Trumps

CHAPTER LXXXI. — MRS. ALFRED DINKS AT HOME.

A new element had forced itself into the life of Hope Wayne, and that was the fate of Abel Newt. There was something startling in the direct, passionate, personal appeal he had made to her. She put on her bonnet and furs, for it was Christmas time, and passed the Bowery into the small, narrow street where the smell of the sewer was the chief odor and the few miserable trees cooped up in perforated boxes had at last been released from suffering, and were placidly, rigidly dead.

The sloppy servant girl was standing upon the area steps with her apron over her head, and blowing her huge red fingers, staring at every thing, and apparently stunned when Hope Wayne stopped and went up the steps. Hope rang, entered the little parlor and seated herself upon the haircloth sofa. Her heart ached with the dreariness of the house; but while she was resolving that she would certainly raise her secret allowance to her Cousin Alfred, whether her good friend Lawrence Newt approved of it or not, she saw that the dreariness was not in the small room or the hair sofa, nor in the two lamps with glass drops upon the mantle, but in the lack of that indescribable touch of feminine taste, and tact, and tenderness, which create comfort and grace wherever they fall, and make the most desolate chambers to blossom with cheerfulness. Hope felt as she glanced around her that money could not buy what was wanting.

Mrs. Alfred Dinks presently entered. Hope Wayne had rarely met her since the season at Saratoga when Fanny had captured her prize. She saw that the black-eyed, clever, resolute girl of those days had grown larger and more pulpy, and was wrapped in a dingy morning wrapper. Her hair was not smooth, her hands were not especially clean; she had that dull carelessness, or unconsciousness of personal appearance, which seemed to Hope only the parlor aspect of the dowdiness that had run entirely to seed in the sloppy servant girl upon the area steps.

Hope Wayne put out her hand, which Fanny listlessly took. There was nothing very hard, or ferocious, or defiant in her manner, as Hope had expected—there was only a weariness and indifference, as if she had been worsted in some kind of struggle. She did not even seem to be excited by seeing Hope Wayne in her house, but merely said, “Good-morning,” and then sank quietly upon the sofa, as if she had said every thing she had to say.

“I came to ask you if you know any thing about Abel?” said Hope.

“No; nothing in particular,” replied Fanny; “I believe he’s going to Congress; but I never see him or hear of him.”

“Doesn’t Alfred see him?”

“He used to meet him at Thiel’s; but Alfred doesn’t go there much now. It’s too fine for poor gentlemen. I remember some time ago I saw he had a black eye, and he said that he and my ‘d—— brother Abel,’ as he elegantly expressed it, had met somewhere the night before, and Abel was drunk and gave him the lie, and they fought it out. I think, by-the-way, that’s the last I’ve heard of brother Abel.”

There was a slight touch of the old manner in the tone with which Fanny ended her remark; after which she relapsed into the previous half-apathetic condition.

“Fanny, I wish I could do something for Abel.”

Fanny Dinks looked at Hope Wayne with an incredulous smile, and said,

“I thought once you would marry him; and so did he, I fancy.”

“What does he do? and how can I reach him?” asked Hope, entirely disregarding Fanny’s remark.

“He lives at the old place in Grand Street, I believe; the Lord knows how; I’m sure I don’t. I suppose he gambles when he isn’t drunk.”

“But about Congress?” inquired Hope.

“I don’t know any thing about that. Abel and father used to say that no gentleman would ever have any thing to do with politics; so I never heard any thing, and I’m sure I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

Fanny apparently supposed her last remark would end the conversation. Not that she wished to end it—not that she was sorry to see Hope Wayne again and to talk with her—not that she wanted or cared for any thing in particular, no, not even for her lord and master, who burst into the room with an oath, as usual, and with his small, swinish eyes heavy with drowsiness.

The master of the house was evidently just down. He wore a dirty morning-gown, and slippers down at the heel, displaying his dirty stockings. He came in yawning and squeezing his eves together.

“Why the h—— don’t that slut of a waiter have my coffee ready?” he said to his wife, who paid no more attention to him than to the lamp on the mantle, but, on the contrary, appeared to Hope to be a little more indifferent than before.

“I say, why the h——” Mr. Dinks began again, and had advanced so far when he suddenly saw his cousin.

“Hallo! what are you doing here?” he said to her abruptly, and in the half-sycophantic, half-bullying tone that indicates the feeling of such a man toward a person to whom he is under immense obligation. Alfred Dinks’s real feeling was that Hope Wayne ought to give him a much larger allowance.

Hope was inexpressibly disgusted; but she found an excitement in encountering this boorishness, which served to stimulate her in the struggle going on in her own soul. And she very soon understood how the sharp, sparkling, audacious Fanny Newt had become the inert, indifferent woman before her. A clever villain might have developed her, through admiration and sympathy, into villainy; but a dull, heavy brute merely crushed her. There is a spur in the prick of a rapier; only stupidity follows the blow of a club.

