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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14532 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE HONORABLE PETER STIRLING
+
+_and
+WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF HIM_
+
+by
+PAUL LEICESTER FORD
+
+Stitt Publishing Company New York
+Henry Holt & Co.
+1894
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I.
+CHAPTER II.
+CHAPTER III.
+CHAPTER IV.
+CHAPTER V.
+CHAPTER VI.
+CHAPTER VII.
+CHAPTER VIII.
+CHAPTER IX.
+CHAPTER X
+CHAPTER XI.
+CHAPTER XII.
+CHAPTER XIII.
+CHAPTER XIV.
+CHAPTER XV.
+CHAPTER XVI.
+CHAPTER XVII.
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+CHAPTER XIX.
+CHAPTER XX.
+CHAPTER XXI.
+CHAPTER XXII.
+CHAPTER XXIII
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+CHAPTER XXV.
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+CHAPTER XXX.
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+CHAPTER XL.
+CHAPTER XLI.
+CHAPTER XLII.
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+CHAPTER XLV.
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+CHAPTER L.
+CHAPTER LI.
+CHAPTER LII.
+CHAPTER LIII.
+CHAPTER LIV.
+CHAPTER LV.
+CHAPTER LVI.
+CHAPTER LVII
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+CHAPTER LIX.
+CHAPTER LX.
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+THOSE DEAR TO ME
+AT
+STONEY WOLDE,
+TURNERS, NEW YORK;
+PINEHURST;
+NORWICH, CONNECTICUT;
+BROOK FARM,
+PROCTORSVILLE, VERMONT;
+AND
+DUNESIDE,
+EASTHAMPTON, NEW YORK,
+
+THIS BOOK,
+WRITTEN WHILE AMONG THEM,
+IS DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+ROMANCE AND REALITY.
+
+
+Mr. Pierce was talking. Mr. Pierce was generally talking. From the day
+that his proud mamma had given him a sweetmeat for a very inarticulate
+“goo” which she translated into “papa,” Mr. Pierce had found speech
+profitable. He had been able to talk his nurse into granting him every
+indulgence. He had talked his way through school and college. He had
+talked his wife into marrying him. He had talked himself to the head of
+a large financial institution. He had talked his admission into
+society. Conversationally, Mr. Pierce was a success. He could discuss
+Schopenhauer or cotillion favors; St. Paul, the apostle, or St. Paul,
+the railroad. He had cultivated the art as painstakingly as a
+professional musician. He had countless anecdotes, which he introduced
+to his auditors by a “that reminds me of.” He had endless quotations,
+with the quotation marks omitted. Finally he had an idea on every
+subject, and generally a theory as well. Carlyle speaks somewhere of an
+“inarticulate genius.” He was not alluding to Mr. Pierce.
+
+Like most good talkers, Mr. Pierce was a tongue despot. Conversation
+must take his course, or he would none of it. Generally he controlled.
+If an upstart endeavored to turn the subject, Mr. Pierce waited till
+the intruder had done speaking, and then quietly, but firmly would
+remark: “Relative to the subject we were discussing a moment ago—” If
+any one ventured to speak, even _sotto voce_, before Mr. Pierce had
+finished all he had to say, he would at once cease his monologue, wait
+till the interloper had finished, and then resume his lecture just
+where he had been interrupted. Only once had Mr. Pierce found this
+method to fail in quelling even the sturdiest of rivals. The
+recollection of that day is still a mortification to him. It had
+happened on the deck of an ocean steamer. For thirty minutes he had
+fought his antagonist bravely. Then, humbled and vanquished, he had
+sought the smoking-room, to moisten his parched throat, and solace his
+wounded spirit, with a star cocktail. He had at last met his superior.
+He yielded the deck to the fog-horn.
+
+At the present moment Mr. Pierce was having things very much his own
+way. Seated in the standing-room of a small yacht, were some eight
+people. With a leaden sky overhead, and a leaden sea about it, the boat
+gently rose and fell with the ground swell. Three miles away could be
+seen the flash-light marking the entrance to the harbor. But though
+slowly gathering clouds told that wind was coming, the yacht now lay
+becalmed, drifting with the ebb tide. The pleasure-seekers had been
+together all day, and were decidedly talked out. For the last hour they
+had been singing songs—always omitting Mr. Pierce, who never so trifled
+with his vocal organs. During this time he had been restless. At one
+point he had attempted to deliver his opinion on the relation of verse
+to music, but an unfeeling member of the party had struck up “John
+Brown’s Body,” and his lecture had ended, in the usual serial style, at
+the most interesting point, without even the promise of a “continuation
+in our next.” Finally, however, the singers had sung themselves hoarse
+in the damp night air, the last “Spanish Cavalier” had been safely
+restored to his inevitable true-love, and the sound of voices and banjo
+floated away over the water. Mr. Pierce’s moment had come.
+
+Some one, and it is unnecessary to mention the sex, had given a sigh,
+and regretted that nineteenth century life was so prosaic and
+unromantic. Clearing his throat, quite as much to pre-empt the pause as
+to articulate the better, Mr. Pierce spoke:
+
+“That modern times are less romantic and interesting than bygone
+centuries is a fallacy. From time immemorial, love and the battle
+between evil and good are the two things which have given the world
+romance and interest. Every story, whether we find it in the myths of
+the East, the folklore of Europe, the poems of the Troubadours, or in
+our newspaper of this morning, is based on one or the other of these
+factors, or on both combined. Now it is a truism that love never played
+so important a part as now in shaping the destinies of men and women,
+for this is the only century in which it has obtained even a partial
+divorce from worldly and parental influences. Moreover the great battle
+of society, to crush wrong and elevate right, was never before so
+bravely fought, on so many fields, by so many people as to-day. But
+because our lovers and heroes no longer brag to the world of their
+doings; no longer stand in the moonlight, and sing of their ‘dering
+does,’ the world assumes that the days of tourneys and guitars were the
+only days of true love and noble deeds. Even our professed writers of
+romance join in the cry. ‘Draw life as it is,’ they say. ‘We find
+nothing in it but mediocrity, selfishness, and money-loving.’ By all
+means let us have truth in our novels, but there is truth and truth.
+Most of New York’s firemen presumably sat down at noon to-day to a
+dinner of corned-beef and cabbage. But perhaps one of them at the same
+moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at
+the risk of his own. Boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true.
+Are they equally worthy of description? What would the age of chivalry
+be, if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and
+coarseness of their contemporaries? The wearing of underclothing
+unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating
+with fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women
+from the table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now
+continued merely as an excuse for a cigar? Some one said once that a
+man finds in a great city just the qualities he takes to it. That’s
+true of romance as well. Modern novelists don’t find beauty and
+nobility in life, because they don’t look for them. They predicate from
+their inner souls that the world is ‘cheap and nasty’ and that is what
+they find it to be. There is more true romance in a New York tenement
+than there ever was in a baron’s tower—braver battles, truer love,
+nobler sacrifices. Romance is all about us, but we must have eyes for
+it. You are young people, with your lives before you. Let me give you a
+little advice. As you go through life look for the fine things—not for
+the despicable. It won’t make you any richer. It won’t make you famous.
+It won’t better you in a worldly way. But it will make your lives
+happier, for by the time you are my age, you’ll love humanity, and look
+upon the world and call it good. And you will have found romance enough
+to satisfy all longings for mediæval times.”
+
+“But, dear, one cannot imagine some people ever finding anything
+romantic in life,” said a voice, which, had it been translated into
+words would have said, “I know you are right, of course, and you will
+convince me at once, but in my present state of unenlightenment it
+seems to me that—” the voice, already low, became lower. “Now”—a
+moment’s hesitation—“there is—Peter Stirling.”
+
+“Exactly,” said Mr. Pierce. “That is a very case in point, and proves
+just what I’ve been saying. Peter is like the novelists of whom I’ve
+been talking. I don’t suppose we ought to blame him for it. What can
+you expect of a son of a mill-foreman, who lives the first sixteen
+years of his life in a mill-village? If his hereditary tendencies gave
+him a chance, such an experience would end it. If one lives in the
+country, one may get fine thoughts by contact with Nature. In great
+cities one is developed and stimulated by art, music, literature, and
+contact with clever people. But a mill-village is one vast expanse of
+mediocrity and prosaicness, and it would take a bigger nature than
+Peter’s to recognize the beautiful in such a life. In truth, he is as
+limited, as exact, and as unimaginative as the machines of his own
+village. Peter has no romance in him; hence he will never find it, nor
+increase it in this world. This very case only proves my point; that to
+meet romance one must have it. Boccaccio said he did not write novels,
+but lived them. Try to imagine Peter living a romance! He could be
+concerned in a dozen and never dream it. They would not interest him
+even if he did notice them. And I’ll prove it to you.” Mr. Pierce
+raised his voice. “We are discussing romance, Peter. Won’t you stop
+that unsocial tramp of yours long enough to give us your opinion on the
+subject?”
+
+A moment’s silence followed, and then a singularly clear voice, coming
+from the forward part of the yacht, replied: “I never read them, Mr.
+Pierce.”
+
+Mr. Pierce laughed quietly. “See,” he said, “that fellow never dreams
+of there being romance outside of novels. He is so prosaic that he is
+unconscious of anything bigger than his own little sphere of life.
+Peter may obtain what he wants in this world, for his desires will be
+of the kind to be won by work and money. But he will never be
+controlled by a great idea, nor be the hero of a true romance.”
+
+Steele once wrote that the only difference between the Catholic Church
+and the Church of England was, that the former was infallible and the
+latter never wrong. Mr. Pierce would hardly have claimed for himself
+either of these qualities. He was too accustomed in his business to
+writing, “E. and O.E.” above his initials, to put much faith in human
+dicta. But in the present instance he felt sure of what he said, and
+the little group clearly agreed. If they were right, this story is like
+that recounted in Mother Goose, which was ended before it was begun.
+But Mr. Pierce had said that romance is everywhere to those who have
+the spirit of it in them. Perhaps in this case the spirit was lacking
+in his judges—not in Peter Stirling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+APPEARANCES.
+
+
+The unconscious illustration of Mr. Pierce’s theory was pacing
+backwards and forwards on the narrow space between the cuddy-roof and
+the gunwale, which custom dignifies with the name of deck. Six strides
+forward and turn. Six strides aft and turn. That was the extent of the
+beat. Yet had Peter been on sentry duty, he could not have continued it
+more regularly or persistently. If he were walking off his supper, as
+most of those seated aft would have suggested, the performance was not
+particularly interesting. The limit and rapidity of the walk resembled
+the tramp of a confined animal, exercising its last meal. But when one
+stands in front of the lion’s cage, and sees that restless and tireless
+stride, one cannot but wonder how much of it is due to the last
+shin-bone, and how much to the wild and powerful nature under the tawny
+skin. The question occurs because the nature and antecedents of the
+lion are known. For this same reason the yachters were a unit in
+agreeing that Stirling’s unceasing walk was merely a digestive
+promenade. The problem was whether they were right? Or whether, to
+apply Mr. Pierce’s formula, they merely imposed their own frame of mind
+in place of Stirling’s, and decided, since their sole reason for
+walking at the moment would be entirely hygienic, that he too must be
+striding from the same cause?
+
+Dr. Holmes tells us that when James and Thomas converse there are
+really six talkers. First, James as James thinks he is, and Thomas as
+Thomas thinks he is. Second James as Thomas thinks him, and Thomas as
+James thinks him. Finally, there are James and Thomas as they really
+are. Since this is neither an autobiography nor an inspired story, the
+world’s view of Peter Stirling must be adopted without regard to its
+accuracy. And because this view was the sum of his past and personal,
+these elements must be computed before we can know on what the world
+based its conclusions concerning him.
+
+His story was as ordinary and prosaic as Mr. and Mrs. Pierce seemed to
+think his character. Neither riches nor poverty had put a shaping hand
+to it. The only child of his widowed mother, he had lived in one of the
+smaller manufacturing cities of New England a life such as falls to
+most lads. Unquestionably he had been rather more shielded from several
+forms of temptation than had most of his playmates, for his mother’s
+isolation had made him not merely her son, but very largely her
+companion. In certain ways this had tended to make him more manly than
+the average fellow of his age, but in others it had retarded his
+development; and this backwardness had been further accentuated by a
+deliberate mind, which hardly kept pace with his physical growth. His
+school record was fair: “Painstaking, but slow,” was the report in
+studies. “Exemplary,” in conduct. He was not a leader among the boys,
+but he was very generally liked. A characteristic fact, for good or
+bad, was that he had no enemies. From the clergyman to the “hired
+help,” everybody had a kind word for him, but tinctured by no
+enthusiasm. All spoke of him as “a good boy,” and when this was said,
+they had nothing more to say.
+
+One important exception to this statement is worthy of note. The girls
+of the High School never liked him. If they had been called upon for
+reasons, few could have given a tangible one. At their age, everything
+this world contains, be it the Falls of Niagara, or a stick of chewing
+gum, is positively or negatively “nice.” For some crime of commission
+or omission, Peter had been weighed and found wanting. “He isn’t nice,”
+was the universal verdict of the scholars who daily filed through the
+door, which the town selectmen, with the fine contempt of the narrow
+man for his unpaid “help,” had labelled, “For Females.” If they had
+said that he was “perfectly horrid,” there might have been a chance for
+him. But the subject was begun and ended with these three words. Such
+terseness in the sex was remarkable and would have deserved a
+psychological investigation had it been based on any apparent data. But
+women’s opinions are so largely a matter of instinct and feeling, and
+so little of judgment and induction, that an analysis of the mental
+processes of the hundred girls who had reached this one conclusion,
+would probably have revealed in each a different method of obtaining
+this product. The important point is to recognize this consensus of
+opinion, and to note its bearing on the development of the lad.
+
+That Peter could remain ignorant of this feeling was not conceivable.
+It puzzled him not a little when he first began to realize the
+prejudice, and he did his best to reverse it. Unfortunately he took the
+very worst way. Had he avoided the girls persistently and obviously, he
+might have interested them intensely, for nothing is more difficult for
+a woman to understand than a woman-hater; and from the days of mother
+Eve the unknown is rumored to have had for her sex a powerful
+fascination. But he tried to win their friendship by humbleness and
+kindness, and so only made himself the more cheap in their eyes. “Fatty
+Peter,” as they jokingly called him, epitomized in two words their
+contempt of him.
+
+Nor did things mend when he went to Harvard. Neither his mother’s
+abilities nor his choice were able to secure for him an _entrée_ to the
+society which Cambridge and Boston dole out stintedly to certain
+privileged collegians. Every Friday afternoon he went home, to return
+by an early train Monday morning. In his first year it is to be
+questioned if he exchanged ten words with women whose names were known
+to him, except during these home-visits. That this could long continue,
+was impossible. In his second year he was several times taken by his
+chum, Watts D’Alloi, to call. But always with one result. Invariably
+Peter would be found talking to Mamma, or, better still, from his point
+of view, with Pater-familias, while Watts chatted with the presumptive
+attractions. Watts laughed at him always. Laughed still more when one
+of these calls resulted in a note, “requesting the pleasure” of Mr.
+Peter Stirling’s company to dinner. It was Watts who dictated the
+acceptance, helped Peter put the finishing touches to his toilet, and
+eventually landed him safely in Mrs. Purdie’s parlor. His description
+to the boys that night of what followed is worthy of quotation:
+
+“The old fellow shook hands with Mrs. P., O.K. Something was said about
+the weather, and then Mrs. P. said, ‘I’ll introduce you to the lady you
+are to take down, Mr. Stirling, but I shan’t let you talk to her before
+dinner. Look about you and take your choice of whom you would like to
+meet?’ Chum gave one agonized look round the room. There wasn’t a woman
+over twenty-five in sight! And what do you think the wily old fox said?
+Call him simple! Not by a circumstance! A society beau couldn’t have
+done it better. Can’t guess? Well, he said, ‘I’d like to talk to you,
+Mrs. Purdie.’ Fact! Of course she took it as a compliment, and was as
+pleased as could be. Well, I don’t know how on earth he ever got
+through his introduction or how he ever reached the dining-room, for my
+inamorata was so pretty that I thought of nothing till we were seated,
+and the host took her attention for a moment. Then I looked across at
+chum, who was directly opposite, to see how he was getting on. Oh, you
+fellows would have died to see it! There he sat, looking straight out
+into vacancy, so plainly laboring for something to say that I nearly
+exploded. Twice he opened his lips to speak, and each time closed them
+again. The girl of course looked surprised, but she caught my eye, and
+entered into the joke, and we both waited for developments. Then she
+suddenly said to him, ‘Now let’s talk about something else.’ It was too
+much for me. I nearly choked. I don’t know what followed. Miss Jevons
+turned and asked me something. But when I looked again, I could see the
+perspiration standing on Peter’s forehead, while the conversation went
+by jerks and starts as if it was riding over a ploughed field. Miss
+Callender, whom he took in, told me afterwards that she had never had a
+harder evening’s work in her life. Nothing but ‘yeses’ and ‘noes’ to be
+got from him. She wouldn’t believe what I said of the old fellow.”
+
+Three or four such experiences ended Peter’s dining out. He was
+recognized as unavailable material. He received an occasional card to a
+reception or a dance, for anything in trousers passes muster for such
+functions. He always went when invited, and was most dutiful in the
+counter-calls. In fact, society was to him a duty which he discharged
+with the same plodding determination with which he did his day’s
+studies. He never dreamed of taking his social moments frivolously. He
+did not recognize that society is very much like a bee colony—stinging
+those who approached it shyly and quietly, but to be mastered by a bold
+beating of tin pans. He neither danced nor talked, and so he was
+shunted by the really pleasant girls and clever women, and passed his
+time with wall-flowers and unbearables, who, in their normal sourness,
+regarded and, perhaps, unconsciously made him feel, hardly to his
+encouragement, that his companionship was a sort of penance. If he had
+been asked, at the end of his senior year, what he thought of young
+women and society, he would probably have stigmatized them, as he
+himself had been formerly: “not nice.” All of which, again to apply Mr.
+Pierce’s theory, merely meant that the phases which his own
+characteristics had shown him, had re-acted on his own mind, and had
+led him to conclude that girls and society were equally unendurable.
+
+The condition was a dangerous one, and if psychology had its doctors
+they would have predicted a serious heart illness in store for him. How
+serious, would depend largely on whether the fever ran its natural
+course, or whether it was driven inwards by disappointment. If these
+doctors had ceased studying his mental condition and glanced at his
+physical appearance, they would have had double cause to shake their
+heads doubtingly.
+
+Peter was not good-looking. He was not even, in a sense, attractive. In
+spite of his taking work so hardly and life so seriously, he was
+entirely too stout. This gave a heaviness to his face that neutralized
+his really pleasant brown eyes and thick brown hair, which were his
+best features. Manly the face was, but, except when speaking in
+unconscious moments, dull and unstriking. A fellow three inches
+shorter, and two-thirds his weight would have been called tall. “Big”
+was the favorite adjective used in describing Peter, and big he was.
+Had he gone through college ten years later, he might have won
+unstinted fame and admiration as the full-back on the team, or stroke
+on the crew. In his time, athletics were but just obtaining, and were
+not yet approved of either by faculties or families. Shakespeare speaks
+of a tide in the affairs of men. Had Peter been born ten years later
+the probabilities are that his name would have been in all the papers,
+that he would have weighed fifty pounds less, have been cheered by
+thousands, have been the idol of his class, have been a hero, have
+married the first girl he loved (for heroes, curiously, either marry or
+die, but never remain bachelors) and would have—but as this is a tale
+of fact, we must not give rein to imagination. To come back to realism,
+Peter was a hero to nobody but his mother.
+
+Such was the man, who, two weeks after graduation from Harvard, was
+pacing up and down the deck of Mr. Pierce’s yacht, the “Sunrise,” as
+she drifted with the tide in Long Island Sound. Yet if his expression,
+as he walked, could for a moment have been revealed to those seated
+aft, the face that all thought dull and uninteresting would have
+riveted their attention, and set each one questioning whether there
+might not be something both heroic and romantic underneath. The set
+determination of his look can best be explained by telling what had
+given his face such rigid lines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A CRAB CHAPTER.
+
+
+Mr. Pierce and those about him had clearly indicated by the
+conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that Peter was in
+a sense an odd number in the “Sunrise’s” complement of
+pleasure-seekers. Whether or no Mr. Pierce’s monologue also indicated
+that he was not a map who dealt in odd numbers, or showered hospitality
+on sons of mill-overseers, the fact was nevertheless true. “For value
+received,” or “I hereby promise to pay,” were favorite formulas of Mr.
+Pierce, and if not actually written in such invitations as he permitted
+his wife to write at his dictation to people whom he decided should be
+bidden to the Shrubberies, a longer or shorter time would develop the
+words, as if written in sympathetic ink. Yet Peter had had as pressing
+an invitation and as warm a welcome at Mr. Pierce’s country place as
+had any of the house-party ingathered during the first week of July.
+Clearly something made him of value to the owner of the Shrubberies.
+That something was his chum, Watts D’Alloi.
+
+Peter and Watts were such absolute contrasts that it seemed impossible
+that they could have an interest or sympathy, in common. Therefore they
+had become chums. A chance in their freshman year had brought them
+together. Watts, with the refined and delicate sense of humor abounding
+in collegians, had been concerned with sundry freshmen in an attempt to
+steal (or, in collegiate terms, “rag”) the chapel Bible, with a view to
+presenting it to some equally subtle humorists at Yale, expecting a
+similar courtesy in return from that college. Unfortunately for the
+joke, the college authorities had had the bad taste to guard against
+the annually attempted substitution. Two of the marauders were caught,
+while Watts only escaped by leaving his coat in the hands of the
+watchers. Even then he would have been captured had he not met Peter in
+his flight, and borrowed the latter’s coat, in which he reached his
+room without detection. Peter was caught by the pursuers, and summoned
+before the faculty, but he easily proved that the captured coat was not
+his, and that he had but just parted from one of the tutors, making it
+certain that he could not have been an offender. There was some talk of
+expelling him for aiding and abetting in the true culprit’s escape, and
+for refusing to tell who it was. Respect for his motives, however, and
+his unimpeachable record saved him from everything but an admonition
+from the president, which changed into a discussion of cotton printing
+before that august official had delivered half of his intended rebuke.
+People might not enthuse over Peter, but no one ever quarrelled with
+him. So the interview, after travelling from cotton prints to spring
+radishes, ended with a warm handshake, and a courteous suggestion that
+he come again when there should be no charges nor admonitions to go
+through with. Watts told him that he was a “devilish lucky” fellow to
+have been on hand to help, for Peter had proved his pluck to his class,
+had made a friend of the president and, as Watts considerately put it:
+“but for your being on the corner at 11:10 that evening, old chap,
+you’d never have known me.” Truly on such small chances do the greatest
+events of our life turn. Perhaps, could Peter have looked into the
+future, he would have avoided that corner. Perhaps, could he have
+looked even further, he would have found that in that chance lay the
+greatest happiness of his life. Who can tell, when the bitter comes,
+and we later see how we could have avoided it, what we should have
+encountered in its place? Who can tell, when sweet comes, how far it is
+sweetened by the bitterness that went before? Dodging the future in
+this world is a success equal to that of the old woman who triumphantly
+announced that she had borrowed money enough to pay all her debts.
+
+As a matter of course Watts was grateful for the timely assistance, and
+was not slow either to say or show it. He told his own set of fellows
+that he was “going to take that Stirling up and make him one of us,”
+and Watts had a remarkable way of doing what he chose. At first Peter
+did not respond to the overtures and insistance of the handsome,
+well-dressed, free-spending, New York swell. He was too conscious of
+the difference between himself and Watts’s set, to wish or seek
+identification with them. But no one who ever came under Watts’s
+influence could long stand out against his sunny face and frank manner,
+and so Peter eventually allowed himself to be “taken up.” Perhaps the
+resistance encountered only whetted Watts’s intention. He was certainly
+aided by Peter’s isolation. Whether the cause was single or multiple,
+Peter was soon in a set from which many a seemingly far more eligible
+fellow was debarred.
+
+Strangely enough, it did not change him perceptibly. He still plodded
+on conscientiously at his studies, despite laughter and attempts to
+drag him away from them. He still lived absolutely within the
+comfortable allowance that his mother gave him. He still remained the
+quiet, serious looking fellow of yore. The “gang,” as they styled
+themselves, called him “kill-joy,” “graveyard,” or “death’s head,” in
+their evening festivities, but Peter only puffed at his pipe
+good-naturedly, making no retort, and if the truth had really been
+spoken, not a man would have changed him a particle. His silence and
+seriousness added the dash of contrast needed to make the evening
+perfect. All joked him. The most popular verse in a class-song Watts
+wrote, was devoted to burlesquing his soberness, the gang never tiring
+of singing at all hours and places:
+
+“Goodness gracious! Who’s that in the ‘yard’ a yelling in the rain?
+That’s the boy who never gave his mother any pain,
+But now his moral character is sadly on the wane,
+’Tis little Peter Stirling, bilin’ drunk again.
+Oh, the Sunday-school boy,
+His mamma’s only joy,
+Is shouting drunk as usual, and raising Cain!”
+
+
+Yet joke Peter as they would, in every lark, be it drive, sail, feed,
+drink, or smoke, whoever’s else absence was commented upon, his never
+passed unnoticed.
+
+In Sophomore year, Watts, without quite knowing why, proposed that they
+should share rooms. Nor would he take Peter’s refusal, and eventually
+succeeded in reversing it.
+
+“I can’t afford your style of living,” Peter had said quietly, as his
+principal objection.
+
+“Oh, I’ll foot the bills for the fixings, so it shan’t cost you a cent
+more,” said Watts, and when Peter had finally been won over to give his
+assent, Watts had supposed it was on this uneven basis. But in the end,
+the joint chambers were more simply furnished than those of the rest of
+the gang, who promptly christened them “the hermitage,” and Peter had
+paid his half of the expense. And though he rarely had visitors of his
+own asking at the chambers, all cost of wine and tobacco was equally
+borne by him.
+
+The three succeeding years welded very strong bands round these two. It
+was natural that they should modify each other strongly, but in truth,
+as in most cases, when markedly different characteristics are brought
+in contact, the only effect was to accentuate each in his
+peculiarities. Peter dug at his books all the harder, by reason of
+Watts’s neglect of them. Watts became the more free-handed with his
+money because of Peter’s prudence. Watts talked more because of Peter’s
+silence, and Peter listened more because of Watts’s talk. Watts, it is
+true, tried to drag Peter into society, yet in truth, Peter was really
+left more alone than if he had been rooming with a less social fellow.
+Each had in truth become the complement of the other, and seemed as
+mutually necessary as the positive and negative wires in electricity.
+Peter, who had been taking the law lectures in addition to the regular
+academic course, and had spent his last two summers reading law in an
+attorney’s office, in his native town, taking the New York examination
+in the previous January, had striven to get Watts to do the same, with
+the ultimate intention of their hanging out a joint legal shingle in
+New York.
+
+“I’ll see the clients, and work up the cases, Watts, and you’ll make
+the speeches and do the social end,” said Peter, making a rather long
+speech in the ardor of his wishes.
+
+Watts laughed. “I don’t know, old man. I rather fancy I shan’t do
+anything. To do something requires that one shall make up one’s mind
+what to do, and that’s such devilish hard work. I’ll wait till I’ve
+graduated, and had a chin with my governor about it Perhaps he’ll make
+up my mind for me, and so save my brain tissue. But anyway, you’ll come
+to New York, and start in, for you must be within reach of me. Besides,
+New York’s the only place in this country worth living in.”
+
+Such were the relations between the two at graduation time. Watts, who
+had always prepared his lessons in a tenth part of the time it had
+taken Peter, buckled down in the last few weeks, and easily won an
+honorable mention. Peter had tried hard to win honors, but failed.
+
+“You did too much outside work, old man,” said Watts, who would
+cheerfully have given his own triumph to his friend. “If you want
+success in anything, you’ve got to sacrifice other things and
+concentrate on the object. The Mention’s really not worth the ink it’s
+written with, in my case, but I knew it would please mammy and pappy,
+so I put on steam, and got it. If I’d hitched on a lot of freight cars
+loaded with stuff that wouldn’t have told in Exams, I never could have
+been in on time.”
+
+Peter shook his head rather sadly. “You outclass me in brains, Watts,
+as much as you do in other things”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Watts. “I haven’t one quarter of your head. But my
+ancestors—here’s to the old coves—have been brain-culturing for three
+hundred years, while yours have been land-culturing; and of course my
+brain moves quicker and easier than yours. I take to a book, by
+hereditary instinct, as a duck to water, while you are like a yacht,
+which needs a heap of building and fitting before she can do the same.
+But you’ll beat me in the long run, as easily as the boat does the
+duck. And the Honor’s nothing.”
+
+“Except, as you said, to one’s”—Peter hesitated for a moment, divided
+in mind by his wish to quote accurately, and his dislike of anything
+disrespectful, and then finished “to one’s mother.”
+
+“That’s the last person it’s needed for, chum,” replied Watts. “If
+there’s one person that doesn’t need the world’s or faculty’s opinion
+to prove one’s merit, it’s one’s dear, darling, doating, self-deluded
+and undisillusioned mamma. Heigh-ho. I’ll be with mine two weeks from
+now, after we’ve had our visit at the Pierces’. I’m jolly glad you are
+going, old man. It will be a sort of tapering-off time for the summer’s
+separation. I don’t see why you insist on starting in at once in New
+York? No one does any law business in the summertime. Why, I even think
+the courts are closed. Come, you’d better go on to Grey-Court with me,
+and try it, at least. My mammy will kill the fatted calf for you in
+great style.”
+
+“We’ve settled that once,” said Peter, who was evidently speaking
+journalistically, for he had done the settling.
+
+Watts said something in a half-articulate way, which certainly would
+have fired the blood of every dime museum-keeper in the country, had
+they been there to hear the conversation, for, as well as could be
+gathered from the mumbling, it related to a “pig-headed donkey” known
+of to the speaker. “I suppose you’ll be backing out of the Pierce
+affair yet,” he added, discontentedly.
+
+“No,” said Peter.
+
+“An invitation to Grey-Court is worth two of the Shrubberies. My mother
+knows only the right kind of people, while Mr. Pierce—”
+
+“Is to be our host,” interrupted Peter, but with no shade of correction
+in his voice.
+
+“Yes,” laughed Watts, “and he is a host. He’ll not let any one else get
+a word in edgewise. You are just the kind of talker he’ll like. Mark my
+word, he’ll be telling every one, before you’ve been two hours in the
+house, that you are a remarkably brilliant conversationalist.”
+
+“What will he say of you?” said Peter, in a sentence which he broke up
+into reasonable lengths by a couple of pulls at his pipe in the middle
+of it.
+
+“Mr. Pierce, chum,” replied Watts, with a look in his eyes which Peter
+had learned to associate with mischief on Watts’s part, “has too great
+an affection for yours truly to object to anything I do. Do you
+suppose, if I hadn’t been sure of my footing at the Shrubberies, that I
+should have dared to ask an invitation for”—then Watts hesitated for a
+moment, seeing a half-surprised, half-anxious look come into Peter’s
+face, “for myself?” he continued.
+
+“Tell truth and shame the devil,” said Peter.
+
+Watts laughed. “Confound you! That’s what comes of letting even such a
+stupid old beggar as you learn to read one’s thoughts. It’s mighty
+ungrateful of you to use them against me. Yes. I did ask to have you
+included in the party. But you needn’t put your back up, Mr.
+Unbendable, and think you were forced on them. Mr. Pierce gave me
+_carte blanche_, and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been some
+other donkey.”
+
+“But Mrs. Pierce?” queried Peter.
+
+“Oh,” explained Watts, “of course Mrs. Pierce wrote the letter. I
+couldn’t do it in my name, and so Mr. Pierce told her to do it. They’re
+very land of me, old man, because my governor is the largest
+stockholder, and a director in Mr. P.’s bank, and I was told I could
+bring down some fellows next week for a few days’ jollity. I didn’t
+care to do that, but of course I wouldn’t have omitted you for any
+amount of ducats.”
+
+Which explanation solves the mystery of Peter’s presence at the
+Shrubberies. To understand his face we must trace the period between
+his arrival and the moment this story begins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+BEGINNINGS.
+
+
+How far Watts was confining himself to facts in the foregoing dialogue
+is of no concern, for the only point of value was that Peter was
+invited, without regard to whether Watts first asked Mr. Pierce, or Mr.
+Pierce first asked Watts. A letter which the latter wrote to Miss
+Pierce, as soon as it was settled that Peter should go, is of more
+importance, and deserves quotation in full:
+
+
+JUNE 7TH.
+
+MY DEAR HELEN—
+
+Between your Pater and my Peter, it has taken an amount of diplomacy to
+achieve the scheme we planned last summer, which would be creditable to
+Palmerston at his palmiest and have made Bismarck even more marked than
+he is. But the deed, the mighty deed is done, and June twenty-ninth
+will see chum and me at the Shrubberies “if it kills every cow in the
+barn,” which is merely another way of saying that in the bright lexicon
+of youth, there’s no such word as fail.
+
+Now a word as to the fellow you are so anxious to meet. I have talked
+to you so much about him, that you will probably laugh at my attempting
+to tell you anything new. I’m not going to try, and you are to consider
+all I say as merely a sort of underlining to what you already know.
+Please remember that he will never take a prize for his beauty—nor even
+for his grace. He has a pleasing way with girls, not only of not
+talking himself, but of making it nearly impossible for them to talk.
+For instance, if a girl asks me if I play croquet, which by the way, is
+becoming very _passé_ (three last lines verge on poetry) being replaced
+by a new game called tennis, I probably say, “No. Do you?” In this way
+I make croquet good for a ten minutes’ chat, which in the end leads up
+to some other subject. Peter, however, doesn’t. He says “No,” and so
+the girl can’t go on with croquet, but must begin a new subject. It is
+safest to take the subject-headings from an encyclopædia, and introduce
+them in alphabetical order. Allow about ninety to the hour, unless you
+are brave enough to bear an occasional silence. If you are, you can
+reduce this number considerably, and chum doesn’t mind a pause in the
+least, if the girl will only look contented. If she looks worried,
+however, Peter gets worried, too. Just put the old chap between you and
+your mamma at meals, and pull him over any rough spots that come along.
+You, I know, will be able to make it easy for him. Neglect me to any
+extent. I shan’t be jealous, and shall use that apparent neglect as an
+excuse for staying on for a week after he goes, so as to have my
+innings. I want the dear old blunderbuss to see how nice a really nice
+girl can be, so do your prettiest to him, for the sake of
+
+WATTS CLARKSON D’ALLOI.
+
+
+When Watts and Peter saved the “cows in the barn” by stepping off the
+train on June 29th, the effect of this letter was manifest. Watts was
+promptly bestowed on the front seat of the trap with Mr. Pierce, while
+Peter was quickly sitting beside a girl on the back seat. Of course an
+introduction had been made, but Peter had acquired a habit of not
+looking at girls, and as a consequence had yet to discover how far Miss
+Pierce came up to the pleasant word-sketch Watts had drawn of her.
+Indeed, Peter had looked longingly at the seat beside Mr. Pierce, and
+had attempted, in a very obvious manner, though one which seemed to him
+the essence of tact and most un-apparent, to have it assigned to him.
+But two people, far his superior in natural finesse and experience, had
+decided beforehand that he was to sit with Helen, and he could not
+resist their skilful manoeuvres. So he climbed into place, hoping that
+she wouldn’t talk, or if that was too much to expect, that at least
+Watts would half turn and help him through.
+
+Neither of these fitted, however, with Miss Pierce’s plans. She gave
+Peter a moment to fit comfortably into his seat, knowing that if she
+forced the running before he had done that, he would probably sit awry
+for the whole drive. Then: “I can’t tell you how pleased we all are
+over Watts’s success. We knew, of course, he could do it if he cared
+to, but he seemed to think the attempt hardly worth the making, and so
+we did not know if he would try.”
+
+Peter breathed more easily. She had not asked a question, and the
+intonation of the last sentence was such as left him to infer that it
+was not his turn to say something; which, Peter had noticed, was the
+way in which girls generally ended their remarks.
+
+“Oh, look at that absurd looking cow,” was her next remark, made before
+Peter had begun to worry over the pause.
+
+Peter looked at the cow and laughed. He would like to have laughed
+longer, for that would have used up time, but the moment he thought the
+laugh could be employed in place of conversation, the laugh failed.
+However, to be told to look at a cow required no rejoinder, so there
+was as yet no cause for anxiety.
+
+“We are very proud of our roads about here,” said Miss Pierce. “When we
+first bought they were very bad, but papa took the matter in hand and
+got them to build with a rock foundation, as they do in Europe.”
+
+Three subjects had been touched upon, and no answer or remark yet
+forced upon him. Peter thought of _rouge et noir_, and wondered what
+the odds were that he would be forced to say something by Miss Pierce’s
+next speech.
+
+“I like the New England roadside,” continued Miss Pierce, with an
+apparent relativeness to the last subject that delighted Peter, who was
+used by this time to much disconnection of conversation, and found not
+a little difficulty in shifting quickly from one topic to another.
+“There is a tangled finish about it that is very pleasant. And in
+August, when the golden-rod comes, I think it is glorious. It seems to
+me as if all the hot sunbeams of the summer had been gathered up
+in—excuse the expression—it’s a word of Watts’s—into ‘gobs’ of
+sunshine, and scattered along the roads and fields.”
+
+Peter wondered if the request to be excused called for a response, but
+concluded that it didn’t.
+
+“Papa told me the other day,” continued Miss Pierce, “that there were
+nineteen distinct varieties of golden-rod. I had never noticed that
+there were any differences.”
+
+Peter began to feel easy and comfortable. He made a mental note that
+Miss Pierce had a very sweet voice. It had never occurred to Peter
+before to notice if a girl had a pleasant voice. Now he distinctly
+remembered that several to whom he had talked—or rather who had talked
+to him—had not possessed that attraction.
+
+“Last year,” said Miss Pierce, “when Watts was here, we had a
+golden-rod party. We had the whole house decked with it, and yellow
+lamps on the lawn.”
+
+“He told me about it,” said Peter.
+
+“He really was the soul of it,” said Miss Pierce, “He wove himself a
+belt and chaplet of it and wore it all through the evening. He was so
+good-looking!”
+
+Peter, quite unconscious that he had said anything, actually continued:
+“He was voted the handsomest man of the class.”
+
+“Was he really? How nice!” said Miss Pierce.
+
+“Yes,” said Peter. “And it was true.” Peter failed to notice that a
+question had been asked, or that he had answered it. He began to think
+that he would like to look at Miss Pierce for a moment. Miss Pierce,
+during this interval, remarked to herself: “Yes. That was the right
+way, Helen, my dear.”
+
+“We had quite a houseful for our party,” Miss Pierce remarked, after
+this self-approval. “And that reminds me that I must tell you about
+whom you meet to-day.” Then the next ten minutes were consumed in
+naming and describing the two fashionable New York girls and their
+brother, who made the party then assembled.
+
+During this time Peter’s eyes strayed from Watts’s shapely back, and
+took a furtive glance at Miss Pierce. He found that she was looking at
+him as she talked, but for some reason it did not alarm him, as such
+observation usually did. Before the guests were properly catalogued,
+Peter was looking into her eyes as she rambled on, and forgot that he
+was doing so.
+
+The face that he saw was not one of any great beauty, but it was sweet,
+and had a most attractive way of showing every change of mood or
+thought. It responded quickly too, to outside influence. Many a girl of
+more real beauty was less popular. People liked to talk to Miss Pierce,
+and many could not escape from saying more than they wished, impelled
+thereto by her ready sympathy. Then her eyes were really beautiful, and
+she had the trimmest, dearest little figure in the world; “squeezable”
+was the word Watts used to describe it, and most men thought the same.
+Finally, she had a pleasant way of looking into people’s eyes as she
+talked to them, and for some reason people felt very well satisfied
+when she did.
+
+It had this effect upon Peter. As he looked down into the large gray
+eyes, really slate-color in their natural darkness, made the darker by
+the shadows of the long lashes, he entirely forgot place and
+circumstances; ceased to think whose turn it was to speak; even forgot
+to think whether he was enjoying the moment. In short he forgot himself
+and, what was equally important, forgot that he was talking to a girl.
+He felt and behaved as he did with men. “Moly hoses!” said Watts to
+himself on the front seat, “the old fellow’s getting loquacious.
+Garrulity must be contagious, and he’s caught it from Mr. Pierce.”
+Which, being reduced to actual facts, means that Peter had spoken eight
+times, and laughed twice, in the half hour that was passed between the
+station and the Shrubberies’ gate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+MINES AND COUNTER-MINES.
+
+
+The sight of the party on the veranda of the Shrubberies brought a
+return of self-consciousness to Peter, and he braced himself, as the
+trap slowed up, for the agony of formal greetings. If Miss Pierce had
+been a less sweet, sympathetic girl, she could hardly have kept from
+smiling at the way Peter’s face and figure stiffened, as the group came
+in sight. But Miss Pierce had decided, before she met Peter, that she
+should like him, and, moreover, that he was a man who needed help. Let
+any woman reach these conclusions about a man, and for some reason
+quite beyond logic or philosophy, he ceases to be ridiculous. So
+instead of smiling, she bridged over the awful greetings with feminine
+engineering skill quite equal to some great strategic movement in war.
+Peter was made to shake hands with Mrs. Pierce, but was called off to
+help Miss Pierce out of the carriage, before speech was necessary. Then
+a bundle was missing in the bottom of the carriage, and Mr. Pawling,
+the New York swell, was summoned to help Peter find it, the incident
+being seized upon to name the two to each other. Finally, he was
+introduced to the two girls, but, almost instantly, Watts and Peter
+were sent to their rooms; and Miss Pierce, nodding her head in a way
+which denoted satisfaction, remarked as she went to her own room,
+“Really, Helen, I don’t think it will be so very hard, after all. He’s
+very tractable.”
+
+As Peter came downstairs, before dinner, he speculated on whether he
+should be able to talk to Miss Pierce. He rather doubted from past
+experience, if such a result was attainable, seeing that there were two
+other men, who would of course endeavor to do the same. But strangely
+enough the two men were already seated by the New York girls, and a
+vacant chair was next that holding Miss Pierce. What was more, he was
+at once summoned to fill it, and in five minutes was again entirely
+unconscious of everything but the slate-colored eyes, looking so
+pleasantly into his. Then he took Miss Pierce in to dinner, and sat
+between her and her mother again becoming absorbed in the slate-colored
+eyes, which seemed quite willing to be absorbed. After dinner, too,
+when the women had succeeded the weed, Peter in someway found it very
+easy to settle himself near Miss Pierce. Later that night Peter sat in
+his room, or rather, with half his body out of the window, puffing his
+pipe, and thinking how well he had gone through the day. He had not
+made a single slip. Nothing to groan over. “I’m getting more
+experienced,” he thought, with the vanity noticeable in even the most
+diffident of collegians, never dreaming that everything that he had
+said or done in the last few hours, had been made easy for him by a
+woman’s tact.
+
+The following week was practically a continuation of this first day. In
+truth Peter was out of his element with the fashionables; Mr. Pierce
+did not choose to waste his power on him; and Mrs. Pierce, like the
+yielding, devoted wife she was, took her coloring from her husband.
+Watts had intended to look after him, but Watts played well on the
+piano, and on the billiard table; he rowed well and rode well; he sang,
+he danced, he swam, he talked, he played all games, he read aloud
+capitally, and, what was more, was ready at any or all times for any or
+all things. No man who can do half these had better intend seriously to
+do some duty in a house-party in July. For, however good his
+intentions, he will merely add to the pavement of a warmer place than
+even a July temperature makes Long Island Sound. Instinctively, Peter
+turned to Miss Pierce at every opportunity. He should have asked
+himself if the girl was really enjoying his company more than she did
+that of the other young people. Had he been to the manner born he would
+have known better than to force himself on a hostess, or to make his
+monopoly of a young girl so marked. But he was entirely oblivious of
+whether he was doing as he ought, conscious only that, for causes which
+he made no attempt to analyze, he was very happy when with her. For
+reasons best known to Miss Pierce, she allowed herself to be
+monopolized. She was even almost as devoted to Peter as he was to her,
+and no comparison could be stronger. It is to be questioned if she
+enjoyed it very much, for Peter was not talkative, and the little he
+did say was neither brilliant nor witty. With the jollity and “high
+jinks” (to use a word of Watts’s) going on about her, it is hardly
+possible that Peter’s society shone by contrast. Yet in drawing-room or
+carriage, on the veranda, lawn, or yacht’s deck, she was ever ready to
+give him as much of her attention and help as he seemed to need, and he
+needed a good deal. Watts jokingly said that “the moment Peter comes in
+sight, Helen puts out a sign ‘vacant, to let,’” and this was only one
+of many jokes the house-party made over the dual devotion.
+
+It was an experience full of danger to Peter. For the first time in his
+life he was seeing the really charming phases which a girl has at
+command. Attractive as these are to all men, they were trebly so to
+Peter, who had nothing to compare with them but the indifferent
+attitudes hitherto shown him by the maidens of his native town, and by
+the few Boston women who had been compelled to “endure” his society. If
+he had had more experience he would have merely thought Miss Pierce a
+girl with nice eyes, figure and manner. But as a single glass of wine
+is dangerous to the teetotaller, so this episode had an over-balancing
+influence on Peter, entirely out of proportion to its true value.
+Before the week was over he was seriously in love, and though his
+natural impassiveness and his entire lack of knowledge how to convey
+his feelings to Miss Pierce, prevented her from a suspicion of the
+fact, the more experienced father and mother were not so blind.
+
+“Really, Charles,” said Mrs. Pierce, in the privacy of their own room,
+“I think it ought to be stopped.”
+
+“Exactly, my dear,” replied her other half, with an apparent yielding
+to her views that amazed and rather frightened Mrs. Pierce, till he
+continued: “Beyond question _it_ should be stopped, since you say so.
+_It_ is neuter, and as neutral things are highly objectionable, stop
+_it_ by all means.”
+
+“I mean Mr. Stirling—” began Mrs. Pierce.
+
+“Yes?” interrupted Mr. Pierce, in an encouraging, inquiring tone.
+“Peter is certainly neuter. I think one might say negative, without
+gross exaggeration. Still, I should hardly stop him. He finds enough
+difficulty in getting out an occasional remark without putting a
+stopper in him. Perhaps, though, I mistake your meaning, and you want
+Peter merely to stop here a little longer.”
+
+“I mean, dear,” replied Mrs. Pierce, with something like a tear in her
+voice, for she was sadly wanting in a sense of humor, and her husband’s
+jokes always half frightened her, and invariably made her feel inferior
+to him, “I mean his spending so much time with Helen. I’m afraid he’ll
+fall in love with her.”
+
+“My dear,” said Mr. Pierce, “you really should be a professional
+mind-reader. Your suggestion comes as an awful revelation to me. Just
+supposing he should—aye—just supposing he has, fallen in love with
+Helen!”
+
+“I really think he has,” said Mrs. Pierce, “though he is so different
+from most men, that I am not sure.”
+
+“Then by all means we must stop him. By the way, how does one stop a
+man’s falling in love?” asked Mr. Pierce.
+
+“Charles!” said Mrs. Pierce.
+
+This remark of Mrs. Pierce’s generally meant a resort to a
+handkerchief, and Mr. Pierce did not care for any increase of
+atmospheric humidity just then. He therefore concluded that since his
+wit was taken seriously, he would try a bit of seriousness, as an
+antidote.
+
+“I don’t think there is any occasion to interfere. Whatever Peter does
+can make no difference, for it is perfectly evident that Helen is nice
+to him as a sort of duty, and, I rather suspect, to please Watts. So
+anything she may do will be a favor to him, while the fact that she is
+attractive to Peter will not lessen her value to—others.”
+
+“Then you don’t think—?” asked Mrs. Pierce, and paused there.
+
+“Don’t insult my intelligence,” laughed Mr. Pierce. “I do think. I
+think things can’t be going better. I was a little afraid of Mr.
+Pawling, and should have preferred to have him and his sisters later,
+but since it is policy to invite them and they could not come at any
+other time, it was a godsend to have sensible, dull old Peter to keep
+her busy. If he had been in the least dangerous, I should not have
+interfered, but I should have made him very ridiculous. That’s the way
+for parents to treat an ineligible man. Next week, when all are gone
+but Watts, he will have his time, and shine the more by contrast with
+what she has had this week.”
+
+“Then you think Helen and Watts care for each other?” asked Mrs.
+Pierce, flushing with pleasure, to find her own opinion of such a
+delightful possibility supported by her husband’s.
+
+“I think,” said Mr. Pierce, “that the less we parents concern ourselves
+with love the better. If I have made opportunities for Helen and Watts
+to see something of each other, I have only done what was to their
+mutual interests. Any courtesy I have shown him is well enough
+accounted for on the ground of his father’s interest in my institution,
+without the assumption of any matrimonial intentions. However, I am not
+opposed to a marriage. Watts is the son of a very rich man of the best
+social position in New York, besides being a nice fellow in himself.
+Helen will make any man a good wife, and whoever wins her will not be
+the poorer. If the two can fix it between themselves, I shall cry _nunc
+dimittis_, but further than this, the deponent saith and doeth not.”
+
+“I am sure they love each other,” said Mrs. Pierce.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Pierce, “I think if most parents would decide whom it
+was best for their child to marry, and see that the young people saw
+just enough of each other, before they saw too much of the world, they
+could accomplish their purpose, provided they otherwise kept their
+finger out of the pot of love. There is a certain period in a man’s
+life when he must love something feminine, even if she’s as old as his
+grandmother. There is a certain period in a girl’s life when it is
+well-nigh impossible for her to say ‘no’ to a lover. He really only
+loves the sex, and she really loves the love and not the lover; but it
+is just as well, for the delusion lasts quite as long as the more
+personal love that comes later. And, being young, they need less
+breaking for double harness.”
+
+Mrs. Pierce winced. Most women do wince when a man really verges on his
+true conclusions concerning love in the abstract, however satisfactory
+his love in the concrete may be to them. “I am sure they love each
+other,” she affirmed.
+
+“Yes, I think they do,” replied Mr. Pierce. “But five years in the
+world before meeting would have possibly brought quite a different
+conclusion. And now, my dear, if we are not going to have the young
+people eloping in the yacht by themselves, we had better leave both the
+subject and the room, for we have kept them fifteen minutes as it is.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A MONOLOGUE AND A DIALOGUE.
+
+
+It was at the end of this day’s yachting that Peter was having his
+“unsocial walk.” Early on the morrow he would be taking the train for
+his native town, and the thought of this, in connection with other
+thoughts, drew stern lines on his face. His conclusions were something
+to this effect:
+
+“I suspected before coming that Watts and Miss Pierce loved each other.
+I was evidently wrong, for if they did they could not endure seeing so
+little of each other. How could he know her and not love her? But it’s
+very fortunate for me, for I should stand no chance against him, even
+supposing I should try to win the girl he loved. She can’t care for me!
+As Watts says, ‘I’m an old stupid naturally, and doubly so with girls.’
+Still, I can’t go to-morrow without telling her. I shan’t see her again
+till next winter. I can’t wait till then. Some one else—I can’t wait.”
+
+Then he strode up and down half a dozen times repeating the last three
+words over and over again. His thoughts took a new turn.
+
+“It’s simply folly, and you have no right to give in to it. You have
+your own way to make. You have no right to ask mother for more than the
+fifteen hundred she says you are to have as an allowance, for you know
+that if she gave you more, it would be only by scrimping herself. What
+is fifteen hundred a year to such a girl? Why, her father would think I
+was joking!”
+
+Then Peter looked out on the leaden waters and wished it was not
+cowardly to end the conflict by letting them close over him. The dark
+color made him think, however, of a pair of slate-colored eyes, so
+instead of jumping in, he repeated “I can’t wait” a few times, and
+walked with redoubled energy. Having stimulated himself thereby, he
+went on thinking.
+
+“She has been so kind to me that—no—she can’t care for me. But if
+she—if by chance—if—supposing she does! Why, the money is nothing. We
+can wait.”
+
+Peter repeated this last remark several times, clearly showing that he
+made a great distinction between “I can wait” and “We can wait.”
+Probably the same nice distinction has been made before, and lovers
+have good authority for the distinction, for many an editor’s public
+“We think” is the exact opposite of his private “I think.” Then Peter
+continued:
+
+“Of course I shall have difficulty with Mr. Pierce. He’s a worldly man.
+That’s nothing, though, if she cares for me. If she cares for me?”
+
+Peter repeated this last sentence a number of times and seemed to enjoy
+the prospect it conjured up. He saw Peter Stirling taking a fond
+farewell of a certain lady. He saw him entering the arena and
+struggling with the wild beasts, and of course conquering them. He saw
+the day when his successes would enable him to set up his own fireside.
+He saw that fireside made perfect by a pair of slate-colored eyes,
+which breakfast opposite him, follow him as he starts for his work, and
+greet him on his return. A pair of eyes to love when present, and think
+of when absent. Heigho! How many firesides and homes have been built
+out of just such materials!
+
+From all this the fact can be gathered that Peter was really, despite
+his calm, sober nature, no more sensible in love matters than are other
+boys verging on twenty-one. He could not see that success in this love
+would be his greatest misfortune. That he could not but be distracted
+from his work. That he would almost certainly marry before he could
+well afford it, and thus overweight himself in his battle for success.
+He forgot prudence and common-sense, and that being what a lover
+usually does, he can hardly be blamed for it.
+
+Bump!
+
+Down came the air-castle. Home, fireside, and the slate-colored eyes
+dissolved into a wooden wharf. The dream was over.
+
+“Bear a hand here with these lunch-baskets, chum,” called Watts. “Make
+yourself useful as well as ornamental.”
+
+And so Peter’s solitary tramp ceased, and he was helping lunch-baskets
+and ladies to the wharf.
+
+But the tramp had brought results which were quickly to manifest
+themselves. As the party paired off for the walk to the Shrubberies,
+both Watts and Peter joined Miss Pierce, which was not at all to
+Peter’s liking.
+
+“Go on with the rest, Watts,” said Peter quietly.
+
+Miss Pierce and Watts both stopped short in surprise.
+
+“Eh?” said the latter.
+
+“You join the rest of the party on ahead,” said Peter.
+
+“I don’t understand,” said Watts, who could hardly have been more
+surprised if Peter had told him to drown himself.
+
+“I want to say something to Miss Pierce,” explained Peter.
+
+Watts caught his breath. If Peter had not requested his absence and
+given his reason for wishing it, in Miss Pierce’s hearing, Watts would
+have formed an instant conclusion as to what it meant, not far from the
+truth. But that a man should deliberately order another away, in the
+girl’s hearing, so that he might propose to her, was too great an
+absurdity for Watts to entertain for more than a second. He laughed,
+and said, “Go on yourself, if you don’t like the company.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “I want you to go on.” Peter spoke quietly, but there
+was an inflexion in his singularly clear voice, which had more command
+in it than a much louder tone in others. Watts had learned to recognize
+it, and from past experience knew that Peter was not to be moved when
+he used it. But here the case was different. Hitherto he had been
+trying to make Peter do something. Now the boot was on the other leg,
+and Watts saw therein a chance for some fun. He therefore continued to
+stand still, as they had all done since Peter had exploded his first
+speech, and began to whistle. Both men, with that selfishness common to
+the sex, failed entirely to consider whether Miss Pierce was enjoying
+the incident.
+
+“I think,” remarked Miss Pierce, “that I will leave you two to settle
+it, and run on with the rest.”
+
+“Don’t,” spoke Peter quickly. “I have something to say to you.”
+
+Watts stopped his whistling. “What the deuce is the old boy up to?” he
+thought to himself. Miss Pierce hesitated. She wanted to go, but
+something in Peter’s voice made it very difficult. “I had no idea he
+could speak so decidedly. He’s not so tractable as I thought. I think
+Watts ought to do what he asks. Though I don’t see why Mr. Stirling
+wants to send him away,” she said to herself.
+
+“Watts,” said Peter, “this is the last chance I shall really have to
+thank Miss Pierce, for I leave before breakfast to-morrow.”
+
+There was nothing appealing in the way it was said. It seemed a mere
+statement of a fact. Yet something in the voice gave it the character
+of a command.
+
+“’Nough said, chum,” said Watts, feeling a little cheap at his
+smallness in having tried to rob Peter of his farewell. The next moment
+he was rapidly overtaking the advance-party.
+
+By all conventions there should have been an embarrassing pause after
+this extraordinary colloquy, but there was not. When Peter decided to
+do a thing, he never faltered in the doing. If making love or declaring
+it had been a matter of directness and plain-speaking, Peter would have
+been a successful lover. But few girls are won by lovers who carry
+business methods and habits of speech into their courtship.
+
+“Miss Pierce,” said Peter, “I could not go without thanking you for
+your kindness to me. I shall never forget this week.”
+
+“I am so glad you have enjoyed it,” almost sang Miss Pierce, in her
+pleasure at this reward for her week of self-sacrifice.
+
+“And I couldn’t go,” said Peter, his clear voice suddenly husking,
+“without telling you how I love you.”
+
+“Love me!” exclaimed Miss Pierce, and she brought the walk again to a
+halt, in her surprise.
+
+“Yes,” replied Peter simply, but the monosyllable meant more than the
+strongest protestations, as he said it.
+
+“Oh,” almost cried his companion, “I am so sorry.”
+
+“Don’t say that,” said Peter; “I don’t want it to be a sorrow to you.”
+
+“But it’s so sudden,” gasped Miss Pierce.
+
+“I suppose it is,” said Peter, “but I love you and can’t help telling
+it. Why shouldn’t one tell one’s love as soon as one feels it? It’s the
+finest thing a man can tell a woman.”
+
+“Oh, please don’t,” begged Miss Pierce, her eyes full of tears in
+sympathy for him. “You make it so hard for me to say that—that you
+mustn’t”
+
+“I really didn’t think you could care for me—as I cared for you,”
+replied Peter, rather more to the voice than to the words of the last
+speech. “Girls have never liked me.”
+
+Miss Pierce began to sob. “It’s all a mistake. A dreadful mistake,” she
+cried, “and it is my fault.”
+
+“Don’t say that,” said Peter, “It’s nothing but my blundering.”
+
+They walked on in silence to the Shrubberies, but as they came near to
+the glare of the lighted doorway, Peter halted a moment.
+
+“Do you think,” he asked, “that it could ever be different?”
+
+“No,” replied Miss Pierce.
+
+“Because, unless there is—is some one else,” continued Peter, “I shall
+not——”
+
+“There is,” interrupted Miss Pierce, the determination in Peter’s voice
+frightening her info disclosing her secret.
+
+Peter said to himself, “It is Watts after all.” He was tempted to say
+it aloud, and most men in the sting of the moment would have done so.
+But he thought it would not be the speech of a gentleman. Instead he
+said, “Thank you.” Then he braced himself, and added: “Please don’t let
+my love cause you any sorrow. It has been nothing but a joy to me.
+Good-night and good-bye.”
+
+He did not even offer to shake hands in parting. They went into the
+hallway together, and leaving the rest of the party, who were already
+raiding the larder for an impromptu supper, to their own devices, they
+passed upstairs, Miss Pierce to bathe her eyes and Peter to pack his
+belongings.
+
+“Where are Helen and Stirling?” inquired Mr. Pierce when the time came
+to serve out the Welsh rarebit he was tending.
+
+“They’ll be along presently,” said Watts. “Helen forgot something, and
+they went back after it.”
+
+“They will be properly punished by the leathery condition of the
+rarebit, if they don’t hurry. And as we are all agreed that Stirling is
+somewhat lacking in romance, he will not get a corresponding pleasure
+from the longer stroll to reward him for that. There, ladies and
+gentlemen, that is a rarebit that will melt in your mouth, and make the
+absent ones regret their foolishness. As the gourmand says in
+‘Richelieu,’ ‘What’s diplomacy compared to a delicious pâté?’”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+FACING THE WORLD.
+
+
+Army surgeons recognize three types of wounded. One type so nervous,
+that it drops the moment it is struck, whether the wound is disabling
+or not. Another so nerveless, that it fights on, unconscious that it
+has been hit. A third, who, feeling the wound, goes on fighting,
+sustained by its nerve. It is over the latter sort that the surgeons
+shake their heads and look anxious.
+
+Peter did his packing quietly and quickly, not pausing for a moment in
+the task. Then he went downstairs, and joined the party, just finishing
+the supper. He refused, it is true, to eat anything, and was quiet, but
+this phase was so normal in him, that it occasioned no remark. Asked
+where Miss Pierce was, he explained briefly that he had left her in the
+hall, in order to do his packing and had not seen her since.
+
+In a few moments the party broke up. Peter said a good-bye to each,
+quite conscious of what he was doing, yet really saying more and better
+things than he had said in his whole visit, and quite surprising them
+all in the apparent ease with which he went through the duty.
+
+“You must come and see us when you have put your shingle out in New
+York,” said Mr. Pierce, not quite knowing why, having previously
+decided that they had had enough of Peter. “We shall be in the city
+early in September, and ready to see our friends.”
+
+“Thank you,” replied Peter. He turned and went upstairs to his room. He
+ought to have spent the night pacing his floor, but he did not. He went
+to bed instead Whether Peter slept, we cannot say. He certainly lay
+very still, till the first ray of daylight brightened the sky. Then he
+rose and dressed. He went to the stables and explained to the groom
+that he would walk to the station, and merely asked that his trunk
+should be there in time to be checked. Then he returned to the house
+and told the cook that he would breakfast on the way. Finally he
+started for the station, diverging on the way, so as to take a
+roundabout road, that gave him a twelve-mile tramp in the time he had
+before the train left.
+
+Perhaps the hardest thing Peter encountered was answering his mother’s
+questions about the visit. Yet he never flinched nor dodged from a true
+reply, and if his mother had chosen, she could have had the whole
+story. But something in the way Peter spoke of Miss Pierce made Mrs.
+Stirling careful, and whatever she surmised she kept to herself, merely
+kissing him good-night with a tenderness that was unusual not merely in
+a New-Englander, but even in her. During the rest of his stay, the
+Pierces were quite as much kept out of sight, as if they had never been
+known. Mrs. Stirling was not what we should call a “lady,” yet few of
+those who rank as such, would have been as considerate or tender of
+Peter’s trouble, if the power had been given them to lay it bare. Love,
+sympathy, unselfishness and forbearance are not bad equivalents for
+breeding and etiquette, and have the additional advantage of meeting
+new and unusual conditions which sometimes occur to even the most
+conventional.
+
+One hope did come to her, “Perhaps, now that”—and Mrs. Stirling left
+“that” blank even in her thoughts; “now my boy, my Peter, will not be
+so set on going to New York.” In this, however, she was disappointed.
+On the second day of his stay, Peter spoke of his intention to start
+for New York the following week.
+
+“Don’t you think you could do as well here?” said Mrs. Stirling.
+
+“Up to a certain point, better. But New York has a big beyond,” said
+Peter. “I’ll try it there first, and if I don’t make my way, I’ll come
+back here”
+
+Few mothers hope for a son’s failure, yet Mrs. Stirling allowed herself
+a moment’s happiness over this possibility. Then remembering that her
+Peter could not possibly fail, she became despondent. “They say New
+York’s full of temptations,” she said.
+
+“I suppose it is, mother,” replied Peter, “to those who want to be
+tempted.”
+
+“I know I can trust you, Peter,” said his mother, proudly, “but I want
+you to promise me one thing.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“That if you do yield, if you do what you oughtn’t to, you’ll write and
+tell me about it?” Mrs. Stirling put her arms about Peter’s neck, and
+looked wistfully into his face.
+
+Peter was not blind to what this world is. Perhaps, had his mother
+known it as he did, she might have seen how unfair her petition was. He
+did not like to say yes, and could not say no.
+
+“I’ll try to go straight, mother,” he replied, “but that’s a good deal
+to promise.”
+
+“It’s all I’m going to ask of you, Peter,” urged Mrs. Stirling.
+
+“I have gone through four years of my life with nothing in it I
+couldn’t tell her,” thought Peter. “If that’s possible, I guess another
+four is.” Then he said aloud, “Well, mother, since you want it, I’ll do
+it.”
+
+The reason of Peter’s eagerness to get to New York, was chiefly to have
+something definite to do. He tried to obtain this distraction of
+occupation, at present, in a characteristic way, by taking excessively
+long walks, and by struggling with his mother’s winter supply of wood.
+He thought that every long stride and every swing of the axe was
+working him free from the crushing lack of purpose that had settled
+upon him. He imagined it would be even easier when he reached New York.
+“There’ll be plenty to keep me busy there,” was his mental hope.
+
+All his ambitions and plans seemed in a sense to have become
+meaningless, made so by the something which but ten days before had
+been unknown to him. Like Moses he had seen the promised land. But
+Moses died. He had seen it, and must live on without it. He saw nothing
+in the future worth striving for, except a struggle to forget, if
+possible, the sweetest and dearest memory he had ever known. He thought
+of the epigram: “Most men can die well, but few can live well.” Three
+weeks before he had smiled over it and set it down as a bit of French
+cynicism. Now—on the verge of giving his mental assent to the theory, a
+pair of slate-colored eyes in some way came into his mind, and even
+French wit was discarded therefrom.
+
+Peter was taking his disappointment very seriously, if quietly. Had he
+only known other girls, he might have made a safe recovery, for love’s
+remedy is truly the homeopathic “similia similibus curantur,” woman
+plural being the natural cure for woman singular. As the Russian in the
+“Last Word” says, “A woman can do anything with a man—provided there is
+no other woman.” In Peter’s case there was no other woman. What was
+worse, there seemed little prospect of there being one in the future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+SETTLING.
+
+
+The middle of July found Peter in New York, eager to begin his grapple
+with the future. How many such stormers have dashed themselves against
+its high ramparts, from which float the flags of “worldly success;” how
+many have fallen at the first attack; how many have been borne away,
+stricken in the assault; how many have fought on bravely, till driven
+back by pressure, sickness or hunger; how few have reached the top, and
+won their colors!
+
+As already hinted, Peter had chosen the law as his ladder to climb
+these ramparts. Like many another fellow he had but a dim comprehension
+of the struggle before him. His college mates had talked over
+professions, and agreed that law was a good one in New York. The
+attorney in his native town, “had known of cases where men without
+knowing a soul in a place, had started in and by hard work and merit
+had built up a good practice, and I don’t see why it can’t be done as
+well in New York as in Lawrence or Lowell. If New York is bigger, then
+there is more to be done.” So Peter, whose New York acquaintances were
+limited to Watts and four other collegians, the Pierces and their
+fashionables, and a civil engineer originally from his native town, had
+decided that the way to go about it was to get an office, hang up a
+sign, and wait for clients.
+
+On the morning after his arrival, his first object was a lodging.
+Selecting from the papers the advertisements of several
+boarding-houses, he started in search of one. Watts had told him about
+where to locate, “so as to live in a decent part of the city,” but
+after seeing and pricing a few rooms near the “Avenue,” about Thirtieth
+Street, Peter saw that Watts had been thinking of his own purse, rather
+than of his friend’s.
+
+“Can you tell me where the cheaper boarding-houses are?” he asked the
+woman who had done the honors of the last house.
+
+“If it’s cheapness you want, you’d better go to Bleecker Street,” said
+the woman with a certain contemptuousness.
+
+Peter thanked her, and, walking away, accosted the first policeman.
+
+“It’s Blaker Strate, is it? Take the Sixth Avenue cars, there beyant,”
+he was informed.
+
+“Is it a respectable street?” asked Peter.
+
+“Don’t be afther takin’ away a strate’s character,” said the policeman,
+grinning good-naturedly.
+
+“I mean,” explained Peter, “do respectable people live there?”
+
+“Shure, it’s mostly boarding-houses for young men,” replied the unit of
+“the finest.” “Ye know best what they’re loike.”
+
+Reassured, Peter, sought and found board in Bleecker Street, not
+comprehending that he had gone to the opposite extreme. It was a dull
+season, and he had no difficulty in getting such a room as suited both
+his expectations and purse. By dinner-time he had settled his simple
+household goods to his satisfaction, and slightly moderated the
+dreariness of the third floor front, so far as the few pictures and
+other furnishings from his college rooms could modify the effect of
+well-worn carpet, cheap, painted furniture, and ugly wall-paper.
+
+Descending to his dinner, in answer to a bell more suitable for a
+fire-alarm than for announcing such an ordinary occurrence as meals, he
+was introduced to the four young men who were all the boarders the
+summer season had left in the house. Two were retail dry-goods clerks,
+another filled some function in a butter and cheese store, and the
+fourth was the ticket-seller at one of the middle-grade theatres. They
+all looked at Peter’s clothes before looking at his face, and though
+the greetings were civil enough, Peter’s ready-made travelling suit,
+bought in his native town, and his quiet cravat, as well as his lack of
+jewelry, were proof positive to them that he did not merit any great
+consideration. It was very evident that the ticket-seller, not merely
+from his natural self-assertion but even more because of his enviable
+acquaintance with certain actresses and his occasional privileges in
+the way of free passes, was the acknowledged autocrat of the table.
+Under his guidance the conversation quickly turned to theatrical and
+“show” talk. Much of it was vulgar, and all of it was dull. It was made
+the worse by the fact that they all tried to show, off a little before
+the newcomer, to prove their superiority and extreme knowingness to
+him. To make Peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various
+questions.
+
+“Do you like—?” a popular soubrette of the day.
+
+“What, never seen her? Where on earth have you been living?”
+
+“Oh? Well, she’s got too good legs to waste herself on such a little
+place.”
+
+They would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared
+to seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing
+interest in Peter. One indeed did ask him what business he was in.
+
+“I haven’t got to work yet,” answered Peter
+
+“Looking for a place” was the mental comment of all, for they could not
+conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage.
+So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves. When time
+had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a
+man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of
+dry-goods clerks) their respect for him considerably increased. He
+could not, however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them. After the
+manly high-minded, cultivated Harvard classmates, every moment of their
+society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor
+asked them to his. Peter had nothing of the snob in him, but he found
+reading or writing, or a tramp about the city, much the pleasanter way
+of passing his evenings.
+
+The morning after this first day in New York, Peter called on his
+friend, the civil engineer, to consult him about an office; for Watts
+had been rather hazy in regard to where he might best locate that. Mr.
+Converse shook his head when Peter outlined his plan.
+
+“Do you know any New York people,” he asked, “who will be likely to
+give you cases?”
+
+“No,” said Peter.
+
+“Then it’s absolutely foolish of you to begin that way,” said Mr.
+Converse. “Get into a lawyer’s office, and make friends first before
+you think of starting by yourself. You’ll otherwise never get a
+client.”
+
+Peter shook his head. “I’ve thought it out,” he added, as if that
+settled it.
+
+Mr. Converse looked at him, and, really liking the fellow, was about to
+explain the real facts to him, when a client came in. So he only said,
+“If that’s so, go ahead. Locate on Broadway, anywhere between the
+Battery and Canal Street.” Later in the day, when he had time, he shook
+his head, and said, “Poor devil! Like all the rest.”
+
+Anywhere between the Battery and Canal Street represented a fairly
+large range of territory, but Peter went at the matter directly, and
+for the next three days passed his time climbing stairs, and inspecting
+rooms and dark cells. At the end of that time he took a moderate-sized
+office, far back in a building near Worth Street. Another day saw it
+fitted with a desk, two chairs (for Peter as yet dreamed only of single
+clients) and a shelf containing the few law books that were the
+monuments of his Harvard law course, and his summer reading. On the
+following Monday, when Peter faced his office door he felt a glow of
+satisfaction at seeing in very black letters on the very newly scrubbed
+glass the sign of:
+
+
+PETER STIRLING
+
+ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW.
+
+
+He had come to his office early, not merely because at his boarding
+place they breakfasted betimes, but because he believed that early
+hours were one way of winning success. He was a little puzzled what to
+do with himself. He sat down at his desk and thrummed it for a minute.
+Then he rose, and spread his books more along the shelf, so as to leave
+little spaces between them, thinking that he could make them look more
+imposing thereby. After that he took down a book—somebody “On
+Torts,”—and dug into it. In the Harvard course, he had had two hours a
+week of this book, but Peter worked over it for nearly three hours.
+Then he took paper, and in a very clear, beautifully neat hand, made an
+abstract of what he had read. Then he compared his abstract with the
+book. Returning the book to the shelf, very much pleased with the
+accuracy of his memory, he looked at his watch. It was but half-past
+eleven. Peter sat down at his desk. “Would all the days go like this?”
+he asked himself. He had got through the first week by his room and
+office-seeking and furnishing. But now? He could not read law for more
+than four hours a day, and get anything from it. What was to be done
+with the rest of the time? What could he do to keep himself from
+thinking of—from thinking? He looked out of his one window, over the
+dreary stretch of roofs and the drearier light shafts spoken of
+flatteringly as yards. He compressed his lips, and resorted once more
+to his book. But he found his mind wandering, and realized that he had
+done all he was equal to on a hot July morning. Again he looked out
+over the roofs. Then he rose and stood in the middle at his room,
+thinking. He looked at his watch again, to make sure that he was right.
+Then he opened his door and glanced about the hall. It was one blank,
+except for the doors. He went down the two flights of stairs to the
+street. Even that had the deserted look of summer. He turned and went
+back to his room. Sitting down once more at his desk, and opening
+somebody “On Torts” again, he took up his pen and began to copy the
+pages literally. He wrote steadily for a time, then with pauses.
+Finally, the hand ceased to follow the lines, and became straggly. Then
+he ceased to write. The words blurred, the paper faded from view, and
+all Peter saw was a pair of slate-colored eyes. He laid his head down
+on the blotter, and the erect, firm figure relaxed.
+
+There is no more terrible ordeal of courage than passive waiting. Most
+of us can be brave with something to do, but to be brave for months,
+for years, with nothing to be done and without hope of the future! So
+it was in Peter’s case. It was waiting—waiting—for what? If clients
+came, if fame came, if every form of success came,—for what?
+
+There is nothing in loneliness to equal the loneliness of a big city.
+About him, so crowded and compressed together as to risk life and
+health, were a million people. Yet not a soul of that million knew that
+Peter sat at his desk, with his head on his blotter, immovable, from
+noon one day till daylight of the next.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+HAPPINESS BY PROXY.
+
+
+The window of Peter’s office faced east, and the rays of the morning
+sun shining dazzlingly in his eyes forced him back to a consciousness
+of things mundane. He rose, and went downstairs, to find the night
+watch-man just opening the building. Fortunately he had already met the
+man, so that he was not suspected as an intruder; and giving him a
+pleasant “good-morning,” Peter passed into the street. It was a good
+morning indeed, with all that freshness and coolness which even a great
+city cannot take from a summer dawn. For some reason Peter felt more
+encouraged. Perhaps it was the consciousness of having beaten his
+loneliness and misery by mere physical endurance. Perhaps it was only
+the natural spring of twenty years. At all events, he felt dimly, that
+miserable and unhopeful as the future looked, he was not conquered yet;
+that he was going to fight on, come what might.
+
+He turned to the river front, and after bargaining with a passing cart
+for a pint of what the poorer people of the city buy as milk, he turned
+north, and quickening his pace, walked till he had left the city proper
+and had reached the new avenue or “drive,” which, by the liberality of
+Mr. Tweed with other people’s money, was then just approaching
+completion. After walking the length of it, he turned back to his
+boarding-place, and after a plunge, felt as if he could face and fight
+the future to any extent.
+
+As a result of this he was for the first time late at breakfast The
+presider over the box-office had ascertained that Peter had spent the
+night out, and had concluded he would have a gird or two at him. He
+failed, however, to carry out his intention. It was not the first time
+that both he and his companions had decided to “roast” Peter, absent,
+but had done other wise with Peter, present. He had also decided to say
+to Peter, “Who’s your dandy letter-writer?” But he also failed to do
+that. This last intention referred to a letter that lay at Peters
+place, and which was examined by each of the four in turn. That letter
+had an air about it. It was written on linen paper of a grade which, if
+now common enough, was not so common at that time. Then it was
+postmarked from one of the most, fashionable summer resorts of the
+country. Finally, it was sealed with wax, then very unusual, and the
+wax bore the impression of a crest. They were all rather disappointed
+when Peter put that letter in his pocket, without opening it.
+
+Peter read the letter at his office that morning. It was as follows:
+
+
+GREY-COURT, July 21st.
+
+DEAR. OLD MAN—
+
+Like a fool I overslept myself on the morning you left, so did not get
+my talk with you. You know I never get up early, and never can, so you
+have only your refusal to let me in that night to blame for our not
+having a last chat. If I had had the news to tell you that I now have,
+I should not have let you keep me out, even if you had forced me to
+break my way in.
+
+Chum, the nicest girl in the world has told me that she loves me, and
+we are both as happy as happy can be, I know you will not be in a
+moment’s doubt as to who she is, I have only run down here to break it
+to my family, and shall go back to the Shrubberies early next week—to
+talk to Mr. Pierce, you understand!
+
+My governor has decided that a couple of years’ travel will keep me out
+of mischief as well as anything else he can devise, and as the prospect
+is not unpleasant, I am not going to let my new plans interfere with
+it, merely making my journeyings a _solitude à deux_, instead of solus.
+So we shall be married in September, at the Shrubberies, and sail for
+Europe almost immediately.
+
+Now, I want you to stand by me in this, as you have in other things,
+and help me through. I want you, in short, to be my “best man” as you
+have been my Best friend. “Best man,” I should inform you, is an
+English wedding institution, which our swell people have suddenly
+discovered is a necessity to make a marriage ceremony legal. He doesn’t
+do much. Holding his principal’s hat, I believe, is the most serious
+duty that falls to him, though perhaps not stepping on the bridal
+dresses is more difficult.
+
+My Mamma wants me to drive with her, so this must be continued in our
+next.
+
+Aff.,
+
+W.
+
+
+Peter did not read law that morning. But after sitting in his chair for
+a couple of hours, looking at the opposite wall, and seeing something
+quite different, he took his pen, and without pause, or change of face,
+wrote two letters, as follows:
+
+
+DEAR WATTS:
+
+You hardly surprised me by your letter. I had suspected, both from your
+frequent visits to the Shrubberies, and from a way in which you
+occasionally spoke of Miss Pierce, that you loved her. After seeing
+her, I felt that it was not possible you did not. So I was quite
+prepared for your news. You have indeed been fortunate in winning such
+a girl. That I wish you every joy and happiness I need not say.
+
+I think you could have found some other of the fellows better suited to
+stand with you, but if you think otherwise, I shall not fail you.
+
+You will have to tell me about details, clothes, etc. Perhaps you can
+suggest a gift that will do? I remember Miss Pierce saying she was very
+fond of pearls. Would it be right to give something of that kind?
+
+Faithfully yours,
+
+PETER.
+
+
+DEAR MISS PIERCE:
+
+A letter from Watts this morning tells me of his good fortune. Fearing
+lest my blindness may perhaps still give you pain, I write to say that
+your happiness is the most earnest wish of my life, and nothing which
+increases it can be other than good news to me. If I can ever serve you
+in any way, you will be doing me a great favor by telling me how.
+
+Please give my regards to Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, and believe me,
+
+Yours ever sincerely,
+
+PETER STIRLING.
+
+
+After these letters were written, Peter studied the wall again for a
+time. Studied it till long after the hour when he should have lunched.
+The wall had three cracks in it which approximated to an outline of
+Italy, but though Peter gazed at this particular wall a good many hours
+in the next few weeks, he did not discover this interesting fact till
+long after this time of wall-gazing.
+
+In the early morning and after dinner, in spite of the summer heat, he
+took long walks. During the day he sat in his office doing nothing,
+with the exception of an occasional letter to his mother, and one or
+two to Watts in respect to the coming wedding. Two visits to the
+tailor’s, and another to Tiffany’s, which resulted in a pearl pin
+rather out of proportion to his purse, were almost the sole variations
+of this routine. It was really a relief to this terrible inactivity,
+when he found himself actually at the Shrubberies, the afternoon before
+the wedding.
+
+Peter was rather surprised at the ease with which he went through the
+next twenty-four hours. It is true that the house was too full, and
+each person too busy, to trouble the silent groomsman with attention,
+so he might have done pretty much what he wished, without being
+noticed. He arrived late, thus having no chance for greetings till
+after a hurried dressing for dinner, when they were made in the
+presence of the whole party, who had waited his coming to go to the
+meal. He went through the ordeal well, even that with Miss Pierce,
+actually showing less embarrassment than she did. What was more
+astonishing, he calmly offered his arm to the bridesmaid who fell to
+his lot, and, after seating her, chatted without thinking that he was
+talking. Indeed, he hardly heeded what he did say, but spoke
+mechanically, as a kind of refuge from thought and feeling.
+
+“I didn’t find him a bit so,” the girl said to Miss Pierce, later in
+the evening, with an indefiniteness which, if not merely feminine, must
+presuppose a previous conversation. “He isn’t exactly talkative, but he
+is perfectly easy to get on with. I tried him on New York, and found he
+had gone into a good many odd places and can tell about them. He
+describes things very well, so that one sees them.”
+
+“It must be your tact, then, Miss Leroy,” said Mrs. Pierce, “for we
+could get nothing out of him before.”
+
+“No? I had nothing to do with it, and, between ourselves, I think he
+disapproved of me. If Helen hadn’t told me about him, I should have
+been very cool to him, his manner was so objectionable. He clearly
+talked to me because he felt it a duty, and not a pleasure.”
+
+“That’s only that unfortunate manner of his,” said Helen. “I really
+think at heart he’s dreadfully afraid of us. At least that’s what Watts
+says. But he only behaves as if—as if—well, you know what I mean,
+Alice!”
+
+“Exactly,” said Alice. “You can’t describe it. He’s so cool, and
+stolid, and silent, that you feel shoddy and cheap, and any simple
+little remark doesn’t seem enough to say. You try to talk up to him,
+and yet feel small all the time.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Helen. “You talk down to him, as if he
+were—were—your old grandfather, or some one else you admired, but
+thought very dull and old-fashioned.”
+
+“But the worst is the way he looks at you. So gravely, even when you
+try to joke. Now I really think I’m passably pretty, but Mr. Stirling
+said as plainly as could be: ‘I look at you occasionally because that’s
+the proper thing to do, when one talks, but I much prefer looking at
+that picture over your head.’ I don’t believe he noticed how my hair
+was dressed, or the color of my eyes. Such men are absolutely
+maddening. When they’ve finished their smoke, I’m going to make him
+notice me.”
+
+But Miss Leroy failed in her plan, try as she would. Peter did not
+notice girls any more. After worrying in his school and college days,
+over what women thought of him and how they treated him, he had
+suddenly ceased to trouble himself about them. It was as if a man,
+after long striving for something, had suddenly discovered that he did
+not wish it—that to him women’s opinions had become worthless. Perhaps
+in this case it was only the Fox and the Grapes over again. At all
+events, from this time on Peter cared little what women did. Courteous
+he tried to be, for he understood this to be a duty. But that was all.
+They might laugh at him, snub him, avoid him. He cared not. He had
+struck women out of his plan of life. And this disregard, as we have
+already suggested, was sure to produce a strange change, not merely in
+Peter, but in women’s view and treatment of him. Peter trying to please
+them, by dull, ordinary platitudes, was one thing. Peter avoiding them
+and talking to them when needs must, with that distant, uninterested
+look and voice, was quite another.
+
+The next morning, Peter, after finding what a fifth wheel in a coach
+all men are at weddings, finally stood up with his friend. He had not
+been asked to stay on for another night, as had most of the bridal
+party, so he slipped away as soon as his duty was done, and took a
+train that put him into New York that evening. A week later he said
+good-bye to the young couple, on the deck of a steamship.
+
+“Don’t forget us, Peter,” shouted Watts, after the fasts were cast off
+and the steamer was slowly moving into mid-stream.
+
+Peter waved his hat, and turning, walked off the pier.
+
+“Could he forget them?” was the question he asked himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+WAITING.
+
+
+“My friend,” said an old and experienced philosopher to a young man,
+who with all the fire and impatience of his years wished to conquer the
+world quickly, “youth has many things to learn, but one of the most
+important is never to let another man beat you at waiting.”
+
+Peter went back to his desk, and waited. He gave up looking at the wall
+of his office, and took to somebody “On Torts” again. When that was
+finished he went through the other law books of his collection. Those
+done, he began to buy others, and studied them with great thoroughness
+and persistence. In one of his many walks, he stumbled upon the
+Apprentices’ Library. Going in, he inquired about its privileges, and
+became a regular borrower of books. Peter had always been a reader, but
+now he gave from three or four hours a day to books, aside from his law
+study. Although he was slow, the number of volumes, he not merely read,
+but really mastered was marvellous. Books which he liked, without much
+regard to their popular reputation, he at once bought; for his simple
+life left him the ability to indulge himself in most respects within
+moderation. He was particularly careful to read a classic occasionally
+to keep up his Greek and Latin, and for the same reason he read French
+and German books aloud to himself. Before the year was out, he was a
+recognized quantity in certain book-stores, and was privileged to
+browse at will both among old and new books without interference or
+suggestion from the “stock” clerks. “There isn’t any good trying to
+sell him anything,” remarked one. “He makes up his mind for himself.”
+
+His reading was broadened out from the classic and belles-lettres
+grooves that were still almost a cult with the college graduate, by
+another recreation now become habitual with him. In his long tramps
+about the city, to vary the monotony, he would sometimes stop and chat
+with people—with a policeman, a fruit-vender, a longshoreman or a
+truckster. It mattered little who it was. Then he often entered
+manufactories and “yards” and asked if he could go through them,
+studying the methods, and talking to the overseer or workers about the
+trade. When he occasionally encountered some one who told him “your
+kind ain’t got no business here” he usually found the statement “my
+father was a mill-overseer” a way to break down the barrier. He had to
+use it seldom, for he dressed plainly and met the men in a way which
+seldom failed to make them feel that he was one of them. After such
+inspection and chat, he would get books from the library, and read up
+about the business or trade, finding that in this way he could enjoy
+works otherwise too technical, and really obtain a very good knowledge
+of many subjects. Just how interesting he found such books as “Our
+Fire-Laddies,” which he read from cover to cover, after an inspection
+of, and chat with, the men of the nearest fire-engine station; or
+Latham’s “The Sewage Difficulty,” which the piping of uptown New York
+induced him to read; and others of diverse types is questionable.
+Probably it was really due to his isolation, but it was much healthier
+than gazing at blank walls.
+
+When the courts opened, Peter kept track of the calendars, and whenever
+a case or argument promised to be interesting, or to call out the great
+lights of the profession, he attended and listened to them. He tried to
+write out the arguments used, from notes, and finally this practice
+induced him to give two evenings a week during the winter mastering
+shorthand. It was really only a mental discipline, for any case of
+importance was obtainable in print almost as soon as argued, but Peter
+was trying to put a pair of slate-colored eyes out of his thoughts, and
+employed this as one of the means.
+
+When winter came, and his long walks became less possible, he turned to
+other things. More from necessity than choice, he visited the art and
+other exhibitions as they occurred, he went to concerts, and to plays,
+all with due regard to his means, and for this reason the latter were
+the most seldom indulged in. Art and music did not come easy to him,
+but he read up on both, not merely in standard books, but in the
+reviews of the daily press, and just because there was so much in both
+that he failed to grasp, he studied the more carefully and patiently.
+
+One trait of his New England training remained to him. He had brought a
+letter from his own Congregational church in his native town, to one of
+the large churches of the same sect in New York, and when admitted,
+hired a sitting and became a regular attendant at both morning and
+evening service. In time this produced a call from his new pastor. It
+was the first new friend he had gained in New York. “He seems a quiet,
+well-informed fellow,” was the clergyman’s comment; “I shall make a
+point of seeing something of him.” But he was pastor of a very large
+and rich congregation, and was a hard-worked and hard-entertained man,
+so his intention was not realized.
+
+Peter spent Christmastide with his mother, who worried not a little
+over his loss of flesh.
+
+“You have been overworking,” she said anxiously.
+
+“Why mother, I haven’t had a client yet,” laughed Peter.
+
+“Then you’ve worried over not getting on,” said his mother, knowing
+perfectly well that it was nothing of the sort. She had hoped that
+Peter would be satisfied with his six months’ trial, but did not
+mention her wish. She marvelled to herself that New York had not yet
+discovered his greatness.
+
+When Peter returned to the city, he made a change in his living
+arrangements. His boarding-place had filled up with the approach of
+winter, but with the class of men he already knew too well. Even though
+he met them only at meals, their atmosphere was intolerable to him.
+When a room next his office fell vacant, and went begging at a very
+cheap price, he decided to use it as a bedroom. So he moved his few
+belongings on his return from his visit to his mother’s.
+
+Although he had not been particularly friendly to the other boarders,
+nor made himself obtrusive in the least, not one of them failed to
+speak of his leaving. Two or three affected to be pleased, but
+“Butter-and-cheese” said he “was a first-rate chap,” and this seemed to
+gain the assent of the table generally.
+
+“I’m dreadfully sorry to lose him,” his landlady informed her other
+boarders, availing herself, perhaps, of the chance to deliver a side
+hit at some of them. “He never has complained once, since he came here,
+and he kept his room as neat as if he had to take care of it himself.”
+
+“Well,” said the box-office oracle, “I guess he’s O.K., if he is a bit
+stiff; and a fellow who’s best man to a big New York swell, and gets
+his name in all the papers, doesn’t belong in a seven-dollar,
+hash-seven-days-a-week, Bleecker Street boarding-house.”
+
+Peter fitted his room up simply, the sole indulgence (if properly so
+called) being a bath, which is not a usual fitting of a New York
+business office, consciences not yet being tubbable. He had made his
+mother show him how to make coffee, and he adopted the Continental
+system of meals, having rolls and butter sent in, and making a French
+breakfast in his own rooms. Then he lunched regularly not far from his
+office, and dined wherever his afternoon walk, or evening plans carried
+him. He found that he saved no money by the change, but he saved his
+feelings, and was far freer to come and go as he chose.
+
+He did not hear from the honeymoon party. Watts had promised to write
+to him and send his address “as soon as we decide whether we pass the
+winter in Italy or on the Nile.” But no letter came. Peter called on
+the Pierces, only to find them out, and as no notice was taken of his
+pasteboard, he drew his own inference, and did not repeat the visit.
+
+Such was the first year of Peter’s New York life. He studied, he read,
+he walked, and most of all, he waited. But no client came, and he
+seemed no nearer one than the day he had first seen his own name on his
+office door. “How much longer will I have to wait? How long will my
+patience hold out?” These were the questions he asked himself, when for
+a moment he allowed himself to lose courage. Then he would take to a
+bit of wall-gazing, while dreaming of a pair of slate-colored eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+NEW FRIENDS.
+
+
+Mr. Converse had evidently thought that the only way for Peter to get
+on was to make friends. But in this first year Peter did not made a
+single one that could be really called such. His second summer
+broadened his acquaintance materially, though in a direction which
+promised him little law practice.
+
+When the warm weather again closed the courts and galleries, and
+brought an end to the concerts and theatres, Peter found time harder to
+kill, the more, because he had pretty well explored the city. Still he
+walked much to help pass the time, and to get outside of his rooms into
+the air. For the same reason he often carried his book, after the heat
+of the day was over, to one of the parks, and did his reading there.
+Not far from his office, eastwardly, where two streets met at an angle,
+was a small open space too limited to be called a square, even if its
+shape had not been a triangle. Here, under the shade of two very sickly
+trees, surrounded by tall warehouses, were a couple of benches. Peter
+sat here many evenings smoking his pipe. Though these few square feet
+made perhaps the largest “open” within half a mile of his office, the
+angle was confined and dreary. Hence it is obvious there must have been
+some attraction to Peter, since he was such a walker, to make him
+prefer spending his time there rather than in the parks not far distant
+The attraction was the children.
+
+Only a few hundred feet away was one of the most densely crowded
+tenement districts of New York. It had no right to be there, for the
+land was wanted for business purposes, but the hollow on which it was
+built had been a swamp in the old days, and the soft land, and perhaps
+the unhealthiness, had prevented the erection of great warehouses and
+stores, which almost surrounded it. So it had been left to the storage
+of human souls instead of merchandise, for valuable goods need careful
+housing, while any place serves to pack humanity. It was not a nice
+district to go through, for there was a sense of heat and dirt, and
+smell, and crowd, and toil and sorrow throughout. It was probably no
+nicer to live in, and nothing proved it better than the overflow of the
+children therefrom into the little, hot, paved, airless angle. Here
+they could be found from five in the morning till twelve at night.
+Here, with guards set, to give notice of the approach of the children’s
+joy-destroying Siva—otherwise the policeman—they played ball. Here
+“cat” and “one old cat” render bearable many a wilting hour for the
+little urchins. Here “Sally in our Alley” and “Skip-rope” made the
+little girls forget that the temperature was far above blood-heat. Here
+of an evening, Peter smoked and watched them.
+
+At first he was an object of suspicion, and the sport visibly ceased
+when he put in an appearance. But he simply sat on one of the benches
+and puffed his pipe, and after a few evenings they lost all fear of
+him, and went on as if he were not there. In time, an intercourse
+sprang up between them. One evening Peter appeared with a stick of
+wood, and as he smoked, he whittled at it with a _real_ jack-knife! He
+was scrutinized by the keen-eyed youngsters with interest at once, and
+before he had whittled long, he had fifty children sitting in the shape
+of a semicircle on the stone pavement, watching his doings with almost
+breathless Interest. When the result of his work actually developed
+into a “cat” of marvellous form and finish, a sigh of intense joy
+passed through the boy part of his audience. When the “cat” was passed
+over to their mercies, words could not be found to express their
+emotions. Another evening, the old clothes-line that served for a
+jump-rope, after having bravely rubbed against the pavement many
+thousand times in its endeavor to lighten the joyless life of the
+little pack, finally succumbed, worn through the centre and quite
+beyond hope of further knotting. Then Peter rose, and going to one of
+the little shops that supplied the district, soon returned with a
+_real_ jump-rope, with _wooden handles!_ So from time to time, _real_
+tops, _real_ dolls, _real_ marbles and various other _real_, if cheap,
+things, hitherto only enjoyed in dreams, or at most through home-made
+attempts, found their way into the angle, and were distributed among
+the little imps. They could not resist such subtle bribery, and soon
+Peter was on as familiar and friendly a footing as he could wish. He
+came to know each by name, and was made the umpire in all their
+disputes and the confidant in all their troubles. They were a dirty,
+noisy, lawless, and godless little community, but they were interesting
+to watch, and the lonely fellow grew to like them much, for with all
+their premature sharpness, they were really natural, and responded
+warmly to his friendly overtures.
+
+After a time, Peter tried to help them a little more than by mere small
+gifts. A cheap box of carpenter’s tools was bought, and under his
+superintendence, evenings were spent in the angle, in making various
+articles. A small wheel barrow, a knife-and-fork basket, a
+clock-bracket and other easy things were made, one at a time. All boys,
+and indeed some girls, were allowed to help. One would saw off the end
+of a plank; another would rule a pencil line; the next would plane the
+plank down to that line; the next would bore the holes in it; the next
+would screw it into position; the next would sandpaper it The work went
+very slowly, but every one who would, had his share in it, while the
+rest sat and watched. When the article was completed, lots were drawn
+for it, and happy was the fortunate one who drew the magnificent prize
+in life’s lottery!
+
+Occasionally too, Peter brought a book with him, and read it aloud to
+them. He was rather surprised to find that they did not take to
+Sunday-school stories or fairy tales. Wild adventures in foreign lands
+were the most effective; and together they explored the heart of
+Africa, climbed the Swiss mountains, fought the Western Indians, and
+attempted to discover the North Pole. They had a curious liking for
+torture, blood-letting, and death. Nor were they without
+discrimination.
+
+“I guess that fellow is only working his jaw,” was one little chap’s
+criticism at a certain point of the narrative of a well-known African
+explorer, rather famous for his success in advertising himself. Again,
+“that’s bully,” was the comment uttered by another, when Peter, rather
+than refuse their request to read aloud, had been compelled to choose
+something in Macaulay’s Essays, and had read the description of the
+Black Hole of Calcutta, “Say, mister,” said another, “I don’t believe
+that fellow wasn’t there, for he never could a told it like that, if he
+wasn’t.”
+
+As soon as his influence was secure, Peter began to affect them in
+other ways. Every fight, every squabble, was investigated, and the
+blame put where it belonged. Then a mandate went forth that profanity
+was to cease: and, though contrary to every instinct and habit, cease
+it did after a time, except for an occasional unconscious slip.
+“Sporadic swearing,” Peter called it, and explained what it meant to
+the children, and why he forgave that, while punishing the intentional
+swearer with exclusion from his favor. So, too, the girls were told
+that to “poke” tongues at each other, and make faces, was but another
+way of swearing; “for they all mean that there is hate in your hearts,
+and it is that which is wrong, and not the mere words or faces.” He ran
+the risk of being laughed at, but they didn’t laugh, for something in
+his way of talking to them, even when verging on what they called
+“goody-goody,” inspired them with respect.
