This is how I shall do,” said Peg at last, and after the General and I
had waited upon her small profundity for some space; “this shall be my
plan. We will have the White House for a reserve, then. The day for our
cabinet folk to receive their friends will be Tuesday--the procession
begins with the first Tuesday to follow New Year's Day. Our good little
Secretary of State has suggested, inasmuch as I am to preside for him,
that his house and mine be open only on alternate cabinet days. In
short, we will receive together. On one Tuesday he will be at my house;
on the next, when my house is closed, I will take stand in his drawing
room and receive our guests for him. You know, too, how I am to be the
head for what functions occur at the British and Russian legations and
act as Lady of the Mansion for our friends, the Viscount Vaughn and
Baron Krudener. Thus I begin with a double reception in my house for the
good little secretary and myself; then at Krudener's; then at the good
little secretary's; and then with the English. After that, we commence
again at my own home.”
“And when do you march my White House upon this desperate field?”
demanded the General, with much gaiety of mien. Peg's vivacious recount
of how she should move her social troops delighted him no little. “In
what manner will I be made of use?”
“Why, then,” said Peg, “after the reception at the English house if you
will, you may give me a dinner, with a dance in the big East Room?”
This was spoken in manner dubious and with the lifting inflection of a
request. “Also, though it be much to ask, I could wish mightily for
you to come in person to my reception. It would be a most convincing
initial.”
“And you doubt my coming?” asked the General, beamingly.
“It would be most unusual for a president,” said Peg, shaking warning
head. “The gossips would scarce survive the shock of it.”
“My life,” observed the General, in a most satisfied way, “has been made
up of shocks to other folk.”
“But you must consider,” urged Peg, “how your appearance in any one's
house would be held a letting down of your dignity. Indeed, in austere
quarters, where the regular is as a god, it would be regarded for a no
slight rent in your robes.”
“And yet, child, I shall come.” This the General offered in a manner
indescribably good. “I have been no man of precedent in my time; I care
little for what was, but much for what is presently right. I shall come
to your reception; more, I'll stay until you give me leave to go. If to
be in the house of my friend, or to show him courtesy who has shown
me only favor and good service--if that be to establish a rent in my
presidency, I'll even promise to have it a thing of rags and patches
before ever I am done.”
“Then you will come!” exclaimed Peg. “Now shall we go bravely through!
For, you are to know, so much of social concession or countenance is
born of nothing save fear of loss or hope of place, that the herd will
collect, bowing and smiling and shining like the sun, wherever you are
known to be.”
“These be, truly, most satisfying maps you draw,” remarked the General,
quizzically, “and yet I do not see how we are to tell when victory is
ours. Now, in war the enemy surrenders or runs away.”
“In the _salons_,” said Peg, laughing at the General's quaint twists,
“triumph turns to the mere question of numbers added to quality.
It is a matter of 'Who?' and 'How many?--a count of carriages to your
gate. But the query of quality is uppermost. Now, your presence at my
house will outweigh the world, should it be so foolish as to gather
itself together against us in the camps of the foe.”
“Then you are indeed very safe,” said the General, “since I shall be
with you as I've said. Also, you are to have your dinner and that East
Room ball to follow, on what day you lay the finger of your pretty
preference. Even though I lacked the reason of my affection, I still
could do no less for so beautiful an enemy of Calhoun. But you spoke
of Van Buren. How did our round little friend go about his proposals
of those joint receptions? I have a curiosity as to that argument which
should lead him to this kindly wisdom; for, let me remind you, it is a
stratagem worthy of a Caesar, and one, besides, to smell most humanly
of what is honest and staunch, this phrasing of a situation where your
ill-wishers must become his ill-wishers and his friends take on terms of
friendship for you. How did Van Buren go upon that proposition, child?”
“In the oddest way, then,” smiled Peg. “He said that because we were
both of tavern origin, with sires to keep houses of call, and since
there might come proud folk to frown upon us for that, it were a wisest
thing, and one to make for the ease of them and us, to hold ever our
receptions in common. Folk then might come, or stay away, and all with
a prodigious saving of effort, whether of compliment or insult, to every
one concerned. But, of course,” said Peg, at the close, her eye a bit
wet, “it was only his goodness to do this.”
“Now, I believe nothing of that sort,” declared the General, stoutly.
“Child, I do not know by what paths you descend to this modest esteem
of yourself, but it in nowise shakes the fact that, with the last of it,
you grace and illustrate and honor the best room you enter or the best
arm to lean on in the land.”
Thus spoke the gallant General from his heart; and to me it was like
milk and honey to only hear him. In the finish he turned his eyes my
way.
