PEGGY O'NEAL
By Alfred Henry Lewis
Illustrated By Henry Hutt
A. J. Drexel Biddle
1902
TO
MRS. A. J. DREXEL BIDDLE
THIS VOLUME
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
[ CHAPTER I—THE LUSTROUS PEG O'NEAL ]
[ CHAPTER II—PORT WINE DUFF AND PIGEON-BREAST ]
[ CHAPTER III—PEG'S MEETING WITH THE MAJOR ]
[ CHAPTER IV—THE JEW AND HIS SPANISH SWORD ]
[ CHAPTER V—REVEREND CAMPBELL AND THE MAGPIE ]
[ CHAPTER VI—THE STORM GATHERS AGAINST PEG ]
[ CHAPTER VII—THE SECRETARY, SUAVE AS CREAM. ]
[ CHAPTER VIII—THE MAD CAPRICIOUS PEG ]
[ CHAPTER IX—THE GENERAL SELECTS HIS SUCCESSOR. ]
[ CHAPTER X—THE MAJOR AND PEG AT CROSSES ]
[ CHAPTER XI—THE GENERAL MAKES PROVERBS ]
[ CHAPTER XII—HOW PEG WOULD WEAR THE CORAL. ]
[ CHAPTER XIII—THE SON OF THE SPANISH BULL-FIGHTER ]
[ CHAPTER XIV.—THE FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED. ]
[ CHAPTER XV—HOW PEG WAS SAVED FROM PEG. ]
[ CHAPTER XVI.—LOVE'S FUNERAL IN THE SNOW. ]
PREFACE
Doubtless I shall tell this tale but poorly, since I have no skill of writing or rhetoric and must, for the most part, proceed by blunt sentences and short one-syllable words to the end that I be understood. This record is worth while, I think, for it exhibits the growth of favor for the Union within the General's breast; and to be corollary thereunto, his wrath against States Rights as a doctrine, together with a hatred of Calhoun, its champion, and what other folk were found to uphold the Vice-President's hands in those ill courses of nullification and separation and secession he laid down for national misguidance. I myself had been with the General, war and peace, for thirty years on end. He was like an elder brother to me, and I apprehended no man better. And knowing him thus well—having his thought and feeling and emotion of politics at my mental finger-ends—it is in my strong belief that not until he came and made oath as chief magistrate, did he conclude his position touching this claim of right on a state's part to nullify general law and strike her name from the roll of our common sisterhood. I was with him, I say, when the seed of the General's determination to stand for a union, one and indivisible, was planted; and I witnessed its quick upgrowing and broadening until it sheltered and shadowed with wide safety the very integrity of the country. We had arrived at a fork in the road; the ways were about to part. Calhoun would have led us to the left where no man could be sure of national continuance over night. But the General ruled; he was for the right hand. By his iron courage, and the brisk, white clearness of his mental lights, the General was to triumph. As descendant of such victory the States were to be unified and secession beaten down. Nor shall that hour find its morning in all time when the mighty excellences of the General's labors are not to have their evidence, and the tree he planted bear into the hands of men its fruits upon the earth. He was a tremendous mechanic of state, was General Jackson; and the world in its construction will wear his hammer-marks with those of Cromwell and Napoleon while the ages keep to their procession.
And yet, as may the Amazon have ultimate well-head in some rivulet as thin as a thread, or a spring so little that a gourd might serve for its exhaustion, so did the General come to select his place in this business of upholding the Union against those who would pull it down, as incident to bucklering a woman—poor and slight and feeble, she was; the beautiful Peg O'Neal!—who for her loveliness was envied and for her goodness was hated and for her origin as a tavern-keeper's daughter was contemned by those proud folk who named themselves the nation's court of fashion.
The General was a sentimentalist; justice and to do right were with him instincts, and came not as grist ground coldly in the mills of calculated selfishness and reason. Scotch-Irish he was in his strain; but more Irish than the Irish and more Scotch than the Scotch, he in a manner wonderful could in the same moment be cool and warm, and cautious and headlong, and prudent and reckless, and close and frank—at once a Fabius and a Scipio. In a glow of sentiment made molten hot by the recent death of his wife—to him the Goddess of his worship—the General would extend the power of his place and name to be a refuge for the tearful, beautiful Peg, whom, as a child, his wife had known and loved, and whom he now found evilly crushed beneath the social wheel. And in a rush of feeling he rescues her and sets her high among the highest. Still, while it owns its hot inception to impulse wholly Irish, this rescue; the carrying out thereof, when now the General goes about it, turns to be all Scotch in the cautious yet indomitable character of its execution.
Also, for that the General is ardent and prone to mix private passion with his public thought, he arrives at a hatred of nullification, finding it a prime principle among those enemies whom he faces for the sake of poor Peg O'Neal. It is the great fire kindled of a small thing, this, the General's war to sustain the Union against ones who already searched for its life. He rides into the lists for a woman's name, and all unknowingly he bears the country's future on the point of his spear. And so comes this story; to the purpose and the hope that what in this good way the General did, and why and how he did it, may not die and disappear upon the memories of men.
PEGGY O'NEAL
CHAPTER I—THE LUSTROUS PEG O'NEAL
It was my fate, I will not say my misfortune—being too proud—to dwell overmuch with camps and caucuses and transact more than stood best for me of politics and war. These were my schools, and they sadly served to make me coarse and turn me hard. Sometimes I think this pity, for I was conceived, you are to notice, with no scanty promise of fineness to my fiber.
Now I am moved to remember, and I might add almost to regret these things, because I would like much at this pinch to color for you a right picture of the fair, innocent, unfortunate Peg O'Neal. Yet how am I to do this?—I, loaded of a sluggish fancy and a genius without touch! I am no Apelles to paint an Aphrodite, no Phidias to carve a Venus; and for that matter, Peg no Phryne to be model for such art. The best I might draw would stand crude and cornerwise, since I own only to talents whereof the graphic character is exhausted when they have laid out a worm fence?
It is within the rim of the possible that you may feel for me, born as I show you with the hands of all good power of description bound close and fast by my sides. Perhaps, too, you yourself on occasion have been stung of high impulse and fain would soar with a poem; and then, when you stretched for flight, found no furnishment of wings. Most folk have been thus crowded upon by exaltations, and were prey to thoughts for the expression of which their lisping natures lacked facility. They had the sinew but not the soul. There was verse in them, but with it no presentation dress of word or ornament of rhyme. They caged a tune of music in their hearts and failed of those notes asked for to announce its melody.
Still, our Peg, for whom we toiled—the General and I—and intrigued and made new friendships and broke old ones, and who was in her fortunes the beginning of policies on the General's part so lasting in importance to the State, shall not go untold. I must make what effort lies in me to give some notion of a beauty that claimed so much of potency in equations of government solved of our times.
For myself, and I take no shame for it, I say freely that of the charges laid against her by common tongue, I was convinced of her innocence by the mere beauty of her face, just as the loveliness of that Greek girl aforetime convinced the judges and wrought a verdict in her favor. There be flowers so purely beautiful as to refuse and refute a stain; and such a blossom was the lustrous Peg O'Neal.
I was first to meet with her at this time; and while I had not condemned her in my thoughts—to condemn a woman is, for a man, the coward part!—if I found myself possessed of views at all, they leaned to her disfavor. I knew the General regarded Peg as a white soul suffering wrong; but I also knew the General to be mercurial, and a blindly passionate recruit when once enlisted. Besides, his own wife had been throughout her life—and she most virtuous!—so lashed of slander, that his blood was ever up and about the defence of any whose wailing wrongs resembled her's. The General's attitudes were never the offshoots of cold wisdom; he was one who believed the worst of a foe so soon as it was told, and the best of a friend before ever it was told at all. Wherefore I would not accept the General's decision touching Peg, more than I would take other conclusions from his hands.
My conservatism and just slowness cut, however, no figure, since, as I tell you, with the moment I clapped eyes upon her, I changed to be her knight—her champion; and thereafter I matched even the torrid General in fire for her cause.
I was in talk with the General when news reached me of Peg waiting in the parlor for a meeting. It was Jim who bore me word; he peered around the corner of the door and with rolling' eye as one who brings bad tidings, beckoned me into the hallway.
“What is it?” I demanded impatiently.
I should tell you, perhaps, that Jim was more than twenty years my senior, and nearing on to three score years and ten. This may explain that attitude of mentor, not to say protector, of my morals which it was his pleasure to hold towards me.
“What is it? Speak up!”
Jim shook his grizzled head, and his look was loaded of reproof.
“See yere, Marse Major,” said Jim; “dish yere aint Tennessee where you-all kin do as you please. What you reckon now Marse Gen'ral would gwine say to sech cat-an'-fiddle doin's?”
“And now what's wrong?” I inquired; humbly enough, for I was much beneath Jim's sway.
“Marse Major, lemme ask you,” said Jim, and with that he fixed me with his old eye like an inquisitor; “lemme ask you: Does you-all send for to meet a young lady?”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “Do you think I've come to Washington to meet young ladies?” This last indignantly.
“How I know what you do?” retorted Jim, sullenly. “Ever see a hoss in a new parstur? Ever see how he r'ar an' pitch an' buck-jump an' kick up? How I know what you do?”
“Get to the point,” I said, and I drew on a fierce expression, for I was running low of patience.
“No use, Marse Major, for you to go dom'neerin' with Jim,” and the scoundrel shook his head admonishingly. “I'll fotch up at d' p'int fas' enough. I tells dese yere niggahs about dis hotel that if any one comes squanderin' 'round to see you-all, an' speshul, if any of them evil-minded women-folks comes 'round, to let me know.”
