And now there comes beneath my hand the hard portion of this history,
the part which I most mislike and bear with least of patience. It is
the record written by the smug, false Doctor Ely to the General, wherein
with a particular past bearing, he piled up his scarlet charges. There
came a dozen counts, and as if it were an indictment; and in them no
slackness, but, instead, an evil confidence of statement plain and
clear, as one after another he cast those stones at Peg. Nor shall his
communication be set forth; I would not so offend against the whiteness
of Peg's name, nor yet harass my own soul's roots by giving a line of it
to types and presses. The more, since it was all a web of lies which sly
rogues wove for the shallow hand of this Ely; and not enough of truth in
it from top to bottom as should serve to make it respectable falsehood.
Sufficient that there were stories with Washington and again New York
as the theatres, and on these was based a brazen demand that Eaton be
dismissed the cabinet and Peg whipped from among women wherever virtue
had a name.
As the General read these things aloud I sat biting my nail in the
flaming impatience of my rage.
“And now what think you?” said he, when he was done.
“I think,” cried I, “that I shall ride at once for the caitiff ears of
him.”
The General, seeing my anger, turned to be mighty calm. It was a manner
of ours that when I was for a rage he would go the other way; I, on
my side and by way of requital, showed never so busy about methods
for peace as when the General was for sounding Boots and Saddles. So,
beholding me eating my fingers in a sort of blood-eagerness to come at
the throat of that Ely, the General would be for craft; and to demand
proof; and to go upon a litigation of the business among ourselves.
“And now you know,” said the General, with a bitterness in his mouth
like aloes, “why I fear preachers and your peace folk. Here is a false
tissue against a girl as white as an angel.”
“My soul for that!” I interjected.
“No one not of the cloth, and saved from men's vengeance by his coat and
ruffle, would so dare. But now this Ely throws these lies in our laps,
and we must sit tied.”
“Yes,” I cried, “I see your meaning right well, and I would give my left
hand at the wrist joint could any gate be opened through which in honor
I might win to the miscreant's heart.” Now the General read the letter
to himself; now he knitted his forehead into a snarl and brooded while
over against him I sat fury-stung.
“Two matters we are to agree on,” said the General at last. “We are not
to tell Peg.”
“No,” said I.
“Nor Eaton.”
Now, somehow, I in no fashion, not even the most shadowy, had had Eaton
on my slope of thought. It had seemed, in the confusion of wrath into
which this charge laid on poor Peg had stirred me, as though there were
just three folk in interest for our own side, being the General and Peg
and myself. The mention of Eaton struck on me in a strange, blistering
way, and was as much an iron in my soul as the slanders of that infamous
Ely himself. This came to be no more than a blur of my wits, however
it departed in a blink, and then a feeling somewhat of pleasure
succeeded to think Eaton would not be engaged in Peg's defence.
“Peg shall not know,” repeated the General, as he who goes over a
manouvre in his mind, “Eaton shall not know. You and I will be enough;
and Noah; and mayhap Henry Lee, since I think, Major, you are not the
man to be trusted with a reply. You--like myself.--would overflow too
much, since you own a feeling too deep.”
There was sense in what the General advanced; I was in an ill frame
for cunning, and to be cool of quill with any specious or refutatory
letter-writing. I could have indited nothing that would not run into a
challenge with the first line; and, with the pulpit character of the foe
to be our answer, that would have been as so much raving madness.
“Let us” said the General, again taking up the scrawl, “examine this
precious scorpion's nest in detail, and then we may know best how it
should be torn to pieces. This Ely does not make these charges by his
own knowledge, but declares how he believes in their truth on the word
of some 'extremely honest individual' of this town. This person would be
so much the viper he must needs hide and crawl under cover; for this Ely
also says 'who asks his name withheld.'”
By this time I had myself in recovery and began to take a part in the
thinking.
“First, then,” said I, “is there any accusation carried which you,
yourself, should contradict?”