+
+Before many weeks of this intercourse, Peter could not stroll east from
+his office without being greeted with yells of recognition. The elders,
+too, gave him “good-evening” pleasantly and smiled genially. The
+children had naturally told their parents about him of his wonderful
+presents, and great skill with knife and string.
+
+“He can whittle anything you ask!”
+
+“He knows how to make things you want!”
+
+“He can tie a knot sixteen different kinds!”
+
+“He can fold a newspaper into soldiers’ and firemen’s caps!”
+
+“He’s friends with the policeman!”
+
+Such laudations, and a hundred more, the children sang of him to their
+elders.
+
+“Oh,” cried one little four-year-old girl, voicing the unanimous
+feeling of the children, “Mister Peter is just shplendid.”
+
+So the elders nodded and smiled when they met him, and he was pretty
+well known to several hundred people whom he knew not.
+
+But another year passed, and still no client came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+HIS FIRST CLIENT.
+
+
+Peter sat in his office, one hot July day, two years after his arrival,
+writing to his mother. He had but just returned to New York, after a
+visit to her, which had left him rather discouraged, because, for the
+first time, she had pleaded with him to abandon his attempt and return
+to his native town. He had only replied that he was not yet prepared to
+acknowledge himself beaten; but the request and his mother’s
+disappointment had worried him. While he wrote came a knock at the
+door, and, in response to his “come in,” a plain-looking laborer
+entered and stood awkwardly before him.
+
+“What can I do for you?” asked Peter, seeing that he must assist the
+man to state his business.
+
+“If you please, sir,” said the man, humbly, “it’s Missy. And I hope
+you’ll pardon me for troubling you.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Peter. “What about Missy?”
+
+“She’s—the doctor says she’s dying,” said the man, adding, with a
+slight suggestion of importance, blended with the evident grief he
+felt: “Sally, and Bridget Milligan are dead already.”
+
+“And what can I do?” said Peter, sympathetically, if very much at sea.
+
+“Missy wants to see you before she goes. It’s only a child’s wish, sir,
+and you needn’t trouble about it. But I had to promise her I’d come and
+ask you. I hope it’s no offence?”
+
+“No.” Peter rose, and, passing to the next room, took his hat, and the
+two went into the street together.
+
+“What is the trouble?” asked Peter, as they walked.
+
+“We don’t know, sir. They were all took yesterday, and two are dead
+already.” The man wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirtsleeve,
+smearing the red brick dust with which it was powdered, over his face.
+
+“You’ve had a doctor?”
+
+“Not till this morning. We didn’t think it was bad at first.”
+
+“What is your name?”
+
+“Blackett, sir—Jim Blackett.”
+
+Peter began to see daylight. He remembered both a Sally and Matilda
+Blackett.—That was probably “Missy.”
+
+A walk of six blocks transferred them to the centre of the tenement
+district. Two flights of stairs brought them to the Blackett’s rooms.
+On the table of the first, which was evidently used both as a kitchen
+and sitting-room, already lay a coffin containing a seven-year-old
+girl. Candles burned at the four corners, adding to the bad air and
+heat. In the room beyond, in bed, with a tired-looking woman tending
+her, lay a child of five. Wan and pale as well could be, with
+perspiration standing in great drops on the poor little hot forehead,
+the hand of death, as it so often does, had put something into the face
+never there before.
+
+“Oh, Mister Peter,” the child said, on catching sight of him, “I said
+you’d come.”
+
+Peter took his handkerchief and wiped the little head. Then he took a
+newspaper, lying on a chair, twisted it into a rude fan, and began
+fanning the child as he sat on the bed.
+
+“What did you want me for?” he asked.
+
+“Won’t you tell me the story you read from the book? The one about the
+little girl who went to the country, and was given a live dove and real
+flowers.”
+
+Peter began telling the story as well as he could remember it, but it
+was never finished. For while he talked another little girl went to the
+country, a far country, from which there is no return—and a very
+ordinary little story ended abruptly.
+
+The father and mother took the death very calmly. Peter asked them a
+few questions, and found that there were three other children, the
+eldest of whom was an errand boy, and therefore away. The others, twin
+babies, had been cared for by a woman on the next floor. He asked about
+money, and found that they had not enough to pay the whole expenses of
+the double funeral.
+
+“But the undertaker says he’ll do it handsome, and will let the part I
+haven’t money for, run, me paying it off in weekly payments,” the man
+explained, when Peter expressed some surprise at the evident needless
+expense they were entailing on themselves.
+
+While he talked, the doctor came in.
+
+“I knew there was no chance,” he said, when told of the death. “And you
+remember I said so,” he added, appealing to the parents.
+
+“Yes, that’s what he said,” responded the father.
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, speaking in a brisk, lively way peculiar to
+him, “I’ve found what the matter was.”
+
+“No?” said the mother, becoming interested at once.
+
+“It was the milk,” the doctor continued. “I thought there was something
+wrong with it, the moment I smelt it, but I took some home to make
+sure.” He pulled a paper out of his pocket. “That’s the test, and Dr.
+Plumb, who has two cases next door, found it was just the same there.”
+
+The Blacketts gazed at the written analysis, with wonder, not
+understanding a word of it. Peter looked too, when they had satisfied
+their curiosity. As he read it, a curious expression came into his
+face. A look not unlike that which his face had worn on the deck of the
+“Sunrise.” It could hardly be called a change of expression, but rather
+a strengthening and deepening of his ordinary look.
+
+“That was in the milk drunk by the children?” he asked, placing his
+finger on a particular line.
+
+“Yes,” replied the doctor. “The milk was bad to start with, and was
+drugged to conceal the fact. These carbonates sometimes work very
+unevenly, and I presume this particular can of milk got more than its
+share of the doctoring.
+
+“There are almost no glycerides,” remarked Peter, wishing to hold the
+doctor till he should have had time to think.
+
+“No,” said the doctor. “It was skim milk.”
+
+“You will report it to the Health Board?” asked Peter.
+
+“When I’m up there,” said the doctor. “Not that it will do any good.
+But the law requires it”
+
+“Won’t they investigate?”
+
+“They’ll investigate too much. The trouble with them is, they
+investigate, but don’t prosecute.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. He shook hands with the parents, and went
+upstairs to the fourth floor. The crape on a door guided him to where
+Bridget Milligan lay. Here preparations had gone farther. Not merely
+were the candles burning, but four bottles, with the corks partly
+drawn, were on the cold cooking stove, while a wooden pail filled with
+beer, reposed in the embrace of a wash-tub, filled otherwise with ice.
+Peter asked a few questions. There was only an elder brother and
+sister. Patrick worked as a porter. Ellen rolled cigars. They had a
+little money laid up. Enough to pay for the funeral. “Mr. Moriarty gave
+us the whisky and beer at half price,” the girl explained incidentally.
+“Thank you, sir. We don’t need anything.” Peter rose to go. “Bridget
+was often speaking of you to us. And I thank you for what you did for
+her.”
+
+Peter went down, and called next door, to see Dr. Plumb’s patients.
+These were in a fair way for recovery.
+
+“They didn’t get any of the milk till last night,” the gray-haired,
+rather sad-looking doctor told him, “and I got at them early this
+morning. Then I suspected the milk at once, and treated them
+accordingly. I’ve been forty years doing this sort of thing, and it’s
+generally the milk. Dr. Sawyer, next door, is a new man, and doesn’t
+get hold quite as quick. But he knows more of the science of the thing,
+and can make a good analysis.”
+
+“You think they have a chance?”
+
+“If this heat will let up a bit” said the doctor, mopping his forehead.
+“It’s ninety-eight in here; that’s enough to kill a sound child.”
+
+“Could they be moved?”
+
+“To-morrow, perhaps.”
+
+“Mrs. Dooley, could you take your children away to the country
+to-morrow, if I find a place for you?”
+
+“It’s very little money I have, sir.”
+
+“It won’t cost you anything. Can you leave your family?”
+
+“There’s only Moike. And he’ll do very well by himself,” he was told.
+
+“Then if the children can go, be ready at 10:15 to-morrow, and you
+shall all go up for a couple of weeks to my mother’s in Massachusetts.
+They’ll have plenty of good food there,” he explained to the doctor,
+“grass and flowers close to the house and woods not far away.”
+
+“That will fix them,” said the doctor.
+
+“About this milk. Won’t the Health Board punish the sellers?” Peter
+asked.
+
+“Probably not,” he was told “It’s difficult to get them to do anything,
+and at this season so many of them are on vacations, it is doubly hard
+to make them stir.”
+
+Peter went to the nearest telegraph, and sent a dispatch to his mother.
+Then he went back to his office, and sitting down, began to study his
+wall. But he was not thinking of a pair of slate-colored eyes. He was
+thinking of his first case. He had found a client.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+THE CASE.
+
+
+Peter went to work the next morning at an hour which most of us, if we
+are indiscreet enough to wake, prefer to use as the preface to a
+further two to four hours’ nap. He had spent his evening in a
+freshening of his knowledge in certain municipal laws, and other
+details which he thought he might need, and as early as five o clock he
+was at work in the tenement district, asking questions and taking
+notes. The inquiry took little skill The milk had come from the cart of
+a certain company, which passed daily through the locality, not to
+supply orders, but to peddle milk to whoever cared to buy. Peter had
+the cart pointed out that morning, but, beyond making a note of the
+exact name of the company, he paid no attention to it. He was aiming at
+bigger game than a milk cart or its driver.
+
+His work was interrupted only by his taking Mrs. Dooley and the two
+children to the train. That done, Peter walked northwardly and
+westwardly, till he had nearly reached the river front. It took some
+little inquiry, but after a while he stumbled on a small shanty which
+had a sign:
+
+NATIONAL MILK COMPANY.
+
+OFFICE.
+
+The place, however, was closed and no one around seemed connected with
+it, though a number of milk carts were standing about. Close to these
+was a long line of sheds, which in turn backed up against a great
+brewery. A couple of men lounged at the door of the sheds. Peter walked
+up to them, and asked if they could tell him where he could find any
+one connected with the milk company.
+
+“The boss is off for lunch,” said one. “I can take an order, if that’s
+what you want.”
+
+Peter said it was not an order, and began chatting with the men. Before
+he had started to question them, a third man, from inside the sheds,
+joined the group at the door.
+
+“That cow’s dead,” he remarked as he came up.
+
+“Is it?” said the one called Bill. Both rose, and went into the shed.
+Peter started to go with them.
+
+“You can’t come in,” said the new-comer.
+
+But Peter passed in, without paying the least attention to him.
+
+“Come back,” called the man, following Peter.
+
+Peter turned to him: “You are one of the employees of the National Milk
+Company?” he asked.
+
+“Yes,” said the man, “and we have orders—”
+
+Peter usually let a little pause occur after a remark to him, but in
+this case he spoke before the man completed his speech. He spoke, too,
+with an air of decision and command that quieted the man.
+
+“Go back to your work,” he said, “and don’t order me round. I know what
+I’m about.” Then he walked after the other two men as rapidly as the
+dimness permitted. The employee scratched his head, and then followed.
+
+Dim as the light was, Peter could discern that he was passing between
+two rows of cows, with not more than space enough for men to pass each
+other between the rows. It was filthy, and very warm, and there was a
+peculiar smell in the air which Peter did not associate with a cow
+stable. It was a kind of vapor which brought some suggestion to his
+mind, yet one he could not identify. Presently he came upon the two
+men. One had lighted a lantern and was examining a cow that lay on the
+ground. That it was dead was plain. But what most interested Peter,
+although he felt a shudder of horror at the sight, were the rotted tail
+and two great sores on the flank that lay uppermost.
+
+“That’s a bad-looking cow,” he said.
+
+“Ain’t it?” replied the one with the lantern. “But you can’t help their
+havin’ them, if you feed them on mash.”
+
+“Hold your tongue, Bill,” said the man who had followed Peter.
+
+“Take some of your own advice,” said Peter, turning quickly, and
+speaking in a voice that made the man step back. A terrible feeling was
+welling up in Peter’s heart. He thought of the poor little
+fever-stricken children. He saw the poor fever-stricken cow. He would
+like to—to—.
+
+He dropped the arm he had unconsciously raised. “Give me that lantern,”
+he demanded.
+
+The man hesitated and looked at the others.
+
+“Give me that lantern,” said Peter, speaking low, but his voice ringing
+very clear.
+
+The lantern was passed to him, and taking it, he walked along the line
+of cows. He saw several with sores more or less developed. One or two
+he saw in the advanced stages of the disease, where the tail had begun
+to rot away. The other men followed him on his tour of inspection, and
+whispered together nervously. It did not take Peter long to examine all
+he wanted to see. Handing back the lantern at the door, he said: “Give
+me your names.”
+
+The men looked nonplussed, and shifted their weights uneasily from leg
+to leg.
+
+“You,” said Peter, looking at the man who had interfered with him.
+
+“Wot do yer want with it?” he was asked.
+
+“That’s my business. What’s your name?”
+
+“John Tingley.”
+
+“Where do you live?”
+
+“310 West 61st Street.”
+
+Peter obtained and wrote down the names and addresses of the trio. He
+then went to the “office” of the company, which was now opened.
+
+“Is this an incorporated company?” he asked of the man tilted back in a
+chair.
+
+“No,” said the man, adding two chair legs to terra firma, and looking
+at Peter suspiciously.
+
+“Who owns it?” Peter queried.
+
+“I’m the boss.”
+
+“That isn’t what I asked.”
+
+“That’s what I answered.”
+
+“And your name is?”
+
+“James Coldman.”
+
+“Do you intend to answer my question?”
+
+“Not till I know your business.”
+
+“I’m here to find out against whom to get warrants for a criminal
+prosecution.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“The warrant will say.”
+
+The man squirmed in his chair. “Will you give me till to-morrow?”
+
+“No. The warrant is to be issued to-day. Decide at once, whether you or
+your principal, shall be the man to whom it shall be served.”
+
+“I guess you’d better make it against me,” said the man.
+
+“Very well,” said Peter. “Of course you know your employer will be run
+down, and as I’m not after the rest of you, you will only get him a few
+days safety at the price of a term in prison.”
+
+“Well, I’ve got to risk it,” said the man.
+
+Peter turned and walked away. He went down town to the Blacketts.
+
+“I want you to carry the matter to the courts,” he told the father.
+“These men deserve punishment, and if you’ll let me go on with it, it
+shan’t cost you anything; and by bringing a civil suit as well, you’ll
+probably get some money out of it.”
+
+Blackett gave his assent. So too did Patrick Milligan, and “Moike”
+Dooley. They had won fame already by the deaths and wakes, but a “coort
+case” promised to give them prestige far beyond what even these
+distinctions conferred. So the three walked away proudly with Peter,
+and warrants were sworn to and issued against the “boss” as principal,
+and the driver and the three others as witnesses, made returnable on
+the following morning. On many a doorstep of the district, that night,
+nothing else was talked of, and the trio were the most envied men in
+the neighborhood. Even Mrs. Blackett and Ellen Milligan forgot their
+grief, and held a joint _soirée_ on their front stoop.
+
+“Shure, it’s mighty hard for Mrs. Dooley, that she’s away!” said one.
+“She’ll be feeling bad when she knows what she’s missed.”
+
+The next morning, Peter, the two doctors, the Blacketts, the Milligans,
+Dooley, the milk quintet, and as many inhabitants of the “district” as
+could crush their way in, were in court by nine o’clock. The plaintiffs
+and their friends were rather disappointed at the quietness of the
+proceedings. The examinations were purely formal except in one
+instance, when Peter asked for the “name or names of the owner or
+owners” of the National Milk Company. Here the defendant’s attorney, a
+shrewd criminal lawyer, interfered, and there was a sharp passage at
+arms, in which an attempt was made to anger Peter. But he kept his
+head, and in the end carried his point. The owner turned out to be the
+proprietor of the brewery, as Peter had surmised, who thus utilized the
+mash from his vats in feeding cattle. But on Peter’s asking for an
+additional warrant against him, the defendant’s lawyer succeeded in
+proving, if the statement of the overseer proved it, that the brewer
+was quite ignorant that the milk sold in the “district” was what had
+been unsalable the day before to better customers, and that the
+skimming and doctoring of it was unknown to him. So an attempt to
+punish the rich man as a criminal was futile. He could afford to pay
+for straw men.
+
+“Arrah!” said Dooley to Peter as they passed out of the court, “Oi
+think ye moight have given them a bit av yer moind.”
+
+“Wait till the trial,” said Peter. “We mustn’t use up our powder on the
+skirmish line.”
+
+So the word was passed through the district that “theer’d be fun at the
+rale trial,” and it was awaited with intense interest by five thousand
+people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+NEW YORK JUSTICE.
+
+
+Peter saw the District Attorney the next morning for a few moments, and
+handed over to him certain memoranda of details that had not appeared
+in the committing court’s record.
+
+“It shall go before the grand jury day after to-morrow,” that official
+told him, without much apparent interest in the matter.
+
+“How soon can it be tried, if they find a true bill? asked Peter.
+
+“Can’t say,” replied the official.
+
+“I merely wished to know,” said Peter, “because three of the witnesses
+are away, and I want to have them back in time.”
+
+“Probably a couple of weeks,” yawned the man, and Peter, taking the
+hint, departed.
+
+The rest of the morning was spent in drawing up the papers in three
+civil suits against the rich brewer. Peter filed them as soon as
+completed, and took the necessary steps for their prompt service.
+
+These produced an almost immediate result, in the shape of a call the
+next morning from the same lawyer who had defended the milkmen in the
+preliminary examination. Peter, as he returned from his midday meal,
+met the lawyer on the stairs.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Stirling. Good-morning,” said the man, whose name was Dummer.
+“I’ve just left your office, finding it closed.”
+
+“Come in,” said Peter.
+
+The lawyer glanced around the plain room, and a quiet look of
+satisfaction came over his face. The two sat down.
+
+“About those cases, Mr. Stirling?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“For reasons you can easily understand, we don’t wish them to come to
+trial.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And we take it for granted that your clients will be quite willing to
+settle them.”
+
+“We will talk about that, after the criminal trial is over”
+
+“Why not now?”
+
+“Because we hope to make Coldman speak the truth in the trial, and thus
+be able to reach Bohlmann.”
+
+“You’re wasting your time.”
+
+“Not if there’s the smallest chance of sending the brewer to prison.”
+
+“There isn’t. Coldman will stick to what he said if the thing is ever
+tried, which it won’t be.”
+
+Peter eyed Dummer without changing a muscle. “The District Attorney
+told me that it ought to be in the courts in a couple of weeks.”
+
+Dummer smiled blandly, and slowly closed one eye. “The District
+Attorney tries to tell the truth,” he said, “and I have no doubt he
+thought that was what he was telling you. Now, name your figure?”
+
+“The civil suits will not be compromised till the criminal one is
+finished.”
+
+“But I tell you the criminal one is dead. Squashed. Bohlmann and I have
+seen the right people, and they’ve seen the District Attorney. That
+case won’t even go to the grand jury. So now, drop it, and say what
+you’ll settle the civil suits for?”
+
+“James Coldman shall go to prison for killing those children,” said
+Peter, “and till he does, it is waste time to talk of dropping or
+settling anything.”
+
+“Humph,” half laughed the lawyer, though with obvious disgust at the
+mulishness in Peter’s face and voice. “You think you know it all. But
+you don’t. You can work for ten years, and that case will be no nearer
+trial than it is to-day. I tell you, young man, you don’t know New
+York.”
+
+“I don’t know New York,” said Peter, “but—”
+
+“Exactly,” interrupted Dummer. “And I do.”
+
+“Probably,” replied Peter quietly, “You may know New York, Mr. Dummer,
+but you don’t know me. That case shall be tried.”
+
+“Well,” laughed Dummer, “if you’ll agree not to press the civil suits,
+till that’s out of the way, we shall have no need to compromise.
+Good-day.”
+
+The next morning Peter went to the District Attorney’s office, and
+inquired for him.
+
+“He’s gone to Bar Harbor for a couple of weeks’ vacation,” he was told.
+
+“Whom must I see in his stead?” And after some time Peter was brought
+face to face with the acting official.
+
+“Mr. Nelson told me he should present the Coldman case to the grand
+jury to-day, and finding he has left the city, I wish to know who has
+it in charge?” asked Peter.
+
+“He left all the presentments with me,” the deputy replied, “but there
+was no such case as that.”
+
+“Could he have left it with some one else to attend to?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Peter went back to his office, took down the Code and went over certain
+sections. His eyes had rather a sad look as they gazed at his wall,
+after his study, as if what he had read had not pleased him. But if the
+eyes were sad, the heavy jaw had a rigidness and setness which gave no
+indication of weakness or yielding.
+
+For two weeks Peter waited, and then once more invaded officialdom.
+
+“The District Attorney’s engaged, and can’t see you,” he was told.
+Peter came again in the afternoon, with the same result. The next
+morning, brought only a like answer, and this was duplicated in the
+afternoon. The third day he said he would wait, and sat for hours in
+the ante-room, hoping to be called, or to intercept the officer. But it
+was only to see man after man ushered into the private office, and
+finally to be told that the District Attorney had gone to lunch, and
+would not return that day. The man who told him this grinned, and
+evidently considered it a good joke, nor had Peter been unconscious
+that all the morning the clerks and underlings had been laughing, and
+guying him as he waited. Yet his jaw was only set the more rigidly, as
+he left the office.
+
+He looked up the private address of the officer in the directory, and
+went to see him that evening. He was wise enough not to send in his
+name, and Mr. Nelson actually came into the hall to see him.
+
+The moment he saw Peter, however, he said: “Oh, it’s you. Well, I never
+talk business except in business hours.”
+
+“I have tried to see you—” began Peter.
+
+“Try some more,” interrupted the man, smiling, and going toward the
+parlor.
+
+Peter followed him, calmly. “Mr. Nelson,” he said, “do you intend to
+push that case?”
+
+“Of course,” smiled Nelson. “After I’ve finished four hundred
+indictments that precede it.”
+
+“Not till then?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Mr. Nelson, can’t you overlook politics for a moment, and think of—”
+
+“Who said anything of politics?” interrupted Nelson, “I merely tell you
+there are indictments which have been in my office for five years and
+are yet to be tried, and that your case is going to take its turn.”
+Nelson passed into the back room, leaving his caller alone.
+
+Peter left the room, and passed out of the front door, just as a man
+was about to ring the bell.
+
+“Is Mr. Nelson in?” asked the man.
+
+“I have just left him, Mr. Dummer,” said Peter.
+
+“Ah! Good-evening, Mr. Stirling. I think I can guess your business.
+Well. How do you come on?” Dummer was obviously laughing internally.
+
+Peter started down the steps without answering.
+
+“Perhaps I can help you?” said Dummer. “I know Mr. Nelson very well in
+politics, and so does Mr. Bohlmann. If you’ll tell me what you are
+after, I’ll try to say a good word for you?”
+
+“I don’t need your help, thank you,” said Peter calmly.
+
+“Good,” said Dummer. “You think a briefless lawyer of thirty can go it
+alone, do you, even against the whole city government?”
+
+“I know I have not influence enough to get that case pushed, Mr.
+Dummer, but the law is on my side, and I’m not going to give up yet.”
+
+“Well, what are you going to do about it?” said Dummer, sneeringly.
+
+“Fight,” said Peter, walking away.
+
+He went back to his office, and sitting at his desk, wrote a formal
+letter to the District Attorney, calling his attention to the case, and
+asking information as to when it would be brought to trial. Then he
+copied this, and mailed the original. Then he read the Code again.
+After that he went over the New York reports, making notes. For a
+second time the morning sun found Peter still at his desk. But this
+time his head was not bowed upon his blotter, as if he were beaten or
+dead. His whole figure was stiff with purpose, and his jaw was as rigid
+as a mastiff’s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+THE FIGHT.
+
+
+The only reply which Peter received to his letter to the
+District-Attorney, was a mere formal reiteration of that officer’s
+verbal statement, that the case would be taken up in its due order,
+after those which preceded it had been dealt with. Peter knew enough of
+the numberless cases which never reach trial to understand that this
+meant in truth, the laying aside of the case, till it was killed by the
+statute of limitations.
+
+On receiving this reply, Peter made another move, by going to three
+newspapers, and trying to see their managing editors. One declined to
+see him. A second merely told Peter, after his statement, which the
+editor only allowed him partly to explain, that he was very busy and
+could not take time to look into it, but that Peter might come again in
+about a month. The third let Peter tell his story, and then shook his
+head:
+
+“I have no doubt you are right, but it isn’t in shape for us to use.
+Such a case rarely goes to trial for six months or a year, and so, if
+we begin an attack now, it will simply fall flat. If you can get us a
+written statement from the District Attorney that he doesn’t intend to
+push the case, we can do something, but I suppose he’s far too shrewd
+to commit himself.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then there’s no use in beginning an attack, for you really have no
+powder. Come in again a year from now, and then we may be able to say
+something, if he hasn’t acted in the meantime.”
+
+Peter left the office, knowing that that chance of pressure was gone.
+If the papers of the Republican party would not use it, it was idle
+spending time in seeing or trying to see the editors of the Democratic
+papers. He wasted therefore no more efforts on newspapers.
+
+The next three days Peter passed in the New York Law Institute Library,
+deep in many books. Then he packed his bag, and took an afternoon train
+for Albany. He was going to play his last card, with the odds of a
+thousand to one against his winning. But that very fact only nerved him
+the more.
+
+Promptly at ten o’clock, the morning after his arrival at the state
+capital, he sent in his card to the Governor. Fortunately for him, the
+middle of August is not a busy time with that official, and after a
+slight delay, he was ushered into the executive chamber.
+
+Peter had been planning this interview for hours, and without
+explanation or preamble, he commenced his statement. He knew that he
+must interest the Governor promptly, or there would be a good chance of
+his being bowed out. So he began with a description of the cow-stables.
+Then he passed to the death of the little child. He sketched both
+rapidly, not taking three minutes to do it, but had he been pleading
+for his own life, he could not have spoken more earnestly nor
+feelingly.
+
+The Governor first looked surprised at Peter’s abruptness; then weary;
+then interested; and finally turned his revolving chair so as to put
+his back to Peter. And after Peter had ended his account, he remained
+so for a moment. That back was very expressive to Peter. For the first
+time he felt vanquished.
+
+But suddenly the Governor turned, and Peter saw tears on his cheek. And
+he said, after a big swallow, “What do you want of me?” in a voice that
+meant everything to Peter.
+
+“Will you listen to me for five minutes?” asked Peter, eagerly.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Than Peter read aloud a statement of the legal proceedings, and of his
+interviews with the District Attorney and with Dummer, in the clearest
+and most compact sentences he had been able to frame.
+
+“You want me to interfere?” asked the Governor.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I’m afraid it’s not possible. I can of course remove the District
+Attorney, but it must be for cause, and I do not see that you can
+absolutely prove his non intention to prosecute those scoundrels.”
+
+“That is true. After study, I did not see that you could remove him.
+But there’s another remedy.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“Through the State Attorney you can appoint a special counsel for this
+case.”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+Peter laid one of the papers in his hands before the Governor. After
+reading it, the Governor rang a bell.
+
+“Send for Mr. Miller,” he said to the boy. Then he turned, and with
+Peter went over the court papers, till Mr. Miller put in an appearance.
+
+“State the matter to Mr. Miller,” said the Governor, and Peter read his
+paper again and told what he wished.
+
+“The power unquestionably exists,” said the Attorney-General. “But it
+has not been used in many years. Perhaps I had better look into it a
+bit.”
+
+“Go with Mr. Miller, Mr. Stirling, and work over your papers with him,”
+said the Governor.
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter simply, but his hand and face and voice said
+far more, as he shook hands. He went out with the first look of hope
+his face had worn for two years.
+
+The ground which the Attorney-General and his subordinates had to
+traverse was that over which Peter had so well travelled already, that
+he felt very much at home, while his notes indeed aided the study, and
+were doubly welcomed, because the summer season had drained the office
+of its underlings. Half as assistant, and half as principal, he worked
+till three o’clock, with pleasure that grew, as he saw that the opinion
+of the Attorney-General seemed to agree more and more with his own.
+Then they returned to the Governor, to whom the Attorney-General gave
+his opinion that his present conclusion was that the Governor could
+empower him, or some appointee, to prosecute the case.
+
+“Well,” said the Governor, “I’m glad you think so. But if we find that
+it isn’t possible, Mr. Stirling, I’ll have a letter written to the
+District Attorney that may scare him into proceeding with the case.”
+
+Peter thanked him, and rose to go.
+
+“Are you going to New York at once?” asked the Governor.
+
+“Yes. Unless I can be of use here.”
+
+“Suppose you dine with me, and take a late train?”
+
+“It will be a great pleasure,” said Peter.
+
+“Very well. Six sharp.” Then after Peter had left the room, the
+Governor asked, “How is he on law?”
+
+“Very good. Clear-headed and balanced.”
+
+“He knows how to talk,” said the Governor. “He brought my heart up in
+my mouth as no one has done in years. Now, I must get word to some of
+the people in New York to find out who he is, and if this case has any
+concealed boomerang in it.”
+
+The dinner was a very quiet one with only the Governor and his wife.
+The former must have told his better-half something about Peter, for
+she studied him with a very kind look in her face, and prosaic and
+silent as Peter was, she did not seem bored. After the dinner was
+eaten, and some one called to talk politics with the Governor, she took
+Peter off to another room, and made him tell her about the whole case,
+and how he came to take it up, and why he had come to the Governor for
+help. She cried over it, and after Peter had gone, she went upstairs
+and looked at her own two sleeping boys, quite large enough to fight
+the world on their own account, but still little children to the
+mother’s heart, and had another cry over them. She went downstairs
+later to the Governor’s study, and interrupting him in the work to
+which he had settled down, put her arms about his neck, and kissed him.
+“You must help him, William,” she said. “Do everything you can to have
+those scoundrels punished, and let him do it.”
+
+The Governor only laughed; but he pushed back his work, and his wife
+sat down, and told of her admiration and sympathy for Peter’s fight.
+There was a bad time ahead for the criminal and his backers. They might
+have political influence of the strongest character, fighting their
+battle, but there was a bigger and more secret one at work. Say what we
+please, the strongest and most subtle “pull” this world as yet contains
+is the under-current of a woman’s influence.
+
+Peter went back to New York that night, feeling hopeful, yet doubtful.
+It almost seemed impossible that he had succeeded, yet at twenty-three,
+failure is hard to believe in. So he waited, hoping to see some move on
+the part of the State, and dreaming of nothing better. But better came,
+for only five days after his return his mail brought him a large
+envelope, and inside that envelope was a special commission, which made
+Peter a deputy of the Attorney-General, to prosecute in the Court of
+Sessions, the case of “The People of the State of New York _versus_
+James Goldman.” If any one could have seen Peter’s face, as he read the
+purely formal instrument, he would not have called it dull or heavy.
+For Peter knew that he had won; that in place of justice blocking and
+hindering him, every barrier was crushed down; that this prosecution
+rested with no officials, but was for him to push; that that little
+piece of parchment bound every court to support him; that if necessary
+fifty thousand troops would enforce the power which granted it. Within
+three hours, the first formal steps to place the case in the courts had
+been taken, and Peter was working at the evidence and law in the
+matter.
+
+These steps produced a prompt call from Dummer, who showed considerably
+less assurance than hitherto, even though he tried to take Peter’s
+success jauntily. He wanted Peter to drop the whole thing, and hinted
+at large sums of money, but Peter at first did not notice his hints,
+and finally told him that the case should be tried. Then Dummer pleaded
+for delay. Peter was equally obdurate. Later they had a contest in the
+court over this. But Peter argued in a quiet way, which nevertheless
+caught the attention of the judge, who ended the dispute by refusing to
+postpone. The judge hadn’t intended to act in this way, and was rather
+surprised at his own conduct. The defendant’s lawyer was furious.
+
+No stone was left unturned, however, to prevent the case going to
+trial. Pressure of the sharpest and closest kind was brought to bear on
+the Governor himself—pressure which required backbone to resist. But he
+stood by his act: perhaps because he belonged to a different party than
+that in control of the city government; perhaps because of Peter’s
+account, and the truthfulness in his face as he told it; perhaps
+because the Attorney-General had found it legal; perhaps because of his
+wife; perhaps it was a blending of all these. Certain it is, that all
+attempts to block failed, and in the last week in August it came before
+the court.
+
+Peter had kept his clients informed as to his struggles, and they were
+tremendously proud of the big battle and ultimate success, as indeed
+were the residents of the whole district, who felt that it was really
+their own case. Then the politicians were furious and excited over it,
+while the almost unexampled act of the Governor had created a good deal
+of public interest in the case. So the court was packed and the press
+had reporters in attendance. Since the trial was fully reported, it is
+needless to go over the testimony here. What Peter could bring out, is
+already known. The defence, by “experts,” endeavored to prove that the
+cowsheds were not in a really unhygienic condition; that feeding cows
+on “mash” did not affect their milk, nor did mere “skin sores;” that
+the milk had been sold by mistake, in ignorance that it was thirty-six
+hours old, and skimmed; and that the proof of this particular milk
+being the cause of the deaths was extremely inadequate and doubtful.
+The only dramatic incident in the testimony was the putting the two
+little Dooleys (who had returned in fat and rosy condition, the day
+before) on the stand.
+
+“Did you find country milk different from what you have here?” Peter
+asked the youngest.
+
+“Oh, yes,” she said. “Here it comes from a cart, but in the country it
+squirts from a cow.”
+
+“Order,” said the judge to the gallery.
+
+“Does it taste differently?”
+
+“Yes. It’s sweet, as if they put sugar in it. It’s lovely I like cow
+milk better than cart milk.”
+
+“Damn those children!” said Dummer, to the man next him.
+
+The event of the trial came, however, when Peter summed up. He spoke
+quietly, in the simplest language, using few adjectives and no
+invective. But as the girl at the Pierces’ dinner had said, “he
+describes things so that one sees them.” He told of the fever-stricken
+cows, and he told of the little fever-stricken children in such a way
+that the audience sobbed; his clients almost had to be ordered out of
+court; the man next Dummer mopped his eyes with his handkerchief; the
+judge and jury thoughtfully covered their eyes (so as to think the
+better); the reporters found difficulty (owing to the glary light), in
+writing the words despite their determination not to miss one; and even
+the prisoner wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Peter was unconscious that
+he was making a great speech; great in its simplicity, and great in its
+pathos. He afterwards said he had not given it a moment’s thought and
+had merely said what he felt. Perhaps his conclusion indicated why he
+was able to speak with the feeling he did. For he said:
+
+“This is not merely the case of the State _versus_ James Goldman. It is
+the case of the tenement-house children, against the inhumanity of
+man’s greed.”
+
+Dummer whispered to the man next him, “There’s no good. He’s done for
+us.” Then he rose, and made a clever defence. He knew it was wasting
+his time. The judge charged against him, and the jury gave the full
+verdict: “Man-slaughter in the first degree.” Except for the desire for
+it, the sentence created little stir. Every one was still feeling and
+thinking of Peter’s speech.
+
+And to this day that speech is talked of in “the district.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+THE CONSEQUENCES.
+
+
+Nor was it the district alone which talked of the speech. Perhaps the
+residents of it made their feelings most manifest, for they organized a
+torchlight procession that night, and went round and made Peter an
+address of thanks. Mr. Dennis Moriarty being the spokesman. The judge
+shook hands with him after the trial, and said that he had handled his
+case well. The defendant’s lawyer told him he “knew his business.” A
+number of the reporters sought a few words with him, and blended praise
+with questions.
+
+The reporters did far more than this, however. It was the dull
+newspaper season, and the case had turned out to be a thoroughly
+“journalistic” one. So they questioned and interviewed every one
+concerned, and after cleverly winnowing the chaff, which in this case
+meant the dull, from the gleanings, most of them gave several columns
+the next morning to the story. Peter’s speech was printed in full, and
+proved to read almost as well as it had sounded. The reporters were
+told, and repeated the tales without much attempt at verification, that
+Peter had taken the matter up without hope of profit; had paid the
+costs out of his own pocket; had refused to settle “though offered nine
+thousand dollars:” had “saved the Dooley children’s lives by sending
+them into the country;” and “had paid for the burials of the little
+victims.” So all gave him a puff, and two of the better sort wrote
+really fine editorials about him. At election time, or any other than a
+dull season, the case would have had small attention, but August is the
+month, to reverse an old adage, when “any news is good news.”
+
+The press began, too, a crusade against the swill-milk dealers, and the
+men who had allowed all this to be possible. “What is the Health Board
+about, that poison for children can be sold in the public streets?”
+“Where is the District Attorney, that prosecutions for the public good
+have to be brought by public-spirited citizens?” they demanded.
+Lynx-eyed reporters tracked the milk-supplies of the city, and though
+the alarm had been given, and many cows had been hastily sent to the
+country, they were able to show up certain companies, and print details
+which were quite lurid enough, when sufficiently “colored” by their
+skilful pens. Most residents of New York can remember the “swill-milk”
+or “stump-tail milk” exposures and prosecutions of that summer, and of
+the reformation brought about thereby in the Board of Health. As the
+details are not pleasant reading, any one who does not remember is
+referred to the daily press, and, if they want horrible pictures, to
+Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. Except for the papers, it is to be
+questioned if Peter’s case would have resulted in much more than the
+punishment of the man actually convicted; but by the press taking the
+matter up, the moment’s indignation was deepened and intensified to a
+degree which well-nigh swept every cow-stable off the island, and drove
+the proper officials into an activity leading to great reforms.
+
+No one was more surprised than Peter, at the sudden notoriety, or at
+the far-reaching results. He collected the articles, and sent them to
+his mother. He wrote:
+
+
+“Don’t think that this means any great start. In truth, I am a hundred
+dollars the poorer for the case, and shall have to cut off a few
+expenses for the rest of the year. I tell you this, because I know you
+will not think for a moment that I grudge the money, and you are not to
+spoil my trifling self-denial by any offer of assistance You did quite
+enough in taking in those two little imps. Were they very bad? Did they
+tramp on your flowers, and frighten poor old Russet [Russet was the
+cat] out of his fast waning lives? It was a great pleasure to me to see
+them so plump and brown, and I thank you for it. Their testimony in
+court was really amusing, though at the same time pathetic. People tell
+me that my speech was a good one. What is more surprising, they tell me
+that I made the prisoner, and Mr. Bohlmann, the brewer, who sat next to
+Dummer, both cry. I confess I grieve over the fact that I was not
+prosecuting Bohlmann. He is the real criminal, yet goes scot free. But
+the moral effect is, I suppose, the important thing, and any one to
+whom responsibility could be traced (and convicted) gives us that. I
+find that Mr. Bohlmann goes to the same church I attend!”
+
+
+His mother was not surprised. She had always known her Peter was a
+hero, and needed no “York papers” to teach her the fact. Still she read
+every line of the case, and of the subsequent crusade. She read Peter’s
+speech again and again, stopping to sob at intervals, and hugging the
+clipping to her bosom from time to time, as the best equivalent for
+Peter, while sobbing: “My boy, my darling boy.” Every one in the
+mill-town knew of it, and the clippings were passed round among Peter’s
+friends, beginning with the clergyman and ending with his school-boy
+companions. They all wondered why Peter had spoken so briefly. “If I
+could talk like that,” said a lawyer to the proud mother, “I’d have
+spoken for a couple of hours.” Mrs. Stirling herself wished it had been
+longer. Four columns of evidence, and only a little over a half column
+of speech! It couldn’t have taken him twenty minutes at the most. “Even
+the other lawyer, who had nothing to say but lies, took over a column
+to his speech. And his was printed close together, while that of
+Peter’s was spread out (_e.g._ solid and leaded) making the difference
+in length all the greater.” Mrs. Stirling wondered if there could be a
+conspiracy against her Peter, on the part of the Metropolitan press.
+She had promptly subscribed for a year to the New York paper which
+glorified Peter the most, supposing that from this time on his name
+would appear on the front page. When she found it did not and that it
+was not mentioned in the press and Health Board crusade against the
+other “swill-milk” dealers, she became convinced that there was some
+definite attempt to rob Peter of his due fame. “Why, Peter began it
+all,” she explained, “and now the papers and Health Board pretend it’s
+all their doings.” She wrote a letter to the editor of the paper—a
+letter which was passed round the office, and laughed over not a little
+by the staff. She never received an answer, nor did the paper give
+Peter the more attention because of it.
+
+Two days after the trial, Peter had another call from Dummer.
+
+“You handled that case in great style, Mr. Stirling,” he told Peter.
+“You know the ropes as well as far older men. You got just the right
+evidence out of your witnesses, and not a bit of superfluous rubbish.
+That’s the mistake most young men make. They bury their testimony in
+unessential details, I tell you, those two children were worth all the
+rest put together. Did you send them to the country on purpose to get
+that kind of evidence?”
+
+“No,” said Peter.
+
+“Well, every man in that jury was probably a father, and that child’s
+talk took right hold of them. Not but that your speech would have done
+the business. You were mighty clever in just telling what you saw, and
+not going into the testimony. You could safely trust the judge to do
+that. It was a great speech.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter.
+
+“He’s not to be taffied,” thought the lawyer. “Plain talking’s the way
+to deal with him.” He ended his allusions to the trial, and said: “Now,
+Mr. Stirling, Mr. Bohlmann doesn’t want to have these civil suits go
+any further. Mr. Bohlmann’s a man of respectability, with a nice wife
+and some daughters. The newspapers are giving him quite enough music
+without your dragging him into court.”
+
+“It’s the only way I can reach him,” said Peter.
+
+“But you mustn’t want to reach him. He’s really a well-meaning man, and
+if you ask your clergyman—for I believe you go to Dr. Purple’s
+church?—you’ll find he’s very charitable and generous with his money.”
+
+Peter smiled curiously. “Distributing money made that way is not much
+of a charity.”
+
+“He didn’t know,” said the lawyer. Then catching a look which came into
+Peter’s face, he instantly added, “at least, he had no idea it was that
+bad. He tells me that he hadn’t been inside those cow-sheds for four
+years.”
+
+“Come and see me to-morrow,” said Peter.
+
+After Dummer had gone, Peter walked uptown, and saw his clergyman.
+
+“Yes,” he was told, “Mr. Bohlmann has always stood high in the church,
+and has been liberal and sensible with his money. I can’t tell you how
+this whole thing has surprised and grieved me, Mr. Stirling. It must be
+terrible for his wife. His daughters, too, are such nice sweet girls.
+You’ve probably noticed them in church?”
+
+“No,” Peter had not noticed them. He did not add that he did not notice
+young girls—that for some reason they had not interested him
+since—since—
+
+“Where does he live?” inquired Peter.
+
+“Not ten blocks from here,” replied Dr. Purple, and named the street
+and number.
+
+Peter looked at his watch and, thanking the clergyman, took his leave.
+He did not go back to his office, but to the address, and asked for Mr.
+Bohlmann. A respectable butler showed him into a handsome parlor and
+carried his name to the brewer.
+
+There were already two girls in the room. One was evidently a caller.
+The other, a girl with a sweet, kindly, German face, was obviously one
+of the “nice” daughters. His arrival checked the flow of conversation
+somewhat, but they went on comparing their summer experiences. When the
+butler came back and said aloud, “Mr. Bohlmann will see you in the
+library, Mr. Stirling,” Peter noticed that both girls turned
+impulsively to look at him, and that the daughter flushed red.
+
+He found Mr. Bohlmann standing uneasily on the rug by the fireplace,
+and a stout woman gazing out of the window, with her back to the room.
+
+“I had a call from your lawyer this morning, Mr. Bohlmann,” said Peter,
+“and I have taken the liberty of coming to see you about the cases.”
+
+“Sid down, sid down,” said his host, nervously, though not sitting
+himself.
+
+Peter sat down. “I want to do what is best about the matter,” he said.
+
+The woman turned quickly to look at him, and Peter saw that there were
+tears in her eyes.
+
+“Vell,” said the brewer, “what is dat?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Peter, “and that’s why I’ve come to see you.”
+
+Mr. Bohlmann’s face worked for a moment. Then suddenly he burst into
+tears. “I give you my word, Mr. Stirling,” he said, “that I didn’t know
+it was so. I haven’t had a happy moment since you spoke that day in
+court.” He had heretofore spoken in English with a slight German
+accent. But this he said in German. He sat down at the table and buried
+his face in his arms. His wife, who was also weeping, crossed to him,
+and tried to comfort him by patting him on the back.
+
+“I think,” said Peter, “we had best drop the suits.”
+
+Mr. Bohlmann looked up. “It is not the money, Mr. Stirling,” he said,
+still speaking in German. “See.” He drew from a drawer in his desk a
+check-book, and filling up a check, handed it to Peter. It was dated
+and signed, but the amount was left blank. “There,” he said, “I leave
+it to you what is right.”
+
+“I think Mr. Dummer will feel we have not treated him fairly,” said
+Peter, “if we settle it in this way.”
+
+“Do not think of him. I will see that he has no cause for complaint,”
+the brewer said. “Only let me know it is ended, so that my wife and my
+daughters—” he choked, and ended the sentence thus.
+
+“Very well,” said Peter. “We’ll drop the suits.”
+
+The husband and wife embraced each other in true German fashion.
+
+Peter rose and came to the table. “Three of the cases were for five
+thousand each, and the other two were for two thousand each,” he said,
+and then hesitated. He wished to be fair to both sides. “I will ask you
+to fill in the check for eight thousand dollars. That will be two each
+for three, and one each for two.”
+
+Mr. Bohlmann disengaged himself from his wife, and took his pen. “You
+do not add your fee,” he said.
+
+“I forgot it,” laughed Peter, and the couple laughed with him in their
+happiness. “Make it for eight thousand, two hundred and fifty.”
+
+“Och,” said the brewer once more resuming his English. “Dat is too
+leedle for vive cases.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “It was what I had decided to charge in case I got
+any damages.”
+
+So the check was filled in, and Peter, after a warm handshake from
+both, went back to his office.
+
+“Dat iss a fine yoong mahn,” said the brewer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+A NEW FRIEND.
+
+
+The day after this episode, Peter had the very unusual experience of a
+note by his morning’s mail. Except for his mother’s weekly letter, it
+was the first he had received since Watts had sailed, two years before.
+For the moment he thought that it must be from him, and the color came
+into his face at the mere thought that he would have news of—of—Watts.
+But a moment’s glance at the writing showed him he was wrong, and he
+tore the envelope with little interest in his face. Indeed after he had
+opened it, he looked at his wall for a moment before he fixed his mind
+on it.
+
+It contained a brief note, to this effect:
+
+
+“A recent trial indicates that Mr. Stirling needs neither praise not
+reward as incentives for the doing of noble deeds.
+
+“But one who prefers to remain unknown cannot restrain her grateful
+thanks to Mr. Stirling for what he did; and being debarred from such
+acts herself, asks that at least she may be permitted to aid him in
+them by enclosing a counsel fee for ‘the case of the tenement children
+of New York against the inhumanity of men’s greed.’
+
+“September third.”
+
+
+Peter looked at the enclosure, and found it was a check for five
+hundred dollars. He laid it on his desk, and read the note over again.
+It was beyond question written by a lady. Every earmark showed that,
+from the delicate scent of the paper, to the fine, even handwriting.
+Peter wanted to know who she was. He looked at the check to see by whom
+it was signed; to find that it was drawn by the cashier of the bank at
+which it was payable.
+
+Half an hour later, a rapid walk had brought him to the bank the name
+of which was on the check. It was an uptown one, which made a specialty
+of family and women’s accounts. Peter asked for the cashier.
+
+“I’ve called about this check,” he said, when that official
+materialized, handing the slip of paper to him.
+
+“Yes,” said the cashier kindly, though with a touch of the resigned
+sorrow in his voice which cashiers of “family’s” and women’s banks
+acquire. “You must sign your name on the back, on the left-hand end,
+and present it to the paying-teller, over at that window. You’ll have
+to be identified if the paying-teller doesn’t know you.”
+
+“I don’t want the money,” said Peter, “I want to know who sent the
+check to me?”
+
+The cashier looked at it more carefully. “Oh!” he said. Then he looked
+up quickly at Peter? with considerable interest, “Are you Mr.
+Stirling?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, I filled this up by order of the president, and you’ll have to
+see him about it, if you want more than the money.”
+
+“Can I see him?”
+
+“Come this way.”
+
+They went into a small office at the end of the bank.
+
+“Mr. Dyer,” said the cashier, “this is Mr. Stirling, and he’s come to
+see about that check.”
+
+“Glad to see you, Mr. Stirling. Sit down.”
+
+“I wish to learn who sent the check.”
+
+“Very sorry we can’t oblige you. We had positive instructions from the
+person for whom we drew it, that no name was to be given.”
+
+“Can you receive a letter?”
+
+“That was forbidden too.”
+
+“A message?”
+
+“Nothing was said about that.”
+
+“Then will you do me the favor to say to the lady that the check will
+not be cashed till Mr. Stirling has been able to explain something to
+her.”
+
+“Certainly. She can’t object to that.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+“Not at all.” The president rose and escorted him to the door. “That
+was a splendid speech of yours, Mr. Stirling,” he added. “I’m not a bit
+ashamed to say that it put salt water in my old eyes.”
+
+“I think,” said Peter, “it was the deaths of the poor little children,
+more than anything I said, that made people feel it.”
+
+The next morning’s mail brought Peter a second note, in the same
+handwriting as that of the day before. It read:
+
+
+“Miss De Voe has received Mr. Stirling’s message and will be pleased to
+see him in regard to the check, at half after eleven to-day (Wednesday)
+if he will call upon her.
+
+“Miss De Voe regrets the necessity of giving Mr. Stirling such brief
+notice, but she leaves New York on Thursday.”
+
+
+As Peter walked up town that morning, he was a little surprised that he
+was so cool over his intended call. In a few minutes he would be in the
+presence of a lady, the firmness of whose handwriting indicated that
+she was not yet decrepit. Three years ago such a prospect would have
+been replete with terror to him. Down to that—that week at the
+Pierce’s, he had never gone to a place where he expected to “encounter”
+(for that was the word he formerly used) women without dread. Since
+that week—except for the twenty-four hours of the wedding, he had not
+“encountered” a lady. Yet here he was, going to meet an entire stranger
+without any conscious embarrassment or suffering. He was even in a
+sense curious. Peter was not given to self-analysis, but the change was
+too marked a one for him to be unconscious of it. Was it merely the
+poise of added years? Was it that he had ceased to care what women
+thought of him? Or was it that his discovery that a girl was lovable
+had made the sex less terrible to him? Such were the questions he asked
+himself as he walked, and he had not answered them when he rang the
+bell of the old-fashioned, double house on Second Avenue.
+
+He was shown into a large drawing-room, the fittings of which were
+still shrouded in summer coverings, preventing Peter from inferring
+much, even if he had had time to do so. But the butler had scarcely
+left him when, with a well-bred promptness from which Peter might have
+drawn an inference, the rustle of a woman’s draperies was heard.
+Rising, Peter found himself facing a tall, rather slender woman of
+between thirty-five and forty. It did not need a second glance from
+even Peter’s untrained eye, to realize the suggestion of breeding in
+the whole atmosphere about her. The gown was of the simplest summer
+material, but its very simplicity, and a certain lack of “latest
+fashion” rather than “old-fashionedness” gave it a quality of
+respectability. Every line of the face, the set of the head, and even
+more the carriage of the figure, conveyed the “look of race.”
+
+“I must thank you, Mr. Stirling,” she said, speaking deliberately, in a
+low, mellow voice, by no means so common then as our women’s imitation
+of the English tone and inflexion has since made it, “for suiting your
+time to mine on such short notice.”
+
+“You were very kind,” said Peter, “to comply with my request. Any time
+was convenient to me.”
+
+“I am glad it suited you.”
+
+Peter had expected to be asked to sit down, but, nothing being said,
+began his explanation.
+
+“I am very grateful, Miss De Voe, for your note, and for the check. I
+thank you for both. But I think you probably sent me the latter through
+a mistake, and so I did not feel justified in accepting it.”
+
+“A mistake?”
+
+“Yes. The papers made many errors in their statements. I’m not a ‘poor
+young lawyer’ as they said. My mother is comfortably off, and gives me
+an ample allowance.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“And what is more,” continued Peter, “while they were right in saying
+that I paid some of the expenses of the case, yet I was more than
+repaid by my fees in some civil suits I brought for the relatives of
+the children, which we settled very advantageously.”
+
+“Won’t you sit down, Mr. Stirling?” said Miss De Voe. “I should like to
+hear about the cases.”
+
+Peter began a very simple narrative of the matter. But Miss De Voe
+interjected questions or suppositions here and there, which led to
+other explanations, and before Peter had finished, he had told not
+merely the history of the cases, but much else. His mention of the two
+Dooley children had brought out the fact of their visit to his mother,
+and this had explained incidentally her position in the world. The
+settlement of the cases involved the story of the visit to the brewer’s
+home, and Peter, to justify his action, added his interview with his
+pastor, Peter’s connection with the case compelled him to speak of his
+evenings in the “angle,” and the solitary life that had sent him there.
+Afterwards, Peter was rather surprised at how much he had told. He did
+not realize that a woman with tact and experience can, without making
+it evident, lead a man to tell nearly anything and everything he knows,
+if she is so minded. If women ever really take to the bar seriously,
+may Providence protect the average being in trousers, when on the
+witness stand.
+
+As Peter talked, a clock struck. Stopping short, he rose. “I must ask
+your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea I had taken so much of your
+time.” Then putting his hand in his pocket, he produced the check. “You
+see that I have made a very good thing out of the whole matter and do
+not need this.”
+
+“One moment, Mr. Stirling,” said the lady, still sitting. “Can you
+spare the time to lunch with me? We will sit down at once, and you
+shall be free to go whenever you wish.”
+
+Peter hesitated. He knew that he had the time, and it did not seem easy
+to refuse without giving an excuse, which he did not have. Yet he did
+not feel that he had the right to accept an invitation which he had
+perhaps necessitated by his long call.
+
+“Thank you,” said his hostess, before he had been able to frame an
+answer. “May I trouble you to pull that bell?”
+
+Peter pulled the bell, and coming back, tendered the check rather
+awkwardly to Miss De Voe. She, however, was looking towards a doorway,
+which the next moment was darkened by the butler.
+
+“Morden,” she said, “you may serve luncheon at once.”
+
+“Luncheon is served, madam,” said Morden.
+
+Miss De Voe rose. “Mr. Stirling, I do not think your explanation has
+really affected the circumstances which led me to send that check. You
+acknowledge yourself that you are the poorer for that prosecution, and
+received no fees for trying it. As I wrote you, I merely was giving a
+retaining fee in that case, and as none other has been given, I still
+wish to do it. I cannot do such things myself, but I am weal—I—I can
+well afford to aid others to do them, and I hope you will let me have
+the happiness of feeling that I have done my little in this matter.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. “I was quite willing to take the money, but I
+was afraid you might have sent it under a misconception.”
+
+Miss De Voe smiled at Peter with a very nice look in her face. “I am
+the one to say ‘thank you,’ and I am most grateful. But we will
+consider that as ended, and discuss luncheon in its place.”
+
+Peter, despite his usual unconsciousness could not but notice the
+beauty of the table service. The meal itself was the simplest of summer
+luncheons, but the silver and china and glass were such as he had never
+seen before.
+
+“What wine will you have with your luncheon, Mr. Stirling?” he was
+asked by his hostess.
+
+“I don’t—none for me,” replied Peter.
+
+“You don’t approve of wine?” asked his hostess.
+
+“Personally I have no feeling about it.”
+
+“But?” And there was a very big question mark in Miss De Voe’s voice.
+
+“My mother is strongly prejudiced against it, so I do not take it. It
+is really no deprivation to me, while it would mean great anxiety to
+her if I drank.”
+
+This started the conversation on Peter’s mother and his early years,
+and before it had ended, his hostess had succeeded in learning much
+more about his origin and his New York life. The clock finally cut him
+short again, for they lingered at the table long after the meal was
+finished, though Miss De Voe made the pretence of eating a grape
+occasionally. When three o’clock struck, Peter, without the least
+simulating any other cause for going, rose hastily.
+
+“I have used up your whole afternoon,” he said, apologetically.
+
+“I think,” smiled Miss De Voe, “that we are equal culprits in that. I
+leave town to-morrow, Mr. Stirling, but return to the city late in
+October, and if your work and inclination favor it, I hope you will
+come to see me again?”
+
+Peter looked at the silver and the china. Then he looked at Miss De
+Voe, so obviously an aristocrat.
+
+“I shall be happy to,” he said, “if, when you return, you will send me
+word that you wish to see me.”
+
+Miss De Voe had slightly caught her breath while Peter hesitated. “I
+believe he is going to refuse!” she thought to herself, a sort of
+stunned amazement seizing her. She was scarcely less surprised at his
+reply.
+
+“I never ask a man twice to call on me, Mr. Stirling,” she said, with a
+slight hauteur in her voice.
+
+“I’m sorry for that,” said Peter quietly.
+
+Miss De Voe caught her breath again. “Good-afternoon,” she said,
+holding out her hand. “I shall hope to see you.”
+
+“Good-bye,” said Peter, and the next moment was walking towards his
+office.
+
+Miss De Voe stood for a moment thinking. “That was curious,” she
+thought, “I wonder if he intends to come?”
+
+The next evening she was dining with relatives in one of the
+fashionable summering places, and was telling them about her call “from
+Mr. Stirling, the lawyer who made that splendid speech.”
+
+“I thought,” she said, “when I received the message, that I was going
+to be buried under a bathos of thanks, or else have my gift declined
+with the expectation that I would gush over the disinterestedness of
+the refusal. Since I couldn’t well avoid seeing him, I was quite
+prepared to snub him, or to take back the money without a word. But he
+wasn’t a bit that kind of creature. He isn’t self-assured nor
+tonguey—rather the reverse. I liked him so, that I forced him to stay
+to luncheon, and made him tell me a good deal about himself, without
+his knowing I was doing so. He leads a very unusual life, without
+seeming conscious that he does, and he tells about it very well. Uses
+just the right word every time, so that you know exactly what he means,
+without taxing your own brain to fill up blanks. He has such a nice
+voice too. One that makes you certain of the absolute truth underneath.
+No. He isn’t good looking, though he has fine eyes, and hair. His face
+and figure are both too heavy.”
+
+“Is he a gentleman, cousin Anneke?” asked one of the party.
+
+“He is a little awkward, and over-blunt at moments, but nothing to
+which one would give a second thought. I was so pleased with him that I
+asked him to call on me.”
+
+“It seems to me,” said another, “that you are over-paying him.”
+
+“That was the most curious part,” replied Miss De Voe. “I’m not at all
+sure that he means to come. It was really refreshing not to be truckled
+to, but it is rather startling to meet the first man who does not want
+to win his way to my visiting list. I don’t think he even knows who
+Miss De Voe is.”
+
+“He will find out quick enough,” laughed a girl, “and then he will do
+what they all do.”
+
+“No,” said Miss De Voe. “I suspect it will make no difference. He isn’t
+that kind, I think. I really am curious to see if I have to ask him a
+second time. It will be the only case I can remember. I’m afraid, my
+dears, your cousin is getting to be an old woman.”
+
+Peter, had in truth, met, and spent over four hours in the company of a
+woman whom every one wished to know. A woman equally famous for her
+lineage, her social position, her wealth and her philanthropy. It would
+not have made any difference, probably, had he known it, though it
+might have increased his awkwardness a little. That he was not quite as
+unconscious as Miss De Voe seemed to think, is shown by a passage in a
+letter he wrote to his mother:
+
+
+“She was very much interested in the case, and asked a good many
+questions about it, and about myself. Some which I would rather not
+have answered, but since she asked them I could not bring myself to
+dodge them. She asked me to come and see her again. It is probably
+nothing but a passing interest, such as this class feel for the
+moment.”—[Then Peter carefully inked out “such as this class feel for
+the moment,” and reproved himself that his bitterness at—at—at one
+experience, should make him condemn a whole class]—“but if she asks me
+again I shall go, for there is something very sweet and noble about
+her. I think she is probably some great personage.”
+
+
+Later on in the letter he wrote:
+
+
+“If you do not disapprove, I will put this money in the savings bank,
+in a special or trustee account, and use it for any good that I can do
+for the people about here. I gave the case my service, and do not think
+I am entitled to take pay when the money can be so much better employed
+for the benefit of the people I tried to help.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+ANOTHER CLIENT.
+
+
+Peter had seen his clients on the morning following the settlement of
+the cases, and told them of their good fortune. They each had a look at
+Bohlmann’s check, and then were asked how they would like their shares.
+
+“Sure,” said Dooley, “Oi shan’t know what to do wid that much money.”
+
+“I think,” said Peter, “that your two thousand really belongs to the
+children.”
+
+“That it does,” said Mrs. Dooley, quite willing to deprive her husband
+of it, for the benefit of her children.
+
+“But what shall Oi do wid it?” asked Mr. Dooley.
+
+“I’d like Mr. Stirling to take charge of mine,” said Blackett.
+
+“That’s the idea,” said Dooley.
+
+And so it was settled by all. Peter said the best thing would be to put
+it in the savings bank. “Perhaps later we’ll find something better.”
+They all went around to a well-known institution on the Bowery, and
+Peter interviewed the cashier. It proved feasible to endorse over the
+check to the bank, and credit the proper share to each.
+
+“I shall have to ask you to give me the odd two hundred and fifty,”
+Peter said, “as that is my legal fee.”
+
+“You had better let me put that in your name, Mr. Stirling?” said the
+president, who had been called into the consultation.
+
+“Very well,” said Peter. “I shall want some of it before long, but the
+rest will be very well off here.” So a book was handed him, and the
+president shook him by the hand with all the warmth that eight thousand
+two hundred and fifty dollars of increased assets and four new
+depositors implied.
+
+Peter did not need to draw any of the two hundred and fifty dollars,
+however. In November he had another knock at his door.
+
+It proved to be Mr. Dennis Moriarty, of whom we have incidentally
+spoken in connection with the half-price drinks for the Milligan wake,
+and as spokesman of the torchlight procession.
+
+“Good-mornin’ to yez, sir,” said the visitor.
+
+It was a peculiarity of Peter’s that he never forgot faces. He did not
+know Mr. Moriarty’s name, never having had it given him, but he placed
+him instantly.
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter, holding out his hand. Peter did not usually
+shake hands in meeting people, but he liked the man’s face. It would
+never take a prize for beauty. The hair verged on a fiery red, the nose
+was a real sky-scraper and the upper lip was almost proboscidian in its
+length. But every one liked the face.
+
+“It’s proud Oi’m bein’ shakin’ the hand av Misther Stirling,” said the
+Irishman.
+
+“Sit down,” said Peter.
+
+“My name’s Moriarty, sir, Dinnis Moriarty, an’ Oi keeps a saloon near
+Centre Street, beyant.”
+
+“You were round here in the procession.”
+
+“Oi was, sir. Shure, Oi’m not much at a speech, compared to the likes
+av yez, but the b’ys would have me do it.”
+
+Peter said something appropriate, and then there was a pause.
+
+“Misther Stirling,” finally said Moriarty, “Oi was up before Justice
+Gallagher yesterday, an’ he fined me bad. Oi want yez to go to him, an’
+get him to be easier wid me. It’s yezself can do it.”
+
+“What were you fined for?” asked Peter.
+
+“For bein’ open on Sunday.”
+
+“Then you ought to be fined.”
+
+“Don’t say that till Oi tell yez. Oi don’t want to keep my place open,
+but it’s in my lease, an’ so Oi have to.”
+
+“In your lease?” enquired Peter.
+
+“Yes.” And the paper was handed over to him.
+
+Peter ran over the three documents. “I see,” he said, “you are only the
+caretaker really, the brewer having an assignment of the lease and a
+chattel mortgage on your fixtures and stock.”
+
+“That’s it,” said Dennis. “It’s mighty quick yez got at it. It’s
+caretaker Oi am, an’ a divil of a care it is. Shure, who wants to work
+seven days a week, if he can do wid six?”
+
+“You should have declined to agree to that condition?”
+
+“Then Oi’d have been turned out. Begobs, it’s such poor beer that it’s
+little enough Oi sell even in seven days.”
+
+“Why don’t you get your beer elsewhere then?”
+
+“Why, it’s Edelhein put me in there to sell his stuff, an’ he’d never
+let me sell anythin’ else.”
+
+“Then Edelhein is really the principal, and you are only put in to keep
+him out of sight?”
+
+“That’s it”
+
+“And you have put no money in yourself?”
+
+“Divil a cent.”
+
+“Then why doesn’t he pay the fine?”
+
+“He says Oi have no business to be afther bein’ fined. As if any one
+sellin’ his beer could help bein’ fined!”
+
+“How is that?” said Peter, inferring that selling poor beer was a
+finable offence, yet ignorant of the statute.
+
+“Why yez see, sir, the b’ys don’t like that beer—an’ sensible they
+are—so they go to other places, an’ don’t come to my place.”
+
+“But that doesn’t explain your fines.”
+
+“Av course it does. Shure, if the boys don’t come to my place, it’s
+little Oi can do at the primary, an’ so it’s no pull Oi have in
+politics, to get the perlice an’ the joodges to be easy wid me, like
+they are to the rest.”
+
+Peter studied his blank wall a bit.
+
+“Shure, if it’s good beer Oi had,” continued Moriarty, “Oi’d be afther
+beatin’ them all, for Oi was always popular wid the b’ys, on account of
+my usin’ my fists so fine.”
+
+Peter smiled. “Why don’t you go into something else?” he asked.
+
+“Well, there’s mother and the three childers to be supported, an’ then
+Oi’d lose my influence at the primary.”
+
+“What kind of beer does Mr. Bohlmann make?” asked Peter, somewhat
+irrelevantly.
+
+“Ah,” said Moriarty, “that’s the fine honest beer! There’s never
+anythin’ wrong wid his. An’ he treats his keepers fair. Lets them do as
+they want about keepin’ open Sundays, an’ never squeezes a man when
+he’s down on his luck.”
+
+Peter looked at his wall again. Peter was learning something.
+
+“Supposing,” he asked, “I was able to get your fine remitted, and that
+clause struck out of the lease. Would you open on Sunday?”
+
+“Divil a bit.”
+
+“When must you pay the fine?”
+
+“Oi’m out on bail till to-morrow, sir.”
+
+“Then leave these papers with me, and come in about this time.”
+
+Peter studied his wall for a bit after his new client was gone. He did
+not like either saloon-keepers or law-breakers, but this case seemed to
+him to have—to have—extenuating circumstances. His cogitations finally
+resulted in his going to Justice Gallagher’s court. He found the judge
+rather curt.
+
+“He’s been up here three times in as many months, and I intend to make
+an example of him.”
+
+“But why is only he arrested, when every saloon keeper in the
+neighborhood does the same thing?”
+
+“Now, sir,” said the judge, “don’t waste any more of my time. What’s
+the next case?”
+
+A look we have mentioned once or twice came into Peter’s face. He
+started to leave the court, but encountered at the door one of the
+policemen whom he was “friends with,” according to the children, which
+meant that they had chatted sometimes in the “angle.”
+
+“What sort of a man is Dennis Moriarty?” he asked of him.
+
+“A fine young fellow, supporting his mother and his younger brothers.”
+
+“Why is Justice Gallagher so down on him?”
+
+The policeman looked about a moment. “It’s politics, sir, and he’s had
+orders.”
+
+“From whom?”
+
+“That’s more than we know. There was a row last spring in the primary,
+and we’ve had orders since then to lay for him.”
+
+Peter stood and thought for a moment. “What saloon-keeper round here
+has the biggest pull?” he asked.
+
+“It’s all of them, mostly, but Blunkers is a big man.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. He stood in the street thinking a little. Then
+he walked a couple of blocks and went into Blunkers’s great gin palace.
+
+“I want to see the proprietor,” he said.
+
+“Dat’s me,” said a man who was reading a paper behind the bar.
+
+“Do you know Justice Gallagher?”
+
+“Do I? Well, I guess,” said the man.
+
+“Will you do me the favor to go with me to his court, and get him to
+remit Dennis Moriarty’s fine?”
+
+“Will I? No. I will not. Der’s too many saloons, and one less will be
+bully.”
+
+“In that case,” said Peter quietly, “I suppose you won’t mind my
+closing yours up?”
+
+“Wot der yer mean?” angrily inquired the man.
+
+“If it comes to closing saloons, two can play at that game.”
+
+“Who is yer, anyway?” The man came out from behind the bar, squaring
+his shoulders in an ugly manner.
+
+“My name’s Stirling. Peter Stirling.”
+
+The man looked at him with interest. “How’ll yer close my place?”
+
+“Get evidence against you, and prosecute you.”
+
+“Dat ain’t de way.”
+
+“It will be my way.”
+
+“Wot yer got against me?”
+
+“Nothing. But I intend to see Moriarty have fair play. You want to
+fight on the square too. You’re not a man to hit a fellow in the dark.”
+
+Peter was not flattering the man. He had measured him and was telling
+him the result of that measure. He told it, too, in a way that made the
+other man realize the opinion behind the words.
+
+“Come on,” said Blunkers, good-naturedly.
+
+They went over to the court, and a whispered colloquy took place
+between the justice and the bartender.
+
+“That’s all right, Mr. Stirling,” presently said the judge. “Clerk,
+strike Dennis Moriarty’s fine off the list.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter to the saloon-keeper. “If I can ever do a turn
+for you, let me know it.”
+
+“Dat’s hunky,” said the man, and they parted.
+
+Peter went out and walked into the region of the National Milk Company,
+but this time he went to the brewery. He found Mr. Bohlmann, and told
+him the story, asking his advice at the end.
+
+“Dondt you vool von minute mit dod Edelheim. I dells you vot I do. I
+harf choost a blace vacant down in Zender Streed, and your frient he
+shall it haf.”
+
+So they chatted till all the details had been arranged. Dennis was to
+go in as caretaker, bound to use only Bohlmann’s beer, with a
+percentage on that, and the profits on all else. He was to pay the
+rent, receiving a sub-lease from Bohlmann, who was only a lesee
+himself, and to give a chattel mortgage on the stock supplied him.
+Finally he was to have the right of redemption of stock, lease, and
+good-will at any time within five years, on making certain payments.
+
+“You draw up der babers, Misder Stirling, and send der bill to me. Ve
+vill give der yoonger a chance,” the brewer said.
+
+When Dennis called the next day, he was “spacheless” at the new
+developments. He wrung Peter’s hand.
+
+“Arrah, what can Oi say to yez?” he exclaimed finally. Then having
+found something, he quickly continued: “Now, Patsy Blunkers, lookout
+for yezself. It’s the divil Oi’ll give yez in the primary this year.”
+
+He begged Peter to come down the opening night, and help to “celebrate
+the event.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter, “but I don’t think I will.”
+
+“Shure,” said Dennis, “yez needn’t be afraid it won’t be orderly. It’s
+myself can do the hittin’, an’ the b’ys know it.”
+
+“My mother brought me up,” Peter explained, “not to go into saloons,
+and when I came to New York I promised her, if I ever did anything she
+had taught me not to, that I would write her about it. She would hardly
+understand this visit, and it might make her very unhappy.”
+
+Peter earned fifty dollars by drawing the papers, and at the end of the
+first month Dennis brought him fifty more.
+
+“Trade’s been fine, sir, an’ Oi want to pay something for what yez
+did.”
+
+So Peter left his two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, having
+recouped the expenses of the first case out of his new client.
+
+He wrote all about it to his mother:
+
+
+“I am afraid you won’t approve of what I did entirely, for I know your
+strong feeling against men who make and sell liquor. But I somehow have
+been made to feel in the last few days that more can be done in the
+world by kindness and help than by frowns and prosecutions. I had no
+thought of getting money out of the case, so I am sure I was not
+influenced by that. It seemed to me that a man was being unfairly
+treated, and that too, by laws which are meant for other purposes. I
+really tried to think it out, and do what seemed right to me. My last
+client has a look and a way of speaking that makes me certain he’s a
+fine fellow, and I shall try to see something of him, provided it will
+not worry you to think of me as friendly with a saloon-keeper. I know I
+can be of use to him.”
+
+
+Little did Peter know how useful his last client would be to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+THE PRIMARY.
+
+
+After this rush of work, Peter’s life became as routine as of yore. The
+winter passed without an event worth noting, if we except a steadily
+growing acquaintance with the dwellers of the district. But in July a
+new phase was injected into it by a call from Dennis Moriarty.
+
+“Good-mornin’ to yez, sir, an’ a fine day it is,” said the latter, with
+his usually breezy way.
+
+“Yes,” said Peter.
+
+“Misther Stirling. An’ is it engaged yez are for this night?”
+
+“No.” Peter had nothing.
+
+“Then,” said Dennis, “maybe ye’ll be afther goin’ wid me to the
+primary?”
+
+“What primary?”
+
+“For the election of delegates to the convention, shure.”
+
+“No. What party?”
+
+“What party is it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Misther Stirling, do yez know my name?”
+
+“Dennis Moriarty, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes. An’ what’s my business?”
+
+“You keep a saloon.”
+
+“Yes. An’ what ward do Oi live in?”
+
+“The sixth, don’t you?”
+
+“Then,” said Dennis, his upper lip twisting into a smile of enormous
+proportions, “Oi suppose yez afther thinkin’ Oi’m a dirty black
+Republican.”
+
+Peter laughed, as few could help doing, when Dennis led the way. “Look
+here, Dennis,” he said, “don’t you run down that party. My father was a
+Democrat, but he voted for Lincoln, and fought for the blacks when the
+time came, and though I’m a Democrat like him, the Republicans are only
+black in their sympathies, and not in their acts.”
+
+“An’ what do yez say to the whisky frauds, an’ black Friday, an’ credit
+mobilier?” asked Dennis.
+
+“Of course I don’t like them,” said Peter; “but that’s the politicians,
+not the party.”
+
+“Shure,” said Dennis, “what’s the party but the men that run it?”
+
+“You’ve seen something of Mr. Bohlmann lately, Dennis?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, he was the man who put Goldman in charge of that cow stable. Yet
+he’s an honest man.”
+
+Dennis scratched his head. “It’s a convincin’ way yez have wid yez,” he
+said; “but it’s scoundrels the Republicans are, all the same. Look at
+them in the district; there’s not one a decent man would invite to
+drink wid him.”
+
+“I think, Dennis,” said Peter, “that when all the decent men get into
+one party, there’ll be only one worth talking about.”
+
+“Av course,” replied Dennis. “That’s the reason there’s only the
+Democratic party in New York City.”
+
+“Tell me about this primary,” said Peter, concluding that abstract
+political philosophy was not the way to liberalize Dennis.
+
+“It’s most important, it is,” he was told, “it’s on top Patsy Blunkers
+an’ his gang av dirty spalpeens (Dennis seemed to forget that he had
+just expressed the opinion that all the “decent” men were Democrats)
+have been this two years, but we’ve got orders for a new enrollment at
+last, an’ if we don’t knock them this time, my name isn’t Dinnis
+Moriarty.”
+
+“What is the question before the meeting?”
+
+“Afther the enrollment, it’s to vote for delegates.”
+
+“Oh! Then it’s just a struggle over who shall be elected?”
+
+“That’s it. But a fine, big fight it will be. The whole district’s so
+excited, sir, that it’s twice Oi’ve had to pound the b’ys a bit in my
+saloon to keep the peace.”
+
+“What do you want of me?”
+
+“Shure, every vote counts on a night like this. An’ ye’d be afther
+helpin’ us big, for the district likes yez.”
+
+“But, Dennis, I can’t vote without knowing something about the way
+things are. I shouldn’t know whether I was voting rightly.”
+
+“Why, a man votes right when he votes for his friends!”
+
+“No; a man votes right when he votes for his convictions.”
+
+“Convictions, is it?”
+
+“Yes. That is, he votes as he thinks is best for the country.”
+
+“That, maybe, is the way yez do it where yez come from,” said Dennis,
+“but it’s no good it would be here. Convictions, whatever they be, are
+never nominated here. It’s real things we’re afther votin’ for in New
+York.”
+
+Peter laughed. “I’ve got to take you in hand, Dennis, and you’ve got to
+take me in hand. I think we both need each other’s help. Yes, I’ll come
+to the primary. Will they let me vote?”
+
+“The dirty spalpeens will never dare to stop yez! Thank yez, sir. Oi’ll
+be along for yez about eight.”
+
+“Remember, though, Dennis—I don’t say how I’ll vote.”
+
+“Yez just listen, an I’m not afraid av what ye’ll do.”
+
+That evening, Peter was ushered into a large hot room, pretty well
+packed with men, and the interstices already filled in with dense
+tobacco smoke. He looked about him curiously, and was surprised to find
+how many of the faces he knew. Blackett, Dooley, and Milligan were
+there, and shook hands with him warmly. Judge Gallagher and Blunkers
+were in evidence. In plain clothes were two policemen, and three of the
+“fire-laddies,” who formed part of the “crew” of the nearest engine,
+with all of whom he had often chatted. Mr. Dummer, his rival lawyer in
+the case, and one of the jurymen in it, likewise were visible. Also
+many faces which were familiar to Peter by a former occasional friendly
+word or nod exchanged in passing. Intense excitement evidently reigned,
+and every one was whispering in a sort of breathless way, which showed
+how deeply interested they were.
+
+At Dennis’s suggestion, made in walking to the room, Peter presented
+himself without guidance, at the desk. Some one behind him asked if he
+lived in the ward, and for how long, but this was the only apparent
+opposition made to the prompt entering of his name. Then Peter strolled
+round and talked to those whom he knew, and tried to find out, without
+much success, just what was the division. Every one knew that a fight
+was on, but in just what it consisted they seemed neither to know nor
+care.
+
+He noticed that hot words were constantly exchanged at the enrolling
+desk, over would-be members, but not understanding the exact nature of
+the qualifications needed, he could not follow the disputes. Finally
+these ceased, for want of applicants.
+
+“Misther Stirling,” said Dennis, coming up to him hurriedly. “Will yez
+be afther bein’ chairman for us?”
+
+“No. I don’t know anything about the proceedings.”
+
+“It don’t take any,” said Dennis. “It’s only fair play we’re afther.”
+
+He was gone again before Peter could say anything. The next instant,
+the enrolling officer rose and spoke.
+
+“Are there any more to be enrolled?” he called. No one came forward, so
+after a moment he said: “Will the meeting choose a presiding officer?”
+
+“Mr. Chairman,” rang two voices so quickly that they in truth cut the
+presiding officer off in his suggestion.
+
+“Mr. Muldoon,” said that officer.
+
+“Oi spoke first,” shouted Dennis, and Peter felt that he had, and that
+he was not having fair play.
+
+Instantly a wave of protest, denials, charges, and counter-charges
+swept through the room, Peter thought there was going to be a fight,
+but the position was too critical to waste a moment on what Dennis
+styled “a diversion.” It was business, not pleasure, just then.
+
+“Mr. Muldoon,” said the officer again, not heeding the tempest in the
+least.
+
+“Mr. Chairman,” shouted Muldoon, “I am proud to nominate Justice
+Gallagher, the pride of the bar, for chairman of this distinguished
+meeting, and I move to make his election unanimous.”
+
+“Misther Chairman,” shouted Dennis.
+
+“Mr. Moriarty,” said the officer.
+
+“Misther Chairman, Oi have the honor to nominate for chairman av this
+meetin’ the people’s an’ the children’s friend, Misther Peter Stirling,
+an’ Oi don’t have to move to make it unanimous, for such is the
+intelligince an’ manhood av this meetin’ that it will be that way for
+shure.”
+
+Peter saw a hurried consultation going on between Gallagher, Muldoon,
+and two others, during the latter part of this speech, and barely had
+Dennis finished his remarks, when Justice Gallagher spoke up.
+
+“Mr. Chairman.”
+
+“The Honorable Justice Gallagher,” said that gentleman.
+
+“I take pride in withdrawing in favor of Mr. Stirling, who so justly
+merits the honor of presiding on this important occasion. From recent
+events too well known to need mention, I am sure we can all look to him
+for justice and fairness.”
+
+“Bad cess to him!” groaned Dennis. “Oi hoped they’d be just fools
+enough to oppose yez, an’ then we’d have won the first blood.”
+
+Peter was chosen without dissent, and was escorted to the seat behind
+the desk.
+
+“What is the first business before the meeting?” he asked of Gallagher,
+aside, as he was taking his seat.
+
+“Election of delegates to the State convention. That’s all to-night,”
+he was told.
+
+Peter had presided at college in debates, and was not flurried. “Will
+you stay here so as to give me the names of those I don’t know?” he
+said to the enrolling officer. “The meeting will please come to order,”
+he continued aloud. “The nomination of delegates to the State
+convention is the business to be acted upon.”
+
+“Misther Chairman,” yelled Dennis, evidently expecting to find another
+rival as before. But no one spoke.
+
+“Mr. Moriarty,” said Peter.
+
+“Misther Chairman. It’s my delight to nominate as delegates to the
+State convention, the Honorable Misther Schlurger, our distinguished
+representative in the Assembly, the Honorable Misther Kennedy, our
+noble Police-commissioner, an’ Misther Caggs, whom it would be insult
+for me to praise in this company.”
+
+“Second the motion,” said some one.
+
+“Mr. Chairman,” shouted a man.
+
+“That’s Caggs,” said the enrolling officer.
+
+“Mr. Caggs,” said Peter.
+
+“Mr. Chairman,” said Caggs. “I must decline the honor offered me from
+such a source.”
+
+“What?” shrieked Dennis, amazement and rage contesting for first place
+in voice and expression.
+
+“Mr. Chairman,” said Dummer.
+
+“Mr. Dummer,” said Peter.
+
+“I have the honor to nominate the Honorable Justice Gallagher, Mr.
+Peter Sweeney, and Mr. Caggs, to whom Mr. Moriarty has just paid so
+glowing a tribute, as delegates to the State convention.”
+
+“Second the—” shouted some one, but the rest was drowned by another
+storm which swept through the room. Even above the tumult, Peter could
+hear Dennis challenging and beseeching Mr. Caggs to come “outside an’
+settle it like gentlemen.” Caggs, from a secure retreat behind
+Blunkers’s right arm, declined to let the siren’s song tempt him forth.
+Finally Peter’s pounding brought a degree of quiet again.
+
+“Misther Chairman,” said Dennis.
+
+“Mr. Moriarty,” said Peter.
+
+“Misther Chairman. Oi’ll not take the valuable time av this meetin’ to
+speak av dirty, cowardly, black-hearted, treacherous snakes, wid souls
+blacker than the divil’s own—”
+
+“Order!” said Peter to the crowd.
+
+“No,” continued Dennis, in answer to the audible remarks of the
+opposition. “It’s no names Oi’m callin’. If yez know such a beast, such
+a snake, fit it to him. Oi’m mentionin’ no names. As Oi was sayin’,
+Misther Chairman, Oi’ll not waste the time av this meetin’ wid
+discribin’ the conduct av a beast so vile that he must be the contempt
+av every honest man. Who would have been driven out by St. Patrick, wid
+the rest av the reptiles, if he’d lived at that time. Oi only rise to
+widdraw the name av Caggs from the list Oi nominated for delegates to
+the state convention, an’ to put in place av it that av a man who is as
+noble an’ true, as some are false an’ divilish. That of Misther Peter
+Stirling, God bless him!”
+
+Once more chaos came. Peter pounded in vain. Both sides were at fever
+heat. Finally Peter rose.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he shouted, in a voice that rang through the hall above
+even the tumult, “if this meeting does not come to order, I shall
+declare it adjourned.”
+
+Instant quiet fell, for all had paused a moment to hear his words, and
+they concluded that he was in earnest.
+
+“Was the last motion seconded?” asked the chairman calmly.
+
+“I seconded it,” shouted Blackett and Milligan together.
+
+“You have heard the nominations, gentlemen. Has any one any remarks to
+make?”
+
+A man next Justice Gallagher said, “Mr. Chairman,” and being duly
+recognized, proceeded to talk for ten minutes in a very useless way.
+But during this time, Peter noticed first a good deal of whispering
+among Blunkers’s friends, and then an interview between Gallagher and
+Dennis. The latter was apparently not reconcilable, and shook his head
+in a way that meant war. Then there was more consultation between the
+opposition, and another confab with Dennis, with more headshakes on his
+part. Finally a compromise having been evidently made impossible, the
+orator was “called down” and it was voted to proceed to an election.
+Peter named one of the firemen, Dooley, and Blunkers, tellers, who,
+after a ballot, announced that Dennis had carried his nominations,
+Peter heading the list with two hundred and twelve votes, and the
+others getting one hundred and seventy-two, and one hundred and
+fifty-eight respectively. The “snake” got but fifty-seven votes.
+
+“Shure,” said Dennis, later, “maybe we don’t vote for convictions here,
+but we don’t vote for the likes av him!”
+
+“Then you are voting for convictions,” said Peter.
+
+“It’s yezself is the convictions then,” said Dennis.
+
+Perhaps he was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+A POLITICAL DEBUT.
+
+
+Peter declared the meeting adjourned as soon as the results of the
+election had been read, and slipped away in the turmoil that
+immediately followed, without a word to any one. He was in truth not
+bewildered—because he had too much natural poise and phlegm—but he was
+surprised by the suddenness of it all, and wanted to think before
+talking with others. So he took advantage of the mutual bickerings and
+recriminations which seemed the order of the day, to get back to his
+office, and there he sat, studying his wall for a time. Then he went to
+bed, and slept as quickly and as calmly as if he had spent his evening
+in reading the “Modern Cottage Architecture” or “Questions de
+Sociologie,” which were on his table instead of presiding at a red-hot
+primary, and being elected a delegate.
+
+The next morning Dennis came to see him as early as well could be.
+
+“Misther Stirling,” he said, his face expanding into the broadest of
+grins, “let me salute the delegate to the State convention.”
+
+“Look here, Dennis,” said Peter, “you know you had no business to
+spring that on me.”
+
+“Ah, sir! Shure, when that dirty little spalpeen av a Caggs went back
+on us so, what could Oi do? Oi know it’s speak to yez Oi ought, but wid
+de room yellin’ like that it’s divilish tryin’ to do the right thing
+quick, barrin’ it’s not hittin’ some one’s head, which always comes
+natural.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “of course I’m very much pleased to have been
+chosen, but I wish it could have been done with less hard feeling.”
+
+“Hard feelin,’ is it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Shure, the b’ys are as pleased and kindly this mornin’ as can be. It’s
+a fight like that makes them yieldin’ an’ friendly. Nothin’ but a
+little head-punchin’ could make them in a sweeter mood, an’ we’d a
+given them that if little Caggs had had any sense in him.”
+
+“You mean Gallagher and Blunkers and the rest of them?”
+
+“Av course. That little time last night didn’t mean much. No one feels
+bad over that. Shure, it’s Gallagher was in my place later last night,
+an’ we had a most friendly time, he treatin’ the whole crowd twice.
+We’ve got to fight in the primary to keep the b’ys interested, but it’s
+seldom that they’re not just as friendly the next day.”
+
+Peter looked at his wall. He had not liked Gallagher at either time he
+had met him. “Still,” he thought to himself, “I have no right to
+prevent him and Dennis being friends, from the little I’ve seen.”
+
+“Now, sir, about the convention?” said Dennis.
+
+“I suppose Porter is the best man talked of for the nomination,”
+remarked Peter.
+
+“Begobs, sir, that he’s not,” said Dennis. “It’s Justice Gallagher was
+tellin’ me himself that he was a poor kind av creature, wid a strong
+objection to saloons.”
+
+Peter’s eye lost its last suggestion of doubt. “Oh, Justice Gallagher
+told you that?” he asked. “When?”
+
+“Last night.”
+
+“After the primary?”
+
+“Av course.”
+
+“Whom does he favor?”
+
+“Catlin.”
+
+“Well, Dennis, you’ve made me a delegate, but I’ve got to vote my own
+way.”
+
+“Shure, sir, Oi’d not have yez do any thin’ else. It’s yezself knows
+better than me. Oi was only tellin’ yez what the Justice—”
+
+A knock at the door interrupted him. It proved to be Gallagher, who
+greeted them both in a hearty, friendly way. Peter brought another
+chair from his bedroom.
+
+“Well, Mr. Stirling, that was a fine contest we had last night,” said
+his honor.
+
+“It seemed to be earnest,” said Peter.
+
+“It’s just as well our friend here sprang your nomination on us as a
+surprise, for if we had known, we should not have put up an opposition
+candidate. You are just the sort of a man we want to represent us in
+the convention.”
+
+“I have never met my colleagues,” said Peter. “What kind of men are
+they?”
+
+So he got Gallagher’s opinion, and Dennis’s opinion. Then he wanted to
+know about the candidates, asking questions about them at considerable
+length. The intentions of the other city delegates were next
+introduced. Finally the probable planks of the platform were brought
+up. While they were still under discussion Gallagher said the sitting
+of his court compelled him to leave.
+
+“I’ll come in some time when I have more to spare.”
+
+Gallagher went to his court, and found a man waiting for him there.
+
+“He’s either very simple or very deep,” said Gallagher. “He did nothing
+but ask questions; and try my best I could not get him to show his
+hand, nor commit himself. It will be bad if there’s a split in a solid
+delegation!”
+
+“I hope it will be a lesson to you to have things better arranged.”
+
+“Blunkers would have it that way, and he’s not the kind of man to
+offend. We all thought he would win.”
+
+“Oh, let them have their fights,” said the man crossly; “but it’s your
+business to see that the right men are put up, so that it doesn’t make
+any difference which side wins.”
+
+“Well,” said Gallagher, “I’ve done all I could to put things straight.
+I’ve made peace, and got Moriarty on our side, and I’ve talked to this
+Stirling, and made out a strong case for Catlin, without seeming to
+care which man gets the nomination.”
+
+“Is there any way of putting pressure on him?”
+
+“Not that I can find out. He’s a young lawyer, who has no business.”
+
+“Then he’s a man we don’t need to conciliate, if he won’t behave?”
+
+“No. I can’t say that. He’s made himself very popular round here by
+that case and by being friendly to people. I don’t think, if he’s going
+into politics, that it will do to fight him.”
+
+“He’s such a green hand that we ought to be able to down him.”
+
+“He’s new, but he’s a pretty cool, knowing chap, I think. I had one
+experience with him, which showed me that any man who picked him up for
+a fool would drop him quick.” Then he told how Dennis’s fine had been
+remitted.
+
+In the next few weeks Peter met a good many men who wanted to talk
+politics with him. Gallagher brought some; Dennis others; his
+fellow-ward delegates, more. But Peter could not be induced to commit
+himself. He would talk candidates and principles endlessly, but without
+expressing his own mind. Twice he was asked point blank, “Who’s your
+man?” but he promptly answered that he had not yet decided. He had
+always read a Democratic paper, but now he read two, and a Republican
+organ as well. His other reading lessened markedly, and the time gained
+was spent in talking with men in the “district.” He even went into the
+saloons and listened to the discussions.
+
+“I don’t drink,” he had to explain several times, “because my mother
+doesn’t like it.” For some reason this explanation seemed to be
+perfectly satisfactory. One man alone sneered at him. “Does she feed
+yer still on milk, sonny?” he asked. “No,” said Peter, “but everything
+I have comes from her, and that’s the kind of a mother a fellow wants
+to please; don’t you think so?” The sneerer hesitated, and finally said
+he “guessed it was.” So Peter was made one of them, and smoked and
+listened. He said very little, but that little was sound, good sense,
+and, if he did not talk, he made others do so; and, after the men had
+argued over something, they often looked at Peter, rather than at their
+opponents, to see if he seemed to approve of their opinions.
+
+“It’s a fine way he has wid the b’ys,” Dennis told his mother. “He
+makes them feel that he’s just the likes av them, an’ that he wants
+their minds an’ opinions to help him. Shure, they’d rather smoke one
+pipe av his tobaccy than drink ten times at Gallagher’s expense.”
+
+After Peter had listened carefully and lengthily, he wrote to “The
+Honorable Lemuel Porter, Hudson, N.Y.,” asking him if he could give him
+an hour’s talk some day. The reply was prompt, and told Peter that
+Porter would be glad to see him any time that should suit his
+convenience. So Peter took a day off and ran up to Hudson.
+
+“I am trying to find out for whom I should vote,” he explained to
+Porter. “I’m a new man at this sort of thing, and, not having met any
+of the men talked of, I preferred to see them before going to the
+convention.”
+
+Porter found that Peter had taken the trouble to go over a back file of
+papers, and read some of his speeches.
+
+“Of course,” Peter explained, “I want, as far as possible, to know what
+you think of questions likely to be matters for legislation.”
+
+“The difficulty in doing that, Mr. Stirling,” he was told, “is that
+every nominee is bound to surrender his opinions in a certain degree to
+the party platform, while other opinions have to be modified to new
+conditions.”
+
+“I can see that,” said Peter. “I do not for a moment expect that what
+you say to-day is in any sense a pledge. If a man’s honest, the poorest
+thing we can do to him is to tie him fast to one course of action, when
+the conditions are constantly changing. But, of course, you have
+opinions for the present state of things?”
+
+Something in Peter’s explanation or face pleased Mr. Porter. He
+demurred no more, and, for an hour before lunch, and during that meal,
+he talked with the utmost freedom.
+
+“I’m not easily fooled on men,” he told his secretary afterwards, “and
+you can say what you wish to that Stirling without danger of its being
+used unfairly or to injure one. And he’s the kind of man to be won by
+square dealing.”
+
+Peter had spoken of his own district “I think,” he said, “that some
+good can be done in the way of non-partisan legislation. I’ve been
+studying the food supplies of the city, and, if I can, I shall try to
+get a bill introduced this winter to have official inspections
+systematized.”
+
+“That will receive my approval if it is properly drawn. But you’ll
+probably find the Health Board fighting you. It’s a nest of
+politicians.”
+
+“If they won’t yield, I shall have to antagonize them, but I have had
+some talks with the men there, in connection with the ‘swill-milk’
+investigations, and I think I can frame a bill that will do what I
+want, yet which they will not oppose. I shall try to make them help me
+in the drafting, for they can make it much better through their
+practical experience.”
+
+“If you do that, the opposition ought not to be troublesome. What else
+do you want?”
+
+“I’ve been thinking of a general Tenement-house bill, but I don’t think
+I shall try for that this winter. It’s a big subject, which needs very
+careful study, in which a lot of harm may be done by ignorance. There’s
+no doubt that anything which hurts the landlord, hurts the tenant, and
+if you make the former spend money, the tenant pays for it in the long
+run. Yet health must be protected. I shall try to find out what can be
+done.”
+
+“I wish you would get into the legislature yourself, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“I shall not try for office. I want to go on with my profession. But I
+shall hope to work in politics in the future.”
+
+Peter took another day off, and spent a few minutes of it with the
+other most promising candidate. He did not see very much of him, for
+they were interrupted by another caller, and Peter had to leave before
+he could have a chance to continue the interview.
+
+“I had a call to-day from that fellow Stirling, who’s a delegate from
+the sixth ward,” the candidate told a “visiting statesman” later. “I’m
+afraid he’ll give us trouble. He asks too many questions. Fortunately
+Dewilliger came to see me, and though I shouldn’t have seen him
+ordinarily, I found his call very opportune as a means of putting an
+end to Stirling’s cross-examination.”
+
+“He’s the one doubtful man on the city’s delegation,” said the
+statesman. “It happened through a mistake. It will be very unfortunate
+if we can’t cast a solid city vote.”
+
+Peter talked more in the next few days. He gave the “b’ys” his
+impressions of the two candidates, in a way which made them trust his
+conclusions. He saw his two fellow delegates, and argued long and
+earnestly with them. He went to every saloon-keeper in the district,
+and discussed the change in the liquor law which was likely to be a
+prominent issue in the campaign, telling them what he had been able to
+draw from both candidates about the subject.
+
+“Catlin seems to promise you the most,” he told them, “and I don’t want
+to say he isn’t trying to help you. But if you get the law passed which
+he promises to sign, you won’t be much better off. In the first place,
+it will cost you a lot of money, as you know, to pass it; and then it
+will tempt people to go into the business, so that it will cut your
+profits that way. Then, you may stir up a big public sentiment against
+you in the next election, and so lay yourselves open to unfriendly
+legislation. It is success, or trying to get too much, which has beaten
+every party, sooner or later, in this country. Look at slavery. If the
+Southerners had left things as they were under the Missouri Compromise,
+they never would have stirred up the popular outbreak that destroyed
+slavery. Now, Porter is said to be unfriendly to you, because he wants
+a bill to limit the number of licenses, and to increase the fee to new
+saloons. Don’t you see that is all in your favor, though apparently
+against you? In the first place, you are established, and the law will
+be drawn so as to give the old dealer precedence over a new one in
+granting fresh licenses. This limit will really give the established
+saloon more trade in the future, by reducing competition. While the
+increase in fee to new saloons will do the same.”
