in those few days next to follow peg's tantrum of the chair, like those several to precede it, i was given no more than meager pictures of her. i should perhaps beg forgiveness for the name “tantrum,” which is a byword or term of slang, but search as i may, i find nothing so good wherewith to tell the story of that rootless wrath of peg's. however, i may say i was at care not to shift the chair again, but left it to stand waiting for her in accord with her command.
peg, on the next day after that tantrum, and on every day, would come for her visit with the general; but each time she so crept by me, whether by stealth or luck, that i lost notice of her advent, and knew nothing of her presence until she went past my door when on her way for home. 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. she would be sure it was there, that chair; and i could tell how its absence would have become the signal for crowning me with so warm a version of her feelings that i shriveled like october leaves to simply think on it. but i would meet no risk of the sort, since i did not entertain the hardihood to invoke it.
i say the latter, because sooth it is, that half in anger, half in thought to bring her in for a talk, i once had it on my mind to send peg's chair again into exile. indeed, i did put it out of the room. but only for a moment; the wick of my courage burned dim, and i fell to be in utmost haste to restore that leathern furnishment, breathing the while in a quick, craven fashion of respiration, lest she surprise me before the situation was repaired. thus it stood; the chair and i in the room, and both desolate, with peg going each day by like a watchman on his rounds, to glance in and be assured.
these conditions of separation between peg and myself, as days went on, would give me less and less of ease. i was forever carrying them on the ridge of my thought, and they made an unhappy element in life's skyline. i stood the more in grief, since to be out with little peg was like a quarrel with a child; and then, moreover, the fault of it was mine, for i overstepped an obvious line of right conduct when i went forth upon eaton's disparagement. it was a fool's work, besides; for i might have known she would be sharp to notice and as sharply bound to resent; had she not already warned me how i disfavored eaton, and told me i was jealous? she would say, truly, she did not care for that jealousy; but that was mere laughter when her fancy was at merriest. also, she had told how i did not know her, and never would see her true self; i began now to understand that she was right. and yet i would have her back, and our old frank confidence returned; for peg, as i tell you, was only a child—a prankish girl when all was in, and it made no more for my credit than for my peace that we should be at crosses.
it stands a thing strangest of all, how differently one will regard another when the time is this or that. peg, as i have written, would seem ever to me the rompish child; for my thoughts of her were forged and beaten out upon the stithy of those moments when, free and playful and without restraint, she sat alone with me. by the same token! i recall another score of moments where the stage was a drawing room and strange folk framed the scene, and peg, a beautiful woman of dignity and grave reserve, would remind one of no child at all. but then she would not be peg to me; on such times when this proud, sufficient being made me some sweeping, stately recognition, and as though i had known her but a day, i have stood aside to wonder was she that playful leopard peg whose white mark i wore on my hand? was it she to call me “slave” and kiss the mark, or “watch-dog” and make me a collar with her arms? and still i liked her thus. i was proud to see her proud; and my bosom would swell to note how when peg, fastidious, and with her highbred look, stepped across a room, she seemed among the women gathered there—and they the vere de veres—a greyhound among poodles, or rather the leopard she was among a troop of tabbies. these be crude comparisons, surely; yet there comes no other to so fit with my thoughts of rearward days when peg moved an empress in the midst of peasants, at once the envy and despair of rivalry.
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 the man you saw on the battle-line, as stern and as brave as caesar, is that boy by yonder campfire who now laughs over some tale of personal chicken-pillage when he fled before a mad old dame armed of a pudding stick.
while peg and i were on these long-range terms, i went more in hunt of the general for his company's sake and for conversation. i do not think the general stood aware of peg's cold pose towards me, for, as i have urged, he was no one to see such things; besides, peg, who showed herself no bad strategist, would be about me with the friendliness of those days that were, whenever the general sat by to make a third. peg held the general in a best esteem; and then, too, she would be mindful how lately he was ill and save for her tending might have died, and be the last to vex him with thoughts of how two so near him and dear upon his sentiment nourished a feud among themselves.
while the general missed the reason of my frequent visits, he no less relished our talks; for a president, let me inform you, is a mighty idle man, for all your sycophants and toadies of print would depict him as a galley slave who breaks his heart against an oar of duty. a president has little to do beyond fret and fume while affairs go crosswise to his wishes; also, the general would have him to be a most tied and helpless creature, besides.
