In those few days next to follow Peg's tantrum of the chair, like those
several to precede it, I was given no more than meager pictures of her.
I should perhaps beg forgiveness for the name “tantrum,” which is a
byword or term of slang, but search as I may, I find nothing so good
wherewith to tell the story of that rootless wrath of Peg's. However, I
may say I was at care not to shift the chair again, but left it to stand
waiting for her in accord with her command.
Peg, on the next day after that tantrum, and on every day, would come
for her visit with the General; but each time she so crept by me,
whether by stealth or luck, that I lost notice of her advent, and knew
nothing of her presence until she went past my door when on her way for
home. She would create noise enough with her flight; setting her small
feet down in emphasis and sending a rustle along the hallway with the
swirl of her petticoats, so that I had ample time to raise my head and
be on guard for her. She would nod slightly as she caught my glance,
but ever sustained herself with that distance which she had seen fit to
construct between us.
When Peg flashed by my door--for, radiant as ever, and with the motion
of a meteor, “flashed” should be the description of it--I was bound
to observe how her look shot straight for her chair like an arrow. She
would be sure it was there, that chair; and I could tell how its absence
would have become the signal for crowning me with so warm a version of
her feelings that I shriveled like October leaves to simply think on
it. But I would meet no risk of the sort, since I did not entertain the
hardihood to invoke it.
I say the latter, because sooth it is, that half in anger, half in
thought to bring her in for a talk, I once had it on my mind to send
Peg's chair again into exile. Indeed, I did put it out of the room. But
only for a moment; the wick of my courage burned dim, and I fell to
be in utmost haste to restore that leathern furnishment, breathing the
while in a quick, craven fashion of respiration, lest she surprise me
before the situation was repaired. Thus it stood; the chair and I in the
room, and both desolate, with Peg going each day by like a watchman on
his rounds, to glance in and be assured.
These conditions of separation between Peg and myself, as days went on,
would give me less and less of ease. I was forever carrying them on the
ridge of my thought, and they made an unhappy element in life's skyline.
I stood the more in grief, since to be out with little Peg was like a
quarrel with a child; and then, moreover, the fault of it was mine, for
I overstepped an obvious line of right conduct when I went forth upon
Eaton's disparagement. It was a fool's work, besides; for I might have
known she would be sharp to notice and as sharply bound to resent; had
she not already warned me how I disfavored Eaton, and told me I was
jealous? She would say, truly, she did not care for that jealousy; but
that was mere laughter when her fancy was at merriest. Also, she had
told how I did not know her, and never would see her true self; I began
now to understand that she was right. And yet I would have her back, and
our old frank confidence returned; for Peg, as I tell you, was only
a child--a prankish girl when all was in, and it made no more for my
credit than for my peace that we should be at crosses.
It stands a thing strangest of all, how differently one will regard
another when the time is this or that. Peg, as I have written, would
seem ever to me the rompish child; for my thoughts of her were forged
and beaten out upon the stithy of those moments when, free and playful
and without restraint, she sat alone with me. By the same token! I
recall another score of moments where the stage was a drawing room and
strange folk framed the scene, and Peg, a beautiful woman of dignity and
grave reserve, would remind one of no child at all. But then she would
not be Peg to me; on such times when this proud, sufficient being made
me some sweeping, stately recognition, and as though I had known her
but a day, I have stood aside to wonder was she that playful leopard Peg
whose white mark I wore on my hand? Was it she to call me “slave” and
kiss the mark, or “watch-dog” and make me a collar with her arms? And
still I liked her thus. I was proud to see her proud; and my bosom would
swell to note how when Peg, fastidious, and with her highbred look,
stepped across a room, she seemed among the women gathered there--and
they the Vere de Veres--a greyhound among poodles, or rather the leopard
she was among a troop of tabbies. These be crude comparisons, surely;
yet there comes no other to so fit with my thoughts of rearward days
when Peg moved an empress in the midst of peasants, at once the envy and
despair of rivalry.