+
+“By ——, yer right,” said Blunkers.
+
+“That’s too good a name to use that way,” said Peter, but more as if he
+were stating a fact than reproving.
+
+Blunkers laughed good-naturedly. “Yer’ll be gittin’ usen to close up
+yet, Mister Stirling. Yer too good for us.”
+
+Peter looked at him. “Blunkers,” he said warmly, “no man is too good
+not to tell the truth to any one whom he thinks it will help.”
+
+“Shake,” said Blunkers. Then he turned to the men at the tables. “Step
+up, boys,” he called. “I sets it up dis time to drink der health of der
+feller dat don’t drink.”
+
+The boys drank
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+A POLITICAL DINNER.
+
+
+Peter had only a month for work after reaching his own conclusions,
+before the meeting of the convention, but in that month he worked hard.
+As the result, a rumor, carrying dismay to the party leaders, became
+current.
+
+“What’s this I hear?” said Gallagher’s former interviewer to that
+gentleman. “They say Schlurger says he intends to vote for Porter, and
+Kennedy’s getting cold?”
+
+“If you’ll go through the sixth you’ll hear more than that.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“There was a torchlight last night, of nearly every voter in the ward,
+and nothing but Stirling prevented them from making the three delegates
+pledge themselves to vote for Porter. He said they must go unbound.”
+
+The interviewer’s next remark is best represented by several “blank
+its,” no allusion however being intended to bed-coverings. Then he
+cited the lower regions to know what it all meant.
+
+“It means that that chap Stirling has got to be fixed, and fixed big. I
+thought I knew how to wire pull, and manage men, but he’s taken hold
+and just runs it as he wants. It’s he makes all the trouble.”
+
+The interviewer left the court, and five minutes later was in
+Stirling’s office.
+
+“My name’s Green,” he said. “I’m a delegate to the convention, and one
+of the committee who has the arranging of the special train and
+accommodations at Saratoga.”
+
+“I’m glad you came in,” said Peter. “I bought my ticket yesterday, and
+the man at headquarters said he’d see that I was assigned a room at the
+United States.”
+
+“There’ll be no trouble about the arrangements. What I want to see you
+for, is to ask if you won’t dine with me this evening? There’s to be
+several of the delegates and some big men there, to talk over the
+situation.”
+
+“I should like to,” said Peter.
+
+The man pulled out a card, and handed it to Peter. “Six o’clock sharp,”
+he said. Then he went to headquarters, and told the result of his two
+interviews. “Now who had better be there?” he asked. After
+consultation, a dinner of six was arranged.
+
+The meal proved to be an interesting one to Peter. First, he found that
+all the guests were well-known party men, whose names and opinions were
+matters of daily notice in the papers. What was more, they talked
+convention affairs, and Peter learned in the two hours’ general
+conversation more of true “interests” and “influences” and “pulls” and
+“advantages” than all his reading and talking had hitherto gained him.
+He learned that in New York the great division of interest was between
+the city and country members, and that this divided interest played a
+part in nearly every measure. “Now,” said one of the best known men at
+the table, “the men who represent the city, must look out for the city.
+Porter’s a fine man, but he has no great backing, and no matter how
+well he intends by us, he can’t do more than agree to such bills as we
+can get passed. But Catlin has the Monroe members of the legislature
+under his thumb, and his brother-in-law runs Onandaga. He promises they
+shall vote for all we want. With that aid, we can carry what New York
+City needs, in spite of the country members.”
+
+“Would the country members refuse to vote for really good and needed
+city legislation?” asked Peter.
+
+“Every time, unless we agree to dicker with them on some country job.
+The country members hold the interest of the biggest city in this
+country in their hands, and threaten or throttle those interests every
+time anything is wanted.”
+
+“And when it comes to taxation,” added another, “the country members
+are always giving the cities the big end to carry.”
+
+“I had a talk with Catlin,” said Peter. “It seemed to me that he wasn’t
+the right kind of man.”
+
+“Catlin’s a timid man, who never likes to commit himself. That’s
+because he always wants to do what his backers tell him. Of course when
+a man does that, he hasn’t decided views of his own, and naturally
+doesn’t wish to express what he may want to take back an hour later.”
+
+“I don’t like straw men,” said Peter.
+
+“A man who takes other people’s opinions is not a bad governor, Mr.
+Stirling. It all depends on whose opinion he takes. If we could find a
+man who was able to do what the majority wants every time, we could
+re-elect him for the next fifty years. You must remember that in this
+country we elect a man to do what we want—not to do what he wants
+himself.”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter. “But who is to say what the majority wants?”
+
+“Aren’t we—the party leaders—who are meeting daily the ward leaders,
+and the big men in the different districts, better able to know what
+the people want than the man who sits in the governor’s room, with a
+doorkeeper to prevent the people from seeing him?”
+
+“You may not choose to do what the people want.”
+
+“Of course. I’ve helped push things that I knew were unpopular. But
+this is very unusual, because it’s risky. Remember, we can only do
+things when our party is in power, so it is our interest to do what
+will please the people, if we are to command majorities and remain in
+office. Individually we have got to do what the majority of our party
+wants done, or we are thrown out, and new men take our places. And it’s
+just the same way with the parties.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “I understand the condition better, and can see
+what I could not fathom before, why the city delegates want Catlin. But
+my own ward has come out strong for Porter. We’ve come to the
+conclusion that his views on the license question are those which are
+best for us, and besides, he’s said that he will stand by us in some
+food and tenement legislation we want.”
+
+“I know about that change, and want to say, Mr. Stirling, that few men
+of your years and experience, were ever able to do as much so quickly.
+But there are other sides, even to these questions, which you may not
+have yet considered. Any proposed restriction on the license will not
+merely scare a lot of saloon-keepers, who will only understand that it
+sounds unfriendly, but it will alienate every brewer and distiller, for
+their interest is to see saloons multiplied. Then food and tenement
+legislation always stirs up bad feeling in the dealers and owners. If
+the opposite party would play fair, we could afford to laugh at it, but
+you see the party out of power can oppose about anything, knowing that
+a minority is never held responsible, and so by winning over the
+malcontents which every piece of legislation is sure to make, before
+long it goes to the polls with a majority, though it has really been
+opposing the best interests of the whole state. We can’t sit still, and
+do nothing, yet everything we do will alienate some interest.”
+
+“It’s as bad as the doctrine of fore-ordination,” laughed another of
+the party:
+
+“You can’t if you will,
+You can if you won’t,
+You’ll be damned if you do,
+You’ll be damned if you don’t.”
+
+
+“You just said,” stated Peter, “that the man who could do what the
+majority wants done every time, would be re-elected. Doesn’t it hold
+true as to a party?”
+
+“No. A party is seldom retained in power for such reasons. If it has a
+long tenure of office it is generally due to popular distrust of the
+other party. The natural tendency otherwise is to make office-holding a
+sort of see-saw. Let alone change of opinion in older men, there are
+enough new voters every four years to reverse majorities in almost
+every state. Of course these young men care little for what either
+party has done in the past, and being young and ardent, they want to
+change things. The minority’s ready to please them, naturally. Reform
+they call it, but it’s quite as often ‘Deform’ when they’ve done it.”
+
+Peter smiled and said, “Then you think my views on license, and
+food-inspection, and tenement-house regulation are ‘Deformities’?”
+
+“We won’t say that, but a good many older and shrewder heads have
+worked over those questions, and while I don’t know what you hope to
+do, you’ll not be the first to want to try a change, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“I hope to do good. I may fail, but it’s not right as it is, and I must
+try to better it.” Peter spoke seriously, and his voice was very clear.
+“I’m glad to have had this talk, before the convention meets. You are
+all experienced men, and I value your opinions.”
+
+“But don’t intend to act on them,” said his host good-naturedly.
+
+“No. I’m not ready to say that. I’ve got to think them over.”
+
+“If you do that, Mr. Stirling, you’ll find we are right. We have not
+been twenty and thirty years in this business for nothing.”
+
+“I think you know how to run a party—but poisoned milk was peddled in
+my ward. I went to law to punish the men who sold it. Now I’m going
+into politics to try and get laws and administration which will prevent
+such evils. I’ve told my district what I want. I think it will support
+me. I know you can help me, and I hope you will. We may disagree on
+methods, but if we both wish the good of New York, we can’t disagree on
+results.” Peter stopped, rather amazed himself at the length of his
+speech.
+
+“What do you want us to do?”
+
+“You say that you want to remain in control. You say you can only do so
+by majorities. I want you to give this city such a government that
+you’ll poll every honest vote on our side,” said Peter warmly.
+
+“That’s only the generalization of a very young man,” said the leader.
+
+Peter liked him all the better for the snub. “I generalized, because it
+would make clear the object of my particular endeavors. I want to have
+the Health Board help me to draft a food-inspection bill, and I want
+the legislature to pass it, without letting it be torn to pieces for
+the benefit of special interests. I don’t mind fair amendments, but
+they must be honest ones.”
+
+“And if the Health Board helps you, and the bill is made a law?”
+
+Peter looked Mr. Costell in the face, and spoke quietly: “I shall tell
+my ward that you have done them a great service.”
+
+Two of the men moved uneasily in their seats, as if not comfortable,
+and a third scowled.
+
+“And if we can give you some tenement-house legislation?”
+
+“I shall tell my ward that you have done them a great service.” Peter
+spoke in the same tone of voice, and still looked Mr. Costell in the
+face.
+
+“And if we don’t do either?”
+
+“What I shall do then will depend on whether you refuse for a good
+reason or for none. In either case I shall tell them the facts.”
+
+“This is damned——” began one of the dinner-party, but the lifting of
+Mr. Costell’s hand stopped the speech there.
+
+“Mr. Stirling,” said Mr. Costell, rising as he spoke, “I hope when you
+come to think it over, that you will vote with us for Catlin. But
+whether you do or not, we want you to work with us. We can help you,
+and you can help us. When you are ready to begin on your bills, come
+and see me.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. “That is just what I want.” He said good-night
+to the company, and left the house.
+
+“That fellow is going to be troublesome,” said Green.
+
+“There’s no good trying to get anything out of him. Better split with
+him at once,” said the guest who had used the expletive.
+
+“He can’t have any very big hold,” said a third. “It’s only that trial
+which has given him a temporary popularity.”
+
+“Wait and see if he goes back on Catlin, and if he does, lay for him,”
+remarked Green.
+
+A pause came, and they all looked at Costell, who was smiling a certain
+deep smile that was almost habitual with him, and which no one had ever
+yet been able to read. “No,” he said slowly. “You might beat him, but
+he isn’t the kind that stays beat. I’ll agree to outwit any man in
+politics, except the man who knows how to fight and to tell the people
+the truth. I’ve never yet seen a man beaten in the long run who can do
+both those, unless he chose to think himself beaten. Gentlemen, that
+Stirling is a fighter and a truth-teller, and you can’t beat him in his
+ward. There’s no use having him against us, so it’s our business to see
+that we have him with us. We may not be able to get him into line this
+time, but we must do it in the long run. For he’s not the kind that
+lets go. He’s beaten Nelson, and he’s beaten Gallagher, both of whom
+are old hands. Mark my words, in five years he’ll run the sixth ward.
+Drop all talk of fighting him. He is in politics to stay, and we must
+make it worth his while to stay with us.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+POLITICS.
+
+
+Peter sat up later than was prudent that night, studying his blank
+wall. Yet when he rose to go to bed, he gave his head a puzzled shake.
+When he had gone through his papers, and drunk his coffee the next
+morning, he went back to wall-gazing again. He was working over two
+conundrums not very easy to answer, which were somewhat to this effect:
+
+Does the best man always make the best official?
+
+Is the honest judgment of a fellow verging on twenty-four better than
+the experienced opinion of many far older men?
+
+Peter began to think life had not such clear and direct “right” and
+“wrong” roads as he had thought. He had said to himself long ago that
+it was easy to take the right one, but he had not then discovered that
+it is often difficult to know which is the right, in order to follow
+it. He had started in to punish Bohlmann, and had compromised. He had
+disapproved of Dennis breaking the law, and had compromised his
+disapproval. He had said he should not go into saloons, and had ended
+by going. Now he was confronted with the problem whether the interests
+of his ward would be better served by the nomination of a man of good
+record, whom Peter personally liked, or by that of a colorless man, who
+would be ruled by the city’s leaders. In the one case Peter feared no
+support for his measures from his own party. In the other case he saw
+aid that was tantamount to success. Finally he shook himself.
+
+“I believe Dennis is right,” he said aloud. “There are more ‘real’
+things than ‘convictions’ in New York politics, and a ‘real’ thing is
+much harder to decide about in voting than a ‘conviction.’”
+
+He went to his bedroom, packed his bag, and took his way to the
+station. There he found a dense crowd of delegates and “well-wishers,”
+both surrounding and filling the special train which was to carry New
+York’s contribution to the collected party wisdom, about to concentrate
+at Saratoga.
+
+Peter felt like a stranger in the crowd, but on mingling in it he
+quickly found himself a marked man. He was seized upon by one of the
+diners of the evening before, and soon found himself forming part of a
+group, which constantly changed its components, but continued to talk
+convention affairs steadily. Nor did the starting of the train, with
+cheers, brass bands, flags, and other enthusing elements, make more
+than a temporary break. From the time the special started, till it
+rolled into Saratoga, six hours later, there was one long series of
+political debates and confabs. Peter listened much, and learned much,
+for the talk was very straight and plain. He had chats with Costell and
+Green. His two fellow-delegates from “de sixt” sought him and discussed
+intentions. He liked Schlurger, a simple, guileless German, who wanted
+only to do what his constituents wished him to do, both in convention
+and Assembly. Of Kennedy he was not so sure. Kennedy had sneered a
+little at Peter’s talk about the “best man,” and about “helping the
+ward,” and had only found that Peter’s ideas had value after he had
+been visited by various of the saloon-keepers, seen the vast torchlight
+meeting, and heard the cheers at Peter’s arguments. Still, Peter was by
+no means sure that Kennedy was not a square man, and concluded he was
+right in not condemning him, when, passing through one of the cars, he
+overheard the following:
+
+“What kind of man is that Stirling, who’s raised such —— in the sixth?”
+
+“I don’t know him, but Kennedy told me, before he’d swung round, that
+he was a darned good sort of a cuss.”
+
+This was flattery, Peter understood, however questionable the form
+might seem, and he was pleased. Very few of us do not enjoy a real
+compliment. What makes a compliment uncomfortable is either a suspicion
+that the maker doesn’t mean it, or a knowledge that it is not merited.
+
+Peter went at once to his room on reaching the hotel in Saratoga,
+intending to make up the sleep of which his long “think” the night
+before had robbed him. But scarcely had the colored gentleman bowed
+himself out, after the usual “can I git de gentleman a pitcher of ice
+water” (which translated means: “has de gentleman any superfluous
+change?”) when a knock came at the door. Peter opened it, to find a man
+outside.
+
+“Is this Mr. Stirling’s room?” inquired the individual.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Can I see him?”
+
+“Come in.” Peter moved his bag off one of his chairs, and his hat and
+overcoat off the other.
+
+“Mr. Stirling,” said the stranger as he sat down, “I am Senator
+Maguire, and am, as perhaps you know, one of Porter’s managers.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“We understand that you are friendly to us. Now, I needn’t say that New
+York is otherwise a unit in opposing us.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “My fellow-delegates from the sixth, Schlurger and
+Kennedy, stand as I do!”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“The change must have been very sudden. They were elected as Catlin
+men, we were told.”
+
+“Yes. But there’s quite a different feeling in the ward now, and they
+have yielded to it.”
+
+“That’s good news.”
+
+“We all three come here prepared to do what seems best.”
+
+The Senator’s expression lost some of the satisfaction Peter’s news had
+put into it. He gave a quick look at Peter’s face, as if to try and
+find from it what lay behind the words. He hesitated, as if divided in
+mind over two courses of action. Finally he said:
+
+“I needn’t tell you that this opposition of practically the whole of
+the New York City delegation, is the most serious set-back to Porter’s
+chance. Now, we have talked it over, and it seemed to us that it would
+be a great card for him if he could be nominated by a city delegate.
+Will you do it?”
+
+“I don’t know him well enough, do I? Doesn’t the nominating delegate
+have to make a speech in his favor?”
+
+“Yes. But I can give you the material to-night. Or if you prefer, we’ll
+give it to you all written for delivery?”
+
+“I don’t make other men’s speeches, Mr. Maguire.”
+
+“Suit yourself about that. It shall be just as you please.”
+
+“The difficulty is that I have not decided myself, yet, how I shall
+vote, and of course such an act is binding.”
+
+Mr. Maguire’s countenance changed again. “I’m sorry to hear that. I
+hoped you were for Porter. He’s far away the best man.”
+
+“So I think.”
+
+The Senator leaned back in his chair, and tucked his thumbs into the
+armholes of his waistcoat. He thought he had fathomed Peter, and felt
+that the rest was plain sailing. “This is not a chap to be tolled. I’ll
+give him the gaff at once,” was his mental conclusion. Then he asked
+aloud:
+
+“What do you want?”
+
+It was a question susceptible of many different constructions, but as
+Mr. Maguire asked it, it seemed to him to have but one, and that not
+very honest. Peter hesitated. The temptation was strong to lead the
+Senator on, but he did not like to do it. It seemed to savor of traps,
+and Peter had never liked traps. Still—he did want to know if the
+managers on Porter’s side would stoop to buy his support by some
+bargain. As Peter hesitated, weighing the pros and cons, Maguire spoke
+again.
+
+“What does the other side offer you?”
+
+Peter spoke quickly. “They haven’t offered me anything, but advice.
+That is, Costell said he’d try and help me on some legislation I want—”
+
+“Special?” interrupted Maguire.
+
+“No, General. I’ve talked about it with Porter as well”
+
+“Oh! Indeed?”
+
+“I’m really anxious to get that. Otherwise I want nothing.”
+
+“Whew,” said the Senator to himself. “That was a narrow squeak. If he
+hadn’t spoken so quickly, I should have shown my hand before the call.
+I wonder if he got any inkling?” He never dreamed that Peter had spoken
+quickly to save that very disclosure.
+
+“I needn’t say, Mr. Stirling, that if you can see your way to nominate
+Porter, we shall not forget it. Nor will he. He isn’t the kind of man
+who forgets his friends. Many a man in to-morrow’s convention would
+give anything for the privilege we offer you.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “I realize the honor offered me, but I don’t see my
+way to take it. It will please me better to see him nominated by some
+one who has really stood close to him, than to gain his favor by doing
+it myself.”
+
+“Think twice, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“If you would rather, I will not give you my answer till to-morrow
+morning?”
+
+“I would,” said Maguire rising, “Try and make it favorable. It’s a
+great chance to do good for yourself and for your side. Good-night.”
+
+Peter closed his door, and looked about for a bit of blank wall. But on
+second thought he sat down on his window-sill, and, filling his pipe,
+tried to draw conclusions as well as smoke from it.
+
+“I wonder,” he pondered to himself, “how much of that was Maguire, and
+how much Porter? Ought I, for the sake of doing my best for my ward, to
+have let him go on? Has an agent any right to refuse what will help is
+client, even if it comes by setting pitfalls?”
+
+Rap, rap, rap.
+
+“Come in,” called Peter, forgetting he had turned down his light.
+
+The door opened and Mr. Costell came in. “Having a quiet smoke?” he
+asked.
+
+“Yes. I haven’t a cigar to offer you. Can you join me in a pipe?”
+
+“I haven’t come to that yet. Suppose you try one of my cigars.” Costell
+sat down on the window-ledge by Peter.
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. “I like a cigar, but it must be a good one,
+and that kind I can’t afford.” He lit the cigar, and leaned back to
+luxuriate in it.
+
+“You’ll like that, I’m sure. Pretty sight, isn’t it?” Costell pointed
+to the broad veranda, three stories below them, gay with brilliant
+dresses.
+
+“Yes. It’s my first visit here, so it’s new to me.”
+
+“It won’t be your last. You’ll be attending other conventions than
+this.”
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+“One of my scouts tells me you’ve had a call from Maguire?”
+
+“Yes.” Peter hesitated a moment. “He wants me to nominate Porter,” he
+continued, as soon as he had decided that plain speaking was fair to
+Maguire.
+
+“We shall be very sorry to see you do it.”
+
+“I don’t think I shall. They only want me because it would give the
+impression that Porter has a city backing, and to try to give that
+amounts to a deception.”
+
+“Can they get Schlurger or Kennedy?”
+
+“Schlurger is safe. I don’t know about Kennedy.”
+
+“Can you find out for us?”
+
+“Yes. When would you like to know?”
+
+“Can you see him now? I’ll wait here.”
+
+Peter rose, looking at his cigar with a suggestion of regret. But he
+rubbed out the light, and left the room. At the office, he learned the
+number of Kennedy’s room, and went to it. On knocking, the door was
+opened only a narrow crack.
+
+“Oh! it’s you,” said Kennedy. “Come in.”
+
+Peter entered, and found Maguire seated in an easy attitude on a
+lounge. He noticed that his thumbs were once more tucked into his
+waistcoat.
+
+“Mr. Kennedy,” said Peter without seating himself, “there is an attempt
+being made to get a city delegate to nominate Porter. It seems to me
+that is his particular friends’ business.”
+
+Maguire spoke so quickly that Kennedy had no chance to reply:
+“Kennedy’s promised to nominate him, Mr. Stirling, if you won’t.”
+
+“Do you feel that you are bound to do it?” asked Peter.
+
+Kennedy moved uneasily in his chair. “Yes, I suppose I have promised.”
+
+“Will you release Mr. Kennedy from his promise if he asks it?” Peter
+queried to Maguire.
+
+“Why, Mr. Stirling, I don’t think either he or you ought to ask it.”
+
+“That was not my question.”
+
+It was the Senator’s turn to squirm. He did not want to say no, for
+fear of angering Peter, yet he did not like to surrender the advantage.
+Finally he said: “Yes, I’ll release him, but Mr. Kennedy isn’t the kind
+of a man that cries off from a promise. That’s women’s work.”
+
+“No,” said Kennedy stiffening suddenly in backbone, as he saw the
+outlet opened by Maguire, between antagonizing Peter, and retracting
+his consent. “I don’t play baby. Not me.”
+
+Peter stood thinking for a longer time than the others found
+comfortable. Maguire whistled to prove that he was quite at ease, but
+he would not have whistled if he had been.
+
+“I think, Mr. Kennedy, that I’ll save you from the difficulty by
+nominating Mr. Porter myself,” said Peter finally.
+
+“Good!” said Maguire; and Kennedy, reaching down into his hip pocket,
+produced a version of the holy text not yet included in any
+bibliography. Evidently the atmosphere was easier. “About your speech,
+Mr. Stirling?” continued the Senator.
+
+“I shall say what I think right.”
+
+Something in Peter’s voice made Maguire say: “It will be of the usual
+kind, of course?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Peter, “I shall tell the facts.”
+
+“What sort of facts?”
+
+“I shall tell how it is that a delegate of the sixth ward nominates
+Porter.”
+
+“And that is?”
+
+“I don’t see,” said Peter, “why I need say it. You know it as well as I
+do.”
+
+“I know of many reasons why you should do it.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “There’s only one, and that has been created in the
+last ten minutes. Mr. Maguire, if you insist on the sixth ward
+nominating Mr. Porter, the sixth ward is going to tell why it does so.
+I’m sorry, for I like Porter, but the sixth ward shan’t lend itself to
+a fraud, if I can help it.”
+
+Kennedy had been combining things spiritual and aqueous at his
+wash-stand. But his interest in the blending seemed suddenly to cease.
+Maguire, too, took his thumbs from their havens of rest, and looked
+dissatisfied.
+
+“Look here, Mr. Stirling,” he said, “it’s much simpler to leave it to
+Kennedy. You think you’re doing what’s right, but you’ll only do harm
+to us, and to yourself. If you nominate Porter, the city gang won’t
+forgive you, and unless you can say what we want said, we shall be down
+on you. So you’ll break with both sides.”
+
+“I think that is so. That is why I want some real friend of Porter’s to
+do it.”
+
+Maguire laughed rather a forced laugh. “I suppose we’ve got to satisfy
+you. We’ll have Porter nominated by one of our own crowd.”
+
+“I think that’s best. Good-evening.” Peter went to the door.
+
+“Mr. Stirling,” called Kennedy. “Won’t you stay and take some whisky
+and water with us?”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. “Mr. Costell’s in my room and he must be tired
+of waiting.” He closed the door, and walked away.
+
+The couple looked at each other blankly for a moment.
+
+“The —— cuss is playing a double game,” Maguire gasped.
+
+“I don’t know what it means!” said Kennedy.
+
+“Mean?” cried Maguire. “It can mean only one thing. He’s acting under
+Costell’s orders.”
+
+“But why should he give it away to us?”
+
+“How the —— should I know? Look here, Kennedy, you must do it, after
+all.”
+
+“I don’t want to.”
+
+“Tut, tut, man, you must.”
+
+“But my ward?”
+
+“Come. We’ll make it quarantine, as you want. That’s six years, and you
+can —— your ward.”
+
+“I’ll do it.”
+
+“That’s the talk.”
+
+They sat and discussed plans and whisky for nearly an hour. Then
+Maguire said good-night.
+
+“You shall have the speech the first thing in the morning,” he said at
+parting. Then as he walked down the long corridor, he muttered, “Now
+then, Stirling, look out for the hind heel of the mule.”
+
+Peter found Costell still waiting for him.
+
+“It took me longer than I thought, for Maguire was there.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Costell, making room for Peter on the window-ledge.
+
+Peter re-lit his cigar, “Maguire promises me that Porter shall be
+nominated by one of his friends.”
+
+“He had been trying Kennedy?”
+
+“I didn’t ask.”
+
+Costell smiled. “I had no business to ask you that?”
+
+“No,” Peter said frankly.
+
+Both puffed their cigars for a time in silence.
+
+Then Costell began talking about Saratoga. He told Peter where the
+“Congress” spring was, and what was worth seeing. Finally he rose to
+go. He held out his hand, and said:
+
+“Mr. Stirling, you’ve been as true as steel with us, and with the other
+men. I don’t want you to suppose we are not conscious of it. I think
+you’ve done us a great service to-night, although it might have been
+very profitable to you if you had done otherwise. I don’t think that
+you’ll lose by it in the long run, but I’m going to thank you now, for
+myself. Good-night.”
+
+Peter had a good night. Perhaps it was only because he was sleepy, but
+a pleasant speech is not a bad night-cap. At least it is better than a
+mental question-mark as to whether one has done wrong. Peter did not
+know how it was coming out, but he thought he had done right, and need
+not spend time on a blank wall that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+THE CONVENTION.
+
+
+Though Peter had not gone to bed so early as he hoped, he was up the
+next morning, and had tramped his eight miles through and around
+Saratoga, before the place gave many evidences of life. He ended his
+tramp at the Congress spring, and tasted the famous water, with
+exceeding disgust at the result. As he set down his half-finished
+tumbler, and turned to leave, he found Miss De Voe at his elbow, about
+to take her morning glass.
+
+“This is a very pleasant surprise,” she said, holding out her hand.
+“When did you arrive?”
+
+“I only came last night.”
+
+“And how long shall you be here?”
+
+“I cannot say. I am attending the convention, and my stay will depend
+on that.”
+
+“Surely you are not a Democrat?” said Miss De Voe, a shade of horror
+showing itself in her face, in spite of her good breeding. In those
+days it was not, to put it mildly, a guarantee of respectability to
+belong to that party, and Miss De Voe had the strong prejudices of her
+social station, all the more because she was absolutely ignorant of
+political events.
+
+Peter said he was.
+
+“How can you be? When a man can ally himself with the best, why should
+he choose the worst?”
+
+“I think,” said Peter quietly, “that a Pharisee said the same thing, in
+different words, many hundred years ago.”
+
+Miss De Voe caught her breath and flushed. She also became suddenly
+conscious of the two girls who had come to the spring with her. They
+had been forgotten in the surprise over Peter, but now Miss De Voe
+wondered if they had heard his reply, and if they had enough Bible lore
+to enable them to understand the reproof.
+
+“I am sure you don’t mean that,” she said, in the sting of the moment.
+
+“I am very sorry,” said Peter, “if I made an unkind speech. What I
+meant was that no one has a right to pick out the best for himself. I
+am sure, from your letter to me, that you think a man should help those
+not as well off as himself.”
+
+“Oh, but that is very different. Of course we should be charitable to
+those who need our help, but we need not mix in their low politics.”
+
+“If good laws, and good administration can give the poor good food, and
+good lodgings, don’t you think the best charity is to ‘mix’ in
+politics, and try to obtain such results?”
+
+“I want you to know my two cousins,” Miss De Voe replied. “Dorothy, I
+wish to present Mr. Stirling. My cousin, Miss Ogden, and Miss Minna
+Ogden.”
+
+Peter saw two very pretty girls, and made a bow to them.
+
+“Which way are you walking?” asked Miss De Voe.
+
+“I have been tramping merely for exercise,” said Peter, “and stopped
+here to try the spring, on my way to the United States.”
+
+“It is hardly worth while, but if you will get into our carriage, we
+will drop you there. Or if you can spare the time, we will drive to our
+cottage, and then send you back to the hotel.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter, “but I shall only crowd you, I fear.”
+
+“No. There is plenty of room.”
+
+“Will the convention be interesting to watch, Mr. Stirling?” asked one
+of the girls, as soon as they were seated.
+
+“I don’t know,” Peter told her. “It is my first experience at it. There
+is pretty strong feeling, and that of course makes it interesting to
+the delegates, but I am not sure that it would be so to others.”
+
+“Will there be speeches, and cheers, and all that sort of thing?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Cousin Anneke, won’t you take us? It will be such fun!”
+
+“Are spectators admitted, Mr. Stirling?”
+
+“I believe so. I heard something about tickets last night. If you care
+to go, I’ll see if I can get you some?”
+
+“Oh, please,” cried both girls.
+
+“If you can do so, Mr. Stirling, we should like to see the interesting
+part,” said Miss De Voe.
+
+“I’ll try.”
+
+“Send word back by Oliver.” The carriage had drawn up at the cottage,
+and farewells were made.
+
+As soon as Peter reached the hotel, he went to the New York City
+delegation room, and saw Costell. He easily secured admissions, and
+pencilling on a card, “At headquarters they tell me that the
+nominations will begin at the afternoon session, about two o’clock,” he
+sent them back by the carriage. Then bearding the terrors of the
+colored “monarch of all he surveys,” who guards the dining-room of
+every well-ordered Saratoga hotel, he satisfied as large an appetite as
+he remembered in a long time.
+
+The morning proceedings in the convention were purely formal. The
+election of the chairman, the roll-call, the naming of the committees,
+and other routine matter was gotten through with, but the real interest
+centred in the undertone of political talk, going on with little regard
+to the business in hand. After the committees were named, an unknown
+man came up to Peter, and introduced himself by a name which Peter at
+once recognized as that of one of the committee on the platform.
+
+“Mr. Costell thinks you might like to see this, and can perhaps suggest
+a change,” explained Mr. Talcott, laying several sheets of manuscript
+on Peter’s desk and indicating with his finger a certain paragraph.
+
+Peter read it twice before saying anything. “I think I can better it,”
+he said. “If you can give me time I’m very slow about such things.”
+
+“All right. Get it in shape as quickly as possible, and send it to the
+committee-room.”
+
+Left alone Peter looked round for a blank wall. Failing in his search,
+he put his head into his hands, and tried to shut out the seething,
+excited mass of men about him. After a time he took a sheet of paper
+and wrote a paragraph for the platform. It pledged the party to
+investigate the food and tenement questions, and to pass such remedial
+legislation as should seem best. It pledged the party to do this, with
+as little disturbance and interference with present conditions as
+possible, “but fully recognizing the danger of State interference, we
+place human life above money profits, and human health above annual
+incomes, and shall use the law to its utmost to protect both.” When it
+appeared in the platform, there was an addition that charged the
+failure to obtain legislation “which should have rendered impossible
+the recent terrible lesson in New York City” to “the obstruction in the
+last legislature in the interest of the moneyed classes and landlords,
+by the Republican party.” That had not been in Peter’s draft and he was
+sorry to see it. Still, the paragraph had a real ring of honesty and
+feeling in it. That was what others thought too. “Gad, that Stirling
+knows how to sling English,” said one of the committee, when the
+paragraph was read aloud. “He makes it take right hold.” Many an orator
+in that fall’s campaign read the nineteenth section of the Democratic
+platform aloud, feeling that it was ammunition of the right kind. It is
+in all the New York papers of September 24th, of that year.
+
+Immediately after the morning adjournment, Green came up to Peter.
+
+“We’ve had a count, and can’t carry Catlin. So we shan’t even put him
+up. What do you think of Milton?”
+
+“I don’t know him personally, but he has a very good record, I
+believe.”
+
+“He isn’t what we want, but that’s not the question. We must take what
+we can get.”
+
+“I suppose you think Porter has a chance.”
+
+“Not if we take Milton.”
+
+“Between the two I have no choice.”
+
+An hour later, the convention was called to order by the chairman. A
+few moments sufficed to complete the unfinished business, and then the
+chairman’s gavel fell, and every one knew without his announcement that
+the crucial moment had been reached.
+
+Much to Peter’s surprise, Kennedy was one of the members who was
+instantly on his feet, and was the one selected for recognition by the
+chairman. He was still more surprised when Kennedy launched at once
+into a glowing eulogium of Porter. Peter was sitting next Kennedy, and
+though he sat quietly, a sad look came into the face usually so
+expressionless. He felt wronged. He felt that he had been an instrument
+in the deceiving of others. Most of all he grieved to think that a
+delegate of his ward, largely through his own interference, was acting
+discreditably. Peter wanted others to do right, and he felt that that
+was not what Kennedy was doing.
+
+The moment Kennedy finished, Peter rose, as did Maguire. The convention
+was cheering for Porter, and it took some time to quiet it to a
+condition when it was worth while recognizing any one. During this time
+the chairman leaned forward and talked with Green, who sat right below
+him, for a moment. Green in turn spoke to Costell, and a little slip of
+paper was presently handed up to the chairman, who from that moment
+became absolutely oblivious of the fact that Maguire was on his feet.
+When silence finally came, in spite of Maguire’s, “Mr. Chairman,” that
+individual said, “Mr. Stirling.”
+
+Peter began in a low voice, “In rising, Mr. Chairman, to second the
+nomination of Mr. Porter, I feel that it would be idle in me to praise
+one so well known to all of us, even if he had not just been the
+subject of so appreciative a speech from my colleague—”
+
+Here cries of “louder” interrupted Peter, during which interruption
+Green said to Costell, “We’ve been tricked.”
+
+“I’m not so sure,” replied Costell, “Maguire’s on his feet yet, and
+doesn’t look happy. Something’s happening which has not been slated.”
+
+When Peter resumed, there were no more cries of “louder.” His
+introduction had been a matter of trouble and doubt to him, for he
+liked Porter, and feared he might not show it. But now he merely had
+something to tell his audience, and that was easy work. So, his voice
+ringing very clear and distinct, he told them of the original election
+of the delegates; of the feeling of his ward; of the attempts to obtain
+a city nomination of Porter; of Maguire’s promise. “Gad, he hits from
+the shoulder,” said Green. As soon as the trend of his remarks was
+realized, Porter’s supporters began to hiss and hoot. Peter at once
+stopped, but the moment silence came he began again, and after a
+repetition of this a few times, they saw they could neither embarrass
+nor anger him, so they let him have his say. He brought his speech to
+an end by saying:
+
+“I have already expressed my admiration of Mr. Porter, and as soon as I
+had made up my mind to vote for him, I made no secret of that
+intention. But he should not have been nominated by a city delegate,
+for he is not the choice of New York City, and any attempt to show that
+he is, or that he has any true backing there, is only an attempt to
+deceive. In seconding his nomination therefore, I wish it to be
+distinctly understood that both his nomination and seconding are
+personal acts, and in no sense the act of the delegates of the city of
+New York.”
+
+There was a mingling of hoots and cheers as Peter sat down, though
+neither was very strong. In truth, the larger part of the delegates
+were very much in the dark as to the tendency of Peter’s speech. “Was
+it friendly or unfriendly to Porter?” they wondered.
+
+“Mr. Maguire,” said the chairman.
+
+“Mr. Chairman, the gentleman who has just sat down is to be
+complimented on his speech. In my whole life I have never heard so
+deceptive and blinding a narration. We know of Brutus stabbing his
+friend. But what shall we say of a pretended Brutus who caresses while
+he stabs?”
+
+Here the Porter adherents became absolutely sure of the character of
+Peter’s speech, and hissed.
+
+“Nor is it Imperial Caesar alone,” continued Maguire, “against whom he
+turns his poniard. Not content with one foul murder, he turns against
+Caesar’s friends. By devilish innuendo, he charges the honorable Mr.
+Kennedy and myself with bargaining to deceive the American people. I
+call on him for proof or retraction.”
+
+The convention laughed. Peter rose and said: “Mr. Chairman, I gave a
+truthful account of what actually took place last evening in the United
+States hotel. I made no charges.”
+
+“But you left the impression that Mr. Kennedy and I had made a deal,”
+shrieked Maguire.
+
+“If the gentleman draws that conclusion from what passed, it is not my
+fault.”
+
+The convention laughed. “Do you mean to charge such a bargain?” angrily
+shouted Maguire.
+
+“Will you deny it?” asked Peter calmly.
+
+“Then you do charge it?”
+
+Here the convention laughed for the third time. Green shouted “deny
+it,” and the cry was taken up by many of the delegates.
+
+“Yes,” screamed Maguire. “I do deny it”
+
+Peter turned to Kennedy. “Do you too, deny it?”
+
+“Yes,” shouted Kennedy, loudly.
+
+Again the convention laughed.
+
+“Then,” said Peter, “if I had charged you with a bargain, I should now
+find it necessary to apologize.”
+
+The convention roared. Maguire screamed something, but it could not be
+heard. The tenor of his remarks was indicated by his red face and
+clinched fist.
+
+Costell smiled his deep smile. “I’m very glad,” he said to the man next
+him, “that we didn’t pick Stirling up.”
+
+Then Milton was nominated and seconded, as were also Catlin, and four
+minor stars. That done, a ballot was taken and the vote stood:
+
+Porter	206 Milton	197 Catlin	52 Scattering	29
+
+A second ballot showed:
+
+Porter	206 Milton	202 Catlin	54 Scattering	22
+
+A third ballot gave:
+
+Porter	206 Milton	210 Catlin	52 Scattering	16
+
+“Porter’s done for on the next,” was whispered round the hall, though
+where it started, no one knew. Evidently his adherents thought so, for
+one made a motion to adjourn. It was voted down, and once more the roll
+call started.
+
+“I shall vote for Milton,” Peter told Schlurger, and the changes in the
+delegations as the call proceeded, proved that many changes were being
+made the same way. Yet the fourth ballot showed:
+
+Porter	125 Milton	128 Catlin	208 Scattering	14
+
+The wildest excitement broke out in the Porter delegates. “They’ve
+beaten us,” screamed Kennedy, as much to himself as to those about.
+“They’ve used Milton to break our ranks, meaning Catlin all the time.”
+So in truth, it was. Milton had been put up to draw off Porter’s
+delegates, but the moment they had begun to turn to Milton, enough New
+York City delegates had been transferred to Catlin to prevent Milton
+being chosen. Amid protests and angry words on all sides another ballot
+was taken:
+
+Catlin	256 Porter	118 Milton	110
+
+Before the result was announced. Green was at Peter’s elbow.
+
+“Will you move to make it unanimous?” he asked.
+
+“Yes.” And Peter made the formal motion, which was carried by
+acclamation. Half an hour served to choose the Lieutenant-Governor and
+the rest of the ticket, for the bulk of it had already been slated. The
+platform was adopted, and the convention dissolved.
+
+“Well,” said Kennedy angrily to Peter, “I guess you’ve messed it this
+time. A man can’t please both sides, but he needn’t get cussed by
+both.”
+
+Peter went out and walked to his hotel. “I’m afraid I did mess it,” he
+thought, “yet I don’t see what else I could have done.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND UNDERSTANDINGS.
+
+
+“Did you understand what it all meant, Cousin Anneke?” asked Dorothy,
+as they were coming downstairs.
+
+“No. The man who got so angry seemed to think Mr. Stirling had—”
+
+She stopped short. A group of men on the sidewalk were talking, and she
+paused to hear one say:
+
+“To see that young chap Stirling handling Maguire was an eye-opener.”
+
+Another man laughed, rather a deep, quiet laugh. “Maguire understands
+everything but honesty,” he said. “You can always beat him with that.”
+
+Miss De Voe would have like to stay and listen, but there were too many
+men. So the ladies entered the carriage.
+
+“At least we know that he said he was trying to tell the truth,” she
+went on, “and you just heard what that man said. I don’t know why they
+all laughed.”
+
+“He didn’t seem to mind a bit.”
+
+“No. Hasn’t he a funny half-embarrassed, half-cool manner?”
+
+“He wasn’t embarrassed after he was fairly speaking. You know he was
+really fine-looking, when he spoke.”
+
+“Yes,” said Dorothy. “You said he had a dull, heavy face.”
+
+“That was the first time I saw him, Dorothy. It’s a face which varies
+very much. Oliver, drive to the United States. We will take him home to
+dinner.”
+
+“Oh, good,” cried the youngest. “Then he will tell us why they
+laughed.”
+
+As they drove up to the hotel, Peter had just reached the steps. He
+turned to the carriage, the moment he saw that they wanted him.
+
+“We wish to carry you off to a simple country dinner,” Miss De Voe told
+him.
+
+“I am going to take the special to New York, and that leaves in half an
+hour.”
+
+“Take a later train.”
+
+“My ticket wouldn’t be good on it.”
+
+Most men Miss De Voe would have snubbed on the spot, but to Peter she
+said: “Then get another ticket.”
+
+“I don’t care to do that,” said Peter.
+
+“Oh, please, Mr. Stirling,” said Minna. “I want to ask you a lot of
+questions about the convention.”
+
+“Hush, Minna,” said Miss De Voe. She was nettled that Peter should
+refuse, and that her niece could stoop to beg of “a criminal lawyer and
+ward politician,” as she put it mentally. But she was determined not to
+show it “We are sorry. Good-evening. Home, Oliver.”
+
+So they did not learn from Peter why the convention laughed. The
+subject was brought up at dinner, and Dorothy asked the opinion of the
+voters of the family.
+
+“Probably he had made a fluke of some kind,” one said.
+
+“More probably he had out-sharped the other side,” suggested a second.
+
+“It will be in the papers to-morrow,” said the first suggestor.
+
+The three women looked in the next day’s papers, but the reporters were
+as much at sea in regard to the Stirling-sixth-ward incident, as had
+been the rank-and-file in the convention. Three took their views from
+Maguire, and called it “shameful treason,” and the like. Two called it
+“unprincipled and contradictory conduct.” One alone said that “Mr.
+Stirling seemed to be acting conscientiously, if erratically.” Just
+what effect it had had on the candidates none of the papers agreed in.
+One said it had killed Porter. Another, that “it was a purely personal
+matter without influence on the main question.” The other papers shaded
+between these, though two called it “a laughable incident.” The
+opposition press naturally saw in it an entire discrediting of both
+factions of the Democratic party, and absolute proof that the nominee
+finally selected was unfit for office.
+
+Unable to sift out the truth, the ladies again appealed to the voters
+of the family.
+
+“Oh,” said one, “Stirling did something tricky and was caught in it.”
+
+“I don’t believe that,” said Miss De Voe.
+
+“Nor I,” said Dorothy.
+
+“Well, if you want to make your political heeler an angel, I have no
+objection,” laughed the enfranchised being.
+
+“I don’t think a man who made that speech about the children can be a
+scoundrel,” said Dorothy.
+
+“I don’t either,” said Minna.
+
+“That’s the way you women reason,” responded he of the masculine
+intellect. “Because a man looks out for some sick kittens, ergo, he is
+a political saint. If you must take up with politicians, do take
+Republicans, for then, at least, you have a small percentage of chance
+in your favor that they are gentlemen.”
+
+“Don’t be a Pharisee, Lispenard,” said Miss De Voe, utilizing Peter’s
+rebuke.
+
+“Then don’t trouble me with political questions. Politics are so vulgar
+in this country that no gentleman keeps up with them.”
+
+Miss De Voe and the two girls dropped the “vulgar” subject, but Miss De
+Voe said later:
+
+“I should like to know what they laughed at?”
+
+“Do ask him—if he comes to call on you, this winter, Cousin Anneke.”
+
+“No. I asked him once and he did not come.” Miss De Voe paused a
+moment. “I shall not ask him again,” she added.
+
+“I don’t think he intends to be rude,” said Dorothy.
+
+“No,” responded Miss De Voe. “I don’t think he knows what he is doing.
+He is absolutely without our standards, and it is just as well for both
+that he shouldn’t call.” Woman-like, Miss De Voe forgot that she had
+said Peter was a gentleman.
+
+If Peter had found himself a marked man in the trip up, he was doubly
+so on the return train. He sat most of the time by himself, pondering
+on what had happened, but he could not be unconscious of the number of
+people to whom he was pointed out. He was conscious too, that his
+course had not been understood, and that many of those who looked at
+him with interest, did so without approbation. He was not buoyed up
+either, by a sense that he had succeeded in doing the best. He had
+certainly hurt Porter, and had made enemies of Maguire and Kennedy.
+Except for the fact that he had tried to do right, he could see no
+compensating balance.
+
+Naturally the newspapers the next morning did not cheer him, though
+perhaps he cared less for what they said than he ought. He sent them,
+good, bad, and indifferent, to his mother, writing her at the same time
+a long letter, telling her how and why he had taken this course. He
+wrote also a long letter to Porter, explaining his conduct. Porter had
+already been told that Peter was largely responsible for his defeat,
+but after reading Peter’s letter, he wrote him a very kind reply,
+thanking him for his support and for his letter. “It is not always easy
+to do what one wants in politics,” he wrote, “but if one tries with
+high motives, for high things, even defeat loses its bitterness. I
+shall not be able to help you, in your wished-for reforms as greatly as
+I hoped, but I am not quite a nonentity in politics even now, and if at
+any time you think my aid worth the asking, do not hesitate to call on
+me for it. I shall always be glad to see you at my house for a meal or
+a night, whether you come on political matters or merely for a chat.”
+
+Peter found his constituents torn with dissensions over his and
+Kennedy’s course in the convention. He did not answer in kind the blame
+and criticism industriously sowed by Kennedy; but he dropped into a
+half-a-dozen saloons in the next few days, and told “the b’ys” a pretty
+full history of the “behind-the-scenes” part.
+
+“I’m afraid I made mistakes,” he frankly acknowledged, “yet even now I
+don’t see how I could have done differently. I certainly thought I was
+doing right.”
+
+“An’ so yez were,” shouted Dennis. “An’ if that dirty beast Kennedy
+shows his dirty face inside these doors, it’s a washin’ it will get wid
+the drainin’ av the beer-glasses. We wants none av his dirty bargains
+here.”
+
+“I don’t know that he had made any bargain,” said Peter.
+
+“But we do,” shouted one of the men. “It’s a bargain he’s always
+makin’.”
+
+“Yes,” said Dennis. “It’s Kennedy looks out for himself, an’ we’ll let
+him do it next time all by himself.” It could not be traced to its
+origin, but in less than a week the consensus of opinion in the ward
+was that: “Kennedy voted for himself, but Stirling for us.”
+
+The ward, too, was rather proud of the celebrity it had achieved. The
+papers had not merely paragraphed Peter, and the peculiar position of
+the “district” in the convention, but they had begun now asking
+questions as to how the ward would behave. “Would it support Catlin?”
+“Was it true that the ward machine had split, and intended to nominate
+rival tickets?” “Had one faction made a deal with the Republicans?”
+
+“Begobs,” said Dennis, “it’s the leaders an’ the papers are just afther
+discoverin’ there is a sixth ward, an’ it’s Misther Stirling’s made
+them do it.”
+
+The chief party leaders had stayed over at Saratoga, but Peter had a
+call from Costell before the week was out.
+
+“The papers gave it to you rather rough,” Costell said kindly, “but
+they didn’t understand it. We thought you behaved very square.”
+
+“They tell me I did Porter harm.”
+
+“No. It was Maguire did the harm. You simply told about it. Of course
+you get the blame.”
+
+“My constituents stand by me.”
+
+“How do they like Catlin?”
+
+“I think they are entirely satisfied. I’m afraid they never cared much
+who got it.”
+
+“I’m told Kennedy is growling, and running amuck?”
+
+“He’s down on Catlin and me.”
+
+“Well, if you think best, we’ll placate him? But Gallagher seemed to
+think he couldn’t do much?”
+
+“I don’t think he has much of a following. Even Moriarty, who was his
+strong card, has gone back on him.”
+
+“Will you make a couple of speeches for us in this ward?”
+
+“If you’ll let me say what I want?”
+
+“You can support us?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then we’ll leave it to you. Only beware of making too many statements.
+You’ll get dates and places from the committee as soon as they are
+settled. We pay twenty-five dollars a night. If you hit the right key,
+we may want you in some of the other wards, too.”
+
+“I shall be glad to talk. It’s what I’ve been doing to small crowds in
+the saloons.”
+
+“So I’m told. You’ll never get a better place. Men listen there, as
+they never will at a mass-meeting.” Costell rose. “If you are free next
+Sunday, come up into Westchester and take a two o’clock dinner with me.
+We won’t talk politics, but you shall see a nice little woman, who’s
+good enough to make my life happier, and after we’ve looked over my
+stables, I’ll bring you back to the city behind a gray mare that will
+pass about anything there is on the road.”
+
+So Peter had a half day in the country and enjoyed it very much. He
+looked over Mrs. Costell’s flower-garden, in which she spent almost her
+whole time, and chatted with her about it. He saw the beautiful
+stables, and their still more beautiful occupants. He liked the couple
+very much. Both were simple and silent people, of little culture, but
+it seemed to Peter that the atmosphere had a gentle, homely tone that
+was very pleasing. As he got into the light buggy, he said to Mrs.
+Costell:
+
+“I’ll get the seed of that mottled gillyflower from my mother as soon
+as possible. Perhaps you’ll let me bring it up myself?”
+
+“Do,” she said. “Come again, whether you get the seed or not.”
+
+After they had started, Mr. Costell said: “I’m glad you asked that.
+Mrs. Costell doesn’t take kindly to many of the men who are in politics
+with me, but she liked you, I could see.”
+
+Peter spoke twice in the next week in small halls in his ward. He had
+good audiences, and he spoke well, if simply.
+
+“There ain’t no fireworks in his stuff,” said the ward satirist. “He
+don’t unfurl the American flag, nor talk about liberty and the
+constitution. He don’t even speak of us as noble freemen. He talks just
+as if he thought we was in a saloon. A feller that made that speech
+about the babies ought to treat us to something moving.”
+
+That was what many of the ward thought. Still they went because they
+wanted to see if he wouldn’t burst out suddenly. They felt that Peter
+had unlimited potentialities in the way of eloquence (for eloquence to
+them meant the ability to move the emotions) and merely saved his
+powers. Without quite knowing it they found what he had to say
+interesting. He brought the questions at issue straight back to
+elementary forms. He showed just how each paragraph in the platform
+would directly affect, not the state, but the “district.”
+
+“He’s thoroughly good,” the party leaders were told. “If he would abuse
+the other side a little more, and stick in a little tinsel and calcium
+light he would be great.”
+
+So he was called upon to speak elsewhere in the city. He worked at one
+of the polls on election day, and was pleased to find that he was able
+to prevent a little of the “trading” for which Kennedy had arranged.
+His ward went Democratic, as was a foregone conclusion, but by an
+unusually large majority, and Peter found that he and Dennis were given
+the credit for it, both in the ward, and at headquarters. Catlin was
+elected, and the Assembly had been won. So Peter felt that his three
+months’ work had not been an entire failure. The proceeds of his
+speeches had added also two hundred and fifty dollars to his savings
+bank account, and one hundred more to the account of “Peter Stirling,
+Trustee.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+VARIOUS KINDS OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+Peter spent Christmas with his mother, and found her very much worried
+over his “salooning.”
+
+“It’s first steps, Peter, that do the mischief,” she told him.
+
+“But, mother, I only go to talk with the men. Not to drink.”
+
+“You’ll come to that later. The devil’s paths always start straight, my
+boy, but they end in wickedness. Promise me you won’t go any more.”
+
+“I can’t do that, mother. I am trying to help the men, and you ought
+not ask me to stop doing what may aid others.”
+
+“Oh, my boy, my boy!” sobbed the mother.
+
+“If you could only understand it, mother, as I have come to, you
+wouldn’t mind. Here, the saloon is chiefly a loafing place for the lazy
+and shiftless, but in New York, it’s very different. It’s the poor
+man’s club. If you could see the dark, cold, foul-aired tenements where
+they live, and then the bright, warm, cheerful saloons, that are open
+to all, you would see that it isn’t the drink that draws the men. I
+even wish the women could come. The bulk of the men are temperate, and
+only take a glass or two of beer or whisky, to pay for their welcome.
+They really go for the social part, and sit and talk, or read the
+papers. Of course a man gets drunk, sometimes, but usually it is not a
+regular customer, and even such cases would be fewer, it we didn’t tax
+whisky so outrageously that the dishonest barkeepers are tempted to
+doctor their whisky with drugs which drive men frantic if they drink.
+But most of the men are too sensible, and too poor, to drink so as
+really to harm themselves.”
+
+“Peter, Peter! To think that three years in New York should bring you
+to talk so! I knew New York was a sink-hole of iniquity, but I thought
+you were too good a boy to be misled.”
+
+“Mother, New York has less evil in it than most places. Here, after the
+mills shut down, there’s no recreation for the men, and so they amuse
+themselves with viciousness. But in a great place like New York, there
+are a thousand amusements specially planned for the evening hours.
+Exhibitions, theatres, concerts, libraries, lectures—everything to
+tempt one away from wrong-doing to fine things. And there wickedness is
+kept out of sight as it never is here. In New York you must go to it,
+but in these small places it hunts one out and tempts one.”
+
+“Oh, Peter! Here, where there’s room in church of a Sabbath for all the
+folks, while they say that in New York there isn’t enough seats in
+churches for mor’n a quarter of the people. A missionary was saying
+only last week that we ought to help raise money to build churches in
+New York. Just think of there being mor’n ten saloons for every church!
+And that my son should speak for them and spend nights in them!”
+
+“I’m sorry it troubles you so. If I felt I had any right to stop, I’d
+do it.”
+
+“You haven’t drunk in them yet, Peter?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And you’ll promise to write me if you do.”
+
+“I’ll promise you I won’t drink in them, mother.”
+
+“Thank you, Peter.” Still his mother was terrified at the mere thought,
+and at her request, her clergyman spoke also to Peter. He was easier to
+deal with, and after a chat with Peter, he told Mrs. Stirling:
+
+“I think he is doing no harm, and may do much good. Let him do what he
+thinks best.”
+
+“It’s dreadful though, to have your son’s first refusal be about going
+to saloons,” sighed the mother.
+
+“From the way he spoke I think his refusal was as hard to him as to
+you. He’s a good boy, and you had better let him judge of what’s
+right.”
+
+On Peter’s return to the city, he found an invitation from Mrs.
+Bohlmann to come to a holiday festivity of which the Germans are so
+fond. He was too late to go, but he called promptly, to explain why he
+had not responded. He was very much surprised, on getting out his
+dress-suit, now donned for the first time in three years, to find how
+badly it fitted him.
+
+“Mother is right,” he had to acknowledge. “I have grown much thinner.”
+
+However, the ill-fit did not spoil his evening. He was taken into the
+family room, and passed a very pleasant hour with the jolly brewer, his
+friendly wife, and the two “nice girls.” They were all delighted with
+Catlin’s election, and Peter had to tell them about his part in it.
+They did not let him go when he rose, but took him into the
+dining-room, where a supper was served at ten. In leaving a box of
+candy, saved for him from the Christmas tree, was given him.
+
+“You will come again, Mr. Stirling?” said Mrs. Bohlmann, warmly.
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. “I shall be very glad to.”
+
+“Yah,” said Mr. Bohlmann. “You coom choost as ofden as you blease.”
+
+Peter took his dress-suit to a tailor the next day, and ordered it to
+be taken in. That individual protested loudly on the ground that the
+coat was so old-fashioned that it would be better to make a new suit.
+Peter told him that he wore evening dress too rarely to make a new suit
+worth the having, and the tailor yielded rather than lose the job.
+Scarcely had it been put in order, when Peter was asked to dine at his
+clergyman’s, and the next day came another invitation, to dine with
+Justice Gallagher. Peter began to wonder if he had decided wisely in
+vamping the old suit.
+
+He had one of the pleasantest evenings of his life at Dr. Purple’s. It
+was a dinner of ten, and Peter was conscious that a real compliment had
+been paid him in being included, for the rest of the men were not
+merely older than himself, but they were the “strong” men of the
+church. Two were trustees. All were prominent in the business world.
+And it pleased Peter to find that he was not treated as the youngster
+of the party, but had his opinions asked. At one point of the meal the
+talk drifted to a Bethel church then under consideration, and this in
+turn brought up the tenement-house question. Peter had been studying
+this, both practically and in books, for the last three months. Before
+long, the whole table was listening to what he had to say. When the
+ladies had withdrawn, there was political talk, in which Peter was much
+more a listener, but it was from preference rather than ignorance. One
+of the men, a wholesale dealer in provisions, spoke of the new
+governor’s recommendation for food legislation.
+
+“The leaders tell me that the legislature will do something about it,”
+Peter said.
+
+“They’ll probably make it worse,” said Mr. Avery.
+
+“Don’t you think it can be bettered?” asked Peter.
+
+“Not by politicians.”
+
+“I’m studying the subject,” Peter said. “Will you let me come down some
+day, and talk with you about it?”
+
+“Yes, by all means. You’d better call about lunch hour, when I’m free,
+and we can talk without interruption.”
+
+Peter would much have preferred to go on discussing with the men, when
+they all joined the ladies, but Mrs. Purple took him off, and placed
+him between two women. They wanted to hear about “the case,” so Peter
+patiently went over that well-worn subject. Perhaps he had his pay by
+being asked to call upon both. More probably the requests were due to
+what Mrs. Purple had said of him during the smoking time:
+
+“He seems such a nice, solid, sensible fellow. I wish some of you would
+ask him to call on you. He has no friends, apparently.”
+
+The dinner at Justice Gallagher’s was a horse of a very different
+color. The men did not impress him very highly, and the women not at
+all. There was more to eat and drink, and the talk was fast and lively.
+Peter was very silent. So quiet, that Mrs. Gallagher told her “take in”
+that she “guessed that young Stirling wasn’t used to real fashionable
+dinners,” and Peter’s partner quite disregarded him for the rattling,
+breezy talker on her other side. After the dinner Peter had a pleasant
+chat with the Justice’s seventeen-year-old daughter, who was just from
+a Catholic convent, and the two tried to talk in French. It is
+wonderful what rubbish is tolerable if only talked in a foreign tongue.
+
+“I don’t see what you wanted to have that Stirling for?” said Honorable
+Mrs. Justice Gallagher, to him who conferred that proud title upon her,
+after the guests had departed.
+
+“You are clever, arn’t you?” said Gallagher, bitingly.
+
+“That’s living with you,” retorted the H.M.J., who was not easily put
+down.
+
+“Then you see that you treat Stirling as if he was somebody. He’s
+getting to be a power in the ward, and if you want to remain Mrs.
+Justice Gallagher and spend eight thousand—and pickings—a year, you see
+that you keep him friendly.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll be friendly, but he’s awful dull.”
+
+“Oh, no, mamma,” said Monica. “He really isn’t. He’s read a great many
+more French books than I have.”
+
+Peter lunched with the wholesale provision-dealer as planned. The lunch
+hour proving insufficient for the discussion, a family dinner, a few
+days later, served to continue it. The dealer’s family were not very
+enthusiastic about Peter.
+
+“He knows nothing but grub talk,” grumbled the heir apparent, who from
+the proud altitude of a broker’s office, had come to scorn the family
+trade.
+
+“He doesn’t know any fashionable people,” said one of the girls, who
+having unfulfilled ambitions concerning that class, was doubly
+interested and influenced by its standards and idols.
+
+“He certainly is not brilliant,” remarked the mother.
+
+“Humph,” growled the pater-familias, “that’s the way all you women go
+on. Brilliant! Fashionable! I don’t wonder marriage is a failure when I
+see what you like in men. That Stirling is worth all your dancing men,
+but just because he holds his tongue when he hasn’t a sensible thing to
+say, you think he’s no good.”
+
+“Still he is ‘a nobody.’”
+
+“He’s the fellow who made that big speech in the stump-tail milk case.”
+
+“Not that man?”
+
+“Exactly. But of course he isn’t ‘brilliant.’”
+
+“I never should have dreamed it.”
+
+“Still,” said the heir, “he keeps his eloquence for cows, and not for
+dinners.”
+
+“He talked very well at Dr. Purple’s,” said the mamma, whose opinion of
+Peter had undergone a change.
+
+“And he was invited to call by Mrs. Dupont and Mrs. Sizer, which is
+more than you’ve ever been,” said Avery senior to Avery junior.
+
+“That’s because of the prog,” growled the son, seeing his opportunity
+to square accounts quickly.
+
+Coming out of church the next Sunday, Peter was laid hold of by the
+Bohlmanns and carried off to a mid-day dinner, at which were a lot of
+pleasant Germans, who made it very jolly with their kindly humor. He
+did not contribute much to the laughter, but every one seemed to think
+him an addition to the big table.
+
+Thus it came to pass that late in January Peter dedicated a week of
+evenings to “Society,” and nightly donning his dress suit, called
+dutifully on Mrs. Dupont, Mrs. Sizer, Mrs. Purple, Mrs. Avery, Mrs.
+Costell, Mrs. Gallagher and Mrs. Bohlmann. Peter was becoming very
+frivolous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+AN EVENING CALL.
+
+
+But Peter’s social gadding did not end with these bread-and-butter
+calls. One afternoon in March, he went into the shop of a famous
+picture-dealer, to look over an exhibition then advertised, and had
+nearly finished his patient examination of each picture, which always
+involved quite as much mental gymnastics as aesthetic pleasure to
+Peter, when he heard a pleasant:
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Stirling?”
+
+Turning, he found Miss De Voe and a well-dressed man at his elbow.
+Peter’s face lighted up in a way which made the lady say to herself: “I
+wonder why he wouldn’t buy another ticket?” Aloud she said, “I want you
+to know another of my cousins. Mr. Ogden, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“Charmed,” said Mr. Ogden genially. Any expression which Peter had
+thought of using seemed so absolutely lame, beside this passive
+participle, that he merely bowed.
+
+“I did not know you cared for pictures,” said Miss De Voe.
+
+“I see most of the public exhibitions,” Peter told her. “I try to like
+them.”
+
+Miss De Voe looked puzzled.
+
+“Don’t,” said Mr. Ogden. “I tried once, when I first began. But it’s
+much easier to notice what women say, and answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at the
+right points.”
+
+Peter looked puzzled.
+
+“Nonsense, Lispenard,” said Miss De Voe. “He’s really one of the best
+connoisseurs I know, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“There,” said Lispenard. “You see. Only agree with people, and they
+think you know everything.”
+
+“I suppose you have seen the pictures, and so won’t care to go round
+with us?” inquired Miss De Voe.
+
+“I’ve looked at them, but I should like to go over again with you,”
+said Peter. Then he added, “if I shan’t be in the way.”
+
+“Not a bit,” said Lispenard heartily. “My cousin always wants a
+listener. It will be a charity to her tongue and my ears.” Miss De Voe
+merely gave him a very pleasant smile. “I wonder why he wouldn’t buy a
+ticket?” she thought.
+
+Peter was rather astonished at the way they looked at the pictures.
+They would pass by a dozen without giving them a second glance, and
+then stop at one, and chat about it for ten minutes. He found that Miss
+De Voe had not exaggerated her cousin’s art knowledge. He talked
+familiarly and brilliantly, though making constant fun of his own
+opinions, and often jeering at the faults of the picture. Miss De Voe
+also talked well, so Peter really did supply the ears for the party. He
+was very much pleased when they both praised a certain picture.
+
+“I liked that,” he told them, making the first remark (not a question)
+which he had yet made. “It seemed to me the best here.”
+
+“Unquestionably,” said Lispenard. “There is poetry and feeling in it.”
+
+Miss De Voe said: “That is not the one I should have thought of your
+liking.”
+
+“That’s womanly,” said Lispenard, “they are always deciding what a man
+should like.”
+
+“No,” denied Miss De Voe. “But I should think with your liking for
+children, that you would have preferred that piece of Brown’s, rather
+than this sad, desolate sand-dune.”
+
+“I cannot say why I like it, except, that I feel as if it had something
+to do with my own mood at times.”
+
+“Are you very lonely?” asked Miss De Voe, in a voice too low for
+Lispenard to hear.
+
+“Sometimes,” said Peter, simply.
+
+“I wish,” said Miss De Voe, still speaking low, “that the next time you
+feel so you would come and see me.”
+
+“I will,” said Peter.
+
+When they parted at the door, Peter thanked Lispenard: “I’ve really
+learned a good deal, thanks to Miss De Voe and you. I’ve seen the
+pictures with eyes that know much more about them than mine do.”
+
+“Well, we’ll have to have another turn some day. We’re always in search
+of listeners.”
+
+“If you come and see me, Mr. Stirling,” said Miss De Voe, “you shall
+see my pictures. Good-bye.”
+
+“So that is your Democratic heeler?” said Lispenard, eyeing Peter’s
+retreating figure through the carriage window.
+
+“Don’t call him that, Lispenard,” said Miss De Voe, wincing.
+
+Lispenard laughed, and leaned back into a comfortable attitude. “Then
+that’s your protector of sick kittens?”
+
+Miss De Voe made no reply. She was thinking of that dreary wintry
+stretch of sand and dune.
+
+Thus it came to pass that a week later, when a north-easter had met a
+south-wester overhead and both in combination had turned New York
+streets into a series of funnels, in and through which wind, sleet and
+snow fought for possession, to the almost absolute dispossession of
+humanity and horses, that Peter ended a long stare at his blank wall by
+putting on his dress-suit, and plunging into the streets. He had, very
+foolishly, decided to omit dinner, a couple of hours before, rather
+than face the storm, and a north-east wind and an empty stomach are
+enough to set any man staring at nothing, if that dangerous inclination
+is at all habitual. Peter realized this, for the opium eater is always
+keenly alive to the dangers of the drug. Usually he fought the tendency
+bravely, but this night he felt too tired to fight himself, and
+preferred to battle with a little thing like a New York storm. So he
+struggled through the deserted streets until he had reached his
+objective point in the broad Second Avenue house. Miss De Voe was at
+home, but was “still at dinner.”
+
+Peter vacillated, wondering what the correct thing was under the
+circumstances. The footman, remembering him of old, and servants in
+those simple days being still open to impressions, suggested that he
+wait. Peter gladly accepted the idea. But he did not wait, for hardly
+had the footman left him than that functionary returned, to tell Peter
+that Miss De Voe would see him in the dining-room.
+
+“I asked you to come in here, because I’m sure, after venturing out
+such a night, you would like an extra cup of coffee,” Miss De Voe
+explained. “You need not sit at the table. Morden, put a chair by the
+fire.”
+
+So Peter found himself sitting in front of a big wood-fire, drinking a
+cup of coffee decidedly better in quality than his home-brew. Blank
+walls ceased to have any particular value for the time.
+
+In a moment Miss De Voe joined him at the fire. A small table was moved
+up, and a plate of fruit, and a cup of coffee placed upon it.
+
+“That is all, Morden,” she said. “It is so nice of you to have come
+this evening. I was promising myself a very solitary time, and was
+dawdling over my dinner to kill some of it. Isn’t it a dreadful night?”
+
+“It’s blowing hard. Two or three times I thought I should have to give
+it up.”
+
+“You didn’t walk?”
+
+“Yes. I could have taken a solitary-car that passed, but the horses
+were so done up that I thought I was better able to walk.”
+
+Miss De Voe touched the bell. “Another cup of coffee, Morden, and bring
+the cognac,” she said. “I am not going to let you please your mother
+to-night,” she told Peter. “I am going to make you do what I wish.” So
+she poured a liberal portion of the eau-de-vie into Peter’s second cup,
+and he most dutifully drank it. “How funny that he should be so
+obstinate sometimes, and so obedient at others,” thought Miss De Voe.
+“I don’t generally let men smoke, but I’m going to make an exception
+to-night in your case,” she continued.
+
+It was a sore temptation to Peter, but he answered quickly, “Thank you
+for the thought, but I won’t this evening.”
+
+“You have smoked after dinner already?”
+
+“No. I tried to keep my pipe lighted in the street, but it blew and
+sleeted too hard.”
+
+“Then you had better.”
+
+“Thank you, no.”
+
+Miss De Voe thought her former thought again.
+
+“Where do you generally dine?” she asked.
+
+“I have no regular place. Just where I happen to be.”
+
+“And to-night?”
+
+Peter was not good at dodging. He was silent for a moment. Then he
+said, “I saw rather a curious thing, as I was walking up. Would you
+like to hear about it?”
+
+Miss De Voe looked at him curiously, but she did not seem particularly
+interested in what Peter had to tell her, in response to her “yes.” It
+concerned an arrest on the streets for drunkenness.
+
+“I didn’t think the fellow was half as drunk as frozen,” Peter
+concluded, “and I told the policeman it was a case for an ambulance
+rather than a station-house. He didn’t agree, so I had to go with them
+both to the precinct and speak to the superintendent.”
+
+“That was before your dinner?” asked Miss De Voe, calmly.
+
+It was a very easily answered question, apparently, but Peter was
+silent again.
+
+“It was coming up here,” he said finally.
+
+“What is he trying to keep back?” asked Miss De Voe mentally. “I
+suppose some of the down-town places are not quite—but he wouldn’t—”
+then she said out loud: “I wonder if you men do as women do, when they
+dine alone? Just live on slops. Now, what did you order to-night? Were
+you an ascetic or a sybarite?”
+
+“Usually,” said Peter, “I eat a very simple dinner.”
+
+“And to-night?”
+
+“Why do you want to know about to-day?”
+
+“Because I wish to learn where you dined, and thought I could form some
+conclusion from your menu.” Miss De Voe laughed, so as to make it
+appear a joke, but she knew very well that she was misbehaving.
+
+“I didn’t reply to your question,” said Peter, “because I would have
+preferred not. But if you really wish to know, I’ll answer it.”
+
+“Yes. I should like to know.” Miss De Voe still smiled.
+
+“I haven’t dined.”
+
+“Mr. Stirling! You are joking?” Miss De Voe’s smile had ended, and she
+was sitting up very straight in her chair. Women will do without eating
+for an indefinite period, and think nothing of it, but the thought of a
+hungry man fills them with horror—unless they have the wherewithal to
+mitigate the consequent appetite. Hunger with woman, as regards
+herself, is “a theory.” As regards a man it is “a condition.”
+
+“No,” said Peter.
+
+Miss De Voe touched the bell again, but quickly as Morden answered it,
+Peter was already speaking.
+
+“You are not to trouble yourself on my account, Miss De Voe. I wish for
+nothing.”
+
+“You must have—”
+
+Peter was rude enough to interrupt with the word “Nothing.”
+
+“But I shall not have a moment’s pleasure in your call if I think of
+you as—”
+
+Peter interrupted again. “If that is so,” he said, rising, “I had
+better go.”
+
+“No,” cried Miss De Voe. “Oh, won’t you please? It’s no trouble. I’ll
+not order much.”
+
+“Nothing, thank you,” said Peter.
+
+“Just a chop or—”
+
+Peter held out his hand.
+
+“No, no. Sit down. Of course you are to do as you please. But I should
+be so happy if—?” and Miss De Voe looked at Peter appealingly.
+
+“No. Thank you.”
+
+“Nothing, Morden.” They sat down again. “Why didn’t you dine?” asked
+Miss De Voe.
+
+“I didn’t care to face the storm.”
+
+“Yet you came out?”
+
+“Yes. I got blue, and thought it foolish to stay indoors by myself.”
+
+“I’m very glad you came here. It’s a great compliment to find an
+evening with me put above dinner. You know I had the feeling that you
+didn’t like me.”
+
+“I’m sorry for that. It’s not so.”
+
+“If not, why did you insist on my twice asking you to call on me?”
+
+“I did not want to call on you without being sure that you really
+wished to have me.”
+
+“Then why wouldn’t you stay and dine at Saratoga?”
+
+“Because my ticket wouldn’t have been good.”
+
+“But a new ticket would only cost seven dollars.”
+
+“In my neighborhood, we don’t say ‘only seven dollars.’”
+
+“But you don’t need to think of seven dollars.”
+
+“I do. I never have spent seven dollars on a dinner in my life.”
+
+“But you should have, this time, after making seven hundred and fifty
+dollars in one month. I know men who would give that amount to dine
+with me.” It was a foolish brag, but Miss De Voe felt that her usual
+means of inspiring respect were not working,—not even realized.
+
+“Very likely. But I can’t afford such luxuries. I had spent more than
+usual and had to be careful.”
+
+“Then it was economy?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I had no idea my dinner invitations would ever be held in so little
+respect that a man would decline one to save seven dollars.” Miss De
+Voe was hurt. “I had given him five hundred dollars,” she told herself,
+“and he ought to have been willing to spend such a small amount of it
+to please me.” Then she said; “A great many people economize in foolish
+ways.”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Peter. “I’m sorry if I disappointed you. I really
+didn’t think I ought to spend the money.”
+
+“Never mind,” said Miss De Voe. “Were you pleased with the nomination
+and election of Catlin?”
+
+“I was pleased at the election, but I should have preferred Porter.”
+
+“I thought you tried to prevent Porter’s nomination?”
+
+“That’s what the papers said, but they didn’t understand.”
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of the papers. You know I heard your speech in the
+convention.”
+
+“A great many people seem to have misunderstood me. I tried to make it
+clear.”
+
+“Did you intend that the convention should laugh?”
+
+“No. That surprised and grieved me very much!”
+
+Miss De Voe gathered from this and from what the papers had said that
+it must be a mortifying subject to Peter, and knew that she ought to
+discontinue it. But she could not help saying, “Why?”
+
+“It’s difficult to explain, I’m afraid. I had a feeling that a man was
+trying to do wrong, but I hoped that I was mistaken. It seemed to me
+that circumstances compelled me to tell the convention all about it,
+but I was very careful not to hint at my suspicion. Yet the moment I
+told them they laughed.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because they felt sure that the man had done wrong.”
+
+“Oh!” It was a small exclamation, but the expression Miss De Voe put
+into it gave it a big meaning. “Then they were laughing at Maguire?”
+
+“At the time they were. Really, though, they were laughing at human
+weakness. Most people seem to find that amusing.”
+
+“And that is why you were grieved?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But why did the papers treat you so badly?”
+
+“Mr. Costell tells me that I told too much truth for people to
+understand. I ought to have said nothing, or charged a bargain right
+out, for then they would have understood. A friend of—a fellow I used
+to know, said I was the best chap for bungling he ever knew, and I’m
+afraid it’s true.”
+
+“Do you know Costell? I thought he was such a dishonest politician?”
+
+“I know Mr. Costell. I haven’t met the dishonest politician yet.”
+
+“You mean?”
+
+“He hasn’t shown me the side the papers talk about.”
+
+“And when he does?”
+
+“I shall be very sorry, for I like him, and I like his wife.” Then
+Peter told about the little woman who hated politics and loved flowers,
+and about the cool, able manager of men, who could not restrain himself
+from putting his arms about the necks of his favorite horses, and who
+had told about the death of one of his mares with tears in his eyes.
+“He had his cheek cut open by a kick from one of his horses once, and
+he speaks of it just as we would speak of some unintentional fault of a
+child.”
+
+“Has he a great scar on his cheek?”
+
+“Yes. Have you seen him?”
+
+“Once. Just as we were coming out of the convention. He said something
+about you to a group of men which called my attention to him.” Miss De
+Voe thought Peter would ask her what it was. “Would you like to know
+what he said?” she asked, when Peter failed to do so.
+
+“I think he would have said it to me, if he wished me to hear it.”
+
+Miss De Voe’s mind reverted to her criticism of Peter. “He is so
+absolutely without our standards.” Her chair suddenly ceased to be
+comfortable. She rose, saying, “Let us go to the library. I shall not
+show you my pictures now. The gallery is too big to be pleasant such a
+night. You must come again for that. Won’t you tell me about some of
+the other men you are meeting in politics?” she asked when they had sat
+down before another open fire. “It seems as if all the people I know
+are just alike—I suppose it’s because we are all so conventional—and I
+am very much interested in hearing about other kinds.”
+
+So Peter told about Dennis and Blunkers, and the “b’ys” in the saloons;
+about Green and his fellow delegates; about the Honorable Mr., Mrs.,
+and Miss Gallagher, and their dinner companions. He did not satirize in
+the least. He merely told various incidents and conversations, in a
+sober, serious way; but Miss De Voe was quietly amused by much of the
+narrative and said to herself, “I think he has humor, but is too
+serious-minded to yield to it.” She must have enjoyed his talk for she
+would not let Peter go early, and he was still too ignorant of social
+usages to know how to get away, whether a woman wished or no. Finally
+he insisted that he must leave when the clock pointed dangerously near
+eleven.
+
+“Mr. Stirling,” said Miss De Voe, in a doubtful, “won’t-you-please”
+voice, such as few men had ever heard from her, “I want you to let me
+send you home? It will only take a moment to have the carriage here.”
+
+“I wouldn’t take a horse out in such weather,” said Peter, in a very
+settling kind of voice.
+
+“He’s obstinate,” thought Miss De Voe. “And he makes his obstinacy so
+dreadfully—dreadfully pronounced!” Aloud she said: “You will come
+again?”
+
+“If you will let me.”
+
+“Do. I am very much alone too, as perhaps you know?” Miss De Voe did
+not choose to say that her rooms could be filled nightly and that
+everywhere she was welcome.
+
+“No. I really know nothing about you, except what you have told me, and
+what I have seen.”
+
+Miss De Voe laughed merrily at Peter’s frankness. “I feel as if I knew
+all about you,” she said.
+
+“But you have asked questions,” replied Peter.
+
+Miss De Voe caught her breath again. Try as she would, she could not
+get accustomed to Peter. All her social experience failed to bridge the
+chasm opened by his speech. “What did he mean by that plain statement,
+spoken in such a matter-of-fact voice?” she asked herself. Of course
+the pause could not continue indefinitely, and she finally said: “I
+have lived alone ever since my father’s death. I have relatives, but
+prefer to stay here. I am so much more independent. I suppose I shall
+have to move some day. This part of the city is beginning to change
+so.” Miss De Voe was merely talking against time, and was not sorry
+when Peter shook hands, and left her alone.
+
+“He’s very different from most men,” she said to the blazing logs. “He
+is so uncomplimentary and outspoken! How can he succeed in politics?
+Still, after the conventional society man he is—he is—very refreshing.
+I think I must help him a little socially.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+A DINNER.
+
+
+The last remark made by Miss De Voe to her fire resulted, after a few
+days, in Peter’s receiving a formal dinner invitation, which he
+accepted with a promptness not to be surpassed by the best-bred
+diner-out. He regretted now his vamping of the old suit. Peter
+understood that he was in for quite another affair than the Avery, the
+Gallagher, or even the Purple dinner. He did not worry, however, and if
+in the dressing-room he looked furtively at the coats of the other men,
+he entirely forgot the subject the moment he started downstairs, and
+thought no further of it till he came to take off the suit in his own
+room.
+
+When Peter entered the drawing-room, he found it well filled with young
+people, and for a moment a little of the bewildered feeling of four
+years before came over him. But he found himself chatting with Miss De
+Voe, and the feeling left him as quickly as it had come. In a moment he
+was introduced to a “Miss Lenox,” who began talking in an easy way
+which gave Peter just as much or as little to say as he chose. Peter
+wondered if many girls were as easy to talk to as—as—Miss Lenox.
+
+He took Miss De Voe in, and found Dorothy Ogden sitting on his other
+side. He had barely exchanged greetings with her, when he heard his
+name spoken from across the table, and looking up, he found Miss Leroy
+sitting opposite.
+
+“I hope you haven’t entirely forgotten me,” that girl said, the moment
+his attention was caught.
+
+“Not at all,” said Peter.
+
+“Nor my dress,” laughed Miss Leroy.
+
+“I remember the style, material, and train.”
+
+“Especially the train I am sure.”
+
+“Do explain these mysterious remarks,” said Dorothy.
+
+“Mr. Stirling and I officiated at a wedding, and I was in such mortal
+terror lest some usher should step on my gown, that it became a joke.”
+
+“Whose wedding was that?” asked Miss De Voe.
+
+“Miss Pierce’s and Watts D’Alloi’s,” said the bridesmaid.
+
+“Do you know Watts D’Alloi?” exclaimed Miss De Voe to Peter.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Indeed! When?”
+
+“At college.”
+
+“Are you a Harvard man?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You were Mr. D’Alloi’s chum, weren’t you?” said Miss Leroy.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Watts D’Alloi?” again exclaimed Miss De Voe.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But he’s a mere boy.”
+
+“He’s two years my senior.”
+
+“You don’t mean it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I thought you were over thirty.”
+
+“Most people do.”
+
+Miss De Voe said to herself, “I don’t know as much about him as I
+thought I did. He may be very frank, but he doesn’t tell all one
+thinks. Now I know where he gets his nice manner. I ought to have
+recognized the Harvard finish.”
+
+“When did you last hear from the D’Allois?” asked Miss Leroy.
+
+“Not since they sailed,” said Peter, wincing internally.
+
+“Not really?” said the bridesmaid. “Surely you’ve heard of the baby?”
+
+“No.” Lines were coming into Peter’s face which Miss De Voe had never
+before seen.
+
+“How strange. The letters must have gone astray. But you have written
+him?”
+
+“I did not know his address.”
+
+“Then you really haven’t heard of the little baby—why, it was born
+two—no, three years ago—and of Helen’s long ill-health, and of their
+taking a villa on the Riviera, and of how they hope to come home this
+spring?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Yes. They will sail in June if Helen is well enough. I’m to be
+god-mother.”
+
+“If you were Mr. D’Alloi’s chum, you must have known Ray Rivington,”
+said Dorothy.
+
+“Yes. But I’ve not seen him since we graduated. He went out West.”
+
+“He has just returned. Ranching is not to his taste.”
+
+“Will you, if you see him, say that I’m in New York and should like to
+run across him?”
+
+“I will. He and Laurence—my second brother—are old cronies, and he
+often drops in on us. I want you to know my brothers. They are both
+here this evening.”
+
+“I have met the elder one, I suppose.”
+
+“No. That was a cousin, Lispenard Ogden. He spoke of meeting you. You
+would be amused to hear his comment about you.”
+
+“Mr. Stirling doesn’t like to have speeches repeated to him, Dorothy,”
+said Miss De Voe.
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Dorothy, looking from one to the other.
+
+“He snubbed me the other evening when I tried to tell him what we
+heard, coming out of the convention last autumn,” explained Miss De
+Voe, smiling slightly at the thought of treating Peter with a dose of
+his own medicine.
+
+Peter looked at Miss De Voe. “I hope you don’t mean that?”
+
+“How else could I take it?”
+
+“You asked me if I wished something, and I merely declined, I think.”
+
+“Oh, no. You reproved me.”
+
+“I’m very sorry if I did. I’m always blundering.”
+
+“Tell us what Lispenard said, Dorothy. I’m curious myself.”
+
+“May I, Mr. Stirling?
+
+“I would rather not,” said Peter.
+
+And Dorothy did not tell him, but in the drawing-room she told Miss De
+Voe:
+
+“He said that except his professor of archaeology at Heidelberg, Mr.
+Stirling was the nicest old dullard he’d ever met, and that he must be
+a very good chap to smoke with.”
+
+“He said that, Dorothy?” exclaimed Miss De Voe, contemptuously.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How ridiculous,” said Miss De Voe. “Lispenard’s always trying to hit
+things off in epigrams, and sometimes he’s very foolish.” Then she
+turned to Miss Leroy. “It was very nice, your knowing Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“I only met him that once. But he’s the kind of man somehow that you
+remember. It’s curious I’ve never heard of him since then.”
+
+“You know he’s the man who made that splendid speech when the poor
+children were poisoned summer before last.”
+
+“I can’t believe it!”
+
+“It’s so. That is the way I came to know him.”
+
+Miss Leroy laughed. “And Helen said he was a man who needed help in
+talking!”
+
+“Was Mrs. D’Alloi a great friend of his?”
+
+“No. She told me that Watts had brought him to see them only once. I
+don’t think Mr. Pierce liked him.”
+
+“He evidently was very much hurt at Watts’s not writing him.”
+
+“Yes. I was really sorry I spoke, when I saw how he took it.”
+
+“Watts is a nice boy, but he always was thoughtless.”
+
+In passing out of the dining-room, Dorothy had spoken to a man for a
+moment, and he at once joined Peter.
+
+“You know my sister, Miss Ogden, who’s the best representative of us,”
+he said. “Now I’ll show you the worst. I don’t know whether she
+exploited her brother Ogden to you?”
+
+“Yes. She talked about you and your brother this evening.”
+
+“Trust her to stand by her family. There’s more loyalty in her than
+there was in the army of the Potomac. My cousin Lispenard says it’s
+wrecking his nervous system to live up to the reputation she makes for
+him.”
+
+“I never had a sister, but it must be rather a good thing to live up
+to.”
+
+“Yes. And to live with. Especially other fellows’ sisters.”
+
+“Are you ready to part with yours for that purpose?”
+
+“No. That’s asking too much. By the way, I think we are in the same
+work. I’m in the office of Jarvis, Redburn and Saltus.”
+
+“I’m trying it by myself.”
+
+“You’ve been very lucky.”
+
+“Yes. I’ve succeeded much better than I hoped for. But I’ve had very
+few clients.”
+
+“Fortunately it doesn’t take many. Two or three rich steady clients
+will keep a fellow running. I know a man who’s only got one, but he
+runs him for all he’s worth, and gets a pretty good living out of him.”
+
+“My clients haven’t been of that sort.” Peter smiled a little at the
+thought of making a steady living out of the Blacketts, Dooleys or
+Milligans.
+
+“It’s all a matter of friends.”
+
+Peter had a different theory, but he did not say so. Just at that point
+they were joined by Laurence Ogden, who was duly introduced, and in a
+moment the conversation at their end of the table became general. Peter
+listened, enjoying his Havana.
+
+When they joined the ladies, they found Lispenard Ogden there, and he
+intercepted Peter.
+
+“Look here,” he said. “A friend of mine has just come back from Europe,
+with a lot of prints. He’s a fellow who thinks he has discrimination,
+and he wants me to come up and look them over to-morrow evening. He
+hopes to have his own taste approved and flattered. I’m not a bit good
+at that, with men. Won’t you go with me, and help me lie?”
+
+“Of course I should like to.”
+
+“All right. Dine with me at six at the Union Club.”
+
+“I’m not going to let you talk to each other,” said Miss De Voe.
+“Lispenard, go and talk with Miss McDougal.”
+
+“See how quickly lying brings its own punishment,” laughed Lispenard,
+walking away.
+
+“What does he mean?” asked Miss De Voe.
+
+“The opposite of what he says, I think,” said Peter.
+
+“That is a very good description of Lispenard. Almost good enough to
+have been said by himself. If you don’t mind, I’ll tell him.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Do tell me, Mr. Stirling, how you and Watts D’Alloi came to room
+together?”
+
+“He asked me.”
+
+“Yes. But what ever made him do that?”
+
+“I’ve often wondered myself.”
+
+“I can easily understand his asking you, but what first threw you
+together?”
+
+“A college scrape.”
+
+“Were you in a college scrape?”
+
+“Yes. I was up before the faculty twice.”
+
+“Do tell me what you had done?”
+
+“I was charged with stealing the chapel Bible, and with painting a
+front door of one of the professors.”
+
+“And had you done these things?”
+
+“No.”
+
+The guests began to say good-night, so the dialogue was interrupted.
+When it came Peter’s turn to go, Miss De Voe said:
+
+“I hope you will not again refuse my dinner invitations.”
+
+“I have had a very pleasant evening,” said Peter. “But I had a
+pleasanter one, the other night.”
+
+“Good-evening,” said Miss De Voe mechanically. She was really thinking
+“What a very nice speech. He couldn’t have meant anything by his remark
+about the questions.”
+
+Peter dined the next evening with Lispenard, who in the course of the
+meal turned the conversation to Miss De Voe. Lispenard was curious to
+learn just what Peter knew of her.
+
+“She’s a great swell, of course,” he said incidentally.
+
+“I suppose so. I really know nothing about her, but the moment I saw
+her I felt that she was different from any other woman I had ever met.”
+
+“But you’ve found out about her since?”
+
+“No. I was tempted to question Dr. Purple, but I didn’t like to ask
+about a friend.”
+
+Lispenard laughed. “You’ve got a pretty bad case of conscience, I’m
+afraid. It’s a poor thing to have in New York, too. Well, my cousin is
+one of the richest, best born women in this country, though I say it.
+You can’t do better than cultivate her.”
+
+“Is that what you do?”
+
+“No. You have me there. She doesn’t approve of me at all. You see,
+women in this country expect a man to be serious and work. I can’t do
+either. I suppose its my foreign education. She likes my company, and
+finds my escortage very convenient. But while she thinks I’m a pretty
+good companion, she is sure I’m a poor sort of a man. If she takes a
+shine to you, make the most of it. She can give you anything she
+pleases socially.”
+
+“I suppose you have anything you please socially?”
+
+“Pretty much.”
+
+“And would you advise me to spend time to get it?”
+
+“Um. I wouldn’t give the toss of a copper for it—but I can have it.
+It’s not being able to have it that’s the bad thing.”
+
+“So I have found,” said Peter gravely.
+
+Lispenard laughed heartily, as he sipped his “Court France.” “I wish,”
+he said, “that a lot of people, whose lives are given to nothing else,
+could have heard you say that, in that tone of voice. You don’t spell
+Society with a capital, do you?”
+
+“Possibly,” said Peter, “if I had more capital, I should use some on
+society.”
+
+“Good,” said Lispenard. “Heavens,” he said to himself, “he’s made a
+joke! Cousin Anneke will never believe it.”
+
+He told her the next day, and his statement proved correct.
+
+“I know you made the joke,” she said. “He didn’t.”
+
+“And why shouldn’t he joke as well as I?”
+
+“It doesn’t suit him.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Parlor tricks are all right in a lap-dog, but they only belittle a
+mastiff.”
+
+Lispenard laughed good-naturedly. He was used to his cousin’s hits at
+his do-nothingness, and rather enjoyed them. “He is a big beast, isn’t
+he? But he’s a nice fellow. We had such a good time over Le Grand’s
+etchings last night. Didn’t get away till after one. It’s really a
+pleasure to find a man who can smoke and keep quiet, and yet enjoy
+things strongly. Le Grand was taken with him too. We just fitted each
+other.”
+
+“I’m glad you took him. I’m going to give him some society.”
+
+“Did you ever hear the story of Dr. Brown?”
+
+“No. What is it?”
+
+“A certain widow announced to her son that she was to marry Dr. Brown.
+‘Bully for you, Ma,’ said the son, ‘Does Dr. Brown know it?’”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+Lispenard laughed. “Does Stirling know it? Because I advise you to tell
+him before you decide to do anything with him. He’s not easy to drive.”
+
+“Of course he’ll be glad to meet nice people.”
+
+“Try him.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that Peter Stirling won’t give a raparee for all the society
+you can give him.”
+
+“You don’t know what you are talking about.”
+
+But Lispenard was right. Peter had enjoyed the dinner at Miss De Voe’s
+and the evening at Mr. Le Grand’s. Yet each night on reaching his
+rooms, he had sat long hours in his straight office chair, in the dark.
+He was thinking of what Miss Leroy had told him of—of—He was not
+thinking of “Society.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+COMMISSIONS.
+
+
+Peter made his dinner call at Miss De Voe’s, but did not find her at
+home. He received a very pleasant letter expressing her regret at
+missing him, and a request to lunch with her two days later, and to go
+with some friends to an afternoon piano recital, “if you care for
+music. If not, merely lunch with us.” Peter replied that he was very
+sorry, but business called him to Albany on that day.
+
+“I really regret it,” said Miss De Voe to Dorothy. “It is getting so
+late in the season, that unless he makes his call quickly, I shall
+hardly be able to give him more than one other chance.”
+
+Peter’s business in Albany had been sprung on him suddenly. It was
+neither more nor less than a request sent verbally through Costell from
+Governor Catlin, to come up and see him.
+
+“It’s about the food and tenement commission bills,” Costell told him.
+“They’ll be passed by the Senate to-day or to-morrow, and be in
+Catlin’s hands.”
+
+“I hope he’ll make good appointments,” said Peter, anxiously.
+
+“I think he will,” said Costell, smiling quietly. “But I don’t believe
+they will be able to do much. Commissions are commonly a way of staving
+off legislation.”
+
+Peter went up to Albany and saw Catlin. Much to his surprise he found
+the Governor asking his advice about the bills and the personnel of the
+commissions. But after a few minutes he found that this seeking for aid
+and support in all matters was chronic, and meant nothing special in
+his own case.
+
+“Mr. Schlurger tells me, though he introduced the bills, that you
+drafted both. Do you think I had better sign them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Mr. Costell told me to take your advice. You really think I had
+better?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The Governor evidently found something solacing in the firm voice in
+which Peter spoke his “yes.” He drew two papers towards him.
+
+“You really think I had better?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The Governor dipped his pen in the ink, but hesitated.
+
+“The amendments haven’t hurt them?” he queried.
+
+“Not much.”
+
+“But they have been hurt?”
+
+“They have been made better in some ways.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Still the Governor hesitated, but finally began a big G. Having
+committed himself, he wrote the rest rapidly. He paused for a moment
+over the second bill, and fingered it nervously. Then he signed it
+quickly. “That’s done.” He shoved them both away much as if they were
+dangerous.
+
+“I wonder,” thought Peter, “if he enjoys politics?”
+
+“There’s been a great deal of trouble about the commissioners,” said
+the Governor.
+
+“I suppose so,” said Peter.
+
+“Even now, I can’t decide. The leaders all want different men.”
+
+“The decision rests with you.”
+
+“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Governor. “If only they’d agree.”
+
+“You should make your own choice. You will be held responsible if the
+appointments are bad.”
+
+“I know I shall. Just look over those lists, and see if you think
+they’ll do?”
+
+Peter took the slips of paper and read them.
+
+“I needn’t say I’m pleased to see my name,” he said. “I had no idea you
+would think of me.”
+
+“That was done by Costell,” said the Governor, hastening to shift the
+responsibility.
+
+“I really don’t know any of the rest well enough to express an opinion.
+Personally, I should like to see some scientific men on each
+commission.”
+
+“Scientific! But we have none in politics.”
+
+“No? But this isn’t politics.”
+
+“I hoped you’d think these lists right.”
+
+“I think they are good. And the bills give us the power to take
+evidence; perhaps we can get the scientific part that way.”
+
+Peter did his best to brace Catlin up; and his talk or other pressure
+seemed to have partially galvanized the backbone of that limp
+individual, for a week later the papers announced the naming of the two
+commissions. The lists had been changed, however. That on food
+consisted of Green, a wholesale grocer, and a member of the Health
+Board. Peter’s name had been dropped. That on tenements, of five
+members, was made up of Peter; a very large property-owner in New York,
+who was a member as well of the Assembly; a professional labor
+agitator; a well-known politician of the better type, and a public
+contractor. Peter, who had been studying some reports of a British
+Royal Commission on the same subject, looked grave, thinking that what
+the trained men in England had failed in doing, he could hardly hope to
+accomplish with such ill-assorted instruments. The papers were rather
+down on the lists. “The appointments have destroyed any chance of
+possible benefit,” was their general conclusion, and Peter feared they
+were right.
+
+Costell laughed when Peter spoke of the commissions. “If you want
+Catlin to do anything well, you’ve got to stand over him till it’s
+done. I wanted you on both commissions, so that you could see how
+useless they all are, and not blame us politicians for failing in our
+duty. Green promises to get you appointed Secretary of the Food
+Commission, which is the next best thing, and will give you a good
+salary for a time.”
+
+The Tenement Commission met with little delay, and Peter had a chance
+to examine its motley members. The big landlord was a great swell, who
+had political ambitions, but was too exclusive, and too much of a
+dilettante to be a real force. Peter took a prejudice against him
+before meeting him, for he knew just how his election to the Assembly
+had been obtained—even the size of the check—and Peter thought buying
+an election was not a very creditable business. He did not like what he
+knew of the labor agitator, for such of the latter’s utterances and
+opinions as he had read seemed to be the cheapest kind of demagogism.
