Chapter 51

SUNSHINE.

But just as Peter was about to continue this rather unsatisfactory train of thought, his eye caught sight of a flattened bullet lying on the floor. He picked it up, with a smile. “I knew she was my good luck,” he said. Then he took out the sachet again, and kissed the dented and bent coin. Then he examined the photographs. “Not even the dress is cut through,” he said gleefully, looking at the full length. “It couldn’t have hit in a better place.” When he came to the glove, however, he grieved a little over it. Even this ceased to trouble him the next moment, for a telegram was laid on his desk. It merely said, “Come by all means. W.C.D’A.” Yet that was enough to make Peter drop thoughts, work, and everything for a time. He sat at his desk, gazing at a blank wall, and thinking of a pair of slate-colored eyes. But his expression bore no resemblance to the one formerly assumed when that particular practice had been habitual.

Nor was this expression the only difference in this day, to mark the change from Peter past to Peter present. For instead of manoeuvring to make Watts sit on the back seat, when he was met by the trap late that afternoon, at Newport, he took possession of that seat in the coolest possible manner, leaving the one by the driver to Watts. Nor did Peter look away from the girl on that back seat. Quite the contrary. It did not seem to him that a thousand eyes would have been any too much. Peter’s three months of gloom vanished, and became merely a contrast to heighten his present joy. A sort of “shadow-box.”

He had had the nicest kind of welcome from his “friend.” If the manner had not been quite so absolutely frank as of yore, yet there was no doubt as to her pleasure in seeing Peter. “It’s very nice to see you again,” she had said while shaking hands. “I hoped you would come quickly.” Peter was too happy to say anything in reply. He merely took possession of that vacant seat, and rested his eyes in silence till Watts, after climbing into place, asked him how the journey to Newport had been.

“Lovelier than ever,” said Peter, abstractedly. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

“Eh?” said Watts, turning with surprise on his face.

But Leonore did not look surprised. She only looked the other way, and the corners of her mouth were curving upwards.

“The journey?” queried Watts.

“You mean Newport, don’t you?” said Leonore helpfully, when Peter said nothing. Leonore was looking out from under her lashes—at things in general, of course.

Peter said nothing. Peter was not going to lie about what he had meant, and Leonore liked him all the better for not using the deceiving loophole she had opened.

Watts said, “Oh, of course. It improves every year. But wasn’t the journey hot, old man?”

“I didn’t notice,” said Peter.

“Didn’t notice! And this one of the hottest days of the year.”

“I had something else to think about,” explained Peter.

“Politics?” asked Watts.

“Oh, Peter,” said Leonore, “we’ve been so interested in all the talk. It was just as maddening as could be, how hard it was to get New York papers way out west. I’m awfully in the dark about some things. I’ve asked a lot of people here about it, but nobody seems to know anything. Or if they do, they laugh at me. I met Congressman Pell yesterday at the Tennis Tournament, and thought he would tell me all about it. But he was horrid! His whole manner said: ‘I can’t waste real talk on a girl.’ I told him I was a great friend of yours, and that you would tell me when you came, but he only laughed and said, he had no doubt you would, for you were famous for your indiscretion. I hate men who laugh at women the moment they try to talk as men do.”

“I think,” said Peter, “we’ll have to turn Pell down. A Congressman who laughs at one of my friends won’t do.”

“I really wish you would. That would teach him,” said Leonore, vindictively. “A man who laughs at women can’t be a good Congressman.”

“I tell you what we’ll do,” said Peter. “I don’t want to retire him, because—because I like his mother. But I will tell you something for you to tell him, that will astonish him very much, and make him want to know who told you, and so you can tease him endlessly.”

“Oh, Peter!” said Leonore. “You are the nicest man.”

“What’s that?” asked Watts.

“It’s a great secret,” said Peter. “I shall only tell it to Miss D’Alloi, so that if it leaks beyond Pell, I shall know whom to blame for it.”

“Goody!” cried Leonore, giving a little bounce for joy.

“Is it about that famous dinner?” inquired Watts.

“No.”

“Peter, I’m so curious about that. Will you tell me what you did?”

“I ate a dinner,” said Peter smiling.

“Now don’t be like Mr. Pell,” said Leonore, reprovingly, “or I’ll take back what I just said.”

“Did you roar, and did the tiger put its tail between its legs?” asked Watts.

“That is the last thing our friends, the enemies, have found,” said Peter.

“You will tell me about it, won’t you, Peter?” said Leonore, ingratiatingly.

“Have you a mount for me, Watts, for to-morrow? Mutineer comes by boat to-night, but won’t be here till noon.”

“Yes. I’ve one chap up to your weight, I think.”

“I don’t like dodgers,” said Leonore, the corners of her mouth drawn down.

