University of Virginia Library

52. CHAPTER LII.
MR. DRUMMOND SUCCEEDS MR. HOLLOWBREAD.

Mr. Jake Pike hastened in hot-footed
wrath to expose to Sykes Drummond how
he had been gouged and chiseled, as he poetically
expressed it, by Josie Murray.

The tale was in itself so entertaining, and
some of the narrator's resentful commentaries
upon it were so whimsical, that the Congressman
could not help laughing from time
to time, in that rasping, snorting, startling
haw, haw! of his, the counterpart of two
hoots from a locomotive.

“Mr. Drummond, how much your laugh is
like the cawing of a crow!” said Jake, getting
irritated at this misplaced hilarity. “I
never noticed it before; but really it is very
like it. Haw, haw! Caw, caw! Exactly
like it.”

Rendered pensive by this comparison,
which seemed to him inappropriate, disagreeable
and ungentlemanly, Sykes suspended
his merriment for a while, to the satisfaction
and triumph of Pike.

“I rather look to you to make this account
square,” continued the lobbyist, speaking
somewhat out of his fretfulness, but also believing
that what he suggested was only
justice. Unattainable justice, probably; but
none the less a beautiful and alluring ideal;
none the less worth asking for.

“Then you will look a great while,” said
Drummond. “I should be sorry to keep a
man of your tender sensibilities in suspense.
You made your own bargain, and you took
your own risk. Besides, if you are out, so
am I. Have I asked you to pay me?”

“No, but you'll borrow it of me some day,
and that'll be the last of the business as far
as my pocket is concerned. Besides, that
an't a complete and exhaustive view of this
whole question. What I contend for, and
have contended for for years, is that there
ought to be responsibility somewhere, and
that it should rest upon Congress. What I
contend for is, that when a member recommends
one of his constituents to his agent,
he ought to be bound to see the agent out
of the woods; and that, if the constituent
fails to pony up honorably, then the member
should make it good, or at least go his share
on the losses.”

“Yes, and have the jobs allotted by the
President, so many dollars' worth to each
district,” grinned Sykes. “Double allowance
to Senators, I suppose? That would
be carrying the Congressional system a dence
of a ways. I don't object to your plan, Jake,
if it can be made general. But there's no
such understanding afoot yet, and you may
bet all your profits for this session that I
sha'n't initiate it.”

“I didn't expect you to, on general principles.
It's a plan that will require combination
and discussion before it can be
rightly inceived, or, in other words, brought
to a judicious inception. But, speaking of
this particular case now, they say you are
agoing to marry the lady. If so, what she
saves, you save. It might look to some folks
as though her chiseling me was a put-up
job betwixt you two.”

“Come, come, old man!” Drummond remonstrated.
But he broke out laughing
again, so callous was he to insinuations of
dishonor, either against himself or against
the woman to whom he was betrothed.
“You are getting beyond the facts there,
and even beyond your rights in stating fictions.
However, just to soothe your feelings
and make business pleasant for the future,
I'll agree to one thing. If I marry the lady,
I will pay you the ten thousand. And if I
don't marry her,” he added, with one of his
confident grins, “I'll make good the four
hundred you have spent.”

“Let me have it on paper,” said Jake.
“By George! hereafter I want things on
paper.”

“Haw, haw!” roared Sykes, quite forgetting

the corvine comparison. “Put it on
paper yourself, if you are afraid of forgetting
it. Stick it into your next relief-bill. Let
it go on the record. By-the-way, I may as
well step around and see Mrs. Murray. Perhaps
I can persuade her into paying you by
agreeing to let her off from marrying me,
haw, haw!”

“Keep your eye peeled,” counseled Pike,
seriously. “You'll need all the sight you've
got to draw a bead on her. She suttenly
out-dodges and out-squats all the turkeys
that ever I hunted.”

So Drummond got rid of his jobber, and
made a call on his betrothed. To her, however,
he said nothing about her dues to Mr.
Pike, that being an affair which could be
easiest managed after the marriage, if indeed
he should ever think best to come to it.

“I wonder you can stay in Washington,”
was Josie's first speech to him, surely a
strange one for an engaged lady. “The
place is horribly dull, now that Congress has
broken up. I wouldn't have thought that
those two or three hundred heavy gentlemen
could make such a vacuum in society.”

“Ah, you are out of work,” said Drummond.
“You are a busy little humming-bird,
and now that you have nothing else to
flutter about, you ought to turn your mind
to the District Government. There is sweetness
and light for you. Public building
contracts, grading and paving contracts,
banking commissions and interests—it almost
equals national legislation. By Jove!
when I look at the multitudes which are sitting
down everywhere to the public loaves
and fishes, I think that there will soon be no
fragments to take up, short of another miracle.
A John Bull told me yesterday that
there is no such thing known in England as
a municipal ring or a thieving mayor. That
is what any American of the present day
would set down as a fairy story.”

