Chapter 48

THE BLUE-PETER.

Leonore’s puzzle went on increasing in complexity, but there is a limit to all intricacy, and after a time Leonore began to get an inkling of the secret. She first noticed that Peter seemed to spend an undue amount of time with her. He not merely turned up in the Park daily, but they were constantly meeting elsewhere. Leonore went to a gallery. There was Peter! She went to a concert. Ditto, Peter! She visited the flower-show. So did Peter! She came out of church. Behold Peter! In each case with nothing better to do than to see her home. At first Leonore merely thought these meetings were coincidences, but their frequency soon ended this theory, and then Leonore noticed that Peter had a habit of questioning her about her plans beforehand, and of evidently shaping his accordingly.

Nor was this all. Peter seemed to be constantly trying to get her to spend time with him. Though the real summer was fast coming, he had another dinner. He had a box at the theatre. He borrowed a drag from Mr. Pell, and took them all up for a lunch at Mrs. Costell’s in Westchester. Then nothing would do but to have another drive, ending in a dinner at the Country Club.

Flowers, too, seemed as frequent as their meetings. Peter had always smiled inwardly at bribing a girl’s love with flowers and bon-bons, but he had now discovered that flowers are just the thing to send a girl, if you love her, and that there is no bribing about it. So none could be too beautiful and costly for his purse. Then Leonore wanted a dog—a mastiff. The legal practice of the great firm and the politics of the city nearly stopped till the finest of its kind had been obtained for her.

Another incriminating fact came to her through Dorothy.

“I had a great surprise to-day,” she told Leonore. “One that fills me with delight, and that will please you.”

“What is that?”

“Peter asked me at dinner, if we weren’t to have Anneke’s house at Newport for the summer, and when I said ‘yes,’ he told me that if I would save a room for him, he would come down Friday nights and stay over Sunday, right through the summer. He has been a simply impossible man hitherto to entice into a visit. Ray and I felt like giving three cheers.”

“He seemed glad enough to be invited to visit Grey-Court,” thought Leonore.

But even without all this, Peter carried the answer to the puzzle about with him in his own person. Leonore could not but feel the difference in the way he treated, and talked, and looked at her, as compared to all about her. It is true he was no more demonstrative, than with others; his face held its quiet, passive look, and he spoke in much the usual, quiet, even tone of voice. Yet Leonore was at first dimly conscious, and later certain, that there was a shade of eagerness in his manner, a tenderness in his voice, and a look in his eye, when he was with her, that was there in the presence of no one else.

So Leonore ceased to puzzle over the problem at a given point, having found the answer. But the solving did not bring her much apparent pleasure.

“Oh, dear!” she remarked to herself. “I thought we were going to be such good friends! That we could tell each other everything. And now he’s gone and spoiled it. Probably, too, he’ll be bothering me later, and then he’ll be disappointed, and cross, and we shan’t be good friends any more. Oh, dear! Why do men have to behave so? Why can’t they just be friends?”

It is a question which many women have asked. The query indicates a degree of modesty which should make the average masculine blush at his own self-love. The best answer to the problem we can recommend to the average woman is a careful and long study of a mirror.

As a result of this cogitation Leonore decided that she would nip Peter’s troublesomeness in the bud, that she would put up a sign, “Trespassing forbidden;” by which he might take warning. Many women have done the same thing to would-be lovers, and have saved the lovers much trouble and needless expense. But Leonore, after planning out a dialogue in her room, rather messed it when she came to put it into actual public performance. Few girls of eighteen are cool over a love-affair. And so it occurred thusly:

Leonore said to Peter one day, when he had dropped in for a cup of afternoon tea after his ride with her:

“If I ask you a question, I wonder if you will tell me what you think, without misunderstanding why I tell you something?”

“I will try.”

“Well,” said Leonore, “there is a very nice Englishman whom I knew in London, who has followed me over here, and is troubling me. He’s dreadfully poor, and papa says he thinks he is after my money. Do you think that can be so?”

So far the public performance could not have gone better if it had been rehearsed. But at this point, the whole programme went to pieces. Peter’s cup of tea fell to the floor with a crash, and he was leaning back in his chair, with a look of suffering on his face.

“Peter,” cried Leonore, “what is it?”

“Excuse me,” said Peter, rallying a little. “Ever since an operation on my eyes they sometimes misbehave themselves. It’s neuralgia of the optic nerve. Sometimes it pains me badly. Don’t mind me. It will be all right in a minute if I’m quiet.”

“Can’t I do anything?”

“No. I have an eye-wash which I used to carry with me, but it is so long since I have had a return of my trouble that I have stopped carrying it.”

“What causes it?”

“Usually a shock. It’s purely nervous.”

“But there was no shock now, was there?” said Leonore, feeling so guilty that she felt it necessary to pretend innocence.

Peter pulled himself together instantly and, leaning over, began deliberately to gather up the fragments of the cup. Then he laid the pieces on the tea-table and said: “I was dreadfully frightened when I felt the cup slipping. It was very stupid in me. Will you try to forgive me for breaking one of your pretty set?”

“That’s nothing,” said Leonore. To herself that young lady remarked, “Oh, dear! It’s much worse than I thought. I shan’t dare say it to him, after all”

But she did, for Peter helped her, by going back to her original question, saying bravely: “I don’t know enough about Mr. Max —— the Englishman, to speak of him, but I think I would not suspect men of that, even if they are poor.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would be much easier, to most men, to love you than to love your money.”

“You think so?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad. I felt so worried over it. Not about this case, for I don’t care for him, a bit. But I wondered if I had to suspect every man who came near me.”

