Before, in this relation, I go to that meeting with Peg whereof I made
account in the commencement of my story, it would be proper, I think,
to notice a singular personality; one who, in intermittent fashion, will
run in and out of my history like a needle through cloth. His sewing,
however, will be of the friendliest, for he was as loyal to the General
as any soul who breathed.
Mordecai Noah, was the man's name. The General possessed a good previous
acquaintance with him, although, as in the gentle instance of Peg, I was
now to meet him for the earliest time.
Noah was a writer of plays, and an editor; moreover, he was a gentleman
of substance and celebration in New York City, where his paper did
stout service for the General the hot autumn before. Noah also had been
America's envoy to the Barbary States during the years of Madison. A
Hebrew of purest strain, Noah was of the Tribe of Judah and the House of
David, and the wiseacres of his race told his lineage, and that he was
descended of David in a right line, and would be a present King of
the Jews were it not that the latter owned neither country nor throne.
However this may have been--and indeed a true accuracy for such
ancestral cliff-climbing seems incredible, when any little slip would
spoil the whole--Noah was of culture and quiet penetration; withal
cunning and fertile to a degree. Also, I found his courage to be the
steadiest; he would fight with slight reason, and had in a duel
some twenty years before, with the first fire, killed one Cantor, a
flamboyant person--the world might well spare him--on the Charleston
racetrack, respectably at ten paces. I incline to grant space favorable
to Noah; for he played his part with an integrity as fine as his
intelligence, while his own modesty, coupled with that vulgar dislike
of Jews by ones who otherwise might have named him in the annals of that
day, has operated to obscure his name.
The General told me of Noah somewhat at length on this morning, and just
following the marching away of Pigeon-breast. He said he had sent for
him, and that any moment might bring his footfall to the door.
As he dwelt on Noah and his characteristics, I was struck by a word. It
is worth record as a sidelight on his own nature.
The General showed gusto and a lipsmacking interest in Noah's duel with
the man Cantor, and ran out every detail as one runs out a trail. I
could not forbear comment.
“How is it,” said I, “you so dote on strife?”
“I don't dote on strife. But when it comes to that, Major, war is as
natural as peace.”
“If it were so,” I returned, “still your admiration is entirely for war.
You do not love peace.”
“I don't love war so much as warriors,” he contended. “I understand your
war man; and I do not fear him. Besides, your honest soul of battles
may be made a best friend. I feel the rankle of a Benton bullet in
my shoulder as we talk together; and yet to-day a Benton faces my
detractors on the floor of the Senate. I say again, I love the natural
warrior; I comprehend him and he gives me no feeling of fear.”
“Do you tell me you can be a prey to fear?” I put the query as an
element of dispute. His reply was the word that surprised me.
“Fear?” and the General repeated the word with a sight of earnestness.
“Sir, I fear folk who won't fight; I fear preachers, Quakers. They are a
most dangerous gentry to run crosswise with.”
When Noah arrived, I was still sitting with the General. Noah was a
sharp, nimble man of middle size and years, and physically as deft and
sure of movement as a mountain goat. He took hold of my hand on being
presented by the General, and I observed how he had an iron steadiness
of grip. I liked that; I am, myself, of prodigious thews and as strong
of arm as any canebrake bear, and when folk shake hands with me, a blush
of emphasis is to my humor. I like to know that I've hold on somebody
and that somebody has hold on me. As I looked in Noah's face, I was
struck with the contradiction of his black eyes, and hair red as the
fur of a fox. On the whole, I felt pleased to know that Noah was the
General's true friend; no one would have cared for his enmity.
“I feel as though you were an old acquaintance,” said Noah, and his face
lighted as I've observed a sudden splash of sunshine to light a deep
wood. “The General has named you so often in his letters, and spoken of
you so much in what interviews I've enjoyed with him, that you are to me
no stranger.”
“And I've heard frequently and much of you,” I replied.
We from that moment were as thoroughly near to one another as though
neighbors for a decade. It was a strange concession of my nature, for
men come slowly upon terms of confidence with me, and my suspicions are
known for their restlessness.
“This is my thought, Noah,” said the General; “this is why I summoned
you. Blessed is he to whom one is not driven with explanations, and who
intuitively comprehends. You are that man, Noah.” The General's vivid
manner was a delight to me. “There's the Eaton affair--you read
my scheme of a cabinet in the paper. There's to be a war upon the
Eatons--upon me. Already I hear a dull rumble as the opposition takes
its artillery into position. I would know what this means. Is it a
frill-and-ruffle wrath alone and confined to our ladies? Or does it go
deeper and plant its tap-root in a plot? You know what I should say.
