Next morning the sun had not climbed over-high when the Reverend Campbell, head down and secret eye , came to call upon the General. I caught the black shadow of him—for all the world like the shadow of some vulture to sail between one and the sun—as the , creature sidled through the hall. The General had sent for him, for the General was not one to let the grass grow deep between resolve and action.
“I will see the man alone, Major,” observed the General; “he might complain, were you present, of a situation offering two against one and planned to over-ride him.”
Such management was much to my appetite, since it would but serve to boil my anger—this listening while the Reverend laid out his pack of upon . In good truth! I much misdoubt if I had withstood my hands from him when under such honest ; and that, maugre his black surtout and pulpit snuffle.
And yet it did not miss me as a feature hard to be read for its significance, that now was the earliest time when the General had shown himself so as to think on “two against one” and fail to ask my presence for his conferences. He had met folk for war and peace, and they had come alone; I had been there, and no one of over-riding. However, the subject was not worth quizzing one's self concerning; the Reverend Campbell was come, the best thing about it being that the General lived ample and to spare to arrest whatever of he should bring us in his mouth, and put it to the death. The General could track a lie as surely as ever he tracked , and lived even more its enemy.
Peg met the Reverend Campbell almost in the great front door, for she was on her usual journey to consult with me about some nothing. When his sidelong glance encountered Peg's, the and seemed to turn more mean, if that were possible, than by nature belonged with him. But he said no word; he did not so much as against her one square look, but , and as a snake might, himself out of her path Peg, for herself, swept him with a chill, errant eye as if he were some gutter-being, offensive though unknown.
“And what brings that bird of mal-omen to flutter about one's door?—so bright a morning, too!” This was Peg's question on the Reverend Campbell as she walked in to me and climbed to her customary chair at the left hand of my desk. “What should you say, watch-dog, was his bad mission? Is he a threat? Does he drag a danger after him? You must be alert if you would make safe your little Peg.”
The tone of raillery which Peg adopted secured me; she had no , then, to the purpose of the Reverend Campbell.
“It's quite sure,” I returned, evasively, “that our swart visitor would be much uplifted were the General to relent and dispose of Florida according to his wish.”
And now while Peg sits before the mirror of my memory with her sweet face, as she on that far morning sat in the great leathern chair, let me please my fond pencil with a word of her. There were so many expressions of the unexpected to our Peg—for so I had grown to call her—one must needs be describing and redescribing her with each new page one turns. A born enchantress and a witch full-blown besides! it is the truth that Peg bore upon me like a spell.
There was never woman to be Peg's for flash and spirit, and beyond all to creep so tenderly near to one. And for a crown to that, she was as wise as the serpent. There were moments when Socrates himself might have listened to her and not lost his time.
And she could shift color like a . her on some day of social parade, or where she meets strangers or half acquaintances, and she will be older by fifteen years than now when she plants her small self in that armchair, and makes me turn my writing downward to talk with her. Tender, , , wise, patient, , true, uncertain, sure, and confusing, she offered contradictions equal with the General. I would exhaust the roll-call of the adjectives were I wholly to set this child-woman in the last of her frank arts and .
Peg wore as many moods as a lake on a flawy day and where skies are scud-swept. Now, with a cloud across the sun, she would be dull and sad as lead. Then, with a of wind, she would wrinkle into waves of temper. And next there would dawn a moment when, calm and clear and deep and sweet, she shone on one like silver.
Once, I recall, she sat in her big chair, steeped in a way of wordlessness. I had not heard her voice for an hour; nor she mine, for I was fallen behind in my letters, and politics and president-making are of ink. Suddenly she broke in:
“Why are you so good to me—so much more than any other?”
“How should one fail of sympathy,” said I, giving my manner a light turn, “for another so innocent and so ill-used?”
“And it's just sympathy—all sympathy?” demanded Peg, resting her round chin in her little shell of a palm. “Nothing but sympathy?”
“What else should it be?”
