University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

MR. Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he
was living at the City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson
had been kind enough to say that it didn't make any
difference whether he was with the corps or not; and although
Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington
Hawkins that he must go back at once to the line and superintend
the lay-out with reference to his contract, yet he did not
go, but wrote instead long letters to Philip, instructing him
to keep his eye out, and to let him know when any difficulty
occurred that required his presence.

Meantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye,
as he did in any society where fortune cast him and he
had the slightest opportunity to expand. Indeed the talents
of a rich and accomplished young fellow like Harry were
not likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land operator,
engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles
of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers,
intimate with public men at Washington, one who could

play the guitar and touch the banjo lightly, and who had an
eye for a pretty girl, and knew the language of flattery, was
welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura Hawkins
thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him,
and to endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes
of her attractions.

“Gad,” says Harry to the Colonel, “she's a superb creature;
she'd make a stir in New York, money or no money. There
are men I know would give her a railroad or an opera house,
or whatever she wanted—at least they'd promise.”

Harry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything
else in the world he wanted, and he half resolved to
appropriate Miss Laura, during his stay in Hawkeye. Perhaps
the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was offended at
Harry's talk, for he replied,

“No nonsense, Mr. Brierly. Nonsense won't do in
Hawkeye, not with my friends. The Hawkins' blood is
good blood, all the way from Tennessee. The Hawkinses
are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is
millions when it comes into market.”

“Of course, Colonel. Not the least offense intended.
But you can see she is a fascinating woman. I was only
thinking, as to this appropriation, now, what such a woman
could do in Washington. All correct, too, all correct. Common
thing, I assure you in Washington; the wives of senators,
representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives, and some
who are not wives, use their influence. You want an appointment?
Do you go to Senator X? Not much. You get on
the right side of his wife. Is it an appropriation? You'd
go straight to the Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose?
You'd learn better than that. It takes a woman to
get any thing through the Land Office. I tell you, Miss
Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the
Senate and the House of Representatives in one session, if she
was in Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course as your
friend.”

[ILLUSTRATION]

NOT EASILY REFERRED.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 179. In-line image of a woman and an older man talking quietly to one another.]

“Would you have her sign our petition?” asked the
Colonel, innocently.

Harry laughed. “Women don't get anything by petitioning
Congress; nobody does, that's for form. Petitions are
referred somewhere, and that's the last of them; you can't
refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is present.
They prefer 'em mostly.”

The petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a
glowing description of Napoleon and the adjacent country,
and a statement of the absolute necessity to the prosperity of
that region and of one of the stations on the great through
route to the Pacific, of the immediate improvement of

Columbus River; to this was appended a map of the city
and a survey of the river. It was signed by all the people
at Stone's Landing who could write their names, by Col.
Eschol Sellers, and the Colonel agreed to have the names
headed by all the senators and representatives from the state
and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of congress.
When completed it was a formidable document. Its
preparation and that of more minute plots of the new city
consumed the valuable time of Sellers and Harry for many
weeks, and served to keep them both in the highest spirits.

In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior
being, a man who was able to bring things to pass in a way
that excited his enthusiasm. He never tired of listening to
his stories of what he had done and of what he was going to
do. As for Washington, Harry thought he was a man of
ability and comprehension, but “too visionary,” he told the
Colonel. The Colonel said he might be right, but he had
never noticed anything visionary about him.

“He's got his plans, sir. God bless my soul, at his age, I
was full of plans. But experience sobers a man, I never
touch any thing now that hasn't been weighed in my judgment;
and when Eschol Sellers puts his judgment on a thing,
there it is.”

Whatever might have been Harry's intentions with regard
to Laura, he saw more and more of her every day, until he
got to be restless and nervous when he was not with her.
That consummate artist in passion allowed him to believe
that the fascination was mainly on his side, and so worked
upon his vanity, while inflaming his ardor, that he searcely
knew what he was about. Her coolness and coyness were
even made to appear the simple precautions of a modest timidity,
and attracted him even more than the little tendernesses
into which she was occasionally surprised. He could never
be away from her long, day or evening; and in a short time
their intimacy was the town talk. She played with him so
adroitly that Harry thought she was absorbed in love for

him, and yet he was amazed that he did not get on faster in
his conquest.

