Book: The Gilded Age, Part 5.

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner >> The Gilded Age, Part 5.




"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.

"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 propositions founded an 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 dash 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 tomorrow.
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."




CHAPTER XL.

Open your ears; for which of you will stop,
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth:
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride;
The which in every, language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

King Henry IV.

As may be readily believed, Col. Beriah Sellers was by this time one of
the best known men in Washington. For the first time in his life his
talents had a fair field.

He was now at the centre of the manufacture of gigantic schemes,
of speculations of all sorts, of political and social gossip.
The atmosphere was full of little and big rumors and of vast, undefined
expectations. Everybody was in haste, too, to push on his private plan,
and feverish in his haste, as if in constant apprehension that tomorrow
would be Judgment Day. Work while Congress is in session, said the
uneasy spirit, for in the recess there is no work and no device.

The Colonel enjoyed this bustle and confusion amazingly; he thrived in
the air of-indefinite expectation. All his own schemes took larger shape
and more misty and majestic proportions; and in this congenial air, the
Colonel seemed even to himself to expand into something large and
mysterious. If he respected himself before, he almost worshipped Beriah
Sellers now, as a superior being. If he could have chosen an official
position out of the highest, he would have been embarrassed in the
selection. The presidency of the republic seemed too limited and cramped
in the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of
the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a
position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible
omniscience of the Special Correspondent.

Col. Sellers knew the President very well, and had access to his presence
when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room. The
President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a
refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business
and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and
the distribution of patronage. The Colonel was as much a lover of
farming and of horses as Thomas Jefferson was. He talked to the
President by the hour about his magnificent stud, and his plantation at
Hawkeye, a kind of principality--he represented it. He urged the
President to pay him a visit during the recess, and see his stock farm.

"The President's table is well enough," he used to say, to the loafers
who gathered about him at Willard's, "well enough for a man on a salary,
but God bless my soul, I should like him to see a little old-fashioned
hospitality--open house, you know. A person seeing me at home might
think I paid no attention to what was in the house, just let things flow
in and out. He'd be mistaken. What I look to is quality, sir. The
President has variety enough, but the quality! Vegetables of course you
can't expect here. I'm very particular about mine. Take celery, now
--there's only one spot in this country where celery will grow. But I an
surprised about the wines. I should think they were manufactured in the
New York Custom House. I must send the President some from my cellar.
I was really mortified the other day at dinner to see Blacque Bey leave
his standing in the glasses."

When the Colonel first came to Washington he had thoughts of taking the
mission to Constantinople, in order to be on the spot to look after the
dissemination, of his Eye Water, but as that invention; was not yet quite
ready, the project shrank a little in the presence of vaster schemes.
Besides he felt that he could do the country more good by remaining at
home. He was one of the Southerners who were constantly quoted as
heartily "accepting the situation."

"I'm whipped," he used to say with a jolly laugh, "the government was too
many for me; I'm cleaned out, done for, except my plantation and private
mansion. We played for a big thing, and lost it, and I don't whine, for
one. I go for putting the old flag on all the vacant lots. I said to
the President, says I, 'Grant, why don't you take Santo Domingo, annex
the whole thing, and settle the bill afterwards. That's my way. I'd,
take the job to manage Congress. The South would come into it. You've
got to conciliate the South, consolidate the two debts, pay 'em off in
greenbacks, and go ahead. That's my notion. Boutwell's got the right
notion about the value of paper, but he lacks courage. I should like to
run the treasury department about six months. I'd make things plenty,
and business look up.'"

The Colonel had access to the departments. He knew all the senators and
representatives, and especially, the lobby. He was consequently a great
favorite in Newspaper Row, and was often lounging in the offices there,
dropping bits of private, official information, which were immediately,
caught up and telegraphed all over the country. But it need to surprise
even the Colonel when he read it, it was embellished to that degree that
he hardly recognized it, and the hint was not lost on him. He began to
exaggerate his heretofore simple conversation to suit the newspaper
demand.

People used to wonder in the winters of 187- and 187-, where the
"Specials" got that remarkable information with which they every morning
surprised the country, revealing the most secret intentions of the
President and his cabinet, the private thoughts of political leaders,
the hidden meaning of every movement. This information was furnished by
Col. Sellers.