“What do you mean with your evil-minded women-folks?”
“That's all right, Marse Major; Jim aint heer'n d' Bible read for mighty likely sixty years an' not know of them evil-minded womenfolks. King Solomon, an' him d' wisest man, was mingled up in d' midst of a whole passel of'em. An' so, when a minute back one of d' house niggahs comes up to me an' lets on thar's a young lady in d' parlor who's waitin' for you, I allows I'll take a look, an' try an' rummage out what she wants. With that, I kinder loiters into d' parlor like I'm sent a urrent; an' sho! Marse Major, if thar don't sot a girl who's that beautiful she's plumb reedic'lous.
“'Be you-all wantin' to meet d' Marse Major?' I says.
“She say, 'Yes; I'm d' wife of his friend, Mr. Eaton.'
“'Mr. Eaton,' I says, 'who lives down south of Nashville at Franklin Co't House?'
“She say, 'Yes; I'm Mrs. Eaton.'
“Course I knows dish yere aint so. An' I'm partic'lar skeered about you, besides, since she's so handsome. It's d' beautiful ones makes all d' trouble; a homely woman aint no more harm than squinch owls, that's Jim's sperience. But nacherally, Marse Major, I don't tell dish yere girl she's lyin'; I'm too well brought up. So I says:
“'I've knowed Mr. Eaton since befo' d' las' wah with d' British what Marse Gen'ral done whups at Noo Aw-leans; Mr. Eaton's a kin to my Marse Major. I've been down by his place a hun'red times at Franklin; an' you hyar me, honey! they aint been no mention about you bein' his wife in Tennessee.'
“She smile a bit at this—she's seemin' trifle sad like—an' says: 'Mr. Eaton an' me, we get married only 'bout a month ago in Wash'ton.' An' so she tell me ag'in to go fotch you; an' arter sort o' hesitatin' 'round between a balk an' a break-down for a while, settlin' on d' properest move, I reckons mebbe I'd better come an' tell you arter all.”
“It's as well you did,” I said, turning back to the General's door.
“That's all right, Marse Major.” Jim called this after me in severe tones. “I'm boun' I'm gwine look arter you-all jes' d' same.” Then in a wheedling voice: “Say, Marse Major, would you-all mind if I he'ps myse'f to a dram outen d' demijohn in your closet? What with all dish yere talkin' an' frettin' about you, Jim's mouth is as dry as a kivered bridge.”
“One, mind you; no more.” The General, in converse with a caller, was considering Van Buren, and party lines and issues in New York. I would have told him of Peg, and that I was about to see her, but the presence of his visitor put it out of reach. On the whole, I decided, it would be as well to meet Peg first and tell the General later. I interrupted, and explained that I was going to the parlors for a moment; we would get to his letters on my return.
“No hurry, Major, no hurry,” he replied; “I'm quite content to put them off. I am already seized on by the spirit of laziness that pervades this place, and which caused Randolph to say: 'I never wind my watch whilst in Washington, as I feel that all time spent here is wasted and thrown away.' It's not quite that bad, perhaps; still, we'll willingly put off the letters until to-morrow.”
And now, since I am to tell you of Peg, I would that I possessed somewhat the art of petticoats—a little polite skill for flounce and farthingale—some shadow of a parlor or a boudoir grace.
Peg, then, was the truth itself for height and mould, and her pretty hands and feet told of no tavern in their genesis, even though the lip of envy did. I give you my first impression of her, earned eye to eye and ear to voice. I say the latter because her voice was as honey and wove conviction like a spell. She had your pansy face; a face regular and ineffably good. And how any, even a woman and a rival, might look her deep eyes through and doubt her, masters conjecture! Peg's hair—hanging in long curls about her neck and shoulders—was black; fine as silk or cobwebs; black, yet with the gold-black of the black Saxon. And her skin was snow and peach-blow. There was meditation, too, in her wide brow; and her mouth, with teeth like milk, was both firm and loving. Also, there was that in her atmosphere to bring brave men to her. It was upon one in a moment that Peg, while tender to be hurt, was hard to conquer; sensitive, she would feel her fate; yet she would face it—face it with the faithful courage of an angel. But I'll have done; why furnish the fragments and queer splinters of a portrait I'm too inaptly dull to offer as a whole!
Peg O'Neal came this day, and making herself known, gave me my first sight of her in the drawing room of the Indian Queen. There was a look about her, lonely, bitter and pathetic; a look that should belong with one hunted, and who waits to be made sure of her friends. She gave me her hand; white and soft and small and yielding—it was as though I took hold on a lily. My heart went out to her before she spoke; as I've confessed, I was warm for her cause on the instant.
Peg had read the cabinet list in the paper; I think, too, she foresaw the woe and worry to become the tail of it more clearly than did either the General or myself, or even the port-wine Duff Green. It was of that she desired to talk; she would see the General; but first she would see me.
This preference for myself before the General was a common custom into which Peg readily stepped. All who knew the General, knew me for his other self; and I will say, despite the inference of a boast, knew me for his calmer and more prudent self.
Peg did not come to me until the afternoon, and before I go to the story of our converse it would be as well to sketch a handful of incidents which preceded her advent and which should be understood to teach one the whole truth of this tale.
This Washington day I have on my mind's edge, being the one next before the day Peg came to me, was the fourteenth of February, St. Valentine's Day, albeit the latter has nothing of part herein. We had arrived, the General and myself, on the tenth, and housed at the Indian Queen. This tavern was not the tavern of old, when that O'Neal who was Peg's father prevailed as master, yet even under new control—and with a born conservative like myself, the new is ever the defective—it was a first hostel of the capital.
Our advent discovered a crust of ice and snow to our feet, and a mortal sharpness in the air that was like a tonic. During those three or four days since our coming, a thaw had befallen which left thoroughfares a discouraging swale of mire, and made going about a foulest possible employ. Withal, as though sponsor for the softening temperature, there descended a fog—fairly a hash of misty rain that one might wash one's face in—and the air was as full of water as a sponge.
These were no true conditions for the General, with lungs never the hardiest, and whose health was more than commonly broken by the blow of his wife's death. She was soundly, deeply sleeping in her grave in Tennessee, and the new sods above her counted but twelve weeks for their age, when we rode into Washington. She had heard the guns and the music which told of her hero's triumph; and then, heart-stricken of shafts of slander aimed against her sinlessness by an opposition willing to conquer with black means, she bowed her gentle head and passed. She was not to multiply a White House honor by sharing it, and left her lover-husband to go his presidential way alone unlighted of her eyes.
Those dark scenes at the Hermitage when the General's angel went from us, and storms of grief—so utter, so beyond repair!—fair beat upon him to a point which all but laid him beneath the grass-roots to keep her company, have neither part nor lot in this relation. They may be guessed at, however; and the General came forth of them woe-worn and shaken, and with the thought in his soul that she perished by the venom of his enemies, who had struck at his fortunes by striking at her pure repute.
After his wife died I had been in the grip of sore concern for the General. He was but a frail man at his best; he carried lead in his shoulder and lead in his side—private bullets stopped in private wars, truly, yet no less, perilous for that—and when on these, plus the angry work and wrath of a campaign, was laid this funeral farther load, I say, I trembled for the upcome.
Our way to Washington was to be by the Cumberland and the Ohio to Pittsburg, and then overland through the mountains, and so along the Potomac. All Tennessee seemed come to Nashville when we went aboard; I helping the General—whose weakness was so great he must, despite vanity, lean visibly on my support.
As he sank exhausted into a chair, and the boat backed off the levee, I was in blackness for the gloom I felt. I believed he would not live to see Washington, but fall by the way; I in no sort presupposed those eight tremendous years when the White House would be to the common folk as a temple, with him the idle of their adoration. I could not foresee his marvelous two presidencies, and how, his name brightening with each added sun and followed by every eye, he would retire again to privacy and his Hermitage, the best beloved since the even day of Jefferson.
And now as I talk to you the tears start. He is dead as I write, and gone long ago to join his heart in the grave and lie by the side of his wife; and it comes strangely, even to myself that I, an old man, and held as one hard and practical and cold, should be so moved of retrospection. If it were to remember loss and sadness and decay, such indeed might stand as reason for emotion. But my rearward glances find only the glory of an ever-climbing, sky-kissed high success. Mayhap it is the splendor and white gleam of it to bring the tears, as does the glint of sunshine on the snow.
Yet it half shames my years, these drops of feeling. And for all that, I well recall how Dale and Overton and Houston and Blair—no meek souls, these!—were as much commoved when claimed of thoughts of General Jackson;—such, for his friends, were the soft and softening spells and powers of the man! The wet eyes of these, stern and rock-hewn, may save me from the stain of doting weakness. But I loiter—I lose time when there is none to lose—a wandering delay is the crime common of old age.
Our journey to Washington was disputed by applause at every foot; the double banks of the Cumberland and the Ohio appeared to have become alike the rendezvous of South and West and North. Bands brayed and “committees” came aboard; a dozen times was the boat tied up and the General borne ashore as on a wave to greet and be greeted of roaring thousands who hailed him their Messiah of politics and one come for their redemption. From the first our progress was hedged and canopied of the never-ceasing shout, “Hurrah! for Jackson!” Night and day it was in our ears, and our very sleep gave way and fled before it.
To say that through this I held no alarms for the General would be but an idle picture of my feelings. Verily! I more than once found my heart in my mouth lest the gusty multitude that struggled and fought to touch his hand should kill him for mere kindness.
