Peggy O'Neal

by Alfred Henry Lewis

And yet it did not miss me as a feature hard to be read for its significance, that now was the earliest time when the General had shown himself so equitable as to think on “two against one” and fail to ask my presence for his conferences. He had met folk for war and peace, and they had come alone; I had been there, and no one spoke of over-riding. However, the subject was not worth quizzing one's self concerning; the Reverend Campbell was come, the best thing about it being that the General lived ample and to spare to arrest whatever of slander he should bring us in his mouth, and put it to the death. The General could track a lie as surely as ever he tracked Creek, and lived even more inveterately its enemy.

Peg met the Reverend Campbell almost in the great front door, for she was on her usual journey to consult with me about some trifling nothing. When his sidelong glance encountered Peg's, the rascal cowered and seemed to turn more mean, if that were possible, than by nature belonged with him. But he said no word; he did not so much as muster against her one square look, but sinuously, and as a snake might, writhed himself out of her path Peg, for herself, swept him with a chill, errant eye as if he were some gutter-being, offensive though unknown.

“And what brings that bird of mal-omen to flutter about one's door?—so bright a morning, too!” This was Peg's question on the Reverend Campbell as she walked in to me and climbed to her customary chair at the left hand of my desk. “What should you say, watch-dog, was his bad mission? Is he a threat? Does he drag a danger after him? You must be alert if you would make safe your little Peg.”

The tone of raillery which Peg adopted secured me; she had no surmise, then, to the purpose of the Reverend Campbell.

“It's quite sure,” I returned, evasively, “that our swart visitor would be much uplifted were the General to relent and dispose of Florida according to his wish.”

And now while Peg sits before the mirror of my memory with her sweet face, as she on that far morning sat in the great leathern chair, let me please my fond pencil with a word of her. There were so many expressions of the unexpected to our Peg—for so I had grown to call her—one must needs be describing and redescribing her with each new page one turns. A born enchantress and a witch full-blown besides! it is the mere truth that Peg bore upon me like a spell.

There was never woman to be Peg's marrow for flash and spirit, and beyond all to creep so tenderly near to one. And for a crown to that, she was as wise as the serpent. There were moments when Socrates himself might have listened to her and not lost his time.

And she could shift color like a chameleon. Behold her on some day of social parade, or where she meets strangers or half acquaintances, and she will be older by fifteen years than now when she plants her small self in that armchair, and makes me turn my writing downward to talk with her. Tender, wilful, pliant, wise, patient, petulant, true, uncertain, sure, confiding and confusing, she offered contradictions equal with the General. I would exhaust the roll-call of the adjectives were I wholly to set forth this child-woman in the last of her frank arts and sage simplicities.

Peg wore as many moods as a lake on a flawy day and where skies are scud-swept. Now, with a cloud across the sun, she would be dull and sad as lead. Then, with a gust of wind, she would wrinkle into waves of temper. And next there would dawn a tranquil moment when, calm and clear and deep and sweet, she shone on one like burnished silver.

Once, I recall, she sat in her big chair, steeped in a way of pensive wordlessness. I had not heard her voice for an hour; nor she mine, for I was fallen behind in my letters, and politics and president-making are mighty gluttons of ink. Suddenly she broke in: