Next morning I went straight into the midst of my correspondence and began tossing it on my pen as husbandmen toss hay. There rang no unusual call for this energy of ink, but the whole truth was that, flying like a before pursuing thoughts of —I may tell you they had a fine dance about my pillow the night before!—I would make a refuge of my work.
Long ago I had given up the hope of solving Peg in her . One would never know where or when or how to lay hold on her, for she came to one new and new each day. Wayward, , now fierce and now tender, now in laughter and now in tears, one might not count on her moods in their direction more than on the flight of birds. The one only thing one might be sure of concerning Peg was that one was sure of nothing.
It was the thought of those tears for the home-coming of Eaton which would storm me down and have me captive for all I might with pen and ink. What should they proclaim? That Peg was unhappy, truly, since folk do not weep for mirth. In a way I was of my honor as I went about these thoughts; it seemed a trustless thing to dwell on Peg and her life. And I would fight against it; and still it pinned and held me. In the last of it I was claimed by the conclusion that Peg found existence grievously dark, for what else should be headwaters for those tears? Also, I resolved that I would coldly look the question of her grief in the face; it might turn the better for both of us to lay hands upon its cause. I was given the more courage for this since I had not forgotten how Peg named me to be her only confidant; that word put a trust upon me and made my question-asking a kind of duty.
As thread by thread I lifted up the of Peg's sorrow, the truth would begin to make itself plain to me. Eaton was something gross, and mayhap in his finer senses not unnumbed of the bowl. He could not value Peg—she, a perfumed spirit thing of music and color and fire and light! And Peg would feel his lack of ; it would her heart, stab her like a . Verily, I came by a great freshness when now I was on the right of it. This, it was, to lie at the root of her meaning when she showed me that vine trailing its rich beauties along the ground, instead of climbing, and said, “I am like that vine.” The and earth-held soul of Eaton offered her no trellis.
And so Peg mourned her lost estate of love! And why should she not mourn? she, thus swindled of a rightful destiny! Peg shone a thing of beauty to deck a heaven with; and here was she fated to be the jewel in the dulled head of a ! Why should her sorrow find ? Born to be the reason of and to feed on it as a flower feeds on the sun, the of accident had flung her into this chill corner of neglect. And her love was dying—starving away its life. Peg did not love Eaton; the her—yoking her as it did to one who, while perhaps owning the affections, the integrity, the , owned also the low unelevation of the . And for that, Peg would stay behind when Eaton went away and weep to see him coming.
While, with some fondness for the argument—since it would make for Peg's exoneration—I was moving to these conclusions, it ran over me how, during our first talk in the of the Indian Queen, Peg's eyes would seem to swim in love for Eaton. I recalled her cry of pain when she feared he might be shamed for her, and how she said she would sooner die than that. Then, surely, Peg must have loved him; nor had he changed since then.
These memories were sent to baffle me; but with a second thought the fallacy of such was laid bare. When, in the Indian Queen, Peg would weep for love of Eaton, she was but the bride of a month. She stood yet in the of the , and had been given no frank outline of her mate. Then he seemed what he should be, not what he was, and Hope, not Truth, was painter to the picture.
Yes, it would walk before me right enough; Eaton had been a lover of gold to become a husband of . Peg was as much wasted on him as though one put a love verse from Herrick into the hands of a Seminole of the Everglades. In his arms she was an error—a solecism—a crime—as it might be, a lily on a muck-heap!
These thoughts so played the with me as to take the pen from between my fingers; I could do no work, but only sit and stare from the window while my mind ran away to Peg.
Then I resolved to call Peg over; she should her throne at my desk's end; I would show her how, for all that cloudiness of sensibility on the part of another, there still lived one on whom her sweet fineness was not thrown away. I would dispatch her a note by Jim; I would her help for my mails. This should bring her, and be a fair excuse besides, since it was not the beginning of such requests. Peg had often aided me to get my letters off.
