Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Out to walk I went; I did not think the General worth a retort. You are not, however, to follow his hint, and lose and leave the plain footprints of the fact. I was no more in love with Peg than was he; I examined myself on that head and made myself particularly clear. Like all men who are physically big and strong, and, moreover, like all men border-born and taught that duty from the ground up of protecting ones weaker than themselves, particularly women-folk and babes, I went as naturally to Peg's side in her troubles as ever went deer to drink. It was in my nature and my lesson to do this. Sympathy is a plant to grow most quickly on roughest soil; and folk of my shag-bark sort are ever soonest on the ground, and stay the longest, when the cause is the weeping cause of woman.

And there you have the explanation of my interest for Peg. The General, himself, was just as headlong; his sympathies fair went about on tiptoe in a constant search for weak ones in distress. Not humanity alone, but animals; and I've seen him go forth into midnight sleet and ice—and Death tearing at his lungs with a cough—to bring in a bleating lamb. It was, then, but partisan sympathy, and not love in the bud, which I felt for Peg; and I turned much fortified and quieter in my own thoughts, when, following a rigid search of my breast, I made it out.

Noah, whom I ran across in the corridor, went with me for the walk. We broke away northward across the city to be free of the crowds which came and went about Gadsby's and the Indian Queen. When we were more alone and with the roads to ourselves, I told Noah of the nameless letter to Peg.

“And that is a fine feather in the cap of Henry Clay,” I cried; “this employment of nameless villains to write threats to a girl!”

“Now let me set you straight,” said Noah. “I've gone to the ends of this foul work. It is not the Clay so much as the Calhoun interest which furnishes the venom. The General is turned round; he believes it to be Clay. I assure you, the enemy is a Calhoun coterie from South Carolina.”

“But what is their purpose?” I asked. “Calhoun is Vice-President; he will preside over the Senate and be part of the administration. Why should he seek to mar it?”

“Mark you, I do not say,” replied Noah, “that Calhoun, personally, so much as hears of these wrongs done in his name. Your friends will sometimes go farther in your cause than you will go for yourself. Let me briefly tell you what I know. Calhoun would succeed the General for the Presidency. He spins a web as fine as any spun of spiders. So curiously has he brought his forces to bear, that of the six he will own three of the General's cabinet—Berrien, Branch, and Ingham. He wanted the war office, and was craftily urging Hayne, of his own state, when the General unconsciously brushed his plan aside with Eaton. Now the Calhoun thought is to drive Eaton from the place; and to mock at Mrs. Eaton and stain her with slanders is the Palmetto idea of a method. The more cruel it is, the more likely to succeed; and the latter condones the ignobility. These folk play for a White House; and the greater the stake the less of scruple on the part of the players. Remember, too, these children of evil have just begun; the attacks, as they proceed, will mobilize a force. The women will be brought to their aid. We gagged the men's mouths with a duel; but who is to gag the women's, and how will he go upon the work?”

This news about Calhoun was nothing by way of surprise. I knew him to be as ambitious as Lucifer; more, I was aware of him for no friend of the General; I had learned that much two years before.

While it was within my knowledge, this enmity, I had not set it forth to the General; the truth of it would have done him no good, and gotten in the way. It would have served only to fire his wrath, and he was one most unmanageable when angry.

Wherefore throughout the campaign, while the General and Calhoun were running mates, I said no word of the latter's secret feeling of envious jealousy and hate, and the General went to the election in the dark, believing the Vice-President to be among his staunchest friends. Thinking now of Peg, I began to glimpse a day when the Calhoun rancors would be worth the General's knowledge.