“And where be your words in this council?” demanded the General. “Have
you lost the will to speak?”
Now, I had kept myself mighty quiet since Peg was come back to her
throne. For one thing, the simple sight of her, and she friendly,
was enough to overflow my cup of happiness; moreover, I owned to some
lurking fear of Peg, and imagined how I had but to open my mouth to set
her anger again on edge. At any rate, no stone could have said less than
did I while Peg and the General held this long parley of the drawing
rooms. When now, however, the General aimed at me direct, I was bound to
make return.
“Have you no advice for us, then?” repeated the General. “It is not
usual for you to so neglect my welfare. Here you permit me to talk ten
minutes without once telling me fully and wholly just what I should do.”
All this in tones of jesting: “Now you would seem willing that I, and
our little girl, too, should go unguided to destruction rather than
unstrap your wisdom in our cause. Sir, do you call that the truth of a
friend?”
“Perhaps I have no good eyes for these trails,” said I. “Your reception
perils and how to foil them are things I have not studied. I would but
lose you your course were I to lead you.”
“Mighty diffident,” quoth the General, “and most suddenly abject! And
no good eyes, say you? Why, then, you could see a church by daylight, I
take it! At the least, you might cheer folk on who propose such deeds of
carpet daring as do our little Peg and I.”
With what further raillery the General might have entertained himself I
came not to know, for word was brought to him, at this nick, of ones who
awaited his coming in the cabinet room. As he went away he called back
to Peg, where she still abode in her leathern chair:
“Then it is settled and made. I shall be at your reception, to the
grinding shock of gossips and the disorder of my presidential robes;
also, you are to dine and dance in the White House whenever you sweetly
will.”
“Where should have lodged more kindness for me than I now find here?”
cried Peg, when the General was quite gone forth of the room. Then
raising her warm eyes to mine where I sat wondering, now cold, now hot,
would she go, or would she stay to talk with me, she gazed upon me with
a steady, friendly look, which, for all it lacked of distance or any
spirit of resentment, yet bred within me a feeling of confusion. I knew
not how to meet it, and I could find no word to say. “And now,” said
Peg, after a pause, but very kindly, “let us have a fair moment of
friendship. No,” she went on, stopping me with her hand as I was
beginning to stumble forward upon an apology for my ill words against
Eaton, “no; let me talk. You have no genius of explanation; you would
speak only to worsen things. Besides, you dwell in the same darkness now
you ever did.”
“And it was to say that,” I interjected, for I was bound to some remark,
“I started to speak. It was to tell you how I had no close knowledge of
your husband and owned no right of information to criticise him.”
“Watch-dog!” cried Peg, motioning with little hands for silence,
“watch-dog, will you have done?”
There was something of pain and reproach in this to stop me as though I
had been planet-struck. Nor could I determine Peg's feeling, nor catch
the color of it in a least of shade. For the most, I felt amazement, and
was set back by the plain agitation of her, an agitation greater than
was to have been looked for in one who came solely to pardon me those
trespasses against good decent taste.
Peg called herself together with a shake of the head that had for one
piquant effect the whipping of her shock of curls about her face, and
leaving them a tangle to fall forward on her shoulders.
“Hear me,” went on Peg, brightening, and peering out on me in an arch
way through her curls; “you are guilty of no wrong save the wrong of
incredible dullness. Therefore you are to offer no defence. Even your
dullness should have been a virtue in my eyes, since it spoke only of
your honor, and told of the lofty place I hold in your regard.” Now I
could see how Peg was at least accepting all I had said, and not one
part only, and would give me credit for a compliment to herself, while
she refused my strictures upon Eaton. “Observe, then; I have resolved we
two shall be good friends. Better friends than before, because better
to understand one another. And our trouble was my fault, too, not yours.
Nor had I one right foot to go upon.”
“Now, that is the maddest charity of error!” cried I.
“It is not, I say,” returned Peg, her eyes beginning to shine with the
first flavor of my opposition. “I say it is not. You had done nothing,
said nothing; while I--why, then I hated you for having eyes of lead.
But we will amend that.” Here Peg turned pleasantly brisk. “We have been
too much abroad with mistakes. We have made you too old and me too young
in our dealings. There shall be a change, and you and I hereafter are to
consider ourselves as folk of even years, each with the other. It is but
right, watchdog, for though you have no learning on that point, it is
none the less true that a woman of twenty-two is very old and very
wise, while a man of forty-four is for his youth and guilelessness, or I
should have said dullness, a creature insupportable. Yes, watch-dog,
for your ignorance you are insupportable; but I forgive you, since it
is your only defect.” And here Peg recovered her old gay smile, and with
that my heart came home again to peace.
