Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

While Peg said this, her face was held up towards mine, and even in the vague lights, which were rather the ghosts of lights than any radiance however dim, I could catch some whiteness of it.

Suddenly her head was in its old resting place over my heart, with the cloak to again become its cover.

“Watch-dog,” whispered Peg, and I might tell how deeply she was stricken by the quaver of her voice, as much as by a trembling that swept her as a gust rumples the surface of a tarn; “watch-dog, I felt that I would not live unless I saw you. Do you contemn me? Do you own shame for your little friend? I could not help it; I sent for Rivera, and made him fetch this carriage. We are alone—hidden from the world's eyes. I have torn a night from the hands of Time to be no one's night save ours. I waited by the lamp; my soul called to you and I knew you would come. I would not send; I was sure you would be with me without that. I should have died if I had not found you. Say that I did right, watch-dog. Say that it was right! I only cry for your one word; what others will think or say I care not, but I could not bear up against your anger! Say that I did right; say it!—say that you are glad.”

“I will say it all and intend it all, my little one!” Here I stroked Peg's tangle of curls as one would pet a child.

My whole being was wrapped in a storm and my bosom caged a whirlwind. I could be calm enough, apparently, and yet I was growing aware of that tempest of spirit which shook me like an aspen. I had been dull—dull to the point of crime; but now my wisdom would begin to sharpen and brighten itself.

Still, I had so much coolness to call my own that I was glad of the fact of Rivera. I remember thinking on that; for, with no more words than the dumb, he was as secret as a mole and as honest, withal, and single-hearted as a hound. There would be none to know; as Peg said, she had torn a night from eternity to be ours and ours alone.

While these thoughts went tumbling down the steeps of my conjecturings, I continued mechanically to caress Peg's hair, and it felt like a web of gossamer in my coarse fingers.

“Contemn you, child!” said I, and my voice was not much louder than had been hers, and I bent down my head so that she might hear; “contemn you! I would as soon impeach the snow outside, new given from the sky, denouncing it for soot.”

Peg began to weep, and I could hear the sharp catching of her sobs. Suddenly the moan came sighing up to me:

“Oh, if there were no such word as right or justice or duty, but only love—just love!” Then with a quick backward twist of her form that was like an impulse, and as replete of a swift grace as any suppleness of that long ago leopard whereof she would so often make me think, Peg turned herself in my arms, and with her own encircling my neck lay crying on my bosom. I held her close—closer. I could tell the beating of her heart, count the footfalls of her nature as though she were parcel of myself. How I loved her! adored her!—my prone spirit would fall on its knees to her for its Deity.