“I don't know,” said Peg, shortly. Then she walked slowly across the room and studied a picture. In a moment she gave a word to me over her shoulder: “I may tell you this, Mr. Questioner. There is but one question a man should put to a woman.”
Smiling on her petulances, I went forward with my writing; she to pulling out the slides of a cabinet. This apartment, I should tell you, was my private workshop of politics wherein I repaired and extended the destinies of the General, and his fame for him. There were a world of history and one president—and say the least of it—constructed in that room.
Peg came presently to my elbow, bringing a trinket of coral. It had been my sister's, and was my mother's before that.
“Is it worth much money?” asked Peg.
“Nothing at all,” I returned.
“And yet you value it highly?”
“Very highly.”
“May I have it?”
It seemed shame to hesitate, and yet I did, while Peg stood with wistful face.
“Why,” said I at last, “I meant it for the one I should love.”
“Oh, you meant it for her whom you would love! And do you look to see it again after that? The coral is mine from this moment.”
With a swish of her skirts Peg was gone; and with her went the coral.
Peg betimes would lay out her campaign for the coming winter. It was then she talked of Van Buren, “the good little secretary,” as Peg named him. Van Buren went often to the Eatons; and on each of those kind excursions he climbed ever higher with the General and with me.
“Not only,” said Peg, assuming a wise of the brow as she recounted how she should wage and win her social war, “not only shall I preside for our good little secretary at dinners and receptions, but he has brought to me the Viscount Vaughn, who is minister for the English, and Krudener, who is here, as you know, for the Russians; and they, since they own no wives to help them, also have me to be at the head of their legation functions. And with the White House back of all, what then will Mrs. Calhoun and her do! Watch-dog we have them routed!” Here Peg's rich laugh would ring out for victory on its way.
Peg, on another day, would shake her head with soft solemnity.
“I do so wish some one watched over me.” Peg spoke in contemplative earnestness. “If I could find a fault in a best of husbands, it must be that he doesn't watch over me.”
“What idleness now claims your tongue?” said I, impatiently. “Was ever such nonsense uttered! And the wives should all turn ospreys, too, I take it, and haunt the upper air to watch their husbands?”
“No,” returned Peg, reading the carpet, “no; a wife should never watch her husband. What should you think of her who, in a garden—a measureless garden of roses—went ever about with petticoats tucked up, stick in hand, questing for some serpent? Who is she, to be so daft as to refuse the of a thousand blossoms to find one serpent and be stung by it?” Peg crowed high and long, deeming herself a princess of chop-logic. “But a man should watch a woman,” she concluded; “the woman wants him to.”
“And why?” said I, becoming curious.
“Because she likes to feel herself tethered by his vigilance.”
“But why?” I insisted. “Is not freedom dear to a woman?”
“Yes, but love is more dear. See what she gains when she only a little freedom for a world of love.”
“I had not thought a woman set such store by —the green eye turned against herself.”
“Jealousy—a man's jealousy is but the counterpart of his love.” Peg lifted her clever head oracularly. “And, watch-dog, that reminds me”—here she me with upraised finger—“you are jealous of me! Yes you are; you are jealous of my husband.”
“You are a confusing form of little girl!” I said, laughing in my turn; “and most confusing when you jest.”
“Yes; when I jest.” This in a way of funny dryness. “Especially, when I jest. Still, you are jealous; you watch me all the time. Do not look frightened; I do not object to jealousy.” Peg finished in a mirthful .
“I would not see you walk into harm,” said I, .
Perhaps I was thus because the small hectorer would stir up confusion in my ; and she, cool, assured, mistress of situations it was her merry humor to create.
“You would not see me walk into harm,” she repeated. “But you are jealous of my husband. Is my husband 'harm?'”
“Do you not complain for that he does not watch you?”
This I said . It is not a hand's-breadth behind a miracle how a girl—and you a steady man of years, and twice her age—will wrap you in perplexities like a parcel. It was so with me; the witch would wind and unwind me as though I were a ball of knitting-yarn! She would darn and patch her laughter with me!
