Peg's war for social eminence would now move bravely. The tale of that
double reception with its polite throngs pushing forward in honor of
her and her “good little secretary,” and the General's presence thereat,
stately yet deferential, fluttered from lip to lip like some bright
bird. And, as such birds will, the farther it fluttered the brighter
it grew. I've told you how I own no warrant, whether of education or
natural trend, to descant on wax-lights and polished floors and satins;
but so far as I might trap the murmur of folk who should have such
matters of gossamer and music on their tongues' ends, the most guarded
decision went to it that Peg's position had become thereby as surely
fixed as the pole-star, and might with as much safety be observed and
steered by whenever any of your blind mariners of the drawing rooms
should lose a course or find himself in deep, strange waters.
Like a great captain who in the wake of victory makes speed to again
strike the enemy while yet the latter is disorganized and before he can
re-collect formation or even hope, Peg was next and swiftly in the field
with that dinner for her glory at the Russian legation, tendered by
the wily Baron Krudener--he of the earrings and the scarlet heels. The
Tartar, as the General called him, zealous for the favor of the General
and Van Buren, was keen to note how a civility done Peg would become a
key to the best good will of both. After Krudener's, came the cabinet
reception at our “good little secretary's,” where Peg would reign; and
since Van Buren lived but a half-dozen houses north from Peg's, it was
hardly to step beyond her own door. Then followed the ball given by the
British with Peg in the place of esteem, and the Viscount Vaughn to lead
Peg forth in the first figure with his own diplomatic hand.
Who could have been more delighted than the General with this splendor
of _salon_ success now spread to our pretty Peg's uninterrupted feet,
and that under the jaundiced eyes of her enemies? The General could not
be present at either the “good little secretary's,” the Russian or the
English house; but he was indomitable to hear; and never exquisite, nor
macaroni, nor buck about London town, gave ear of warmer ardor to the
nightly annals of Mayfair than did the General to those stories of Peg's
victories. Who were there and what they did and said, would be his
constant curiosity; and indeed he carried question-putting to the verge
of what stood foppish.
“But can't you see, sir,” demanded the General, when I told him how his
heat to trace Peg's skirts through every dance, or learn the calling
list of each reception, would jostle one's better conception of him,
“can't you see that with the world and the law as made, this is the
trial of Peg's standing, and freighted of life or death?”
“No,” said I, full bluntly; “and if you will have my notion then, I call
these things mere antic matters of apeish trick and chatter, not worth a
man's attention.”
“You are a barbarian,” retorted the General, oracularly. “These
functions--these dinners and dances and receptions--are trials by jury
where the repute of folk, peculiarly the repute of women folk, is passed
upon. The verdict in her favor means the world and all for Peg. It is
the law.”
“And if it be,” said I, “it is but a bad law and a cheap law, and one
whereat I should snap my fingers.”
“And yet, sir,” replied the General, “wondrous highly as you hold
yourself, you are not yet grown to be the world. It's Peg's happiness--a
matter of being within the pale, without which she would feel decided
against and spurned. And remember this, sir, while you flourish with
your defiances, that a bad law is none the less a law, with penalty
in nowise to be mollified because of that badness at which you rail.
Wherefore I deem, these drawing-room trinkets of a first weight in Peg's
concerns; I shall know as much of them as I well may, and take my chance
of falling in your graces.”
After that, and somewhat in the broader manner of a jest, I would each
day lay out to the General whatever of polite gaities took place the
night before; and while I recited those present, and what they did or
said, or failed to do or say, and particularly when such relation told
for Peg, he would smoke, and listen, and exult, and on occasion comment
like unto any grandmother gossip who still enjoys by second hands those
scenes which long ago her years taught her to desert.
These exploits of waxed floors and dinner tables, while the General
might have neither art nor lot therein, drew me along with them--for all
I loved them not--like a magnet. For one thing, I would behold how Peg
fared; and then, the General would have me attend, to the purpose that
he be given their story.