When he was asked, afterwards, about the stolen copy of the Alabama
Treaty which got into the "New York Tribune," he only looked mysterious,
and said that neither he nor Senator Dilworthy knew anything about it.
But those whom he was in the habit of meeting occasionally felt almost
certain that he did know.

It must not be supposed that the Colonel in his general patriotic labors
neglected his own affairs. The Columbus River Navigation Scheme absorbed
only a part of his time, so he was enabled to throw quite a strong
reserve force of energy into the Tennessee Land plan, a vast enterprise
commensurate with his abilities, and in the prosecution of which he was
greatly aided by Mr. Henry Brierly, who was buzzing about the capitol and
the hotels day and night, and making capital for it in some mysterious
way.

"We must create, a public opinion," said Senator Dilworthy. "My only
interest in it is a public one, and if the country wants the institution,
Congress will have to yield."

It may have been after a conversation between the Colonel and Senator
Dilworthy that the following special despatch was sent to a New York
newspaper:

"We understand that a philanthropic plan is on foot in relation to
the colored race that will, if successful, revolutionize the whole
character of southern industry. An experimental institution is in
contemplation in Tennessee which will do for that state what the
Industrial School at Zurich did for Switzerland. We learn that
approaches have been made to the heirs of the late Hon. Silas
Hawkins of Missouri, in reference to a lease of a portion of their
valuable property in East Tennessee. Senator Dilworthy, it is
understood, is inflexibly opposed to any arrangement that will not
give the government absolute control. Private interests must give
way to the public good. It is to be hoped that Col. Sellers, who
represents the heirs, will be led to see the matter in this light."

When Washington Hawkins read this despatch, he went to the Colonel in
some anxiety. He was for a lease, he didn't want to surrender anything.
What did he think the government would offer? Two millions?

"May be three, may be four," said the Colonel, "it's worth more than the
bank of England."

"If they will not lease," said Washington, "let 'em make it two millions
for an undivided half. I'm not going to throw it away, not the whole of
it."

Harry told the Colonel that they must drive the thing through, he
couldn't be dallying round Washington when Spring opened. Phil wanted
him, Phil had a great thing on hand up in Pennsylvania.

"What is that?" inquired the Colonel, always ready to interest himself in
anything large.

"A mountain of coal; that's all. He's going to run a tunnel into it in
the Spring."

"Does he want any capital?", asked the Colonel, in the tone of a man who
is given to calculating carefully before he makes an investment.

"No. Old man Bolton's behind him. He has capital, but I judged that he
wanted my experience in starting."

"If he wants me, tell him I'll come, after Congress adjourns. I should
like to give him a little lift. He lacks enterprise--now, about that
Columbus River. He doesn't see his chances. But he's a good fellow, and
you can tell him that Sellers won't go back on him."

"By the way," asked Harry, "who is that rather handsome party that's
hanging 'round Laura? I see him with her everywhere, at the Capitol, in
the horse cars, and he comes to Dilworthy's. If he weren't lame, I
should think he was going to run off with her."

"Oh, that's nothing. Laura knows her business. He has a cotton claim.
Used to be at Hawkeye during the war.

"Selby's his name, was a Colonel. Got a wife and family.
Very respectable people, the Selby's."

"Well, that's all right," said Harry, "if it's business. But if a woman
looked at me as I've seen her at Selby, I should understand it. And it's
talked about, I can tell you."

Jealousy had no doubt sharpened this young gentleman's observation.
Laura could not have treated him with more lofty condescension if she had
been the Queen of Sheba, on a royal visit to the great republic. And he
resented it, and was "huffy" when he was with her, and ran her errands,
and brought her gossip, and bragged of his intimacy with the lovely
creature among the fellows at Newspaper Row.

Laura's life was rushing on now in the full stream of intrigue and
fashionable dissipation. She was conspicuous at the balls of the fastest
set, and was suspected of being present at those doubtful suppers that
began late and ended early. If Senator Dilworthy remonstrated about
appearances, she had a way of silencing him. Perhaps she had some hold
on him, perhaps she was necessary to his plan for ameliorating the
condition the tube colored race.

