Chapter 26

VARIOUS KINDS OF SOCIETY.

Peter spent Christmas with his mother, and found her very much worried over his “salooning.”

“It’s first steps, Peter, that do the mischief,” she told him.

“But, mother, I only go to talk with the men. Not to drink.”

“You’ll come to that later. The devil’s paths always start straight, my boy, but they end in wickedness. Promise me you won’t go any more.”

“I can’t do that, mother. I am trying to help the men, and you ought not ask me to stop doing what may aid others.”

“Oh, my boy, my boy!” sobbed the mother.

“If you could only understand it, mother, as I have come to, you wouldn’t mind. Here, the saloon is chiefly a loafing place for the lazy and shiftless, but in New York, it’s very different. It’s the poor man’s club. If you could see the dark, cold, foul-aired tenements where they live, and then the bright, warm, cheerful saloons, that are open to all, you would see that it isn’t the drink that draws the men. I even wish the women could come. The bulk of the men are temperate, and only take a glass or two of beer or whisky, to pay for their welcome. They really go for the social part, and sit and talk, or read the papers. Of course a man gets drunk, sometimes, but usually it is not a regular customer, and even such cases would be fewer, it we didn’t tax whisky so outrageously that the dishonest barkeepers are tempted to doctor their whisky with drugs which drive men frantic if they drink. But most of the men are too sensible, and too poor, to drink so as really to harm themselves.”

“Peter, Peter! To think that three years in New York should bring you to talk so! I knew New York was a sink-hole of iniquity, but I thought you were too good a boy to be misled.”

“Mother, New York has less evil in it than most places. Here, after the mills shut down, there’s no recreation for the men, and so they amuse themselves with viciousness. But in a great place like New York, there are a thousand amusements specially planned for the evening hours. Exhibitions, theatres, concerts, libraries, lectures—everything to tempt one away from wrong-doing to fine things. And there wickedness is kept out of sight as it never is here. In New York you must go to it, but in these small places it hunts one out and tempts one.”

“Oh, Peter! Here, where there’s room in church of a Sabbath for all the folks, while they say that in New York there isn’t enough seats in churches for mor’n a quarter of the people. A missionary was saying only last week that we ought to help raise money to build churches in New York. Just think of there being mor’n ten saloons for every church! And that my son should speak for them and spend nights in them!”

“I’m sorry it troubles you so. If I felt I had any right to stop, I’d do it.”

“You haven’t drunk in them yet, Peter?”

“No.”

“And you’ll promise to write me if you do.”

“I’ll promise you I won’t drink in them, mother.”

“Thank you, Peter.” Still his mother was terrified at the mere thought, and at her request, her clergyman spoke also to Peter. He was easier to deal with, and after a chat with Peter, he told Mrs. Stirling:

“I think he is doing no harm, and may do much good. Let him do what he thinks best.”

“It’s dreadful though, to have your son’s first refusal be about going to saloons,” sighed the mother.

“From the way he spoke I think his refusal was as hard to him as to you. He’s a good boy, and you had better let him judge of what’s right.”

On Peter’s return to the city, he found an invitation from Mrs. Bohlmann to come to a holiday festivity of which the Germans are so fond. He was too late to go, but he called promptly, to explain why he had not responded. He was very much surprised, on getting out his dress-suit, now donned for the first time in three years, to find how badly it fitted him.

“Mother is right,” he had to acknowledge. “I have grown much thinner.”

However, the ill-fit did not spoil his evening. He was taken into the family room, and passed a very pleasant hour with the jolly brewer, his friendly wife, and the two “nice girls.” They were all delighted with Catlin’s election, and Peter had to tell them about his part in it. They did not let him go when he rose, but took him into the dining-room, where a supper was served at ten. In leaving a box of candy, saved for him from the Christmas tree, was given him.

“You will come again, Mr. Stirling?” said Mrs. Bohlmann, warmly.

“Thank you,” said Peter. “I shall be very glad to.”

“Yah,” said Mr. Bohlmann. “You coom choost as ofden as you blease.”

Peter took his dress-suit to a tailor the next day, and ordered it to be taken in. That individual protested loudly on the ground that the coat was so old-fashioned that it would be better to make a new suit. Peter told him that he wore evening dress too rarely to make a new suit worth the having, and the tailor yielded rather than lose the job. Scarcely had it been put in order, when Peter was asked to dine at his clergyman’s, and the next day came another invitation, to dine with Justice Gallagher. Peter began to wonder if he had decided wisely in vamping the old suit.

