34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
Eet Jomfru Haar drager stærkere end ti Par Öxen.
WHEN Laura had been in Washington three months,
she was still the same person, in one respect, that she
was when she first arrived there—that is to say, she still bore
the name of Laura Hawkins. Otherwise she was perceptibly
changed.—
She had arrived in a state of grievous uncertainty as to
what manner of woman she was, physically and intellectually,
as compared with eastern women; she was well satisfied, now,
that her beauty was confessed, her mind a grade above the
average, and her powers of fascination rather extraordinary.
So she was at ease upon those points. When she arrived,
she was posessed of habits of economy and not possessed of
money; now she dressed elaborately, gave but little thought
to the cost of things, and was very well fortified financially.—
She kept her mother and Washington freely supplied with
money, and did the same by Col. Sellers—who always insisted
upon giving his note for loans—with interest; he was rigid
upon that; she must take interest; and one of the Colonel's
greatest satisfactions was to go over his accounts and note
what a handsome sum this accruing interest amounted to,
and what a comfortable though modest support it would yield
Laura in case reverses should overtake her. In truth he
could not help feeling that he was an efficient shield for her
against poverty; and so, if her expensive ways ever troubled
him for a brief moment, he presently dismissed the thought
and said to himself, “Let her go on—even if she loses
everything she is still safe—this interest will always afford her
a good easy income.”
Laura was on excellent terms with a great many members
of Congress, and there was an undercurrent of suspicion in
some quarters that she was one of that detested class known
as “lobbyists;” but what belle could escape slander in such a
city? Fair-minded people declined to condemn her on mere
suspicion, and so the injurious talk made no very damaging
headway. She was very gay, now, and very celebrated, and
she might well expect to be assailed by many kinds of gossip.
She was growing used to celebrity, and could already sit calm
and seemingly unconscious, under the fire of fifty lorgnettes
in a theatre, or even overhear the low voice “That's she!” as
she passed along the street without betraying annoyance.
The whole air was full of a vague vast scheme which was
to eventuate in filling Laura's pockets with millions of money;
some had one idea of the scheme, and some another, but
nobody had any exact knowledge upon the subject. All that
any one felt sure about, was that Laura's landed estates were
princely in value and extent, and that the government was
anxious to get hold of them for public purposes, and that
Laura was willing to make the sale but not at all anxious
about the matter and not at all in a hurry. It was whispered
that Senator Dilworthy was a stumbling block in the way of
an immediate sale, because he was resolved that the government
should not have the lands except with the understanding
that they should be devoted to the uplifting of the
negro race; Laura did not care what they were devoted to, it
was said, (a world of very different gossip to the contrary notwithstanding,)
but there were several other heirs and they
would be guided entirely by the Senator's wishes; and
finally, many people averred that while it would be easy to
sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the negro,
by resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes,
Senator Dilworthy was unwilling to have so noble a charity
sullied by any taint of corruption—he was resolved that not
a vote should be bought. Nobody could get anything
definite from Laura about these matters, and so gossip had
to feed itself chiefly upon guesses. But the effect of it all
was, that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and
likely to be vastly more so in a little while. Consequently
she was much courted and as much envied. Her wealth
attracted many suitors. Perhaps they came to worship her
riches, but they remained to worship her. Some of the
noblest men of the time succumbed to her fascinations.
She frowned upon no lover when he made his first advances,
but by and by when he was hopelessly enthralled, he learned
from her own lips that she had formed a resolution never to
marry. Then he would go away hating and cursing the
whole sex, and she would calmly add his scalp to her string,
while she mused upon the bitter day that Col. Selby trampled
her love and her pride in the dust. In time it came to be
said that her way was paved with broken hearts.
Poor Washington gradually woke up to the fact that he too
was an intellectual marvel as well as his gifted sister. He
could not conceive how it had come about (it did not occur
to him that the gossip about his family's great wealth had
anything to do with it). He could not account for it by any
process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the
fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself
dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied
very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who
flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of
nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes
at a dinner party or a reception he would find himself
the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in
the discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would
mine his brain and put in a blast and when the smoke and
flying debris had cleared away the result would be what
seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of dirt or
two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as
lost in admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of
virgin gold. Every remark he made delighted his hearers
and compelled their applause; he overheard people say he
was exceedingly bright—they were chiefly mammas and
marriageable young ladies. He found that some of his good
things were being repeated about the town. Whenever he
heard of an instance of this kind, he would keep that particular
remark in mind and analyze it at home in private. At
first he could not see that the remark was anything better
than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to
feel that perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that
he used to analyze his good things with a deal of comfort,
and find in them a brilliancy which would have been unapparent
to him in earlier days—and then he would make a note
of that good thing and say it again the first time he found himself
in a new company. Presently he had saved up quite a
repertoire of brilliancies; and after that he confined himself
to repeating these and ceased to originate any more, lest he
might injure his reputation by an unlucky effort.
He was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his
notice at receptions, or left upon his hands at parties, and in
time he began to feel that he was being deliberately persecuted
in this way; and after that he could not enjoy society
because of his constant dread of these female ambushes and surprises.
He was distressed to find that nearly everytime he
showed a young lady a polite attention he was straightway
reported to be engaged to her; and as some of these reports
got into the newspapers occasionally, he had to keep writing
to Louise that they were lies and she must believe in him and
not mind them or allow them to grieve her.
Washington was as much in the dark as anybody with
regard to the great wealth that was hovering in the air and
seemingly on the point of tumbling into the family pocket.
Laura would give him no satisfaction. All she would say,
was:
“Wait. Be patient. You will see.”
“But will it be soon, Laura?”
“It will not be very long, I think.”
“But what makes you think so?”
“I have reasons—and good ones. Just wait, and be
patient.”
“But is it going to be as much as people say it is?”
“What do they say it is?”
“Oh, ever so much. Millions!”
“Yes, it will be a great sum.”
“But how great, Laura? Will it be millions?”
“Yes, you may call it that. Yes, it will be millions.
There, now—does that satisfy you?”
“Splendid! I can wait. I can wait patiently—ever so
patiently. Once I was near selling the land for twenty thousand
dollars; once for thirty thousand dollars; once after that
for seven thousand dollars; and once for forty thousand
dollars—but something always told me not to do it. What
a fool I would have been to sell it for such a beggarly trifle!
It is the land that's to bring the money, isn't it Laura? You
can tell me that much, can't you?”
“Yes, I don't mind saying that much. It is the land.
But mind—don't ever hint that you got it from me. Don't
mention me in the matter at all, Washington.”
“All right—I won't. Millions! Isn't it splendid! I mean
to look around for a building lot; a lot with fine ornamental
shrubbery and all that sort of thing. I will do it to-day.
And I might as well see an architect, too, and get him to go
to work at a plan for a house. I don't intend to spare and
expense; I mean to have the noblest house that money can
build.” Then after a pause—he did not notice Laura's smiles
—“Laura, would you lay the main hall in encaustic tiles, or
just in fancy patterns of hard wood?”
Laura laughed a good old-fashioned laugh that had more of
her former natural self about it than any sound that had
issued from her mouth in many weeks. She said:
“You don't change, Washington. You still begin to
squander a fortune right and left the instant you hear of
it in the distance; you never wait till the foremost dollar of
it arrives within a hundred miles of you,”—and she kissed
her brother good bye and left him weltering in his dreams,
so to speak.
He got up and walked the floor feverishly during two
hours; and when he sat down he had married Louise, built a
house, reared a family, married them off, spent upwards of
eight hundred thousand dollars on mere luxuries, and died
worth twelve millions.