As I tell you, for all these exhibitions of commanding womanhood, Peg
would continue with me but a child; the image of such ballroom triumphs
were not to remain with me, while the real Peg, the true Peg, the
dear Peg of memory when alone, would ever be the laughing, mocking,
hectoring, teasing Peg on her leathern throne at my desk's end. It is
the same with men; there come such words as play and work, and danger
and safety; and the man you saw on the battle-line, as stern and as
brave as Caesar, is that boy by yonder campfire who now laughs over
some tale of personal chicken-pillage when he fled before a mad old dame
armed of a pudding stick.
While Peg and I were on these long-range terms, I went more in hunt of
the General for his company's sake and for conversation. I do not think
the General stood aware of Peg's cold pose towards me, for, as I have
urged, he was no one to see such things; besides, Peg, who showed
herself no bad strategist, would be about me with the friendliness of
those days that were, whenever the General sat by to make a third. Peg
held the General in a best esteem; and then, too, she would be mindful
how lately he was ill and save for her tending might have died, and be
the last to vex him with thoughts of how two so near him and dear upon
his sentiment nourished a feud among themselves.
While the General missed the reason of my frequent visits, he no less
relished our talks; for a president, let me inform you, is a mighty idle
man, for all your sycophants and toadies of print would depict him as
a galley slave who breaks his heart against an oar of duty. A president
has little to do beyond fret and fume while affairs go crosswise to his
wishes; also, the General would have him to be a most tied and helpless
creature, besides.
“The presidency,” he would say, “when one goes to a last experiment, is
but another word for paralysis.”
“And is a president such a thing without hands?” I would ask, for it was
sure he thirsted to lecture.
“The office is so much bigger than the man,” he would reply, “that it
controls him, as a mountain might bear down the strongest were you to
load his back with one.”
“Now, I had thought a president to be of some consequence,” I would
retort, in a manner of vexing him. “At least I have known presidents to
think so.”
“And so thought I,” he would respond, “ten months ago and before
inauguration. Sir, a president is but the fly on the chariot wheel.
Being vain, the insect might flatter himself with a theory that he is
the reason of that dust and motion he observes. But the insect's vanity
would be none the less in error. I say to you, a presidency is a thing
of bolts and bars and locks and fetters. What may a president do? He may
say this man shall keep office and that man shall not, and that would be
as important as if he said this rat shall go overboard and that rat stay
to roam the ship. The vermin fate of these, for black or white, would
neither affect a course nor pick those ports at which the vessel
touched.”
“But a president may veto a bill,” I would reply, “or make it a law with
his fist. He may bring down a war.”
“And yet he is no free agent when he does any of these,” he would
return. “He is pressed upon by one force or another, or mayhap a dozen
at once, and must go with conditions like a man in a landslide. As I
say, the office is so much bigger than the man that it transacts the
man, and not the man the office. It is as though one were made president
of the Potomac, or of a glacier. Could he take the one beyond its banks
with a war or stay the other in its progress with a veto? He might run
up a flag, order a bugle blown, fire a gun; but the river or the glacier
would be the last impressed. No, sir; were one made chief magistrate of
that snowstorm which now whitens the world outside, and set to rule its
flakes, he would be in as much control as when given a White House and
told that he is President.”
Mayhap it will interest should I offer a report of one of our
afternoons. It might go as specimen of all, for each was but a strolling
here and there of talk. Our discourse would be hit or miss, like a rag
carpet, and would fall foul of whatever caught the eye or stubbed the
toe of fancy at the moment.
On this day, and being weary with the sight of Peg's empty chair, I went
down the hall to the General's workroom and found him with his nose in
_Tristram Shandy_.'
“Do you like your author?” said I.
“Why, sir,” said the General, laying aside the book, “he is so grown up
to sedge of phrase and choked of word-weeds as to deny one either the
sight or the taste of the true stream of his story.”
“Walpole,” I returned, “said that reading _Tristram_ was to laugh a
moment and yawn an hour.”
“Then he had the better of me, since I have done nothing but yawn.”
