Those next few weeks went by in a tumbling procession that was more
like mob violence than aught orderly or sequential. The town was overrun
of folk. It was a climbing case of everybody under foot--everybody
stepped on one, and, in compensation, one stepped on everybody.
Jim was driven to remark concerning the collecting tangle of humanity,
and the crush and crowd and jostle of it. The sage Jim was speaking to
his own defence, being indicted for some neglect of me.
“'Pears like, Marse Major,” said Jim, soothingly, “you-all must jes'
wrastle along somehow until dish yere pop'lace begins to abrogate. I'm
doin' d' bes' I knows how; but she shorely is a time for every 'possum
to learn to hang by his own tail.”
“What do you mean by 'abrogate?'” I was willing to be amused at the
expense of the erroneous Jim.
“You don't tell me, Marse Major, that you-all don't know what 'abrogate'
means?”
Jim imitated astonishment. “Why, a thing abrogates when it beds itse'f
down--kind o' quiles itse'f up like a moccasin snake.”
It was impressive, the throng in the streets--a multitude hungry for
office--a multitude it would ask a miracle to feed and fill. The whole
country was come to town, the place blazed with Jackson badges, every
face shone with victory. It was a pretorian band, and had borne its
beloved captain into power on its shields. It was present now for
jubilation and for spoil.
For myself, I surveyed the surging, shouting, unkempt thousands with
disfavor; the General liked and applauded them.
“They are as rightfully here,” said he, “as the smuggest, slyest rascal
of riches of them all. We are done with Adams and his Federal dogma,
'The best dressed citizen is the best citizen.' The day is the day of
democracy.”
“And very well,” said I; “democracy is my creed, too. But may it not
scrape its face with a razor? Would soap destroy it? I grow sick of a
democracy which finds no outlet for expression save cowhide boots all
mud, and standing on a damask chair in them.” The General snorted; next
to his dead Saint Rachel, he loved the herd.
Noah, who was much in my company these days, gave one of his cynic
shrugs.
“Major, doubtless you are a democrat,” observed Noah with a comic face.
“But you have been too much solitary, and you've forgotten the tenets
of our faith. You should recall yourself to that inscription on the
cornerstone of our temple: 'The Mob giveth, the Mob taketh away, blessed
be the name of the Mob.'”
The weather was fine, and clear as a bell in the sky; but the frost
coming up from the ground made underfoot another sonnet altogether. With
bright air, and sun shining, still the roads weltered mere swamps, and
all so set and puddled of soft ooze they would have bogged a saddle
blanket. Carriages were out of the possible; but, save for crowds on the
sidewalks, folk a-foot did well enough.
The pretty Peg was each day to the Indian Queen to chat with us. I saw
so much of her, she grew on me like a habit.
Eaton for the war desk was known now to all, and, verbally at least,
acquiesced in. Noah's slicing work with his Spanish sword had been
whispered industriously; scores went up to gaze on the broad blotches of
dull red where the rogue Catron's blood had spread like paint; the arm
wide open from wrist to should der-joint--a very gutter of a wound!--was
dilated upon; and the result appeared in a wholesome caution on the
conversational parts of our enemies. Noah was still in town; and no male
at least came reckless enough to court the fate of Catron. Besides, the
buzz and talk of a new administration scraping its feet at the door and
lifting the latch of events would occupy the public mouth, and mention
of Peg, whether for good or bad, was crowded out of it. The future would
have been the better for peace had these conditions secured a longer
maintenance.
Among others, that Reverend Doctor Ely, for whom the equally Reverend
Campbell and the magpie one aforetime came upon the carpet, broke
rapturously into town. I say “broke,” since as a term it may best depict
the effusiveness of that descent upon the General. Twenty years before,
this Ely had met the General; their acquaintance had been as attenuated
as it might be and still bear up the name; and with that slender capital
the hopeful Doctor was present to make the most it.
Surely, I met the reverend man. He was a bald, brisk, worldly personage,
with a most noble appetite for the flesh-pots. He carefully sustained
himself the hypocrite in that last behalf, however, and to folk casual
he offered nothing beyond an appearance fervently religious. While with
us, he held forth in sundry local pulpits, and although I heard him not
myself, he was warmly eulogized by pious critics who knew what sermons
should be.