“Well,” I said, when Peg would let me be heard, “I make no secret that
I am over happy with this new prospect of your friendship. It was night
while I thought you would not forgive me my offence.”
“Say no more of it,” cried Peg, sharply, putting her fingers in her
ears. At the same time I caught the milky shine of her leopard teeth.
“Say no more, or I shall go back to my anger as a refuge. Speak of
something else! Why did you turn my chair out of door?--my poor chair
that had done no harm!” Peg caressed the arms of it with her palms as
though it were alive and could know and feel her petting. “You did it
because you hated me.”
“No, forsooth!” I protested. “Now if I had only hated you it might have
stayed till the fall of doom. But I could not bear the leering, mocking
look of it, and me deserted; it would seem ever to brew for me a cup of
loneliness. And so for that I thrust it from the room.”
“Why, then! and that was it!” cried Peg. “There you see, now, I can be a
fool as well as you.”
“But why did you avoid me?” I asked, in my turn. “Surely, even for my
dull clumsiness, there was need of no such hard reproof. Come, now, why
did you stay away? And why did you run from me when I went across to the
square that day to beg a word from you?”
“Because I hated you,” returned Peg, with a self-satisfied air. “I hate
you now, watchdog, when I pause and think. You had made me suffer, and
I thought to see you suffer in return. And really, watch-dog, you did
suffer; and it pleased me much.”
“I had not thought you were made with such a palate for revenge,”
said I, a bit stricken with these words of cruelty. “And yet, if it so
pleasure you to give me pain, why then, go on.”
“Don't, watch-dog, don't,” returned Peg, in a voice whimsically between
crying and laughing. “Only a little more of that and you shall have
my tears. But can't you see how your suffering was a most tender
compliment? I declare to you that when I would go by your door, the look
of grief to weigh upon your brow was better to me than a smile. The mere
memory of it would keep my heart warm throughout a winter's day.”
“It must indeed be a topsy-turvy nature,” said I, “that finds its
pleasure in the woe of friends.”
“No recriminations, watch-dog,” retorted Petif, in a high vein. “If your
dullness have no limits, at the least my patience has. Now where did you
go when I avoided you in the square, and you were too much the coward to
lift the knocker of my door? Fie! such another fawn-heart does not roam
existence! Where did you go, I say?”
“Well, I would give that vine of yours a tree to clamber on and lift it
off the ground.”
“And did you,” demanded Peg, eagerly. “The gods ruled otherwise,” I
returned. “There was no tree to be near or possible for your vine;
it must live and die on the ground.” Peg sat quite still and never a
response. As I looked on her, somewhat with wonder, I concede, two great
drops welled from her eyes and fell down upon her hands.
“Now I would like to hear,” said Peg at last, her voice in a twitter of
pain, “does ever one get what one prays for in this world of ours? Would
there be such a word as contentment, now? However, I am glad, watchdog,
your good heart took you to my vine. But let it go; let it all go! Let
us be friends; and if the day can't be for us all sunshine, let us own
as few clouds as we may. Now, we will forget the past, and start our
friendship out anew. We will bring nothing to remind us of days when I
was young and cunning and you were old and dull.”
At this, I involuntarily looked for the mark of Peg's leopard tooth,
where, round and white, it stared up at me from my hand.
“Ah, yes!” said Peg, softly, “I had forgotten. There is that sign
between us that shall last through time. No, we can never forget.” Then,
after musing a moment: “But we may change the subject and say the worst
of it. You heard me lay out my reception purposes. What do you think of
my plans?”
“Tell me first one thing,” said I. “When it was so much pleasure to
behold me in grief for your absence, why, then, did you come back?” That
speech of Peg's was like a dagger in my heart, and I would have her draw
it out with some kindness of explanation. “Why did you come back, then?”
“The mere sorrow of it brought me back, watch-dog,” said Peg, and her
words were music in my ear. “It came finally to where I would sooner
suffer than have you suffer. That is the woman nature of me. The sheer
truth is, I've been on my way back to you for days. When I followed you
in the square, it was with a full purpose of taking your arm and walking
with you as in the old time.”
“And why didn't you?”
“Just as I would have done so, I was caught up in a little swirl of
hatred which carried me away from your side. It didn't last the moment,
but by the time it was gone the chance had taken flight. There is one
thing I should tell you, however; at such a time you must not palter
with a woman.” Peg's tones were uplifted to the pitch severe. “Do you
know what you should have done that day? You should have seized me by
the shoulder as you did that spy who dogged us; you should have stopped
me flush and full. Without excuse or explanation or pretense of remorse
for what had been, you should have made me take your arm. You might have
found, had you so willed it, that for all my high head I would follow
you like a dog.”