+The politician he had met and liked. Of the contractor he knew nothing.
+
+The Commission organized by electing the politician as chairman. Then
+the naming of a secretary was discussed, each member but Peter having a
+candidate. Much to Peter’s surprise, the landlord, Mr. Pell, named Ray
+Rivington.
+
+“I thought he was studying law?” Peter said.
+
+“He is,” said Pell. “But he can easily arrange to get off for the few
+hours we shall meet a week, and the five dollars a day will be a very
+nice addition to his income. Do you know him?”
+
+“We were in college together. I thought he was rich.”
+
+“No. He’s of good family, but the Rivingtons are growing poorer every
+year. They try to live on their traditions, and traditions don’t pay
+grocers. I hope you’ll help him. He’s a very decent fellow.”
+
+“I shall vote for him,” replied Peter, marvelling that he should be
+able to give a lift to the man who, in the Harvard days, had seemed so
+thoroughly the mate of Watts and the other rich fellows of the “gang.”
+Rivington being the only candidate who had two votes, he was promptly
+selected.
+
+Thirty arduous minutes were spent in waiting for the arrival of the
+fifth member of the Commission, and in the election of chairman and
+secretary. A motion was then made to adjourn, on the ground that the
+Commission could not proceed without the secretary.
+
+Peter promptly objected. He had been named secretary for this
+particular meeting, and offered to act until Rivington could be
+notified. “I think,” he said, “that we ought to lay out our programme.”
+
+The labor agitator agreed with him, and, rising, delivered an extempore
+speech, declaring that “we must not delay. The leeches (here he looked
+at Mr. Pell) are sucking the life-blood of the people,” etc.
+
+The chairman started to call him to order, but Peter put his hand on
+the chairman’s arm. “If you stop him,” he said in a low voice, “he’ll
+think we are against him, and he’ll say so outside.”
+
+“But it’s such foolishness.”
+
+“And so harmless! While he’s talking, look over this.” Peter produced
+an outline of action which he had drawn up, and having written it in
+duplicate, he passed one draft over to Mr. Pell.
+
+They all let the speech go on, Peter, Mr. Pell and the chairman
+chatting over the plan, while the contractor went to sleep. The
+agitator tried to continue, but as the inattention became more and more
+evident, his speech became tamer and tamer. Finally he said, “That is
+my opinion,” and sat down.
+
+The cessation of the oration waked up the contractor, and Peter’s
+outline was read aloud.
+
+“I don’t move its adoption,” said Peter. “I merely submit it as a
+basis.”
+
+Not one of the members had come prepared with knowledge of how to go to
+work, except the chairman, who had served on other commissions. He
+said:
+
+“I think Mr. Stirling’s scheme shows very careful thought and is
+admirable. We cannot do better than adopt it.”
+
+“It is chiefly copied from the German committee of three years ago,”
+Peter told them. “But I have tried to modify it to suit the different
+conditions.”
+
+Mr. Pell objected to the proposed frequent sittings. Thereupon the
+agitator praised that feature. The hour of meeting caused discussion.
+But finally the scheme was adopted, and the date of the first session
+fixed.
+
+Peter went downstairs with Mr. Pell, and the latter offered to drop him
+at his office. So they drove off together, and talked about the
+Commission.
+
+“That Kurfeldt is going to be a nuisance,” said Pell
+
+“I can’t say yet. He evidently has no idea of what our aim is. Perhaps,
+though, when we really get to work, he’ll prove useful.”
+
+Peter had a call the next day from Rivington. It was made up of thanks,
+of college chat, and of inquiry as to duties. Peter outlined the
+preliminary work, drafted the “Inquiries” and other printed papers
+necessary to be sent out before the first meeting, and told him about
+the procedure at the meetings.
+
+“I know I shall get into all kinds of pickles,” said Ray. “I write such
+a bad hand that often I can’t read it myself. How the deuce am I to
+take down evidence?”
+
+“I shall make notes for my own use, and you will be welcome to them, if
+they will help you.”
+
+“Thanks, Peter. That’s like you.”
+
+The Commission began its inquiry, on the date fixed, and met three
+times a week from that time on. Peter did not try to push himself
+forward, but he was by far the best prepared on the subject, and was
+able to suggest the best sources of information. He asked good
+questions, too, of the various witnesses summoned. Finally he was the
+one regular attendant, and therefore was the one appealed to for
+information elicited at previous meetings. He found the politician his
+best helper. Pell was useful when he attended, which was not very
+often, and even this intermittent attendance ceased in June. “I’m going
+to Newport,” he explained, and did not appear again till late in the
+fall. The contractor really took no part in the proceedings beyond a
+fairly frequent attendance, and an occasional fit of attention whenever
+the inquiry related to building. The labor-agitator proved quite a good
+man. He had, it is true, no memory, and caused them to waste much time
+in reading over the minutes of previous meetings. But he was in
+earnest, and proved to be perfectly reasonable as soon as he found that
+the commissioners’ duties were to inquire and not to make speeches.
+Peter walked home with him several times, and they spent evenings
+together in Peter’s rooms, talking over the evidence, and the
+possibilities.
+
+Peter met a great many different men in the course of the inquiry;
+landlords, real-estate agents, architects, engineers, builders,
+plumbers, health officials, doctors and tenants. In many cases he went
+to see these persons after they had been before the Commission, and
+talked with them, finding that they were quite willing to give facts in
+private which they did not care to have put on record.
+
+He had been appointed the Secretary of the Food Commission, and spent
+much time on that work. He was glad to find that he had considerable
+influence, and that Green not merely acted on his suggestions, but
+encouraged him to make them. The two inquiries were so germane that
+they helped him reciprocally. No reports were needed till the next
+meeting of the Legislature, in the following January, and so the two
+commissions took enough evidence to swamp them. Poor Ray was reduced
+almost to despair over the mass of “rubbish” as he called it, which he
+would subsequently have to put in order.
+
+Between the two tasks, Peter’s time was well-nigh used up. It was
+especially drawn upon when the taking of evidence ceased and the
+drafting of the reports began. Ray’s notes proved hopeless, so Peter
+copied out his neatly, and let Ray have them, rather glad that
+irrelevant and useless evidence was thus omitted. It was left to Peter
+to draw the report, and when his draft was submitted, it was
+accompanied by a proposed General Tenement-house Bill. Both report and
+bill were slightly amended, but not in a way that Peter minded.
+
+Peter drew the Food-Commission report as well, although it went before
+the Commission as Green’s. To this, too, a proposed bill was attached,
+which had undergone the scrutiny of the Health Board, and had been
+conformed to their suggestions.
+
+In November Peter carried both reports to Albany, and had a long talk
+with Catlin over them. That official would have preferred no reports,
+but since they were made, there was nothing to do but to submit them to
+the Legislature. Peter did not get much encouragement from him about
+the chances for the bills. But Costell told him that they could be
+“whipped through. The only danger is of their being amended, so as to
+spoil them.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “I hope they will be passed. I’ve done my best,
+whatever happens.”
+
+A very satisfactory thing to be able to say of yourself, if you believe
+in your own truthfulness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+IN THE MEANTIME.
+
+
+In spite of nine months’ hard work on the two Commissions, it is not to
+be supposed that Peter’s time was thus entirely monopolized. If one
+spends but seven hours of the twenty-four in sleep, and but two more on
+meals, there is considerable remaining time, and even so slow a worker
+as Peter found spare hours not merely for society and saloons, but for
+what else he chose to undertake.
+
+Socially he had an evening with Miss De Voe, just before she left the
+city for the summer; a dinner with Mr. Pell, who seemed to have taken a
+liking to Peter; a call on Lispenard; another on Le Grand; and a family
+meal at the Rivingtons, where he was made much of in return for his aid
+to Ray.
+
+In the saloons he worked hard over the coming primary, and spent
+evenings as well on doorsteps in the district, talking over objects and
+candidates. In the same cause, he saw much of Costell, Green,
+Gallagher, Schlurger and many other party men of greater or less note
+in the city’s politics. He had become a recognized quantity in the
+control of the district, and the various ward factions tried hard to
+gain his support. When the primary met, the proceedings, if exciting,
+were never for a moment doubtful, for Gallagher, Peter, Moriarty and
+Blunkers had been able to agree on both programme and candidates. An
+attempt had been made to “turn down” Schlurger, but Peter had opposed
+it, and had carried his point, to the great gratitude of the silent,
+honest German. What was more important to him, this had all been done
+without exciting hard feelings.
+
+“Stirling’s a reasonable fellow,” Gallagher told Costell, not knowing
+how much Peter was seeing of the big leader, “and he isn’t dead set on
+carrying his own schemes. We’ve never had so little talk of mutiny and
+sulking as we have had this paring. Moriarty and Blunkers swear by him.
+It’s queer. They’ve always been on opposite sides till now.”
+
+When the weather became pleasant, Peter took up his “angle” visitings
+again, though not with quite the former regularity. Yet he rarely let a
+week pass without having spent a couple of evenings there. The
+spontaneous welcome accorded him was payment enough for the time, let
+alone the pleasure and enjoyment he derived from the imps. There was
+little that could raise Peter in their estimation, but they understood
+very well that he had become a man of vast importance, as it seemed to
+them. They had sharp little minds and ears, and had caught what the
+“district” said and thought of Peter.
+
+“Cheese it, the cop, Tim,” cried an urchin one evening to another, who
+was about to “play ball.”
+
+“Cheese it yerself. He won’t dare tech me,” shouted Tim, “so long as
+Mister Peter’s here.”
+
+That speech alone showed the magnitude of his position in their eyes.
+He was now not merely, “friends wid de perlice;” he was held in fear by
+that awesome body!
+
+“If I was as big as him,” said one, “I’d fire all the peelers.”
+
+“Wouldn’t that be dandy!” cried another.
+
+He won their hearts still further by something he did in midsummer.
+Blunkers had asked him to attend what brilliant posters throughout that
+part of the city announced as:
+
+
+HO FOR THE SEA-SHORE!
+
+SIXTH ANNUAL
+
+CLAM BAKE
+
+OF THE
+
+PATRICK N. BLUNKERS’S ASSOCIATION.
+
+
+When Peter asked, he found that it was to consist of a barge party
+(tickets fifty cents) to a bit of sand not far away from the city, with
+music, clams, bathing and dancing included in the price of the ticket,
+and unlimited beer for those who could afford that beverage.
+
+“The beer just pays for it,” Blunkers explained. “I don’t give um
+whisky cause some —— cusses don’t drink like as dey orter.” Then
+catching a look in Peter’s face, he laughed rather shamefacedly. “I
+forgits,” he explained. “Yer see I’m so da—” he checked himself—“I
+swears widout knowin’ it.”
+
+“I shall be very glad to go,” said Peter.
+
+“Dat’s bully,” said Blunkers. Then he added anxiously: “Dere’s
+somethin’ else, too, since yer goin’. Ginerally some feller makes a
+speech. Yer wouldn’t want to do it dis time, would yer?”
+
+“What do they talk about?”
+
+“Just what dey—” Blunkers swallowed a word, nearly choking in so doing,
+and ended “please.”
+
+“Yes. I shall be glad to talk, if you don’t mind my taking a dull
+subject?”
+
+“Yer just talk what yer want. We’ll listen.”
+
+After Peter had thought it over for a day, he went to Blunkers’s gin
+palace.
+
+“Look here,” he said. “Would it be possible to hire one more barge, and
+take the children free? I’ll pay for the boat, and for the extra food,
+if they won’t be in the way.”
+
+“I’m damned if yer do,” shouted Blunkers. “Yer don’t pay for nothinks,
+but der childers shall go, or my name ain’t Blunkers.”
+
+And go they did, Blunkers making no secret of the fact that it was
+Peter’s idea. So every child who went, nearly wild with delight, felt
+that the sail, the sand, the sea, and the big feed, was all owed to
+Peter.
+
+It was rather an amusing experience to Peter. He found many of his
+party friends in the district, not excluding such men as Gallagher,
+Kennedy and others of the more prominent rank. He made himself very
+pleasant to those whom he knew, chatting with them on the trip down. He
+went into the water with the men and boys, and though there were many
+good swimmers, Peter’s country and river training made it possible for
+him to give even the “wharf rats,” a point or two in the way of water
+feats. Then came the regulation clam-bake, after which Peter talked
+about the tenement-house question for twenty minutes. The speech was
+very different from what they expected, and rather disappointed them
+all. However, he won back their good opinions in closing, for he ended
+with a very pleasant “thank you,” to Blunkers, so neatly worded, and
+containing such a thoroughly apt local joke, that it put all in a good
+humor, and gave them something to tell their neighbors, on their return
+home. The advantage of seldom joking is that people remember the joke,
+and it gets repeated. Peter almost got the reputation of a wit on that
+one joke, merely because it came after a serious harangue, and happened
+to be quotable. Blunkers was so pleased with the end of the speech that
+he got Peter to write it out, and to this day the “thank you” part of
+the address, in Peter’s neat handwriting, handsomely framed, is to be
+seen in Blunkers’s saloon.
+
+Peter also did a little writing this summer. He had gone to see three
+or four of the reporters, whom he had met in “the case,” to get them to
+write up the Food and Tenement subjects, wishing thereby to stir up
+public feeling. He was successful to a certain degree, and they not
+merely wrote articles themselves, but printed three or four which Peter
+wrote. In two cases, he was introduced to “staff” writers, and even
+wrote an editorial, for which he was paid fifteen dollars. This money
+was all he received for the time spent, but he was not working for
+shekels. All the men told him to let them know when he had more
+“stories” for them, and promised him assistance when the reports should
+go in to the legislature.
+
+Peter visited his mother as usual during August. Before going, he
+called on Dr. Plumb, and after an evening with him, went to two
+tenements in the district. As the result of these calls, he carried
+three children with him when he went home. Rather pale, thin little
+waifs. It is a serious matter to charge any one with so grave a crime
+as changling, but Peter laid himself open to it, for when he came back,
+after two weeks, he returned very different children to the parents.
+The fact that they did not prosecute for the substitution only proves
+how little the really poor care for their offspring.
+
+But this was not his only summering. He spent four days with the
+Costells, as well as two afternoons later, thoroughly enjoying, not
+merely the long, silent drives over the country behind the fast horses,
+but the pottering round the flower-garden with Mrs. Costell. He had
+been reading up a little on flowers and gardening, and he was glad to
+swap his theoretical for her practical knowledge. Candor compels the
+statement that he enjoyed the long hours stretched on the turf, or
+sitting idly on the veranda, puffing Mr. Costell’s good Havanas.
+
+Twice Mr. Bohlmann stopped at Peter’s office of a Saturday and took him
+out to stay over Sunday at his villa in one of the Oranges. The family
+all liked Peter and did not hesitate to show it. Mr. Bohlmann told him:
+
+“I sbend about dree dousand a year on law und law-babers. Misder Dummer
+id does for me, but ven he does nod any longer it do, I gifts id you.”
+
+On the second visit Mrs. Bohlmann said:
+
+“I tell my good man that with all the law-business he has, he must get
+a lawyer for a son-in-law.”
+
+Peter had not heard Mrs. Bohlmann say to her husband the evening
+before, as they were prinking for dinner:
+
+“Have you told Mr. Stirling about your law business?”
+
+Nor Mr. Bohlmann’s prompt:
+
+“Yah. I dells him der last dime.”
+
+Yet Peter wondered if there were any connection between the two
+statements. He liked the two girls. They were nice-looking, sweet,
+sincere women. He knew that Mr. Bohlmann was ranked as a millionaire
+already, and was growing richer fast. Yet—Peter needed no blank walls.
+
+During this summer, Peter had a little more law practice. A small
+grocer in one of the tenements came to him about a row with his
+landlord. Peter heard him through, and then said: “I don’t see that you
+have any case; but if you will leave it to me to do as I think best,
+I’ll try if I can do something,” and the man agreeing, Peter went to
+see the landlord, a retail tobacconist up-town.
+
+“I don’t think my client has any legal grounds,” he told the landlord,
+“but he thinks that he has, and the case does seem a little hard. Such
+material repairs could not have been foreseen when the lease was made.”
+
+The tobacconist was rather obstinate at first. Finally he said, “I’ll
+tell you what I’ll do. I’ll contribute one hundred dollars towards the
+repairs, if you’ll make a tenant named Podds in the same building pay
+his rent; or dispossess him if he doesn’t, so that it shan’t cost me
+anything.”
+
+Peter agreed, and went to see the tenant in arrears. He found that the
+man had a bad rheumatism and consequently was unable to work. The wife
+was doing what she could, and even the children had been sent on the
+streets to sell papers, or by other means, to earn what they could.
+They also owed a doctor and the above-mentioned grocer. Peter went back
+to the landlord and told him the story.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “it’s a hard case, I know, but, Mr. Stirling, I owe a
+mortgage on the place, and the interest falls due in September. I’m out
+four months’ rent, and really can’t afford any more.” So Peter took
+thirty-two dollars from his “Trustee” fund, and sent it to the
+tobacconist. “I have deducted eight dollars for collection,” he wrote.
+Then he saw his first client, and told him of his landlord’s
+concession.
+
+“How much do I owe you?” inquired the grocer.
+
+“The Podds tell me they owe you sixteen dollars.”
+
+“Yes. I shan’t get it.”
+
+“My fee is twenty-five. Mark off their bill and give me the balance.”
+
+The grocer smiled cheerfully. He had charged the Podds roundly for
+their credit, taking his chance of pay, and now got it paid in an
+equivalent of cash. He gave the nine dollars with alacrity.
+
+Peter took it upstairs and gave it to Mrs. Podds. “If things look up
+with you later,” he said, “you can pay it back. If not, don’t trouble
+about it. Ill look in in a couple of weeks to see how things are
+going.”
+
+When this somewhat complicated matter was ended, he wrote about it to
+his mother:
+
+
+“Many such cases would bankrupt me. As it is, my fund is dwindling
+faster than I like to see, though every lessening of it means a
+lessening of real trouble to some one. I should like to tell Miss De
+Voe what good her money has done already, but fear she would not
+understand why I told her. It has enabled me to do so much that
+otherwise I could not have afforded. There is only one hundred and
+seventy-six dollars left. Most of it though, is merely loaned and
+perhaps will be repaid. Anyway, I shall have nearly six hundred dollars
+for my work as secretary of the Food Commission, and I shall give half
+of it to this fund.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+A “COMEDY.”
+
+
+When the season began again, Miss De Voe seriously undertook her
+self-imposed work of introducing Peter. He was twice invited to dinner
+and was twice taken with opera parties to sit in her box, besides
+receiving a number of less important attentions. Peter accepted
+dutifully all that she offered him. Even ordered a new dress-suit of a
+tailor recommended by Lispenard. He was asked by some of the people he
+met to call, probably on Miss De Voe’s suggestion, and he dutifully
+called. Yet at the end of three months Miss De Voe shook her head.
+
+“He is absolutely a gentleman, and people seem to like him. Yet
+somehow—I don’t understand it.”
+
+“Exactly,” laughed Lispenard. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a
+sow’s ear.”
+
+“Lispenard,” angrily said Miss De Voe, “Mr. Stirling is as much better
+than—”
+
+“That’s it,” said Lispenard. “Don’t think I’m depreciating Peter. The
+trouble is that he is much too good a chap to make into a society or a
+lady’s man.”
+
+“I believe you are right. I don’t think he cares for it at all.”
+
+“No,” said Lispenard. “Barkis is not willin’. I think he likes you, and
+simply goes to please you.”
+
+“Do you really think that’s it?”
+
+Lispenard laughed at the earnestness with which the question was asked.
+“No,” he replied. “I was joking. Peter cultivates you, because he wants
+to know your swell friends.”
+
+Either this conversation or Miss De Voe’s own thoughts, led to a change
+in her course. Invitations to formal dinners and to the opera suddenly
+ceased, and instead, little family dinners, afternoons in galleries,
+and evenings at concerts took their place. Sometimes Lispenard went
+with them, sometimes one of the Ogden girls, sometimes they went alone.
+It was an unusual week when Peter’s mail did not now bring at least one
+little note giving him a chance to see Miss De Voe if he chose.
+
+In February came a request for him to call. “I want to talk with you
+about something,” it said. That same evening he was shown into her
+drawing-rooms. She thanked him with warmth for coming so quickly, and
+Peter saw that only the other visitors prevented her from showing some
+strong feeling. He had stumbled in on her evening—for at that time
+people still had evenings—but knowing her wishes, he stayed till they
+were left alone together.
+
+“Come into the library,” she said. As they passed across the hall she
+told Morden, “I shall not receive any more to-night.”
+
+The moment they were in the smaller and cosier room, without waiting to
+sit even, she began: “Mr. Stirling, I dined at the Manfreys yesterday.”
+She spoke in a voice evidently endeavoring not to break. Peter looked
+puzzled.
+
+“Mr. Lapham, the bank president, was there.”
+
+Peter still looked puzzled.
+
+“And he told the table about a young lawyer who had very little money,
+yet who put five hundred dollars—his first fee—into his bank, and had
+used it to help—” Miss De Voe broke down, and, leaning against the
+mantel, buried her face in her handkerchief.
+
+“It’s curious you should have heard of it,” said Peter.
+
+“He—he didn’t mention names, b-bu-but I knew, of course.”
+
+“I didn’t like to speak of it because—well—I’ve wanted to tell you the
+good it’s done. Suppose you sit down.” Peter brought a chair, and Miss
+De Voe took it.
+
+“You must think I’m very foolish,” she said, wiping her eyes.
+
+“It’s nothing to cry about.” And Peter began telling her of some of the
+things which he had been able to do:—of the surgical brace it had
+bought; of the lessons in wood-engraving it had given; of the
+sewing-machine it had helped to pay for; of the arrears in rent it had
+settled. “You see,” he explained, “these people are too self-respecting
+to go to the big charities, or to rich people. But their troubles are
+talked over in the saloons and on the doorsteps, so I hear of them, and
+can learn whether they really deserve help. They’ll take it from me,
+because they feel that I’m one of them.”
+
+Miss De Voe was too much shaken by her tears to talk that evening. Miss
+De Voe’s life and surroundings were not exactly weepy ones, and when
+tears came they meant much. She said little, till Peter rose to go, and
+then only:
+
+“I shall want to talk with you, to see what I can do to help you in
+your work. Please come again soon. I ought not to have brought you here
+this evening, only to see me cry like a baby. But—I had done you such
+injustice in my mind about that seven dollars, and then to find
+that—Oh!” Miss De Voe showed signs of a recurring break-down, but
+mastered herself. “Good-evening.”
+
+Peter gone, Miss De Voe had another “good” cry—which is a feminine
+phrase, quite incomprehensible to men—and, going to her room, bathed
+her eyes. Then she sat before her boudoir fire, thinking. Finally she
+rose. In leaving the fire, she remarked aloud to it:
+
+“Yes. He shall have Dorothy, if I can do it.”
+
+So Dorothy became a pretty regular addition to the informal meals,
+exhibitions and concerts. Peter was once more taken to the opera, but
+Dorothy and Miss De Voe formed with him the party in the box on such
+nights. Miss De Voe took him to call on Mrs. Odgen, and sang his
+praises to both parents. She even went so far as to say frankly to them
+what was in her mind.
+
+Mr. Ogden said, “Those who know him speak very well of him. I heard
+‘Van’ Pell praise him highly at Newport last summer. Said all the
+politicians thought of him as a rising man.”
+
+“He seems a nice steady fellow,” said the mamma. “I don’t suppose he
+has much practice?”
+
+“Oh, don’t think of the money,” said Miss De Voe. “What is that
+compared to getting a really fine man whom one can truly love?”
+
+“Still, money is an essential,” said the papa.
+
+“Yes. But you both know what I intend to do for Dorothy and Minna. They
+need not think of money. If he and Dorothy only will care for each
+other!”
+
+Peter and Dorothy did like each other. Dorothy was very pretty, and had
+all the qualities which make a girl a strong magnet to men. Peter could
+not help liking her. As for Dorothy, she was like other women. She
+enjoyed the talking, joking, “good-time” men in society, and chatted
+and danced with them with relish. But like other women, when she
+thought of marriage, she did not find these gingerbread ornamentations
+so attractive. The average woman loves a man, aside from his love for
+her, for his physical strength, and his stiff truth-telling. The first
+is attractive to her because she has it not. Far be it from man to say
+why the second attracts. So Dorothy liked Peter. She admired many
+qualities in him which she would not have tolerated in other men. It is
+true that she laughed at him, too, for many things, but it was the
+laughter of that peculiar nature which implies admiration and approval,
+rather than the lower feelings. When the spring separation came, Miss
+De Voe was really quite hopeful.
+
+“I think things have gone very well. Now, Mr. Stirling has promised to
+spend a week with me at Newport. I shall have Dorothy there at the same
+time,” she told Mrs. Ogden.
+
+Lispenard, who was present, laughed as usual. “So you are tired of your
+new plaything already?”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Arn’t you marrying him so as to get rid of his calls and his
+escortage?”
+
+“Of course not. We shall go on just the same.”
+
+“Bully for you, Ma. Does Dr. Brown know it?”
+
+Miss De Voe flushed angrily, and put an end to her call.
+
+“What a foolish fellow Lispenard is!” she remarked unconsciously to
+Wellington at the carriage door.
+
+“Beg pardon, mum?” said Wellington, blank wonderment filling his face.
+
+“Home, Wellington,” said Miss De Voe crossly.
+
+Peter took his week at Newport on his way back from his regular August
+visit to his mother. Miss De Voe had told him casually that Dorothy
+would be there, and Dorothy was there. Yet he saw wonderfully little of
+her. It is true that he could have seen more if he had tried, but Peter
+was not used to practice finesse to win minutes and hours with a girl,
+and did not feel called upon, bluntly, to take such opportunities. His
+stay was not so pleasant as he had expected. He had thought a week in
+the same house with Miss De Voe, Dorothy and Lispenard, without much
+regard to other possible guests, could not but be a continual pleasure.
+But he was conscious that something was amiss with his three friends.
+Nor was Peter the only one who felt it. Dorothy said to her family when
+she went home:
+
+“I can’t imagine what is the matter with Cousin Anneke. All last spring
+she was nicer to me than she has ever been before, but from the moment
+I arrived at Newport, and before I could possibly have said or done
+anything to offend her, she treated me in the snippiest way. After two
+days I asked her what the matter was, but she insisted there was
+nothing, and really lost her temper at my suggesting the idea. There
+was something, I know, for when I said I was coming home sooner than I
+had at first intended, she didn’t try to make me stay.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Ogden, “she was disappointed in something, and so
+vented her feeling on you.”
+
+“But she wasn’t cross—except when I asked her what the matter was. She
+was just—just snippy.”
+
+“Was Mr. Stirling there?”
+
+“Yes. And a lot of other people. I don’t think anybody had a good time,
+unless it was Cousin Lispenard. And he wasn’t a bit nice. He had some
+joke to himself, and kept making remarks that nobody could understand,
+and chuckling over them. I told him once that he was rude, but he said
+that ‘when people went to a play they should laugh at the right
+points.’ That’s the nice thing about Mr. Stirling. You know that what
+he says is the real truth.”
+
+“Lispenard’s always trying to be clever.”
+
+“Yes. What do you suppose he said to me as I came away!”
+
+“What?”
+
+“He shook my hand, laughing, and said, ‘Exit villain. It is to be a
+comedy, not a tragedy.’ What could he mean?”
+
+Lispenard stayed on to see the “comedy,” and seemed to enjoy it, if the
+amused expression on his face when he occasionally gave himself up to
+meditation was any criterion. Peter had been pressed to stay beyond the
+original week, and had so far yielded as to add three days to his
+visit. These last three days were much pleasanter than those which had
+gone before, although Dorothy had departed and Peter liked Dorothy. But
+he saw much more of Miss De Voe, and Miss De Voe was in a much
+pleasanter mood. They took long drives and walks together, and had long
+hours of talk in and about the pleasant house and grounds. Miss De Voe
+had cut down her social duties for the ten days Peter was there, giving
+far more time for them to kill than usually fell to Newporters even in
+those comparitively simple days.
+
+In one of these talks, Miss De Voe spoke of Dorothy.
+
+“She is such a nice, sweet girl,” she said. “We all hope she’ll marry
+Lispenard.”
+
+“Do you think cousins ought to marry?”
+
+Miss De Voe had looked at Peter when she made her remark. Peter had
+replied quietly, but his question, as Miss De Voe understood it, was
+purely scientific, not personal. Miss De Voe replied:
+
+“I suppose it is not right, but it is so much better than what may
+happen, that it really seems best. It is so hard for a girl in
+Dorothy’s position to marry as we should altogether wish.”
+
+“Why?” asked Peter, who did not see that a girl with prospective
+wealth, fine social position, and personal charm, was not necessarily
+well situated to get the right kind of a husband.
+
+“It is hard to make it clear—but—I’ll tell you my own story, so that
+you can understand. Since you don’t ask questions, I will take the
+initiative. That is, unless your not asking them means you are not
+interested?” Miss De Voe laughed in the last part of this speech.
+
+“I should like to hear it.”
+
+People, no matter what Peter stated, never said “Really?” “You are in
+earnest?” or “You really mean it?” So Miss De Voe took him at his word.
+
+“Both my father and mother were rich before they married, and the rise
+in New York real estate made them in time, much richer. They both
+belonged to old families. I was the only child—Lispenard says old
+families are so proud of themselves that they don’t dare to have large
+families for fear of making the name common. Of course they lavished
+all their thought, devotion and anxiety on me. I was not spoiled; but I
+was watched and tended as if I were the most precious thing the world
+contained. When I grew up, and went into society, I question if I ever
+was a half-hour out of the sight of one or the other of my parents. I
+had plenty of society, of course, but it was restricted entirely to our
+set. None other was good enough for me! My father never had any
+business, so brought no new element into our household. It was old
+families, year in and year out! From the moment I entered society I was
+sought for. I had many suitors. I had been brought up to fear
+fortune-hunting, and suspected the motives of many men. Others did not
+seem my equals—for I had been taught pride in my birth. Those who were
+fit as regarded family were, many of them, unfit in brains or
+morals—qualities not conspicuous in old families. Perhaps I might have
+found one to love—if it had not been for the others. I was surrounded
+wherever I went and if by chance I found a pleasant man to talk to,
+_téte-à-téte,_ we were interrupted by other men coming up. Only a few
+even of the men whom I met could gain an _entrée_ to our house.—They
+weren’t thought good enough. If a working, serious man had ever been
+able to see enough of me to love me, he probably would have had very
+little opportunity to press his suit. But the few men I might have
+cared for were frightened off by my money, or discouraged by my
+popularity and exclusiveness. They did not even try. Of course I did
+not understand it then. I gloried in my success and did not see the
+wrong it was doing me. I was absolutely happy at home, and really had
+not the slightest inducement to marry—especially among the men I saw
+the most. I led this life for six years. Then my mother’s death put me
+in mourning. When I went back into society, an almost entirely new set
+of men had appeared. Those whom I had known were many of them
+married—others were gone. Society had lost its first charm to me. So my
+father and I travelled three years. We had barely returned when he
+died. I did not take up my social duties again till I was thirty-two.
+Then it was as the spinster aunt, as you have known me. Now do you
+understand how hard it is for such a girl as Dorothy to marry rightly?”
+
+“Yes. Unless the man is in love. Let a man care enough for a woman, and
+money or position will not frighten him off.”
+
+“Such men are rare. Or perhaps it is because I did not attract them. I
+did not understand men as well then as I do now. Of some whom I thought
+unlovable or dull at that time, I have learned to think better. A woman
+does not marry to be entertained—or should not.”
+
+“I think,” said Peter, “that one marries for love and sympathy.”
+
+“Yes. And if they are given, it does not matter about the rest. Even
+now, thirty-seven though I am, if I could find a true man who could
+love me as I wish to be loved, I could love him with my whole heart. It
+would be my happiness not merely to give him social position and
+wealth, but to make his every hope and wish mine also.”
+
+All this had been said in the same natural manner in which they both
+usually spoke. Miss De Voe had talked without apparent emotion. But
+when she began the last remark, she had stopped looking at Peter, and
+had gazed off through the window at the green lawn, merely showing him
+her profile. As a consequence she did not see how pale he suddenly
+became, nor the look of great suffering that came into his face. She
+did not see this look pass and his face, and especially his mouth,
+settle into a rigid determination, even while the eyes remained sad.
+
+Miss De Voe ended the pause by beginning, “Don’t you”—but Peter
+interrupted her there, by saying:
+
+“It is a very sad story to me—because I—I once craved love and
+sympathy.”
+
+Miss De Voe turned and looked at him quickly. She saw the look of
+suffering on his face, but read it amiss. “You mean?” she questioned.
+
+“There was a girl I loved,” said Peter softly, “who did not love me.”
+
+“And you love her still?”
+
+“I have no right to.”
+
+“She is married?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Will you tell me about it?”
+
+“I—I would rather not.”
+
+Miss De Voe sat quietly for a moment, and then rose. “Dear friend,” she
+said, laying her hand on Peter’s shoulder, “we have both missed the
+great prize in life. Your lot is harder than the one I have told you
+about. It is very,”—Miss De Voe paused a moment,—“it is very sad to
+love—without being loved.”
+
+And so ended Lispenard’s comedy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+CONFLICTS.
+
+
+Lispenard went back with Peter to the city. He gave his reason on the
+train:
+
+“You see I go back to the city occasionally in the summer, so as to
+make the country bearable, and then I go back to the country, so as to
+make the city endurable. I shall be in Newport again in a week. When
+will you come back?”
+
+“My summering’s over.”
+
+“Indeed. I thought my cousin would want you again!”
+
+“She did not say so.”
+
+“The deuce she didn’t. It must be the only thing she didn’t say, then,
+in your long confabs?”
+
+Peter made no reply, though Lispenard looked as well as asked a
+question.
+
+“Perhaps,” continued Lispenard, “she talked too much, and so did not
+remember to ask you?”
+
+Still Peter said nothing.
+
+“Are you sure she didn’t give you a chance to have more of her
+society?” Lispenard was smiling.
+
+“Ogden,” said Peter gently, “you are behaving contemptibly and you know
+it.”
+
+The color blazed up into Lispenard’s face and he rose, saying:
+
+“Did I understand you aright?” The manner and attitude were both
+threatening though repressed.
+
+“If you tell me that I misunderstood you, I will apologize. If you
+think the statement insulting, I will withdraw it. I did not speak to
+insult you; but because I wished you to know how your questions
+impressed me.”
+
+“When a man tells another he is contemptible, he cannot expect to
+escape results. This is no place to have a scene. You may send me your
+apology when we reach New York—”
+
+Peter interrupted. “I shall, if you will tell me I wronged you in
+supposing your questions to be malicious.”
+
+Lispenard paid no attention to the interjection. “Otherwise,” he
+finished, “we will consider our relations ended.” He walked away.
+
+Peter wrote Lispenard that evening a long letter. He did not apologize
+in it, but it ended:
+
+
+“There should be no quarrel between us, for we ought to be friends. If
+alienation has come, it is due to what has occurred to-day, and that
+shall not cause unkind feelings, if I can help it. An apology is due
+somewhere. You either asked questions you had no right to ask, or else
+I misjudged you. I have written you my point of view. You have your
+own. I leave the matter to your fairness. Think it over, and if you
+still find me in the wrong, and will tell me so, I will apologize.”
+
+
+He did not receive a reply. Meeting Ogden Ogden a few days later, he
+was told that Lispenard had gone west for a hunting trip, quite
+unexpectedly. “He said not to expect him back till he came. He seemed
+out of sorts at something.” In September Peter had a letter from Miss
+De Voe. Merely a few lines saying that she had decided to spend the
+winter abroad, and was on the point of sailing. “I am too hurried to
+see my friends, but did not like to go without some good-byes, so I
+write them.” On the whole, as in the case of most comedies, there was
+little amusement for the actual performers. A great essayist has
+defined laughter as a “feeling of superiority in the laugher over the
+object laughed at.” If this is correct, it makes all humor despicable.
+Certainly much coarseness, meanness and cruelty are every day
+tolerated, because of the comic covering with which it is draped.
+
+It is not to be supposed that this comedy nor its winter prologue had
+diverted Peter from other things. In spite of Miss De Voe’s demands on
+his time he had enough left to spend many days in Albany when the
+legislature took up the reports of the Commissions. He found strong
+lobbies against both bills, and had a long struggle with them. He had
+the help of the newspapers, and he had the help of Costell, yet even
+with this powerful backing, the bills were first badly mangled, and
+finally were side-tracked. In the actual fight, Pell helped him most,
+and Peter began to think that a man might buy an election and yet not
+be entirely bad. Second only to Pell, was his whilom enemy, the former
+District-Attorney, now a state senator, who battled himself into
+Peter’s reluctant admiration and friendship by his devotion and loyalty
+to the bills. Peter concluded that he had not entirely done the man
+justice in the past. Curiously enough, his chief antagonist was
+Maguire.
+
+Peter did not give up the fight with this defeat. His work for the
+bills had revealed to him the real under-currents in the legislative
+body, and when it adjourned, making further work in Albany only a waste
+of time, he availed himself of the secret knowledge that had come to
+him, to single out the real forces which stood behind and paid the
+lobby, and to interview them. He saw the actual principals in the
+opposition, and spoke with utmost frankness. He told them that the
+fight would be renewed, on his part, at every session of the
+legislature till the bills were passed; that he was willing to consider
+proposed amendments, and would accept any that were honest. He made the
+fact very clear to them that they would have to pay yearly to keep the
+bills off the statute book. Some laughed at him, others quarrelled. But
+a few, after listening to him, stated their true objections to the
+bills, and Peter tried to meet them.
+
+When the fall elections came, Peter endeavored to further his cause in
+another way. Three of the city’s assemblymen and one of her senators
+had voted against the bills. Peter now invaded their districts, and
+talked against them in saloons and elsewhere. It very quickly stirred
+up hard feeling, which resulted in attempts to down him. But Peter’s
+blood warmed up as the fight thickened, and hisses, eggs, or actual
+attempts to injure him physically did not deter him. The big leaders
+were appealed to to call him off, but Costell declined to interfere.
+
+“He wouldn’t stop anyway,” he told Green, “so we should do no good. Let
+them fight it out by themselves.” Both of which sentences showed that
+Mr. Costell understood his business.
+
+Peter had challenged his opponents to a joint debate, and when that was
+declined by them, he hired halls for evenings and spoke on the subject.
+He argued well, with much more feeling than he had shown since his
+speech in “the case.” After the first attempt of this kind, he had no
+difficulty in filling his halls. The rumor came back to his own
+district that he was “talkin’ foin,” and many of his friends there
+turned out to hear him. The same news went through other wards of the
+city and drew men from them. People were actually excluded, for want of
+room, and therefore every one became anxious to hear his speeches.
+Finally, by subscription of a number of people who had become
+interested, headed by Mr. Pell, the Cooper Union was hired, and Peter
+made a really great speech to nearly three thousand people.
+
+The papers came to his help too, and stood by him manfully. By their
+aid, it was made very clear that this was a fight against a selfish
+lobby. By their aid, it became one of the real questions of the local
+campaign, and was carried beyond the borders of the city, so as to play
+a part in the county elections. Peter met many of the editors, and
+between his expert knowledge, acquired on the Commissions, and his
+practical knowledge, learned at Albany, proved a valuable man to them.
+They repaid his help by kind words and praise in their columns, and
+brought him forward as the chief man in the movement. Mrs. Stirling
+concluded that the conspiracy to keep Peter in the background had been
+abandoned.
+
+“Those York papers couldn’t help my Peter’s getting on,” was the way
+she put it.
+
+The results of this fight were even better than he had hoped. One
+Assemblyman gave in and agreed no longer to oppose the bills. Another
+was defeated. The Senator had his majority so cut down that he retired
+from the opposition. The questions too had become so much more
+discussed and watched, and the blame so fastened upon the lobby that
+many members from the country no longer dared to oppose legislation on
+the subject. Hence it was that the bills, newly drawn by Peter, to
+reduce opposition as far as possible, when introduced by Schlurger soon
+after the opening of the legislature, went through with a rush, not
+even ayes and nays being taken. Aided by Mr. Costell, Peter secured
+their prompt signing by Catlin, his long fight had ended in victory.
+
+The “sixt” was wild with joy over the triumph. Whether it was because
+it was a tenement ward, or because Peter had talked there so much about
+it, or because his success was felt to redound to their credit, the
+voters got up a display of fireworks on the night when the news of the
+signing of the bills reached New York. When Peter returned to the city,
+he was called down to a hall one evening, to witness a torchlight
+procession and receive resolutions “engrossed and framed” from his
+admiring friends. Blunkers was chairman and made a plain speech which
+set the boys cheering by its combination of strong feeling and lack of
+grammar. Then Justice Gallagher made a fine-sounding, big-worded
+presentation. In the enthusiasm of the moment, Dennis broke the
+programme by rising and giving vent to a wild burst of feeling, telling
+his audience all that they owed to Peter, and though they knew already
+what he told them, they cheered and cheered the strong, natural
+eloquence.
+
+“Yer was out a order,” said Blunkers, at the end of the speech.
+
+“Yez loi!” said Dennis, jumping on his feet again. “It’s never out av
+order to praise Misther Stirling.”
+
+The crowd applauded his sentiment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+THE END OF THE CONFLICT.
+
+
+Peter had had some rough experiences two or three times in his fall
+campaign, and Dennis, who had insisted on escorting him, took him to
+task about his “physical culture.”
+
+“It’s thirty pounds yez are too heavy, sir,” he told Peter. “An’ it’s
+too little intirely yez afther knowin’ av hittin’.”
+
+Peter asked his advice, bought Indian clubs, dumb-bells, and
+boxing-gloves, and under Dennis’s tutelage began to learn the art of
+self-defence. He was rather surprised, at the end of two months, to
+find how much flesh he had taken off, how much more easily he moved,
+how much more he was eating, and how much more he was able to do, both
+mentally and physically.
+
+“It seems as if somebody had oiled my body and brain,” he told Dennis.
+
+Dennis let him into another thing, by persuading him to join the
+militia regiment most patronized by the “sixth,” and in which Dennis
+was already a sergeant. Peter received a warm welcome from the
+regiment, for Dennis, who was extremely popular, had heralded his fame,
+and Peter’s physical strength and friendly way did the rest. Ogden
+Ogden laughed at him for joining a “Mick” regiment, and wanted to put
+Peter into the Seventh. Peter only said that he thought his place was
+where he was.
+
+Society did not see much of Peter this winter. He called on his friends
+dutifully, but his long visits to Albany, his evenings with Dennis, and
+his drill nights, interfered badly with his acceptance of the
+invitations sent him. He had, too, made many friends in his commission
+work and politics, so that he had relatively less time to give to his
+older ones. The absence of Miss De Voe and Lispenard somewhat reduced
+his social obligations it is true, but the demands on his time were
+multiplying fast.
+
+One of these demands was actual law work. The first real case to come
+to him was from the contractor who had served on the
+tenement-commission. He was also employed by the Health Board as
+special counsel in a number of prosecutions, to enforce clauses of his
+Food Bill. The papers said it was because of his familiarity with the
+subject, but Peter knew it was the influence of Green, who had become a
+member of that Board. Then he began to get cases from the “district,”
+and though there was not much money in each case, before long the
+number of them made a very respectable total.
+
+The growth of his practice was well proven by a suggestion from Dummer
+that they should join forces. “Mr. Bohlmann wants to give you some of
+his work, and it’s easier to go into partnership than to divide his
+practice.”
+
+Peter knew that Dummer had a very lucrative business of a certain kind,
+but he declined the offer.
+
+“I have decided never to take a case which has not right on its side.”
+
+“A lawyer is just as much bound to try a case as a physician is bound
+to take a patient.”
+
+“That is what lawyers say outside, but they know better.”
+
+“Well, have your scruples. We’ll make the firm cases only such as you
+choose. I’ll manage the others.”
+
+“I should like to,” said Peter. “I’m very grateful for the offer—but we
+could hardly do that successfully. If the firm was good for anything,
+we should be known as belonging to it, and the public could not well
+discriminate.”
+
+So that chance of success was passed. But every now and then Bohlmann
+sent him something to do, and Dummer helped him to a joint case
+occasionally.
+
+So, though friends grew steadily in numbers, society saw less and less
+of Peter. Those who cared to study his tastes came to recognize that to
+force formal entertaining on him was no kindness, and left it to Peter
+to drop in when he chose, making him welcome when he came.
+
+He was pleased to get a letter from Lispenard during the winter, from
+Japan. It was long, but only the first paragraph need be quoted, for
+the rest related merely to his travels:
+
+
+“The breezes of the Pacific have blown away all my bad temper,” he
+wrote, “and I want to say that I was wrong, and regret my original
+fault, as well as what it later led me into. You are quite right. We
+must continue friends.”
+
+
+Peter wrote a reply, which led to a regular correspondence. He sent
+Miss De Voe, also, a line of Christmas greetings, and received a long
+letter from her at Nice, which told him something of Watts and Helen:
+
+
+“She is now well again, but having been six years in Europe, she and
+her husband have become wedded to the life. I question if they ever
+return. I spoke of you, and they both inquired with great warmth about
+you.”
+
+
+Peter replied, sending his “remembrance to Mr. and Mrs. D’Alloi in case
+you again meet them.” From that time on Miss De Voe and he
+corresponded, she telling him of her Italian, Greek and Egyptian
+wanderings, and he writing of his doings, especially in regard to a
+certain savings bank fund standing in the name of “Peter Stirling,
+trustee” to which Miss De Voe had, the winter before, arranged to
+contribute a thousand dollars yearly.
+
+As his practice increased he began to indulge himself a little. Through
+the instrumentality of Mr. Pell, he was put first into one and later
+into a second of the New York clubs, and his dinners became far less
+simple in consequence. He used these comforters of men, indeed, almost
+wholly for dining, and, though by no means a club-man in other senses,
+it was still a tendency to the luxurious. To counteract this danger he
+asked Mr. Costell to pick him up a saddle-horse, whereupon that friend
+promptly presented him with one. He went regularly now to a good
+tailor, which conduct ought to have ruined him with the “b’ys,” but it
+didn’t. He still smoked a pipe occasionally in the saloons or on the
+doorsteps of the district, yet candor compels us to add that he now had
+in his room a box of cigars labelled “Habana.” These were creature
+pleasures, however, which he only allowed himself on rare occasions.
+And most of these luxuries did not appear till his practice had
+broadened beyond the point already noted.
+
+Broaden it did. In time many city cases were thrown in his way. As he
+became more and more a factor in politics, the judges began to send him
+very profitable referee cases. Presently a great local corporation,
+with many damage suits, asked him to accept its work on a yearly
+salary.
+
+“Of course we shall want you to look out for us at Albany,” it was
+added.
+
+“I’ll do what I can to prevent unfair legislation. That must be all,
+though. As for the practice, you must let me settle every case where I
+think the right is with the plaintiff.” This caused demur at first, but
+eventually he was employed, and it was found that money was saved in
+the long run, for Peter was very successful in getting people to settle
+out of court.
+
+Then the savings bank, for which Peter had done his best (not merely as
+recorded, but at other times), turned over its law business to him,
+giving him many real estate transactions to look into, besides papers
+to draw. “He brings us a good many depositors,” Mr. Lapham told his
+trustees, “and is getting to be a large depositor himself.”
+
+Peter began to find help necessary, and took a partner. He did this at
+the suggestion of Ogden Ogden, who had concluded his clerkship, and who
+said to Peter:
+
+“I have a lot of friends who promise me their work. I don’t know how
+much it will be, but I should like to try it with you. Of course, yours
+is the bigger practice, but we can arrange that.”
+
+So after considerable discussion, the sign on Peter’s door became
+“Stirling and Ogden,” and the firm blossomed out with an office boy—one
+of Peter’s original “angle” friends, now six years older than when
+Peter and he had first met.
+
+Ogden’s friends did materialize, and brought good paying cases. As the
+city, referee, corporation and bank work increased, their joint
+practice needed more help, and Ray Rivington was, on Ogden’s request,
+taken in.
+
+“He doesn’t get on with his law studies, though he pretends to work
+over them hard. In fact he’ll never be a good lawyer. He hasn’t a legal
+mind. But he’ll bring cases, for he’s very popular in society, and
+he’ll do all the palavering and running round very well. He’s just the
+fellow to please people.” This was what Ogden urged, adding, “I might
+as well tell you that I’m interested for another reason, too. He and
+Dorothy will marry, if he can ever get to the marrying point. This, of
+course, is to be between us.”
+
+“I’ll be very glad to have him, both for his own sake, and for what
+you’ve just told me,” said Peter.
+
+Thus it was that the firm again changed its name, becoming “Stirling,
+Ogden and Rivington,” and actually spread into two other rooms, Peter’s
+original little “ten by twelve” being left to the possession of the
+office boy. That functionary gazed long hours at the map of Italy on
+the blank wall, but it did not trouble him. He only whistled and sang
+street songs at it. As for Peter, he was too busy to need blank walls.
+He had fought two great opponents. The world and himself. He had
+conquered them both.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+A RENEWAL.
+
+
+If the American people had anglicized themselves as thoroughly into
+liking three-volume stories, as they have in other things, it would be
+a pleasure to trace the next ten years of Peter’s life; for his growing
+reputation makes this period a far easier matter to chronicle than the
+more obscure beginnings already recorded. If his own life did not
+supply enough material we could multiply our characters, as did
+Dickens, or journey sideways, into little essays, as did Thackeray. His
+life and his biographer’s pen might fail to give interest to such
+devices, but the plea is now for “realism,” which most writers take to
+mean microscopical examination of minutia. If the physical and
+psychical emotions of a heroine as she drinks a glass of water can
+properly be elaborated so as to fill two printed pages, Peter’s life
+could be extended endlessly. There were big cases, political fights,
+globe trottings, and new friends, all of which have unlimited
+potentialities for numerous chapters. But Americans are peculiar
+people, and do not buy a pound of sugar any the quicker because its
+bulk has been raised by a skilful admixture of moisture and sand. So it
+seems best partly to take the advice of the Bellman, in the “Hunting of
+the Snark,” to skip sundry years. In resuming, it is to find Peter at
+his desk, reading a letter. He has a very curious look on his face, due
+to the letter, the contents of which are as follows:
+
+
+MARCH 22.
+
+DEAR OLD CHUM—
+
+Here is the wretched old sixpence, just as bad as ever—if not
+worse—come back after all these years.
+
+And as of yore, the sixpence is in a dreadful pickle, and appeals to
+the old chum, who always used to pull him out of his scrapes, to do it
+once more. Please come and see me as quickly as possible, for every
+moment is important. You see I feel sure that I do not appeal in vain.
+“Changeless as the pyramids” ought to be your motto.
+
+Helen and our dear little girl will be delighted to see you, as will
+
+Yours affectionately,
+
+WATTS.
+
+
+Peter opened a drawer and put the letter into it. Then he examined his
+diary calendar. After this he went to a door, and, opening it, said:
+
+“I am going uptown for the afternoon. If Mr. Murtha comes, Mr. Ogden
+will see him.”.
+
+Peter went down and took a cab, giving the driver a number in Grammercy
+Park.
+
+The footman hesitated on Peter’s inquiry. “Mr. D’Alloi is in, sir, but
+is having his afternoon nap, and we have orders he’s not to be
+disturbed.”
+
+“Take him my card. He will see me.”
+
+The footman showed Peter into the drawing-room, and disappeared. Peter
+heard low voices for a moment, then the curtains of the back room were
+quickly parted, and with hands extended to meet him, Helen appeared.
+
+“This is nice of you—and so unexpected!”
+
+Peter took the hand, but said nothing. They sat down, and Mrs. D’Alloi
+continued:
+
+“Watts is asleep, and I have given word that he is not to be disturbed.
+I want to see you for a moment myself. You have plenty of time?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That’s very nice. I don’t want you to be formal with us. Do say that
+you can stay to dinner?”
+
+“I would, if I were not already engaged.”
+
+“Then we’ll merely postpone it. It’s very good of you to come to see
+us. I’ve tried to get Watts to look you up, but he is so lazy! It’s
+just as well since you’ve found us out. Only you should have asked for
+both of us.”
+
+“I came on business,” said Peter.
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi laughed. “Watts is the poorest man in the world for that,
+but he’ll do anything he can to help you, I know. He has the warmest
+feeling for you.”
+
+Peter gathered from this that Mrs. D’Alloi did not know of the
+“scrape,” whatever it was, and with a lawyer’s caution, he did not
+attempt to disabuse her of the impression that he had called about his
+own affairs.
+
+“How you have changed!” Mrs. D’Alloi continued. “If I had not known who
+it was from the card, I am not sure that I should have recognized you.”
+
+It was just what Peter had been saying to himself of Mrs. D’Alloi. Was
+it her long ill-health, or was it the mere lapse of years, which had
+wrought such changes in her? Except for the eyes, everything had
+altered. The cheeks had lost their roundness and color; the hair had
+thinned noticeably; lines of years and pain had taken away the sweet
+expression that formerly had counted for so much; the pretty roundness
+of the figure was gone, and what charm it now had was due to the
+modiste’s skill. Peter felt puzzled. Was this the woman for whom he had
+so suffered? Was it this memory that had kept him, at thirty-eight,
+still a bachelor? Like many another man, he found that he had been
+loving an ideal—a creation of his own mind. He had, on a boyish fancy,
+built a dream of a woman with every beauty and attraction, and had been
+loving it for many years, to the exclusion of all other womankind. Now
+he saw the original of his dream, with the freshness and glamour gone,
+not merely from the dream, but from his own eyes. Peter had met many
+pretty girls, and many sweet ones since that week at the Pierces. He
+had gained a very different point of view of women from that callow
+time.
+
+Peter was not blunderer enough to tell Mrs. D’Alloi that he too, saw a
+change. His years had brought tact, if they had not made him less
+straightforward. So he merely said, “You think so?”
+
+“Ever so much. You’ve really grown slender, in spite of your broad
+shoulders—and your face is so—so different.”
+
+There was no doubt about it. For his height and breadth of shoulder,
+Peter was now by no means heavy. His face, too, had undergone a great
+change. As the roundness had left it, the eyes and the forehead had
+both become more prominent features, and both were good. The square,
+firm jaw still remained, but the heaviness of the cheek and nose had
+melted into lines which gave only strength and character, and destroyed
+the dulness which people used to comment upon. The face would never be
+called handsome, in the sense that regular features are supposed to
+give beauty, but it was strong and speaking, with lines of thought and
+feeling.
+
+“You know,” laughed Mrs. D’Alloi, “you have actually become
+good-looking, and I never dreamed that was possible!”
+
+“How long have you been here?”
+
+“A month. We are staying with papa, till the house in Fifty-seventh
+Street can be put in order. It has been closed since Mrs. D’Alloi’s
+death. But don’t let’s talk houses. Tell me about yourself.”
+
+“There is little to tell. I have worked at my profession, with
+success.”
+
+“But I see your name in politics. And I’ve met many people in Europe
+who have said you were getting very famous.”
+
+“I spend a good deal of time in politics. I cannot say whether I have
+made myself famous, or infamous. It seems to depend on which paper I
+read.”
+
+“Yes, I saw a paper on the steamer, that—” Mrs. D’Alloi hesitated,
+remembering that it had charged Peter with about every known sin of
+which man is capable. Then she continued, “But I knew it was wrong.”
+Yet there was quite as much of question as of assertion in her remark.
+In truth, Mrs. D’Alloi was by no means sure that Peter was all that was
+desirable, for any charge made against a politician in this country has
+a peculiar vitality and persistence. She had been told that Peter was
+an open supporter of saloons, and that New York politics battened on
+all forms of vice. So a favorite son could hardly have retained the
+purity that women take as a standard of measurement. “Don’t you find
+ward politics very hard?” she asked, dropping an experimental plummet,
+to see what depths of iniquity there might be.
+
+“I haven’t yet.”
+
+“But that kind of politics must be very disagreeable to gentlemen. The
+men must have such dirty hands!”
+
+“It’s not the dirty hands which make American politics disagreeable.
+It’s the dirty consciences.”
+
+“Are—are politics so corrupt and immoral?”
+
+“Politics are what the people make them.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+“I suppose your life has not been of a kind to make you very familiar
+with it all. Tell me what these long years have brought you?”
+
+“Perfect happiness! Oh, Mr. Stirling—may I call you Peter?—thank you.
+Peter, I have the finest, noblest husband that ever lived! He is
+everything that is good and kind!” Mrs. D’Alloi’s face lighted up with
+happiness and tenderness.
+
+“And your children?”
+
+“We have only one. The sweetest, loveliest child you can imagine.”
+
+“Fie, fie, Rosebud,” cried a voice from the doorway. “You shouldn’t
+speak of yourself so, even if it is the truth. Leave that to me. How
+are you, Peter, old fellow? I’d apologize for keeping you waiting, but
+if you’ve had Helen, there’s no occasion. Isn’t it Boileau who said
+that: ‘The best thing about many a man is his wife’?”
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi beamed, but said, “It isn’t so, Peter. He’s much better
+than I.”
+
+Watts laughed. “You’ll have to excuse this, old man. Will happen
+sometimes, even in the properest of families, if one marries an angel.”
+
+“There, you see,” said Mrs. D’Alloi. “He just spoils me, Peter.”
+
+“And she thrives on it, doesn’t she, Peter?” said Watts. “Isn’t she
+prettier even than she was in the old days?”
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi colored with pleasure, even while saying: “Now, Watts
+dear, I won’t swallow such palpable flattery. There’s one kiss for
+it—Peter won’t mind—and now I know you two want to talk old times, so
+I’ll leave you together. Good-bye, Peter—or rather _au revoir_—for you
+must be a regular visitor now. Watts, arrange with Peter to dine with
+us some day this week.”
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi disappeared through the doorway. Peter’s pulse did not
+change a beat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+HELP.
+
+
+The moment she was gone, Watts held out his hand, saying: “Here, old
+man, let us shake hands again. It’s almost like going back to college
+days to see my old chum. Come to the snuggery, where we shan’t be
+interrupted.” They went through two rooms, to one fitted up as a
+smoking-room and office. “It’s papa-in-law’s workshop. He can’t drop
+his work at the bank, so he brings it home and goes on here. Sit down.
+Here, take a cigar. Now, are you comfortable?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“_Maintenant_, I suppose you want to know why I wrote you to come so
+quickly?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, the truth of it is, I’m in an awful mess. Yesterday I was so
+desperate I thought I should blow my brains out. I went round to the
+club to see if I couldn’t forget or drown my trouble, just as sick as a
+man could be. Fellows talking. First thing I heard was your name. ‘Just
+won a great case.’ ‘One of the best lawyers in New York.’ Thinks I to
+myself, ‘That’s a special providence.’ Peter always was the fellow to
+pull me through my college scrapes. I’ll write him.’ Did it, and played
+billiards for the rest of the evening, secure in the belief that you
+would come to my help, just as you used to.”
+
+“Tell me what it is?”
+
+“Even that isn’t easy, chum. It’s a devilish hard thing to tell even to
+you.”
+
+“Is it money trou—?”
+
+“No, no!” Watts interrupted. “It isn’t that. The truth is I’ve a great
+deal more money than is good for me, and apparently always shall have.
+I wish it were only that!”
+
+“How can I help you?” began Peter.
+
+“I knew you would,” cried Watts, joyfully. “Just the same old reliable
+you always were. Here. Draw up nearer. That’s it. Now then, here goes.
+I shan’t mind if you are shocked at first. Be as hard on me as you
+like.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, to make a long story short, I’m entangled with a woman, and
+there’s the devil to pay. Now you’ll pull me through, old man, won’t
+you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Don’t say that, Peter! You must help me. You’re my only hope.
+
+“I do not care to mix myself in such a business,” said Peter, very
+quietly. “I would rather know nothing about it.” Peter rose.
+
+“Don’t desert me,” cried Watts, springing to his feet, and putting his
+hand on Peter’s shoulder, so as to prevent his progress to the door.
+“Don’t. She’s going to expose me. Think of the disgrace! My God, Peter,
+think—”
+
+“Take your hand off my shoulder.”
+
+“But Peter, think—”
+
+“The time to think was before—not now, Watts. I will not concern myself
+in this.”
+
+“But, old man. I can’t face it. It will kill Helen!”
+
+Peter had already thrown aside the arm, and had taken a step towards
+the doorway. He stopped and turned. “She does not know?”
+
+“Not a suspicion. And nothing but absolute proof will make her believe
+it. She worships me. Oh, Peter, save her! Save Leonore—if you won’t
+save me!”
+
+“Can they be saved?”
+
+“That’s what I want to know. Here—sit down, please! I’ll tell you all
+about it.”
+
+Peter hesitated a moment, and then sat down.
+
+“It began in Paris twelve years ago. Such affairs have a way of
+beginning in Paris, old man. It’s in the atmosphere. She—”
+
+“Stop. I will ask questions. There’s no good going over the whole
+story.” Peter tried to speak calmly, and to keep his voice and face
+from showing what he felt. He paused a moment, and then said: “She
+threatens to expose you. Why?”
+
+“Well, after three years I tired of it and tried to end it. Then she
+used it to blackmail me for ten years, till, in desperation, I came to
+America, to see if I couldn’t escape her.”
+
+“And she followed you?”
+
+“Yes. She was always tracking me in Europe, and making my life a hell
+on earth, and now she’s followed me here.”
+
+“If it’s merely a question of money, I don’t see what you want of me.”
+
+“She says she doesn’t want money now—but revenge. She’s perfectly
+furious over my coming off without telling her—always had an awful
+temper—and—well, you know an infuriated woman is capable of anything.
+The Spaniard was right who said it was easier to take care of a peck of
+fleas than one woman, eh, chum?”
+
+“So she threatens to tell your wife?”
+
+“No. She says she’s going to summon me into court.”
+
+“On what grounds?”
+
+“That’s the worst part of it. You see, chum, there’s a child, and she
+says she’s going to apply for a proper support for it. Proper support!
+Heavens! The money I’ve paid her would support ten children. It’s only
+temper.”
+
+Peter said, “Watts, Watts,” in a sad voice.
+
+“Pretty bad, isn’t it? If it wasn’t for the child I could—”
+
+Peter interrupted. “Has she any proofs of paternity besides—?”
+
+Watts interrupted in turn. “Yes. Confound it! I was fool enough to
+write letters during my infatuation. Talleyrand was right when he said
+only fools and women wrote letters.”
+
+“How could you?”
+
+“That’s what I’ve asked myself a hundred times. Oh, I’m sorry enough.
+I’ve sworn never to put pen to paper again. _Jamais!_”
+
+“I did not mean the letters. But your vow.”
+
+“My vow?”
+
+“Your marriage vow.”
+
+“Oh, yes. I know. But you know, chum, before you promise to love one
+woman for all time you should have seen them all.”
+
+“And that display ten minutes ago was all mockery?”
+
+“No, no! Really, Peter, I’m awfully fond of the little woman. Really I
+am. And you know Daudet says a man can love two women at the same
+time.”
+
+“And if so, how about his honor?” Peter was trying to repress his
+emotion, but it would jerk out questions.
+
+“Yes, I know. I’ve said that to myself over and over again. Why, look
+here.” Watts pulled a small revolver from his hip pocket. “This will
+show you how close to the desperation point I have come. I’ve carried
+that for two days, so that if worse comes to worse—well. Phut!—_Voila
+tout_.”
+
+Peter rose, speaking in a voice ringing with scorn. “You would escape
+your sin, to leave it with added disgrace for your wife and daughter to
+bear! Put up your pistol, Watts D’Alloi. If I am to help you, I want to
+help a man—not a skulker. What do you want me to do?”
+
+“That’s what I wish to know. What can I do?”
+
+“You have offered her money?”
+
+“Yes. I told her that—”
+
+“Never mind details,” interrupted Peter, “Was it enough to put further
+offers out of the question?”
+
+“Yes. She won’t hear of money. She wants revenge.”
+
+“Give me her name and address.”
+
+“Celestine—” The rest was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Well?”
+said Watts.
+
+The door was opened, and a footman entered. “If you please, Mr.
+D’Alloi, there’s a Frenchwoman at the door who wants to see you. She
+won’t give me her name, but says you’ll know who it is.”
+
+“Say I won’t see her. That I’m busy.”
+
+“She told me to say that if you were engaged, she’d see Mrs. D’Alloi.”
+
+“My God!” said Watts, under his breath.
+
+“Ask the woman to come in here,” said Peter, quietly, but in a way
+which made the man leave the room without waiting to see if Watts
+demurred.
+
+A complete silence followed. Then came the rustle of skirts, and a
+woman entered the room. Peter, who stood aside, motioned to the footman
+to go, and closed the door himself, turning the key.
+
+The woman came to the middle of the room. “So, Monsieur D’Alloi,” she
+said in French, speaking very low and distinctly, “you thought it best
+not to order your groom to turn me out, as you did that last day in
+Paris, when you supposed your flight to America left you free to do as
+you pleased? But you did not escape me. Here I am.”
+
+Watts sat down in an easy-chair, and striking a match, lighted a
+cigarette. “That, Celestine,” he said in French, “is what in English we
+call a self-evident proposition.”
+
+Celestine’s foot began to tap the floor, “You needn’t pretend you
+expected I would follow you. You thought you could drop me, like an old
+slipper.”
+
+Watts blew a whiff of tobacco from his mouth. “It was a remark of
+Ricard’s, I believe, ‘that in woman, one should always expect the
+unexpected.’”
+
+“_Mon Dieu_!” shrieked Celestine. “If I—if I could kill you—you—”
+
+She was interrupted by Peter’s bringing a chair to her and saying in
+French, “Will you not sit down, please?”
+
+She turned in surprise, for she had been too wrought up to notice that
+Peter was in the room. She stared at him and then sat down.
+
+“That’s right,” said Watts. “Take it easy. No occasion to get excited.”
+
+“Ah!” screamed Celestine, springing to her feet, “your name shall be in
+all the papers. You shall—”
+
+Peter again interrupted. “Madame, will you allow me to say something?”
+He spoke gently and deferentially.
+
+Celestine looked at him again, saying rapidly: “Why should I listen to
+you? What are you to me? I don’t even know you. My mind’s made up. I
+tell you—” The woman was lashing herself into a fury, and Peter
+interrupted her again:
+
+“Pardon me. We are strangers. If I ask anything of you for myself, I
+should expect a refusal. But I ask it for humanity, to which we all owe
+help. Only hear what I have to say. I do not claim it as a right, but
+as a favor.”
+
+Celestine sat down. “I listen,” she said. She turned her chair from
+Watts and faced Peter, as he stood at the study table.
+
+Peter paused a moment, and then said: “After what I have seen, I feel
+sure you wish only to revenge yourself on Mr. D’Alloi?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Now let me show you what you will do. For the last two days Mr.
+D’Alloi has carried a pistol in his pocket, and if you disgrace him he
+will probably shoot himself.”
+
+“Bon!”
+
+“But where is your revenge? He will be beyond your reach, and you will
+only have a human life upon your conscience ever after.”
+
+“I shall not grieve!”
+
+“Nor is that all. In revenging yourself on him, you do one of the
+cruelest acts possible. A wife, who trusts and believes in him, will
+have her faith and love shattered. His daughter—a young girl, with all
+her life before her—must ever after despise her father and blush at her
+name. Do not punish the weak and innocent for the sin of the guilty!”
+Peter spoke with an earnestness almost terrible. Tears came into his
+eyes as he made his appeal, and his two auditors both rose to their
+feet, under the impulse of his voice even more than of his words. So
+earnest was he, and so spell-bound were the others, that they failed to
+hear the door from the dining-room move, or notice the entrance of Mrs.
+D’Alloi as Peter ended his plea.
+
+A moment’s silence followed Peter’s outburst of feeling. Then the
+Frenchwoman cried:
+
+“Truly, truly. But what will you do for me and my child? Haven’t we
+been ill-treated? Don’t you owe us help, too? Justice? Don’t we deserve
+tenderness and protection?”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter. “But you wish revenge. Ask for justice, ask for
+help, and I will do what is within my power to aid you.”
+
+“Watts,” cried Mrs. D’Alloi, coming forward, “of what child are you
+talking? Whose child? Who is this woman?”
+
+Watts jumped as if he had been shot. Celestine even retreated before
+the terrible voice and face with which Mrs. D’Alloi asked her
+questions. A sad, weary look came into Peter’s eyes. No one answered
+Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“Answer me,” she cried
+
+“My dear little woman. Don’t get excited. It’s all right.” Watts
+managed to say this much. But he did not look his last remark.
+
+“Answer me, I say. Who is this woman? Speak!”
+
+“It’s all right, really, it’s all right. Here. Peter will tell you it’s
+all right.”
+
+“Peter,” cried Mrs. D’Alloi. “Of whose child were you speaking?”
+
+Peter was still standing by the desk. He looked sad and broken, as he
+said:
+
+“This is the mother, Mrs. D’Alloi.”
+
+“Yes? Yes?”
+
+Peter raised his eyes to Helen’s and looked at her. Then he said
+quietly:
+
+“And Watts—will tell you that—I am its father.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+RUNNING AWAY.
+
+
+The dramatic pause which followed Peter’s statement was first broken by
+Mrs. D’Alloi, who threw her arms about Watt’s neck, and cried: “Oh! my
+husband. Forgive me, forgive me for the suspicion!”
+
+Peter turned to Celestine. “Madame,” he said. “We are not wanted here.”
+He unlocked the door into the hall, and stood aside while she passed
+out, which she did quietly. Another moment found the two on the
+sidewalk. “I will walk with you to your hotel, if you will permit me?”
+Peter said to her.
+
+“Certainly,” Celestine replied. Nothing more was said in the walk of
+ten blocks. When they reached the hotel entrance, Peter asked: “Can you
+see me for a few moments?”
+
+“Yes. Come to my private parlor.” They took the elevator, and were but
+a moment in reaching that apartment.
+
+Peter spoke the moment the door was closed. “Madame,” he said, “you saw
+that scene. Spare his wife and child? He is not worth your anger.”
+
+“Ah, Ciel!” cried Celestine, emotionally. “Do you think so lowly of me,
+that you can imagine I would destroy your sacrifice? Your romantic,
+your dramatic, _mon Dieu!_ your noble sacrifice? Non, non. Celestine
+Lacour could never do so. She will suffer cruelty, penury, insults,
+before she behaves so shamefully, so perfidiously.”
+
+Peter did not entirely sympathize with the Frenchwoman’s admiration for
+the dramatic element, but he was too good a lawyer not to accept an
+admission, no matter upon what grounds. He held out his hand promptly.
+“Madame,” he said, “accept my thanks and admiration for your generous
+conduct.”
+
+Celestine took it and shook it warmly.
+
+“Of course,” said Peter. “Mr. D’Alloi owes you an ample income.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Celestine, shrugging her shoulders. “Do not talk of him—I
+leave it to you to make him do what is right.”
+
+“And you will return to France?”
+
+“Yes, yes. If you say so?” Celestine looked at Peter in a manner known
+only to the Latin races. Just then a side door was thrown open, and a
+boy of about twelve years of age dashed into the room, followed by a
+French poodle.
+
+“Little villain!” cried Celestine. “How dare you approach without
+knocking? Go. Go. Quickly.”
+
+“Pardon, Madame,” said the child. “I thought you still absent.”
+
+“Is that the child?” asked Peter.
+
+“Yes,” said Celestine.
+
+“Does he know?”
+
+“Nothing. I do not tell him even that I am his mother.”
+
+“Then you are not prepared to give him a mother’s care and tenderness?”
+
+“Never. I love him not. He is too like his father. And I cannot have it
+known that I am the mother of a child of twelve. It would not be
+believed, even.” Celestine took a look at herself in the tall mirror.
+
+“Then I suppose you would like some arrangement about him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Peter stayed for nearly an hour with the woman. He stayed so long, that
+for one of the few times in his life he was late at a dinner
+engagement. But when he had left Celestine, every detail had been
+settled. Peter did not have an expression of pleasure on his face as he
+rode down-town, nor was he very good company at the dinner which he
+attended that evening.
+
+The next day did not find him in any better mood. He went down-town,
+and called on an insurance company and talked for a while with the
+president. Then he called at a steamship office. After that he spent
+twenty minutes with the head of one of the large schools for boys in
+the city. Then he returned to his office.
+
+“A Mr. D’Alloi is waiting for you in your private office, sir,” he was
+told. “He said that he was an old friend and insisted on going in
+there.”
+
+Peter passed into his office.
+
+Watts cried: “My dear boy, how can I ever—”
+
+He was holding out his hand, but Peter failed to take it, and
+interrupted him.
+
+“I have arranged it all with Madame Lacour,” Peter said coldly. “She
+sails on La Bretagne on Thursday. You are to buy an annuity for three
+thousand dollars a year. In addition, you are to buy an annuity for the
+boy till he is twenty-five, of one thousand dollars a year, payable to
+me as his guardian. This will cost you between forty and fifty thousand
+dollars. I will notify you of the amount when the insurance company
+sends it to me. In return for your check, I shall send you the letters
+and other things you sent Madame Lacour, or burn them, as you direct.
+Except for this the affair is ended. I need not detain you further.”
+
+“Oh, I say, chum. Don’t take it this way,” cried Watts. “Do you
+think—?”
+
+“I end it as suits me,” said Peter. “Good-day.”
+
+“But, at least you must let me pay you a fee for your work?”
+
+Peter turned on Watts quickly, but checked the movement and the words
+on his tongue. He only reiterated. “Good-day.”
+
+“Well, if you will have it so.” Watts went to the door, but hesitated.
+“Just as you please. If, later, you change your mind, send me word. I
+shan’t cherish any feeling for this. I want to be friends.”
+
+“Good-day,” said Peter. Watts passed out, closing the door.
+
+Peter sat down at his desk, doing nothing, for nearly an hour. How long
+he would have sat will never be known, if his brown study had not been
+ended by Rivington’s entrance. “The Appeals have just handed down their
+decision in the Henley case. We win.”
+
+“I thought we should,” said Peter mechanically.
+
+“Why, Peter! What’s the matter with you? You look as seedy as—”
+
+“As I feel,” said Peter. “I’m going to stop work and take a ride, to
+see if I can’t knock some of my dulness out of me.” Within an hour he
+was at the Riding Club.
+
+“Hello,” said the stable man. “Twice in one day! You’re not often here
+at this hour, sir. Which horse will you have?”
+
+“Give me whichever has the most life in him.”
+
+“It’s Mutineer has the devil in him always, sir. Though it’s not
+yourself need fear any horse. Only look out for the ice.”
+
+Peter rode into the Park in ten minutes. He met Lispenard at the first
+turn.
+
+“Hello! It’s not often you are here at this hour.” Lispenard reined his
+horse up alongside.
+
+“No,” said Peter. “I’ve been through a very revolt—a very disagreeable
+experience, and I’ve come up here to get some fresh air. I don’t want
+to be sociable.”
+
+“That’s right. Truthful as ever. But one word before we separate.
+Keppel has just received two proofs of Haden’s last job. He asks awful
+prices for them, but you ought to see them.”
+
+“Thanks.” And the two friends separated as only true friends can
+separate.
+
+Peter rode on, buried in his own thoughts. The park was rather empty,
+for dark comes on early in March, and dusk was already in the air. He
+shook himself presently, and set Mutineer at a sharp canter round the
+larger circle of the bridle path. But before they had half swung the
+circle, he was deep in thought again, and Mutineer was taking his own
+pace. Peter deserved to get a stumble and a broken neck or leg, but he
+didn’t. He was saved from it by an incident which never won any credit
+for its good results to Peter, however much credit it gained him.
+
+Peter was so deeply engrossed in his own thoughts that he did not hear
+the clutter of a horse’s feet behind him, just as he struck the long
+stretch of the comparatively straight path along the Reservoir. But
+Mutineer did, and pricked up his ears. Mutineer could not talk
+articulately, but all true lovers of horses understand their language.
+Mutineer’s cogitations, transmuted into human speech, were something to
+this effect:
+
+“Hello! What’s that horse trying to do? He can’t for a moment expect to
+pass me!”
+
+But the next moment a roan mare actually did pass him, going at a swift
+gallop.
+
+Mutineer laid his ears back, “The impudence!” he said. “Does that
+little whiffet of a roan mare think she’s going to show me her heels?
+I’ll teach her!” It is a curious fact that both the men and horses who
+are most seldom passed by their kind, object to it most when it
+happens.
+
+Peter suddenly came back to affairs earthly to find Mutineer just
+settling into a gait not permitted by Park regulations. He drew rein,
+and Mutineer, knowing that the fun was up, danced round the path in his
+bad temper.
+
+“Really,” he said to himself, “if I wasn’t so fond of you, I’d give you
+and that mare, an awful lesson. Hello! not another? This is too much!”
+
+The last remarks had relation to more clattering of hoofs. In a moment
+a groom was in view, going also at a gallop.
+
+“Hout of the way,” cried the groom, to Peter, for Mutineer was waltzing
+round the path in a way that suggested “no thoroughfare.” “Hi’m after
+that runaway.”
+
+Peter looked after the first horse, already a hundred feet away. He
+said nothing to groom nor horse, but Mutineer understood the sudden
+change in the reins, even before he felt that maddening prick of the
+spurs. There was a moment’s wild grinding of horse’s feet on the
+slippery road and then Mutineer had settled to his long, tremendous
+stride.
+
+“Now, I’ll show you,” he remarked, “but if only he wouldn’t hold me so
+damned tight.” We must forgive Mutineer for swearing. He lived so much
+with the stablemen, that, gentleman though he was, evil communications
+could not be entirely resisted.
+
+Peter was riding “cool.” He knew he could run the mare down, but he
+noticed that the woman, who formed the mount, was sitting straight, and
+he could tell from the position of her elbows that she was still
+pulling on her reins, if ineffectually. He thought it best therefore to
+let the mare wind herself before he forced himself up, lest he should
+only make the runaway horse the wilder. So after a hundred yards’ run,
+he drew Mutineer down to the mare’s pace, about thirty feet behind her.
+
+They ran thus for another hundred yards. Then suddenly Peter saw the
+woman drop her reins, and catch at the saddle. His quick eye told him
+in a moment what had happened. The saddle-girth had broken, or the
+saddle was turning. He dug his spurs into Mutineer, so that the horse,
+who had never had such treatment, thought that he had been touched by
+two branding irons. He gave a furious shake of his ears, and really
+showed the blood of his racing Kentucky forebears. In fifteen seconds
+the horse was running even with the mare.
+
+Peter had intended merely to catch the reins of the runaway, trusting
+to his strength to do what a woman’s could not. But when he came up
+alongside, he saw that the saddle had turned so far that the rider
+could not keep her seat ten seconds longer. So he dropped his reins,
+bent over, and putting his arms about the woman lifted her off the
+precarious seat, and put her in front of him. He held her there with
+one arm, and reached for his reins. But Mutineer had tossed them over
+his head.
+
+“Mutineer!” said Peter, with an inflection of voice decidedly
+commanding.
+
+“I covered a hundred yards to your seventy,” Mutineer told the roan
+mare. “On a mile track I could go round you twice, without getting out
+of breath. I could beat you now, even with double mount easily. But my
+Peter has dropped the reins and that puts me on my honor. Good-bye.”
+Mutineer checked his great racing stride, broke to a canter; dropped to
+a trot; altered that to a walk, and stopped.
+
+Peter had been rather astonished at the weight he had lifted. Peter had
+never lifted a woman before. His chief experience in the weight of
+human-kind had been in wrestling matches at the armory, and only the
+largest and most muscular men in the regiment cared to try a bout with
+him. Of course Peter knew as a fact that women were lighter than men,
+but after bracing himself, much as he would have done to try the
+cross-buttock with two hundred pounds of bone and brawn, he marvelled
+much at the ease with which he transferred the rider. “She can’t weigh
+over eighty pounds,” he thought. Which was foolish, for the woman
+actually weighed one hundred and eighteen, as Peter afterwards learned.
+
+The woman also surprised Peter in another way. Scarcely had she been
+placed in front of him, than she put her arms about his neck and buried
+her face in his shoulder. She was not crying, but she was drawing her
+breath in great gasps in a manner which scared Peter terribly. Peter
+had never had a woman cling to him in that way, and frightened as he
+was, he made three very interesting discoveries:
+
+1. That a man’s shoulder seems planned by nature as a resting place for
+a woman’s head.
+
+2. That a man’s arm about a woman’s waist is a very pleasant position
+for the arm.
+
+3. That a pair of woman’s arms round a man’s neck, with the clasped
+hands, even if gloved, just resting on the back of his neck, is very
+satisfying.
+
+Peter could not see much of the woman. His arm told him that she was
+decidedly slender, and he could just catch sight of a small ear and a
+cheek, whose roundness proved the youth of the person. Otherwise he
+could only see a head of very pretty brown hair, the smooth dressing of
+which could not entirely conceal its longing to curl.
+
+When Mutineer stopped, Peter did not quite know what to do. Of course
+it was his duty to hold the woman till she recovered herself. That was
+a plain duty—and pleasant. Peter said to himself that he really was
+sorry for her, and thought his sensations were merely the satisfaction
+of a father in aiding his daughter. We must forgive his foolishness,
+for Peter had never been a father, and so did not know the parental
+feeling.
+
+It had taken Mutineer twenty seconds to come to a stand, and for ten
+seconds after, no change in the condition occurred. Then suddenly the
+woman stopped her gasps. Peter, who was looking down at her, saw the
+pale cheek redden. The next moment, the arms were taken from his neck
+and the woman was sitting up straight in front of him. He got a
+downward look at the face, and he thought it was the most charming he
+had ever seen.
+
+The girl kept her eyes lowered, while she said firmly, though with
+traces of breathlessness and tremulo in her voice, “Please help me
+down.”
+
+Peter was out of his saddle in a moment, and lifted the girl down. She
+staggered slightly on reaching the ground, so that Peter said: “You had
+better lean on me.”
+
+“No,” said the girl, still looking down, “I will lean against the
+horse.” She rested against Mutineer, who looked around to see who was
+taking this insulting liberty with a Kentucky gentleman. Having looked
+at her he said: “You’re quite welcome, you pretty dear!” Peter thought
+he would like to be a horse, but then it occurred to him that equines
+could not have had what he had just had, so he became reconciled to his
+lot.
+
+The girl went on flushing, even after she was safely leaning against
+Mutineer. There was another ten seconds’ pause, and then she said,
+still with downcast eyes, “I was so frightened, that I did not know
+what I was doing.”
+
+“You behaved very well,” said Peter, in the most comforting voice he
+could command. “You held your horse splendidly.”
+
+“I wasn’t a bit frightened, till the saddle began to turn.” The girl
+still kept her eyes on the ground, and still blushed. She was
+undergoing almost the keenest mortification possible for a woman. She
+had for a moment been horrified by the thought that she had behaved in
+this way to a groom. But a stranger—a gentleman—was worse! She had not
+looked at Peter’s face, but his irreproachable riding-rig had been
+noticed. “If it had only been a policeman,” she thought. “What can I
+say to him?”
+
+Peter saw the mortification without quite understanding it. He knew,
+however, it was his duty to ease it, and took the best way by giving
+her something else to think about.
+
+“As soon as you feel able to walk, you had better take my arm. We can
+get a cab at the 72d Street entrance, probably. If you don’t feel able
+to walk, sit down on that stone, and I’ll bring a cab. It oughtn’t to
+take me ten minutes.”
+
+“You are very good,” said the girl, raising her eyes, and taking a look
+at Peter’s face for the first time.
+
+A thrill went through Peter.
+
+The girl had slate-colored eyes!!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+A DREAM.
+
+
+Something in Peter’s face seemed to reassure the girl, for though she
+looked down after the glance, she ceased leaning against the horse, and
+said, “I behaved very foolishly, of course. Now I will do whatever you
+think best.”
+
+Before Peter had recovered enough from his thrill to put what he
+thought into speech, a policeman came riding towards them, leading the
+roan mare. “Any harm done?” he called.
+
+“None, fortunately. Where can we get a cab? Or can you bring one here?”
+
+“I’m afraid there’ll be none nearer than Fifty-ninth Street. They leave
+the other entrances before it’s as dark as this.”
+
+“Never mind the cab,” said the girl. “If you’ll help me to mount, I’ll
+ride home.”
+
+“That’s the pluck!” said the policeman.
+
+“Do you think you had better?” asked Peter.
+
+“Yes. I’m not a bit afraid. If you’ll just tighten the girth.”
+
+It seemed to Peter he had never encountered such a marvellously
+fascinating combination as was indicated by the clinging position of a
+minute ago and the erect one of the present moment. He tightened the
+girth with a pull that made the roan mare wonder if a steam-winch had
+hold of the end, and then had the pleasure of the little foot being
+placed in his hand for a moment, as he lifted the girl into the saddle.
+
+“I shall ride with you,” he said, mounting instantly.
+
+“Beg pardon,” said the policeman. “I must take your names. We are
+required to report all such things to headquarters.”
+
+“Why, Williams, don’t you know me?” asked Peter.
+
+Williams looked at Peter, now for the first time on a level with him.
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Stirling. It was so dark, and you are so seldom
+here afternoons that I didn’t know you.”
+
+“Tell the chief that this needn’t go on record, nor be given to the
+reporters.”
+
+“Very well, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the girl in a frank yet shy way, “but will
+you tell me your first name?”
+
+Peter was rather astonished, but he said “Peter.”
+
+“Oh!” cried the girl, looking Peter in the face. “I understand it now.
+I didn’t think I could behave so to a stranger! I must have felt it was
+you.” She was smiling joyfully, and she did not drop her eyes from his.
+On the contrary she held out her hand to him.
+
+Of course Peter took it. He did not stop to ask if it was right or
+wrong to hold a young girl’s hand. If it was wrong, it was certainly a
+very small one, judging from the size of the hand.
+
+“I was so mortified! But if it’s you it’s all right.”
+
+Peter thought this mood of the girl was both delightful and
+complimentary, but he failed to understand anything of it, except its
+general friendliness. His manner may have suggested this, for suddenly
+the girl said:
+
+“But of course, you do not know who I am? How foolish of me! I am
+Leonore D’Alloi.”
+
+It was Peter’s turn to gasp. “Not—?” he began and then stopped.
+
+“Yes,” said the girl joyfully, as if Peter’s “not” had had something
+delightful in it.
+
+“But—she’s a child.”
+
+“I’ll be eighteen next week,” said Leonore, with all the readiness of
+that number of years to proclaim its age.
+
+Peter concluded that he must accept the fact. Watts could have a child
+that old. Having reached this conclusion, he said, “I ought to have
+known you by your likeness to your mother.” Which was an unintentional
+lie. Her mother’s eyes she had, as well as the long lashes; and she had
+her mother’s pretty figure, though she was taller. But otherwise she
+was far more like Watts. Her curly hair, her curvy mouth, the dimple,
+and the contour of the face were his. Leonore D’Alloi was a far greater
+beauty than her mother had ever been. But to Peter, it was merely a
+renewal of his dream.
+
+Just at this point the groom rode up. “Beg pardon, Miss D’Alloi,” he
+said, touching his cap. “My ’orse went down on a bit of hice.”
+
+“You are not hurt, Belden?” said Miss D’Alloi.
+
+Peter thought the anxious tone heavenly. He rather wished he had broken
+something himself.
+
+“No. Nor the ’orse.”
+
+“Then it’s all right. Mr. Stirling, we need not interrupt your ride.
+Belden will see me home.”
+
+Belden see her home! Peter would see him do it! That was what Peter
+thought. He said, “I shall ride with you, of course.” So they started
+their horses, the groom dropping behind.
+
+“Do you want to try it again?” asked Mutineer of the roan.
+
+“No,” said the mare. “You are too big and strong.”
+
+Leonore was just saying: “I could hear the pound of a horse’s feet
+behind me, but I thought it was the groom, and knew he could never
+overtake Fly-away. So when I felt the saddle begin to slip, I thought I
+was—was going to be dragged—as I once saw a woman in England—Oh!—and
+then suddenly I saw a horse’s head, and then I felt some one take hold
+of me so firmly that I didn’t have to hold myself at all, and I knew I
+was safe. Oh, how nice it is to be big and strong!”
+
+Peter thought so too.
+
+So it is the world over. Peter and Mutineer felt happy and proud in
+their strength, and Leonore and Fly-away glorified them for it. Yet in
+spite of this, as Peter looked down at the curly head, from his own and
+Mutineers altitude, he felt no superiority, and knew that the slightest
+wish expressed by that small mouth, would be as strong with him as if a
+European army obeyed its commands.
+
+“What a tremendous horse you have?” said Leonore. “Isn’t he?” assented
+Peter. “He’s got a bad temper, I’m sorry to say, but I’m very fond of
+him. He was given me by my regiment, and was the choice of a very dear
+friend now dead.”
+
+“Who was that?”
+
+“No one you know. A Mr. Costell.”
+
+“Oh, yes I do. I’ve heard all about him.”
+
+“What do you know of Mr. Costell?”
+
+“What Miss De Voe told me.”
+
+“Miss De Voe?”
+
+“Yes. We saw her both times in Europe. Once at Nice, and once in—in
+1882—at Maggiore. The first time, I was only six, but she used to tell
+me stories about you and the little children in the angle. The last
+time she told me all she could remember about you. We used to drift
+about the lake moonlight nights, and talk about you.”
+
+“What made that worth doing to you?”
+
+“Oh from the very beginning, that I can remember, papa was always
+talking about ‘dear old Peter’”—the talker said the last three words in
+such a tone, shot such a look up at Peter, half laughing and half
+timid, that in combination they nearly made Peter reel in his
+saddle—“and you seemed almost the only one of his friends he did speak
+of, so I became very curious about you as a little girl, and then Miss
+De Voe made me more interested, so that I began questioning Americans,
+because I was really anxious to learn things concerning you. Nearly
+every one did know something, so I found out a great deal about you.”
+
+Peter was realizing for the first time in his life, how champagne made
+one feel.
+
+“Tell me whom you found who knew anything about me?”
+
+“Oh, nearly everybody knew something. That is, every one we’ve met in
+the last five years. Before that, there was Miss De Voe, and grandpapa,
+of course, when he came over in 1879—”
+
+“But,” interrupted Peter, “I don’t think I had met him once before that
+time, except at the Shrubberies.”
+
+“No, he hadn’t seen you. But he knew a lot about you, from Mr. Lapharn
+and Mr. Avery, and some other men who had met you.”
+
+“Who else?”
+
+“Miss Leroy, mamma’s bridesmaid, who spent two weeks at our villa near
+Florence, and Dr. Purple, your clergyman, who was in the same house
+with us at Ober-Ammergau, and—and—oh the best were Mr. and Mrs.
+Rivington. They were in Jersey, having their honeymoon. They told me
+more than all the rest put together.”
+
+“I feel quite safe in their hands. Dorothy and I formed a mutual
+admiration society a good many years ago.”
+
+“She and Mr. Rivington couldn’t say enough good of you.”
+
+“You must make allowance for the fact that they were on their wedding
+journey, and probably saw everything rose-colored.”
+
+“That was it. Dorothy told me about your giving Mr. Rivington a full
+partnership, in order that Mr. Ogden should give his consent.”
+
+Peter laughed.
+
+“Ray swore that he wouldn’t tell. And Dorothy has always appeared
+ignorant. And yet she knew it on her wedding trip.”
+
+“She couldn’t help it. She said she must tell some one, she was so
+happy. So she told mamma and me. She showed us your photograph. Papa
+and mamma said it was like you, but I don’t think it is.”
+
+Again Leonore looked up at him. Leonore, when she glanced at a man, had
+the same frank, fearless gaze that her mother had of yore. But she did
+not look as often nor as long, and did not seem so wrapped up in the
+man’s remarks when she looked. We are afraid even at seventeen that
+Leonore had discovered that she had very fetching eyes, and did not
+intend to cheapen them, by showing them too much. During the whole of
+this dialogue, Peter had had only “come-and-go” glimpses of those eyes.
+He wanted to see more of them. He longed to lean over and turn the face
+up and really look down into them. Still, he could see the curly hair,
+and the little ear, and the round of the cheek, and the long lashes.
+For the moment Peter did not agree with Mr. Weller that “life isn’t all
+beer and skittles.”
+
+“I’ve been so anxious to meet you. I’ve begged papa ever since we
+landed to take me to see you. And he’s promised me, over and over
+again, to do it, but something always interfered. You see, I felt very
+strange and—and queer, not knowing people of my own country, and I felt
+that I really knew you, and wouldn’t have to begin new as I do with
+other people. I do so dread next winter when I’m to go into society. I
+don’t know what I shall do, I’ll not know any one.”
+
+“You’ll know me.”
+
+“But you don’t go into society.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I do. Sometimes, that is. I shall probably go more next
+winter. I’ve shut myself up too much.” This was a discovery of Peter’s
+made in the last ten seconds.
+
+“How nice that will be! And will you promise to give me a great deal of
+attention?”
+
+“You’ll probably want very little. I don’t dance.” Peter suddenly
+became conscious that Mr. Weller was right.
+
+“But you can learn. Please. I do so love valsing.”
+
+Peter almost reeled again at the thought of waltzing with Leonore. Was
+it possible life had such richness in it? Then he said with a bitter
+note in his voice very unusual to him:
+
+“I’m afraid I’m too old to learn.”
+
+“Not a bit,” said Leonore. “You don’t look any older than lots of men
+I’ve seen valsing. Young men I mean. And I’ve seen men seventy years
+old dancing in Europe.”
+
+Whether Peter could have kept his seat much longer is to be questioned.
+But fortunately for him, the horses here came to a stop in front of a
+stable.
+
+“Why,” said Leonore, “here we are already! What a short ride it has
+been.”
+
+Peter thought so too, and groaned over the end of it. But then he
+suddenly remembered that Leonore was to be lifted from her horse. He
+became cold with the thought that she might jump before he could get to
+her, and he was off his horse and by her side with the quickness of a
+military training. He put his hands up, and for a moment had—well,
+Peter could usually express himself but he could not put that moment
+into words. And it was not merely that Leonore had been in his arms for
+a moment, but that he had got a good look up into her eyes.
+
+“I wish you would take my horse round to the Riding Club,” he told the
+groom. “I wish to see Miss D’Alloi home.”
+
+“Thank you very much, but my maid is here in the brougham, so I need
+not trouble you. Good-bye, and thank you. Oh, thank you so much!” She
+stood very close to Peter, and looked up into his eyes with her own.
+“There’s no one I would rather have had save me.”
+
+She stepped into the brougham, and Peter closed the door. He mounted
+his horse again, and straightening himself up, rode away.
+
+“Hi thought,” remarked the groom to the stableman, “that ’e didn’t know
+’ow to sit ’is ’orse, but ’e’s all right, arter all. ’E rides like ha
+’orse guards capting, w’en ’e don’t ’ave a girl to bother ’im.”
+
+Would that girl bother him?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+“FRIENDS.”
+
+
+At first blush, judging from Peter’s behavior, the girl was not going
+to bother him. Peter left his horse at the stable, and taking a hansom,
+went to his club. There he spent a calm half hour over the evening
+papers. His dinner was eaten with equal coolness. Not till he had
+reached his study did he vary his ordinary daily routine. Then, instead
+of working or reading, he rolled a comfortable chair up to the fire,
+put on a fresh log or two, opened a new box of Bock’s, and lighting
+one, settled back in the chair. How many hours he sat and how many
+cigars he smoked are not recorded, lest the statement should make
+people skeptical of the narrative.
+
+Of course Peter knew that life had not lost its troubles. He was not
+fooling himself as to what lay before him. He was not callous to the
+sufferings already endured. But he put them, past, and to come, from
+him for one evening, and sat smoking lazily with a dreamy look on his
+face. He had lately been studying the subject of Asiatic cholera, but
+he did not seem to be thinking of that. He had just been through what
+he called a “revolting experience,” but it is doubtful if he was
+thinking of that. Whatever his thoughts were, they put a very different
+look on his face than that which it used to wear while he studied blank
+walls.
+
+When Peter sat down, rather later than usual at his office desk the
+next morning, he took a sheet of paper, and wrote, “Dear sir,” upon it.
+Then he tore it up. He took another and wrote, “My dear Mr. D’Alloi.”
+He tore that up. Another he began, “Dear Watts.” A moment later it was
+in the paper basket. “My dear friend,” served to bring a similar fate
+to the fourth. Then Peter rose and strolled about his office aimlessly.
+Finally he went out into a gallery running along the various rooms,
+and, opening a door, put his head in.
+
+“You hypocritical scoundrel,” he said. “You swore to me that you would
+never tell a living soul.”
+
+“Well?” came a very guilty voice back.
+
+“And Dorothy’s known all this time.”
+
+Dead silence.
+
+“And you’ve both been as innocent as—as you were guilty.”