After a pause: “Peg gave me the book; it was my loyalty to the child
that sent me between its pages. And speaking of Peg: Do you still send
her the roses? I know you do, for I met your Jim on his way to her,
buried in blossoms and looking for all the world like the flower booth
in a village fair.” Here the General lazily reached for his pipe.
“And why should she not have the flowers?” I demanded, warmly.
“No reason under the sky, sir,” said he, giving me that old glance out
of the falcon eyes of him--to anger me, I suppose--“none under the sky!
Send our pretty Peg the roof off the house should she have a mind for
it.” Then, when now his pipe was going: “Was it not you to recommend a
round, squat, corpulent being named Curtis to be marshal for Tennessee?”
“I said he was a good man.”
“One might say as much of a pan of dough. The creature is absolutely
without motion; I tried him mentally and physically, so to speak; the
man is stagnant.”
“None the less a good man,” I contended. “To do nothing is at least to
do no harm.”
“Now, that is as may be,” retorted the General. “I will have nothing to
do with your motionless folk. They are always the worst folk of all. I
never have been in any crush of peril or concern where action was not
less hazardous than inaction, and to do the wrong thing far and away
better than to do nothing at all. Now, this fellow Curtis of yours would
not even talk. He had no more conversation than a catfish.”
“Silence is caution,” said I, dogmatically, also reaching down a pipe
from the mantel to keep the General in smoky countenance; “silence is
caution, and caution is ever a good thing.”
“Caution is a braggart,” returned the General, argumentatively, “to call
itself a virtue when it is more often a cover for cowardice. Caution has
lost more fights than rashness, you may take a soldier's word for that.”
“That is in keeping with your other proverb, 'Never overrate a foe.'
Those be the maxims to get folk killed!”
“And why not, so the folk be the enemy? I have beaten twice my strength
because they overrated me.”
“Still,” said I, stubbornly, “the crime of silence which you charge upon
this Curtis is no mighty delinquency. Words, as a rule, are a weakness;
and I think Curtis should be marshal.”
“Let him be marshal, then, and end it,” returned the General; “but I may
tell you, sir, that words are not a weakness, but a source of strength.”
The General was an indomitable conversationist, and would not be
criticised. “The man who says the most, commonly knows the most, and
comes most often to succeed. Silent folk win only by accident, as he
shall see who retraces any of their victories to its birth.”
“And now what nonsense!” cried I. “What wise one said 'Silence is
golden!'?”
“Some wise one who wanted the floor for himself, doubtless,” puffed the
General. “Talk is a cloak, and great talk a great cloak to hide
one's movements. It is a common fallacy to suppose that one who talks
much--chatters, we will even call it--tells ever the truth. Now my
experience goes for it that a great talker is misleading you nine-tenths
of the time; heads one way while he talks another. I cannot be sure of
the plans or aims of a great talker. He would seem to point so many ways
at once. Your tongue-tied fellow I read easily. When I once know where
he is, and then remember where he would be, I will readily foresee for
you the trail he means to travel.”
“Calhoun is a silent man.”
“And Calhoun is a defeated man; his one chance is my death, which I
have no mind shall happen. Calhoun is a silent, but not a secret man. He
hides nothing, and can hide nothing by a still tongue. Who does not know
how he is for Nullification and must live or die by it?”
“And you,” said I, “have decided it shall be the latter.”
“If Calhoun had not assailed me, and, more, if he had not included Peg's
destruction in his plans--as a soldier might burn a beautiful suburb for
an element of his assault on a city--Calhoun and I would have come
by some agreement. I like the man; but you see he has no gift to be
popular. He makes war on me, which is the least popular thing he could
do and then, to prick me on for bitterest resolution and a strife to the
death, he sets his dogs to baying Peg. Also, let us not forget how he
would drag down Van Buren because he is Peg's friend and mine. Sir, you
and I will one day make Van Buren president for that.”
“And you have written Calhoun that letter to be notice of your hate.”
