The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him. Paul Leicester Ford

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      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.

       Table of Contents

A CRAB CHAPTER.

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