Duff Green was a round, insincere, self-seeking, suave, smooth, porpoise-body of a personage, small of eye, hair age-streaked, a port wine voice, wide mouth, and nose of friendly hue. He had come to town the year before, poor and modest, and bartered himself into possession of theTelegraph, a leading journal of the capital. He prospered, and prosperity had swollen him. Nor was he without some tincture of shrewdness; for he owned the wit in the late elections to support the General, and now would wax pompous and come forward because of it. I did not like him, holding him selfish and withal weak; besides, his affable complacency offended me.
The General would defend Duff Green, although I am sure he had his measure from the start. The General, retorting to my charge of selfishness and vanity, would say: “Of course, Duff's selfish; that's why I enjoy him. I like selfish folk; they are easy to understand, easy to start or stop. One has but to bait his trap with their interest and, presto! there they are in the morning caught sharp and fast for his use. And again, your selfish folk are content with much less than will suffice your disinterested folk who truly love you.” This was one of the General's efforts at sarcasm, and delivered with the sly flicker of a smile.
“But the smug vanity of Duff Green!” I would urge. “I could wish you half so tremendous as he deems himself.”
“Fie! Major, fie!” would be the reply; “vanity is the powder in the gun, the impulse that sends the bullet home. It is the sails of the ship and the reason of motion to that hull of merit which might make no voyage without. Vanity has won more battles than patriotism; wanting vanity, Caesar would have crossed no Rubicon, and Napoleon would have begun, not ended, with Waterloo.”
This fashion of bicker fell often forth between the General and myself; indeed, we were in frequent disagreement, he being one who, while holding notions of his own wisdom, was withal much imposed against by pretences on the false parts of men whom I saw through as through a ladder; and so I told him.
“Ah! excellent evening, Mr. President! excellent evening, Major—ah!” exclaimed Duff Green, his friendly nose aflame, and port wine tones, satisfied and unctuous. Coming forward, he took first the General's hand and then mine. For all the warmth of his countenance, his hand had the cold feel of a fish, and I did not, myself, insist on its retention beyond the plain limits of politeness. “Excellent evening, Mr. President,” he repeated, glowing the while, in anticipation doubtless of public printing to come.
“You are not hard to suit for your evening, Duff,” returned the General, whose fault it was to be on terms too common with many unworthy of the honor. “Now, I call this the scandalous evening of a scandalous day. I say 'scandalous' because muddy,” explained the General.
In the talk to follow it developed that the purpose of Duff Green's visit was no more noble than to just wring future patronage from the General. Especially did our caller have his watery eye on the governorship of Florida, a post, for its palms and orange groves and flowers and summer seas, and mayhap the social life of St. Augustine—aristocratic, and still on Spanish stilts—much quested; and the reason of a deal of court paid the General by rich ones who, having money, hungered for an opening to its display. Duff Green even suggested, tentatively, the name of a certain wealthy thick-skull. He said the notable in hand was a prime friend of Calhoun; that his selection would be held vastly a compliment—a flower to his nose, indeed!—by the Vice-President.
“Why, sir!” observed the General, whose familiarity diminished as the place-hunting eagerness of the worthy Duff Green began to gain expression; “why, sir, the man you tell of lacks brains. It cannot be; say no more. We'll find some safer way to flatter the Vice-President than by periling public service in the hands of a weakling.”
“Weakling!” repeated Duff Green, while the friendly nose began to bleach; “weakling! Mr. President, this gentleman—this friend of Calhoun—is one of our richest people.”
“Why, I believe he did inherit a fortune,” responded the General carelessly; “or perhaps a more proper phrasing would make the fortune inherit him. But that is scant reason why he should mismanage a gravely important trust. The governorship of Florida is not all citron groves and mocking birds; there is responsible work to do; and the territory, I tell you, shall not be wasted by a fool. But cheer up, Duff,”—the visitor was looking blue and the hue of friendship had quite departed his nose—“cheer thou up! Perchance we may yet discover some office wherein your ambitious wittol of wealth—whom the Vice-President loves!—may be great without being dangerous.”
Duff Green was no more urgent on the point of a Florida governorship. He was not so dim but he saw his failure and accepted it with what grace he might.
“I don't know how the Vice-President may take it!” he murmured at the close.
“As to that,” said the General, and his words fell with a suspicious sharpness, as from one smelling to a threat; “as to that, the Vice-President must sustain himself very patiently. I know those who would hold other conduct on the Vice-President's part as excessively misplaced. They might even teach the Vice-President a similar conclusion. You should tell him that; since I see you act by his request and as his agent.”
Here the General looked hard at Duff Green. Already I caught a shadow of those jealous differences to come between the General and Calhoun—differences that would seem, for the separation of the White House and the Vice-Presidency, constructed of the Constitution. These offices never have agreed—never have been true friends in any administration. It was the less important in this instance, since, secretly and unknown to him, Calhoun for over a decade had been the General's enemy. On that February evening which Duff Green so distinguished as “excellent” the General was by no means distant from the fact's discovery.
“You do wrong, Mr. President,” faltered Duff Green, his affable nose as pale as paper now, “when you say I am Calhoun's agent. The Vice-President knows nothing of this. It was by accident I became aware of his anxiety touching the Florida governorship. I give you my honor, Mr. President; I give you my honor!”
“Let it pass; it's of no mighty consequence.” Then impatiently, “Don't call me 'Mr. President' until I'm President. It will be bad enough after inauguration, I take it.”
Here poor Duff Green was visibly disturbed. I said nothing to relieve him. Indeed, I didn't utter a dozen words while he remained; as I've told you, I misliked Duff Green, with his face the color of a violin and his airs of fussy consequence.
“But here, Duff,” resumed the General, coming himself to the rescue of our visitor, who might be described as sinking for the third and last time in the deep waters of his own confusion, “here, Duff, is something I much desire you to do. It is a list of the cabinet as I intend its construction on the hocks of my inaugural. There are reasons why it should be printed; the Major”—here he indicated me, and with a dry note in his voice which I understood—“approves the names and thinks they should be given to the public. Get them in the nextTelegraph. Here, I'll read them.” And the General reached for his horn-framed glasses and began from a paper he'd taken from his pocket. “Van Buren, Secretary of State; Ingham, the Treasury; Eaton, for the War Office.” I saw Duff Green look sharply up. Somehow, while I found protest in his glance, I could not believe the promised cabinet selection of Eaton unpleasant to him. From that moment I knew him for no well-wisher of the General—to be thus pleased with a prospect of hot water! The General drove ahead: “Branch for the Navy; Berrien for the Department of Justice; and lastly, Barry, Postmaster General. There you have it. New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky; the North, the West, and the South—two each; and none for the Yankee East, since to that hard region where men, to make them smart, are raised on foxes' ears and thistle tops, I owe no debts. There is the list. Let me see it in print.” And the General placed the paper in Duff Green's hands.