“It ties him hand and foot,” said the General. “Were Calhoun Samson,
that letter shears his locks. He will publish it, and make every friend
I have his enemy.”
“And you are enough loved by the people to make that a most formidable
condition for Calhoun.”
You are to observe that now when I would find the General idle and
with an itch for talk, I trolled him along as folk troll pickerel. It
relieved him to thus unbuckle; more, it helped him form his plans, for
so he said himself.
“I am ten fold more loved than Calhoun,” responded the General.
“Calhoun, as I've said, has no gift to be popular. He talks _to_ folk;
I talk _with_ them. Sir, between those words, _with_ and _to_, dwells the
whole art of popularity.”
“Your popularity is growth of your work in the field.”
“My being a soldier, had much to do with its beginning. Man is a
fighting animal and loves a fighter. Particularly if he win. Now, were
I to advise one to a short cut for public favor, I would say, 'Be a
soldier and win.'”
“Especially 'win,'” I returned.
“By all means add the 'win' and emphasize it. That is my rede: Be sure
to win. No one is made to explain a victory, no one tries a conqueror;
the error of all errors is the black error of defeat.”
“And yet a good man may lose.”
“Sir, the best man may lose. But you are to consider: When he loses, the
public owes him nothing. A farmer toils like a slave; a drought kills
his crops; is he paid for the corn he does not raise? The public owes
the successful soldier for that profit it takes from his sword; and
the public pays its debts. I won at the Horseshoe, at Pensacola, at
New Orleans; and the public pays me with a White House. Had I lost my
battles, I would have been cashiered a score of times. Calhoun would
have succeeded with his scheme to court-martial me in the Seminole days,
save that I was armored of my victories. I would never agree to less
than victory, and that stubbornness for triumph has even defeated
enemies I did not know I had.”
“You have had vast success,” said I, judgmatically, “when one remembers
the blindness of your prejudices, and how you will help this one or hurt
that one for a no better reason than love or hate. There is your defect;
I have often wished that to your honesty and ardor you added the just
fairness of Jefferson.”
“Jefferson!” This with a snort: “I am a fairer--a more just man than was
Jefferson! He was just to his enemies and unjust to his friends. Now, I
am strong enough to do justice by a friend. It hurts no man with me that
he has been the friend of Andrew Jackson.”
“But you can not do justice by a foe. You are all for a foe's
destruction.”
“I am all for a foe's defeat. And defeat of a foe is justice to a foe.
'Woe to the vanquished!' said Brennus, and the barbarian was right.
Being in the field, your business is to conquer.”
“You talk like a philosopher,” said I, “but you never feel like one.
Here: I will show you your prejudice in the face! Give me now your
estimate of Clay--of Webster--of Hayne--of Calhoun--of Randolph!”
“You think my portraits will be red and black and flame-color.” The
General spoke cunningly. I saw how he had gone sentry over his feeling,
and now I looked for a mild story of those whom I had named. “Webster,
mentally, is strong,” said he, “and willing, like a horse. But, like a
horse, he can not harness himself to a load. There should be those about
to hook the traces and in a measure guide him for his haulings. Compared
with Hayne, whose mentality is slim and graceful as is an elm, Webster
is the oak. He is bigger and stronger without being so beautiful.
Besides, Hayne is indolent, and would sooner drift all day than pull an
oar an hour. That is the reason why Calhoun, who has currents, sweeps
Hayne along for Nullification. Calhoun is simply a good man gone wrong;
and, for that he was bred narrowly and as an aristocrat, he loses time
over his dignity. Also, he does not keep in touch with the detail of his
destinies, but leaves too much to underlings. Thus he is put into the
position of him who attacks a woman--an act without defence, and one
most perilous; and, being in, Calhoun lacks that force needed for his
extrication. Randolph is built like a spear, with his anger the head and
his intelligence to be the shaft of it. He has no morality of thought,
and his one virtue is his contempt for Clay. Randolph was born to be
beaten, since he was born to make a science of hatred and become a
specialist of reprisal. Clay is altogether another story. The man is
mean beyond expression. He would be perilous, but he wants in courage.
