now when the general's toast at that banquet in the indian queen had gone abroad, it would have the effect of a warning, each man taking it home. a mighty silence fell upon states rights; the foxes of nullification found their dens, and were to be noticed for a sudden absence from one's eye and ear where but the day before with their presence and their yelpings they would fill both.
it will have a strange look, but it was the general, himself, who of all folk fostered a distrust of his course.
it was to noah and me he one day told this. noah mentioned the vast silence of a voiceless conservatism which had fallen upon that movement of secession, late so reboant and rampant.
“and yet,” said the general, “the story of the country will at last show me wrong.”
“will you say how?” asked noah. “surely, you do not doubt the common need of a union between the states, and one strong enough to defy the caprice or the ambition of a clique?”
“my sentiment for the union,” said the general, “has suffered no modification, and it is because i stand for union and would die for union, that i am not sure of the wisdom of that toast of mine. it would have been better to stand aloof, and let secession go the length of treason. had i held to such a course, perhaps as many as one hundred might have answered for the crime with their lives. but the question would have been settled; the dispute would have been made res adjudicata and the future forever freed of that struggle. now the serpent is only bruised, not killed; in years to follow yours and mine it will revive in rebellion and may yet crush the country in its folds.”
“i can not think you are right,” said i, for i was having part in the conversation with the others; “i am no judge, or you have closed the door against this nullification.”
“ay!” responded the general, “closed but not locked the door. it should have been barred with a gibbet. folk are not taught by threats but by example. had i stayed myself until the leaders for secession went so far they were hanged for it, that would have meant the end. now the business is deferred; the country will yet be forced to fight a civil war and wade knee-deep in blood to save itself.”
“is it,” asked noah, curiously, “is it now you first hold these views?”
“they are not new,” returned the general; “i owned them from the beginning. but i lacked the hardihood to act on them. i grow old; i have been in my hour the instrument by which so much blood has been shed that in my grey age i shrink from more. that toast was devised to save myself from spilling further blood; i was thinking on myself when i framed it and not of those black ones who would do treason. its great purpose was to save me from becoming their executioner.”
“now your feeling is mine too,” observed noah, shaking a thoughtful head. “the seed of the whole trouble is slavery; while that exists, the certain chance of civil war stands open.”
“and how would one be rid of it?” demanded the general, passionately. “washington was against slavery, jefferson was against it, franklin was against it, every great one whose trowel employed itself in laying the foundations of our government was against it, and yet there to-day it lives. they could not cope with slavery; how, then, shall we?”
“it existed in the north,” said noah, “and it was wiped out.”
“the slaves were few in the north,” responded the general; “as chattels they made but a slim fraction of that region's riches. moreover, slavery did not pay a northern profit. it is easy, when there is money loss, to abandon the cause of that loss. but conditions within the present boundaries of slavery show otherwise. the slave's cost of keep is less, his months of labor more in number, and he is not winter-killed with maladies of the lungs. moreover, your slave makes a fairer unit of labor in rice savannahs and cotton fields, where a plantation carries thousands of acres, than he did where land was more divided and a farm of a hundred and sixty acres the common holding of a man. in short, the slave spins that money profit for the south which was lacking in the north. that fact of profit—the greed of men—will meet folk who would free the slave and make you a mighty difference.”
“and still,” said noah, “slavery should be stricken down.”
“to that i agree,” remarked the general, “but again i ask you, how? certain of our new england radicals, when they shout for abolition, cry 'down with slavery!' as lightly as one should say: 'marry! swallow a strawberry.' when a man is in the upper story of a burning house he does not hurl himself from a window, he descends by the stair. let us, when now we be ablaze over slavery—for it is that, as you say, to lie at the bottom of this whole movement of states rights—let us grope cautiously until we find the safe stairway of escape.”
“it is not so clear to my mind,” said i, for the spirit to lecture, excited by example, began to move within me, “that slavery is so bad for the blacks. one must have account for a difference of race. you would not insist that a deer tear a prey with his teeth and howl on some hill of midnight like a wolf. it has been the never-flagging mistake of government to deal with the indian as though he were white, and enforce pale-face conditions upon him. it would be as rife of error to proceed with the negro as though he were white or could work out a white man's destiny. make the black man free, and i tell you he will be as helpless as a ship ashore on the instant.”
