A book-keeper was the next thing to a retired banker—sometimes even better off, Mrs. Winslow thought; and, believing that Fox was the book-keeper he represented himself to be, she conceived the idea of travelling during the pendency of the suit, and gave Fox glowing accounts of the vast sums of money they could make if she only had so presentable a man as he for a sort of agent, manager, and protector.
One afternoon Fox came in early, and said that as he was suffering severely from headache he had been excused from his duties, and had come home for rest. He passed into his own room and laid down upon his bed, where he was immediately followed by the woman, who threw herself passionately into his arms, declaring that he was the only man whom she had ever really and truly loved, and terminated her expressions of ardor by a proposition that he should "get hold of a big pile down there to the store," as she expressed it, and fly to some quiet spot where they might revel in love and all that the term implies.
Had he been a book-keeper instead of what he was, and able to secure any large sum of money, she would have probably so bedevilled him that he would have become a criminal for life for the sake of gratifying his passion and her demands, and in a week after she would have had nine-tenths of the money, and Fox would have been a penniless fugitive from justice.
He had more trouble than Bristol in dispossessing the mind of the adventuress of the idea that he was not the man to allow her to become his Delilah; but when this was done, and she disgustedly realized that not all men were ready to sell themselves body and soul for her embraces, while she was indignant and suspicious, yet a sort of easy confidence was established between the mysterious three, which brought out a good many strong points in her character, and at the same time led to the securing of a large amount of evidence against her. In fact, it seemed that so soon as she thoroughly understood the, to her, novel situation of being in constant contact with two men who, though probably no better than average men, were still from the nature of their business compelled to be above reproach in all their association with her, her self-assertion and consciousness of power, which she had been able to assert over nearly every man with whom she came in contact, in a measure left her, and she became, at least to my operatives, an ordinary woman, whose inherent vileness, low cunning, and splendid physical perfection, were her only distinguishing characteristics. This was all natural enough, for I had compelled these men to be her almost constant companions, and as they had been with her long enough to drive away any superfluous constraint, and she had found both of them unassailable, though sociable and agreeable, her conversation, which chiefly concerned herself, became as utterly devoid of decency as her life had been, so that no incident of rehearsed romance of herself lost any of its piquancy by unnecessary assumption of modesty in its narration.
CHAPTER XX.
A Female Spiritualist's Ideas of Political and Social Economy.—The Weaknesses of Judges.—Legal Acumen of the Adventuress.—An unfriendly Move.—Harcout attacked.—Lilly Nettleton and the Rev. Mr. Bland again together.—A Whirlwind.
ONE evening, after Mrs. Winslow had had a very busy day with her spiritualistic customers, which had become quite unusual, she showed herself to be more than ordinarily communicative, undoubtedly on account of the spirits which had kept her such close company, and at once started in upon an edifying explanation of her political views, and confided to Bristol and Fox, as illustrative of her high political influence, that certain officers of the Government only held their lease of office through her leniency.
From this she verged into political and social economy, stating her earnest belief to be that every man should have a military education, and that if they were found to be unfit physically to withstand the rigors of a military life, they should be immediately condemned to death, and thus be summarily disposed of. And so, too, with women. There should be appointed a capable examining board, and wherever a woman was found wanting in physical ability to meet every demand made upon her by her affinities through life, she should also be instantly deprived of existence. She maintained that there should be a continuous and eternal natural selection of the best of these mental and physical conditions, just the same as the stock-raiser bred and inbred the finest animals to secure a still finer type, and that all persons, male or female, failing to reach a certain fit standard of perfection in this regard, should be condemned to death. She would have no marriage save that sanctioned by the supreme love of one eternal moment; and shamelessly claimed that passion was the real base of all love, and that, consequently, it was but a farce on either justice or purity that men and women should be by law condemned to lives of miserable companionship. In this connection she held that not half the men and women were fit to live, and were she the world's ruler she would preside at the axe and the block half of her waking hours.
These sentiments were quite in keeping with her expressions concerning the late war, her gratification at Lincoln's assassination, and her threats that she had President Johnson in her power through her knowledge of some transactions in Tennessee. This was, of course, all silly talk, but it showed the woman's tendencies and disposition, and enabled Bristol and Fox to gradually lead her into narrations of portions of her own career during and after the war.