University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.

Maitia, nun zira?

COL. SELBY had just come to Washington, and taken
lodgings in Georgetown. His business was to get pay
for some cotton that was destroyed during the war. There
were many others in Washington on the same errand, some
of them with claims as difficult to establish as his. A concert
of action was necessary, and he was not, therefore, at all surprised
to receive the note from a lady asking him to call at
Senator Dilworthy's.

At a little after three on Wednesday he rang the bell of
the Senator's residence. It was a handsome mansion on the
Square opposite the President's house. The owner must be
a man of great wealth, the Colonel thought; perhaps, who
knows, said he with a smile, he may have got some of my
cotton in exchange for salt and quinine after the capture of
New Orleans. As this thought passed through his mind he
was looking at the remarkable figure of the Hero of New
Orleans, holding itself by main strength from sliding off the
back of the rearing bronze horse, and lifting its hat in the
manner of one who acknowledges the playing of that martial
air: “See, the Conquering Hero Comes!” “Gad,” said the
Colonel to himself, “Old Hickory ought to get down and
give his seat to Gen. Sutler—but they'd have to tie him on.”

[ILLUSTRATION]

ONCE MORE FACE TO FACE.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 350. In-line image of a man addressing a woman as he walks through the door.]

Laura was in the drawing room. She heard the bell, she
heard the steps in the hall, and the emphatic thud of the
supporting cane. She had risen from her chair and was
leaning against the piano, pressing her left hand against the
violent beating of her heart. The door opened and the Colonel
entered, standing in the full light of the opposite window.
Laura was more in the shadow and stood for an instant, long
enough for the Colonel to make the inward observation that
she was a magnificent woman. She then advanced a step.

“Col. Selby, is it not?”

The Colonel staggered back, caught himself by a chair, and
turned towards her a look of terror.

“Laura? My God!”

“Yes, your wife!”

“Oh, no, it can't be. How came you here? I thought
you were—”

“You thought I was dead? You thought you were rid
of me? Not so long as you live, Col. Selby, not so long as
you live,” Laura in her passion was hurried on to say.

No man had ever accused Col. Selby of cowardice. But
he was a coward before this woman. May be he was not the
man he once was. Where was his coolness? Where was his
sneering, imperturbable manner, with which he could have
met, and would have met, any woman he had wronged, if
he had only been forewarned. He felt now that he must
temporize, that he must gain time. There was danger in
Laura's tone. There was something frightful in her calmness.
Her steady eyes seemed to devour him.

“You have ruined my life,” she said; “and I was so young,
so ignorant, and loved you so. You betrayed me, and left
me, mocking me and trampling me into the dust, a soiled
cast-off. You might better have killed me then. Then I
should not have hated you.”

“Laura,” said the Colonel, nerving himself, but still pale,
and speaking appealingly, “don't say that. Reproach me. I
deserve it. I was a scoundrel. I was everything monstrous.
But your beauty made me crazy. You are right. I was a
brute in leaving you as I did. But what could I do? I was
married, and—”

“And your wife still lives?” asked Laura, bending a little
forward in her eagerness.

The Colonel noticed the action, and he almost said “no,”
but he thought of the folly of attempting concealment.

“Yes. She is here.”

What little color had wandered back into Laura's face
forsook it again. Her heart stood still, her strength seemed
going from her limbs. Her last hope was gone. The room
swam before her for a moment, and the Colonel stepped
towards her, but she waved him back, as hot anger again
coursed through her veins, and said,

“And you dare come with her, here, and tell me of it, here
and mock me with it! And you think I will have it, George?
You think I will let you live with that woman? You think I
am as powerless as that day I fell dead at your feet?”