And yet he would thrive and be fat upon it, if such word by any padding of hyperbole may be made to fit his slim meagerness. His gray eye would light, his lean cheek show a color, his milky bristle of hair turn more stiffly, jauntily spinous with each of these encounters. When I would remonstrate and cite his sick weakness to forbid, he would shake his head and smile—his closest journey to a laugh. Then he would say:
“Major, you don't know me! These shoutings are as medicine in wine. These people love me; I take strength from their hands; their applause is my food and I live and grow heavy by it.”
And so this boisterousness of endorsement went on; and the General reveled while I sat sour with terror lest from it he sicken and die, stricken by the very evidences of his popularity. He was right and I was wrong; he came from this general joy, which with every hour arose and laid actual hands upon him, as one remade.
Some pages back I pitched upon the fourteenth as a day much in my mind, and the fourth since we came upon the capital. I begin narration properly with that day, regarding what has gone before as preliminary and given for a clearer knowledge of that which is to follow as it unfolds.
There were matters to take place upon the fourteenth which served to fix it in my memory. The first was a mishap to the General himself.
For the rain and the mist and the mire, we that day found ourselves much confined to the Indian Queen. This might be called no hardship of loneliness since, despite the mud, all the world would pull on its boots to visit us. The General, whose dyspepsia was dominant, had eaten only a little rice. This he took at short intervals; yet such dwarf spoonfuls were they, that in the end the aggregate was smallish, and he found himself weakly languid as a reward.
The General had been to a casual reception below to meet official folk—they were building hopes for themselves of what should follow inauguration, still eighteen days away—and being done with them, and uneasy with the weariness of their call, was returning to his room. At the stair's head he stumbled; as he fell he griped his side and gave a smothered sob of pain.
I, who walked close behind, was well aware of what had chanced. The old Dickenson wound was imperfectly healed, and a sharp wrench would tear it and set it to inward hemorrhage. Swiftly I raised him, and since it was no vast distance down the hall, nor he a mighty burden, carried him to his chamber.
“Call Augustus,” he said, his voice pain-lowered to a whisper.
Placing a chair I gave him a mouthful of whisky by way of a stimulant. Augustus was the black body-servant who had come with us from the Hermitage. I knew what the summoning of Augustus argued, yet was handless to interfere. The General when stricken—as he had been many times—in the fashion I have named, was used to open a vein, and so bleed himself comfortably till he felt relief. More than once I had denounced such backwoods surgery as not only dangerous but revolting, and wanting foundations of common sense. There was no logic for it, I said; and it stood for the spirit of the preposterous when one bled internally to bleed one's self externally as remedy. As well might I have spoken with the trees. The General made his stubborn laws and lived them.
“There was a Frenchman,” observed the General on some occasion of my remonstrance, “who said that at forty every man was either a fool or a doctor. Now I am more than forty; and I'm no fool.”
Augustus, a tawny, handsome black, arrived in a hurry splendidly promissory of zeal. Being deft of practice, he whipped a bandage sharply tight about the General's arm above the elbow—as starved as a rake-handle, that arm, yet strong as hickory bough! Then the General with his jackknife nicked a vein well down the lower arm, and proceeded to bleed himself most contentedly and liberally, while Augustus held a basin.
Following these horse-leech experiments, for so I scrupled not to brand them, the General, wrapped in a dressing gown, was put to rest upon a sofa. It would have been the bed; but it stood not yet three of the afternoon, and it was a saying of the General's that no man should take to his bed by daylight until he came to die. On the lounge, and, as he declared, much uplifted of health, Augustus and I left him, with the whisky easily at hand in event of over-creeping faintness.
After the lapse of an hour I returned. There lay that upon me which, as I saw the future, it was proper enough should be said to the General. And since he was like to oppose my counsel, as folk commonly do what is patent for their peace, sticking as stoutly for the seeds of trouble as though they were indeed the seeds of righteousness, I reckoned aid perhaps from his present weak, low state. He would lack somewhat his vivacity, and might be drawn with less of struggle to my manner of thought.
Thus abode the coil: It was the evening before when the General told me how he would propose Eaton to be his Secretary of War, and asked my view. I had withheld opinion at the time, my caution evoking a dull flare of that heat-lightning of the General's temper, which last commodity was never deeply in abeyance. I would tell him later, I said; and following a rumble of contempt on his part for the sluggishness of my friendship for Eaton—for that gentleman and I for long had been friends—the subject was for the moment at rest. Now was the time ripe to dispute this question with him; so I bethought, as I wended towards his door.
Coming to his chamber I tapped, and then pushed in without wait, as was my wont. The windows were to the west where at this hour the sun should have been; but such was the veil of fog without that the day seemed already spent and sinking into twilight.
The great fire on the hearth—honest, crackling logs to feed it, since the General would tolerate no less—set the room in a bloom of light that came close to marking the candle that burned at his elbow a profligacy. He had lifted himself from the sofa where Augustus and I placed him, and was seated before a little table. On it, propped against the Vicar of Wakefield, a book whereof he never tired, stood a miniature of his wife. Throughout the day he wore this little painting beneath his garments and hung about his neck by a black cord. His wife had given it him in the old days and when their love was new. Each night, when folk pray and con the Bible, he would have this picture before him; and with it her hymn-book to read her favorite songs. This was his devotion—his worship; it was as though he communed with her, his Saint Rachel, on the work of the day and its duties. To the time of his death he did this; and for whatever was good of his performing he would lay it to these conferences, sweet at once and sad, when in the dusk borderlands of day and night he met and talked with the soft shadow of his heart's own.
As I came into the room the General raised his eyes. They were tear-brimmed and he made no shift to hide them.
“Major,” he said with trembling lip, gazing the while on the miniature, “she strove to make me a Christian. I gave her my promise to become a Christian. And so I shall when once I'm done with office and back again at home. I would become one now, were it within the domain of what might be. But who is he who could unite politics and Christ? I'm no hypocrite, Major; you know that! You know what a politician is; you know what a Christian should be. No man may be both, Major; no man may be both.”
“You are not a politician,” I retorted. “You are a president.”
This I got off with a gruff air of harshness, not, however, because it drew a true distinction. I sought to call him from his present mood. The General was unusual in so far that a best step towards comforting him was to irritate him. In his breast he loved collision, and might even leave mourning for a war.
“I am a president and not a politician!” This with a gather of scorn. “And pray, when is a president not a politician?”
With a deprecatory gesture I dismissed the point.
“Let that remain,” I replied, “as a question wherewith to rack some further moment. I came for another matter.” The General turned a keen eye upon me. “You spoke of Eaton for your portfolio of war,” I continued.
“Have you considered what objection might lodge against such course?”
“Go on,” he said.
“General, I misdoubt the wisdom of the step. I will make my word plain. There is none to be more the friend of Eaton than myself, none to respect him more. But, sir, you are aware of what folk say.”
“And what do folk say?” Anger stood red on the brow of the General as a banner is flung from a battlement. “What do folk say?”
“You should consider coolly, General,” I went on. Ever cool myself, it was for that the General valued my counsel. “You know this tale as well as I. It has been told me more than once within four days. Light and laughter-loving, the beautiful Peg O'Neal grows up, the daughter of this very tavern that shelters us. She weds Timberlake, the purser. He is here; then he is at sea. The girlish Peg is still a girl. She goes to rout and ball; she is gay and high and does not mope and wear demure half-weeds as good opinion holds one should whose love is on the sea among the storms. There come whisper and nod and innuendo—the pot of Washington scandal, they tell me, is made easily to boil. Then in the Mediterranean Timberlake cuts his throat; and next, as one who makes sure work, leaps overboard into fifty fathoms. The beautiful Peg does not become distinguished for her grief. This, and the throat-cutting, augment talk, and tongues wag doubly. Within the year thereafter, and not two months ago, she and our friend Eaton are wed. Gossip gains a new impulse; heads nod and there are wise leers. I put this to you, General, with a rude coarseness almost ferocious; I do so for a purpose. I put it as your enemies will put it when, should you call Eaton to your cabinet, they seize on the story to your injury. It is not what you and I say or believe; that is not the question. It is what will your enemies tell and the world accept.”
While I was talking, the General filled a clay pipe; in tobacco he found calm. Holding the pipe by its long reed stem he strode up and down, puffing cloudily. The red faded on his forehead, but his eyes were agate-hard. I saw it would be Eaton against argument. The General's will was set as hard and fast and cold as arctic ice.
Nor, to be fully honest, was I over-surprised or sensibly cast down; I had fairly foreseen it all. You may question why, then, I made this vigorous head; and Eaton my friend.
It is a proper curiosity. Freely, I am constrained, as I review the past, to regard myself as sometimes the victim of self-foolery. On this February evening with the General, I make no doubt but I thought I acted wholly for his weal and peace. And yet I was clear before I spoke, how my words would win to no effect, and Eaton for the cabinet it would be. Thus, I now see that my impulse, indubitably, was one wholly of vanity; as the friend privileged to frankness and who—as he said many times and until I consented to the fact myself—more than any other had builded him up to be a president, I would tell my mind, air my gifts of prophecy, and arrange myself for a future wherein the General might say, when the winds blew high, “You saw the tempest coming and you told me.” That, as I now see, was the very conceited, small, cheap reason of my interference; although at the time I in no sort beheld it by that light, but felt somewhat noble and high and as might a loyal friend.
The General for ten full minutes smoked up and down, I silent, and the room otherwise still save for the tick-ticking of the clock. At last he spoke smilingly and off to one side.
“You remember that sagacious doctor who was yesterday called from Baltimore to amend me after my journey? 'I'll do anything you say,' I told him, 'save give up coffee and tobacco.' 'Then you'll die,' he retorted, 'since it is coffee and tobacco which are killing you.' 'Then I'll die,' I replied, 'since coffee and tobacco are all that are left worth living for.' He quit the place in a fury of heat, did that doctor.”