It was at the Russian's I was called on to witness the iron steadiness
of Peg--albeit I could have wished the Dutch jade, who offended, a man,
that I might pinch his neck. You must know, then, how the Minister
from the Netherlands was a bloated creature of beer and butter-tub
proportions--a Herr Huygens, he was; and Frau Huygens, his lady--save
the mark!--was as dropsical as he. The latter ungentlewoman would be
a waddling, duck-built cabbage thing of fifty years; and of no little
standing for a money-prudence and strict economy, since while as rich as
that commerce of gin by which her spouse had builded up their fortunes,
she owned celebration for but one frock--a most fantastic garment for
color and flounce like the garb of a clown in a kirmess.
At the Krudener dinner, your Frau Huygens, whose place was next to
Peg's, would up and leave her chair immediately she was seated; and all
with a lofty face as of one insulted, and following a great looking of
Peg over through a spying glass.
Spurred by this rudeness, Krudener directed a servant to remove the
chair and plate and table furniture of that place. This was swiftly done;
and next, to show his own feeling of the insolence offered under his
roof, our Russian would have the plate and the rest, including the gilt
chair, broken to pieces in one corner of the apartment and thrown upon
the blaze in the vast fireplace.
“They have been used by that woman of canals and gin-casks,” explained
Krudener--under his exterior of quiet diplomacy and with his eye on Van
Buren, I could tell how the Muscovite was in a towering rage--“and I
have no servant so low he would now eat off that plate or sit in that
chair. Let them be destroyed, and with them the recollection of the
offence to our fair guest, which throughout my life I shall deplore.”
With this Krudener bowed deeply to Peg.
“Since you say so much, Baron,” responded Peg, “I am driven to tell you
that you need have been to no disturbance. I should have remarked that
person's going only for the relief it gave to be free of the nearness of
one so gross.”
This our pretty Peg got off in a way of relieved superiority that was
invincible; she lost nothing through the episode, but would gain ground
thereby for her bearing.
In my first ill-humor to see this reasonless slight put upon our Peg,
I looked about for the rotund Herr Huygens, with a view, I
suppose--although I remember no clear plan in my angry head at the
time--to have his opinion on the conduct of that wife, since he as her
lord would be responsible. He was not present, nor had he been; it was
as well, for I might have forgotten his sacred character as a Minister
and said or done that which should be a further and more depressing jolt
to the proprieties.
The General, when he learned of the business, was even warmer than
myself. He was all for having Van Buren give Herr Huygens his walking
papers, and would scarce listen to less. The “good little secretary,”
with Peg, herself, to aid, won him from his mood to banish the Dutchman
and that offensive Frau. It bred a sharp alarm in the bosom of Herr
Huygens, for he would as soon lay down his life as his post of Minister,
over the proud eminence whereof he gloated much.
An incident more to be merry with, and one carrying within itself the
elements of fair reproof, came off in the house of the English.
By this time your drawing-room forces had greatly abandoned the
Vice-President's wife and the ladies Berrien, Branch and Ingham,
to follow Peg. Among these, and glittering in the van, shone the
vainglorious Pigeon-breast. It was at the dance of the Viscount Vaughn
that Pigeon-breast, after deeply considering the butter on his bread,
made obviously and obsequiously up to Peg.
In his earlier advances I did not see the tinsel fellow or I might have
interposed to dash his good resolves; I was to first know of him in
these bright relations of friendship for our side when I gained a
glimpse of him across the wide ball room where, with Peg's hand held
high, and maintaining a mighty respectful distance between them as
though Peg were majesty itself, he led her through one of those slow
dances--more, indeed, like a promenade than any dance--which had vogue
of that hour.