The worthy Doctor with a view to Florida dangled about the General. The
Reverend Campbell, and the magpie one, dangled about the worthy Doctor.
They were made to see, with the very finish of it, however, that by no
accident of concession would the General place their man, Westfall, in
the van of Florida affairs to set up mimic thrones in the Governor's
Palace of St. Augustine.
The news was a blow to them; and the urgent trio were no Stoics to be
capable of excluding from their brows the chagrin they felt. They no
longer harrassed the General, however, which, when now a score of duties
pulled at him like horses, was no small desideratum.
Presumably as a last ditch wherein to perish, the Reverend Doctor Ely
came to me. I was no favorite of his, nor he of mine. To me he was not
a precious metal. Polished? yes--and yet only to remind one of brass. He
was, as I have said, of fashionable model; fond of his burgundy, and
his canvas-back; garbed fastidiously and in the mode; precisely that
character the General so accurately read those years before when he
suspected him as one less concerned for the fit of his conscience than
the fit of his coat.
When the Reverend Doctor encountered me, I cut him short. To do this,
let me tell you, I took my courage in my hands, for it is no child's
play to thwart a dominie.
“You are one who holds fast for the doctrine of foreordination?” I asked
this like a catechist at his questions.
“I am,” returned the Reverend Doctor.
“And you believe that many are called while few are chosen?”
“I do.”
“And in original sin; and infant damnation; and how hell is paved with
children's skulls?”
“I do. To what, however, does this move?”
“And the love of gold to be the root of evil?” I went on, disregarding
the question thrust at me; “and that it would be easier to pass a camel
through the needle's eye than a rich man into heaven?”
“Sir, I insist on hearing the purpose of your surprising curiosity.”
“Why, then, it should all be huddled into this. Your Westfall, rich and
sinful, by what you say may be presumed to dwell in multiplied peril of
immortal shipwreck. And since such be your craft, and the trade you pick
up bread by, would it not come more seemly for yourself, and be for
this Westfall an effort more of grace, were you, instead of storming the
General with pleas for a Governorship which might prove but a worm
to gnaw him, to employ your self in bringing about the eternal safe
advantage of his soul?”
The Reverend Doctor withdrew, his dander much on furious end, and
shortly thereafter the tail of my eye caught a picture of him, as--heads
close together--he conferred whisperingly with the Reverend Campbell in
a corner of the longroom of the Indian Queen.
Since I could not think well, I was careful to think nothing at all of
these reverend office seekers. In that latter I dropped into error; they
were worthy serious respect. I should have borne it more upon my memory
how easy comes destruction, and that he who is incapable of building one
brick upon another may yet tear down the most stubborn best masonry of
man. I should have kept before me those powers for ill which arm the
meanest, and not have forgotten how the veriest vermin of a rat might
gnaw the canvas of a Rubens.
Remembering those ignoble ones that evening, I foolishly burst into
disparagement of the clergy as a class. The General was smart for
defence.
“Humbug!” quoth the General. “Because you have seen the inside of two,
you would have it you know them all. It were as wise if you declared
Washington to be a traitor for that Arnold would have sold West Point.
Every tub, even a pulpit tub, must stand upon its own bottom.”
I have told how dumb and dead lay vilification on the masculine lip,
and that no man so much as breathed against the fame of Peg. There was
notice on its way to show the women were unquelled.
It was the day before the General's inauguration, and he over ears with
his address, reading and re-reading it, so as to give the periods a
best volume and voice, and endow them with that strutting majesty of
utterance his vanity conceived belonged in justice to their merit. He
would be by himself while thus rehearsing, for he took shame to vapor
up and down, and toss about before me, and swore that my presence,
glowering from a chair, would have daunted Cicero. I was glad enough to
leave him to himself, it being but poor sport to play at audience for a
bad orator; moreover, since the speech was written in my Nashville home
and wrangled over, as it proceeded, by the General and myself like dogs
over a bone, it would come to me as nothing new. And so the General
was left to plod about in his paragraphs much like a cow in a morass,
difficult and slow, and sinking to the hocks with every step. I could
catch the humming roar of him in my parlor, while he swaggered about his
rooms, singing out shrill and high in declamation, and reveling in the
figure he would cut.