“Dear me! there isn't a bit of liberty in
England, is there?” smiled Josie. “See
what it is to be ruled by a selfish aristocracy.
But I hate your perpetual chuckling over
our picking and stealing. It is all very well
to live by it, if one can't live any other way,
and if it is the fashion. But it isn't nice at
all to talk of it so much, and to giggle about
it. A person may do wrong, and yet want
to do better, and so be tolerably decorous
and decent, as I am.”

“Hypocrisy is the established religion of
some persons; yes, and of some nations.”

“It is better than open bragging of naughtiness,
and guffawing about it,” affirmed Josie,
reproachfully.

“You are very hard on your advocate and
adorer this evening. Your advocate and
adorer prostrates himself and asks pardon.”

“Well, you deserve so many whippings,
Sykes! You don't know the first thing
about women. They like, above all things,
a fair outside. They admire the iron hand,
to be sure, but they want the velvet glove
all over it. Now, tell me something nice—
something besides lobbyism — disgusting
business! I never mean to speak to a lobbyist
again as long as I live,” she declared,
remembering with indignation Jake Pike's
extortions and impudence. “Is there nothing
stirring which is pleasant? Is nobody
married or dead?”

“They say that Colonel Murray is going
to give Belle Warden fifty thousand dollars
for a wedding settlement,” said Drummond,
thinking it wise to remind his betrothed
that Bradford was lost to her.

“As a settlement!” repeated Josie, gnawing
her heart in jealous pain. “Such things
sometimes get unsettled,” she could not help
adding. “There's many a slip 'twixt cup
and lip.”

“Not often when the cup is so well gilded,”
laughed Drummond, imprudently.

As we have said, he had given up his haw,
haw! in a great measure, unless he was in
such vulgar and subordinate company as
that of Jake Pike, where he felt perfectly
at liberty to domineer. But sometimes,
even in his affianced one's presence, he fell
back into it through old habit and disagreeable
instinct.

Out of the corner of her lustrous eyes
Josie gave him a furtive glance, very pretty
to look at, and yet almost menacing.

She remembered how her own cup had
been gilded, and queried whether Drummond's
lips were watering for the gold
alone, or for her also. Bradford lost and
Hollowbread dismissed, she sometimes wanted
this man as a comfort to her heart and a
protector to her loneliness, and sometimes,
when he was particularly bearish, wanted
to get rid of him.

“May I ask what you are reading?” inquired
Drummond, suspecting that he had
caused annoyance, and wishing to change
the subject.

“`La Comtesse de Chalis,' and it is very
interesting,” said Josie. “Do let me finish
the page.”

She had just reached that wonderful passage
where the noble and beautiful heroine
makes a superb gesture of bravado, and then,
“with a resolution perfectly cool, perfectly
patrician,” jumps upon the young professor's
knees and throws her arms around his neck.

It was so entrainant, the recollection of
this delicious passage, that Josie of a sudden
dropped her book, rustled over to her Congressman,
and went through the same performance
with him. Perhaps we may suspect
that it was lucky for Drummond that
he, and not some other young gentleman,
was in the room at the time. However, not
thinking of this, and being a person of an
emotional temperament, he was properly
touched by the demonstration.

“I am obliged to you, my dear pussy,” he
said, after some other lip-service of a thankful
nature.

By-the-way, it is wonderful to think how
many pet names this pretty creature had
won since she was big enough to sit in masculine
laps. She had been one man's darling,
another man's dear child, another man's
chicken, another man's pussy, and so on—
quite a long string of them.

“You are very good and sweet to do this,”
continued Drummond. “But, do you know,
it makes me impatient? When will you fix
the day?”

“Oh, what a hurry!” returned Josie, with
an alluring pout. “Can't you look at the
morning star without wanting the sun to
rise in the same minute?”

“I like the morning star. But I sometimes
fear that the sun will never rise.
What if I should lose you? What if my
venerable rival should return in triumph?”
he concluded, spoiling the whole speech with
one of his characteristic turns of coarseness.

“You needn't worry; the poor man is gone
for good,” replied Josie, rising from her seat
with a slight sense that it was a rough one.

“How did the old fellow bear it?” grinned
Drummond, not even seeing that he had annoyed
her, and much less suspecting how.

“He bore it admirably,” said Josie, remembering
with pleasure how she had been worshiped
and clung to by Hollowbread. “He
bore it so well, that I sometimes want him
back.”

