Now fell across us the sultry summer; sometimes with rain, and steamy
mud to follow; and then with stretches of a burning dryness when the
dust curled aloft on the impertinent lip of the wind to fill folk's eyes
and faces. There came, too, the shadow of impending calamity to rest
upon us, for the General's health began to flag, and it would look for a
while as though he had been marked by death itself. The malady was never
understood by me, and I think the doctor lived no better off; but, as
near as one might guess, it arose from the bogs and reeking marshes
fringing the river on our south, and on which, morning and evening, I've
seen the damps and miasmas lying white and thick as a flock of wool--a
sight to shake the strongest.
The General was indeed ill, and with face turning to be wan while his
haggard eye grew ever more bright and hollow. He lost greatly the use
of his legs; those members being swollen to a preposterous size, and his
feet dropsical, so that he could not be said to walk but only hobble.
He must be supported, leaning commonly on my arm, though sometimes Peg's
pretty shoulder was his crutch; for she was with him very constant,
reading to him, or passing him a glass, or cheering him with her talk of
flippant nothings.
With his usual bitterness of resolution the General would each day be up
and dressed, and pass the hours on a lounge which Augustus prepared, and
where he might lie and through the open casement command a prospect of
the distant Arlington hills.
To such a lowness did the General sink that his death was waited for,
and the doctor who attended him--and did no good--felt driven to give
him the name of it.
“For one who is in so high a place,” said the doctor, “must needs have
weighty concerns to be put in order; and therefore of all folk he should
be shown his end in time.”
This was gospel true enough as an abstraction, but in the case of the
General that doctor should have known how his business was to cure, and
not stand prating of death. Of this I informed him in such wise that he
was at once for leaving the house and never coming back. The loss might
have been easily measured had he done so.
It was the General himself who told me he was to die; and it stood
a marvel, the good patience and sympathy wherewith he went upon the
information. One would have supposed it was of my death he talked.
“And in the bottom of it,” said he, in conclusion, “I have the chance
of meeting her”--pointing to his wife's picture--“and that chance alone
would make twenty deaths worth trying. For when we come to the end of
it, Major, the heaven they talk of may be true.” This last with a manner
of reverie as when hope upholds conviction leaning to a fall.
As best it could, my nature fought against a belief that the General
would die; but his own word overpowered me. The fear of it, when he told
the news, went through me like a spear. Or it was as if a stone were
rolled upon my heart.
Sick folk, for a rule, are impatient and sharply cross with those about,
even with their best beloved. But the General would be the opposite, and
was never more tolerant than now when he lay ill; and this kindness made
it a privilege and a pleasure to be near him, and not a burden to be
borne.
Peg, as I have written, was much with him--fresh and sweet as a cluster
of violets, about a sick room she was worth her weight in drugs. And the
General and she had never so full a space for acquaintance before, and
so each day he came to know Peg better and to love her more.
There existed throughout this summer a kind of truce in the crusade
against Peg; the Reverend Ely had turned to be as mute as an oyster,
while the Reverend Campbell and those harpies whom Noah so confounded
were not only silent but deeply out of sight. There was neither sign nor
rumor to come from them.
The books of account which Peg and I brought away from her mother's on
the night when we were dogged, showed all Peg claimed. For the June her
detractors spoke of in their lyings, and for three years before and well
nigh a twelvemonth to follow, Timberlake was in town, and, after his
wedding, constantly with Peg until he sailed. There was left no ground
for argument, and that tale, as fatuous as it was wicked, fell, knocked
on its sinful head.
As for the lurking Reverend Campbell himself, I caught sight of him but
once. This was accident, and the pleasure of the shortest, for he dodged
around a corner like the wind; and although--through an idleness of mind
to see him going--I made speed to be at his point of disappearance, he,
so to say, had exhaled. Into what dark crevice he crawled to hide from
me I have no hint; but as if that street corner were a corner of the
universe and he spilled therefrom into the very abyss of eternity
itself, I never afterward caught the picture of his tallow cheeks and
festering, munching lips.
This peace for Peg was something due to, a desertion of the town; for
everybody--and women-folk especially--not tied by the leg to duties,
went seeking cool comfort by the ocean or on the mountains.