I waited with much irritation until the dance was to its end and Peg at
liberty. I remembered, however, in her defence, that Peg was not aware
of Pigeon-breast for one who had sought her harm. No one had told her
of that splendid long speech to the General when Pigeon-breast chose
to represent “Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington,” which latter
term, under the scorching fire of Peg's successes, had dwindled to
a sour handful scarce equal to the task of filling a dinner table or
constructing a quadrille.
“Why should you dance,” said I, when now I had gotten Peg by herself
near a window, “why should you dance with such a coxcomb?”
“You mean,” returned Peg, “to tell me that he is no friend. As for that,
I've known him for an ill-wisher and, as far as his frail strength went,
an ill-doer, from the beginning.”
“And how would that news come to you?” said I. “Has the rogue said
anything?”
“Not so fierce, watch-dog, not so fierce!” whispered Peg. “Folk present
are not cognizant of your mastiff sort and might wonder to learn of it.
Wherefore, go quietly about me with your guardianship.” Peg would be
amused by the energy of my distaste of Pigeon-breast. “The 'rogue' has
said nothing. I knew he was my wrong-wisher from yourself.”
“Me?” cried I. “And how should you have had it from me when I have not
breathed of the popinjay's existence?”
“How? Why, from your face, where I've been long wont to read much more
than your tongue has ever told.”
“What of my face, then?”
“And I have wished you might see it! Whoever it was to approach me, I
had but to watch your brow. Was your brow frank, open, friendly: he who
came was a friend. Did you lower and gloom hatefully: he was an enemy
who rapped at the gate. Now you gave this fop the look of a fiend when
one day he would pass us in the square. And so by the light, or rather
the twilight of your frown, I read him.”
“All exceeding clever,” said I, half made to laugh by the airy fashion
wherein Peg would toss this off, “all exceeding clever. But it brings
me with interest to my question, why, then, did you honor him with a
dance?”
“For the same reason,” said Peg, with a look of funny malice, “that an
Indian scalps his foe.”
“Now what should that mean?”
“Wait and see, oh watch-dog!”
It was a bit later when Peg was again by my side.
“Do you know why I am back with you?” she asked. “Well, aside from the
profound pleasure of your company, the more profound by contrast with
that of those vapid ones”--here she would include the ball room males
with a sweep of her round arm--“I thought I would scalp my enemy before
your eyes. You have a violent nature, watch-dog, and I reflected how the
exhibition might bring you joy. Since you do not dance, your time must
lie on your hands like iron; I would do somewhat to lighten it.”
Before I could ask Peg to unravel the intent of her long speech,
Pigeon-breast was pushing valourously our way.
“He comes for a second dance,” said Peg. “See, his name is next on my
card.”
“And call you that scalping?” cried I. “At that rate, every man in the
room will compete for your cruelty! Scalping, say you! I wish for the
simple humor of it, a Seminole might hear you.”
The truth was I had fallen into a dudgeon with Peg for her notion of
taking a trophy; she would confer heaven on this Pigeon-breast and call
it “scalping!”
“I believe,” observed Pigeon-breast, with his nose fairly to the floor,
so deeply would he bow, “I believe I will have the honor of another
dance”--here another bow as lowly louted as the first.
As Pigeon-breast resumed the perpendicular, he crooked his gallant arm
invitingly and would lead Peg to her place.
But Peg drew back, as much to my bewilderment as that of the
wonder-smitten Pigeon-breast himself, and with a manner coldly polite
said:
“There is a mistake, sir; I could have promised you no dance, since I do
not know you.”
“Mistake!” gasped Pigeon-breast.
“Mistake,” repeated Peg, with, if anything, an access of ice. “I never
before saw you; I could have put you down for no dance. One does not
dance with strangers.” Then to me: “Your arm, if you please.”
As I carried Peg away, Pigeon-breast was heard to inarticulately moan
and whine like a high wind in a keyhole. Later I beheld him desperately,
in the refreshment room, drinking strong waters with both hands and as
though he had a fish in his stomach.
