The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Part 71

"And you don't want him?"

"No. I have never crossed his path without finding him engaged in something discreditable. But he's truckled himself into a kind of popularity and power, and, having always been 'a Democrat,' he hopes to get the party to endorse him."

"Can't you order the convention not to do it?"

Peter smiled down into the eyes. "We don't order men in this country with any success."

"But can't you prevent them?"

"I hope so. But it looks now as if I should have to do it in a way very disagreeable to myself."

"How?"

"This is a great secret, you understand?"

"Yes," said Leonore, all interest and eagerness. "I can keep a secret splendidly."

"You are sure?" asked Peter.

"Sure."

"So can I," said Peter.

Leonore perfectly bristled with indignation. "I won't be treated so,"

she said. "Are you going to tell me?" She put on her severest manner.

"No," said Peter.

"He is obstinate," thought Leonore to herself. Then aloud she said: "Then I shan't be friends any more?"

"That is very nice," said Peter, soberly.

"What?" said Leonore, looking at him in surprise.

"I have come to the conclusion," said Peter, "that there is no use in our trying to be friends. So we had better give up at once. Don't you think so?"

"What a pretty horse Miss Winthrop has?" said Leonore. And she never obtained an answer to her question, nor answered Peter's.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

A MUTINEER.

After Peter's return from Was.h.i.+ngton, there was a settled gloom about him positively appalling. He could not be wooed, on any plea, by his closest friends, to journey up-town into the social world. He failed entirely to avail himself of the room in the Rivington's Newport villa, though Dorothy wrote appealingly, and cited his own words to him. Even to his partners he became almost silent, except on law matters. Jenifer found that no delicacy, however rare or however well cooked and served, seemed to be noticed any more than if it was mess-pork. The only moments that this atmosphere seemed to yield at all was when Peter took a very miscellaneous collection of rubbish out of a little sachet, meant for handkerchiefs, which he now carried in his breast-pocket, and touched the various articles to his lips. Then for a time he would look a little less suicidal.

But it was astonis.h.i.+ng the amount of work he did, the amount of reading he got through, the amount of politics he bossed, and the cigars he smoked, between the first of June, and the middle of August The party-leaders had come to the conclusion that Peter did not intend to take a hand in this campaign, but, after his return from Was.h.i.+ngton, they decided otherwise. "The President must have asked him to interfere," was their whispered conclusion, "but it's too late now. It's all cut and dried."

Peter found, as this remark suggested, that his two months' devotion to the dearest of eyes and sweetest of lips, had had serious results. As with Mutineer once, he had dropped his bridle, but there was no use in uttering, as he had, then, the trisyllable which had reduced the horse to order. He had a very different kind of a creature with which to deal, than a Kentucky gentleman of lengthy lineage, a creature called sometimes a "tiger." Yet curiously enough, the same firm voice, and the same firm manner, and a "mutineer," though this time a man instead of a horse, was effective here. All New York knew that something had been done, and wanted to know what, There was not a newspaper in the city that would have refused to give five thousand dollars for an authentic stenographic report of what actually was said in a s.p.a.ce of time not longer than three hours in all. Indeed, so intensely were people interested, that several papers felt called upon to fabricate and print most absurd versions of what did occur, all the accounts reaching conclusions as absolutely different as the press portraits of celebrities. From three of them it is a temptation to quote the display headlines or "scare-heads," which ushered these reports to the world.

The first read:

"THE BOSSES AT WAR!"

"HOT WORDS AND LOOKS."

"BUT THEY'LL CRAWL LATER."

"There's beauty in the bellow of the blast, There's grandeur in the growling of the gale; But there's eloquence-appalling, when Stirling is aroaring, And the Tiger's getting modest with his tail"

That was a Republican account. The second was:

"MAGUIRE ON TOP!"

"The Old Man is Friendly. A Peace-making Dinner at the Manhattan Club. Friends in Council. Labor and Democracy Shoulder to Shoulder. A United Front to the Enemy."

The third, printed in an insignificant little penny paper, never read and almost unknown by reading people, yet which had more city advertising than all the other papers put together, and a circulation to match the largest, announced:

"TACITURNITY JUNIOR'S"

"ONCE MORE AT THE BAT!"

"NO MORE NONSENSE."

"HE PUTS MAGUIRE OUT ON THIRD BASE."

"NOW PLAY BALL!"

And unintelligible as this latter sounds, it was near enough the truth to suggest inspiration. But there is no need to reprint the article that followed, for now it is possible, for the first time, to tell what actually occurred; and this contribution should alone permit this work to rank, as no doubt it is otherwise fully qualified to, in the dullest cla.s.s of all books, that of the historical novel.

The facts are, that Peter alighted from a hansom one evening, in the middle of July, and went into the Manhattan Club. He exchanged greetings with a number of men in the halls, and with more who came in while he was reading the evening papers. A man came up to him while he still read, and said:

"Well, Stirling. Reading about your own iniquity?"