She saw Col. Selby, when the public knew and when it did not know.
She would see him, whatever excuses he made, and however he avoided her.
She was urged on by a fever of love and hatred and jealousy, which
alternately possessed her. Sometimes she petted him, and coaxed him and
tried all her fascinations. And again she threatened him and reproached
him. What was he doing? Why had he taken no steps to free himself?
Why didn't he send his wife home? She should have money soon.
They could go to Europe--anywhere. What did she care for talk?

And he promised, and lied, and invented fresh excuses for delay, like a
cowardly gambler and roue as he was, fearing to break with her, and half
the time unwilling to give her up.

"That woman doesn't know what fear is," he said to himself, "and she
watches me like a hawk."

He told his wife that this woman was a lobbyist, whom he had to tolerate
and use in getting through his claims, and that he should pay her and
have done with her, when he succeeded.




CHAPTER XLI.

Henry Brierly was at the Dilworthy's constantly and on such terms of
intimacy that he came and went without question. The Senator was not an
inhospitable man, he liked to have guests in his house, and Harry's gay
humor and rattling way entertained him; for even the most devout men and
busy statesmen must have hours of relaxation.

Harry himself believed that he was of great service in the University
business, and that the success of the scheme depended upon him to a great
degree. He spent many hours in talking it over with the Senator after
dinner. He went so far as to consider whether it would be worth his
while to take the professorship of civil engineering in the new
institution.

But it was not the Senator's society nor his dinners--at which this
scapegrace remarked that there was too much grace and too little wine
--which attracted him to the house. The fact was the poor fellow hung
around there day after day for the chance of seeing Laura for five
minutes at a time. For her presence at dinner he would endure the long
bore of the Senator's talk afterwards, while Laura was off at some
assembly, or excused herself on the plea of fatigue. Now and then he
accompanied her to some reception, and rarely, on off nights, he was
blessed with her company in the parlor, when he sang, and was chatty and
vivacious and performed a hundred little tricks of imitation and
ventriloquism, and made himself as entertaining as a man could be.

It puzzled him not a little that all his fascinations seemed to go for so
little with Laura; it was beyond his experience with women. Sometimes
Laura was exceedingly kind and petted him a little, and took the trouble
to exert her powers of pleasing, and to entangle him deeper and deeper.
But this, it angered him afterwards to think, was in private; in public
she was beyond his reach, and never gave occasion to the suspicion that
she had any affair with him. He was never permitted to achieve the
dignity of a serious flirtation with her in public.

"Why do you treat me so?" he once said, reproachfully.

"Treat you how?" asked Laura in a sweet voice, lifting her eyebrows.

"You know well enough. You let other fellows monopolize you in society,
and you are as indifferent to me as if we were strangers."

"Can I help it if they are attentive, can I be rude? But we are such old
friends, Mr. Brierly, that I didn't suppose you would be jealous."

"I think I must be a very old friend, then, by your conduct towards me.
By the same rule I should judge that Col. Selby must be very new."

Laura looked up quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to
such impertinence, but she only said, "Well, what of Col. Selby,
sauce-box?"

"Nothing, probably, you'll care for. Your being with him so much is the
town talk, that's all?"

"What do people say?" asked Laura calmly.

"Oh, they say a good many things. You are offended, though, to have me
speak of it?"

"Not in the least. You are my true friend. I feel that I can trust you.
You wouldn't deceive me, Harry?" throwing into her eyes a look of trust
and tenderness that melted away all his petulance and distrust. "What do
they say?"

"Some say that you've lost your head about him; others that you don't
care any more for him than you do for a dozen others, but that he is
completely fascinated with you and about to desert his wife; and others
say it is nonsense to suppose you would entangle yourself with a married
man, and that your intimacy only arises from the matter of the cotton,
claims, for which he wants your influence with Dilworthy. But you know
everybody is talked about more or less in Washington. I shouldn't care;
but I wish you wouldn't have so much to do with Selby, Laura," continued
Harry, fancying that he was now upon such terms that his, advice, would
be heeded.

"And you believed these slanders?"