Four years pass as swiftly as four clouds; and Henry Clay would still
hanker for a presidency. These Bargain and Corruption wolves will hunt
my administration for every foot of the way, and strive to drag it down.
You gather my notion, Noah. Discover all you can; back-track this Eaton
trouble--it's but just started and the trail is short--and bring me sure
word, not only of those who foment it, but of the position held towards
it by both Clay and Calhoun. Of the hatred of the former I'm certain,
and that he'll strike at me with foulest blow. Calhoun, elected to the
vice-presidency by my side, I would have leaned on confidently; but a
word has been said--the Major heard it--that nurtures doubt. Let me
learn all there is of this tangle with what dispatch you may. My own
belief goes to it that, when all is said, search will discover Clay to
be the sole, lone bug under the chip, and Calhoun--and put it the worst
way--but an indifferent looker-on.”
Noah paid wordless attention until the General was through. Then he
spoke. “General,” said Noah, “I had already heard much when you sent for
me. Your portfolio purposes have not been a secret well kept. Also, it
has been abroad as gossip for almost a week, this ill talk of the Eatons;
this morning's publication simply served to give it volume. Thus far,
and personally, Henry Clay has had naught to do with it; his friends,
however, have been prompt to lift up the cry. You are right, too, when
you regard the rage of these wolves as threatening you. They would,
as you declare, tear down your administration. They will leave nothing
untried. They will hang on your flanks through the defiles and in the
thickets of society; and it is thus they will seek to harass you by
means of the Eatons. They reckon no slight help to their plans, General,
through your high temper; I say this for no end of irritation, but to
put you on guard with yourself.”
Noah would have gone forth at once, but the General held him in speech
about Van Buren, who as present Governor of New York must resign his
Albany position to assume place as the General's premier.
Noah, who lived Van Buren's right hand of power in his own region, was
full to the brim with him, and I, who had yet to be introduced to the
little Knickerbocker, sat absorbed of his description. The General had
met Van Buren a dozen times or more; but in any sense of intimacy he was
as ignorant of his future secretary as was I myself. We therefore gave
fullest heed to Noah, who talked well, being one able to take you a man
to pieces as though he were a clock, and show in detail his wheels and
particular springs, and point you to the pendulum of motive for every
hour he struck.
We were in mid-swing of talk when I was called. It was none other than
Jim, to bring me that information--threatening, he deemed it--of the
beautiful Peg who waited my coming below.
As I was going, the door standing open, one in coat of clerical finish
presented himself without announcement, and rapped modestly on the door
frame. I had had experience of his flock and knew him by his feathers.
Plainly, he was a solicitor of subscriptions for some amiable charity.
The book in his hand spoke loudly for my surmise.
My doubt, had one been entertained, would have found dissipation by the
words of the General, as, harsh and strident, they overtook me on my
way.
“No, sir,” I heard him say; “no, sir! Not one splinter!--not one two-bit
piece! I shall begin as I mean to end. You people are not to send me out
of the White House, a pauper and a beggar, as you sent poor Jim Monroe.”
Doughtily resolved, oh General! hard without and soft within! Doughtily
resolved and weakly executed, when eight years later you are made to
borrow ten thousand dollars wherewith to pay your White House debts
before ever you wend homeward to your Hermitage!
After forty and when youth's suppleness has fled, one's fancy is as
prone to lapse into a stiff inertness as one's joints. It came then to
pass, as I journeyed parlorward along the old-fashioned corridors and
stairways of the Indian Queen, that I in nowise was visited by any
glint of the possible beauty of Peg, nor yet of her honest injuries; but
rather, in half peevish fashion, I considered her a proposed incumbrance
to the General's administration, in which I may be pardoned for
saying--I, who had been busy with trowel and plumb-line about the corner
stone and subsills of his whole career--I was smitten of an interest.
Truly, I had been Eaton's friend; and had used him well, too. Also, I
was glad to have him take Peg to wife, since such was his fancy. But why
should she and he rise subsequently up to vex folk who were like to own
troubles more properly their own? That was the question I held acridly
under my tongue as I went onward to my meeting with Peg, and I fear some
blush of it showed in my face.
Over six feet and broad as a door, I doubtless towered forbiddingly
upon her imaginings when I came up to Peg; these and the cloud on my
forehead--for I am sure one darkened it--showed her to be both brave
and innocent when, without hesitation or holding back, she put forth
her hands to me. I've told somewhere how she gave me her hand; that was
wrong; she gave me both, and gave them with a full sweep of frankness,
that showed confident at once and sad, as though with the motion of it
she offered herself for my protection. She spoke no word; her little
hands lay in my great ones, and I felt within them the beat of a sharp,
small pulse as of one under strain and stress. Once, long before, I had
toiled upward with caitiff secrecy and captured a sleeping mother-pigeon
on her nest. The quick flutter of the bird's heart beneath my fingers
was as this poor throbbing in Peg's hands. I remember, also, I was
melted into the same sudden compassion for the pigeon that seized on me
for Peg.