“the presidency,” he would say, “when one goes to a last experiment, is but another word for paralysis.”
“and is a president such a thing without hands?” i would ask, for it was sure he thirsted to lecture.
“the office is so much bigger than the man,” he would reply, “that it controls him, as a mountain might bear down the strongest were you to load his back with one.”
“now, i had thought a president to be of some consequence,” i would retort, in a manner of vexing him. “at least i have known presidents to think so.”
“and so thought i,” he would respond, “ten months ago and before inauguration. sir, a president is but the fly on the chariot wheel. being vain, the insect might flatter himself with a theory that he is the reason of that dust and motion he observes. but the insect's vanity would be none the less in error. i say to you, a presidency is a thing of bolts and bars and locks and fetters. what may a president do? he may say this man shall keep office and that man shall not, and that would be as important as if he said this rat shall go overboard and that rat stay to roam the ship. the vermin fate of these, for black or white, would neither affect a course nor pick those ports at which the vessel touched.”
“but a president may veto a bill,” i would reply, “or make it a law with his fist. he may bring down a war.”
“and yet he is no free agent when he does any of these,” he would return. “he is pressed upon by one force or another, or mayhap a dozen at once, and must go with conditions like a man in a landslide. as i say, the office is so much bigger than the man that it transacts the man, and not the man the office. it is as though one were made president of the potomac, or of a glacier. could he take the one beyond its banks with a war or stay the other in its progress with a veto? he might run up a flag, order a bugle blown, fire a gun; but the river or the glacier would be the last impressed. no, sir; were one made chief magistrate of that snowstorm which now whitens the world outside, and set to rule its flakes, he would be in as much control as when given a white house and told that he is president.”
mayhap it will interest should i offer a report of one of our afternoons. it might go as specimen of all, for each was but a strolling here and there of talk. our discourse would be hit or miss, like a rag carpet, and would fall foul of whatever caught the eye or stubbed the toe of fancy at the moment.
on this day, and being weary with the sight of peg's empty chair, i went down the hall to the general's workroom and found him with his nose in tristram shandy.'
“do you like your author?” said i.
“why, sir,” said the general, laying aside the book, “he is so grown up to sedge of phrase and choked of word-weeds as to deny one either the sight or the taste of the true stream of his story.”
“walpole,” i returned, “said that reading tristram was to laugh a moment and yawn an hour.”
“then he had the better of me, since i have done nothing but yawn.” after a pause: “peg gave me the book; it was my loyalty to the child that sent me between its pages. and speaking of peg: do you still send her the roses? i know you do, for i met your jim on his way to her, buried in blossoms and looking for all the world like the flower booth in a village fair.” here the general lazily reached for his pipe.
“and why should she not have the flowers?” i demanded, warmly.
“no reason under the sky, sir,” said he, giving me that old glance out of the falcon eyes of him—to anger me, i suppose—“none under the sky! send our pretty peg the roof off the house should she have a mind for it.” then, when now his pipe was going: “was it not you to recommend a round, squat, corpulent being named curtis to be marshal for tennessee?”
“i said he was a good man.”
“one might say as much of a pan of dough. the creature is absolutely without motion; i tried him mentally and physically, so to speak; the man is stagnant.”
“none the less a good man,” i contended. “to do nothing is at least to do no harm.”
“now, that is as may be,” retorted the general. “i will have nothing to do with your motionless folk. they are always the worst folk of all. i never have been in any crush of peril or concern where action was not less hazardous than inaction, and to do the wrong thing far and away better than to do nothing at all. now, this fellow curtis of yours would not even talk. he had no more conversation than a catfish.”
“silence is caution,” said i, dogmatically, also reaching down a pipe from the mantel to keep the general in smoky countenance; “silence is caution, and caution is ever a good thing.”
“caution is a braggart,” returned the general, argumentatively, “to call itself a virtue when it is more often a cover for cowardice. caution has lost more fights than rashness, you may take a soldier's word for that.”