She raged now. She was in a tempest of excitement.
And she advanced towards him with a threatening mien. She
would kill me if she could, thought the Colonel; but he

would kill me if she could, thought the Colonel; but he
thought at the same moment, how beautiful she is. He had
recovered his head now. She was lovely when he knew her,
then a simple country girl. Now she was dazzling, in the
fullness of ripe womanhood, a superb creature, with all the
fascination that a woman of the world has for such a man
as Col. Selby. Nothing of this was lost on him. He stepped
quickly to her, grasped both her hands in his, and said,

“Laura, stop! think! Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose
I hated my fate! What can I do? I am broken by the war.
I have lost everything almost. I had as lief be dead and done
with it.”

The Colonel spoke with a low remembered voice that
thrilled through Laura. He was looking into her eyes as he
had looked in those old days, when no birds of all those that
sang in the groves where they walked sang a note of warning.
He was wounded. He had been punished. Her strength
forsook her with her rage, and she sank upon a chair, sobbing,

“Oh! my God, I thought I hated him!”

The Colonel knelt beside her. He took her hand and she
let him keep it. She looked down into his face, with a pitiable
tenderness, and said in a weak voice.

let him keep it. She looked down into his face, with a pitiable
tenderness, and said in a weak voice,

“And you do love me a little?”

The Colonel vowed and protested. He kissed her hand
and her lips. He swore his false soul into perdition.

She wanted love, this woman. Was not her love for George
Selby deeper than any other woman's could be? Had she
not a right to him? Did he not belong to her by virtue of
her overmastering passion? His wife—she was not his wife,
except by the law. She could not be. Even with the law
she could have no right to stand between two souls that were
one. It was an infamous condition in society that George
should be tied to her.

Laura thought this, believed it, because she desired to
believe it. She came to it as an original proposition, founded
on the requirements of her own nature. She may have heard,
doubtless she had, similar theories that were prevalent at
that day, theories of the tyranny of marriage and of the freedom
of marriage. She had even heard women lecturers say
that marriage should only continue so long as it pleased
either party to it—for a year, or a month, or a day. She
had not given much heed to this. But she saw its justice
now in a flash of revealing desire. It must be right. God
would not have permitted her to love George Selby as she
did, and him to love her, if it was right for society to raise
up a barrier between them. He belonged to her. Had he
not confessed it himself?

Not even the religious atmosphere of Senator Dilworthy's
house had been sufficient to instill into Laura that deep Christian
principle which had been somehow omitted in her training.
Indeed in that very house had she not heard women,
prominent before the country and besieging Congress, utter
sentiments that fully justified the course she was marking out
for herself?

They were seated now, side by side, talking with more
calmness. Laura was happy, or thought she was. But it was
that feverish sort of happiness which is snatched out of the
black shadow of falsehood, and is at the moment recognized

as fleeting and perilous, and indulged tremblingly. She
loved. She was loved. That is happiness certainly. And
the black past and the troubled present and the uncertain
future could not snatch that from her.

What did they say as they sat there? What nothings do
people usually say in such circumstances, even if they are
three-score and ten? It was enough for Laura to hear his
voice and be near him. It was enough for him to be near
her, and avoid committing himself as much as he could.
Enough for him was the present also. Had there not always
been some way out of such scrapes?

And yet Laura could not be quite content without prying
into to-morrow. How could the Colonel manage to free himself
from his wife? Would it be long? Could he not go
into some State where it would not take much time? He
could not say exactly. That they must think of. That they
must talk over. And so on. Did this seem like a damnable
plot to Laura against the life, maybe, of a sister, a woman
like herself? Probably not. It was right that this man
should be hers, and there were some obstacles in the way.
That was all. There are as good reasons for bad actions as
for good ones, to those who commit them. When one has
broken the tenth commandment, the others are not of much
account.

Was it unnatural, therefore, that when George Selby
departed, Laura should watch him from the window, with an
almost joyful heart as he went down the sunny square? “I
shall see him to-morrow,” she said, “and the next day, and
the next. He is mine now.”

“Damn the woman,” said the Colonel as he picked his way
down the steps. “Or,” he added, as his thoughts took a new
turn, “I wish my wife was in New Orleans.”