After sitting silently for some minutes, during which Alfred Dinks sprawled in a chair, and yawned, and whistled insolently to himself, while Fanny sat without looking at him, as if she were deaf and dumb, Hope Wayne said to the husband and wife:

“Abel Newt is ruining himself, and he may harm other people. If there is any thing that can be done to save him we ought to do it. Fanny, he is your own flesh and blood.”

She spoke with a kind of despairing earnestness, for Hope herself felt how useless every thing would probably be. But when she had ended Alfred broke out into uproarious laughter,

“Ho! ho! ho! Ho! ho! ho!”

He made such a noise that even his wife looked at him with almost a glance of contempt.

“Save Abel Newt!” cried he. “Convert the Devil! Yes, yes; let’s send him some tracts! Ho! ho! ho!”

And he roared again until the water oozed from his eyes.

Hope Wayne scarcely looked at him. She rose to go; but it seemed to her pitiful to leave Fanny Newt in such utter desolation of soul and body, in which she seemed to her to be gradually sinking into idiocy. She went to Fanny and took her hand. Fanny listlessly rose, and when Hope had done shaking hands Fanny crossed them before her inanely, but in an unconsciously appealing attitude, which Hope saw and felt. Alfred still sprawled in his chair; laughing at intervals; and Hope left the room, followed by Fanny, who shuffled after her, her slippers, evidently down at the heel, pattering on the worn oil-cloth in the entry as she shambled toward the front door. Hope opened it. The morning was pleasant, though cool, and the air refreshing after the odor of mingled grease and stale tobacco-smoke which filled the house.

As they passed out, Fanny quietly sat down upon the step, leaned her chin upon one hand, and looked up and down the street, which, it seemed to Hope, offered a prospect that would hardly enliven her mind. There was something more touching to Hope in this dull apathy than in the most positive grief.

“Fanny Newt!” she said to her, suddenly.

Fanny lifted her lazy eyes.

“If I can do nothing for your brother, can I do nothing for you? You will rust out, Fanny, if you don’t take care.”

Fanny smiled languidly.

“What if I do?” she answered.

Thereupon Hope sat down by her, and told her just what she meant, and what she hoped, and what she would do if she would let her. And the eager young woman drew such pleasant pictures of what was yet possible to Fanny, although she was the wife of Alfred Dinks, that, as if the long-accumulating dust and ashes were blown away from her soul, and it began to kindle again in a friendly breath, Fanny felt herself moved and interested. She smiled, looked grave, and finally laid her head upon Hope’s shoulder and cried good, honest tears of utter weariness and regret.

“And now,” said Hope, “will you help me about Abel?”

“I really don’t see that you can do any thing,” said Fanny, “nor any body else. Perhaps he’ll get a new start in Congress, though I don’t know any thing about it.”

Hope Wayne shook her head thoughtfully.

“No,” she said, “I see no way. I can only be ready to befriend him if the chance offers.”

They said no more of him then, but Hope persuaded Fanny to come to Lawrence Newt’s Christmas dinner, to which they had all been bidden. “And I will make him understand about it,” she said, as she went down the steps.

Mrs. Dinks sat upon the door-step for some time. There was nobody to see her whom she knew, and if there had been she would not have cared. She did not know how long she had been sitting there, for she was thinking of other things, but she was roused by hearing her husband’s voice:

“Well, by G——! that’s a G—— d—— pretty business—squatting on a door-step like a servant girl! Come in, I tell you, and shut the door.”

From long habit Fanny did not pay the least attention to this order. But after some time she rose and closed the door, and clattered along the entry and up stairs, upon the worn and ragged carpet. Mr. Alfred Dinks returned to the parlor, pulled the bell violently, and when the sloppy servant girl appeared, glaring at him with the staring eyes, he immediately damned them, and wanted to know why in h—— he was kept waiting for his boots. The staring eyes vanished, and Mr. Dinks reclined upon the sofa, picking his teeth. Presently there was the slop—slop—slop of the girl along the entry. She opened the door, dropped the boots, and fled. Mr. Dinks immediately pulled the bell violently, walking across the room a greater distance than to his boots. Slop—slop again. The door opened.

“Look here! If you don’t bring me my boots, I’ll come and pull the hair out of your head!” roared the master of the house.

The cowering little creature dashed at the boots with a wobegone look, and brought them to the sofa. Mr. Dinks took them in his hand, and turned them round contemptuously.

“G——! You call those boots blacked?”

He scratched his head a moment, enjoying the undisguised terror of the puny girl.