While I was idly turning this weakness of the General to think himself
a Patrick Henry, when he had no more of eloquence or music than any
midnight owl, a nervous tap came on my panels. I was instantly on my
feet; the tap quite drove the General and his rhetoric out of my head.
By some instinct, or, mayhap, the tap itself was marked of agitation, I
not only recognized it for Peg, but knew she was in grief. I threw open
the door.
Peg stepped in; she was white to the lips; and this paleness of ivory
showed the more on her because of the great dark eyes and those midnight
shadows to dwell within her hair. Save for this pallor, however, she
seemed steady as a rock.
It was on the outside, though, for no sooner was I seated again than she
drifted down before my feet on the floor, and, with her head on my knee,
broke into a passion of sobbing. I let my hand, for sympathy, rest a
moment on her poor head, and when I thought she would have cried enough,
lifted her up and placed her in a chair.
“What is it?” I said. “I thought I was to see no more tears from you.”
This I threw off in half sprightly tones to rally Peg.
“Nor shall you,” cried she, “but I was fair spent and beaten for want
of a good cry. And you should know”--she was giving me a trace of
brightness now--“that crying is so much like conversation, to cry alone
is like talking to one's self. I can not go to my husband; and the
General, good and kind, is with it all too old and too great, and,
therefore, too much out of my reach. I've just you; and that's how rich
I am for confidants. I've not a woman to be friend to me in all the
world; nor would I trust her if I had. I've just you; and so you are
like to see a deal of worry.”
“All that is mighty sweet,” I returned, “and every word a flower. And
yet, what is the wrong?”
“And simply nothing, after all,” she replied. “Only it's so much more
horrible to see it with your eyes than hear it with your ears.” Peg put
a note into my hands. “It came through the post; and doubtless means no
more than the malevolence which was author to it.”
The note had no name; nothing to indicate its parentage. It read:
“Revenge is sweet! I have you in my power; and I shall burn you as
savages burn their victim at the stake. I pray that you live long to
extend my pleasure. Think not that you can escape me. I would not that
death nor any evil thing should take you out of my hand for half the
world.”
“The nameless devil!” I cried. “It is a woman's hand of writ, though the
letters are made purposely big and sprawling. Have you any thought at
who she should be?”
“No,” returned Peg; “I can not so much as guess.”
Peg and I talked the question up and down, I asking and she answering,
and with the end we were where we started, that was nowhere at all. The
Reverend Campbell came into my conjecturings, he and his magpie mate;
but I did not mention them, for what would have been the use of
feathering Peg's imagination with a surmise?
“But, in good truth, I came to you,” said Peg at the end, “not for any
hope of solving this. That would be frankly impossible. Rather I am here
to get a drink of your courage; for, faith! though I wear as brave a
face as I may, my own betimes runs something low. And now,”--Peg stood
up and gave me her dainty hand, mimicking the manner of a man--“and
now, my big comrade, having had my cry, and got my draught of courage,
I shall go back to the President's Square; and there I shall forget the
whole story of this miserable letter. That is”--she had gone into the
hall and was closing the door now, with only a strip of her sweet face
looking in to me--“forget all except how I cried at your knee and was
very, very happy because you were good and kind and--let me cry.”
When the door was shut, I picked up the note which Peg had left and
placed it in the private locker of my desk. Then I sate me down and
thought revengefully on Peg's wrongs, and the hatefulness of him who
should think her harm. But her dark, deep eyes were forever coming in to
look on me, and at the last I had a memory for nothing but her beauty;
and, elaborating thereon, I considered how beauty was in itself a
benediction implied of Providence, and a sermon; and then I got to
reading Burns; and I confess--however often I had spoken of them as so
much sweetened oatmeal--there arose in me a delight from those verses
as though they were the songs of birds. And throughout the whole, from
Peg's crying at my feet until I'd put Burns away in his place, the drone
of the General, thundering on tariff, and finance, and standing armies,
and sinking funds, was in the air; and all futile, so I thought, and
dreary and workaday and commonplace.
