Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

“For all that,” contended Peg, with much candor, “that is what you should have done. Remember: in treating with a woman, while one should be a gentleman—your word—one must be a man. There is this, too, about a woman with the man she would love. She likes warfare but she does not want to win; victory would only embarass your woman. Her instinct is rather for protection than to protect, and to find him on whom she leans weaker than herself might alarm her love into flight. And as for that politeness you tell of, it is an artifice, like a dress or a house, and good only within a limit. There be occasions when politeness to a man is a fair thing thrown away; also, there be occasions when politeness to a woman is nothing better than a waste of justice. Watch-dog, you should have pocketed the 'gentleman' for use on a languid day; you should have been all 'man.' You should have seized me by the shoulder; you should have made me go or stay, or talk or stand mute, as you willed. It was for that”—and Peg gave me this gravely, like some confidant Pythoness sure of her Apollo-inspired word—“it was for that, watch-dog, you were made the stronger of us two.”

Now here was a pretty word of caution! It was as the General once said: one had only to listen, and lo! one would hear ever the savage stirring about in Peg.

“There is one thing whereof I was cheated,” said I, after a brief silence, and seeking to give our talk a slighter, if not a direction of more reason. “You were to give me lessons in yourself. I looked forward to no little improvement from such good teaching, and when I was made to go missing it I could feel a plain loss to myself.”

“And perhaps now,” observed Peg, with her half-merry glance, “I was giving you a lesson in Peg for every moment of that frowning time.” Then, as if in reply to my look of bewilderment: “No, watch-dog I went too fast in those threats to expound myself. You are in no sort prepared for so tremendous a course of study.”

“Wherein do I lack now?”

“Why, you flounder in abyssmal ignorance of yourself. To study another with a hope of light, one should first own some liberal knowledge of one's self. To have gone about to teach you that difficult lesson of Peg, you, who are as unaware of yourself as any bush or tree or tuft of grass, would have been as truly wise, and a task well worth one's while, as would be a discussion of Moore with that savage of the woods who has yet to hear of the alphabet. However, we will rest content with you as you are, oh, watch-dog! oh, slave of Peg, wearing her mark! The more, for that your splendid ignorance of both yourself and me has to be its characteristic, a white, high beauty like unto some snow-capped peak—safe, too, since inaccessible. And now, because I have stayed long; and because we are good friends again; and because we will infallibly quarrel should I remain, I think, watch-dog, I shall go home.”

And so Peg went away, singing a little song which was no song but like the whistle of some thrush, leaving me in a calm of peace; nor did I fail to remember how Peg's tune, when she departed, was the earliest music upon her lips since ever she would be in anger with me for those ill opinions against Eaton.

There was no long time given me to think on Peg and her whims of temper, black and white, for Noah was with me briskly on the tail of her going away. Noah brought with him that Blair who had come in deference to my note, to be the rival of Duff Green and organize the Globe as a death-stab to Duff's Telegraph. I had met Blair before, and liked him; most of all was he a favorite of the General, for his pen was fed of fire and the heart of his friendship was like the loyal heart of a dog. In person, Blair was a slender, sickly man, but with a great head on his shoulders, and strange feverish eyes that shone like jewels. He was not unlike the General; only the latter stood vastly taller, and, while Blair was as some fire to blaze and sparkle and burn, the General would be more that hurricane of wind, bridled of no man, sweeping flat as a field of turnips everything to stand in the way.

“Here is a delicate question,” said Noah, with his grin of the cynic. “The department folk will give our friend, Blair, no public printing; it goes all to Duff. That should be stopped, since your public advertising—I speak from my place as an editor—is for your newspaper as the breath in its body.”

“And what would you propose by way of cure for that felon perversity of our folk of the departments who will still send printing to the recreant Duff?” This I put laughingly, to be abreast of the lightness of Noah.