“There are two,” returned the General. “This Ely has it that my dear
wife knew Peg's bad conduct and condemned her for it. That is false; my
wife spoke of Peg within a six-month; she loved her like her own child;
and, I well recall, she kissed Peg when last we left this place. Then,
too, Ely asserts how Timberlake was jealous of Eaton before he sailed
for the Mediterranean, hated him as Peg's tempter, and would have slain
him. That, also, I should know to be a lie; for here,” and the General
crossed to a shelf and took down a rich Turkish tobacco pouch, “is a
tobacco pocket which Timberlake sent to Eaton with a letter asking him
to give it me when I arrived; and the letter bore date not ten days
before Timberlake died. There remain but two great delinquencies
alleged; the one here and the other in New York; and both are capable
of proof for either their truth or falsity.”
“And how shall we go about that proof?” I asked.
“As a primary step, then, let us have Noah with us.”
Noah came, and the General put the Ely letter into his dark, nervous
hands.
“The gentleman seems marvelously prompt,” said Noah, “to decide a
woman's fame away on barest hearsay. Doubtless he is a good Christian,
but he would make a bad judge.”
“This is what you will do, Noah, if you love me,” said the General: “Go
to Philadelphia. Squeeze from this Ely the name of that reptile on whose
word he starts about this crime against innocence. Then press to
New York for the evidence needed to display the falsehood he tells
concerning Peg in that place.”
When Noah had gone forth, the General called in Henry Lee, who was a
secret, truthworthy man, and, dictating while Lee did the pen work,
proceeded to beat the Reverend Ely and his lies as folk beat carpets.
The General, when it was done, dismissing Lee, read to me his answer;
and I could not so much as add one word. It was as complete a retort,
and withal as slashing an arraignment of this Ely for his own cruel
part, as might be compassed with paper and ink. I listened; and I never
loved the General half so well before.
“And yet,” observed the General, when he had closed the reading and the
letter lay ready for the post, “this Ely is but the mask for some rogue
who hides behind him.”
There was no more to do now, save wait for Noah's return. I had one
ordeal of the spirit, however; that was when Peg came next day. I so
yearned over her in pity, it marked itself in my face and she took
some dim account of it. She went away wrong in her hunting for a cause,
however.
“What has been the mischance?” said Peg, getting up and standing behind
my chair with a soft hand on each of my shoulders. “You've had poor news
from your farms?”
“A horse dead,” I replied. This was so far true as a word that the
letter telling me thereof had but just arrived, and lay open on my
table. “Only that a favorite horse has died,” I replied. “But he was one
of the General's Truxton colts, and I but loth to lose him.”
It was a soon day thereafter, and we yet waiting for word of Noah, when
the General re-opened the affair of the Ely letter.
“The man Ely,” said he, thoughtfully, “has been practiced upon. The
Calhoun interest it was which stirred him to this. He would be clay
easily moulded for such a purpose, and peculiarly when the potters
employed upon him might promise somewhat for his ambition. As against
Eaton and Peg, the fellow would needs lack personal motive, since
he knows them not at all. He might find in his bosom, truly, a part
willingness to disturb me, because I broke the heart of his hope for a
Florida exaltation. Yet even with that to train his malignancy upon the
Eatons, it is clear he must be loaded, primed, and aimed by other hands.
Thus do I make the story of it: if Clay be out, as you declare, who
is there save Calhoun to put this Ely forward? Then, too, there is the
coincidence of method. Ely does there what the Calhoun folk do here.”
“Still,” I returned, for I believed in justice though to an enemy,
and would not condemn the Vice-President without some open sureness of
proof; “still, as Noah explained, these villainies might find act and
parcel in Calhoun's interests, and that gentleman be as innocent of
personal part as next year's babes.”
“Be that as it may,” retorted the General, “a man is responsible for his
dogs. Besides, it is too much to believe that Calhoun has no notice of
this war on the Eatons.”
“Oh, as to that,” I replied, “I think there is scant doubt. An important
movement in his destinies is not to continue for long in the dark, to a
keen sight like Calhoun's. However, he might miss details.”
