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 ofsalonsuccess 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.
Doubtless, since my very palms itched to be about that employment, I would have had my hands on others of the rogue crew, but I was granted no chance. Rivera poured himself against the scoundrels like a torrent. Quick, catlike, springing in and out, he smote upon two of them as with a poleaxe, and they went to the grass like folk of wood. The sound of the blows came to my ears as clearly as the click of balls in a billiard game. Beholding the thunderbolt work of Rivera, the others, losing courage, and with a concert of curses and growling cries, turned tail and ran.
There was one, however, of those who were yet upon their ignoble feet, to save himself this disgrace. When the rest ran off crying among the trees, this man would tarry; he was that wide-shouldered fighting man who was thought to match Rivera. For reasons of his own, and perhaps they were in a rude sort chivalric and to his credit, this fellow had not rushed upon us with the others, but stood at some distance looking on, arms folded across his chest. Now, when all were down or vanished in the dark, he, with arms still folded, came slowly towards Rivera.
“Volks tells me, lad,” said the fighting man as, arms still at peace, he paused within a few yards of Rivera, who would be coolly waiting for him, “volks tells me as 'ow you be summat of a boxer; and vor a certainty, you does make beef of them coves in a vorkmanlike vay—you does, upon my davy! But now, d'ye see, you settles vith me—me, Jim Burns of W'itechapel.”
“Assuredly!” returned Rivera, and his deep tones, like the roll of an organ, would carry the impression of one in wondrous good humor, “I shall be most pleased to settle with you. See, you may take your time; there is no hurry.”
The other, who seemed to have faith in the leisurely mood of Rivera, softly doffed coat and waistcoat, and stood in his shirt of gray cloth, trousers and shoes. Rivera similarly prepared himself; he would meet his enemy in the same light costume.
“Best to turn up your trowsers, lad,” advised the fighting man, “as I does. They may 'inder your veet, else, in steppin'.”
When these improvements had been wrought, the fighting man's thought would double a new corner.
“And yet,” he remarked, complainingly, “w'at's the bloomin' use? 'Ere's them coves all run away”—pointing to the last of the trio whom Rivera had beaten down, as that unworthy staggered to his feet and lurched off into the darkness—“an' no purse nor nothink to vight for. I sees no use, lad, in our puttin' hup our 'ands.” This last in a grieved tone.
“But you must fight,” remonstrated Rivera, in a sharp, eager fashion. “You came to this town to beat me. Will you now let yourself be stopped and never a blow? Are you afraid?”
“Me, afeerd?” retorted the fighting man, fiercely, his little eyes like sparks. “W'y, lad! th' cove doant stan' in leather as I'm afeerd on. Me, a fourteen stoner, leery? An' of only one? Well, I likes that!” The disgust of the fighting man was unmistakable.
It was a queer position, this waiting to be spectator of a fist duel between these game-some ones, but I did not feel free to leave until the thing should end. When the fighting man, arms crossed, came pacifically up, I would have been for going forward to lay hold on him, but Rivera, with a manner like a prayer and as he who seeks a favor for his soul, besought me to withstay my hand.
“Don't,” pleaded Rivera, but never taking his gaze from the man, “don't; he is mine.”
With that, giving over whatever of right I may have owned to the fellow, I went to Peg where she stood on a little knoll among the deeper shadows of the woods.
“I should take you to safety at once,” said I, in explanation of my loitering lack of expedition, “but I would see Rivera through this.”
“I do not want to go,” replied Peg, gazing the while as with a kind of fascination.
Peg's face wore a flush of excitement; this I could tell even in the shadows, and her words had a great ring of interest. I did not remark on the strangeness of it, nor frame a rebuke for that she should love to look on while gladiators fought. I, myself,—for I confess to a mighty lust of strife,—was hot to see what might follow, and it came to me as quite the thing that Peg should share my feeling. It was the savage in her blood, as the General would have said; but, a trifle strung of the fracas and with the wolf in me at full stretch, I felt no amazement, but only sympathy for Peg's sentiment.
