The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him Part 4

"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 pate?'"

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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ngle 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 pet.i.tion 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sault; 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 fas.h.i.+onables, 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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."

Rea.s.sured, 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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 b.u.t.ter 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-a.s.sertion but even more because of his enviable acquaintance with certain actresses and his occasional privileges in the way of free pa.s.ses, 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?"