“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.
CHAPTER XLV.
The galleries of the House were packed, on the momentous day, not because the reporting of an important bill back by a committee was a thing to be excited about, if the bill were going to take the ordinary course afterward; it would be like getting excited over the empaneling of a coroner’s jury in a murder case, instead of saving up one’s emotions for the grander occasion of the hanging of the accused, two years later, after all the tedious forms of law had been gone through with.
But suppose you understand that this coroner’s jury is going to turn