The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Part 95

"Now what shall we do or talk about?" he said. "You know I am host and mustn't do anything my guests don't wish."

Peter said this in the most matter-of-fact way, but Leonore, after a look from under her eyelashes at him, stopped thinking about the door.

She went over to one of the window-seats.

"Come and sit here by me," she said, "and tell me everything about it."

So Peter described "the war, and what they fought each other for," as well as he was able, for, despite his intentions, his mind would wander as those eyes looked into his.

"I am glad that Podds was blown to pieces!" said Leonore.

"Don't say that."

"Why?"

"Because it's one of those cases of a man of really good intentions, merely gone wrong. He was a horse-car driver, who got inflammatory rheumatism by the exposure, and was discharged. He suffered fearful pain, and saw his family suffer for bread. He grew bitter, and took up with these wild theories, not having enough original brain force, or education, to see their folly. He believed firmly in them. So firmly, that when I tried to reason him out of them many years ago he came to despise me and ordered me out of his rooms. I had once done him a service, and felt angered at what I thought ungrateful conduct, so I made no attempt to keep up the friendliness. He knew yesterday that dynamite was in the hands of some of those men, and tried to warn me away. When I refused to go, he threw himself upon me, to protect me from the explosion. Nothing else saved my life."

"Peter, will your regiment have to do anything more?"

"I don't think so. The dynamite has caused a reaction, and has driven off the soberer part of the mob. The pendulum, when it swings too far, always swings correspondingly far the other way. I must stay here for a couple of days, but then if I'm asked, I'll go back to Newport."

"Papa and mamma want you, I'm sure," said Leonore, glancing at the door again, after an entire forgetfulness.

"Then I shall go," said Peter, though longing to say something else.

Leonore looked at him and said in the frankest way; "And I want you too." That was the way she paid Peter for his forbearance.

Then they all went up on the roof, where in one corner there were pots of flowers about a little table, over which was spread an awning. Over that table, too, Jenifer had spread himself. How good that breakfast was! What a glorious September day it was! How beautiful the view of the city and the bay was! It was all so thoroughly satisfactory, that the three nearly missed the "limited." Of course Peter went to the station with them, and, short as was the time, he succeeded in obtaining for one of the party, "all the comic papers," "the latest novel," a small basket of fruit, and a bunch of flowers, not one of which, with the exception of the latter, the real object of these attentions wanted in the least.

Just here it is of value to record an interesting scientific discovery of Leonore's, because women so rarely have made them. It was, that the distance from New York to Newport is very much less than the distance from Newport to New York.

Curiously enough, two days later, his journey seemed to Peter the longest railroad ride he had ever taken. "His friend" did not meet him this time. His friend felt that her trip to New York must be offset before she could resume her proper self-respect. "He was very nice," she had said, in monologue, "about putting the trip down to friends.h.i.+p. And he was very nice that morning in his study. But I think his very niceness is suspicious, and so I must be hard on him!" A woman's reasoning is apt to seem defective, yet sometimes it solves problems not otherwise answerable.

Leonore found her "hard" policy harder than she thought for. She told Peter the first evening that she was going to a card-party. "I can't take you," she said.

"I shall be all the better for a long night's sleep," said Peter, calmly.

This was bad enough, but the next morning, as she was arranging the flowers, she remarked to some one who stood and watched her, "Miss Winthrop is engaged. How foolish of a girl in her first season! Before she's had any fun, to settle down to dull married life."

She had a rose in her hand, prepared to revive Peter with it, in case her speech was too much for one dose, but when she glanced at him, he was smiling happily.

"What is it?" asked Leonore, disapprovingly.

"I beg your pardon," said Peter. "I wasn't listening. Did you say Miss Winthrop was married?"

"What were you smiling over?" said Leonore, in the same voice.

"I was thinking of--of--." Then Peter hesitated and laughed.

"Of what?" asked Leonore.

"You really mustn't ask me," laughed Peter.

"Of what were you thinking?"

"Of eyelashes," confessed Peter.

"It's terrible!" cogitated Leonore, "I can't snub him any more, try as I may."