Somehow, for all of Burns and my meditations, after Peg had left me, my
heart felt poor and robbed. Also, I turned less and less patient with
the General, humming at his coming speech like a great bee in a bottle.
At last I went in to him and gave him my tart opinion of his doings, for
all the world like an actor with a part to study, or some girl primping
and preparing for conquest before a glass.
“Have you so forgotten English,” I cried, “that you can not tell your
views to the people without first telling and re-telling them a score of
times to yourself?”
But the General was in a high mood and no more to be dealt with than a
tempest.
“Take your irritation out for a walk, sir,” said he. “Take a walk for
your nerves. Something has combed your fur wrong-wise; and I don't think
it could have been politics. You prodigiously remind me of one in love,
and who has ear-patience for naught save the voice of his mistress.”
Out to walk I went; I did not think the General worth a retort. You
are not, however, to follow his hint, and lose and leave the plain
footprints of the fact. I was no more in love with Peg than was he; I
examined myself on that head and made myself particularly clear. Like
all men who are physically big and strong, and, moreover, like all men
border-born and taught that duty from the ground up of protecting ones
weaker than themselves, particularly women-folk and babes, I went as
naturally to Peg's side in her troubles as ever went deer to drink. It
was in my nature and my lesson to do this. Sympathy is a plant to grow
most quickly on roughest soil; and folk of my shag-bark sort are ever
soonest on the ground, and stay the longest, when the cause is the
weeping cause of woman.
And there you have the explanation of my interest for Peg. The General,
himself, was just as headlong; his sympathies fair went about on tiptoe
in a constant search for weak ones in distress. Not humanity alone, but
animals; and I've seen him go forth into midnight sleet and ice--and
Death tearing at his lungs with a cough--to bring in a bleating lamb. It
was, then, but partisan sympathy, and not love in the bud, which I felt
for Peg; and I turned much fortified and quieter in my own thoughts,
when, following a rigid search of my breast, I made it out.
Noah, whom I ran across in the corridor, went with me for the walk. We
broke away northward across the city to be free of the crowds which came
and went about Gadsby's and the Indian Queen. When we were more alone
and with the roads to ourselves, I told Noah of the nameless letter to
Peg.
“And that is a fine feather in the cap of Henry Clay,” I cried; “this
employment of nameless villains to write threats to a girl!”
“Now let me set you straight,” said Noah. “I've gone to the ends of
this foul work. It is not the Clay so much as the Calhoun interest which
furnishes the venom. The General is turned round; he believes it to be
Clay. I assure you, the enemy is a Calhoun coterie from South Carolina.”
“But what is their purpose?” I asked. “Calhoun is Vice-President; he
will preside over the Senate and be part of the administration. Why
should he seek to mar it?”
“Mark you, I do not say,” replied Noah, “that Calhoun, personally,
so much as hears of these wrongs done in his name. Your friends will
sometimes go farther in your cause than you will go for yourself. Let me
briefly tell you what I know. Calhoun would succeed the General for the
Presidency. He spins a web as fine as any spun of spiders. So curiously
has he brought his forces to bear, that of the six he will own three of
the General's cabinet--Berrien, Branch, and Ingham. He wanted the war
office, and was craftily urging Hayne, of his own state, when the
General unconsciously brushed his plan aside with Eaton. Now the Calhoun
thought is to drive Eaton from the place; and to mock at Mrs. Eaton and
stain her with slanders is the Palmetto idea of a method. The more cruel
it is, the more likely to succeed; and the latter condones the
ignobility. These folk play for a White House; and the greater the stake
the less of scruple on the part of the players. Remember, too, these
children of evil have just begun; the attacks, as they proceed, will
mobilize a force. The women will be brought to their aid. We gagged the
men's mouths with a duel; but who is to gag the women's, and how will he
go upon the work?”
This news about Calhoun was nothing by way of surprise. I knew him to be
as ambitious as Lucifer; more, I was aware of him for no friend of the
General; I had learned that much two years before.
