All this time I had been holding to her hands, for I felt her great beauty and it made me forget the name of time. Besides, this was no common meeting, but rather the making of a league and covenant between folk who were to be allies throughout a bitter strife. I think she noticed my awkward and scarce polite retention of her fingers, for she withdrew them, while a little flush of color painted itself in her face. Still, she did not do this unkindly; and, I may say, there was nothing of sentiment in my breast which cried for rebuke or tendered her aught but honor.
“Pardon a freedom in one twice your years, but you are wondrous beautiful.” These were my first words to Peg. “Mr. Eaton has come by mighty fortune.”
“My beauty, as you call it,” said she, with just the shadow of a smile that told more of pain than gladness, “has been no good ground to me and borne me nettles for a crop. I had been happier for a wholesome plainness.”
Then we settled to a better conversation; and the while her sweetness was growing on me like a vine and I becoming more and more soundly her partisan with every moment.
“My husband is much honored,” said she at one point, “and deems himself advanced by what the General would offer. Also, he sees nothing of the darkness into which I stare; he sees only the high station and the power of it, and the way shines to his feet. But I know what society will do; I have not been child and girl and woman in Washington without experience of it. Folk will turn from me and ignore me and seek to blot me out. If it were none save myself to be considered, I would abandon the field; I would hunt seclusion, cultivate obscurity as if it were a rose. But am I to become a drag on the man who loves me and gives me his name? Am I to be fetters for his feet—a stumbling-block before him?”
“There is no need of this apprehension,” said I; “you should have a higher spirit, since you are innocent.”
“Innocent, yes!” she cried, and her deep eyes glowed; “innocent, yes! As heaven hears me, innocent!” Her manner dismayed me with what it unveiled of suffering. Then in a lower tone, and with a kindle of that cynicism to come upon folk who, working no evil and doing no wrong, are yet made to find themselves fronted of adverse tides and blown against by winds of cruelty, “Innocent, yes; but what relief comes then? I am young; many are still children with my years. And, thanks to a tavern bringing up,”—here was hardness now—“I have so seen into the world's heart as to know that it is better to be a rogue called honest, than honest and called a rogue. That is true among men; I tell you it is doubly true among women.”
To be open about it, I was shocked; not that what Peg said was either foolish or untrue. But to be capable of such talk, and she with that loving, patient mouth, showed how woeful must have been the lesson. But it gave me none the less a deal of sureness for the level character of her intellect, and I saw she carried within her head the rudiments of sense.
“What is it you would ask of me?” said I, at last. “I can only promise beforehand anything in my power.”
“I would ask nothing,” she replied, “save the assurance that you will be my husband's friend and mine. I see grief on its way as one sees a storm creep up the sky. Oh!” she suddenly cried with a sparkle of tears, “my husband! He must not be made ashamed for me! Rather than that, I would die!”