Next morning the sun had not climbed over-high when the Reverend
Campbell, head down and secret eye aslant, came shuffling to call upon
the General. I caught the black shadow of him--for all the world like
the shadow of some vulture to sail between one and the sun--as the
drooping, furtive creature sidled through the hall. The General had sent
for him, for the General was not one to let the grass grow deep between
resolve and action.
“I will see the man alone, Major,” observed the General; “he might
complain, were you present, of a situation offering two against one and
planned to over-ride him.”
Such management was much to my appetite, since it would but serve to
boil my anger--this listening while the Reverend Rogue laid out his pack
of calumnies upon Peg. In good truth! I much misdoubt if I had withstood
my hands from him when under such honest provocation; and that, maugre
his black surtout and pulpit snuffle.
And yet it did not miss me as a feature hard to be read for its
significance, that now was the earliest time when the General had shown
himself so equitable as to think on “two against one” and fail to ask
my presence for his conferences. He had met folk for war and peace, and
they had come alone; I had been there, and no one spoke of over-riding.
However, the subject was not worth quizzing one's self concerning;
the Reverend Campbell was come, the best thing about it being that the
General lived ample and to spare to arrest whatever of slander he should
bring us in his mouth, and put it to the death. The General could
track a lie as surely as ever he tracked Creek, and lived even more
inveterately its enemy.
Peg met the Reverend Campbell almost in the great front door, for she
was on her usual journey to consult with me about some trifling nothing.
When his sidelong glance encountered Peg's, the rascal cowered and
seemed to turn more mean, if that were possible, than by nature belonged
with him. But he said no word; he did not so much as muster against her
one square look, but sinuously, and as a snake might, writhed himself
out of her path Peg, for herself, swept him with a chill, errant eye as
if he were some gutter-being, offensive though unknown.
“And what brings that bird of mal-omen to flutter about one's door?--so
bright a morning, too!” This was Peg's question on the Reverend Campbell
as she walked in to me and climbed to her customary chair at the left
hand of my desk. “What should you say, watch-dog, was his bad mission?
Is he a threat? Does he drag a danger after him? You must be alert if
you would make safe your little Peg.”
The tone of raillery which Peg adopted secured me; she had no surmise,
then, to the purpose of the Reverend Campbell.
“It's quite sure,” I returned, evasively, “that our swart visitor would
be much uplifted were the General to relent and dispose of Florida
according to his wish.”
And now while Peg sits before the mirror of my memory with her sweet
face, as she on that far morning sat in the great leathern chair, let me
please my fond pencil with a word of her. There were so many expressions
of the unexpected to our Peg--for so I had grown to call her--one must
needs be describing and redescribing her with each new page one turns.
A born enchantress and a witch full-blown besides! it is the mere truth
that Peg bore upon me like a spell.
There was never woman to be Peg's marrow for flash and spirit, and
beyond all to creep so tenderly near to one. And for a crown to that,
she was as wise as the serpent. There were moments when Socrates himself
might have listened to her and not lost his time.
And she could shift color like a chameleon. Behold her on some day of
social parade, or where she meets strangers or half acquaintances, and
she will be older by fifteen years than now when she plants her small
self in that armchair, and makes me turn my writing downward to talk
with her. Tender, wilful, pliant, wise, patient, petulant, true,
uncertain, sure, confiding and confusing, she offered contradictions
equal with the General. I would exhaust the roll-call of the adjectives
were I wholly to set forth this child-woman in the last of her frank
arts and sage simplicities.
Peg wore as many moods as a lake on a flawy day and where skies are
scud-swept. Now, with a cloud across the sun, she would be dull and
sad as lead. Then, with a gust of wind, she would wrinkle into waves of
temper. And next there would dawn a tranquil moment when, calm and clear
and deep and sweet, she shone on one like burnished silver.
Once, I recall, she sat in her big chair, steeped in a way of pensive
wordlessness. I had not heard her voice for an hour; nor she mine, for
I was fallen behind in my letters, and politics and president-making are
mighty gluttons of ink. Suddenly she broke in:
“Why are you so good to me--so much more than any other?”
“How should one fail of sympathy,” said I, giving my manner a light
turn, “for another so innocent and so ill-used?”
“And it's just sympathy--all sympathy?” demanded Peg, resting her round
chin in her little shell of a palm. “Nothing but sympathy?”
“What else should it be?”