In truth, Peter was not worrying any longer over what Leonore said or did to him. He was merely enjoying her companions.h.i.+p. He was at once absolutely happy, and absolutely miserable. Happy in his hope. Miserable in its non-certainty. To make a paradox, he was confident that she loved him, yet he was not sure. A man will be absolutely confident that a certain horse will win a race, or he will be certain that a profit will accrue from a given business transaction. Yet, until the horse has won, or the profit is actually made, he is not a.s.sured. So it was with Peter. He thought that he had but to speak, yet dared not do it. The present was so certain, and the future might have such agonies. So for two days he merely followed Leonore about, enjoying her pretty ways and hardly heeding her snubs and petulance. He was very silent, and often abstracted, but his silence and abstraction brought no relief to Leonore, and only frightened her the more, for he hardly let her out of his sight, and the silent devotion and tenderness were so obvious that Leonore felt how absolutely absurd was her pretence of unconsciousness.

In his very "Miss D'Alloi" now, there was a tone in his voice and a look in his face which really said the words: "My darling." Leonore thought this was a mean trick, of apparently sustaining the conventions of society, while in reality outraging them horribly, but she was helpless to better his conduct. Twice unwittingly he even called her "Leonore"

(as he had to himself for two months), thereby terribly disconcerting the owner of that name. She wanted to catch him up and snub him each time, but she was losing her courage. She knew that she was walking on a mine, and could not tell what chance word or deed of hers would bring an explosion. "And then what can I say to him?" she asked.

What she said was this:

Peter came downstairs the third evening of his stay "armed and equipped as the law directs" for a cotillion. In the large hallway, he found Leonore, likewise in gala dress, resting her hand on the tall mantel of the hall, and looking down at the fire. Peter stopped on the landing to enjoy that pose. He went over every detail with deliberation. But girl, gown, and things in general, were much too tempting to make this distant glimpse over lengthy. So he descended to get a closer view. The pose said nothing, and Peter strolled to the fire, and did likewise. But if he did not speak he more than made up for his silence with his eyes.

Finally the pose said, "I suppose it's time we started?"

"Some one's got to speak," the pose had decided. Evidently the pose felt uneasy under that silent gaze.

"It's only a little past ten," said Peter, who was quite satisfied with the _status quo_.

Then silence came again. After this had held for a few moments, the pose said: "Do say something!"

"Something," said Peter. "Anything else I can do for you?"

"Unless you can be more entertaining, we might as well be sitting in the Purdies' dressing-rooms, as standing here. Suppose we go to the library and sit with mamma and papa?" Clearly the pose felt nervous.

Peter did not like this idea. So he said: "I'll try to amuse you. Let me tell you something very interesting to me. It's my birthday to-morrow."

"Oh!" said Leonore. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? Then I would have had a gift for you."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"Don't you want me to give you something?"

"Yes." Then Peter's hands trembled, and he seemed to have hard work in adding, "I want you to give me--a kiss."

"Peter!" said Leonore, drawing back grieved and indignant. "I didn't think you would speak to me so. Of all men!"

"You mustn't think," said Peter, "that I meant to pain you."

"You have," said Leonore, almost ready to cry.

"Because," said Peter, "that isn't what I meant." Peter obviously struggled to find words to say what he did mean as he had never struggled over the knottiest of legal points, or the hardest of wrestling matches. "If I thought you were a girl who would kiss a man for the asking, I should not care for a kiss from you." Peter strayed away from the fire uneasily. "But I know you are not." Peter gazed wildly round, as if the furnis.h.i.+ngs, of the hall might suggest the words for which he was blindly groping. But they didn't, and after one or two half-begun sentences, he continued: "I haven't watched you, and dreamed about you, and loved you, for all this time, without learning what you are." Peter roamed about the great hall restlessly. "I know that your lips will never give what your heart doesn't." Then his face took a despairing look, and he continued quite rapidly: "I ask without much hope. You are so lovely, while I--well I'm not a man women care for.

I've tried to please you. Tried to please you so hard, that I may have deceived you. I probably am what women say of me. But if I've been otherwise with you it is because you are different from any other woman in the world." Here the sudden flow of words ended, and Peter paced up and down, trying to find what to say. If any one had seen Peter as he paced, without his present environment, he would have thought him a man meditating suicide. Suddenly his voice and face became less wild, and he said tenderly: "There is no use in my telling you how I love you. You know it now, or will never learn it from anything I can say." Peter strode back to the fire. "It is my love which asks for a kiss. And I want it for the love you will give with it, if you can give it."

Leonore had apparently kept her eyes on the blazing logs during the whole of this monologue. But she must have seen something of Peter's uneasy wanderings about the room, for she had said to herself: "Poor dear! He must be fearfully in earnest, I never knew him so restless. He prowls just like a wild animal."