Eaton himself made one of those who went away; he would have had Peg
for company, but she urged--what was true, since the old lady had grown
frail and weakly--that she ought not to leave her mother for so long
a space. Eaton agreed with entire good humor to this, and so left Peg
behind, and never a qualm or mark of hesitation, while he sought his
ease by the sea.
Eaton from his own view-point might well spare Peg from his plans; he
was extremely a man's man, and owning, withal, a hand for the bottle and
a mighty promptitude for cards, would the better amuse himself with no
wife to be a mortgage on his liberty.
Summer is for society what winter is to war; the forces lie all in
quarters, and beyond caring for their arms or practicing a drill against
the campaign day to dawn, there arises nothing to be called a movement.
Indeed, as I've explained, the women--who, as Peg would have it, are the
fighting line--for the most part were fled to beach and hill. The town
was in its sleep, and society would awaken it only with the advent of
the snows.
In the last there were still our three cabinet wives, that is, the
ladies Berrien, Branch, and Ingham, to be left about us. These would
soon depart; but by this claim or that, they had been brought to lag
behind when the great covey of their flounced fellows went whirring away
to be cool. Peg never had visited these folk, nor they her, and on those
few occasions when official exigency threw them together, the cabinet
three, who, like the General's fleeting niece, were utterly beneath the
sway of the Vice-President's wife--herself a woman of unquestioned place
and breeding, and a natural queen, besides,--took heed to hold aloof
from Peg. On her side, Peg passed them by or looked them through as
though they had not been, and, if I am to judge, came off from these
tiltings with prestige all undimmed.
It would have been as good as the play, were I not prey and spoil to so
much soreness in the business, to have watched those tacit joustings of
Peg with our old mailed warriors of the drawing rooms. The dauntless Peg
crossed glances with the most seasoned of her bad-wishers, and left them
ever the worse for those thrustings. If she were wounded, no one learned
the bleeding fact; and not even I should know. From the laugh to ring
true, and the fine spirit of her, I was fain to conclude that Peg, so
far from shrinking, joyed in such silken combats to take place among the
flowers and with the music of orchestras stirring the blood; and in the
last I am sure she did.
Berrien and Branch, and for that matter the clumsy Ingham, would with
an invariable politeness, nicely measured to a hair, greet Peg whenever
they met with her; and she would accept their courtesy in a cold way of
elevation and as though our cabinet gentlemen came of the general press
about whose very names she did not know and never would. On such lofty
terms a fair peace was maintained, and nothing to rancorously rise above
the majesty of a ripple to beat upon any one's shore.
The General might have preferred a better cordiality, but he could make
no interference.
“If to step between a man and his enemy,” he would say, “is to invoke
a risk, how much more is he in danger who tampers with the feuds of
women?”
For one, I much agreed with him, and we both looked on, idle of hand and
tongue, while Peg met and foiled the “Redsticks,” as the General named
them.
Nor would Peg need our aid. I've seen no prouder, braver woman walk
across a room, or one of a more nimble faculty or fortitude more broadly
planted, than our Peg. My admiration spent its days to weave new wreaths
for her.
It was the doting Ingham--he of our Treasury--to be witless enough to
broach this business of feminine ice with Eaton. Ingham was a girthy
person, and one's briefest consideration disclosed him for the vulgar
Pennsylvania paper-maker he was. Short and thick of body, with thick
legs, thick neck; even his tongue was thick, and his slow wits thickest
of all. Of Ingham I shall not forget Jim's estimate.
“It aint for Jim,” said that worthy, “to go talkin' sassy about no white
gentleman; but as for dish yere Mr. Ingham, thar's a notion ag'in him
which goes gropin' about through Jim like d'grace of heaven through a
camp meetin'. That Mr. Ingham is mean; he's that mean if he owned a lake
he wouldn't give a duck a drink. He's jes' about as pop'lar with Jim as
a wet dawg; an' that's d'mortual fac'.”
“You don't appear to carry a high estimate of our Secretary of the
Treasury,” said I.
“'Deed Jim don't, Marse Major,” he replied. “An' jes' let Jim warn
you-all. You don't want to disrecollect, Marse Major, that Jim's a heap
sight older man than you be, an' while Jim don't deny he's been gettin'
duller an' duller ever since you locks up that demijohn, still it's
mighty likely Jim's wise an' wary to a p'int where you-all oughter
listen.”