“Take you by the shoulder!” cried I, somewhat aroused to a spirit of
terror. “And that would have been polite, indeed, and the act of a true
gentleman! I can see myself seizing you by the shoulder!”
“For all that,” contended Peg, with much candor, “that is what you
should have done. Remember: in treating with a woman, while one _should_
be a gentleman--your word--one _must_ be a man. There is this, too,
about a woman with the man she would love. She likes warfare but she
does not want to win; victory would only embarass your woman. Her
instinct is rather for protection than to protect, and to find him on
whom she leans weaker than herself might alarm her love into flight. And
as for that politeness you tell of, it is an artifice, like a dress or a
house, and good only within a limit. There be occasions when politeness
to a man is a fair thing thrown away; also, there be occasions when
politeness to a woman is nothing better than a waste of justice.
Watch-dog, you should have pocketed the 'gentleman' for use on a languid
day; you should have been all 'man.' You should have seized me by the
shoulder; you should have made me go or stay, or talk or stand mute, as
you willed. It was for that”--and Peg gave me this gravely, like some
confidant Pythoness sure of her Apollo-inspired word--“it was for that,
watch-dog, you were made the stronger of us two.”
Now here was a pretty word of caution! It was as the General once said:
one had only to listen, and lo! one would hear ever the savage stirring
about in Peg.
“There is one thing whereof I was cheated,” said I, after a brief
silence, and seeking to give our talk a slighter, if not a direction of
more reason. “You were to give me lessons in yourself. I looked forward
to no little improvement from such good teaching, and when I was made to
go missing it I could feel a plain loss to myself.”
“And perhaps now,” observed Peg, with her half-merry glance, “I was
giving you a lesson in Peg for every moment of that frowning time.”
Then, as if in reply to my look of bewilderment: “No, watch-dog I went
too fast in those threats to expound myself. You are in no sort prepared
for so tremendous a course of study.”
“Wherein do I lack now?”
“Why, you flounder in abyssmal ignorance of yourself. To study another
with a hope of light, one should first own some liberal knowledge of
one's self. To have gone about to teach you that difficult lesson of
Peg, you, who are as unaware of yourself as any bush or tree or tuft of
grass, would have been as truly wise, and a task well worth one's while,
as would be a discussion of Moore with that savage of the woods who has
yet to hear of the alphabet. However, we will rest content with you as
you are, oh, watch-dog! oh, slave of Peg, wearing her mark! The more,
for that your splendid ignorance of both yourself and me has to be its
characteristic, a white, high beauty like unto some snow-capped
peak--safe, too, since inaccessible. And now, because I have stayed
long; and because we are good friends again; and because we will
infallibly quarrel should I remain, I think, watch-dog, I shall go
home.”
And so Peg went away, singing a little song which was no song but like
the whistle of some thrush, leaving me in a calm of peace; nor did I
fail to remember how Peg's tune, when she departed, was the earliest
music upon her lips since ever she would be in anger with me for those
ill opinions against Eaton.
There was no long time given me to think on Peg and her whims of temper,
black and white, for Noah was with me briskly on the tail of her going
away. Noah brought with him that Blair who had come in deference to
my note, to be the rival of Duff Green and organize the _Globe_ as a
death-stab to Duff's _Telegraph_. I had met Blair before, and liked him;
most of all was he a favorite of the General, for his pen was fed of
fire and the heart of his friendship was like the loyal heart of a dog.
In person, Blair was a slender, sickly man, but with a great head on his
shoulders, and strange feverish eyes that shone like jewels. He was
not unlike the General; only the latter stood vastly taller, and, while
Blair was as some fire to blaze and sparkle and burn, the General would
be more that hurricane of wind, bridled of no man, sweeping flat as a
field of turnips everything to stand in the way.
“Here is a delicate question,” said Noah, with his grin of the cynic.
“The department folk will give our friend, Blair, no public printing;
it goes all to Duff. That should be stopped, since your public
advertising--I speak from my place as an editor--is for your newspaper
as the breath in its body.”
“And what would you propose by way of cure for that felon perversity of
our folk of the departments who will still send printing to the recreant
Duff?” This I put laughingly, to be abreast of the lightness of Noah.
“Surely,” said Blair, speaking with a kind of eagerness natural to him,
and which ran red-hot throughout all he did; “surely, the president
must make no personal interference. Were he to order printing out of
one paper and into another, the opposite side would use it for a club
against him to the last day of his career.”