“I came to you because you are the General's old friend,” she said. Her
sweet, large eyes were swimming, and her voice began to break. Then she
put out an effort and brought herself to bay. “I've nothing to ask; not
much to say, neither. I know what the General would do; my husband
has told me. I know, too, what it will mean of slander and insult and
suffering. And yet--I've prayed upon it; prayed and again prayed!--I
must go forward. I can not, nay, I dare not become a bar across the path
of my husband; I dare not poison his success.”
All this time I had been holding to her hands, for I felt her great
beauty and it made me forget the name of time. Besides, this was no
common meeting, but rather the making of a league and covenant between
folk who were to be allies throughout a bitter strife. I think she
noticed my awkward and scarce polite retention of her fingers, for she
withdrew them, while a little flush of color painted itself in her face.
Still, she did not do this unkindly; and, I may say, there was nothing
of sentiment in my breast which cried for rebuke or tendered her aught
but honor.
“Pardon a freedom in one twice your years, but you are wondrous
beautiful.” These were my first words to Peg. “Mr. Eaton has come by
mighty fortune.”
“My beauty, as you call it,” said she, with just the shadow of a smile
that told more of pain than gladness, “has been no good ground to me
and borne me nettles for a crop. I had been happier for a wholesome
plainness.”
Then we settled to a better conversation; and the while her sweetness
was growing on me like a vine and I becoming more and more soundly her
partisan with every moment.
“My husband is much honored,” said she at one point, “and deems himself
advanced by what the General would offer. Also, he sees nothing of the
darkness into which I stare; he sees only the high station and the power
of it, and the way shines to his feet. But I know what society will
do; I have not been child and girl and woman in Washington without
experience of it. Folk will turn from me and ignore me and seek to blot
me out. If it were none save myself to be considered, I would abandon
the field; I would hunt seclusion, cultivate obscurity as if it were a
rose. But am I to become a drag on the man who loves me and gives me his
name? Am I to be fetters for his feet--a stumbling-block before him?”
“There is no need of this apprehension,” said I; “you should have a
higher spirit, since you are innocent.”
“Innocent, yes!” she cried, and her deep eyes glowed; “innocent, yes! As
heaven hears me, innocent!” Her manner dismayed me with what it unveiled
of suffering. Then in a lower tone, and with a kindle of that cynicism
to come upon folk who, working no evil and doing no wrong, are yet made
to find themselves fronted of adverse tides and blown against by winds
of cruelty, “Innocent, yes; but what relief comes then? I am young; many
are still children with my years. And, thanks to a tavern bringing
up,”--here was hardness now--“I have so seen into the world's heart as to
know that it is better to be a rogue called honest, than honest and
called a rogue. That is true among men; I tell you it is doubly true
among women.”
To be open about it, I was shocked; not that what Peg said was either
foolish or untrue. But to be capable of such talk, and she with that
loving, patient mouth, showed how woeful must have been the lesson. But
it gave me none the less a deal of sureness for the level character of
her intellect, and I saw she carried within her head the rudiments of
sense.
“What is it you would ask of me?” said I, at last. “I can only promise
beforehand anything in my power.”
“I would ask nothing,” she replied, “save the assurance that you will be
my husband's friend and mine. I see grief on its way as one sees a storm
creep up the sky. Oh!” she suddenly cried with a sparkle of tears, “my
husband! He must not be made ashamed for me! Rather than that, I would
die!”
Peg bowed her flower-like head and wept, I, sitting just across, doing
nothing, saying nothing; which conduct was wise on my part, albeit I
hadn't the wit to see it at the time, and was simply daunted to silence
by a sorrow I knew not how to check. It was a tempest, truly, and swayed
and bent her like a willow in a wind. At last she overtook herself; she
smiled with all the brightness of nature, or the sun after a flurry of
rain.
“It will do me good,” she said; “and when the time comes I will be
braver than you now think.”
When Peg smiled she gave me a flash of white behind the full red of her
lips. Then I noticed a peculiar matter. She wanted the two teeth that,
one on each side of the middle teeth, should grow between the latter and
the eye teeth. When I say she wanted these, you are not to understand
she once owned them and that they were lost. These teeth had never been;
where six should have grown there were but four; and these, set evenly
and with dainty spaces between, took up the room, each claiming its just
share. The teeth were as white as rice, short and broad and strong, and
the eye teeth sharply pointed like those of a leopard. There gleamed,
too, a shimmer of ferocity about these teeth which called for all Peg's
tenderness of mouth, aye! even that sadness which lurked in plaintive
shadows about the corners, to correct. And yet what struck one as a
blemish went on to be a source of fascination and grew into the little
lady's chiefest charm--these separated sharp white leopard teeth of
Peg's.