Note in hand and ready, I stepped to the rear of the to summon Jim. I could hear his high, patronizing tones, evidently employed about the instruction of the cook. The two were close by a rear door that opened into the kitchen.
“Yassir,” I heard Jim say, “they has black in d'Cumberland, shoals an' shoals of'em. How much you reckon that one weigh?” they had a Potomac fish between them to be the basis of discussion. “How much that weigh? Five pounds? You hyar me, son, we uses that size fish for bait back in Tennessee. Do Jim ever catch a bigger one? Say; if Jim don't catch a bass in d'ol' Cumberland that's bigger than a cow, then Jim'll jine d'church! It was a heap excitin', cotchin' that fish. He grab d'hook; an' then he jes' nacherally split up an' down d'river like ol' Satan was arter him for dinner; an' then he done dives. That's whar he leads d'wrong kyard; for he bump his nose, blim! on d'rock bottom; an' it hurt him so he jes' turn, an' next he comes lippin' up through d'top of d'water an' goes soarin' off up into d'air for fifty foot. That's when Jim sees how big he is. When he gets up into d'atmosphere, he sort o' shuck himse'f, same as you-all sees a hen waller in d'dust; an', son, you could hear his scales like shakin' buckshot in a bottle! An' at d'same time, that bass lams loose a yell folk might nacherally hear a mile, an' which shorely sounds like d'squall of a soul in . You hyar Jim! that bass—” At this, I broke in on the revelations of our black Munchausen with my demands. As he turned, I heard him call back:
“No, I don't get him; he done bruk d'hook.”
Peg and I had been busy with my letters for full ten minutes. She was, for her, very quiet, almost indeed to the line of a grave sadness, which after all should be the aftermath of those tears of the day before.
If Peg were wordless, I, on my side, sat equally without conversation. We made tongueless company; but for that very reason went with all the more earnestness to the letters as though they were the seeds of this silence.
“Well?” said Peg, with a suddenness, her hands in her lap. I stared. “Well?” she repeated. Then, when I said nothing, she would elaborate a bit. “Well, watch-dog, what would you have? You know these letters were the merest for me to come.”
“Why, then,” said I, made desperate because she snatched away my disguise, “why, then, I was in a to look on you.”
“Was it that?”
“Sometimes I fear your husband does not wholly understand you.” It took courage to go thus far; it marked a point forward of any to in former talks.
Peg gave me one of those looks, narrowing her brow whimsically. My bluntness had not dashed her spirit, at any rate; indeed, it would seem to have raised it.
“You fear my husband does not understand me?” repeated Peg. Now she paused an endless while, her eyes reading mine like print. I could feel her searching me for my last promise of expression. “You fear my husband does not understand me. And is he to be the only one? Is it there the roll-call ends? If that were true, I might sustain myself.” For all a shadowy, vague of brow, Peg got this off wearily enough, and I still prisoner to her eyes. Now, after a moment, her would mount a little. “You are right,” she went on, “I am not much understood.” A smile peeped from the dimple in her cheek. “What would you think, watch-dog, were I to give thick folk lessons in myself—expound myself to dunces as your gives lessons in a book?”
“The lessons you propose should be marvellously sweet,” said I. Then, with some tincture of my better courage: “By my soul's hope! I should be sure to go to school for those lessons.”
“Ah! do you challenge me?” cried Peg. Now it would be the old Peg. “From this hour you begin your studies. Life shall be a never-ending lesson, and Peg the lesson.”
“And I a student most .”
Peg came and stood close against my shoulder where I sat at the desk. Her color and her brightness had returned to chase away the shadows. With her fingers she parted my hair where the frosts of two score years and four were beginning their . She made as though she considered these of silver.
Finally, she to me in a way tenderly good.
