Chapter 40

THE DUDE.

Just as Peter came back to his office, his lunch was announced.

“What makes you look so happy?” asked Ray.

“Being so,” said Peter, calmly.

“What a funny old chap he is?” Ray remarked to Ogden, as they went back to work. “He brought me his opinion, just after lunch, in the Hall-Seelye case. I suppose he had been grubbing all the morning over those awful figures, and a tougher or dryer job, you couldn’t make. Yet he came in to lunch looking as if he was walking on air.”

When Peter returned to his office, he would have preferred to stop work and think for a bit. He wanted to hold those violets, and smell them now and then. He wished to read that letter over again. He longed to have a look at that bit of ribbon and gold. But he resisted temptation. He said: “Peter Stirling, go to work.” So all the treasures were put in a drawer of his study table, and Peter sat down at his office desk. First, after tearing up his note to Watts, he wrote another, as follows:

WATTS:

You can understand why I did not call last night, or bind myself as to the future. I shall hope to receive an invitation to call from Mrs. D’Alloi. How, I must leave to you; but you owe me this much, and it is the only payment I ask of you. Otherwise let us bury all that has occurred since our college days, forever.

PETER.

Then he ground at the law till six, when he swung his clubs and dumb-bells for ten minutes; took a shower; dressed himself, and dined. Then he went into his study, and opened a drawer. Did he find therein a box of cigars, or a bunch of violets, gold-piece, ribbon and sheet of paper? One thing is certain. Peter passed another evening without reading or working. And two such idle evenings could not be shown in another week of his life for the last twenty years.

The next day Peter was considerably nearer earth. Not that he didn’t think those eyes just as lovely, and had he been thrown within their radius, he would probably have been as strongly influenced as ever. But he was not thrown within their influence, and so his strong nature and common sense reasserted themselves. He took his coffee, his early morning ride, and then his work, in their due order. After dinner, that evening, he only smoked one cigar. When he had done that, he remarked to himself—apropos of the cigars, presumably—“Peter, keep to your work. Don’t burn yourself again.” Then his face grew very firm, and he read a frivolous book entitled: “Neun atiologische und prophylactische Satze ... uber die Choleræpidemien in Ostindien,” till nearly one o’clock.

The following day was Sunday. Peter went to church, and in the afternoon rode out to Westchester to pass the evening there with Mrs. Costell. Peter thought his balance was quite recovered. Other men have said the same thing. The fact that they said so, proved that they were by no means sure of themselves.

This was shown very markedly on Monday in Peter’s case, for after lunch he did not work as steadily as he had done in the morning hours. He was restless. Twice he pressed his lips, and started in to work very, very hard—and did it for a time. Then the restlessness would come on again. Presently he took to looking at his watch. Then he would snap it to, and go to work again, with a great determination in his face, only to look at the watch again before long. Finally he touched his bell.

“Jenifer,” he said, “I wish you would rub off my spurs, and clean up my riding trousers.”

“For lohd, sar, I done dat dis day yesserday.”

“Never mind, then,” said Peter. “Tell Curzon to ring me up a hansom.”

When Peter rode into the park he did not vacillate. He put his horse at a sharp canter, and started round the path. But he had not ridden far when he suddenly checked his horse, and reined him up with a couple of riders. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said frankly. Peter had not ceased to be straightforward.

“Hello! This is nice,” said Watts.

“Don’t you think it’s about time?” said Leonore. Leonore had her own opinion of what friendship consisted. She was not angry with Peter—not at all. But she did not look at him.

Peter had drawn his horse up to the side on which Leonore was riding. “That is just what I thought,” he said deliberately, “and that’s why I’m here now.”

“How long ago did that occur to you, please?” said Leonore, with dignity.

“About the time it occurred to me that you might ride here regularly afternoons.”

“Don’t you?” Leonore was mollifying.

“No. I like the early morning, when there are fewer people.”

“You unsociable old hermit,” exclaimed Watts.

“But now?” asked Leonore.