“Come, pussy, you must not be angry
with me,” remonstrated the lover, divining
her vexation at last. “I don't mean to be
hard on Nestor for admiring you. I ought
to thank him for it. He raises the value of
the article—of my article. Won't you take
your seat again?”

“I want to talk business,” responded Josie,
seeking relief in a chair. “How shall I
invest my money? Lots of people are coming
to me, and writing to me about investments,
and sending me circulars, and advertising
almanacs, and religious papers with
puffs in them. I think they must talk of
me all day, and dream of me all night. I
could paper a room with their communications.”

“Don't invest till I can look about and
advise you. Almost every thing in the
country is watered, and is as dangerous as
the Dismal Swamp. You might as well invest
in the Gulf Stream as in these advertised
undertakings. We must look for things
that are not puffed. Wait till I can find
something solid.”

“What do you think of railroads, ocean
steam-lines, mines in Colorado, quarries of
Florida marble, and that sort of trifles? I
could buy millions of any one of them.”

“Don't buy a cent's worth of any thing
till I see it. Confound this herd of specula
tors and swindlers! They have no right to
follow you up in such a fashion. However,
it is one of the penalties of being a successful
claimant. Your luck has made a noise,
I can tell you. All the cheats in Washington
are talking about it, and half the honest
people—that despised minority!”

“And savagely enough, I suppose?” queried
Josie, wondering if Jacob Pike had complained
of her. “Has any body abused me
to you?”

“They wouldn't be likely to do that.”

“Have you told of our engagement?” she
instantly asked. “You must not—not yet
a while. Only think of what a position it
would put me in before the people! Off
with the old love and on with the new, every
body would say, and te-he and shaw-shaw
about it at an awful rate. I have done just
right, and just what any woman would do;
but” (and here she laughed) “I don't want
any body to know it, and no woman would.
So we must keep our understanding to ourselves
for a while longer.”

“Certainly,” guffawed Drummond, forgetting
himself, and showing quite too much
triumph.

That laugh of his, that conceited and defiant
and insolent cock-a-doodle-doo, had
probably done him more damage in life than
all his blunders and his sins, such a revelation
was it of his opinions, feelings, and purposes,
as well as such an assault upon the
sensibilities of others. In the present case,
it informed Josie that he had boasted publicly
of the engagement, that he had done
it with a view to “nail her,” and that he
thought he had succeeded. She asked him
no questions, but she took his guilt for granted,
and she resolved to punish him.

It must be understood that, although she
was a wild and headlong coquette, she did
not want the name of being one, and supposed
that she had somehow escaped that
repute.

All sly and habitual sinners, providing
they are not openly and sharply overhauled
for their misdeeds, imagine that they deceive
society. They believe in precautions which
are transparently futile, and in explanations
and self-defenses which are privately laughed
at. The real reason why they are not
haled to judgment is simply this, that the
world has not time to attend to all its petty
malefactors.

Well, Josie believed that Sykes had played
her a trick and done her a harm. She
chastised him by being “out” when he called,
for two days together, and also by failing
to answer the notes which he left for her.
Remembering her flirtishness, and also what
a prize she was in various ways, and being,
moreover, considerably in love with her, after
his taurian fashion, Drummond became
somewhat alarmed.

Perhaps nobody but a very able man and

experienced wire-puller could have devised a
greater blunder than he committed on this
occasion, under the belief that it was an inspiration
of genius. After deep meditation
on the waywardness of coquettes, on their
indifference to birds in the hand, and their
hankering after birds in the bush, he put
himself into the wild-wood in the following
elaborate fashion:

It was a good letter, he said to himself.
It was magnanimous and every way handsome;
at the same time it was perfectly
self-respectful and dignified; it would nail
her, if any thing could. So, after much hesitation,
after deciding for it and against it
several times, he dispatched it by a messenger.

Well, the epistle hit its intended mark; it
actually made Josie fond of him. She wrote
back immediately:

That night she lay awake for hours, wondering
if he wanted to break with her, and
saying to herself that she would not let him
go, that it would make her wretched, etc.

The next day, by the merest accident, and
meaning the while to greet him with a delicious
love-scene, she happened to be out when
he called. What could Drummond do (purposing,
of course, to be self-respectful and
irresistible), but scribble upon a card, “Unlucky
to-day, hope to be happier to-morrow,”
and leave it for Mrs. Murray?

It was enough for Josie; she saw that she
could have him if she wanted him; and she
found, with some little shame, that she did
not want him. After very brief pondering
she rallied the hardihood to write him as
follows: