University of Virginia Library

46. CHAPTER XLVI.

PHILIP left the capitol and walked up Pennsylvania
Avenue in company with Senator Dilworthy. It was a
bright spring morning, the air was soft and inspiring; in the
deepening wayside green, the pink flush of the blossoming
peach trees, the soft suffusion on the heights of Arlington,
and the breath of the warm south wind was apparent the
annual miracle of the resurrection of the earth.

The Senator took off his hat and seemed to open his soul
to the sweet influences of the morning. After the heat and
noise of the chamber, under its dull gas-illuminated glass
canopy, and the all night struggle of passion and feverish
excitement there, the open, tranquil world seemed like
Heaven. The Senator was not in an exultant mood, but rather
in a condition of holy joy, befitting a Christian statesman
whose benevolent plans Providence has made its own and
stamped with approval. The great battle had been fought,
but the measure had still to encounter the scrutiny of the
Senate, and Providence sometimes acts differently in the two
Houses. Still the Senator was tranquil, for he knew that

[ILLUSTRATION]

SENATOR DILWORTHY TRANQUIL.

[Description: 499EAF. Page 417. In-line image of two men standing in a street with the capitol dome behind them.] there is an esprit de corps in the Senate which does not exist
in the House, the effect of which is to make the members
complaisant towards the projects of each other, and to extend
a mutual aid which in a more vulgar body would be called
“log-rolling.”

“It is, under Providence, a good night's work, Mr. Sterling.
The government has founded an institution which will
remove half the difficulty from the Southern problem. And
it is a good thing for the Hawkins heirs, a very good thing.
Laura will be almost a millionaire.”

“Do you think, Mr. Dilworthy, that the Hawkinses will get
much of the money?” asked Philip innocently, remembering
the fate of the Columbus River appropriation.

The Senator looked at his companion scrutinizingly for a
moment to see if he meant any thing personal, and then
replied,

“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. I have had their interests
greatly at heart. There will of course be a few expenses,
but the widow and orphans will realize all that Mr. Hawkins
dreamed of for them.”

The birds were singing as they crossed the Presidential
Square, now bright with its green turf and tender foliage.
After the two had gained the steps of the Senator's house
they stood a moment, looking upon the lovely prospect.

[ILLUSTRATION]

"SHE AIN'T DAH, SAH!"

[Description: 499EAF. Page 418. In-line image of two men in a parlor with a servant woman entering in the room.]

“It is like the peace of God,” said the Senator devoutly.
Entering the house, the Senator called a servant and said,
“Tell Miss Laura that we are waiting to see her. I ought to
have sent a messenger on horseback half an hour ago,” he
added to Philip, “she will be transported with our victory.
You must stop to breakfast, and see the excitement.” The
servant soon came back, with a wondering look and reported,
“Miss Laura ain't dah, sah. I reckon she hain't been dah all
night.”

The Senator and Philip both started up. In Laura's room
there were the marks of a confused and hasty departure,
drawers half open, little articles strewn on the floor. The
bed had not been disturbed. Upon inquiry it appeared that
Laura had not been at dinner, excusing herself to Mrs. Dilworthy
on the plea of a violent headache; that she made a
request to the servants that she might not be disturbed.

The Senator was astounded. Philip thought at once of
Col. Selby. Could Laura have run away with him? The

Senator thought not. In fact it could not be. Gen. Leffenwell,
the member from New Orleans, had casually told him
at the house last night that Selby and his family went to New
York yesterday morning and were to sail for Europe to-day.

Philip had another idea which he did not mention. He
seized his hat, and saying that he would go and see what he
could learn, ran to the lodgings of Harry, whom he had not
seen since yesterday afternoon, when he left him to go to
the House.

Harry was not in. He had gone out with a hand-bag before
six o'clock yesterday, saying that he had to go to New York,
but should return next day. In Harry's room on the table
Philip found this note:—

Yours &c., L. H.”

“Confound it,” said Philip, “the noodle has fallen into
her trap. And she promised me she would let him alone.”

He only stopped to send a note to Senator Dilworthy, telling
him what he had found, and that he should go at once to
New York, and then hastened to the railway station. He
had to wait an hour for a train, and when it did start it
seemed to go at a snail's pace.

Philip was devoured with anxiety. Where could they
have gone? What was Laura's object in taking Harry? Had
the flight anything to do with Selby? Would Harry be such
a fool as to be dragged into some public scandal?

It seemed as if the train would never reach Baltimore.
Then there was a long delay at Havre de Grace. A hot box
had to be cooled at Wilmington. Would it never get on?
Only in passing around the city of Philadelphia did the train
not seem to go slow. Philip stood upon the platform and
watched for the Boltons' house, fancied he could distinguish
its roof among the trees, and wondered how Ruth would feel
if she knew he was so near her.

Then came Jersey, everlasting Jersey, stupid irritating Jersey,

where the passengers are always asking which line they are
on, and where they are to come out, and whether they have
yet reached Elizabeth. Launched into Jersey, one has a vague
notion that he is on many lines and no one in particular, and
that he is liable at any moment to come to Elizabeth. He has
no notion what Elizabeth is, and always resolves that the next
time he goes that way he will look out of the window and see
what it is like; but he never does. Or if he does, he probably
finds that it is Princeton or something of that sort. He gets
annoyed, and never can see the use of having different names for
stations in Jersey. By and by there is Newark, three or four
Newarks apparently; then marshes, then long rock cuttings
devoted to the advertisements of patent medicines and ready-made
clothing, and New York tonics for Jersey agues, and—
Jersey City is reached.

On the ferry-boat Philip bought an evening paper from a
boy crying “'Ere's the Evening Gram, all about the murder,”
and with breathless haste ran his eyes over the following:—

Philip hastened at once to the Southern Hotel, where he

found still a great state of excitement, and a thousand different
and exaggerated stories passing from mouth to mouth.
The witnesses of the event had told it over so many times
that they had worked it up into a most dramatic scene, and
embellished it with whatever could heighten its awfulness.
Outsiders had taken up invention also. The Colonel's wife
had gone insane, they said. The children had rushed into the
parlor and rolled themselves in their father's blood. The
hotel clerk said that he noticed there was murder in the
woman's eye when he saw her. A person who had met the
woman on the stairs felt a creeping sensation. Some thought
Brierly was an accomplice, and that he had set the woman
on to kill his rival. Some said the woman showed the
clamness and indifference of insanity.

Philip learned that Harry and Laura had both been taken
to the city prison, and he went there; but he was not admitted.
Not being a newspaper reporter, he could not see either of
them that night; but the officer questioned him suspiciously

and asked him who he was. He might perhaps see Brierly in
the morning.

The latest editions of the evening papers had the result of
the inquest. It was a plain enough case for the jury, but
they sat over it a long time, listening to the wrangling of the
physicians. Dr. Puffer insisted that the man died from the effects
of the wound in the chest. Dr. Dobb as strongly insisted
that the wound in the abdomen caused death. Dr.
Golightly suggested that in his opinion death ensued from a
complication of the two wounds and perhaps other causes.
He examined the table waiter, as to whether Col. Selby ate
any breakfast, and what he ate, and if he had any appetite.

The jury finally threw themselves back upon the indisputable
fact that Selby was dead, that either wound would have killed
him (admitted by the doctors), and rendered a verdict that he
died from pistol-shot wounds inflicted by a pistol in the hands
of Laura Hawkins.

The morning papers blazed with big type, and overflowed
with details of the murder. The accounts in the evening
papers were only the premonitory drops to this mighty
shower. The scene was dramatically worked up in column
after column. There were sketches, biographical and historical.
There were long “specials” from Washington, giving a
full history of Laura's career there, with the names of men

with whom she was said to be intimate, a description of Senator
Dilworthy's residence and of his family, and of Laura's
room in his house, and a sketch of the Senator's appearance and
what he said. There was a great deal about her beauty, her
accomplishments and her brilliant position in society, and her
doubtful position in society. There was also an interview
with Col. Sellers and another with Washington Hawkins,
the brother of the murderess. One journal had a long dispatch
from Hawkeye, reporting the excitement in that quiet
village and the reception of the awful intelligence.

All the parties had been “interviewed.” There were reports
of conversations with the clerk at the hotel; with the
call-boy; with the waiter at table, with all the witnesses,
with the policeman, with the landlord (who wanted it understood
that nothing of that sort had ever happened in his
house before, although it had always been frequented by
the best Southern society,) and with Mrs. Col. Selby. There
were diagrams illustrating the scene of the shooting, and

views of the hotel and street, and portraits of the parties.

There were three minute and different statements from the
doctors about the wounds, so technically worded that nobody
could understand them. Harry and Laura had also been
“interviewed” and there was a statement from Philip himself,
which a reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight
to give, though how he found him, Philip never could
conjecture.

What some of the journals lacked in suitable length for the
occasion, they made up in encyclopœdic information about
other similar murders and shootings.

The statement from Laura was not full, in fact it was fragmentary,
and consisted of nine parts of the reporter's valuable
observations to one of Laura's, and it was, as the reporter
significantly remarked, “incoherent.” But it appeared that
Laura claimed to be Selby's wife, or to have been his wife,
that he had deserted her and betrayed her, and that she was
going to follow him to Europe. When the reporter asked:

“What made you shoot him, Miss Hawkins?” Laura's
only reply was, very simply,

“Did I shoot him? Do they say I shot him?” And she
would say no more.

The news of the murder was made the excitement of the
day. Talk of it filled the town. The facts reported were
scrutinized, the standing of the parties was discussed, the
dozen different theories of the motive, broached in the newspapers,
were disputed over.

During the night subtle electricity had carried the tale
over all the wires of the continent and under the sea; and in
all villages and towns of the Union, from the Atlantic to the
territories, and away up and down the Pacific slope, and as
far as London and Paris and Berlin, that morning the name
of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and millions of
people, while the owner of it—the sweet child of years ago,
the beautiful queen of Washington drawing rooms—sat shivering
on her cot-bed in the darkness of a damp cell in the
Tombs.