When I came into the room I was thinking on the hardships to the
General's administration; now I regarded nothing save the perils of
Peg herself. With that on my soul I started, man-fashion, to talk
courageously.
“After all, what is there to cower from?” said I. “You know society, you
say; doubtless that is true. I confess I do not, since this is almost
my first visit to the town. But I know men, and of what else is society
compounded? Their heaviest frown, if one but think coolly and be sure of
one's self, should not weigh down a feather.”
“Why, yes,” she cried, “you know men. But do you know women? Men are as
so many camp followers of society; it is the women who make the fighting
line. And oh! their shafts are tipped with venom!”
“It cannot be so bad,” I insisted. “So-called society, which must
take on somewhat the character of come-and-go with the ebb and flow of
administrations, begins with the White House, does it not?”
“We will do our best,” smiled Peg, without replying to my question.
Probably she comprehended the hopeless sort of my ignorance and the
uselessness of efforts to set forth to me the “Cabinet Circle,” the
“Senate Circle,” the “Supreme Court Circle,” and those dozen other
mysterious rings within rings, wheels within wheels, which the
complicated perfection of capital social life offers for the confusion
of folk.
“Unquestionably, the White House,” Peg went on, “is the citadel, the
great tower, and we can always retreat to that. We will do well enough;
but oh!”--here Peg laid her hand like a rose leaf on my arm--“you do not
understand, a man can not understand, what we shall go through.”
“Let us have stout hearts for all that,” said I. “It behooveth us to
be bold, since no victory, even over weakness, was ever constructed of
timidity. Besides, the foe may offer us its defeat by its own errors.
I recall, how once upon a time, certain Creeks whom the General was to
attack entrenched themselves, and all about felled trees and sharpened
the branches into points, the whole as defensive as any bristle of
bayonets. You, as thought these red engineers, would have deemed the
place impregnable, for no one might force his way through this _chevaux
de-frise_. But the General's military eye unlocked the situation. The
sun-dried leaves and twigs were lying where they fell. An arrow, with
blazing tow tied to its shaft and shot from a safe two hundred yards
away, solved the problem. In a moment that precious defence was on fire;
and the enemy, driven forth by the heat and flame and smoke of it,
were met in the open and destroyed to a man. We may yet smoke these
society savages into a surrender by setting an honest torch to their
surroundings. One thing we can promise ourselves.” I remarked this in
conclusion. “Whatever else may fail, at the worst, you shall not go
wanting a revenge.”
“And that thought is sweet, too,” said she in return.
Peg's leopard teeth were not without significance; that much I saw.
After all, her speech was to have been expected; for who will go further
afield for revenge than your flesh and blood true woman, still of
earth's fires and not ready for the skies?
Peg told me a portion of her story; partly because it was natural she
should think that I, who had been a stranger to her, might justly want
such knowledge; but mostly, I believe, for that she had an instinct to
defend herself against what I might have preconceived to her disaster.
Dear child, she had small cause to fret herself on that score! I
remember she gave herself no little blame as the self-willed gardener
of those thorny sorrows among which she had walked and was still
sorrowfully to find her path. She would run on like this, as I recall:
“The first fault belonged with this tavern of an Indian Queen. I could
have been no older than eight when I knew how folk who came here,
Congressmen and officers of state and their ladies, looked upon us who
kept the place as but servants over servants, and took care not to
meet us on an equal footing with themselves. My father and mother were
disrated as mere tavern-keepers who sold their entertainment to any
and to all; and I, so soon as I came to discretion and an ability to
apprehend, found myself included in the ban thus set upon my people.
I've seen nurses skurry to carry their charges off from childish games
with me and the contamination of my baby contact. Later, in girlhood,
I've overheard mothers while they warned their daughters to avoid me,
and experienced the tilt-nosed airs of those same daughters who with
superior arts of insolence stung me like wasps. More often than once,
I've crept away to tears of shame because I was the daughter of a
tavern.