“Go on,” said I, “I'm listening.”
“Course you-all is listenin',” agreed Jim; “of course you listens,
'cause you has got listenin' sense. That's what Jim likes about you. Now
let Jim tell you, Marse Major; that Mr. Ingham's plumb selfish. Jim can
see it in his eye. He's all right whilst he's haulin' fodder for his own
stack, but you let your intrusrun ag'in his, an' you hyar Jim! that Mr.
Ingham 'ud burn your barn to boil his egg quicker than a mule can kick.”
Ingham took up the subject of their wives' coldness with Eaton in an
unexpected fashion. I have heard that he was thus set in foolish motion
by a fear of trouble at ten paces with the war secretary, and would have
placated him and missed a bullet. He stood under no cloud of peril, but
that dove-like truth was yet to claim him. The General would have been
his shield; but Ingham, who regarded the General as chief among the
fire-eaters, would be the last to suspect the news.
It was on the kibes of a cabinet meeting when Ingham approached Eaton.
“Sir,” said Ingham, tugging nervously at his lapels, “sir, there is
something of strain between our ladies, about which, if you'll permit, I
should like word with you.”
“Why, sir,” returned Eaton, seizing the initiative, “I perhaps should
tell you that I can not, in her social obligations, control my wife.
That, sir, let me say, is work beyond a gentleman. My wife must be her
own mistress; and while I know of no just cause why she should refuse to
receive or recognize Mrs. Ingham, I must still insist how the right to
do both lies wholly in her hands. Personally, I may deplore my wife's
refusal of the acquaintance of Mrs. Ingham; however, I stand none the
less ready to give you any satisfaction you require.”
With this speech, Eaton bent his brows upon the other in such way of
iron menace that without a word our timid treasury gentleman clapped on
his hat and went pantingly in quest of safer company.
“Was it not a master-stroke?” exulted the General, when he related the
flurry. “Eaton had the hill of him in an instant; Napoleon himself could
not have exhibited a more military genius.”
The General, in his glee, would talk of nothing else throughout the
evening; but since I left him at an early hour I was not bored too much.
Eaton replied in a manner to his credit when one considers the fact of a
surprise; but there dwelt therein no reason for that long-drawn delight
in which the General indulged. I was so far fortunate, however, as to
soon quit him on that particular night, having work to look after, and
so escaped his enthusiasm. Any childishness of satisfaction for little
reason, by the General, obtruded offensively on my ideal of him, and I
would experience no more of it than I might; wherefore I went about my
affairs, leaving him in full song, celebrating the gallant cleverness
of Eaton, who, to my notion, instead of his smart speeches should have
pulled the Ingham nose.
While the General was sick on his lounge, and when Peg tired of reading,
she would fall to a review of the unremitting politeness bestowed upon
her by the suave Van Buren. One might read the pleasure of the General
over these tidings in his relaxed face and the heed he offered to each
detail. The word of how Van Buren had brought Vaughn of the English and
Krudener of the Russians--for these ministers were joint despots among
the legation folk and led them to what social fields they would--gave
the General peculiar satisfaction; and if there remained a door in his
affections which had not yet opened to the little Knickerbocker, Peg's
recitals of the secretary's steady yet delicately balanced goodness
threw it wide.
When the General and I were alone with our nightly pipes--albeit he at
the time would be in his bed for sickness--he made his little premier
the great burden of his conversation and was wont to find in him new
excellencies. Time and again he would quote Peg to me for virtues owned
of Van Buren and which he feared might otherwise elude my notice. It
was clear “the good little secretary”--Peg's name--was become a first
favorite of the General; and to be frank, and for identical reasons, as
much should be said of me. I loved any who was good to Peg, and made
no bones of showing it. Wherefore, you are to conceive, there arose no
dispute between us; instead, we took turn and turn about in exalting our
secretary and teaching each other a higher account of the man.
Peg would set forth to the General--it amused him and he would question
her concerning such matters--how in this sort or in that, and always
in some way of trifles too small for the mind of a man to seize on, the
women who followed the social banner of the Vice-President's wife would
strive to drive her into obscurity. And this was not wanting of stern
effect on the General. The name Calhoun found constant repetition in
these tales, and never to give the General delight. And there is this
to observe: while Peg spoke of Mrs. Calhoun, the General, for his side,
would be thinking only on the Vice-President, and at the end he held
even more hateful views of the Carolinian than of Henry Clay himself.
