Peggy O'Neal

“ Peg laughed her witch-laugh now, and stepped on more quickly. “Don't let us talk of them,” she said, “don't let us talk of such hollow folk!”
Peg's carriage stood at the curb. Indeed, she had but just arrived when, as I piloted the Reverend Campbell and the magpie, I found her by the General's fire.
“Some day you must go with me to meet my mother,” said Peg; “I've promised her.” Then, as I lifted her into the carriage, “Mercy! you should practice for a lighter hand. I feel as one in the paws of a bear.” ”

“ I could feel her heart-throbs become firmer and more slow as she lay in my arms, and it was in them I read the truth of her resolve.
“Watch-dog,” said Peg in a way most sweetly solemn, “I think nothing of myself. If it were I alone to be unmade, I'd never leave your arms again. Come weal, come woe, here would I bide, and while your arms were round me the worst would change to be the best. But I will not see you under the mire of men's tongues. Dear one, you would die! You are one whose life grows on his honor like a flower on its stem; disgrace would cut you down and you would die. ”

“ A great woman is ever a great actress; Peg was proving it now; for with a face all light, her heart was a heart of shadows, and heavy with the forebode of dark days coming down. What a paradox is woman! Here was Peg, brave at once, and fearful—afraid for her husband, while quick with courage for him, finding her peril where she found her strength.
“We are living,” remarked Eaton, as he tucked Peg under his arm preparatory to their departure, “we are living on the Georgetown side of the President's Square. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peg and I talked the question up and down, I asking and she answering, and with the end we were where we started, that was nowhere at all. The Reverend Campbell came into my conjecturings, he and his magpie mate; but I did not mention them, for what would have been the use of feathering Peg's imagination with a surmise?
“But, in good truth, I came to you,” said Peg at the end, “not for any hope of solving this. That would be frankly impossible. Rather I am here to get a drink of your courage; for, faith! though I wear as brave a face as I may, my own betimes runs something low. ”

“ I made no breathless battle of it, you may guess.
“Major, I've been telling this child,” said the General, laying his thin hand on Peg's curly mop of hair, “how at our receptions she'll light up that great East Room with the bright face of her. We shall require all the beauty we can muster, since the administration is like to go limping in the business of looks. Van Buren and Barry are wifeless; and I'm told Mrs. Ingham is forbiddingly hideous, with the voice of a henhawk. You see, my child,” turning to Peg, “we build on you to save our day from the sin of ugliness.” ”

“ 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, demurely reading the carpet, “no; a wife should never watch her husband. ”

“ Then, seeing my flowers: “How now! how now! and when was Mars a gardener and has the world turned girl! These should be thin days and bloodless, when the starkest saber that ever rode on my bridle hand—he whom the Creeks called the 'Big Death'—loiters with woman's wares and learns to twine a posy.”
“They are for Peg,” said I, more nettled than I showed, for it struck me he talked a deal about nothing at all.
“Oh, they are for Peg,” he repeated, his glance whimsical, yet narrow and intent; “they are for Peg!” ”

“ Before I could ask Peg to unravel the intent of her long speech, Pigeon-breast was pushing valourously our way.
“He comes for a second dance,” said Peg. “See, his name is next on my card.”
“And call you that scalping?” cried I. “At that rate, every man in the room will compete for your cruelty! Scalping, say you! I wish for the simple humor of it, a Seminole might hear you.”
The truth was I had fallen into a dudgeon with Peg for her notion of taking a trophy; she would confer heaven on this Pigeon-breast and call it “scalping!” ”

“ Peg was under fire for her fair repute. Had I broken up my Cabinet, it would have been Peg's death blow. Folk would have told how it was for the war upon her and because she could not be defended. No, I must give her time for triumph; that achieved, the rest might happen and she be made secure in Florida. It was the one trail, and I followed it.” The General came over to my chair. “Old comrade,” said he with a world of goodness in his manner, “if I have thrust a thorn in your heart, forgive me. If friendship can cure, that thorn will be plucked away.” ”

“ But he did not fence at me with any jesting reminder of how Peg was no part of his cabinet; he met my thought squarely and would make allowance for my feeling.
“It is most natural,” he returned, “that you should ask of Peg. We have guarded our little girl too long—you and I—not to own her first in our concern. Peg, then, shall go to Florida and be a queen. I shall give Eaton that Governorship; we may yet need a firm hand in St. Augustine. Is it not a good thought? Our Peg shall rule among those Spaniards; it will almost be to have a throne and wear a crown. ”

“ As I tell you, for all these exhibitions of commanding womanhood, Peg would continue with me but a child; the image of such ballroom triumphs were not to remain with me, while the real Peg, the true Peg, the dear Peg of memory when alone, would ever be the laughing, mocking, hectoring, teasing Peg on her leathern throne at my desk's end. It is the same with men; there come such words as play and work, and danger and safety ”