As Peg and I stood considering the others in their words and motions, Rivera pointed to a level, glady spot where no trees grew and the moonlight came down in a white flood.
“That should be a fine place,” said Rivera to the fighting man, “for us to try each other?”
“It does look a tidy bit of grass,” assented the fighting man.
As the two walked forward to this turfy spot of fairness it brought them nearer to Peg and myself, and squarely under our eyes. It was as though they set a stage, and would produce their drama of blows for us and in such wise that we should not lose the least of it.
As the pair moved to the selected place, that moaning one whose arm I had broken, and who, when the rest had fled, still lay in a fit of fainting, so far recovered as to sit weakly up. But he could not yet walk, being shaken and dizzy mayhap, and so he, too, would be a looker on, albeit I do not think he was to see much, being taken with his own woes and groaning over them.
“W'at a come-down is this!” exclaimed the fighting man, as he moved into the center of the ground, “me, who should be champion, vighting by moonlight in a vorest vith a mad Yankee! W'at a tale to tell in W'itechapel!”
“I'm not a Yankee,” said Rivera, as if for the other's consolation, I thought, “I'm an Irish-Jew.”
“An Irish-Jew!” returned the other, with a note of admiration. “Now that's better, lad; Irish on Jew makes a bitter cross for the ring. But all the same, it's a shame vor me to be 'ere millin' by moonlight in voreign parts, an' never no purse nor ropes nor nothink, an' no 'igh toby blokes to referee or even 'old a vatch. An' me, mind you, as should be champion.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Rivera, in a hunger of boyish curiosity to know how honorable the conquest was he went about. “Of what should you be champion?”
“Hengland, lad, w'at else!” said the other. “It's all on account of an accident that I beant. I vights vith Big Tom Brown of Bridgenorth, I does; an' Tom, 'e naps it on the bugle so 'ard 'e's all vor bleedin' to death. An' vith that, the beaks is vor puttin' me on a transport to go to New South Wales, when I moseys down to Bristol an' goes aboard ship an' comes over 'ere. If I could 'ave stayed at 'ome, I'd a-beat Bendigo by now, an' been the champion 'stead of 'e. 'Owever, volks must do the best vith w'at they has, so hup vith your mauleys, lad. Time!”
More than once I had seen our rough keel-boatmen of the Cumberland indulge, when soaked of rum, in what they termed a “rough and tumble,” but this, when Rivera and the fighting man of Whitechapel stood up to one another, was the first time I was to observe how ones trained to fisticuffs expound the game. My keel-boatmen fought in a biting, clawing, gouging, wildcat way that was a climax of brutality and blood. This would not be the story of Rivera and his foe, for their labors were as cleanly accurate as a cameo, while yet the blows they dealt would have shaken an oak to its core.
As the fighting man of Whitechapel exclaimed “Time!” Rivera and he drew cautiously over to one another. I could see how each kept his left hand well forward and his left foot advanced to bear it company, while the right foot was planted with firm squareness, and no spring nor give to the knee, but the leg stiff to prop against a blow. The right arm would be used, too, more as a guard to save the body, but with hand in reserve clenched like iron to deal a finishing blow whenever the vanguard or left hand had opened the way with the enemy.
Rivera and the fighting man sparred carefully and as folk who would test each other. And yet, while there abode with each a wealth of care and a saving determination to be sure of guards and parries, there was no slowness. They paced about and before one another like two fighting panthers, each as ready as leven-flash to have advantage of a weakness in the other's defence.
To me it was like a picture of motion, and a sense of delight coursed in my veins. I was so held, too, I did not once cast my eyes on Peg, who with her hand on my arm was crowded snug to my side and—as I remembered later, when I would learn the reason of pain for it—leaning upon me with all her slight weight. No, so rapt was my gaze for the moment that I never once looked nor thought on Peg; and that, let me tell you, is a deal to say, since such was our witch-child's sweet hold on me I could number you few moments which did not find her in the fond foreground of my fancy.