He has appetites but no principles; he can attain to a conclusion but
not to a conviction. He owns no depth of mind; he is brilliant in a
sheeny, shimmery way, and, being of no integrity, is no more to be laid
hold on, mind you! and held to anything, than so much water.”
“And would you say,” cried I, “that Clay has no convictions?”
“No more than has a mirror! Sir, the man will acquiesce, and show you
whatever is set before him like a looking-glass. There is his conviction
for you! It is each time some other man's conviction and wholly outside
of Clay. Remove it from before him; look then into your burnished
statesman, and where is his conviction? Why, sir, when Clay sold himself
to Adams, did it not prove what I say?”
The General reeled off these views with, for him, a mighty conservatism
that was a surprise to me; for knowing his headlong, not to say
trenchant, sort, I looked to have him go about his carvings of the
portraits of ones inimical to him with a knife. He would have obliged me,
too; but he observed my thought, and turned cautious to disappoint me.
I must concede, he weighed up these gentry fairly well--he squarely
hit them off or I'm the more mistaken. He was too lenient with Calhoun;
Calhoun might have called off those slanders against Peg which found
voice for his advancement; when he failed of that he became their
sponsor.
When I went again to my own lair of labor, I found Noah waiting. I had
grown to delight in our cool gentleman of the red hair, the jet eyes,
and the sharp Spanish swords.
“And now,” said I, and greeting my visitor, “how runs the world away?”
“There are things talked about our taverns,” said Noah, “and the
corridors of Congress, whereof it might be proper the President should
hear. The more, since the conversations have him for their motive.”
“Let us journey down the hall and tell him,” said I.
“No,” returned Noah; “you may enlighten him later, since there comes no
call for hurry. I dislike to dodge in and out or play hide and seek
with a president; it is not seemly. And the fact that our friend would
tolerate, and might even encourage the familiarity on my personal part,
offer best reasons why I should avoid it.”
“You make yourself too modest,” said I.
None the less I was touched to admiration with this decent sense of the
proprieties on Noah's part. It stood a pity it found imitation by so
few.
“What is it to be, then?” I asked.
“You need not be told,” said Noah, “how the President's note to the
Vice-President, added to Rhetz's report of the White House views
on Nullification, Secession, and kindred hangman topics, has made
a flutter. Your Palmetto folk who plot for Nullification fear the
President. Being so far right, they then step aside for error; they fall
to fond imaginings that, for all his violence of phrase to Rhetz, the
President, in return, fears them. They believe, were he to count their
power, he would not dare them to any last-ditch opposition. Then, too,
the leaders are not wholly satisfied with the Rhetz returns. Thus
a situation is framed where some stronger light on the President's
intentions, together with the true news of those lengths to which he
stands ready to go, and whether an ultimate resort would call for
rifles and then the gallows, is deeply to be desired. And these tavern
conversations and talks of the corridors have for their object the
President's development along the lines exhibited.”
“And this is highly the natural thing,” said I. “Have our anxious ones
invented any trap wherewith to catch that word they seek?”
“They will search for it in this wise,” said Noah; “thus canters the
plan: They look to a day far ahead, but it will be with them in
time. They have settled on Jefferson's birthday to make a test of the
President and discover what he would do should South Carolina,
with Calhoun, abrogate a tariff and defy government in the port of
Charleston. The occasion will be in honor of the Man of Monticello.
Jefferson's memory and its graceful illustration will serve as the
cause, ostensible, of that banquet; really, the affair is to be twisted
for Nullification. There will come a score of toasts; and each to exalt
the state at the cost of the nation, and argue treason holy. The
speeches will follow of a piece with the toasts. Calhoun and his cohorts
will crowd the tables; applause will be extant for every sentiment of
disunion; in short, they devise a States Rights gathering where
Nullification and the rebellious spawn of it shall gain a broad
endorsement.”
“And where does the General come into their machinations?”