“But there is a way,” said Noah. “We may have advantage of the mean
fears of our folk of place who are ever prompt to read a threat against
themselves. Such egotists do they grow to be that, following a decade of
office holding, it may not so much as thunder but your agitated desk-man
knows it at once for some plot of heaven's hand to snatch him from his
pap.”
“How would you approach these fears with an appeal?” I asked.
“And there could be nothing easier,” quoth Noah, “while missing every
word that might look like an order from the White House. You have but
to issue a request, addressed to each who is in control of any least
of printing, to send to the president with every month a full report
of what advertisements he has dispensed and to what imprints. There you
have it in your claw; after such notice not one line will go to Duff,
but all to Blair. With the one stone you kill two birds; the _Telegraph_
is destroyed while the _Globe_ in its fortunes is made beyond a
chance.”
“Your mighty proper suggestion will be adopted,” said I. “The request
you speak of goes forth this very day.”
When Blair had departed the scene to look after the daily fortunes of
his paper, Noah and I, as was much and frequently our case, settled to
a mouthful of party gossip. We had not run far, however, when my Jim
appeared with a word from the General to meet him in his personal
workshop on some trivial concern.
“D'Marse Gen'ral trees Jim by d'winder,” said that worthy black man,
“an' tells him to ask you-all, Marse Major, to come squanderin' along
down to his room. He allows, d'Marse Gen'ral does, how he's got letters
from home you might like to see.”
“And how is your 'Marse Gen'ral'?” said Noah, for “the red-head Jew
gentleman,” as Jim ever referred to him, was fond of making Jim talk.
“How does your 'Marse Gen'ral' carry himself these winter days?”
“Mighty toler'ble an' tranquil, thankee, sah!” replied Jim; “mighty
toler'ble an' tranquil. Jim on'y wishes he himse'f was feelin' half so
good. But Jim's got a mis'ry in his back, an' d'rheumatics in his
laigs an' shoulders ontwell he can't but jes' make out to hobble 'round.
Yassir; them rheumatics leaves Jim like a fly in a saucer of m'lasses;
he gets about plumb slow.”
Jim furnished a most doleful air to be the frame for this piece of news;
one might have thought him some flame-enveloped martyr.
“At any rate,” said Noah, in tones of greatest sympathy, “you are
fortunate, Jim, since now you are an invalid, in having such a kind,
forbearing master as your 'Marse Major' here.”
“D'Marse Major aint so mighty bad,” observed Jim, with the face of one
who considers deeply. “Course he has his spells. Thar's times when he's
sort o' amiable, d'Marse Major is; an' then Jim nacherally takes to him
like a honeysuckle to a front porch. Then thar's other days when Jim
quits him an' goes streakin' it for d'tall grass. Them's d'times when
d'Marse Major takes to t'arin' about loose, an' carryin' all befo' him
like a b'ar in a hawg-pen.”
Having disposed of the letter which had given the loquacious Jim that
delay required for these important disclosures, I put an end to them by
carrying Noah away to the General's room. He would expostulate and hold
back; but I made him come with me on the plea of how the General had
asked to talk with him of that coming Nullification banquet to be held
at the Indian Queen.
“True, he has heard it from me,” said I, “but what then? You know how
folk are. He would hear it from you first-hand.”
While I was running over the General's mails from Tennessee, that
eminent person and Noah waded forth into deep and animated converse.
“I am rather glad than otherwise,” said the General, lighting the while
the usual friendly pipe, “for that treason dinner our Calhoun clique
would plan. I shall go; should they ask it, I'll even give them a toast.
I will light a torch for them; I would be the last to have it said I let
folk go blundering to a gibbet in the dark.”
“You recall,” remarked Noah, “how zealous were certain influences for
that Florida post, and how they would have it go to one Westfall?”
“The man Westfall,” retorted the General, “was an utter weakling. He
never would have done for such a place. The Florida governorship is of
consequence; its duties call for one of force. I have thought on a man
for it, but the time has not come. The present incumbent does fairly
well for an Adams selection.”
“That weakness of Westfall to which you refer,” said Noah, “was, I take
it, no slight merit in the minds of those who stood by the elbow of his
hope. It was a part of the Nullification scheme, the putting forward of
Westfall.”
“In what sort?” asked the General. “I know how Calhoun desired him, for
Duff Green told us so much when we were not a week in town.”