Surely, he came finally to be strung like a bow against him.
This vivacity of disfavor for Calhoun, however, may have had its story.
Clay was a foe beaten beyond question, powerless for further war.
Calhoun, on the other hand, was increasing in power; and, active in
design and searching for the future, stood forth as an enemy yet to be
conquered.
“The man is a would-be traitor,” said the General one day when speaking
with me of Calhoun and his lines of political resolve. “He should
consider, however; I may yet teach him a better patriotism.”
“He is for your destruction,” said I, “and has been since the Seminole
days.”
“Nothing is more plain than that,” said the General. “And yet, were he
or his people fibered of any decency, they would not, as an element of
assault on me, seek to make tatters of poor Peg. I can not see how they
bring themselves to that; for myself, I would not give hand to so vile a
ploy for all the world.”
“They would plunge you in for Peg's defence,” I said, recalling Noah's
explanation. “They hope to set the women of the land upon you as he who
gives countenance to one flagrant of her sins. That is their precious
intrigue; they, with their lies of Peg, would shake your power with
private home-loving folk whose firesides are clean and who base
themselves on chastity. There you have the whole crow-colored scheme of
them, with the black impulse which turns them against Peg.”
“If they shake me with the people,” said the General, “they should call
it the thirteenth labor of Hercules.”
“They should have punishment for all that,” cried I.
“Sir, they shall be punished,” retorted the General. “And as for
Calhoun, he most of all shall suffer. Mark you this: That man shall
never be president. More, he may yet win Gilderoy's elevation at a
rope's end.” This last in wrathful whisper like a warning of death.
There was spreading reason to talk on Calhoun and his policies. South
Carolina, ever arrogant, was moving to snap rebellious thumb and finger
in the National face. The legislature of that insolent commonwealth had
done its treason part; Nullification and its counterpart, Secession,
were already agreed on; men were being enrolled and arms collected,
while medals found Charleston coinage bearing the words, “John C.
Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy.”
And the restless spirit to animate it all was no other than Calhoun
himself. He was then among his henchmen of the Palmettoes, directing
even the very phrases wherewith to deck their traitorous fulminations.
So much the General knew, not alone from what Peg read daily in the
papers, but by the weeded word of ones whom, safe and prudent, we
dispatched to find the truth.
And yet, in the last, I was sure Calhoun would never mean rebellion and
a severance of his state from the common bonds. On such terms he could
not succeed the General for the presidency, which was his invincible
ambition. What Calhoun hoped was, by a deafening din of threat on his
people's part of secession and rebellion, and every whatnot of stark
treason besides, to browbeat the General to his will of Nullification;
and thus by the one stroke to so fix himself in the van of victorious
sentiment that no one might stay his march of White House conquest. And
in good truth, thus argued the General.
“But he should beware,” said the General. “Calhoun and his cohorts
shall not steal a march on the old soldier. They must not go too far.
A conspiracy to do treason exists, and Calhoun is at its head. But the
mere conspiracy is not enough. Marshall lays it down how folk can not
think treason, can not talk treason, and that treason to be treason must
be acted. There must be the overt act; and though it be but the act
of one, it attaches to every member of the conspiracy and becomes the
treason of all. If one man so much as snap a South Carolina flint, that
is an act to fall within the law, and the treason is the treason of
Calhoun. I say, he should take heed for himself; whether he know it or
no, the man walks among pitfalls.”
“But you should be prepared,” I said.
“We will go upon the work at once,” returned the General. “Winfield
Scott shall proceed to Charleston; the fleet shall convene in the bay;
Castle Pinckney shall have a hundred thousand stand of arms; and we will
write to our old Indian fighters, Crockett and Coffee and Houston and
Dale and Overton and the rest, to lie ready with one hundred
thousand riflemen in Tennessee and North Carolina to overwhelm these
rebellionists at the dropping of a handkerchief.”
This converse, I recall, came off one afternoon when the General was in
more healthful fettle than stood common during those days of fear
for his life. Peg sat with us; indeed, it was news she gave us from a
Charleston paper to bring down all this talk.