The General grinned. There was another pause; then he swung back to my Eaton warning, while his face again showed grave and firm.
“Sir, Mrs. Eaton—Peg, as we call her—is as spotless as a star. My wife knew her, loved her.” His tone was tender, while his glance sought the miniature where from the table it followed him up and down with its eyes. “Timberlake's habits were unfortunate; his suicide was due to that. There was never a doubt of Peg in his soul; never a question of her conduct. I know this; I do not guess. What!”—here his voice began to rise with choler—“what! are we to guide by nameless slanders? Eaton is my friend, honorable, high of mind, honorably married to the woman he loves! I will not, by anything I do or fail to do, arm villification. Into my cabinet he goes though every bow in hell be bent against it.”
Smash! went the General's pipe upon the hearth. It was the manner of the man when driven of anger. First and last he smashed pipes by the gross.
“That is not the song of it!” I stubbornly protested.
Then I put out what was true; that he should look at this thing from the point of his presidency. There was the public interest; his faith to the public must be dwelt on.
“If there be a faith to the public,” he retorted, “there is also a faith to a friend. It is a widest rumor that Eaton is to be of my cabinet. Folk are morally sure of it as much as folk may be of what sits in the antechamber of time. Should he not be named, that fact will be held as an endorsement of these slanders. It will destroy Eaton; worse, it will destroy Peg. Do you counsel that? Must that be done in the name of Public Good?” The General now was speaking in a cold, contained way for all his late pipe-smashing, and you are not to infer, from any verbal force displayed, a shouting anger. Wroth he was; but, nathe-less, low-voiced and steady as with a kind of tranquility of fury. “Must my friend be abased, insulted—must a sweet, true woman suffer harm for that you say a public interest asks it? Sir, you speak folly and propose disgrace. There can be no public good to come from private wrong. And if it were so, still I should stand the same. I've suffered many tests for the public you prate of; I've abode the death-chances of a hundred battles; I've marched to the public's wars when, spent and weak, I must be lifted to the saddle; in no way have I spared or saved myself. But I will spare my friend; I'll save a woman's honor; aye! spare and save them though your public interest perish in their steads. You could name no altar whereon I would make such sacrifices. The honor of a woman—to safeguard her good fame—is the first duty of a man. It is before friendship, before patriotism; it has precedence over things public or private. What you offer spells ruin for a woman—ruin for Peg whom my wife has loved and kissed! I will not do it. I say it again: Eaton for the cabinet it should be though it were the last act of my life. More; if I were capable of beginning my administration with treason to a friend, I might surely look to conclude it with treason to the people.”
You are to know that the General made these long orations walking the floor, and in a manner jerky and declamatory, though not loud. There might be spaces of silence between sentences measured by two and three steps; and much of the time his eye left me and he was like one who debates with himself.
I ramble off his utterances somewhat in full; for I not only regard the sentiments expressed as creditable to the General himself, but am disposed to give you the truth of him as one who, while right oftener than most men, and as set for justice as a pair of scales, on this as on every other strong occasion did his thinking with his heart. Also, while he never said the word, it ran in him like a torrent that his wife, were she with him, would shield poor Peg at whatever vital cost; and of itself that was equal to the sweeping down of reasons strong as oak or adamant.
Who was the un-observer to say that familiarity breeds contempt? He went wide of the truth; he should have said that familiarity breeds self-confidence. Now I knew the General—I knew the windings of his thought as one knows his way about a house. Folk called him a hero; he was never so to me. And yet, more than any, I knew him to be even better and braver and broader than was his fame in the worshiping mouths of ones who uplifted him to be a god. No, the General and I neither looked up nor looked down when we dealt with one another; we met ever on level terms. He was president, or shortly would be; but what then? As he himself said, “The presidency is a condition, not an attribute, as it might be a malady or a fortune, an evil or a good. And if I am King are you not Warwick?” This last was his way of phrasing it when, a year or so later, I told him of some overheard amazement concerning the easy, old-shoe terms on which I lived with him.
Such being our attitudes one to the other, the General's oral exaltations—while I identified them for honest and as from his soul's soul—struck on me as more florid than was called for by an interview, private and commonplace, between us two. But it was the nature of him; his surface could be made to toss like some tempest-bitten ocean, while his steady depths were calm. This may explain, if it does not excuse, that while he thus walked about, raging and eloquent, I listened with a bit of impatience, helping myself meanwhile to a mouthful of whisky and filling a pipe of my own.
“Say no more,” I observed, having advantage of a pause; “say no more. Eaton you will have it, and Eaton it shall be. But, on the whole, do you call it good to your Peg? Do you call it wise or friendly to put her forth to be the target for every bolt of detraction?”
The General drew over to the fire and sat down. Slowly he poured himself a glass of spirits, and then as slowly drank it off. For some moments he smoked in silence.
“What with this wrong to my side, Major,” he said at last, “and the blood I've let, and all on a pale diet of rice, I fear I'm not strong enough to argue with you. Let us agree, then, that Eaton shall go in as Secretary of War. As for Peg—poor little Peg!—why should she be safer out than in? Moreover, a woman must have her courage as a man has his. She must risk slander as he risks sword, and both must front their enemies.” He had gone on with a mighty mildness; now he began to wave his second pipe, and I looked to have it go into the fireplace with every word. “You say that the Eatons will be assailed. Already they are attacked; not for themselves, but for me. They were married in January; none found fault until, with our coming, Eaton's nearness to me was remembered and the whisper of what I would do with him began to run abroad. The Eatons are the victims of my feuds; it is I, through them, who am stabbed at. Sir,”—smash! went the pipe and the General started up—“sir, it is the work of Henry Clay—that creature of bargain and corruption! You know his methods of the past campaign. What lie was too vile to tell? What calumny too gross? Who so innocent as to escape his malice? Why, sir! such as Clay and his crew would befoul Gehenna, and Satan himself might shrink aside in shame from their companionship! Who was sure from them and the poison of their mendacity? She died by it”—here he pointed to the miniature. “Even the poor lost grave of my mother was not sacred to such jackals. And now it is the Eatons—now it is the pretty, harmless Peg! So let it be; they will find me ready. If I feel joy for a presidency it is because it clothes my hands for their annihilation.”
There was a rap at the door. Augustus opened it and announced: “General Green.”
“Duff Green,” said the General, as though a new thought occurred. “I think now for once, in a way I shall turn our rotund friend to partial use.”
“And how will you compass that miracle?” I spoke rather in scorn than curiosity since I owned to briefest admiration for the General's caller. “It will be a novelty to see your Duff Green of use.”
“Why then,” returned the General, “the benefit I propose from him is one simple enough. I shall have him, in his paper, give this cabinet list to the public. Once in print the thing is ended—the nails for that cabinet building will be clinched.”
“And that is it,” cried I, in opposition. “Now to my notion it is ever best to hold a question of this sort in abeyance until the latest moment. Thereby you preserve for yourself room wherein to change your plan.”
“One's first aim is the surest,” responded the General. “Now I've never known much good to come from this plan-changing of which you talk. Nor do I believe in secrets. One should tell the people their business so soon as ever that business is transacted. More folk are trapped and slain with their own secrets than are saved by them. Besides one has no right to lock a door between the people and their affairs. There go but two keys with government, one for the treasury and the other for the gaol, and every officer from path-master to President should be made to study this lesson of the keys until he can repeat it.”
To this lecture I made no retort whether of comment, denial or agreement. These abstractions delighted him; and in this instance I too listened with pleasure, not so much because of the deep-sea wisdom disclosed as for that tranquility of spirit after his tossing anger against Clay, which their utterance would seem to bring him. As it stood the General's high temper had faded and his heat was much cooled away when Duff Green appeared.
CHAPTER II—PORT WINE DUFF AND PIGEON-BREAST
Duff Green was a round, insincere, self-seeking, suave, smooth, porpoise-body of a personage, small of eye, hair age-streaked, a port wine voice, wide mouth, and nose of friendly hue. He had come to town the year before, poor and modest, and bartered himself into possession of the Telegraph, a leading journal of the capital. He prospered, and prosperity had swollen him. Nor was he without some tincture of shrewdness; for he owned the wit in the late elections to support the General, and now would wax pompous and come forward because of it. I did not like him, holding him selfish and withal weak; besides, his affable complacency offended me.
The General would defend Duff Green, although I am sure he had his measure from the start. The General, retorting to my charge of selfishness and vanity, would say: “Of course, Duff's selfish; that's why I enjoy him. I like selfish folk; they are easy to understand, easy to start or stop. One has but to bait his trap with their interest and, presto! there they are in the morning caught sharp and fast for his use. And again, your selfish folk are content with much less than will suffice your disinterested folk who truly love you.” This was one of the General's efforts at sarcasm, and delivered with the sly flicker of a smile.
“But the smug vanity of Duff Green!” I would urge. “I could wish you half so tremendous as he deems himself.”
“Fie! Major, fie!” would be the reply; “vanity is the powder in the gun, the impulse that sends the bullet home. It is the sails of the ship and the reason of motion to that hull of merit which might make no voyage without. Vanity has won more battles than patriotism; wanting vanity, Caesar would have crossed no Rubicon, and Napoleon would have begun, not ended, with Waterloo.”
This fashion of bicker fell often forth between the General and myself; indeed, we were in frequent disagreement, he being one who, while holding notions of his own wisdom, was withal much imposed against by pretences on the false parts of men whom I saw through as through a ladder; and so I told him.