“I don't know,” said Peg, shortly. Then she walked slowly across the
room and studied a picture. In a moment she gave a word to me over
her shoulder: “I may tell you this, Mr. Questioner. There is but one
question a man should put to a woman.”
Smiling on her jaunty petulances, I went forward with my writing; she to
pulling out the slides of a cabinet. This apartment, I should tell you,
was my private workshop of politics wherein I repaired and extended the
destinies of the General, and transacted his fame for him. There were a
world of history and one president--and say the least of it--constructed
in that room.
Peg came presently to my elbow, bringing a trinket of coral. It had been
my sister's, and was my mother's before that.
“Is it worth much money?” asked Peg.
“Nothing at all,” I returned.
“And yet you value it highly?”
“Very highly.”
“May I have it?”
It seemed shame to hesitate, and yet I did, while Peg stood with wistful
face.
“Why,” said I at last, “I meant it for the one I should love.”
“Oh, you meant it for her whom you would love! And do you look to see it
again after that? The coral is mine from this moment.”
With a swish of her skirts Peg was gone; and with her went the coral.
Peg betimes would lay out her campaign for the coming winter. It was
then she talked of Van Buren, “the good little secretary,” as Peg named
him. Van Buren went often to the Eatons; and on each of those kind
excursions he climbed ever higher with the General and with me.
“Not only,” said Peg, assuming a wise pucker of the brow as she
recounted how she should wage and win her social war, “not only shall I
preside for our good little secretary at dinners and receptions, but he
has brought to me the Viscount Vaughn, who is minister for the English,
and Baron Krudener, who is here, as you know, for the Russians; and
they, since they own no wives to help them, also have besought me to be
at the head of their legation functions. And with the White House back
of all, what then will Mrs. Calhoun and her followers do! Watch-dog we
have them routed!” Here Peg's rich laugh would ring out for victory on
its way.
Peg, on another day, would shake her head with soft solemnity.
“I do so wish some one watched over me.” Peg spoke in contemplative
earnestness. “If I could find a fault in a best of husbands, it must be
that he doesn't watch over me.”
“What idleness now claims your tongue?” said I, impatiently. “Was ever
such nonsense uttered! And the wives should all turn ospreys, too, I
take it, and haunt the upper air to watch their husbands?”
“No,” returned Peg, demurely reading the carpet, “no; a wife should
never watch her husband. What should you think of her who, dwelling in
a garden--a measureless garden of roses--went ever about with petticoats
tucked up, stick in hand, questing for some serpent? Who is she, to be
so daft as to refuse the fragrance of a thousand blossoms to find one
serpent and be stung by it?” Peg crowed high and long, deeming
herself a princess of chop-logic. “But a man should watch a woman,” she
concluded; “the woman wants him to.”
“And why?” said I, becoming curious.
“Because she likes to feel herself tethered by his vigilance.”
“But why?” I insisted. “Is not freedom dear to a woman?”
“Yes, but love is more dear. See what she gains when she barters only a
little freedom for a world of love.”
“I had not thought a woman set such store by jealousy--the green eye
turned against herself.”
“Jealousy--a man's jealousy is but the counterpart of his love.”
Peg lifted her clever head oracularly. “And, watch-dog, that reminds
me”--here she admonished me with upraised finger--“you are jealous of me!
Yes you are; you are jealous of my husband.”
“You are a confusing form of little girl!” I said, laughing in my turn;
“and most confusing when you jest.”
“Yes; when I jest.” This in a way of funny dryness. “Especially, when
I jest. Still, you are jealous; you watch me all the time. Do not look
frightened; I do not object to jealousy.” Peg finished in a mirthful
ripple.
“I would not see you walk into harm,” said I, meekly.
Perhaps I was thus meek because the small hectorer would stir up
confusion in my bosom; and she, cool, assured, mistress of situations it
was her merry humor to create.
“You would not see me walk into harm,” she repeated. “But you are
jealous of my husband. Is my husband 'harm?'”
“Do you not complain for that he does not watch you?”
This I said desperately. It is not a hand's-breadth behind a miracle how
a girl--and you a steady man of years, and twice her age--will wrap you
in perplexities like a parcel. It was so with me; the witch would wind
and unwind me as though I were a ball of knitting-yarn! She would darn
and patch her laughter with me!
“Watch-dog,” said Peg, severely, “watchdog, you know you are jealous!
