Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

These conditions of separation between Peg and myself, as days went on, would give me less and less of ease. I was forever carrying them on the ridge of my thought, and they made an unhappy element in life's skyline. I stood the more in grief, since to be out with little Peg was like a quarrel with a child; and then, moreover, the fault of it was mine, for I overstepped an obvious line of right conduct when I went forth upon Eaton's disparagement. It was a fool's work, besides; for I might have known she would be sharp to notice and as sharply bound to resent; had she not already warned me how I disfavored Eaton, and told me I was jealous? She would say, truly, she did not care for that jealousy; but that was mere laughter when her fancy was at merriest. Also, she had told how I did not know her, and never would see her true self; I began now to understand that she was right. And yet I would have her back, and our old frank confidence returned; for Peg, as I tell you, was only a child—a prankish girl when all was in, and it made no more for my credit than for my peace that we should be at crosses.

It stands a thing strangest of all, how differently one will regard another when the time is this or that. Peg, as I have written, would seem ever to me the rompish child; for my thoughts of her were forged and beaten out upon the stithy of those moments when, free and playful and without restraint, she sat alone with me. By the same token! I recall another score of moments where the stage was a drawing room and strange folk framed the scene, and Peg, a beautiful woman of dignity and grave reserve, would remind one of no child at all. But then she would not be Peg to me; on such times when this proud, sufficient being made me some sweeping, stately recognition, and as though I had known her but a day, I have stood aside to wonder was she that playful leopard Peg whose white mark I wore on my hand? Was it she to call me “slave” and kiss the mark, or “watch-dog” and make me a collar with her arms? And still I liked her thus. I was proud to see her proud; and my bosom would swell to note how when Peg, fastidious, and with her highbred look, stepped across a room, she seemed among the women gathered there—and they the Vere de Veres—a greyhound among poodles, or rather the leopard she was among a troop of tabbies. These be crude comparisons, surely; yet there comes no other to so fit with my thoughts of rearward days when Peg moved an empress in the midst of peasants, at once the envy and despair of rivalry.

As I tell you, for all these exhibitions of commanding womanhood, Peg would continue with me but a child; the image of such ballroom triumphs were not to remain with me, while the real Peg, the true Peg, the dear Peg of memory when alone, would ever be the laughing, mocking, hectoring, teasing Peg on her leathern throne at my desk's end. It is the same with men; there come such words as play and work, and danger and safety; and the man you saw on the battle-line, as stern and as brave as Caesar, is that boy by yonder campfire who now laughs over some tale of personal chicken-pillage when he fled before a mad old dame armed of a pudding stick.

While Peg and I were on these long-range terms, I went more in hunt of the General for his company's sake and for conversation. I do not think the General stood aware of Peg's cold pose towards me, for, as I have urged, he was no one to see such things; besides, Peg, who showed herself no bad strategist, would be about me with the friendliness of those days that were, whenever the General sat by to make a third. Peg held the General in a best esteem; and then, too, she would be mindful how lately he was ill and save for her tending might have died, and be the last to vex him with thoughts of how two so near him and dear upon his sentiment nourished a feud among themselves.

While the General missed the reason of my frequent visits, he no less relished our talks; for a president, let me inform you, is a mighty idle man, for all your sycophants and toadies of print would depict him as a galley slave who breaks his heart against an oar of duty. A president has little to do beyond fret and fume while affairs go crosswise to his wishes; also, the General would have him to be a most tied and helpless creature, besides.

“The presidency,” he would say, “when one goes to a last experiment, is but another word for paralysis.”

“And is a president such a thing without hands?” I would ask, for it was sure he thirsted to lecture.

“The office is so much bigger than the man,” he would reply, “that it controls him, as a mountain might bear down the strongest were you to load his back with one.”

“Now, I had thought a president to be of some consequence,” I would retort, in a manner of vexing him. “At least I have known presidents to think so.”

“And so thought I,” he would respond, “ten months ago and before inauguration. Sir, a president is but the fly on the chariot wheel. Being vain, the insect might flatter himself with a theory that he is the reason of that dust and motion he observes. But the insect's vanity would be none the less in error. I say to you, a presidency is a thing of bolts and bars and locks and fetters. What may a president do? He may say this man shall keep office and that man shall not, and that would be as important as if he said this rat shall go overboard and that rat stay to roam the ship. The vermin fate of these, for black or white, would neither affect a course nor pick those ports at which the vessel touched.”