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The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him

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Title: The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him

Author: Paul Leicester Ford


        
Release date: December 30, 2004 [eBook #14532]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HONORABLE PETER STIRLING AND WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF HIM ***

[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 c

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