“But in the end it hardened me. I had a perverse, retaliatory temper. I
grew up beautiful, so folk told me; moreover, I knew it but too well by
the merest glance in a glass. With my beauty,”--Peg spoke of it in mixed
simplicity and sadness as though she recounted deformity--“I was wont to
fashion my revenge. My father--not a poor man, for while taverns may be
vulgar they maybe profitable--was ever ready to spend money on me; and I
had only to hint at a comb or a ribbon or a ring, to find the gewgaw
an hour after on my table. Good, poor man! my father, calm and careless
enough under his condition so far as it rested on himself, felt for my
humiliations, which now and again he could not fail to see, and sought
with trinketry and luxury of dress to repair the injury. Neither he nor
my mother spoke of what they both must have felt, that is our nosocial
condition, if one may so describe it; and for myself, I was too proud,
and too tenderly in love with them for their thousand kindnesses, to
bring it upon their notice.
“As I've said, I made my beauty the method of my revenge. I owned taste
as well as looks, and my wits were as deep and as quick and as bright as
my eyes. I've set many a wrinkle on many a fair brow by defeating it to
second place in that woman's rivalry of looks.
“For these wars, where loveliness tilts against loveliness, my allies
were the men. Compliment for me was never silent on their lips. I was
the town's toast as I grew up. This put the women to an opposite course.
As the men spoke of my beauty, the women shrugged their pure shoulders
and told of my boldness; and I must confess that in a native vivacity,
together with that rebellion of the spirit born of their attitude
towards me, I gave them endless evidence to go upon. I have lived my
life without an immorality or the shadow of one; I have done no wrong
wherewith to shame myself; but, reckless, careless, and with the frank
ignorance of innocence--and then, to be sure, because it made those
others angry--I was greedy of men's praise, withal too free of speech
and eye, and thereby offered tongues eager to assail me the argument
required as material for their ill work. They, the women, wove for me
as bad a story as they might, and then wrapped it about me for a
reputation. How I loathed and hated them! those who, worsted of my
beauty, would tear me with calumny by way of reprisal!
“Now I must tell you, it was I who wearied first of that game where it
was beauty on the one side against icy stare, arched brow, and covert
innuendo on the other. No; my tongue would not have spared them--it was
never a patient member, that tongue!--but for such artillery, as you
would call it, my persecutors were out of reach. There is a gravity
of words; they descend and never climb; they must, like a stone, come
tumbling from above to do an injury. Wherefore these folk high up
were safe from me--safe from everything except my beauty; and since I
maintained myself without a stain upon my virtue, even my beauty wore
for them and theirs no real peril. Above, on the cliffs of society, they
rolled down tale and whisper against me like so many black stones;
in retort, though I might be beautiful and so madden them with the
possession of what they lacked, I from below could harm them nothing.
I think, too, some in pain of their own ugliness, envied and would have
changed places with me. They would not, had they known what I knew and
felt what I felt. My soul was in torment, and I grew never so callous
but the darts of their forked malignancy would pierce and pain.
“It was to avoid conditions which grew at last intolerable--for I
brooded when alone and magnified the evils of my position, turning
morbid the while--that I wedded Mr. Timberlake. I never loved him; I
took him to be a refuge rather than a husband, and my little life with
him was not a happy one. By no fault of his, however; I think he loved
me, and I know he did his best. I had nothing from him save kindness,
and when he died in the Mediterranean I doubt not he carried into the
other world a sincere regard for me.
“And I would have loved him if I could.” Peg waved her hand with an
accent of despair, and as one who had striven and failed beyond recall.
“But I could not--could not; strive as I might, love would not come. I
felt guilt to live with him; I was glad when he sailed away; and, God
help me! my sighs over his death were the sighs of one released from
bonds.”
Peg broke and cried like any child. You should understand, however, that
she was unjust to herself. What she said of her brooding aforetime to
the frontier of the morbid was over-true. And, supersensitive, proud,
her hope had wasted as her gloom grew; her griefs of girlhood, enlarged
many fold doubtless, as she herself suspected, by stress of her own
fancy sorrowing with a wound, had left solemn stamp upon her; and this
took far too often and unjustly the shape of self-blame. Beneath all,
and hidden deep within her breast, Peg carried small opinion of herself;
thought herself selfish, hard, shallow, and of no rich depth of heart.
She was wrong to the core; for her inner self was as beautiful as her
face. And yet, despite knowledge on her own part, and her friends'
assurances, in the ultimate recesses of her thoughts there existed
a torture-chamber; and therein she ever racked herself as the one
wrongdoer in what she had passed through. There was no driving her from
this; she was merciless against herself; and while none not the closest
might know, for in the presence of non-friends and strangers she showed
the iron fortitude of an Indian or a soldier, to myself and those with
whom she practiced no reserve these self-flagellations were much too
painfully plain.