While it was within my knowledge, this enmity, I had not set it forth to
the General; the truth of it would have done him no good, and gotten
in the way. It would have served only to fire his wrath, and he was one
most unmanageable when angry.
Wherefore throughout the campaign, while the General and Calhoun were
running mates, I said no word of the latter's secret feeling of envious
jealousy and hate, and the General went to the election in the dark,
believing the Vice-President to be among his staunchest friends.
Thinking now of Peg, I began to glimpse a day when the Calhoun rancors
would be worth the General's knowledge.
“Assuming that Calhoun languishes to be President,” said I, “and
intrigues for that object, what do you say to the radical sort of his
States Rights position--going in for the right to nullify a general law,
and secede at will from the national circle, and all that? Would you
call Calhoun either politic or right to occupy those positions?
“And now for the 'politic and right,'” responded Noah, “Calhoun must go
with the current. A statesman is a scientist of circumstances; he must
not fight wind and tide, but use them. In South Carolina, Nullification
and Secession are doctrines of a first respectability. One meets folk
daily who would sooner be respectable than right; and Calhoun may
well be one of these. No,” observed Noah in conclusion, speaking with
emphasis, “Calhoun must adopt his state, or his state will not adopt
him. He can not build himself for anything without his state; that is
the keystone, wanting which his arch of the future comes tumbling to the
ground.”
“Then you regard Calhoun as helpless, and that he could not, if he
would, rescue himself on a question of Nullification or Secession?”
“No; he's as helpless as a fly in amber; he must go with his state or be
lost.”
“Do these proposals of a right to nullify and a right to secede, then,
strike so deep with their roots? I had not thought men cared so much for
tariff.”
“Sir,” replied Noah, “while present States Rights discussion circles
about tariff as argument most convenient, behind it, and as the grand
motive, lurks black slavery. A protest against tariff links many rich
merchants, not alone in Charleston, but in every great seaboard city
from Baltimore to Boston, to this doctrine. They would bring in goods
free. There be many among these, tugged upon by their pockets, who can
be brought to States Rights for a tariff argument, and who would turn
off in horror were the true black slavery reason advanced. There you
have the cunning of Calhoun.”
“Then you hold slavery to be the mainspring of States Rights as a
movement?”
“Absolutely,” and Noah's tones left no doubt of his conviction. “Slavery
overshadows all. It is a question to yet shake the country in its soul.”
There was silence between us; we walked on, I, for my side, ruminating
the words of Noah. The more I considered them, the more they looked the
truth. Calhoun's enmity I made no mouth about believing; indeed, as I've
set forth, it already had dwelt in my knowledge for long.
Getting back to what was presently being acted, I spoke of that cabinet
trio whom my companion had marked as of the clan and same family of
politics with Calhoun.
“Branch, Berrien, and Ingham,” repeated Noah, “are blood and bone with
Calhoun. If they drive out Eaton, there may come a fourth to strengthen
them. Four of a cabinet six! That would make a mighty beginning in any
hunting of the White House.”
“And what,” said I, remembering Peg, and my rage swelling, “what are we
to think of ones who would hunt a White House across the naked honor of
a woman?”
“What we are to think,” said Noah, with a toss of the hand, “will be the
least of their worry when once they succeed.”
“And that will never happen,” I returned. “I hold it between my palms
to defeat their best laid plan--their most darling chicane, as you shall
witness.”
“And so I hope,” said he. “Also, now you know as much as I, it is left
with you to warn the General and make bare to him Calhoun. You are the
right one to speak with him on that skittish topic.”
Inauguration as a ceremony came and departed, and I looked on the going
thereof as its most superlative feature. There were twenty thousand
people to hear the General's address; and when he advanced to the
platform reared for him on the eastern front of the Capitol, the
multitude doffed hats and stood a most remarkable spectacle, the like of
which I'd never gazed on.
But the later horde in the White House defies expression! It was simple
loot and pillage, wanting bloodshed, and nothing carried away. The
cowhide throng, mud and mire to the boot-ears, climbed on sofas and
stood on chairs; they would catch a glimpse of their god at whatever
damask cost. When punch would have been brought for their entertainment,
they rushed upon the servants like red barbarians, struggling,
wrestling, the pails spilled out upon the floors. It was I who settled
the disorder, and I claim credit as for a stratagem which on other
fields might have saved a battle. I caused the drinkables to be quietly
withdrawn to the lawn, beyond the first hill and far to the south. Then
from a corner of the East Room I announced the fact with a loud voice.