“If you don’t black ‘em better—if you don’t put a brighter shine on to 'em, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll put a shine on your face, you slut!”

The girl seemed to be all terrified eye as she looked at him, and then fled again, while he laughed.

“Ho! ho! ho! I’ll teach ‘em how—insolent curs! G—— d—— Paddies! What business have they coming over here? Ho! ho! ho!”

Leaving his slippers upon the parlor floor, Mr. Dinks mounted to his room and changed his coat. He tried the door of his wife’s room as he passed out, and found it locked. He kicked it violently, and bawled,

“Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks! If Miss Wayne calls, tell her I’ve gone to tell Mr. Abel Newt that she repents, and wants to marry him; and I shall add that, having been through the wood, she picks up a crooked stick at last. Ho! ho! ho! (Kick.) Good-morning, Mrs. Dinks!”

He went heavily down stairs and slammed the front door, and was gone for the day.

When they were first married, after the bitter conviction that there was really no hope of old Burt’s wealth, Fanny Dinks had carried matters with a high hand, domineering by her superior cleverness, and with a superiority that stung and exasperated her husband at every turn. Her bitter temper had gradually entirely eaten away the superficial, stupid good-humor of his younger days; and her fury of disappointment, carried into the detail of life, had gradually confirmed him in all his worst habits and obliterated the possibility of better. But the sour, superior nature was, as usual, unequal to the struggle. At last it spent itself in vain against the massive brutishness of opposition it had itself developed, and the reaction came, and now daily stunned her into hopeless apathy and abject indifference. Having lost the power of vexing, and beyond being really vexed by a being she so utterly despised as her husband, there was nothing left but pure passivity and inanition, into which she was rapidly declining.

Mr. Dinks kicked loudly and roared at the door, but Mrs. Dinks did not heed him. She was sitting in her dingy wrapper, rocking, and pondering upon the conversation of the morning—mechanically rocking, and thinking of the Christinas dinner at Uncle Lawrence’s.

CHAPTER LXXXII. — THE LOST IS FOUND.

It was a whim of Lawrence’s to give dinners; to have them good, and to ask only the people he wanted, and who he thought would enjoy themselves together.

“How much,” he said, quietly, as he conversed with Mrs. Bennet, while his guests were assembling, “Edward Wynne looks like your sister Martha!”

It was the first time Mrs. Bennet had heard her sister’s name mentioned by any stranger for years. But Lawrence spoke as calmly and naturally as if Martha Darro had been the subject of their conversation.

“Poor Martha!” said Mrs. Bennet, sadly; “how mysterious it was!”

Her husband saw her as she spoke, and he was so struck by the mournfulness of her face that he came quietly over.

“What is it?” he said, gently.

“For my son who was dead is alive again. He was lost and is found,” said Lawrence Newt, solemnly.

Mrs. Bennet looked troubled, startled, almost frightened. The words were full of significance, the tone was not to be mistaken. She looked at Lawrence Newt with incredulous eagerness. He shook his head assentingly.

“Alive?” she gasped rather than asked.

“And well,” he continued.

Mrs. Bennet closed her eyes in a silent prayer. A light so sweet stole over her matronly face that Lawrence Newt did not fear to say,

“And near you; come with me!”

They left the room together; and Amy Waring, who knew why they went, followed her aunt and Lawrence from the room.

The three stopped at the door of Lawrence Newt’s study.

“Your sister is here,” said he; and Amy and he remained outside while Mrs. Bennet entered the room.

It was more than twenty years since the sisters had met, and they clasped each other silently and wept for a long time.

“Martha!”

“Lucia!”

It was all they said; and wept again quietly.

Aunt Martha was dressed in sober black. Her face was very comely; for the hardness that came with a morbid and mistaken zeal was mellowed, and the sadness of experience softened it.

“I have lived not far from you, Lucia, all these long years.”

“Martha! and you did not come to me?”

“I did not dare. Listen, Lucia. If a woman who had always gratified her love of admiration, and gloried in the power of gratifying it—who conquered men and loved to conquer them—who was a woman of ungoverned will and indomitable pride, should encounter—as how often they do?—a man who utterly conquered her, and betrayed her through the very weakness that springs from pride, do you not see that such a woman would go near to insanity—as I have been—believing that I had committed the unpardonable sin, and that no punishment could be painful enough?”

Mrs. Bennet looked alarmed.

“No, no; there is no reason,” said her sister, observing it.

