CHAPTER VII—THE SECRETARY, SUAVE AS CREAM.
And now there comes beneath my hand the hard portion of this history, the part which I most mislike and bear with least of patience. It is the record written by the smug, false Doctor Ely to the General, wherein with a particular past bearing, he piled up his scarlet charges. There came a dozen counts, and as if it were an indictment; and in them no slackness, but, instead, an evil confidence of statement plain and clear, as one after another he cast those stones at Peg. Nor shall his communication be set forth; I would not so offend against the whiteness of Peg's name, nor yet harass my own soul's roots by giving a line of it to types and presses. The more, since it was all a web of lies which sly rogues wove for the shallow hand of this Ely; and not enough of truth in it from top to bottom as should serve to make it respectable falsehood. Sufficient that there were stories with Washington and again New York as the theatres, and on these was based a brazen demand that Eaton be dismissed the cabinet and Peg whipped from among women wherever virtue had a name.
As the General read these things aloud I sat biting my nail in the flaming impatience of my rage.
“And now what think you?” said he, when he was done.
“I think,” cried I, “that I shall ride at once for the caitiff ears of him.”
The General, seeing my anger, turned to be mighty calm. It was a manner of ours that when I was for a rage he would go the other way; I, on my side and by way of requital, showed never so busy about methods for peace as when the General was for sounding Boots and Saddles. So, beholding me eating my fingers in a sort of blood-eagerness to come at the throat of that Ely, the General would be for craft; and to demand proof; and to go upon a litigation of the business among ourselves.
“And now you know,” said the General, with a bitterness in his mouth like aloes, “why I fear preachers and your peace folk. Here is a false tissue against a girl as white as an angel.”
“My soul for that!” I interjected.
“No one not of the cloth, and saved from men's vengeance by his coat and ruffle, would so dare. But now this Ely throws these lies in our laps, and we must sit tied.”