“Ah! excellent evening, Mr. President! excellent evening, Major—ah!” exclaimed Duff Green, his friendly nose aflame, and port wine tones, satisfied and unctuous. Coming forward, he took first the General's hand and then mine. For all the warmth of his countenance, his hand had the cold feel of a fish, and I did not, myself, insist on its retention beyond the plain limits of politeness. “Excellent evening, Mr. President,” he repeated, glowing the while, in anticipation doubtless of public printing to come.
“You are not hard to suit for your evening, Duff,” returned the General, whose fault it was to be on terms too common with many unworthy of the honor. “Now, I call this the scandalous evening of a scandalous day. I say 'scandalous' because muddy,” explained the General.
In the talk to follow it developed that the purpose of Duff Green's visit was no more noble than to just wring future patronage from the General. Especially did our caller have his watery eye on the governorship of Florida, a post, for its palms and orange groves and flowers and summer seas, and mayhap the social life of St. Augustine—aristocratic, and still on Spanish stilts—much quested; and the reason of a deal of court paid the General by rich ones who, having money, hungered for an opening to its display. Duff Green even suggested, tentatively, the name of a certain wealthy thick-skull. He said the notable in hand was a prime friend of Calhoun; that his selection would be held vastly a compliment—a flower to his nose, indeed!—by the Vice-President.
“Why, sir!” observed the General, whose familiarity diminished as the place-hunting eagerness of the worthy Duff Green began to gain expression; “why, sir, the man you tell of lacks brains. It cannot be; say no more. We'll find some safer way to flatter the Vice-President than by periling public service in the hands of a weakling.”
“Weakling!” repeated Duff Green, while the friendly nose began to bleach; “weakling! Mr. President, this gentleman—this friend of Calhoun—is one of our richest people.”
“Why, I believe he did inherit a fortune,” responded the General carelessly; “or perhaps a more proper phrasing would make the fortune inherit him. But that is scant reason why he should mismanage a gravely important trust. The governorship of Florida is not all citron groves and mocking birds; there is responsible work to do; and the territory, I tell you, shall not be wasted by a fool. But cheer up, Duff,”—the visitor was looking blue and the hue of friendship had quite departed his nose—“cheer thou up! Perchance we may yet discover some office wherein your ambitious wittol of wealth—whom the Vice-President loves!—may be great without being dangerous.”
Duff Green was no more urgent on the point of a Florida governorship. He was not so dim but he saw his failure and accepted it with what grace he might.
“I don't know how the Vice-President may take it!” he murmured at the close.
“As to that,” said the General, and his words fell with a suspicious sharpness, as from one smelling to a threat; “as to that, the Vice-President must sustain himself very patiently. I know those who would hold other conduct on the Vice-President's part as excessively misplaced. They might even teach the Vice-President a similar conclusion. You should tell him that; since I see you act by his request and as his agent.”
Here the General looked hard at Duff Green. Already I caught a shadow of those jealous differences to come between the General and Calhoun—differences that would seem, for the separation of the White House and the Vice-Presidency, constructed of the Constitution. These offices never have agreed—never have been true friends in any administration. It was the less important in this instance, since, secretly and unknown to him, Calhoun for over a decade had been the General's enemy. On that February evening which Duff Green so distinguished as “excellent” the General was by no means distant from the fact's discovery.
“You do wrong, Mr. President,” faltered Duff Green, his affable nose as pale as paper now, “when you say I am Calhoun's agent. The Vice-President knows nothing of this. It was by accident I became aware of his anxiety touching the Florida governorship. I give you my honor, Mr. President; I give you my honor!”
“Let it pass; it's of no mighty consequence.” Then impatiently, “Don't call me 'Mr. President' until I'm President. It will be bad enough after inauguration, I take it.”
Here poor Duff Green was visibly disturbed. I said nothing to relieve him. Indeed, I didn't utter a dozen words while he remained; as I've told you, I misliked Duff Green, with his face the color of a violin and his airs of fussy consequence.
“But here, Duff,” resumed the General, coming himself to the rescue of our visitor, who might be described as sinking for the third and last time in the deep waters of his own confusion, “here, Duff, is something I much desire you to do. It is a list of the cabinet as I intend its construction on the hocks of my inaugural. There are reasons why it should be printed; the Major”—here he indicated me, and with a dry note in his voice which I understood—“approves the names and thinks they should be given to the public. Get them in the next Telegraph. Here, I'll read them.” And the General reached for his horn-framed glasses and began from a paper he'd taken from his pocket. “Van Buren, Secretary of State; Ingham, the Treasury; Eaton, for the War Office.” I saw Duff Green look sharply up. Somehow, while I found protest in his glance, I could not believe the promised cabinet selection of Eaton unpleasant to him. From that moment I knew him for no well-wisher of the General—to be thus pleased with a prospect of hot water! The General drove ahead: “Branch for the Navy; Berrien for the Department of Justice; and lastly, Barry, Postmaster General. There you have it. New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky; the North, the West, and the South—two each; and none for the Yankee East, since to that hard region where men, to make them smart, are raised on foxes' ears and thistle tops, I owe no debts. There is the list. Let me see it in print.” And the General placed the paper in Duff Green's hands.
The General turned to fill his infallible pipe; he would have it ready to shatter into smithereens should provocation come. Duff Green fingered the folded paper with timid air while the General fished for a coal with the little table tongs. For myself, I said nothing; since it was to be done, it might as well see ink—that cabinet list. As the General straightened his tall, slight form, his tobacco-lighting accomplished, Duff Green, breathing pursily from a dash of trepidation, could not forbear comment.
“I suppose you would like my thoughts on this list?” Duff Green took care to give his supposition the rising turn of query.
“And why do you suppose so?” said the General, his tone something grim.
“Only because I supposed you'd like the thoughts of everybody.” Duff Green fawned with his voice in a half-fright. It is ill to pester a lion, being no lion-tamer. “I supposed you'd like the thoughts of everybody,” he repeated.
“Quite right!” said the General, pretending return of sunshine. “And what are your thoughts?”
“The list will be welcome,” he answered, gaining confidence from the General's mollified features; “the list will be welcome save in one particular. The selection for your Secretary of War, Mr. President—”
Here Duff Green came to a stop, utterance wholly at a halt. Nor did I blame him, for now the General gloomed in truly savage sort. The General waved his pipe; but he did not break it. Probably he did not think Duff Green worth a pipe.
“And what of Mr. Eaton?” demanded the General at last.
“It's Mrs. Eaton,” gasped the other, while his fear shook him until he quaked like a custard; “it's Mrs. Eaton. Our society will not receive her; that is, our ladies won't. Mr. President, she's a tavern-keeper's daughter—he kept this identical Indian Queen, as you must know. Mrs. Eaton's origin is too low for such station; and besides they say—and—and—Mr. President, really, our ladies won't receive her into society.” Duff Green ran visibly aground and could go no further.
“Mark you this, Duff Green,” and the General's eyes sparkled, while he kept his voice in hand; “mark you this! If a 'low origin' be the social argument, then I am minded of no palace as the habitat of my own bringing up. But here I tell you: I've not come to the White House to be ruled. Once I was set to the defence of New Orleans. The society of that great city was against me, and I put society under martial law; a society legislature was thereby shocked, and I dissolved it; a society Frenchman murmured against this, and I marched him out of town with two bayonets at his back; a society American denounced the expulsion, and I clapped him in irons; a society judge issued a writ of release, and I arrested him. Incidentally, I beat Pakenham and his English, and did what I was sent to do. Now I've been ordered to Washington by the public and given duties to perform. I look to find here conditions of sympathy and friendship and support. If they be not here, I'll construct them; if, being here, they fail me, I'll supply their places. Notably, should I get up some morning to discover myself without a newspaper”—Duff Green sweats now and pricks up his ears—“there shall one grow instantly from the ground like any Jonah's gourd. Your ladies will not receive Mrs. Eaton whose 'origin is low!' And for that cogent reason Mr. Eaton must not be Secretary of War! Man, have I been lifted to a presidency to consult wives and gossips in picking my constitutional advisers? Go; print that list—print it as I give it you;—go!”
The breath of the General's indignation carried Duff Green into the hall; and even when the door was closed behind him, I could follow by ear as he fled towards the stair with a fat shuffle that told of terror.
“The man exhausts me,” said the General, as he refilled his pipe.
“I think I'll write to Frank Blair.”
“Why?” and the General looked up.
“We should have him ready to start a Jackson paper in Washington when Duff Green deserts.”
When I turned out on the next morning I found the fogs and mists of the day before departed and blown aside, and a bright sky overhead. There was no frost; but on the contrary a fine spring promise in the air that smelled in one's nostril like the breath of budding trees. The roads, too, were more in the way of reform, and here and there a dry spot showed in profert of what would be. Altogether it was quite an April rather than a February morning. I finished shaving and dressing and called Jim to brush my coat. A hostler before he became a valet, Jim was used to accompany these brush-labors with an aspiration like unto the escape of steam; a sound held sovereign by him for giving a horse's coat a gloss, and therefore good for mine. I had gone forth in an earlier day to break Jim of these stable tricks, but, making no headway, wisely gave it up, and Jim hissed on unchecked. There be things your African won't learn; there be things he will learn; and effort to suppress in the one direction or excite enterprise in the other, is thrown away. Aware on these points, I had taken years before the bridle of restraint off Jim, and to give him his due he went the better with his head free.
When brushed to fit Jim's notion of the spic and span, I settled my chin in my black stock and went to call upon the General. I would know how he held himself on the back of his bleedings and his wraths against Duff Green.