“He knows of these tales against Peg,” declared the General firmly, and
as though the question were solved and settled. “Also, by lifting his
finger he could end them in the mouths that give them words. When one
can do a thing and doesn't do it, that is because one doesn't want to do
it, but prefers things as they are. And there you have it. In the mean
courses against Peg your Vice-President is accessory. By the Eternal!”
swore the General abruptly, beginning to walk about the floor, “but such
perfidy makes me to loathe the man! I should hate all that comes from
him, whether of policy or plan. For where a source is foul, the stream
will be unclean.”
There was now to enter upon the stage one who wrought strongly for Peg's
defence. But he toiled better for himself, for at last he took the White
House by it; the General in a gust of kindness for what he did in Peg's
pure favor making him his heir of politics and laying the presidency in
his hands with the death of his own second term. This personage, to be
so much the ally of Peg, and so fortunate for his own future, was none
other than that Van Buren who resigned his Governorship and traveled the
long way from Albany to become the General's Secretary of State.
Heretofore I've made suggestion that the General's knowledge of Van
Buren was nothing deep, but only narrow and of a surface sort. More;
the truth was that now when the General stood in the midst of this Eaton
trouble and saw a long strife ahead, he was by no sense secure for the
coming attitude of his premier, and went doubt-pricked as to whether or
no it would turn to be a friendly one. I could discern some feather of
these misgivings when one evening over our pipes we dwelt on Marcy and
Van Buren, these two being topmost spirits of our party in their state.
Marcy was a bold man, and strong with a burly force; as frank and
without fear too, as a soldier, and less the hypocrite than any of his
day. He had yet to say, from his seat in the Senate, “The politicians of
my state wear no masks of superior goodness and make no pretences. They
are content to preach what they practice. If they be defeated, they
expect to step down and out; if they triumph, they look to enjoy the
fruits of their victory. They see no harm in the aphorism, 'To the
victor belongs the spoil of the enemy.'” Marcy, I say, had not yet
uttered these words in the Senate; but they dwelt with him as a
sentiment; he had given them expression in Duff Green's paper; and,
since the General said nothing in negation, they were held to declare
the feelings of the administration.
Before this, I have written somewhere, have I not?--for old age can not
hold a memory, nor tell a lucid story step by step, but forever must
wander to the garrulous this-side-or-that, with topics alien to the task
in hand--how I caught some flash of the General's uncertainty of Van
Buren and the pose that gentleman would take on? It fell in this kind. I
had asked then a question about Van Buren, and how he compared with his
fellow captain, Marcy. The General shook uncertain head.
“Van Buren may surprise us,” said he, “and show me wrong besides; but
this is what I think. You are to bear in mind, also, that his selection
to be at my cabinet right hand was not personal but political. Here is
how I hold him.” Now the General spoke with a thoughtful, measured flow
of speech, as though his eye were turned to introspection, and he read,
as one reads a page of print, his estimate of him whom he sought to
weigh. “Van Buren is essentially furtive, lurking, cat-like. He delights
in moonlight politics and follows the byways. He avoids the eye, is
seldom in the show ring, and, in making his excursions, sticks to the
lanes and keeps off the highways. Few men see, and fewer know, Van
Buren. He is sly rather than bold; chicanes rather than assails; and
when attacked he does not fight in that strifish sense of hard knocks.
He poisons the springs and streams and standing water; and then he falls
back into the hills. Van Buren does with snares what others do by blows;
traps while others hunt. And yet, in a feline way, he likes trouble. Set
out a bowl of milk and a bowl of blood, and turn your back. If sure
of unobservation, he will lap the blood. But if you stare at him, he
dissembles with the milk, purring with fervor sedulous. Ever secret, Van
Buren knows of no harder fate than mere discovery. His points of power
are his egotism, his skill for sly effort, his talent as a trader of
politics. Marcy is of another sort. Marcy is vigorous where Van Buren is
fine. If a band of music were to go by, Marcy would regard the bass drum
as the great instrument. Van Buren would prefer the piccolo. Marcy does
his war work with an axe. When any homicide of politics enforces
itself upon Van Buren he moves with sack and bowstring. He waits until
midnight, and then, with victim gagged and bagged and bound, drowns him
in the Bosphorus of party.”