“The man came. I could not resist him. There was a form of marriage. I believed that it was I who had conquered. He left me; my child was born. I appealed to Lawrence Newt, our old friend and playmate. He promised me faithful secrecy, and through him the child was sent where Gabriel was at school. Then I withdrew from both. I thought it was the will of God. I felt myself commanded to a living death—dead to every friend and kinsman—dead to every thing but my degradation and its punishment; and yet consciously close to you, near to all old haunts and familiar faces—lost to them all—lost to my child—” Her voice faltered, and the tears gushed from her eyes. “But I persevered. The old passionate pride was changed to a kind of religious frenzy. Lawrence Newt went and came to and from India. I was utterly lost to the world. I knew that my child would never know me, for Lawrence had promised that he would not betray me; and when I disappeared from his view, Lawrence gradually came to consider me dead. Then Amy discovered me among the poor souls she visited, and through Amy Lawrence Newt; and by them I have been led out of the valley of the shadow of death, and see the blessed light of love once more.”

She bowed her head in uncontrollable emotion.

“And your son?” said her sister, half-smiling through her sympathetic tears.

“Will be yours also, Amy tells me,” said Aunt Martha. “Thank God! thank God!”

“Martha, who gave him his name?” asked Mrs. Bennet.

Aunt Martha paused for a little while. Then she said:

“You never knew who my—my—husband was?”

“Never.”

“I remember—he never came to the house. Well, I gave my child almost his father’s name. I called him Wynne; his father’s name was Wayne.”

Mrs. Bennet clasped her hands in her lap.

“How wonderful! how wonderful!” was all she said.

Lawrence Newt knocked at the door, and Amy and he came in. There was so sweet and strange a light upon Amy’s face that Mrs. Bennet looked at her in surprise. Then she looked at Lawrence Newt; and he cheerfully returned her glance with that smiling, musing expression in his eyes that was utterly bewildering to Mrs. Bennet. She could only look at each of the persons before her, and repeat her last words:

“How wonderful! how wonderful!”

Amy Waring, who had not heard the previous conversation between her two aunts, blushed as she heard these words, as if Mrs. Bennet had been alluding to something in which Amy was particularly interested.

“Amy,” said Mrs. Bennet.

Amy could scarcely raise her eyes. There was an exquisite maidenly shyness overspreading her whole person. At length she looked the response she could not speak.

“How could you?” asked her aunt.

Poor Amy was utterly unable to reply.

“Coming and going in my house, my dearest niece, and yet hugging such a secret, and holding your tongue. Oh Amy, Amy!”

These were the words of reproach; but the tone, and look, and impression were of entire love and sympathy. Lawrence Newt looked calmly on.

“Aunt Lucia, what could I do?” was all that Amy could say.

“Well, well, I do not reproach you; I blame nobody. I am too glad and happy. It is too wonderful, wonderful!”

There was a fullness and intensity of emphasis in what she said that apparently made Amy suspect that she had not correctly understood her aunt’s intention.

“Oh, you mean about Aunt Martha!” said Amy, with an air of relief and surprise.

Lawrence Newt smiled. Mrs. Bennet turned to Amy with a fresh look of inquiry.

“About Aunt Martha? Of course about Aunt Martha. Why, Amy, what on earth did you suppose it was about?”

Again the overwhelming impossibility to reply. Mrs. Bennet was very curious. She looked at her sister Martha, who was smiling intelligently. Then at Lawrence Newt, who did not cease smiling, as if he were in no perplexity whatsoever. Then at Amy, who sat smiling at her through the tears that had gathered in the thoughtful womanly brown eyes.

“Let me speak,” said Lawrence Newt, quietly. “Why should we not all be glad and happy with you? You have found a sister, Aunt Martha has found herself and a son, I have found a wife, and Amy a husband.”

They returned to the room where they had left the guests, and the story was quietly told to Hope Wayne and the others.

Hope and Edward looked at each other.

“Little Malacca!” she said, in a low tone, putting out her hand.

“Sister Hope,” said the young man, blushing, and his large eyes filling with tenderness.

“And my sister, too,” whispered Ellen Bennet, as she took Hope’s other hand.

CHAPTER LXXXIII. — MRS. DELILAH JONES.

Mr. Newt’s political friends in New York were naturally anxious when he went to Washington. They had constant communication with the Honorable Mr. Ele in regard to his colleague; for although they were entirely sure of Mr. Ele, they could not quite confide in Mr. Newt, nor help feeling that, in some eccentric moment, even his interest might fail to control him.

“The truth is, I begin to be sick of it,” said General Belch to the calm William Condor.

That placid gentleman replied that he saw no reason for apprehension.

“But he may let things out, you know,” said Belch.

“Yes, but is not our word as good as his,” was the assuring reply.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said General Belch, dolefully.