When Leonore said those two words Peter had not yet had a sight of those eyes. And he was getting desperately anxious to see them. So he replied: “Now I shall ride in the afternoons.”

He was rewarded by a look. The sweetest kind of a look. “Now, that is very nice, Peter,” said Leonore. “If we see each other every day in the Park, we can tell each other everything that we are doing or thinking about. So we will be very good friends for sure.” Leonore spoke and looked as if this was the pleasantest of possibilities, and Peter was certain it was.

“I say, Peter,” said Watts. “What a tremendous dude we have come out. I wanted to joke you on it the first time I saw you, but this afternoon it’s positively appalling. I would have taken my Bible oath that it was the last thing old Peter would become. Just look at him, Dot. Doesn’t he fill you with ‘wonder, awe and praise?’”

Leonore looked at Peter a little shyly, but she said frankly:

“I’ve wondered about that, Peter. People told me you were a man absolutely without style.”

Peter smiled. “Do you remember what Friar Bacon’s brass head said?”

“Time is: Time was: Time will never be again?” asked Leonore.

“That fits my lack of style, I think.”

“Pell and Ogden, and the rest of them, have made you what I never could, dig at you as I would. So you’ve yielded to the demands of your toney friends?”

“Of course I tried to dress correctly for my up-town friends, when I was with them. But it was not they who made me careful, though they helped me to find a good tailor, when I decided that I must dress better.”

“Then it was the big law practice, eh? Must keep up appearances?”

“I fancy my dressing would no more affect my practice, than does the furnishing of my office.”

“Then who is she? Out with it, you sly dog.”

“Of course I shan’t tell you that”

“Peter, will you tell me?” asked Leonore.

Peter smiled into the frank eyes. “Who she is?”

“No. Why you dress so nicely. Please?”

“You’ll laugh when I tell you it is my ward.”

“Oh, nonsense,” laughed Watts. “That’s too thin. Come off that roof. Unless you’re guardian of some bewitching girl?”

“Your ward, Peter?”

“Yes. I don’t know whether I can make you understand it. I didn’t at first. You see I became associated with the ward, in people’s minds, after I had been in politics for a few years. So I was sometimes put in positions to a certain extent representative of it. I never thought much how I dressed, and it seems that sometimes at public meetings, and parades, and that sort of thing, I wasn’t dressed quite as well as the other men. So when the people of my ward, who were present, were asked to point me out to strangers, they were mortified about the way I looked. It seemed to reflect on the ward. The first inkling I had of it was after one of these parades, in which, without thinking, I had worn a soft hat. I was the only man who did not wear a silk one, and my ward felt very badly about it. So they made up a purse, and came to me to ask me to buy a new suit and silk hat and gloves. Of course that set me asking questions, and though they didn’t want to hurt my feelings, I wormed enough out of them to learn how they felt. Since then I’ve spent a good deal of money on tailors, and dress very carefully.”

“Good for ‘de sixt’! Hurrah for the unwashed democracy, where one man’s as good as another! So a ‘Mick’ ward wants its great man to put on all the frills? I tell you, chum, we may talk about equality, but the lower classes can’t but admire and worship the tinsel and flummery of aristocracy.”

“You are mistaken. They may like to see brilliant sights. Soldiers, ball-rooms or the like, and who does not? Beauty is aesthetic, not aristocratic. But they judge people less by their dress or money than is usually supposed. Far less than the people up-town do. They wanted me to dress better, because it was appropriate. But let a man in the ward try to dress beyond his station, and he’d be jeered out of it, or the ward, if nothing worse happened.”

“Oh, of course they’d hoot at their own kind,” said Watts. “The hardest thing to forgive in this world is your equal’s success. But they wouldn’t say anything to one of us.”