“to better the black,” said the general, “is not my argument; i am against slavery to better the white man. when i seek to destroy slavery, it is the master i would free, and not the slave.”
just what the general would intend by this last i had no opportunity to discover, for the zealous jim was heard at the door, ushering in our peg.
“never mind, miss peg,” i could hear jim say, in a way of patronizing reassurance, and evidently in combat of some suggestion of peg's that she would defer her appearance among us, “never mind about d'marse major an' d'marse gen'ral an' that red-head jew gentleman argufyin'. that don't count for nothin'; they're allers at it, night an' day, argufyin' away like they aint got a minute to live, and nothin' to never come of it. never mind 'em, miss peg; you-all jes' trapse right along in an' declar' your urrent.”
with peg's coming, noah made polite expedition to retire; nothing one might do or say would serve to keep him. he who could look a man in the eye and stand knee to knee with him for life or death, feared a woman as though she were a ghost and fled from the mere sight of her.
“i am somewhat abashed,” said peg, “to think of the disturbance i have caused, and that i drive away your visitor.” this to the general. “why did you not make him stay? 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. they may own other engagements.”
“there will be no engagements,” said peg. “the season is quite at an end; the redsticks, as you christened them, closed their defeated doors six weeks ago, and for our own side, we only continued our receptions two weeks longer to show how we remained masters of the field. there will stand nothing in the way; and as for space to be ready in, why, then, folk don't need hours, but only minutes, when the invitation is from the white house.”
“let us say the day following to-morrow, then,” said the general. “it shall be for your victory, child, and to celebrate it. also, since the losers as well as the victors have proper place in a triumph, and, again, because it will look like the olive branch and an expression of peace, we will bid both friend and foe to this merrymaking, and mark it with as wide a good feeling as our opponents will accept.”
peg's dinner, as dinners go, was a creature of magnificence, with peg, beautiful as a moss-rose, at the general's right, and dolly madison's own silver—massy, and, as the women said, “gorgeous,”—to glisten on the white napery. the general's wide-flung invitations were as widely accepted; and not alone the van burens and the krudeners and the vaughns, but the calhouns and the berriens and the branches, and all of the sept of nullification, were there, as though to put down any surmise of sulky fear for themselves to be the offshoot of that conflict of the toasts. even the frivolous pigeon-breast was with us undismayed; albeit he practiced a forbearance touching peg, and never once after the first formalities so far forgot his caution as to be near enough to that sparkling lady to court the awful hazard of her glance.
there came but one clash beneath my notice, and that would feed my humor. houston was just come into town, as rude and tangled a gentleman in every politer technicality as the bears of his native woods. with him for his table-mate he bore away the wife of ingham of the treasury. houston guarded his prize to her place with a ferocious backwoods vigilance as though it were indeed the enemy's country and they in peril of some indian ambuscade with each new room they entered. the lady, with a tact as crude as houston's knowledge of the drawing-room, perceiving the savageries of her protector, would be prompt to establish herself as directress' of his manners. poor houston suffered more than once the humiliation of the lady's counsel, given in a high, obvious voice, and with the manner of one who corrects a novice dull to the confines of despair.
the rupture befell over fish and when a portion of delicate pompano was placed before the headlong houston.
“that is not the fish fork,” cautioned the lady in a whisper so loud it bred a smile on thirty faces either side of her; “that is not the fish fork; here, take this.”
