Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

“And I would have loved him if I could.” Peg waved her hand with an accent of despair, and as one who had striven and failed beyond recall. “But I could not—could not; strive as I might, love would not come. I felt guilt to live with him; I was glad when he sailed away; and, God help me! my sighs over his death were the sighs of one released from bonds.”

Peg broke and cried like any child. You should understand, however, that she was unjust to herself. What she said of her brooding aforetime to the frontier of the morbid was over-true. And, supersensitive, proud, her hope had wasted as her gloom grew; her griefs of girlhood, enlarged many fold doubtless, as she herself suspected, by stress of her own fancy sorrowing with a wound, had left solemn stamp upon her; and this took far too often and unjustly the shape of self-blame. Beneath all, and hidden deep within her breast, Peg carried small opinion of herself; thought herself selfish, hard, shallow, and of no rich depth of heart. She was wrong to the core; for her inner self was as beautiful as her face. And yet, despite knowledge on her own part, and her friends' assurances, in the ultimate recesses of her thoughts there existed a torture-chamber; and therein she ever racked herself as the one wrongdoer in what she had passed through. There was no driving her from this; she was merciless against herself; and while none not the closest might know, for in the presence of non-friends and strangers she showed the iron fortitude of an Indian or a soldier, to myself and those with whom she practiced no reserve these self-flagellations were much too painfully plain.

I say, folk near to Peg were aware of this morbid lack of soul-vanity and good regard for herself. There should be one exception counted, and that, curious to tell, her own husband. Peg, for all he might be double her age, and I think no very handsome man at that, I could see, when I talked with her, loved Eaton as she loved her eyes or mothers love their children. And yet, never to him did she show her true feeling; in his presence she was the brave, gay, bright, strong, brilliant Peg, asking in the fight which followed no quarter and granting none, she seemed to the common world. It is curious, and presents a problem too involved for my solution, that Peg should have guarded against the one she most loved and shut the door upon discovery by him of her own wondrous self. Yet so it was; it stood patent to me from the beginning that Eaton knew no more of Peg than of her whom he never met.

In her morbid estimates of her worth it is possible she feared to grant him too clear a view. She may have thought she would lose by it. The reason, however, for this great secrecy coupled with great love—this hiding from him for whom she would have died—I shall leave to be searched for by those scientists of souls who are pleased to explain the inexplicable. For myself, I confess I was baffled by it.

This, however, I will say; the fact that Peg could so practice upon Eaton to his blindness gave me no high opinion of that gentleman. He should have groped for her and grasped her, and found her out for the loving, loyal, sorrowing heart she was; and that he did not, but went in placid darkness of the treasure he held in his hands, content to have it so, marked him for a lack of insight and want of sympathy which I'm bound to say do not distinguish me. Such stolidity on the part of folk has caused me more often than once to consider whether the angels, by mere possession, may not at last find even heaven commonplace.

Still, it is none the less infuriating to witness so much beauty so much thrown away! Indubitably, the economy of existence asks for pigs as loudly as it asks for pearls, and to blame Eaton for failing in appreciation of Peg is as apart from equity as would be the flogging of a horse who sees no beauty in a moss-rose—and less, perhaps—not present in a musty lock of hay. However, it is none the less infuriating for that.

Mark you though, I would be guilty of no wrong to Eaton, nor establish him on too low a level in your esteem. He was in the Senate from Tennessee at the time, and of solid repute among his fellows. He was a brave, dull, good-humored sort, who thought better, perhaps, of a bottle than of a book—not to excess, you are to notice—and as a statesman, if he put out no fires, he kindled none; though he did no good, at worst he did no harm; and that, let me tell you, is a record somewhat better than the average. I have been attacked and charged with a distaste of Eaton. There are two words to go with that, and no one—and I challenge those who knew us both—can put his finger on any ill of word or deed or thought I ever aimed against him. Truly, I hunted not his company with horn and horse and hound; but what then? I take it, I'm as free to pick and choose for my intimates as any other. And I still declare what was in my thoughts in those hours I tell of, that Eaton, sluggish and something of a clod-head, and with a blurred, gray tone of fancy, was unworthy such a woman, whose love for him, be it said, was when I met her as boundless as the difficulty of accounting for its first existence. I say again, and the last time, I hold no dislike for Eaton, and more than once have done him good favors in days gone. That I shall grant him no extensive mention in these pages means no more than that he was but a supernumerary in the drama where of the General and Peg carried the great parts. Eaton came on and off; but his lines were few and brief and burned with no interest. There is little reason for prodigious clamor over Eaton, and little there will be. But I am not to be accused of unfairness to the man for that he dwelt with an angel and was too thick to find it out.

Peg at last recalled herself from the dead Timberlake. She brushed away her tears.

“These are all of them you are to see,” laughed Peg, stoutly, referring to her tears. “I promise to shed no more. However, you may quiet alarm; a woman's tears are no such mighty matter.” I showed perturbation, I suppose, and she would dissipate it.

Peg told me of her wedding with Eaton. She dwelt a deal on her love for him; but since one consents to it as a sentiment, even though its cause defy one's search, there comes no call to extend the details in this place.