And how long do you count it since I told you that jealously was but
love turned upside down?” This came off trippingly, and with superior
wave of wrist, as settling a thing beyond debate. Then with a tinge of
tenderness: “Watch-dog, being so trusted, what would you do for me?”
“I would be a slave for you,” said I, simply enough, “if it were to do
you good.”
“Qualification,” cried she, with a vicious stamp of her foot, “always
qualification!” Then mimicking me: “'If it were to do me good.'
Good!--good!--what a desert of weariness in four letters! If I were to
discover some unnamed desolation, some barren waste, one arid, gray,
dry, dead--especially dead--I'd turn geographer and call it 'Good.'”
Peg was quiet after this upheaval, which was with it all but a surface
impatience and nothing deep, and uttering never a word, gazed over
against the wall. On my side, I made no return; for I was grown used to
her whims, and knew they were not to be argued with. And most fatal of
all was agreement. A best course would be to reply nothing, whether
of denial or comment or endorsement, but let Peg talk her talk out
unrestrained.
However, catching the fashion of her with the fringe of my eye as I
went for more ink on my pen, and observing her face to seem over sad and
considerate, I spoke up to cheer her.
“And now what are your thoughts?” said I.
“I was just wanting to be a man, that's all.” And Peg stared straight
ahead as though in a muse. Then starting up, and with a rush of
vivacity: “Heigh ho! and now if I were, I'll wager I'd be as dull as the
others--as dull as you, watch-dog.” Then, changing the tune of it, but
keeping to her dash and fling: “So you would be my slave! Come, let me
mark you for my slave!”
Without warning, she seized my hand, and with her sharp leopard teeth
bit until the blood flowed. Then surveying her work, she kissed the
pin-prick of a wound with unction. When she raised her face, there was a
trickle of blood on her lip and chin.
Walking to a mirror with a careless, flinging step, Peg glanced her face
over, and I thought with relish.
“See if there do not come a pretty white mark when it heals.” This she
told me in an arch manner, and with chin on shoulder, and the fleck of
blood on her chin. “Now if I but dared,” she went on, returning to the
glass, “I would wear that blood always and never wash it away. But the
world! the world!--ah, the world! One must wash one's face for the world
although one owes the world nothing.”
Peg, now in a climax of bubbling spirits, and pouring a spoonful of
water on her handkerchief, washed off the spots of red, transferring
them to her tiny square of cambric. This she contemplated with a sort of
surprised delight, as tendering a new idea.
“I need never wash that, at any rate,” said she. Then with her glancing
eyes on me: “You will wear my mark now;--Peg's mark for her slave!--who
would do her good.”
The next moment she went singing across the lawn for her home, leaving
me to think on the caprices of our radiant, reckless, blooming, madcap
Peg. All this by the way, however; now to return to our day of the
Reverend Campbell's call upon the General.
Peg was still curled in her big armchair when, following his interview
with the General, the Reverend Campbell left the mansion. It was she
who told his departure to me where I wrought at my desk. Peg caught a
flutter of him through the large window.
“Oh!” cried Peg, “there goes our Reverend Raven.”
Looking up from where I worked, I beheld the Reverend Campbell making
speed out of the grounds. In such hurry was he that he left the walk of
gravel, and to save a corner would cut across the grass. The black-foot
creature slouched away for all mankind like unto some henroost fox of
the night whom daylight had surprised and who now went skulking for the
comforting safe darkness of his burrow.
“It is wonder,” said Peg, “what could induce the good General to
tolerate the presence of our Reverend Raven for so long. What should be
the interest in his croakings?”
As Peg spoke, the General's gaunt form appeared in the door. He was more
than half warm with an angry excitement. Without pause or first words of
greeting, he addressed himself to Peg.
“Child, where was Timberlake two years ago this summer?--where was he in
June?”
“Here in Washington,” returned Peg, her eyes full of wonder, as she
scanned the face of the General in quest of a clue to his sharp, unusual
curiosity. “He stayed here idle for four years before he last sailed.
He was seeking to adjust his accounts as purser for the frigate
_President_. His books were lost when the English captured the ship.
It was that to make all the trouble; the red-tape of the navy office
detained him here four years before it would accept his accounts. It was
during that period we were wed.” Peg's voice, brisk at the start, fell
sorrowfully away towards the end.