The General turned to fill his infallible pipe; he would have it ready to shatter into smithereens should provocation come. Duff Green fingered the folded paper with timid air while the General fished for a coal with the little table tongs. For myself, I said nothing; since it was to be done, it might as well see ink—that cabinet list. As the General straightened his tall, slight form, his tobacco-lighting accomplished, Duff Green, breathing pursily from a dash of trepidation, could not forbear comment.
“I suppose you would like my thoughts on this list?” Duff Green took care to give his supposition the rising turn of query.
“And why do you suppose so?” said the General, his tone something grim.
“Only because I supposed you'd like the thoughts of everybody.” Duff Green fawned with his voice in a half-fright. It is ill to pester a lion, being no lion-tamer. “I supposed you'd like the thoughts of everybody,” he repeated.
“Quite right!” said the General, pretending return of sunshine. “And what are your thoughts?”
“The list will be welcome,” he answered, gaining confidence from the General's mollified features; “the list will be welcome save in one particular. The selection for your Secretary of War, Mr. President—”
Here Duff Green came to a stop, utterance wholly at a halt. Nor did I blame him, for now the General gloomed in truly savage sort. The General waved his pipe; but he did not break it. Probably he did not think Duff Green worth a pipe.
“And what of Mr. Eaton?” demanded the General at last.
“It's Mrs. Eaton,” gasped the other, while his fear shook him until he quaked like a custard; “it's Mrs. Eaton. Our society will not receive her; that is, our ladies won't. Mr. President, she's a tavern-keeper's daughter—he kept this identical Indian Queen, as you must know. Mrs. Eaton's origin is too low for such station; and besides they say—and—and—Mr. President, really, our ladies won't receive her into society.” Duff Green ran visibly aground and could go no further.
“Mark you this, Duff Green,” and the General's eyes sparkled, while he kept his voice in hand; “mark you this! If a 'low origin' be the social argument, then I am minded of no palace as the habitat of my own bringing up. But here I tell you: I've not come to the White House to be ruled. Once I was set to the defence of New Orleans. The society of that great city was against me, and I put society under martial law; a society legislature was thereby shocked, and I dissolved it; a society Frenchman murmured against this, and I marched him out of town with two bayonets at his back; a society American denounced the expulsion, and I clapped him in irons; a society judge issued a writ of release, and I arrested him. Incidentally, I beat Pakenham and his English, and did what I was sent to do. Now I've been ordered to Washington by the public and given duties to perform. I look to find here conditions of sympathy and friendship and support. If they be not here, I'll construct them; if, being here, they fail me, I'll supply their places. Notably, should I get up some morning to discover myself without a newspaper”—Duff Green sweats now and pricks up his ears—“there shall one grow instantly from the ground like any Jonah's gourd. Your ladies will not receive Mrs. Eaton whose 'origin is low!' And for that cogent reason Mr. Eaton must not be Secretary of War! Man, have I been lifted to a presidency to consult wives and gossips in picking my constitutional advisers? Go; print that list—print it as I give it you;—go!”
The breath of the General's indignation carried Duff Green into the hall; and even when the door was closed behind him, I could follow by ear as he fled towards the stair with a fat shuffle that told of terror.
“The man exhausts me,” said the General, as he refilled his pipe.
“I think I'll write to Frank Blair.”
“Why?” and the General looked up.
“We should have him ready to start a Jackson paper in Washington when Duff Green deserts.”
When I turned out on the next morning I found the fogs and mists of the day before departed and blown aside, and a bright sky overhead. There was no frost; but on the contrary a fine spring promise in the air that smelled in one's nostril like the breath of budding trees. The roads, too, were more in the way of reform, and here and there a dry spot showed in profert of what would be. Altogether it was quite an April rather than a February morning. I finished shaving and dressing and called Jim to brush my coat. A hostler before he became a valet, Jim was used to accompany these brush-labors with an aspiration like unto the escape of steam; a sound held sovereign by him for giving a horse's coat a gloss, and therefore good for mine. I had gone forth in an earlier day to break Jim of these stable tricks, but, making no headway, wisely gave it up, and Jim hissed on unchecked. There be things your African won't learn; there be things he will learn; and effort to suppress in the one direction or excite enterprise in the other, is thrown away. Aware on these points, I had taken years before the bridle of restraint off Jim, and to give him his due he went the better with his head free.
When brushed to fit Jim's notion of the spic and span, I settled my chin in my black stock and went to call upon the General. I would know how he held himself on the back of his bleedings and his wraths against Duff Green.
I found him over a bowl of coffee and with a pipe going; he had been up and breakfasted an hour before. Also, he had gotten letters to please him and was in top spirits.
I recall looking at him as I entered his chamber, and thinking, as I noted his quick, game-cock air, full of life and resolution, how little he seemed that invalid who but the evening before was opening veins and lying ill with old wounds. The difference would have amazed any save myself, who had seen too much of him to be now astonished. The General could pull himself together like a watch-spring. Moreover, he fed on sensation, and a glow at his heart's roots was better for him than a meal of victuals. I've borne witness as he rode into the wilderness to conquer Weatherford and his Creeks, with a month-old bullet in his shoulder and its fellow in his arm. He was so feeble and nigh death that he must be handed to his saddle like a sack of bran, and each hour the surgeons must bathe him over with sugar-of-lead water to keep life in his body. And yet, from the outset, and on bad food and with the ground for his bed, he began to mend. The man lived on sensation, I say, like a babe on milk. He would walk up and down a line of battle and be as drunk on rifle smoke as any other on brandy.
When I came into his room I found the General—pipe and coffee for the moment in retirement—to his own evident satisfaction, but in a rusty raven voice I fear, hummingThe Star Spangled Banner. His eyes were closed. He was sitting by the fire, beating out the time of the music with pipe held like a baton in his claw-like hand, wearing meanwhile much the air of your critic at an opera. His notes slipped frequently into quavers, and there was constant struggle to keep from lapsing into the savage minor key.
“You make grewsome music for a bright morning, General,” said I; “it sounds dolefully like a wail.”
“That's a majestic tune, Major,” he replied, opening his eyes. “It never fails to stir me, and would bear comparison withOld Hundred, albeit one tells of religion and the other of patriotism. After all, what should be the separation between true patriotism and true religion?”
“Last evening,” I retorted, “you fell upon me hip and thigh because I said you were not a politician but a president; you would have it that the two were synonyms for each other. Also, you declared that no one might be both a politician and a Christian. Now you talk of no separation between patriotism and religion. General, you go to bed in one frame and get, up in another; you are not consistent.”