“And now,” said I to Peg, as we moved away from the crushed
Pigeon-breast, “why were you so bitter? That empty fellow was not worth
so much. Besides, you have shamed him before the town; you hurt him to
the heart.”
“Hurt him to the vanity,” corrected Peg. “If it be true that
nothing dries more quickly than a woman's tear--and it is true,
watch-dog--nothing cures more quickly than the hurt vanity of a man.
That dandy will anon be as gay as a peacock. However, I would punish
him. I have made him an Ishmael of the drawing-rooms; I have driven him
forth from us, and he cannot return to the others for his apostasy of
their cause is known. Did I not tell you, watch-dog, I was a revengeful
woman?”
Altogether, I might have wished our Peg had taken another course with
Pigeon-breast.
Thus to publicly drum him out of camp was a thought too hardy. However,
Pigeon-breast had wrought for what he received, and I think, too, Peg
was more moved by the audacious fun of the business than any darkling
taste to have a vengeance, for all her word.
The General, I am minded, was of my view; it was the frolic of the thing
to carry Peg away.
“Peg is young,” quoth the General, amiably; “our Peg is young. What
would you have? She shall be older one day and more upon dignity. What
shall more bound and frisk and play than your scapegrace kitten? And
yet what more gravely decorous than your cat? By Joshua's horn! on the
whole, I'm glad your Pigeon-breast was brought up with a round turn.”
It was one afternoon when the General came to me with a request that I
seek out Noah at the Indian Queen and confer with him over the merits of
a gentleman who lusted to hold a certain office.
“This individual comes to me well spoken of,” said the General, “and
yet I would know more of him, and that from one who has no axe to be
grinded.”
While I made ready for my walk to the Indian Queen, the General
unpouched another piece of interesting news.
“By the way,” said he, “our Peg has settled on April as a time for that
dinner and ball. She would have had it sooner; but she does not now need
the White House for any direct aid to her arms. She will save it for the
close, and make the affair a sort of celebration.”
“It is a good thought,” said I. “It is wiser, since she has won her way
with what should be her own resources, not to subtract from that success
by any full blown movement of the White House upon the scene. Mean folk
would say she could not have come through without you to be her ally.”
“And that is my notion, too!” coincided the General. “Peg's position is
complete; the White House now would but divide her glory. We will offer
her our East Room courtesies in April, and let it be for an old-time
Roman triumph as when a victor returns from war. Peg well deserves a
triumph; the Vice-Presidential coterie and all whom it might control
have moved heaven and earth for Peg's disaster and pulled and hauled
like common sailor-folk on any rope to do her harm.”
“Does not April,” said I, “mark an unheard-of span for your social
season? I had thought it might end with Lent.”
“And so it would,” smiled the General, “if now we were only Federalists
like Adams, and remembered the Church of England as a guide. This,
however, is a Presbyterian administration; wherefore, we shall abide
none of your Lents, but drink and dance and dine as far into spring
flowers as we will.”
“Being the earliest instance,” added I, “when to drink and to dance and
to dine were called an evidence of Calvinism.”
Noah was pen-employed over certain wisdom which should find subsequent
exposition in his paper.
“There are large money influences,” remarked Noah, thoughtfully, when
we had talked a moment, “which have grown alluringly friendly about my
associate, Watson Webb. They are offering a loan to our paper of fifty
thousand dollars. You know”--this with his satirical air--“how papers
are ever in want of a loan. These money folk bank on that to win us;
perhaps, too, they find hope in my being a Jew.”
“And what would your associate do?” I asked.
“To be frank,” returned Noah, “he grants admiring ear to this song of
siren money. I think we shall part company--Webb and I.”
“And yet,” said I, with a bent for banter, “you are ever in one kind or
another laying emphasis on your Jewish readiness for gold. Now you see
it is the Jew who can not be moved, while our Gentile, with an eye to
the yellow chance, would not be found so sentimental.”