I found him over a bowl of coffee and with a pipe going; he had been up and breakfasted an hour before. Also, he had gotten letters to please him and was in top spirits.
I recall looking at him as I entered his chamber, and thinking, as I noted his quick, game-cock air, full of life and resolution, how little he seemed that invalid who but the evening before was opening veins and lying ill with old wounds. The difference would have amazed any save myself, who had seen too much of him to be now astonished. The General could pull himself together like a watch-spring. Moreover, he fed on sensation, and a glow at his heart's roots was better for him than a meal of victuals. I've borne witness as he rode into the wilderness to conquer Weatherford and his Creeks, with a month-old bullet in his shoulder and its fellow in his arm. He was so feeble and nigh death that he must be handed to his saddle like a sack of bran, and each hour the surgeons must bathe him over with sugar-of-lead water to keep life in his body. And yet, from the outset, and on bad food and with the ground for his bed, he began to mend. The man lived on sensation, I say, like a babe on milk. He would walk up and down a line of battle and be as drunk on rifle smoke as any other on brandy.
When I came into his room I found the General—pipe and coffee for the moment in retirement—to his own evident satisfaction, but in a rusty raven voice I fear, humming The Star Spangled Banner. His eyes were closed. He was sitting by the fire, beating out the time of the music with pipe held like a baton in his claw-like hand, wearing meanwhile much the air of your critic at an opera. His notes slipped frequently into quavers, and there was constant struggle to keep from lapsing into the savage minor key.
“You make grewsome music for a bright morning, General,” said I; “it sounds dolefully like a wail.”
“That's a majestic tune, Major,” he replied, opening his eyes. “It never fails to stir me, and would bear comparison with Old Hundred, albeit one tells of religion and the other of patriotism. After all, what should be the separation between true patriotism and true religion?”
“Last evening,” I retorted, “you fell upon me hip and thigh because I said you were not a politician but a president; you would have it that the two were synonyms for each other. Also, you declared that no one might be both a politician and a Christian. Now you talk of no separation between patriotism and religion. General, you go to bed in one frame and get, up in another; you are not consistent.”
“I'll not quarrel with you,” said he, “though to say, as you would seem to, that a president and a patriot are ever the same, is begging the question and a far shot from the truth. I still stick for it, however, that The Star Spangled Banner comes close to religion in its influence; I've heard it given while the big guns were speaking at the front, and I may tell you, sir, it brought water to my eyes.”
I could well believe this, for the General was as soon to shed tears as a woman; and withal so readily excited that on least occasion his hand would shake like a leaf in a ripple of wind. He said the latter was from coffee and tobacco and not from natural nervousness. He was half right and half wrong. This tremble of the hands was the vibration of that mighty machinery of the man when the belts were thrown on for utter action. However, this is all aside the story.
The promulgation in Duff Green's valued imprint of the General's designs had made a stir, I warrant you. The capital community seized on the list of coming cabineteers with wondrous relish. Delighted day by day over the tattle of office, the local public sat up, one and all, and chattered of the printed names like unto a coop of catbirds. Particularly, I might add, were the Eatons tossed from tongue to tongue; folk took sides, and some assailed while others defended, and no little heat found generation. The General admired the buzz and clash—for his ears were open and he heard of it—being as fond of storms as a petrel; and for myself, I was well enough pleased. It was prior to my interview with Peg, you are to remember, and I not yet her partisan; I half hoped those resentful clamors against the Eatons would stay the General at the eleventh hour.
“It's not yet too late,” said I, “to have White for the war portfolio and leave Eaton in his Senate seat. I repeat, there's the country to think of.”
The General was blandly immovable. Said he, “I have told you how it's a war on me as much as a war on Peg. They fight really against me; they attack her good name in their criminal strategy. Besides, Major, you do the country insult.” Here he gave me a smile. “The country is larger than you would admit and not to be easily shaken or over-set. Nor are you and I of such import as we think. The worst that both of us might do of public evil would hardly serve to rock the boat. And though the common interest should dip gunwale a trifle, to this side or to that, are we to throw overboard a girl on an argument of trimming ship? I say to you for the last time, I'm no such mariner.”
The latter sentences were vivid of spirit, and it was clear the General had given the Eatons a deal of consideration since the night before, with the result of stiffening his first determination.
“You'll find more folk than myself,” I observed at last, “to differ with concerning this business. I do not believe the town is like to sit down quietly with the arrangement.”
“We will cross that river,” said he, “when we come to it. But why, Major, should you and I continue whirling flails over this old straw? It was between us most thoroughly threshed last evening. I think you are right about the town, however, and that's why I'm waiting now in my apartment. Mud or no mud, I would else be in the saddle for a morning ride. I'm in momentary hope of visitation by a delegation of society Redsticks, who, I understand, connive a descent upon me. They propose at the coming pow-wow to demand my Eaton intentions, and to make protest against them should their most worshipful fancy disapprove.” The term “Redsticks,” which the General employed, was a kind of border slang and the name given to the Creek hostiles in Weatherford's war. “You must stand to my back, Major, when the enemy arrives.” This, with a glance of humor which showed the General as not attaching vast emphasis to the invasion or what might grow from it.
“I will abide the shock of your Redsticks' charge,” I said, smiling with him, “unless they bring a reserve of women to the field. With the first dire swish of warlike crinoline I shall abandon you to the fate you've invited. I have stood to odds; but my courage is not proof against an angry woman.”
The General beamed in his droll fashion and, shifting our ground of talk, said he had letters to write and needed my help. It may as well be known, for soon or late it is bound to escape into notice, that I wrote most of the General's letters. He was a perilous hand with a pen, and no more a speller than a poet.
But there would be no letters written that day; for when we were in the very act and article of beginning, Augustus came in with a card.
“Ah! Colonel Towson, U. S. A.,” read the General. “Show him up.” This last to Augustus. “The Redsticks would seem to have dwindled to one,” observed the General, turning to me. “This Colonel Towson was to be their spokesman. Now he comes alone. He is a very brave or a very ignorant man.” And the General sniffed dangerously, and yet in manner comic, as recognizing the elements of a farce.
Colonel Towson, I must needs say, was a poor feature of a man, with a trivial face in which the great expression was a noble opinion of himself. He was of the cavalry, as I judged by the facings on his regimentals, for our visitor appeared in full uniform, and for part of his regalia dragged a clattering saber and wore fierce spurs to his heels. Plainly he was one of your egregious fops; and his breast was trussed outward and upward with the fullness of a pigeon's by dint of some vain contrivance inside his garments. As he brought his heels together, and stood with a deal of splendor just inside the door, the General ran him over with questioning eye that took in everything from the wax on his moustache to the gilt on his spurs.
“What do you want, sir?” demanded the General, as blunt as a hammer.
“I am Colonel Towson, Mr. President; the paymaster of the forces.”
Pigeon-breast spoke in high, affected tones, and would clip his words and slur his “r's” in a mincing fashion beyond imitation.
“Of what forces?”
The voice was calculated to plant dismay in the other's youthful ears. I was aware how the General's ferocity was assumed, and that deep in his throat he was laughing. I should have laughed myself, but managed instead to establish a firm gravity.
“Of the army, Mr. President.”
The high tone began to squeak from agitation. And no marvel! The General's frown was enough to abash a lion.
“Are you come to me on duty?”
“No, sir, Mr. President, I—”
“Then why do you wear your side arms?” The General could throw an expression into his face before which a hostile council of red Indians had been known to shrink and turn gray beneath the paints wherewith they were tallowed. The hapless Pigeon-breast was shaking in the shadow of one of the General's most hateful looks. When the other made no response, the General resumed:
“Note this, sir; I am not in the habit of being terrorized by the military forces of the nation. Never again presume to come into my presence armed and spurred, unless required by the regulations.”
“I'll retire, Mr. President, and change my apparel.”
This was feebly piped, and poor Pigeon-breast came nigh to wrinkling his coat in attempts to bow conciliation and apology.
“State your errand, sir, now you are here,” commanded the General. “I've no time for two visits from you.”
Pigeon-breast took what confidence he might from the General's brusque permission, and drew from his cuff a memorandum; as it were, the heads of a speech. Clearing his throat and collecting himself, he began what may have been a most lucid and eloquent discourse. Its effect was lost in the delivery, however; for what with the high thin tones, and what with the orator's lady-like affectations, neither the General nor myself could make more of it than of the laughter of a loon. For his own careless part, I don't think the General paid even slight attention. If Pigeon-breast were uttering thunder, then it was summer thunder and high and harmless, far above his head; he minded it no more than the scraping of a fiddle at a tavern dance. In the midst, Pigeon-breast was made to halt. The General waved his hand as demanding silence..
“We will shorten this. For whom do you come to me?”
“I was asked to see you on behalf of Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.”
The General glanced in my direction. Of course we well understood that the mighty purpose of Pigeon-breast was to protest against Eaton's selection. Indeed, we had caught enough of his oratory to teach us that much. Moreover, Pigeon-breast had at one stage read aloud the article from Duff Green's paper as the reason of his coming, and received the General's word that the list therein set forth was authorized.
But we had caught no word of Mrs. Calhoun, and her name, when it did fall, came as a surprise. The Vice-President's wife was the head of capital fashion—the stately queen of the little court. Both she and her husband, however, had called on the Eatons just following their wedding; and now to discover the lady in the enemy's van owned a sinister as well as unexpected side. It looked like a change of front, and much sustained the General's surmise that this was to be a war on him rather than the Eatons; that its purpose was politics while its source was a plot.
“Did I not tell you that here was an intrigue?” asked the General. I continued blowing my tobacco smoke in silence by the fire. Then, with utter suavity, the General returned to Pigeon-breast. “I must treat the messenger with politeness because of his fair principals. Let me understand: You come from 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington'?”