He had one of the pleasantest evenings of his life at Dr. Purple’s. It was a dinner of ten, and Peter was conscious that a real compliment had been paid him in being included, for the rest of the men were not merely older than himself, but they were the “strong” men of the church. Two were trustees. All were prominent in the business world. And it pleased Peter to find that he was not treated as the youngster of the party, but had his opinions asked. At one point of the meal the talk drifted to a Bethel church then under consideration, and this in turn brought up the tenement-house question. Peter had been studying this, both practically and in books, for the last three months. Before long, the whole table was listening to what he had to say. When the ladies had withdrawn, there was political talk, in which Peter was much more a listener, but it was from preference rather than ignorance. One of the men, a wholesale dealer in provisions, spoke of the new governor’s recommendation for food legislation.

“The leaders tell me that the legislature will do something about it,” Peter said.

“They’ll probably make it worse,” said Mr. Avery.

“Don’t you think it can be bettered?” asked Peter.

“Not by politicians.”

“I’m studying the subject,” Peter said. “Will you let me come down some day, and talk with you about it?”

“Yes, by all means. You’d better call about lunch hour, when I’m free, and we can talk without interruption.”

Peter would much have preferred to go on discussing with the men, when they all joined the ladies, but Mrs. Purple took him off, and placed him between two women. They wanted to hear about “the case,” so Peter patiently went over that well-worn subject. Perhaps he had his pay by being asked to call upon both. More probably the requests were due to what Mrs. Purple had said of him during the smoking time:

“He seems such a nice, solid, sensible fellow. I wish some of you would ask him to call on you. He has no friends, apparently.”

The dinner at Justice Gallagher’s was a horse of a very different color. The men did not impress him very highly, and the women not at all. There was more to eat and drink, and the talk was fast and lively. Peter was very silent. So quiet, that Mrs. Gallagher told her “take in” that she “guessed that young Stirling wasn’t used to real fashionable dinners,” and Peter’s partner quite disregarded him for the rattling, breezy talker on her other side. After the dinner Peter had a pleasant chat with the Justice’s seventeen-year-old daughter, who was just from a Catholic convent, and the two tried to talk in French. It is wonderful what rubbish is tolerable if only talked in a foreign tongue.

“I don’t see what you wanted to have that Stirling for?” said Honorable Mrs. Justice Gallagher, to him who conferred that proud title upon her, after the guests had departed.

“You are clever, arn’t you?” said Gallagher, bitingly.

“That’s living with you,” retorted the H.M.J., who was not easily put down.

“Then you see that you treat Stirling as if he was somebody. He’s getting to be a power in the ward, and if you want to remain Mrs. Justice Gallagher and spend eight thousand—and pickings—a year, you see that you keep him friendly.”

“Oh, I’ll be friendly, but he’s awful dull.”

“Oh, no, mamma,” said Monica. “He really isn’t. He’s read a great many more French books than I have.”

Peter lunched with the wholesale provision-dealer as planned. The lunch hour proving insufficient for the discussion, a family dinner, a few days later, served to continue it. The dealer’s family were not very enthusiastic about Peter.

“He knows nothing but grub talk,” grumbled the heir apparent, who from the proud altitude of a broker’s office, had come to scorn the family trade.

“He doesn’t know any fashionable people,” said one of the girls, who having unfulfilled ambitions concerning that class, was doubly interested and influenced by its standards and idols.

“He certainly is not brilliant,” remarked the mother.

“Humph,” growled the pater-familias, “that’s the way all you women go on. Brilliant! Fashionable! I don’t wonder marriage is a failure when I see what you like in men. That Stirling is worth all your dancing men, but just because he holds his tongue when he hasn’t a sensible thing to say, you think he’s no good.”

“Still he is ‘a nobody.’”

“He’s the fellow who made that big speech in the stump-tail milk case.”

“Not that man?”

“Exactly. But of course he isn’t ‘brilliant.’”

“I never should have dreamed it.”

“Still,” said the heir, “he keeps his eloquence for cows, and not for dinners.”

“He talked very well at Dr. Purple’s,” said the mamma, whose opinion of Peter had undergone a change.

“And he was invited to call by Mrs. Dupont and Mrs. Sizer, which is more than you’ve ever been,” said Avery senior to Avery junior.

“That’s because of the prog,” growled the son, seeing his opportunity to square accounts quickly.

Coming out of church the next Sunday, Peter was laid hold of by the Bohlmanns and carried off to a mid-day dinner, at which were a lot of pleasant Germans, who made it very jolly with their kindly humor. He did not contribute much to the laughter, but every one seemed to think him an addition to the big table.

Thus it came to pass that late in January Peter dedicated a week of evenings to “Society,” and nightly donning his dress suit, called dutifully on Mrs. Dupont, Mrs. Sizer, Mrs. Purple, Mrs. Avery, Mrs. Costell, Mrs. Gallagher and Mrs. Bohlmann. Peter was becoming very frivolous.