Peggy O'Neal. Alfred Henry Lewis
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