+
+“Look here, Peter, I can’t make you understand, because you’ve—you’ve
+never been on a honeymoon. Really, old fellow, I was so happy over your
+generosity in giving me a full share, when I didn’t bring a tenth of
+the business, and so happy over Dorothy, that If I hadn’t told her, I
+should have simply—bust. She swore she’d never tell. And now she’s told
+you!”
+
+“No, but she told some one else.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then she’s broken her word. She—”
+
+“The Pot called the Kettle black.”
+
+“But to tell one’s own wife is different. I thought she could keep a
+secret.”
+
+“How can you expect a person to keep a secret when you can’t keep it
+yourself?” Peter and Ray were both laughing.
+
+Ray said to himself, “Peter has some awfully knotty point on hand, and
+is resting the brain tissue for a moment.” Ray had noticed, when Peter
+interrupted him during office hours, on matters not relating to
+business, that he had a big or complex question in hand.
+
+Peter closed the door and went back to his room. Then he took a fifth
+sheet of paper, and wrote:
+
+
+“WATTS: A day’s thought has brought a change of feeling on my part.
+Neither can be the better for alienation or unkind thoughts. I regret
+already my attitude of yesterday. Let us cancel all that has happened
+since our college days, and put aside as if it had never occurred.
+
+“PETER”
+
+
+Just as he had finished this, his door opened softly. ‘Peter did not
+hear it, but took the letter up and read it slowly.
+
+“Boo!”
+
+Peter did not jump at the Boo. He looked up very calmly, but the moment
+he looked up, jump he did. He jumped so that he was shaking hands
+before the impetus was lost.
+
+“This is the nicest kind of a surprise,” he said.
+
+“Bother you, you phlegmatic old cow,” cried a merry voice. “Here we
+have spent ten minutes palavering your boy, in order to make him let us
+surprise you, and then when we spring it on you, you don’t budge.
+Wasn’t it shabby treatment, Dot?”
+
+“You’ve disappointed us awfully, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+Peter was shaking hands more deliberately with Leonore than he had with
+Watts. He had been rather clever in shaking hands with him first, so
+that he need not hurry himself over the second. So he had a very nice
+moment—all too short—while Leonore’s hand lay in his. He said, in order
+to prolong the moment, without making it too marked, “It will take
+something more frightful than you, Miss D’Alloi, to make me jump.” Then
+Peter was sorry he had said it, for Leonore dropped her eyes.
+
+“Now, old man, give an account of yourself.” Watts was speaking
+jauntily, but not quite as easily as he usually did. “Here Leonore and
+I waited all last evening, and you never came. So she insisted that we
+come this morning.”
+
+“I don’t understand?” Peter was looking at Leonore as if she had made
+the remark. Leonore was calmly examining Peter’s room.
+
+“Why, even a stranger would have called last night to inquire about
+Dot’s health, after such an accident. But for you not to do it, was
+criminal. If you have aught to say why sentence should not now be
+passed on you, speak now or forever—no—that’s the wedding ceremony,
+isn’t it? Not criminal sentence—though, on second thought, there’s not
+much difference.”
+
+“Did you expect me, Miss D’Alloi?”
+
+Miss D’Alloi was looking at a shelf of law books with her back to
+Peter, and was pretending great interest in them. She did not turn, but
+said “Yes.”
+
+“I wish I had known that,” said Peter, with the sincerest regret in his
+voice.
+
+Miss D’Alloi’s interest in legal literature suddenly ceased. She turned
+and Peter had a momentary glimpse of those wonderful eyes. Either his
+words or tone had evidently pleased Miss D’Alloi. The corners of her
+mouth were curving upwards. She made a deep courtesy to him and said:
+“You will be glad to know, Mr. Stirling, that Miss D’Alloi has suffered
+no serious shock from her runaway, and passed a good night. It seemed
+to Miss D’Alloi that the least return she could make for Mr. Stirling’s
+kindness, was to save him the trouble of coming to inquire about Miss
+D’Alloi’s health, and so leave Mr. Stirling more time to his grimy old
+law books.”
+
+“There, sir, I hope you are properly crushed for your wrong-doing,”
+cried Watts.
+
+“I’m not going to apologize for not coming,” said Peter, “for that is
+my loss; but I can say that I’m sorry.”
+
+“That’s quite enough,” said Leonore. “I thought perhaps you didn’t want
+to be friends. And as I like to have such things right out, I made papa
+bring me down this morning so that I could see for myself.” She spoke
+with a frankness that seemed to Peter heavenly, even while he grew cold
+at the thought that she should for a moment question his desire to be
+friends.
+
+“Of course you and Peter will be friends,” said Watts.
+
+“But mamma told me last night—after we went upstairs, that she was sure
+Mr. Stirling would never call.”
+
+“Never, Dot?” cried Watts.
+
+“Yes. And when I asked her why, she wouldn’t tell me at first, but at
+last she said it was because he was so unsociable. I shan’t be friends
+with any one who won’t come to see me.” Leonore was apparently looking
+at the floor, but from under her lashes she was looking at something
+else.
+
+Whatever Peter may have felt, he looked perfectly cool. Too cool,
+Leonore thought. “I’m not going to make any vows or protestations of
+friendship,” he said, “I won’t even pledge myself to come and see you,
+Miss D’Alloi. Remember, friendship comes from the word free. If we are
+to be friends, we must each leave the other to act freely.”
+
+“Well,” said Leonore, “that is, I suppose, a polite way of saying that
+you don’t intend to come. Now I want to know why you won’t?”
+
+“The reasons will take too long to explain to you now, so I’ll defer
+the telling till the first time I call on you.” Peter was smiling down
+at her.
+
+Miss D’Alloi looked up at Peter, to see what meaning his face gave his
+last remark. Then she held out her two hands. “Of course we are to be
+the best of friends,” she said. Peter got a really good look down into
+those eyes as they shook hands.
+
+The moment this matter had been settled, Leonore’s manner changed. “So
+this is the office of the great Peter Stirling?” she said, with the
+nicest tone of interest in her voice, as it seemed to Peter.
+
+“It doesn’t look it,” said Watts. “By George, with the business people
+say your firm does, you ought to do better than this. It’s worse even
+than our old Harvard quarters, and those were puritanical enough.”
+
+“There is a method in its plainness. If you want style, go into Ogden’s
+and Rivington’s rooms.”
+
+“Why do you have the plain office, Mr. Stirling?”
+
+“I have a lot of plain people to deal with, and so I try to keep my
+room simple, to put them at their ease. I’ve never heard of my losing a
+client yet, because my room is as it is, while I should have frightened
+away some if I had gone in for the same magnificence as my partners.”
+
+“But I say, chum, I should think that is the sort you would want to
+frighten away. There can’t be any money in their business?”
+
+“We weren’t talking of money. We were talking of people. I am very glad
+to say, that with my success, there has been no change in my relations
+with my ward. They all come to me here, and feel perfectly at home,
+whether they come as clients, as co-workers, or merely as friends.”
+
+“Ho, ho,” laughed Watts. “You wily old fox! See the four bare walls.
+The one shelf of law books. The one cheap cabinet of drawers. The four
+simple chairs, and the plain desk. Behold the great politician! The man
+of the people.”
+
+Peter made no reply. But Leonore said to him, “I’m glad you help the
+poor people still, Mr. Stirling,” and gave Peter another glimpse of
+those eyes. Peter didn’t mind after that.
+
+“Look here, Dot,” said Watts. “You mustn’t call chum Mr. Stirling. That
+won’t do. Call him—um—call him Uncle Peter.”
+
+“I won’t,” said Leonore, delighting Peter thereby. “Let me see. What
+shall I call you?” she asked of Peter.
+
+“Honey,” laughed Watts.
+
+“What shall I call you?” Miss D’Alloi put her head on one side, and
+looked at Peter out of the corners of her eyes.
+
+“You must decide that, Miss D’Alloi.”
+
+“I suppose I must. I—think—I—shall—call—you—Peter.” She spoke
+hesitatingly till she said his name, but that went very smoothly. Peter
+on the spot fell in love with the five letters as she pronounced them.
+
+“Plain Peter?” inquired Watts.
+
+“Now what will you call me?”
+
+“Miss D’Alloi,” said Peter.
+
+“No. You—are—to—call—me—call—me—”
+
+“Miss D’Alloi,” re-affirmed Peter.
+
+“Then I will call you Mr. Stirling, Peter.”
+
+“No, you won’t.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because you said you’d call me Peter.”
+
+“But not if you won’t—”
+
+“You made no condition at the time of promise. Shall I show you the
+law?”
+
+“No. And I shall not call you Peter, any more, Peter.”
+
+“Then I shall prosecute you.”
+
+“But I should win the case, for I should hire a friend of mine to
+defend me. A man named Peter.” Leonore sat down in Peter’s chair. “I’m
+going to write him at once about it.” She took one of his printed
+letter sheets and his pen, and, putting the tip of the holder to her
+lips (Peter has that pen still), thought for a moment. Then she wrote:
+
+
+DEAR PETER:
+
+I am threatened with a prosecution. Will you defend me? Address your
+reply to “Dear Leonore.”
+
+LEONORE D’ALLOI.
+
+
+“Now” she said to Peter, “you must write me a letter in reply. Then you
+can have this note.” Leonore rose with the missive in her hand.
+
+“I never answer letters till I’ve received them.” Peter took hold of
+the slender wrist, and possessed himself of the paper. Then he sat down
+at his desk and wrote on another sheet:
+
+
+DEAR MISS D’ALLOI:
+
+I will defend you faithfully and always.
+
+PETER STIRLING
+
+
+“That isn’t what I said,” remarked Miss D’Alloi. “But I suppose it will
+have to do.”
+
+“You forget one important thing.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“My retaining fee.”
+
+“Oh, dear,” sighed Leonore. “My allowance is nearly gone. Don’t you
+ever do work for very, very poor people, for nothing?”
+
+“Not if their poverty is pretence.”
+
+“Oh, but mine isn’t. Really. See. Here is my purse. Look for yourself.
+That’s all I shall have till the first of the month.”
+
+She gave Peter her purse. He was still sitting at his desk, and he very
+deliberately proceeded to empty the contents out on his blotter. He
+handled each article. There was a crisp ten-dollar bill, evidently the
+last of those given by the bank at the beginning of the month. There
+were two one-dollar bills. There was a fifty-cent piece, two quarters
+and a dime. A gold German twenty-mark piece, about eight inches of
+narrow crimson ribbon, and a glove button, completed the contents.
+Peter returned the American money and the glove button to the purse and
+handed it back to Miss D’Alloi.
+
+“You’ve forgotten the ribbon and the gold piece,” said Leonore.
+
+“You were never more mistaken in your life,” replied Peter, with
+anything but legal guardedness concerning unprovable statements. He
+folded up the ribbon neatly and put it, with the coin, in his waistcoat
+pocket.
+
+“Oh,” said Leonore, “I can’t let you have that That’s my luck-piece.”
+
+“Is it?” Peter expressed much surprise blended with satisfaction in his
+tone.
+
+“Yes. You don’t want to take my good luck.”
+
+“I will think it over, and write you a legal opinion later.
+
+“Please!” Miss D’Alloi pleaded.
+
+“That is just what I have succeeded in doing—for myself.”
+
+“But I want my luck-piece. I found it in a crack of the rocks crossing
+the Ghemi. And I must have the ribbon. I need it to match for a gown it
+goes with.” Miss D’Alloi put true anxiety into her voice, whatever she
+really felt.
+
+“I shall be glad to help you match it,” said Peter, “and any time you
+send me word, I will go shopping with you. As for your luck, I shall
+keep that for the present.”
+
+“Now I know,” said Leonore crossly, “why lawyers have such a bad
+reputation. They are perfect thieves!” She looked at Peter with the
+corners of her mouth drawn down. He gazed at her with a very grave look
+on his face. They eyed each other steadily for a moment, and then the
+corners of Leonore’s mouth suddenly curled upwards. She tried hard for
+a moment to keep serious. Then she gave up and laughed. Then they both
+laughed.
+
+Many people will only see an amusing side to the dialogue here so
+carefully recorded. If so, look back to the time when everything that
+he or she said was worth listening to. Or if there has never been a he
+or a she, imitate Peter, and wait. It is worth waiting for.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+THE HERMITAGE.
+
+
+It is not to be supposed from this last reflection of ours, that
+Leonore was not heart-whole. Leonore had merely had a few true friends,
+owing to her roving life, and at seventeen a girl craves friends. When,
+therefore, the return to America was determined upon, she had at once
+decided that Peter and she would be the closest of friends. That she
+would tell him all her confidences, and take all her troubles to him.
+Miss De Voe and Dorothy had told her about Peter, and from their
+descriptions, as well as from her father’s reminiscences, Leonore had
+concluded that Peter was just the friend she had wanted for so long.
+That Leonore held her eyes down, and tried to charm yet tantalize her
+intended friend, was because Leonore could not help it, being only
+seventeen and a girl. If Leonore had felt anything but a friendly
+interest and liking, blended with much curiosity, in Peter, she never
+would have gone to see him in his office, and would never have talked
+and laughed so frankly with him.
+
+As for Peter, he did not put his feelings into good docketed shape. He
+did not attempt to label them at all. He had had a delicious half-hour
+yesterday. He had decided, the evening before, that he must see those
+slate-colored eyes again, if he had to go round the world in pursuit of
+them. How he should do it, he had not even thought out, till the next
+morning. He had understood very clearly that the owner of those
+slate-colored eyes was really an unknown quantity to him. He had
+understood, too, that the chances were very much against his caring to
+pursue those eyes after he knew them better. But he was adamant that he
+must see those eyes again, and prove for himself whether they were but
+an _ignis fatuus_, or the radiant stars that Providence had cast for
+the horoscope of Peter Stirling. He was studying those eyes, with their
+concomitants, at the present time. He was studying them very coolly, to
+judge from his appearance and conduct. Yet he was enjoying the study in
+a way that he had never enjoyed the study of somebody “On Torts.”
+Somebody “On Torts,” never looked like that. Somebody “On Torts,” never
+had luck-pieces, and silk ribbons. Somebody “On Torts,” never wrote
+letters and touched the end of pens to its lips. Somebody “On Torts,”
+never courtesied, nor looked out from under its eyelashes, nor called
+him Peter.
+
+While this investigation had been progressing, Watts had looked at the
+shelf of law books, had looked out of the window, had whistled, and had
+yawned. Finally, in sheer _ennui_ he had thrown open a door, and looked
+to see what lay beyond.
+
+“Ha, ha!” he cried. “All is discovered. See! Here sits Peter Stirling,
+the ward politician, enthroned in Jeffersonian simplicity. But here,
+behind the arras, sits Peter Stirling, the counsellor of banks and
+railroads, in the midst of all the gorgeousness of the golden East.”
+Watts passed into the room beyond.
+
+“What does he mean, Peter?”
+
+“He has gone into my study. Would you like—”
+
+He was interrupted by Watts calling, “Come in here, Dot, and see how
+the unsociable old hermit bestows himself.”
+
+So Leonore and Peter followed Watts’s lead. The room into which they
+went was rather a curious one. It was at least twenty-five feet square,
+having four windows, two looking out on Broadway, and two on the side
+street. It had one other door besides that by which they had entered.
+Here the ordinary quality ended. Except for the six openings already
+noted and a large fireplace, the walls were shelved from floor to
+ceiling (which was not a low one), with dusky oak shelving. The ceiling
+was panelled in dark oak, and the floor was covered with a smooth
+surface of the same wood. Yet though the shelves were filled with
+books, few could be seen, for on every upright of the shelving, were
+several frames of oak, hinged as one sees them in public galleries
+occasionally, and these frames contained etchings, engravings, and
+paintings. Some were folded back against the shelves. Others stood out
+at right angles to them and showed that the frames were double ones,
+both sides containing something. Four easy-chairs, three less easy
+chairs, and a large table desk, likewise of dusky oak were the sole
+other fittings of the room, if we except two large polar bear skins.
+
+“Oh,” cried Leonore looking about, “I’m so glad to see this. People
+have told me so much about your rooms. And no two of them ever agreed.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “It seems a continual bone of contention with my
+friends. They scold me because I shelved it to the ceiling, because I
+put in one-colored wood, because I framed my pictures and engravings
+this way, and because I haven’t gone in for rugs, and bric-à-brac, and
+the usual furnishings. At times I have really wondered, from their
+determination to change things, whether it was for them to live in, or
+for my use?”
+
+“It is unusual,” said Leonore, reluctantly, and evidently selecting a
+word that should not offend Peter.
+
+“You ought to be hung for treating fine pictures so,” said Watts.
+
+“I had to give them those broad flat mats, because the books gave no
+background.”
+
+“It’s—it’s—” Leonore hesitated. “It’s not so startling, after a
+moment.”
+
+“You see they had to hang this way, or go unhung. I hadn’t wall space
+for both pictures and books. And by giving a few frames a turn,
+occasionally, I can always have fresh pictures to look at.”
+
+“Look here, Dot, here’s a genuine Rembrandt’s ‘Three Crosses,’” called
+Watts. “I didn’t know, old man, that you were such a connoisseur.”
+
+“I’m not,” said Peter. “I’m fond of such things, but I never should
+have had taste or time to gather these.”
+
+“Then how did you get them?”
+
+“A friend of mine—a man of exquisite taste—gathered them. He lost his
+money, and I bought them of him.”
+
+“That was Mr. Le Grand?” asked Leonore, ceasing her study of the “Three
+Crosses.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Mrs. Rivington told me about it.”
+
+“It must have been devilish hard for him to part with such a
+collection,” said Watts.
+
+“He hasn’t really parted with them. He comes down here constantly, and
+has a good time over them. It was partly his scheme to arrange them
+this way.”
+
+“And are the paintings his, too, Peter?”
+
+Peter could have hugged her for the way she said Peter. “No,” he
+managed to remark. “I bought some of them, and Miss De Voe and
+Lispenard Ogden the others. People tell me I spoil them by the flat
+framing, and the plain, broad gold mats. But it doesn’t spoil them to
+me. I think the mixture of gold mats and white mats breaks the
+monotony. And the variation just neutralizes the monotone which the
+rest of the room has. But of course that is my personal equation.”
+
+“Then this room is the real taste of the ‘plain man,’ eh?” inquired
+Watts.
+
+“Really, papa, it is plain. Just as simple as can be.”
+
+“Simple! Yes, sweet simplicity! Three-thousand-dollar-etching
+simplicity! Millet simplicity! Oh, yes. Peter’s a simple old dog.”
+
+“No, but the woodwork and the furniture. Isn’t this an enticing chair?
+I must try it.” And Leonore almost dissolved from view in its depths.
+Peter has that chair still. He would probably knock the man down who
+offered to buy it.
+
+It occurred to Peter that since Leonore was so extremely near the
+ground, and was leaning back so far, that she could hardly help but be
+looking up. So he went and stood in front of the fireplace, and looked
+down at her. He pretended that his hands were cold. Watts perhaps was
+right. Peter was not as simple as people thought.
+
+It seemed to Peter that he had never had so much to see, all at once,
+in his life. There were the occasional glimpses of the eyes (for
+Leonore, in spite of her position, did manage to cover the larger part
+of them) not one of which must be missed. Then there was her mouth.
+That would have been very restful to the eye; if it hadn’t been for the
+distracting chin below it. Then there were the little feet, just
+sticking out from underneath the tailor-made gown, making Peter think
+of Herrick’s famous lines. Finally there were those two hands! Leonore
+was very deliberately taking off her gloves. Peter had not seen those
+hands ungloved yet, and waited almost breathlessly for the unveiling.
+He decided that he must watch and shake hands at parting before Leonore
+put those gloves on again.
+
+“I say,” said Watts, “how did you ever manage to get such a place
+here?”
+
+“I was a tenant for a good many years of the insurance company that
+owns the building, and when it came to rebuild, it had the architect
+fit this floor for me just as I wished it. So I put our law-offices in
+front and arranged my other rooms along the side street. Would you like
+to see them?” Peter asked this last question very obviously of Leonore.
+
+“Very much.”
+
+So they passed through the other door, to a little square hall, lighted
+by a skylight, with a stairway going up to the roof.
+
+“I took the upper floor, so as to get good air and the view of the city
+and the bay, which is very fine,” Peter said. “And I have a staircase
+to the roof, so that in good weather I can go up there.”
+
+“I wondered what the great firm was doing up ten stories,” said Watts.
+
+“Ogden and Rivington have been very good in yielding to my
+idiosyncracies. This is my mealing closet.”
+
+It was a room nine feet square, panelled, ceiled and floored in
+mahogany, and the table and six chairs were made of the same material.
+
+“So this is what the papers call the ‘Stirling political incubator?’ It
+doesn’t look like a place for hatching dark plots,” said Watts.
+
+“Sometimes I have a little dinner here. Never more than six, however,
+for it’s too small.”
+
+“I say, Dot, doesn’t this have a jolly cosy feeling? Couldn’t one sit
+here blowy nights, with the candles lit, eating nuts and telling
+stories? It makes me think of the expression, ‘snug as a bug.’”
+
+“Miss Leroy told me, Peter, what a reputation your dinners had, and how
+every one was anxious to be invited just once,” said Leonore.
+
+“But not a second time, old man. You caught Dot’s inference, I hope?
+Once is quite enough.”
+
+“Peter, will you invite me some day?”
+
+“Would he?” Peter longed to tell her that the place and everything it
+contained, including its owner—Then Peter said to himself, “You really
+don’t know anything about her. Stop your foolishness.” Still Peter knew
+that—that foolishness was nice. He said, “People only care for my
+dinners because they are few and far between, and their being way down
+here in the city, after business hours, makes them something to talk
+about. Society wants badly something to talk about most of the time. Of
+course, my friends are invited.” Peter looked down at Leonore, and she
+understood, without, his saying so, that she was to be a future guest.
+
+“How do you manage about the prog, chum?”
+
+“Mr. Le Grand had a man—a Maryland darky—whom he turned over to me. He
+looks after me generally, but his true forte is cooking. For oysters
+and fish and game I can’t find his equal. And, as I never attempt very
+elaborate dinners, he cooks and serves for a party of six in very good
+shape. We are not much in haste down here after six, because it’s so
+still and quiet. The hurry’s gone up-town to the social slaves. Suppose
+you stay and try his skill at lunch to-day? My partners generally are
+with me, and Jenifer always has something good for them.”
+
+“By all means,” said Watts.
+
+But Leonore said: “No. We mustn’t make a nuisance of ourselves the
+first time we come.” Peter and Watts tried to persuade her, but she was
+not persuadable. Leonore had no intention, no matter how good a time it
+meant, of lunching sola with four men.
+
+“I think we must be going,” she said.
+
+“You mustn’t go without seeing the rest of my quarters,” said Peter,
+hoping to prolong the visit.
+
+Leonore was complaisant to that extent. So they went into the pantry,
+and Leonore proceeded, apparently, to show her absolute ignorance of
+food matters under the pretext that she was displaying great
+housekeeping knowledge. She told Peter that he ought to keep his
+champagne on ice. “That champagne will spoil if it isn’t kept on ice.”
+She complained because some bottles of Burgundy had dust on them.
+“That’s not merely untidy,” she said, “but it’s bad for the wine. It
+ought to be stood on end, so that the sediment can settle.” She
+criticised the fact that a brace of canvas-backs were on ice. “All your
+game should be hung,” she said. She put her finger or her eyes into
+every drawer and cupboard, and found nothing to praise. She was
+absolutely grave over it, but before long Peter saw the joke and
+entered into it. It was wonderful how good some of the things that she
+touched tasted later.
+
+Then they went into Peter’s sleeping-room, Leonore said it was very
+ordinary, but promptly found two things to interest her.
+
+“Do you take care of your window flowers?”
+
+“No, Mrs. Costell comes down to lunch with me once a week, and potters
+with them. She keeps all the windows full of flowers—perhaps you have
+noticed them in the other rooms, as well?”
+
+“Yes. I liked them, but I didn’t think they could be yours. They grow
+too well for a man.”
+
+“It seems as if Mrs. Costell had only to look at a plant, and it breaks
+out blossoming,” Peter replied.
+
+“What a nice speech,” said Leonore.
+
+“It’s on a nice subject,” Peter told her. “When you have that, it’s
+very easy to make a nice speech.”
+
+“I want to meet Mrs. Costell. I’ve heard all about her.”
+
+The second point of interest concerned the contents of what had
+evidently been planned as an umbrella-stand.
+
+“Why do you have three swords?” she asked, taking the handsomest from
+its resting place.
+
+“So that I can kill more people.”
+
+“Why, Dot, you ought to know that an officer wants a service sword and
+a dress-sword.”
+
+“But these are all dress-swords. I’m afraid you are very proud of your
+majorship.”
+
+Peter only smiled a reply down at her.
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore, “I have found out your weakness at last. You like
+gold lace and fixings.”
+
+Still Peter only smiled.
+
+“This sword is presented to Captain Peter Stirling in recognition of
+his gallant conduct at Hornellsville, July 25, 1877,” Leonore read on
+the scabbard. “What did you do at Hornellsville?”
+
+“Various things.”
+
+“But what did you do to get the sword?”
+
+“My duty!”
+
+“Tell me?”
+
+“I thought you knew all about me.”
+
+“I don’t know this.”
+
+Peter only smiled at her.
+
+“Tell me. If you don’t, somebody else will. Please.”
+
+“Why, Dot, these are all presentation swords.”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter; “and so gorgeous that I don’t dare use them. I keep
+the swords I wear at the armory.”
+
+“Are you going to tell me what you did to get them?”
+
+“That one was given me by my company when I was made captain. That was
+subscribed for by some friends. The one you have was given me by a
+railroad.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For doing my duty.”
+
+“Come, papa. We’ll go home.”
+
+Peter surrendered. “There were some substitutes for strikers in freight
+cars that were fitted up with bunks. The strikers fastened the doors on
+them, and pushed them into a car-shed.”
+
+“And what did you do?”
+
+“We rolled the cars back.”
+
+“I don’t think that was much. Nothing to give a sword for. Now, have
+you anything more to show us?”
+
+“No. I have a spare room, and Jenifer has a kitchen and sleeping place
+beyond, but they are not worth showing.”
+
+They went out into the little square hall, and so into the study.
+Leonore began unfolding her gloves.
+
+“I’ve had a very nice time,” she said. “I think I shall come again very
+often, I like down-town New York.” Leonore was making her first trip to
+it, so that she spoke from vast knowledge.
+
+“I can’t tell you how pleasant it has been to me. It isn’t often that
+such sunshine gets in here,” said Peter.
+
+“Then you do prefer sunshine to grimy old law books?” inquired Leonore,
+smiling demurely.
+
+“Some sunshine,” said Peter, meaningly.
+
+“Wherever there has been sunshine there ought to be lots of flowers. I
+have a good mind—yes, I will—leave you these violets,” Leonore took a
+little bunch that she had worn near her throat and put them and her
+hand in Peter’s. And she hadn’t put her glove on yet! Then she put her
+gloves on, and Peter shook hands. Then he remembered that he ought to
+see them to the elevator, so he took them out—and shook hands again.
+After that he concluded it was his duty to see them to the carriage—and
+he shook hands again.
+
+Peter was not an experienced hand, but he was doing very well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+THE DUDE.
+
+
+Just as Peter came back to his office, his lunch was announced.
+
+“What makes you look so happy?” asked Ray.
+
+“Being so,” said Peter, calmly.
+
+“What a funny old chap he is?” Ray remarked to Ogden, as they went back
+to work. “He brought me his opinion, just after lunch, in the
+Hall-Seelye case. I suppose he had been grubbing all the morning over
+those awful figures, and a tougher or dryer job, you couldn’t make. Yet
+he came in to lunch looking as if he was walking on air.”
+
+When Peter returned to his office, he would have preferred to stop work
+and think for a bit. He wanted to hold those violets, and smell them
+now and then. He wished to read that letter over again. He longed to
+have a look at that bit of ribbon and gold. But he resisted temptation.
+He said: “Peter Stirling, go to work.” So all the treasures were put in
+a drawer of his study table, and Peter sat down at his office desk.
+First, after tearing up his note to Watts, he wrote another, as
+follows:
+
+
+WATTS:
+
+You can understand why I did not call last night, or bind myself as to
+the future. I shall hope to receive an invitation to call from Mrs.
+D’Alloi. How, I must leave to you; but you owe me this much, and it is
+the only payment I ask of you. Otherwise let us bury all that has
+occurred since our college days, forever.
+
+PETER.
+
+
+Then he ground at the law till six, when he swung his clubs and
+dumb-bells for ten minutes; took a shower; dressed himself, and dined.
+Then he went into his study, and opened a drawer. Did he find therein a
+box of cigars, or a bunch of violets, gold-piece, ribbon and sheet of
+paper? One thing is certain. Peter passed another evening without
+reading or working. And two such idle evenings could not be shown in
+another week of his life for the last twenty years.
+
+The next day Peter was considerably nearer earth. Not that he didn’t
+think those eyes just as lovely, and had he been thrown within their
+radius, he would probably have been as strongly influenced as ever. But
+he was not thrown within their influence, and so his strong nature and
+common sense reasserted themselves. He took his coffee, his early
+morning ride, and then his work, in their due order. After dinner, that
+evening, he only smoked one cigar. When he had done that, he remarked
+to himself—apropos of the cigars, presumably—“Peter, keep to your work.
+Don’t burn yourself again.” Then his face grew very firm, and he read a
+frivolous book entitled: “Neun atiologische und prophylactische Satze
+... uber die Choleræpidemien in Ostindien,” till nearly one o’clock.
+
+The following day was Sunday. Peter went to church, and in the
+afternoon rode out to Westchester to pass the evening there with Mrs.
+Costell. Peter thought his balance was quite recovered. Other men have
+said the same thing. The fact that they said so, proved that they were
+by no means sure of themselves.
+
+This was shown very markedly on Monday in Peter’s case, for after lunch
+he did not work as steadily as he had done in the morning hours. He was
+restless. Twice he pressed his lips, and started in to work very, very
+hard—and did it for a time. Then the restlessness would come on again.
+Presently he took to looking at his watch. Then he would snap it to,
+and go to work again, with a great determination in his face, only to
+look at the watch again before long. Finally he touched his bell.
+
+“Jenifer,” he said, “I wish you would rub off my spurs, and clean up my
+riding trousers.”
+
+“For lohd, sar, I done dat dis day yesserday.”
+
+“Never mind, then,” said Peter. “Tell Curzon to ring me up a hansom.”
+
+When Peter rode into the park he did not vacillate. He put his horse at
+a sharp canter, and started round the path. But he had not ridden far
+when he suddenly checked his horse, and reined him up with a couple of
+riders. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said frankly. Peter had not
+ceased to be straightforward.
+
+“Hello! This is nice,” said Watts.
+
+“Don’t you think it’s about time?” said Leonore. Leonore had her own
+opinion of what friendship consisted. She was not angry with Peter—not
+at all. But she did not look at him.
+
+Peter had drawn his horse up to the side on which Leonore was riding.
+“That is just what I thought,” he said deliberately, “and that’s why
+I’m here now.”
+
+“How long ago did that occur to you, please?” said Leonore, with
+dignity.
+
+“About the time it occurred to me that you might ride here regularly
+afternoons.”
+
+“Don’t you?” Leonore was mollifying.
+
+“No. I like the early morning, when there are fewer people.”
+
+“You unsociable old hermit,” exclaimed Watts.
+
+“But now?” asked Leonore.
+
+When Leonore said those two words Peter had not yet had a sight of
+those eyes. And he was getting desperately anxious to see them. So he
+replied: “Now I shall ride in the afternoons.”
+
+He was rewarded by a look. The sweetest kind of a look. “Now, that is
+very nice, Peter,” said Leonore. “If we see each other every day in the
+Park, we can tell each other everything that we are doing or thinking
+about. So we will be very good friends for sure.” Leonore spoke and
+looked as if this was the pleasantest of possibilities, and Peter was
+certain it was.
+
+“I say, Peter,” said Watts. “What a tremendous dude we have come out. I
+wanted to joke you on it the first time I saw you, but this afternoon
+it’s positively appalling. I would have taken my Bible oath that it was
+the last thing old Peter would become. Just look at him, Dot. Doesn’t
+he fill you with ‘wonder, awe and praise?’”
+
+Leonore looked at Peter a little shyly, but she said frankly:
+
+“I’ve wondered about that, Peter. People told me you were a man
+absolutely without style.”
+
+Peter smiled. “Do you remember what Friar Bacon’s brass head said?”
+
+“Time is: Time was: Time will never be again?” asked Leonore.
+
+“That fits my lack of style, I think.”
+
+“Pell and Ogden, and the rest of them, have made you what I never
+could, dig at you as I would. So you’ve yielded to the demands of your
+toney friends?”
+
+“Of course I tried to dress correctly for my up-town friends, when I
+was with them. But it was not they who made me careful, though they
+helped me to find a good tailor, when I decided that I must dress
+better.”
+
+“Then it was the big law practice, eh? Must keep up appearances?”
+
+“I fancy my dressing would no more affect my practice, than does the
+furnishing of my office.”
+
+“Then who is she? Out with it, you sly dog.”
+
+“Of course I shan’t tell you that”
+
+“Peter, will you tell me?” asked Leonore.
+
+Peter smiled into the frank eyes. “Who she is?”
+
+“No. Why you dress so nicely. Please?”
+
+“You’ll laugh when I tell you it is my ward.”
+
+“Oh, nonsense,” laughed Watts. “That’s too thin. Come off that roof.
+Unless you’re guardian of some bewitching girl?”
+
+“Your ward, Peter?”
+
+“Yes. I don’t know whether I can make you understand it. I didn’t at
+first. You see I became associated with the ward, in people’s minds,
+after I had been in politics for a few years. So I was sometimes put in
+positions to a certain extent representative of it. I never thought
+much how I dressed, and it seems that sometimes at public meetings, and
+parades, and that sort of thing, I wasn’t dressed quite as well as the
+other men. So when the people of my ward, who were present, were asked
+to point me out to strangers, they were mortified about the way I
+looked. It seemed to reflect on the ward. The first inkling I had of it
+was after one of these parades, in which, without thinking, I had worn
+a soft hat. I was the only man who did not wear a silk one, and my ward
+felt very badly about it. So they made up a purse, and came to me to
+ask me to buy a new suit and silk hat and gloves. Of course that set me
+asking questions, and though they didn’t want to hurt my feelings, I
+wormed enough out of them to learn how they felt. Since then I’ve spent
+a good deal of money on tailors, and dress very carefully.”
+
+“Good for ‘de sixt’! Hurrah for the unwashed democracy, where one man’s
+as good as another! So a ‘Mick’ ward wants its great man to put on all
+the frills? I tell you, chum, we may talk about equality, but the lower
+classes can’t but admire and worship the tinsel and flummery of
+aristocracy.”
+
+“You are mistaken. They may like to see brilliant sights. Soldiers,
+ball-rooms or the like, and who does not? Beauty is aesthetic, not
+aristocratic. But they judge people less by their dress or money than
+is usually supposed. Far less than the people up-town do. They wanted
+me to dress better, because it was appropriate. But let a man in the
+ward try to dress beyond his station, and he’d be jeered out of it, or
+the ward, if nothing worse happened.”
+
+“Oh, of course they’d hoot at their own kind,” said Watts. “The hardest
+thing to forgive in this world is your equal’s success. But they
+wouldn’t say anything to one of us.”
+
+“If you, or Pell, or Ogden should go into Blunkers’s place in my ward,
+this evening, dressed as you are, or better, you probably would be told
+to get out. I don’t believe you could get a drink. And you would stand
+a chance of pretty rough usage. Last week I went right from a dinner to
+Blunkers’s to say a word to him. I was in evening dress, newcastle, and
+crush hat—even a bunch of lilies of the valley—yet every man there was
+willing to shake hands and have me sit down and stay. Blunkers couldn’t
+have been dressed so, because it didn’t belong to him. For the same
+reason, you would have no business in Blunkers’s place, because you
+don’t belong there. But the men know I dressed for a reason, and came
+to the saloon for a reason. I wasn’t putting on airs. I wasn’t
+intruding my wealth on them.”
+
+“Look here, chum, will you take me into Blunkers’s place some night,
+and let me hear you powwow the ‘b’ys?’ I should like to see how you do
+it.”
+
+“Yes,” Peter said deliberately, “if some night you’ll let me bring
+Blunkers up to watch one of your formal dinners. He would enjoy the
+sight, I’m sure.”
+
+Leonore cocked her little nose up in the air, and laughed merrily.
+
+“Oh, but that’s very different,” said Watts.
+
+“It’s just as different as the two men with the toothache,” said Peter.
+“They both met at the dentist’s, who it seems had only time to pull one
+tooth. The question arose as to which it should be. ‘I’m so brave,’
+said one, ‘that I can wait till to-morrow.’ ‘I’m such a coward,’ said
+the other, ‘that I don’t dare have it done to-day.’”
+
+“Haven’t you ever taken people to those places, Peter?” asked Leonore.
+
+“No. I’ve always refused. It’s a society fad now to have what are
+called ‘slumming parties,’ and of course I’ve been asked to help. It
+makes my blood tingle when I hear them talk over the ‘fun’ as they call
+it. They get detectives to protect them, and then go through the
+tenements—the homes of the poor—and pry into their privacy and poverty,
+just out of curiosity. Then they go home and over a chafing dish of
+lobster or terrapin, and champagne, they laugh at the funny things they
+saw. If the poor could get detectives, and look in on the luxury and
+comfort of the rich, they wouldn’t see much fun in it, and there’s less
+fun in a down-town tenement than there is in a Fifth Avenue palace. I
+heard a girl tell the other night about breaking in on a wake by
+chance. ‘Weren’t we lucky?’ she said. ‘It was so funny to see the poor
+people weeping and drinking whisky at the same time. Isn’t it
+heartless?’ Yet the dead—perhaps the bread-winner of the family, fallen
+in the struggle—perhaps the last little comer, not strong enough to
+fight this earth’s battle—must have lain there in plain view of that
+girl. Who was the most heartless? The family and friends who had
+gathered over that body, according to their customs, or the party who
+looked in on them and laughed?” Peter had forgotten where he was, or to
+whom he was talking.
+
+Leonore had listened breathlessly. But the moment he ceased speaking,
+she bowed her head and began to sob. Peter came down from his indignant
+tirade like a flash. “Miss D’Alloi,” he cried, “forgive me. I forgot.
+Don’t cry so.” Peter was pleading in an anxious voice. He felt as if he
+had committed murder.
+
+“There, there, Dot. Don’t cry. It’s nothing to cry about.”
+
+Miss D’Alloi was crying and endeavoring at the same time to solve the
+most intricate puzzle ever yet propounded by man or woman—that is, to
+find a woman’s pocket. She complicated things even more by trying to
+talk. “I—I—know I’m ver—ver—very fooooooolish,” she managed to get out,
+however much she failed in a similar result with her
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+“Since I caused the tears, you must let me stop them,” said Peter. He
+had produced his own handkerchief, and was made happy by seeing Leonore
+bury her face in it, and re-appear not quite so woe-begone.
+
+“I—only—didn’t—know—you—could— talk—like—like that,” explained Leonore.
+
+“Let this be a lesson for you,” said Watts. “Don’t come any more of
+your jury-pathos on my little girl.”
+
+“Papa! You—I—Peter, I’m so glad you told me—I’ll never go to one.”
+
+Watts laughed. “Now I know why you charm all the women whom I hear
+talking about you. I tell you, when you rear your head up like that,
+and your eyes blaze so, and you put that husk in your voice, I don’t
+wonder you fetch them. By George, you were really splendid to look at.”
+
+That was the reason why Leonore had not cried till Peter had finished
+his speech. We don’t charge women with crying whenever they wish, but
+we are sure that they never cry when they have anything better to do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+OPINIONS.
+
+
+When the ride was ended, Leonore was sent home in the carriage, Watts
+saying he would go with Peter to his club. As soon as they were in the
+cab, he said:
+
+“I wanted to see you about your letter.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Everything’s going as well as can be expected. Of course the little
+woman’s scandalized over your supposed iniquity, but I’m working the
+heavy sentimental ‘saved-our-little-girl’s life’ business for all it’s
+worth. I had her crying last night on my shoulder over it, and no woman
+can do that and be obstinate long. She’ll come round before a great
+while.”
+
+Peter winced. He almost felt like calling Watts off from the endeavor.
+But he thought of Leonore. He must see her—just to prove to himself
+that she was not for him, be it understood—and how could he see enough
+of her to do that—for Peter recognized that it would take a good deal
+of that charming face and figure and manner to pall on him—if he was
+excluded from her home? So he justified the continuance of the attempt
+by saying to himself: “She only excludes me because of something of
+which I am guiltless, and I’ve saved her from far greater suffering
+than my presence can ever give her. I have earned the privilege if ever
+man earned it” Most people can prove to themselves what they wish to
+prove. The successful orator is always the man who imposes his frame of
+mind on his audience. We call it “saying what the people want said.”
+But many of the greatest speakers first suggest an idea to their
+listeners, and when they say it in plain English, a moment later, the
+audience say, mentally, “That’s just what we thought a moment ago,” and
+are convinced that the speaker is right.
+
+Peter remained silent, and Watts continued: “We get into our own house
+to-morrow, and give Leonore a birthday dinner Tuesday week as a
+combined house-warming and celebration. Save that day, for I’m
+determined you shall be asked. Only the invitation may come a little
+late. You won’t mind that?”
+
+“No. But don’t send me too many of these formal things. I keep out of
+them as much as I can. I’m not a society man and probably won’t fit in
+with your friends.”
+
+“I should know you were not _de societé_ by that single speech. If
+there’s one thing easy to talk to, or fit in with, it’s a society man
+or woman. It’s their business to be chatty and pleasant, and they would
+be polite and entertaining to a kangaroo, if they found one next them
+at dinner. That’s what society is for. We are the yolk of the egg,
+which holds and blends all the discordant, untrained elements. The oil,
+vinegar, salt, and mustard We don’t add much flavor to life, but people
+wouldn’t mix without us.”
+
+“I know,” said Peter, “if you want to talk petty personalities and
+trivialities, that it’s easy enough to get through endless hours of
+time. But I have other things to do.”
+
+“Exactly. But we have a purpose, too. You mustn’t think society is all
+frivolity. It’s one of the hardest working professions.”
+
+“And the most brainless.”
+
+“No. Don’t you see, that society is like any other kind of work, and
+that the people who will centre their whole life on it must be the
+leaders of it? To you, the spending hours over a new _entrée_, or over
+a cotillion figure, seems rubbish, but it’s the exact equivalent of
+your spending hours over who shall be nominated for a certain office.
+Because you are willing to do that, you are one of the ‘big four.’
+Because we are willing to do our task, we differentiate into the ‘four
+hundred.’ You mustn’t think society doesn’t grind up brain-tissue. But
+we use so much in running it, that we don’t have enough for other
+subjects, and so you think we are stupid. I remember a woman once
+saying she didn’t like conversazioni, ‘because they are really
+brain-parties, and there is never enough to go round, and give a second
+help,’ Any way, how can you expect society to talk anything but
+society, when men like yourself stay away from it.”
+
+“I don’t ask you to talk anything else. But let me keep out of it.”
+
+“‘He’s not the man for Galway’,” hummed Watts. “He prefers talking to
+‘heelers,’ and ‘b’ys,’ and ‘toughs,’ and other clever, intellectual
+men.”
+
+“I like to talk to any one who is working with a purpose in life.”
+
+“I say, Peter, what do those fellows really say of us?”
+
+“I can best describe it by something Miss De Voe once said. We were at
+a dinner together, where there was a Chicago man who became irritated
+at one or two bits of ignorance displayed by some of the other guests
+over the size and prominence of his abiding place. Finally he said:
+‘Why, look here, you people are so ignorant of my city, that you don’t
+even know how to pronounce its name.’ He turned to Miss De Voe and
+said, ‘We say Chicawgo. Now, how do you pronounce it in New York?’ Miss
+De Voe put on that quiet, crushing manner she has when a man displeases
+her, and said, ‘We never pronounce it in New York.’”
+
+“Good for our Dutch-Huguenot stock! I tell you, Peter, blood does
+tell.”
+
+“It wasn’t a speech I should care to make, because it did no good, and
+could only mortify. But it does describe the position of the lower
+wards of New York towards society. I’ve been working in them for nearly
+sixteen years, and I’ve never even heard the subject mentioned.”
+
+“But I thought the anarchists and socialists were always taking a whack
+at us?”
+
+“They cry out against over-rich men—not against society. Don’t confuse
+the constituents with the compound. Citric acid is a deadly poison, but
+weakened down with water and sugar, it is only lemonade. They growl at
+the poison, not at the water and sugar. Before there can be hate, there
+must be strength.”
+
+The next day Peter turned up in the park about four, and had a
+ride—with Watts. The day after that, he was there a little earlier, and
+had a ride—with the groom. The day following he had another ride—with
+the groom. Peter thought they were very wonderful rides. Some one told
+him a great many interesting things. About some one’s European life,
+some one’s thoughts, some one’s hopes, and some one’s feelings. Some
+one really wanted a friend to pour it all out to, and Peter listened
+well, and encouraged well.
+
+“He doesn’t laugh at me, as papa does,” some one told herself, “and so
+it’s much easier to tell him. And he shows that he really is
+interested. Oh, I always said he and I should be good friends, and we
+are going to be.”
+
+This put some one in a very nice frame of mind, and Peter thought he
+had never met such a wonderful combination of frankness, of confluence,
+and yet of a certain girlish shyness and timidity. Some one would tell
+him something, and then appeal to him, if he didn’t think that was so?
+Peter generally thought it was. Some one did not drop her little touch
+of coquetry, for that was ingrain, as it is in most pretty girls. But
+it was the most harmless kind of coquetry imaginable. Someone was not
+thinking at all of winning men’s hearts. That might come later. At
+present all she wanted was that they should think her pretty, and
+delightful, so that—that they should want to be friend.
+
+When Peter joined Watts and Leonore, however, on the fourth day, there
+was a noticeable change in Leonore’s manner to him. He did not get any
+welcome except a formal “Good-afternoon,” and for ten minutes Watts and
+he had to sustain the conversation by firing remarks at each other past
+a very silent intermediary. Peter had no idea what was wrong, but when
+he found that she did not mollify at the end of that time, he said to
+her;
+
+“What is the matter?”
+
+“Matter with what?” asked Leonore, calmly.
+
+“With you.”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“I shan’t take that for an answer. Remember, we have sworn to be
+friends.”
+
+“Friends come to see each other.”
+
+Peter felt relieved; and smiled, “They do,” he said, “when they can.”
+
+“No, they don’t, sometimes,” said Leonore severely. Then she unbent a
+little. “Why haven’t you been to see us? You’ve had a full week.”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter, “I have had a very full week.”
+
+“Are you going to call on us, Mr. Stirling?”
+
+“To whom are you talking?”
+
+“To you.”
+
+“My name’s Peter.”
+
+“That depends. Are you going to call on us?”
+
+“That is my hope and wish.”
+
+Leonore unbent a little more. “If you are,” she said, “I wish you would
+do it soon, because mamma said to-day she thought of asking you to my
+birthday dinner next Tuesday, but I said you oughtn’t to be asked till
+you had called.”
+
+“Did you know that bribery is unlawful?”
+
+“Are you going to call?”
+
+“Of course I am.”
+
+“That’s better. When?”
+
+“What evening are you to be at home?”
+
+“To-morrow,” said Leonore, beginning to curl up the corners of her
+mouth.
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “I wish you had said this evening, because that’s
+nearer, but to-morrow isn’t so far away.”
+
+“That’s right. Now we’ll be friends again.”
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+“Are you willing to be good friends—not make believe, or half friends,
+but—real friends?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“Don’t you think friends should tell each other everything?”
+
+“Yes.” Peter was quite willing, even anxious, that Leonore should tell
+him everything.
+
+“You are quite sure?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then,” said Leonore, “tell me about the way you got that sword.”
+
+Watts laughed. “She’s been asking every one she’s met about that. Do
+tell her, just for my sake.”
+
+“I’ve told you already.”
+
+“Not the way I want it. I know you didn’t try to make it interesting.
+Some of the people remembered there was something very fine, but I
+haven’t found anybody yet who could really tell it to me. Please tell
+about it nicely, Peter.” Leonore was looking at Peter with the most
+pleading of looks.
+
+“It was during the great railroad strike. The Erie had brought some men
+up from New York to fill the strikers’ places. The new hands were
+lodged in freight cars, when off work, for it wasn’t safe for them to
+pass outside the guard lines of soldiers. Some of the strikers applied
+for work, and were reinstated. They only did it to get inside our
+lines. At night, when the substitutes in the cars were fast asleep,
+tired out with the double work they had done, the strikers locked the
+car-doors. They pulled the two cars into a shed full of freight, broke
+open a petroleum tank, and with it wet the cars and some others loaded
+with jute. They set fire to the cars and barricaded the shed doors. Of
+course we didn’t know till the flames burst through the roof of the
+shed, when by the light, one of the superintendents found the bunk cars
+gone. The fire-department was useless, for the strikers two days
+before, had cut all the hose. So we were ordered up to get the cars
+out. Some strikers had concealed themselves in buildings where they
+could overlook the shed, and while we were working at the door, they
+kept firing on us. We were in the light of the blazing shed, and they
+were in the dark, which gave them a big advantage over us, and we
+couldn’t spare the time to attend to them. We tore up some rails and
+with them smashed in the door. The men in the cars were screaming, so
+we knew which to take, and fortunately they were the nearest to the
+door. We took our muskets—for the frames of the cars were blazing, and
+the metal part too hot to touch—and fixing bayonets, drove them into
+the woodwork and so pushed the cars out. When we were outside, we used
+the rails again, to smash an opening in the ends of the cars which were
+burning the least. We got the men out unharmed, but pretty badly
+frightened.”
+
+“And were you not hurt?”
+
+“We had eight wounded and a good many badly burned.”
+
+“And you?”
+
+“I had my share of the burn.”
+
+“I wish you would tell me what you did—not what the others did.”
+
+Peter would have told her anything while she looked like that at him.
+
+“I was in command at that point. I merely directed things, except
+taking up the rails. I happened to know how to get a rail up quickly,
+without waiting to unscrew the bolts. I had read it, years before, in a
+book on railroad construction. I didn’t think that paragraph would ever
+help me to save forty lives—for five minutes’ delay would have been
+fatal. The inside of the shed was one sheet of flame. After we broke
+the door down, I only stood and superintended the moving of the cars.
+The men did the real work.”
+
+“But you said the inside of the shed was a sheet of flame.”
+
+“Yes. The railroad had to give us all fresh uniforms. So we made new
+toggery out of that night’s work. I’ve heard people say militia are no
+good. If they could have stood by me that night, and seen my company
+working over those blazing cars, in that mass of burning freight, with
+the roof liable to fall any minute, and the strikers firing every time
+a man showed himself, I think they would have altered their opinion.”
+
+“Oh,” said Leonore, her eyes flashing with enthusiasm. “How splendid it
+is to be a man, and be able to do real things! I wish I had known about
+it in Europe.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because the officers were always laughing about our army. I used to
+get perfectly wild at them, but I couldn’t say anything in reply. If I
+could only have told them about that.”
+
+“Hear the little Frenchwoman talk,” said Watts.
+
+“I’m not French.”
+
+“Yes you are, Dot.”
+
+“I’m all American. I haven’t a feeling that isn’t all American. Doesn’t
+that make me an American, Peter, no matter where I was born?”
+
+“I think you are an American under the law.”
+
+“Am I really?” said Leonore, incredulously.
+
+“Yes. You were born of American parents, and you will be living in this
+country when you become of age. That constitutes nationality.”
+
+“Oh, how lovely! I knew I was an American, really, but papa was always
+teasing me and saying I was a foreigner. I hate foreigners.”
+
+“Confound you, chum, you’ve spoiled one of my best jokes! It’s been
+such fun to see Dot bristle when I teased her. She’s the hottest little
+patriot that ever lived.”
+
+“I think Miss D’Alloi’s nationality is akin to that of a case of which
+I once heard,” said Peter, smiling. “A man was bragging about the
+number of famous men who were born in his native town. He mentioned a
+well-known personage, among others, and one of his auditors said: ‘I
+didn’t know he was born there,’ ‘Oh, yes, he was,’ replied the man. ‘He
+was born there, but during the temporary absence of his parents!’”
+
+“Peter, how much does a written opinion cost?” asked Leonore, eagerly.
+
+“It has a range about equal to the woman’s statement that a certain
+object was as long as a piece of string.”
+
+“But your opinions?”
+
+“I have given an opinion for nothing. The other day I gave one to a
+syndicate, and charged eight thousand dollars.”
+
+“Oh, dear!” said Leonore. “I wonder if I can afford to get your opinion
+on my being an American? I should like to frame it and hang it in my
+room. Would it be expensive?”
+
+“It is usual with lawyers,” said Peter gravely, “to find out how much a
+client has, and then make the bill for a little less. How much do you
+have?”
+
+“I really haven’t any now. I shall have two hundred dollars on the
+first. But then I owe some bills.”
+
+“You forget your grandmamma’s money, Dot.”
+
+“Oh! Of course. I shall be rich, Peter, I come into the income of my
+property on Tuesday. I forget how much it is, but I’m sure I can afford
+to have an opinion.”
+
+“Why, Dot, we must get those papers out, and you must find some one to
+put the trust in legal shape, and take care of it for you,” said Watts.
+
+“I suppose,” said Leonore to Peter, “if you have one lawyer to do all
+your work, that he does each thing cheaper, doesn’t he?”
+
+“Yes. Because he divides what his client has, on several jobs, instead
+of on one,” Peter told her.
+
+“Then I think I’ll have you do it all. We’ll come down and see you
+about it. But write out that opinion at once, so that I can prove that
+I’m an American.”
+
+“Very well. But there’s a safer way, even, of making sure that you’re
+an American.”
+
+“What is that?” said Leonore, eagerly.
+
+“Marry one,” said Peter.
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Leonore, “I’ve always intended to do that, but not for
+a great many years.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+CALLS.
+
+
+Peter dressed himself the next evening with particular care, even for
+him. As Peter dressed, he was rather down on life. He had been kept
+from his ride that afternoon by taking evidence in a referee case. “I
+really needed the exercise badly,” he said. He had tried to work his
+dissatisfaction off on his clubs and dumb-bells, but whatever they had
+done for his blood and tissue, they had not eased his frame of mind.
+Dinner made him a little pleasanter, for few men can remain cross over
+a proper meal. Still, he did not look happy, when, on rising from his
+coffee, he glanced at his watch and found that it was but ten minutes
+past eight.
+
+He vacillated for a moment, and then getting into his outside
+trappings, he went out and turned eastward, down the first side street.
+He walked four blocks, and then threw open the swing door of a
+brilliantly lighted place, stepping at once into a blaze of light and
+warmth which was most attractive after the keen March wind blowing
+outside.
+
+He nodded to the three barkeepers. “Is Dennis inside?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, Misther Stirling. The regulars are all there.”
+
+Peter passed through the room, and went into another without knocking.
+In it were some twenty men, sitting for the most part in attitudes
+denoting ease. Two, at a small table in the corner, were playing
+dominoes. Three others, in another corner, were amusing themselves with
+“High, Low, Jack.” Two were reading papers. The rest were collected
+round the centre table, most of them smoking. Some beer mugs and
+tumblers were standing about, but not more than a third of the twenty
+were drinking anything. The moment Peter entered, one of the men jumped
+to his feet.
+
+“B’ys,” he cried, “here’s Misther Stirling. Begobs, sir, it’s fine to
+see yez. It’s very scarce yez been lately.” He had shaken hands, and
+then put a chair in place for Peter.
+
+The cards, papers, and dominoes had been abandoned the moment Dennis
+announced Peter’s advent, and when Peter had finished shaking the hands
+held out to him, and had seated himself, the men were all gathered
+round the big table.
+
+Peter laid his hat on the table, threw back his Newcastle and lit a
+cigar. “I’ve been very short of time, Dennis. But I had my choice this
+evening before going uptown, of smoking a cigar in my own quarters, or
+here. So I came over to talk with you all about Denton.”
+
+“An’ what’s he been doin’?” inquired Dennis.
+
+“I saw him to-day about the Hummel franchise that comes up in the Board
+next Tuesday. He won’t vote for it, he says. I told him I thought it
+was in the interest of the city to multiply means of transit, and asked
+him why he refused. He replied that he thought the Hummel gang had been
+offering money, and that he would vote against bribers.”
+
+“He didn’t have the face to say that?” shouted one of the listeners.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oi never!” said Dennis. “An’ he workin’ night an’ day to get the Board
+to vote the rival road.”
+
+“I don’t think there’s much doubt that money is being spent by both
+sides,” said Peter. “I fear no bill could ever pass without it. But the
+Hummel crowd are really responsible people, who offer the city a good
+percentage. The other men are merely trying to get the franchise, to
+sell it out at a profit to Hummel. I don’t like the methods of either,
+but there’s a road needed, and there’ll be a road voted, so it’s simply
+a choice between the two. I shouldn’t mind if Denton voted against both
+schemes, but to say he’ll vote against Hummel for that reason, and yet
+vote for the other franchise shows that he’s not square. I didn’t say
+so to him, because I wanted to talk it over with the ward a little
+first to see if they stood with me.”
+
+“That we do, sir,” said Dennis, with a sureness which was cool, if
+nothing more. Fortunately for the boldness of the speaker, no one
+dissented, and two or three couples nodded heads or pipes at each
+other.
+
+Peter looked at his watch. “Then I can put the screws on him safely,
+you think?”
+
+“Yes,” cried several.
+
+Peter rose. “Dennis, will you see Blunkers and Driscoll this evening,
+or some time to-morrow, and ask if they think so too? And if they
+don’t, tell them to drop in on me, when they have leisure.”
+
+“Begobs, sir, Oi’ll see them inside av ten minutes. An’ if they don’t
+agree widus, shure, Oi’ll make them.”
+
+“Thank you. Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night, Mr. Stirling,” came a chorus, and Peter passed into the
+street by the much maligned side-door.
+
+Dennis turned to the group with his face shining with enthusiasm. “Did
+yez see him, b’ys? There was style for yez. Isn’t he somethin’ for the
+ward to be proud av?”
+
+Peter turned to Broadway, and fell into a long rapid stride. In spite
+of the cold he threw open his coat, and carried his outer covering on
+his arm. Peter had no intention of going into an up-town drawing-room
+with any suggestion of “sixt” ward tobacco. So he walked till he
+reached Madison Square, when, after a glance at his watch, he jumped
+into a cab.
+
+It was a quarter-past nine when the footman opened the door of the
+Fifty-seventh Street house, in reply to Peter’s ring. Yet he was told
+that, “The ladies are still at dinner.”
+
+Peter turned and went down the stoop. He walked to the Avenue, and
+stopped at a house not far off.
+
+“Is Mrs. Pell at home?” he asked, and procured entrance for both his
+pasteboard and himself.
+
+“Welcome, little stranger,” was his greeting. “And it is so nice that
+you came this evening. Here is Van, on from Washington for two days.”
+
+“I was going to look you up, and see what ‘we, the people’ were talking
+about, so that I could enlighten our legislators when I go back,” said
+a man of forty.
+
+“I wrote Pope a long letter to-day, which I asked him to show you,”
+said Peter. “Things are in a bad shape, and getting worse.”
+
+“But, Peter,” queried the woman, “if you are the leader, why do you let
+them get so?”
+
+“So as to remain the leader,” said Peter, smiling quietly.
+
+“Now that’s what comes of ward politics,” cried Mrs. Pell, “You are
+beginning to make Irish bulls.”
+
+“No,” replied Peter, “I am serious, and because people don’t understand
+what I mean, they don’t understand American politics.”
+
+“But you say in effect that the way you retain your leadership, is by
+not leading. That’s absurd!”
+
+“No. Contradiction though it may seem the way to lose authority, is to
+exercise it too much. Christ enunciated the great truth of democratic
+government, when he said, ‘He that would be the greatest among you,
+shall be the servant of all’”
+
+“I hope you won’t carry your theory so far as to let them nominate
+Maguire?” said Mr. Pell, anxiously.
+
+“Now, please don’t begin on politics,” said the woman. “Here is Van,
+whom I haven’t seen for nine weeks, and here is Peter whom I haven’t
+seen for time out of mind, and just as I think I have a red-letter
+evening before me, you begin your everlasting politics.”
+
+“I merely stopped in to shake hands,” said Peter. “I have a call to
+make elsewhere, and can stay but twenty minutes. For that time we
+choose you speaker, and you can make us do as it pleases you.”
+
+Twenty minutes later Peter passed into the D’Alloi drawing-room. He
+shook Mrs. D’Alloi’s hand steadily, which was more than she did with
+his. Then he was made happy for a moment, with that of Leonore. Then he
+was introduced to a Madame Mellerie, whom he placed at once as the
+half-governess, half-companion, who had charge of Leonore’s education;
+a Mr. Maxwell, and a Marquis de somebody. They were both good-looking
+young fellows; and greeted Peter in a friendly way. But Peter did not
+like them.
+
+He liked them less when Mrs. D’Alloi told him to sit in a given place,
+and then put Madame Mellerie down by him. Peter had not called to see
+Madame Mellerie. But he made a virtue of necessity, and he was too
+instinctively courteous not to treat the Frenchwoman with the same
+touch of deference his manner towards women always had. After they had
+been chatting for a little on French literature, it occurred to Peter
+that her opinion of him might have some influence with Leonore, so he
+decided that he would try and please her. But this thought turned his
+mind to Leonore, and speaking of her to her governess, he at once
+became so interested in the facts she began to pour out to him, that he
+forgot entirely about his diplomatic scheme.
+
+This arrangement continued half an hour, when a dislocation of the
+_statu quo_ was made by the departure of Mr. Maxwell. When the exit was
+completed, Mrs. D’Alloi turned to place her puppets properly again. But
+she found a decided bar to her intentions. Peter had formed his own
+conclusions as to why he had been set to entertain Madame Mellerie, not
+merely from the fact itself, but from the manner in which it had been
+done, and most of all, from the way Mrs. D’Alloi had managed to stand
+between Leonore and himself, as if protecting the former, till she had
+been able to force her arrangements. So with the first stir Peter had
+risen, and when the little bustle had ceased he was already standing by
+Leonore, talking to her. Mrs. D’Alloi did not look happy, but for the
+moment she was helpless.
+
+Peter had had to skirt the group to get to Leonore, and so had stood
+behind her during the farewells. She apparently had not noticed his
+advent, but the moment she had done the daughter-of-the-house duty, she
+turned to him, and said: “I wondered if you would go away without
+seeing me. I was so afraid you were one of the men who just say, ‘How
+d’ye do’ and ‘Good-bye,’ and think they’ve paid a call.”
+
+“I called to see you to-night, and I should not have gone till I had
+seen you. I’m rather a persistent man in some things.”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore, bobbing her head in a very knowing manner, “Miss
+De Voe told me.”
+
+“Mr. Stirling,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “can’t you tell us the meaning of
+the Latin motto on this seal?” Mrs. D’Alloi held a letter towards him,
+but did not stir from her position across the room.
+
+Peter understood the device. He was to be drawn off, and made to sit by
+Mrs. D’Alloi, not because she wanted to see him, but because she did
+not want him to talk to Leonore. Peter had no intention of being
+dragooned. So he said: “Madame Mellerie has been telling me what a good
+Latin scholar Miss D’Alloi is. I certainly shan’t display my ignorance,
+till she has looked at it.” Then he carried the envelope over to
+Leonore, and in handing it to her, moved a chair for her, not
+neglecting one for himself. Mrs. D’Alloi looked discouraged, the more
+when Peter and Leonore put their heads close together, to examine the
+envelope.
+
+“‘_In bonam partem_,’” read Leonore. “That’s easy, mamma. It’s—why, she
+isn’t listening!”
+
+“You can tell her later. I have something to talk to you about.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“Your dinner in my quarters. Whom would you like to have there?”
+
+“Will you really give me a dinner?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And let me have just whom I want?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Oh, lovely! Let me see. Mamma and papa, of course.”
+
+“That’s four. Now you can have two more.”
+
+“Peter. Would you mind—I mean——” Leonore hesitated a moment and then
+said in an apologetic tone—“Would you like to invite madame? I’ve been
+telling her about your rooms—and you—and I think it would please her
+so.”
+
+“That makes five,” said Peter.
+
+“Oh, goody!” said Leonore, “I mean,” she said, correcting herself,
+“that that is very kind of you.”
+
+“And now the sixth?”
+
+“That must be a man of course,” said Leonore, wrinkling up her forehead
+in the intensity of puzzlement. “And I know so few men.” She looked out
+into space, and Peter had a moment’s fear lest she should see the
+marquis, and name him. “There’s one friend of yours I’m very anxious to
+meet. I wonder if you would be willing to ask him?”
+
+“Who is that?”
+
+“Mr. Moriarty.”
+
+“No, I can’t ask him, I don’t want to cheapen him by making a show of
+him.”
+
+“Oh! I haven’t that feeling about him. I——”
+
+“I think you would understand him and see the fine qualities. But do
+you think others would?” Peter mentioned no names, but Leonore
+understood.
+
+“No,” she said. “You are quite right.”
+
+“You shall meet him some day,” said Peter, “if you wish, but when we
+can have only people who won’t embarrass or laugh at him.”
+
+“Really, I don’t know whom to select.”
+
+“Perhaps you would like to meet Le Grand?”
+
+“Very much. He is just the man.”
+
+“Then we’ll consider that settled. Are you free for the ninth?”
+
+“Yes. I’m not going out this spring, and mamma and papa haven’t really
+begun yet, and it’s so late in the season that I’m sure we are free.”
+
+“Then I will ice the canvas-backs and champagne and dust off the
+Burgundy for that day, if your mamma accedes.”
+
+“Peter, I wanted to ask you the other day about that. I thought you
+didn’t drink wine.”
+
+“I don’t. But I give my friends a glass, when they are good enough to
+come to me. I live my own life, to please myself, but for that very
+reason, I want others to live their lives to please themselves. Trying
+to live other people’s lives for them, is a pretty dog-in-the-manger
+business.”
+
+Just then Mrs. D’Alloi joined them. “Were you able to translate it?”
+she asked, sitting down by them.
+
+“Yes, indeed,” said Leonore. “It means ‘Towards the right side,’ or as
+a motto it might be translated, ‘For the right side.’”
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi had clearly, to use a western expression, come determined
+to “settle down and grow up with the country.” So Peter broached the
+subject of the dinner, and when she hesitated, Leonore called Watts
+into the group. He threw the casting ballot in favor of the dinner, and
+so it was agreed upon. Peter was asked to come to Leonore’s birthday
+festival, “If you don’t mind such short notice,” and he didn’t mind,
+apparently. Then the conversation wandered at will till Peter rose. In
+doing so, he turned to Leonore, and said:
+
+“I looked the question of nationality up to-day, and found I was right.
+I’ve written out a legal opinion in my best hand, and will deliver it
+to you, on receiving my fee.”
+
+“How much is that?” said Leonore, eagerly.
+
+“That you come and get it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+DOWN-TOWN NEW YORK.
+
+
+Peter had not been working long the next morning when he was told that
+“The Honorable Terence Denton wishes to see you,” “Very well,” he said,
+and that worthy was ushered in.
+
+“Good-morning, Denton. I’m glad to see you. I was going down to the
+Hall to-day to say something, but you’ve saved me the trouble.”
+
+“I know you was. So I thought I’d get ahead of you,” said Denton, with
+a surly tone and manner.
+
+“Sit down,” said Peter. Peter had learned that, with a certain class of
+individuals, a distance and a seat have a very dampening effect on
+anger. It is curious, man’s instinctive desire to stand up to and be
+near the object for which anger is felt.
+
+“You’ve been talking against me in the ward, and makin’ them down on
+me.”
+
+“No, I didn’t talk against you. I’ve spoken with some of the people
+about the way you think of voting on the franchises.”
+
+“Yes. I wasn’t round, but a friend heard Dennis and Blunkers a-going
+over it last night. And it’s you did it.”
+
+“Yes. But you know me well enough to be sure, after my talk with you
+yesterday, that I wouldn’t stop there.”
+
+“So you try to set the pack on me.”
+
+“No. I try to see how the ward wants its alderman to vote on the
+franchises.”
+
+“Look a-here. What are you so set on the Hummel crowd for?”
+
+“I’m not.”
+
+“Is it because Hummel’s a big contractor and gives you lots of law
+business?”
+
+“No,” said Peter, smiling. “And you don’t think it is, either.”
+
+“Has they offered you some stock cheap?”
+
+“Come, come, Denton. You know the _tu quoque_ do here.”
+
+Denton shifted in his seat uneasily, not knowing what reply to make.
+Those two little Latin words had such unlimited powers of concealment
+in them. He did not know whether _tu quoque_ meant something about
+votes, an insulting charge, or merely a reply, and feared to make
+himself ridiculous by his response to them. He was not the first man
+who has been hampered and floored by his own ignorance. He concluded he
+must make an entire change of subject to be safe. So he said, “I ain’t
+goin’ to be no boss’s puppy dog.”
+
+“No,” said Peter, finding it difficult not to smile, “you are not that
+kind of a man.”
+
+“I takes my orders from no one.”
+
+“Denton, no one wants you to vote by order. We elected you alderman to
+do what was best for the ward and city, as it seems to you. You are
+responsible for your votes to us, and no other man can be. I don’t care
+who orders you or advises you; in the end, you must vote yourself, and
+you yourself will be held to account by us.”
+
+“Yes. But if I don’t vote as you wants, you’ll sour the boys on me.”
+
+“I shall tell them what I think. You can do the same. It’s a fair game
+between us.”
+
+“No, it ain’t. You’re rich and you can talk more.”
+
+“You know my money has nothing to do with it. You know I don’t try to
+deceive the men in talking to them. If they trust what I tell them,
+it’s because it’s reasonable, and because I haven’t tricked them
+before.”
+
+“Well, are you goin’ to drive me out?”
+
+“I hope not. I think you’ve made a good alderman, Denton, and you’ll
+find I’ve said so.”
+
+“But now?”
+
+“If you vote for that franchise, I shall certainly tell the ward that I
+think you’ve done wrong. Then the ward will do as they please.”
+
+“As you please, you mean.”
+
+“No. You’ve been long enough in politics to know that unless I can make
+the ward think as I do, I couldn’t do anything. What would you care for
+my opinion, if you didn’t know that the votes are back of it?”
+
+Just then the door swung open, and Dennis came in. “Tim said yez was
+alone wid Denton, sir, so Oi came right in. It’s a good-mornin’, sir.
+How are yez, Terence?”
+
+“You are just the man I want, Dennis. Tell Denton how the ward feels
+about the franchises.”
+
+“Shure. It’s one man they is. An’ if Denton will step down to my place
+this night, he’ll find out how they think.”
+
+“They never would have felt so, if Mister Stirling hadn’t talked to
+them. Not one in twenty knew the question was up.”
+
+“That’s because they are most of them too hard working to keep track of
+all the things. Come, Denton; I don’t attempt to say how you shall
+vote. I only tell you how it seems to me. Go round the ward, and talk
+with others. Then you can tell whether I can give you trouble in the
+future or not. I don’t want to fight you. We’ve been good friends in
+the past, and we can do more by pulling in double harness than by
+kicking, I don’t know a man I would rather see at the Hall.” Peter held
+out his hand, and Denton took it.
+
+“All right, Mister Stirling. I’ll do my best to stay friends,” he said,
+and went out.
+
+Peter turned and smiled at Dennis. “They can’t find out that it’s not
+I, but the ward. So every time there’s trouble they lay it against me,
+and it’s hard to keep them friendly. And I hate quarrels and
+surliness.”
+
+“It’s yezself can do it, though. Shure, Denton was in a great state av
+mind this mornin’, they was tellin’ me, but he’s all right now, an’
+will vote right, or my name isn’t Dennis Moriarty.”
+
+“Yes. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll vote square on Tuesday.”
+
+Just then Tim brought in the cards of Watts and Leonore, and strangely
+enough, Peter said they were to be shown in at once. In they came, and
+after the greetings, Peter said:
+
+“Miss D’Alloi, this is my dear friend, Dennis Moriarty. Dennis, Miss
+D’Alloi has wanted to know you because she’s heard of your being such a
+friend to me.”
+
+“Shure,” said Dennis, taking the little hand so eagerly offered him,
+“Oim thinkin’ we’re both lucky to be in the thoughts at all, at all, av
+such a sweet young lady.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Moriarty, you’ve kissed the blarney stone.”
+
+“Begobs,” responded Dennis, “it needs no blarney stone to say that.
+It’s afther sayin’ itself.”
+
+“Peter, have you that opinion?”
+
+“Yes.” Peter handed her out a beautifully written sheet of script, all
+in due form, and given an appearance of vast learning, by red ink
+marginal references to such solid works as “Wheaton,” “Story,” and
+“Cranch’s” and “Wallace’s” reports. Peter had taken it practically from
+a “Digest,” but many apparently learned opinions come from the same
+source. And the whole was given value by the last two lines, which
+read, “Respectfully submitted, Peter Stirling.” Peter’s name had value
+at the bottom of a legal opinion, or a check, if nowhere else.
+
+“Look, Mr. Moriarty,” cried Leonore, too full of happiness over this
+decision of her nationality not to wish for some one with whom to share
+it, “I’ve always thought I was French—though I didn’t feel so a bit—and
+now Mr. Stirling has made me an American, and I’m so happy. I hate
+foreigners.”
+
+Watts laughed. “Why, Dot. You mustn’t say that to Mr. Moriarty. He’s a
+foreigner himself.”
+
+“Oh, I forgot. I didn’t think that——” Poor Leonore stopped there,
+horrified at what she had said.
+
+“No,” said Peter, “Dennis is not a foreigner. He’s one of the most
+ardent Americans I know. As far as my experience goes, to make one of
+Dennis’s bulls, the hottest American we have to-day, is the
+Irish-American.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Watts. “You know every Irishman pins his loyalty to
+the ‘owld counthry.’”
+
+“Shure,” said Dennis, “an’ if they do, what then? Sometimes a man finds
+a full-grown woman, fine, an’ sweet, an’ strong, an’ helpful to him,
+an’ he comes to love her big like. But does that make him forget his
+old weak mother, who’s had a hard life av it, yet has done her best by
+him? Begobs! If he forgot her, he wouldn’t be the man to make a good
+husband. Oi don’t say Oi’m a good American, for its small Oi feel
+besides Misther Stirling. But Oi love her, an’ if she ever wants the
+arm, or the blood, or the life, av Dennis Moriarty, she’s only got to
+say so.”
+
+“Well,” said Watts, “this is very interesting, both as a point of view
+and as oratory; but it isn’t business. Peter, we came down this morning
+to take whatever legal steps are necessary to put Dot in possession of
+her grandmother’s money, of which I have been trustee. Here is a lot of
+papers about it. I suppose everything is there relating to it.”
+
+“Papa seemed to think it would be very wise to ask you to take care of
+it, and pay me the income, I can’t have the principal till I’m
+twenty-five.”
+
+“You must tie it up some way, Peter, or Dot will make ducks and drakes
+of it. She has about as much idea of the value of money as she has of
+the value of foreigners. When we had our villa at Florence, she
+supported the entire pauper population of the city.”
+
+Peter had declined heretofore the care of trust funds. But it struck
+him that this was really a chance—from a business standpoint, entirely!
+It is true, the amount was only ninety two thousand, and, as a trust
+company would handle that sum of money for four hundred and odd
+dollars, he was bound to do the same; and this would certainly not pay
+him for his time. “Sometimes, however,” said Peter to himself, “these,
+trusteeships have very handsome picking’s, aside from the half per
+cent.” Peter did not say that the “pickings,” as they framed themselves
+in his mind, were sundry calls on him at his office, and a justifiable
+reason at all times for calling on Leonore; to say nothing of letters
+and other unearned increment. So Peter was not obstinate this time.
+“It’s such a simple matter that I can have the papers drawn while you
+wait, if you’ve half an hour to spare.” Peter did this, thinking it
+would keep them longer, but later it occurred to him it would have been
+better to find some other reason, and leave the papers, because then
+Leonore would have had to come again soon. Peter was not quite as cool
+and far-seeing as he was normally.
+
+He regretted his error the more when they all took his suggestion that
+they go into his study. Peter rang for his head clerk, and explained
+what was needed with great rapidity, and then left the latter and went
+into the study.
+
+“I wonder what he’s in such a hurry for?” said the clerk, retiring with
+the papers.
+
+When Peter entered the library he found Leonore and Watts reposing in
+chairs, and Dennis standing in front of them, speaking. This was what
+Dennis was saying:
+
+“‘Schatter, boys, an’ find me a sledge.’ Shure, we thought it was
+demented he was, but he was the only cool man, an’ orders were orders.
+Dooley, he found one, an’ then the captain went to the rails an’ gave
+it a swing, an’ struck the bolts crosswise like, so that the heads flew
+off, like they was shootin’ stars. Then he struck the rails sideways,
+so as to loosen them from the ties. Then says he: ‘Half a dozen av yez
+take off yez belts an’ strap these rails together!’ Even then we didn’t
+understand, but we did it All this time the dirty spal—Oi ask yez
+pardon, miss—all this time the strikers were pluggin’ at us, an’
+bullets flyin’ like fun. ‘Drop your muskets,’ says the captain, when we
+had done; ‘fall in along those rails. Pick them up, and double-quick
+for the shed door,’ says he, just as if he was on parade. Then we saw
+what he was afther, and double-quick we went. Begobs, that door went
+down as if it was paper. He was the first in. ‘Stand back,’ says he,
+‘till Oi see what’s needed.’ Yez should have seen him walk into that
+sheet av flame, an’ stand theer, quiet-like, thinkin’, an’ it so hot
+that we at the door were coverin’ our faces to save them from
+scorchin’. Then he says: ‘Get your muskets!’ We went, an’ Moike says to
+me: ‘It’s no good. No man can touch them cars. He’s goin’ to attind to
+the strikers,’ But not he. He came out, an’ he says: ‘B’ys, it’s hot in
+there, but, if you don’t mind a bit av a burn, we can get the poor
+fellows out. Will yez try?’ ‘Yes!’ we shouted. So he explained how we
+could push cars widout touchin’ them. ‘Fall in,’ says he. ‘Fix
+bayonets. First file to the right av the cars, second rank to the left.
+Forward, march!’ An’ we went into that hell, an’ rolled them cars out
+just as if we was marchin’ down Broadway, wid flags, an’ music, an’
+women clappin’ hands.”
+
+“But weren’t you dreadfully burnt?”
+
+“Oh, miss, yez should have seen us! We was blacker thin the divil
+himsilf. Hardly one av us but didn’t have the hair burnt off the part
+his cap didn’t cover; an’, as for eyelashes, an’ mustaches, an’
+blisters, no one thought av them the next day. Shure, the whole company
+was in bed, except them as couldn’t lie easy.”
+
+“And Mr. Stirling?”
+
+“Shure, don’t yez know about him?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why, he was dreadful burnt, an’ the doctors thought it would be blind
+he’d be; but he went to Paris, an’ they did somethin’ to him there that
+saved him. Oh, miss, the boys were nearly crazy wid fear av losin’ him.
+They’d rather be afther losin’ the regimental cat.”
+
+Peter had been tempted to interrupt two or three times, but it was so
+absorbing to watch Leonore’s face, and its changing expression, as,
+unconscious of his presence, she listened to Dennis, that Peter had not
+the heart to do it. But now Watts spoke up.
+
+“Do you hear that, Peter? There’s value for you! You’re better than the
+cat.”
+
+So the scenes were shifted, and they all sat and chatted till Dennis
+left. Then the necessary papers were brought in and looked over at
+Peter’s study-table, and Miss D’Alloi took another of his pens. Peter
+hoped she’d stop and think a little, again, but she didn’t. Just as she
+had begun an L she hesitated, however.
+
+“Why,” she said, “this paper calls me ‘Leonore D’Alloi, spinster!’ I’m
+not going to sign that.”
+
+“That is merely the legal term,” Peter explained. Leonore pouted for
+some time over it, but finally signed. “I shan’t be a spinster, anyway,
+even if the paper does say so,” she said.
+
+Peter agreed with her.
+
+“See what a great blot I’ve made on your clean blotter,” said Leonore,
+who had rested the pen-point there. “I’m very sorry.” Then she wrote on
+the blotter, “Leonore D’Alloi. Her very untidy mark.” “That was what
+Madame Mellerie always made me write on my exercises.”
+
+Then they said “Good-bye.” “I like down-town New York better and
+better,” said Leonore.
+
+So did Peter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+A BIRTHDAY EVENING.
+
+
+Peter went into Ray’s office on Monday. “I want your advice,” he said.
+“I’m going to a birthday dinner to-morrow. A girl for whom I’m trustee.
+Now, how handsome a present may I send her?”
+
+“H’m. How well do you know her?”
+
+“We are good friends.”
+
+“Just about what you please, I should say, if you know her well, and
+make money out of her?”
+
+“That is, jewelry?”
+
+“Ye—es.”
+
+“Thanks.” Peter turned.
+
+“Who is she, Peter? I thought you never did anything so small as that.
+Nothing, or four figures, has always seemed your rule?”
+
+“This had extenuating circumstances,” smiled Peter.
+
+So when Peter shook hands, the next evening, with the very swagger
+young lady who stood beside her mother, receiving, he was told:
+
+“It’s perfectly lovely! Look.” And the little wrist was held up to him.
+“And so were the flowers. I couldn’t carry a tenth of them, so I
+decided to only take papa’s. But I put yours up in my room, and shall
+keep them there.” Then Peter had to give place to another, just as he
+had decided that he would have one of the flowers from the bunch she
+was carrying, or—he left the awful consequences of failure blank.
+
+Peter stood for a moment unconscious of the other people, looking at
+the pretty rounded figure in the dainty evening dress of French
+open-work embroidery. “I didn’t think she could be lovelier than she
+was in her street and riding dresses but she is made for evening
+dress,” was his thought. He knew this observation wasn’t right,
+however, so he glanced round the room, and then walked up to a couple.
+
+“There, I told Mr. Beekman that I was trying to magnetize you, and
+though your back was turned, you came to me at once.”
+
+“Er—really, quite wonderful, you know,” said Mr. Beekman. “I positively
+sharn’t dare to be left alone with you, Miss De Voe.”
+
+“You needn’t fear me. I shall never try to magnetize you, Mr. Beekman,”
+said Miss De Voe. “I was so pleased,” she continued, turning to Peter,
+“to see you take that deliberate survey of the room, and then come over
+here.”
+
+Peter smiled. “I go out so little now, that I have turned selfish. I
+don’t go to entertain people. I go to be entertained. Tell me what you
+have been doing?”
+
+But as Peter spoke, there was a little stir, and Peter had to say
+“excuse me.” He crossed the room, and said, “I am to have the pleasure,
+Mrs. Grinnell,” and a moment later the two were walking towards the
+dining-room. Miss De Voe gave her arm to Beekman calmly, but her eyes
+followed Peter. They both could have made a better arrangement. Most
+dinner guests can.
+
+It was a large dinner, and so was served in the ball-room. The sixty
+people gathered were divided into little groups, and seated at small
+tables holding six or eight. Peter knew all but one at his table, to
+the extent of having had previous meetings. They were all fashionables,
+and the talk took the usual literary-artistic-musical turn customary
+with that set. “Men, not principles” is the way society words the old
+cry, or perhaps “personalities, not generalities” is a better form. So
+Peter ate his dinner quietly, the conversation being general enough not
+to force him to do more than respond, when appealed to. He was, it is
+true, appealed to frequently. Peter had the reputation, as many quiet
+men have, of being brainy. Furthermore he knew the right kind of
+people, was known to enjoy a large income, was an eligible bachelor,
+and was “interesting and unusual.” So society no longer rolled its
+Juggernaut over him regardlessly, as of yore. A man who was close
+friends with half a dozen exclusives of the exclusives, was a man not
+to be disregarded, simply because he didn’t talk. Society people
+applied much the same test as did the little “angle” children, only in
+place of “he’s frinds wid der perlice,” they substituted “he’s very
+intimate with Miss De Voe, and the Ogdens and the Pells.”
+
+Peter had dimly hoped that he would find himself seated at Leonore’s
+table—He had too much self depreciation to think for a moment that he
+would take her in—but hers was a young table, he saw, and he would not
+have minded so much if it hadn’t been for that Marquis. Peter began to
+have a very low opinion of foreigners. Then he remembered that Leonore
+had the same prejudice, so he became more reconciled to the fact that
+the Marquis was sitting next her. And when Leonore sent him a look and
+a smile, and held up the wrist, so as to show the pearl bracelet, Peter
+suddenly thought what a delicious _rissole_ he was eating.
+
+As the dinner waned, one of the footmen brought him a card, on which
+Watts had written: “They want me to say a few words of welcome and of
+Dot. Will you respond?” Peter read the note and then wrote below it:
+“Dear Miss D’Alloi: You see the above. May I pay you a compliment? Only
+one? Or will it embarrass you?” When the card came back a new line
+said: “Dear Peter: I am not afraid of your compliment, and am very
+curious to hear it.” Peter said, “Tell Mr. D’Alloi that I will with
+pleasure.” Then he tucked the card in his pocket. That card was not
+going to be wasted.
+
+So presently the glasses were filled up, even Peter saying, “You may
+give me a glass,” and Watts was on his feet. He gave “our friends” a
+pleasant welcome, and after apologizing for their absence, said that at
+least, “like the little wife in the children’s play, ‘We too have not
+been idle,’ for we bring you a new friend and introduce her to you
+to-night.”
+
+Then Peter rose, and told the host: “Your friends have been grieved at
+your long withdrawal from them, as the happy faces and welcome we
+tender you this evening, show. We feared that the fascination of
+European art, with its beauty and ease and finish, had come to
+over-weigh the love of American nature, despite its life and strength
+and freshness; that we had lost you for all time. But to-night we can
+hardly regret even this long interlude, if to that circumstance we owe
+the happiest and most charming combination of American nature and
+European art—Miss D’Alloi.”
+
+Then there was applause, and a drinking of Miss D’Alloi’s health, and
+the ladies passed out of the room—to enjoy themselves, be it
+understood, leaving the men in the gloomy, quarrelsome frame of mind it
+always does.
+
+Peter apparently became much abstracted over his cigar, but the
+abstraction was not perhaps very deep, for he was on his feet the
+moment Watts rose, and was the first to cross the hall into the
+drawing-room. He took a quick glance round the room, and then crossed
+to a sofa. Dorothy and—and some one else were sitting on it.
+
+“Speaking of angels,” said Dorothy.
+
+“I wasn’t speaking of you,” said Peter. “Only thinking.”
+
+“There,” said Leonore. “Now if Mrs. Grinnell had only heard that.”
+
+Peter looked a question, so Leonore continued:
+
+“We were talking about you. I don’t understand you. You are so
+different from what I had been told to think you. Every one said you
+were very silent and very uncomplimentary, and never joked, but you are
+not a bit as they said, and I thought you had probably changed, just as
+you had about the clothes. But Mrs. Grinnell says she never heard you
+make a joke or a compliment in her life, and that at the Knickerbocker
+they call you ‘Peter, the silent.’ You are a great puzzle.”
+
+Dorothy laughed. “Here we four women—Mrs. Grinnell, and Mrs. Winthrop
+and Leonore and myself—have been quarrelling over you, and each
+insisting you are something different. I believe you are not a bit firm
+and stable, as people say you are, but a perfect chameleon, changing
+your tint according to the color of the tree you are on. Leonore was
+the worst, though! She says that you talk and joke a great deal. We
+could have stood anything but that!”
+
+“I am sorry my conversation and humor are held in such low estimation.”
+
+“There,” said Leonore, “See. Didn’t I tell you he joked? And, Peter, do
+you dislike women?”
+
+“Unquestionably,” said Peter.
+
+“Please tell me. I told them of your speech about the sunshine, and
+Mrs. Winthrop says that she knows you didn’t mean it. That you are a
+woman-hater and despise all women, and like to get off by yourself.”
+
+“That’s the reason I joined you and Dorothy,” said Peter.
+
+“Do you hate women?” persisted Leonore.
+
+“A man is not bound to incriminate himself,” replied Peter, smiling.
+
+“Then that’s the reason why you don’t like society, and why you are so
+untalkative to women. I don’t like men who think badly of women. Now, I
+want to know why you don’t like them?”
+
+“Supposing,” said Peter, “you were asked to sit down to a game of
+whist, without knowing anything of the game. Do you think you could
+like it?”
+
+“No. Of course not!”
+
+“Well, that is my situation toward women. They have never liked me, nor
+treated me as they do other men. And so, when I am put with a
+small-talk woman, I feel all at sea, and, try as I may, I can’t please
+her. They are never friendly with me as they are with other men.”
+
+“Rubbish!” said Dorothy. “It’s what you do, not what she does, that
+makes the trouble. You look at a woman with those grave eyes and that
+stern jaw of yours, and we all feel that we are fools on the spot, and
+really become so. I never stopped being afraid of you till I found out
+that in reality you were afraid of me. You know you are. You are afraid
+of all women.”
+
+“He isn’t a bit afraid of women,” affirmed Leonore.
+
+Just then Mr. Beekman came up. “Er—Mrs. Rivington. You know this
+is—er—a sort of house-warming, and they tell me we are to go over the
+house, don’t you know, if we wish. May I harve the pleasure?”
+
+Dorothy conferred the boon. Peter looked down at Leonore with a laugh
+in his eyes. “Er—Miss D’Alloi,” he said, with the broadest of accents,
+“you know this,—er—is a sort of a house-warming and—” He only imitated
+so far and then they both laughed.
+
+Leonore rose. “With pleasure. I only wish Mrs. Grinnell had heard you.
+I didn’t know you could mimic?”
+
+“I oughtn’t. It’s a small business. But I am so happy that I couldn’t
+resist the temptation.”
+
+Leonore asked, “What makes you so happy?”
+
+“My new friend,” said Peter.
+
+Leonore went on up the stairs without saying anything. At the top,
+however, she said, enthusiastically: “You do say the nicest things!
+What room would you like to see first?”
+
+“Yours,” said Peter.
+
+So they went into the little bedroom, and boudoir, and looked over
+them. Of course Peter found a tremendous number of things of interest.
+There were her pictures, most of them her own purchases in Europe; and
+her books and what she thought of them; and her thousand little
+knick-knacks of one kind and another. Peter wasn’t at all in a hurry to
+see the rest of the house.
+
+“These are the photographs of my real friends,” said Leonore, “except
+yours. I want you to give me one to complete my rack.”
+
+“I haven’t had a photograph taken in eight years, and am afraid I have
+none left.”
+
+“Then you must sit.”
+
+“Very well. But it must be an exchange.” Peter almost trembled at his
+boldness, and at the thought of a possible granting.
+
+“Do you want mine?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+“I have dozens,” said Leonore, going over to her desk, and pulling open
+a drawer. “I’m very fond of being taken. You may have your choice.”
+
+“That’s very difficult,” said Peter, looking at the different
+varieties. “Each has something the rest haven’t. You don’t want to be
+generous, and let me have these four?”
+
+“Oh, you greedy!” said Leonore, laughing. “Yes, if you’ll do something
+I’m going to ask you.”
+
+Peter pocketed the four. “That is a bargain,” he said, with a brashness
+simply disgraceful in a good business man. “Now, what is it?”
+
+“Miss De Voe told me long ago about your savings-bank fund for helping
+the poor people. Now that I have come into my money, I want to do what
+she does. Give a thousand dollars a year to it—and then you are to tell
+me just what you do with it.”
+
+“Of course I’m bound to take it, if you insist. But it won’t do any
+good. Even Miss De Voe has stopped giving now, and I haven’t added
+anything to it for over five years.”
+
+“Why is that?”
+
+“You see, I began by loaning the fund to people who were in trouble, or
+who could be boosted a little by help, and for three or four years, I
+found the money went pretty fast. But by that time people began to pay
+it back, with interest often, and there has hardly been a case when it
+hasn’t been repaid. So what with Miss De Voe’s contributions, and the
+return of the money, I really have more than I can properly use
+already. There’s only about eight thousand loaned at present, and
+nearly five thousand in bank.”
+
+“I’m so sorry!” said Leonore. “But couldn’t you give some of the money,
+so that it wouldn’t come back?”
+
+“That does more harm than good. It’s like giving opium to kill
+temporary pain. It stops the pain for the moment, but only to weaken
+the system so as to make the person less able to bear pain in the
+future. That’s the trouble with most of our charity. It weakens quite
+as much as it helps.”
+
+“I have thought about this for five years as something I should do. I’m
+so grieved.” And Leonore looked her words.
+
+Peter could not stand that look. “I’ve been thinking of sending a
+thousand dollars of the fund, that I didn’t think there was much chance
+of using, to a Fresh Air fund and the Day Nursery. If you wish I’ll
+send two thousand instead and then take your thousand? Then I can use
+that for whatever I have a chance.”
+
+“That will do nicely. But I thought you didn’t think regular charities
+did much good?”
+
+“Some don’t. But it’s different with children. They don’t feel the
+stigma and are not humiliated or made indolent by help. We can’t do too
+much to help them. The future of this country depends on its poor
+children. If they are to do right, they must be saved from ill-health,
+and ignorance, and vice; and the first step is to give them good food
+and air, so that they shall have strong little bodies. A sound man,
+physically, may not be a strong man in other ways, but he stands a much
+better chance.”
+
+“Oh, it’s very interesting,” said Leonore. “Tell me some more about the
+poor people.”
+
+“What shall I tell you?” said Peter.
+
+“How to help them.”
+
+“I’ll speak about something I have had in mind for a long time, trying
+to find some way to do it. I think the finest opportunity for
+benevolence, not already attempted, would be a company to lend money to
+the poor, just as I have attempted, on a small scale, in my ward. You
+see there are thousands of perfectly honest people who are living on
+day wages, and many of them can lay up little or no money. Then comes
+sickness, or loss of employment, or a fire which burns up all their
+furniture and clothes, or some other mischance, and they can turn only
+to pawnbrokers and usurers, with their fearful charges; or charity,
+with its shame. Then there are hundreds of people whom a loan of a
+little money would help wonderfully. This boy can get a place if he had
+a respectable suit of clothes. Another can obtain work by learning a
+trade, but can’t live while he learns it. A woman can support herself
+if she can buy a sewing-machine, but hasn’t the money to buy it.
+Another can get a job at something, but is required to make a deposit
+to the value of the goods intrusted to her. Now, if all these people
+could go to some company, and tell their story, and get their notes
+discounted, according to their reputation, just as the merchant does at
+his bank, don’t you see what a help it would be?”
+
+“How much would it take, Peter?”
+
+“One cannot say, because, till it is tested, there would be no way of
+knowing how much would be asked for. But a hundred thousand dollars
+would do to start with.”
+
+“Why, that’s only a hundred people giving a thousand each,” cried
+Leonore eagerly. “Peter, I’ll give a thousand, and I’ll make mamma and
+papa give a thousand, and I’ll speak to my friends and—”
+
+“Money isn’t the difficult part,” said Peter, longing to a fearful
+degree to take Leonore in his arms. “If it were only money, I could do
+it myself—or if I did not choose to do it alone, Miss De Voe and Pell
+would help me.”
+
+“What is it, then?”
+
+“It’s finding the right man to run such a company. I can’t give the
+time, for I can do more good in other directions. It needs a good
+business man, yet one who must have many other qualities which rarely
+go with a business training. He must understand the poor, because he
+must look into every case, to see if it is a safe risk—or rather if the
+past life of the applicant indicates that he is entitled to help. Now
+if your grandfather, who is such an able banker, were to go into my
+ward, and ask about the standing of a man in it, he wouldn’t get any
+real information. But if I ask, every one will tell me what he thinks.
+The man in control of such a bank must be able to draw out the truth.
+Unless the management was just what it ought to be, it would be
+bankrupt in a few months, or else would not lend to one quarter of the
+people who deserve help. Yet from my own experience, I know, that money
+can be loaned to these people, so that the legal interest more than
+pays for the occasional loss, and that most of these losses are due to
+inability, more than to dishonesty.”
+
+“I wish we could go on talking,” sighed Leonore. “But the people are
+beginning to go downstairs. I suppose I must go, so as to say good-bye.
+I only wish I could help you in charity.”
+
+“You have given _me_ a great charity this evening,” said Peter.
+
+“You mean the photographs,” smiled Leonore.
+
+“No.”
+
+“What else?”
+
+“You have shown me the warmest and most loving of hearts,” said Peter,
+“and that is the best charity in the world.”
+
+On the way down they met Lispenard coming up. “I’ve just said
+good-night to your mother. I would have spoken to you while we were in
+your room, but you were so engrossed that Miss Winthrop and I thought
+we had better not interrupt.”
+
+“I didn’t see you,” said Leonore.
