Here the General turned his face towards me; his eyes were shining with the lambent orange glow one sees in the panther's eyes at night.
There was silence, I still looking on the General. His nervous face was twitching. Then the frown on his forehead gave way to quiet sadness. Rising, he stood by the mantel and gazed for long, and tenderly, on the miniature of his dead dear one.
“I have had many titles,” said he, and he spoke whisperingly and as though talking with the picture; “I have had many titles, and the greatest was the one 'her husband.' I have had honors;—I stand the chief of the greatest nation in the greatest age the world has witnessed; and I would give all to hold her hand one moment. They say there is a heaven above us. It will be no heaven unless I meet her there.”
Now while I was in warmest sympathy with the General, his talk would seem to fill me up with darkness. Also, I could feel the two hot arms of Peg burning my neck. That story, too, of the Dickenson fight may be supposed to have set in my nature that animal which lairs within each of us, somewhat on truculent edge. Abruptly I burst forth:
“And it is a surprising thing,” cried I—ripping out an oath, the last not common with me—“how Eaton abides Peg's wrongs. He should have killed a man or two by now.”
“Sir,” returned the General, coming from his reverie with a kind of snap, “sir, no man since Catron has been known to speak a word. Besides, my cabinet men can not go trooping off for Blandensburg at any price. It is one of the drawbacks to a high position of state that it chops one's hands off at the elbow; duels are no longer a question.”
“I do not see it thus,” I retorted viciously. “You do not? Look on Aaron Burr—deserted and old and poor, and dying in New York. He came down from his vice-presidency to slay one who had maligned him for years. And there is his reward.”
“What do I care for that?” cried I. “If it were for Peg, I should leave a throne and perish poor, despised and all alone, but I would strangle the throat that spoke her wrong.”
“Ah! if it were Peg!” And the General, now alert and wholly of this world, gave me that narrow intent glance I resented among the flowers.
What might have been uttered next was cut short by a messenger on the door. He brought word from Noah; he had just come to town, and since it was turned late he would defer his call until the morning.