“If you, or Pell, or Ogden should go into Blunkers’s place in my ward, this evening, dressed as you are, or better, you probably would be told to get out. I don’t believe you could get a drink. And you would stand a chance of pretty rough usage. Last week I went right from a dinner to Blunkers’s to say a word to him. I was in evening dress, newcastle, and crush hat—even a bunch of lilies of the valley—yet every man there was willing to shake hands and have me sit down and stay. Blunkers couldn’t have been dressed so, because it didn’t belong to him. For the same reason, you would have no business in Blunkers’s place, because you don’t belong there. But the men know I dressed for a reason, and came to the saloon for a reason. I wasn’t putting on airs. I wasn’t intruding my wealth on them.”

“Look here, chum, will you take me into Blunkers’s place some night, and let me hear you powwow the ‘b’ys?’ I should like to see how you do it.”

“Yes,” Peter said deliberately, “if some night you’ll let me bring Blunkers up to watch one of your formal dinners. He would enjoy the sight, I’m sure.”

Leonore cocked her little nose up in the air, and laughed merrily.

“Oh, but that’s very different,” said Watts.

“It’s just as different as the two men with the toothache,” said Peter. “They both met at the dentist’s, who it seems had only time to pull one tooth. The question arose as to which it should be. ‘I’m so brave,’ said one, ‘that I can wait till to-morrow.’ ‘I’m such a coward,’ said the other, ‘that I don’t dare have it done to-day.’”

“Haven’t you ever taken people to those places, Peter?” asked Leonore.

“No. I’ve always refused. It’s a society fad now to have what are called ‘slumming parties,’ and of course I’ve been asked to help. It makes my blood tingle when I hear them talk over the ‘fun’ as they call it. They get detectives to protect them, and then go through the tenements—the homes of the poor—and pry into their privacy and poverty, just out of curiosity. Then they go home and over a chafing dish of lobster or terrapin, and champagne, they laugh at the funny things they saw. If the poor could get detectives, and look in on the luxury and comfort of the rich, they wouldn’t see much fun in it, and there’s less fun in a down-town tenement than there is in a Fifth Avenue palace. I heard a girl tell the other night about breaking in on a wake by chance. ‘Weren’t we lucky?’ she said. ‘It was so funny to see the poor people weeping and drinking whisky at the same time. Isn’t it heartless?’ Yet the dead—perhaps the bread-winner of the family, fallen in the struggle—perhaps the last little comer, not strong enough to fight this earth’s battle—must have lain there in plain view of that girl. Who was the most heartless? The family and friends who had gathered over that body, according to their customs, or the party who looked in on them and laughed?” Peter had forgotten where he was, or to whom he was talking.

Leonore had listened breathlessly. But the moment he ceased speaking, she bowed her head and began to sob. Peter came down from his indignant tirade like a flash. “Miss D’Alloi,” he cried, “forgive me. I forgot. Don’t cry so.” Peter was pleading in an anxious voice. He felt as if he had committed murder.

“There, there, Dot. Don’t cry. It’s nothing to cry about.”

Miss D’Alloi was crying and endeavoring at the same time to solve the most intricate puzzle ever yet propounded by man or woman—that is, to find a woman’s pocket. She complicated things even more by trying to talk. “I—I—know I’m ver—ver—very fooooooolish,” she managed to get out, however much she failed in a similar result with her pocket-handkerchief.

“Since I caused the tears, you must let me stop them,” said Peter. He had produced his own handkerchief, and was made happy by seeing Leonore bury her face in it, and re-appear not quite so woe-begone.

“I—only—didn’t—know—you—could— talk—like—like that,” explained Leonore.

“Let this be a lesson for you,” said Watts. “Don’t come any more of your jury-pathos on my little girl.”

“Papa! You—I—Peter, I’m so glad you told me—I’ll never go to one.”

Watts laughed. “Now I know why you charm all the women whom I hear talking about you. I tell you, when you rear your head up like that, and your eyes blaze so, and you put that husk in your voice, I don’t wonder you fetch them. By George, you were really splendid to look at.”

That was the reason why Leonore had not cried till Peter had finished his speech. We don’t charge women with crying whenever they wish, but we are sure that they never cry when they have anything better to do.