“Then he was here in June two summers ago,” said the General, “and for
three years prior and almost one year after that time?”
“Yes,” said Peg.
“Now there!” cried the General, with a mixture of wrath and disgust;
“see what bald and easily confuted falsehood a fool moved of low malice
will tell! I could believe at times, when I'm brought face to face with
such mendacious simplicity, that liars are denied powers of reflection.”
“What is it all about?” asked Peg.
“Nothing, child, nothing,” returned the General. “Now run away home; I
want a word with your big playmate here.” Then in a softer manner: “No,
child, the Major and I are trying to do you a service, and please God! I
think we shall accomplish it.”
The whole kind attitude of the General towards Peg seemed ever that of a
father, and he was used to call her to him or dismiss her with no
shade of rudeness, truly, and yet with no more of ceremonies than
an affectionate parent might adopt. Peg never grudged obedience, and
received the General's word as readily, and was withal as free of
affront at any suddenness, as should be a daughter who feels her place
assured.
When Peg was off for home, the General came and sat in the chair she had
vacated.
With the white thick brush of his end-wise hair, and the fierce eyes of
him, he made a portrait wide apart from that tender one the great chair
so lately framed.
“You are not to know,” quoth the General, without halting for my
question, “the whole foul story this creature has told me. It is bad
enough that I was made to give ear to it. The point lies here: If
Timberlake were with Peg in June two years ago, and for a year before,
this miserable tale falls to the ground as false. He makes its main
element to depend upon Timberlake's absence--his charge of iniquity
against Peg holds only by that. The Reverend Serpent's hinge to swing
his vilification on is the absence of Timberlake. And you heard her
declare how Timberlake was here.”
“Does this snake, as you rightly term him, give you his story as of a
knowledge of his own?”
“No; he hides behind the words of two women; a mother and daughter,
named Craven. They pretend to base their slanders on what they allege
was told them by the husband and father, a Doctor Craven--dead, he is,
these ten months.”
“And that is mighty convenient,” said I, “for the Reverend Campbell and
his fellow ophidians--this retreat to the word of one who dwells dead
and dumb beneath six feet of earth.”
“That is their coward strategy,” commented the General, furiously.
“However, my thought is to ask Noah to visit these women and question
them before the Reverend Campbell collects the wit to tell of his
talk with me. I may have alarmed the man, for I was now and then not
altogether calm.”
I was driven to smile at this; so much concession of a want of calmness
on the General's part would mean that he had fumed up and down like a
tiger. The scuttling eagerness of the Reverend Campbell to be clear of
the place was not without a cause. There beat some reason in his heels.
“I asked him,” said the General, “why he did not tell this story in the
beginning. He explained that he hesitated to approach me with it; he
related it to Doctor Ely, who pretended to close terms with me. Then I
demanded why this Ely had not told me by word of mouth? Why should he
leave with that lie in his stomach, and then write it and send it by
post? He said that when it came to the test, Doctor Ely was afraid of
me. Fear, fear, that was the assassin excuse of him, and the reason for
striking at a woman in the dark! Why, I would not believe the sun was
shining on the words of such coward rogues!”
It was settled that I should make company for Noah when he saw the
Cravens.
“But don't interfere for a word, Major,” exhorted the General, with a
world of earnestness. “You do right well when the quarry is a bear or
the enemy no more subtile than an Indian. But now the foe is a woman,
you might better fall to the rear and leave leadership to Noah. You are
monstrous ignorant of woman.”
The Cravens lived no breathless distance up Georgetown way. Not far from
their doorstep, Noah and I encountered the Reverend Campbell, who seemed
shaken by the meeting.
“Nothing could be better,” cried Noah, cheerfully, claiming the Reverend
Campbell's arm. “You shall present the Major and myself to the ladies.
And please permit me to do the talking; you may have your turn at the
conversation when we leave.”
The two women were bilious, lime-faced folk, and the daughter notably
ugly. I was something stiff, I fear; but Noah, when introduced by the
Reverend Campbell, showed as balmy as a day in May. He swept the pair
with rapid glance and then turned to the daughter.
“I shall pitch upon the one I deem the more manageable,” said Noah, on
our journey to the house, “and when I commence to talk with her, you
engage with the other.”
