“Are they not beautiful?” she asked. “I love the flowers; so sweet, so contented on their stems among the leaves! Are they not beautiful?”
“And how will I see flowers while you are in the place?” said I.
This was to cure her out of her sadness, which, for all her words about the flowers, hung over her face like a mist.
“Now, see how well you said that!” cried Peg, brightening a little and turning me her droll look. “Was it prepared? Was it spontaneous? Really, slave, were you to go on like that for a year, or say for two, my hope might revive over you.” This lightly, and to step off her tongue with foot of air. Then, for my bewilderment beyond hope, she without warning breaks into tears. And next, to be a cap-sheaf on my shocked amazement, she gives me this at the door, to which she cries her way blindly: “My husband will be home to-night!” And with that she leaves me helplessly to wonder was there ever born upon this earth, to be a beautiful woman and turn folk mad, such another confusing tangle as this Peg of ours!
CHAPTER X—THE MAJOR AND PEG AT CROSSES
Next morning I went straight into the midst of my correspondence and began tossing it on my pen as husbandmen toss hay. There rang no unusual call for this energy of ink, but the whole truth was that, flying like a fugitive before pursuing thoughts of Peg—I may tell you they had a fine dance about my pillow the night before!—I would make a refuge of my work.
Long ago I had given up the hope of solving Peg in her vagaries. One would never know where or when or how to lay hold on her, for she came to one new and new each day. Wayward, erratic, now fierce and now tender, now in laughter and now in tears, one might not count on her moods in their direction more than on the flight of birds. The one only thing one might be sure of concerning Peg was that one was sure of nothing.
It was the thought of those tears for the home-coming of Eaton which would storm me down and have me captive for all I might barricade with pen and ink. What should they proclaim? That Peg was unhappy, truly, since folk do not weep for mirth. In a way I was daunted of my honor as I went about these thoughts; it seemed a trustless thing to dwell on Peg and her wedded life. And I would fight against it; and still it pinned and held me. In the last of it I was claimed by the conclusion that Peg found existence grievously dark, for what else should be headwaters for those tears? Also, I resolved that I would coldly look the question of her grief in the face; it might turn the better for both of us to lay hands upon its cause. I was given the more courage for this scrutiny since I had not forgotten how Peg named me to be her only confidant; that word put a trust upon me and made my question-asking a kind of duty.