Peter’s eyes ceased to burn, and his second cup of tea, which a moment before was well-nigh choking him, suddenly became nectar for the gods.

Then at last Leonore made the remark towards which she had been working. At twenty-five Leonore would have been able to say it without so dangerous a preamble.

“I don’t want to be bothered by men, and wish they would let me alone,” she said. “I haven’t the slightest intention of marrying for at least five years, and shall say no to whomever asks me before then,”

Five years! Peter sipped his tea quietly, but with a hopeless feeling. He would like to claim that bit of womanhood as his own that moment, and she could talk of five years! It was the clearest possible indication to Peter that Leonore was heart-whole. “No one, who is in love,” he thought, “could possibly talk of five years, or five months even.” When Peter got back to his chambers that afternoon, he was as near being despairing as he had been since—since—a long time ago. Even the obvious fact, that, if Leonore was not in love with him, she was also not in love with any one else, did not cheer him. There is a flag in the navy known as the Blue-Peter. That evening, Peter could have supplied our whole marine, with considerable bunting to spare.

But even worse was in store for him on the morrow. When he joined Leonore in the Park that day, she proved to him that woman has as much absolute brutality as the lowest of prize-fighters. Women get the reputation of being less brutal, because of their dread of blood-letting. Yet when it comes to torturing the opposite sex in its feelings, they are brutes compared with their sufferers.

“Do you know,” said Leonore, “that this is almost our last ride together?”

“Don’t jerk the reins needlessly, Peter,” said Mutineer, crossly.

“I hope not,” said Peter.

“We have changed our plans. Instead of going to Newport next week, I have at last persuaded papa to travel a little, so that I can see something of my own country, and not be so shamefully ignorant. We are going to Washington on Saturday, and from there to California, and then through the Yellowstone, and back by Niagara. We shan’t be in Newport till the middle of August”

Peter did not die at once. He caught at a life-preserver of a most delightful description. “That will be a very enjoyable trip,” he said. “I should like to go myself.”

“There is no one I would rather have than you,” said Leonore, laying her little hand softly on the wound she had herself just made, in a way which women have. Then she stabbed again. “But we think it pleasanter to have it just a party of four.”

“How long shall you be in Washington?” asked Peter, catching wildly at a straw this time.

“For a week. Why?”

“The President has been wanting to see me, and I thought I might run down next week,”

“Dear me,” thought Leonore. “How very persistent he is!”

“Where will you put up?” said Peter.

“We haven’t decided. Where shall you stay?” she had the brutality to ask.

“The President wants me with him, but I may go to a hotel. It leaves one so much freer.” Peter was a lawyer, and saw no need of committing himself. “If I am there when you are, I can perhaps help you enjoy yourself. I think I can get you a lunch at the White House, and, as I know most of the officials, I have an open sesame to some other nice things.” Poor Peter! He was trying to tempt Leonore to tolerate his company by offering attractions in connection therewith. A chromo with the pound of tea. And this from the man who had thought flowers and bon-bons bribery!

“Why does the President want to see you?”

“To talk politics.”

“About the governorship?”

“Yes. Though we don’t say so.”

“Is it true, Peter, that you can decide who it is to be as the papers say?”

“No, I would give twenty-five thousand dollars to-day if I could name the Democratic nominee.”

“Why?”

“Would you mind my not telling you?”

“Yes. I want to know. And you are to tell me,” said her majesty, calmly.

“I will tell you, though it is a secret, if you will tell me a secret of yours which I want to know.”

“No,” said Leonore. “I don’t think that’s necessary. You are to tell me without making me promise anything.” Leonore might deprecate a man’s falling in love with her, but she had no objection to the power and perquisites it involved.

“Then I shan’t tell you,” said Peter, making a tremendous rally.

Leonore looked out from under her lashes to see just how much of Peter’s sudden firmness was real and how much pretence. Then she became unconscious of his presence.

Peter said something.

Silence.

Peter said something else.

Silence.

“Are you really so anxious to know?” he asked, surrendering without terms.

He had a glorious look at those glorious eyes. “Yes,” said the dearest of all mouths.

“The great panic,” said Peter, “has led to the formation of a so-called Labor party, and, from present indications, they are going to nominate a bad man. Now, there is a great attempt on foot to get the Democratic convention to endorse whomever the Labor party nominates.”

“Who will that be?’”

“A Stephen Maguire.”

“And you don’t want him?”

“No. I have never crossed his path without finding him engaged in something discreditable. But he’s truckled himself into a kind of popularity and power, and, having always been ‘a Democrat,’ he hopes to get the party to endorse him.”

“Can’t you order the convention not to do it?”

Peter smiled down into the eyes. “We don’t order men in this country with any success.”

“But can’t you prevent them?”

“I hope so. But it looks now as if I should have to do it in a way very disagreeable to myself.”

“How?”

“This is a great secret, you understand?”

“Yes,” said Leonore, all interest and eagerness. “I can keep a secret splendidly.”

“You are sure?” asked Peter.

“Sure.”

“So can I,” said Peter.

Leonore perfectly bristled with indignation. “I won’t be treated so,” she said. “Are you going to tell me?” She put on her severest manner.

“No,” said Peter.

“He is obstinate,” thought Leonore to herself. Then aloud she said: “Then I shan’t be friends any more?”

“That is very nice,” said Peter, soberly.

“What?” said Leonore, looking at him in surprise.

“I have come to the conclusion,” said Peter, “that there is no use in our trying to be friends. So we had better give up at once. Don’t you think so?”

“What a pretty horse Miss Winthrop has?” said Leonore. And she never obtained an answer to her question, nor answered Peter’s.