Having this hint in my mind, when Noah began to address the daughter I
favored the mother with a word or two on safe topics, principally the
weather and the condition of the roads. For all that, I could tell how
the mother, like myself, had her ears laid back to catch the words of
the others. Her suspicions were upon us from the start, even with the
guaranty of the Reverend Campbell's company. As for that perturbed
animal, he looked only upon the floor, saying never a syllable, and
rubbing one warty hand with the other in a composite of doubt and
trepidation. The tragic wrath of the General still sang in the
hare-hearted creature's head.
“We are being shown about by our reverend friend,” I heard Noah say;
“we were asked to make a few calls with him and meet the better folk.
We were too glad, I assure you; I grow vastly weary of nobody save the
politicians and nothing better to talk of than politics.”
To say that I was startled at these gay, glib fictions on the lips of my
companion would fall behind the fact; I was amazed. But I also had the
General's command to leave leadership to Noah, and so stood mute. I let
my gaze go for a moment to the Reverend Campbell to come by some thought
of how he took the trend of Noah's surprising discourse. I saw naught
beyond the top of his head, as, bowed forward in his chair, he appeared
to study his toes, meanwhile twiddling and rubbing his nobby fingers.
As for the women, they knew no argument of fact or otherwise for
distrusting Noah's statements. I should have before explained that
neither possessed the least of glimmer as to our identity or nearness to
the General. Indeed, they lived ignorant, we found later, of the letters
of that Ely ill-using Peg's name, and of the Reverend Campbell's visit
to the General paid that morning. Thus, it fell about that the daughter
sailed off with Noah on a current of conversation in the dark, and the
mother just as blind.
“And so,” Noah went on, “you are a copyist in the Department of
Justice.” This from her explanation and his notice of a stain of
ink near her finger-nail, for this daughter was an untidy slut.
“The Department of Justice!” repeated Noah. “And there is something
consistent in your employment in such a field, since Justice is a
woman--and blind.” This last quip under his breath. “I am a close friend
with Judge Berrien, the Attorney General, who heads your department. The
great tie to unite us is our love for Calhoun.”
“Are you a friend of the Vice-President?” asked the daughter, her
interest a little kindled.
“Perhaps partisan would be the truer word,” replied Noah. “I trust a
good day will come when we are to drop the 'Vice' to his title and
find him at home in the White House. And you, I suppose, meet many of
Calhoun's adherents in your Department of Justice?”
“Numbers, indeed,” assented the daughter, while the mother bent an
intent ear, trying to discover the drift.
By this time I could well make out how neither of these women was of
vigorous intelligence. A malignant spirit, and a ripe aptness for evil
to others. I could read in their vinegar faces and the fault-finding
gather to their brows; but no power of thought, nor yet much cunning.
I leaned back now, inquisitive as to Noah's methods and to note their
results.
Noah led the talk up and down the town. He made it cover several years,
for the Cravens were not newcomers in the place. At last he considered
the navy and mentioned Timberlake. Had the young lady known the
handsome purser Timberlake? The young lady had known the handsome purser
Timberlake. A forbidding scowl contorted her features as she said this.
“Oh, I beg a thousand pardons!” cried Noah. He had caught the scowl. “I
fear the mention of the handsome Timberlake is not agreeable. But he cut
his throat, and there's the proper villain end of him.”
The butt-end cruelty of Noah's manner I was sure possessed a purpose,
for commonly he was one of your most guarded of folk. While I had
this in thought, it did not lessen my dismay when the daughter fell to
weeping with her face in her hands, and all in frantic kind. Sobbing,
she left the room.
“An affair of the heart?” cooed Noah, sympathetically, to the mother,
while the Reverend Campbell fidgeted visibly.
“Sir,” said the mother, loftily, “you touched her rudely. Mr.
Timberlake was paying my daughter marked attentions, and ones not to be
misunderstood, when he was stolen from her side and trapped to the altar
by that wanton, Peg O'Neal.”
“Sorry, I assure you,” murmured Noah, apologetically. “Sorry I so
blundered against your daughter's sensibilities. Please recall her,
madam, if only to hear me ask forgiveness.”
The daughter, whose emotion was of the briefest, returned, with nose
reddened and look more bilious than before. Noah became profuse in his
regrets, and severely characterized his own awkwardness.
“Nor are you to have blame for your feeling,” said he, addressing the
daughter and as a finish to his self-reproaches. “Your mother has
done us the honor to confide the once nearness of the handsome purser
Timberlake to you. And that hideous woman who stole him away! I do not
marvel you hate her. I could teach you to write her such a letter as
should be a revenge; for I know one of her secrets, the very name of
which would crush her like a falling tree.”
