Chapter 59

GIFTS.

After the rolls and coffee had been finished, Peter walked with his friends to their cab. It had all been arranged that they were to go to Peter’s quarters, and get some sleep. These were less than eight blocks away, but the parting was very terrific! However, it had to be done, and so it was gone through with. Hard as it was, Peter had presence of mind enough to say, through the carriage window.

“You had better take my room, Miss D’Alloi, for the spare room is the largest. I give you the absolute freedom of it, minus the gold-box. Use anything you find.”

Then Peter went back to the chaotic street and the now breakfasting regiment, feeling that strikes, anarchists, and dynamite were only minor circumstances in life.

About noon Leonore came back to life, and succeeded in making a very bewitching toilet despite the absence of her maid. Whether she peeped into any drawers or other places, is left to feminine readers to decide. If she did, she certainly had ample authority from Peter.

This done she went into the study, and, after sticking her nose into some of the window flowers, she started to go to the bookshelves. As she walked her foot struck something which rang with a metallic sound, as it moved on the wood floor. The next moment, a man started out of a deep chair.

“Oh!” was all Leonore said.

“I hope I didn’t startle you. You must have kicked my sword.”

“I—I didn’t know you were here!” Leonore eyed the door leading to the hall, as if she were planning for a sudden flight.

“The regiment was relieved by another from Albany this morning. So I came up here for a little sleep.”

“What a shame that I should have kept you out of your room,” said Leonore, still eyeing the door. From Leonore’s appearance, one would have supposed that she had purloined something of value from his quarters, and was meditating a sudden dash of escape with it.

“I don’t look at it in that light,” said Peter. “But since you’ve finished with the room for the moment, I’ll borrow the use temporarily. Strikers and anarchists care so little for soap and water themselves, that they show no consideration to other people for those articles.” Peter passed through the doorway towards which Leonore had glanced. Then Leonore’s anxious look left her, and she no longer looked at the door. One would almost have inferred that Leonore was afraid of Peter, but that is absurd, since they were such good friends, since Leonore had come all the way from Newport to see him, and since Leonore had decided that Peter must do as she pleased.

Yet, curiously enough, when Peter returned in about twenty minutes, the same look came into Leonore’s face.

“We shall have something to eat in ten minutes,” Peter said, “for I hear your father and mother moving.”

Leonore looked towards the door. She did not intend that Peter should see her do it, but he did.

“Now what shall we do or talk about?” he said. “You know I am host and mustn’t do anything my guests don’t wish.”

Peter said this in the most matter-of-fact way, but Leonore, after a look from under her eyelashes at him, stopped thinking about the door. She went over to one of the window-seats.

“Come and sit here by me,” she said, “and tell me everything about it.”

So Peter described “the war, and what they fought each other for,” as well as he was able, for, despite his intentions, his mind would wander as those eyes looked into his.

“I am glad that Podds was blown to pieces!” said Leonore.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s one of those cases of a man of really good intentions, merely gone wrong. He was a horse-car driver, who got inflammatory rheumatism by the exposure, and was discharged. He suffered fearful pain, and saw his family suffer for bread. He grew bitter, and took up with these wild theories, not having enough original brain force, or education, to see their folly. He believed firmly in them. So firmly, that when I tried to reason him out of them many years ago he came to despise me and ordered me out of his rooms. I had once done him a service, and felt angered at what I thought ungrateful conduct, so I made no attempt to keep up the friendliness. He knew yesterday that dynamite was in the hands of some of those men, and tried to warn me away. When I refused to go, he threw himself upon me, to protect me from the explosion. Nothing else saved my life.”

“Peter, will your regiment have to do anything more?”

“I don’t think so. The dynamite has caused a reaction, and has driven off the soberer part of the mob. The pendulum, when it swings too far, always swings correspondingly far the other way. I must stay here for a couple of days, but then if I’m asked, I’ll go back to Newport.”

“Papa and mamma want you, I’m sure,” said Leonore, glancing at the door again, after an entire forgetfulness.

“Then I shall go,” said Peter, though longing to say something else.

Leonore looked at him and said in the frankest way; “And I want you too.” That was the way she paid Peter for his forbearance.