“For all that,” remarked Noah, “the Jew is a profound money hunter.
It is but natural he should be. That cupidity, or, if you prefer, that
gold-greed, has been through centuries developed as his one hope for
safety. In the oppressions which have borne upon him, and which in all
countries save this still bear him down, your Jew has found in money his
last cave of retreat. He might bulwark himself with riches. With others,
gold would mean luxury; with the Jew, it stood for life itself, and
to go wanting it was to be tooth and nail about the digging of his own
grave.”
“And it is your theory, then,” said I, “that the great need for gold
which for ages was to stare the Jew in the face, became the seed of that
genius, to gather which now the race is heir to?”
“Without question,” said Noah. “More; since the Jew has been safe of his
goods and his blood in this land of ours, and the rowels of that great
need no longer lance the flanks of effort and set it to the leap, we
rear a kind of Jew who owns no mighty care for money. I will find you
Jews in our midst who can still be hawks to swoop, but who have no hold
to keep. They will spend you their riches or give them away like water.
We shall yet rear an American Jew who has no skill to get money. Still,
going back to that first thought--for it is worrying my soul like a
dog--of those money influences busy with the enlistment of Webb, I am
free to say that even in his worst hour your Jew would never take a
bribe. He would sell neither his friend nor his principle; those were
never Jewish ways of money-finding.”
“Your Jew makes a stout patriot,” said I. “I could want no better
American than a Jew.”
“Why, then,” responded Noah, “there be none to whom America means so
much. You, being of the strain of Saxon-Dane, would have justice in
England, welcome in Russia, friendship in France. What would your Jew
meet? Your Jew loves America because he loves himself; he is a patriot
since he is a Jew.”
“And yet,” I protested, “it is no question of cool selfishness with your
Jew. He is as spontaneously the patriot as any other. Take Judah Touro:
whose money or whose blood was more at the beck of his country that
January day at New Orleans?”
“Why, yes, that is true,” said Noah. “But you should reflect:
patriotism, like every other emotion--if it be a mother's love for her
child--has ever its first feet in selfishness. That would be the tale
of Jew or Gentile the wide world round. Selfishness seems but a rough,
unworthy root, but from it have flowered art, poetry, science, or what
you will. The lineage of each sentiment of beauty, whether it be the
tenderest charity or that self-sacrifice that lays down its life, begins
with selfishness--that mighty cornerstone of the world.”
“Beware of metaphysics,” said I. “That, at least, would be our
matter-of-fact General's caution.”
“Who? the President?” Noah laughed. “I will let you in with a
secret. There is only one to be more the sentimentalist than your
'matter-of-fact General,' and that, my friend, is yourself. However,
keeping from the personal, I would still stand firm to it that
selfishness is the beginning of the virtues. Those better expressions,
charity and love, come by its cultivation just as the generous apple has
for its forebear that bitter, thorny, sour creature, the wild crab.
Now, your Jew has been vastly cultivated”--here came Noah's look of
satire--“he has been ploughed by adversity and harrowed of oppression.
Thus farmed, your Jew will produce those Judah Touros you tell of. There
were mates for Touro throughout our years of revolution. There dwelt but
seven hundred families of Jews in this land when Concord and Lexington
and Bunker Hill fell forth. From Lexington until Cornwallis, those
Jews were busy with their ducats and their blood for freedom. They gave
millions. Old Haym Salomon alone gave six hundred thousand dollars He
was the richest of his day; he died copper poor to the obolary point
of groats and farthings. At his end he said: 'I die broken and in the
talons of want; but I die happy since I have lived to see civil and
religious liberty established on this soil.'”
Rivera, broad of shoulder, mild of eye, here drew near and made a slight
motion, as one who points with his thumb, towards the tap-room of the
tavern. Noah would seem instantly to understand his wordless satellite.