Of the suddenest, the fighting man fell upon Rivera like a storm. But it would be of no avail. The blows he dealt, Rivera caught upon his forearm; and that with so careless a confidence it would appear to sting the other. In the last of the melee the fighting man, stepping swiftly near, struck a slashing, swinging blow that should have cracked a skull had one gotten in the way. Rivera leaped back, light as a goat and as sure. As the big fist swept harmlessly on its journey, Rivera laughed as at a jest.
Our fighting man, however, would own to no turn for humor. The laugh hurt him like the lash of a rawhide. Without pause or space, and with a sharpness that stood a marvel in one so bulky, he repeated the smashing swing, but with the other hand. Rivera did not spring backward; indeed, he had no time, even had he carried the inclination. But it would be all one with Noah's protege, for he ducked his head like a wild fowl who dives from the flash of a gun. Again the blow passed without scathe; only, this time, over Rivera's cunning head. The force of the swing half turned the fighting man; with that, and not striking him, but, as though in a spirit of derision, pushing with open hand, and at the same moment locking, as wrestlers would say, the enemy's ankle at the back with his foot, Rivera tumbled our huge gentleman over on the grass. He fell a-sprawl, but with no hurt to himself, and all as easy as delivering a bale of goods at one's door.
The fighting man got slowly to his feet. Then he looked on Rivera with an eye of puzzled discontent.
“Be you playin' vith me, lad?” said he at last. This in a manner of injury.
Rivera made no retort other than his quiet laugh that told rather of pleasure than amusement. Clearly, Rivera was in enjoyment's very heart and his cup would come to him crowned of high delight.
The fighting man went now and leaned against a tree to breathe himself. Presently he spoke again; I could tell by the way of it how his regard for Rivera had been augmented.
“'Ow 'eavy be you, lad?” he asked, his breath still coming in short, deep puffs.
“One hundred and eighty-two,” said Rivera.
“An' w'at would that be in stone?”
“Thirteen.”
“D'ye see now!” exclaimed the fighting man, dejectedly, “an' that should be my veight. Only I'm a stone above; but it's fat an' does me 'arm. You bees a 'ard un, young master, an' I doant know as 'ow I can do vor you, an' me not trained. 'Owever, I shall try all I knows. Time!”
For the second occasion the two stood forth against one another in the middle of the moonlighted glade; and again the fighting man was the aggressor. It would be still the same old tale; Rivera foiled him and beat him back upon himself at every angle of his effort. It was like, a tune to simply see Rivera for his eye and hand and foot worked all together in a fashion of harmony like the notes in music.
But the dour end was on its way, and it fell upon the victim like the bursting of a bomb. The fighting man had stepped a pace backward following a rally in which he won nothing save chagrin. As he retreated, Rivera would seem to swoop on him. It was a feint—an artifice; it had for result, however, the drawing of the fighting man again upon Rivera. Straight from his shoulder, and by way of retort or counter to the feint, the fighting man sent his left hand for Rivera's face. It would be the situation wrought for. Rivera, with feet firm set, moved his head aside so that the blow met nothing, but whistled across his left shoulder. Then his left hand, arm as stiff as a bar of iron, met the oncoming foe, carried forward with the momentum of his own wasted blow, flush in the mouth. I heard the sound of it, and saw it jolt the other's head back as though he had run against the pole of a baggage wagon. The vicious emphasis of it shook his senses in their source; before he could rally, Rivera dealt him a smashing blow above the heart with his right hand; it was a buffet like the kick of a pony and one that would have splintered a rock!