Peg, silent yet interested, listened while the General laid out his
purposes.
“And if the Vice-President were taken for treason, what then?” asked Peg
in a kind of innocence. “What would you do with him?”
“He shall hang, child,” and the General spoke slowly and with a granite
emphasis; “he shall hang as high as Haman! He shall be a lesson to
traitors for all time.”
It was then, and for the first time, as the General sank back spent, and
in his weakness almost consumed of his own fires, there broke on me
the whole peril of Calhoun. I knew the General too well to distrust the
execution of his rope-and-gibbet threat. I was the more confirmed when
that evening he would have me go about a score of letters ordering the
readiness of those ships and arms and men he had outlined. A cordon of
power was to be thrown about Calhoun and the ground beneath him mined
for his destruction.
Now if the General through this long summer grew to a better
acquaintance with Peg, the same also might be told of me. And hardly
a day was to dawn and die when in the unique turns and twists of her
manifold nature she would not come upon me in a novel light. She was
never to be twice the same, and my sluggish apprehension could scarce
keep pace with the changes of her.
For a specimen, then, of how she would stand against me over a wrong
claim, and her skill in its defence. One morning she had drawn me off to
the northward for a walk. The day was by no means sultry, and a breeze
was blowing and so induced a temperature which made the exercise a joy.
We were rambling through a deep valley--Peg and I--which was the home
of a brawling rivulet, and making a slow journey of it, since the way,
broken by boulders and sown with thickets in between, was something of
the roughest. While about this pleasant toil Peg broke forth:
“Do you see that vine?” Here she pointed to a creeper, luxuriant and
rich, which, failing of support to climb by, ran all about on the
ground. “That vine is like me. It needs a trellis--asks some tall and
strong tree to clasp and love and grow upon. Given a tree to touch the
heavens, that loving vine would climb upward to kiss the heavens with
her tree. Wanting her tree--poor vine!--she grovels about the ground.
That vine and I are the same.”
To this I offered no response, for I could not see how the matter called
for debate; and then her fancy was like unto a shooting star, and no one
might foresee its flight or prophesy its course. However, Peg did not
ask reply. Away she plunged in a new direction.
“Should one control his love, to send it here or there like a dog?”
“Why,” said I, “the thing is out of the question. One's love is not a
creature of bit and bridle, to be guided as one guides a horse. I should
say that no one controls his love, but is controlled by it.”
“See there, now! A second Daniel!” cried Peg, with a little flicker of
derision. For all that, I could tell how she agreed with me. She went
on, “Then one is not to blame how one's love wanders, since one has it
in no leading-string. Should one marry without love?”
“Of a verity! no,” I retorted. “It would be to cheat the other of every
chance of happiness.”
“If one be not to blame,” said Peg, in a wandering way of talk, “if
one be not to blame for the birth of one's love, neither should one
be blamed for its death. And if one is not to marry without love, one
should not continue, the wife with the husband nor he with her, when
love has met its end. You yourself have shown me the wrong of that. Ah,
watch-dog! am I not right?”
“Now, in all my days,” said I, “I have not been made to talk so much on
love. The question is above me.”
“You said folk should not wed wanting love.” Peg paused to stamp her
foot at me in saucy vehemence. “If that be true, then folk should not
remain wedded wanting love. Do you not think, if a wife were to cease to
love her husband, she should leave him? Does she not owe him that duty?
And you have said, watch-dog, as you shall not forget, that her love,
too, is not her fault.”
“Still, I should deem it great pity,” said I, “were a wife to leave her
husband.”
“And that is mighty loyal to your friend,” cried Peg, in a hot spurt of
indignation. “Did not the General's wife leave a husband for him?
It was well for both her and him they did not consult with you. She
might have been unhappy yet, and he never happy at all.” Then, gravely,
following a pause: “watch-dog, you are dull beyond description.”
When I reflected on my blind inference of criticism against the General,
and his wife in her grave, I was willing to concede as much. However, I
took refuge in saying nothing, waiting for my blunder to blow by.
After a moment, and as we walked in a wide grassy place side by side,
Peg took up my hand. Finding the round, white mark where the wound of
her leopard tooth had healed, she gazed on it a moment and sighed. Then,
before I could stay her, she kissed it.
