University of Virginia Library

44. CHAPTER XLIV.

“IT'S easy enough for another fellow to talk,” said Harry,
despondingly, after he had put Philip in possession of
his view of the case. “It's easy enough to say `give her up,'
if you don't care for her. What am I going to do to give
her up?”

It seemed to Harry that it was a situation requiring some
active measures. He couldn't realize that he had fallen hopelessly
in love without some rights accruing to him for the
possession of the object of his passion. Quiet resignation
under relinquishment of any thing he wanted was not in his
line. And when it appeared to him that his surrender of
Laura would be the withdrawal of the one barrier that kept
her from ruin, it was unreasonable to expect that he could see
how to give her up.

Harry had the most buoyant confidence in his own projects
always; he saw everything connected with himself in a
large way and in rosy hues. This predominance of the imagination
over the judgment gave that appearance of exaggeration
to his conversation and to his communications with
regard to himself, which sometimes conveyed the impression
that he was not speaking the truth. His acquaintances had

been known to say that they invariably allowed a half for
shrinkage in his statements, and held the other half under
advisement for confirmation.

Philip in this case could not tell from Harry's story exactly
how much encouragement Laura had given him, nor
what hopes he might justly have of winning her. He had
never seen him desponding before. The “brag” appeared
to be all taken out of him, and his airy manner only asserted
itself now and then in a comical imitation of its old self.

Philip wanted time to look about him before he decided
what to do. He was not familiar with Washington, and it
was difficult to adjust his feelings and perceptions to its peculiarities.
Coming out of the sweet sanity of the Bolton
household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity Fair one
could conceive. It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy
atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed. He
fancied that everybody attached to himself an exaggerated
importance, from the fact of being at the national capital,
the center of political influence, the fountain of patronage,
preferment, jobs and opportunities.

People were introduced to each other as from this or that
state, not from cities or towns, and this gave a largeness to
their representative feeling. All the women talked politics
as naturally and glibly as they talk fashion or literature
elsewhere. There was always some exciting topic at the
Capitol, or some huge slander was rising up like a miasmatic
exhalation from the Potomac, threatening to settle no one
knew exactly where. Every other person was an aspirant
for a place, or, if he had one, for a better place, or more pay;
almost every other one had some claim or interest or remedy
to urge; even the women were all advocates for the advancement
of some person, and they violently espoused or denounced
this or that measure as it would affect some relative, acquaintance
or friend.

Love, travel, even death itself, waited on the chances of the
dies daily thrown in the two Houses, and the committee
rooms there. If the measure went through, love could afford

[ILLUSTRATION]

CHILDREN OF HOPE.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 398. In-line image of two homeless men on crutches talking to each other.] to ripen into marriage, and longing for foreign travel would
have fruition; and it must have been only eternal hope
springing in the breast that kept alive numerous old claimants
who for years and years had besieged the doors of Congress,
and who looked as if they needed not so much an appropriation
of money as six feet of ground. And those who stood
so long waiting for success to bring them death were usually
those who had a just claim.

Representing states and talking of national and even international
affairs, as familiarly as neighbors at home talk of
poor crops and the extravagance of their ministers, was likely
at first to impose upon Philip as to the importance of the
people gathered here.

There was a little newspaper editor from Phil's native
town, the assistant on a Peddletonian weekly, who made his
little annual joke about the “first egg laid on our table,” and
who was the menial of every tradesman in the village and
under bonds to him for frequent “puffs,” except the undertaker,

about whose employment he was recklessly facetious.
In Washington he was an important man, correspondent, and
clerk of two house committees, a “worker” in politics, and a
confident critic of every woman and every man in Washington.
He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some
foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant-though
if ignorance of language
were a qualification
he might have been a consul
at home. His easy familiarity
with great men was
beautiful to see, and when
Philip learned what a tremendous
underground influence
this little ignoramus
had, he no longer wondered
at the queer appointments
and the queerer legislation.

Philip was not long in
discovering that people in Washington did not differ much
from other people; they had the same meannesses, generosities,
and tastes. A Washington boarding house had the
odor of a boarding house the world over.

Col. Sellers was as unchanged as any one Philip saw whom
he had known elsewhere. Washington appeared to be the
native element of this man. His pretentions were equal to
any he encountered there. He saw nothing in its society that
equalled that of Hawkeye, he sat down to no table that could
not be unfavorably contrasted with his own at home; the
most airy scheme inflated in the hot air of the capital only
reached in magnitude some of his lesser fancies, the by-play
of his constructive imagination.

“The country is getting along very well,” he said to Philip,
“but our public men are too timid. What we want is more
money. I've told Boutwell so. Talk about basing the currency
on gold; you might as well base it on pork. Gold is

only one product. Base it on everything! You've got to
do something for the West. How am I to move my crops?
We must have improvements. Grant's got the idea. We
want a canal from the James River to the Mississippi. Government
ought to build it.”

It was difficult to get the Colonel off from these large
themes when he was once started, but Philip brought the
conversation round to Laura and her reputation in the City.