“I'll not quarrel with you,” said he, “though to say, as you would seem to, that a president and a patriot are ever the same, is begging the question and a far shot from the truth. I still stick for it, however, thatThe Star Spangled Bannercomes close to religion in its influence; I've heard it given while the big guns were speaking at the front, and I may tell you, sir, it brought water to my eyes.”
I could well believe this, for the General was as soon to shed tears as a woman; and withal so readily excited that on least occasion his hand would shake like a leaf in a ripple of wind. He said the latter was from coffee and tobacco and not from natural nervousness. He was half right and half wrong. This tremble of the hands was the vibration of that mighty machinery of the man when the belts were thrown on for utter action. However, this is all aside the story.
The promulgation in Duff Green's valued imprint of the General's designs had made a stir, I warrant you. The capital community seized on the list of coming cabineteers with wondrous relish. Delighted day by day over the tattle of office, the local public sat up, one and all, and chattered of the printed names like unto a coop of catbirds. Particularly, I might add, were the Eatons tossed from tongue to tongue; folk took sides, and some assailed while others defended, and no little heat found generation. The General admired the buzz and clash—for his ears were open and he heard of it—being as fond of storms as a petrel; and for myself, I was well enough pleased. It was prior to my interview with Peg, you are to remember, and I not yet her partisan; I half hoped those resentful clamors against the Eatons would stay the General at the eleventh hour.
“It's not yet too late,” said I, “to have White for the war portfolio and leave Eaton in his Senate seat. I repeat, there's the country to think of.”
The General was blandly immovable. Said he, “I have told you how it's a war on me as much as a war on Peg. They fight really against me; they attack her good name in their criminal strategy. Besides, Major, you do the country insult.” Here he gave me a smile. “The country is larger than you would admit and not to be easily shaken or over-set. Nor are you and I of such import as we think. The worst that both of us might do of public evil would hardly serve to rock the boat. And though the common interest should dip gunwale a trifle, to this side or to that, are we to throw overboard a girl on an argument of trimming ship? I say to you for the last time, I'm no such mariner.”
The latter sentences were vivid of spirit, and it was clear the General had given the Eatons a deal of consideration since the night before, with the result of stiffening his first determination.
“You'll find more folk than myself,” I observed at last, “to differ with concerning this business. I do not believe the town is like to sit down quietly with the arrangement.”
“We will cross that river,” said he, “when we come to it. But why, Major, should you and I continue whirling flails over this old straw? It was between us most thoroughly threshed last evening. I think you are right about the town, however, and that's why I'm waiting now in my apartment. Mud or no mud, I would else be in the saddle for a morning ride. I'm in momentary hope of visitation by a delegation of society Redsticks, who, I understand, connive a descent upon me. They propose at the coming pow-wow to demand my Eaton intentions, and to make protest against them should their most worshipful fancy disapprove.” The term “Redsticks,” which the General employed, was a kind of border slang and the name given to the Creek hostiles in Weatherford's war. “You must stand to my back, Major, when the enemy arrives.” This, with a glance of humor which showed the General as not attaching vast emphasis to the invasion or what might grow from it.
“I will abide the shock of your Redsticks' charge,” I said, smiling with him, “unless they bring a reserve of women to the field. With the first dire swish of warlike crinoline I shall abandon you to the fate you've invited. I have stood to odds; but my courage is not proof against an angry woman.”
The General beamed in his droll fashion and, shifting our ground of talk, said he had letters to write and needed my help. It may as well be known, for soon or late it is bound to escape into notice, that I wrote most of the General's letters. He was a perilous hand with a pen, and no more a speller than a poet.
But there would be no letters written that day; for when we were in the very act and article of beginning, Augustus came in with a card.
“Ah! Colonel Towson, U. S. A.,” read the General. “Show him up.” This last to Augustus. “The Redsticks would seem to have dwindled to one,” observed the General, turning to me. “This Colonel Towson was to be their spokesman. Now he comes alone. He is a very brave or a very ignorant man.” And the General sniffed dangerously, and yet in manner comic, as recognizing the elements of a farce.
Colonel Towson, I must needs say, was a poor feature of a man, with a trivial face in which the great expression was a noble opinion of himself. He was of the cavalry, as I judged by the facings on his regimentals, for our visitor appeared in full uniform, and for part of his regalia dragged a clattering saber and wore fierce spurs to his heels. Plainly he was one of your egregious fops; and his breast was trussed outward and upward with the fullness of a pigeon's by dint of some vain contrivance inside his garments. As he brought his heels together, and stood with a deal of splendor just inside the door, the General ran him over with questioning eye that took in everything from the wax on his moustache to the gilt on his spurs.
“What do you want, sir?” demanded the General, as blunt as a hammer.
“I am Colonel Towson, Mr. President; the paymaster of the forces.”
Pigeon-breast spoke in high, affected tones, and would clip his words and slur his “r's” in a mincing fashion beyond imitation.
“Of what forces?”
The voice was calculated to plant dismay in the other's youthful ears. I was aware how the General's ferocity was assumed, and that deep in his throat he was laughing. I should have laughed myself, but managed instead to establish a firm gravity.
“Of the army, Mr. President.”
The high tone began to squeak from agitation. And no marvel! The General's frown was enough to abash a lion.
“Are you come to me on duty?”
“No, sir, Mr. President, I—”
“Then why do you wear your side arms?” The General could throw an expression into his face before which a hostile council of red Indians had been known to shrink and turn gray beneath the paints wherewith they were tallowed. The hapless Pigeon-breast was shaking in the shadow of one of the General's most hateful looks. When the other made no response, the General resumed:
“Note this, sir; I am not in the habit of being terrorized by the military forces of the nation. Never again presume to come into my presence armed and spurred, unless required by the regulations.”
“I'll retire, Mr. President, and change my apparel.”
This was feebly piped, and poor Pigeon-breast came nigh to wrinkling his coat in attempts to bow conciliation and apology.
“State your errand, sir, now you are here,” commanded the General. “I've no time for two visits from you.”
Pigeon-breast took what confidence he might from the General's brusque permission, and drew from his cuff a memorandum; as it were, the heads of a speech. Clearing his throat and collecting himself, he began what may have been a most lucid and eloquent discourse. Its effect was lost in the delivery, however; for what with the high thin tones, and what with the orator's lady-like affectations, neither the General nor myself could make more of it than of the laughter of a loon. For his own careless part, I don't think the General paid even slight attention. If Pigeon-breast were uttering thunder, then it was summer thunder and high and harmless, far above his head; he minded it no more than the scraping of a fiddle at a tavern dance. In the midst, Pigeon-breast was made to halt. The General waved his hand as demanding silence..
“We will shorten this. For whom do you come to me?”
“I was asked to see you on behalf of Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.”