“Peg's mark!” she exclaimed, as though she conversed with her thoughts;
“Peg's mark for her slave!” Then lifting up her eyes to mine: “I love
that mark; so much of you I love.” Then hiding a rogue of a smile which
began to creep about the corners of her mouth, for she would be amused,
it would seem, over the confusion into which her caress had thrown
me--“Tell me, slave, do you not wish now it were a great hideous scar to
overwhelm you?”
“And wherefore?” I asked. I could see how she meant to tease me with her
mockeries, and would give her no answer to go upon. “I regard that as a
very excellent scar as it is,” said I. “I would not have it larger for a
good deal.”
“Oh, believe me,” cried Peg, her nose to the sky in a moment: “I would
not make it larger for the world.”
With that, and wearing a mighty air of insult, she went about swiftly,
and never a syllable for good or ill could I bring from her until
we reached her house. At the gate she paused and offered me her old,
teasing look.
“Do you pray, watch-dog?” said she.
“I cannot make that boast,” I replied.
“You should begin at once,” she retorted. “You should pray for quickness
and a little wit.” Then, seeing me to rummage about in my thoughts for
a clue to this: “But have no fear, watch-dog; I shall never let the
General know how you condemned his wife.”
This gave me ease again, for then I caught her meaning. However, I
needed no such assurance, since I knew of none to own Peg's tact, or one
less likely to go upon that error with the General she would pledge me
her word to avoid.
The summer was running into autumn and the General no better. There had
been good days and bad days, and for weeks on end we were made to swing
between hope and fear like a pendulum. And I believe he would have died,
too, if it had not been for Peg to tend upon his pillow like a daughter.
What a joy I had of the girl! My soul would fair reach out to take her
in its arms for that tireless affection wherewith she surrounded him.
While she could help, she was about him like an angel; when he turned
his head for a little rest, she would be with me in her big chair by my
desk.
And yet, when the days drew on themselves the coolness of October, and
one should have looked for him to mend, the General fell suddenly away
to the last flicker of his strength like a candle burning out. It was
then the doctor gave him that warning how his time was near, and put us
upon our guard to meet the worst. I may tell you my heart was as so much
wood under my ribs, and gloom dwelt in the house like a ghost.
It will have somewhat a foolish sound, but, as I live by bread I think
it was our Peg to save the General out from between the paws of death.
Not by her care, though that was above description, but rather with a
thought she one day laid upon him.
“Child, I shall surely die,” the General was saying. “I have thought so
more than once during my rough life; but this time is my first to really
know. Now I see that I shall die.”
Then he asked her to read a song from the hymn-book of his wife. “They
are always an ease to me,” he said.
Peg's eyes were running tears, and she had her work cut out to smother
her sobs. For all that, she bore bravely up.
“You will not die,” cried Peg. “And I shall read you, instead of hymns,
how the Vice-President means to pull the country to pieces with
his Charleston plots. Will you die and make him president in your
stead--endow him with the power for his treasons?”
Peg told me how she had no design in saying this, and that Calhoun
was in her mouth no more than an exclamation. And yet had it been the
prescription of a whole college of doctors, it could not have exerted a
wholesomer effect.
The General had told me he would die; and I had stood in daily terror of
it; and yet neither had once fallen to consider--and this smacks of the
foolish for both of us--how his death would raise up Calhoun to take his
place. The truth is, I could never bring myself to plan or look beyond
the General's death; my thought, however fear-spurred, would run no
farther than just his death; there it would stop nor budge a pace
beyond. The General's death would seem the end of things, as it might be
a second deluge. And perhaps he, himself, fell into similar frame; only
with him it was but his building on that all-swallowing hope of meeting
with his Saint Rachel, never again to be parted. That crowded out all
else.
Letting conjecturings go adrift, however, the bald fact remains that it
was Peg, after all, who came first to make us take a thought in advance
and consider where the General's going would place the country with
Calhoun. I remember how the General lay back on his pillow after Peg's
outburst of warning; and next how his glance began to collect its
old-time fire.
“By the Eternal!”--this in a whisper--“I will not die and leave the
people helpless with those traitors. I must either live my term out, or
live till I hang Calhoun. The country must be safe before I go.”