Pigeon-breast bowed as profoundly as he might with his armor on and gasped assent.
“And their objections are to Mr. Eaton in the cabinet—really to Mrs. Eaton?”
Another bow and gasp from the bold Pigeon-breast.
“Sir, give my compliments to 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.' Say I much regret that I must disregard their wishes. Say, also, they do grave wrong, a wrong greater than mere injustice, to one who in all that stands best is their equal. Being ladies, they should receive her as one of themselves; being women, they should feel for her as an innocent maligned; being Christians, they should come to her succor as one borne upon by troubles. These would be graceful courses, and make for the glory of 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.' On the point of their protest, however, describe me as saying that Mr. Eaton will be of my cabinet; I shall tender him the portfolio of war and he has signified his readiness to accept. I do not know what this may imply socially; I do not decide that, but leave it to the better and more experienced tastes of 'Mrs. Calhoun and the ladies of Washington.' Also, you are to do me this favor, sir.”
Pigeon-breast, who was flattered by the General's long harangue, and inclined to congratulate himself over a polite finale to what as an interview at one moment was stricken of a storm, here aroused himself smartly.
“Believe me, Mr. President, any favor in my power.”
Pigeon-breast touched his brow with prodigious military eclat, and then slapped his leg with his hand like cracking off a pistol.
“Why, then, the favor is simple. Tell every enemy of mine, and especially every friend of Henry Clay, my decision touching Mr. Eaton. I want the news to travel fast and far. My friends will sustain Mr. Eaton; and as for my foes, it shall go hard but I discover ways to deal with them. You may depart, sir.” |
Pigeon-breast saluted with flattered chin in air, and went his way, and presently we heard his saber on its jingling journey down the stair.
“I do not understand that word about the Calhouns,” observed the General, when we were alone. “The Calhouns have already visited the Eatons and professed friendship. As for myself, I've supposed Calhoun my supporter. And why should he be otherwise?” The General shook his head as one puzzled. “We must, I fear, count as against us more than Henry Clay and his rogues of Bargain and Corruption. Well, so be it; a fight is like a frolic in so far that 'the more, the merrier,' as a proverb, applies with equal force to both.”.
Now that Pigeon-breast was gone, and we being alone, I remonstrated with the General for that he had entertained our caller and submitted to his anti-Eaton speech. I said it disparaged his dignity; that he had already listened to Duff Green, which was bad enough, but now he must stand with half-patient ear while yon clanking popinjay reeled off his high-pitched opposition and that of those befeathered dames whom he professed to represent. It was a poor beginning for a president.
“Why, sir,” retorted the General, “you, yourself, are wont to hector me at will; I may not buy a coat without you finding fault. Major, I fear me you are the proud one. To be sure, I stoop when I listen to such as Duff and our martial visitor just here. But you must know what Franklin said of stooping: 'The world is like a tunnel, dark and low of roof. He who stoops a little as he passes through will save himself many a thump.'”
“Oh, if it were to be,” said I, “an argument of saw and proverb and slips of dried wisdom, I might quote you not a few and redden your ears. What I say is, you sacrifice dignity; you know it full well at that.”
The General laughed. “But I had my reasons, Major. I sent him whom you term 'Pigeon-breast' forth to be a poultice to this Eaton inflammation. I want to draw it to a head. Duff Green wouldn't do; he'd keep our talk to himself, since my harshness hurt his self-love, and he's too vain to tell a tale against himself. And again, he would be made silent with thoughts of my possible resentment. With Pigeon-breast the cards fall differently. Did you not remark how well I flattered? At the outset he was afraid of me. In the end I packed his timidity in cotton-batting and sang it to sleep; I rocked his cradle and warmed his milk for him. I called up his pride and made him my messenger. He will tell the Eaton story to all, and give me as his authority; that is what I seek. It is a business that will be the sooner over by setting folk's mouths to the quarrel at once. And we should make it short for Peg's sake. Poor Peg; it's her tavern origin that kindles patrician wrath, and it is their aristocratic method to blow calumny upon her. Slander, Major,”—here the General donned his manner of philosopher—“slander, Major, is as much the resource of your true aristocrat as poison of your Turk.”
CHAPTER III—PEG'S MEETING WITH THE MAJOR
Before, in this relation, I go to that meeting with Peg whereof I made account in the commencement of my story, it would be proper, I think, to notice a singular personality; one who, in intermittent fashion, will run in and out of my history like a needle through cloth. His sewing, however, will be of the friendliest, for he was as loyal to the General as any soul who breathed.
Mordecai Noah, was the man's name. The General possessed a good previous acquaintance with him, although, as in the gentle instance of Peg, I was now to meet him for the earliest time.
Noah was a writer of plays, and an editor; moreover, he was a gentleman of substance and celebration in New York City, where his paper did stout service for the General the hot autumn before. Noah also had been America's envoy to the Barbary States during the years of Madison. A Hebrew of purest strain, Noah was of the Tribe of Judah and the House of David, and the wiseacres of his race told his lineage, and that he was descended of David in a right line, and would be a present King of the Jews were it not that the latter owned neither country nor throne. However this may have been—and indeed a true accuracy for such ancestral cliff-climbing seems incredible, when any little slip would spoil the whole—Noah was of culture and quiet penetration; withal cunning and fertile to a degree. Also, I found his courage to be the steadiest; he would fight with slight reason, and had in a duel some twenty years before, with the first fire, killed one Cantor, a flamboyant person—the world might well spare him—on the Charleston racetrack, respectably at ten paces. I incline to grant space favorable to Noah; for he played his part with an integrity as fine as his intelligence, while his own modesty, coupled with that vulgar dislike of Jews by ones who otherwise might have named him in the annals of that day, has operated to obscure his name.
The General told me of Noah somewhat at length on this morning, and just following the marching away of Pigeon-breast. He said he had sent for him, and that any moment might bring his footfall to the door.
As he dwelt on Noah and his characteristics, I was struck by a word. It is worth record as a sidelight on his own nature.
The General showed gusto and a lipsmacking interest in Noah's duel with the man Cantor, and ran out every detail as one runs out a trail. I could not forbear comment.
“How is it,” said I, “you so dote on strife?”
“I don't dote on strife. But when it comes to that, Major, war is as natural as peace.”
“If it were so,” I returned, “still your admiration is entirely for war. You do not love peace.”
“I don't love war so much as warriors,” he contended. “I understand your war man; and I do not fear him. Besides, your honest soul of battles may be made a best friend. I feel the rankle of a Benton bullet in my shoulder as we talk together; and yet to-day a Benton faces my detractors on the floor of the Senate. I say again, I love the natural warrior; I comprehend him and he gives me no feeling of fear.”
“Do you tell me you can be a prey to fear?” I put the query as an element of dispute. His reply was the word that surprised me.
“Fear?” and the General repeated the word with a sight of earnestness. “Sir, I fear folk who won't fight; I fear preachers, Quakers. They are a most dangerous gentry to run crosswise with.”
When Noah arrived, I was still sitting with the General. Noah was a sharp, nimble man of middle size and years, and physically as deft and sure of movement as a mountain goat. He took hold of my hand on being presented by the General, and I observed how he had an iron steadiness of grip. I liked that; I am, myself, of prodigious thews and as strong of arm as any canebrake bear, and when folk shake hands with me, a blush of emphasis is to my humor. I like to know that I've hold on somebody and that somebody has hold on me. As I looked in Noah's face, I was struck with the contradiction of his black eyes, and hair red as the fur of a fox. On the whole, I felt pleased to know that Noah was the General's true friend; no one would have cared for his enmity.
“I feel as though you were an old acquaintance,” said Noah, and his face lighted as I've observed a sudden splash of sunshine to light a deep wood. “The General has named you so often in his letters, and spoken of you so much in what interviews I've enjoyed with him, that you are to me no stranger.”
“And I've heard frequently and much of you,” I replied.
We from that moment were as thoroughly near to one another as though neighbors for a decade. It was a strange concession of my nature, for men come slowly upon terms of confidence with me, and my suspicions are known for their restlessness.
“This is my thought, Noah,” said the General; “this is why I summoned you. Blessed is he to whom one is not driven with explanations, and who intuitively comprehends. You are that man, Noah.” The General's vivid manner was a delight to me. “There's the Eaton affair—you read my scheme of a cabinet in the paper. There's to be a war upon the Eatons—upon me. Already I hear a dull rumble as the opposition takes its artillery into position. I would know what this means. Is it a frill-and-ruffle wrath alone and confined to our ladies? Or does it go deeper and plant its tap-root in a plot? You know what I should say. Four years pass as swiftly as four clouds; and Henry Clay would still hanker for a presidency. These Bargain and Corruption wolves will hunt my administration for every foot of the way, and strive to drag it down. You gather my notion, Noah. Discover all you can; back-track this Eaton trouble—it's but just started and the trail is short—and bring me sure word, not only of those who foment it, but of the position held towards it by both Clay and Calhoun. Of the hatred of the former I'm certain, and that he'll strike at me with foulest blow. Calhoun, elected to the vice-presidency by my side, I would have leaned on confidently; but a word has been said—the Major heard it—that nurtures doubt. Let me learn all there is of this tangle with what dispatch you may. My own belief goes to it that, when all is said, search will discover Clay to be the sole, lone bug under the chip, and Calhoun—and put it the worst way—but an indifferent looker-on.”