I say, folk near to Peg were aware of this morbid lack of soul-vanity
and good regard for herself. There should be one exception counted, and
that, curious to tell, her own husband. Peg, for all he might be double
her age, and I think no very handsome man at that, I could see, when I
talked with her, loved Eaton as she loved her eyes or mothers love their
children. And yet, never to him did she show her true feeling; in his
presence she was the brave, gay, bright, strong, brilliant Peg, asking
in the fight which followed no quarter and granting none, she seemed to
the common world. It is curious, and presents a problem too involved for
my solution, that Peg should have guarded against the one she most loved
and shut the door upon discovery by him of her own wondrous self. Yet so
it was; it stood patent to me from the beginning that Eaton knew no more
of Peg than of her whom he never met.
In her morbid estimates of her worth it is possible she feared to grant
him too clear a view. She may have thought she would lose by it. The
reason, however, for this great secrecy coupled with great love--this
hiding from him for whom she would have died--I shall leave to be
searched for by those scientists of souls who are pleased to explain the
inexplicable. For myself, I confess I was baffled by it.
This, however, I will say; the fact that Peg could so practice upon
Eaton to his blindness gave me no high opinion of that gentleman. He
should have groped for her and grasped her, and found her out for the
loving, loyal, sorrowing heart she was; and that he did not, but went in
placid darkness of the treasure he held in his hands, content to have
it so, marked him for a lack of insight and want of sympathy which I'm
bound to say do not distinguish me. Such stolidity on the part of folk
has caused me more often than once to consider whether the angels, by
mere possession, may not at last find even heaven commonplace.
Still, it is none the less infuriating to witness so much beauty so
much thrown away! Indubitably, the economy of existence asks for pigs
as loudly as it asks for pearls, and to blame Eaton for failing in
appreciation of Peg is as apart from equity as would be the flogging
of a horse who sees no beauty in a moss-rose--and less, perhaps--not
present in a musty lock of hay. However, it is none the less infuriating
for that.
Mark you though, I would be guilty of no wrong to Eaton, nor establish
him on too low a level in your esteem. He was in the Senate from
Tennessee at the time, and of solid repute among his fellows. He was a
brave, dull, good-humored sort, who thought better, perhaps, of a bottle
than of a book--not to excess, you are to notice--and as a statesman, if
he put out no fires, he kindled none; though he did no good, at worst he
did no harm; and that, let me tell you, is a record somewhat better than
the average. I have been attacked and charged with a distaste of Eaton.
There are two words to go with that, and no one--and I challenge those
who knew us both--can put his finger on any ill of word or deed or
thought I ever aimed against him. Truly, I hunted not his company with
horn and horse and hound; but what then? I take it, I'm as free to pick
and choose for my intimates as any other. And I still declare what
was in my thoughts in those hours I tell of, that Eaton, sluggish and
something of a clod-head, and with a blurred, gray tone of fancy, was
unworthy such a woman, whose love for him, be it said, was when I
met her as boundless as the difficulty of accounting for its first
existence. I say again, and the last time, I hold no dislike for Eaton,
and more than once have done him good favors in days gone. That I shall
grant him no extensive mention in these pages means no more than that
he was but a supernumerary in the drama where of the General and Peg
carried the great parts. Eaton came on and off; but his lines were
few and brief and burned with no interest. There is little reason for
prodigious clamor over Eaton, and little there will be. But I am not to
be accused of unfairness to the man for that he dwelt with an angel and
was too thick to find it out.
Peg at last recalled herself from the dead Timberlake. She brushed away
her tears.
“These are all of them you are to see,” laughed Peg, stoutly, referring
to her tears. “I promise to shed no more. However, you may quiet alarm;
a woman's tears are no such mighty matter.” I showed perturbation, I
suppose, and she would dissipate it.
Peg told me of her wedding with Eaton. She dwelt a deal on her love for
him; but since one consents to it as a sentiment, even though its cause
defy one's search, there comes no call to extend the details in this
place.
It stood open to my eyes, however, as Peg talked, how no man was more
loved than Eaton. And when I looked upon the ardent girl and considered,
withal, the dull stolidity of the other, there would rise up pictures
from my roving past to be as allegories of Peg's love. I would recall
how once I saw a vine, blossom-flecked and beautiful, flinging its green
tenderness across a hard insensate wall; and that was like Peg's love.
Or it would come before me how I had known a mountain, sterile, seamed,
unlovely, where it heaved itself against the heavens, a repellant harsh
shoulder of stone. The June day, fresh and new and beautiful, would
blush in the east, and her first kiss was for that cold gray, rude,
old rock. That day at noon in her warm ripeness would rest upon it. Her
latest glance, as our day died in the west, was for it; and when the
valley and all about were dark, her last rays crowned it. And the vivid
day, with her love for that unregardful mountain, the rich day wasting
herself on the desert peak that would neither respond nor understand,
was as the marvel of Peg's love.