The General glanced in my direction. Of course we well understood that the mighty purpose of Pigeon-breast was to protest against Eaton's selection. Indeed, we had caught enough of his oratory to teach us that much. Moreover, Pigeon-breast had at one stage read aloud the article from Duff Green's paper as the reason of his coming, and received the General's word that the list therein set forth was authorized.
But we had caught no word of Mrs. Calhoun, and her name, when it did fall, came as a surprise. The Vice-President's wife was the head of capital fashion—the stately queen of the little court. Both she and her husband, however, had called on the Eatons just following their wedding; and now to discover the lady in the enemy's van owned a sinister as well as unexpected side. It looked like a change of front, and much sustained the General's surmise that this was to be a war on him rather than the Eatons; that its purpose was politics while its source was a plot.
“Did I not tell you that here was an intrigue?” asked the General. I continued blowing my tobacco smoke in silence by the fire. Then, with utter suavity, the General returned to Pigeon-breast. “I must treat the messenger with politeness because of his fair principals. Let me understand: You come from 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington'?”
Pigeon-breast bowed as profoundly as he might with his armor on and gasped assent.
“And their objections are to Mr. Eaton in the cabinet—really to Mrs. Eaton?”
Another bow and gasp from the bold Pigeon-breast.
“Sir, give my compliments to 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.' Say I much regret that I must disregard their wishes. Say, also, they do grave wrong, a wrong greater than mere injustice, to one who in all that stands best is their equal. Being ladies, they should receive her as one of themselves; being women, they should feel for her as an innocent maligned; being Christians, they should come to her succor as one borne upon by troubles. These would be graceful courses, and make for the glory of 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.' On the point of their protest, however, describe me as saying that Mr. Eaton will be of my cabinet; I shall tender him the portfolio of war and he has signified his readiness to accept. I do not know what this may imply socially; I do not decide that, but leave it to the better and more experienced tastes of 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.' Also, you are to do me this favor, sir.”
Pigeon-breast, who was flattered by the General's long harangue, and inclined to congratulate himself over a polite finale to what as an interview at one moment was stricken of a storm, here aroused himself smartly.
“Believe me, Mr. President, any favor in my power.”
Pigeon-breast touched his brow with prodigious militaryeclat, and then slapped his leg with his hand like cracking off a pistol.
“Why, then, the favor is simple. Tell every enemy of mine, and especially every friend of Henry Clay, my decision touching Mr. Eaton. I want the news to travel fast and far. My friends will sustain Mr. Eaton; and as for my foes, it shall go hard but I discover ways to deal with them. You may depart, sir.” |
Pigeon-breast saluted with flattered chin in air, and went his way, and presently we heard his saber on its jingling journey down the stair.
“I do not understand that word about the Calhouns,” observed the General, when we were alone. “The Calhouns have already visited the Eatons and professed friendship. As for myself, I've supposed Calhoun my supporter. And why should he be otherwise?” The General shook his head as one puzzled. “We must, I fear, count as against us more than Henry Clay and his rogues of Bargain and Corruption. Well, so be it; a fight is like a frolic in so far that 'the more, the merrier,' as a proverb, applies with equal force to both.”.
Now that Pigeon-breast was gone, and we being alone, I remonstrated with the General for that he had entertained our caller and submitted to his anti-Eaton speech. I said it disparaged his dignity; that he had already listened to Duff Green, which was bad enough, but now he must stand with half-patient ear while yon clanking popinjay reeled off his high-pitched opposition and that of those befeathered dames whom he professed to represent. It was a poor beginning for a president.
“Why, sir,” retorted the General, “you, yourself, are wont to hector me at will; I may not buy a coat without you finding fault. Major, I fear me you are the proud one. To be sure, I stoop when I listen to such as Duff and our martial visitor just here. But you must know what Franklin said of stooping: 'The world is like a tunnel, dark and low of roof. He who stoops a little as he passes through will save himself many a thump.'”
“Oh, if it were to be,” said I, “an argument of saw and proverb and slips of dried wisdom, I might quote you not a few and redden your ears. What I say is, you sacrifice dignity; you know it full well at that.”
The General laughed. “But I had my reasons, Major. I sent him whom you term 'Pigeon-breast' forth to be a poultice to this Eaton inflammation. I want to draw it to a head. Duff Green wouldn't do; he'd keep our talk to himself, since my harshness hurt his self-love, and he's too vain to tell a tale against himself. And again, he would be made silent with thoughts of my possible resentment. With Pigeon-breast the cards fall differently. Did you not remark how well I flattered? At the outset he was afraid of me. In the end I packed his timidity in cotton-batting and sang it to sleep; I rocked his cradle and warmed his milk for him. I called up his pride and made him my messenger. He will tell the Eaton story to all, and give me as his authority; that is what I seek. It is a business that will be the sooner over by setting folk's mouths to the quarrel at once. And we should make it short for Peg's sake. Poor Peg; it's her tavern origin that kindles patrician wrath, and it is their aristocratic method to blow calumny upon her. Slander, Major,”—here the General donned his manner of philosopher—“slander, Major, is as much the resource of your true aristocrat as poison of your Turk.”
Before, in this relation, I go to that meeting with Peg whereof I made account in the commencement of my story, it would be proper, I think, to notice a singular personality; one who, in intermittent fashion, will run in and out of my history like a needle through cloth. His sewing, however, will be of the friendliest, for he was as loyal to the General as any soul who breathed.
Mordecai Noah, was the man's name. The General possessed a good previous acquaintance with him, although, as in the gentle instance of Peg, I was now to meet him for the earliest time.
Noah was a writer of plays, and an editor; moreover, he was a gentleman of substance and celebration in New York City, where his paper did stout service for the General the hot autumn before. Noah also had been America's envoy to the Barbary States during the years of Madison. A Hebrew of purest strain, Noah was of the Tribe of Judah and the House of David, and the wiseacres of his race told his lineage, and that he was descended of David in a right line, and would be a present King of the Jews were it not that the latter owned neither country nor throne. However this may have been—and indeed a true accuracy for such ancestral cliff-climbing seems incredible, when any little slip would spoil the whole—Noah was of culture and quiet penetration; withal cunning and fertile to a degree. Also, I found his courage to be the steadiest; he would fight with slight reason, and had in a duel some twenty years before, with the first fire, killed one Cantor, a flamboyant person—the world might well spare him—on the Charleston racetrack, respectably at ten paces. I incline to grant space favorable to Noah; for he played his part with an integrity as fine as his intelligence, while his own modesty, coupled with that vulgar dislike of Jews by ones who otherwise might have named him in the annals of that day, has operated to obscure his name.
The General told me of Noah somewhat at length on this morning, and just following the marching away of Pigeon-breast. He said he had sent for him, and that any moment might bring his footfall to the door.
As he dwelt on Noah and his characteristics, I was struck by a word. It is worth record as a sidelight on his own nature.