Even as the General spoke, Van Buren was trudging up the street; for it
would appear that he had come into town the hour before, and now made
speed to pay his respects to the General.
While Van Buren was in talk with the General, our first greetings being
done, I strove to come by some true account of one who was like to make
for much weight in the scales. He was round, short, and by no means
superb or imposing. Standing between the General and myself, and both
of us above six feet, he seemed something stunted. There was a
quiet twinkle in his gray, intelligent eye that he drew from his
tavern-keeping sire of Kinderhook; the latter being of shrewd Dutch
stock, born to count pennies and to save them, and whose profits with
his inn found partial coinage in an education above bottles and taprooms
for his son. There hovered an oily peace about Van Buren; it showed on
him like painted color. I was not tremendously impressed of him, I grant
you; albeit, before all was done, I came to better learn him. The
man, for a best simile, was like so much quicksilver. Bright and of
surprising weight, he rolled away from a touch and never failed to
fit himself scrupulously and plausibly into every inequality which
the surface he rested on presented. He came to be, as you may think,
precisely the man for the General; since, while the one was as apt for
heat as Sahara, and as much the home of hurricanes, the other under
no stress was ever known to give or take offence. He would be without
quills, this Van Buren, and yet no porcupine in his rattling armor went
about more perfect to his own defence or so equal for the problem of his
own security.
Van Buren made no lengthy stay with us; there was a hand-shake, a talk
of a moment, a bow, and he was back to his quarters in the Indian Queen.
“And what do you say of him?” asked the General, when now his new
secretary was gone.
“Why, sir,” I replied, “I should call your story of the man a good one.
But he does not look so strong as you would make him.”
“Why, then,” returned the General, “neither does any other thing of
silk.” Then, after a pause: “Just as an insinuation is stronger than a
direct charge, so is Van Buren stronger than other men. I warrant you,
as we stand here with all our wisdom, he holds our measures more nearly
than we hold his.”
The General, you are to observe, and whether early or late, never said
a word to Van Buren of Peg and the villain forays against her fame;
the General was too proud for that. The defence of Peg seemed a thing
personal to his heart; with him it owned no place in politics or the
business of the state. Therefore, he would ask no man's aid, and folk on
that quarrel might be neutral or pick their sides and go what ways they
would.
The General, I say, beheld nothing of politics in the question of his
defence of Peg; it was wholly the thing personal. He never realized,
what is clear to you and me, that everything was the thing personal with
him, and politics a thing most personal of all. Even now, since he had
found the Palmetto coterie to be among his enemies, and within short
weeks of the birth of his first rancor against Calhoun as one who had
sought to do him hidden harm while apeing friendship and aiming at his
betrayal with a kiss, he had commenced to nourish a steady wrath against
that statesman's policies of Secession and States Rights. This latter he
was cultivating and feeding in all possible fashion.
One day I came upon him deep within Marshall's definitions of treason as
declared in the trial of Aaron Burr.
“There's the law for you,” he cried, with a note of exultation in his
tone, and thrusting the book at me with one hand while with the other
he marked the place; “there's the law of treason so laid down that a
wayfaring man though a fool should not err therein. I shall get it pat
to my tongue; I may yet teach it to our Secessionists with a gibbet.”
I put this down to show the climbing of the General's anger against
Calhoun; and how it began to spread and feel about to assail the
Vice-President in his acts and plans and sentiments and hopes. It was,
as he said aforetime, “We would foil the villain and save our pretty
Peg.”
You may rest sure I made no argument against his law studies; indeed, I
think treason a crime which the White House can not understand too well
nor hate too thoroughly, and I never thought so more than in those far
days when the General read Marshall and we carried forward our fight for
lovely Peg.