It is all the mystery that never ends; woman in her love-reasons is not
to be fathomed nor made plain. The cry of her soul is to love rather
than to be loved; her happiness lives in what she gives, not what she
gets. This turns for the good fortunes of men; also, it offers the
frequent spectacle of a woman squandering herself--for squandering it
is--on one so unworthy that only the sorrow of it may serve to smother
the laughter that else might be evoked. However, I am not one to discuss
these things, being no analyst, but only a creature of bluff wits, too
clumsy for theories as subtle, not to say as brittle, as spun glass.
Wherefore, let us put aside Peg's love and break off prosing. The more,
since I may otherwise give some value to a jest of the General's--made
on that same day--who would have it I was at first sight half in love
with Peg myself. This was the General's conception of humor ard owned no
other currency--I, being twice Peg's age, and in the middle forties,
and not a trifle battered of feature by my years in the field. I was old
enough to be Peg's father;--but when it comes to that, Eaton was quite
as old.
It was time to seek the General, I said. Peg and I had arrived at a
frank acquaintance, and we went together to the General's room in good
opinion of ourselves, she the better by a new staunch friend, and I
prosperous with thoughts for her of a coming elevation consistent with
her graces of mind and person, and which should atone as much as might
be for what she had suffered heretofore. We decided that Peg should wear
a gay look, and harrow the General with no tears.
As we went along I was given to quite a novel enthusiasm, I recollect;
and it was the more strange since, while no pessimist, I never had found
celebration as one whose hope was wont to wander with the stars. I could
see the white days ahead for Peg; and albeit I fear their glory shone
not to her apprehension as it did to mine, and while they came slowly
as days shod with lead, dawn they did, as he shall witness who goes with
this history to the end.
My servant Jim was sent with a message to the General to give him the
word of Peg's coming. During our talk in the parlor, Jim, be it said,
was never far to call. Obviously, Jim proposed for me no dangers of
bright eyes so far as remained with him to be my shield. He dodged in
and out of the room, now with this pretext and now with that, and when
I bade him repair to the General to say that Peg and I would visit him,
the gray old rogue was fair irresolute, and hung in the wind as though
he had but to turn his back on us and bring down every evil. I drove him
forth at last, and when Peg and I would tap on the General's door our
black courier was just coming away.
While the General was greeting Peg--rather effusively for him, so I
thought--Jim, detaining me at the door, took the liberty of a private
word.
“Now you-all is yere, Marse Major,” observed Jim, and his manner was of
complaint and weariness, “an' where Marse Gen'ral kin keep a eye on you,
I feels free an' safe to go projectin' 'round about my own consarns.
I was boun' I wouldn't leave you alone, Marse Major, in d' parlors; I
shore tells you it makes Jim draw long brefs an' puts him to fear an'
tremblin' lest every minute's gwine to be his nex', while any woman as
han'some as dish yere Missis Eaton is pesterin' nigh. You-all can't tell
what dey'll do, or what you'll do! Which Jim has knowed Love to up
an' prounce on a man like a mink on a settin' hen; an' him jes' merely
lookin' at one of them sirens, as d' good book calls'em. That's d' shore
enough fac', Marse Major; an' you-all oughter be mighty keerful an' keep
Jim hoverin' about d' lan'scape at all sech meetin's. It's a heap safer,
that a-way; you hyar Jim!” At this point of warning Jim stopped like a
clock that has run down.
“You asked me if you might have one drink from the demijohn in my
closet,” I said. “Yassir, Marse Major, I does.”
“You took four, you scoundrel; you took at least four, as I can tell by
the mill-wheel clatter of your tongue.”
“On'y three, Marse Major; on'y three. An' you don't want to disrecollect
Marse Major, pore old Jim's got a heap on his mind to make him thirsty.”
“I shall not disrecollect, as you call it, to lock my closet door. I
don't propose, sir, to furnish you forty-year-old whisky to become the
inspiration of such crazy harangues as I've just listened to.”
My voice was stern, and the awful threat of locking the closet door took
vastly the heart out of Jim.
“Why, Marse Major,” he began apologetically, “Jim warn't aimin' to say
nothin' to cumfusticate you; Jim was talkin' for your good. I wouldn't
go for to lock up that closet, Marse Major; how's Jim gwine to get your
clothes to bresh? Besides, Jim's done said his say, an' arter this he'll
nacherally go about as cat-foot an' as wary an' as quiet as a coon at
noon, that's what Jim will. You has heard d' las' word from Jim, Marse
Major; d' very las' word. On'y don't go for to lock that closet door;
if you does, most likely we'll lose d' key an' it's gwine to get in our
way.”
“Well, sir, we shall see,” I replied, severely. “One thing is certain;
I'm not to have my servant, at the age of seventy, make a drunken show
of himself. I'll send you back to Tennessee, first.”
