The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Part 99

"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 unbia.s.sed 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 Betise 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 b.u.t.ton-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 pa.s.sed into a door; from the door he pa.s.sed into a hall; from a hall he pa.s.sed into a room; from a room he pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed it to Peter.

"Absolutely," said Peter, looking the picture of bliss. But then he remembered that this wasn't his role, 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?"