“Come,” said Noah, eagerly, “I can show you those Catron thugs I warned
you against. It may serve you to know their faces.”
“I had forgotten to ask,” I returned. “Has any of them gone about to
molest you? I see you still safe.”
“It is because I am looked on,” returned Noah, lightly, “as a Jew most
perilous. Those Catron five minutes at Gadsby's did me good service.
Also, since I love quiet, I would have gossip give wings to it how I
carry a knife. The truth is, these caitiff folk mistrust me as a trap of
death.”
There was a rude group gathered about a table in the bar. The members
were drinking rum from tin measures, and their vivid noses and features
much aflame would not have said the habit was one lately taken up.
“Those be our friends,” whispered Noah. “That animal with the
shoulders of a buffalo, the iron jaw, and no forehead to speak of, is a
prize-fighter of renown. He was brought over to be a counter-weight for
Rivera. I would wager, should they come together, that my man beats him
to a pumice.”
The light in Noah's eyes showed no sloth of appetite for such a battle.
The rogues about the table were made uneasy by our presence. We looked
them up and down at no little length, Noah with an eye of rawest
insolence, enough of itself to draw resentment from an image. Noah
called Rivera from where he lounged against the doorpost and held
whispered converse with him touching the fellows, and all in a most
apparent way of insult. But beyond a wrathful growl one might not lure
them; they turned their shifty, evil eyes away, and hastily gulping the
rum, shuffled from the place.
“If those ruffians are come to town for a motive of trouble,” said I,
“why do not they go upon their mission? They have been weeks here. Has
this Catron so much money to waste?”
“Doubtless Catron has money enough,” replied Noah. “Like yourself,
however, I can not find reason for this stage-wait in the tragedy. I
have tempted them to a rupture with my eye a score of times, but their
conduct was always what you saw.”
Noah went with me to the General, to reply to the latter's interest
concerning the ambitious one.
“He is wise and brave and true,” said Noah; “that is the worst I know of
him.”
“And that should be enough,” said the General, decisively. “What more
may one want than 'wise and brave and true?'”
“Then you care only for the man,” said I, “and ask nothing of his
principles of politics?”
“Added to those cardinals,” laughed the General, “of 'wise and brave and
true,' one would need but the other virtue of being my friend. When you
say 'principles of politics,' Major, I should know what you mean. Still,
with a now and then Calhoun exception, I am free to say I care only
for your man and nothing for a measure. If it were an election, now, I
should vote for a good man on a bad platform rather than a bad man on a
good platform.”
“And why?” asked Noah. “For myself, I am not so sure.”
“You will turn sure,” replied the General, “if you but pause and recall
your own experience. Measures are like batteries aboard ship. It is ever
the man behind the measure, as it is the man behind the gun. If he be
'wise and brave and true,' good. If he be otherwise;--why, hang him and
have you another man.”
As I was returning alone to my workshop, I overheard the voices of Peg
and Jim within the room.
“An' so, Miss Peg,” Jim was saying, “as soon as ever your mammy gives
Jim d'message an' that mouthful of whiskey, Jim shore lights out for
you. Honey, Jim comes that fas', Jim does, he jes' natcherally leaves
things on both sides of d'road. Your mammy's plumb sick, an' thar aint
no sort o' doubt of it. Plumbago is what Jim allows it is.”
“My mother is ill,” said Peg, when I came in. “I sent your Jim down to
get word from her. She wants me, and I would ask you to go with me to
her if I dared.”
“That should call for no desperate courage,” said I.
The deep snows had been melting for many days, and, while the ground was
now quite bare, it lay wet as a sponge, and the roads not to be thought
of for horses. Peg's mother, however, lived but a little mile distant,
and our way would lie through woodland for the most, with paths to wind
in and out among the trees. These walks, being grassy, would do well
enough for folk afoot.
“We must walk,” said Peg, “and since that be the order, I must go back
for stronger boots to fend against this wet.”