“Watch-dog, watch-dog, you have eyes in your head and none in your wits. You are a blind-wit, watch-dog, a blind-wit of no hope. And you would study Peg? Teach I never so , study thou never so long, yet shouldst thou never know Peg, but die in darkness of her.” Peg said this with a kind of of regret. Then, collecting direction: “How many times has Peg been with you? And yet you have never seen her—never once seen Peg. You do not see Peg now while she stands at your shoulder. You are a blind-wit.”
“If I have not seen Peg,” said I, “and if I do not now see Peg, then at the least my eyes have tasted visions above report.”
“Now you speak well,” quoth Peg, with an archness of pretended approval.
Here, surely, should be the old, true Peg. It was a delight to listen to the yet soft tones of her, like walking in the May woods with their new green and the new blossoms painting the ground about one's feet.
“What have I seen, then?” I asked, going back a pace.
“What have you seen? A , the mirage of Peg—her picture, on the skies of your ideal.” Then in a playful manner of correction, as when a girl refuses a compliment: “You have looked upward, watchdog, when you should have looked down. And now for your first lesson. This is the text of it: Would you find a woman, keep your eyes on the ground.”
For all Peg's humor of gaiety, I could tell how she was under greatest strain. Also, there ran an odd current of reproach throughout her words. It was as though she saw faults in me.
“And now,” said I, seeking to focus complaint, “and now, what have I done or said to hurt?”
Peg drew away from my shoulder. I could not see her face, but I felt her spirit changing from cool to hot in the furnace of some thought. There was silence for a moment.
“What have you done to hurt?” cried Peg, suddenly, breaking into a . “Oh, I could die with such a dullard! What have you done? What is this just-now complaint you conceive against my husband? He does not understand me, forsooth! You should consider yourself! What have you done to hurt? You place me too high! You put me out of reach! Oh, I know of no more dreadful fate than to be forever mistaken for an angel!” That last came like the cry of a heart in torture. The next moment Peg was gone and I left .
Of what avail to think? As she had said, I was a blundering blind-wit, and, by me at least, Peg would not be made out. I had declared how Eaton owned a footless fancy which could not raise itself to realize a goddess. And now, in my own high superiority, I had come bravely off! I had been properly paid as one who is enough to give a woman a compliment at the expense of her husband. Was I to suppose my goddess would accept flattery at the cost of her self-respect? The goddess from her furious pedestal had denounced me as one who planned for her dishonor.
Congress was now come down upon us like a high wind. The town began to rub its eyes free of those cobwebs of vacation ; the took on a buzzing life, while the streets, lately so still and lonesome, showed thickly sown of folk going here and there, for this reason of legislation or that hunger of office, and with faces gay or sombre as success was given or denied.
Noah was one to be denied. He had come to town somewhat in advance of Congress. The General brought him quickly to the White House and made him his budget of gossip. How was Burr? How was Swartout? How fared Hoyt? Thus ran off the General's curiosity.
“All well, all prosperous,” responded Noah, “and the town itself growing up to weeds of riches. The New York cry is, Money! They revise your friend Crockett, and, for an , say, 'Be sure you're rich, then go ahead.'”
The General would have it that Noah must take an office—a collectorship or some such gear.
“The Senate would defeat my confirmation,” said Noah; “first for that I'm a Jew; and next because of Catron.”
“And even so,” returned the General; “it is still worth while to discover who would do that.”
Noah was right, and his name came up to be refused by one vote. Calhoun from his place as president of the Senate proved as flint against Noah, while his mouthpiece, Hayne, led the war on the floor. I have yet to look on more anger than was the General's when the news arrived.
“ it not,” said Noah, snapping his fingers. “I have still my laughter, my newspaper, and my Spanish swords.”
“But the insult of it!” cried the General.
“To the cynic,” said Noah, lightly, “there can come no insult. Your philosopher who laughs is safe against such . I shall long remain both fat of pride and fat of purse for all a Senate may do. You do not know me; I should have been a Diogenes and insulted Alexanders from my tub.”