+
+“Indeed!” said Lispenard, with immense wonderment. “I can’t believe
+that. You know you were cutting us.” Then he turned to Peter. “You old
+scamp, you,” he whispered, “you are worse than the Standard Oil.”
+
+“I sent for you some time ago, Leonore,” said her mother,
+disapprovingly. “The guests have been going and you were not here.”
+
+“I’m sorry, mamma. I was showing Peter the house.”
+
+“Good-night,” said that individual. “I dread formal dinners usually,
+but this one has been the pleasantest of my life.”
+
+“That’s very nice. And thank you, Peter, for the bracelet, and the
+flowers, and the compliment. They were all lovely. Would you like a
+rose?”
+
+Would he? He said nothing, but he looked enough to get it.
+
+“Can’t we put you down?” said a man at the door. “It’s not so far from
+Washington Square to your place, that your company won’t repay us.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter, “but I have a hansom here.”
+
+Yet Peter did not ride. He dismissed cabby, and walked down the Avenue.
+Peter was not going to compress his happiness inside a carriage that
+evening. He needed the whole atmosphere to contain it.
+
+As he strode along he said:
+
+“It isn’t her beauty and grace alone”—(It never is with a man, oh,
+no!)—“but her truth and frankness and friendliness. And then she
+doesn’t care for money, and she isn’t eaten up with ambition. She is
+absolutely untouched by the world yet. Then she is natural, yet
+reserved, with other men. She’s not husband-hunting, like so many of
+them. And she’s loving, not merely of those about her, but of
+everything.”
+
+Musicians will take a simple theme and on it build unlimited
+variations. This was what Peter proceeded to do. From Fifty-seventh
+Street to Peter’s rooms was a matter of four miles. Peter had not half
+finished his thematic treatment of Leonore when he reached his
+quarters. He sat down before his fire, however, and went on, not with
+hope of exhausting all possible variations, but merely for his own
+pleasure.
+
+Finally, however, he rose and put photographs, rose, and card away.
+
+“I’ve not allowed myself to yield to it,” he said (which was a whopper)
+“till I was sure she was what I could always love. Now I shall do my
+best to make her love me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+A GOOD DAY.
+
+
+The next day it was raining torrents, but despite this, and to the
+utter neglect of his law business, Peter drove up-town immediately
+after lunch, to the house in Fifty-seventh Street. He asked for Watts,
+but while he was waiting for the return of the servant, he heard a
+light foot-step, and turning, he found Leonore fussing over some
+flowers. At the same moment she became conscious of his presence.
+
+“Good-day,” said Peter.
+
+“It isn’t a good day at all,” said Leonore, in a disconsolate voice,
+holding out her hand nevertheless.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“It’s a horrid day, and I’m in disgrace.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“For misbehaving last night. Both mamma and madame say I did very
+wrong. I never thought I couldn’t be real friends with you.” The little
+lips were trembling slightly.
+
+Peter felt a great temptation to say something strong. “Why can’t the
+women let such an innocent child alone?” he thought to himself. Aloud
+he said, “If any wrong was done, which I don’t think, it was my fault.
+Can I do anything?”
+
+“I don’t believe so,” said Leonore, with a slight unsteadiness in her
+voice. “They say that men will always monopolize a girl if she will
+allow it, and that a really well-mannered one won’t permit it for a
+moment.”
+
+Peter longed to take her in his arms and lay the little downcast head
+against his shoulder, but he had to be content with saying: “I am so
+sorry they blame you. If I could only save you from it.” He evidently
+said it in a comforting voice, for the head was raised a trifle.
+
+“You see,” said Leonore, “I’ve always been very particular with men,
+but with you it seemed different. Yet they both say I stayed too long
+upstairs, and were dreadfully shocked about the photographs. They said
+I ought to treat you like other men. Don’t you think you are
+different?”
+
+Yes. Peter thought he was very different.
+
+“Mr. D’Alloi will see you in the library,” announced the footman at
+this point.
+
+Peter turned to go, but in leaving he said: “Is there any pleasure or
+service I can do, to make up for the trouble I’ve caused you?”
+
+Leonore put her head on one side, and looked a little less
+grief-stricken. “May I save that up?” she asked.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+A moment later Peter was shaking hands with Watts.
+
+“This is nice of you. Quite like old times. Will you smoke?”
+
+“No. But please yourself. I’ve something to talk about.”
+
+“Fire away.”
+
+“Watts, I want to try and win the love of your little girl.”
+
+“Dear old man,” cried Watts, “there isn’t any one in God’s earth whom I
+would rather see her choose, or to whom I would sooner trust her.”
+
+“Thank you, Watts,” said Peter, gratefully. “Watts is weak, but he is a
+good fellow,” was his mental remark. Peter entirely forgot his opinion
+of two weeks ago. It is marvellous what a change a different point of
+view makes in most people.
+
+“But if I give you my little Dot, you must promise me one thing.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“That you will never tell her? Ah! Peter, if you knew how I love the
+little woman, and how she loves me. From no other man can she learn
+what will alter that love. Don’t make my consent bring us both
+suffering?”
+
+“Watts, I give my word she shall never know the truth from me.”
+
+“God bless you, Peter. True as ever. Then that is settled. You shall
+have a clear field and every chance.”
+
+“I fear not. There’s something more. Mrs. D’Alloi won’t pardon that
+incident—nor do I blame her. I can’t force my presence here if she does
+not give her consent. It would be too cruel, even if I could hope to
+succeed in spite of her. I want to see her this morning. You can tell
+better than I whether you had best speak to her first, or whether I
+shall tell her.”
+
+“H’m. That is a corker, isn’t it? Don’t you think you had better let
+things drift?”
+
+“No. I’m not going to try and win a girl’s love behind the mother’s
+back. Remember, Watts, the mother is the only one to whom a girl can go
+at such a time. We mustn’t try to take advantage of either.”
+
+“Well, I’ll speak to her, and do my best. Then I’ll send her to you.
+Help yourself to the tobacco if you get tired of waiting _tout seul_.”
+
+Watts went upstairs and knocked at a door. “Yes,” said a voice. Watts
+put his head in. “Is my Rosebud so busy that she can’t spare her lover
+a few moments?”
+
+“Watts, you know I live for you.”
+
+Watts dropped down on the lounge. “Come here, then, like a loving
+little wife, and let me say my little say.”
+
+No woman nearing forty can resist a little tenderness in her husband,
+and Mrs. D’Alloi snuggled up to Watts in the pleasantest frame of mind.
+Watts leaned over and kissed her cheek. Then Mrs. D’Alloi snuggled some
+more.
+
+“Now, I want to talk with you seriously, dear,” he said. “Who do you
+think is downstairs?”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Dear old Peter. And what do you think he’s come for!”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Dot.”
+
+“For what?”
+
+“He wants our consent, dear, to pay his addresses to Leonore.”
+
+“Oh, Watts!” Mrs. D’Alloi ceased to snuggle, and turned a horrified
+face to her husband.
+
+“I’ve thought she attracted him, but he’s such an impassive, cool old
+chap, that I wasn’t sure.”
+
+“That’s what I’ve been so afraid of. I’ve worried so over it.”
+
+“You dear, foolish little woman. What was there to worry over?”
+
+“Watts! You won’t give your consent?”
+
+“Of course we will. Why, what more do you want? Money, reputation,
+brains, health.” (That was the order in which Peter’s advantages ranged
+themselves in Watts’s mind). “I don’t see what more you can ask, short
+of a title, and titles not only never have all those qualities
+combined, but they are really getting decidedly _nouveau richey_ and
+not respectable enough for a Huguenot family, who’ve lived two hundred
+and fifty years in New York. What a greedy mamma she is for her little
+girl.”
+
+“Oh, Watts! But think!”
+
+“It’s hard work, dear, with your eyes to look at. But I will, if you’ll
+tell me what to think about.”
+
+“My husband! You cannot have forgotten? Oh, no! It is too horrible for
+you to have forgotten that day.”
+
+“You heavenly little Puritan! So you are going to refuse Peter as a
+son-in-law, because he—ah—he’s not a Catholic monk. Why, Rosebud, if
+you are going to apply that rule to all Dot’s lovers, you had better
+post a sign: ‘Wanted, a husband. P.S. No man need apply.’”
+
+“Watts! Don’t talk so.”
+
+“Dear little woman. I’m only trying to show you that we can’t do better
+than trust our little girl to Peter.”
+
+“With that stain! Oh, Watts, give him our pure, innocent, spotless
+child!”
+
+“Oh, well. If you want a spotless wedding, let her marry the Church.
+She’ll never find one elsewhere, my darling.”
+
+“Watts! How can you talk so? And with yourself as an example. Oh,
+husband! I want our child—our only child—to marry a man as noble and
+true as her father. Surely there must be others like you?”
+
+“Yes. I think there are a great many men as good as I, Rosebud! But I’m
+no better than I should be, and it’s nothing but your love that makes
+you think I am.”
+
+“I won’t hear you say such things of yourself. You know you are the
+best and purest man that ever lived. You know you are.”
+
+“If there’s any good in me, it’s because I married you.”
+
+“Watts, you couldn’t be bad if you tried.” And Mrs. D’Alloi put her
+arms round Watts’s neck and kissed him.
+
+Watts fondled her for a moment in true lover’s fashion. Then he said,
+“Dear little wife, a pure woman can never quite know what this world
+is. I love Dot next to you, and would not give her to a man whom I
+believe would not be true to her, or make her happy. I know every
+circumstance of Peter’s connection with that woman, and he is as
+blameless as man ever was. Such as it was, it was ended years ago, and
+can never give him more trouble. He is a strong man, and will be true
+to Dot. She might get a man who would make her life one long torture.
+She may be won by a man who only cares for her money, and will not even
+give her the husks of love. But Peter loves her, and has outgrown his
+mistakes. And don’t forget that but for him we might now have nothing
+but some horribly mangled remains to remember of our little darling.
+Dear, I love Dot twenty times more than I love Peter. For her sake, and
+yours, I am trying to do my best for her.”
+
+So presently Mrs. D’Alloi came into the library, where Peter sat. She
+held out her hand to him, but Peter said:
+
+“Let me say something first. Mrs. D’Alloi, I would not have had that
+occurrence happen in your home or presence if I had been able to
+prevent it. It grieves me more than I can tell you. I am not a roué. In
+spite of appearances I have lived a clean life. I shall never live any
+other in the future. I—I love Leonore. Love her very dearly. And if you
+will give her to me, should I win her, I pledge you my word that I will
+give her the love, and tenderness, and truth which she deserves. Now,
+will you give me your hand?”
+
+“He is speaking the truth,” thought Mrs. D’Alloi, as Peter spoke. She
+held out her hand. “I will trust her to you if she chooses you.”
+
+Half an hour later, Peter went back to the drawing-room, to find
+Leonore reposing in an exceedingly undignified position before the fire
+on a big tiger-skin, and stroking a Persian cat, who, in delight at
+this enviable treatment, purred and dug its claws into the rug. Peter
+stood for a time watching the pretty tableau, wishing he was a cat.
+
+“Yes, Tawney-eye,” said Leonore, in heartrending tones, “it isn’t a
+good day at all.”
+
+“I’m going to quarrel with you on that,” said Peter. “It’s a glorious
+day.”
+
+Leonore rose from the skin. “Tawney-eye and I don’t think so.”
+
+“But you will. In the first place I’ve explained about the monopoly and
+the photographs to your mamma, and she says she did not understand it,
+and that no one is to blame. Secondly, she says I’m to stay to dinner
+and am to monopolize you till then. Thirdly, she says we may be just as
+good friends as we please. Fourthly, she has asked me to come and stay
+for a week at Grey-Court this summer. Now, what kind of a day is it?”
+
+“Simply glorious! Isn’t it, Tawney-eye?” And the young lady again
+forgot her “papas, proprieties, potatoes, prunes and prisms,” and
+dropping down on the rug, buried her face in the cat’s long silky hair.
+Then she reappeared long enough to say:
+
+“You are such a comforting person! I’m so glad you were born.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+THE BOSS.
+
+
+After this statement, so satisfying to both, Leonore recovered her
+dignity enough to rise, and say, “Now, I want to pay you for your
+niceness. What do you wish to do?”
+
+“Suppose we do what pleases you.”
+
+“No. I want to please you.”
+
+“That _is_ the way to please me,” said Peter emphatically.
+
+Just then a clock struck four. “I know,” said Leonore. “Come to the
+tea-table, and we’ll have afternoon tea together. It’s the day of all
+others for afternoon tea.”
+
+“I just said it was a glorious day.”
+
+“Oh? yes. It’s a nice day. But it’s dark and cold and rainy all the
+same.”
+
+“But that makes it all the better. We shan’t be interrupted.”
+
+“Do you know,” said Leonore, “that Miss De Voe told me once that you
+were a man who found good in everything, and I see what she meant.”
+
+“I can’t hold a candle to Dennis. He says its ‘a foine day’ so that you
+feel that it really is. I never saw him in my life, when it wasn’t ‘a
+foine day.’ I tell him he carries his sunshine round in his heart.”
+
+“You are so different,” said Leonore, “from what every one said. I
+never knew a man pay such nice compliments. That’s the seventh I’ve
+heard you make.”
+
+“You know I’m a politician, and want to become popular.”
+
+“Oh, Peter! Will you let me ask you something?”
+
+“Anything,” said Peter, rashly, though speaking the absolute truth.
+Peter just then was willing to promise anything. Perhaps it was the
+warm cup of tea; perhaps it was the blazing logs; perhaps it was the
+shade of the lamp, which cast such a pleasant rosy tint over
+everything; perhaps it was the comfortable chair; perhaps it was that
+charming face; perhaps it was what Mr. Mantalini called the “demd
+total.”
+
+“You see,” said Leonore, shaking her head in a puzzled way, “I’ve begun
+to read the papers—the political part, I mean—and there are so many
+things I don’t understand which I want to ask you to explain.”
+
+“That is very nice,” said Peter, “because there are a great many things
+of which I want to tell you.”
+
+“Goody!” said Leonore, forgetting again she was now bound to conduct
+herself as befit a society girl. “And you’ll not laugh at me if I ask
+foolish questions?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then what do the papers mean by calling you a boss?”
+
+“That I am supposed to have sufficient political power to dictate to a
+certain extent.”
+
+“But don’t they speak of a boss as something not nice?” asked Leonore,
+a little timidly, as if afraid of hurting Peter’s feelings.
+
+“Usually it is used as a stigma,” said Peter, smiling. “At least by the
+kind of papers you probably read.”
+
+“But you are not a bad boss, are you?” said Leonore, very earnestly.
+
+“Some of the papers say so.”
+
+“That’s what surprised me. Of course I knew they were wrong, but are
+bosses bad, and are you a boss?”
+
+“You are asking me one of the biggest questions in American politics. I
+probably can’t answer it, but I’ll try to show you why I can’t. Are
+there not friends whose advice or wish would influence you?”
+
+“Yes. Like you,” said Leonore, giving Peter a glimpse of her eyes.
+
+“Really,” thought Peter, “if she does that often, I can’t talk abstract
+politics.” Then he rallied and said: “Well, that is the condition of
+men as well, and it is that condition, which creates the so-called
+boss. In every community there are men who influence more or less the
+rest. It may be that one can only influence half a dozen other
+intimates. Another may exert power over fifty. A third may sway a
+thousand. One may do it by mere physical superiority. Another by a
+friendly manner. A third by being better informed. A fourth by a
+deception or bribery. A fifth by honesty. Each has something that
+dominates the weaker men about him. Take my ward. Burton is a
+prize-fighter, and physically a splendid man. So he has his little
+court. Driscoll is a humorist, and can talk, and he has his admirers.
+Sloftky is popular with the Jews, because he is of their race. Burrows
+is a policeman, who is liked by the whole ward, because of his kindness
+and good-nature. So I could go on telling you of men who are a little
+more marked than the rest, who have power to influence the opinions of
+men about them, and therefore have power to influence votes. That is
+the first step in the ladder.”
+
+“But isn’t Mr. Moriarty one?”
+
+“He comes in the next grade. Each of the men I have mentioned can
+usually affect an average of twenty-five votes. But now we get to
+another rung of the ladder. Here we have Dennis, and such men as
+Blunkers, Denton, Kennedy, Schlurger and others. They not merely have
+their own set of followers, but they have more or less power to
+dominate the little bosses of whom I have already spoken. Take Dennis
+for instance. He has fifty adherents who stick to him absolutely, two
+hundred and fifty who listen to him with interest, and a dozen of the
+smaller bosses, who pass his opinions to their followers. So he can
+thus have some effect on about five hundred votes. Of course it takes
+more force and popularity to do this and in this way we have a better
+grade of men.”
+
+“Yes. I like Mr. Moriarty, and can understand why others do. He is so
+ugly, and so honest, and so jolly. He’s lovely.”
+
+“Then we get another grade. Usually men of a good deal of brain force,
+though not of necessity well educated. They influence all below them by
+being better informed, and by being more far-seeing. Such men as
+Gallagher and Dummer. They, too, are usually in politics for a living,
+and so can take the trouble to work for ends for which the men with
+other work have no time. They don’t need the great personal popularity
+of those I have just mentioned, but they need far more skill and brain.
+Now you can see, that these last, in order to carry out their
+intentions, must meet and try to arrange to pull together, for
+otherwise they can do nothing. Naturally, in a dozen or twenty men,
+there will be grades, and very often a single man will be able to
+dominate them all, just as the smaller bosses dominate the smaller men.
+And this man the papers call a boss of a ward. Then when these various
+ward bosses endeavor to unite for general purposes, the strongest man
+will sway them, and he is boss of the city.”
+
+“And that is what you are?”
+
+“Yes. By that I mean that nothing is attempted in the ward or city
+without consultation with me. But of course I am more dependent on the
+voters than they are on me, for if they choose to do differently from
+what I advise, they have the power, while I am helpless.”
+
+“You mean the smaller bosses?”
+
+“Not so much them as the actual voters. A few times I have shot right
+over the heads of the bosses and appealed directly to the voters.”
+
+“Then you can make them do what you want?”
+
+“Within limits, yes. As I told you, I am absolutely dependent on the
+voters. If they should defeat what I want three times running, every
+one would laugh at me, and my power would be gone. So you see that a
+boss is only a boss so long as he can influence votes.”
+
+“But they haven’t defeated you?”
+
+“No, not yet.”
+
+“But if the voters took their opinions from the other bosses how did
+you do anything?”
+
+“There comes in the problem of practical politics. The question of who
+can affect the voters most. Take my own ward. Suppose that I want
+something done so much that I insist. And suppose that some of the
+other leaders are equally determined that it shan’t be done. The ward
+splits on the question and each faction tries to gain control in the
+primary. When I have had to interfere, I go right down among the voters
+and tell them why and what I want to do. Then the men I have had to
+antagonize do the same, and the voters decide between us. It then is a
+question as to which side can win the majority of the voters. Because I
+have been very successful in this, I am the so-called boss. That is, I
+can make the voters feel that I am right.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“For many reasons. First, I have always tried to tell the voters the
+truth, and never have been afraid to acknowledge I was wrong, when I
+found I had made a mistake, so people trust what I say. Then, unlike
+most of the leaders in politics, I am not trying to get myself office
+or profit, and so the men feel that I am disinterested. Then I try to
+be friendly with the whole ward, so that if I have to do what they
+don’t like, their personal feeling for me will do what my arguments
+never could. With these simple, strong-feeling, and unreasoning folk,
+one can get ten times the influence by a warm handshake and word that
+one can by a logical argument. We are so used to believing what we
+read, if it seems reasonable, that it is hard for us to understand that
+men who spell out editorials with difficulty, and who have not been
+trained to reason from facts, are not swayed by what to us seems an
+obvious argument. But, on the contrary, if a man they trust, puts it in
+plain language to them, they see it at once. I might write a careful
+editorial, and ask my ward to read it, and unless they knew I wrote it,
+they probably wouldn’t be convinced in the least. But let me go into
+the saloons, and tell the men just the same thing, and there isn’t a
+man who wouldn’t be influenced by it.”
+
+“You are so popular in the ward?” asked Leonore.
+
+“I think so, I find kind words and welcome everywhere. But then I have
+tried very hard to be popular. I have endeavored to make a friend of
+every man in it with whom one could be friendly, because I wished to be
+as powerful as possible, so that the men would side with me whenever I
+put my foot down on something wrong.”
+
+“Do you ever tell the ward how they are to vote?”
+
+“I tell them my views. But never how to vote. Once I came very near it,
+though.”
+
+“How was that?”
+
+“I was laid up for eight months by my eyes, part of the time in Paris.
+The primary in the meantime had put up a pretty poor man for an office.
+A fellow who had been sentenced for murder, but had been pardoned by
+political influence. When I was able to take a hand, I felt that I
+could do better by interfering, so I came out for the Republican
+candidate, who was a really fine fellow. I tried to see and talk to
+every man in the ward, and on election day I asked a good many men, as
+a personal favor, to vote for the Republican, and my friends asked
+others. Even Dennis Moriarty worked and voted for what he calls a
+‘dirty Republican,’ though he said ‘he never thought he’d soil his
+hands wid one av their ballots.’ That is the nearest I ever came to
+telling them how to vote.”
+
+“And did they do as you asked?”
+
+“The only Republican the ward has chosen since 1862 was elected in that
+year. It was a great surprise to every one—even to myself—for the ward
+is Democratic by about four thousand majority. But I couldn’t do that
+sort of thing often, for the men wouldn’t stand it. In other words, I
+can only do what I want myself, by doing enough else that the men wish.
+That is, the more I can do to please the men, the more they yield their
+opinions to mine.”
+
+“Then the bosses really can’t do what they want?”
+
+“No. Or at least not for long. That is a newspaper fallacy. A relic of
+the old idea that great things are done by one-man power. If you will
+go over the men who are said to control—the bosses, as they are
+called—in this city, you will find that they all have worked their way
+into influence slowly, and have been many years kept in power, though
+they could be turned out in a single fight. Yet this power is obtained
+only by the wish of a majority, for the day they lose the consent of a
+majority of the voters that day their power ends. We are really more
+dependent than the representatives, for they are elected for a certain
+time, while our tenure can be ended at any moment. Why am I a power in
+my ward? Because I am supposed to represent a given number of votes,
+which are influenced by my opinions. It would be perfectly immaterial
+to my importance how I influenced those votes, so long as I could
+control them. But because I can influence them, the other leaders don’t
+dare to antagonize me, and so I can have my way up to a certain point.
+And because I can control the ward I have made it a great power in city
+politics.”
+
+“How did you do that?”
+
+“By keeping down the factional feeling. You see there are always more
+men struggling for power or office, than can have it, and so there
+cannot but be bad blood between the contestants. For instance, when I
+first became interested in politics, Moriarty and Blunkers were quite
+as anxious to down each other as to down the Republicans. Now they are
+sworn friends, made so in this case, by mere personal liking for me.
+Some have been quieted in this way. Others by being held in check.
+Still others by different means. Each man has to be studied and
+understood, and the particular course taken which seems best in his
+particular case. But I succeeded even with some who were pretty bitter
+antagonists at first, and from being one of the most uncertain wards in
+the city, the sixth has been known at headquarters for the last five
+years as ‘old reliability’ from the big majority it always polls. So at
+headquarters I am looked up to and consulted. Now do you understand why
+and what a boss is?”
+
+“Yes, Peter. Except why bosses are bad.”
+
+“Don’t you see that it depends on what kind of men they are, and what
+kind of voters are back of them. A good man, with honest votes back of
+him, is a good boss, and _vice versa_.”
+
+“Then I know you are a good boss. It’s a great pity that all the bosses
+can’t be good?”
+
+“I have not found them so bad. They are quite as honest, unselfish, and
+reasonable as the average of mankind. Now and then there is a bad man,
+as there is likely to be anywhere. But in my whole political career, I
+have never known a man who could control a thousand votes for five
+years, who was not a better man, all in all, than the voters whom he
+influenced. More one cannot expect. The people are not quick, but they
+find out a knave or a demagogue if you give them time.”
+
+“It’s the old saying; ‘you can fool all of the people, some of the
+time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of
+the people all of the time,’” laughed a voice.
+
+Peter took his eyes off Leonore’s face, where they had been resting
+restfully, and glanced up. Watts had entered the room.
+
+“Go on,” said Watts. “Don’t let me interrupt your political
+disquisitions; I have only come in for a cup of tea.”
+
+“Miss D’Alloi and I were merely discussing bosses,” said Peter. “Miss
+D’Alloi, when women get the ballot, as I hope they will, I trust you
+will be a good boss, for I am sure you will influence a great many
+votes.”
+
+“Oh!” said Leonore, laughing, “I shan’t be a boss at all. You’ll be my
+boss, I think, and I’ll always vote for you.”
+
+Peter thought the day even more glorious than he had before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+THE BETTER ELEMENT.
+
+
+The evening after this glorious day, Peter came in from his ride, but
+instead of going at once to his room, he passed down a little passage,
+and stood in a doorway.
+
+“Is everything going right, Jenifer?” he queried.
+
+“Yissah!”
+
+“The flowers came from Thorley’s?”
+
+“Yissah!”
+
+“And the candies and ices from Maillard?”
+
+“Yissah!”
+
+“And you’ve _frappé_ the champagne?”
+
+“Yissah?”
+
+“Jenifer, don’t put quite so much onion juice as usual in the Queen
+Isabella dressing. Ladies don’t like it as much as men.”
+
+“Yissah!”
+
+“And you stood the Burgundy in the sun?”
+
+“Yissah! Wha foh yo’ think I doan do as I ginl’y do?”
+
+Jenifer was combining into a stuffing bread crumbs, chopped broiled
+oysters, onions, and many other mysterious ingredients, and was
+becoming irritated at such evident doubt of his abilities.
+
+Peter ought to have been satisfied, but he only looked worried. He
+glanced round the little closet that served as a kitchen, in search of
+possible sources for slips, but did not see them. All he was able to
+say was, “That broth smells very nice, Jenifer.”
+
+“Yissah. Dar ain’t nuffin in dat sup buh a quart a thick cream, and de
+squeezin’s of a hunerd clams, sah. Dat sup will make de angels sorry
+dey died. Dey’ll just tink you’se dreful unkine not to offer dem a
+secon’ help. Buh doan yo’ do it, sah, foh when dey gits to dem
+prayhens, dey’ll be pow’ful glad yo’ didn’t.” To himself, Jenifer
+remarked: “Who he gwine hab dis day? He neber so anxious befoh, not
+even when de Presidint an Guv’nor Pohter dey dun dine hyah.”
+
+Peter went to his room and, after a due course of clubbing and tubbing,
+dressed himself with the utmost care. Truth compels the confession that
+he looked in his glass for some minutes. Not, however, apparently with
+much pleasure, for an anxious look came into his face, and he remarked
+aloud, as he turned away, “I don’t look so old, but I once heard Watts
+say that I should never take a prize for my looks, and he was right. I
+wonder if she cares for handsome men?”
+
+Peter forgot his worry in the opening of a box in the dining-room and
+the taking out of the flowers. He placed the bunches at the different
+places, raising one of the bouquets of violets to his lips, before he
+laid it down. Then he took the cut flowers, and smilax, and spread them
+loosely in the centre of the little table, which otherwise had nothing
+on it, except the furnishings placed at each seat. After that he again
+kissed a bunch of violets. History doesn’t state whether it was the
+same bunch. Peter must have been very fond of flowers!
+
+“Peter,” called a voice.
+
+“Is that you, Le Grand? Go right into my room.”
+
+“I’ve done that already. You see I feel at home. How are you?” he
+continued, as Peter joined him in the study.
+
+“As always.”
+
+“I thought I would run in early, so as to have a bit of you before the
+rest. Peter, here’s a letter from Muller. He’s got that ‘Descent’ in
+its first state, in the most brilliant condition. You had better get
+it, and trash your present impression. It has always looked cheap
+beside the rest.”
+
+“Very well. Will you attend to it?”
+
+Just then came the sound of voices and the rustle of draperies in the
+little hall.
+
+“Hello! Ladies?” said Le Grand. “This is to be one of what Lispenard
+calls your ‘often, frequently, only once’ affairs, is it?”
+
+“I’m afraid we are early,” said Mrs. D’Alloi. “We did not know how much
+time to allow.”
+
+“No. Such old friends cannot come too soon.”
+
+“And as it is, I’m really starved,” said another personage, shaking
+hands with Peter as if she had not seen him for a twelve-month instead
+of parting with him but two hours before. “What an appetite riding in
+the Park does give one! Especially when afterwards you drive, and
+drive, and drive, over New York stones.”
+
+“Ah,” cried Madame. “_C’est tres bien_!”
+
+“Isn’t it jolly?” responded Leonore.
+
+“But it is not American. It is Parisian.”
+
+“Oh, no, it isn’t! It’s all American. Isn’t it, Peter?”
+
+But Peter was telling Jenifer to hasten the serving of dinner. So
+Leonore had to fight her country’s battles by herself.
+
+“What’s all this to-day’s papers are saying, Peter?” asked Watts, as
+soon as they were seated.
+
+“That’s rather a large subject even for a slow dinner.”
+
+“I mean about the row in the Democratic organization over the
+nomination for governor?”
+
+“The papers seem to know more about it than I do,” said Peter calmly.
+
+Le Grand laughed. “Miss De Voe, Ogden, Rivington—all of us, have tried
+to get Peter, first and last, to talk politics, but not a fact do we
+get. They say it’s his ability to hold his tongue which made Costell
+trust him and push him, and that that was the reason he was chosen to
+fill Costells place.”
+
+“_I_ don’t fill his place,” said Peter. “No one can do that. I merely
+succeeded him. And Miss D’Alloi will tell you that the papers calling
+me ‘Taciturnity Junior’ is a libel. Am I not a talker, Miss D’Alloi?”
+
+“_I_ really can’t find out,” responded Leonore, with a puzzled look.
+“People say you are not.”
+
+“I didn’t think you would fail me after the other night.”
+
+“Ah,” said madame. “The quiet men are the great men. Look at the
+French.”
+
+“Oh, madame!” exclaimed Leonore.
+
+“You are joking” cried Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“That’s delicious,” laughed Watts.
+
+“Whew,” said Le Grand, under his breath.
+
+“Ah! Why do you cry out? Mr. Stirling, am I not right?” Madame appealed
+to the one face on which no amusement or skepticism was shown.
+
+“I think it is rather dangerous to ascribe any particular trait to any
+nationality. It is usually misleading. But most men who think much,
+talk little, and the French have many thinkers”
+
+“I always liked Von Moltke, just for it being said of him that he could
+be silent in seven languages,” said Le Grand.
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore. “It’s so restful. We crossed on the steamer with a
+French Marquis who can speak six languages, and can’t say one thing
+worth listening to in any.”
+
+Peter thought the soup all Jenifer had cracked it up to be.
+
+“Peter,” said Leonore, turning to him, “Mr. Le Grand said that you
+never will talk politics with anybody. That doesn’t include me, of
+course?”
+
+“No,” said Peter promptly.
+
+“I thought it didn’t,” said Leonore, her eyes dancing with pleasure,
+however, at the reply. “We had Mr. Pell to lunch to-day and I spoke to
+him as to what you said about the bosses, and he told me that bosses
+could never be really good, unless the better element were allowed to
+vote, and not the saloon-keepers and roughs. I could see he was right,
+at once.”
+
+“From his point of view. Or rather the view of his class.”
+
+“Don’t you think so?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Broadly speaking, all persons of sound mind are entitled to vote on
+the men and the laws which are to govern them. Aside from this, every
+ounce of brain or experience you can add to the ballot, makes it more
+certain. Suppose you say that half the people are too ignorant to vote
+sensibly. Don’t you see that there is an even chance, at least, that
+they’ll vote rightly, and if the wrong half carries the election, it is
+because more intelligent people have voted wrongly, have not voted, or
+have not taken the trouble to try and show the people the right way,
+but have left them to the mercies of the demagogue. If we grant that
+every man who takes care of himself has some brain, and some
+experience, his vote is of some value, even if not a high one. Suppose
+we have an eagle, and a thousand pennies. Are we any better off by
+tossing away the coppers, because each is worth so little. That is why
+I have always advocated giving the franchise to women. If we can add
+ten million voters to an election, we have added just so much knowledge
+to it, and made it just so much the harder to mislead or buy enough
+votes to change results.”
+
+“You evidently believe,” said Watts, “in the saying, ‘Everybody knows
+more than anybody?’”
+
+Peter had forgotten all about his company in his interest over—over the
+franchise. So he started slightly at this question, and looked up
+from—from his subject.
+
+“Yes,” said Le Grand. “We’ve been listening and longing to ask
+questions. When we see such a fit of loquacity, we want to seize the
+opportunity.”
+
+“No,” said Leonore, “I haven’t finished. Tell me. Can’t you make the
+men do what you want, so as to have them choose only the best men?”
+
+“If I had the actual power I would not,” said Peter.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I would not dare to become responsible for so much, and
+because a government of the ‘best’ men is not an American government.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“That is the aristocratic idea. That the better element, so called,
+shall compel the masses to be good, whether they wish it or no. Just as
+one makes a child behave without regard to its own desires. With grown
+men, such a system only results in widening the distance between the
+classes and masses, making the latter more dependent and unthinking.
+Whereas, if we make every man vote he must think a little for himself,
+because different people advise him contrarily, and thus we bring him
+nearer to the more educated. He even educates himself by his own
+mistakes; for every bad man elected, and every bad law passed, make him
+suffer the results, and he can only blame himself. Of course we don’t
+get as good a government or laws, but then we have other offsetting
+advantages.”
+
+“What are those?”
+
+“We get men and laws which are the wish of the majority. Such are
+almost self-supporting and self-administering. It is not a mere
+combination of words, printing-ink, and white paper which makes a law.
+It is the popular sentiment back of it which enforces it, and unless a
+law is the wish of a majority of the people who are to be governed by
+it, it is either a dead letter, or must be enforced by elaborate police
+systems, supported oftentimes with great armies. Even then it does not
+succeed, if the people choose to resist. Look at the attempt to govern
+Ireland by force, in the face of popular sentiment. Then, too, we get a
+stability almost unknown in governments which do not conform to the
+people. This country has altered its system of government less than any
+other great country in the last hundred years. And there is less
+socialistic legislation and propaganda here than anywhere else. That
+is, less discontent.”
+
+“But, Peter, if the American people are as sensible as you think, how
+do you account for the kind of men who exercise control?” said Le
+Grand.
+
+“By better men not trying.”
+
+“But we have reform movements all the time, led by good men. Why aren’t
+these men elected?”
+
+“Who are as absolutely inexperienced and blind as to the way to
+influence votes, as well can be. Look at it, as a contest, without
+regard to the merit of the cause. On one side we have bosses, who know
+and understand the men in their wards, have usually made themselves
+popular, are in politics for a living, have made it a life-study, and
+by dear experience have learned that they must surrender their own
+opinions in order to produce harmony and a solid vote. The reformer, on
+the contrary, is usually a man who has other occupations, and, if I may
+say so, has usually met with only partial success in them. By that I
+mean that the really successful merchant, or banker, or professional
+man cannot take time to work in politics, and so only the less
+successful try. Each reformer, too, is sure that he himself is right,
+and as his bread and butter is not in the issue, he quarrels to his
+heart’s content with his associates, so that they rarely can unite all
+their force. Most of the reform movements in this city have been
+attempted in a way that is simply laughable. What should we say if a
+hundred busy men were to get together to-morrow, and decide that they
+would open a great bank, to fight the clearing-house banks of New York?
+Yet this, in effect, is what the reformers have done over and over
+again in politics. They say to the men who have been kept in power for
+years by the people, ‘You are scoundrels. The people who elected you
+are ignorant We know how to do it better. Now we’ll turn you out.’ In
+short, they tell the majority they are fools, but ask their votes. The
+average reformer endorses thoroughly the theory ‘that every man is as
+good as another, and a little better.’ And he himself always is the
+better man. The people won’t stand that. The ‘holier than thou’ will
+defeat a man quicker in this country than will any rascality he may
+have done.”
+
+“But don’t you think the reformer is right in principle?”
+
+“In nine cases out of ten. But politics does not consist in being
+right. It’s in making other people think you are. Men don’t like to be
+told that they are ignorant and wrong, and this assumption is the basis
+of most of the so-called educational campaigns. To give impetus to a
+new movement takes immense experience, shrewdness, tact, and many other
+qualities. The people are obstructive—that is conservative—in most
+things, and need plenty of time.”
+
+“Unless _you_ tell them what they are to do,” laughed Watts. “Then they
+know quick enough.”
+
+“Well, that has taken them fifteen years to learn. Don’t you see how
+absurd it is to suppose that the people are going to take the opinions
+of the better element off-hand? At the end of a three months’ campaign?
+Men have come into my ward and spoken to empty halls; they’ve flooded
+it with campaign literature, which has served to light fires; their
+papers have argued, and nobody read them. But the ward knows me.
+There’s hardly a voter who doesn’t. They’ve tested me. Most of them
+like me. I’ve lived among them for years. I’ve gone on their summer
+excursions. I’ve talked with them all over the district. I have helped
+them in their troubles. I have said a kind word over their dead. I’m
+godfather to many. With others I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder when the
+bullets were flying. Why, the voters who were children when I first
+came here, with whom I use to sit in the angle, are almost numerous
+enough now to carry an election as I advise. Do you suppose, because
+speakers, unknown to them, say I’m wrong, and because the three-cent
+papers, which they never see, abuse me, that they are going to turn
+from me unless I make them? That is the true secret of the failure of
+reformers. A logical argument is all right in a court of appeals, but
+when it comes to swaying five thousand votes, give me five thousand
+loving hearts rather than five thousand logical reasons.”
+
+“Yet you have carried reforms.”
+
+“I have tried, but always in a practical way. That is, by not
+antagonizing the popular men in politics, but by becoming one of them
+and making them help me. I have gained political power by recognizing
+that I could only have my own way by making it suit the voters. You see
+there are a great many methods of doing about the same thing. And the
+boss who does the most things that the people want, can do the most
+things that the people don’t want. Every time I have surrendered my own
+wishes, and done about what the people desire, I have added to my
+power, and so have been able to do something that the people or
+politicians do not care about or did not like.”
+
+“And as a result you are called all sorts of names.”
+
+“Yes. The papers call me a boss. If the voters didn’t agree with me,
+they would call me a reformer.”
+
+“But, Peter,” said Le Grand, “would you not like to see such a type of
+man as George William Curtis in office?”
+
+“Mr. Curtis probably stood for the noblest political ideas this country
+has ever produced. But he held a beacon only to a small class. A man
+who writes from an easy-chair, will only sway easy-chair people. And
+easy-chair people never carried an election in this country, and never
+will. This country cannot have a government of the best. It will always
+be a government of the average. Mr. Curtis was only a leader to his own
+grade, just as Tim Sullivan is the leader of his. Mr. Curtis, in his
+editorials, spoke the feelings of one element in America. Sullivan, in
+Germania Hall, voices another. Each is representative, the one of five
+per cent. of New York; the other of ninety-five per cent. If the
+American people have decided one thing, it is that they will not be
+taken care of, nor coercively ruled, by their better element, or
+minorities.”
+
+“Yet you will acknowledge that Curtis ought to rule, rather than
+Sullivan?”
+
+“Not if our government is to be representative. I need not say that I
+wish such a type as Mr. Curtis was representative.”
+
+“I suppose if he had tried to be a boss he would have failed?”
+
+“I think so. For it requires as unusual a combination of qualities to
+be a successful boss, as to be a successful merchant or banker. Yet one
+cannot tell. I myself have never been able to say what elements make a
+boss, except that he must be in sympathy with the men whom he tries to
+guide, and that he must be meeting them. Mr. Curtis had a broad, loving
+nature and sympathies, and if the people had discovered them, they
+would have liked him. But the reserve which comes with culture makes
+one largely conceal one’s true feelings. Super-refinement puts a man
+out of sympathy with much that is basic in humanity, and it needs a
+great love, or a great sacrifice of feeling, to condone it. It is hard
+work for what Watts calls a tough, and such a man, to understand and
+admire one another.”
+
+“But don’t you think,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “that the people of our class
+are better and finer?”
+
+“The expression ‘noblesse oblige’ shows that,” said madame.
+
+“My experience has led me to think otherwise,” said Peter. “Of course
+there is a difference of standards, of ideals, and of education, in
+people, and therefore there are differences in conduct. But for their
+knowledge of what is right and wrong, I do not think the so-called
+better classes, which should, in truth, be called the prosperous
+classes, live up to their own standards of right any more than do the
+poor.”
+
+“Oh, I say, draw it mild. At least exclude the criminal classes,” cried
+Watts. “They know better.”
+
+“We all know better. But we don’t live up to our knowledge. I crossed
+on one of the big Atlantic liners lately, with five hundred other
+saloon passengers. They were naturally people of intelligence, and
+presumably of easy circumstances. Yet at least half of those people
+were plotting to rob our government of money by contriving plans to
+avoid paying duties truly owed. To do this all of them had to break our
+laws, and in most cases had, in addition, to lie deliberately. Many of
+them were planning to accomplish this theft by the bribery of the
+custom-house inspectors, thus not merely making thieves of themselves,
+but bribing other men to do wrong. In this city I can show you blocks
+so densely inhabited that they are election districts in themselves.
+Blocks in which twenty people live and sleep in a single room, year
+after year; where the birth of a little life into the world means that
+all must eat less and be less warm; where man and woman, old and young,
+must shiver in winter, and stifle in summer; where there is not room to
+bury the people who live in the block within the ground on which they
+dwell. But I cannot find you, in the poorest and vilest parts of this
+city, any block where the percentage of liars and thieves and
+bribe-givers is as large as was that among the first-class passengers
+of that floating palace. Each condition of society has its own
+mis-doings, and I believe varies little in the percentage of
+wrong-doers to the whole.”
+
+“To hear Peter talk you would think the whole of us ought to be
+sentenced to life terms,” laughed Watts. “I believe it’s only an
+attempt on his part to increase the practice of lawyers.”
+
+“Do you really think people are so bad, Peter?” asked Leonore, sadly.
+
+“No. I have not, ten times in my life, met a man whom I should now call
+bad. I have met men whom I thought so, but when I knew them better I
+found the good in them more than balancing the evil. Our mistake is in
+supposing that some men are ‘good’ and others ‘bad,’ and that a sharp
+line can be drawn between them. The truth is, that every man has both
+qualities in him and in very few does the evil overbalance the good. I
+marvel at the goodness I find in humanity, when I see the temptation
+and opportunity there is to do wrong.”
+
+“Some men are really depraved, though,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“Yes,” said madame. “Think of those strikers!”
+
+Peter felt a thrill of pleasure pass through him, but he did not show
+it. “Let me tell you something in connection with that. A high light in
+place of a dark shadow. There was an attempt to convict some of the
+strikers, but it failed, for want of positive evidence. The moral
+proof, however, against a fellow named Connelly was so strong that
+there could be no doubt that he was guilty. Two years later that man
+started out in charge of a long express, up a seven-mile grade, where
+one of our railroads crosses the Alleghanies. By the lay of the land
+every inch of that seven miles of track can be seen throughout its
+entire length, and when he had pulled half way up, he saw a section of
+a freight train coming down the grade at a tremendous speed. A coupling
+had broken, and this part of the train was without a man to put on the
+brakes. To go on was death. To stand still was the same. No speed which
+he could give his train by backing would enable it to escape those
+uncontrolled cars. He sent his fireman back to the first car, with
+orders to uncouple the engine. He whistled ‘on brakes’ to his train, so
+that it should be held on the grade safely. And he, and the engine
+alone, went on up that grade, and met that flying mass of freight. He
+saved two hundred people’s lives. Yet that man, two years before, had
+tried to burn alive forty of his fellow-men. Was that man good or bad?”
+
+“Really, chum, if you ask it as a conundrum, I give it up. But there
+are thoroughly and wholly good things in this world, and one of them is
+this stuffing. Would it be possible for a fellow to have a second
+help?”
+
+Peter smiled. “Jenifer always makes the portions according to what is
+to follow, and I don’t believe he’ll think you had better. Jenifer, can
+Mr. D’Alloi have some more stuffing?”
+
+“Yissah,” said Jenifer, grinning the true darkey grin, “if de gentmun
+want’t sell his ap’tite foh a mess ob potash.”
+
+“Never mind,” said Watts. “I’m not a dyspeptic, and so don’t need
+potash. But you might wrap the rest up in a piece of newspaper, and
+I’ll take it home.”
+
+“Peter, you must have met a great many men in politics whom you knew to
+be dishonest?” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“No. I have known few men whom I could call dishonest. But then I make
+a great distinction between the doer of a dishonest act and a dishonest
+man.”
+
+“That is what the English call ‘a fine-spun’ distinction, I think,”
+said madame.
+
+“I hope not. A dishonest man I hold to be one who works steadily and
+persistently with bad means and motives. But there are many men whose
+lives tell far more for good than for evil in the whole, yet who are
+not above doing wrong at moments or under certain circumstances. This
+man will lie under given conditions of temptations. Another will bribe,
+if the inducement is strong enough. A third will merely trick. Almost
+every man has a weak spot somewhere. Yet why let this one weakness—a
+partial moral obliquity or imperfection—make us cast him aside as
+useless and evil. As soon say that man physically is spoiled, because
+he is near-sighted, lame or stupid. If we had our choice between a new,
+bright, keen tool, or a worn, dull one, of poor material, we should not
+hesitate which to use. But if we only have the latter, how foolish to
+refuse to employ it as we may, because we know there are in the world a
+few better ones.”
+
+“Is not condoning a man’s sins, by failing to blame him, direct
+encouragement to them?” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“One need not condone the sin. My rule has been, in politics, or
+elsewhere, to fight dishonesty wherever I found it. But I try to fight
+the act, not the man. And if I find the evil doer beyond hope of
+correction, I do not antagonize the doer of it. More can be done by
+amity and forbearance than by embittering and alienating. Man is not
+bettered by being told that he is bad. I had an alderman in here three
+or four days ago who was up to mischief. I could have called him a
+scoundrel, without telling him untruth. But I didn’t. I told him what I
+thought was right, in a friendly way, and succeeded in straightening
+him out, so that he dropped his intention, yet went away my friend. If
+I had quarrelled with him, we should have parted company, he would have
+done the wrong, I should have fought him when election time came—and
+defeated him. But he, and probably fifty of his adherents in the ward
+would have become my bitter enemies, and opposed everything I tried in
+the future. If I quarrelled with enough such men, I should in time
+entirely lose my influence in the ward, or have it generally lessened.
+But by dealing as a friend with him, I actually prevented his doing
+what he intended, and we shall continue to work together. Of course a
+man can be so bad that this course is impossible, but they are as few
+in politics as they are elsewhere.”
+
+“Taciturnity Stirling in his great circus feat of riding a whole ward
+at once,” said Watts.
+
+“I don’t claim that I’m right,” said Peter. “I once thought very
+differently. I started out very hotly as a reformer when I began life.
+But I have learned that humanity is not reformed with a club, and that
+if most people gave the energy they spend in reforming the world, or
+their friends, to reforming themselves, there would be no need of
+reformers.”
+
+“The old English saying that ‘people who can’t mind their own business
+invariably mind some one’s else,’ seems applicable,” said Watts.
+
+“But is it not very humiliating to you to have to be friends with such
+men?” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“You know Mr. Drewitt?” asked Peter.
+
+“Yes,” said all but madame.
+
+“Do you take pleasure in knowing him?”
+
+“Of course,” said Watts. “He’s very amusing and a regular parlor pet.”
+
+“That is the reason I took him. For ten years that man was notoriously
+one of the worst influences in New York State politics. At Albany, in
+the interest of a great corporation, he was responsible for every job
+and bit of lobbying done in its behalf. I don’t mean to say that he
+really bribed men himself, for he had lieutenants for the actual dirty
+work, but every dollar spent passed through his hands, and he knew for
+what purpose it was used. At the end of that time, so well had he done
+his work, that he was made president of the corporation. Because of
+that position, and because he is clever, New York society swallowed him
+and has ever since delighted to fête him. I find it no harder to shake
+hands and associate with the men he bribed, than you do to shake hands
+and associate with the man who gave the bribe.”
+
+“Even supposing the great breweries, and railroads, and other interests
+to be chiefly responsible for bribery, that makes it all the more
+necessary to elect men above the possibility of being bribed,” said Le
+Grand. “Why not do as they do in Parliament? Elect only men of such
+high character and wealth, that money has no temptation for them.”
+
+“The rich man is no better than the poor man, except that in place of
+being bribed by other men’s money, he allows his own money to bribe
+him. Look at the course of the House of Lords on the corn-laws. The
+slave-holders’ course on secession. The millionaire silver senators’
+course on silver. The one was willing to make every poor man in England
+pay a half more for his bread than need be, in order that land might
+rent for higher prices. The slave-owner was willing to destroy his own
+country, rather than see justice done. The last are willing to force a
+great commercial panic, ruining hundreds and throwing thousands out of
+employment, if they can only get a few cents more per ounce for their
+silver. Were they voting honestly in the interest of their fellow-men?
+Or were their votes bribed?”
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi rose, saying, “Peter. We came early and we must go early.
+I’m afraid we’ve disgraced ourselves both ways.”
+
+Peter went down with them to their carriage. He said to Leonore in the
+descent, “I’m afraid the politics were rather dull to you. I lectured
+because I wanted to make some things clear to you.”
+
+“Why?” questioned Leonore.
+
+“Because, in the next few months you’ll see a great deal about bosses
+in the papers, and I don’t want you to think so badly of us as many
+do.”
+
+“I shan’t think badly of you, Peter,” said Leonore, in the nicest tone.
+
+“Thank you,” said Peter. “And if you see things said of me that trouble
+you, will you ask me about them?”
+
+“Yes. But I thought you wouldn’t talk politics?”
+
+“I will talk with you, because, you know, friends must tell each other
+everything.”
+
+When Leonore had settled back in the carriage for the long drive, she
+cogitated: “Mr. Le Grand said that he and Miss De Voe, and Mr. Ogden
+had all tried to get Peter to talk about politics, but that he never
+would. Yet, he’s known them for years, and is great friends with them.
+It’s very puzzling!”
+
+Probably Leonore was thinking of American politics.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+THE BLUE-PETER.
+
+
+Leonore’s puzzle went on increasing in complexity, but there is a limit
+to all intricacy, and after a time Leonore began to get an inkling of
+the secret. She first noticed that Peter seemed to spend an undue
+amount of time with her. He not merely turned up in the Park daily, but
+they were constantly meeting elsewhere. Leonore went to a gallery.
+There was Peter! She went to a concert. Ditto, Peter! She visited the
+flower-show. So did Peter! She came out of church. Behold Peter! In
+each case with nothing better to do than to see her home. At first
+Leonore merely thought these meetings were coincidences, but their
+frequency soon ended this theory, and then Leonore noticed that Peter
+had a habit of questioning her about her plans beforehand, and of
+evidently shaping his accordingly.
+
+Nor was this all. Peter seemed to be constantly trying to get her to
+spend time with him. Though the real summer was fast coming, he had
+another dinner. He had a box at the theatre. He borrowed a drag from
+Mr. Pell, and took them all up for a lunch at Mrs. Costell’s in
+Westchester. Then nothing would do but to have another drive, ending in
+a dinner at the Country Club.
+
+Flowers, too, seemed as frequent as their meetings. Peter had always
+smiled inwardly at bribing a girl’s love with flowers and bon-bons, but
+he had now discovered that flowers are just the thing to send a girl,
+if you love her, and that there is no bribing about it. So none could
+be too beautiful and costly for his purse. Then Leonore wanted a dog—a
+mastiff. The legal practice of the great firm and the politics of the
+city nearly stopped till the finest of its kind had been obtained for
+her.
+
+Another incriminating fact came to her through Dorothy.
+
+“I had a great surprise to-day,” she told Leonore. “One that fills me
+with delight, and that will please you.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“Peter asked me at dinner, if we weren’t to have Anneke’s house at
+Newport for the summer, and when I said ‘yes,’ he told me that if I
+would save a room for him, he would come down Friday nights and stay
+over Sunday, right through the summer. He has been a simply impossible
+man hitherto to entice into a visit. Ray and I felt like giving three
+cheers.”
+
+“He seemed glad enough to be invited to visit Grey-Court,” thought
+Leonore.
+
+But even without all this, Peter carried the answer to the puzzle about
+with him in his own person. Leonore could not but feel the difference
+in the way he treated, and talked, and looked at her, as compared to
+all about her. It is true he was no more demonstrative, than with
+others; his face held its quiet, passive look, and he spoke in much the
+usual, quiet, even tone of voice. Yet Leonore was at first dimly
+conscious, and later certain, that there was a shade of eagerness in
+his manner, a tenderness in his voice, and a look in his eye, when he
+was with her, that was there in the presence of no one else.
+
+So Leonore ceased to puzzle over the problem at a given point, having
+found the answer. But the solving did not bring her much apparent
+pleasure.
+
+“Oh, dear!” she remarked to herself. “I thought we were going to be
+such good friends! That we could tell each other everything. And now
+he’s gone and spoiled it. Probably, too, he’ll be bothering me later,
+and then he’ll be disappointed, and cross, and we shan’t be good
+friends any more. Oh, dear! Why do men have to behave so? Why can’t
+they just be friends?”
+
+It is a question which many women have asked. The query indicates a
+degree of modesty which should make the average masculine blush at his
+own self-love. The best answer to the problem we can recommend to the
+average woman is a careful and long study of a mirror.
+
+As a result of this cogitation Leonore decided that she would nip
+Peter’s troublesomeness in the bud, that she would put up a sign,
+“Trespassing forbidden;” by which he might take warning. Many women
+have done the same thing to would-be lovers, and have saved the lovers
+much trouble and needless expense. But Leonore, after planning out a
+dialogue in her room, rather messed it when she came to put it into
+actual public performance. Few girls of eighteen are cool over a
+love-affair. And so it occurred thusly:
+
+Leonore said to Peter one day, when he had dropped in for a cup of
+afternoon tea after his ride with her:
+
+“If I ask you a question, I wonder if you will tell me what you think,
+without misunderstanding why I tell you something?”
+
+“I will try.”
+
+“Well,” said Leonore, “there is a very nice Englishman whom I knew in
+London, who has followed me over here, and is troubling me. He’s
+dreadfully poor, and papa says he thinks he is after my money. Do you
+think that can be so?”
+
+So far the public performance could not have gone better if it had been
+rehearsed. But at this point, the whole programme went to pieces.
+Peter’s cup of tea fell to the floor with a crash, and he was leaning
+back in his chair, with a look of suffering on his face.
+
+“Peter,” cried Leonore, “what is it?”
+
+“Excuse me,” said Peter, rallying a little. “Ever since an operation on
+my eyes they sometimes misbehave themselves. It’s neuralgia of the
+optic nerve. Sometimes it pains me badly. Don’t mind me. It will be all
+right in a minute if I’m quiet.”
+
+“Can’t I do anything?”
+
+“No. I have an eye-wash which I used to carry with me, but it is so
+long since I have had a return of my trouble that I have stopped
+carrying it.”
+
+“What causes it?”
+
+“Usually a shock. It’s purely nervous.”
+
+“But there was no shock now, was there?” said Leonore, feeling so
+guilty that she felt it necessary to pretend innocence.
+
+Peter pulled himself together instantly and, leaning over, began
+deliberately to gather up the fragments of the cup. Then he laid the
+pieces on the tea-table and said: “I was dreadfully frightened when I
+felt the cup slipping. It was very stupid in me. Will you try to
+forgive me for breaking one of your pretty set?”
+
+“That’s nothing,” said Leonore. To herself that young lady remarked,
+“Oh, dear! It’s much worse than I thought. I shan’t dare say it to him,
+after all”
+
+But she did, for Peter helped her, by going back to her original
+question, saying bravely: “I don’t know enough about Mr. Max —— the
+Englishman, to speak of him, but I think I would not suspect men of
+that, even if they are poor.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because it would be much easier, to most men, to love you than to love
+your money.”
+
+“You think so?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I’m so glad. I felt so worried over it. Not about this case, for I
+don’t care for him, a bit. But I wondered if I had to suspect every man
+who came near me.”
+
+Peter’s eyes ceased to burn, and his second cup of tea, which a moment
+before was well-nigh choking him, suddenly became nectar for the gods.
+
+Then at last Leonore made the remark towards which she had been
+working. At twenty-five Leonore would have been able to say it without
+so dangerous a preamble.
+
+“I don’t want to be bothered by men, and wish they would let me alone,”
+she said. “I haven’t the slightest intention of marrying for at least
+five years, and shall say no to whomever asks me before then,”
+
+Five years! Peter sipped his tea quietly, but with a hopeless feeling.
+He would like to claim that bit of womanhood as his own that moment,
+and she could talk of five years! It was the clearest possible
+indication to Peter that Leonore was heart-whole. “No one, who is in
+love,” he thought, “could possibly talk of five years, or five months
+even.” When Peter got back to his chambers that afternoon, he was as
+near being despairing as he had been since—since—a long time ago. Even
+the obvious fact, that, if Leonore was not in love with him, she was
+also not in love with any one else, did not cheer him. There is a flag
+in the navy known as the Blue-Peter. That evening, Peter could have
+supplied our whole marine, with considerable bunting to spare.
+
+But even worse was in store for him on the morrow. When he joined
+Leonore in the Park that day, she proved to him that woman has as much
+absolute brutality as the lowest of prize-fighters. Women get the
+reputation of being less brutal, because of their dread of
+blood-letting. Yet when it comes to torturing the opposite sex in its
+feelings, they are brutes compared with their sufferers.
+
+“Do you know,” said Leonore, “that this is almost our last ride
+together?”
+
+“Don’t jerk the reins needlessly, Peter,” said Mutineer, crossly.
+
+“I hope not,” said Peter.
+
+“We have changed our plans. Instead of going to Newport next week, I
+have at last persuaded papa to travel a little, so that I can see
+something of my own country, and not be so shamefully ignorant. We are
+going to Washington on Saturday, and from there to California, and then
+through the Yellowstone, and back by Niagara. We shan’t be in Newport
+till the middle of August”
+
+Peter did not die at once. He caught at a life-preserver of a most
+delightful description. “That will be a very enjoyable trip,” he said.
+“I should like to go myself.”
+
+“There is no one I would rather have than you,” said Leonore, laying
+her little hand softly on the wound she had herself just made, in a way
+which women have. Then she stabbed again. “But we think it pleasanter
+to have it just a party of four.”
+
+“How long shall you be in Washington?” asked Peter, catching wildly at
+a straw this time.
+
+“For a week. Why?”
+
+“The President has been wanting to see me, and I thought I might run
+down next week,”
+
+“Dear me,” thought Leonore. “How very persistent he is!”
+
+“Where will you put up?” said Peter.
+
+“We haven’t decided. Where shall you stay?” she had the brutality to
+ask.
+
+“The President wants me with him, but I may go to a hotel. It leaves
+one so much freer.” Peter was a lawyer, and saw no need of committing
+himself. “If I am there when you are, I can perhaps help you enjoy
+yourself. I think I can get you a lunch at the White House, and, as I
+know most of the officials, I have an open sesame to some other nice
+things.” Poor Peter! He was trying to tempt Leonore to tolerate his
+company by offering attractions in connection therewith. A chromo with
+the pound of tea. And this from the man who had thought flowers and
+bon-bons bribery!
+
+“Why does the President want to see you?”
+
+“To talk politics.”
+
+“About the governorship?”
+
+“Yes. Though we don’t say so.”
+
+“Is it true, Peter, that you can decide who it is to be as the papers
+say?”
+
+“No, I would give twenty-five thousand dollars to-day if I could name
+the Democratic nominee.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Would you mind my not telling you?”
+
+“Yes. I want to know. And you are to tell me,” said her majesty,
+calmly.
+
+“I will tell you, though it is a secret, if you will tell me a secret
+of yours which I want to know.”
+
+“No,” said Leonore. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You are to tell me
+without making me promise anything.” Leonore might deprecate a man’s
+falling in love with her, but she had no objection to the power and
+perquisites it involved.
+
+“Then I shan’t tell you,” said Peter, making a tremendous rally.
+
+Leonore looked out from under her lashes to see just how much of
+Peter’s sudden firmness was real and how much pretence. Then she became
+unconscious of his presence.
+
+Peter said something.
+
+Silence.
+
+Peter said something else.
+
+Silence.
+
+“Are you really so anxious to know?” he asked, surrendering without
+terms.
+
+He had a glorious look at those glorious eyes. “Yes,” said the dearest
+of all mouths.
+
+“The great panic,” said Peter, “has led to the formation of a so-called
+Labor party, and, from present indications, they are going to nominate
+a bad man. Now, there is a great attempt on foot to get the Democratic
+convention to endorse whomever the Labor party nominates.”
+
+“Who will that be?’”
+
+“A Stephen Maguire.”
+
+“And you don’t want him?”
+
+“No. I have never crossed his path without finding him engaged in
+something discreditable. But he’s truckled himself into a kind of
+popularity and power, and, having always been ‘a Democrat,’ he hopes to
+get the party to endorse him.”
+
+“Can’t you order the convention not to do it?”
+
+Peter smiled down into the eyes. “We don’t order men in this country
+with any success.”
+
+“But can’t you prevent them?”
+
+“I hope so. But it looks now as if I should have to do it in a way very
+disagreeable to myself.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“This is a great secret, you understand?”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore, all interest and eagerness. “I can keep a secret
+splendidly.”
+
+“You are sure?” asked Peter.
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“So can I,” said Peter.
+
+Leonore perfectly bristled with indignation. “I won’t be treated so,”
+she said. “Are you going to tell me?” She put on her severest manner.
+
+“No,” said Peter.
+
+“He is obstinate,” thought Leonore to herself. Then aloud she said:
+“Then I shan’t be friends any more?”
+
+“That is very nice,” said Peter, soberly.
+
+“What?” said Leonore, looking at him in surprise.
+
+“I have come to the conclusion,” said Peter, “that there is no use in
+our trying to be friends. So we had better give up at once. Don’t you
+think so?”
+
+“What a pretty horse Miss Winthrop has?” said Leonore. And she never
+obtained an answer to her question, nor answered Peter’s.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+A MUTINEER.
+
+
+After Peter’s return from Washington, there was a settled gloom about
+him positively appalling. He could not be wooed, on any plea, by his
+closest friends, to journey up-town into the social world. He failed
+entirely to avail himself of the room in the Rivington’s Newport villa,
+though Dorothy wrote appealingly, and cited his own words to him. Even
+to his partners he became almost silent, except on law matters. Jenifer
+found that no delicacy, however rare or however well cooked and served,
+seemed to be noticed any more than if it was mess-pork. The only
+moments that this atmosphere seemed to yield at all was when Peter took
+a very miscellaneous collection of rubbish out of a little sachet,
+meant for handkerchiefs, which he now carried in his breast-pocket, and
+touched the various articles to his lips. Then for a time he would look
+a little less suicidal.
+
+But it was astonishing the amount of work he did, the amount of reading
+he got through, the amount of politics he bossed, and the cigars he
+smoked, between the first of June, and the middle of August The
+party-leaders had come to the conclusion that Peter did not intend to
+take a hand in this campaign, but, after his return from Washington,
+they decided otherwise. “The President must have asked him to
+interfere,” was their whispered conclusion, “but it’s too late now.
+It’s all cut and dried.”
+
+Peter found, as this remark suggested, that his two months’ devotion to
+the dearest of eyes and sweetest of lips, had had serious results. As
+with Mutineer once, he had dropped his bridle, but there was no use in
+uttering, as he had, then, the trisyllable which had reduced the horse
+to order. He had a very different kind of a creature with which to
+deal, than a Kentucky gentleman of lengthy lineage, a creature called
+sometimes a “tiger.” Yet curiously enough, the same firm voice, and the
+same firm manner, and a “mutineer,” though this time a man instead of a
+horse, was effective here. All New York knew that something had been
+done, and wanted to know what. There was not a newspaper in the city
+that would have refused to give five thousand dollars for an authentic
+stenographic report of what actually was said in a space of time not
+longer than three hours in all. Indeed, so intensely were people
+interested, that several papers felt called upon to fabricate and print
+most absurd versions of what did occur, all the accounts reaching
+conclusions as absolutely different as the press portraits of
+celebrities. From three of them it is a temptation to quote the display
+headlines or “scare-heads,” which ushered these reports to the world.
+The first read:
+
+“THE BOSSES AT WAR!”
+“HOT WORDS AND LOOKS.”
+“BUT THEY’LL CRAWL LATER.”
+
+
+“There’s beauty in the bellow of the blast,
+There’s grandeur in the growling of the gale;
+But there’s eloquence-appalling, when Stirling is aroaring,
+And the Tiger’s getting modest with his tail”
+
+
+That was a Republican account. The second was:
+
+“MAGUIRE ON TOP!”
+
+
+“The Old Man is Friendly. A Peace-making Dinner at the Manhattan Club.
+Friends in Council. Labor and Democracy Shoulder to Shoulder. A United
+Front to the Enemy.”
+
+
+The third, printed in an insignificant little penny paper, never read
+and almost unknown by reading people, yet which had more city
+advertising than all the other papers put together, and a circulation
+to match the largest, announced:
+
+“TACITURNITY JUNIOR’S”
+“ONCE MORE AT THE BAT!”
+“NO MORE NONSENSE.”
+“HE PUTS MAGUIRE OUT ON THIRD BASE.”
+“NOW PLAY BALL!”
+
+
+And unintelligible as this latter sounds, it was near enough the truth
+to suggest inspiration. But there is no need to reprint the article
+that followed, for now it is possible, for the first time, to tell what
+actually occurred; and this contribution should alone permit this work
+to rank, as no doubt it is otherwise fully qualified to, in the dullest
+class of all books, that of the historical novel.
+
+The facts are, that Peter alighted from a hansom one evening, in the
+middle of July, and went into the Manhattan Club. He exchanged
+greetings with a number of men in the halls, and with more who came in
+while he was reading the evening papers. A man came up to him while he
+still read, and said:
+
+“Well, Stirling. Reading about your own iniquity?”
+
+“No,” said Peter, rising and shaking hands. “I gave up reading about
+that ten years ago. Life is too short.”
+
+“Pelton and Webber were checking their respectability in the coat-room,
+as I came up. I suppose they are in the café.”
+
+Peter said nothing, but turned, and the two entered that room. Peter
+shook hands with three men who were there, and they all drew up round
+one of the little tables. A good many men who saw that group, nudged
+each other, and whispered remarks.
+
+“A reporter from the _Sun_ is in the strangers’ room. Mr. Stirling, and
+asks to see you,” said a servant.
+
+“I cannot see him,” said Peter, quietly. “But say to him that I may
+possibly have something to tell him about eleven o’clock.”
+
+The four men at the table exchanged glances.
+
+“I can’t imagine a newspaper getting an interview out of you,
+Stirling,” laughed one of them a little nervously.
+
+Peter smiled. “Very few of us are absolutely consistent. I can’t
+imagine any of you, for instance, making a political mistake but
+perhaps you may some day.”
+
+A pause of a curious kind came after this, which was only interrupted
+by the arrival of three more men. They all shook hands, and Peter rang
+a bell.
+
+“What shall it be?” he asked.
+
+There was a moment’s hesitation, and then one said. “Order for us.
+You’re host. Just what you like.”
+
+Peter smiled. “Thomas,” he said, “bring us eight Apollinaris
+cocktails.”
+
+The men all laughed, and Thomas said, “Beg pardon, Mr. Stirling?” in a
+bewildered way. Thomas had served the club many years, but he had never
+heard of that cocktail.
+
+“Well, Thomas,” said Peter, “if you don’t have that in stock, make it
+seven Blackthorns.”
+
+Then presently eight men packed themselves into the elevator, and a
+moment later were sitting in one of the private dining-rooms. For an
+hour and a half they chatted over the meal, very much as if it were
+nothing more than a social dinner. But the moment the servant had
+passed the cigars and light, and had withdrawn, the chat suddenly
+ceased, and a silence came for a moment Then a man said:
+
+“It’s a pity it can’t please all, but the majority’s got to rule.”
+
+“Yes,” promptly said another, “this is really a Maguire ratification
+meeting.”
+
+“There’s nothing else to do,” affirmed a third.
+
+But a fourth said: “Then what are we here for?”
+
+No one seemed to find an answer. After a moment’s silence, the original
+speaker said:
+
+“It’s the only way we can be sure of winning.”
+
+“He gives us every pledge,” echoed the second.
+
+“And we’ve agreed, anyways, so we are bound,” continued the first
+speaker.
+
+Peter took his cigar out of his mouth. “Who are bound?” he asked,
+quietly.
+
+“Why, the organization is—the party,” said Number Two, with a
+“deny-it-if-you-dare” in his voice.
+
+“I don’t see how we can back out now, Stirling,” said Number One.
+
+“Who wants to?” said another. “The Labor party promises to support us
+on our local nominations, and Maguire is not merely a Democrat, but he
+gives us every pledge.”
+
+“There’s no good of talking of anything else anyhow,” said Number One,
+“for there will be a clean majority for Maguire in the convention.”
+
+“And no other candidate can poll fifty votes on the first ballot,” said
+Number Two.
+
+Then they all looked at Peter, and became silent. Peter puffed his
+cigar thoughtfully.
+
+“What do you say?” said Number One.
+
+Peter merely shook his head.
+
+“But I tell you it’s done,” cried one of the men, a little excitedly.
+“It’s too late to backslide! We want to please you, Stirling, but we
+can’t this time. We must do what’s right for the party.”
+
+“I’m not letting my own feeling decide it,” said Peter. “I’m thinking
+of the party. For every vote the Labor people give Maguire, the support
+of that party will lose us a Democratic vote.”
+
+“But we can’t win with a triangular fight. The Republicans will simply
+walk over the course.”
+
+If Peter had been a hot-headed reformer, he would have said: “Better
+that than that such a scoundrel shall win.” But Peter was a politician,
+and so saw no need of saying the unpleasantest thing that occurred to
+him, even if he felt it. Instead, he said: “The Labor party will get as
+many votes from the Republicans as from us, and, for every vote the
+Labor party takes from us, we shall get a Republican vote, if we put up
+the right kind of a man.”
+
+“Nonsense,” cried Number One.
+
+“How do you figure that?” asked another.
+
+“In these panic times, the nomination of such a man as Maguire, with
+his truckling to the lowest passions and his socialistic speeches, will
+frighten conservative men enough to make them break party lines, and
+unite on the most certain candidate. That will be ours.”
+
+“But why risk it, when, with Maguire, it’s certain?”
+
+Peter wanted to say: “Maguire shall not be endorsed, and that ends it.”
+Instead, he said: “We can win with our own man, and don’t need to trade
+with or endorse the Labor party. We can elect Maguire by the aid of the
+worst votes in this city, or we can elect our own man by the aid of the
+best. The one weakens our party in the future; the other strengthens
+it.”
+
+“You think that possible?” asked the man who had sought information as
+to what they “were here for.”
+
+“Yes. The Labor party makes a stir, but it wouldn’t give us the oyster
+and be content with the shells if it really felt strong. See what it
+offers us. All the local and State ticket except six assemblymen, two
+senators, and a governor, tied hand and foot to us, whose proudest
+claim for years has been that he’s a Democrat.”
+
+“But all this leaves out of sight the fact that the thing’s done,” said
+Number One.
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“Yes. It’s too late. The polls are closed,” said another.
+
+Peter stopped puffing. “The convention hasn’t met,” he remarked,
+quietly.
+
+That remark, however, seemed to have a sting in it, for Number Two
+cried:
+
+“Come. We’ve decided. Now, put up or shut up. No more beating about the
+bush.”
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“Tell us what you intend, Stirling,” said Number One. “We are committed
+beyond retreat. Come in with us, or stay outside the breastworks.”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Peter, “since you’ve taken your own position, without
+consulting me, you will allow me the same privilege.”
+
+“Go to—where you please,” said Number Six, crossly.
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“Well, what do you intend to do?” asked Number One.
+
+Peter knocked the ash off his cigar. “You consider yourselves pledged
+to support Maguire?”
+
+“Yes. We are pledged,” said four voices in unison.
+
+“So am I,” said Peter.
+
+“How?”
+
+“To oppose him,” said Peter.
+
+“But I tell you the majority of the convention is for him,” said Number
+One. “Don’t you believe me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then what good will your opposition do?”
+
+“It will defeat Maguire.”
+
+“No power on earth can do that.”
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“You can’t beat him in the convention, Stirling. The delegates pledged
+to him, and those we can give him elect him on the first ballot.”
+
+“How about November fourth?” asked Peter.
+
+Number One sprang to his feet. “You don’t mean?” he cried.
+
+“Never!” said Number Three.
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“Come, Stirling, say what you intend!”
+
+“I intend,” said Peter, “if the Democratic convention endorses Stephen
+Maguire, to speak against him in every ward of this city, and ask every
+man in it, whom I can influence, to vote for the Republican candidate.”
+
+Dead silence reigned.
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“You’ll go back on the party?” finally said one, in awe-struck tones.
+
+“You’ll be a traitor?” cried another.
+
+“I’d have believed anything but that you would be a dashed Mugwump!”
+groaned the third.
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“Say you are fooling?” begged Number Seven.
+
+“No,” said Peter, “Nor am I more a traitor to my party than you. You
+insist on supporting the Labor candidate and I shall support the
+Republican candidate. We are both breaking our party.”
+
+“We’ll win,” said Number One.
+
+Peter puffed his cigar.
+
+“I’m not so sure,” said the gentleman of the previous questions. “How
+many votes can you hurt us, Stirling?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Peter looked very contented.
+
+“You can’t expect to beat us single?”
+
+Peter smiled quietly. “I haven’t had time to see many men. But—I’m not
+single. Bohlmann says the brewers will back me, Hummel says he’ll be
+guided by me, and the President won’t interfere.”
+
+“You might as well give up,” continued the previous questioner. “The
+Sixth is a sure thirty-five hundred to the bad, and between Stirling’s
+friends, and the Hummel crowd, and Bohlmann’s people, you’ll lose
+twenty-five thousand in the rest of the city, besides the Democrats
+you’ll frighten off by the Labor party. You can’t put it less than
+thirty-five thousand, to say nothing of the hole in the campaign fund.”
+
+The beauty about a practical politician is that votes count for more
+than his own wishes. Number One said:
+
+“Well, that’s ended. You’ve smashed our slate. What have you got in its
+place?”
+
+“Porter?” suggested Peter.
+
+“No,” said three voices.
+
+“We can’t stand any more of him,” said Number One.
+
+“He’s an honest, square man,” said Peter.
+
+“Can’t help that. One dose of a man who’s got as little gumption as he,
+is all we can stand. He may have education, but I’ll be hanged if he
+has intellect. Why don’t you ask us to choose a college professor, and
+have done with it.”
+
+“Come, Stirling,” said the previous questioner, “the thing’s been
+messed so that we’ve got to go into convention with just the right man
+to rally the delegates. There’s only one man we can do it with, and you
+know it.”
+
+Peter rose, and dropped his cigar-stump into the ash-receiver. “I don’t
+see anything else,” he said, gloomily. “Do any of you?”
+
+A moment’s silence, and then Number One said: “No.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “I’ll take the nomination if necessary, but keep it
+back for a time, till we see if something better can’t be hit upon.”
+
+“No danger,” said Number One, holding out his hand, gleefully.
+
+“There’s more ways of killing a pig than choking it with butter,” said
+Number Three, laughing and doing the same.
+
+“It’s a pity Costell isn’t here,” added the previous questioner. “After
+you’re not yielding to him, he’d never believe we had forced you to
+take it.”
+
+And that was what actually took place at that very-much-talked-about
+dinner.
+
+Peter went downstairs with a very serious look on his face. At the
+door, the keeper of it said: “There are six reporters in the strangers’
+room, Mr. Stirling, who wish to see you.”
+
+A man who had just come in said: “I’m sorry for you, Peter.”
+
+Peter smiled quietly. “Tell them our wishes are not mutual.” Then he
+turned to the newcomer. “It’s all right,” he said, “so far as the party
+is concerned, Hummel. But I’m to foot the bill to do it.”
+
+“The devil! You don’t mean—?”
+
+Peter nodded his head.
+
+“I’ll give twenty-five thousand to the fund,” said Hummel, gleefully.
+“See if I don’t.”
+
+“Excuse me, Mr. Stirling,” said a man who had just come in.
+
+“Certainly,” said Peter promptly, “But I must ask the same favor of
+you, as I am going down town at once.” Peter had the brutality to pass
+out of the front door instantly, leaving the reporter with a
+disappointed look on his face.
+
+“If he only would have said something?” groaned the reporter to
+himself. “Anything that could be spun into a column. He needn’t have
+told me what he didn’t care to tell, yet he could have helped me to pay
+my month’s rent as easily as could be.”
+
+As for Peter, he fell into a long stride, and his face nearly equalled
+his stride in length. After he reached his quarters he sat and smoked,
+with the same serious look. He did not look cross. He did not have the
+gloom in his face which had been so fixed an expression for the last
+month. But he looked as a man might look who knew he had but a few
+hours to live, yet to whom death had no terror.
+
+“I am giving up,” Peter thought, “everything that has been my true life
+till now. My profession, my friends, my chance to help others, my
+books, and my quiet. I shall be misunderstood, reviled and hated.
+Everything I do will be distorted for partisan purposes. Friends will
+misjudge. Enemies will become the more bitter. I give up fifty thousand
+dollars a year in order to become a slave, with toadies, trappers,
+lobbyists and favor-seekers as my daily quota of humanity. I even
+sacrifice the larger part of my power.”
+
+So ran Peter’s thoughts, and they were the thoughts of a man who had
+not worked seventeen years in politics for nothing. He saw alienation
+of friends, income, peace, and independence, and the only return a mere
+title, which to him meant a loss, rather than a gain of power. Yet this
+was one of the dozen prizes thought the best worth striving for in our
+politics. Is it a wonder that our government and office-holding is left
+to the foreign element? That the native American should prefer any
+other work, rather than run the gauntlet of public opinion and press,
+with loss of income and peace, that he may hold some difficult office
+for a brief term?
+
+But finally Peter rose. “Perhaps she’ll like it,” he said aloud, and
+presumably, since no woman is allowed a voice in American politics, he
+was thinking of Miss Columbia. Then he looked at some photographs, a
+scrap of ribbon, a gold coin (Peter clearly was becoming a money
+worshipper), three letters, a card, a small piece of blotting-paper, a
+handkerchief (which Leonore and Peter had spent nearly ten minutes in
+trying to find one day), a glove, and some dried rose-leaves and
+violets. Yet this was the man who had grappled an angry tiger but two
+hours before and had brought it to lick his hand.
+
+He went to bed very happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+CLOUDS.
+
+
+But a month later he was far happier, for one morning towards the end
+of August, his mail brought him a letter from Watts, announcing that
+they had been four days installed in their Newport home, and that Peter
+would now be welcome any time. “I have purposely not filled Grey-Court
+this summer, so that you should have every chance. Between you and me
+and the post, I think there have been moments when mademoiselle missed
+‘her friend’ far more than she confessed.”
+
+“Dat’s stronory,” thought Jenifer. “He dun eat mo’ dis yar hot mo’nin’
+dan he dun in two mumfs.”
+
+Then Jenifer was sent out with a telegram, which merely said: “May I
+come to-day by Shore line limited? P.S.”
+
+“When you get back, Jenifer,” said Peter, “you may pack my trunk and
+your own. We may start for Newport at two.” Evidently Peter did not
+intend to run any risks of missing the train, in case the answer should
+be favorable.
+
+Peter passed into his office, and set to work to put the loose ends in
+such shape that nothing should go wrong during his absence. He had not
+worked long, when one of the boys told him that:
+
+“Mr. Cassius Curlew wants to see you, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+Peter stopped his writing, looking up quickly: “Did he say on what
+business?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Ask him, please.” And Peter went on writing till the boy returned.
+
+“He says it’s about the convention.”
+
+“Tell him he must be more specific.”
+
+The boy returned in a moment with a folded scrap of paper.
+
+“He said that would tell you, Mr. Stirling.”
+
+Peter unfolded the scrap, and read upon it: “A message from Maguire.”
+
+“Show him in.” Peter touched a little knob on his desk on which was
+stamped “Chief Clerk.” A moment later a man opened a door. “Samuels,”
+said Peter, “I wish you would stay here for a moment. I want you to
+listen to what’s said.”
+
+The next moment a man crossed the threshold of another door.
+“Good-morning, Mr. Stirling,” he said.
+
+“Mr. Curlew,” said Peter, without rising and with a cold inclination of
+his head.
+
+“I have a message for you, Mr. Stirling,” said the man, pulling a chair
+into a position that suited him, and sitting, “but it’s private.”
+
+Peter said nothing, but began to write.
+
+“Do you understand? I want a word with you private,” said the man after
+a pause.
+
+“Mr. Samuels is my confidential clerk. You can speak with perfect
+freedom before him.” Peter spoke without raising his eyes from his
+writing.
+
+“But I don’t want any one round. It’s just between you and me.”
+
+“When I got your message,” said Peter, still writing, “I sent for Mr.
+Samuels. If you have anything to say, say it now. Otherwise leave it
+unsaid.”
+
+“Well, then,” said the man, “your party’s been tricking us, and we
+won’t stand it.”
+
+Peter wrote diligently.
+
+“And we know who’s back of it. It was all pie down to that dinner of
+yours.”
+
+“Is that Maguire’s message?” asked Peter, though with no cessation of
+his labors.
+
+“Nop,” said the man. “That’s the introduction. Now, we know what it
+means. You needn’t deny it. You’re squinting at the governorship
+yourself. And you’ve made the rest go back on Maguire, and work for you
+on the quiet. Oh, we know what’s going on.”
+
+“Tell me when you begin on the message,” said Peter, still writing.
+
+“Maguire’s sent me to you, to tell you to back water. To stop bucking.”
+
+“Tell Mr. Maguire I have received his message.”
+
+“Oh, that isn’t all, and don’t you forget it! Maguire’s in this for fur
+and feathers, and if you go before the convention as a candidate, we’ll
+fill the air with them.”
+
+“Is that part of the message?” asked Peter.
+
+“By that we mean that half an hour after you accept the nomination,
+we’ll have a force of detectives at work on your past life, and we’ll
+hunt down and expose every discreditable thing you’ve ever done.”
+
+Peter rose, and the man did the same instantly, putting one of his
+hands on his hip-pocket. But even before he did it, Peter had begun
+speaking, in a quiet, self-contained voice: “That sounds so like Mr.
+Maguire, that I think we have the message at last. Go to him, and say
+that I have received his message. That I know him, and I know his
+methods. That I understand his hopes of driving me, as he has some,
+from his path, by threats of private scandal. That, judging others by
+himself, he believes no man’s life can bear probing. Tell him that he
+has misjudged for once. Tell him that he has himself decided me in my
+determination to accept the nomination. That rather than see him the
+nominee of the Democratic party, I will take it myself. Tell him to set
+on his blood-hounds. They are welcome to all they can unearth in my
+life.”
+
+Peter turned towards his door, intending to leave the room, for he was
+not quite sure that he could sustain this altitude, if he saw more of
+the man. But as his hand was on the knob, Curlew spoke again.
+
+“One moment,” he called. “We’ve got something more to say to you. We
+have proof already.”
+
+Peter turned, with an amused look on his face. “I was wondering,” he
+said, “if Maguire really expected to drive me with such vague threats.”
+
+“No siree,” said Curlew with a self-assured manner, but at the same
+time putting Peter’s desk between the clerk and himself, so that his
+flank could not be turned. “We’ve got some evidence that won’t be sweet
+reading for you, and we’re going to print it, if you take the
+nomination.”
+
+“Tell Mr. Maguire he had better put his evidence in print at once. That
+I shall take the nomination.”
+
+“And disgrace one of your best friends?” asked Curlew.
+
+Peter started slightly, and looked sharply at the man.
+
+“Ho, ho,” said Curlew. “That bites, eh? Well, it will bite worse before
+it’s through with.”
+
+Peter stood silent for a moment, but his hands trembled slightly, and
+any one who understood anatomy could have recognized that every muscle
+in his body was at full tension. But all he said was: “Well?”
+
+“It’s about that trip of yours on the ‘Majestic.’”
+
+Peter looked bewildered.
+
+“We’ve got sworn affidavits of two stewards,” Curlew continued, “about
+yours and some one else’s goings on. I guess Mr. and Mrs. Rivington
+won’t thank you for having them printed.”
+
+Instantly came a cry of fright, and the crack of a revolver, which
+brought Peter’s partners and the clerks crowding into the room. It was
+to find Curlew lying back on the desk, held there by Peter with one
+hand, while his other, clasping the heavy glass inkstand, was swung
+aloft. There was a look on Peter’s face that did not become it. An
+insurance company would not have considered Curlew’s life at that
+moment a fair risk.
+
+But when Peter’s arm descended it did so gently, put the inkstand back
+on the desk, and taking a pocket-handkerchief wiped a splash of ink
+from the hand that had a moment before been throttling Curlew. That
+worthy struggled up from his back-breaking attitude and the few parts
+of his face not drenched with ink, were very white, while his hands
+trembled more than had Peter’s a moment before.
+
+“Peter!” cried Ogden. “What is it?”
+
+“I lost my temper for a moment,” said Peter.
+
+“But who fired that shot?”
+
+Peter turned to the clerks. “Leave the room,” he said, “all of you. And
+keep this to yourselves. I don’t think the other floors could have
+heard anything through the fire-proof brick, but if any one comes,
+refer them to me.” As the office cleared, Peter turned to his partners
+and said: “Mr. Curlew came here with a message which he thought needed
+the protection of a revolver. He judged rightly, it seems.”
+
+“Are you hit?”
+
+“I felt something strike.” Peter put his hand to his side. He
+unbuttoned his coat and felt again. Then he pulled out a little sachet
+from his breast-pocket, and as e did so, a flattened bullet dropped to
+the floor. Peter looked into the sachet anxiously. The bullet had only
+gone through the lower corner of the four photographs and the glove!
+Peter laughed happily. “I had a gold coin in my pocket, and the bullet
+struck that. Who says that a luck-piece is nothing but a superstition?”
+
+“But, Peter, shan’t we call the police?” demanded Ogden, still looking
+stunned.
+
+Curlew moved towards the door.
+
+“One moment,” said Peter, and Curlew stopped.
+
+“Ray,” Peter continued, “I am faced with a terrible question. I want
+your advice?”
+
+“What, Peter?”
+
+“A man is trying to force me to stand aside and permit a political
+wrong. To do this, he threatens to publish lying affidavits of
+worthless scoundrels, to prove a shameful intimacy between a married
+woman and me.”
+
+“Bosh,” laughed Ray. “He can publish a thousand and no one would
+believe them of you.”
+
+“He knows that. But he knows, too, that no matter how untrue, it would
+connect her name with a subject shameful to the purest woman that ever
+lived. He knows that the scavengers of gossip will repeat it, and gloat
+over it. That the filthy society papers will harp on it for years. That
+in the heat of a political contest, the partisans will be only too glad
+to believe it and repeat it. That no criminal prosecution, no court
+vindication, will ever quite kill the story as regards her. And so he
+hopes that, rather than entail this on a woman whom I love, and on her
+husband and family, I will refuse a nomination. I know of such a case
+in Massachusetts, where, rather than expose a woman to such a danger,
+the man withdrew. What should I do?”
+
+“Do? Fight him. Tell him to do his worst.”
+
+Peter put his hand on Ray’s shoulder.
+
+“Even if—if—it is one dear to us both?”
+
+“Peter!”
+
+“Yes. Do you remember your being called home in our Spanish trip,
+unexpectedly? You left me to bring Miss De Voe, and—Well. They’ve
+bribed, or forged affidavits of two of the stewards of the ‘Majestic.’”
+
+Ray tried to spring forward towards Curlew. But Peter’s hand still
+rested on his shoulder, and held him back, “I started to kill him,”
+Peter said quietly, “but I remembered he was nothing but the miserable
+go-between.”
+
+“My God, Peter! What can I say?”
+
+“Ray! The stepping aside is nothing to me. It was an office which I was
+ready to take, but only as a sacrifice and a duty. It is to prevent
+wrong that I interfered. So do not think it means a loss to me to
+retire.”
+
+“Peter, do what you intended to do. We must not compromise with wrong
+even for her sake.”
+
+The two shook hands, “I do not think they will ever use it, Ray,” said
+Peter. “But I may be mistaken, and cannot involve you in the
+possibility, without your consent.”
+
+“Of course they’ll use it,” cried Ogden. “Scoundrels who could think of
+such a thing, will use it without hesitation.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “A man who uses a coward’s weapons, is a coward at
+heart. We can prevent it, I think.” Then he turned to Curlew. “Tell Mr.
+Maguire about this interview. Tell him that I spared you, because you
+are not the principal. But tell him from me, that if a word is breathed
+against Mrs. Rivington, I swear that I’ll search for him till I find
+him, and when I find him I’ll kill him with as little compunction as I
+would a rattlesnake.” Peter turned and going to his dressing-room,
+washed away the ink from his hands.
+
+Curlew shuffled out of the room, and, black as he was, went straight to
+the Labor headquarters and told his story.
+
+“And he’ll do it too, Mr. Maguire,” he said. “You should have seen his
+look as he said it, and as he stood over me. I feel it yet.”
+
+“Do you think he means it?” said Ray to Ogden, when they were back in
+Ray’s room.
+
+“I wouldn’t think so if I hadn’t seen his face as he stood over that
+skunk. But if ever a man looked murder he did at that moment. And quiet
+old Peter of all men!”
+
+“We must talk to him. Do tell him that—”
+
+“Do you dare do it?”
+
+“But you—?”
+
+“I don’t. Unless he speaks I shall—”
+
+“Ray and Ogden,” said a quiet voice, “I wish you would write out what
+you have just seen and heard. It may be needed in the future.”
+
+“Peter, let me speak,” cried Ray. “You mustn’t do what you said. Think
+of such an end to your life. No matter what that scoundrel does, don’t
+end your life on a gallows. It—”
+
+Peter held up his hand. “You don’t know the American people, Ray. If
+Maguire uses that lying story, I can kill him, and there isn’t a jury
+in the country which, when the truth was told, wouldn’t acquit me.
+Maguire knows it, too. We have heard the last of that threat, I’m
+sure.”
+
+Peter went back to his office. “I don’t wonder,” he thought, as he
+stood looking at the ink-stains on his desk and floor, “that people
+think politics nothing but trickery and scoundrelism. Yet such vile
+weapons and slanders would not be used if there were not people vile
+and mean enough at heart to let such things influence them. The fault
+is not in politics. It is in humanity.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+SUNSHINE.
+
+
+But just as Peter was about to continue this rather unsatisfactory
+train of thought, his eye caught sight of a flattened bullet lying on
+the floor. He picked it up, with a smile. “I knew she was my good
+luck,” he said. Then he took out the sachet again, and kissed the
+dented and bent coin. Then he examined the photographs. “Not even the
+dress is cut through,” he said gleefully, looking at the full length.
+“It couldn’t have hit in a better place.” When he came to the glove,
+however, he grieved a little over it. Even this ceased to trouble him
+the next moment, for a telegram was laid on his desk. It merely said,
+“Come by all means. W.C.D’A.” Yet that was enough to make Peter drop
+thoughts, work, and everything for a time. He sat at his desk, gazing
+at a blank wall, and thinking of a pair of slate-colored eyes. But his
+expression bore no resemblance to the one formerly assumed when that
+particular practice had been habitual.
+
+Nor was this expression the only difference in this day, to mark the
+change from Peter past to Peter present. For instead of manoeuvring to
+make Watts sit on the back seat, when he was met by the trap late that
+afternoon, at Newport, he took possession of that seat in the coolest
+possible manner, leaving the one by the driver to Watts. Nor did Peter
+look away from the girl on that back seat. Quite the contrary. It did
+not seem to him that a thousand eyes would have been any too much.
+Peter’s three months of gloom vanished, and became merely a contrast to
+heighten his present joy. A sort of “shadow-box.”
+
+He had had the nicest kind of welcome from his “friend.” If the manner
+had not been quite so absolutely frank as of yore, yet there was no
+doubt as to her pleasure in seeing Peter. “It’s very nice to see you
+again,” she had said while shaking hands. “I hoped you would come
+quickly.” Peter was too happy to say anything in reply. He merely took
+possession of that vacant seat, and rested his eyes in silence till
+Watts, after climbing into place, asked him how the journey to Newport
+had been.
+
+“Lovelier than ever,” said Peter, abstractedly. “I didn’t think it was
+possible.”
+
+“Eh?” said Watts, turning with surprise on his face.
+
+But Leonore did not look surprised. She only looked the other way, and
+the corners of her mouth were curving upwards.
+
+“The journey?” queried Watts.
+
+“You mean Newport, don’t you?” said Leonore helpfully, when Peter said
+nothing. Leonore was looking out from under her lashes—at things in
+general, of course.
+
+Peter said nothing. Peter was not going to lie about what he had meant,
+and Leonore liked him all the better for not using the deceiving
+loophole she had opened.
+
+Watts said, “Oh, of course. It improves every year. But wasn’t the
+journey hot, old man?”
+
+“I didn’t notice,” said Peter.
+
+“Didn’t notice! And this one of the hottest days of the year.”
+
+“I had something else to think about,” explained Peter.
+
+“Politics?” asked Watts.
+
+“Oh, Peter,” said Leonore, “we’ve been so interested in all the talk.
+It was just as maddening as could be, how hard it was to get New York
+papers way out west. I’m awfully in the dark about some things. I’ve
+asked a lot of people here about it, but nobody seems to know anything.
+Or if they do, they laugh at me. I met Congressman Pell yesterday at
+the Tennis Tournament, and thought he would tell me all about it. But
+he was horrid! His whole manner said: ‘I can’t waste real talk on a
+girl.’ I told him I was a great friend of yours, and that you would
+tell me when you came, but he only laughed and said, he had no doubt
+you would, for you were famous for your indiscretion. I hate men who
+laugh at women the moment they try to talk as men do.”
+
+“I think,” said Peter, “we’ll have to turn Pell down. A Congressman who
+laughs at one of my friends won’t do.”
+
+“I really wish you would. That would teach him,” said Leonore,
+vindictively. “A man who laughs at women can’t be a good Congressman.”
+
+“I tell you what we’ll do,” said Peter. “I don’t want to retire him,
+because—because I like his mother. But I will tell you something for
+you to tell him, that will astonish him very much, and make him want to
+know who told you, and so you can tease him endlessly.”
+
+“Oh, Peter!” said Leonore. “You are the nicest man.”
+
+“What’s that?” asked Watts.
+
+“It’s a great secret,” said Peter. “I shall only tell it to Miss
+D’Alloi, so that if it leaks beyond Pell, I shall know whom to blame
+for it.”
+
+“Goody!” cried Leonore, giving a little bounce for joy.
+
+“Is it about that famous dinner?” inquired Watts.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Peter, I’m so curious about that. Will you tell me what you did?”
+
+“I ate a dinner,” said Peter smiling.
+
+“Now don’t be like Mr. Pell,” said Leonore, reprovingly, “or I’ll take
+back what I just said.”
+
+“Did you roar, and did the tiger put its tail between its legs?” asked
+Watts.
+
+“That is the last thing our friends, the enemies, have found,” said
+Peter.
+
+“You will tell me about it, won’t you, Peter?” said Leonore,
+ingratiatingly.
+
+“Have you a mount for me, Watts, for to-morrow? Mutineer comes by boat
+to-night, but won’t be here till noon.”
+
+“Yes. I’ve one chap up to your weight, I think.”
+
+“I don’t like dodgers,” said Leonore, the corners of her mouth drawn
+down.
+
+“I was not dodging,” said Peter. “I only was asking a preliminary
+question. If you will get up, before breakfast, and ride with me, I
+will tell you everything that actually occurred at that dinner. You
+will be the only person, I think, who wasn’t there, who knows.” It was
+shameful and open bribery, but bosses are shameful and open in their
+doings, so Peter was only living up to his rôle.
+
+The temptation was too strong to be resisted, Leonore said, “Of coarse
+I will,” and the corners of her mouth reversed their position. But she
+said to herself: “I shall have to snub you in something else to make up
+for it.” Peter was in for a bad quarter of an hour somewhere.
+
+Leonore had decided just how she was going to treat Peter. To begin
+with, she intended to accentuate that “five years” in various ways.
+Then she would be very frank and friendly, just as long as he, too,
+would keep within those limits, but if Peter even verged on anything
+more, she intended to leave him to himself, just long enough to show
+him that such remarks as his “not caring to be friends,” brought
+instant and dire punishment. “And I shan’t let him speak,” Leonore
+decided, “no matter if he wants to. For if he does, I’ll have to say
+‘no,’ and then he’ll go back to New York and sulk, and perhaps never
+come near me again, since he’s so obstinate, while I want to stay
+friends.” Many such campaigns have been planned by the party of the
+first part. But the trouble is that, usually, the party of the second
+part also has a plan, which entirely disconcerts the first. As the
+darkey remarked: “Yissah. My dog he wud a beat, if it hadn’t bin foh de
+udder dog.”