“Westfall's success for the place would have linked to the
Vice-President the richest, strongest elements in Pennsylvania. Then
there is Florida itself--two-thirds Spanish and by no means in love with
the balance of this country. With a weak governor in St. Augustine, and
one who owed his crown to our Vice-President, what should be simpler, in
the event of secession in South Carolina, than to count on Floridian men
and money for the venture?”
“They will do as well without their Westfall,” commented the General.
“Mayhap they will do better, since had they succeeded for him, it
might hereafter have given their rashness inspiration, and turned them
gallows-ripe. One thing sure: let them once rebel against the law--let
them but rise in Calhoun's state to the law's defiance--and I will burn
them from the earth. They shall be destroyed root and stalk and standing
grass, with the reptiles that crawl between. Their leaders shall
swing for it so surely as my name is Jackson or there's such a word as
'President' in the land.”
Here I come near to the first true social test to be put upon our Peg,
and that, you will know, was the reception which she would give as a
cabinet lady at her own home on the Georgetown side of the President's
Square. And now, when I am driven by stress of this tale to furnish you
with a handful of hints or little twigs of description concerning the
business, I write as though with fetters on my wrists. It is because
I have no _salon_ learning, and was never taught your lessons of
chandeliers and wax-lights and orchestras and tables spread with
elegance and palms and flowers and folk brilliant on evening parade,
formidably engaged, each with a part like people in a play, in bringing
off one of those encounters where well dressed men and women meet to
crowd each other and call the trial a function. If it were to be a
battle or even some quiet-lying landscape with its stretch of river,
and a forest to fringe the banks, and mayhap a mountain chain with
its plushy dress of pines to the background, I might not come on so
haltingly. But this, as it were, is to lay a fence of stone--and that,
you are to witness, means a journey full of backaches--to be here piling
one word upon another for the story of a drawing-room three hours.
Van Buren was himself Peg's partner for this reception--his own doors
closed, as Peg explains in rearward pages when she talks with the
General. It would be then, a double reception, and both the State and
the War Departments to stand thereof the social sponsors.
Word had crept abroad how the General himself planned a place among the
callers, and at the grave tidings Duff Green, in his paper, was driven
to extremes of frantic ink over the proposed lowering of the presidency
to cabinet levels, which latter the disturbed Duff would seem to think
were common, even if they were not bad.
“The White House,” cried Duff, in his shocked columns, “should not be
taken down from that high place of elevation in which our late president
was pleased to leave it.”
“Truly, an excellent thought!” observed the General, “to set Adams
before me for a model! Why, man! from his purchase of the rogue Clay
down to the last measure to meet the flourish of his pen and be made
a law thereby, I call it patriotism to turn my back on every position
Adams occupied, and the very essence of right to undo all he did. Me to
follow Adams! I should as soon think of emulating Billy Weatherford and
his Creeks.”
“But why stand over me,” said I, “with all this arm tossing and
threatening declamation? It is your Duff Green and not I who would thus
drive you to an Adams example.”
“Well,” said the General, somewhat subdued by this thought, “you at
least are here and I must vent myself on some one.”
While both the General and I lived in a deal of fog concerning such
coils, neither of us was torn of doubt as to the certainty of Peg's
triumph. Vaughn and Krudener, for the favor of Van Buren, would lead up
the legation folk as bell-sheep lead a flock; the military element was
bound to Peg's chariot-wheel by merest war department bonds; withal, the
General's presence alone would mean a multitude, and that of gaudiest
feather, for it asked no skill of society to know how that same impulse
of self-interest was ever at work to move it, as much as might be said
of any conspiracy of roughest politics. The General as the present
source of things temporal would be courted; and to that sycophantish
end your swarming brood of courtiers would be found tagging at his back
though he were to make a sulphurous pilgrimage and seek the pit itself.
There came one thing, however, to rub my fur against the grain; but this
was of the week prior to our Tuesday of Peg's reception. It is the great
marvel how it will ever be the slight affair to ruffle one. I have
known a rascal to crack off his pistol at me for a no better reason than
strong drink; and yet beyond a busy interest to stun him and prevent
a return of his experiment, and so settle safety in my favor, my bosom
went as rippleless of wrath as any millpond. On the other side, the idle
whistle of some fellow, and him outside the house and of no knowledge
even of my being, has sent me off on storms of rage.
This it was to nag me into irritation. There arrived one day a mighty
casket of jewels for Peg--diamonds and rubies they were, and ones a
princess might have worn with honor. They were a gift from Eaton; for
that secretary was notably rich and owned the treasure-chests of an
emperor.