Noah paid wordless attention until the General was through. Then he spoke. “General,” said Noah, “I had already heard much when you sent for me. Your portfolio purposes have not been a secret well kept. Also, it has been abroad as gossip for almost a week, this ill talk of the Eatons; this morning's publication simply served to give it volume. Thus far, and personally, Henry Clay has had naught to do with it; his friends, however, have been prompt to lift up the cry. You are right, too, when you regard the rage of these wolves as threatening you. They would, as you declare, tear down your administration. They will leave nothing untried. They will hang on your flanks through the defiles and in the thickets of society; and it is thus they will seek to harass you by means of the Eatons. They reckon no slight help to their plans, General, through your high temper; I say this for no end of irritation, but to put you on guard with yourself.”
Noah would have gone forth at once, but the General held him in speech about Van Buren, who as present Governor of New York must resign his Albany position to assume place as the General's premier.
Noah, who lived Van Buren's right hand of power in his own region, was full to the brim with him, and I, who had yet to be introduced to the little Knickerbocker, sat absorbed of his description. The General had met Van Buren a dozen times or more; but in any sense of intimacy he was as ignorant of his future secretary as was I myself. We therefore gave fullest heed to Noah, who talked well, being one able to take you a man to pieces as though he were a clock, and show in detail his wheels and particular springs, and point you to the pendulum of motive for every hour he struck.
We were in mid-swing of talk when I was called. It was none other than Jim, to bring me that information—threatening, he deemed it—of the beautiful Peg who waited my coming below.
As I was going, the door standing open, one in coat of clerical finish presented himself without announcement, and rapped modestly on the door frame. I had had experience of his flock and knew him by his feathers. Plainly, he was a solicitor of subscriptions for some amiable charity. The book in his hand spoke loudly for my surmise.
My doubt, had one been entertained, would have found dissipation by the words of the General, as, harsh and strident, they overtook me on my way.
“No, sir,” I heard him say; “no, sir! Not one splinter!—not one two-bit piece! I shall begin as I mean to end. You people are not to send me out of the White House, a pauper and a beggar, as you sent poor Jim Monroe.”
Doughtily resolved, oh General! hard without and soft within! Doughtily resolved and weakly executed, when eight years later you are made to borrow ten thousand dollars wherewith to pay your White House debts before ever you wend homeward to your Hermitage!
After forty and when youth's suppleness has fled, one's fancy is as prone to lapse into a stiff inertness as one's joints. It came then to pass, as I journeyed parlorward along the old-fashioned corridors and stairways of the Indian Queen, that I in nowise was visited by any glint of the possible beauty of Peg, nor yet of her honest injuries; but rather, in half peevish fashion, I considered her a proposed incumbrance to the General's administration, in which I may be pardoned for saying—I, who had been busy with trowel and plumb-line about the corner stone and subsills of his whole career—I was smitten of an interest. Truly, I had been Eaton's friend; and had used him well, too. Also, I was glad to have him take Peg to wife, since such was his fancy. But why should she and he rise subsequently up to vex folk who were like to own troubles more properly their own? That was the question I held acridly under my tongue as I went onward to my meeting with Peg, and I fear some blush of it showed in my face.
Over six feet and broad as a door, I doubtless towered forbiddingly upon her imaginings when I came up to Peg; these and the cloud on my forehead—for I am sure one darkened it—showed her to be both brave and innocent when, without hesitation or holding back, she put forth her hands to me. I've told somewhere how she gave me her hand; that was wrong; she gave me both, and gave them with a full sweep of frankness, that showed confident at once and sad, as though with the motion of it she offered herself for my protection. She spoke no word; her little hands lay in my great ones, and I felt within them the beat of a sharp, small pulse as of one under strain and stress. Once, long before, I had toiled upward with caitiff secrecy and captured a sleeping mother-pigeon on her nest. The quick flutter of the bird's heart beneath my fingers was as this poor throbbing in Peg's hands. I remember, also, I was melted into the same sudden compassion for the pigeon that seized on me for Peg.
“I came to you because you are the General's old friend,” she said. Her sweet, large eyes were swimming, and her voice began to break. Then she put out an effort and brought herself to bay. “I've nothing to ask; not much to say, neither. I know what the General would do; my husband has told me. I know, too, what it will mean of slander and insult and suffering. And yet—I've prayed upon it; prayed and again prayed!—I must go forward. I can not, nay, I dare not become a bar across the path of my husband; I dare not poison his success.”
All this time I had been holding to her hands, for I felt her great beauty and it made me forget the name of time. Besides, this was no common meeting, but rather the making of a league and covenant between folk who were to be allies throughout a bitter strife. I think she noticed my awkward and scarce polite retention of her fingers, for she withdrew them, while a little flush of color painted itself in her face. Still, she did not do this unkindly; and, I may say, there was nothing of sentiment in my breast which cried for rebuke or tendered her aught but honor.
“Pardon a freedom in one twice your years, but you are wondrous beautiful.” These were my first words to Peg. “Mr. Eaton has come by mighty fortune.”
“My beauty, as you call it,” said she, with just the shadow of a smile that told more of pain than gladness, “has been no good ground to me and borne me nettles for a crop. I had been happier for a wholesome plainness.”
Then we settled to a better conversation; and the while her sweetness was growing on me like a vine and I becoming more and more soundly her partisan with every moment.
“My husband is much honored,” said she at one point, “and deems himself advanced by what the General would offer. Also, he sees nothing of the darkness into which I stare; he sees only the high station and the power of it, and the way shines to his feet. But I know what society will do; I have not been child and girl and woman in Washington without experience of it. Folk will turn from me and ignore me and seek to blot me out. If it were none save myself to be considered, I would abandon the field; I would hunt seclusion, cultivate obscurity as if it were a rose. But am I to become a drag on the man who loves me and gives me his name? Am I to be fetters for his feet—a stumbling-block before him?”
“There is no need of this apprehension,” said I; “you should have a higher spirit, since you are innocent.”
“Innocent, yes!” she cried, and her deep eyes glowed; “innocent, yes! As heaven hears me, innocent!” Her manner dismayed me with what it unveiled of suffering. Then in a lower tone, and with a kindle of that cynicism to come upon folk who, working no evil and doing no wrong, are yet made to find themselves fronted of adverse tides and blown against by winds of cruelty, “Innocent, yes; but what relief comes then? I am young; many are still children with my years. And, thanks to a tavern bringing up,”—here was hardness now—“I have so seen into the world's heart as to know that it is better to be a rogue called honest, than honest and called a rogue. That is true among men; I tell you it is doubly true among women.”
To be open about it, I was shocked; not that what Peg said was either foolish or untrue. But to be capable of such talk, and she with that loving, patient mouth, showed how woeful must have been the lesson. But it gave me none the less a deal of sureness for the level character of her intellect, and I saw she carried within her head the rudiments of sense.
“What is it you would ask of me?” said I, at last. “I can only promise beforehand anything in my power.”
“I would ask nothing,” she replied, “save the assurance that you will be my husband's friend and mine. I see grief on its way as one sees a storm creep up the sky. Oh!” she suddenly cried with a sparkle of tears, “my husband! He must not be made ashamed for me! Rather than that, I would die!”
Peg bowed her flower-like head and wept, I, sitting just across, doing nothing, saying nothing; which conduct was wise on my part, albeit I hadn't the wit to see it at the time, and was simply daunted to silence by a sorrow I knew not how to check. It was a tempest, truly, and swayed and bent her like a willow in a wind. At last she overtook herself; she smiled with all the brightness of nature, or the sun after a flurry of rain.
“It will do me good,” she said; “and when the time comes I will be braver than you now think.”
When Peg smiled she gave me a flash of white behind the full red of her lips. Then I noticed a peculiar matter. She wanted the two teeth that, one on each side of the middle teeth, should grow between the latter and the eye teeth. When I say she wanted these, you are not to understand she once owned them and that they were lost. These teeth had never been; where six should have grown there were but four; and these, set evenly and with dainty spaces between, took up the room, each claiming its just share. The teeth were as white as rice, short and broad and strong, and the eye teeth sharply pointed like those of a leopard. There gleamed, too, a shimmer of ferocity about these teeth which called for all Peg's tenderness of mouth, aye! even that sadness which lurked in plaintive shadows about the corners, to correct. And yet what struck one as a blemish went on to be a source of fascination and grew into the little lady's chiefest charm—these separated sharp white leopard teeth of Peg's.
When I came into the room I was thinking on the hardships to the General's administration; now I regarded nothing save the perils of Peg herself. With that on my soul I started, man-fashion, to talk courageously.
“After all, what is there to cower from?” said I. “You know society, you say; doubtless that is true. I confess I do not, since this is almost my first visit to the town. But I know men, and of what else is society compounded? Their heaviest frown, if one but think coolly and be sure of one's self, should not weigh down a feather.”
“Why, yes,” she cried, “you know men. But do you know women? Men are as so many camp followers of society; it is the women who make the fighting line. And oh! their shafts are tipped with venom!”
“It cannot be so bad,” I insisted. “So-called society, which must take on somewhat the character of come-and-go with the ebb and flow of administrations, begins with the White House, does it not?”
“We will do our best,” smiled Peg, without replying to my question.
Probably she comprehended the hopeless sort of my ignorance and the uselessness of efforts to set forth to me the “Cabinet Circle,” the “Senate Circle,” the “Supreme Court Circle,” and those dozen other mysterious rings within rings, wheels within wheels, which the complicated perfection of capital social life offers for the confusion of folk.
“Unquestionably, the White House,” Peg went on, “is the citadel, the great tower, and we can always retreat to that. We will do well enough; but oh!”—here Peg laid her hand like a rose leaf on my arm—“you do not understand, a man can not understand, what we shall go through.”