It was as though my words bore a charm; in a twinkling the White House
proper approached desertion. Folk decent and civilized might again move
about, and quiet ones have peace. The mob never came back, for I made
it my duty that no lack of punch should occur on the lawn; there the
uproarious remained and drank, and at last--those who could walk--they
drifted away, each deviously to his habitat, and something akin to quiet
settled again about the eaves and rafters of the mansion.
The General put in most of the next day on a lounge, in nurse to
Augustus, recovering from the ordeal. It all but swept his life away as
in a freshet. However, he pulled through; and when in the evening I went
to ask about his condition, I found him with that little miniature of
his wife I've spoken of, and her hymn-book, wherewith he made his
daily church and said his prayers. What a soul would have been his for
cross-handles and chain-mail!--what a knight! so dauntless among men,
and withal so loyal with all his love to the dear lady of his heart. She
might die to others, but she would never die to him. His love would each
night search her out among the stars.
And now we settled down to our strange life. But since I use the word,
let me tell you in how short a period the strange becomes the common;
for I had not been a week in the White House, and in and out of its
great rooms, when all was as familiar and friendly to me as though I had
passed my days from boyhood within the four walls of it.
The General's family, beyond himself and me, was made up of his nephew
Donalson, the latter's wife, and the portrait-maker, Earl; not an
extensive circle, truly, and one to be soon contracted by the desertion
of two, as you shall presently hear.
We were still in process of that mild wrangle with our new abode which
must ever precede a last adjustment, when, like a clap of thunder from
a sky without a cloud, the General's niece--she who was our Lady of
the White House--came upon him. There lowered something formidable
and gloomy in the mien of the young woman as she entered the room,
and because no towering force of character had distinguished her
theretofore, this cloudy something was the more to be observed. I should
have said, too, the social lines were already being set for and against
our pretty Peg, and this visit of the General's niece was somewhat in
the nature of a blow from the enemy's side.
“What is it, my dear?” asked the General, glancing up from his
conversation with me.
“Uncle,” she said, much in the manner of a starling which whistles a
tune that has been taught it, “Uncle, I am here to tell you that I can
not call upon Mrs. Eaton. I will receive her, since this is your house,
and you its master. But call on her in return, I can not.”
“Hoity toity!” quoth the General, “and now where did you learn these bad
manners?'
“It is my duty to myself, Uncle; there is not a lady in Washington,
beginning with Mrs. Calhoun and going down to the least among us, who
will call on Mrs. Eaton; therefore, I can not call on her.”
“Then you might better go back to Tennessee, my dear,” said the General.
And the niece and her husband went.
The word “Calhoun,” had not, however, escaped the General. It was
forever cropping up in manner and form most sinister, that word Calhoun;
and in the entire crusade of venom waged upon our Peg, it seemed on
the lips of everyone with whom the exigencies of the hour threw us into
speech, from the immortal Pigeon-breast to the General's very niece.
“The Calhoun interest,” remarked the General, when his young
relative had retired in wrath to pack her trunks, “would appear to be
headquarters for the foe.”
The General said “foe” and meant it; for he was one whose eyes were in
his heart and saw ever his enemy in the enemy of his friend.
It was then I took occasion to lay out to the General in particular,
not alone the plan of Calhoun to seize a presidency; not alone
his leadership in that war of politics then mustering forces over
Nullification and a state's right to secede, and which in the next
Congress gave birth to the debates between Webster and Hayne; but I
went a step beyond, and exhibited the hidden enmity of Calhoun which was
leveled at himself, and had hunted his destruction as far away as the
Seminole campaign, when Calhoun was in Monroe's cabinet as Secretary of
War.
“It is true,” I declared; “at that time your only friend was Monroe.
Calhoun in the secret councils of the cabinet was warm to break your
sword.”
“How do you know that?” demanded the General, his eye making for heat.