“by satan's hoofs, madam!” exclaimed the wrathful houston, whose long-stifled resentment would now be in the saddle, at the same time brandishing the huge trident he had somehow gotten hold on; “by satan's hoofs! keep your fish forks for whom you will. for myself, i'll eat this catfish with my saber if i have the mind.”
later i heard the distempered lady confide to a neighbor how houston was “an untaught brute,” while that hurt hero told me on his word as a man that for those several hours he was in her company, he had less of ease than at the horseshoe where he was given four wounds.
the east room, when agile ones would dance was brilliant in white and gold and crystal chandeliers, with floor of water-soaked oak so polished it reflected the gay dresses like a looking-glass, and so slippery that clumsy ones, like myself, went gingerly about it in terror for their bones.
peg was as glorious as a star, and to me never more lovely, albeit my coral on her bosom may have had somewhat to do with that. and to see her so bowed to and flattered was like a perfume; for it looked as though the foe would forego those old-time tactics of distance and averted gaze, and that a new word was abroad in peg's behalf. there came no one to more emphasize his courtesy or show more attentive in what might do peg honor than the vice-president himself, and with him were the members of that cabinet triumvirate who had cast in their narrow lots with him. even the stately mrs. calhoun would be gracious in a far-off sort, while the ladies berrien and branch relaxed from a former frigidity, and if not torrid, were at all events of the temperate zone when the etiquette of the floor would bring peg and them in contact. as for the vigorous madam ingham, she was so overcome of her labors in elevation of houston that following dinner she could do nothing but repose herself. however, for so much as she remained in the picture, she beamed affably in a fat, vermilion way, and her red face was like the setting sun.
the male ingham, being in prodigious fettle, would fain waddle onto the treacherous floor with peg in his hand for a dance; for ingham was sensibly exalted of his valor since eaton, whom he held in fear, was not present, but off in baltimore on some long-drawn duty about new rifles—meant, i fear me, for nullifiers, should their pot of treason over-boil. i will say this of ingham, however: for all his rotund uncouthness, he went through that dance without falling down; a no small feat i should call it, and one to give me relief, since for the while it lasted i was held on tenter-hooks over peg's safety, and would hover about ready to rush in and save her should affairs go badly between ingham and the glass-like floor.
there occurred one incident of harshness i could have wished left out. it was when that frau huygens drew up to peg and would greet her as though there were no such name as krudener and no such story as the slight she cast on peg in the russian's dining room. the gross frau huygens was arrayed in her one garish frock of many colors, and which her prudence to save money and buy no more frocks had made so well known.
frau huygens, trained to the venture, doubtless, by her husband, who still dwelt in fear of van buren and those passports which should return him to the hague, swept before peg with the grace of a cabbage on parade. when peg, in response to her greeting, was silent and would only look on her in a baffled manner, as though her memory were at bay, frau huygens exclaimed, with a dutch thickness of reproach which no one might imitate with a pen:
“madam, don't you remember me?”
“well, then,” said peg, as one who makes every polite effort and yet fails, “i remember your dress very well, but your face is strange to me.”
with that i swooped on peg and whisked her away, for i had a horror of what might follow.
“and there,” cried peg, with an unctuous gurgle, “was it not a best of fortunes, watchdog, that she should give me that opportunity? now we are quits; and i think, too, i have her in my debt.”
there was nothing to be said to this, and
i made myself content with thoughts of how we were no worse off.
late one afternoon when the hour was drawing towards the close of the day, i had planted myself at a window and was looking across to the president's square, and, since her gables were of necessity in the corner of my eye, carrying peg vaguely on my meditations. it had been a still, windless day of the early spring, but, for all it stood so late of the season, with a heaviness in the air that smelled of snow.
now i am not one readily to be borne upon by imps in blue, and would commonly give you the reason of my gloomy mood, if gloom i were a spoil to. but this was the day odd for me, since i was pressed hard with a sense of disaster and the feeling as of some threat in the air like a knife, that i liked not at all and understood still less. what was it to so hang upon me like a millstone or a sibyl-spoken prophecy of death? i would try to laugh it down; but the smile i wrung from my unwilling lips owned so much of bitterness that in mere defence i surrendered myself to a pensive resignation instead, as being of two evils the lesser one, and so paused for what blow might descend upon me. some disaster pended, of that my spirit went convinced; and i folded my hands and waited for the future to announce its name.