“The President will be invited to attend. Should he come, he will be
given the Chair's right hand. The Calhoun folk will read his face while
their toasts of treason are flaunted. They will ask him for a sentiment.
They believe that his courses to come, as he designs them, can not fail
to find disclosure. They hope to gain the measure of his apprehensions.
When they once have the pattern of the President's hopes and fears, and
learn his timid limits, they think those boundaries of safety beyond
which Nullification must not push will be determined.”
“Now, if these schemers,” I cried, “own no capital save the General's
timidity, they are indeed in bankrupt case.”
“They build on sand,” said Noah. “But that fact of sand is precisely
what they do not know. However, the President may teach then? with what
light he sees fit. Should he decide to prolong their night of doubt, he
has but to stay away.”
“And how would our black gentry construe his absence?”
“Assuredly they would incline to believe he was afraid.”
“Why, then,” cried I, “it might be difficult to say that the General
will or will not attend a gathering of treason scheduled more than three
months away. There is this to be recalled, however; the General has done
few things because he was afraid.”
“But it is well,” returned Noah, “to have the President aware of what
is in store. He will own the larger space for preparation. The gathering
will continue a sort of secret for six weeks to come; nor is the traitor
color thereof to be shown until a glass-and-bottle stage. When courage
is high and caution fled, rebellion will be unpacked. You observe how
surprise is arranged for. There will be hawks' eyes to catch the trend
of presidential thought concerning it. There lies open the whole plot
for you.”
“And many thanks,” said I. “Your warning, as you remark, has the mighty
merit of being early. Rest secure the General will profit by it; he may
even contrive some counter reason for amazement that shall become to our
folk of Secession the very mother of dismay.”
When, now, Noah was about to go, he came back from the door with a new
thought.
“This on Rivera's word,” said he. “The boy, however, is to be trusted
when he tells merely what he sees and hears, and is not asked to
think. There would seem to be a rough Maryland brood to hang about the
tap-rooms--as many as ten, all told. They belong, so to say it, with
that Catron whom we think of now and then for the pleasure he gave us at
Gadsby's. Catron, somewhat the worse of his sword-arm, is also in town.
These ruffians use your name and mine, and never in a way of praise.
Should you go about the roads of nights, carry an ear for ones to come
up behind. Also, walk warily where corners are dark.”
“And you?” said I, laughing at the comic twist with which Noah
ornamented his counsel; “and you? Have you gone upon precautions?”
“No more than you see,” said Noah, bringing to light a knife of peculiar
make. “I have no great burden of respect for just one man, however
urgent his irritation or its reason. But a horde, and the members to be
of midnight, hangdog sort, arouses the latent prudence of my race, and I
comfort my nervousness with toys like this.” Here the queer knife made a
flourish.
I took the weapon from his hand. It was one of those new knives called
a bowie, and the first in my fingers. There was a buckhorn haft, and the
9-inch blade showed thick at the back with plenty of steel. This gave it
weight, and it balanced in one's hand like a hatchet, and all sanguine
and hopeful to the feel.
“It is a Maryland conception,” said Noah, “and therefore a most fitting
rebuke to what thugs shall come out of that commonwealth on a mission
for one's disaster.” Then, reclaiming the bowie: “The courage of a race
appears in the length of its weapons. The shorter the weapon the hardier
the strain Now, whoever devised that knife had a Norse heart in him;
his instinct was to go close in to his enemy, and comeback covered with
blood.”
“And do you believe,” said I, “those fellows of whom Rivera tells were
brought here by that Catron to work a revenge for him?”
“They are here by favor of his money, truly,” responded Noah, “as Rivera
overheard them say. And for that revenge you speak of, it will be long
ere Catron works one for himself in person, since his arm has turned
dead in deference to my rapier. He could not so much as point a pistol
with it.”
These words of Catron and his ruffians did not dwell with me seriously;
they were the sooner thrust out of mind because the General, not
a moment behind Noah's going, came into my room. On hearing of the
latter's visit, he was active at first to call him back. But on another
thought, he gave that up; full of a new notion of concern to Peg, he
would have my view of it.