“ And yet there arose a sad steadfastness to wrap her about that was a check and a bar to me.
“Watch-dog,” said Peg at last, and her manner was the manner of one who grieves, “watch-dog, I am a wicked woman. I live my life backward, and it would be as though I could not help or save myself. My feet take hold on baseness, and my hands spin evil for those who do me good. My touch is a darkness—a palsy—a death. Oh, why was I born!” Peg wailed ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore you are to offer no defence. Even your dullness should have been a virtue in my eyes, since it spoke only of your honor, and told of the lofty place I hold in your regard.” Now I could see how Peg was at least accepting all I had said, and not one part only, and would give me credit for a compliment to herself, while she refused my strictures upon Eaton. “Observe, then; I have resolved we two shall be good friends. Better friends than before, because better to understand one another. ”

“ She would create noise enough with her flight; setting her small feet down in emphasis and sending a rustle along the hallway with the swirl of her petticoats, so that I had ample time to raise my head and be on guard for her. She would nod slightly as she caught my glance, but ever sustained herself with that distance which she had seen fit to construct between us.
When Peg flashed by my door—for, radiant as ever, and with the motion of a meteor, “flashed” should be the description of it—I was bound to observe how her look shot straight for her chair like an arrow. ”

“ Peg called herself together with a shake of the head that had for one piquant effect the whipping of her shock of curls about her face, and leaving them a tangle to fall forward on her shoulders.
“Hear me,” went on Peg, brightening, and peering out on me in an arch way through her curls; “you are guilty of no wrong save the wrong of incredible dullness. ”

“ Man an' woman is jes' like a candle; he's d'taller, she's d'wick. D'Marse General is a pow'ful fine soger an' all that, but he shore don't know enough 'bout women folks to wad a gun.”
One day I got a little note from Peg. It was as though I held a sunbeam in my fingers; I kissed it while my heart put up a prayer. Thus it ran:
“So, Watch-dog:—They have taken me and left you, and there be miles between. Wherefore I feel very safe and very sad. It is all birds and blossoms and trees and sunshine and bright days and sorrow here. ”

“ My nature was on watch in a moment; I suspected how these ruffians would be after us. We were in a lonely strip of trees, and no folk near the spot but just ourselves—a safe theatre for villainy. I counted our roaring drunkards; there were eleven, and among them I could pick out the yard-wide shoulders of that gladiator to whom Noah had pointed.
Peg, as well as I, could see these creatures coming; but then she had not my news, and would only know them for roysterers returning from some drinking bout. I glanced at Peg ”

“ I shall never forget my debt to him; and I'm glad, too, he is so much your favorite.”
“Noah puts us all in his debt,” said the General. “To me he is the man remarkable; fine, high, yet bold and quick, there will be no one to take his place when he is gone.”
Peg's purpose was to tell the General—for he had asked the question in a little note that morning—how she should like the dinner and that East Room dance he offered, on the next evening but one.
“Is not the time too short?” asked the General. “Forty-eight hours would seem no mighty space for folk to make themselves prepared. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a bit later when Peg was again by my side.
“Do you know why I am back with you?” she asked. “Well, aside from the profound pleasure of your company, the more profound by contrast with that of those vapid ones”—here she would include the ball room males with a sweep of her round arm—“I thought I would scalp my enemy before your eyes. You have a violent nature, watch-dog, and I reflected how the exhibition might bring you joy. Since you do not dance, your time must lie on your hands like iron ”

“ I am glad I care nothing for myself. Let my fate be woven to me coarse as sackcloth, harsh as nettles, yet will I exult while I draw its folds about me. I will go on as a world would say I should; and if the way of life lie steep, I'll still climb on and think I toil for you; and if it be stony and if it bruise my feet, I'll say I suffer that to keep you safe; I'll make my grief my Eden and find in the endless woe of your surrender a nobler, higher, more immortal transport than would have owned me in your arms. And there will be another world!” Peg's tones swung low to my ear, and mystical. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Once for the stranger whom we thought thee, and again for thyself. Get right in with me, child, and tell me all that hath befallen thee. Why, ’tis long since I have seen thee.”
“How beautiful she is,” spoke Robert Dale as he and Peggy rode on after Harriet had climbed into the coach beside Mrs. Owen. “How beautiful she is!”
“Is she not?” asked Peggy eagerly. “Methinks she grows more so every time I see her. Does thee not think so too, Robert?”
“I do not know, Peggy. This is the first time I have ever seen her. When you were at Middlebrook I was with General Arnold in Philadelphia. ”

“ She was tense and straining and finally even Chuck lost patience. “What’s the matter with you, Peggy?” he said sharply at rehearsal one day. “You’re missing this thing by a mile. You’re acting like an insipid little daisy that’s about to wilt on the stem! Evelyn isn’t like that—she’s crazy like a fox! She has power in her own strange way—”
“Could I say something, Chuck?” Alison interrupted, coming out from the wings where she’d been watching. “It might help Peggy. When I played the part I did it as though I were perfectly sane. Peggy’s trying to act crazy and it’s never believable that way.” ”