Calhoun and his brought with them to town their great question of Nullification. They worked on it and made a deal of . Calhoun set forward his man, Hayne, to the exposition of this policy of national . Hayne was met in that debate and by the Webster. The country echoed with the of these Titans.
For himself, the General followed the argument, North against South, word by word and step by step. He had the debate of each day written off, and Peg would come over and read it to him while he smoked and pondered and resolved.
About this time I must write down how I was made to feel and neglected. Following that unguided reference to her husband, Peg would seem to have me. My eyes had little of her, and I heard her voice still less; for while she was often in to gossip with the General, or read those Senate speeches to him, she gave me only stray, cold glances and monosyllables. She came no more to my workshop; and day after day I sat alone while crept upon me like over stone. I was not so but I could tell how I had offended. Peg was proud; she resented my suggestion that Eaton lacked appreciation; that was why she flew upon me, and , and said it was I who lived in darkness of her. I had been the wiser had I forgotten those tears of hers so soon as they were dry, and withstood myself from opinions concerning her lot in life. Peg's coldness was the proper retort for my impertinence, and I must bear it even while it broke my heart.
It would be the expected thing that I should turn cheerless and be cast down when now Peg left me with my thoughts alone. I had grown so used to her about me, and to hear the sweet laugh of her, that it was to miss something out of my life when she took herself away. And yet it would be egotism. Folk miss and for a while what has become a piece of their days—even chains and , so I've heard. Nor is this due to any love save self-love. I have often considered, as folk shed tears on a grave, how they wept for themselves and not for him who slept at their feet. It was the merest selfishness of habit, this dejection because Peg would desert me. Her absence would become custom in time, and then, should' she return, that coming doubtless would irk me just as much.
For all my wisdom, however, when now my starved eyes came only by stray, glimpses of Peg, as I her now and again across in the President's Square, or when she went by my door on her visits to the General, my spirit fell to be and vastly lowered.
Had I known my way to go about it, I would have sought Peg out and talked with her freely and in full of what had fallen to be our differences. I would have acknowledged my error. But I saw no open gate through which to come by such , and I feared with an attempt to bad into worse.
Once, indeed, my resolve was half hatched to gain some plain speech of her. I lay in wait until, the day being fine, I had sight of her on a seat over across in the square. She was wrapped in a fur of some sort—martin, I think—and, with this high about the throat, it so framed her face as to make her beautiful to the of .
Seeing how she was near a path, I lounged out of door, and crossing the road, would make as though to walk by her, , and for exercise and air. It was my plan to greet Peg, and next drift into word with her as in the old time. The old time! It was not days away, and yet it seemed as distant as my cradle! I would drift into speech of her, I say, and trust to fortune and my wit to bring down the explanation I believed might solve a for us. It was a sagacious enough, but Peg granted me no chance of its test.
Before I could get to Peg, indeed, before I journeyed half the distance, she arose, careless and contained, as though she had not observed me—albeit I am sure she had—and would be moving for her own gate. At this I half halted; and Peg, striking out into a rapid walk, was in a moment the other side of her door. A little later I saw her by a window.
With Peg's flight I was ; it was so sure she wished to me. Then a kind of anger took me in hand and I started towards her house. I do not know what was my precise thought in this, or whether I would have gone forward to lift the great knocker on the panel. As it fell , however, Peg, on seeing me coming, whipped away from the window; with that my heart would turn all to water and I faced sadly about.
Being abroad in the streets, I now went on to walk, and to clear my of that unhappiness which lay so heavy on it. I walked on and on, with no clear purpose until the thing to strike my notice was how here before me that vine which, on a summer day, Peg characterized for its wanderings and said it was like her.
Why I should go seeking this vine is by no means plain; and yet I must have owned to some hope of its , since I stood long to consider it, and cast about with my eyes if, by any luck of nature, a true tree stood at hand which might be given it for support. There was none; the poor ............