Chapter 25

MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND UNDERSTANDINGS.

“Did you understand what it all meant, Cousin Anneke?” asked Dorothy, as they were coming downstairs.

“No. The man who got so angry seemed to think Mr. Stirling had—”

She stopped short. A group of men on the sidewalk were talking, and she paused to hear one say:

“To see that young chap Stirling handling Maguire was an eye-opener.”

Another man laughed, rather a deep, quiet laugh. “Maguire understands everything but honesty,” he said. “You can always beat him with that.”

Miss De Voe would have like to stay and listen, but there were too many men. So the ladies entered the carriage.

“At least we know that he said he was trying to tell the truth,” she went on, “and you just heard what that man said. I don’t know why they all laughed.”

“He didn’t seem to mind a bit.”

“No. Hasn’t he a funny half-embarrassed, half-cool manner?”

“He wasn’t embarrassed after he was fairly speaking. You know he was really fine-looking, when he spoke.”

“Yes,” said Dorothy. “You said he had a dull, heavy face.”

“That was the first time I saw him, Dorothy. It’s a face which varies very much. Oliver, drive to the United States. We will take him home to dinner.”

“Oh, good,” cried the youngest. “Then he will tell us why they laughed.”

As they drove up to the hotel, Peter had just reached the steps. He turned to the carriage, the moment he saw that they wanted him.

“We wish to carry you off to a simple country dinner,” Miss De Voe told him.

“I am going to take the special to New York, and that leaves in half an hour.”

“Take a later train.”

“My ticket wouldn’t be good on it.”

Most men Miss De Voe would have snubbed on the spot, but to Peter she said: “Then get another ticket.”

“I don’t care to do that,” said Peter.

“Oh, please, Mr. Stirling,” said Minna. “I want to ask you a lot of questions about the convention.”

“Hush, Minna,” said Miss De Voe. She was nettled that Peter should refuse, and that her niece could stoop to beg of “a criminal lawyer and ward politician,” as she put it mentally. But she was determined not to show it “We are sorry. Good-evening. Home, Oliver.”

So they did not learn from Peter why the convention laughed. The subject was brought up at dinner, and Dorothy asked the opinion of the voters of the family.

“Probably he had made a fluke of some kind,” one said.

“More probably he had out-sharped the other side,” suggested a second.

“It will be in the papers to-morrow,” said the first suggestor.

The three women looked in the next day’s papers, but the reporters were as much at sea in regard to the Stirling-sixth-ward incident, as had been the rank-and-file in the convention. Three took their views from Maguire, and called it “shameful treason,” and the like. Two called it “unprincipled and contradictory conduct.” One alone said that “Mr. Stirling seemed to be acting conscientiously, if erratically.” Just what effect it had had on the candidates none of the papers agreed in. One said it had killed Porter. Another, that “it was a purely personal matter without influence on the main question.” The other papers shaded between these, though two called it “a laughable incident.” The opposition press naturally saw in it an entire discrediting of both factions of the Democratic party, and absolute proof that the nominee finally selected was unfit for office.

Unable to sift out the truth, the ladies again appealed to the voters of the family.

“Oh,” said one, “Stirling did something tricky and was caught in it.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Miss De Voe.

“Nor I,” said Dorothy.

“Well, if you want to make your political heeler an angel, I have no objection,” laughed the enfranchised being.

“I don’t think a man who made that speech about the children can be a scoundrel,” said Dorothy.

“I don’t either,” said Minna.

“That’s the way you women reason,” responded he of the masculine intellect. “Because a man looks out for some sick kittens, ergo, he is a political saint. If you must take up with politicians, do take Republicans, for then, at least, you have a small percentage of chance in your favor that they are gentlemen.”

“Don’t be a Pharisee, Lispenard,” said Miss De Voe, utilizing Peter’s rebuke.

“Then don’t trouble me with political questions. Politics are so vulgar in this country that no gentleman keeps up with them.”

Miss De Voe and the two girls dropped the “vulgar” subject, but Miss De Voe said later:

“I should like to know what they laughed at?”

“Do ask him—if he comes to call on you, this winter, Cousin Anneke.”

“No. I asked him once and he did not come.” Miss De Voe paused a moment. “I shall not ask him again,” she added.

“I don’t think he intends to be rude,” said Dorothy.

“No,” responded Miss De Voe. “I don’t think he knows what he is doing. He is absolutely without our standards, and it is just as well for both that he shouldn’t call.” Woman-like, Miss De Voe forgot that she had said Peter was a gentleman.

If Peter had found himself a marked man in the trip up, he was doubly so on the return train. He sat most of the time by himself, pondering on what had happened, but he could not be unconscious of the number of people to whom he was pointed out. He was conscious too, that his course had not been understood, and that many of those who looked at him with interest, did so without approbation. He was not buoyed up either, by a sense that he had succeeded in doing the best. He had certainly hurt Porter, and had made enemies of Maguire and Kennedy. Except for the fact that he had tried to do right, he could see no compensating balance.

Naturally the newspapers the next morning did not cheer him, though perhaps he cared less for what they said than he ought. He sent them, good, bad, and indifferent, to his mother, writing her at the same time a long letter, telling her how and why he had taken this course. He wrote also a long letter to Porter, explaining his conduct. Porter had already been told that Peter was largely responsible for his defeat, but after reading Peter’s letter, he wrote him a very kind reply, thanking him for his support and for his letter. “It is not always easy to do what one wants in politics,” he wrote, “but if one tries with high motives, for high things, even defeat loses its bitterness. I shall not be able to help you, in your wished-for reforms as greatly as I hoped, but I am not quite a nonentity in politics even now, and if at any time you think my aid worth the asking, do not hesitate to call on me for it. I shall always be glad to see you at my house for a meal or a night, whether you come on political matters or merely for a chat.”