But Belch and Condor were forgotten by the representative they had sent to Congress when he once snuffed the air of Washington. There was something grateful to Abel Newt in the wide sphere and complicated relations of the political capital, of which the atmosphere was one of intrigue, and which was built over the mines and countermines of selfishness. He hoodwinked all Belch’s spies, so that the Honorable Mr. Ele could never ascertain any thing about his colleague, until once when he discovered that the report upon the Grant was to be brought in within a day or two by the Committee, and that it would be recommended, upon which he hastened to Abel’s lodging. He found him smoking as usual, with a decanter at hand. It was past midnight, and the room was in the disorder of a bachelor’s sanctum.

Mr. Ele seated himself carelessly, so carelessly that Abel saw at once that he had come for some very particular purpose. He offered his friend a tumbler and a cigar, and they talked nimbly of a thousand things. Who had come, who had gone, and how superb Mrs. Delilah Jones was, who had suddenly appeared upon the scene, invested with mystery, and bringing a note to each of the colleagues from General Belch.

“Mrs. Delilah Jones,” said that gentleman, in a private note to Ele, “is our old friend, Kitty Dunham. She appears in Washington as the widow of a captain in the navy, who died a few years since upon the Brazil station. She can be of the greatest service to us; and you must have no secrets from each other about our dear friend, who shall be nameless.”

To Abel Newt, General Belch wrote: “My dear Newt, the lady to whom I have given a letter to you is daughter of an old friend of my family. She married Captain Jones of the navy, whom she lost some years since upon the Brazil station. She has seen the world; has money; and comes to Washington to taste life, to enjoy herself—to doff the sables, perhaps, who knows? Be kind to her, and take care of your heart. Don’t forget the Grant in the arms of Delilah! Yours, Belch.”

Abel Newt, when he received this letter, looked over his books of reports and statistics.

“Captain Jones—Brazil station,” he said, skeptically, to himself. But he found no such name or event in the obituaries; and he was only the more amused by his friend Belch’s futile efforts at circumvention and control.

“My dear Belch,” he replied, after he had made his investigations, “I have your private note, but I have not yet encountered the superb Delilah; nor have I forgotten what you said to me about working ‘em through their wives, and sisters, etc. I shall not begin to forget it now, and I hope to make the Delilah useful in the campaign; for there are goslings here, more than you would believe. Thank you for such an ally. You, at least, were not born to fail. Yours, A. Newt.”

“Goslings, are there? I believe you,” said Belch to himself, inwardly chuckling as he read and folded Abel’s letter.

“Ally, hey? Well, that is good,” he continued, the chuckle rising into a laugh. “Well, well, I thought Abel Newt was smart; but he doesn’t even suspect, and I have played a deeper game than was needed.”

“I guess that will fix him,” said Abel, as he looked over his letter, laughed, folded it, and sent it off.

Mr. Ele by many a devious path at length approached the object of his visit, and hoped that Mr. Newt would flesh his maiden sword in the coming fray. Abel said, without removing his cigar, “I think I shall speak.”

He said no more. Mr. Ele shook his foot with inward triumph.

“The Widow Jones will do a smashing business this winter, I suppose,” he said, at length.

“Likely,” replied Newt.

“Know her well?”

“Pretty well.”

Mr. Ele retired, for he had learned all that his friend meant he should know.

“Do I know Delilah?” laughed Abel Newt to himself, as he said “Good-night, Ele.”

Yes he did. He had followed up his note to General Belch by calling upon the superb Mrs. Delilah Jones. But neither the skillful wig, nor the freshened cheeks, nor the general repairs which her personal appearance had undergone, could hide from Abel the face of Kitty Dunham, whom he had sometimes met in other days when suppers were eaten in Grand Street and wagons were driven to Cato’s. He betrayed nothing, however; and she wrote to General Belch that she had disguised herself so that he did not recall her in the least.

Abel was intensely amused by the espionage of the Honorable Mr. Ele and the superb Jones. He told his colleague how greatly he had been impressed by the widow—that she was really a fascinating woman, and, by Jove! though she was a widow, and no longer twenty, still there were a good many worse things a man might do than fall in love with her. ‘Pon honor, he did not feel altogether sure of himself, though he thought he was hardened if any body was.

Mr. Ele smiled, and said, in a serious way, that she was a splendid woman, and if Abel persisted he must look out for a rival.

“For I thought it best to lead him on,” he wrote to his friend Belch.

As for the lady herself, Abel was so dexterous that she really began to believe that she might do rather more for herself than her employers. He brought to bear upon her the whole force of the fascination which had once been so irresistible; and, like a blowpipe, it melted out the whole conspiracy against him without her knowing that she had betrayed it. The point of her instructions from Belch was that she was to persuade him to be constant to the Grant at any price.

“To-morrow, then, Mr. Newt,” she said to him, as they stood together in the crush of a levee at the White House—“our bill is to be reported, and favorably.”