While the General spoke no word of the Eatons and their injuries to Van
Buren, the latter for a certainty was not long in town before he thereon
held converse with himself. I would be made wise of this by his coming
to me--it was our second encounter--and, with a manner suave as cream,
asking what to my thought would be a time fitting, and to the lady
convenient, for him to call upon our Peg.
“For you must know,” said he, spreading out his smooth hands and
regarding the backs of them, being, I think, a trick of his to cover an
inability to look one between the eyes, “for you must know, sir, since
my wife died, and with no daughter in my house to teach me, my society
learning has gone excessively to seed.”
It became my turn to say that society, I was told--for I carried no
personal knowledge thereof, having little genius for it--ran now to
broken ends and fragments, and would continue so throughout the
year. The social season, by word of such experienced parlor scouts as
Pigeon-breast, would not begin until New Year's Day.
“However,” said I, in finale, “you may take it from me that the Eatons
will be blithe to receive you on any evening you should care to call.
There need be no formality; you may pull their latch-string at any hour
with every assurance of a welcome.”
“Can not you take me there this evening?” he asked, with a kind of
enthusiasm.
“I am only too pleased to be of service.”
The fair truth is I could have hugged the little secretary from gladness
for Peg.
That same night, when later I paid my usual visit to the General for a
friendly pipe and to finish the day in smoke before we went to bed, I
told him of Van Buren's waiting on Peg. The pleasure the news gave him
fell across his face like sunlight. But he carried himself in ordinary
fashion.
“Why, sir,” said he, “I'm glad that he has been to see the Eatons.
Still, no less could have been looked for from a gentleman.”
“But he did better,” I said. “Never have I heard more delicate
compliment than he offered to Peg. He says she shall preside at his
house for those functions which belong with his position.”
“And that, since he has no wife, will be a vast convenience for him,”
responded the General; “this pouring of his guests' tea by our beautiful
Peg.”
The General would accept it as a matter of course, but I tell you the
tidings of that tea-pouring warmed the cockles of his heart. For myself,
I made no effort to hide my satisfaction.
“Is it not a strange thing,” said the General, after a bit, “how one's
first impression will go astray? Who could be more true, or more wise,
or better bred or founded in whatever makes for the best in a man, than
our Van Buren? And yet I thought him sly, and with a hand for selfish
design. The man's as simple as a child!”
“He tells me,” I remarked, “that your friend Hoyt of this region warned
him you did not like him, and how your great favorite was Calhoun.”
“Hoyt is a presumptuous fool,” returned the General, hotly. “I would not
give Van Buren's finger for Calhoun. Why should he be favorite of mine
who foments treason, and schemes to split the nation like a billet of
wood!”
Peg was with me betimes next morning to jubilate with dancing pulses
over Van Buren to her house the night before.
“For can't you see,” she cried, her cheeks red with the excitement that
crowed in her breast, “what a strategic point, as you sons of war
would term it,”--Peg was laughing here--“is your little, round, smooth
Secretary of State? He carries the grand legation folk in his wake. With
them, all ribbons and orders, and the army--for the latter will be bound
to us since we are the war department--our receptions should be a blaze
of glory and gold braid.”
Here Peg clapped her hands with the glee of it. It was an inspiration to
see her so gay.
“I am overcome of delight,” I said, mocking gravity, “to know that we
are like to gain so much of ornamentation.” Then, changing my tone: “But
of a truth, my little one, I shall forever love our State Secretary for
your sweet sake.”
“You brought him,” cried Peg. “What a watch-dog you are to me!” This
with sudden warmth. “That is the word, a watch-dog--a faithful watch-dog
with a great sleepless heart guarding its Peg! And you shall have a
collar.”
[Illustration: 0226]
With that, since I was sitting in my chair and so within her reach, the
minx crept up and threw her arms about my neck. It was simply play--the
exuberance of a born tomboy. And yet I was glad we were alone and no
General about, else I would have lived long ere I had heard the last of
it. The situation would have fitted like a glove with the General's bent
of humor, and I should not have cared for his raillery.