The General showed gusto and a lipsmacking interest in Noah's duel with the man Cantor, and ran out every detail as one runs out a trail. I could not forbear comment.
“How is it,” said I, “you so dote on strife?”
“I don't dote on strife. But when it comes to that, Major, war is as natural as peace.”
“If it were so,” I returned, “still your admiration is entirely for war. You do not love peace.”
“I don't love war so much as warriors,” he contended. “I understand your war man; and I do not fear him. Besides, your honest soul of battles may be made a best friend. I feel the rankle of a Benton bullet in my shoulder as we talk together; and yet to-day a Benton faces my detractors on the floor of the Senate. I say again, I love the natural warrior; I comprehend him and he gives me no feeling of fear.”
“Do you tell me you can be a prey to fear?” I put the query as an element of dispute. His reply was the word that surprised me.
“Fear?” and the General repeated the word with a sight of earnestness. “Sir, I fear folk who won't fight; I fear preachers, Quakers. They are a most dangerous gentry to run crosswise with.”
When Noah arrived, I was still sitting with the General. Noah was a sharp, nimble man of middle size and years, and physically as deft and sure of movement as a mountain goat. He took hold of my hand on being presented by the General, and I observed how he had an iron steadiness of grip. I liked that; I am, myself, of prodigious thews and as strong of arm as any canebrake bear, and when folk shake hands with me, a blush of emphasis is to my humor. I like to know that I've hold on somebody and that somebody has hold on me. As I looked in Noah's face, I was struck with the contradiction of his black eyes, and hair red as the fur of a fox. On the whole, I felt pleased to know that Noah was the General's true friend; no one would have cared for his enmity.
“I feel as though you were an old acquaintance,” said Noah, and his face lighted as I've observed a sudden splash of sunshine to light a deep wood. “The General has named you so often in his letters, and spoken of you so much in what interviews I've enjoyed with him, that you are to me no stranger.”
“And I've heard frequently and much of you,” I replied.
We from that moment were as thoroughly near to one another as though neighbors for a decade. It was a strange concession of my nature, for men come slowly upon terms of confidence with me, and my suspicions are known for their restlessness.
“This is my thought, Noah,” said the General; “this is why I summoned you. Blessed is he to whom one is not driven with explanations, and who intuitively comprehends. You are that man, Noah.” The General's vivid manner was a delight to me. “There's the Eaton affair—you read my scheme of a cabinet in the paper. There's to be a war upon the Eatons—upon me. Already I hear a dull rumble as the opposition takes its artillery into position. I would know what this means. Is it a frill-and-ruffle wrath alone and confined to our ladies? Or does it go deeper and plant its tap-root in a plot? You know what I should say. Four years pass as swiftly as four clouds; and Henry Clay would still hanker for a presidency. These Bargain and Corruption wolves will hunt my administration for every foot of the way, and strive to drag it down. You gather my notion, Noah. Discover all you can; back-track this Eaton trouble—it's but just started and the trail is short—and bring me sure word, not only of those who foment it, but of the position held towards it by both Clay and Calhoun. Of the hatred of the former I'm certain, and that he'll strike at me with foulest blow. Calhoun, elected to the vice-presidency by my side, I would have leaned on confidently; but a word has been said—the Major heard it—that nurtures doubt. Let me learn all there is of this tangle with what dispatch you may. My own belief goes to it that, when all is said, search will discover Clay to be the sole, lone bug under the chip, and Calhoun—and put it the worst way—but an indifferent looker-on.”
Noah paid wordless attention until the General was through. Then he spoke. “General,” said Noah, “I had already heard much when you sent for me. Your portfolio purposes have not been a secret well kept. Also, it has been abroad as gossip for almost a week, this ill talk of the Eatons; this morning's publication simply served to give it volume. Thus far, and personally, Henry Clay has had naught to do with it; his friends, however, have been prompt to lift up the cry. You are right, too, when you regard the rage of these wolves as threatening you. They would, as you declare, tear down your administration. They will leave nothing untried. They will hang on your flanks through the defiles and in the thickets of society; and it is thus they will seek to harass you by means of the Eatons. They reckon no slight help to their plans, General, through your high temper; I say this for no end of irritation, but to put you on guard with yourself.”
Noah would have gone forth at once, but the General held him in speech about Van Buren, who as present Governor of New York must resign his Albany position to assume place as the General's premier.
Noah, who lived Van Buren's right hand of power in his own region, was full to the brim with him, and I, who had yet to be introduced to the little Knickerbocker, sat absorbed of his description. The General had met Van Buren a dozen times or more; but in any sense of intimacy he was as ignorant of his future secretary as was I myself. We therefore gave fullest heed to Noah, who talked well, being one able to take you a man to pieces as though he were a clock, and show in detail his wheels and particular springs, and point you to the pendulum of motive for every hour he struck.
We were in mid-swing of talk when I was called. It was none other than Jim, to bring me that information—threatening, he deemed it—of the beautiful Peg who waited my coming below.
As I was going, the door standing open, one in coat of clerical finish presented himself without announcement, and rapped modestly on the door frame. I had had experience of his flock and knew him by his feathers. Plainly, he was a solicitor of subscriptions for some amiable charity. The book in his hand spoke loudly for my surmise.
My doubt, had one been entertained, would have found dissipation by the words of the General, as, harsh and strident, they overtook me on my way.
“No, sir,” I heard him say; “no, sir! Not one splinter!—not one two-bit piece! I shall begin as I mean to end. You people are not to send me out of the White House, a pauper and a beggar, as you sent poor Jim Monroe.”
Doughtily resolved, oh General! hard without and soft within! Doughtily resolved and weakly executed, when eight years later you are made to borrow ten thousand dollars wherewith to pay your White House debts before ever you wend homeward to your Hermitage!
After forty and when youth's suppleness has fled, one's fancy is as prone to lapse into a stiff inertness as one's joints. It came then to pass, as I journeyed parlorward along the old-fashioned corridors and stairways of the Indian Queen, that I in nowise was visited by any glint of the possible beauty of Peg, nor yet of her honest injuries; but rather, in half peevish fashion, I considered her a proposed incumbrance to the General's administration, in which I may be pardoned for saying—I, who had been busy with trowel and plumb-line about the corner stone and subsills of his whole career—I was smitten of an interest. Truly, I had been Eaton's friend; and had used him well, too. Also, I was glad to have him take Peg to wife, since such was his fancy. But why should she and he rise subsequently up to vex folk who were like to own troubles more properly their own? That was the question I held acridly under my tongue as I went onward to my meeting with Peg, and I fear some blush of it showed in my face.