“that is in keeping with your other proverb, 'never overrate a foe.' those be the maxims to get folk killed!”
“and why not, so the folk be the enemy? i have beaten twice my strength because they overrated me.”
“still,” said i, stubbornly, “the crime of silence which you charge upon this curtis is no mighty delinquency. words, as a rule, are a weakness; and i think curtis should be marshal.”
“let him be marshal, then, and end it,” returned the general; “but i may tell you, sir, that words are not a weakness, but a source of strength.” the general was an indomitable conversationist, and would not be criticised. “the man who says the most, commonly knows the most, and comes most often to succeed. silent folk win only by accident, as he shall see who retraces any of their victories to its birth.”
“and now what nonsense!” cried i. “what wise one said 'silence is golden!'?”
“some wise one who wanted the floor for himself, doubtless,” puffed the general. “talk is a cloak, and great talk a great cloak to hide one's movements. it is a common fallacy to suppose that one who talks much—chatters, we will even call it—tells ever the truth. now my experience goes for it that a great talker is misleading you nine-tenths of the time; heads one way while he talks another. i cannot be sure of the plans or aims of a great talker. he would seem to point so many ways at once. your tongue-tied fellow i read easily. when i once know where he is, and then remember where he would be, i will readily foresee for you the trail he means to travel.”
“calhoun is a silent man.”
“and calhoun is a defeated man; his one chance is my death, which i have no mind shall happen. calhoun is a silent, but not a secret man. he hides nothing, and can hide nothing by a still tongue. who does not know how he is for nullification and must live or die by it?”
“and you,” said i, “have decided it shall be the latter.”
“if calhoun had not assailed me, and, more, if he had not included peg's destruction in his plans—as a soldier might burn a beautiful suburb for an element of his assault on a city—calhoun and i would have come by some agreement. i like the man; but you see he has no gift to be popular. he makes war on me, which is the least popular thing he could do and then, to prick me on for bitterest resolution and a strife to the death, he sets his dogs to baying peg. also, let us not forget how he would drag down van buren because he is peg's friend and mine. sir, you and i will one day make van buren president for that.”
“and you have written calhoun that letter to be notice of your hate.”
“it ties him hand and foot,” said the general. “were calhoun samson, that letter shears his locks. he will publish it, and make every friend i have his enemy.”
“and you are enough loved by the people to make that a most formidable condition for calhoun.”
you are to observe that now when i would find the general idle and with an itch for talk, i trolled him along as folk troll pickerel. it relieved him to thus unbuckle; more, it helped him form his plans, for so he said himself.
“i am ten fold more loved than calhoun,” responded the general. “calhoun, as i've said, has no gift to be popular. he talks to folk; i talk with them. sir, between those words, with and to, dwells the whole art of popularity.”
“your popularity is growth of your work in the field.”
“my being a soldier, had much to do with its beginning. man is a fighting animal and loves a fighter. particularly if he win. now, were i to advise one to a short cut for public favor, i would say, 'be a soldier and win.'”
“especially 'win,'” i returned.
“by all means add the 'win' and emphasize it. that is my rede: be sure to win. no one is made to explain a victory, no one tries a conqueror; the error of all errors is the black error of defeat.”
“and yet a good man may lose.”
“sir, the best man may lose. but you are to consider: when he loses, the public owes him nothing. a farmer toils like a slave; a drought kills his crops; is he paid for the corn he does not raise? the public owes the successful soldier for that profit it takes from his sword; and the public pays its debts. i won at the horseshoe, at pensacola, at new orleans; and the public pays me with a white house. had i lost my battles, i would have been cashiered a score of times. calhoun would have succeeded with his scheme to court-martial me in the seminole days, save that i was armored of my victories. i would never agree to less than victory, and that stubbornness for triumph has even defeated enemies i did not know i had.”
“you have had vast success,” said i, judgmatically, “when one remembers the blindness of your prejudices, and how you will help this one or hurt that one for a no better reason than love or hate. there is your defect; i have often wished that to your honesty and ardor you added the just fairness of jefferson.”
“jefferson!” this with a snort: “i am a fairer—a more just man than was jefferson! he was just to his enemies and unjust to his friends. now, i am strong enough to do justice by a friend. it hurts no man with me that he has been the friend of andrew jackson.”