It was to me a thing astounding how neither of these women resented the
raw freedom of Noah's words. On the contrary, they went with him, making
no question of the propriety of such talk on the tongue of a stranger.
They would appear not to have been crossed by such a thought, for, so to
phrase it, they fell in with Noah, and, as if it were, hand in hand.
At the word “secrets,” both women sat bolt upright and questioned Noah
with tongue and eye. What was this hidden sin of that siren, Peg O'Neal?
They panted for a fullest tale of it.
“Nay, then,” remonstrated Noah, “it was but a slip. I said I could teach
you how to write a letter that should strike her to the soul. But of
what avail? Timberlake is dead; his grave is the Mediterranean.”
“But she lives,” hissed the daughter. “Tell me that secret concerning
her, and I shall call you my best friend.” Truly, the bilious maiden had
a taste for vengeance as pointed as a thorn.
“Why, then,” returned Noah, hesitating with invented reluctance, “there
is no reason why I should not humor your wishes. Take your pen, and I'll
dictate that letter I have in my mind.”
The bilious one wheeled about to a writing table which stood by her
side, and while the rest of us sat silent--for the mother and myself had
long before surrendered our semblance of conversation, and the unhappy
dominie still pored upon the floor--Noah began with finger on forehead
as one who cudgels memory.
“Write her this,” said Noah. “Revenge is sweet! I have you in my power;
and I shall burn you as savages burn their victim at the stake. 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.” When Noah began this
evil dictation, the lime-faced one took down his opening words with
greedy pen. As he proceeded, she first hesitated, and then with
blanched, scared face, whirled herself upon him. Her pen fell to the
floor, while her hands shook in a gust of fear. At the close she gasped:
“You have read my letter!”
“I have, indeed,” returned Noah. “I have repeated word for word your
atrocious threats to a lady whom we will not name.” It was verity; with
a memory like unto wax, Noah had recalled with every faithfulness of
word and mark that menacing epistle Peg brought to me, and which was
then under my private lock and key. “Yes, you wrote that letter,”
repeated Noah. “And you,” coming round on the Reverend Campbell, who
writhed as one in the jaws of wretchedness, unable to make a plan or
frame a sentence; “and you, sir, were privy to it.”
“Our dear sister”--he could not lay aside his snuffle even now--“our
dear sister did indeed tell me she had sent such a note.”
“You mix your tenses, sir,” retorted Noah, savagely. “She told you
before it was dispatched, and you read it.”
* “My dear gentlemen,” broke in the mother, in mighty agitation, “he put
that letter in the post himself. Oh, gentlemen, spare my poor daughter!”
With that the mother put her arm about the-younger harpy, where, like
some frightened thing of sin that can escape no farther, she waited as
one frozen.
“Your daughter, madam,” replied Noah, quietly enough, “lies in no peril,
although by the law there be punishments for ones who thus misuse the
post. But there remains another question. You have put a lie against
that lady of the letter into the mouth of our reverend friend. He has
retold it to many; this morning he told it to the President. The tale
proves itself untrue upon its face, and that is the one merit of it. It
was a dangerous falsehood to tell, and”--here Noah looked towards the
unhappy Reverend Campbell, who, as though fascinated by the other's
baleful eye, lifted up his visage,' with its ugly array of munching
mouth and flabby unhealthfulness--“and a still more dangerous falsehood
to repeat.”
“What do you require of us, gentlemen?” asked the frightened
mother-harpy.
“Nothing, save tongues of peace,” cried Noah. “It is too much to suppose
that her friends will rest quiet while you foully tear a good woman to
shreds. Tie up your tongues, you three, and the thing rests. Let another
word escape, and a torch shall be found to burn you out like any other
nest of adders.” The Reverend Campbell made no return to this warning
thrown to him with the others. The scoundrel had the wisdom of silence
when words would work no benefit. Still, I could trace a hunger for
retaliation writhing beneath the coarse snake's skin of him.
“I think we have locked three evil mouths to-day,” observed Noah, as we
were about our return. “It is the less important, perhaps, since already
a whole flock of these lies has been uncaged in the town.”
“It is never unimportant,” I returned, “to identify an enemy. I am the
more relieved, too, since you cleared up the mystery of that written
menace. And yet I do not make out how you supposed it gained emanation
among these people.”