Mrs. Delilah Jones was a pretty woman, and shrewd. She had large eyes; languishing at will—at will, also, bright and piercing. Her face was a smiling, mobile face; the features rather coarse, the expression almost vulgar, but the vulgarity well concealed. She was dressed in the extreme of the mode, and drew Mr. Newt’s arm very close to her as she spoke. She observed that Mr. Newt was more than usually disposed to chat. The honorable representative had dined.

“Our bill, Lady Delilah? Thank you for that,” said Abel, in a low voice, and almost pressing the hand that lay upon his close-held arm.

The reply was a slow turn of the head, and a half languishment in the eyes as they sought his with the air of saying, “Would you deceive a woman who trusts in you utterly?”

They moved out of the throng a little, and stood by the window.

“I wish I dared to ask you one thing as a pure favor,” said the superb Mrs. Delilah Jones, and this time the eyes were firm and bright.

“I hoped, by this time, that you dared every thing,” replied Abel, with a vague reproach in his tone.

Mrs. Jones looked at him for a moment with a look of honest inquiry in her eyes. His own did not falter. Their expression combined confidence and respect.

“May I then ask,” she said, earnestly, and raising her other hand as if to lay it imploringly upon his shoulder, but somehow it fell into his hand, which was raised simultaneously, and which did not let it go—.

“For my sake, will you speak in favor of it?” she asked, casting her eyes down.

“For your sake, Delilah,” he said, in a musical whisper, and under the rouge her cheeks tingled—“for your sake I will make a speech—my maiden speech.”

There was more conversation between them. The Honorable Mr. Ele stood guard, so to speak, and by incessant chatter warded off the company from pressing upon them unawares. The guests, smiled as they looked on; and after the levee the newspapers circulated rumors (it was before the days of “Personal”) that were read with profound interest throughout the country, that the young and talented representative from the commercial emporium had not forfeited his reputation as a squire of dames, and gossip already declared that the charming and superb Mrs. D-li-h J-nes would ere long exchange that honored name for one not less esteemed.

When Abel returned from the levee he threw himself into his chair, and said, aloud,

“Isn’t a man lucky who is well paid for doing just what he meant to do?”

For Abel Newt intended to get all he could from the Grant, and to enjoy himself as fully as possible while getting it; but he had his own work to do, and to that his power was devoted. To make a telling speech upon the winning side was one of his plans, and accordingly he made it.

When the bill was reported as it had been drafted by his friends in New York, it had been arranged that Mr. Newt should catch the speaker’s eye. His figure and face attracted attention, and his career in Washington had already made him somewhat known. During the time he had been there his constant employment had been a study of the House and of its individual members, as well as of the general character and influence of the speeches. His shrewdness showed him the shallows, the currents, and the reefs. Day after day he saw a great many promising plans, like full-sailed ships, ground upon the flats of dullness, strike rocks of prejudice, or whirl in the currents of crudity, until they broke up and went down out of sight.

He rose, and his first words arrested attention. He treated the House with consummate art, as he might have treated a woman whom he wished to persuade. The House was favorably inclined before. It was resolved when he sat down. For he had shown so clearly that it was one of the cases in which patriotism and generosity—the finer feelings and only a moderate expense—were all one, that the majority, who were determined to pass the Grant in any case, were charmed to have the action so imposingly stated; and the minority, who knew that it was useless to oppose it, enjoyed the rhetoric of the speech, and, as it was brief, and did not encroach upon dinner-time, smiled approval, and joined in the congratulation to Mr. Newt upon his very eloquent and admirable oration.

In the midst of the congratulations Abel raised his eyes to Mrs. Delilah Jones, who sat conspicuous in the gallery.

CHAPTER LXXXIV. — PROSPECTS OF HAPPINESS.

The Honorable Abel Newt was the lion of the hour. Days of dinner invitations and evening parties suddenly returned. He did not fail to use the rising tide. It helped to float him more securely to the fulfillment of his great work. Meanwhile he saw Mrs. Jones every day. She no longer tried to play a game.

The report of his speech was scattered abroad in the papers. General Belch rubbed his hands and expectorated with an energy that showed the warmth of his feeling. Far away in quiet Delafield, when the news arrived, Mr. Savory Gray lost no time in improving the pregnant text. The great moral was duly impressed upon the scholars that Mr. Newt was a great man because he had been one of Mr. Gray’s boys. The Washington world soon knew his story, the one conspicuous fact being that he was the favorite nephew of the rich merchant, Lawrence Newt. All the doors flew open. The dinner invitations, the evening notes, fell upon his table more profusely than ever.

He sneered at his triumph. Ambition, political success, social prestige had no fascination for a man who was half imbruted, and utterly disappointed and worn out. One thing only Abel really wanted. He wanted money—money, which could buy the only pleasures of which he was now capable.