Peg clung to my neck like a rose to an oak while I tried softly to
loosen her arms. I could not make head against her for fear of hurting
her.
“How do you like your collar, watchdog?” she cried, with a chuckle. “And
now the buckle--how do you like that?” Here she laid her velvet cheek
against my face. “So, watch-dog, you would slip your collar?” This,
banteringly. “There; you are free.” And Peg unlocked her arms and stood
back smiling, her small, white leopard teeth just showing, and her eyes
like diamonds. Then donning a satiric air: “Sir, you call yourself a
gentleman and a politician. You should know, then, there be two honors
no man may decline; the one is a presidency and the other is a--lady.”
With this smartness on her lips Peg broke into downright merriment. The
little witch was never so charming!
That evening I was sitting alone with the General; each of us silent and
within himself, wrapping his own fancies about him like a cloak. I know
not on what uplands of conjecture the General's thoughts were grazing;
for myself, I was dwelling on Peg, for I could still feel that soft,
warm collar of her two arms clasping my neck.
It is trenching on the wondrous, too, how the sweet image of a woman
will train one's soul for war. No sooner would I take Peg upon the
back of my meditations, than they straightway went plunging off to
her enemies, and to tire themselves with vain circlings of how best to
refute the malice of her foes and return upon their wicked heads the
most of cruelty. Commonly I might be held as one not beyond touch of
mercy, and indeed I have spared a painted Creek when he stood helpless.
But I doubt me if Peg's foes, when by some sleight of fate they had
fallen within my power, would have found a least loophole of relief.
Of a verity! I think I might have looked long on their writhings ere my
heart was touched or my hands raised to stay their tortures.
While I sat in this blood-mood, and shedding in imagination the lives
of ones who would persecute our innocent, my glance was caught by the
General's pistols lying near by on a table. They were of that long,
duelling breed belonging with the times, and the General kept them as
bright and new as he kept his honor.
“And why are those on parade?” I asked, pointing to the weapons.
“It is the day of the year,” said the General, and his steady voice
was low, “whereon I killed Dickenson. This is the one I used,” and he
stretched his long arm and offered it for my inspection. It had a ribbon
of black about the butt. “That is not for Dickenson,” he explained; “it
is for her.” Here he indicated that miniature of his wife from which
he would never be parted, where it rested on the mantel and looked down
upon us with the painted eyes.
“You speak in a queer way,” I said; “do you regret killing the man?”
“No,” he returned, half sadly; “I do not regret killing him.”
“Tell me of it,” I urged. “I was not about, and Overton went with you to
the field.”
The General never named his fight with Dickenson to others, but I was
sure he would tell the tale to me. In good truth, I had not asked for
it, save that, knowing him far better than I knew myself, I saw what
was in his manner to make me believe he would be the lighter after the
relation.
“Dickenson,” said the General, making no flourish of talk in explanation
of a readiness to describe adventures which some folk for the red ending
might have shrunk from; “Dickenson was the tool of a conspiracy made
against my life, and politics was at the bottom of it. I was too
popular; I was in the way; the grave was a place for me; thus argued
my enemies. And then they went about to draw in Dickenson to be their
cat's-paw.
“Dickenson was young and vain, and withal willingly cruel enough to act
as my murderer for the illustration it would bring. He counted himself
safe, since he was reckoned the surest, quickest hand in all the world.
The man could shoot from the hip like a flash, and as accurately as one
might put one's finger.
“Once the plan was laid, Dickenson took a sure course; he spoke evil of
my wife.” Here the General picked up the two pistols, a butt in either
hand, and looked first upon the one and then upon its fellow. “Following
my marriage, with every dollar I owned, I bought these pistols. They are
hair-triggers and a breath unhooks them. Also, they are sighted to shoot
as fine and as true as the moral law. I gave to their purchase my last
dollar, and devoted them to the destruction of what scoundrels should
vilify my wife. They have done their work and never failed me.