Over six feet and broad as a door, I doubtless towered forbiddingly upon her imaginings when I came up to Peg; these and the cloud on my forehead—for I am sure one darkened it—showed her to be both brave and innocent when, without hesitation or holding back, she put forth her hands to me. I've told somewhere how she gave me her hand; that was wrong; she gave me both, and gave them with a full sweep of frankness, that showed confident at once and sad, as though with the motion of it she offered herself for my protection. She spoke no word; her little hands lay in my great ones, and I felt within them the beat of a sharp, small pulse as of one under strain and stress. Once, long before, I had toiled upward with caitiff secrecy and captured a sleeping mother-pigeon on her nest. The quick flutter of the bird's heart beneath my fingers was as this poor throbbing in Peg's hands. I remember, also, I was melted into the same sudden compassion for the pigeon that seized on me for Peg.
“I came to you because you are the General's old friend,” she said. Her sweet, large eyes were swimming, and her voice began to break. Then she put out an effort and brought herself to bay. “I've nothing to ask; not much to say, neither. I know what the General would do; my husband has told me. I know, too, what it will mean of slander and insult and suffering. And yet—I've prayed upon it; prayed and again prayed!—I must go forward. I can not, nay, I dare not become a bar across the path of my husband; I dare not poison his success.”
All this time I had been holding to her hands, for I felt her great beauty and it made me forget the name of time. Besides, this was no common meeting, but rather the making of a league and covenant between folk who were to be allies throughout a bitter strife. I think she noticed my awkward and scarce polite retention of her fingers, for she withdrew them, while a little flush of color painted itself in her face. Still, she did not do this unkindly; and, I may say, there was nothing of sentiment in my breast which cried for rebuke or tendered her aught but honor.
“Pardon a freedom in one twice your years, but you are wondrous beautiful.” These were my first words to Peg. “Mr. Eaton has come by mighty fortune.”
“My beauty, as you call it,” said she, with just the shadow of a smile that told more of pain than gladness, “has been no good ground to me and borne me nettles for a crop. I had been happier for a wholesome plainness.”
Then we settled to a better conversation; and the while her sweetness was growing on me like a vine and I becoming more and more soundly her partisan with every moment.
“My husband is much honored,” said she at one point, “and deems himself advanced by what the General would offer. Also, he sees nothing of the darkness into which I stare; he sees only the high station and the power of it, and the way shines to his feet. But I know what society will do; I have not been child and girl and woman in Washington without experience of it. Folk will turn from me and ignore me and seek to blot me out. If it were none save myself to be considered, I would abandon the field; I would hunt seclusion, cultivate obscurity as if it were a rose. But am I to become a drag on the man who loves me and gives me his name? Am I to be fetters for his feet—a stumbling-block before him?”
“There is no need of this apprehension,” said I; “you should have a higher spirit, since you are innocent.”
“Innocent, yes!” she cried, and her deep eyes glowed; “innocent, yes! As heaven hears me, innocent!” Her manner dismayed me with what it unveiled of suffering. Then in a lower tone, and with a kindle of that cynicism to come upon folk who, working no evil and doing no wrong, are yet made to find themselves fronted of adverse tides and blown against by winds of cruelty, “Innocent, yes; but what relief comes then? I am young; many are still children with my years. And, thanks to a tavern bringing up,”—here was hardness now—“I have so seen into the world's heart as to know that it is better to be a rogue called honest, than honest and called a rogue. That is true among men; I tell you it is doubly true among women.”
To be open about it, I was shocked; not that what Peg said was either foolish or untrue. But to be capable of such talk, and she with that loving, patient mouth, showed how woeful must have been the lesson. But it gave me none the less a deal of sureness for the level character of her intellect, and I saw she carried within her head the rudiments of sense.
“What is it you would ask of me?” said I, at last. “I can only promise beforehand anything in my power.”
“I would ask nothing,” she replied, “save the assurance that you will be my husband's friend and mine. I see grief on its way as one sees a storm creep up the sky. Oh!” she suddenly cried with a sparkle of tears, “my husband! He must not be made ashamed for me! Rather than that, I would die!”
Peg bowed her flower-like head and wept, I, sitting just across, doing nothing, saying nothing; which conduct was wise on my part, albeit I hadn't the wit to see it at the time, and was simply daunted to silence by a sorrow I knew not how to check. It was a tempest, truly, and swayed and bent her like a willow in a wind. At last she overtook herself; she smiled with all the brightness of nature, or the sun after a flurry of rain.
“It will do me good,” she said; “and when the time comes I will be braver than you now think.”
When Peg smiled she gave me a flash of white behind the full red of her lips. Then I noticed a peculiar matter. She wanted the two teeth that, one on each side of the middle teeth, should grow between the latter and the eye teeth. When I say she wanted these, you are not to understand she once owned them and that they were lost. These teeth had never been; where six should have grown there were but four; and these, set evenly and with dainty spaces between, took up the room, each claiming its just share. The teeth were as white as rice, short and broad and strong, and the eye teeth sharply pointed like those of a leopard. There gleamed, too, a shimmer of ferocity about these teeth which called for all Peg's tenderness of mouth, aye! even that sadness which lurked in plaintive shadows about the corners, to correct. And yet what struck one as a blemish went on to be a source of fascination and grew into the little lady's chiefest charm—these separated sharp white leopard teeth of Peg's.
When I came into the room I was thinking on the hardships to the General's administration; now I regarded nothing save the perils of Peg herself. With that on my soul I started, man-fashion, to talk courageously.
“After all, what is there to cower from?” said I. “You know society, you say; doubtless that is true. I confess I do not, since this is almost my first visit to the town. But I know men, and of what else is society compounded? Their heaviest frown, if one but think coolly and be sure of one's self, should not weigh down a feather.”
“Why, yes,” she cried, “you know men. But do you know women? Men are as so many camp followers of society; it is the women who make the fighting line. And oh! their shafts are tipped with venom!”
“It cannot be so bad,” I insisted. “So-called society, which must take on somewhat the character of come-and-go with the ebb and flow of administrations, begins with the White House, does it not?”
“We will do our best,” smiled Peg, without replying to my question.
Probably she comprehended the hopeless sort of my ignorance and the uselessness of efforts to set forth to me the “Cabinet Circle,” the “Senate Circle,” the “Supreme Court Circle,” and those dozen other mysterious rings within rings, wheels within wheels, which the complicated perfection of capital social life offers for the confusion of folk.
“Unquestionably, the White House,” Peg went on, “is the citadel, the great tower, and we can always retreat to that. We will do well enough; but oh!”—here Peg laid her hand like a rose leaf on my arm—“you do not understand, a man can not understand, what we shall go through.”