“but you can not do justice by a foe. you are all for a foe's destruction.”
“i am all for a foe's defeat. and defeat of a foe is justice to a foe. 'woe to the vanquished!' said brennus, and the barbarian was right. being in the field, your business is to conquer.”
“you talk like a philosopher,” said i, “but you never feel like one. here: i will show you your prejudice in the face! give me now your estimate of clay—of webster—of hayne—of calhoun—of randolph!”
“you think my portraits will be red and black and flame-color.” the general spoke cunningly. i saw how he had gone sentry over his feeling, and now i looked for a mild story of those whom i had named. “webster, mentally, is strong,” said he, “and willing, like a horse. but, like a horse, he can not harness himself to a load. there should be those about to hook the traces and in a measure guide him for his haulings. compared with hayne, whose mentality is slim and graceful as is an elm, webster is the oak. he is bigger and stronger without being so beautiful. besides, hayne is indolent, and would sooner drift all day than pull an oar an hour. that is the reason why calhoun, who has currents, sweeps hayne along for nullification. calhoun is simply a good man gone wrong; and, for that he was bred narrowly and as an aristocrat, he loses time over his dignity. also, he does not keep in touch with the detail of his destinies, but leaves too much to underlings. thus he is put into the position of him who attacks a woman—an act without defence, and one most perilous; and, being in, calhoun lacks that force needed for his extrication. randolph is built like a spear, with his anger the head and his intelligence to be the shaft of it. he has no morality of thought, and his one virtue is his contempt for clay. randolph was born to be beaten, since he was born to make a science of hatred and become a specialist of reprisal. clay is altogether another story. the man is mean beyond expression. he would be perilous, but he wants in courage. he has appetites but no principles; he can attain to a conclusion but not to a conviction. he owns no depth of mind; he is brilliant in a sheeny, shimmery way, and, being of no integrity, is no more to be laid hold on, mind you! and held to anything, than so much water.”
“and would you say,” cried i, “that clay has no convictions?”
“no more than has a mirror! sir, the man will acquiesce, and show you whatever is set before him like a looking-glass. there is his conviction for you! it is each time some other man's conviction and wholly outside of clay. remove it from before him; look then into your burnished statesman, and where is his conviction? why, sir, when clay sold himself to adams, did it not prove what i say?”
the general reeled off these views with, for him, a mighty conservatism that was a surprise to me; for knowing his headlong, not to say trenchant, sort, i looked to have him go about his carvings of the portraits of ones inimical to him with a knife. he would have obliged me, too; but he observed my thought, and turned cautious to disappoint me. i must concede, he weighed up these gentry fairly well—he squarely hit them off or i'm the more mistaken. he was too lenient with calhoun; calhoun might have called off those slanders against peg which found voice for his advancement; when he failed of that he became their sponsor.
when i went again to my own lair of labor, i found noah waiting. i had grown to delight in our cool gentleman of the red hair, the jet eyes, and the sharp spanish swords.
“and now,” said i, and greeting my visitor, “how runs the world away?”
“there are things talked about our taverns,” said noah, “and the corridors of congress, whereof it might be proper the president should hear. the more, since the conversations have him for their motive.”
“let us journey down the hall and tell him,” said i.
“no,” returned noah; “you may enlighten him later, since there comes no call for hurry. i dislike to dodge in and out or play hide and seek with a president; it is not seemly. and the fact that our friend would tolerate, and might even encourage the familiarity on my personal part, offer best reasons why i should avoid it.”
“you make yourself too modest,” said i.
none the less i was touched to admiration with this decent sense of the proprieties on noah's part. it stood a pity it found imitation by so few.
“what is it to be, then?” i asked.
“you need not be told,” said noah, “how the president's note to the vice-president, added to rhetz's report of the white house views on nullification, secession, and kindred hangman topics, has made a flutter. your palmetto folk who plot for nullification fear the president. being so far right, they then step aside for error; they fall to fond imaginings that, for all his violence of phrase to rhetz, the president, in return, fears them. they believe, were he to count their power, he would not dare them to any last-ditch opposition. then, too, the leaders are not wholly satisfied with the rhetz returns. thus a situation is framed where some stronger light on the president's intentions, together with the true news of those lengths to which he stands ready to go, and whether an ultimate resort would call for rifles and then the gallows, is deeply to be desired. and these tavern conversations and talks of the corridors have for their object the president's development along the lines exhibited.”
