CHAPTER XX—THE GENERAL GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
THIS is of a steamboat day, and keel boats are but a memory. The General makes his tedious eight-weeks' way to Washington via the Cumberland, the Ohio, the mountains, and the Potomac valley. It is like the progress of a conqueror. The people throng about him until Wizard Lewis, remembering his broken state, fears for his life. The fears are without grounds to stand on. Applause never kills, and the General finds in it the milk of lions. He enters Washington renewed, and was never so fit for hard work. The General is inaugurated. As he is cheered into the White House by jubilant thousands, Statesman Clay, beaten and bitter, retires to Kentucky; while Statesman Adams goes back to Massachusetts, where his ice-waterisms, let us hope, will be appreciated, and from which frigid region he ought never to have been drawn.
When the General is declared President, Statesman Calhoun is made Vice-President. From his high perch in the Senate Statesman Calhoun begins at once to scan the plain of the possible for ways and means to name himself the General's successor. He proves dull in the furtherance of his ambitions, and conceives that the only best path to victory lies over the General himself. He must break down that demigod in the hearts of the people, and teach them to hate where now they trust and love.
The General is not a day in Washington before Statesman Calhoun is intriguing to cut the ground of popularity from beneath his feet. As frequently happens with dark-lantern strategists, his plottings in their very inception go off on the wrong foot. Statesman Calhoun is so foolish as to commence his campaign against the General with an attack upon a woman. The woman thus malevolently distinguished is the pretty Peg, once belle of the Indian Queen.
Between that time when the General came last to Washington as Senator and the pretty Peg was petted and loved by the blooming Rachel, and now when the General occupies the White House as President, destiny has been moving rapidly and not always gayly with the pretty Peg. In that interim she becomes the wife of Purser Timberlake of the Navy, who later cuts his drunken throat and walks overboard to his drunken death in the Mediterranean.
In her widow's weeds the pretty Peg looks prettier than before—since black is ever the best setting for beauty, and shows it off like a diamond. Major Eaton, Senator from Tennessee and per incident friend of the General, is smitten of the pretty Peg, and marries her. The wedding bells are ringing as the General rides into Washington.
It is an hour wherein Vice-Presidents have more to say than they will later on. Statesman Calhoun, scheming his own advantage, puts forward covert efforts to place his friends about the General as cabineteers. This is not so difficult; since the General is not thinking on Statesman Calhoun. His eyes, hate-guided, are fastened upon Statesman Adams and Statesman Clay; his single aim is to advance no follower of theirs. These are happy conditions for Statesman Calhoun, who comes up unseen on the General's blind side, and presents him—all unnoticed—with three of his Cabinet six.
Statesman Calhoun, who prefers four to three, next tries all he secretly knows to control the General's choice of a War Secretary. In this he meets defeat; the General selects Major Eaton, just wedded to the pretty Peg. His completed Cabinet includes Van Buren, Secretary of State; Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury; Eaton, Secretary of War; Branch, Secretary of the Navy; Berrien, Attorney General; and Barry, Postmaster General. Of these, Statesman Calhoun, craftily reviewing the list from his perch in the Senate, may call Cabi-neteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien his henchmen.
The General is not aware of this Calhoun color to his Cabinet. The last man of the six hates Statesman Clay and Statesman Adams; which is the consideration most upon the General's mind. He does not like Statesman Calhoun. But he in no sort suspects him; and, at this crisis of Cabinet making, that plotting Vice-President is not at all upon the General's slope of thought.
Not content with half the Cabinet, Statesman Calhoun resents privily his failure to control the war portfolio. He resolves to attack Major Eaton, and drive him from the place. As much wanting in chivalry as in a wisdom of the popular, he decides to assail him through the pretty Peg. It is the error of Statesman Calhoun's career, which now becomes one blundering procession of mistakes.
Statesman Calhoun's attack on the pretty Peg begins with hidden adroitness. There lives in Philadelphia a smug dominie named Ely. On the merest Calhoun hint in the dark, Dominie Ely—who has a mustard-seed soul—writes the General a letter, wherein he charges the pretty Peg with every immorality. Dominie Ely prayerfully protests against the husband of a woman so morally ebon making one of the General's official family.
The General is in flames in a moment. His loved and blooming Rachel was stabbed to death by slander! The pretty Peg was the blooming Rachel's favorite, in that old day at the Indian Queen! The General possesses every angry reason for being aroused, and he sends fiercely for smug Dominie Ely.
The villifying Dominie Ely appears before the General in fear and trembling—color stricken from his fat cheek. He falteringly confesses that he has been inspired to his slanders by a Dominie Campbell. The furious General summons Dominie Campbell, about whom there is a Calhoun atmosphere of jackal and buzzard in even parts. The General hurls pointed questions at Dominie Campbell, and catches him in lies.
While the General is putting to flight the two black-coat buzzards of slander, the war breaks out in a new quarter. The “Ladies of Washington,” compared to whom the Red Stick Creeks at the Horseshoe and the redcoat English at New Orleans are as children's toys, fall upon the General's social flank. They hate the pretty Peg because she is more beautiful than they. They resent her as the daughter of a tavern keeper—a common tapster!—who is now being lifted to a social eminence equal with their own. These reasons bring the “Ladies of Washington” to the field. But with militant sapiency they conceal them, and adopt as the pretended cause of their onslaught the slanders of those ophidians, Dominie Ely and Dominie Campbell.
Mrs. Calhoun, wife of Statesman Calhoun, at the head of Capital fashion and social war-chief of the “Ladies of Washington,” says she will not “recognize” the pretty Peg. Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien, wives of the three Cabineteers who wear in private the colors of Statesman Calhoun, say they will not “recognize” the pretty Peg. Mrs. Donelson, wife of the General's private secretary and ex officio “Lady of the White House,” says she will not “recognize” the pretty Peg. The latter drawing-room Red Stick is the General's niece. Also, she is in fashionable leading strings to Mrs. Calhoun, who as social war-chief of the “Ladies of Washington” dazzles and benumbs her.