+
+Peter found as much contrast in his evening, as compared with his
+morning, as there was in his own years. After dinner. Leonore said:
+
+“I always play billiards with papa. Will you play too?”
+
+“I don’t know how,” said Peter.
+
+“Then it’s time you learned. I’ll take you on my side, because papa
+always beats me. I’ll teach you.”
+
+So there was the jolliest of hours spent in this way, all of them
+laughing at Peter’s shots, and at Leonore’s attempts to show him how.
+“Every woman ought to play billiards,” Peter thought, when it was
+ended. “It’s the most graceful sight I’ve seen in years.”
+
+Leonore said, “You get the ideas very nicely, but you hit much too
+hard. You can’t hit a ball too softly. You pound it as if you were
+trying to smash it.”
+
+“It’s something I really must learn,” said Peter, who had refused over
+and over again in the past.
+
+“I’ll teach you, while you are here,” said Leonore.
+
+Peter did not refuse this time.
+
+Nor did he refuse another lesson. When they had drifted into the
+drawing-room, Leonore asked: “Have you been learning how to valse?”
+
+Peter smiled at so good an American using so European a word, but said
+seriously, “No. I’ve been too busy.”
+
+“That’s a shame,” said Leonore, “because there are to be two dances
+this week, and mamma has written to get you cards.”
+
+“Is it very hard?” asked Peter.
+
+“No,” said Leonore. “It’s as easy as breathing, and much nicer.”
+
+“Couldn’t you teach me that, also?”
+
+“Easily. Mamma, will you play a valse? Now see.” Leonore drew her
+skirts back with one hand, so as to show the little feet, and said:
+“one, two, three, so. One, two, three, so. Now do that.”
+
+Peter had hoped that the way to learn dancing was to take the girl in
+one’s arms. But he recognized that this would follow. So he set to work
+manfully to imitate that dainty little glide. It seemed easy as she did
+it. But it was not so easy when he tried it.
+
+“Oh, you clumsy,” said Leonore laughing. “See. One, two, three, so.
+One, two, three, so.”
+
+Peter forgot to notice the step, in his admiration of the little feet
+and the pretty figure.
+
+“Well,” said Leonore after a pause, “are you going to do that?”
+
+So Peter tried again, and again, and again. Peter would have done it
+all night, with absolute contentment, so long as Leonore, after every
+failure, would show him the right way in her own person.
+
+Finally she said, “Now take my hands. No. Way apart, so that I can see
+your feet. Now. We’ll try it together. One, two, change. One, two,
+change.”
+
+Peter thought this much better, and was ready to go on till strength
+failed. But after a time, Leonore said, “Now. We’ll try it the true
+way. Take my hand so and put your arm so. That’s the way. Only never
+hold a girl too close. We hate it. Yes. That’s it. Now, mamma. Again.
+One, two, three. One, two, three.”
+
+This was heavenly, Peter thought, and could have wept over the
+shortness, as it seemed to him, of this part of the lesson.
+
+But it ended, and Leonore said: “If you’ll practice that in your room,
+with a bolster, you’ll get on very fast.”
+
+“I always make haste slowly,” said Peter, not taking to the bolster
+idea at all kindly. “Probably you can find time to-morrow for another
+lesson, and I’ll learn much quicker with you.”
+
+“I’ll see.”
+
+“And will you give me some waltzes at the dances?”
+
+“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Leonore. “You shall have the dances
+the other men don’t ask of me. But you don’t dance well enough, in case
+I can get a better partner. I love valsing too much to waste one with a
+poor dancer.”
+
+A moment before Peter thought waltzing the most exquisite pleasure the
+world contained. But he suddenly changed his mind, and concluded it was
+odious.
+
+“Nevertheless,” he decided, “I will learn how.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
+
+
+Peter had his ride the next morning, and had a very interested listener
+to his account of that dinner. The listener, speaking from vast
+political knowledge, told him at the end. “You did just right. I
+thoroughly approve of you.”
+
+“That takes a great worry off my mind,” said Peter soberly. “I was
+afraid, since we were to be such friends, and you wanted my help in the
+whirligig this winter, that you might not like my possibly having to
+live in Albany.”
+
+“Can’t you live in New York?” said Leonore, looking horrified.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then I don’t like it at all,” said Leonore. “It’s no good having
+friends if they don’t live near one.”
+
+“That’s what I think,” said Peter. “I suppose I couldn’t tempt you to
+come and keep house for me?”
+
+“Now I must snub him,” thought Leonore. “No,” she said, “It will be bad
+enough to do that five years from now, for the man I love.” She looked
+out from under her eyelashes to see if her blow had been fatal, and
+concluded from the glumness in Peter’s face, that she really had been
+too cruel. So she added: “But you may give me a ball, and we’ll all
+come up and stay a week with you.”
+
+Peter relaxed a little, but he said dolefully, “I don’t know what I
+shall do. I shall be in such need of your advice in politics and
+housekeeping.”
+
+“Well,” said Leonore, “if you really find that you can’t get on without
+help, we’ll make it two weeks. But you must get up toboggan parties,
+and other nice things.”
+
+“I wonder what the papers will say,” thought Peter, “if a governor
+gives toboggan parties?”
+
+After the late breakfast, Peter was taken down to see the tournament.
+He thought he would not mind it, since he was allowed to sit next
+Leonore. But he did. First he wished that she wouldn’t pay so much
+attention to the score. Then that the men who fluttered round her would
+have had the good taste to keep away. It enraged Peter to see how
+perfectly willing she was to talk and chat about things of which he
+knew nothing, and how more than willing the men were. And then she
+laughed at what they said!
+
+“That’s fifteen-love, isn’t it?” Leonore asked him presently.
+
+“He doesn’t look over fifteen,” actually growled Peter. “I don’t know
+whether he’s in love or not. I suppose he thinks he is. Boys fifteen
+years old always do.”
+
+Leonore forgot the score, even, in her surprise. “Why,” she said, “you
+growl just like Bêtise (the mastiff). Now I know what the papers mean
+when they say you roar.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “it makes me cross to see a lot of boys doing
+nothing but hit a small ball, and a lot more looking at them and
+thinking that it’s worth doing.” Which was a misstatement. It was not
+that which made Peter mad.
+
+“Haven’t you ever played tennis?”
+
+“Never. I don’t even know how to score.”
+
+“Dear me,” said Leonore, “You’re dreadfully illiterate.”
+
+“I know it,” growled Peter, “I don’t belong here, and have no business
+to come. I’m a ward boss, and my place is in saloons. Don’t hesitate to
+say it.”
+
+All this was very foolish, but it was real to Peter for the moment, and
+he looked straight ahead with lines on his face which Leonore had never
+seen before. He ought to have been ordered to go off by himself till he
+should be in better mood.
+
+Instead Leonore turned from the tennis, and said: “Please don’t talk
+that way, Peter. You know I don’t think that.” Leonore had understood
+the misery which lay back of the growl. “Poor fellow,” she thought, “I
+must cheer him up.” So she stopped looking at the tennis. “See,” she
+said, “there are Miss Winthrop and Mr. Pell. Do take me over to them
+and let me spring my surprise. You talk to Miss Winthrop.”
+
+“Why, Peter!” said Pell. “When did you come?”
+
+“Last night. How do you do, Miss Winthrop?” Then for two minutes Peter
+talked, or rather listened, to that young lady, though sighing
+internally. Then, _Laus Deo!_ up came the poor little chap, whom Peter
+had libelled in age and affections, only ten minutes before, and set
+Peter free. He turned to see how Leonore’s petard was progressing, to
+find her and Pell deep in tennis. But just as he was going to expose
+his ignorance on that game, Leonore said:
+
+“Mr. Pell, what do you think of the political outlook?”
+
+Pell sighed internally, “You can read it in the papers,” he said.
+
+“No. I want your opinion. Especially about the great departure the
+Democratic Convention is going to make.”
+
+“You mean in endorsing Maguire?”
+
+Leonore began to visibly swell in importance. “Of course not,” she
+said, contemptuously. “Every one knows that that was decided against at
+the Manhattan dinner. I mean the unusual resolution about the next
+senator.”
+
+Pell ceased to sigh. “I don’t know what you mean?” he said.
+
+“Not really?” said Leonore incredulously, her nose cocking a little
+more airily. “I thought of course you would know about it. I’m so
+surprised!”
+
+Pell looked at her half quizzingly, and half questioningly. “What is
+the resolution?”
+
+“Naming a candidate for the vacancy for the Senate.”
+
+“Nonsense,” said Pell, laughing. “The convention has nothing to do with
+the senators. The Legislature elects them.” He thought, “Why can’t
+women, if they will talk politics, at least learn the ABC.”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore, “but this is a new idea. The Senate has behaved so
+badly, that the party leaders think it will be better to make it a more
+popular body by having the New York convention nominate a man, and then
+they intend to make the legislature elect him. If the other states will
+only follow New York’s lead, it may make the Senate respectable and
+open to public opinion.”
+
+Pell sniffed obviously. “In what fool paper did you read that?”
+
+“I didn’t read it,” said Leonore, her eyes dancing with delight. “The
+papers are always behind the times. But I didn’t think that you would
+be, since you are to be named in the resolution.”
+
+Pell looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
+
+“Didn’t you know that the Convention will pass a resolution, naming you
+for next senator?” said Leonore, with both wonder and pity in her face
+and voice.
+
+“Who told you that?” said Pell, with an amount of interest blended with
+doubt that was a decided contrast to a moment ago.
+
+“That’s telling,” said Leonore. “You know, Mr. Pell, that one mustn’t
+tell people who are outside the party councils everything.”
+
+“I believe you are trying to stuff me,” said Pell, “If it is so, or
+anything like it, you wouldn’t know.”
+
+“Oh,” said Leonore, tantalizingly, “I could tell you a great deal more
+than that. But of course you don’t care to talk politics with a girl.”
+
+Pell weakened. “Tell me who told you about it?”
+
+“I think we must go home to lunch,” said Leonore, turning to Peter, who
+had enjoyed Leonore’s triumph almost as much as she had.
+
+“Peter,” said Pell, “have you heard what Miss D’Alloi has been saying?”
+
+“Part of it.”
+
+“Where can she have picked it up?
+
+“I met Miss D’Alloi at a lunch at the White House, last June,” said
+Peter seriously, “and she, and the President, and I, talked politics.
+Politically, Miss D’Alloi is rather a knowing person. I hope you
+haven’t been saying anything indiscreet, Miss D’Alloi?”
+
+“I’m afraid I have,” laughed Leonore, triumphantly, adding, “but I
+won’t tell anything more.”
+
+Pell looked after them as they went towards the carriage. “How
+extraordinary!” he said. “She couldn’t have it from Peter. He tells
+nothing. Where the deuce did she get it, and is it so?” Then he said:
+“Senator Van Brunt Pell,” with a roll on all the r’s. “That sounds
+well. I wonder if there’s anything in it?”
+
+“I think,” said Leonore to Peter, triumphantly “that he would like to
+have talked politics. But he’ll get nothing but torture from me if he
+tries.”
+
+It began to dawn on Peter that Leonore did not, despite her frank
+manner, mean all she said. He turned to her, and asked:
+
+“Are you really in earnest in saying that you’ll refuse every man who
+asks you to marry him within five years?”
+
+Leonore’s triumph scattered to the four winds. “What an awfully
+impudent question,” she thought, “after my saying it so often. What
+shall I answer?” She looked Peter in the eye with severity. “I shan’t
+refuse,” she said, “because I shan’t even let him speak. If any man
+dares to attempt it, I’ll tell him frankly I don’t care to listen.”
+
+“She really means it,” sighed Peter internally. “Why is it, that the
+best girls don’t care to marry?” Peter became very cross, and, what is
+worse, looked it.
+
+Nor was Leonore much better, “There,” she said, “I knew just how it
+would be. He’s getting sulky already. He isn’t nice any more. The best
+thing will be to let him speak, for then he’ll go back to New York, and
+won’t bother me.” The corners of her mouth drew away down, and life
+became very gray.
+
+So “the best of friends” rode home from the Casino, without so much as
+looking at each other, much less speaking. Clearly Peter was right.
+There was no good in trying to be friends any longer.
+
+Precedent or habit, however, was too strong to sustain this condition
+long. First Leonore had to be helped out of the carriage. This was
+rather pleasant, for she had to give Peter her hand, and so life became
+less unworth living to Peter. Then the footman at the door gave Peter
+two telegraphic envelopes of the bulkiest kind, and Leonore too began
+to take an interest in life again.
+
+“What are they about?” she asked.
+
+“The Convention. I came off so suddenly that some details were left
+unarranged.”
+
+“Read them out loud,” she said calmly, as Peter broke the first open.
+
+Peter smiled at her, and said: “If I do, will you give me another
+waltzing lesson after lunch?”
+
+“Don’t bargain,” said Leonore, disapprovingly.
+
+“Very well,” said Peter, putting the telegrams in his pocket, and
+turning towards the stairs.
+
+Leonore let him go up to the first landing. But as soon as she became
+convinced that he was really going to his room, she said, “Peter.”
+
+Peter turned and looked down at the pretty figure at the foot of the
+stairs. He came down again. When he had reached the bottom he said,
+“Well?”
+
+Leonore was half angry, and half laughing. “You ought to want to read
+them to me,” she said, “since we are such friends.”
+
+“I do,” said Peter, “And you ought to want to teach me to waltz, since
+we are such friends.”
+
+“But I don’t like the spirit,” said Leonore.
+
+Peter laughed. “Nor I,” he said. “Still, I’ll prove I’m the better, by
+reading them to you.”
+
+“Now I will teach him,” said Leonore to herself.
+
+Peter unfolded the many sheets. “This is very secret, of course,” he
+said.
+
+“Yes.” Leonore looked round the hall as if she was a conspirator. “Come
+to the window-seat upstairs,” she whispered, and led the way. When they
+had ensconced themselves there, and drawn the curtains, she said,
+“Now.”
+
+“You had better sit nearer me,” said Peter, “so that I can whisper it.”
+
+“No,” said Leonore. “No one can hear us.” She thought, “I’d snub you
+for that, if I wasn’t afraid you wouldn’t read it.”
+
+“You understand that you are not to repeat this to anyone.” Peter was
+smiling over something.
+
+Leonore said, “Yes,” half crossly and half eagerly.
+
+So Peter read:
+
+“Use Hudson knowledge counties past not belief local twenty imbecility
+certified of yet till yesterday noon whose Malta could accurately it at
+seventeen. Potomac give throw Haymarket estimated Moselle thirty-three
+to into fortify through jurist arrived down right—”
+
+“I won’t be treated so!” interrupted Leonore, indignantly.
+
+“What do you mean,” said Peter, still smiling. “I’m reading it to you,
+as you asked.”
+
+“No you are not. You are just making up.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “It’s all here.”
+
+“Let me see it.” Leonore shifted her seat so as to overlook Peter.
+
+“That’s only two pages,” said Peter, holding them so that Leonore had
+to sit very close to him to see. “There are eighteen more.”
+
+Leonore looked at them. “Was it written by a lunatic?” she asked.
+
+“No.” Peter looked at the end. “It’s from Green. Remember. You are not
+to repeat it to any one.”
+
+“Luncheon is served, Miss D’Alloi,” said a footman.
+
+“Bother luncheon,” thought Peter.
+
+“Please tell me what it means?” said Leonore, rising.
+
+“I can’t do that, till I get the key and decipher it.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Leonore, clapping her hands in delight. “It’s a cipher. How
+tremendously interesting! We’ll go at it right after lunch and decipher
+it together, won’t we?”
+
+“After the dancing lesson, you mean, don’t you?” suggested Peter.
+
+“How did you know I was going to do it?” asked Leonore.
+
+“You told me.”
+
+“Never! I didn’t say a word.”
+
+“You looked several,” said Peter.
+
+Leonore regarded him very seriously. “You are not ‘Peter Simple’ a
+bit,” she said. “I don’t like deep men.” She turned and went to her
+room. “I really must be careful,” she told the enviable sponge as it
+passed over her face, “he’s a man who needs very special treatment. I
+ought to send him right back to New York. But I do so want to know
+about the politics. No. I’ll keep friends till the campaign’s finished.
+Then he’ll have to live in Albany, and that will make it all right. Let
+me see. He said the governor served three years. That isn’t five, but
+perhaps he’ll have become sensible before then.”
+
+As for Peter, he actually whistled during his ablutions, which was
+something he had not done for many years. He could not quite say why,
+but it represented his mood better than did his earlier growl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+A GUARDIAN ANGEL.
+
+
+Peter had as glorious an afternoon as he had had a bad morning. First
+he danced a little. Then the two sat at the big desk in the deserted
+library and worked together over those very complex dispatches till
+they had them translated. Then they had to discuss their import.
+Finally they had to draft answers and translate them into cipher. All
+this with their heads very close together, and an utter forgetfulness
+on the part of a certain personage that snubbing rather than politics
+was her “plan of campaign.” But Leonore began to feel that she was a
+political power herself, and so forgot her other schemes. When they had
+the answering dispatches fairly transcribed, she looked up at Peter and
+said:
+
+“I think we’ve done that very well,” in the most approving voice. “Do
+you think they’ll do as we tell them?”
+
+Peter looked down into that dearest of faces, gazing at him so frankly
+and with such interest, so very near his, and wondered what deed was
+noble or great enough to win a kiss from those lips. Several times that
+afternoon, it had seemed to him that he could not keep himself from
+leaning over and taking one. He even went so far now as to speculate on
+exactly what Leonore would do if he did. Fortunately his face was not
+given to expressing his thoughts. Leonore never dreamed how narrow an
+escape she had. “If only she wouldn’t be so friendly and confiding,”
+groaned Peter, even while absolutely happy in her mood. “I can’t do it,
+when she trusts me so.”
+
+“Well,” said Leonore, “perhaps when you’ve done staring at me, you’ll
+answer my question.”
+
+“I think they’ll do as we tell them,” smiled Peter. “But we’ll get word
+to-morrow about Dutchess and Steuben. Then we shall know better how the
+land lies, and can talk plainer.”
+
+“Will there be more ciphers, to-morrow?”
+
+“Yes.” To himself Peter said, “I must write Green and the rest to
+telegraph me every day.”
+
+“Now we’ll have a cup of tea,” said Leonore. “I like politics.”
+
+“Then you would like Albany,” said Peter, putting a chair for her by
+the little tea-table.
+
+“I wouldn’t live in Albany for the whole world,” said Leonore, resuming
+her old self with horrible rapidity. But just then she burnt her finger
+with the match with which she was lighting the lamp, and her cruelty
+vanished in a wail. “Oh!” she cried. “How it hurts.”
+
+“Let me see,” said Peter sympathetically.
+
+The little hand was held up. “It does hurt,” said Leonore, who saw that
+there was a painful absence of all signs of injury, and feared Peter
+would laugh at such a burn after those he had suffered.
+
+But Peter treated it very seriously. “I’m sure it does,” he said,
+taking possession of the hand. “And I know how it hurts.” He leaned
+over and kissed the little thumb. Then he didn’t care a scrap whether
+Leonore liked Albany or not.
+
+“I won’t snub you this time,” said Leonore to herself, “because you
+didn’t laugh at me for it.”
+
+Peter’s evening was not so happy. Leonore told him as they rose from
+dinner that she was going to a dance. “We have permission to take you.
+Do you care to go?”
+
+“Yes. If you’ll give me some dances.”
+
+“I’ve told you once that I’ll only give you the ones not taken by
+better dancers. If you choose to stay round I’ll take you for those.”
+
+“Do you ever have a dance over?” asked Peter, marvelling at such a
+possibility.
+
+“I’ve only been to one dance. I didn’t have at that.”
+
+“Well,” said Peter, growling a little, “I’ll go.”
+
+“Oh,” said Leonore, calmly, “don’t put yourself out on my account.”
+
+“I’m not,” growled Peter. “I’m doing it to please myself.” Then he
+laughed, so Leonore laughed too.
+
+After a game of billiards they all went to the dance. As they entered
+the hall, Peter heard his name called in a peculiar voice behind. He
+turned and saw Dorothy.
+
+Dorothy merely said, “Peter!” again. But Peter understood that
+explanations were in order. He made no attempt to dodge.
+
+“Dorothy,” he said softly, giving a glance at Leonore, to see that she
+was out of hearing, “when you spent that summer with Miss De Voe, did
+Ray come down every week?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Would he have come if you had been travelling out west?”
+
+“Oh, Peter,” cried Dorothy, below her breath, “I’m so glad it’s come at
+last!”
+
+We hope our readers can grasp the continuity of Dorothy’s mental
+processes, for her verbal ones were rather inconsequent.
+
+“She’s lovely,” continued the verbal process. “And I’m sure I can help
+you.”
+
+“I need it,” groaned Peter. “She doesn’t care in the least for me, and
+I can’t get her to. And she says she isn’t going to marry for—”
+
+“Nonsense!” interrupted Dorothy, contemptuously, and sailed into the
+ladies’ dressing-room.
+
+Peter gazed after her. “I wonder what’s nonsense?” he thought.
+
+Dorothy set about her self-imposed task with all the ardor for
+matchmaking, possessed by a perfectly happy married woman. But Dorothy
+evidently intended that Leonore should not marry Peter, if one can
+judge from the tenor of her remarks to Leonore in the dressing-room.
+Peter liked Dorothy, and would probably not have believed her capable
+of treachery, but it is left to masculine mind to draw any other
+inference from the dialogue which took place between the two, as they
+prinked before a cheval glass.
+
+“I’m so glad to have Peter here for this particular evening,” said
+Dorothy.
+
+“Why?” asked Leonore, calmly, in the most uninterested of tones.
+
+“Because Miss Biddle is to be here. For two years I’ve been trying to
+bring those two together, so that they might make a match of it. They
+are made for each other.”
+
+Leonore tucked a rebellious curl in behind the drawn-back lock. Then
+she said, “What a pretty pin you have.”
+
+“Isn’t it? Ray gave it to me,” said Dorothy, giving Leonore all the
+line she wanted.
+
+“I’ve never met Miss Biddle,” said Leonore.
+
+“She’s a great beauty, and rich. And then she has that nice
+Philadelphia manner. Peter can’t abide the young-girl manner. He hates
+giggling and talking girls. It’s funny too, because, though he doesn’t
+dance or talk, they like him. But Miss Biddle is an older girl, and can
+talk on subjects which please him. She is very much interested in
+politics and philanthropy.”
+
+“I thought,” said Leonore, fluffing the lace on her gown, “that Peter
+never talked politics.”
+
+“He doesn’t,” said Dorothy. “But she has studied political economy.
+He’s willing to talk abstract subjects. She’s just the girl for a
+statesman’s wife. Beauty, tact, very clever, and yet very discreet. I’m
+doubly glad they’ll meet here, for she has given up dancing, so she can
+entertain Peter, who would otherwise have a dull time of it.”
+
+“If she wants to,” said Leonore.
+
+“Oh,” said Dorothy, “I’m not a bit afraid about that. Peter’s the kind
+of man with whom every woman’s ready to fall in love. Why, my dear,
+he’s had chance after chance, if he had only cared to try. But, of
+course, he doesn’t care for such women as you and me, who can’t enter
+into his thoughts or sympathize with his ambitions. To him we are
+nothing but dancing, dressing, prattling flutter-birds.” Then Dorothy
+put her head on one side, and seemed far more interested in the effect
+of her own frock than in Peter’s fate.
+
+“He talks politics to me,” Leonore could not help saying. Leonore did
+not like Dorothy’s last speech.
+
+“Oh, Peter’s such a gentleman that he always talks seriously even to
+us; but it’s only his politeness. I’ve seen him talk to girls like you,
+and he is delightfully courteous, and one would think he liked it. But,
+from little things Ray has told me, I know he looks down on society
+girls.”
+
+“Are you ready, Leonore?” inquired Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+Leonore was very ready. Watts and Peter were ready also; had been ready
+during the whole of this dialogue. Watts was cross; Peter wasn’t. Peter
+would willingly have waited an hour longer, impatient only for the
+moment of meeting, not to get downstairs. That is the difference
+between a husband and a lover.
+
+“Peter,” said Leonore, the moment they were on the stairs, “do you ever
+tell other girls political secrets?”
+
+Dorothy was coming just behind, and she poked Peter in the back with
+her fan. Then, when Peter turned, she said with her lips as plainly as
+one can without speaking: “Say yes.”
+
+Peter looked surprised. Then he turned to Leonore and said, “No. You
+are the only person, man or woman, with whom I like to talk politics.”
+
+“Oh!” shrieked Dorothy to herself. “You great, big, foolish old stupid!
+Just as I had fixed it so nicely!” What Dorothy meant is quite
+inscrutable. Peter had told the truth.
+
+But, after the greetings were over, Dorothy helped Peter greatly. She
+said to him, “Give me your arm, Peter. There is a girl here whom I want
+you to meet.”
+
+“Peter’s going to dance this valse with me,” said Leonore. And Peter
+had two minutes of bliss, amateur though he was. Then Leonore said
+cruelly, “That’s enough; you do it very badly!”
+
+When Peter had seated her by her mother, he said: “Excuse me for a
+moment. I want to speak to Dorothy.”
+
+“I knew you would be philandering after the young married women. Men of
+your age always do,” said Leonore, with an absolutely incomprehensible
+cruelty.
+
+So Peter did not speak to Dorothy. He sat down by Leonore and talked,
+till a scoundrelly, wretched, villainous, dastardly, low-born, but very
+good-looking fellow carried off his treasure. Then he wended his way to
+Dorothy.
+
+“Why did you tell me to say ‘yes’?” he asked.
+
+Dorothy sighed. “I thought you couldn’t have understood me,” she said;
+“but you are even worse than I supposed. Never mind, it’s done now.
+Peter, will you do me a great favor?”
+
+“I should like to,” said Peter.
+
+“Miss Biddle, of Philadelphia, is here. She doesn’t know many of the
+men, and she doesn’t dance. Now, if I introduce you, won’t you try to
+make her have a good time?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Peter, gloomily.
+
+“And don’t go and desert her, just because another man comes up. It
+makes a girl think you are in a hurry to get away, and Miss Biddle is
+very sensitive. I know you don’t want to hurt her feelings.” All this
+had been said as they crossed the room. Then: “Miss Biddle, let me
+introduce Mr. Stirling.”
+
+Peter sat down to his duty. “I mustn’t look at Leonore,” he thought,
+“or I shan’t be attentive.” So he turned his face away from the room
+heroically. As for Dorothy, she walked away with a smile of
+contentment. “There, miss,” she remarked, “we’ll see if you can trample
+on dear old Peter!”
+
+“Who’s that girl to whom Mr. Stirling is talking?” asked Leonore of her
+partner.
+
+“Ah, that’s the rich Miss Biddle, of Philadelphia,” replied the
+scoundrel, in very gentleman-like accents for one of his class. “They
+say she’s never been able to find a man good enough for her, and so
+she’s keeping herself on ice till she dies, in hopes that she’ll find
+one in heaven. She’s a great catch.”
+
+“She’s decidedly good-looking,” said Leonore.
+
+“Think so? Some people do. I don’t. I don’t like blondes.”
+
+When Leonore had progressed as far as her fourth partner, she asked:
+“What sort of a girl is that Miss Biddle?”
+
+“She’s really stunning,” she was told. “Fellows are all wild about her.
+But she has an awfully snubbing way.”
+
+“Is she clever?”
+
+“Is she? That’s the trouble. She won’t have anything to do with a man
+unless he’s clever. Look at her to-night! She got her big fish right
+off, and she’s driven away every man who’s come near her ever since.
+She’s the kind of a girl that, if she decides on anything, she does
+it.”
+
+“Who’s her big fish?” said Leonore, as if she had not noticed.
+
+“That big fellow, who is so awfully exclusive—Stirling. He doesn’t
+think any people good enough for him but the Pells, and Miss De Voe,
+and the Ogdens. What they can see in him I can’t imagine. I sat
+opposite him once at dinner, this spring, at the William Pells, and he
+only said three things in the whole meal. And he was sitting next that
+clever Miss Winthrop.”
+
+After the fifth dance, Dorothy came up to Leonore. “It’s going
+beautifully,” she said; “do you see how Peter has turned his back to
+the room? And I heard a man say that Miss Biddle was freezing to every
+man who tried to interrupt them. I must arrange some affairs this week
+so that they shall have chances to see each other. You will help me?”
+
+“I’m very much engaged for this week,” said Leonore.
+
+“What a pity! Never mind; I’ll get Peter. Let me see. She rides
+beautifully. Did Peter bring his horses?”
+
+“One,” said Leonore, with a suggestion of reluctance in stating the
+fact.
+
+“I’ll go and arrange it at once,” said Dorothy, thinking that Peter
+might be getting desperate.
+
+“Mamma,” said Leonore, “how old Mrs. Rivington has grown!”
+
+“I haven’t noticed it, dear,” said her mother.
+
+Dorothy went up to the pair and said: “Peter, won’t you show Miss
+Biddle the conservatories! You know,” she explained, “they are very
+beautiful.”
+
+Peter rose dutifully, but with a very passive look on his face.
+
+“And, Peter,” said Dorothy, dolefully, “will you take me in to supper?
+I haven’t found a man who’s had the grace to ask me.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“We’ll sit at the same table,” said Dorothy to Miss Biddle.
+
+When Peter got into the carriage that evening he was very blue. “I had
+only one waltz,” he told himself, “and did not really see anything else
+of her the whole evening.”
+
+“Is that Miss Biddle as clever as people say she is?” asked Mrs.
+D’Alloi.
+
+“She is a very unusual woman,” said Peter, “I rarely have known a
+better informed one.” Peter’s tone of voice carried the inference that
+he hated unusual and informed women, and as this is the case with most
+men, his voice presumably reflected his true thoughts.
+
+“I should say so,” said Watts. “At our little table she said the
+brightest things, and told the best stories. That’s a girl as is a
+girl. I tried to see her afterwards, but found that Peter was taking an
+Italian lesson of her.”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“I have a chap who breakfasts with me three times a week, to talk
+Italian, which I am trying to learn,” said Peter, “and Dorothy told
+Mrs. Biddle, so she offered to talk in it. She has a beautiful accent
+and it was very good of her to offer, for I knew very little as yet,
+and don’t think she could have enjoyed it.”
+
+“What do you want with Italian?” asked Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“To catch the Italian vote,” said Peter.
+
+“Oh, you sly-boots,” said Watts. Then he turned. “What makes my Dot so
+silent?” he asked.
+
+“Oh,” said Leonore in weary tones, “I’ve danced too much and I’m very,
+very tired.”
+
+“Well,” said Watts, “see that you sleep late.”
+
+“I shall be all right to-morrow,” said Leonore, “and I’m going to have
+an early horseback ride.”
+
+“Peter and I will go too,” said Watts.
+
+“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “I’m to ride with Dorothy and Miss Biddle.”
+
+“Ha, ha,” said Watts. “More Italian lessons, eh?”
+
+Two people looked very cross that evening when they got to their rooms.
+
+Leonore sighed to her maid: “Oh, Marie, I am so tired! Don’t let me be
+disturbed till it’s nearly lunch.”
+
+And Peter groaned to nobody in particular, “An evening and a ride gone!
+I tried to make Dorothy understand. It’s too bad of her to be so
+dense.”
+
+So clearly Dorothy was to blame. Yet the cause of all this trouble fell
+asleep peacefully, remarking to herself, just before she drifted into
+dreamland, “Every man in love ought to have a guardian, and I’ll be
+Peter’s.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+INTERFERENCE.
+
+
+When Peter returned from his ride the next day, he found Leonore
+reading the papers in the big hall. She gave him a very frigid
+“good-morning,” yet instantly relaxed a little in telling him there was
+another long telegram for him on the mantel. She said nothing of his
+reading the despatch to her, but opened a new sheet of paper, and began
+to read its columns with much apparent interest. That particular page
+was devoted to the current prices of “Cotton;” “Coffee;” “Flour;”
+“Molasses;” “Beans;” “Butter;” “Hogs;” “Naval Stores;” “Ocean
+Freights,” and a large number of equally kindred and interesting
+subjects.
+
+Peter took the telegram, but did not read it. Instead he looked down at
+all of his pretty “friend” not sedulously hidden by the paper; He
+recognized that his friend had a distinctly “not-at-home” look, but
+after a moment’s hesitation he remarked, “You don’t expect me to read
+this alone?”
+
+Silence.
+
+“Because,” continued Peter, “it’s an answer to those we wrote and sent
+yesterday, and I shan’t dare reply it without your advice.”
+
+Silence.
+
+Peter coolly put his hand on the paper and pushed it down till he could
+see Leonore’s face. When he had done that he found her fairly beaming.
+She tried to put on a serious look quickly, and looked up at him with
+it on.
+
+But Peter said, “I caught you,” and laughed. Then Leonore laughed. Then
+they filled in the space before lunch by translating and answering the
+telegram.
+
+As soon as that meal was over, Peter said, “Now will you teach me
+waltzing again?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I’m not going to spend time teaching a man to dance, who doesn’t
+dance.”
+
+“I was nearly wild to dance last night,” said Peter.
+
+“Then why didn’t you?”
+
+“Dorothy asked me to do something.”
+
+“I don’t think much of men who let women control them.”
+
+“I wanted to please Dorothy” said Peter, “I was as well off talking to
+one girl as to another. Since you don’t like my dancing, I supposed you
+would hardly choose to dance again with me, or ropes wouldn’t have held
+me.”
+
+“I can talk Italian too,” said Leonore, with no apparent connection.
+
+“Will you talk it with me?” said Peter eagerly. “You see, there are a
+good many Italians in the district, now, who by their ignorance and
+their not speaking English, are getting into trouble all the time. I
+want to learn, so as to help them, without calling in an interpreter.”
+Peter was learning to put his requests on grounds other than his own
+wishes.
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore very sweetly, “and I’ll give you another lesson in
+dancing. How did you enjoy your ride?”
+
+“I like Dorothy,” said Peter, “and I like Miss Biddle. But I didn’t get
+the ride I wanted.”
+
+He got a very nice look from those slate-colored eyes.
+
+They set a music-box going, and Peter’s instruction began. When it was
+over, Leonore said:
+
+“You’ve improved wonderfully.”
+
+“Well enough to dance with you?”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore. “I’ll take pity on you unless you’d rather talk to
+some other girl.”
+
+Peter only smiled quietly.
+
+“Peter,” said Leonore, later, as he was sipping his tea, “do you think
+I’m nothing but a foolish society flutterbird?”
+
+“Do you want to know what I think of you?” asked Peter, eagerly.
+
+“No,” said Leonore hastily. “But do you think of me as nothing but a
+society girl?”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter, truth speaking in voice and face.
+
+The corners of Leonore’s mouth descended to a woeful degree.
+
+“I think you are a society girl,” continued Peter, “because you are the
+nicest kind of society.”
+
+Leonore fairly filled the room with her smile. Then she said, “Peter,
+will you do me a favor?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Will you tell Dorothy that I have helped you translate cipher
+telegrams and write the replies?”
+
+Peter was rather astonished, but said, “Yes.”
+
+But he did it very badly, Leonore thought, for meeting Dorothy the next
+day at a lawn party, after the mere greetings, he said:
+
+“Dorothy, Miss D’Alloi has been helping me translate and write cipher
+telegrams.”
+
+Dorothy looked startled at the announcement for a moment. Then she gave
+a glance at Leonore, who was standing by Peter, visibly holding herself
+in a very triumphant attitude. Then she burst out into the merriest of
+laughs, and kept laughing.
+
+“What is it?” asked Peter.
+
+“Such a joke,” gasped Dorothy, “but I can’t tell you.”
+
+As for Leonore, her triumphant manner had fled, and her cheeks were
+very red. And when some one spoke to Dorothy, and took her attention,
+Leonore said to Peter very crossly:
+
+“You are so clumsy! Of course I didn’t mean that way.”
+
+Peter sighed internally. “I am stupid, I suppose,” he said to himself.
+“I tried to do just what she asked, but she’s displeased, and I suppose
+she won’t be nice for the rest of the day. If it was only law or
+politics! But women!”
+
+But Leonore didn’t abuse him. She was very kind to him, despite her
+displeasure. “If Dorothy would only let me alone,” thought Peter, “I
+should have a glorious time. Why can’t she let me stay with her when
+she’s in such a nice mood. And why does she insist on my being
+attentive to her. I don’t care for her. It seems as if she was
+determined to break up my enjoyment, just as I get her to myself.”
+Peter mixed his “hers” and “shes” too thoroughly in this sentence to
+make its import clear. His thoughts are merely reported verbatim, as
+the easiest way. It certainly indicates that, as with most troubles,
+there was a woman in it.
+
+Peter said much this same thing to himself quite often during the
+following week, and always with a groan. Dorothy was continually
+putting her finger in. Yet it was in the main a happy time to Peter.
+His friend treated him very nicely for the most part, if very variably.
+Peter never knew in what mood he should find her. Sometimes he felt
+that Leonore considered him as the dirt under her little feet. Then
+again, she could not be too sweet to him. There was an evening—a
+dinner—at which he sat between Miss Biddle and Leonore when, it seemed
+to Peter, Leonore said and looked such nice things, that the millennium
+had come. Yet the next morning, she told him that: “It was a very dull
+dinner. I talked to nobody but you.”
+
+Fortunately for Peter, the D’Allois were almost as new an advent in
+Newport, so Leonore was not yet in the running. But by the time Peter’s
+first week had sped, he found that men were putting their fingers in,
+as well as Dorothy. Morning, noon, and night they gathered. Then
+lunches, teas, drives, yachts and innumerable other affairs also
+plunged their fingers in. Peter did not yield to the superior numbers,
+he went wherever Leonore went. But the other men went also, and
+understood the ropes far better. He fought on, but a sickening feeling
+began to creep over him of impending failure. It was soon not merely
+how Leonore treated him; it was the impossibility of getting her to
+treat him at all. Even though he was in the same house, it seemed as if
+there was always some one else calling or mealing, or taking tea, or
+playing tennis or playing billiards, or merely dropping in. And then
+Leonore took fewer and fewer meals at home, and spent fewer and fewer
+hours there. One day Peter had to translate those despatches all by
+himself! When he had a cup of tea now, even with three or four men
+about, he considered himself lucky. He understood at last what Miss De
+Voe had meant when she had spoken of the difficulty of seeing enough of
+a popular girl either to love her or to tell her of it. They prayed for
+rain in church on Sunday, on account of the drought, and Peter said
+“Amen” with fervor. Anything to end such fluttering.
+
+At the end of two weeks, Peter said sadly that he must be going.
+
+“Rubbish,” said Watts. “You are to stay for a month.”
+
+“I hope you’ll stay,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+Peter waited a moment for some one else to speak. Some one else didn’t.
+
+“I think I must,” he said. “It isn’t a matter of my own wishes, but I’m
+needed in Syracuse.” Peter spoke as if Syracuse was the ultimate of
+human misery.
+
+“Is it necessary for you to be there?” asked Leonore.
+
+“Not absolutely, but I had better go.”
+
+Later in the day Leonore said, “I’ve decided you are not to go to
+Syracuse. I shall want you here to explain what they do to me.”
+
+And that cool, insulting speech filled Peter with happiness.
+
+“I’ve decided to stay another week,” he told Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+Nor could all the appeals over the telegraph move him, though that day
+and the next the wires to Newport from New York and Syracuse were kept
+hot, the despatches came so continuously.
+
+Two days after this decision, Peter and Leonore went to a cotillion.
+Leonore informed him that: “Mamma makes me leave after supper, because
+she doesn’t like me to stay late, so I miss the nice part.”
+
+“How many waltzes are you going to give me?” asked Peter, with an eye
+to his one ball-room accomplishment.
+
+“I’ll give you the first,” said Leonore, “and then if you’ll sit near
+me, I’ll give you a look every time I see a man coming whom I don’t
+like, and if you are quick and ask me first, I’ll give it to you.”
+
+Peter became absolutely happy. “How glad I am,” he thought, “that I
+didn’t go to Syracuse! What a shame it is there are other dances than
+waltzes.”
+
+But after Peter had had two waltzes, he overheard his aged friend of
+fifteen years say something to a girl that raised him many degrees in
+his mind. “That’s a very brainy fellow,” said Peter admiringly. “That
+never occurred to me!”
+
+So he waited till he saw Leonore seated, and then joined her. “Won’t
+you sit out this dance with me?” he asked.
+
+Leonore looked surprised. “He’s getting very clever,” she thought,
+never dreaming that Peter’s cleverness, like so many other people’s
+nowadays, consisted in a pertinent use of quotations. Parrot
+cleverness, we might term it. Leonore listened to the air which the
+musicians were beginning, and finding it the Lancers, or dreariest of
+dances, she made Peter happy by assenting.
+
+“Suppose we go out on the veranda,” said Peter, still quoting.
+
+“Now of what are you going to talk?” said Leonore, when they were
+ensconced on a big wicker divan, in the soft half light of the Chinese
+lanterns.
+
+“I want to tell you of something that seems to me about a hundred years
+ago,” said Peter. “But it concerns myself, and I don’t want to bore
+you.”
+
+“Try, and if I don’t like it I’ll stop you,” said Leonore, opening up a
+line of retreat worthy of a German army.
+
+“I don’t know what you’ll think about it,” said Peter, faltering a
+little. “I suppose I can hardly make you understand it, as it is to me.
+But I want you to know, because—well—it’s only fair.”
+
+Leonore looked at Peter with a very tender look in her eyes. He could
+not see it, because Leonore sat so that her face was in shadow. But she
+could see his expression, and when he hesitated, with that drawn look
+on his face, Leonore said softly:
+
+“You mean—about—mamma?”
+
+Peter started. “Yes! You know?”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore gently. “And that was why I trusted you, without
+ever having met you, and why I wanted to be friends.”
+
+Peter sighed a sigh of relief. “I’ve been so afraid of it,” he said.
+“She told you?”
+
+“Yes. That is, Miss De Voe told me first of your having been
+disappointed, so I asked mamma if she knew the girl, and then mamma
+told me. I’m glad you spoke of it, for I’ve wanted to ask you
+something.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“If that was why you wouldn’t call at first on us?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then why did mamma say you wouldn’t call?” When Peter made no reply,
+Leonore continued, “I knew—that is I felt, there was something wrong.
+What was it?”
+
+“I can’t tell you.”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore, very positively.
+
+Peter hesitated. “She thought badly of me about something, till I
+apologized to her.”
+
+“And now?”
+
+“Now she invites me to Grey-Court.”
+
+“Then it wasn’t anything?”
+
+“She had misjudged me.”
+
+“Now, tell me what it was.”
+
+“Miss D’Alloi, I know you do not mean it,” said Peter, “but you are
+paining me greatly. There is nothing in my whole life so bitter to me
+as what you ask me to tell.”
+
+“Oh, Peter,” said Leonore, “I beg your pardon. I was very thoughtless!”
+
+“And you don’t think the worse of me, because I loved your mother, and
+because I can’t tell you?” said Peter, in a dangerous tone.
+
+“No,” said Leonore, but she rose. “Now we’ll go back to the dancing.”
+
+“One moment,” begged Peter.
+
+But Leonore was already in the full light blazing from the room. “Are
+you coming?” she said.
+
+“May I have this waltz?” said Peter, trying to get half a loaf.
+
+“No,” said Leonore, “it’s promised to Mr. Rutgers.”
+
+Just then mine host came up and said. “I congratulate you, Mr.
+Stirling.”
+
+Peter wanted to kick him, but he didn’t.
+
+“I congratulate you,” said another man.
+
+“On what?” Peter saw no cause for congratulation, only for sorrow.
+
+“Oh, Peter,” said Dorothy, sailing up at this junction, “how nice! And
+such a surprise!”
+
+“Why, haven’t you heard?” said mine host.
+
+“Oh,” cried Leonore, “is it about the Convention?”
+
+“Yes,” said a man. “Manners is in from the club and tells us that a
+despatch says your name was sprung on the Convention at nine, and that
+you were chosen by acclamation without a single ballot being taken.
+Every one’s thunderstruck.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said a small voice, fairly bristling with importance, “I knew
+all about it.”
+
+Every one laughed at this, except Dorothy. Dorothy had a suspicion that
+it was true. But she didn’t say so. She sniffed visibly, and said,
+“Nonsense. As if Peter would tell you secrets. Come, Peter, I want to
+take you over and let Miss Biddle congratulate you.”
+
+“Peter has just asked me for this waltz,” said Leonore. “Oh, Mr.
+Rutgers, I’m so sorry, I’m going to dance this with Mr. Stirling.”
+
+And then Peter felt he was to be congratulated.
+
+“I shan’t marry him myself,” thought Leonore, “but I won’t have my
+friends married off right under my nose, and you can try all you want,
+Mrs. Rivington.”
+
+So Peter’s guardianship was apparently bearing fruit. Yet man to this
+day holds woman to be the weaker vessel!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+OBSTINACY.
+
+
+The next morning Peter found that his prayer for a rainy day had been
+answered, and came down to breakfast in the pleasantest of humors.
+
+“See how joyful his future Excellency looks already,” said Watts,
+promptly recalling Peter to the serious part of life. And fortunately
+too, for from that moment, the time which he had hoped to have alone
+(if _two_ ever can be alone), began to be pilfered from him. Hardly
+were they seated at breakfast when Pell dropped in to congratulate him,
+and from that moment, despite the rain, every friend in Newport seemed
+to feel it a bounden duty to do the same, and to stay the longer
+because of the rain. Peter wished he had set the time for the
+Convention two days earlier or two days later.
+
+“I hope you won’t ask any of these people to luncheon,” Peter said in
+an aside to Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“Why?” he was asked.
+
+Peter looked puzzled, and finally said weakly, “I—I have a good deal to
+do.”
+
+And then as proper punishment for his misdemeanor, the footman
+announced Dorothy and Miss Biddle, Ray and Ogden. Dorothy sailed into
+the room with the announcement:
+
+“We’ve all come to luncheon if we are asked.”
+
+“Oh, Peter,” said Ray, when they were seated at the table. “Have you
+seen this morning’s ‘Voice of Labor?’ No? Good gracious, they’ve raked
+up that old verse in Watts’s class-song and print it as proof that you
+were a drunkard in your college days. Here it is. Set to music and
+headed ‘Saloon Pete.’”
+
+“Look here, Ray, we must write to the ‘Voice’ and tell them the truth,”
+said Watts.
+
+“Never write to the paper that tells the lie,” said Peter, laughing.
+“Always write to the one that doesn’t. Then it will go for the other
+paper. But I wouldn’t take the trouble in this case. The opposition
+would merely say that: ‘Of course Mr. Stirling’s intimate friends are
+bound to give such a construction to the song, and the attempt does
+them credit.’”
+
+“But why don’t you deny it, Peter?” asked Leonore anxiously. “It’s
+awful to think of people saying you are a drunkard!”
+
+“If I denied the untruths told of me I should have my hands full.
+Nobody believes such things, except the people who are ready to believe
+them. They wouldn’t believe otherwise, no matter what I said. If you
+think a man is a scoundrel, you are not going to believe his word.”
+
+“But, Peter,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “you ought to deny them for the
+future. After you and your friends are dead, people will go back to the
+newspapers, and see what they said about you, and then will misjudge
+you.”
+
+“I am not afraid of that. I shall hardly be of enough account to figure
+in history, or if I become so, such attacks will not hurt me. Why,
+Washington was charged by the papers of his day, with being a murderer,
+a traitor, and a tyrant. And Lincoln was vilified to an extent which
+seems impossible now. The greater the man, the greater the abuse.”
+
+“Why do the papers call you ‘Pete’?” asked Leonore, anxiously. “I
+rather like Peter, but Pete is dreadful!”
+
+“To prove that I am unfit to be governor.”
+
+“Are you serious?” asked Miss Biddle.
+
+“Yes. From their point of view, the dropping of the ‘r’ ought to
+convince voters that I am nothing but a tough and heeler.”
+
+“But it won’t!” declared Leonore, speaking from vast experience.
+
+“I don’t think it will. Though if they keep at it, and really convince
+the voters who can be convinced by such arguments, that I am what they
+call me, they’ll elect me.”
+
+“How?” asked Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+“Because intelligent people are not led astray but outraged by such
+arguments, and ignorant people, who can be made to believe all that is
+said of me, by such means, will think I am just the man for whom they
+want to vote.”
+
+“How is it possible that the papers can treat you so?” said Watts. “The
+editors know you?”
+
+“Oh, yes. I have met nearly every man connected with the New York
+press.”
+
+“They must know better?”
+
+“Yes. But for partisan purposes they must say what they do.”
+
+“Then they are deliberately lying to deceive the people?” asked Miss
+Biddle.
+
+“It’s rather a puzzling matter in ethics,” said Peter. “I don’t think
+that the newspaper fraternity have any lower standard of morals, than
+men in other professions. In the main they stand for everything that is
+admirable, so long as it’s non-partisan, and some of the men who to-day
+are now writing me down, have aided me in the past more than I can say,
+and are at this moment my personal friends.”
+
+“How dishonest!”
+
+“I cannot quite call it that. When the greatest and most honorable
+statesmen of Europe and America will lie and cheat each other to their
+utmost extent, under cover of the term ‘diplomacy,’ and get rewarded
+and praised by their respective countries for their knavery, provided
+it is successful, I think ‘dishonest’ is a strong word for a merely
+partisan press. Certain it is, that the partisan press would end
+to-morrow, but for the narrowness and meanness of readers.”
+
+“Which they cause,” said Ogden.
+
+“Just as much,” said Peter, “as the saloon makes a drunkard, food
+causes hunger, and books make readers.”
+
+“But, at least, you must acknowledge they’ve got you, when they say you
+are the saloon-keepers’ friend,” laughed Watts.
+
+“Yes. I am that—but only for votes, you understand.”
+
+“Mr. Stirling, why do you like saloons?” asked Miss Biddle.
+
+“I don’t like saloons. My wish is to see the day come, when such a
+gross form of physical enjoyment as tippling shall cease entirely. But
+till that day comes, till humanity has taught itself and raised itself,
+I want to see fair play.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“The rich man can lay in a stock of wine, or go to a hotel or club, and
+get what he wants at any time and all times. It is not fair, because a
+man’s pockets are filled with nickels instead of eagles, that he shall
+not have the same right. For that reason, I have always spoken for the
+saloon, and even for Sunday openings. You know what I think myself of
+that day. You know what I think of wine. But if I claim the right to
+spend Sunday in my way and not to drink, I must concede an equal right
+to others to do as they please. If a man wants to drink at any time,
+what right have I to say he shall not?”
+
+“But the poor man goes and makes a beast of himself,” said Watts.
+
+“There is as much champagne drunkenness as whisky drunkenness, in
+proportion to the number of drinkers of each. But a man who drinks
+champagne, is sent home in a cab, and is put to bed, while the man who
+can’t afford that kind of drink, and is made mad by poisoned and
+doctored whisky, doctored and poisoned because of our heavy tax on it,
+must take his chance of arrest. That is the shameful thing about all
+our so-called temperance legislation. It’s based on an unfair
+interference with personal liberty, and always discriminates in favor
+of the man with money. If the rich man has his club, let the poor man
+have his saloon.”
+
+“How much better, though,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “to stop the sale of wine
+everywhere.”
+
+“That is neither possible nor right. You can’t strengthen humanity by
+tying its hands. It must be left free to become strong. I have thought
+much about the problem, and I see only one fair and practical means of
+bettering our present condition. But boss as the papers say I am, I am
+not strong enough to force it.”
+
+“What is that, Peter?” asked Dorothy.
+
+“So long as a man drinks in such a way as not to interfere with another
+person’s liberty we have no right to check him. But the moment he does,
+the public has a right to protect itself and his family, by restraining
+him, as it does thieves, or murderers, or wife-beaters. My idea is,
+that a license, something perhaps like our dog-license, shall be given
+to every one who applies for it. That before a man can have a drink,
+this license must be shown. Then if a man is before the police court a
+second time, for drunkenness, or if his family petition for it, his
+license shall be cancelled, and a heavy fine incurred by any one who
+gives or sells that man a drink thereafter.”
+
+“Oh,” laughed Watts, “you are heavenly! Just imagine a host saying to
+his dinner-party, ‘Friends, before this wine is passed, will you please
+show me your drink licenses.’”
+
+“You may laugh, Watts,” said Peter, “but such a request would have
+saved many a young fellow from ruin, and society from an occasional
+terrible occurrence which even my little social experience has shown
+me. And it would soon be so much a matter of course, that it would be
+no more than showing your ticket, to prove yourself entitled to a ride.
+It solves the problem of drunkenness. And that is all we can hope to
+do, till humanity is—” Then Peter, who had been looking at Leonore,
+smiled.
+
+“Is what?” asked Leonore.
+
+“The rest is in cipher,” said Peter, but if he had finished his
+sentence, it would have been, “half as perfect as you are.”
+
+After this last relay of callers had departed, it began to pour so
+nobly that Peter became hopeful once more. He wandered about, making a
+room-to-room canvass, in search of happiness, and to his surprise saw
+happiness descending the broad stair incased in an English
+shooting-cap, and a mackintosh.
+
+“You are not going out in such weather?” demanded Peter.
+
+“Yes. I’ve had no exercise to-day, and I’m going for a walk.”
+
+“It’s pouring torrents,” expostulated Peter.
+
+“I know it.”
+
+“But you’ll get wet through.”
+
+“I hope so. I like to walk in the rain.”
+
+Peter put his hand on the front door-handle, to which this conversation
+had carried them, “You mustn’t go out,” he said.
+
+“I’m going,” said Leonore, made all the more eager now that it was
+forbidden.
+
+“Please don’t,” said Peter weakening.
+
+“Let me pass,” said Leonore decisively.
+
+“Does your father know?”
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+“Then you should ask him. It’s no weather for you to walk in.”
+
+“I shan’t ask him.”
+
+“Then I shall,” and Peter went hurriedly to the library.
+
+“Watts,” he said, “it’s raining torrents and Leonore insists on going
+to walk. Please say she is not to go.”
+
+“All right,” said Watts, not looking up from his book.
+
+That was enough. Peter sped back to the hall. It was empty. He put his
+head into the two rooms. Empty. He looked out of the front door. There
+in the distance, was that prettiest of figures, distinguishable even
+when buried in a mackintosh. Peter caught up a cap from the hall rack,
+and set out in pursuit. Leonore was walking rapidly, but it did not
+take Peter many seconds to come up with her.
+
+“Your father says you are not to go out.”
+
+“I can’t help it, since I am out,” said Leonore, sensibly.
+
+“But you should come back at once.”
+
+“I don’t care to,” said Leonore.
+
+“Aren’t you going to obey him?”
+
+“He never would have cared if you hadn’t interfered. It’s your orders,
+not his. So I intend to have my walk.”
+
+“You are to come back,” said Peter.
+
+Leonore stopped and faced him. “This is getting interesting,” she
+thought. “We’ll see who can be the most obstinate.” Aloud she said,
+“Who says so?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“And I say I shan’t.”
+
+Peter felt his helplessness. “Please come back.”
+
+Leonore laughed internally. “I don’t choose to.”
+
+“Then I shall have to make you.”
+
+“How?” asked Leonore.
+
+That was a conundrum, indeed. If it had been a knotty law point, Peter
+would have been less nonplussed by it.
+
+Leonore felt her advantage, and used it shamefully. She knew that Peter
+was helpless, and she said, “How?” again, laughing at him.
+
+Peter groped blindly. “I shall make you,” he said again, for lack of
+anything better.
+
+“Perhaps,” said Leonore, helping him out, though with a most insulting
+laugh in her voice and face, “you will get a string and lead me?”
+
+Peter looked the picture of helplessness.
+
+“Or you might run over to the Goelets’, and borrow their baby’s
+perambulator,” continued that segment of the Spanish Inquisition. If
+ever an irritating, aggravating, crazing, exasperating, provoking
+fretting enraging, “I dare you,” was uttered, it was in Leonore’s
+manner as she said this.
+
+Peter looked about hopelessly.
+
+“Please hurry up and say how,” Leonore continued, “for I want to get
+down to the cliff walk. It’s very wet here on the grass. Perhaps you
+will carry me back? You evidently think me a baby in arms.” “He’s such
+fun to tease,” was her thought, “and you can say just what you please
+without being afraid of his doing anything ungentlemanly.” Many a woman
+dares to torture a man for just the same reason.
+
+She was quite right as to Peter. He had recognized that he was
+powerless; that he could not use force. He looked the picture of utter
+indecision. But as Leonore spoke, a sudden change came over his face
+and figure. “Leonore had said it was wet on the grass! Leonore would
+wet her feet! Leonore would take cold! Leonore would have pneumonia!
+Leonore would die!” It was a shameful chain of argument for a light of
+the bar, logic unworthy of a school-boy. But it was fearfully real to
+Peter for the moment, and he said to himself: “I must do it, even if
+she never forgives me.” Then the indecision left his face, and he took
+a step forward.
+
+Leonore caught her breath with a gasp. The “dare-you” look, suddenly
+changed to a very frightened one, and turning, she sped across the
+lawn, at her utmost speed. She had read something in Peter’s face, and
+felt that she must fly, however ignominious such retreat might be.
+
+Peter followed, but though he could have caught her in ten seconds, he
+did not. As on a former occasion, he thought: “I’ll let her get out of
+breath. Then she will not be so angry. At least she won’t be able to
+talk. How gracefully she runs!”
+
+Presently, as soon as Leonore became convinced that Peter did not
+intend to catch her, she slowed down to a walk. Peter at once joined
+her.
+
+“Now,” he said, “will you come back?”
+
+Leonore was trying to conceal her panting. She was not going to
+acknowledge that she was out of breath since Peter wasn’t. So she made
+no reply.
+
+“You are walking in the wrong direction,” said Peter, laying his hand
+on her arm. Then, since she made no reply, his hand encircled the arm,
+and he stopped. Leonore took two more steps. Then she too, curiously
+enough, halted.
+
+“Stop holding me,” she said, not entirely without betraying her
+breathlessness.
+
+“You are to come back,” said Peter.
+
+He got an awful look from those eyes. They were perfectly blazing with
+indignation.
+
+“Stop holding me,” she repeated.
+
+It was a fearful moment to Peter. But he said, with an appeal in his
+voice, “You know I suffer in offending you. I did not believe that I
+could touch you without your consent. But your health is dearer to me
+than your anger is terrible. You must come home.”
+
+So Leonore, realizing that helplessness in a man exists only by his own
+volition, turned, and began walking towards the now distant house.
+Peter at once released her arm, and walked beside her. Not a glimpse
+did he get of those dear eyes. Leonore was looking directly before her,
+and a grenadier could not have held himself straighter. If insulted
+dignity was to be acted in pantomime, the actor could have obtained
+some valuable points from that walk.
+
+Peter walked along, feeling semi-criminal, yet semi-happy. He had saved
+Leonore from an early grave, and that was worth while doing. Then, too,
+he could look at her, and that was worth while doing. The run had made
+Leonore’s cheeks blaze, as Peter’s touch had made her eyes. The rain
+had condensed in little diamonds on her stray curls, and on those long
+lashes. It seemed to Peter that he had never seen her lovelier. The
+longing to take her in his arms was so strong, that he almost wished
+she had refused to return. But then Peter knew that she was deeply
+offended, and that unless he could make his peace, he was out of favor
+for a day at least. That meant a very terrible thing to him. A whole
+day of neglect; a whole day with no glimpse of these eyes; a whole day
+without a smile from those lips!
+
+Peter had too much sense to say anything at once. He did not speak till
+they were back in the hall. Leonore had planned to go straight to her
+room, but Peter was rather clever, since she preceded him, in getting
+to the foot of the staircase so rapidly that he was there first.
+
+This secured him his moment for speech. He said simply: “Miss D’Alloi,
+I ask your forgiveness for offending you.”
+
+Leonore had her choice of standing silent, of pushing passed Peter, or
+of speaking. If she had done the first, or the second, her position was
+absolutely impregnable. But a woman’s instinct is to seek defence or
+attack in words rather than actions. So she said: “You had no right,
+and you were very rude.” She did not look at Peter.
+
+“It pained me far more than it could pain you.”
+
+Leonore liked Peter’s tone of voice, but she saw that her position was
+weakening. She said, “Let me by, please.”
+
+Peter with reluctance gave her just room to pass. He felt that he had
+not said half of what he wished, but he did not dare to offend again.
+
+As it turned out, it was the best thing he could do, for the moment
+Leonore had passed him, she exclaimed, “Why! Your coat’s wringing wet.”
+
+“That’s nothing,” said Peter, turning to the voice.
+
+He found those big dark eyes at last looking at him, and looking at him
+without anger. Leonore had stopped on the step above him.
+
+“That shows how foolish you were to go out in the rain,” said Leonore.
+
+“Yes,” said Peter, venturing on the smallest smiles.
+
+Leonore promptly explained the charge in Peter’s “yes.” “It’s very
+different,” he was told. “I put on tips and a mackintosh. You didn’t
+put on anything. And it was pouring torrents.”
+
+“But I’m tough,” said Peter, “A wetting won’t hurt me.”
+
+“So am I,” said Leonore. “I’ve tramped for hours in the Orkneys, and
+Sweden and Norway, when it was raining. But then I was dressed for it.
+Go and put on dry clothes at once.”
+
+That was what Peter had intended to do, but he saw his advantage. “It
+isn’t worth while,” he said.
+
+“I never heard of such obstinacy,” said Leonore. “I pity your wife, if
+you ever get one. She’ll have an awful time of it.”
+
+Peter did not like that view at all. But he did not forego at once his
+hope of getting some compensation out of Leonore’s wish. So he said:
+“It’s too much trouble to change my clothes, but a cup of your tea may
+keep me from taking cold.” It was nearly five, o’clock, and Peter was
+longing for that customary half-hour at the tea-table.
+
+Leonore said in the kindness of her heart, “When you’ve changed your
+clothes, I’ll make you a cup.” Then she went upstairs. When she had
+reached the second floor, she turned, and leaning over the balustrade
+of the gallery, said, “Peter.”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter, surveying her from below, and thinking how lovely
+she was.
+
+Leonore was smiling saucily. She said in triumph: “I had my way. I did
+get my walk.” Then she went to her room, her head having a very
+victorious carriage.
+
+Peter went to his room, smiling. “It’s a good lawyer,” he told his
+mirror, “who compromises just enough to make both sides think they’ve
+won.” Peter changed his clothes with the utmost despatch, and hurried
+downstairs to the tea-table. She was not there! Peter waited nearly
+five minutes quietly, with a patience almost colossal. Then he began to
+get restless. He wandered about the room for another two minutes. Then
+he became woe-begone. “I thought she had forgiven me,” he remarked.
+
+“What?” said the loveliest of visions from the doorway. Most women
+would have told one that the beauty lay in the Parisian tea-gown. Peter
+knew better. Still, he was almost willing to forgive Leonore the delay
+caused by the donning of it, the result was so eminently satisfactory.
+“And it will take her as long to make tea as usual, anyway,” he
+thought.
+
+“Hadn’t I better put some rum into it to-day?” he was asked, presently.
+
+“You may put anything in it, except the sugar tongs,” said Peter,
+taking possession of that article.
+
+“But then I can’t put any sugar in.”
+
+“Fingers were made before forks,” suggested Peter. “You don’t want to
+give me anything bitter, do you?”
+
+“You deserve it,” said Leonore, but she took the lumps in her fingers,
+and dropped them in the cup.
+
+“I can’t wait five years!” thought Peter, “I can’t wait five
+months—weeks—days—hours—minutes—sec—— ”
+
+Watts saved Peter from himself by coming in here. “Hello! Here you are.
+How cosy you look. I tried to find you both a few minutes ago, but
+thought you must have gone to walk after all. Here, Peter. Here’s a
+special delivery letter, for which I receipted a while ago. Give me a
+cup, Dot.”
+
+Peter said, “Excuse me,” and, after a glance at the envelope, opened
+the letter with a sinking sensation. He read it quickly, and then
+reached over and rang the bell. When the footman came, Peter rose and
+said something in a low voice to him. Then he came back to his tea.
+
+“Nothing wrong, I hope,” asked Watts.
+
+“Yes. At least I am called back to New York,” said Peter gloomily.
+
+“Bother,” said Watts. “When?”
+
+“I shall leave by the night express.”
+
+“Nonsense. If it was so important as that, they’d have wired you.”
+
+“It isn’t a matter which could be telegraphed.”
+
+“What is it, Peter?” said Leonore, putting her finger in.
+
+“It’s confidential.”
+
+So Leonore did not ask again. But when the tea was finished, and all
+had started upstairs, Leonore said, “Peter,” on the landing. When Peter
+stopped, she whispered, “Why are you going to New York?”
+
+“I can’t tell you,” said Peter.
+
+“Yes, you can, now that papa isn’t here.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Yes. I know it’s politics, and you are to tell me.”
+
+“It isn’t politics.”
+
+“Then what is it?”
+
+“You really want to know?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“It’s something really confidential.”
+
+Leonore gave Peter one look of insulted dignity, and went upstairs to
+her room. “He’s different,” she said. “He isn’t a bit afraid of
+displeasing me any more. I don’t know what to do with him.”
+
+Peter found Jenifer waiting. “Only pack the grip,” he said. “I hope to
+come back in a few days.” But he looked very glum, and the glumness
+stuck to him even after he had dressed and had descended to dinner.
+
+“I am leaving my traps,” he told Mrs. D’Alloi. “For I hope to be back
+next week.”
+
+“Next week!” cried Watts. “What has been sprung on you that will take
+you that long?”
+
+“It doesn’t depend on me, unfortunately,” said Peter, “or I wouldn’t
+go.”
+
+When the carriage was announced later, Peter shook hands with Watts and
+Mrs. D’Alloi, and then held out his hand to Leonore. “Good-bye,” he
+said.
+
+“Are you going to tell me why you are going?” said that young lady,
+with her hands behind her, in the prettiest of poses.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then I shan’t say good-bye.”
+
+“I cannot tell you,” said Peter, quietly; “please say good-bye.”
+
+“No.”
+
+That refusal caused Peter gloom all the way to the station. But if
+Leonore could have looked into the future she would have seen in her
+refusal the bitterest sorrow she had ever known.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+OATHS.
+
+
+As soon as Peter was on the express he went into the smoking cabin of
+the sleeping-car, and lighting a cigar, took out a letter and read it
+over again. While he was still reading it, a voice exclaimed:
+
+“Good! Here’s Peter. So you are in it too?” Ogden continued, as Ray and
+he took seats by Peter.
+
+“I always did despise Anarchists and Nihilists,” sighed Ray, “since I
+was trapped into reading some of those maudlin Russian novels, with
+their eighth-century ideas grafted on nineteenth-century conditions.
+Baby brains stimulated with whisky.”
+
+Ogden turned to Peter. “How serious is it likely to be, Colonel?”
+
+“I haven’t any idea,” replied Peter, “The staff is of the opposite
+party now, and I only have a formal notification to hold my regiment in
+readiness. If it’s nothing but this Socialist and Anarchist talk, there
+is no real danger in it.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“This country can never be in danger from discontent with our
+government, for it’s what the majority want it to be, or if not, it is
+made so at the next election. That is the beauty of a Democracy. The
+majority always supports the government. We fight our revolutions with
+ballots, not with bullets.”
+
+“Yet Most says that blood must be shed.”
+
+“I suppose,” said Peter, “that he has just reached the stage of
+intelligence which doctors had attained when they bled people to make
+them strong.”
+
+“What can you do with such a fellow’s talk? You can’t argue with him,”
+said Ogden.
+
+“Talk!” muttered Ray, “Don’t dignify it with that word. Gibberish!”
+
+“No?” said Peter, “It’s too earnest to deserve that name. The man can’t
+express himself, but way down underneath all the absurd talk of
+‘natural monopolies,’ and of ‘the oppression of the money-power,’ there
+lies a germ of truth, without which none of their theories would have a
+corporal’s guard of honest believers. We have been working towards that
+truth in an unsystematic way for centuries, but we are a long way from
+it, and till we solve how to realize it, we shall have ineffectual
+discontent.”
+
+“But that makes the whole thing only the more arrant nonsense,”
+grumbled Ray. “It’s foolish enough in all conscience sake, if they had
+a chance of success, but when they haven’t any, why the deuce do they
+want to drag us poor beggars back from Newport?”
+
+“Why did Rome insist on burning while Nero fiddled?” queried Peter
+smiling. “We should hear nothing of socialism and anarchy if Newport
+and the like had no existence.”
+
+“I believe at heart you’re a Socialist yourself,” cried Ray.
+
+“No danger,” laughed Ogden; “his bank account is too large. No man with
+Peter’s money is ever a Socialist”
+
+“You forget,” said Ray, “that Peter is always an exception to the
+rule.”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “I disagree with Socialists entirely both in aims and
+methods, but I sympathize with them, for I see the fearful problems
+which they think their theories will solve, and though I know how
+mistaken they are, I cannot blame them, when I see how seriously and
+honestly they believe in, and how unselfishly they work for, their
+ideas. Don’t blame the Socialists, for they are quite as conscientious
+as were the Abolitionists. Blame it to the lack of scientific
+education, which leaves these people to believe that theories
+containing a half truth are so wholly true that they mean the
+regeneration and salvation of society.”
+
+“I suppose you are right,” sighed Ray, “for you’ve thought of it, and I
+haven’t. I don’t want to, either. I thank the Lord I’m not as serious
+as you, Graveyard. But if you want to air your theory, I’ll lend you my
+ears, for friendship’s sake. I don’t promise to remember.”
+
+Peter puffed his cigar for a moment “I sometimes conclude,” he said,
+“that the people who are most in need of education, are the
+college-bred men. They seem to think they’ve done all the work and
+study of their life in their four years, and so can dissipate mentally
+ever after.” But Peter smiled as he said this and continued, more
+seriously: “Society and personal freedom are only possible in
+conjunction, when law or public opinion interferes to the degree of
+repressing all individual acts that interfere with the freedom of
+others; thus securing the greatest individual freedom to all. So far as
+physical force is concerned, we have pretty well realized this
+condition. Because a man is strong he can no longer take advantage of
+the weak. But strength is not limited to muscle. To protect the weak
+mind from the strong mind is an equal duty, and a far more difficult
+task. So far we have only partially succeeded. In this difficulty lies
+the whole problem. Socialism, so far as it attempts to repress
+individualism, and reduce mankind to an evenness opposed to all natural
+laws, is suicidal of the best in favor of mediocrity. But so far as it
+attempts to protect that mediocrity and weakness from the superior
+minds of the best, it is only in line with the laws which protect us
+from murder and robbery. You can’t expect men of the Most variety,
+however, to draw such distinctions.”
+
+“I do wish they would settle it, without troubling me,” groaned Ray.
+“Lispenard’s right. A man’s a fool who votes, or serves on a jury, or
+joins a regiment. What’s the good of being a good citizen, when the
+other fellow won’t be? I’m sick of being good for nothing.”
+
+“Have you just discovered that?” laughed Ogden. “You’re progressing.”
+
+“No,” said Ray, “I am good for one thing. Like a good many other men I
+furnish the raw material on which the dearest of women may lavish her
+affection. Heigh-ho! I wish I was before the fire with her now. It’s
+rather rough to have visits to one’s wife cut short in this way.”
+
+Peter rose. “I am going to get some sleep, for we don’t know what’s
+before us, and may not have much after to-night. But, Ray, there’s a
+harder thing than leaving one’s wife at such a time.”
+
+“What’s that, Peter?” asked Ray, looking at Peter with surprise.
+
+“To know that there is no one to whom your going or return really
+matters.” Peter passed out of the cabin.
+
+“By George!” said Ray, “if it wasn’t Peter, I’d have sworn there was
+salt water in his eyes.”
+
+“Anneke has always insisted that he was lonely. I wonder if she’s
+right?” Ogden queried.
+
+“If he is, why the deuce does he get off in those solitary quarters of
+his?”
+
+“Ray,” said Ogden, “I have a sovereign contempt for a man who answers
+one question with another.”
+
+Peter reached the city at six the next morning, and, despite the hour,
+began his work at once. He made a number of calls in the district,
+holding whispered dialogues with men; who, as soon as Peter was gone,
+hurried about and held similar conversations with other men; who
+promptly went and did the same to still others. While they were doing
+this, Peter drove uptown, and went into Dickel’s riding academy. As he
+passed through the office, a man came out.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Stirling. Good-morning.”
+
+“Good-morning, Mr. Byrnes,” said Peter. “How serious is it likely to
+be?”
+
+“We can’t say yet. But the force has all it can do now to handle the
+Anarchists and unemployed, and if this strike takes place we shall need
+you.”
+
+Peter passed into another room where were eight men.
+
+“Good-morning, Colonel,” said one. “You are prompt.”
+
+“What is the trouble?”
+
+“The Central has decided to make a general reduction. They put it in
+force at noon to-day, and are so certain that the men will go out, that
+they’ve six hundred new hands ready somewhere to put right in.”
+
+“Byrnes tells me he has all he can do.”
+
+“Yes. We’ve obtained the governor’s consent to embody eight regiments.
+It isn’t only the strike that’s serious, but this parade of the
+unemployed to-morrow, and the meeting which the Anarchists have called
+in the City Hall. Byrnes reports a very ugly feeling, and buying of
+arms.”
+
+“It’s rather rough on you, Stirling,” spoke up a man, “to have it come
+while you are a nominee.”
+
+Peter smiled, and passed into the room beyond. “Good-morning, General
+Canfield,” he said. “I have taken the necessary steps to embody my
+regiment. Are there any further orders?”
+
+“If we need you, we shall put you at the Central Station,” the officer
+replied; “so, if you do not know the lay of the land, you had better
+familiarize yourself at once.”
+
+“General Canfield,” said Peter, “my regiment has probably more
+sympathizers with the strikers than has any other in the city. It could
+not be put in a worse place.”
+
+“Are you objecting to orders?” said the man, in a sharp decisive voice.
+
+“No,” replied Peter. “I am stating a fact, in hopes that it may prevent
+trouble.”
+
+The man and Peter looked each other in the eye.
+
+“You have your orders,” said the man, but he didn’t look pleased or
+proud.
+
+Peter turned and left the room, looking very grave. He look his cab and
+went to his quarters. He ate a hurried breakfast, and then went down
+into the streets. They seemed peaceably active as he walked through
+them. A small boy was calling an extra, but it was in reference to the
+arrival of a much-expected racing-yacht. There was nothing to show that
+a great business depression rested with crushing weight on the city,
+and especially on the poor; that anarchy was lifting its head, and from
+hungering for bread was coming to hunger for blood and blaze; that
+capital and labor were preparing to lock arms in a struggle which
+perhaps meant death and destruction.
+
+The armory door was opened only wide enough to let a man squeeze
+through, and was guarded by a keeper. Peter passed in, however, without
+question, and heard a hum of voices which showed that if anarchy was
+gathering, so too was order. Peter called his officers together, and
+gave a few orders. Then he turned and whispered for a moment with
+Dennis.
+
+“They don’t put us there, sir!” exclaimed Dennis.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Are they mad?”
+
+“They’ve given us the worst job, not merely as a job, but especially
+for the regiment. Perhaps they won’t mind if things do go wrong.”
+
+“Yez mean?”
+
+“What will people say of me on November fourth, if my regiment flunks
+on September thirtieth?”
+
+“Arrah musha dillah!” cried Dennis. “An’ is that it?”
+
+“I’m afraid so. Will the men stand by me?”
+
+“Oi’ll make them. Yez see,” shouted Dennis, “Oi’ll tell the b’ys they
+are tryin’ to put yez in a hole, an’ they’ll stan’ by yez, no matter
+what yez are told to do.”
+
+As quickly as possible Peter put on his fatigue uniform. When he came
+out, it was to find that the rank and file had done the same, and were
+now standing in groups about the floor. A moment later they were lined
+up.
+
+Peter stepped forward and said in a clear, ringing voice: “Before the
+roll is called I wish to say a word. We may receive orders any moment
+to take possession of the buildings and switches at the Central
+Station, to protect the property and operators of that road. This will
+be hard to some of you, who believe the strikers are right. But we have
+nothing to do with that. We have taken our oath to preserve order and
+law, and we are interested in having it done, far more than is the
+capitalist, for he can buy protection, whether laws are enforced or
+not, while the laboring man cannot. But if any man here is not prepared
+to support the State in its duty to protect the life and property of
+all, by an enforcement of the laws, I wish to know it now.”
+
+Peter stood a moment waiting, and then said, “Thank you, men.”
+
+The roll-call was made, and Peter sent off a line to headquarters,
+stating that his regiment, with only eighteen reported “missing” was
+mustered and ready for further orders. Then the regiment broke ranks,
+and waited.
+
+Just as two o’clock struck a despatch was handed Peter. A moment later
+came the rap of the drum, and the men rose from the floor and fell in.
+A few sharp, quick words were passed from mouth to mouth. Guns rose to
+the shoulders with a click and a movement almost mechanical. The
+regiment swung from a long straight line into companies, the door
+rolled open, and without a sound, except the monotonous pound of the
+regular tread, the regiment passed into the street. At the corner they
+turned sharply, and marched up a side street, so narrow that the ranks
+had to break their lines to get within the curbs. So without sound of
+drum or music they passed through street after street. A regiment is
+thrilling when it parades to music: it is more so when it marches in
+silence.
+
+Presently it passed into a long tunnel, where the footfall echoed in a
+startling way. But as it neared the other end, a more startling sound
+could be heard. It was a low murmur, as of many voices, and of voices
+that were not pleasant. Peter’s wisdom in availing himself of the
+protection and secrecy of the tunnel as an approach became obvious.
+
+A moment later, as the regiment debouched from the tunnel’s mouth, the
+scene broke upon them. A vast crowd filled Fourth Avenue and
+Forty-second Street. Filled even the cut of the entrance to the tunnel.
+An angry crowd, judging from the sounds.
+
+A sharp order passed down the ranks, and the many broad lines melted
+into a long-thin one again, even as the regiment went forward. It was
+greeted with yells, and bottles and bricks were hurled from above it,
+but the appearance of the regiment had taken the men too much by
+surprise for them to do more. The head entered the mob, and seemed to
+disappear. More and more of the regiment was swallowed up. Finally,
+except to those who could trace the bright glint of the rifle-barrels,
+it seemed to have been submerged. Then even the rifles disappeared. The
+regiment had passed through the crowd, and was within the station.
+Peter breathed a sigh of relief. To march up Fifth Avenue, with empty
+guns, in a parade, between ten thousand admiring spectators is one
+thing. To march between ten thousand angry strikers and their
+sympathizers, with ball cartridges in the rifles, is quite another. It
+is all the difference between smoking a cigar after dinner, and smoking
+one in a powder magazine.
+
+The regiment’s task had only just begun, however. Peter had orders to
+clear the streets about the station. After a consultation with the
+police captain, the companies were told off, and filing out of the
+various doors, they began work. Peter had planned his debouchments so
+as to split the mob into sections, knowing that each fragment pushed
+back rendered the remainder less formidable. First a sally was made
+from the terminal station, and after two lines of troops had been
+thrown across Forty-second Street, the second was ordered to advance.
+Thus a great tongue of the mob, which stretched towards Third Avenue,
+was pressed back, almost to that street, and held there, without a
+quarter of the mob knowing that anything was being done. Then a similar
+operation was repeated on Forty-third Street and Forty-fourth Street,
+and possession was taken of Madison Avenue. Another wedge was driven
+into the mob and a section pushed along Forty-second, nearly to Fifth
+Avenue. Then what was left of the mob was pushed back from the front of
+the building down Park Avenue. Again Peter breathed more freely.
+
+“I think the worst is done,” he told his officers. “Fortunately the
+crowd did not expect us, and was not prepared to resist. If you can
+once split a mob, so that it has no centre, and can’t get together
+again, except by going round the block, you’ve taken the heart out of
+it”
+
+As he said this a soldier came up, and saluting, said: “Captain
+Moriarty orders me to inform you that a committee of the strikers ask
+to see you, Colonel.”
+
+Peter followed the messenger. He found a couple of sentries marking a
+line. On one side of this line sat or reclined Company D. and eight
+policemen. On the other stood a group of a dozen men, and back of them,
+the crowd.
+
+Peter passed the sentry line, and went up to the group. Three were the
+committee. The rest were the ubiquitous reporters. From the newspaper
+report of one of the latter We quote the rest:
+
+
+“You wish to see me?” asked Colonel Stirling.
+
+“Yes, Colonel,” said Chief Potter. “We are here to remonstrate with
+you.”
+
+“We’ve done nothing yet,” said Doggett, “and till we had, the troops
+oughtn’t to have been called in.”
+
+“And now people say that the scabs are to be given a regimental escort
+to the depot, and will go to work at eight.”
+
+“We’ve been quiet till now,” growled a man in the crowd surlily, “but
+we won’t stand the militia protecting the scabs and rats.”
+
+“Are you going to fight for the capitalist?” ask Kurfeldt, when Colonel
+Stirling stood silent.
+
+“I am fighting no man’s battle, Kurfeldt,” replied Colonel Stirling. “I
+am obeying orders.”
+
+The committee began to look anxious.
+
+“You’re no friend of the poor man, and you needn’t pose any more,”
+shouted one of the crowd.
+
+“Shut your mouth,” said Kurfeldt to the crowd. “Colonel Stirling,” he
+continued, “we know you’re our friend. But you can’t stay so if you
+fight labor. Take your choice. Be the rich man’s servant, or our
+friend.”
+
+“I know neither rich man nor poor man in this,” Colonel Stirling said.
+“I know only the law.”
+
+“You’ll let the scabs go on?”
+
+“I know no such class. If I find any man doing what the law allows him
+to do, I shall not interfere. But I shall preserve order.”
+
+“Will you order your men to fire on us?”
+
+“If you break the laws.”
+
+“Do it at your peril,” cried Potter angrily. “For every shot your
+regiment fires, you’ll lose a thousand votes on election day.”
+
+Colonel Stirling turned on him, his face blazing with scorn. “Votes,”
+he cried. “Do you think I would weigh votes at such a time? There is no
+sacrifice I would not make, rather than give the order that ends a
+human life; and you think that paper ballots can influence my action?
+Votes compared to men’s lives!”
+
+“Oh,” cried Doggett, “don’t come the heavy nobility racket on us. We
+are here for business. Votes is votes, and you needn’t pretend you
+don’t think so.”
+
+Colonel Stirling was silent for a moment. Then he said calmly: “I am
+here to do my duty, not to win votes. There are not votes enough in
+this country to make me do more or less.”
+
+“Hear him talk,” jeered one of the crowd, “and he touting round the
+saloons to get votes.”
+
+The crowd jeered and hissed unpleasantly.
+
+“Come, Colonel,” said Kurfeldt, “we know you’re after votes this year,
+and know too much to drive them away. You ain’t goin’ to lose fifty
+thousand votes, helpin’ scabs to take the bread away from us, only to
+see you and your party licked.”
+
+“No,” shouted a man in the crowd. “You don’t dare monkey with votes!”
+
+Colonel Stirling turned and faced the crowd. “Do you want to know how
+much I care for votes,” he called, his head reared in the air.
+
+“Speak up loud, sonny,” shouted a man far back in the mass, “we all
+want to hear.”
+
+Colonel Stirling’s voice rang quite clear enough, “Votes be damned!” he
+said, and turning on his heel, strode back past the sentries. And the
+strikers knew the fate of their attempt to keep out the scabs. Colonel
+Stirling’s “damn” had damned the strike as well as the votes.
+
+
+Dead silence fell on the committee and crowd. Even Company D. looked
+astounded. Finally, however, one of the committee said, “There’s no
+good wasting time here.” Then a reporter said to a confrère, “What a
+stunning headline that will make?” Then the Captain of Company D. got
+his mouth closed enough to exclaim, “Oi always thought he could swear
+if he tried hard. Begobs, b’ys, it’s proud av him we should be this
+day. Didn’t he swear strong an’ fine like? Howly hivens! it’s a delight
+to hear damn said like that.”
+
+For some reason that “swear-word” pleased New York and the country
+generally, showing that even an oath has its purpose in this world, so
+long as it is properly used. Dean Swift said a lie “was too good to be
+lavished about.” So it is of profanity. The crowd understood Peter’s
+remark as they would have understood nothing else. They understood that
+besides those rifles and bayonets there was something else not to be
+trifled with. So in this case, it was not wasted.
+
+And Mr. Bohlmann, Christian though he was, as he read his paper that
+evening cried, “Och! Dod Beder Stirling he always does say chust der
+righd ding!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+CUI BONO?
+
+
+Of the further doings of that day it seems hardly necessary to write,
+for the papers recorded it with a fulness impossible here. The
+gathering crowds. The reinforcement of the militia. The clearing and
+holding of Forty-second Street to the river. The arrival of the three
+barge-loads of “scabs.” Their march through that street to the station
+safely, though at every cross street greeted with a storm of stones and
+other missiles. The struggle of the mob at the station to force back
+the troops so as to get at the “rats.” The impact of the “thin line”
+and that dense seething mass of enraged, crazed men. The yielding of
+the troops from mere pressure. The order to the second rank to fix
+bayonets. The pushing back of the crowd once more. The crack of a
+revolver. Then the dozen shots fired almost simultaneously. The great
+surge of the mob forward. The quick order, and the rattle of guns, as
+they rose to the shoulder. Another order, and the sheet of flame. The
+great surge of the mob backwards. Then silence. Silence in the ranks.
+Silence in the mob. Silence in those who lay on the ground between the
+two.
+
+Capital and Labor were disagreed as to a ten per cent reduction of
+wages, and were trying to settle it. At first blush capital had the
+best of it. “Only a few strikers and militia-men killed,” was the
+apparent result of that struggle. The scabs were in safety inside the
+station, and trains were already making up, preparatory to a resumption
+of traffic. But capital did not go scot-free. “Firing in the streets of
+New York,” was the word sent out all over the world, and on every
+exchange in the country, stocks fell. Capital paid twenty-five million
+dollars that day, for those few ounces of lead. Such a method of
+settlement seems rather crude and costly, for the last decade of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+Boys all over the city were quickly crying extras of the “Labor-party”
+organ, the first column of which was headed:
+
+BUTCHER STIRLING
+
+THE NOMINEE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
+
+SHOOTS DOWN UNARMED MEN
+
+IN
+
+COLD BLOOD.
+
+
+This was supplemented by inflammatory broadsides. Men stood up on
+fences, lamp-posts, or barrels, wherever they could get an audience,
+and shrieked out invectives against police, troops, government, and
+property; and waved red flags. Orders went out to embody more
+regiments. Timid people retired indoors, and bolted their shutters. The
+streets became deserted, except where they were filled by groups of
+angry men listening to angrier speakers. It was not a calm night in New
+York.
+
+Yet in reality, the condition was less serious, for representatives of
+Capital, Labor, and Government were in consultation. Inside the
+station, in the Directors’ room of the railroad, its officials, a
+committee of the strikers, and an officer in fatigue uniform, with a
+face to match, were seated in great leather-covered chairs, around a
+large table. When they had first gathered, there had been dark brows,
+and every sentence had been like the blow of flint on steel. At one
+moment all but the officer had risen from their seats, and the meeting
+had seemed ended. But the officer had said something quietly, and once
+more they had seated themselves. Far into the night they sat, while
+mobs yelled, and sentries marched their beats. When the gathering
+ended, the scowls were gone. Civil partings were exchanged, and the
+committee and the officer passed out together.
+
+“That Stirling is a gritty bull-dog for holding on, isn’t he?” said one
+of the railroad officials. “It’s a regular surrender for us.”
+
+“Yes, but we couldn’t afford to be too obstinate with him, for he may
+be the next governor.”
+
+One of the committee said to the officer as they passed into the
+street, “Well, we’ve given up everything to the road, to please you. I
+hope you’ll remember it when you’re governor and we want things done.”
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Peter, “for every surrender of opinion you and the
+railroad officials have made to-night, I thank you. But you should have
+compromised twelve hours sooner.”
+
+“So as you should not have had to make yourself unpopular?” asked
+Kurfeldt. “You needn’t be afraid. You’ve done your best for us. Now
+we’ll do our best for you.”
+
+“I was not thinking of myself. I was thinking of the dead,” said Peter.
+
+Peter sent a despatch to headquarters and went the rounds to see if all
+was as it should be. Then spreading his blanket in the passenger
+waiting-room, he fell asleep, not with a very happy look on the grave
+face.
+
+But the morning-papers announced that the strike was ended by a
+compromise, and New York and the country breathed easier.
+
+Peter did not get much sleep, for he was barely dreaming of—of a
+striker, who had destroyed his peace, by striking him in the heart with
+a pair of slate-colored eyes—when a hand was placed on his shoulder. He
+was on his feet before the disturber of his dreams could speak.
+
+“A despatch from headquarters,” said the man.
+
+Peter broke it open. It said:
+
+“Take possession of Printing-house Square, and await further orders.”
+In ten minutes the regiment was tramping through the dark, silent
+streets, on its way to the new position.
+
+“I think we deserve a rest,” growled the Lieutenant-Colonel to Peter.
+
+“We shan’t get it,” said Peter, “If there’s anything hard to be done,
+we shall have it.” Then he smiled. “You’ll have to have an
+understanding hereafter, before you make a man colonel, that he shan’t
+run for office.”
+
+“What are we in for now?”
+
+“I can’t say. To-day’s the time of the parade and meeting in City Hall
+Park.”
+
+It was sunrise when the regiment drew up in the square facing the Park.
+It was a lovely morning, with no sign of trouble in sight, unless the
+bulletin boards of the newspapers, which were chiefly devoted to the
+doings about the Central Station, could be taken as such. Except for
+this, the regiment was the only indication that the universal peace had
+not come, and even this looked peaceful, as soon as it had settled down
+to hot coffee, bread and raw ham.
+
+In the park, however, was a suggestive sight. For not merely were all
+the benches filled with sleeping men, but the steps of the City Hall,
+the grass, and even the hard asphalt pavement were besprinkled with a
+dirty, ragged, hungry-looking lot of men, unlike those usually seen in
+the streets of New York. When the regiment marched into the square, a
+few of the stragglers rose from their recumbent attitudes, and looked
+at it, without much love in their faces. As the regiment breakfasted,
+more and more rose from their hard beds to their harder lives. They
+moved about restlessly, as if waiting for something. Some gathered in
+little groups and listened to men who talked and shrieked far louder
+than was necessary in order that their listeners should hear. Some came
+to the edge of the street and cursed and vituperated the breakfasting
+regiment. Some sat on the ground and ate food which they produced from
+their pockets or from paper bundles. It was not very tempting-looking
+food. Yet there were men in the crowd who looked longingly at it, and a
+few scuffles occurred in attempts to get some. That crowd represented
+the slag and scum of the boiling pot of nineteenth-century conditions.
+And as the flotsam on a river always centres at its eddies, so these
+had drifted, from the country, and from the slums, to the centre of the
+whirlpool of American life. Here they were waiting. Waiting for what?
+The future only would show. But each moment is a future, till it
+becomes the present.
+
+While the regiment still breakfasted it became conscious of a
+monotonous sound, growing steadily in volume. Then came the tap of the
+drum, and the regiment rose from a half-eaten meal, and lined up as if
+on parade. Several of the members remarked crossly: “Why couldn’t they
+wait ten minutes?”
+
+The next moment the head of another regiment swung from Chambers Street
+into the square. It was greeted by hisses and groans from the denizens
+of the park, but this lack of politeness was more than atoned for, by
+the order: “Present arms,” passed down the immovable line awaiting it.
+After a return salute the commanding officers advanced and once more
+saluted.
+
+“In obedience to orders from headquarters, I have the honor to report
+my regiment to you, Colonel Stirling, and await your orders,” said the
+officer of the “visiting” regiment, evidently trying not to laugh.
+
+“Let your men break ranks, and breakfast, Major Rivington,” said Peter.
+In two minutes dandy and mick were mingled, exchanging experiences, as
+they sliced meat off the same ham-bones and emptied the same cracker
+boxes. What was more, each was respecting and liking the other. One
+touch of danger is almost as efficacious as one touch of nature. It is
+not the differences in men which make ill-feeling or want of sympathy,
+it is differences in conditions.
+
+In the mean time, Peter, Ray and Ogden had come together over their
+grub, much as if it was a legal rather than an illegal trouble to be
+dealt with.
+
+“Where were you?” asked Peter.
+
+“At the Sixty-third Street terminals,” said Ray. “We didn’t have any
+fun at all. As quiet as a cow. You always were lucky! Excuse me, Peter,
+I oughtn’t to have said it,” Ray continued, seeing Peter’s face. “It’s
+this wretched American trick of joking at everything.”
+
+Ogden, to change the subject, asked: “Did you really say ‘damn’?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But I thought you disapproved of cuss words.”
+
+“I do. But the crowd wouldn’t believe that I was honest in my intention
+to protect the substitutes. They thought I was too much of a politician
+to dare to do it. So I swore, thinking they would understand that as
+they would not anything else. I hoped it might save actual firing. But
+they became so enraged that they didn’t care if we did shoot.”
+
+Just then one of the crowd shrieked, “Down with the blood-suckers. On
+to freedom. Freedom of life, of property, of food, of water, of air, of
+land. Destroy the money power!”
+
+“If we ever get to the freedom he wants,” said Ray, “we’ll utilize that
+chap for supplying free gas.”
+
+“Splendid raw material for free soap,” said Ogden.
+
+“He’s not the only one,” said Ray. “I haven’t had a wash in nine hours,
+and salt meats are beginning to pall.”
+
+“There are plenty of fellows out there will eat it for you, Ray,” said
+Peter, “and plenty more who have not washed in weeks.”
+
+“It’s their own fault.”
+
+“Yes. But if you burn or cut yourself, through ignorance, that doesn’t
+make the pain any the less.”
+
+“They don’t look like a crowd which could give us trouble.”
+
+“They are just the kind who can. They are men lifted off their common
+sense, and therefore capable of thinking they can do anything, just as
+John Brown expected to conquer Virginia with forty men.”
+
+“But there’s no danger of their getting the upper hand.”
+
+“No. Yet I wish we had orders to clear the Park now, while there are
+comparatively few here, or else to go back to our armories, and let
+them have their meeting in peace. Our being here will only excite
+them.”
+
+“Hear that,” said Ray, as the crowd gave a great roar as another
+regiment came up Park Place, across the Park and spread out so as to
+cover Broadway.
+
+As they sat, New Yorkers began to rise and begin business. But many
+seemed to have none, and drifted into the Park. Some idlers came from
+curiosity, but most seemed to have some purpose other than the mere
+spectacle. From six till ten they silted in imperceptibly from twenty
+streets. As fast as the crowd grew, regiments appeared, and taking up
+positions, lay at ease. There was something terrible about the quiet
+way in which both crowd and troops increased. The mercury was not high,
+but it promised to be a hot morning in New York. All the car lines took
+off their cars. Trucks disappeared from the streets. The exchanges and
+the banks closed their doors, and many hundred shops followed their
+example. New York almost came to a standstill as order and anarchy
+faced each other.
+
+While these antagonistic forces still gathered, a man who had been
+yelling to his own coterie of listeners in that dense crowd, extracted
+himself, and limped towards Peter.
+
+“Mr. Stirling,” he shouted, “come out from those murderers. I want to
+tell you something.”
+
+Peter went forward. “What is it, Podds?” he asked.
+
+Podds dropped his voice. “We’re out for blood to-day. But I don’t want
+yours, if you do murder my fellow-men. Get away from here, quick. Hide
+yourself before the people rise in their might.”
+
+Peter smiled sadly. “How are Mrs. Podds and the children?” he asked
+kindly.
+
+“What is a family at such a moment?” shrieked Podds.
+
+“The world is my family. I love the whole world, and I’m going to
+revolutionize it. I’m going to give every man his rights. The gutters
+shall reek with blood, and every plutocrat’s castle shall be levelled
+to the soil. But I’ll spare you, for though you are one of the classes,
+it’s your ignorance, not your disposition, that makes you one. Get away
+from here. Get away before it’s too late.”
+
+Just then the sound of a horse’s feet was heard, and a staff officer
+came cantering from a side street into the square. He saluted Peter and
+said, “Colonel Stirling, the governor has issued a proclamation
+forbidding the meeting and parade. General Canfield orders you to clear
+the Park, by pushing the mob towards Broadway. The regiments have been
+drawn in so as to leave a free passage down the side streets.”
+
+“Don’t try to move us a foot,” screamed Podds, “or there’ll be blood.
+We claim the right of free meeting and free speech.”
+
+Even as he spoke, the two regiments formed, stiffened, fixed bayonets,
+and moved forward, as if they were machines rather than two thousand
+men.