“Look here, Delilah—I like that name better than Kitty, it means something—you know Belch. So do I. Do you suppose a man would work with him or for him except for more advantage than he can insure? Or do you think I want to slave for the public—I work for the public? God! would I be every man’s drudge? No, Mrs. Delilah Jones, emphatically not. I will be my own master, and yours, and my revered uncle will foot the bills.”

The woman looked at him inquiringly. She was a willing captive. She accepted him as master.

“It isn’t for you to know how he will pay,” said Abel, “but to enjoy the fruits.”

The woman, in whose face there were yet the ruins of a coarse beauty, which pleased Abel now as the most fiery liquor gratified his palate, looked at him, and said,

“Abel, what are we to do?”

“To be happy,” he answered, with the old hard, black light in his eyes.

She almost shuddered as she heard the tone and saw the look, and yet she did not feel as if she could escape the spell of his power.

“To be happy!” she repeated. “To be happy!”

Her voice fell as she spoke the words; Her life had not been a long one. She had laughed a great deal, but she had never been happy. She knew Abel from old days. She saw him now, sodden, bloated—but he fascinated her still. Was he the magician to conjure happiness for her?

“What is your plan?” she asked.

“I have two passages taken in a brig for the Mediterranean. We go to New York a day or two before she sails. That’s all.”

“And then?” asked his companion, with wonder and doubt in her voice.

“And then a blissful climate and happiness.”

“And then?” she persisted, in a low, doubtful voice.

“Then Hell—if you are anxious for it,” said Abel, in a sharp, sudden voice.

The poor woman cowered as she sat. Men had often enough sworn at her; but she recoiled from the roughness of this lover as if it hurt her. Her eyes were not languishing now, but startled—then slowly they grew dim and soft with tears.

Abel Newt looked at her, surprised and pleased.

“Kitty, you’re a woman still, and I like it. It’s so much the better. I don’t want a dragon or a machine. Come, girl, are you afraid?”

“Of what?”

“Of me—of the future—of any thing?”

The tone of his voice had a lingering music of the same kind as the lingering beauty in her face. It was a sensual, seductive sound.

“No, I am not afraid,” she answered, turning to him. “But, oh! my God! my God! if we were only both young again!”

She spoke with passionate hopelessness, and the tears dried in her eyes.

Later in the evening Mrs. Delilah Jones appeared at the French minister’s ball.

“Upon the whole,” said Mr. Ele to his partner, “I have never seen Mrs. Jones so superb as she is to-night.”

She stood by the mantle, queen-like—so the representatives from several States remarked—and all the evening fresh comers offered homage.

“Ma foi!” said the old Brazilian ambassador, as he gazed at her through his eye-glass, and smacked his lips.

“Tiens!” responded the sexagenarian representative from Chili, half-closing one eye.

CHAPTER LXXXV. — GETTING READY.

Hope Wayne had not forgotten the threat which Abel had vaguely thrown out; but she supposed it was only an expression of disappointment and indignation. Could she have seen him a few evenings after the ball and his conversation with Mrs. Delilah Jones, she might have thought differently.

He sat with the same woman in her room.

“To-morrow, then?” she said, looking at him, hesitatingly.

“To-morrow,” he answered, grimly.

“I hope all will go well.”

“All what?” he asked, roughly.

“All our plans.”

“Abel Newt was not born to fail,” he replied; “or at least General Belch said so.”

His companion had no knowledge of what Abel really meant to do. She only knew that he was capable of every thing, and as for herself, her little mask had fallen, and she did not even wish to pick it up again.

They sat together silently for a long time. He poured freely and drank deeply, and whiffed cigar after cigar nervously away. The few bells of the city tolled the hours. Ele had come during the evening and knocked at the door, but Abel did not let him in. He and his companion sat silently, and heard the few bells strike.

“Well, Kitty,” he said at last, thickly, and with glazing eye. “Well, my Princess of the Mediterranean. We shall be happy, hey? You’re not afraid even now, hey?”

“Oh, we shall be very happy,” she replied, in a low, wild tone, as if it were the night wind that moaned, and not a woman’s voice.

He looked at her for a few moments. He saw how entirely she was enthralled by him.

“I wonder if I care any thing about you?” he said at length, leering at her through the cigar-smoke.

“I don’t think you do,” she answered, meekly.

“But my—my—dear Mrs. Jones—the su-superb Mrs. Delilah Jo-Jones ought to be sure that I do. Here, bring me a light: that dam—dam—cigar’s gone out.”

She rose quietly and carried the candle to Abel. There was an inexpressible weariness and pathos in all her movements: a kind of womanly tranquillity that was touchingly at variance with the impression of her half-coarse appearance. As Abel watched her he remembered the women whom he had tried to marry. His memory scoured through his whole career. He thought of them all variously happy.