And when he thought of it, he was piqued as well. A
country girl, poor enough, that was evident; living with her
family in a cheap and most unattractive frame house, such as
carpenters build in America, scantily furnished and unadorned;
without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels or
the fine manners of society—Harry couldn't understand it.
But she fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of
absolute familiarity at the same time. While he was with her
she made him forget that the Hawkins' house was nothing but
a wooden tenement, with four small square rooms on the
ground floor and a half story; it might have been a palace
for aught he knew.

Perhaps Laura was older than Harry. She was, at any
rate, at that ripe age when beauty in woman seems more
solid than in the budding period of girlhood, and she had
come to understand her powers perfectly, and to know exactly
how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it
was profitable to retain. She saw that many women, with
the best intentions, make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness
into womanhood. Such a woman would have attracted
Harry at any time, but only a woman with a cool brain and
exquisite art could have made him lose his head in this way;
for Harry thought himself a man of the world. The young
fellow never dreamed that he was merely being experimented
on; he was to her a man of another society and another culture,
different from that she had any knowledge of except in
books, and she was not unwilling to try on him the fascinations
of her mind and person.

For Laura had her dreams. She detested the narrow limits
in which her lot was cast, she hated poverty. Much of
her reading had been of modern works of fiction, written by
her own sex, which had revealed to her something of her own
powers and given her indeed, an exaggerated notion of the
influence, the wealth, the position a woman may attain who
has beauty and talent and ambition and a little culture, and
is not too scrupulous in the the use of them. She wanted to

be rich, she wanted luxury, she wanted men at her feet, her
slaves, and she had not—thanks to some of the novels she
had read—the nicest discrimination between notoriety and
reputation; perhaps she did not know how fatal notoriety
usually is to the bloom of womanhood.

With the other Hawkins children Laura had been brought
up in the belief that they had inherited a fortune in the Tennessee
Lands. She did not by any means share all the delusion
of the family; but her brain was not seldom busy with
schemes about it. Washington seemed to her only to dream
of it and to be willing to wait for its riches to fall upon him
in a golden shower; but she was impatient, and wished she
were a man to take hold of the business.

“You men must enjoy your schemes and your activity and
liberty to go about the world,” she said to Harry one day,
when he had been talking of New York and Washington and
his incessant engagements.

“Oh, yes,” replied that martyr to business, “it's all well
enough, if you don't have too much of it, but it only has one
object.”

“What is that?”

“If a woman doesn't know, it's useless to tell her. What
do you suppose I am staying in Hawkeye for, week after
week, when I ought to be with my corps?”

“I suppose it's your business with Col. Sellers about Napoleon,
you've always told me so,” answered Laura, with a look
intended to contradict her words.

“And now I tell you that is all arranged, I suppose you'll
tell me I ought to go?”

“Harry!” exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting
her pretty hand rest there a moment. “Why should I want
you to go away? The only person in Hawkeye who understands
me.”

“But you refuse to understand me,” replied Harry, flattered
but still petulent. “You are like an iceberg, when we are
alone.”

Laura looked up with wonder in her great eyes, and something
like a blush suffusing her face, followed by a look of

langour that penetrated Harry's heart as if it had been longing.
“Did I ever show any want of confidence in you. Harry?”
And she gave him her hand, which Harry pressed with
effusion—something in her manner told him that he must be
content with that favor.

It was always so. She excited his hopes and denied him,
inflamed his passion and restrained it, and wound him in
her toils day by day. To what purpose? It was keen delight
to Laura to prove that she had power over men.

Laura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially
about the luxurious society in which Mr. Brierly moved when
he was at home. It pleased her imagination to fancy herself
a queen in it.

“You should be a winter in Washington,” Harry said.

“But I have no acquaintances there.”