The fighting man fell forward senseless on the grass; the moonlight played across his face and tiny streams of blood were running thinly from his nose and ears. He lay without motion or quiver, and, after considering him a bit with all the warmth an artist might bestow upon a masterpiece, Rivera turned loungingly to Peg and myself where we were viewing proceedings from our knoll. There was a dancing light in Rivera's eyes such as comes to a child pleased of a new toy. As he stood before us, a smile about his mouth, he stretched upward on his toes, and raised his hands above his head, his vast chest arching and swelling the while like a drum, and the muscles of his neck writhing until they fairly burst the collar of his gray shirt and sent a button buzzing into the darkness.
“He wasn't fit,” said Rivera, recovering himself from the muscle-stretching, and beaming amiably; “the fellow was not in condition.” Here he indicated with a nod the prostrate fighting man, still stunned and bleeding where he fell.
“Have you killed him?” said Peg, with a deep breath. The girl was drawn as tense as harpstrings. “I hope he will not die.”
“Oh, no,” declared Rivera; “he will not die. In two minutes, or at the most in ten, he will be well again. If he do not come to his wits in ten minutes, I shall help him with water on his face.”
“We have to thank you,” said I; “you are a brave fellow to match yourself against a horde.”
“I was told always to follow them,” said Rivera. “I have been at their heels for weeks. But they would do nothing until to-night.” Rivera's manner when he related the long-drawn indolence of his quarry and those weeks wherein they would “do nothing,” tasted of disappointment. “However,”—this as though a wrong had been repaired,—“they got to work at last, so after all it ends right.”
Now I walked across to my moaning one of the broken arm, who still sat nursing his injuries.
“Why would you rob us?” I asked.
“Rob you?” he repeated between moans, and with a startled air. “No one wanted to rob you.”
“You and your gang,” said I—for this was the story I meant to tell, if made to tell one of the night's turmoil—“you and your gang are footpads. You would have robbed us. Should you be in the town to-morrow, I will find you a place of bars and bolts.”
Certainly, these brawling creatures were not highwaymen, but only ruffians whom that Catron had hired for I know not what particular purpose of revenge. But the wretch's exclamation, “Here is our big lover and his light o' love!” alarmed me for Peg. I would not have that tale told to thus bring forth her name. It were better to drive these fellows off and have an end of it. That was my thought in calling them footpads and talking of attempts to take a purse.
The argument of robbery put a measure of life into the moaning one; he got upon his feet and made ready to betake himself to scenes of better safety.
“My arm is broken,” said he, whiningly, and as hoping I might feel a sympathy.
“It should have been your neck, instead,” said I, in no wise sympathetic. “And so it would, had I owned the forethought to have had you by the throat rather than your arm. You might better depart, sirrah; else I may yet wring round your head, for my spirit is hard laid siege to by some such twisting impulse.”
That was enough; our moaning one made shift to get himself away through the trees and with not a trifle of expedition.
“And now, what will you do?” I asked Rivera.
“Oh, I shall remain here,” replied Rivera, simply, “and wait for him to return to his wits,” Here he pointed to his enemy. “He is a very bold, strong man, and perhaps when he has recovered and rested he may want to fight again.” This last sentence was vibrant of a dim hope.
Turning from me, Rivera brought a little snow-water in his hat from a hollow where it had collected during the thaws and began to sprinkle the face of his fighting friend from Whitechapel. Leaving him upon these labors of grace and philanthropy—albeit I believe the thought uppermost in his innocent heart was that the smitten one, when duly revived, might declare for another battle—I again sought Peg. I went to her something stricken of my conscience and uneasy with the fear of having neglected my duties as her cavalier. I found her sitting upon the little knoll, her foot drawn under her, and she nursing her right ankle in a marked peculiar way.
“Was not Rivera grand!” exclaimed Peg, as I came up. “And you, too, watch-dog: I shall never forget the picture of you”—Peg spoke in a bubbling way and as though she overflowed of ecstasy—“as you flung that crying creature in the faces of the others. It was a moment of nobility; I shall never miss it from my memory.”
“And what has gone wrong with your foot?” said I, for from her crouching position and the manner in which she would caress her ankle I was struck with the fear of some disaster; nor was I wrong.
