Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

As thread by thread I lifted up the inquiry of Peg's sorrow, the truth would begin to make itself plain to me. Eaton was something gross, and mayhap in his finer senses not unnumbed of the bowl. He could not value Peg—she, a perfumed spirit thing of music and color and fire and light! And Peg would feel his lack of appreciation; it would wring her heart, stab her like a dagger. Verily, I came by a great freshness when now I was on the right scent of it. This, it was, to lie at the root of her meaning when she showed me that vine trailing its rich beauties along the ground, instead of climbing, and said, “I am like that vine.” The prone and earth-held soul of Eaton offered her no trellis.

And so Peg mourned her lost estate of love! And why should she not mourn? she, thus swindled of a rightful destiny! Peg shone a thing of beauty to deck a heaven with; and here was she fated to be the jewel in the dulled head of a toad! Why should her sorrow find rebuke? Born to be the reason of admiration and to feed on it as a flower feeds on the sun, the irony of accident had flung her into this chill corner of neglect. And her love was dying—starving away its life. Peg did not love Eaton; the yoke galled her—yoking her as it did to one who, while perhaps owning the affections, the integrity, the loyalty, owned also the low unelevation of the brute. And for that, Peg would stay behind when Eaton went away and weep to see him coming.

While, with some fondness for the argument—since it would make for Peg's exoneration—I was moving to these conclusions, it ran abruptly over me how, during our first talk in the parlors of the Indian Queen, Peg's eyes would seem to swim in love for Eaton. I recalled her cry of pain when she feared he might be shamed for her, and how she said she would sooner die than that. Then, surely, Peg must have loved him; nor had he changed since then.

These memories were sent to baffle me; but with a second thought the fallacy of such deductions was laid bare. When, in the Indian Queen, Peg would weep for love of Eaton, she was but the bride of a month. She stood yet in the haze of the honeymoon, and had been given no frank outline of her mate. Then he seemed what he should be, not what he was, and Hope, not Truth, was painter to the picture.

Yes, it would walk before me right enough; Eaton had been a lover of gold to become a husband of brass. Peg was as much wasted on him as though one put a love verse from Herrick into the hands of a Seminole of the Everglades. In his arms she was an error—a solecism—a crime—as it might be, a lily on a muck-heap!

These thoughts so played the tyrant with me as to take the pen from between my fingers; I could do no work, but only sit and stare from the window while my mind ran away to Peg.

Then I resolved to call Peg over; she should adorn her throne at my desk's end; I would show her how, for all that cloudiness of sensibility on the part of another, there still lived one on whom her sweet fineness was not thrown away. I would dispatch her a note by Jim; I would crave her help for my mails. This should bring her, and be a fair excuse besides, since it was not the beginning of such requests. Peg had often aided me to get my letters off.

Note in hand and ready, I stepped to the rear of the mansion to summon Jim. I could hear his high, patronizing tones, evidently employed about the instruction of the cook. The two were close by a rear door that opened into the kitchen.

“Yassir,” I heard Jim say, “they has black bass in d'Cumberland, shoals an' shoals of'em. How much you reckon that one weigh?” Apparently they had a Potomac fish between them to be the basis of discussion. “How much that weigh? Five pounds? You hyar me, son, we uses that size fish for bait back in Tennessee. Do Jim ever catch a bigger one? Say; if Jim don't catch a bass in d'ol' Cumberland that's bigger than a cow, then Jim'll jine d'church! It was a heap excitin', cotchin' that fish. He grab d'hook; an' then he jes' nacherally split up an' down d'river like ol' Satan was arter him for dinner; an' then he done dives. That's whar he leads d'wrong kyard; for he bump his nose, blim! on d'rock bottom; an' it hurt him so he jes' turn, an' next he comes lippin' up through d'top of d'water an' goes soarin' off up into d'air for fifty foot. That's when Jim sees how big he is. When he gets up into d'atmosphere, he sort o' shuck himse'f, same as you-all sees a hen waller in d'dust; an', son, you could hear his scales rattle like shakin' buckshot in a bottle! An' at d'same time, that bass lams loose a yell folk might nacherally hear a mile, an' which shorely sounds like d'squall of a soul in torment. You hyar Jim! that bass—” At this, I broke in on the revelations of our black Munchausen with my demands. As he turned, I heard him call back:

“No, I don't get him; he done bruk d'hook.”