“I swear! to think I should come to you!” he said at length, looking at his companion, with an indescribable bitterness of sneering.

Kitty Dunham sat at a little distance from him on the end of a sofa. She was bowed as if deeply thinking; and when she heard these words her head only sank a little more, as if a palpable weight had been laid upon her. She understood perfectly what he meant.

“I know I am not worth loving,” she said, in the same low voice, “but my love will do you no harm. Perhaps I can help you in some way. If you are ill some day, I can nurse you. I shall be poor company on the long journey, but I will try.”

“What long journey?” asked Abel, suddenly and angrily.

“Where we are going,” she replied, gently.

“D—— it, then, don’t use such am-am-big-’us phrases. A man would think we were go-going to die.”

She said no more, but sat, half-crouching, upon the sofa, looking into the fire. Abel glanced at her, from time to time, with maudlin grins and sneers.

“Go to bed,” he said at length; “I’ve something to do. Sleep all you can; you’ll need it. I shall stay here ‘till I’m ready to go, and come for you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” she answered, and rose quietly. “Good-night!” she said.

“Oh! good-night, Mrs. De-de-liah—superb Jo-Jones!”

He laughed as she went—sat ogling the fire for a little while, and then unsteadily, but not unconsciously, drew a pocket-book from his pocket and took out a small package. It contained several notes, amounting to not less than a hundred thousand dollars signed by himself, and indorsed by Lawrence Newt & Co.—at least the name was there, and it was a shrewd eye that could detect the difference between the signature and that which was every day seen and honored in the street.

Abel looked at them carefully, and leered and glared upon them as if they had been windows through which he saw something—sunny isles, and luxury, and a handsome slave who loved him to minister to every whim.

“‘Tis a pretty game,” he said, half aloud; “a droll turnabout is life. Uncle Lawrence plays against other people, and wins. I play against Uncle Lawrence, and win. But what’s un-dred—sousand—to—him?”

He said it drowsily, and his hands unconsciously fell. He was asleep in his chair.

He sat there sleeping until the gray of morning. Kitty Dunham, coming into the room ready-dressed for a journey, found him there. She was frightened; for he looked as if he were dead. Going up to him she shook him, and he awoke heavily.

“What the h——‘s the matter?” said he, as he opened his sleepy eyes.

“Why, it’s time to go.”

“To go where?”

“To be happy,” she said, standing passively and looking in his face.

He roused himself, and said:

“Well, I’m all ready. I’ve only to stop at my room for my trunk.”

His hair was tangled, his eyes were bloodshot, his clothes tumbled and soiled.

“Wouldn’t you like to dress yourself?” she asked.

“Why, no; ain’t I dressed enough for you? No gentleman dresses when he’s going to travel.”

She said no more. The carriage came as Abel had ordered, a private conveyance to take them quite through to New York. All the time before it came Kitty Dunham moved solemnly about the room, seeing that nothing was left. The solemnity fretted Abel.

“What are you so sober about?” he asked impatiently.

“Because I am getting ready for a long journey,” she answered, tranquilly.

“Perhaps not so long,” he said, sharply—“not if I choose to leave you behind.”

“But you won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you will want somebody, and I’m the only person in the world left to you.”

She spoke in the same sober way. Abel knew perfectly well that she spoke the truth, but he had never thought of it before. Was he then going so long a journey without a friend, unless she went with him? Was she the only one left of all the world?

As his mind pondered the question his eye fell upon a newspaper of the day before, in which he saw his name. He took it up mechanically, and read a paragraph praising him and his speech; foretelling “honor and troops of friends” for a young man who began his public career so brilliantly.

“There; hear this!” said he, as he read it aloud and looked at his companion. “Troops of friends, do you see? and yet you talk of being my only dependence in the world! Fie! fie! Mrs. Delilah Jones.”

It was melancholy merriment. He did not smile, and the woman’s face was quietly sober.

“For the present, then, Mr. Speaker and fellow-citizens,” said Abel Newt, waving his hand as he saw that every thing was ready, and that the carriage waited only for him and his companion, “I bid these scenes adieu! For the present I terminate my brief engagement. And you, my fellow-members, patterns of purity and pillars of truth, farewell! Disinterested patriots, I leave you my blessing! Pardon me that I prefer the climate of the Mediterranean to that of the District, and the smiles of my Kitty to the intelligent praises of my country. Friends of my soul, farewell! I kiss my finger tips! Boo—hoo!”

He made a mock bow, and smiled upon an imaginary audience. Then offering his arm with grave ceremony to his companion as if a crowd had been looking on, he went down stairs.