“Let us have stout hearts for all that,” said I. “It behooveth us to be bold, since no victory, even over weakness, was ever constructed of timidity. Besides, the foe may offer us its defeat by its own errors. I recall, how once upon a time, certain Creeks whom the General was to attack entrenched themselves, and all about felled trees and sharpened the branches into points, the whole as defensive as any bristle of bayonets. You, as thought these red engineers, would have deemed the place impregnable, for no one might force his way through thischevaux de-frise. But the General's military eye unlocked the situation. The sun-dried leaves and twigs were lying where they fell. An arrow, with blazing tow tied to its shaft and shot from a safe two hundred yards away, solved the problem. In a moment that precious defence was on fire; and the enemy, driven forth by the heat and flame and smoke of it, were met in the open and destroyed to a man. We may yet smoke these society savages into a surrender by setting an honest torch to their surroundings. One thing we can promise ourselves.” I remarked this in conclusion. “Whatever else may fail, at the worst, you shall not go wanting a revenge.”
“And that thought is sweet, too,” said she in return.
Peg's leopard teeth were not without significance; that much I saw. After all, her speech was to have been expected; for who will go further afield for revenge than your flesh and blood true woman, still of earth's fires and not ready for the skies?
Peg told me a portion of her story; partly because it was natural she should think that I, who had been a stranger to her, might justly want such knowledge; but mostly, I believe, for that she had an instinct to defend herself against what I might have preconceived to her disaster. Dear child, she had small cause to fret herself on that score! I remember she gave herself no little blame as the self-willed gardener of those thorny sorrows among which she had walked and was still sorrowfully to find her path. She would run on like this, as I recall:
“The first fault belonged with this tavern of an Indian Queen. I could have been no older than eight when I knew how folk who came here, Congressmen and officers of state and their ladies, looked upon us who kept the place as but servants over servants, and took care not to meet us on an equal footing with themselves. My father and mother were disrated as mere tavern-keepers who sold their entertainment to any and to all; and I, so soon as I came to discretion and an ability to apprehend, found myself included in the ban thus set upon my people. I've seen nurses skurry to carry their charges off from childish games with me and the contamination of my baby contact. Later, in girlhood, I've overheard mothers while they warned their daughters to avoid me, and experienced the tilt-nosed airs of those same daughters who with superior arts of insolence stung me like wasps. More often than once, I've crept away to tears of shame because I was the daughter of a tavern.
“But in the end it hardened me. I had a perverse, retaliatory temper. I grew up beautiful, so folk told me; moreover, I knew it but too well by the merest glance in a glass. With my beauty,”—Peg spoke of it in mixed simplicity and sadness as though she recounted deformity—“I was wont to fashion my revenge. My father—not a poor man, for while taverns may be vulgar they maybe profitable—was ever ready to spend money on me; and I had only to hint at a comb or a ribbon or a ring, to find the gewgaw an hour after on my table. Good, poor man! my father, calm and careless enough under his condition so far as it rested on himself, felt for my humiliations, which now and again he could not fail to see, and sought with trinketry and luxury of dress to repair the injury. Neither he nor my mother spoke of what they both must have felt, that is our nosocial condition, if one may so describe it; and for myself, I was too proud, and too tenderly in love with them for their thousand kindnesses, to bring it upon their notice.
“As I've said, I made my beauty the method of my revenge. I owned taste as well as looks, and my wits were as deep and as quick and as bright as my eyes. I've set many a wrinkle on many a fair brow by defeating it to second place in that woman's rivalry of looks.
“For these wars, where loveliness tilts against loveliness, my allies were the men. Compliment for me was never silent on their lips. I was the town's toast as I grew up. This put the women to an opposite course. As the men spoke of my beauty, the women shrugged their pure shoulders and told of my boldness; and I must confess that in a native vivacity, together with that rebellion of the spirit born of their attitude towards me, I gave them endless evidence to go upon. I have lived my life without an immorality or the shadow of one; I have done no wrong wherewith to shame myself; but, reckless, careless, and with the frank ignorance of innocence—and then, to be sure, because it made those others angry—I was greedy of men's praise, withal too free of speech and eye, and thereby offered tongues eager to assail me the argument required as material for their ill work. They, the women, wove for me as bad a story as they might, and then wrapped it about me for a reputation. How I loathed and hated them! those who, worsted of my beauty, would tear me with calumny by way of reprisal!
“Now I must tell you, it was I who wearied first of that game where it was beauty on the one side against icy stare, arched brow, and covert innuendo on the other. No; my tongue would not have spared them—it was never a patient member, that tongue!—but for such artillery, as you would call it, my persecutors were out of reach. There is a gravity of words; they descend and never climb; they must, like a stone, come tumbling from above to do an injury. Wherefore these folk high up were safe from me—safe from everything except my beauty; and since I maintained myself without a stain upon my virtue, even my beauty wore for them and theirs no real peril. Above, on the cliffs of society, they rolled down tale and whisper against me like so many black stones; in retort, though I might be beautiful and so madden them with the possession of what they lacked, I from below could harm them nothing. I think, too, some in pain of their own ugliness, envied and would have changed places with me. They would not, had they known what I knew and felt what I felt. My soul was in torment, and I grew never so callous but the darts of their forked malignancy would pierce and pain.
“It was to avoid conditions which grew at last intolerable—for I brooded when alone and magnified the evils of my position, turning morbid the while—that I wedded Mr. Timberlake. I never loved him; I took him to be a refuge rather than a husband, and my little life with him was not a happy one. By no fault of his, however; I think he loved me, and I know he did his best. I had nothing from him save kindness, and when he died in the Mediterranean I doubt not he carried into the other world a sincere regard for me.
“And I would have loved him if I could.” Peg waved her hand with an accent of despair, and as one who had striven and failed beyond recall. “But I could not—could not; strive as I might, love would not come. I felt guilt to live with him; I was glad when he sailed away; and, God help me! my sighs over his death were the sighs of one released from bonds.”
Peg broke and cried like any child. You should understand, however, that she was unjust to herself. What she said of her brooding aforetime to the frontier of the morbid was over-true. And, supersensitive, proud, her hope had wasted as her gloom grew; her griefs of girlhood, enlarged many fold doubtless, as she herself suspected, by stress of her own fancy sorrowing with a wound, had left solemn stamp upon her; and this took far too often and unjustly the shape of self-blame. Beneath all, and hidden deep within her breast, Peg carried small opinion of herself; thought herself selfish, hard, shallow, and of no rich depth of heart. She was wrong to the core; for her inner self was as beautiful as her face. And yet, despite knowledge on her own part, and her friends' assurances, in the ultimate recesses of her thoughts there existed a torture-chamber; and therein she ever racked herself as the one wrongdoer in what she had passed through. There was no driving her from this; she was merciless against herself; and while none not the closest might know, for in the presence of non-friends and strangers she showed the iron fortitude of an Indian or a soldier, to myself and those with whom she practiced no reserve these self-flagellations were much too painfully plain.