From that moment he would not speak of dying, but only of getting
well and living; and each day he made visible stages towards a better
strength, and would sit up longer, and would demand that we do some
work. I can not say I witnessed these efforts without trembling; he
might break himself down to death's door with this sudden load of labor.
But no, he would go on; and no harm to come of it, but only good, for
within the four weeks to follow Peg's inspired exhortation--for I shall
ever think of her as one inspired of heaven to call the General back
from death--he could be looked on as a hale man, one sound and in a
plight of safety.
Also, his old fierceness began again to burn; he would bicker with me
viciously--a thing laid aside for months. It comes back to me how,
at the tail end of that sickness, his first words of opposition to
something I proposed fell on my ears like a concord of sweet sounds.
I could thank God in my heart to hear his anger, for now I knew he was
surely upon health's own highroad. And so he was.
There came another thing of moment to find its cause in the General's
illness, and that death it would threaten. The word had gone about the
town that the General was in his last throes, or nearly; and at that,
the thought giving a mean courage to the man, in the midst of this
bad news our port wine Duff Green came upon us with a long editorial
comparison of Calhoun with Van Buren, wherein the latter was lashed and
the other uplifted to the blue dome. The article was nothing strong or
well considered--a mere black thing of froth and poison!--and served no
purpose beyond marking Duff Green's friendship in one quarter and his
enmity in another.
It was Peg, who had taken charge of our newspapers, to call our eyes to
the business.
Peg's indignation ran high, for she was a tireless adherent of her “good
little secretary,” who would be her ally against Mrs. Calhoun.
“Listen to this wretch!” cried Peg, as with the paper in her little claw
she burst upon the General and me.
Thereupon she gave us the English of it, and being strung with anger,
flourished it off with much spirit and effect.
While the General bent quiet ear, his brow lowered and his own anger
began to run with Peg's.
“The scoundrel speaks of Van Buren,” said the General, when Peg was
done; “but he means me. And so he applauds Calhoun! Then let him follow
his applause for his support.” Then, to me directly: “Did you not in the
beginning speak of calling Blair to found a paper? Write to him; bid him
come at once. This Duff Green has done enough for punishment, and we
will go about his destinies in ways not soon to be forgot.”
Within the hour, a word was on the road to Blair in Frankfort; a word
to become at once the death-warrant of Duff Green's _Telegraph_ and the
reason of Blair's _Globe_, which last, as the General once said, grew up
in a night like any Jonah's gourd, to cast a long, important shadow in
affairs.
Duff Green, as if to observe the effect of his Calhoun-Van Buren shot,
would call upon the General. It was my guardian Jim who told me of that
visit.
“I was sort o' knockin' 'round,” said Jim, “like a blind dog in a meat
shop, when dish yere Duff Green gentleman tells me to give you 'Howdy!'
an' say he's waitin' to see you-all.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He's pervadin' about d'big Eas' Room,” returned Jim, “when I 'bandons
him.”
Duff Green extended his fishy hand; but I did not see it, my eyes being
employed upon his face; and that with so cold an industry it served to
turn the violin red of it to apoplectic purple for uneasiness and rage.
“I offer you my hand, sir,” cried Duff.
“Sir,” said I, “in requital, I offer you a sentence of counsel. Be out
of that door, and do not enter it again until your friend Calhoun is
master in this house. But stay; I have another order for your ear. Do
not, by word or look or act, whether to me or to any man, make claim on
my acquaintance. I will not agree as to the measure of my resentment in
case you do.”
“Sir, is this an insult?”
“Sir, you will please yourself for a term.”
“And, sir,”--Duff Green's voice quavered a trifle--“am I to consider
this the action of the president?”
“I think it would be wise to do so,” I retorted, “since you would seem
to stand even lower in his graces than you do in mine. I argue this
from a comparison of our remarks upon you.” I was enough the savage
to delight in harassing the pursy Duff and in diminishing his brow
of consequence. “I did but casually describe you--being idle at the
time--as a bloated spider, sucking patronage, and with a newspaper to be
your web, when he would correct me. 'You do the dog a compliment,' said
he. 'Now, one might conceive of a spider that should be of some moment.