+
+“Brethren,” yelled Podds, “the foot of the tyrant is on us. Rise. Rise
+in your might.” Then Podds turned to find the rigid line of bayonets
+close upon him. He gave a spring, and grappled with Peter, throwing his
+arms about Peter’s neck. Peter caught him by the throat with his free
+arm.
+
+“Don’t push me off,” shrieked Podds in his ear, “it’s coming,” and he
+clung with desperate energy to Peter.
+
+Peter gave a twist with his arm. He felt the tight clasp relax, and the
+whole figure shudder. He braced his arm for a push, intending to send
+Podds flying across the street.
+
+But suddenly there was a flash, as of lightning. Then a crash. Then the
+earth shook, cobble-stones, railroad tracks, anarchists, and soldiers,
+rose in the air, leaving a great chasm in crowd and street. Into that
+chasm a moment later, stones, rails, anarchists, and soldiers fell,
+leaving nothing but a thick cloud of overhanging dust. Underneath that
+great dun pall lay soldier and anarchist, side by side, at last at
+peace. The one died for his duty, the other died for his idea. The
+world was none the better, but went on unchanged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+HAPPINESS
+
+
+The evening on which Peter had left Grey-Court, Leonore had been moved
+“for sundry reasons” to go to her piano and sing an English ballad
+entitled “Happiness.” She had sung it several times, and with gusto.
+
+The next morning she read the political part of the papers. “I don’t
+see anything to have taken him back,” she said “but I am really glad,
+for he was getting hard to manage. I couldn’t send him away, but now I
+hope he’ll stay there.” Then Leonore fluttered all day, in the true
+Newport style, with no apparent thought of her “friend.”
+
+But something at a dinner that evening interested her.
+
+“I’m ashamed,” said the hostess, “of my shortage of men. Marlow was
+summoned back to New York last night, by business, quite unexpectedly,
+and Mr. Dupont telegraphed me this afternoon that he was detained
+there.”
+
+“It’s curious,” said Dorothy. “Mr. Rivington and my brother came on
+Tuesday expecting to stay for a week, but they had special delivery
+letters yesterday, and both started for New York. They would not tell
+me what it was.”
+
+“Mr. Stirling received a special delivery, too,” said Leonore, “and
+started at once. And he wouldn’t tell.”
+
+“How extraordinary!” said the hostess. “There must be something very
+good at the roof-gardens.”
+
+“It has something to do with headwears,” said Leonore, not hiding her
+light under a bushel.
+
+“Headwear?” said a man.
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore. “I only had a glimpse of the heading, but I saw
+‘Headwears N.G.S.N.Y.’”
+
+A sudden silence fell, no one laughing at the mistake.
+
+“What’s the matter?” asked Leonore.
+
+“We are wondering what will happen,” said the host, “if men go in for
+headwear too.”
+
+“They do that already,” said a man, “but unlike women, they do it on
+the inside, not the outside of the head.”
+
+But nobody laughed, and the dinner seemed to drag from that moment.
+
+Leonore and Dorothy had come together, and as soon as they were in
+their carriage, Leonore said, “What a dull dinner it was?”
+
+“Oh, Leonore,” cried Dorothy, “don’t talk about dinners. I’ve kept up
+till now, bu—” and Dorothy’s sentence melted into a sob.
+
+“Is it home, Mrs. Rivington?” asked the tiger, sublimely unconscious,
+as a good servant should be, of this dialogue, and of his mistress’s
+tears.
+
+“No, Portman, the Club,” sobbed Dorothy.
+
+“Dorothy,” begged Leonore, “what is it?”
+
+“Don’t you understand?” sobbed Dorothy. “All this fearful anarchist
+talk and discontent? And my poor, poor darling! Oh, don’t talk to me.”
+Dorothy became inarticulate once more.
+
+“How foolish married women are!” thought Leonore, even while putting
+her arm around Dorothy, and trying blindly to comfort her.
+
+“Is it a message, Mrs. Rivington?” asked the man, opening the
+carriage-door.
+
+“Ask for Mr. Melton, or Mr. Duer, and say Mrs. Rivington wishes to see
+one of them.” Dorothy dried her eyes, and braced up. Before Leonore had
+time to demand an explanation, Peter’s gentlemanly scoundrel was at the
+door.
+
+“What is it, Mrs. Rivington?” he asked.
+
+“Mr. Duer, is there any bad news from New York?”
+
+“Yes. A great strike on the Central is on, and the troops have been
+called in to keep order.”
+
+“Is that all the news?” asked Dorothy.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Dorothy. “Home, Portman.”
+
+The two women were absolutely silent during the drive. But they kissed
+each other in parting, not with the peck which women so often give each
+other, but with a true kiss. And when Leonore, in crossing the porch,
+encountered the mastiff which Peter had given her, she stopped and
+kissed him too, very tenderly. What is more, she brought him inside,
+which was against the rules, and put him down before the fire. Then she
+told the footman to bring her the evening-papers, and sitting down on
+the rug by Bêtise, proceeded to search them, not now for the political
+outlook, but for the labor troubles. Leonore suddenly awoke to the fact
+that there were such things as commercial depressions and unemployed.
+She read it all with the utmost care. She read the outpourings of the
+Anarchists, in a combination of indignation, amazement and fear, “I
+never dreamed there could be such fearful wretches!” she said. There
+was one man—a fellow named Podds—whom the paper reported as shrieking
+in Union Square to a select audience:
+
+
+“Rise! Wipe from the face of the earth the money power! Kill! Kill!
+Only by blood atonement can we lead the way to better things. To a
+universal brotherhood of love. Down with rich men! Down with their paid
+hirelings, the troops! Blow them in pieces!”
+
+
+“Oh!” cried Leonore shuddering. “It’s fearful. I wish some one would
+blow you in pieces!” Thereby was she proving herself not unlike Podds.
+All humanity have something of the Anarchist in them. Then Leonore
+turned to the mastiff and told him some things. Of how bad the strikers
+were, and how terrible were the Anarchists. “Yes, dear,” she said, “I
+wish we had them here, and then you could treat them as they deserve,
+wouldn’t you, Bêtise? I’m so glad he has my luck-piece!”
+
+A moment later her father and another man came into the hall from the
+street, compelling Leonore to assume a more proper attitude.
+
+“Hello, Dot!” said Watts. “Still up? Vaughan and I are going to have a
+game of billiards. Won’t you score for us?”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore.
+
+“Bad news from New York, isn’t it?” said Vaughan, nonchalantly, as he
+stood back after his first play.
+
+Leonore saw her father make a grimace at Vaughan, which Vaughan did not
+see. She said, “What?”
+
+“I missed,” said Watts. “Your turn, Will.”
+
+“Tell me the news before you shoot?” said Leonore.
+
+“The collision of the strikers and the troops.”
+
+“Was any one hurt?” asked Leonore, calmly scoring two to her father’s
+credit.
+
+“Yes. Eleven soldiers and twenty-two strikers.”
+
+“What regiment was it?” asked Leonore.
+
+“Colonel Stirling’s,” said Vaughan, making a brilliant _massé_.
+“Fortunately it’s a Mick regiment, so we needn’t worry over who was
+killed.”
+
+Leonore thought to herself: “You are as bad every bit as Podds!” Aloud
+she said, “Did it say who were killed?”
+
+“No. The dispatch only said fourteen dead.”
+
+“That was a beautiful shot,” said Leonore. “You ought to run the game
+out with that position. I think, papa, that I’ll go to bed. I find I’m
+a little tired. Good-night, Mr. Vaughan.” Leonore went upstairs,
+slowly, deep in thought. She did not ring for her maid. On the contrary
+she lay down on her bed in her dinner-gown, to its everlasting
+detriment. “I know he isn’t hurt,” she said, “because I should feel it.
+But I wish the telegram had said.” She hardly believed herself,
+apparently, for she buried her head in the pillow, and began to sob
+quietly. “If I only had said good-bye,” she moaned.
+
+Early the next morning Watts found Leonore in the hall.
+
+“How pale my Dot is!” he exclaimed.
+
+“I didn’t sleep well,” said Leonore.
+
+“Aren’t you going to ride with me?”
+
+“No. I don’t feel like it this morning,” said Leonore.
+
+As Watts left the hall, a servant entered it.
+
+“I had to wait, Miss D’Alloi,” he said. “No papers are for sale till
+eight o’clock.”
+
+Leonore took the newspaper silently and went to the library. Then she
+opened it and looked at the first column. She read it hurriedly.
+
+“I knew he wasn’t hurt,” she said, “because I would have felt it, and
+because he had my luck piece.” Then she stepped out of one of the
+windows, called Bêtise to her, and putting her arms about his neck,
+kissed him.
+
+When the New York papers came things were even better, for they
+recorded the end of the strike. Leonore even laughed over that big, big
+D. “I can’t imagine him getting so angry,” she said “He must have a
+temper, after all.” She sang a little, as she fixed the flowers in the
+vases, and one of the songs was “Happiness.” Nor did she snub a man who
+hinted at afternoon tea, as she had a poor unfortunate who suggested
+tennis earlier in the day.
+
+While they were sipping their tea, however, Watts came in from the
+club.
+
+“Helen,” he said, going to the bay window farthest from the tea-table,
+“come here I want to say something.”
+
+They whispered for a moment, and then Mrs. D’Alloi came back to her
+tea.
+
+“Won’t you have a cup, papa?” asked Leonore.
+
+“‘Not to-day, dear,” said Watts, with an unusual tenderness in his
+voice.
+
+Leonore was raising a spoon to her mouth, but suddenly her hand
+trembled a little. After a glance at her father and mother, she pushed
+her tea-cup into the centre of the table as if she had finished it,
+though it had just been poured. Then she turned and began to talk and
+laugh with the caller.
+
+But the moment the visitor was out of the room, Leonore said:
+
+“What is it, papa?”
+
+Watts was standing by the fire. He hesitated. Then he groaned. Then he
+went to the door. “Ask your mother,” he said, and went out of the room.
+
+“Mamma?” said Leonore.
+
+“Don’t excite yourself, dear,” said her mother. “I’ll tell you
+to-morrow.”
+
+Leonore was on her feet. “No,” she said huskily, “tell me now.”
+
+“Wait till we’ve had dinner.”
+
+“Mamma,” cried Leonore, appealingly, “don’t you see that—that—that I
+suffer more by not knowing it? Tell me.”
+
+“Oh, Leonore,” cried her mother, “don’t look that way. I’ll tell you;
+but don’t look that way!”
+
+“What?”
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi put her arms about Leonore. “The Anarchists have exploded
+a bomb.”
+
+“Yes?” said Leonore.
+
+“And it killed a great many of the soldiers.”
+
+“Not—?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Thank you, mamma,” said Leonore. She unclasped her mother’s arms, and
+went towards the door.
+
+“Leonore,” cried her mother, “stay here with me, dear.”
+
+“I’d rather be alone,” said Leonore, quietly. She went upstairs to her
+room and sank down by an ottoman which stood in the middle of the
+floor. She sat silent and motionless, for over an hour, looking
+straight before her at nothing, as Peter had so often done. Is it
+harder to lose out of life the man or woman whom one loves, or to see
+him or her happy in the love of another. Is the hopelessness of the
+impossible less or greater than the hopelessness of the unattainable?
+
+Finally Leonore rose, and touched her bell. When her maid came she
+said, “Get me my travelling dress.” Ten minutes later she came into the
+library, saying to Watts.
+
+“Papa, I want you to take me to New York, by the first train.”
+
+“Are you crazy, my darling?” cried Watts. “With riots and Anarchists
+all over the city.”
+
+“I must go to New York,” said Leonore. “If you won’t take me, I’ll go
+with madame.”
+
+“Not for a moment—” began Watts.
+
+“Papa,” cried Leonore, “don’t you see it’s killing me? I can’t bear
+it—” and Leonore stopped.
+
+“Yes, Watts, we must,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
+
+Two hours later they were all three rolling towards New York. It was a
+five hours’ ride, but Leonore sat the whole distance without speaking,
+or showing any consciousness of her surroundings. For every turn of
+those wheels seemed to fall into a rhythmic repetition of: “If I had
+only said ‘good-bye.’”
+
+The train was late in arriving, and Watts tried to induce Leonore to go
+to a hotel for the night. She only said “No. Take me to him,” but it
+was in a voice which Watts could not disregard. So after a few
+questions at the terminal, which produced no satisfactory information,
+Watts told the cabman to drive to the City Hall Park.
+
+They did not reach it, however, for at the corner of Centre Street and
+Chambers, there came a cry of “halt,” and the cab had to stop.
+
+“You can’t pass this line,” said the sentry. “You must go round by
+Broadway.”
+
+“Why?” asked Watts.
+
+“The street is impassable.”
+
+Watts got out, and held a whispered dialogue with the sentry. This
+resulted in the summoning of the officer of the watch. In the mean time
+Leonore descended and joined them. Watts turned and said to her: “The
+sentry says he’s here.”
+
+Presently an officer came up.
+
+“An’ what do the likes av yez want at this time av night?” he inquired
+crossly. “Go away wid yez.”
+
+“Oh, Captain Moriarty,” said Leonore, “won’t you let me see him? I’m
+Miss D’Alloi.”
+
+“Shure,” said Dennis, “yez oughtn’t to be afther disturbin’ him. It’s
+two nights he’s had no sleep.”
+
+Leonore suddenly put her hand on Dennis’s arm. “He’s not killed?” she
+whispered, as if she could not breathe, and the figure swayed a little.
+
+“Divil a bit! They got it wrong entirely. It was that dirty spalpeen av
+a Podds.”
+
+“Are you sure?” said Leonore, pleadingly. “You are not deceiving me?”
+
+“Begobs,” said Dennis, “do yez think Oi could stand here wid a dry eye
+if he was dead?”
+
+Leonore put her head on Dennis’s shoulder, and began to sob softly. For
+a moment Dennis looked aghast at the results of his speech, but
+suddenly his face changed. “Shure,” he whispered, “we all love him just
+like that, an that’s why the Blessed Virgin saved him for us.”
+
+Then Leonore, with tears in her eyes, said, “I felt it,” in the most
+joyful of voices. A voice that had a whole _Te Deum_ in it.
+
+“Won’t you let me see him?” she begged. “I won’t wake him, I promise
+you.”
+
+“That yez shall,” said Dennis. “Will yez take my arm?” The four passed
+within the lines. “Step careful,” he continued. “There’s pavin’ stones,
+and rails, and plate-glass everywheres. It looks like there’d been a
+primary itself.”
+
+All thought that was the best of jokes and laughed. They passed round a
+great chasm in the street and sidewalk. Then they came to long rows of
+bodies stretched on the grass, or rather what was left of the grass, in
+the Park. Leonore shuddered. “Are they all dead?” she whispered. “Dead!
+Shurely not. It’s the regiment sleepin’,” she was told. They passed
+between these rows for a little distance. “This is him,” said Dennis,
+“sleepin’ like a babby.” Dennis turned his back and began to describe
+the explosion to Mrs. D’Alloi and Watts.
+
+There, half covered with a blanket, wrapped in a regulation great coat,
+his head pillowed on a roll of newspapers, lay Peter. Leonore knelt
+down on the ground beside him, regardless of the proprieties or the
+damp. She listened to hear if he was breathing, and when she found that
+he actually was, her face had on it a little thanksgiving proclamation
+of its own. Then with the prettiest of motherly manners, she softly
+pulled the blanket up and tucked it in about his arms. Then she looked
+to see if there was not something else to do. But there was nothing. So
+she made more. “The poor dear oughtn’t to sleep without something on
+his head. He’ll take cold.” She took her handkerchief and tried to fix
+it so that it should protect Peter’s head. She tried four different
+ways, any one of which would have served; but each time she thought of
+a better way, and had to try once more. She probably would have thought
+of a fifth, if Peter had not suddenly opened his eyes.
+
+“Oh!” said Leonore, “what a shame? I’ve waked you up. And just as I had
+fixed it right.”
+
+Peter studied the situation calmly, without moving a muscle. He looked
+at the kneeling figure for some time. Then he looked up at the arc
+light a little distance away. Then he looked at the City Hall clock.
+Then his eyes came back to Leonore. “Peter,” he said finally, “this is
+getting to be a monomania. You must stop it.”
+
+“What?” said Leonore, laughing at his manner as if it was intended as a
+joke.
+
+Peter put out his hand and touched Leonore’s dress. Then he rose
+quickly to his feet. “What is the matter?” he asked.
+
+“Hello,” cried Watts. “Have you come to? Well. Here we are, you see.
+All the way from Newport to see you in fragments, only to be
+disappointed. Shake!”
+
+Peter said nothing for a moment. But after he had shaken hands, he
+said, “It’s very good of you to have thought of me.”
+
+“Oh,” explained Leonore promptly, “I’m always anxious about my friends.
+Mamma will tell you I am.”
+
+Peter turned to Leonore, who had retired behind her mother. “Such
+friends are worth having,” he said, with a strong emphasis on
+“friends.”
+
+Then Leonore came out from behind her mother. “‘How nice he’s stupid,”
+she thought. “He is Peter Simple, after all.”
+
+“Well,” said Watts, “your friends are nearly dying with hunger and want
+of sleep, so the best thing we can do, since we needn’t hunt for you in
+scraps, is to go to the nearest hotel. Where is that?”
+
+“You’ll have to go uptown,” said Peter. “Nothing down here is open at
+this time.”
+
+“I’m not sleepy,” said Leonore, “but I am so hungry!”
+
+“Serves you right for eating no din—” Watts started to say, but Leonore
+interjected, in an unusually loud voice. “Can’t you get us something?”
+
+“Nothing; that will do for you, I’m afraid,” said Peter. “I had Dennett
+send up one of his coffee-boilers so that the men should have hot
+coffee through the night, and there’s a sausage-roll man close to him
+who’s doing a big business. But they’ll hardly serve your purpose.”
+
+“The very thing,” cried Watts. “What a lark!”
+
+“I can eat anything,” said Leonore.
+
+So they went over to the stands. Peter’s blanket was spread on the
+sidewalk, and three Newport swells, and the Democratic nominee for
+governor sat upon it, with their feet in the gutter, and drank
+half-bean coffee and ate hot sausage rolls, made all the hotter by the
+undue amount of mustard which the cook would put in. What is worse,
+they enjoyed it as much as if it was the finest of dinners. Would not
+society have been scandalized had it known of their doings?
+
+How true it is that happiness is in a mood rather than in a moment. How
+eagerly we prepare for and pursue the fickle sprite, only to find our
+preparations and chase giving nothing but dullness, fatigue, and ennui.
+But then how often without exertion or warning, the sprite is upon us,
+and tinges the whole atmosphere. So it was at this moment, with two of
+the four. The coffee might have been all beans, and yet it would have
+been better than the best served in Viennese cafés. The rolls might
+have had even a more weepy amount of mustard, and yet the burning and
+the tears would only have been the more of a joke. The sun came up, as
+they ate, talked and laughed, touching everything about them with gold,
+but it might have poured torrents, and the two would have been as
+happy.
+
+For Leonore was singing to herself: “He isn’t dead. He isn’t dead.”
+
+And Peter was thinking: “She loves me. She must love me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+GIFTS.
+
+
+After the rolls and coffee had been finished, Peter walked with his
+friends to their cab. It had all been arranged that they were to go to
+Peter’s quarters, and get some sleep. These were less than eight blocks
+away, but the parting was very terrific! However, it had to be done,
+and so it was gone through with. Hard as it was, Peter had presence of
+mind enough to say, through the carriage window.
+
+“You had better take my room, Miss D’Alloi, for the spare room is the
+largest. I give you the absolute freedom of it, minus the gold-box. Use
+anything you find.”
+
+Then Peter went back to the chaotic street and the now breakfasting
+regiment, feeling that strikes, anarchists, and dynamite were only
+minor circumstances in life.
+
+About noon Leonore came back to life, and succeeded in making a very
+bewitching toilet despite the absence of her maid. Whether she peeped
+into any drawers or other places, is left to feminine readers to
+decide. If she did, she certainly had ample authority from Peter.
+
+This done she went into the study, and, after sticking her nose into
+some of the window flowers, she started to go to the bookshelves. As
+she walked her foot struck something which rang with a metallic sound,
+as it moved on the wood floor. The next moment, a man started out of a
+deep chair.
+
+“Oh!” was all Leonore said.
+
+“I hope I didn’t startle you. You must have kicked my sword.”
+
+“I—I didn’t know you were here!” Leonore eyed the door leading to the
+hall, as if she were planning for a sudden flight.
+
+“The regiment was relieved by another from Albany this morning. So I
+came up here for a little sleep.”
+
+“What a shame that I should have kept you out of your room,” said
+Leonore, still eyeing the door. From Leonore’s appearance, one would
+have supposed that she had purloined something of value from his
+quarters, and was meditating a sudden dash of escape with it.
+
+“I don’t look at it in that light,” said Peter. “But since you’ve
+finished with the room for the moment, I’ll borrow the use temporarily.
+Strikers and anarchists care so little for soap and water themselves,
+that they show no consideration to other people for those articles.”
+Peter passed through the doorway towards which Leonore had glanced.
+Then Leonore’s anxious look left her, and she no longer looked at the
+door. One would almost have inferred that Leonore was afraid of Peter,
+but that is absurd, since they were such good friends, since Leonore
+had come all the way from Newport to see him, and since Leonore had
+decided that Peter must do as she pleased.
+
+Yet, curiously enough, when Peter returned in about twenty minutes, the
+same look came into Leonore’s face.
+
+“We shall have something to eat in ten minutes,” Peter said, “for I
+hear your father and mother moving.”
+
+Leonore looked towards the door. She did not intend that Peter should
+see her do it, but he did.
+
+“Now what shall we do or talk about?” he said. “You know I am host and
+mustn’t do anything my guests don’t wish.”
+
+Peter said this in the most matter-of-fact way, but Leonore, after a
+look from under her eyelashes at him, stopped thinking about the door.
+She went over to one of the window-seats.
+
+“Come and sit here by me,” she said, “and tell me everything about it.”
+
+So Peter described “the war, and what they fought each other for,” as
+well as he was able, for, despite his intentions, his mind would wander
+as those eyes looked into his.
+
+“I am glad that Podds was blown to pieces!” said Leonore.
+
+“Don’t say that.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because it’s one of those cases of a man of really good intentions,
+merely gone wrong. He was a horse-car driver, who got inflammatory
+rheumatism by the exposure, and was discharged. He suffered fearful
+pain, and saw his family suffer for bread. He grew bitter, and took up
+with these wild theories, not having enough original brain force, or
+education, to see their folly. He believed firmly in them. So firmly,
+that when I tried to reason him out of them many years ago he came to
+despise me and ordered me out of his rooms. I had once done him a
+service, and felt angered at what I thought ungrateful conduct, so I
+made no attempt to keep up the friendliness. He knew yesterday that
+dynamite was in the hands of some of those men, and tried to warn me
+away. When I refused to go, he threw himself upon me, to protect me
+from the explosion. Nothing else saved my life.”
+
+“Peter, will your regiment have to do anything more?”
+
+“I don’t think so. The dynamite has caused a reaction, and has driven
+off the soberer part of the mob. The pendulum, when it swings too far,
+always swings correspondingly far the other way. I must stay here for a
+couple of days, but then if I’m asked, I’ll go back to Newport.”
+
+“Papa and mamma want you, I’m sure,” said Leonore, glancing at the door
+again, after an entire forgetfulness.
+
+“Then I shall go,” said Peter, though longing to say something else.
+
+Leonore looked at him and said in the frankest way; “And I want you
+too.” That was the way she paid Peter for his forbearance.
+
+Then they all went up on the roof, where in one corner there were pots
+of flowers about a little table, over which was spread an awning. Over
+that table, too, Jenifer had spread himself. How good that breakfast
+was! What a glorious September day it was! How beautiful the view of
+the city and the bay was! It was all so thoroughly satisfactory, that
+the three nearly missed the “limited.” Of course Peter went to the
+station with them, and, short as was the time, he succeeded in
+obtaining for one of the party, “all the comic papers,” “the latest
+novel,” a small basket of fruit, and a bunch of flowers, not one of
+which, with the exception of the latter, the real object of these
+attentions wanted in the least.
+
+Just here it is of value to record an interesting scientific discovery
+of Leonore’s, because women so rarely have made them. It was, that the
+distance from New York to Newport is very much less than the distance
+from Newport to New York.
+
+Curiously enough, two days later, his journey seemed to Peter the
+longest railroad ride he had ever taken. “His friend” did not meet him
+this time. His friend felt that her trip to New York must be offset
+before she could resume her proper self-respect. “He was very nice,”
+she had said, in monologue, “about putting the trip down to friendship.
+And he was very nice that morning in his study. But I think his very
+niceness is suspicious, and so I must be hard on him!” A woman’s
+reasoning is apt to seem defective, yet sometimes it solves problems
+not otherwise answerable.
+
+Leonore found her “hard” policy harder than she thought for. She told
+Peter the first evening that she was going to a card-party. “I can’t
+take you,” she said.
+
+“I shall be all the better for a long night’s sleep,” said Peter,
+calmly.
+
+This was bad enough, but the next morning, as she was arranging the
+flowers, she remarked to some one who stood and watched her, “Miss
+Winthrop is engaged. How foolish of a girl in her first season! Before
+she’s had any fun, to settle down to dull married life.”
+
+She had a rose in her hand, prepared to revive Peter with it, in case
+her speech was too much for one dose, but when she glanced at him, he
+was smiling happily.
+
+“What is it?” asked Leonore, disapprovingly.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Peter. “I wasn’t listening. Did you say Miss
+Winthrop was married?”
+
+“What were you smiling over?” said Leonore, in the same voice.
+
+“I was thinking of—of—.” Then Peter hesitated and laughed.
+
+“Of what?” asked Leonore.
+
+“You really mustn’t ask me,” laughed Peter.
+
+“Of what were you thinking?”
+
+“Of eyelashes,” confessed Peter.
+
+“It’s terrible!” cogitated Leonore, “I can’t snub him any more, try as
+I may.”
+
+In truth, Peter was not worrying any longer over what Leonore said or
+did to him. He was merely enjoying her companionship. He was at once
+absolutely happy, and absolutely miserable. Happy in his hope.
+Miserable in its non-certainty. To make a paradox, he was confident
+that she loved him, yet he was not sure. A man will be absolutely
+confident that a certain horse will win a race, or he will be certain
+that a profit will accrue from a given business transaction. Yet, until
+the horse has won, or the profit is actually made, he is not assured.
+So it was with Peter. He thought that he had but to speak, yet dared
+not do it. The present was so certain, and the future might have such
+agonies. So for two days he merely followed Leonore about, enjoying her
+pretty ways and hardly heeding her snubs and petulance. He was very
+silent, and often abstracted, but his silence and abstraction brought
+no relief to Leonore, and only frightened her the more, for he hardly
+let her out of his sight, and the silent devotion and tenderness were
+so obvious that Leonore felt how absolutely absurd was her pretence of
+unconsciousness. In his very “Miss D’Alloi” now, there was a tone in
+his voice and a look in his face which really said the words: “My
+darling.” Leonore thought this was a mean trick, of apparently
+sustaining the conventions of society, while in reality outraging them
+horribly, but she was helpless to better his conduct. Twice unwittingly
+he even called her “Leonore” (as he had to himself for two months),
+thereby terribly disconcerting the owner of that name. She wanted to
+catch him up and snub him each time, but she was losing her courage.
+She knew that she was walking on a mine, and could not tell what chance
+word or deed of hers would bring an explosion. “And then what can I say
+to him?” she asked.
+
+What she said was this:
+
+Peter came downstairs the third evening of his stay “armed and equipped
+as the law directs” for a cotillion. In the large hallway, he found
+Leonore, likewise in gala dress, resting her hand on the tall mantel of
+the hall, and looking down at the fire. Peter stopped on the landing to
+enjoy that pose. He went over every detail with deliberation. But girl,
+gown, and things in general, were much too tempting to make this
+distant glimpse over lengthy. So he descended to get a closer view. The
+pose said nothing, and Peter strolled to the fire, and did likewise.
+But if he did not speak he more than made up for his silence with his
+eyes.
+
+Finally the pose said, “I suppose it’s time we started?”
+
+“Some one’s got to speak,” the pose had decided. Evidently the pose
+felt uneasy under that silent gaze.
+
+“It’s only a little past ten,” said Peter, who was quite satisfied with
+the _status quo_.
+
+Then silence came again. After this had held for a few moments, the
+pose said: “Do say something!”
+
+“Something,” said Peter. “Anything else I can do for you?”
+
+“Unless you can be more entertaining, we might as well be sitting in
+the Purdies’ dressing-rooms, as standing here. Suppose we go to the
+library and sit with mamma and papa?” Clearly the pose felt nervous.
+
+Peter did not like this idea. So he said: “I’ll try to amuse you. Let
+me tell you something very interesting to me. It’s my birthday
+to-morrow.”
+
+“Oh!” said Leonore. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Then I would have
+had a gift for you.”
+
+“That’s what I was afraid of.”
+
+“Don’t you want me to give you something?”
+
+“Yes.” Then Peter’s hands trembled, and he seemed to have hard work in
+adding, “I want you to give me—a kiss.”
+
+“Peter!” said Leonore, drawing back grieved and indignant. “I didn’t
+think you would speak to me so. Of all men!”
+
+“You mustn’t think,” said Peter, “that I meant to pain you.”
+
+“You have,” said Leonore, almost ready to cry.
+
+“Because,” said Peter, “that isn’t what I meant.” Peter obviously
+struggled to find words to say what he did mean as he had never
+struggled over the knottiest of legal points, or the hardest of
+wrestling matches. “If I thought you were a girl who would kiss a man
+for the asking, I should not care for a kiss from you.” Peter strayed
+away from the fire uneasily. “But I know you are not.” Peter gazed
+wildly round, as if the furnishings, of the hall might suggest the
+words for which he was blindly groping. But they didn’t, and after one
+or two half-begun sentences, he continued: “I haven’t watched you, and
+dreamed about you, and loved you, for all this time, without learning
+what you are.” Peter roamed about the great hall restlessly. “I know
+that your lips will never give what your heart doesn’t.” Then his face
+took a despairing look, and he continued quite rapidly: “I ask without
+much hope. You are so lovely, while I—well I’m not a man women care
+for. I’ve tried to please you. Tried to please you so hard, that I may
+have deceived you. I probably am what women say of me. But if I’ve been
+otherwise with you it is because you are different from any other woman
+in the world.” Here the sudden flow of words ended, and Peter paced up
+and down, trying to find what to say. If any one had seen Peter as he
+paced, without his present environment, he would have thought him a man
+meditating suicide. Suddenly his voice and face became less wild, and
+he said tenderly: “There is no use in my telling you how I love you.
+You know it now, or will never learn it from anything I can say.” Peter
+strode back to the fire. “It is my love which asks for a kiss. And I
+want it for the love you will give with it, if you can give it.”
+
+Leonore had apparently kept her eyes on the blazing logs during the
+whole of this monologue. But she must have seen something of Peter’s
+uneasy wanderings about the room, for she had said to herself: “Poor
+dear! He must be fearfully in earnest, I never knew him so restless. He
+prowls just like a wild animal.”
+
+A moment’s silence came after Peter’s return to the fire. Then he said:
+“Will you give it to me, Miss D’Alloi?” But his voice in truth, made
+the words, “Give me what I ask, my darling.”
+
+“Yes,” said Leonore softly. “On your birthday.” Then Leonore shrank
+back a little, as if afraid that her gift would be sought sooner. No
+young girl, however much she loves a man, is quite ready for that first
+kiss. A man’s lips upon her own are too contrary to her instinct and
+previous training to make them an unalloyed pleasure. The girl who is
+over-ready for her lover’s first kiss, has tasted the forbidden fruit
+already, or has waited over-long for it.
+
+Peter saw the little shrinking and understood it. What was more, he
+heeded it as many men would not have done. Perhaps there was something
+selfish in his self-denial, for the purity and girlishness which it
+indicated were very dear to him, and he hated to lessen them by
+anything he did. He stood quietly by her, and merely said, “I needn’t
+tell you how happy I am!”
+
+Leonore looked up into Peter’s face. If Leonore had seen there any lack
+of desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, she would never have
+forgiven him. But since his face showed beyond doubt that he was
+longing to do it, Leonore loved him all the better for his repression
+of self, out of regard for her. She slipped her little hand into
+Peter’s confidingly, and said, “So am I.” It means a good deal when a
+girl does not wish to run away from her lover the moment after she has
+confessed her love.
+
+So they stood for some time, Leonore looking down into the fire, and
+Peter looking down at Leonore.
+
+Finally Peter said, “Will you do me a great favor?”
+
+“No,” said Leonore, “I’ve done enough for one night. But you can tell
+me what it is.”
+
+“Will you look up at me?”
+
+“What for?” said Leonore, promptly looking up.
+
+“I want to see your eyes,” said Peter.
+
+“Why?” asked Leonore, promptly looking down again.
+
+“Well,” said Peter, “I’ve been dreaming all my life about some eyes,
+and I want to see what my dream is like in reality.”
+
+“That’s a very funny request,” said Leonore perversely. “You ought to
+have found out about them long ago. The idea of any one falling in
+love, without knowing about the eyes!”
+
+“But you show your eyes so little,” said Peter. “I’ve never had a
+thoroughly satisfying look at them.”
+
+“You look at them every time I look at you,” said Leonore. “Sometimes
+it was very embarrassing. Just supposing that I showed them to you now,
+and that you find they aren’t what you like?”
+
+“I never waste time discussing impossibilities,” said Peter. “Are you
+going to let me see them?”
+
+“How long will it take?”
+
+“I can tell better after I’ve seen them,” said Peter, astutely.
+
+“I don’t think I have time this evening,” said Leonore, still
+perversely, though smiling a look of contentment down into the fire.
+
+Peter said nothing for a moment, wishing to give Leonore’s conscience a
+chance to begin to prick. Then be ended the silence by saying: “If I
+had anything that would give you pleasure, I wouldn’t make you ask for
+it twice.”
+
+“That’s—different,” said Leonore. “Still, I’ll—well, look at them,” and
+Leonore lifted her eyes to Peter’s half laughingly and half timidly.
+
+Peter studied those eyes in silence—studied them till Leonore, who did
+not find that steady look altogether easy to bear, and yet was not
+willing to confess herself stared out of countenance, asked: “Do you
+like them?”
+
+“Yes,” said Peter.
+
+“Is that all you can say? Other people have said very complimentary
+things!” said Leonore, pretending to be grieved over the monosyllable,
+yet in reality delighting in its expressiveness as Peter said it.
+
+“I think,” said Peter, “that before I can tell you what I think of your
+eyes, we shall have to invent some new words.”
+
+Leonore looked down again into the fire, smiling a satisfied smile.
+Peter looked down at that down-turned head, also with a satisfied
+smile. Then there was another long silence. Incidentally it is to be
+noted that Peter still held the hand given him some time before. To use
+a poker term, Peter was standing “pat,” and wished no change. Once or
+twice the little hand had hinted that it had been held long enough, but
+Peter did not think so, and the hand had concluded that it was safest
+to let well alone. If it was too cruel It might rouse the sleeping lion
+which the owner of that hand knew to exist behind that firm, quiet
+face.
+
+Presently Peter put his unoccupied hand in his breast-pocket, and
+produced a small sachet. “I did something twice,” he said, “that I have
+felt very meanly about at times. Perhaps you’ll forgive me now?” He
+took from the sachet, a glove, and a small pocket-handkerchief, and
+without a word showed them to Leonore.
+
+Leonore looked at them. “That’s the glove I lost at Mrs. Costell’s,
+isn’t it?” she asked gravely.
+
+Peter nodded his head.
+
+“And is that the handkerchief which disappeared in your rooms, at your
+second dinner?”
+
+Peter nodded his head.
+
+“And both times you helped me hunt for them?”
+
+Peter nodded his head. He at last knew how prisoners felt when he was
+cross-examining them.
+
+“I knew you had them all the time,” said Leonore laughing. “It was
+dreadfully funny to see you pretend to hunt, when the guilty look on
+your own face was enough to show you had them. That’s why I was so
+determined to find them.”
+
+Peter knew how prisoners felt when the jury says, “Not guilty.”
+
+“But how did the holes come in them?” said Leonore. “Do you have mice
+in your room?” Leonore suddenly looked as worried as had Peter the
+moment before.
+
+Peter put his hand in the sachet, and produced a bent coin. “Look at
+that,” he said.
+
+“Why, it’s my luck-piece!” exclaimed Leonore. “And you’ve spoiled that
+too. What a careless boy!”
+
+“No,” said Peter. “They are not spoiled to me. Do you know what cut
+these holes and bent this coin?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“A bullet.”
+
+“Peter!”
+
+“Yes. Your luck-piece stopped it, or I shouldn’t be here.”
+
+“There,” said Leonore triumphantly, “I said you weren’t hurt, when the
+news of the shooting came, because I knew you had it. I was so glad you
+had taken it!”
+
+“I am going to give it back to you by and by,” said Peter.
+
+“I had rather that you should have it,” said Leonore. “I want you to
+have my luck.”
+
+“I shall have it just the same even after I’ve given it to you,” said
+Peter.
+
+“How?”
+
+“I’m going to have it made into a plain gold ring,” replied Peter, “and
+when I give it to you, I shall have all your luck.”
+
+Then came a silence.
+
+Finally Peter said, “Will you please tell me what you meant by talking
+about five years!”
+
+“Oh! Really, Peter,” Leonore hastened to explain, in an anxious way, as
+if Peter had charged her with murder or some other heinous crime. “I
+did think so. I didn’t find it out till—till that night. Really! Won’t
+you believe me?”
+
+Peter smiled. He could have believed anything.
+
+“Now,” he said, “I know at last what Anarchists are for.”
+
+His ready acceptance of her statement made Leonore feel a slight prick
+of conscience. She said: “Well—Peter—I mean—that is—at least, I did
+sometimes think before then—that when I married, I’d marry you—but I
+didn’t think it would come so soon. Did you? I thought we’d wait. It
+would have been so much more sensible!”
+
+“I’ve waited a long time,” said Peter.
+
+“Poor dear!” said Leonore, putting her other hand over Peter’s, which
+held hers.
+
+Peter enjoyed this exquisite pleasure in silence for a time, but the
+enjoyment was too great not to be expressed So he said;
+
+“I like your hands almost as much as your eyes.”
+
+“That’s very nice,” said Leonore.
+
+“And I like the way you say ‘dear,’” said Peter. “Don’t you want to say
+it again?”
+
+“No, I hate people who say the same thing twice.”
+
+Then there was a long pause.
+
+“What poor things words are?” said Peter, at the end of it.
+
+“I know just what you mean,” said Leonore.
+
+Clearly they both meant what they said, for there came another absence
+of words. How long the absence would have continued is a debatable
+point. Much too soon a door opened.
+
+“Hello!” said a voice. “Back already? What kind of an evening had you?”
+
+“A very pleasant one,” said Peter, calmly, yet expressively.
+
+“Let go my hand, Peter, please,” a voice whispered imploringly. “Oh,
+please! I can’t to-night. Oh, please!”
+
+“Say ‘dear,’” whispered Peter, meanly.
+
+“Please, dear,” said Leonore. Then Leonore went towards the stairs
+hurriedly.
+
+“Not off already, Dot, surely?”
+
+“Yes. I’m going to bed.”
+
+“Come and have a cigar, Peter,” said Watts, walking towards the
+library.
+
+“In a moment,” said Peter. He went to the foot of the stairs and said,
+“Please, dear,” to the figure going up.
+
+“Well?” said the figure.
+
+Peter went up five steps. “Please,” he begged.
+
+“No,” said the figure, “but there is my hand.”
+
+So Peter turned the little soft palm uppermost and kissed it Then he
+forgot the cigar and Watts. He went to his room, and thought of—of his
+birthday gift.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+“GATHER YE ROSEBUDS WHILE YE MAY.”
+
+
+If Peter had roamed about the hall that evening, he was still more
+restless the next morning. He was down early, though for no apparent
+reason, and did nothing but pass from hall to room, and room to hall,
+spending most of his time in the latter, however.
+
+How Leonore could have got from her room into the garden without
+Peter’s seeing her was a question which puzzled him not a little, when,
+by a chance glance out of a window, he saw that personage clipping
+roses off the bushes. He did not have time to spare, however, to reason
+out an explanation. He merely stopped roaming, and went out to—to the
+roses.
+
+“Good-morning,” said Leonore pleasantly, though not looking at Peter,
+as she continued her clipping.
+
+Peter did not say anything for a moment. Then he asked, “Is that all?”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” said Leonore, innocently. “Besides,
+someone might be looking out of a window.”
+
+Peter calmly took hold of the basket to help Leonore sustain its
+enormous weight. “Let me help you carry it,” he said.
+
+“Very well,” said Leonore. “But there’s no occasion to carry my hand
+too. I’m not decrepit.”
+
+“I hoped I was helping you,” said Peter.
+
+“You are not. But you may carry the basket, since you want to hold
+something.”
+
+“Very well,” said Peter meekly.
+
+“Do you know,” said Leonore, as she snipped, and dropped roses into the
+basket, “you are not as obstinate as people say you are.”
+
+“Don’t deceive yourself on that score,” said Peter.
+
+“Well! I mean you are not absolutely determined to have your own way.”
+
+“I never give up my own views,” said Peter, “unless I can see more to
+be gained by so doing. To that extent I am not at all obstinate.”
+
+“Suppose,” said Leonore, “that you go and cut the roses on those
+furthest bushes while I go in and arrange these?”
+
+“Suppose,” said Peter calmly, and with an evident lack of enthusiasm.
+
+“Well. Will you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“The motion to adjourn,” said Peter, “is never debatable.”
+
+“Do you know,” said Leonore, “that you are beginning very badly?”
+
+“That is what I have thought ever since I joined you.”
+
+“Then why don’t you go away?”
+
+“Why make bad, worse?”
+
+“There,” said Leonore, “Your talking has made me cut my finger,
+almost.”
+
+“Let me see,” said Peter, reaching out for her hand.
+
+“I’m too busy,” said Leonore.
+
+“Do you know,” said Peter, “that if you cut many more buds, you won’t
+have any more roses for a week. You’ve cut twice as many roses as you
+usually do.”
+
+“Then I’ll go in and arrange them. I wish you would give Bêtise a run
+across the lawn.”
+
+“I never run before breakfast,” said Peter. “Doctors say it’s very
+bad.”
+
+So he followed her in. Leonore became tremendously occupied in
+arranging the flowers, Peter became tremendously occupied in watching
+her.
+
+“You want to save one of those for me,” he said, presently.
+
+“Take one,” said Leonore.
+
+“My legal rule has been that I never take what I can get given me. You
+can’t do less than pin it in my button-hole, considering that it is my
+birthday.”
+
+“If I have a duty to do, I always get through with it at once,” said
+Leonore. She picked out a rose, arranged the leaves as only womankind
+can, and, turning to Peter, pinned it in his button-hole. But when she
+went to take her hands away, she found them held against the spot so
+firmly that she could feel the heart-beats underneath.
+
+“Oh, please,” was all she said, appealingly, while Peter’s rose seemed
+to reflect some of its color on her cheeks.
+
+“I don’t want you to give it to me if you don’t wish,” said Peter,
+simply. “But last night I sat up late thinking about it. All night I
+dreamed about it. When I waked up this morning, I was thinking about
+it. And I’ve thought about it ever since. I can wait, but I’ve waited
+so long!”
+
+Then Leonore, with very red cheeks, and a very timid manner, held her
+lips up to Peter.
+
+“Still,” Leonore said presently, when again arranging of the roses,
+“since you’ve waited so long, you needn’t have been so slow about it
+when you did get it.”
+
+“I’m sorry I did it so badly,” said Peter, contritely. “I always was
+slow! Let me try again?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then show me how?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Now who’s obstinate?” inquired Peter.
+
+“You,” said Leonore, promptly. “And I don’t like it.”
+
+“Oh, Leonore,” said Peter. “If you only knew how happy I am!”
+
+Leonore forgot all about her charge of obstinacy. “So am I,” she said.
+“And I won’t be obstinate any more.”
+
+“Was that better?” Peter asked, presently.
+
+“No,” said Leonore. “That wouldn’t have been possible. But you do take
+so long! I shan’t be able to give you more than one a day. It takes so
+much time.”
+
+“But then I shall have to be much slower about it.”
+
+“Then I’ll only give you one every other day.”
+
+“Then I shall be so much the longer.”
+
+“Yes,” sighed Leonore. “You are obstinate, after all!”
+
+So they went on till breakfast was announced. Perhaps it was foolish.
+But they were happy in their foolishness, if such it was. It is not
+profitable to write what they said. It is idle to write of the week
+that followed. To all others what they said and did could only be the
+sayings and doings of two very intolerable people. But to them it was
+what can never be told in words—and to them we will leave it.
+
+It was Leonore who put an end to this week. Each day that Peter
+lingered brought letter and telegraphic appeals to him from the
+party-leaders, over which Peter only laughed, and which he not
+infrequently failed even to answer. But Mr. Pell told Leonore something
+one day which made her say to Peter later:
+
+“Is it true that you promised to speak in New York on the fifteenth?”
+
+“Yes. But I wrote Green last night saying I shan’t.”
+
+“And were you to have made a week of speeches through the State?”
+
+“Yes. But I can’t spare the time.”
+
+“Yes, you can. You must leave to-morrow and make them.”
+
+“I can’t,” groaned Peter.
+
+“You must.”
+
+“Who says so?”
+
+“I do. Please, Peter? I so want to see you win. I shall never forgive
+myself if I defeat you.”
+
+“But a whole week,” groaned Peter.
+
+“We shall break up here on the eighteenth, and of course you would have
+to leave a day sooner. So you’ll not be any better off.”
+
+“Well,” sighed Peter, “If I do as you want, will you give me the seven
+I shall lose before I go.”
+
+“Dear me, Peter,” sighed Leonore, “you oughtn’t to ask them, since it’s
+for your own sake. I can’t keep you contented. You do nothing but
+encroach.”
+
+“I should get them if I was here,” said Peter, “And one a day is little
+enough! I think, if I oblige you by going away, I shouldn’t be made to
+suffer more than is necessary.”
+
+“I’m going to call you Growley,” said Leonore, patting him on the
+cheek. Then she put her own against it. “Thank you, dear,” she said.
+“It’s just as hard for me.”
+
+So Peter buckled on his armor and descended into the arena. Whether he
+spoke well or ill, we leave it to those to say who care to turn back to
+the files of the papers of that campaign. Perhaps, however, it may be
+well to add that an entirely unbiassed person, after reading his
+opening speeches, delivered in the Cooper Union and the Metropolitan
+Opera House, in New York City, wrote him: “It is libel to call you
+Taciturnity. They are splendid! How I wish I could hear you—and see
+you, dear. I’m very lonely, and so are Bêtise and Tawney-eye. We do
+nothing but wander round the house all day, waiting for your letter,
+and the papers.” Three thousand people in the Brooklyn Rink were kept
+waiting for nearly ten minutes by Peter’s perusal of that letter. But
+when he had finished it, and had reached the Rink, he out-Stirlinged
+Stirling. A speaker nowadays speaks far more to the people absent than
+to the people present. Peter did this that evening. He spoke, it is
+true, to only one person that night, but it was the best speech of the
+campaign.
+
+A week later, Peter rang the bell of the Fifty-seventh Street house. He
+was in riding costume, although he had not been riding.
+
+“Mr. and Mrs. D’Alloi are at breakfast,” he was informed.
+
+Peter rather hurriedly laid his hat and crop on the hall-table, and
+went through the hall, but his hurry suddenly came to an end, when a
+young lady, carrying her napkin, added herself to the vista. “I knew it
+must be you,” she said, offering her hand very properly—(on what
+grounds Leonore surmised that a ring at the door-bell at nine o’clock
+meant Peter, history does not state)—“I wondered if you knew enough to
+come to breakfast. Mamma sent me out to say that you are to come right
+in.”
+
+Peter was rather longer over the handshake than convention demands, but
+he asked very politely, “How are your father and—?” But just then the
+footman closed a door behind him, and Peter’s interest in parents
+suddenly ceased.
+
+“How could you be so late?” said some one presently. “I watched out of
+the window for nearly an hour.”
+
+“My train was late. The time-table on that road is simply a satire!”
+said Peter. Yet it is the best managed road in the country, and this
+particular train was only seven minutes overdue.
+
+“You have been to ride, though,” said Leonore.
+
+“No. I have an engagement to ride with a disagreeable girl after
+breakfast, so I dressed for it.”
+
+“Suppose the disagreeable girl should break her engagement—or declare
+there never was one?”
+
+“She won’t,” said Peter. “It may not have been put in the contract, but
+the common law settles it beyond question.”
+
+Leonore laughed a happy laugh. Then she asked: “For whom are those
+violets?”
+
+“I had to go to four places before I could get any at this season,”
+said Peter. “Ugly girls are just troublesome enough to have
+preferences. What will you give me for them?”
+
+“Some of them,” said Leonore, and obtained the bunch. Who dares to say
+after that that women have no business ability nor shrewdness? It is
+true that she kissed the fraction returned before putting it in Peter’s
+button-hole, which raises the question which had the best of the
+bargain.
+
+“I’m behind the curtain, so I can’t see anything,” said a voice from a
+doorway, “and therefore you needn’t jump; but I wish to inquire if you
+two want any breakfast?”
+
+A few days later Peter again went up the steps of the Fifty-seventh
+Street house. This practice was becoming habitual with Peter; in fact,
+so habitual that his cabby had said to him this very day, “The old
+place, sir?” Where Peter got the time it is difficult to understand,
+considering that his law practice was said to be large, and his
+political occupations just at present not small. But that is
+immaterial. The simple fact that Peter went up the steps is the
+essential truth.
+
+From the steps, he passed into a door; from the door he passed into a
+hall; from a hall he passed into a room; from a room he passed into a
+pair of arms.
+
+“Thank the Lord, you’ve come,” Watts remarked. “Leonore has up and down
+refused to make the tea till you arrived.”
+
+“I was at headquarters, and they would talk, talk, talk,” said Peter.
+“I get out of patience with them. One would think the destinies of the
+human race depended on this campaign!”
+
+“So the Growley should have his tea,” said a vision, now seated on the
+lounge at the tea-table. “Then Growley will feel better.”
+
+“I’m doing that already,” said Growley, sitting down on the
+delightfully short lounge—now such a fashionable and deservedly popular
+drawing-room article. “May I tell you how you can make me absolutely
+contented?”
+
+“I suppose that will mean some favor from me,” said Leonore. “I don’t
+like children who want to be bribed out of their bad temper. Nice
+little boys are never bad-tempered.”
+
+“I was only bad-tempered,” whispered Peter, “because I was kept from
+being with you. That’s cause enough to make the best-tempered man in
+the universe murderous.”
+
+“Well?” said Leonore, mollifying, “what is it this time?”
+
+“I want you all to come down to my quarters this evening after dinner.
+I’ve received warning that I’m to be serenaded about nine o’clock, and
+I thought you would like to hear it.”
+
+“What fun,” cried Leonore. “Of course we’ll go. Shall you speak?”
+
+“No. We’ll sit in my window-seats merely, and listen.”
+
+“How many will there be?”
+
+“It depends on the paper you read. The ‘World’ will probably say ten
+thousand, the ‘Tribune’ three thousand, and the ‘Voice of Labor’ ‘a
+handful.’ Oh! by the way, I brought you a ‘Voice’.” He handed Leonore a
+paper, which he took from his pocket.
+
+Now this was simply shameful of him! Peter had found, whenever the
+papers really abused him, that Leonore was doubly tender to him, the
+more, if he pretended that the attacks and abuse pained him. So he
+brought her regularly now that organ of the Labor party which was most
+vituperative of him, and looked sad over it just as long as was
+possible, considering that Leonore was trying to comfort him.
+
+“Oh, dear!” said Leonore. “That dreadful paper. I can’t bear to read
+it. Is it very bad to-day?”
+
+“I haven’t read it,” said Peter, smiling. “I never read—” then Peter
+coughed, suddenly looked sad, and continued—“the parts that do not
+speak of me.” “That isn’t a lie,” he told himself, “I don’t read them.”
+But he felt guilty. Clearly Peter was losing his old-time
+straightforwardness.
+
+“After its saying that you had deceived your clients into settling
+those suits against Mr. Bohlmann, upon his promise to help you in
+politics, I don’t believe they can say anything worse,” said Leonore,
+putting two lumps of sugar (with her fingers) into a cup of tea. Then
+she stirred the tea, and tasted it. Then she touched the edge of the
+cup with her lips. “Is that right?” she asked, as she passed it to
+Peter.
+
+“Absolutely,” said Peter, looking the picture of bliss. But then he
+remembered that this wasn’t his rôle, so he looked sad and said: “That
+hurt me, I confess. It is so unkind.”
+
+“Poor dear,” whispered a voice. “You shall have an extra one to-day,
+and you shall take just as long as you want!”
+
+Now, how could mortal man look grieved, even over an American
+newspaper, with that prospect in view? It is true that “one” is a very
+indefinite thing. Perhaps Leonore merely meant another cup of tea.
+Whatever she meant, Peter never learned, for, barely had he tasted his
+tea when the girl on the lounge beside him gave a cry. She rose, and as
+she did so, some of the tea-things fell to the floor with a crash.
+
+“Leonore!” cried Peter. “What—”
+
+“Peter!” cried Leonore. “Say it isn’t so?” It was terrible to see the
+suffering in her face and to hear the appeal in her voice.
+
+“My darling,” cried the mother, “what is the matter?”
+
+“It can’t be,” cried Leonore. “Mamma! Papa! Say it isn’t so?”
+
+“What, my darling?” said Peter, supporting the swaying figure.
+
+“This,” said Leonore, huskily, holding out the newspaper.
+
+Mrs. D’Alloi snatched it. One glance she gave it. “Oh, my poor
+darling!” she cried. “I ought not to have allowed it. Peter! Peter! Was
+not the stain great enough, but you must make my poor child suffer for
+it?” She shoved Peter away, and clasped Leonore wildly in her arms.
+
+“Mamma!” cried Leonore. “Don’t talk so! Don’t! I know he didn’t! He
+couldn’t!”
+
+Peter caught up the paper. There in big head-lines was:
+
+SPEAK UP, STIRLING!
+
+
+
+WHO IS THIS BOY?
+
+
+DETECTIVE PELTER FINDS A WARD UNKNOWN TO THE COURTS, AND EXPLANATIONS
+ARE IN ORDER FROM
+
+
+PURITY STIRLING.
+
+
+The rest of the article it is needless to quote. What it said was so
+worded as to convey everything vile by innuendo and inference, yet in
+truth saying nothing.
+
+“Oh, my darling!” continued Mrs. D’Alloi. “You have a right to kill me
+for letting him come here after he had confessed it to me. But I—Oh,
+don’t tremble so. Oh, Watts! We have killed her.”
+
+Peter held the paper for a moment. Then he handed it to Watts. He only
+said “Watts?” but it was a cry for help and mercy as terrible as
+Leonore’s had been the moment before.
+
+“Of course, chum,” cried Watts. “Leonore, dear, it’s all right. You
+mustn’t mind. Peter’s a good man. Better than most of us. You mustn’t
+mind.”
+
+“Don’t,” cried Leonore. “Let me speak. Mamma, did Peter tell you it was
+so?”
+
+All were silent.
+
+“Mamma! Say something? Papa! Peter! Will nobody speak?”
+
+“Leonore,” said Peter, “do not doubt me. Trust me and I will—”
+
+“Tell me,” cried Leonore interrupting, “was this why you didn’t come to
+see us? Oh! I see it all! This is what mamma knew. This is what pained
+you. And I thought it was your love for—!” Leonore screamed.
+
+“My darling,” cried Peter wildly, “don’t look so. Don’t speak—”
+
+“Don’t touch me,” cried Leonore. “Don’t. Only go away.” Leonore threw
+herself upon the rug weeping. It was fearful the way those sobs shook
+her.
+
+“It can’t be,” said Peter. “Watts! She is killing herself.”
+
+But Watts had disappeared from the room.
+
+“Only go away,” cried Leonore. “That’s all you can do now. There’s
+nothing to be done.”
+
+Peter leaned over and picked up the prostrate figure, and laid it
+tenderly on the sofa. Then he kissed the edge of her skirt. “Yes.
+That’s all I can do,” he said quietly. “Good-bye, sweetheart. I’ll go
+away.” He looked about as if bewildered, then passed from the room to
+the hall, from the hall to the door, from the door to the steps. He
+went down them, staggering a little as if dizzy, and tried to walk
+towards the Avenue. Presently he ran into something. “Clumsy,” said a
+lady’s voice. “I beg your pardon,” said Peter mechanically. A moment
+later he ran into something again. “I beg your pardon,” said Peter, and
+two well-dressed girls laughed to see a bareheaded man apologize to a
+lamp-post. He walked on once more, but had not gone ten paces when a
+hand was rested on his shoulder.
+
+“Now then, my beauty,” said a voice. “You want to get a cab, or I shall
+have to run you in. Where do you want to go?”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Peter.
+
+“Come,” said the policeman shaking him, “where do you belong? My God!
+It’s Mr. Stirling. Why, sir. What’s the matter?”
+
+“I think I’ve killed her,” said Peter.
+
+“He’s awfully screwed,” ejaculated the policeman. “And him of all men!
+Nobody shall know.” He hailed a passing cab, and put Peter into it.
+Then he gave Peter’s office address, and also got in. He was fined the
+next day for being off his beat “without adequate reasons,” but he
+never told where he had been. When they reached the building, he helped
+Peter into the elevator. From there he helped him to his door. He rang
+the bell, but no answer came. It was past office-hours, and Jenifer
+having been told that Peter would dine up-town, had departed on his own
+leave of absence. The policeman had already gone through Peter’s
+pockets to get money for cabby, and now he repeated the operation,
+taking possession of Peter’s keys. He opened the door and, putting him
+into a deep chair in the study, laid the purse and keys on Peter’s
+desk, writing on a scrap of paper with much difficulty: “mr. stirling
+$2.50 I took to pay the carriage. John Motty policeman 22 precinct,” he
+laid it beside the keys and purse. Then he went back to his beat.
+
+And what was Peter doing all this time? Just what he now did. He tried
+to think, though each eye felt as if a red hot needle was burning in
+it. Presently he rose, and began to pace the floor, but he kept
+stumbling over the desk and chairs. As he stumbled he thought,
+sometimes to himself, sometimes aloud: “If I could only think! I can’t
+see. What was it Dr. Pilcere said about her eyes? Or was it my eyes?
+Did he give me some medicine? I can’t remember. And it wouldn’t help
+her. Why can’t I think? What is this pain in her head and eyes? Why
+does everything look so dark, except when those pains go through her
+head? They feel like flashes of lightning, and then I can see. Why
+can’t I think? Her eyes get in the way. He gave me something to put on
+them. But I can’t give it to her. She told me to go away. To stop this
+agony! How she suffers. It’s getting worse every moment. I can’t
+remember about the medicine. There it comes again. Now I know. It’s not
+lightning. It’s the petroleum! Be quick, boys. Can’t you hear my
+darling scream? It’s terrible. If I could only think. What was it the
+French doctor said to do, if it came back? No. We want to get some
+rails.” Peter dashed himself against a window. “Once more, men,
+together. Can’t you hear her scream? Break down the door!” Peter caught
+up and hurled a pot of flowers at the window, and the glass shattered
+and fell to the floor and street “If I could see. But it’s all dark.
+Are those lights? No. It’s too late. I can’t save her from it.”
+
+So he wandered physically and mentally. Wandered till sounds of martial
+music came up through the broken window. “Fall in,” cried Peter. “The
+Anarchists are after her. It’s dynamite, not lightning. Podds, Don’t
+let them hurt her. Save her. Oh! save her I Why can’t I get to her?
+Don’t try to hold me,” he cried, as he came in contact with a chair. He
+caught it up and hurled it across the room, so that it crashed into the
+picture-frames, smashing chair and frames into fragments. “I can’t be
+the one to throw it,” he cried, in an agonized voice. “She’s all I
+have. For years I’ve been so lonely. Don’t I can’t throw it. It kills
+me to see her suffer. It wouldn’t be so horrible if I hadn’t done it
+myself. If I didn’t love her so. But to blow her up myself. I can’t.
+Men, will you stand by me, and help me to save her?”
+
+The band of music stopped. A moment’s silence fell and then up from the
+street, came the air of: “Marching through Georgia,” five thousand
+voices singing:
+
+“Rally round our party, boys;
+Rally to the blue,
+And battle for our candidate,
+So sterling and so true,
+Fight for honest government, boys,
+And down the vicious crew;
+Voting for freedom and Stirling.
+
+“Hurrah, hurrah, for Stirling, brave and strong.
+Hurrah, hurrah, for Stirling, never wrong.
+And roll the voters up in line,
+Two hundred thousand strong;
+Voting for freedom and Stirling.”
+
+
+“I can’t fight so many. Two hundred thousand! I have no sword. I didn’t
+shoot them. No! I only gave the order. It hurt me, but I didn’t mean to
+hurt her. She’s all I have. Do you think I intended to kill her? No! No
+sacrifice would be too great. And you can talk to me of votes! Two
+hundred thousand votes! I did my best for her. I didn’t mean to hurt
+her. And I went to see the families. I went to see them all. If I only
+could think. But she is suffering too much. I can’t think as long as
+she lies on the rug, and trembles so. See the flashes of lightning pass
+through her head. Don’t bury your face in the rug. No wonder it’s all
+dark. Try to think, and then it will be all right.”
+
+Up from the street came the air of: “There were three crows,” and the
+words:
+
+“Steven Maguire has schemed to be elected November fourth,
+Steven Maguire has schemed to be elected November fourth.
+Steven Maguire has schemed and schemed,
+    But all his schemes will end in froth!
+And the people will all shout, Hurrah, rah, rah, rah.
+And the people will all shout, Hurrah, rah, rah, rah.
+
+“For Peter Stirling elected will be upon November fourth,
+For Peter Stirling elected will be upon November fourth,
+For Peter Stirling elected will be
+    And Steven Maguire will be in broth,
+And the people will all shout, Hurrah, rah, rah, rah,
+And the people will all shout, Hurrah, rah, rah, rah.”
+
+
+“It’s Steven Maguire. He never could be honest. If I had him here!”
+Peter came in contact with a chair. “Who’s that? Ah! It’s you. You’ve
+killed her. Now!” And another chair went flying across the room with
+such force, that the door to the hall flew off its hinges, and fell
+with a crash. “I’ve killed him” screamed Peter. “I’ve—No, I’ve killed
+my darling. All I have in the world!”
+
+And so he raved, and roamed, and stumbled, and fell; and rose, and
+roamed, and raved, and stumbled, and fell, while the great torchlight
+procession sang and cheered him from below.
+
+He was wildly fighting his pain still when two persons, who, after
+ringing and ringing, had finally been let in by Jenifer’s key, stood
+where the door had been.
+
+“My God,” cried one, in terror. “He’s crazy! Come away!”
+
+But the other, without a word or sign of fear, went up to that
+wild-looking figure, and put her hand in his.
+
+Peter stopped his crazed stride.
+
+“I can’t think, I tell you. I can’t think as long as you lie there on
+the rug. And your eyes blaze so. They feel just like balls of fire.”
+
+“Please sit down, Peter. Please? For my sake. Here. Here is the chair.
+Please sit down.”
+
+Peter sank back in the chair. “I tell you I can’t think. They do
+nothing but burn. It’s the petroleum!” He started forward, but a
+slender arm arrested his attempt to rise, and he sank back again as if
+it had some power over him.
+
+“Hyah, miss. Foh de lub ub heaben, put some ub dis yar on he eyes,”
+said Jenifer, who had appeared with a bottle, and was blubbering enough
+to supply a whole whaling fleet. “De doctor he done give dis yar foh de
+Aspic nerve.” Which is a dish that Jenifer must have invented himself,
+for it is not discoverable even on the fullest of menus.
+
+Leonore knelt in front of Peter, and, drenching her fingers with the
+wash, began rubbing it softly over his eyes. It has always been a
+problem whether it was the remedy or the ends of those fingers which
+took those lines of suffering out of Peter’s face and made him sit
+quietly in that chain Those having little faith in medicines, and much
+faith in a woman’s hands, will opine the latter. Doctors will not.
+
+Sufficeth it to say, after ten minutes of this treatment, during which
+Peter’s face had slowly changed, first to a look of rest, and then to
+one which denoted eagerness, doubt and anxiety, but not pain, that he
+finally put out his hands and took Leonore’s.
+
+“You have come to me,” he said, “Has he told you?”
+
+“Who? What?” asked Leonore.
+
+“You still think I could?” cried Peter. “Then why are you here?” He
+opened his eyes wildly and would have risen, only Leonore was kneeling
+in front of the chair still.
+
+“Don’t excite yourself, Peter,” begged Leonore. “We’ll not talk of that
+now. Not till you are better.”
+
+“What are you here for?” cried Peter. “Why did you come—?”
+
+“Oh, please, Peter, be quiet.”
+
+“Tell me, I will have it.” Peter was exciting himself, more from
+Leonore’s look than by what she said.
+
+“Oh, Peter. I made papa bring me—because—Oh! I wanted to ask you to do
+something. For my sake!”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“I wanted to ask you,” sobbed Leonore, “to marry her. Then I shall
+always think you were what I—I—have been loving, and not—” Leonore laid
+her head down on his knee, and sobbed bitterly.
+
+Peter raised Leonore in his arms, and laid the little head on his
+shoulder.
+
+“Dear one,” he said, “do you love me?”
+
+“Yes,” sobbed Leonore.
+
+“And do you think I love you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Now look into your heart. Could you tell me a lie?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Nor can I you. I am not the father of that boy, and I never wronged
+his mother.”
+
+“But you told—” sobbed Leonore.
+
+“I lied to your mother, dear.”
+
+“For what?” Leonore had lifted her head, and there was a look of hope
+in her eyes, as well as of doubt.
+
+“Because it was better at that time than the truth. But Watts will tell
+you that I lied.”
+
+“Papa?”
+
+“Yes, Dot. Dear old Peter speaks the truth.”
+
+“But if you lied to her, why not to me?”
+
+“I can’t lie to you, Leonore. I am telling you the truth. Won’t you
+believe me?”
+
+“I do,” cried Leonore. “I know you speak the truth. It’s in your face
+and voice.” And the next moment her arms were about Peter’s neck, and
+her lips were on his.
+
+Just then some one in the “torchlight” shouted:
+
+“What’s the matter wid Stirling?”
+
+And a thousand voices joyfully yelled;
+
+“He’s all right.”
+
+And so was the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+A CONUNDRUM.
+
+
+Mr. Pierce was preparing to talk. Usually Mr. Pierce was talking. Mr.
+Pierce had been talking already, but it had been to single listeners
+only, and for quite a time in the last three hours Mr. Pierce had been
+compelled to be silent. But at last Mr. Pierce believed his moment had
+come. Mr. Pierce thought he had an audience, and a plastic audience at
+that. And these three circumstances in combination made Mr. Pierce
+fairly bubbling with words. No longer would he have to waste his
+precious wit and wisdom, _tête-à-tête,_ or on himself.
+
+At first blush Mr. Pierce seemed right in his conjecture. Seated—in
+truth, collapsed, on chairs and lounges, in a disarranged and
+untidy-looking drawing-room, were nearly twenty very tired-looking
+people. The room looked as if there had just been a free fight there,
+and the people looked as if they had been the participants. But the
+multitude of flowers and the gay dresses proved beyond question that
+something else had made the disorder of the room and had put that
+exhausted look upon the faces.
+
+Experienced observers would have understood it at a glimpse. From the
+work and fatigues of this world, people had gathered for a little
+enjoyment of what we call society. It is true that both the room and
+its occupants did not indicate that there had been much recreation.
+But, then, one can lay it down as an axiom that the people who work for
+pleasure are the hardest-working people in the world; and, as it is
+that for which society labors, this scene is but another proof that
+they get very much fatigued over their pursuit of happiness and
+enjoyment, considering that they hunt for it in packs, and entirely
+exclude the most delicious intoxicant known—usually called oxygen—from
+their list of supplies from the caterer. Certainly this particular
+group did look exhausted far beyond the speech-making point. But this,
+too, was a deception. These limp-looking individuals had only remained
+in this drawing-room for the sole purpose of “talking it over,” and Mr.
+Pierce had no walk-over before him.
+
+Mr. Pierce cleared his throat and remarked: “The development of
+marriage customs and ceremonies from primeval days is one of the most
+curious and—”
+
+“What a lovely wedding it has been!” said Dorothy, heaving a sigh of
+fatigue and pleasure combined.
+
+“Wasn’t it!” went up a chorus from the whole party, except Mr. Pierce,
+who looked eminently disgusted.
+
+“As I was remarking—” began Mr. Pierce again.
+
+“But the best part,” said Watts, who was lolling on one of the lounges,
+“was those ‘sixt’ ward presents. As Mr. Moriarty said; ‘Begobs, it’s
+hard it would be to find the equal av that tureen!’ He was right! Its
+equal for ugliness is inconceivable.”
+
+“Yet the poor beggars spent eight hundred dollars on it” sighed
+Lispenard, wearily.
+
+“Relative to the subject—” said Mr. Pierce.
+
+“And Leonore told me,” said a charmingly-dressed girl, “that she liked
+it better than any other present she had received.”
+
+“Oh, she was more enthusiastic,” laughed Watts, “over all the ‘sixt’
+ward and political presents than she was over what we gave her. We
+weren’t in it at all with the Micks. She has come out as much a
+worshipper of hoi-polloi as Peter.”
+
+“I don’t believe she cares a particle for them,” said our old friend,
+the gentlemanly scoundrel; “but she worships them because they worship
+him.”
+
+“Well,” sighed Lispenard, “that’s the way things go in life. There’s
+that fellow gets worshipped by every one, from the Irish saloon-keeper
+up to Leonore. While look at me! I’m a clever, sweet-tempered, friendly
+sort of a chap, but nobody worships me. There isn’t any one who gives a
+second thought for yours truly. I seem good for nothing, except being
+best man to much luckier chaps. While look at Peter! He’s won the love
+of a lovely girl, who worships him to a degree simply inconceivable. I
+never saw such idealization.”
+
+“Then you haven’t been watching Peter,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, who, as a
+mother, had no intention of having it supposed that Leonore was not
+more loved than loving.
+
+“Taking modern marriage as a basis—” said Mr. Pierce.
+
+“Oh,” laughed Dorothy, “there’s no doubt they are a pair, and I’m very
+proud of it, because I did it.”
+
+“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed Ray.
+
+“I did,” said Dorothy, “and my own husband is not the one to cast
+reflection on my statement.”
+
+“He’s the only one who dares,” said Ogden.
+
+“Well, I did. Leonore would never have cared for such a silent, serious
+man if I hadn’t shown her that other women did, and—”
+
+“Nonsense,” laughed Ogden. “It was Podds did it. Dynamite is famous for
+the uncertainty of the direction in which it will expend its force, and
+in this case it blew in a circle, and carried Leonore’s heart clear
+from Newport to Peter.”
+
+“Or, to put it scientifically,” said Lispenard, “along the line of
+least resistance.”
+
+“It seems to me that Peter was the one who did it,” said Le Grand. “But
+of course, as a bachelor, I can’t expect my opinion to be accepted.”
+
+“No,” said Dorothy. “He nearly spoiled it by cheapening himself. No
+girl will think a man is worth much who lets her tramp on him.”
+
+“Still,” said Lispenard, “few girls can resist the flattery of being
+treated by a man as if she is the only woman worth considering in the
+world, and Peter did that to an extent which was simply disgraceful. It
+was laughable to see the old hermit become social the moment she
+appeared, and to see how his eyes and attention followed her. And his
+learning to dance! That showed how things were.”
+
+“He began long before any of you dreamed,” said Mrs. D’Alloi. “Didn’t
+he, Watts?”
+
+“Undoubtedly,” laughed Watts. “And so did she. I really think Leonore
+did quite as much in her way, as Peter did. I never saw her treat any
+one quite as she behaved to Peter from the very first. I remember her
+coming in after her runaway, wild with enthusiasm over him, and saying
+to me ‘Oh, I’m so happy. I’ve got a new friend, and we are going to be
+such friends always!’”
+
+“That raises the same question,” laughed Ogden, “that the Irishman did
+about the street-fight, when he asked ‘Who throwed that last brick
+first?’”
+
+“Really, if it didn’t seem too absurd,” said Watts, “I should say they
+began it the moment they met.”
+
+“I don’t think that at all absurd,” said a gray-haired, refined looking
+woman who was the least collapsed of the group, or was perhaps so well
+bred as to conceal her feelings. “I myself think it began before they
+even met. Leonore was half in love with Peter when she was in Europe,
+and Peter, though he knew nothing of her, was the kind of a man who
+imagines an ideal and loves that. She happened to be his ideal.”
+
+“Really, Miss De Voe,” said Mr. Pierce, “you must have misjudged him.
+Though Peter is now my grandson, I am still able to know what he is. He
+is not at all the kind of man who allows himself to be controlled by an
+ideal.”
+
+“I do not feel that I have ever known Peter. He does not let people
+perceive what is underneath,” said Miss De Voe. “But of one thing I am
+sure. Nearly everything he does is done from sentiment. At heart he is
+an idealist.”
+
+“Oh!” cried several.
+
+“That is a most singular statement,” said Mr. Pierce. “There is not a
+man I know who has less of the sentimental and ideal in him. An
+idealist is a man of dreams and romance. Peter is far too sensible a
+fellow to be that. There is nothing heroic or romantic in him.”
+
+“Nonsense, _Paternus_,” said Watts. “You don’t know anything about the
+old chap. You’ve only seen him as a cool clever lawyer. If your old
+definition of romance is right: that it is ‘Love, and the battle
+between good and evil,’ Peter has had more true romance than all the
+rest of us put together.”
+
+“No,” said Mr. Pierce. “You have merely seen Peter in love, and so you
+all think he is romantic. He isn’t. He is a cool man, who never acts
+without weighing his actions, and therein has lain the secret of his
+success. He calmly marks out his line of life, and, regardless of
+everything else, pursues it. He disregards everything not to his
+purpose, and utilizes everything that serves. I predicted great success
+for him many years ago when he was fresh from college, simply from a
+study of his mental characteristics and I have proved myself a prophet.
+He has never made a slip, legally, politically, or socially. To use a
+yachting expression, he has ‘made everything draw.’ An idealist, or a
+man of romance and fire and impulse could never succeed as he has done.
+It is his entire lack of feeling which has led to his success. Indeed—”
+
+“I can’t agree with you,” interrupted Dorothy, sitting up from her
+collapse as if galvanized into life and speech by Mr. Pierce’s
+monologue. “You don’t understand Peter. He is a man of great feeling.
+Think of that speech of his about those children! Think of his conduct
+to his mother as long as she lived! Think of the goodness and kindness
+he showed to the poor! Why, Ray says he has refused case after case for
+want of time in recent years, while doing work for people in his ward
+which was worth nothing. If—”
+
+“They were worth votes,” interjected Mr. Pierce.
+
+“Look at his buying the Costell place in Westchester when Mr. Costell
+died so poor, and giving it to Mrs. Costell,” continued Dorothy,
+warming with her subject. “Look at his going to those strikers’
+families, and arranging to help them. Were those things done for votes?
+If I could only tell you of something he once did for me, you would not
+say that he was a man without feeling.”
+
+“I have no doubt,” said Mr. Pierce blandly, “that he did many things
+which, on their face, seemed admirable and to indicate feeling. But if
+carefully examined, they would be found to have been advantageous to
+him. Any service he could have done to Mrs. Rivington surely did not
+harm him. His purchase of Costell’s place pleased the political friends
+of the dead leader. His aiding the strikers’ families placated the men,
+and gained him praise from the press. I dislike greatly to oppose this
+rose-colored view of Peter, but, from my own knowledge of the man, I
+must. He is without feeling, and necessarily makes no mistakes, nor is
+he led off from his own ambitions by sentiment of any kind. When we had
+that meeting with the strikers, he sat there, while all New York was
+seething, with mobs and dead just outside the walls, as cool and
+impassive as a machine. He was simply determined that we should
+compromise, because his own interests demanded it, and he carried his
+point merely because he was the one cool man at that meeting. If he had
+had feeling he could not have been cool. That one incident shows the
+key-note of his success.”
+
+“And I say his strong sympathies and feeling were the key-note,”
+reiterated Dorothy.
+
+“I think,” said Pell, “that Peter’s great success lay in his ability to
+make friends. It was simply marvellous. I’ve seen it, over and over
+again, both in politics and society. He never seemed to excite envy or
+bitterness. He had a way of doing things which made people like him.
+Every one he meets trusts him. Yet nobody understands him. So he
+interests people, without exciting hostility. I’ve heard person after
+person say that he was an uninteresting, ordinary man, and yet nobody
+ever seemed to forget him. Every one of us feels, I am sure, that, as
+Miss De Voe says, he had within something he never showed people. I
+have never been able to see why he did or did not do hundreds of
+things. Yet it always turned out that what he did was right. He makes
+me think of the Frenchwoman who said to her sister, ‘I don’t know why
+it is, sister, but I never meet any one who’s always right but
+myself.’”
+
+“You have hit it,” said Ogden Ogden, “and I can prove that you have by
+Peter’s own explanation of his success. I spoke to him once of a rather
+curious line of argument, as it seemed to me, which he was taking in a
+case, and he said: ‘Ogden, I take that course because it is the way
+Judge Potter’s mind acts. If you want to convince yourself, take the
+arguments which do that best, but when you have to deal with judges or
+juries, take the lines which fit their capacities. People talk about my
+unusual success in winning cases. It’s simply because I am not certain
+that my way and my argument are the only way and the only argument.
+I’ve studied the judges closely, so that I know what lines to take, and
+I always notice what seems to interest the jury most, in each case.
+But, more important than this study, is the fact that I can comprehend
+about how the average man will look at a certain thing. You see I am
+the son of plain people. Then I am meeting all grades of mankind, and
+hearing what they say, and getting their points of view. I have never
+sat in a closet out of touch with the world and decided what is right
+for others, and then spent time trying to prove it to them. In other
+words, I have succeeded, because I am merely the normal or average man,
+and therefore am understood by normal or average people, or by
+majorities, to put it in another way.’”
+
+“But Mr. Stirling isn’t a commonplace man,” said another of the
+charmingly dressed girls. “He is very silent, and what he says isn’t at
+all clever, but he’s very unusual and interesting.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Ogden, “I believe he was right. He has a way of
+knowing what the majority of people think or feel about things. And
+that is the secret of his success, and not his possession or lack of
+feeling.”
+
+“You none of you have got at the true secret of Peter’s success,” said
+Ray. “It was his wonderful capacity for work. To a lazy beggar like
+myself it is marvellous. I’ve known that man to work from nine in the
+morning till one at night, merely stopping for meals.”
+
+“Yet he did not seem an ambitious man,” said Le Grand. “He cared
+nothing for social success, he never has accepted office till now, and
+he has refused over and over again law work which meant big money.”
+
+“No,” said Ray. “Peter worked hard in law and politics. Yet he didn’t
+want office or money. He could more than once have been a judge, and
+Costell wanted him governor six years ago. He took the nomination this
+year against his own wishes. He cared as little for money or reputation
+in law, as he cared for society, and would compromise cases which would
+have added greatly to his reputation if he had let them go to trial. He
+might have been worth double what he is to-day, if he had merely
+invested his money, instead of letting it lie in savings banks or trust
+companies. I’ve spoken about it repeatedly to him, but he only said
+that he wasn’t going to spend time taking care of money, for money
+ceased to be valuable when it had to be taken care of; its sole use to
+him being to have it take care of him. I think he worked for the sake
+of working.”
+
+“That explains Peter, certainly. His one wish was to help others,” said
+Miss De Voe. “He had no desire for reputation or money, and so did not
+care to increase either.”
+
+“And mark my words,” said Lispenard. “From this day, he’ll set no limit
+to his endeavors to obtain both.”
+
+“He can’t work harder than he has to get political power,” said an
+usher. “Think of how anxious he must have been to get it, when he would
+spend so much time in the slums and saloons! He couldn’t have liked the
+men he met there.”
+
+“I’ve taken him to task about that, and told him he had no business to
+waste his time so,” said Ogden; “but he said that he was not taking
+care of other people’s money or trying to build up a great business,
+and that if he chose to curtail his practice, so as to have some time
+to work in politics, it was a matter of personal judgment.”
+
+“I once asked Peter,” said Miss De Voe, “how he could bear, with his
+tastes and feelings, to go into saloons, and spend so much time with
+politicians, and with the low, uneducated people of his district. He
+said, ‘That is my way of trying to do good, and it is made enjoyable to
+me by helping men over rough spots, or by preventing political wrong. I
+have taken the world and humanity as it is, and have done what I could,
+without stopping to criticise or weep over shortcomings and sins. I
+admire men who stand for noble impossibilities. But I have given my own
+life to the doing of small possibilities. I don’t say the way is the
+best. But it is my way, for I am a worker, not a preacher. And just
+because I have been willing to do things as the world is willing to
+have them done, power and success have come to me to do more.’ I
+believe it was because Peter had no wish for worldly success, that it
+came to him.”
+
+“You are all wrong,” groaned Lispenard. “I love Peter as much as I love
+my own kin, with due apology to those of it who are present, but I must
+say that his whole career has been the worst case of sheer, downright
+luck of which I ever saw or heard.”
+
+“Luck!” exclaimed Dorothy.
+
+“Yes, luck!” said Lispenard. “Look at it. He starts in like all the
+rest of us. And Miss Luck calls him in to look at a sick kitten die.
+Very ordinary occurrence that! Health-board report several hundred
+every week. But Miss Luck knew what she was about and called him in to
+just the right kind of a kitten to make a big speech about. Thereupon
+he makes it, blackguarding and wiping the floor up with a millionaire
+brewer. Does the brewer wait for his turn to get even with him? Not a
+bit. Miss Luck takes a hand in and the brewer falls on Peter’s
+breast-bone, and loves him ever afterwards. My cousin writes him, and
+he snubs her. Does she annihilate him as she would have other men? No.
+Miss Luck has arranged all that, and they become the best of friends.”
+
+“Lispenard—” Miss De Voe started to interrupt indignantly, but
+Lispenard continued, “Hold on till I finish. One at a time. Well. Miss
+Luck gets him chosen to a convention by a fluke and Peter votes against
+Costell’s wishes. What happens? Costell promptly takes him up and
+pushes him for all he’s worth. He snubs society, and society concludes
+that a man who is more snubby and exclusive than itself must be a man
+to cultivate. He refuses to talk, and every one promptly says: ‘How
+interesting he is!’ He gets in the way of a dynamite bomb. Does it kill
+him? Certainly not. Miss Luck has put an old fool there, to protect
+him. He swears a bad word. Does it shock respectable people? No! Every
+one breathes easier, and likes him the better. He enrages and shoots
+the strikers. Does he lose votes? Not one. Miss Luck arranges that the
+directors shall yield things which they had sworn not to yield; and the
+strikers are reconciled and print a card in praise of him. He runs for
+office. Do the other parties make a good fight of it? No. They promptly
+nominate a scoundrelly demagogue and a nonentity who thinks votes are
+won by going about in shirtsleeves. So he is elected by the biggest
+plurality the State has ever given. Has Miss Luck done enough? No. She
+at once sets every one predicting that he’ll get the presidential
+nomination two years from now, if he cares for it. Be it friend or
+enemy, intentional or unintentional, every one with whom he comes in
+contact gives him a boost. While look at me! There isn’t a soul who
+ever gave me help. It’s been pure, fire-with-your-eyes-shut luck.
+
+“Was this morning luck too?” asked a bridesmaid.
+
+“Absolutely,” sighed Lispenard. “And what luck! I always said that
+Peter would never marry, because he would insist on taking women
+seriously, and because at heart he was afraid of them to a woeful
+degree, and showed it in such a way, as simply to make women think he
+didn’t like them individually. But Miss Luck wouldn’t allow that. Oh,
+no! Miss Luck isn’t content even that Peter shall take his chance of
+getting a wife, with the rest of us. She’s not going to have any
+accidents for him. So she takes the loveliest of girls and trots her
+all over Europe, so that she shan’t have friends, or even know men
+well. She arranges too, that the young girl shall have her head filled
+with Peter by a lot of admiring women, who are determined to make him
+into a sad, unfortunate hero, instead of the successful man he is. A
+regular conspiracy to delude a young girl. Then before the girl has
+seen anything of the world, she trots her over here. Does she introduce
+them at a dance, so that Peter shall be awkward and silent? Not she!
+She puts him where he looks his best—on a horse. She starts the thing
+off romantically, so that he begins on the most intimate footing,
+before another man has left his pasteboard. So he’s way ahead of the
+pack when they open cry. Is that enough? No! At the critical moment he
+is called to the aid of his country. Gets lauded for his pluck. Gets
+blown up. Gets everything to make a young girl worship him. Pure luck!
+It doesn’t matter what Peter says or does. Miss Luck always arranges
+that it turn up the winning card.”
+
+“There is no luck in it,” cried Mr. Pierce. “It was all due to his
+foresight and shrewdness. He plans things beforehand, and merely
+presses the button. Why, look at his marriage alone? Does he fall in
+love early in life, and hamper himself with a Miss Nobody? Not he! He
+waits till he has achieved a position where he can pick from the best,
+and then he does exactly that, if you’ll pardon a doating grandfather’s
+saying it.”
+
+“Well,” said Watts, “we have all known Peter long enough to have found
+out what he is, yet there seems to be a slight divergence of opinion.
+Are we fools, or is Peter a gay deceiver?”
+
+“He is the most outspoken man I ever knew,” said Miss De Voe.
+
+“But he tells nothing,” said an usher.
+
+“Yes. He is absolutely silent,” said a bridesmaid.
+
+“Except when he’s speechifying,” said Ray.
+
+“And Leonore says he talks and jokes a great deal,” said Watts.
+
+“I never knew any one who is deceiving herself so about a man,” said
+Dorothy. “It’s terrible. What do you think she had the face to say to
+me to-day?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“She was speaking of their plans after returning from the wedding
+journey, and she said: ‘I am going to have Peter keep up his bachelor
+quarters.’ ‘Does he say he’ll do it?’ I asked. ‘I haven’t spoken to
+him,’ she replied, ‘but of course he will.’ I said: ‘Leonore, all women
+think they rule their husbands, but they don’t in reality, and Peter
+will be less ruled than any man I know.’ Then what do you think she
+said?”
+
+“Don’t keep us in suspense.”
+
+“She said: ‘None of you ever understood Peter. But I do.’ Think of it!
+From that little chit, who’s known Peter half the number of months that
+I’ve known him years!”
+
+“I don’t know,” sighed Lispenard. “I’m not prepared to say it isn’t so.
+Indeed, after seeing Peter, who never seemed able to understand women
+till this one appeared on the scene, develop into a regulation lover, I
+am quite prepared to believe that every one knows more than I do. At
+the same time, I can’t afford to risk my reputation for discrimination
+and insight over such a simple thing as Peter’s character. You’ve all
+tried to say what Peter is. Now I’ll tell you in two words and you’ll
+all find you are right, and you’ll all find you are wrong.”
+
+“You are as bad as Leonore,” cried Dorothy.
+
+“Well,” said Watts, “we are all listening. What is Peter?”
+
+“He is an extreme type of a man far from uncommon in this country, yet
+who has never been understood by foreigners, and by few Americans.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Peter is a practical idealist”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+LEONORE’S THEORY.
+
+
+And how well had that “talk-it-over” group at the end of Peters
+wedding-day grasped his character? How clearly do we ever gain an
+insight into the feelings and motives which induce conduct even in
+those whom we best know and love? Each had found something in Peter
+that no other had discovered. We speak of rose-colored glasses, and
+Shakespeare wrote, “All things are yellow to a jaundiced eye.” When we
+take a bit of blue glass, and place it with yellow, it becomes green.
+When we put it with red, it becomes purple. Yet blue it is all the
+time. Is not each person responsible for the tint he seems to produce
+in others? Can we ever learn that the thing is blue, and that the green
+or purple aspect is only the tinge which we ourselves help to give? Can
+we ever learn that we love and are loved entirely as we give ourselves
+colors which may harmonize with those about us? That love, wins love;
+kindness, kindness; hate, hate. That just such elements as we give to
+the individual, the individual gives back to us? That the sides we show
+are the sides seen by the world. There were people who could truly
+believe that Peter was a ward boss; a frequenter of saloons; a
+drunkard; a liar; a swearer; a murderer, in intention, if not in act; a
+profligate; and a compromiser of many of his own strongest principles.
+Yet there were people who could, say other things of him.
+
+But more important than the opinion of Peter’s friends, and of the
+world, was the opinion of Peter’s wife. Was she right in her theory
+that she was the only one who understood him? Or had she, as he had
+once done, reared an ideal, and given that ideal the love which she
+supposed she was giving Peter? It is always a problem in love to say
+whether we love people most for the qualities they actually possess, or
+for those with which our own love endows them. Here was a young girl,
+inexperienced in world and men, joyfully sinking her own life in that
+of a man whom, but a few months before, had been only a matter of
+hearsay to her. Yet she had apparently taken him, as women will, for
+better, for worse, till death, as trustfully as if he and men generally
+were as knowable as A B C, instead of as unknown as the algebraic X.
+Only once had she faltered in her trust of him, and then but for a
+moment. How far had her love, and the sight of Peter’s misery, led her
+blindly to renew that trust? And would it hold? She had seen how little
+people thought of that scurrilous article, and how the decent papers
+had passed it over without a word. But she had also seen, the scandal
+harped upon by partisans and noted that Peter failed to vindicate
+himself publicly, or vouchsafe an explanation to her. Had she taken
+Peter with trust or doubt, knowledge or blindness?
+
+Perhaps a conversation between the two, a week later, will answer these
+questions. It occurred on the deck of a vessel. Yet this parting
+glimpse of Peter is very different from that which introduced him. The
+vessel is not drifting helplessly, but its great screw is whirling it
+towards the island of Martinique, as if itself anxious to reach that
+fairy land of fairy lands. Though the middle of November, the soft
+warmth of the tropics is in the air. Nor are the sea and sky now
+leaden. The first is turned into liquid gold by the phosphorescence,
+and the full moon silvers everything else. Neither is Peter pacing the
+deck with lines of pain and endurance on his face. He is up in the bow,
+where the vessel’s forefoot throws up the white foam in silver drops in
+the moonlight. And he does not look miserable. Anything but that. He is
+sitting on an anchor stock, with his back comfortably braced against
+the rail. Another person is not far distant. What that person sits upon
+and leans against is immaterial to the narrative.
+
+“Why don’t you smoke?” asked that person.
+
+“I’m too happy,” said Peter, in a voice evidencing the truth of his
+words.
+
+“Will you if I bite off the end?” asked Eve, Jr., placing temptation
+most temptingly.
+
+“I like the idea exceedingly,” said Peter. “But my right arm is so very
+pleasantly placed that it objects to moving.”
+
+“Don’t move it. I know where they are. I even know about the matches.”
+And Peter sat calmly while his pockets were picked. He even seemed to
+enjoy the sensation of that small hand rummaging in his waistcoat
+pockets. “You see, dear, that I am learning your ways,” Leonore
+continued, in a tone of voice which suggested that that was the chief
+end of woman. Perhaps it is. The Westminster catechism only tells us
+the chief end of man.
+
+“There. Now are you really happy?”
+
+“I don’t know anybody more so.”
+
+“Then, dear, I want to talk with you.”
+
+“The wish is reciprocal. But what have we been doing for six days?”
+
+“We’ve been telling each other everything, just as we ought. But now I
+want to ask two favors, dear.”
+
+“I don’t think that’s necessary. Just tell me what they are.”
+
+“Yes. These favors are. Though I know you’ll say ‘yes.’”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“First. I want you always to keep your rooms just as they are?”
+
+“Dear-heart, after our six weeks’ trip, we must be in Albany for three
+years, and when we come back to New York, we’ll have a house of
+course.”
+
+“Yes. But I want you to keep the rooms just as they are, because I love
+them. I don’t think I shall ever feel the same for any other place. It
+will be very convenient to have them whenever, we want to run down from
+Albany. And of course you must keep up with the ward.”
+
+“But you don’t suppose, after we are back in New-York, that I’ll stay
+down there, with you uptown?”
+
+“Oh, no! Of course not. Peter! How absurd you are! But I shall go down
+very often. Sometimes we’ll give little dinners to real friends. And
+sometimes, when we want to get away from people, we’ll dine by
+ourselves and spend the night there. Then whenever you want to be at
+the saloons or primaries we’ll dine together there and I’ll wait for
+you. And then I think I’ll go down sometimes, when I’m shopping, and
+lunch with you. I’ll promise not to bother you. You shall go back to
+your work, and I’ll amuse myself with your flowers, and books, till you
+are ready to go uptown. Then we’ll ride together.”
+
+“Lispenard frightened me the other day, but you frighten me worse.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“He said you would be a much lovelier woman at thirty than you are
+now.”
+
+“And that frightened you?” laughed Leonore.
+
+“Terribly. If you are that I shall have to give up law and politics
+entirely, so as to see enough of you.”
+
+“But what has that to do with my lunching with you?”
+
+“Do you think I could work at law with you in the next room?”
+
+“Don’t you want me? I thought it was such a nice plan.”
+
+“It is. If your other favor is like that I shan’t know what to say. I
+shall merely long for you to ask favors.”
+
+“This is very different. Will you try to understand me?”
+
+“I shan’t misunderstand you, at all events.” Which was a crazy speech
+for any man to make any woman.
+
+“Then, dear, I want to speak of that terrible time—only for a moment,
+dear. You mustn’t think I don’t believe what you said. I do! I do!
+Every word of it, and to prove it to you I shall never speak of it
+again. But when I’ve shown you that I trust you entirely, some stormy
+evening, when we’ve had the nicest little dinner together at your
+rooms, and I’ve given you some coffee, and bitten your cigar for you, I
+shall put you down before the fire, and sit down in your lap, as I am
+doing now, and put my arms about your neck so, and put my cheek so. And
+then I want you, without my asking to tell me why you told mamma that
+lie, and all about it.”
+
+“Dear-heart,” said Peter, “I cannot tell. I promised.”
+
+“Oh, but that didn’t include your wife, dear, of course. Besides,
+Peter, friends should tell each other everything. And we are the best
+of friends, aren’t we?”
+
+“And if I don’t tell my dearest friend?”
+
+“I shall never speak of it, Peter, but I know sometimes when I am by
+myself I shall cry over it. Not because I doubt you, dear, but because
+you won’t give me your confidence.”
+
+“Do you know, Dear-heart, that I can’t bear the thought of your doing
+that!”
+
+“Of course not, dear. That’s the reason I tell you. I knew you couldn’t
+bear it.”
+
+“How did you know?”
+
+“Because I understand you, dear. I know just what you are. I’m the only
+person who does.”
+
+“Tell me what I am.”
+
+“I think, dear, that something once came into your life that made you
+very miserable, and took away all your hope and ambition. So, instead
+of trying to make a great position or fortune, you tried to do good to
+others. You found that you could do the most good among the poor
+people, so you worked among them. Then you found that you needed money,
+so you worked hard to get that. Then you found that you could help most
+by working in politics, so you did that. And you have tried to gain
+power so as to increase your power for good. I know you haven’t liked a
+great deal you have had to do. I know that you much prefer to sit
+before your study fire and read than sit in saloons. I know that you
+would rather keep away from tricky people than to ask or take their
+help. But you have sacrificed your own feelings and principles because
+you felt that they were not to be considered if you could help others.
+And, because people have laughed at you or misunderstood, you have
+become silent and unsocial, except as you have believed your mixing
+with the world to be necessary to accomplish good.”
+
+“What a little idealist we are!”
+
+“Well, dear, that isn’t all the little idealist has found out. She
+knows something else. She knows that all his life her ideal has been
+waiting and longing for some one who did understand him, so that he can
+tell her all his hopes and feelings, and that at last he has found her,
+and she will try to make up for all the misery and sacrifice he has
+endured She knows, too, that he wants to tell her everything. You
+mustn’t think, dear, that it was only prying which made me ask you so
+many questions. I—I really wasn’t curious except to see if you would
+answer, for I felt that you didn’t tell other people your real thoughts
+and feelings, and so, whenever you told me, it was really getting you
+to say that you loved me. You wanted me to know what you really are.
+And that was why I knew that you told me the truth that night. And that
+is the reason why I know that some day you will tell me about that
+lie.”
+
+Peter, whatever he might think, did not deny the correctness of
+Leonore’s theories concerning his motives in the past or his conduct in
+the future. He kissed the soft cheek so near him, tenderly, and said:
+
+“I like your thoughts about me, dear one.”
+
+“Of course you do,” said Leonore. “You said once that when you had a
+fine subject it was always easy to make a fine speech. It’s true, too,
+of thoughts, dear.”
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14532 ***