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.”
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.