“I was not dodging,” said Peter. “I only was asking a preliminary question. If you will get up, before breakfast, and ride with me, I will tell you everything that actually occurred at that dinner. You will be the only person, I think, who wasn’t there, who knows.” It was shameful and open bribery, but bosses are shameful and open in their doings, so Peter was only living up to his rôle.

The temptation was too strong to be resisted, Leonore said, “Of coarse I will,” and the corners of her mouth reversed their position. But she said to herself: “I shall have to snub you in something else to make up for it.” Peter was in for a bad quarter of an hour somewhere.

Leonore had decided just how she was going to treat Peter. To begin with, she intended to accentuate that “five years” in various ways. Then she would be very frank and friendly, just as long as he, too, would keep within those limits, but if Peter even verged on anything more, she intended to leave him to himself, just long enough to show him that such remarks as his “not caring to be friends,” brought instant and dire punishment. “And I shan’t let him speak,” Leonore decided, “no matter if he wants to. For if he does, I’ll have to say ‘no,’ and then he’ll go back to New York and sulk, and perhaps never come near me again, since he’s so obstinate, while I want to stay friends.” Many such campaigns have been planned by the party of the first part. But the trouble is that, usually, the party of the second part also has a plan, which entirely disconcerts the first. As the darkey remarked: “Yissah. My dog he wud a beat, if it hadn’t bin foh de udder dog.”

Peter found as much contrast in his evening, as compared with his morning, as there was in his own years. After dinner. Leonore said:

“I always play billiards with papa. Will you play too?”

“I don’t know how,” said Peter.

“Then it’s time you learned. I’ll take you on my side, because papa always beats me. I’ll teach you.”

So there was the jolliest of hours spent in this way, all of them laughing at Peter’s shots, and at Leonore’s attempts to show him how. “Every woman ought to play billiards,” Peter thought, when it was ended. “It’s the most graceful sight I’ve seen in years.”

Leonore said, “You get the ideas very nicely, but you hit much too hard. You can’t hit a ball too softly. You pound it as if you were trying to smash it.”

“It’s something I really must learn,” said Peter, who had refused over and over again in the past.

“I’ll teach you, while you are here,” said Leonore.

Peter did not refuse this time.

Nor did he refuse another lesson. When they had drifted into the drawing-room, Leonore asked: “Have you been learning how to valse?”

Peter smiled at so good an American using so European a word, but said seriously, “No. I’ve been too busy.”

“That’s a shame,” said Leonore, “because there are to be two dances this week, and mamma has written to get you cards.”

“Is it very hard?” asked Peter.

“No,” said Leonore. “It’s as easy as breathing, and much nicer.”

“Couldn’t you teach me that, also?”

“Easily. Mamma, will you play a valse? Now see.” Leonore drew her skirts back with one hand, so as to show the little feet, and said: “one, two, three, so. One, two, three, so. Now do that.”

Peter had hoped that the way to learn dancing was to take the girl in one’s arms. But he recognized that this would follow. So he set to work manfully to imitate that dainty little glide. It seemed easy as she did it. But it was not so easy when he tried it.

“Oh, you clumsy,” said Leonore laughing. “See. One, two, three, so. One, two, three, so.”

Peter forgot to notice the step, in his admiration of the little feet and the pretty figure.

“Well,” said Leonore after a pause, “are you going to do that?”

So Peter tried again, and again, and again. Peter would have done it all night, with absolute contentment, so long as Leonore, after every failure, would show him the right way in her own person.

Finally she said, “Now take my hands. No. Way apart, so that I can see your feet. Now. We’ll try it together. One, two, change. One, two, change.”

Peter thought this much better, and was ready to go on till strength failed. But after a time, Leonore said, “Now. We’ll try it the true way. Take my hand so and put your arm so. That’s the way. Only never hold a girl too close. We hate it. Yes. That’s it. Now, mamma. Again. One, two, three. One, two, three.”

This was heavenly, Peter thought, and could have wept over the shortness, as it seemed to him, of this part of the lesson.

But it ended, and Leonore said: “If you’ll practice that in your room, with a bolster, you’ll get on very fast.”

“I always make haste slowly,” said Peter, not taking to the bolster idea at all kindly. “Probably you can find time to-morrow for another lesson, and I’ll learn much quicker with you.”

“I’ll see.”

“And will you give me some waltzes at the dances?”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Leonore. “You shall have the dances the other men don’t ask of me. But you don’t dance well enough, in case I can get a better partner. I love valsing too much to waste one with a poor dancer.”

A moment before Peter thought waltzing the most exquisite pleasure the world contained. But he suddenly changed his mind, and concluded it was odious.

“Nevertheless,” he decided, “I will learn how.”