Peg's war for social eminence would now move bravely. The tale of that double reception with its polite throngs pushing forward ===in honor of her and her “good little secretary,” and the General's presence thereat, stately yet deferential, fluttered from lip to lip like some bright bird. And, as such birds will, the farther it fluttered the brighter it grew. I've told you how I own no warrant, whether of education or natural trend, to descant on wax-lights and polished floors and satins; but so far as I might trap the murmur of folk who should have such matters of gossamer and music on their tongues' ends, the most guarded decision went to it that Peg's position had become thereby as surely fixed as the pole-star, and might with as much safety be observed and steered by whenever any of your blind mariners of the drawing rooms should lose a course or find himself in deep, strange waters.
Like a great captain who in the wake of victory makes speed to again strike the enemy while yet the latter is disorganized and before he can re-collect formation or even hope, Peg was next and swiftly in the field with that dinner for her glory at the Russian legation, tendered by the wily Baron Krudener—he of the earrings and the scarlet heels. The Tartar, as the General called him, zealous for the favor of the General and Van Buren, was keen to note how a civility done Peg would become a key to the best good will of both. After Krudener's, came the cabinet reception at our “good little secretary's,” where Peg would reign; and since Van Buren lived but a half-dozen houses north from Peg's, it was hardly to step beyond her own door. Then followed the ball given by the British with Peg in the place of esteem, and the Viscount Vaughn to lead Peg forth in the first figure with his own diplomatic hand.
Who could have been more delighted than the General with this splendor of salon success now spread to our pretty Peg's uninterrupted feet, and that under the jaundiced eyes of her enemies? The General could not be present at either the “good little secretary's,” the Russian or the English house; but he was indomitable to hear; and never exquisite, nor macaroni, nor buck about London town, gave ear of warmer ardor to the nightly annals of Mayfair than did the General to those stories of Peg's victories. Who were there and what they did and said, would be his constant curiosity; and indeed he carried question-putting to the verge of what stood foppish.
“But can't you see, sir,” demanded the General, when I told him how his heat to trace Peg's skirts through every dance, or learn the calling list of each reception, would jostle one's better conception of him, “can't you see that with the world and the law as made, this is the trial of Peg's standing, and freighted of life or death?”
“No,” said I, full bluntly; “and if you will have my notion then, I call these things mere antic matters of apeish trick and chatter, not worth a man's attention.”
“You are a barbarian,” retorted the General, oracularly. “These functions—these dinners and dances and receptions—are trials by jury where the repute of folk, peculiarly the repute of women folk, is passed upon. The verdict in her favor means the world and all for Peg. It is the law.”
“And if it be,” said I, “it is but a bad law and a cheap law, and one whereat I should snap my fingers.”
“And yet, sir,” replied the General, “wondrous highly as you hold yourself, you are not yet grown to be the world. It's Peg's happiness—a matter of being within the pale, without which she would feel decided against and spurned. And remember this, sir, while you flourish with your defiances, that a bad law is none the less a law, with penalty in nowise to be mollified because of that badness at which you rail. Wherefore I deem, these drawing-room trinkets of a first weight in Peg's concerns; I shall know as much of them as I well may, and take my chance of falling in your graces.”
After that, and somewhat in the broader manner of a jest, I would each day lay out to the General whatever of polite gaities took place the night before; and while I recited those present, and what they did or said, or failed to do or say, and particularly when such relation told for Peg, he would smoke, and listen, and exult, and on occasion comment like unto any grandmother gossip who still enjoys by second hands those scenes which long ago her years taught her to desert.
These exploits of waxed floors and dinner tables, while the General might have neither art nor lot therein, drew me along with them—for all I loved them not—like a magnet. For one thing, I would behold how Peg fared; and then, the General would have me attend, to the purpose that he be given their story.