“Watch-dog,” said Peg, , “watchdog, you know you are jealous! And how long do you count it since I told you that jealously was but love turned upside down?” This came off trippingly, and with superior wave of wrist, as settling a thing beyond debate. Then with a of tenderness: “Watch-dog, being so trusted, what would you do for me?”
“I would be a slave for you,” said I, simply enough, “if it were to do you good.”
“Qualification,” cried she, with a vicious stamp of her foot, “always qualification!” Then me: “'If it were to do me good.' Good!—good!—what a desert of weariness in four letters! If I were to discover some unnamed desolation, some barren waste, one , gray, dry, dead—especially dead—I'd turn and call it 'Good.'”
Peg was quiet after this , which was with it all but a surface and nothing deep, and uttering never a word, gazed over against the wall. On my side, I made no return; for I was grown used to her , and knew they were not to be argued with. And most fatal of all was agreement. A best course would be to reply nothing, whether of denial or comment or , but let Peg talk her talk out unrestrained.
However, the fashion of her with the fringe of my eye as I went for more ink on my pen, and observing her face to seem over sad and considerate, I spoke up to cheer her.
“And now what are your thoughts?” said I.
“I was just wanting to be a man, that's all.” And Peg stared straight ahead as though in a . Then starting up, and with a rush of : “Heigh ho! and now if I were, I'll I'd be as dull as the others—as dull as you, watch-dog.” Then, changing the of it, but keeping to her dash and fling: “So you would be my slave! Come, let me mark you for my slave!”
Without warning, she seized my hand, and with her sharp teeth bit until the blood flowed. Then surveying her work, she kissed the pin-prick of a wound with unction. When she raised her face, there was a of blood on her lip and chin.
Walking to a mirror with a careless, flinging step, Peg glanced her face over, and I thought with .
“See if there do not come a pretty white mark when it heals.” This she told me in an arch manner, and with chin on shoulder, and the of blood on her chin. “Now if I but dared,” she went on, returning to the glass, “I would wear that blood always and never wash it away. But the world! the world!—ah, the world! One must wash one's face for the world although one owes the world nothing.”
Peg, now in a of bubbling spirits, and pouring a spoonful of water on her handkerchief, washed off the spots of red, transferring them to her tiny square of cambric. This she with a sort of surprised delight, as tendering a new idea.
“I need never wash that, at any rate,” said she. Then with her glancing eyes on me: “You will wear my mark now;—Peg's mark for her slave!—who would do her good.”
The next moment she went singing across the lawn for her home, leaving me to think on the caprices of our radiant, reckless, blooming, madcap Peg. All this by the way, however; now to return to our day of the Reverend Campbell's call upon the General.
Peg was still curled in her big armchair when, following his interview with the General, the Reverend Campbell left the . It was she who told his departure to me where I at my desk. Peg caught a flutter of him through the large window.
“Oh!” cried Peg, “there goes our Reverend .”
Looking up from where I worked, I the Reverend Campbell making speed out of the grounds. In such hurry was he that he left the walk of , and to save a corner would cut across the grass. The black-foot creature slouched away for all mankind like unto some henroost fox of the night whom daylight had surprised and who now went for the comforting safe darkness of his .
“It is wonder,” said Peg, “what could induce the good General to tolerate the presence of our Reverend Raven for so long. What should be the interest in his croakings?”
As Peg spoke, the General's gaunt form appeared in the door. He was more than half warm with an angry excitement. Without pause or first words of greeting, he addressed himself to Peg.
“Child, where was Timberlake two years ago this summer?—where was he in June?”
“Here in Washington,” returned Peg, her eyes full of wonder, as she scanned the face of the General in quest of a clue to his sharp, unusual curiosity. “He stayed here idle for four years before he last sailed. He was seeking to adjust his accounts as purser for the President. His books were lost when the English captured the ship. It was that to make all the trouble; the red-tape of the navy office detained him here four years before it would accept his accounts. It was during that period we were .” Peg's voice, brisk at the start, fell sorrowfully away towards the end.