“I read it in a letter from Governor Forsythe to Colonel Hamilton. If
that be not enough, I heard it from ex-President Monroe himself, when
last evening he was with us here to dinner. Moreover, I was made aware
of it two years ago on my trip to the Mississippi.”
“And why did I not hear of it before?”
“You have learned it in ample time for every interest you carry, whether
of your own or Peg's.”
“That is true,” said the General, “that is quite true.” Then he mused
with bended brow. At last he burst forth: “I begin to see into the
Calhoun thoughts. He knows my rule, which we agreed on before we left
Nashville, that no member of my cabinet shall succeed me. That leaves
him but two rivals, Clay and Adams, for Crawford can never run again. He
has three adherents in my cabinet through whose aid he hopes to feather
the nest of his ambitions with patronage. He would destroy Eaton with
the thought of gaining a fourth. Meanwhile he will preside over the
Senate, and control legislation in favor of low tariff, if not a flat
level of free trade. Thus he trusts to break down Clay and Adams, who
are wedded to protection. Verily, a most noble, a most delicate bit of
chicane!” Here the General brooded for a long space. “I might admire
it,” he went on, “nay, I might even aid it on its high-stepping way,
were it not that he includes in his intrigue the destruction of a girl.
It is like a play, Major, and we must foil the villain and save
our beautiful Peg. Her name shall not be blown upon, though all the
presidencies for ten centuries to come depend upon it! Peg came spotless
among us; and from among us, spotless she shall depart; and that in the
teeth of all the Calhouns that ever came out of Carolina.”
The General smashed his clay pipe at this crisis, and by that token
I knew the thing to be already done. It was a way he had, this
pipe-breaking, of signing his bonds.
Peg lived catty-cornered across the President's Square, and ran in and
out of the White House like one of the inmates. She liked the flowers,
and she liked the pictures, and was never tired of gazing at the latter
and smelling to the former. She was so much sunshine about the mansion,
not the lightest nor yet the least gloomy house in nature, but quite the
contrary.
One day a little scene occurred about which nothing of import clambered,
and yet I would give it here; for it pleases me when now I'm fallen in
the vale of years, and the General and Peg and those others who were my
friends are dead and gone from out my hands, to remember such frail
matters for their sweetness rather than their consequence; and truth to
say, they stay by me, too, with gentle clearness when events that were
of moment are clean faded from my mind.
Peg, then, was dragging me about by the hand--for she was as much the
romp as any child--and we journeyed from room to room, and from picture
to picture. We were standing in front of that portrait of Washington
which Dolly Madison once slashed from its frame to save from vandal
British.
“Come,” said Peg, tugging at my wrist with the two hands of her, “I'm
weary of these. Doubtless he was a wondrous fine gentleman”--pointing to
the painted figure of our first president--“and lived well aware of it,
himself, as one may know by the satisfied smirk of him. But show me some
other picture, one more beautiful and less grand--and not so satisfied
with itself, and respectable. All the folk I hate are respectable, and I
begin to loathe the word!”
“I can show you the most beautiful picture in the world,” I retorted;
and, whirling her by the shoulders, I stood her before a mirror.
Peg looked upon her kindly reflection for long in silence; then her eyes
filled up.
“It isn't your compliments I cry for,” said Peg, breaking into a catchy
laugh; “but your tone is so queer with the sheer kindness of it, that I
am taken by the heart. You dear, true friend; you at least think good of
little Peg!” And with that, she came quite close, and turned her face in
wistful yet trusting fashion up to mine.
An hour later--and it was growth of this--I did a foolish action; and
yet no harm turned of it, but only a better friendship between myself
and the coxcomb Pigeon-breast. It fell forth when Peg was gone home, and
I alone near the north door of the big East Room, and none save myself
in the broad expanse of that mighty apartment. My soul was somewhat in
arms over Peg, for the wintry moan in her tones when she spoke of my
faith in her goodness was still working on me, and I would have bartered
ten years of my life to have had set before me some specific male of
my species who should avow himself Peg's evil-thinker. My vengeance was
starving and wolfish, and I would have fed it with him.
