Peggy O'Neal. Alfred Henry Lewis
Table of Contents
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