I say, folk near to Peg were aware of this morbid lack of soul-vanity and good regard for herself. There should be one exception counted, and that, curious to tell, her own husband. Peg, for all he might be double her age, and I think no very handsome man at that, I could see, when I talked with her, loved Eaton as she loved her eyes or mothers love their children. And yet, never to him did she show her true feeling; in his presence she was the brave, gay, bright, strong, brilliant Peg, asking in the fight which followed no quarter and granting none, she seemed to the common world. It is curious, and presents a problem too involved for my solution, that Peg should have guarded against the one she most loved and shut the door upon discovery by him of her own wondrous self. Yet so it was; it stood patent to me from the beginning that Eaton knew no more of Peg than of her whom he never met.
In her morbid estimates of her worth it is possible she feared to grant him too clear a view. She may have thought she would lose by it. The reason, however, for this great secrecy coupled with great love—this hiding from him for whom she would have died—I shall leave to be searched for by those scientists of souls who are pleased to explain the inexplicable. For myself, I confess I was baffled by it.
This, however, I will say; the fact that Peg could so practice upon Eaton to his blindness gave me no high opinion of that gentleman. He should have groped for her and grasped her, and found her out for the loving, loyal, sorrowing heart she was; and that he did not, but went in placid darkness of the treasure he held in his hands, content to have it so, marked him for a lack of insight and want of sympathy which I'm bound to say do not distinguish me. Such stolidity on the part of folk has caused me more often than once to consider whether the angels, by mere possession, may not at last find even heaven commonplace.
Still, it is none the less infuriating to witness so much beauty so much thrown away! Indubitably, the economy of existence asks for pigs as loudly as it asks for pearls, and to blame Eaton for failing in appreciation of Peg is as apart from equity as would be the flogging of a horse who sees no beauty in a moss-rose—and less, perhaps—not present in a musty lock of hay. However, it is none the less infuriating for that.
Mark you though, I would be guilty of no wrong to Eaton, nor establish him on too low a level in your esteem. He was in the Senate from Tennessee at the time, and of solid repute among his fellows. He was a brave, dull, good-humored sort, who thought better, perhaps, of a bottle than of a book—not to excess, you are to notice—and as a statesman, if he put out no fires, he kindled none; though he did no good, at worst he did no harm; and that, let me tell you, is a record somewhat better than the average. I have been attacked and charged with a distaste of Eaton. There are two words to go with that, and no one—and I challenge those who knew us both—can put his finger on any ill of word or deed or thought I ever aimed against him. Truly, I hunted not his company with horn and horse and hound; but what then? I take it, I'm as free to pick and choose for my intimates as any other. And I still declare what was in my thoughts in those hours I tell of, that Eaton, sluggish and something of a clod-head, and with a blurred, gray tone of fancy, was unworthy such a woman, whose love for him, be it said, was when I met her as boundless as the difficulty of accounting for its first existence. I say again, and the last time, I hold no dislike for Eaton, and more than once have done him good favors in days gone. That I shall grant him no extensive mention in these pages means no more than that he was but a supernumerary in the drama where of the General and Peg carried the great parts. Eaton came on and off; but his lines were few and brief and burned with no interest. There is little reason for prodigious clamor over Eaton, and little there will be. But I am not to be accused of unfairness to the man for that he dwelt with an angel and was too thick to find it out.
Peg at last recalled herself from the dead Timberlake. She brushed away her tears.
“These are all of them you are to see,” laughed Peg, stoutly, referring to her tears. “I promise to shed no more. However, you may quiet alarm; a woman's tears are no such mighty matter.” I showed perturbation, I suppose, and she would dissipate it.
Peg told me of her wedding with Eaton. She dwelt a deal on her love for him; but since one consents to it as a sentiment, even though its cause defy one's search, there comes no call to extend the details in this place.
It stood open to my eyes, however, as Peg talked, how no man was more loved than Eaton. And when I looked upon the ardent girl and considered, withal, the dull stolidity of the other, there would rise up pictures from my roving past to be as allegories of Peg's love. I would recall how once I saw a vine, blossom-flecked and beautiful, flinging its green tenderness across a hard insensate wall; and that was like Peg's love. Or it would come before me how I had known a mountain, sterile, seamed, unlovely, where it heaved itself against the heavens, a repellant harsh shoulder of stone. The June day, fresh and new and beautiful, would blush in the east, and her first kiss was for that cold gray, rude, old rock. That day at noon in her warm ripeness would rest upon it. Her latest glance, as our day died in the west, was for it; and when the valley and all about were dark, her last rays crowned it. And the vivid day, with her love for that unregardful mountain, the rich day wasting herself on the desert peak that would neither respond nor understand, was as the marvel of Peg's love.
It is all the mystery that never ends; woman in her love-reasons is not to be fathomed nor made plain. The cry of her soul is to love rather than to be loved; her happiness lives in what she gives, not what she gets. This turns for the good fortunes of men; also, it offers the frequent spectacle of a woman squandering herself—for squandering it is—on one so unworthy that only the sorrow of it may serve to smother the laughter that else might be evoked. However, I am not one to discuss these things, being no analyst, but only a creature of bluff wits, too clumsy for theories as subtle, not to say as brittle, as spun glass. Wherefore, let us put aside Peg's love and break off prosing. The more, since I may otherwise give some value to a jest of the General's—made on that same day—who would have it I was at first sight half in love with Peg myself. This was the General's conception of humor ard owned no other currency—I, being twice Peg's age, and in the middle forties, and not a trifle battered of feature by my years in the field. I was old enough to be Peg's father;—but when it comes to that, Eaton was quite as old.
It was time to seek the General, I said. Peg and I had arrived at a frank acquaintance, and we went together to the General's room in good opinion of ourselves, she the better by a new staunch friend, and I prosperous with thoughts for her of a coming elevation consistent with her graces of mind and person, and which should atone as much as might be for what she had suffered heretofore. We decided that Peg should wear a gay look, and harrow the General with no tears.
As we went along I was given to quite a novel enthusiasm, I recollect; and it was the more strange since, while no pessimist, I never had found celebration as one whose hope was wont to wander with the stars. I could see the white days ahead for Peg; and albeit I fear their glory shone not to her apprehension as it did to mine, and while they came slowly as days shod with lead, dawn they did, as he shall witness who goes with this history to the end.
My servant Jim was sent with a message to the General to give him the word of Peg's coming. During our talk in the parlor, Jim, be it said, was never far to call. Obviously, Jim proposed for me no dangers of bright eyes so far as remained with him to be my shield. He dodged in and out of the room, now with this pretext and now with that, and when I bade him repair to the General to say that Peg and I would visit him, the gray old rogue was fair irresolute, and hung in the wind as though he had but to turn his back on us and bring down every evil. I drove him forth at last, and when Peg and I would tap on the General's door our black courier was just coming away.