When Peg returned from her own home and we would be setting forth, it
was six years off her age to merely see her. For what mud and water
we might meet, Peg had donned thick-soled, high-laced boots, and with
these, and skirts cut short to match her boots, Peg appeared not an hour
older than sixteen.
“You look like a schoolgirl,” said I, in comment. “You will be now more
than ever the child with me.”
“'Tis a good uniform to walk in,” said Peg, “and to balk mire and
water.”
Peg's mother was in no strait of weakened health more than stood proper
with her days. But she was grown peevish and with nerves on edge to see
her daughter; for since rout and dinner and reception made such claim on
Peg, she had not visited the good old lady as often as was her wont.
And now when we were there, the old mother would hear no soon word for
our departure; we must stay to supper; Peg should cook for us, she said.
It was not without surprise that I observed how this command to turn
herself a cook would fit with Peg's temper like a glove. In the first,
Peg hung upon uncertainties; the paths were bad, there were mire and
pool. But when told that she should cook for me, her face brightened and
she was instantly moved to recall that a great moon would shine and so
put those night-dangers of pool and mire to rest.
So patent stood Peg's satisfaction in her new duties that, as she would
heap and heap again my plate--scarce eating a morsel herself--I was
driven to ask reason.
“And you don't know?” said Peg, pausing with a new-baked tin of
light-bread in her little hands--these latter white with flour. “It is
because this is the first natural woman thing I've done for months. You
may be very sure, watch-dog, whenever you see me bowing and scraping at
a reception, or dismissing some Pigeon-breast from my royal presence at
a ball, that I would give the stockings off my feet to be busy about a
fireplace instead, and cooking bread and meat for you. You see, I am so
much more the woman than the lady. There is my defect.”
“And was it that,” said I, attacking a second steak with the fury of a
farm-hand, while Peg glowed to see me dispatch it, “was it that to teach
you to warn me I must be a man rather than a gentleman when I dealt with
you?”
“Now I shouldn't wonder,” replied Peg, going for more coffee.
This kitchen mood of Peg's--and somehow I liked it as much as ever she
did--and her word for it how she preferred cookery to balls, set me to
put questions as we twined along our path among the trees on homeward
journey. The night, as Peg foretold when she so favored supper-getting,
was full of a white radiance that one might read print by, for the air
was as clear as glass and the moon both big and round.
“You were speaking as one weary,” said I, “of dance and reception, and
declared how you would sooner cook. Now that puts me in a fog; I should
have supposed you the happiest, as you should be the proudest, woman in
the world.”
“I said I would sooner cook for you,” said Peg. “You are uncouth enough
to forget that part. Or perhaps, now it was your timidity. I am proud
enough, doubtless; but why, watch-dog, should you think me happy?”
“Is it not reason enough,” returned I, “that you have stifled your
enemies, and stand on the last summit of our society?”
“I am happy only as it makes my friends happy,” returned Peg; “the good
General and yourself. I would not, for my own part, waste one moment on
it.”
“I can not understand,” said I. “That I should love nothing of
drawing-rooms does not amaze me; the day is on in middle life with
me and I've seen too much of grass and sky to now care for floors and
frescoes. But for a woman:--I should have said her joy would be there.”
“Watch-dog, I am too much the woman,” said Peg; “or, since you may
better understand, I'm too much the savage. I've climbed the social
mountain. I stand on its summit; there is nowhere higher. And yet what
will it all mean?”
“What will it not mean?” I asked.
“Watch-dog, I'll tell you what it will not mean.” Peg spoke in a tone of
tired earnestness. “It will not mean sympathy or love or trust. Society,
as we've agreed, is like a mountain. And like a mountain, you find less
and less of vegetation as you climb--fewer of the green, good virtues
that stand so thickly rank in the poor valleys below. As you climb, it
would turn ever barer and colder; and at the last no virtues--nothing
but lichens and livid mosses. We are at the summit, watch-dog. And now
what find we other than the dead cold snow? You have told me I stand on
the social summit; you see I keep repeating. Do you know now what it is
in my heart to do? There lies no peril of a slip; I have too much the
sure foot of the ibex. Do you know what I am moved to do?--me on my high
snow social peak? Why, then, dash myself into that common valley far
below.”
