The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Part 61

"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 circ.u.mstances," 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 subst.i.tuted "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 embarra.s.s 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 gla.s.ses were filled up, even Peter saying, "You may give me a gla.s.s," 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sed 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.