Peter found his constituents torn with dissensions over his and Kennedy’s course in the convention. He did not answer in kind the blame and criticism industriously sowed by Kennedy; but he dropped into a half-a-dozen saloons in the next few days, and told “the b’ys” a pretty full history of the “behind-the-scenes” part.

“I’m afraid I made mistakes,” he frankly acknowledged, “yet even now I don’t see how I could have done differently. I certainly thought I was doing right.”

“An’ so yez were,” shouted Dennis. “An’ if that dirty beast Kennedy shows his dirty face inside these doors, it’s a washin’ it will get wid the drainin’ av the beer-glasses. We wants none av his dirty bargains here.”

“I don’t know that he had made any bargain,” said Peter.

“But we do,” shouted one of the men. “It’s a bargain he’s always makin’.”

“Yes,” said Dennis. “It’s Kennedy looks out for himself, an’ we’ll let him do it next time all by himself.” It could not be traced to its origin, but in less than a week the consensus of opinion in the ward was that: “Kennedy voted for himself, but Stirling for us.”

The ward, too, was rather proud of the celebrity it had achieved. The papers had not merely paragraphed Peter, and the peculiar position of the “district” in the convention, but they had begun now asking questions as to how the ward would behave. “Would it support Catlin?” “Was it true that the ward machine had split, and intended to nominate rival tickets?” “Had one faction made a deal with the Republicans?”

“Begobs,” said Dennis, “it’s the leaders an’ the papers are just afther discoverin’ there is a sixth ward, an’ it’s Misther Stirling’s made them do it.”

The chief party leaders had stayed over at Saratoga, but Peter had a call from Costell before the week was out.

“The papers gave it to you rather rough,” Costell said kindly, “but they didn’t understand it. We thought you behaved very square.”

“They tell me I did Porter harm.”

“No. It was Maguire did the harm. You simply told about it. Of course you get the blame.”

“My constituents stand by me.”

“How do they like Catlin?”

“I think they are entirely satisfied. I’m afraid they never cared much who got it.”

“I’m told Kennedy is growling, and running amuck?”

“He’s down on Catlin and me.”

“Well, if you think best, we’ll placate him? But Gallagher seemed to think he couldn’t do much?”

“I don’t think he has much of a following. Even Moriarty, who was his strong card, has gone back on him.”

“Will you make a couple of speeches for us in this ward?”

“If you’ll let me say what I want?”

“You can support us?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll leave it to you. Only beware of making too many statements. You’ll get dates and places from the committee as soon as they are settled. We pay twenty-five dollars a night. If you hit the right key, we may want you in some of the other wards, too.”

“I shall be glad to talk. It’s what I’ve been doing to small crowds in the saloons.”

“So I’m told. You’ll never get a better place. Men listen there, as they never will at a mass-meeting.” Costell rose. “If you are free next Sunday, come up into Westchester and take a two o’clock dinner with me. We won’t talk politics, but you shall see a nice little woman, who’s good enough to make my life happier, and after we’ve looked over my stables, I’ll bring you back to the city behind a gray mare that will pass about anything there is on the road.”

So Peter had a half day in the country and enjoyed it very much. He looked over Mrs. Costell’s flower-garden, in which she spent almost her whole time, and chatted with her about it. He saw the beautiful stables, and their still more beautiful occupants. He liked the couple very much. Both were simple and silent people, of little culture, but it seemed to Peter that the atmosphere had a gentle, homely tone that was very pleasing. As he got into the light buggy, he said to Mrs. Costell:

“I’ll get the seed of that mottled gillyflower from my mother as soon as possible. Perhaps you’ll let me bring it up myself?”

“Do,” she said. “Come again, whether you get the seed or not.”

After they had started, Mr. Costell said: “I’m glad you asked that. Mrs. Costell doesn’t take kindly to many of the men who are in politics with me, but she liked you, I could see.”

Peter spoke twice in the next week in small halls in his ward. He had good audiences, and he spoke well, if simply.

“There ain’t no fireworks in his stuff,” said the ward satirist. “He don’t unfurl the American flag, nor talk about liberty and the constitution. He don’t even speak of us as noble freemen. He talks just as if he thought we was in a saloon. A feller that made that speech about the babies ought to treat us to something moving.”

That was what many of the ward thought. Still they went because they wanted to see if he wouldn’t burst out suddenly. They felt that Peter had unlimited potentialities in the way of eloquence (for eloquence to them meant the ability to move the emotions) and merely saved his powers. Without quite knowing it they found what he had to say interesting. He brought the questions at issue straight back to elementary forms. He showed just how each paragraph in the platform would directly affect, not the state, but the “district.”

“He’s thoroughly good,” the party leaders were told. “If he would abuse the other side a little more, and stick in a little tinsel and calcium light he would be great.”

So he was called upon to speak elsewhere in the city. He worked at one of the polls on election day, and was pleased to find that he was able to prevent a little of the “trading” for which Kennedy had arranged. His ward went Democratic, as was a foregone conclusion, but by an unusually large majority, and Peter found that he and Dennis were given the credit for it, both in the ward, and at headquarters. Catlin was elected, and the Assembly had been won. So Peter felt that his three months’ work had not been an entire failure. The proceeds of his speeches had added also two hundred and fifty dollars to his savings bank account, and one hundred more to the account of “Peter Stirling, Trustee.”