“It is my ankle,” said Peg, and I could notice how her brow was wrung with the pain of it. “As I climbed upon this knoll in the first of it, my foot turned under me. I did not observe until just now how sharp was the injury.”
That was the story; Peg's ankle, for all her strong high boots, had won to a grievous wrench.
“Now that I've nothing else to think on,” said Peg, biting her lips to smother a cry, “it gives me torture like a knife.”
“Your ankle,” said I, “is becoming swollen; and that in those tight-laced boots, let me say, should mean a torment of the inquisition.”
My years in the field had made me deft of strains and bruises and, when need pressed, even broken bones and wounds more threatening. I straightway knelt down before Peg and began with care to make loose her footgear. What a little boot it was! “One and one-half” was the size, so Peg told me. I slipped the boot off with mighty tenderness and put it in the pocket of my coat.
“And I'm very proud of my small foot, watch-dog,” said Peg, a smile struggling with the lines of pain which pinched the corners of her mouth. “Yes, I am proud of my small foot. Why not? It came to me from that same wareroom of nature where you got your great heart and that arm of might, and where the good General found his honesty and his courage. I've as much right to be proud of my foot as you folk of those attributes of excellence I've named.”
Peg was striving to laugh down her pain with these compliments for her foot; I could tell, moreover, that she was a far cry from success, for her pretty argument ended in a halfsob as a pang more than commonly severe crushed her poor ankle in its vise.
Gently I chafed Peg's foot; and while that would do little good, it served to soothe and modify the instant agony. Meanwhile I told her how I would carry her home in my arms so soon as the first grief of the sprain was chafed away.
“Carry me in your arms!” cried Peg.
“What else?” said I. “You can't walk.”
So, then, Peg made no more demur; and presently, when her foot was well enough, I lifted her and started through the woods. It would be no more than just carrying a child; and since Peg put her arm about my neck, and helped to keep her place, my own arms even failed of the full burden of her. It was an easy task at any rate, and if you will be told it, a sweet task, too; this walk with Peg held close, and her hair, which had been caught up with a comb, to fall down and sweep across my throat and face. I could taste a fragrance in that hair like a breath from the Isles of Spice—a perfume that fair set my bosom in a flame.
It might have been the half of a mile that I carried Peg; however, I had no knowledge of it, whether for the distance or the time, but only of a bliss that was like a radiance, and a heart-willingness to go on and on and on to the world's end.
It was Peg herself who at last would bring me to my senses; for I was pressing forward as void of speculation as a drunken man to march through the crowded avenues of the town, Peg on my breast and my two arms holding her tight like a treasure.
“Put me down, watch-dog,” whispered Peg, for her mouth was at the very door of my ear, “put me down. I can stand well enough. Have me down, and let us wait here until we can call a carriage. It would be a perplexing sight to quiet folk were you to go striding through the streets with such a burden.”
With a sigh to end so dear a toil, I had Peg down carefully; and there she stood, and as she would say it, “like a chicken on one foot.” It fell our luck that one of those carriages of public livery, whereof there was plentiful store in the town, drove by about this time. I called to it, and placing Peg therein, soon had her at her own door.
“I am mighty sorry for the sprain,” said I, as I lifted Peg from the carriage.
“Are you?” quoth Peg, with an archness that would almost cloak the pain. “Now is that gallant of you, watch-dog?” Then, making a mock of my words and manner: “I am mighty glad for the sprain. Only, I could wish my mother lived farther away. I never knew how close she was till now.”
As the winter wore into spring, the talk to swell and grow was of Nullification. Calhoun's state of South Carolina had laid aside disguise, and while nothing worse than speeches, with now and then a doughty resolution, were indulged in, these showed ever of that rebellious sort that waited only to be turned into action to become sufficient treason. The General sat brooding and watching the drift; his plans of men and rifles and ships laid like a trap, and set to snap up in the jaws of them the first traitor to be afoot for that secession the Calhoun clique would claim was each state's holy right. Altogether, the days were on a strain, and hair turned white and folk went pale of the cheek with the worry of the question “How will this ferment end?”