“and this is highly the natural thing,” said i. “have our anxious ones invented any trap wherewith to catch that word they seek?”
“they will search for it in this wise,” said noah; “thus canters the plan: they look to a day far ahead, but it will be with them in time. they have settled on jefferson's birthday to make a test of the president and discover what he would do should south carolina, with calhoun, abrogate a tariff and defy government in the port of charleston. the occasion will be in honor of the man of monticello. jefferson's memory and its graceful illustration will serve as the cause, ostensible, of that banquet; really, the affair is to be twisted for nullification. there will come a score of toasts; and each to exalt the state at the cost of the nation, and argue treason holy. the speeches will follow of a piece with the toasts. calhoun and his cohorts will crowd the tables; applause will be extant for every sentiment of disunion; in short, they devise a states rights gathering where nullification and the rebellious spawn of it shall gain a broad endorsement.”
“and where does the general come into their machinations?”
“the president will be invited to attend. should he come, he will be given the chair's right hand. the calhoun folk will read his face while their toasts of treason are flaunted. they will ask him for a sentiment. they believe that his courses to come, as he designs them, can not fail to find disclosure. they hope to gain the measure of his apprehensions. when they once have the pattern of the president's hopes and fears, and learn his timid limits, they think those boundaries of safety beyond which nullification must not push will be determined.”
“now, if these schemers,” i cried, “own no capital save the general's timidity, they are indeed in bankrupt case.”
“they build on sand,” said noah. “but that fact of sand is precisely what they do not know. however, the president may teach then? with what light he sees fit. should he decide to prolong their night of doubt, he has but to stay away.”
“and how would our black gentry construe his absence?”
“assuredly they would incline to believe he was afraid.”
“why, then,” cried i, “it might be difficult to say that the general will or will not attend a gathering of treason scheduled more than three months away. there is this to be recalled, however; the general has done few things because he was afraid.”
“but it is well,” returned noah, “to have the president aware of what is in store. he will own the larger space for preparation. the gathering will continue a sort of secret for six weeks to come; nor is the traitor color thereof to be shown until a glass-and-bottle stage. when courage is high and caution fled, rebellion will be unpacked. you observe how surprise is arranged for. there will be hawks' eyes to catch the trend of presidential thought concerning it. there lies open the whole plot for you.”
“and many thanks,” said i. “your warning, as you remark, has the mighty merit of being early. rest secure the general will profit by it; he may even contrive some counter reason for amazement that shall become to our folk of secession the very mother of dismay.”
when, now, noah was about to go, he came back from the door with a new thought.
“this on rivera's word,” said he. “the boy, however, is to be trusted when he tells merely what he sees and hears, and is not asked to think. there would seem to be a rough maryland brood to hang about the tap-rooms—as many as ten, all told. they belong, so to say it, with that catron whom we think of now and then for the pleasure he gave us at gadsby's. catron, somewhat the worse of his sword-arm, is also in town. these ruffians use your name and mine, and never in a way of praise. should you go about the roads of nights, carry an ear for ones to come up behind. also, walk warily where corners are dark.”
“and you?” said i, laughing at the comic twist with which noah ornamented his counsel; “and you? have you gone upon precautions?”
“no more than you see,” said noah, bringing to light a knife of peculiar make. “i have no great burden of respect for just one man, however urgent his irritation or its reason. but a horde, and the members to be of midnight, hangdog sort, arouses the latent prudence of my race, and i comfort my nervousness with toys like this.” here the queer knife made a flourish.
i took the weapon from his hand. it was one of those new knives called a bowie, and the first in my fingers. there was a buckhorn haft, and the 9-inch blade showed thick at the back with plenty of steel. this gave it weight, and it balanced in one's hand like a hatchet, and all sanguine and hopeful to the feel.