Peg said naught of these trinkets, whether to the General or to me, nor
did she show them. But since they came in from New York, employing for
their safety certain armed guardians of express, the thing could be
called no secret. Moreover, Eaton himself would probably be the last
to smother the story of these chains and bracelets and brooches and
coronets and flashing whatnot, since for what else did he buy them save
self-love and to deck Peg out as one decks out a horse on gala days.
That man never loved Peg; it was a mark of sentiment beyond him. He
had a pride of her as of a gem or a picture, and wore her beauty as one
wears a decoration.
But he no more knew Peg, no more loved Peg, than cud-cattle know and
love the stars above their stolid heads. Her praise would ring sweet
to his ear, yes; her loveliness and the bright glory of her eyes would
lighten his face. Also, the moon will light you and shine again on the
face of that chance-hollowed mud-hole which the rains have filled and
the swine enjoyed.
It is but truth to say that my resentment of these jewels to Peg gave
me a pause of uneasiness. It was not the little fact of their existence
which bayed me; it was not that I went pricked as though by nettles
because of these gewgaws; that was not it. But why should I be pricked
at all? Other folk would bring diamonds to their wives or sweethearts,
and you meet none who owned to less excitement or a colder interest
thereover than myself. Why, then, should these stir my pulse and set my
anger to a trot? It were indeed a thing most passing strange, and one
whereof I was bound to find the bottom if I called myself an honest man.
The question of my anger for Peg's jewels hung about me like lead, I
tell you; for to myself I made free confession of that wrath and would
hide nothing of it from my conscience. I was stout to drag myself to the
bar, and to sit in trial over my own heart. Was it love of Peg to move
me? The General had told me how I had been swept away in love for her
from the first; but that was his jest and the bantering humor of him at
the time. Was I in love with Peg? And if not, then wherefore fly to
arms for that Eaton would hang the common gifts of man to wife about her
charms and strive for her delight? That was the question I held before
my soul's eyes and shook it for an answer.
In a trice the riddle was replied to; the reasons of my anger unrolled
before me like a scroll. It was not that I loved Peg; it was my certain
sureness how Eaton himself was master of no such true sentiment, nor
one worthy of the word. As I have said, he but held her--being below a
better thought--to adorn his vanity; he would wrap her in his riches in
the vulgarity of a boast. Peg was as the feather to his hat, the
jewel to his hilt; he trapped her in brilliants just as he drunk from
cut-glass. And knowing Peg as I knew her, and with a deep appreciation
of her worth, was it miracle, or must my heart be charged of crime,
because my brow would flush to see her thus abased and set to nurse so
gross a self-esteem? Besides, it fell as a blow upon one's better taste,
since to embellish Peg with such earthenware was indeed to paint a lily
and gild gold.
It was true, I so much resented these jewels, and they so bit my feeling
in advance, that I went at wits' end to fish forth some excuse for being
absent from that reception and thus avoid their tawdry splendors. But
when I moved the matter, the General was set like iron that I should go.
Were it the General alone to cross my temper for this, I should have
run over him, no doubt, and had my way for it. But next stood Peg in the
path. I no more than breathed a half-suggestion of possible conditions
to arise and keep me from the house, when she glowed on me with a look
so gently pleading that, without waiting for her to speak, I straightway
told her I would come.
“And I am glad, watch-dog,” said Peg, simply. “I could give myself no
reason, save a reason that would burn like fire, why you should stay
away.”
It should be noted, perhaps, that the magical tale of those gems ran in
and out of the mouth of gossip for prior days, and I doubt not a purpose
to look on them--for the feminine eye is caught with glitter like a
blackbird, which hollow fowl will think of nothing for a week on end
save how to steal a bit of broken glass--brought as many to Peg's
reception as did the presence of the General.
And here, being now upon the brink, I fairly ask you what should be the
use of setting forth how the carriages rolled to the gate; and how Peg
stood like some flower beneath the light of a chandelier--for these
receptions were in the evening--with her “good little secretary” by her
side, welcoming the throngs to press forward in her honor? The Calhouns
were not there; and, indeed, the folk from the Vice-President's own state
would be obviously absent. The other cabinet folk--that Calhoun trio,
the ladies Branch and Berrien and Ingham--did not appear; but then they
were upon certain similar receptions of their own.. However, there came
scores to have their places. There were the lion Webster, the courtly
Vaughn, Krudenerwith red heels to his shoes, red waistcoat, and earrings
to his ears, Noah with his black, dangerous eyes, and a high-caste
multitude, besides, from Senate and House and Supreme Court and
Legations, and those two score other lofty lairs of your utter capital
fashion. There arose the never-ceasing gride of carriages as they came
and went incessantly upon the frozen gravel; there crawled the endless
file of hand-shaking folk, the grave and the gay, the young and the old,
the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad--this last since there
stood no process of elimination to separate the sheep from the goats
where all who would might come. And Peg went through it with a sweet,
grave grace; and even surly Envy submitted to the verdict of a vast
success and one to fix Peg's standing beyond distrust, and mark itself,
besides, as the hopeless Waterloo of her every last ill-wisher.