“Now I have a decided humor,” observed the General, throwing himself
into Peg's chair--which was consistent enough since he came upon Peg's
good--“I have grown to a decided humor that Peg shall rout these carpet
Red-sticks who would conspire for her defeat. The more, perhaps,
since the chief--if that be fit title for a lady--is wife of our
Vice-President, and moving, as she sees it, for his interest of politics
against me. Peg must and shall triumph; to lose--aside from what we
might personally feel--would spell nothing short of her destruction. And
a war, mark you, which combed a country of its last of life, would mean
no more for any individual.”
“Why then,” I said, “you can not be more deeply set on Peg's success
than I.”
“Of a truth, no!” retorted the General, with his shrewd grin; “do not
imagine I had a doubt of it. But here is what I have been turning in
my head for a question. The White House, socially, they tell me, is of
immense consequence. Now, I have decided to endow Peg with this coign
of vantage to be an aid for her plans. For myself, I shall follow Peg's
flag; I shall implicitly take her commands. She shall hold the White
House for her reserve; or have it on either wing; or she may head a
charge with it.”
“And do you think to surprise me with this?” I returned. “I knew how you
would thus conduct yourself from the beginning.”
“I am glad to have been so flattered in your thoughts,” said the
General, dryly. “I may take it you forestalled my action by considering
what should be your own. However, now that we are come by these sage
decisions to put Peg in control of us, I hold it excellent to have
her over and learn her views. Perchance, after all, she may mislike
us--these, her volunteers--and give us our dismissals.”
“Shall I send word for her?” I asked. Mighty ready was I for any reason
that should bring Peg walking our way.
“It is what I would propose,” said he. “The sooner Peg knows of these,
her troops, the sooner she can sketch her line of battle. Send your Jim;
he has doubtless learned the way to Peg's on those rose errands.”
The General's humor would court a risk of being overtaxed with a too
much concern for those roses to Peg. Some day I might ask him to observe
as much, and to seek newer reason for his jesting. There is such a
word as threadbare, but in conjunction with my floral sendings to
Peg, which--and properly--still went on, and his endless references
thereunto, the General would appear to live in ignorance of it. However,
I did not proceed for his enlightenment at this time, but put it off to
a more sour leisure and a cloudier day.
Jim was sitting near a hall window, ruefully considering the snow
through the pane. Jim's tropic blood would shrink from winter, and, as
though in sympathy with what were probably his feelings, he crooned in a
most dismal vein:
“Rain come wet me, sun come dry me,
Take keer, white man, don't come nigh
me.”
“Is that another of those inspirations of Polly Hines of the 'Possum
Trot?” I asked.
“Why, no, Marse Major,” said Jim, “It's a good ol' Cumberland ditty jes'
d'same. Jim sings 'em when he's thinkin' of d'folks in Tennessee. It
sort o' he'ps Jim to see 'em. Thar's times when, if Jim sings long
enough, d'folks back thar nacherally seems to rise right up befo' Jim.”
“Those are surely advantages,” said I, “and if I thought it might bring
me such fortune, I would strike up a tune for myself. Since you appear
to be in touch with them, tell me what is going on among our people at
home.”
Jim, with his own color and on a capital made up of a dried snake's
head, the smoke-cured cud of a cow, and the several feet of a
rabbit--“a graveyard rabbit, cotched in d'dark of d'moon,” was Jim's
description--set up, you should understand, for a seer. In a compliant
spirit of fun, I was wont to countenance Jim in these weird assumptions.
“Tell me what they do in Tennessee,” I repeated.
“Jim's afeerd to try, Marse Major,” said Jim, shaking his head as one
who distrusts his powers. “You-all can see yourse'f, that camped yere as
we-all be, millions an' millions of miles away, tellin' what goes on
in Tennessee aint easy. Under d'most fav'ble conditions, it's what Jim
would call a long shot an' a limb in d'way. An' you hyar Jim! thar aint
been no fav'ble conditions cirklin' round him since ever you turns d'key
on that demijohn. Jim aint got over thinkin' you-all acts plumb hasty
about that demijohn, Marse Major.”