The one query of most concern related to the General. What would he do? To what line would his resentment travel? Folk knew how he was against Secession and States Rights and Nullification, or whatever the name might be wherewith iniquitous rebellion pleased itself for the moment, but would he treat these sins of politics as stark treason? Would he fall back on courts and hangman's ropes in dealing with them?
No one might tell. The General, after he made himself plain with that Rhetz who came to spy out his resolves, would say no farther word. Ones in interest might go wrong or go right; as for the General himself, he would light no more lamps.
“Have I not told them what I will do?” cried the General. “Must I be out of my bed o' nights to tell them again? No; let these would-be treason-mongers proceed as they see their way. Besides, to hang the right man now may save the lives of later thousands.”
This was said for my ear alone; to no other would the General so much as give one look of yea or nay.
While the General would be the sphinx over Nullification, prudent rebellionists argued for a waiting strategy. There would dawn the anniversary of Jefferson's birthday; there would come that dinner at the Indian Queen; the General's conduct if not his words on that occasion must surely tell his story of decision. Should he remain away, they would know he feared to face them. Should he be present, they would try him with toasts of treason and mark his manner under fire. They would ask him for a sentiment; what he said or did in retort might give them every needed glimpse. Decidedly, it was wise to wait; Secession would keep; in the name of one's neck and a rope, proceedings might better be stayed until those toast experiments on the General were given a chance.
The General was well enough pleased with this uncertainty whereof he now found himself the hub. He guarded his words, left every man to grope out his own path for himself, and the days coursed on with the unanswered question of the General's determination in their mouths. Thus dwelt the business on that day of April from the developments whereof so much was to be hoped.
For the prior space of eight weeks or more the General had said little to me of that banquet planned of nullifiers to uncover him on those topics of perilous statecraft. Seeing his taste to be mysterious, I would say nothing to the General, whether to ask a question or give a hint of conduct, but left him to himself. I knew what he would do; and for the detail of how he would go upon its execution, I was the more willing to miss a forecast of it since I have a weakness for the unknown and am as prone as any other to save up surprise for myself. Wherefore, I would have the General make his own maps and design his own ambuscades, and leave me in blindness of them. On that April morning I owned no sure knowledge that the General would even attend the banquet, to say naught of what he might do or say if ever he once were there.
It was the middle of the afternoon when the General looked into my workshop, pipe in mouth, and said with a twinkle in his eye, a twinkle that was both mirthful and hard: “Major, I take it you and I will go to that dinner to-night?”
The General would put this as though it were a question; not because it stood unsettled and unsaid as a thing resolved, but it was the way of him when he would pay you a compliment to pretend a consultation, and coax you into a council, hoping you would advise those things he was already resolved upon like iron and which were often half performed.
For all I was aware of this talent on the General's part to be polite, and was certain, when he glanced in through my door, that both of us would be of the band about those Indian Queen tables, I was quick to humor his whim for the mysterious and undecided. I looked up as one who turns a new proposal on the wheel of his thoughts.
“It is my idea,” said I at last, with the air of a man who likes the notion's flavor, “that your presence would work for good. I should say we might better go. We may count the enemy, and that at least should be something.”
“You are right,” returned the General. “We will go; and I think, too, it might be good policy to let the foe count us.”
The Indian Queen was a crowded hostelry that night. The halls and waiting rooms of the tavern were thronged of eminent ones. Some were present to attend the Jefferson dinner; others casually for gossip and to hear the news.
As the General and I would be going up the stair, my eye was caught by the heavy shoulders and lion face of Webster coming down.
“There's too much Secession in the wind for me,” remarked Webster, as the General asked if he were going away.
“You did not leave the Senate for that,” responded the General. “If Secession be here, it's a reason for remaining.”