The General, bright of eye and unbending as a bayonet, was there early
to remain late.
“I have enlisted for the campaign,” said he, “and I shall stay while I
hear of one foe to be in the field.”
Never had I known him to look better, and the old-time deference
wherewith he would be about Peg so that all might see his regard for her
was like a page from chivalry.
And now I must tell a tale on myself, and show how this was to twist
into a happy hour for me and I be harrassed by no sordid hatefulness of
those jewels. I had, for my shame be it told, gone to my place in the
line of calling folk with a reluctance that bound my breast like a rope.
I could scarce breathe for it. The file moved slowly, but I held my head
high, and, being a tall man, looked easily over Peg and did not once
rest my eyes upon her.
I would escape the canker of those barbarous rubies and diamonds.
It was the tones of a woman, who had Peg by her hand, to rivet my
interest.
“Why! where now be those diamonds I heard so much about?” The voice was
of the empty tin-pan kind that tells of society and mighty little else.
“Where be those diamonds? Or was the story false?”
Then I heard Peg in cold retort to our she-savage and her coarse greed
to look on diamonds.
“Why, I believe I have a few handsful somewhere about the house,” said
Peg. “If it be those you are come to see, I shall have pleasure in
directing you to my maid.”
Now when quite close I bent my slow eyes upon our little Peg. There she
stood, a lamp of beauty! and never the sign of your diamonds or rubies
about her--nothing of ornament save a rose my Jim had brought, and the
little coral of my mother's which Peg took from the cabinet on that
summer day. As she offered me her hand, she lifted up her face to mine.
She gave me no word but the red blood showed in her cheek a match for my
coral. Then her eyes fell; and next, with a heart full to foolishness of
a joy that was like a mystery, I passed on to walk the air and join the
General.
“Our victory was measureless,” declared the General, in the stiff manner
of him who makes report, when late that night he and I were about our
inevitable pipes in his room. The General would discuss Peg's reception.
“Sir, it was absolute triumph. Do you know how Peg's function compared
with those of the enemy? 'Quantity and quality' were her words; you
remember that. Do you know on those two points, how our affair compared
with those of Ingham and Berrien and Branch? You do not? Sir, you
surprise me, and you to be a soldier whom I myself taught! Why! how are
you to know when we win or lose if you keep no account of the fight?
'Quantity and quality,' mark you! that is the test.” The General was in
towering spirit and as exalted of brow as one might wish to see. It was
like the real war to him. “Now,” he went on, “I was of a mind to know
results; I took measures for a count of noses, and a list of your folk
who called at those four cabinet houses to-day. Sir, it may please you
to hear that on both proposals of 'quality and quantity' Peg and you and
I overpowered those Redsticks as ten would overpower one.”
The General smoked on in silent satisfaction; I said nothing, my mind
being wholly taken with my coral on Peg's bosom, and never mark of
diamond or ruby for a blemish to the rich beauty of her neck and face
and the cataract of gold-black hair to fall about her shoulders.
“Peg is a grand girl!” mused the General. “It is pity, too; she should
have been a man and a soldier. And then the pure taste of her! You have
heard of a peck, more or less, of diamonds which Eaton brought on from
the North? I looked to see them wreathed about Peg's neck or arms or
fingers or wherever heaven meant they should go. And, mind you! not a
trace of them. 'Why,' says our Peg, when I would question her, 'they
were of such wondrous richness I thought it shame to wear them in my own
drawing room--and me no more than a girl--and set them against older,
better folk who would be my guests. It would have been to over-crow
them, and as though I sought to pamper vanity at their cost. Wherefore,
in compliment, I would not wear them, but put them all aside. Now, this
bit of coral is better, since more modest. It was from a sweetheart, and
is the one thing I love best of all the world.' Was there not fineness
for you?” demanded the General. “Was there not magnanimity? What other
woman between the poles could have withstood her hands from those gems?
Or who, from mere kindness and to spare the women about her their own
envy, would have thrust them away to don that coral trifle in their
stead? A tavern's daughter, forsooth! Why, such a spirit would give
a grace beyond her title to a duchess! I know of nothing more good or
noble to tell the silken nature of our little Peg.”