“Now, that is not our Peg who speaks,” cried I, not a trifle put about
by Peg's Alpine parables. “It is the talk of a tongue and means mere
wildness.”
“And that is it, watch-dog,” returned Peg, in a way of mourning. “I am
not tame; I am like the wild things that will not bear a cage. Now here;
see how strange I am. I do not like women; I will not trust one with a
word; I must watch myself to treat them with a fair face. Then I am all
to talk and go about with men. I should have been born one of those
Indian girls of whom you told me. A campfire and a petticoat of
buckskin, a wigwam and a husband--big and broad like you, watch-dog--to
fight and to hunt for me; that would be my dream.”
There arose a rough laugh, and if my ears were true, a rum-sodden laugh.
I turned my head, and there, a hundred yards to our rear, came rolling
and stumbling the drunken crew whom Noah had been at pains to show me
in the Indian Queen. Over my shoulder I watched them for a moment. They
were in sottish glee, and would shout, and now and then troll a bar or
two of some pot-house ballad.
My nature was on watch in a moment; I suspected how these ruffians would
be after us. We were in a lonely strip of trees, and no folk near the
spot but just ourselves--a safe theatre for villainy. I counted our
roaring drunkards; there were eleven, and among them I could pick out
the yard-wide shoulders of that gladiator to whom Noah had pointed.
Peg, as well as I, could see these creatures coming; but then she had
not my news, and would only know them for roysterers returning from some
drinking bout. I glanced at Peg; her face was bright and free, and
for all her late lamentations over society and its dead cold wastes of
proper snow, mighty wide awake and vivacious. I never beheld her more
brisk; in the white moonlight her picture shone out as clear as day.
Peg was on my right arm. I began to go more slowly so that those who
followed should overtake us, and to push a little off the path to the
right, for I would have Peg out of the midst of them when trouble fell.
As I would loiter and go with a slower foot, the eleven behind quickened
their step. They came on, roaring and jesting among themselves; not
together, but by twos and threes, and straggling along the path like
geese. I think it was their plan to push ahead of Peg and me and bar our
way; for they went lumbering and lurching by, making a rude joke to toss
from tongue to tongue, but no one to so much as look on us direct until
the last one came up. He would be lagging behind for a purpose, too,
since he was gone on no more than a yard ahead of Peg and myself when he
sings out to his fellows with an oath:
“D'ye see whom we have here? Why, here is our big lover and his light o'
love--no less!”
With that, stepping before Peg, I seized the scoundrel with my left
hand. It was his arm above the elbow I took hold on, and a soft snick
like a snapping of the clay stem of a pipe, and the grotesque way in
which the hand dangled, palm outward, showed me how I had broken the
bone.
The creature's scream brought the others to his rescue. That was no
loss, for it would have been their plan from the first to return and
fall upon me. As they came on in a blundering file, whirling forth
oaths, I took the one in my hand with a grip about his middle. Heaving
him over my head, I dashed him at the others as they drew near. The
villain would do beautifully as a projectile, too, for he mowed down
three like a chain-shot, his boot making a fine gash in the face of one
of them.
On the point of going forward to meet the others, I was stayed by
a shout, loud and musical, yet much like the muffled roar of some
deep-lunged animal. Then came one from the the rear with the speed of an
arrow at top flight. In the moonlight I could tell him for Rivera the
son of that Spanish bull-fighter, running like a stag. He flashed by me;
and the next moment he struck one of the roughs with his fist. It was a
hammer-like blow, and that one who would stop it fell with the crash of
a tree.