“Then he was here in June two summers ago,” said the General, “and for three years prior and almost one year after that time?”
“Yes,” said Peg.
“Now there!” cried the General, with a mixture of and disgust; “see what bald and easily confuted falsehood a fool moved of low will tell! I could believe at times, when I'm brought face to face with such , that are denied powers of reflection.”
“What is it all about?” asked Peg.
“Nothing, child, nothing,” returned the General. “Now run away home; I want a word with your big playmate here.” Then in a softer manner: “No, child, the Major and I are trying to do you a service, and please God! I think we shall accomplish it.”
The whole kind attitude of the General towards Peg seemed ever that of a father, and he was used to call her to him or dismiss her with no shade of rudeness, truly, and yet with no more of ceremonies than an affectionate parent might adopt. Peg never , and received the General's word as readily, and was withal as free of at any suddenness, as should be a daughter who feels her place assured.
When Peg was off for home, the General came and sat in the chair she had vacated.
With the white thick brush of his end-wise hair, and the fierce eyes of him, he made a portrait wide apart from that tender one the great chair so lately framed.
“You are not to know,” quoth the General, without halting for my question, “the whole story this creature has told me. It is bad enough that I was made to give ear to it. The point lies here: If Timberlake were with Peg in June two years ago, and for a year before, this tale falls to the ground as false. He makes its main element to depend upon Timberlake's absence—his charge of against Peg holds only by that. The Reverend Serpent's hinge to swing his on is the absence of Timberlake. And you heard her declare how Timberlake was here.”
“Does this snake, as you rightly term him, give you his story as of a knowledge of his own?”
“No; he hides behind the words of two women; a mother and daughter, named Craven. They pretend to base their on what they was told them by the husband and father, a Doctor Craven—dead, he is, these ten months.”
“And that is mighty convenient,” said I, “for the Reverend Campbell and his fellow ophidians—this retreat to the word of one who dwells dead and dumb beneath six feet of earth.”
“That is their coward strategy,” commented the General, furiously. “However, my thought is to ask Noah to visit these women and question them before the Reverend Campbell collects the wit to tell of his talk with me. I may have alarmed the man, for I was now and then not altogether calm.”
I was driven to smile at this; so much of a want of calmness on the General's part would mean that he had up and down like a tiger. The eagerness of the Reverend Campbell to be clear of the place was not without a cause. There beat some reason in his heels.
“I asked him,” said the General, “why he did not tell this story in the beginning. He explained that he hesitated to approach me with it; he related it to Doctor Ely, who pretended to close terms with me. Then I demanded why this Ely had not told me by word of mouth? Why should he leave with that lie in his stomach, and then write it and send it by post? He said that when it came to the test, Doctor Ely was afraid of me. Fear, fear, that was the assassin excuse of him, and the reason for striking at a woman in the dark! Why, I would not believe the sun was shining on the words of such coward !”
It was settled that I should make company for Noah when he saw the Cravens.
“But don't for a word, Major,” the General, with a world of earnestness. “You do right well when the is a bear or the enemy no more subtile than an Indian. But now the is a woman, you might better fall to the rear and leave leadership to Noah. You are ignorant of woman.”
The Cravens lived no breathless distance up Georgetown way. Not far from their doorstep, Noah and I encountered the Reverend Campbell, who seemed shaken by the meeting.
“Nothing could be better,” cried Noah, cheerfully, claiming the Reverend Campbell's arm. “You shall present the Major and myself to the ladies. And please permit me to do the talking; you may have your turn at the conversation when we leave.”
The two women were , lime-faced folk, and the daughter ugly. I was something stiff, I fear; but Noah, when introduced by the Reverend Campbell, showed as balmy as a day in May. He swept the pair with rapid glance and then turned to the daughter.
“I shall pitch upon the one I deem the more manageable,” said Noah, on our journey to the house, “and when I commence to talk with her, you engage with the other.”
Having this hint in my mind, when Noah began to address the daughter I favored the mother with a word or two on............