Jim departed, sensibly subdued.
With Peg and the General I found Eaton, who arrived while I was
receiving my lecture from the sapient Jim. We greeted each other with
warmth, and I could see that Peg felt this warmth and took a glow from
it. Dear girl! he was her all; she had friendship for those who were his
friends, love for those who loved him; and, twisting a commandment, Peg
would do unto others as they did unto him.
Eaton was a blond, ruddy man. As we released each other's hands, he said:
“I'm here to offer my thanks to the General. I was speaking of this
cabinet matter to my colleague, White. He is greatly pleased. By the
way, General,”--here Eaton wheeled on the General--“my senate seat will
want an occupant. Why not prevail on our friend, the Major, to take it?”
“No, no!” responded the General, quickly and with a gay energy; “that
would never match my plans. The Major, or I much mistake, must go with
me to the White House. I could not carry on my administration unless I
found him quarreling at my elbow whenever I turned my head.”
“And if 'carry on' be the name of it, who is to carry on my farms?” I
asked.
This I put seriously; it stood much to the left hand of any programme of
mine, this making one of the General's White House family.
“Who will carry on your farms?” repeated the General. “Why, then, who is
to carry on mine? Do you mean that you, who have put me here, are about
to desert me? Nonsense, man; there is no room in your body, big as
it is, for so gross a treason. If I stay, you stay; and that's nailed
down.”
“And surely you wouldn't abandon me?” said Peg, bringing her pretty face
something near to my shoulder. Then, low and pleading: “Me; with trouble
frowning?”
Who was there to stand up against both Peg and the General? I made no
breathless battle of it, you may guess.
“Major, I've been telling this child,” said the General, laying his thin
hand on Peg's curly mop of hair, “how at our receptions she'll light up
that great East Room with the bright face of her. We shall require all
the beauty we can muster, since the administration is like to go limping
in the business of looks. Van Buren and Barry are wifeless; and I'm told
Mrs. Ingham is forbiddingly hideous, with the voice of a henhawk. You
see, my child,” turning to Peg, “we build on you to save our day from
the sin of ugliness.”
Peg's eyes danced, and she seemed to bask in prospects naught save
sunshine. She was far from that broken one of sobs and sorrows whose
hand I held a short half hour before. A great woman is ever a great
actress; Peg was proving it now; for with a face all light, her heart
was a heart of shadows, and heavy with the forebode of dark days
coming down. What a paradox is woman! Here was Peg, brave at once,
and fearful--afraid for her husband, while quick with courage for him,
finding her peril where she found her strength.
“We are living,” remarked Eaton, as he tucked Peg under his arm
preparatory to their departure, “we are living on the Georgetown side
of the President's Square. General, we won't, while you are in the White
House, have a far journey when we visit you. Major, you must call on
us.”
“Indeed, you must!” echoed Peg.
As the two took their leave, and the General, having bowed the little
lady to the door, sought his never-failing pipe, Jim reappeared, and
with a caution that bordered upon mystery put a penciled note in my
hand. It read:
“Mr. Noah presents his compliments to the Major; and will the Major
do Mr. Noah the honor to meet him immediately in the card room? It
is considered advisable by Mr. Noah to say nothing to the General
concerning this message.”
The note went into my pocket, the General, luckily involved with his
pipe, which for some stubbornness concealed within the stem refused to
draw, failing to notice. This was as should be, for the General was as
inquisitive and prompt with query as a girl. Even now he asked where I
was bound.
“I've had nothing to eat as yet,” I returned.
“That's true; I had forgotten. Come back when you are finished; there's
a deal to talk about. I shall need you to help me make up my mind.”
“Help you unmake it, you mean,” I replied.
There was an exchange of grins. I had exactly stated the case; and, as a
grave truth will on occasion, it struck our sense of the ridiculous. It
had been my work for years; it would be my work for the eight years yet
to come; this unmaking of the General's mind.
On my way to the card room I asked Jim,
Peggy
O'Neal who was close behind, where he got the message.
“Marse Major, Jim done obtains it from that red-head Jew gentleman I
sees romancin' 'round yere this mornin'. An' say, Marse Major; don't
you-all reckon Jim better skuffle for your room an' fotch your box of
pistols?”
“Pistols!” I exclaimed, stopping short; “what in the name of General
Jackson do I. want of pistols?”
“Oh, nothin', Marse Major, jest nothin',” said Jim, shifting uneasily on
his feet. “It's simply one of them old-time Cumberland idees of Jim's.
D' fac' is, Marse Major, Jim sort o' allows from d' signs how dish yere
red-head Jew gentleman's gwine to have a fight.”