“I had no such thought in the beginning,” replied Noah. “I knew, as did
you, and with a glance, how our entertainers were nothing fine nor deep,
but of a harshest clay and of least intelligence. No more delicacy was
required than might do for driving pigs. At first I sought to develop
their whereabouts, and stormed the woods with my remarks. In that,
and on the sheer chance of it, I employed the name of Timberlake. The
daughter's disturbed features were a cue. And you know the rest. The
digging up of the authorship of the letter was but the birth of a bold
guess. However, we've paralyzed that trio of tongues, which is excellent
as far as it goes. And we must beat out these fires wherever we find
them. Else they will spread, and may come to mean a conflagration that
shall burn some one to a cinder.”
“And going back for cause,” I said, my thought recurring to Peg, “I
still can not tell the hound purpose of this incessant, malignant
pursuit of our little girl.”
“Sir, they reason in this guise,” returned Noah. “As I've told you, the
great impulse springs from the adherents of Calhoun. They desire the
destruction of the President as a method of their man's advancement.
They fear that the President will seek to succeed himself--there has
been illustrious example--or, in default of that, insist on selecting
his successor. They attack Mrs. Eaton in hope of its reaction against
the administration. Suppose, sir, they make her out to be vile, suppose
they show the administration as condoning and defending her vileness,
will they not have organized the women against us? Give Calhoun
the women of the country to be his allies, and he will go over the
administration like an avalanche.”
“But you”--now I spoke gingerly, for I would not hurt so true a friend
nor ruffle him with himself--“in your pretense of friendship for
Calhoun, and as well in other particulars, misled our harpy folk.”
“I but fought the devil with fire and snared liars with lies,” said he.
“These she-villains were not entitled to the truth. Only truthful folk
have a right to truth.”
When the General and I were together, I laid before him those ethics or
word-morals of Noah; he stoutly agreed with that diplomat.
“One is not always bound to tell the truth,” asserted the General.
“Would you tell a footpad whose gun was at your breast where you lodged
your money? In war, would you disclose your strengths or your plans to
the foe because he asked? Sir, truth is a property--a goods; to have
right to it one must possess title to it. The casual man, and the more
if he would work me harm, has as scant a right to search my head with
his questions as to search my pockets with his fingers. Take my word
for it, Major,”--this in high Delphic vein, for the General was growing
pleased with his argument--“take my word, sir; the right in the one is
the right in the other, and he who may lock a door may lie.”
“These harpies,” said I, commenting on what had befallen, “and the
Reverend Campbell have fair admitted their guilt.”
“Why, as to that, sir,” returned the General, “the falsity of the
story was never in doubt. But the prime thing is to smother out these
calumnies. It is not hard to see how this day has been well spent.”
In concord with what we had long before agreed, neither the General nor
I, by lisp or the lifting of an eyebrow, gave Peg a least intimation of
what had gone forward about her name and fame. And yet, she must have
divined her close interest, for in the early hours of the twilight she
came again to the General, saying she remembered books of account kept
by Timberlake's own hand, which would demonstrate his whereabouts for
those four years. Her mother, Peg said, had these books in her house.
“Why, then,” said the General, “that should give us the best evidence.
Major, go you with the child to her mother's and bring me those books.”
It was not the first call I had made on Peg's mother, but this night the
garrulous old soul would so launch herself upon wide waters of gossip,
and never quit until she crossed them from shore to shore, that it
leaned towards ten of the clock when Peg and I, taking the road in our
hands, as say the Spaniards, went forth for our return.
The night was dark and still, and a moist promise of rain hung in the
air. Our way lay from the south, diagonally across the wooded patch
called the Mall. We were finding our path without trouble, Peg keeping
close and warm to my side, with a hand gripping my arm, and had gone
some distance when, in a way of dull faintness, a sound like the fall of
a stealthy foot on the grass overtook my ear. Peg heard it as soon as I.
“Are we dogged?” she asked. Peg showed no fear, but bit off her words in
a manner vicious and resentful.
“That we may soon know,” said I. Then I drew her in by a clump of bushes
where her white frock would be screened. “It should be a strange thing
if any save ourselves were going this road at such an hour.”
We had been but a moment hidden by the trees when a dark figure crouched
past us with furtive, hurrying step that made it plain he followed as a
spy. As he would have brushed by, I stretched out and seized him by the
shoulder. The creature screamed like a hare when the dogs snap her up.