“it is a maryland conception,” said noah, “and therefore a most fitting rebuke to what thugs shall come out of that commonwealth on a mission for one's disaster.” then, reclaiming the bowie: “the courage of a race appears in the length of its weapons. the shorter the weapon the hardier the strain now, whoever devised that knife had a norse heart in him; his instinct was to go close in to his enemy, and comeback covered with blood.”
“and do you believe,” said i, “those fellows of whom rivera tells were brought here by that catron to work a revenge for him?”
“they are here by favor of his money, truly,” responded noah, “as rivera overheard them say. and for that revenge you speak of, it will be long ere catron works one for himself in person, since his arm has turned dead in deference to my rapier. he could not so much as point a pistol with it.”
these words of catron and his ruffians did not dwell with me seriously; they were the sooner thrust out of mind because the general, not a moment behind noah's going, came into my room. on hearing of the latter's visit, he was active at first to call him back. but on another thought, he gave that up; full of a new notion of concern to peg, he would have my view of it.
“now i have a decided humor,” observed the general, throwing himself into peg's chair—which was consistent enough since he came upon peg's good—“i have grown to a decided humor that peg shall rout these carpet red-sticks who would conspire for her defeat. the more, perhaps, since the chief—if that be fit title for a lady—is wife of our vice-president, and moving, as she sees it, for his interest of politics against me. peg must and shall triumph; to lose—aside from what we might personally feel—would spell nothing short of her destruction. and a war, mark you, which combed a country of its last of life, would mean no more for any individual.”
“why then,” i said, “you can not be more deeply set on peg's success than i.”
“of a truth, no!” retorted the general, with his shrewd grin; “do not imagine i had a doubt of it. but here is what i have been turning in my head for a question. the white house, socially, they tell me, is of immense consequence. now, i have decided to endow peg with this coign of vantage to be an aid for her plans. for myself, i shall follow peg's flag; i shall implicitly take her commands. she shall hold the white house for her reserve; or have it on either wing; or she may head a charge with it.”
“and do you think to surprise me with this?” i returned. “i knew how you would thus conduct yourself from the beginning.”
“i am glad to have been so flattered in your thoughts,” said the general, dryly. “i may take it you forestalled my action by considering what should be your own. however, now that we are come by these sage decisions to put peg in control of us, i hold it excellent to have her over and learn her views. perchance, after all, she may mislike us—these, her volunteers—and give us our dismissals.”
“shall i send word for her?” i asked. mighty ready was i for any reason that should bring peg walking our way.
“it is what i would propose,” said he. “the sooner peg knows of these, her troops, the sooner she can sketch her line of battle. send your jim; he has doubtless learned the way to peg's on those rose errands.”
the general's humor would court a risk of being overtaxed with a too much concern for those roses to peg. some day i might ask him to observe as much, and to seek newer reason for his jesting. there is such a word as threadbare, but in conjunction with my floral sendings to peg, which—and properly—still went on, and his endless references thereunto, the general would appear to live in ignorance of it. however, i did not proceed for his enlightenment at this time, but put it off to a more sour leisure and a cloudier day.
jim was sitting near a hall window, ruefully considering the snow through the pane. jim's tropic blood would shrink from winter, and, as though in sympathy with what were probably his feelings, he crooned in a most dismal vein:=
```"rain come wet me, sun come dry me,
```take keer, white man, don't come nigh
`````me."=
“is that another of those inspirations of polly hines of the 'possum trot?” i asked.
“why, no, marse major,” said jim, “it's a good ol' cumberland ditty jes' d'same. jim sings 'em when he's thinkin' of d'folks in tennessee. it sort o' he'ps jim to see 'em. thar's times when, if jim sings long enough, d'folks back thar nacherally seems to rise right up befo' jim.”
“those are surely advantages,” said i, “and if i thought it might bring me such fortune, i would strike up a tune for myself. since you appear to be in touch with them, tell me what is going on among our people at home.”
jim, with his own color and on a capital made up of a dried snake's head, the smoke-cured cud of a cow, and the several feet of a rabbit—“a graveyard rabbit, cotched in d'dark of d'moon,” was jim's description—set up, you should understand, for a seer. in a compliant spirit of fun, i was wont to countenance jim in these weird assumptions.