“Overton was to act my second, and we would fight in Kentucky, sixty
miles away. All day we traveled; the Dickenson party preceded us over
the same trail. At every squatter's cabin the inmates would call us to
the wizard work of Dickenson. Here he shot the head from a fowl; there
he cut the string by which a gourd was hanging; now he drove a nail at
twenty paces. It was a trick to shake my nerve.
“We would fight in the early morning, each standing to a peg twelve
paces apart. Overton won the word and the pistols. I was dressed in a
black coat, loose and long, and with no white to show at the throat and
coax a bullet. We were given our places, I to my joy with my favorite
pistol.
“It was conceded by Overton and myself, as we went up and down the
business in advance, that Dickenson would kill me. Our hope was that I'd
last long enough to kill him--he, the defamer of my wife!
“The thought on our side was for me to brace myself and take Dickenson's
fire. I could not rival him for quickness or for sureness. And the haste
of an attempt would waste and throw away my aim.
“We were put up, I say; the words were to be
'Fire--one--two--three--stop!' We might fire at any moment between
'Fire!' and 'Stop!' And Overton had the word. As I took my place I
slipped a bullet into my mouth. I would set my teeth on it to steady my
hand.
“Overton cried the word and began the count. With the word 'Fire!'
Dickenson's weapon flashed. I heard the roar of it, and felt the numb,
dull shock as the lead crashed into my side. But I sustained myself. I
was held on my feet by hate. I thought he had slain me, but with him out
of hell I would not rest in my grave.
“When I did not fall, but stood firm, Dickenson started back.
“'My God, I have missed him!' he cried.
“'Step to your peg, sir,' roared Overton, pausing in his count and
cocking a pistol; 'step to your peg, or I'll blow your head from your
body!'
“Dickenson stood again to his peg and turned his eyes from me; his face
was the color of tobacco ashes.
“Overton resumed his count. 'One!' 'Click!'” My pistol caught at
half-cock. Overton paused and I re-cocked my pistol; Dickenson white
and firm to his peg--a man who had played his life away.
“'Two!' cried Overton.
“My pistol responded; the lead tore its way through the midst of
Dickenson's body. He crippled slowly down on one knee; and then he
fell along on his face, and next turned over on his back with a sort of
twitching jerk. I never took my eyes from him.”
“And your wound,” said I, “was a serious one, I well know that.”
“My ribs were broken, while my boot was clogged with the blood which
ran down beneath my garments. The bullet I placed between my teeth was
crushed as flat as a two-bit piece.”
“It was hardy work,” said I, “bearing up and firing on the heels of such
a wound.”
“Sir, I was thinking on her”--glancing at the miniature. “I should have
killed that man though he had put his bullet through my heart.”
Here the General turned his face towards me; his eyes were shining with
the lambent orange glow one sees in the panther's eyes at night.
There was silence, I still looking on the General. His nervous face was
twitching. Then the frown on his forehead gave way to quiet sadness.
Rising, he stood by the mantel and gazed for long, and tenderly, on the
miniature of his dead dear one.
“I have had many titles,” said he, and he spoke whisperingly and as
though talking with the picture; “I have had many titles, and the
greatest was the one 'her husband.' I have had honors;--I stand the
chief of the greatest nation in the greatest age the world has witnessed;
and I would give all to hold her hand one moment. They say there is a
heaven above us. It will be no heaven unless I meet her there.”
Now while I was in warmest sympathy with the General, his talk would
seem to fill me up with darkness. Also, I could feel the two hot arms
of Peg burning my neck. That story, too, of the Dickenson fight may be
supposed to have set in my nature that animal which lairs within each of
us, somewhat on truculent edge. Abruptly I burst forth:
“And it is a surprising thing,” cried I--ripping out an oath, the last
not common with me--“how Eaton abides Peg's wrongs. He should have
killed a man or two by now.”
“Sir,” returned the General, coming from his reverie with a kind of
snap, “sir, no man since Catron has been known to speak a word. Besides,
my cabinet men can not go trooping off for Blandensburg at any price. It
is one of the drawbacks to a high position of state that it chops one's
hands off at the elbow; duels are no longer a question.”