while i was thus by the window it began to snow. it was of your left-over storms which have been held captive in caverns of the clouds, to at last escape and overtake the world a month or more behind the proper time. there was no stir to the air, and the day went still and moderate; and yet i never looked on such a fall of snow, with flakes big and soft as a baby's hands. even as i gazed, the ground under my eyes turned from a new spring green to white, while the trees across were snow from roots to very finger-tips, and showed in milky fretwork against the low dullness of the sky.
as i stood watching these white changes in the face of things—for the spectacle would charm me like mesmerism and made me forget my forebodes—the general laid a gentle hand upon my shoulder. this, too, had its side to startle, for the general, while as tender as a woman, was in nowise demonstrative, and not one to be patting your shoulder or slapping your back.
in dim fashion those thin fingers would add themselves to that threat of sadness, and stir a new alarm inside my bosom.
“what is it?” i asked, as though he solicited my notice to something urgent or unusual; “what should it be now?”—my voice not firm but tremulous.
the general looked on me with an affectionate, consolatory eye, and yet, somehow, his glance would fit in ominously with my feeling. i could tell how i stood at the point of bad tidings.
and at that he began far enough away, for his first words were of the long ago.
“i was thinking,” said he, “of that time my horse was shot and pinned me by the leg in the fight on the tombigbee. do you recall how you sprang from your saddle and flung the dying horse aside as though you but hefted a rabbit?”
“when it comes to that,” i returned, “i supposed that you as well as your horse were shot down, and the fear gave me a flash of strength.”
the general was silent, his hand still on my shoulder. then he began again, musingly.
“we must ever be together, major,” said he; “we must stay together to the last. i shall die first; i am eighteen years nearer the grave than you and shall go on ahead. it is you—i look to you for this—it is you who must be by my side to close my eyes. we must never part; we are lonely men and lonesome men, and shall make no new friends. we must be for that the closer to each other.”
now, even through my clouds, these words would strike me as lacking object or coherency. what should be the matter? was there some wrong with him or with me? he had not spoken in this vein even when he lay in the vale of death.
“why,” said i, “there is no present need to talk on death, thank god! why should you talk on death?”
“it was not death but you, i had on my mind,” he replied. “i would never be parted from you.”
“nor shall you,” i declared; “although i should count the absence of myself no loss to you or any one.”
this was not it; what would he be about?
“well, let us put aside dole,” cried he, cheering himself with an effort; “now folk would call us two fortunate, i warrant you, to be looking from a white house window upon a world all ours. come, we will have a brisker view; i have great news for you, and news to make you stare. nor will i beat about the bush, but go to the heart at once. i am about to dissolve my cabinet.”
“what!” i exclaimed, for here was a thing without a precedent.
“my cabinet is to dissolve. i have arranged for it. van buren will tender his resignation as of his own desire; eaton and barry will follow suit. if calhoun's three do not take the hint and act on so good an example, then i will bring them to book with a demand. i will say that, half of my cabinet being gone, i desire to sweep clean the site and rear up in its place a new edifice of counsel.”
my thoughts were in a tumult, and the blood in me seemed seized of riot. it was a strange thing, that from the moment the general's hand fell upon my shoulder it seemed to hold peg before my eyes. and when he talked it was as though he spoke her name with every word.
“yes,” he went on, “van buren's resignation will be in my hands to-morrow; eaton's so soon as he returns from baltimore, say in a week; then barry's will come along in the wake of eaton's. i shall send van buren minister to england. he shall be vice-president for my second term, as you and i have planned, and president after that.”
“but peg,” cried i, at last; “what will you do with peg?”
the general would try to smile at this, but the effort was as futile as had been my own. 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. does not that please you, when now her station under kinder skies is to be so splendid and so notably enhanced?”
from him i turned and paced the room; then from sadness my anger began to swell, for i am one whose grief runs with the end of it into wrath.
“tell me one thing,” cried i at last, pausing before the general. “why do you dissolve your cabinet?”
“will it not lop off three arms of calhoun's power?” he asked. “does it not palsy branch and ingham and berrien?”
“but is that the true reason?” i demanded.
“it is the one i shall let the world believe, it any rate.”
