Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Noah would have gone forth at once, but the General held him in speech about Van Buren, who as present Governor of New York must resign his Albany position to assume place as the General's premier.

Noah, who lived Van Buren's right hand of power in his own region, was full to the brim with him, and I, who had yet to be introduced to the little Knickerbocker, sat absorbed of his description. The General had met Van Buren a dozen times or more; but in any sense of intimacy he was as ignorant of his future secretary as was I myself. We therefore gave fullest heed to Noah, who talked well, being one able to take you a man to pieces as though he were a clock, and show in detail his wheels and particular springs, and point you to the pendulum of motive for every hour he struck.

We were in mid-swing of talk when I was called. It was none other than Jim, to bring me that information—threatening, he deemed it—of the beautiful Peg who waited my coming below.

As I was going, the door standing open, one in coat of clerical finish presented himself without announcement, and rapped modestly on the door frame. I had had experience of his flock and knew him by his feathers. Plainly, he was a solicitor of subscriptions for some amiable charity. The book in his hand spoke loudly for my surmise.

My doubt, had one been entertained, would have found dissipation by the words of the General, as, harsh and strident, they overtook me on my way.

“No, sir,” I heard him say; “no, sir! Not one splinter!—not one two-bit piece! I shall begin as I mean to end. You people are not to send me out of the White House, a pauper and a beggar, as you sent poor Jim Monroe.”

Doughtily resolved, oh General! hard without and soft within! Doughtily resolved and weakly executed, when eight years later you are made to borrow ten thousand dollars wherewith to pay your White House debts before ever you wend homeward to your Hermitage!

After forty and when youth's suppleness has fled, one's fancy is as prone to lapse into a stiff inertness as one's joints. It came then to pass, as I journeyed parlorward along the old-fashioned corridors and stairways of the Indian Queen, that I in nowise was visited by any glint of the possible beauty of Peg, nor yet of her honest injuries; but rather, in half peevish fashion, I considered her a proposed incumbrance to the General's administration, in which I may be pardoned for saying—I, who had been busy with trowel and plumb-line about the corner stone and subsills of his whole career—I was smitten of an interest. Truly, I had been Eaton's friend; and had used him well, too. Also, I was glad to have him take Peg to wife, since such was his fancy. But why should she and he rise subsequently up to vex folk who were like to own troubles more properly their own? That was the question I held acridly under my tongue as I went onward to my meeting with Peg, and I fear some blush of it showed in my face.

Over six feet and broad as a door, I doubtless towered forbiddingly upon her imaginings when I came up to Peg; these and the cloud on my forehead—for I am sure one darkened it—showed her to be both brave and innocent when, without hesitation or holding back, she put forth her hands to me. I've told somewhere how she gave me her hand; that was wrong; she gave me both, and gave them with a full sweep of frankness, that showed confident at once and sad, as though with the motion of it she offered herself for my protection. She spoke no word; her little hands lay in my great ones, and I felt within them the beat of a sharp, small pulse as of one under strain and stress. Once, long before, I had toiled upward with caitiff secrecy and captured a sleeping mother-pigeon on her nest. The quick flutter of the bird's heart beneath my fingers was as this poor throbbing in Peg's hands. I remember, also, I was melted into the same sudden compassion for the pigeon that seized on me for Peg.

“I came to you because you are the General's old friend,” she said. Her sweet, large eyes were swimming, and her voice began to break. Then she put out an effort and brought herself to bay. “I've nothing to ask; not much to say, neither. I know what the General would do; my husband has told me. I know, too, what it will mean of slander and insult and suffering. And yet—I've prayed upon it; prayed and again prayed!—I must go forward. I can not, nay, I dare not become a bar across the path of my husband; I dare not poison his success.”