“tell me what they do in tennessee,” i repeated.
“jim's afeerd to try, marse major,” said jim, shaking his head as one who distrusts his powers. “you-all can see yourse'f, that camped yere as we-all be, millions an' millions of miles away, tellin' what goes on in tennessee aint easy. under d'most fav'ble conditions, it's what jim would call a long shot an' a limb in d'way. an' you hyar jim! thar aint been no fav'ble conditions cirklin' round him since ever you turns d'key on that demijohn. jim aint got over thinkin' you-all acts plumb hasty about that demijohn, marse major.”
“well, perhaps i did,” said i, “and so far as a dollar will go”—here i tossed jim a mexican—“towards repairing the injury, i am ready to make amends. meanwhile you are to take this note where you take the flowers.”
jim's confidence in peg had long ago been established, and he was no more ploughed of those fears which arose to furrow him during our earlier days at the indian queen. he promptly took my note—one which employed the general's name—and with it the mexican coin, and went about his errand.
“it's monstrous remark'ble, marse major,” said jim, as he pocketed the silver, “how money does 'liven an' limber a man up. now that dollar shore makes jim feel as spry as a gray squirrel; it mos' certainly do!”
i was not without my alarms for peg's coming; but when she tripped in upon the general and myself, it was as balm to my bruised nature to feel on her part some quick leniency towards me, and a certain tacit sweetness—somewhat sorrowful, but none the less good—to which i had been alien since the day i laid those witless strictures upon eaton for that he was conceived without a soul. this gentle attitude of peg's came upon me like summer weather, touching everything with sunshine, and the hour took on a sudden pleasant value. peg could not fail to see the change; and even the general would be aware of that improvement.
“now you must have brought june in your apron,” said the general, playing with peg. “in any event, you have thawed our frigid friend here. he has been frozen for days, and now you see his face glows like harvest-home.”
“if that be true,” laughed peg—quite her old beautiful laugh, too, and not a laugh contrived solely for the general, but with a share for me—“if that be true, i must show more pains to come often, and not make my stay so short as has been my wont. i did not know that i was such a blessing.”
the general would make peg have her old chair by my desk, which showed me—and i wondered over it not a little—how he was observant beyond what i had supposed, to be thus sharp on that small point of where peg would sit when in confab with me. when peg was throned in her old place—and, to my eyes, she filled the room with a kind of glory—the general drew up his own chair so as to put us three to be the corners of a triangle.
“we have brought you here,” quoth the general, giving his face a droll expression by which one might tell him to be in a frame of amiable lightness, “we have brought you here, the good, thawed major and i, to make a despot of you. we draw towards new year's day, when our society redsticks will start upon the warpath. we desire to put ourselves and our white house, and all we have besides, in your hands. you have but to publish your orders, and lo! we carry them out. being now set to rule over us, the major—and i perceive with joy he is quite warmed through—would crave your commands for him. as for myself, you have had only to lift your finger to dispose of half my kingdom since ever that day when i lay dying and you revived me with the name of calhoun.”
when he said this, the general beamed on peg in his tolerant, paternal fashion, while for my side i sat silent, yet the happiest one of all, since i was growing sure and more sure with every moment how my peg of the old days had of a truth come back. i would not stop to query how or why; it was enough to have it so, and the music that went singing in my heart with this white surprise of joy was near to betraying me into humming a tune—a burst of harmony, had i been weakly guilty of it, which the general would have made the material of his mirth for so long a term it would weary him who sought to measure it.
“and i am to order you and your white house up and down in my campaign?” cried peg, sparkling forth.
“have i not told you how you are to be a despot?”
“and i may have a dinner, a reception, or a dance, or what i will—the carpets up in the east room, if i choose?”
“your word shall be as aladdin magic among us, your very hint a law.”
“well, then,” cried peg, whose smile was a bright comrade for the general's, “well, then, now that i am clothed of this high estate, i must not begin by being rash. let me consider!” and with that peg put her little hand to her brow with such another air of jaunty profundity i would have clinked down a fortune to have had her on canvas just as she sat—peg, in the great chair that but an hour gone was mocking me as my most hateful enemy, and which now would be the friendliest thing in life.
