“I had no such thought in the beginning,” replied Noah. “I knew, as did you, and with a glance, how our entertainers were nothing fine nor deep, but of a harshest clay and of least intelligence. No more delicacy was required than might do for driving pigs. At first I sought to develop their whereabouts, and stormed the woods with my remarks. In that, and on the sheer chance of it, I employed the name of Timberlake. The daughter's disturbed features were a cue. And you know the rest. The digging up of the authorship of the letter was but the birth of a bold guess. However, we've paralyzed that trio of tongues, which is excellent as far as it goes. And we must beat out these fires wherever we find them. Else they will spread, and may come to mean a conflagration that shall burn some one to a cinder.”
“And going back for cause,” I said, my thought recurring to Peg, “I still can not tell the hound purpose of this incessant, malignant pursuit of our little girl.”
“Sir, they reason in this guise,” returned Noah. “As I've told you, the great impulse springs from the adherents of Calhoun. They desire the destruction of the President as a method of their man's advancement. They fear that the President will seek to succeed himself—there has been illustrious example—or, in default of that, insist on selecting his successor. They attack Mrs. Eaton in hope of its reaction against the administration. Suppose, sir, they make her out to be vile, suppose they show the administration as condoning and defending her vileness, will they not have organized the women against us? Give Calhoun the women of the country to be his allies, and he will go over the administration like an avalanche.”
“But you”—now I spoke gingerly, for I would not hurt so true a friend nor ruffle him with himself—“in your pretense of friendship for Calhoun, and as well in other particulars, misled our harpy folk.”
“I but fought the devil with fire and snared liars with lies,” said he. “These she-villains were not entitled to the truth. Only truthful folk have a right to truth.”
When the General and I were together, I laid before him those ethics or word-morals of Noah; he stoutly agreed with that diplomat.
“One is not always bound to tell the truth,” asserted the General. “Would you tell a footpad whose gun was at your breast where you lodged your money? In war, would you disclose your strengths or your plans to the foe because he asked? Sir, truth is a property—a goods; to have right to it one must possess title to it. The casual man, and the more if he would work me harm, has as scant a right to search my head with his questions as to search my pockets with his fingers. Take my word for it, Major,”—this in high Delphic vein, for the General was growing pleased with his argument—“take my word, sir; the right in the one is the right in the other, and he who may lock a door may lie.”
“These harpies,” said I, commenting on what had befallen, “and the Reverend Campbell have fair admitted their guilt.”
“Why, as to that, sir,” returned the General, “the falsity of the story was never in doubt. But the prime thing is to smother out these calumnies. It is not hard to see how this day has been well spent.”
In concord with what we had long before agreed, neither the General nor I, by lisp or the lifting of an eyebrow, gave Peg a least intimation of what had gone forward about her name and fame. And yet, she must have divined her close interest, for in the early hours of the twilight she came again to the General, saying she remembered books of account kept by Timberlake's own hand, which would demonstrate his whereabouts for those four years. Her mother, Peg said, had these books in her house.