Mrs. Donelson approaches the General concerning the pretty Peg.
“Anything but that, Uncle!” she says. “I am sorry to offend you, but I cannot 'recognize' Mrs. Eaton.”
“Then you'd better go back to Tennessee, my dear!” returns the General, between puffs at his clay pipe.
Mrs. Donelson and her unwilling spouse go back to Tennessee. The war against the pretty Peg goes on.
The General's Cabinet is a house divided against itself. Cabineteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien align themselves with Statesman Calhoun on this issue of the pretty Peg. For each has a ring in his nose, a wedding ring, and his wife leads him about by it socially, hither and yon as she chooses. Cabineteers Van Buren and Barry range themselves with Cabineteer Eaton and the pretty Peg.
Cabineteer Van Buren is short, round, fat, smooth, adroit, ambitious, and so much the mental tree-toad that, now when he is in contact with the positive General, his every opinion takes its color from that warrior. Also Cabineteer Van Buren is a widower, with no wife to lead him socially by the nose. Hat in hand, he calls upon the pretty Peg—a politeness which pleases the General tremendously.
Cabineteer Van Buren gives dinners, and asks the pretty Peg to perform as hostess. With a wise eye on the General, he incites Cabineteer Barry, who is a bachelor, to burst into similar dinners, with the pretty Peg in command. By his suggestion, Minister Vaughn of the English and Minister Krudener of the Russians, who like Cabineteer Barry are bachelors, follow amiable suit. They give legation dinners, at which the pretty Peg presides. The General adopts these brilliant examples with the White House. The pretty Peg finds herself in control of such society high ground as the English and Russian legations, two Cabinet houses besides her own, and last and most important the White House itself. It is a merry even if a savage war, and the pretty Peg is everywhere victorious.
Not everywhere! Mrs. Calhoun, as war-chief of the “Ladies of Washington,” with Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien about her as a staff, refuses to yield. These four indomitables and their beflounced and be-feathered followers, noses uptilted in scorn of the pretty Peg, prosecute their battle to the acrid end.
In the earlier stages, the General, his angry thoughts on Statesman Clay, inclines to the belief that these attacks on the pretty Peg are of that defeated personage's connivance, and says so to Wizard Lewis.
Wizard Lewis, when the General is inaugurated, is for returning to his Cumberland home, but finds himself restrained by the lonesome General.
“What!” cries the latter, “would you leave me now, after doing more than all the rest to land me here?”
Upon which reproach, Wizard Lewis remains, and lives in the White House with the General. It befalls that with the earliest slanders of the ophidians, Dominie Ely and Dominie Campbell, the General goes to Wizard Lewis with accusations against Statesman Clay.
“It's that pit-viper, Henry Clay!” cries the General. “Major, the pet employment of that scoundrel is the vindication of good women!”
Wizard Lewis holds to a different view. He declares that the secret impulse of this base war is Statesman Calhoun, and proves it as events unfold.
“And yet,” asks the General, “why should he assail little Peg? Both he and Mrs. Calhoun called upon her and Major Eaton, and congratulated them on their marriage.”
“That was while Major Eaton was a senator,” Wizard Lewis responds, “and before he became War Secretary and got in the way of the Calhoun plans. Your Vice-President, General, is mad to be President. Also, he is so blurred in his strategy as to imagine that these attacks on little Peg will advance his prospects.”
The General snorts suspiciously; a light breaks upon him.
“Then your theory is,” he says, “that Calhoun assails Peg as a step toward the presidency.”
“Precisely, General! Rightly construed, it is not an attack on Peg, but you. He is trying to put you before the people in the role of one who countenances the immoral, and upholds a bad woman. In that he hopes to array every virtuous fireside against you. He looks for you to ask a second term; and, by any means in his power, he will strive to destroy you out of his path.”
“Now, was there ever such infamy!” cries the General. “Here is a man so vile that he would pave his way to the White House with the slain honor of a woman!”
The hate of the General is now focused upon Statesman Calhoun. That ignoble strategist, he resolves, shall never achieve the presidency.
As one wherewith to defeat Statesman Calhoun and succeed himself, the General picks upon Cabineteer Van Buren—that suave one, who is so much to the urbane fore for the pretty Peg.
“Yes, sir,” says the General to Wizard Lewis; “I'll take a second term! And then, Major, we will make Matt President after me.”
“We'll do more,” returns Wizard Lewis. “When we elect you President the second time, we'll shove aside the plotting Calhoun, and make Van Buren Vice-President.”
“Right!” exults the General. “Then, should I die, Matt will at once step into my shoes.”
Neither the General nor Wizard Lewis is at pains to conceal their design. The sallow cheek of Statesman Calhoun grows sallower; for the news is like an icicle through his heart. It in no wise abates his war upon the pretty Peg, however; which—as Wizard Lewis guesses—is only meant to break down the General with good people.
Vindicated; in all quarters she rises in triumph over Mrs. Calhoun, Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, Mrs. Berrien, and what other “society Red Sticks”—as he terms them—seek her destruction. The next thing is to shear away the cabinet strength of Statesman Calhoun. Wizard Lewis recommends a dissolution of the Cabinet. He lays his thought before the General, who sits listening in the smoke of his long pipe. Cabineteer Van Buren will resign. Cabi-neteers Eaton and Barry will emulate his example and turn over their portfolios. With half his Cabinet gone, should the Calhoun three prove backward, the General shall demand their portfolios.
“And then?” asks the General, his iron-gray head in a cloud of tobacco smoke.