Now I lugged him to the open, and, for all the night was moonless and no
stars because of clouds, it puzzled neither Peg nor myself to make out
the Reverend Campbell. The fellow hung in my hand like a rag, and beyond
that first shrill screech uttered not a word.
“What shall I do with him?” I asked, still holding him in my grasp like
something dead.
“Kill him!” cried Peg; “kill him with your great hands!” And then, while
I was dumb before the sudden murderous fury of her tones, Peg began to
plead the other way about. “Let him go free,” she said. “He's not worth
punishment. And yet it is sure he was after us as a spy.”
“I think,” said I, “it would do no harm to throw him in yonder water.”
Now in that day a chain of baby lakes lay along this portion of the
Potomac fens, and one of these was glimmering on our near left hand. It
was not deep; but muddy and grown up to lilies, and the home, besides,
of certain sedate bullpouts and turtles and other stagnant fish that do
not care for currents but love dead waters. These, since bullpouts and
turtles be in no manner hysterical animals nor nervous, would not suffer
for any plumping of the spy into their midst; and, thus forming my
resolve, I was for posting to its execution. My captive still swung
limp and loose, for all the world as though he had fainted. I could not
believe this last, however, and in any event I would throw him in among
the lilies. If he were too far gone with fright to save his own life
from drowning, it would mean no more than that I must wade to him and
fish him ashore again.
Thus adjusted in my mind, I was on the brink of heaving him overboard,
when with a touch of protest Peg stayed my arm.
“No,” she cried, “let him go free.”
“But a moment gone,” I remonstrated, “and you were calling for murder
with all its inconveniences. Now you interpose to stop a mighty proper
punishment, for, I bethink me, it has been custom to duck spies in every
age.”
“Still, you must let him go,” cried Peg. “I will not have you touch
him.” And she seized my hand with her little fingers.
With that I threw the caitiff creature on the grass; whereupon he rolled
to his knees and extended his palms towards Peg. There was something to
roil me in the attitude, and to end that I pushed him over with my foot.
“Be off,” I cried. “And you are to thank this lady for your dry clothes.
You had been splashing among the lily-pads except for her.”
Without retort, he scrambled to his soles and was gone like some foul
shadow. His absence, of itself, relieved me, for the sight of him was
like a blot.
“He would not resist, and so I made you let him go,” said Peg.
“You would have it safe for cowards,” I returned.
“It wasn't for that creature!” exclaimed Peg. She seemed to scorn me
for a dullard. “No; it was for you. I would not have such a memory--you,
punishing an unresisting beast!”
We were for a second time on our way, Peg now holding my arm with her
two hands and laying her cheek against it like a child. I could tell by
that how this bushwhacking rogue had fluttered her not a little. At last
she lifted her face, and I could, even in the pitch darkness, catch the
deep glow of her eyes.
“And after all, for what should you think he spied upon us? What should
he hope to find?”
“Indeed, that is beyond me,” I replied.
“But the very wicked are often very foolish too.”
“To follow so right a character as yourself, watch-dog, is for a spy to
waste his strength.” Peg spoke in a droll way of laughter.
“Why, then, I may say I emulate the virtuous Drusus, who commanded the
architect to so build his house that all who would might behold every
act of his life.” I must tell you I had studied the classics in my
youth, and would like at times to flourish with a scrap or two. I was no
pedant to show off my learning, only a tag or two from Ovid or Horace on
occasion, and just enough to suggest what a deal I had forgot.
“And your Drusus would so live as to hide nothing.” Peg was still
stifling a laugh. “How very admirable! And what was the end of your
memorable Drusus?”
“As to that,” I retorted, puzzled and put about by the satirical toss
she gave to her queries, “as to that, I believe the people stoned him to
death.”
“Ah, the poor people! His awful goodness, I suppose, drove them to
frenzy.” Peg's voice was mocking sympathy. Then, with a great abruptness
of anger, and throwing away my arm: “Do you know what I think of your
precious Drusus? I think he was a hypocrite, and a canting prig who
earned his fate; and if he have followers they should taste the same
destiny for a sniveling conceit that teaches them a holiness above
their neighbors.” This Peg flung at me like a spoiled child; and then,
stepping smartly, she went on alone, I following in silence a yard or
more to the rear.