"I don't believe anything against you, Laura, but Col. Selby does not
mean you any good. I know you wouldn't be seen with him if you knew his
reputation."

"Do you know him?" Laura asked, as indifferently as she could.

"Only a little. I was at his lodgings' in Georgetown a day or two ago,
with Col. Sellers. Sellers wanted to talk with him about some patent
remedy he has, Eye Water, or something of that sort, which he wants to
introduce into Europe. Selby is going abroad very soon."

Laura started; in spite of her self-control.

"And his wife!--Does he take his family? Did you see his wife?"

"Yes. A dark little woman, rather worn--must have been pretty once
though. Has three or four children, one of them a baby. They'll all
go of course. She said she should be glad enough to get away from
Washington. You know Selby has got his claim allowed, and they say he
has had a run, of luck lately at Morrissey's."

Laura heard all this in a kind of stupor, looking straight at Harry,
without seeing him. Is it possible, she was thinking, that this base
wretch, after, all his promises, will take his wife and children and
leave me? Is it possible the town is saying all these things about me?
And a look of bitterness coming into her face--does the fool think he can
escape so?

"You are angry with me, Laura," said Harry, not comprehending in the
least what was going on in her mind.

"Angry?" she said, forcing herself to come back to his presence.
"With you? Oh no. I'm angry with the cruel world, which, pursues an
independent woman as it never does a man. I'm grateful to you Harry;
I'm grateful to you for telling me of that odious man."

And she rose from her chair and gave him her pretty hand, which the silly
fellow took, and kissed and clung to. And he said many silly things,
before she disengaged herself gently, and left him, saying it was time to
dress, for dinner.

And Harry went away, excited, and a little hopeful, but only a little.
The happiness was only a gleam, which departed and left him thoroughly,
miserable. She never would love him, and she was going to the devil,
besides. He couldn't shut his eyes to what he saw, nor his ears to what
he heard of her.

What had come over this thrilling young lady-killer? It was a pity to see
such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel. Was there something good in him,
after all, that had been touched? He was in fact madly in love with this
woman.

It is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy
one. It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough. If he
deserved punishment, what more would you have? Perhaps this love was
kindling a new heroism in him.

He saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did
not believe the worst he heard of her. He loved her too passionately to
credit that for a moment. And it seemed to him that if he could compel
her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him,
and that he could save her. His love was so far ennobled, and become a
very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye. Whether he ever
thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up
himself, is doubtful. Such a pitch of virtue does not occur often in
real life, especially in such natures as Harry's, whose generosity and
unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or
principles.

He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter,
pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her
as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks
she ran of compromising herself in many ways.

Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other
days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the
thought, "They are all alike."

Harry was in the habit of writing to Philip freely, and boasting also
about his doings, as he could not help doing and remain himself.
Mixed up with his own exploits, and his daily triumphs as a lobbyist,
especially in the matter of the new University, in which Harry was to
have something handsome, were amusing sketches of Washington society,
hints about Dilworthy, stories about Col. Sellers, who had become a
well-known character, and wise remarks upon the machinery of private
legislation for the public-good, which greatly entertained Philip in his
convalescence.

Laura's name occurred very often in these letters, at first in casual
mention as the belle of the season, carrying everything before her with
her wit and beauty, and then more seriously, as if Harry did not exactly
like so much general admiration of her, and was a little nettled by her
treatment of him.

This was so different from Harry's usual tone about women, that Philip
wondered a good deal over it. Could it be possible that he was seriously
affected? Then came stories about Laura, town talk, gossip which Harry
denied the truth of indignantly; but he was evidently uneasy, and at
length wrote in such miserable spirits that Philip asked him squarely
what the trouble was; was he in love?

Upon this, Harry made a clean breast of it, and told Philip all he knew
about the Selby affair, and Laura's treatment of him, sometimes
encouraging him--and then throwing him off, and finally his belief that
she would go, to the bad if something was not done to arouse her from her
infatuation. He wished Philip was in Washington. He knew Laura, and she
had a great respect for his character, his opinions, his judgment.
Perhaps he, as an uninterested person whom she would have some
confidence, and as one of the public, could say some thing to her that
would show her where she stood.

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