“Well, perhaps I did,” said I, “and so far as a dollar will go”--here I
tossed Jim a Mexican--“towards repairing the injury, I am ready to make
amends. Meanwhile you are to take this note where you take the flowers.”
Jim's confidence in Peg had long ago been established, and he was
no more ploughed of those fears which arose to furrow him during our
earlier days at the Indian Queen. He promptly took my note--one which
employed the General's name--and with it the Mexican coin, and went
about his errand.
“It's monstrous remark'ble, Marse Major,” said Jim, as he pocketed the
silver, “how money does 'liven an' limber a man up. Now that dollar
shore makes Jim feel as spry as a gray squirrel; it mos' certainly do!”
I was not without my alarms for Peg's coming; but when she tripped in
upon the General and myself, it was as balm to my bruised nature to
feel on her part some quick leniency towards me, and a certain tacit
sweetness--somewhat sorrowful, but none the less good--to which I had
been alien since the day I laid those witless strictures upon Eaton for
that he was conceived without a soul. This gentle attitude of Peg's came
upon me like summer weather, touching everything with sunshine, and the
hour took on a sudden pleasant value. Peg could not fail to see the
change; and even the General would be aware of that improvement.
“Now you must have brought June in your apron,” said the General,
playing with Peg. “In any event, you have thawed our frigid friend
here. He has been frozen for days, and now you see his face glows like
harvest-home.”
“If that be true,” laughed Peg--quite her old beautiful laugh, too,
and not a laugh contrived solely for the General, but with a share for
me--“if that be true, I must show more pains to come often, and not make
my stay so short as has been my wont. I did not know that I was such a
blessing.”
The General would make Peg have her old chair by my desk, which showed
me--and I wondered over it not a little--how he was observant beyond
what I had supposed, to be thus sharp on that small point of where
Peg would sit when in confab with me. When Peg was throned in her old
place--and, to my eyes, she filled the room with a kind of glory--the
General drew up his own chair so as to put us three to be the corners of
a triangle.
“We have brought you here,” quoth the General, giving his face a droll
expression by which one might tell him to be in a frame of amiable
lightness, “we have brought you here, the good, thawed Major and I, to
make a despot of you. We draw towards New Year's Day, when our society
Redsticks will start upon the warpath. We desire to put ourselves and
our White House, and all we have besides, in your hands. You have but
to publish your orders, and lo! we carry them out. Being now set to
rule over us, the Major--and I perceive with joy he is quite warmed
through--would crave your commands for him. As for myself, you have had
only to lift your finger to dispose of half my kingdom since ever that
day when I lay dying and you revived me with the name of Calhoun.”
When he said this, the General beamed on Peg in his tolerant, paternal
fashion, while for my side I sat silent, yet the happiest one of all,
since I was growing sure and more sure with every moment how my Peg of
the old days had of a truth come back. I would not stop to query how or
why; it was enough to have it so, and the music that went singing in
my heart with this white surprise of joy was near to betraying me into
humming a tune--a burst of harmony, had I been weakly guilty of it,
which the General would have made the material of his mirth for so long
a term it would weary him who sought to measure it.
“And I am to order you and your White House up and down in my campaign?”
cried Peg, sparkling forth.
“Have I not told you how you are to be a despot?”
“And I may have a dinner, a reception, or a dance, or what I will--the
carpets up in the East Room, if I choose?”
“Your word shall be as Aladdin magic among us, your very hint a law.”
“Well, then,” cried Peg, whose smile was a bright comrade for the
General's, “well, then, now that I am clothed of this high estate, I
must not begin by being rash. Let me consider!” And with that Peg put
her little hand to her brow with such another air of jaunty profundity I
would have clinked down a fortune to have had her on canvas just as she
sat--Peg, in the great chair that but an hour gone was mocking me as
my most hateful enemy, and which now would be the friendliest thing in
life.