He whom we call Duff Green is no such thing. He is nothing; or at most
a vacuum, which is nothingness given a name--as it were, an im-ponderous
absence of overpowering unimportance.'”
“Them's mighty fine words, Marse Major, you-all flings loose,” said Jim,
when Duff Green quit the field. Jim, whose care concerning me was only
equaled by his curiosity, stood, of course, in close attendance upon the
colloquy. “Yas-sir,” he continued, “them's what Jim calls langwidge of
d'good ol' Cumberland kind. That Duff Green gentleman shore misses it
a mile when he comes pawin' 'round for to 'spute with you. Yes, indeed,
Marse Major, that's whar he drap his water-million!”
When I repeated my interview with Duff to the General, together with
Jim's comments of admiration, and we had had our laugh, the General
turned serious:
“Major,” said he, “I've been thinking. I may yet die, and the rule we
made that no one of my cabinet shall succeed me when my term is done
turns now to be no good rule. It strengthens Calhoun. Also, it is he to
set his dog of a Duff against Van Buren because the latter would buckler
Peg. I'm too much broken and too weak for talk, and I need not repeat
the reasons for such step. It's on my heart, however, to set the ball in
motion for Van Buren to have this place when my term is done.”
“And how would you proceed?” said I. “For myself, nothing could be
better to my taste.”
“This is my notion,” said the General. “Let us write to Overton, setting
forth--with a cloud of other matter to be a cover--the presidential
fitness of Van Buren in his every line. This shall be a secret between
Overton and us. The letter will be wanted only in event of my death,
for while I live Calhoun shall never have the White House. If I die, why
there's my name to it for Van Buren against the world. And let me tell
you, sir, I much mistake my place with the people if my dead word be not
of greater weight with them, aye! if it do not move them far beyond any
potency to be latent in the living name Calhoun.”
We made no pause about it, the General and I, and as soon as saddle-bags
might carry, Overton received the missive which the General had
described. It was never wanted, for the General did not die; but there
it lay in the hands of Overton, and the word-for-word blood brother
to it in my own, ready like a grim reserve to take his place in battle
against Calhoun should the General be stricken down.
And thus, during our first summer and autumn, did the General and I,
with caution and wise concern, coil down and clear our political decks
for the great wars we knew were at hand. Defeat for our enemies; triumph
for our friends; those were our watchwords.
You may believe I went into November and looked winterward with a load
off my soul, when now the General's health was come back; and with
it his temper to wrangle and clash with me; also his mighty heart was
restored, hot as Hecla and as volcanic, against those who, mongering
Nullification, would forge a Calhoun treason down among the rice fields.
As for Peg, there stood no limit to her satisfaction when the fight for
the General's life was won, and he in fairer health than at any hour
since we came.
“And, child, it was you who saved me,” said the General, lifting up
Peg's chin with his thin hand. “Do you think I shall forget that?”
Now the town began to regain its own, and folk came straggling in from
beach and hill and dale. Noah, too, was down from New York, he and his
graceful Hercules, Rivera; and, as the town filled, Peg's spirits would
put on spurs, and she never was more blithe and high than now when we
drew close to that struggle of the drawing rooms wherein she so planned
to have a leading portion.
One day, however, she would seem not quite so gay as common, but with a
haze of thought about those eyes, which of late--with the General strong
and above the need of drugs--had danced and sparkled. Peg had brought me
a posy of flowers for my desk.
“Are they not beautiful?” she asked. “I love the flowers; so sweet, so
contented on their stems among the leaves! Are they not beautiful?”
“And how will I see flowers while you are in the place?” said I.
This was to cure her out of her sadness, which, for all her words about
the flowers, hung over her face like a mist.
“Now, see how well you said that!” cried Peg, brightening a little and
turning me her droll look. “Was it prepared? Was it spontaneous? Really,
slave, were you to go on like that for a year, or say for two, my hope
might revive over you.” This lightly, and to step off her tongue with
foot of air. Then, for my bewilderment beyond hope, she without warning
breaks into tears. And next, to be a cap-sheaf on my shocked amazement,
she gives me this at the door, to which she cries her way blindly: “My
husband will be home to-night!” And with that she leaves me helplessly
to wonder was there ever born upon this earth, to be a beautiful woman
and turn folk mad, such another confusing tangle as this Peg of ours!