“Don't know any of the families of the congressmen?
They like to have a pretty woman staying with them.”

“Not one.”

“Suppose Col. Sellers should have business there; say,
about this Columbus River appropriation?”

“Sellers!” and Laura laughed.

“You needn't laugh. Queerer things have happened.
Sellers knows everybody from Missouri, and from the
West, too, for that matter. He'd introduce you to Washington
life quick enough. It doesn't need a crowbar to break
your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It's
democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any
door. If I were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any
better place than the capital to pick up a prince or a fortune.”

“Thank you,” replied Laura. “But I prefer the quiet of
home, and the love of those I know;” and her face wore a
look of sweet contentment and unworldliness that finished
Mr. Harry Brierly for the day.

Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon
good ground, and bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in
her mind until she had built up a plan on it, and almost a
career for herself. Why not, she said, why shouldn't I do

as other women have done? She took the first opportunity
to see Col. Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington
visit. How was he getting on with his navigation scheme,
would it be likely to take him from home to Jefferson City;
or to Washington, perhaps?

“Well, maybe. If the people of Napoleon want me to go
to Washington, and look after that matter, I might tear
myself from my home. It's been suggested to me, but—not a
word of it to Mrs. Sellers and the children. Maybe they
wouldn't like to think of their father in Washington. But
Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, `Colonel, you
are the man, you could influence more votes than any one
else on such a measure, an old settler, a man of the people,
you know the wants of Missouri; you've a respect for religion
too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel goes
with improvements.' Which is true enough, Miss Laura,
and hasn't been enough thought of in connection with
Napoleon. He's an able man, Dilworthy, and a good man.
A man has got to be good to succeed as he has. He's only
been in Congress a few years, and he must be worth a million.
First thing in the morning when he stayed with me he asked
about family prayers, whether we had 'em before or after
breakfast. I hated to disappoint the Senator, but I had to
out with it, tell him we didn't have 'em, not steady. He
said he understood, business interruptions and all that, some
men were well enough without, but as for him he never neglected
the ordinances of religion. He doubted if the Columbus
River appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke
the Divine Blessing on it.”

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say to the reader that Senator
Dilworthy had not stayed with Col. Sellers while he was in
Hawkeye; this visit to his house being only one of the Colonel's
hallucinations—one of those instant creations of his
fertile fancy, which were always flashing into his brain and
out of his mouth in the course of any conversation and without
interrupting the flow of it.

During the summer Philip rode across the country and
made a short visit in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity

to show him the progress that he and the Colonel had made
in their operation at Stone's Landing, to introduce him also
to Laura, and to borrow a little money when he departed.
Harry bragged about his conquest, as was his habit, and took
Philip round to see his western prize.

Laura received Mr. Philip with a courtesy and a slight
hauteur that rather surprised and not a little interested him.
He saw at once that she was older than Harry, and soon made
up his mind that she was leading his friend a country dance
to which he was unaccustomed. At least he thought he saw
that, and half hinted as much to Harry, who flared up at
once; but on a second visit Philip was not so sure, the young
lady was certainly kind and friendly and almost confiding
with Harry, and treated Philip with the greatest consideration.
She deferred to his opinions, and listened attentively
when he talked, and in time met his frank manner with an
equal frankness, so that he was quite convinced that whatever
she might feel towards Harry, she was sincere with him.
Perhaps his manly way did win her liking. Perhaps in her
mind, she compared him with Harry, and recognized in
him a man to whom a woman might give her whole soul,
recklessly and with little care if she lost it. Philip was
not invincible to her beauty nor to the intellectual charm of
her presence.

The week seemed very short that he passed in Hawkeye,
and when he bade Laura good by, he seemed to have known
her a year.

“We shall see you again, Mr. Sterling,” she said as she
gave him her hand, with just a shade of sadness in her handsome
eyes.

And when he turned away she followed him with a look
that might have disturbed his serenity, if he had not at the
moment had a little square letter in his breast pocket, dated
at Philadelphia, and signed “Ruth.”