“that should be no answer,” i retorted, my heart like a furnace with the rage that was coming over me. “why do you palter? i have the right to know. you have made your dozen poor jests upon me, and said i was in love with peg. perhaps you would mean those jests. i tell you i do not believe your word when you say it is a move against calhoun. that is mere glamour and fallacy and meant for blindness. it is no tale to tell me as though i were some common gull. give me your reason, then—the true one. does eaton know he is to go?”
all this i reeled off, and gave the general no opening for an answer, asking a dozen questions at once. but he sat quiet and with a friendly patience, and his face spoke to me only of nearness and sympathy, and never a shade of hurt for the rudeness i visited upon him. what a heart of gold was his! he, who bore nothing from an enemy, would bear all at the hands of a friend.
when i was run out of queries he began to take me up, beginning at the end.
“eaton knows,” said he; “he knew before he left for baltimore. for him the change will be a relief; his has been no bed of flowers, and in st. augustine his place and power, and last, not least, his peace, will gain promotion.”
“doubtless,” said i, in a high pitch of scorn, “he can there flaunt his riches in the faces of the dons, and show peg's beauty, and make a vast display.”
“you interrupt me,” remarked the general. “however let me ask a question: why do you remind me how i've jested and mayhap made some idle laugh between us, and as innocent as idle, over your feeling for the little girl? why do you put that to me?”
“because,” said i, in a fury, “i think you break up your cabinet for that. you will have it how peg is in some peril of me; you would send peg to florida on a pretense to make her safe from me. there you have it. you see i can be the honester and the franker man. i pass you my heart on a spear.”
the general arose from the chair into which he had flung himself, and taking me by the two shoulders, would look on me squarely, while i in my turn must gaze into his gray depths. i could see the tears stand in his fine eyes.
“let me tell you one thing,” said he. “i but repeat what you know as well as i, when i say that should you harbor thought of peg, or look on her in lights other than as the wife of a friend, it would be black disgrace to yourself and to me, and most of all to peg. and do you think i would not trust you? man, i need no sentry over you save the sentry of your own conscience, no guard other than the guard your honor sets. you would do no wrong to peg. it is not you i fear; on your faith i would stake my soul's hope of a meeting i look and long for after death. will you have my reason now for what i do? it is not to save peg from you; it is to save peg from peg, she goes to florida. and to save our peg i'd break a dozen cabinets.”
it was now grown dark, and the silent storm swept down more whitely dense than before. i threw a heavy military cloak about me and stepped out into the night. i had no set purpose, no destination; but some sure influence tugged at me, and then the house would seem to choke and its heat to smother me; i wanted the darkness and the coolness and to be alone. was it some sweet power beckoning my heart, or merely a plain instinct to save and recover myself, one that any hard-struck animal might have had, to thus take me forth into the midst of the blinding storm?
my journey through the gathering drifts was not pushed far when, under one of the oil lamps that flanked the road and shed a sickly flare through the thick-falling snow, i beheld a closed carriage drawn up. it was one of those vehicles of hire common of the place, and beyond being better than most, and with two powerful horses that would have looked well hauling a gun in a battery, nothing to mark it. at first glance i thought it had come by some mishap to running gear or axle-tree.
as i was for pushing by, quite heedless of the stalled carriage and thinking only on my own broken heart, some one plucked me by the cloak. wheeling sharply, i saw it was the coachman who had leaped from his box to interrupt me.
there would be no mistaking the massive shoulders and easy pose; it was rivera.
“what's this?” said i. “when did you turn whip?”
rivera gave me no words, but motioning towards the carriage, swung again to his place with the reins. as he did so, there came a tap on the glass.
somewhat in a maze, i approached and flung open the door. in the dark depths i made out the vague outlines of a woman.
“get in.” it was peg's voice.
without demur or question i took my place beside her and shut the door; with that, rivera cracking a thong over the sleepy horses to rouse them, the carriage at a slow pace began moving georgetown way.
“hold me close to you,” whispered peg, her low tones falling on my ears like a cry of pain, “hold me close to you; i am cold.”