“No,” he said, “I haven't noticed much. We've been so
busy about this University. It will make Laura rich with
the rest of us, and she has done nearly as much as if she were
a man. She has great talent, and will make a big match. I
see the foreign ministers and that sort after her. Yes, there
is talk, always will be about a pretty woman so much in public
as she is. Tough stories come to me, but I put'em away.
'Taint likely one of Si. Hawkins's children would do that—
for she is the same as a child of his. I told her, though, to
go slow,” added the Colonel, as if that mysterious admonition
from him would set everything right.

“Do you know anything about a Col. Selby?”

“Know all about him. Fine fellow. But he's got a wife;
and I told him, as a friend, he'd better sheer off from Laura.
I reckon he thought better of it and did.”

But Philip was not long in learning the truth. Courted as
Laura was by a certain class and still admitted into society,
that, nevertheless, buzzed with disreputable stories about her,
she had lost character with the best people. Her intimacy
with Selby was open gossip, and there were winks and thrustings
of the tongue in any group of men when she passed by.
It was clear enough that Harry's delusion must be broken up,
and that no such feeble obstacle as his passion could interpose
would turn Laura from her fate. Philip determined to
see her, and put himself in possession of the truth, as he suspected
it, in order to show Harry his folly.

Laura, after her last conversation with Harry, had a new
sense of her position. She had noticed before the signs of a

change in manner towards her, a little less respect perhaps
from men, and an avoidance by women. She had attributed
this latter partly to jealousy of her, for no one is willing to
acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive
can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances. But,
now, if society had turned on her, she would defy it. It was
not in her nature to shrink. She knew she had been wronged,
and she knew that she had no remedy.

What she heard of Col. Selby's proposed departure alarmed
her more than anything else, and she calmly determined that if
he was deceiving her the second time it should be the last.
Let society finish the tragedy if it liked; she was indifferent what
came after. At the first opportunity, she charged Selby with
his intention to abandon her. He unblushingly denied it.
He had not thought of going to Europe. He had only been
amusing himself with Sellers' schemes. He swore that as
soon as she succeeded with her bill, he would fly with her to
any part of the world.

She did not quite believe him, for she saw that he feared
her, and she began to suspect that his were the protestations
of a coward to gain time. But she showed him no doubts.
She only watched his movements day by day, and always held
herself ready to act promptly.

When Philip came into the presence of this attractive
woman, he could not realize that she was the subject of all
the scandal he had heard. She received him with quite the
old Hawkeye openness and cordiality, and fell to talking at
once of their little acquaintance there; and it seemed impossible
that he could ever say to her what he had come determined
to say. Such a man as Philip has only one standard
by which to judge women.

Laura recognized that fact no doubt. The better part of
her woman's nature saw it. Such a man might, years ago, not
now, have changed her nature, and made the issue of her life
so different, even after her cruel abandonment. She had a
dim feeling of this, and she would like now to stand well
with him. The spark of truth and honor that was left in her

was elicited by his presence. It was this influence that governed
her conduct in this interview.

“I have come,” said Philip in his direct manner, “from
my friend Mr. Brierly, You are not ignorant of his feeling
towards you?”

“Perhaps not.”

“But perhaps you do not know, you who have so much
admiration, how sincere and overmastering his love is for
you?” Philip would not have spoken so plainly, if he had
in mind anything except to draw from Laura something
that would end Harry's passion.

“And is sincere love so rare, Mr. Sterling?” asked Laura,
moving her foot a little, and speaking with a shade of sarcasm.

“Perhaps not in Washington,” replied Philip, tempted
into a similar tone. “Excuse my bluntness,” he continued,
“but would the knowledge of his love, would his devotion,
make any difference to you in your Washington life?”

“In respect to what?” asked Laura quickly.

“Well, to others. I won't equivocate—to Col. Selby?”

Laura's face flushed with anger, or shame; she looked
steadily at Philip and began,

“By what right, sir,—”

“By the right of friendship,” interrupted Philip stoutly.
“It may matter little to you. It is everything to him. He
has a Quixotic notion that you would turn back from what
is before you for his sake. You cannot be ignorant of what
all the city is talking of.” Philip said this determinedly and
with some bitterness.

It was a full minute before Laura spoke. Both had risen,
Philip as if to go, and Laura in suppressed excitement.
When she spoke her voice was very unsteady, and she looked
down.

“Yes, I know. I perfectly understand what you mean. Mr.
Brierly is nothing—simply nothing. He is a moth singed, that
is all—the trifler with women thought he was a wasp. I
have no pity for him, not the least. You may tell him not

to make a fool of himself, and to keep away. I say this on
your account, not his. You are not like him. It is enough
for me that you want it so. Mr. Sterling,” she continued,
looking up, and there were tears in her eyes that contradicted
the hardness of her language, “you might not pity him if
you knew my history; perhaps you would not wonder at some
things you hear. No; it is useless to ask me why it must be
so. You can't make a life over—society wouldn't let you if
you would—and mine must be lived as it is. There, sir, I'm
not offended; but it is useless for you to say anything more.”

Philip went away with his heart lightened about Harry,
but profoundly saddened by the glimpse of what this woman
might have been. He told Harry all that was necessary of
the conversation—she was bent on going her own way, he
had not the ghost of a chance—he was a fool, she had said,
for thinking he had.

And Harry accepted it meekly, and made up his own mind
that Philip didn't know much about women.