“I do not see it thus,” I retorted viciously. “You do not? Look on Aaron
Burr--deserted and old and poor, and dying in New York. He came down
from his vice-presidency to slay one who had maligned him for years. And
there is his reward.”
“What do I care for that?” cried I. “If it were for Peg, I should leave
a throne and perish poor, despised and all alone, but I would strangle
the throat that spoke her wrong.”
“Ah! if it were Peg!” And the General, now alert and wholly of this
world, gave me that narrow intent glance I resented among the flowers.
What might have been uttered next was cut short by a messenger on the
door. He brought word from Noah; he had just come to town, and since it
was turned late he would defer his call until the morning.
“Let's have him with us now,” cried the General, briskly. “I shall not
sleep for hours; and you, I take it, will stay awake in such a cause?”
“I would stand sleepless guard for weeks if it were to defend Peg,” said
I.
“Think now and then, my friend, for your own defence.” The General said
this with a look both quizzical and grave. Then, without pausing: “Write
Noah a note in my name.” While I scribbled he walked to and fro. “I must
ever ask you to write for me, since I am so unfortunate as to deny a
proverb and be one whose sword was ever mightier than his pen.”
In the hall I discovered Jim, and told him to depart with our message to
the Indian Queen.
“'Course I'll nacherally go, Marse Major,” said Jim, “but I was jes'
waitin' to see you-all, an' ask how soon you reckons we'll go caperin'
back to Tennessee.”
“Why,” I demanded, “what has made you so soon homesick?”
“It aint that, Marse Major,” and Jim gave to his words a melancholy
whine, “but we-all can't stand d'pace yere. For a week Jim was as happy
an' chirpy as a drunkard at a barbecue. But since you locks that closet
do', Jim's sort o' been obleeged to buy whiskey for himse'f; an' what
you think? They charge Jim five cents a drink for whiskey that don't
cost two bits a gallon all along d'Cumberland! They's shorely robbers;
an' they jes' nacherally takes Jim's money off him so fas' he cotch
cold.”
“Go on, you rogue!” said I. “Here is a Mexican dollar to bolster your
finances. We're not yet bankrupt, Jim.”
Noah came to us spattered of travel, and with the high riding-boots he
wore on the road. I took a deal of pleasure for a buoyancy I observed in
him, since I read it as a sign of whitest promise. Nor was I to be cast
down from that hope.
“You are to know,” said Noah, turning to the General, “that I was two
days before your letter with the Reverend Ely. In the first of our
conversations he held his head loftily; in the end, he came something
under control. Your letter much dismayed him, and after that his courage
ran very thin indeed. Now he quite agrees he knew nothing, and was wrong
and false in all he wrote. I dragged him to New York with me. I have
Mrs. Eaton's innocence here, in these papers.” Noah laid a sealed
package by the General's elbow. They were from the Reverend Ely, as well
as from the folk of the hotel wherein that Ely said Peg lodged. “They
are oath-made; they prove Mrs. Eaton chaste as snow.”
“And how did you make conquest of this Ely?” questioned the General, his
eye gratified and spirit a mate for Noah's.
“The power of the press, I should call it,” laughed Noah. “The ignoble
Ely hath a mighty distaste of unfriendly ink. And I'm an editor. That
was it,” went on Noah; “I showed him what might be done. He should stand
in the pillory of my types for the reasonless defamer he was. Then the
dog trembled and came my way with meekness, asking what he should do. I
answered much like the monks with the wild Clovis, 'Bend thy neck, proud
Sicambrian; adore what thou hast burned, burn what thou hast adored!'
In short, I demanded a letter of retractory amends to the President; and
also that he name his fellow reptile, whose infamous word he claimed for
the truth of his scurrility.”
“And who is he?” demanded the General, as warm as ever I saw him.
By some virtue of telepathic sort, I read the answer before Noah uttered
it. And why had I not guessed before! The secret one so falsely in
the ear of the shallow Ely was none other than the unctious Reverend
Campbell.