While in this vein of fret and tumult, I caught the voice of Jim in the
hallway outside the door.
“Do I know d'Marse Major?” I heard Jim say, apparently in answer to the
question; “does Jim know d'Marse Major? Well, Jim should say likely;
for, you hyar me! Jim's been all through him with a lantern. You-all may
tell them gambler-gentlemen somethin' new about a ace of clubs; an 'mebby
you could post Jim of somethin' he aint heerd about corn whiskey; but
I don't allow thar's anythin' mo' for Jim to learn about d'Marse Major.
'Cause why; 'cause he's Jim's Marse Major, an' I jes' nacherally raise
him, I does, from a colt.”
When I stepped into the vestibule to answer to my own name, and put a
stop to the extravagances of Jim, I saw, to my astonishment, that the
caller was no less a personage than Pigeon-breast. Without pausing to
hear his mission, I took him by the arm and led him out upon the lawn.
Once there, however, I was sore put to it to show reason for my conduct,
of the rather extraordinary character of which one caught some glint in
the expression of amazement that made wide the eyes of Pigeon-breast and
all but set his mouth ajar.
Now the truth was, that anonymous letter to Peg, and which lay safe
locked in my desk, had ever stuck in my craw. I said it was a woman's
hand of writing, but I was by no means sure. Knowing hardly a baker's
dozen of folk in town, there were not many for my thoughts to run upon
in this scurvy business; and I had had it now and then on my mind--the
more since Pigeon-breast had broken into the trouble at an early hour as
the open ill-wisher of Peg--to call this fine gentleman's attention
to the missive with a view to asking him was he its architect. In my
present frame of hunger to lay hands on a flesh and blood enemy of
Peg's--one of my own rude sex--and I suppose because Pigeon-breast was
a foppish creature of scents and ribbons who might lean to feminine
methods of attack, I put the question to him. Fairly, I blurted it out,
and I fear with nothing of fineness or diplomacy.
“Me?” cried the outraged Pigeon-breast in a shrill treble through a
sense of injustice; “me?” he cried again, starting back a pace, perhaps
from savageries which looked out upon him from my eye, “never! On my
soul! to think of such a thing! Me write an anonymous letter! Why, sir,”
and poor Pigeon-breast chirped forth the words like a mouse that has
been wronged, “why, sir, should a man say so, I'd have him to the field,
sir, and cut his throat.”
There was no doubt of it; the insulted Pigeon-breast was not the author
of that letter. No man might simulate his indignant excitement. I made
amends handsomely, and for the first time Pigeon-breast and I shook
hands. There was no harm in the creature save that he was a bandbox
fool.
It ran well towards evening when I went about in the conservatory
culling a basket of flowers for Peg. This I was wont to do each day,
since the blossoms went otherwise to waste; for the place was a mere
lair and nest of masculinity, with the General's niece gone home, and
none about save the General and myself--and I might add Earl, but he had
no wit save for canvas and colors, and no thought except from morning
till night to paint the General's portrait. The General and I were no
mighty consumers of nosegays; wherefore, as I've said, and to save the
flowers from loss, I was used each day to cut an armful of the best and
bravest and send them across to Peg's, where they would give her smile
for smile and dare their beauties against her own from every corner.
While I was roving right and left among the blossoms, the General came
in with long strides. There was a kind of angry hurry to him, and he
carried a letter in his hand.
“Here is something to make you curse your kind,” cried he. Then, seeing
my flowers: “How now! how now! and when was Mars a gardener and has the
world turned girl! These should be thin days and bloodless, when the
starkest saber that ever rode on my bridle hand--he whom the Creeks
called the 'Big Death'--loiters with woman's wares and learns to twine a
posy.”
“They are for Peg,” said I, more nettled than I showed, for it struck me
he talked a deal about nothing at all.
“Oh, they are for Peg,” he repeated, his glance whimsical, yet narrow
and intent; “they are for Peg!” Then just as I was warming to the brink
of knowing what he would mean by that, he harked back suddenly to the
letter in his clutch. “Come with me. Here is a word from that very
Reverend Doctor Ely about your Peg, and we must concert steps to prove
him the false defamer that he is.”