a carriage, and drove away. How sweet was the sunlight, how exhilarating the sense of freedom! Were not these following cheers the expression of popular approval and affection? Was she not the heroine of the hour?
It was with a feeling of triumph that Laura reached her hotel, a scornful feeling of victory over society with its own weapons.
Mrs. Hawkins shared not at all in this feeling; she was broken with the disgrace and the long anxiety.
“Thank God, Laura,” she said, “it is over. Now we will go away from this hateful city. Let us go home at once.”
“Mother,” replied Laura, speaking with some tenderness, “I cannot go with you. There, don’t cry, I cannot go back to that life.”
Mrs. Hawkins was sobbing. This was more cruel than anything else, for she had a dim notion of what it would be to leave Laura to herself.
“No, mother, you have been everything to me. You know how dearly I love you. But I cannot go back.”
A boy brought in a telegraphic despatch. Laura took it and read:
“The bill is lost. Dilworthy ruined. (Signed) WASHINGTON.”
For a moment the words swam before her eyes. The next her eyes flashed fire as she handed the dispatch to her mother and bitterly said,
“The world is against me. Well, let it be, let it. I am against it.”
“This is a cruel disappointment,” said Mrs. Hawkins, to whom one grief more or less did not much matter now, “to you and, Washington; but we must humbly bear it.”
“Bear it;” replied Laura scornfully, “I’ve all my life borne it, and fate has thwarted me at every step.”
A servant came to the door to say that there was a gentleman below who wished to speak with Miss Hawkins. “J. Adolphe Griller” was the name Laura read on the card. “I do not know such a person. He probably comes from Washington. Send him up.”
Mr. Griller entered. He was a small man, slovenly in dress, his tone confidential, his manner wholly void of animation, all his features below the forehead protruding — particularly the apple of his throat — hair without a kink in it, a hand with no grip, a meek, hang-dog countenance. He was a falsehood done in flesh and blood; for while every visible sign about him proclaimed him a poor, witless, useless weakling, the truth was that he had the brains to plan great enterprises and the pluck to carry them through. That was his reputation, and it was a deserved one. He softly said:
“I called to see you on business, Miss Hawkins. You have my card?”
Laura bowed.
Mr. Griller continued to purr, as softly as before.
“I will proceed to business. I am a business man. I am a lecture-agent, Miss Hawkins, and as soon as I saw that you were acquitted, it occurred to me that an early interview would be mutually beneficial.”
“I don’t understand you, sir,” said Laura coldly.
“No? You see, Miss Hawkins, this is your opportunity. If you will enter the lecture field under good auspices, you will carry everything before you.”
“But, sir, I never lectured, I haven’t any lecture, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Ah, madam, that makes no difference — no real difference. It is not necessary to be able to lecture in order to go into the lecture tour. If ones name is celebrated all over the land, especially, and, if she is also beautiful, she is certain to draw large audiences.”
“But what should I lecture about?” asked Laura, beginning in spite of herself to be a little interested as well as amused.
“Oh, why; woman — something about woman, I should say; the marriage relation, woman’s fate, anything of that sort. Call it The Revelations of a Woman’s Life; now, there’s a good title. I wouldn’t want any better title than that. I’m prepared to make you an offer, Miss Hawkins, a liberal offer, — twelve thousand dollars for thirty nights.”
Laura thought. She hesitated. Why not? It would give her employment, money. She must do something.
“I will think of it, and let you know soon. But still, there is very little likelihood that I — however, we will not discuss it further now.”
“Remember, that the sooner we get to work the better, Miss Hawkins, public curiosity is so fickle. Good day, madam.”
The close of the trial released Mr. Harry Brierly and left him free to depart upon his long talked of Pacific-coast mission. He was very mysterious about it, even to Philip.
“It’s confidential, old boy,” he said, “a little scheme we have hatched up. I don’t mind telling you that it’s a good deal bigger thing than that in Missouri, and a sure thing. I wouldn’t take a half a million just for my share. And it will open something for you, Phil. You will hear from me.”
Philip did hear from Harry a few months afterward. Everything promised splendidly, but there was a little delay. Could Phil let him have a hundred, say, for ninety days?
Philip himself hastened to Philadelphia, and, as soon as the spring opened, to the mine at Ilium, and began transforming the loan he had received from Squire Montague into laborers’ wages. He was haunted with many anxieties; in the first place, Ruth was overtaxing her strength in her hospital labors, and Philip felt as if he must move heaven and earth to save her from such toil and suffering. His increased pecuniary obligation oppressed him. It seemed to him also that he had been one cause of the misfortune to the Bolton family, and that he was dragging into loss and ruin everybody who associated with him. He worked on day after day and week after week, with a feverish anxiety.
It would be wicked, thought Philip, and impious, to pray for luck; he felt that perhaps he ought not to ask a blessing upon the sort of labor that was only a venture; but yet in that daily petition, which this very faulty and not very consistent young Christian gentleman put up, he prayed earnestly enough for Ruth and for the Boltons and for those whom he loved and who trusted in him, and that his life might not be a misfortune to them and a failure to himself.
Since this young fellow went out into the world from his New England home, he had done some things that he would rather his mother should not know, things maybe that he would shrink from telling Ruth. At a certain green age young gentlemen are sometimes afraid of being called milksops, and Philip’s associates had not always been the most select, such as these historians would have chosen for him, or whom at a later, period he would have chosen for himself. It seemed inexplicable, for instance, that his life should have been thrown so much with his college acquaintance, Henry Brierly.
Yet, this was true of Philip, that in whatever company he had been he had never been ashamed to stand up for the principles he learned from his mother, and neither raillery nor looks of wonder turned him from that daily habit he had learned at his mother’s knees. — Even flippant Harry respected this, and perhaps it was one of the reasons why Harry and all who knew Philip trusted him implicitly. And yet it must be confessed that Philip did not convey the impression to the world of a very serious young man, or of a man who might not rather easily fall into temptation. One looking for a real hero would have to go elsewhere.
The parting between Laura and her mother