Then they all went up on the roof, where in one corner there were pots of flowers about a little table, over which was spread an awning. Over that table, too, Jenifer had spread himself. How good that breakfast was! What a glorious September day it was! How beautiful the view of the city and the bay was! It was all so thoroughly satisfactory, that the three nearly missed the “limited.” Of course Peter went to the station with them, and, short as was the time, he succeeded in obtaining for one of the party, “all the comic papers,” “the latest novel,” a small basket of fruit, and a bunch of flowers, not one of which, with the exception of the latter, the real object of these attentions wanted in the least.

Just here it is of value to record an interesting scientific discovery of Leonore’s, because women so rarely have made them. It was, that the distance from New York to Newport is very much less than the distance from Newport to New York.

Curiously enough, two days later, his journey seemed to Peter the longest railroad ride he had ever taken. “His friend” did not meet him this time. His friend felt that her trip to New York must be offset before she could resume her proper self-respect. “He was very nice,” she had said, in monologue, “about putting the trip down to friendship. And he was very nice that morning in his study. But I think his very niceness is suspicious, and so I must be hard on him!” A woman’s reasoning is apt to seem defective, yet sometimes it solves problems not otherwise answerable.

Leonore found her “hard” policy harder than she thought for. She told Peter the first evening that she was going to a card-party. “I can’t take you,” she said.

“I shall be all the better for a long night’s sleep,” said Peter, calmly.

This was bad enough, but the next morning, as she was arranging the flowers, she remarked to some one who stood and watched her, “Miss Winthrop is engaged. How foolish of a girl in her first season! Before she’s had any fun, to settle down to dull married life.”

She had a rose in her hand, prepared to revive Peter with it, in case her speech was too much for one dose, but when she glanced at him, he was smiling happily.

“What is it?” asked Leonore, disapprovingly.

“I beg your pardon,” said Peter. “I wasn’t listening. Did you say Miss Winthrop was married?”

“What were you smiling over?” said Leonore, in the same voice.

“I was thinking of—of—.” Then Peter hesitated and laughed.

“Of what?” asked Leonore.

“You really mustn’t ask me,” laughed Peter.

“Of what were you thinking?”

“Of eyelashes,” confessed Peter.

“It’s terrible!” cogitated Leonore, “I can’t snub him any more, try as I may.”

In truth, Peter was not worrying any longer over what Leonore said or did to him. He was merely enjoying her companionship. He was at once absolutely happy, and absolutely miserable. Happy in his hope. Miserable in its non-certainty. To make a paradox, he was confident that she loved him, yet he was not sure. A man will be absolutely confident that a certain horse will win a race, or he will be certain that a profit will accrue from a given business transaction. Yet, until the horse has won, or the profit is actually made, he is not assured. So it was with Peter. He thought that he had but to speak, yet dared not do it. The present was so certain, and the future might have such agonies. So for two days he merely followed Leonore about, enjoying her pretty ways and hardly heeding her snubs and petulance. He was very silent, and often abstracted, but his silence and abstraction brought no relief to Leonore, and only frightened her the more, for he hardly let her out of his sight, and the silent devotion and tenderness were so obvious that Leonore felt how absolutely absurd was her pretence of unconsciousness. In his very “Miss D’Alloi” now, there was a tone in his voice and a look in his face which really said the words: “My darling.” Leonore thought this was a mean trick, of apparently sustaining the conventions of society, while in reality outraging them horribly, but she was helpless to better his conduct. Twice unwittingly he even called her “Leonore” (as he had to himself for two months), thereby terribly disconcerting the owner of that name. She wanted to catch him up and snub him each time, but she was losing her courage. She knew that she was walking on a mine, and could not tell what chance word or deed of hers would bring an explosion. “And then what can I say to him?” she asked.

What she said was this:

Peter came downstairs the third evening of his stay “armed and equipped as the law directs” for a cotillion. In the large hallway, he found Leonore, likewise in gala dress, resting her hand on the tall mantel of the hall, and looking down at the fire. Peter stopped on the landing to enjoy that pose. He went over every detail with deliberation. But girl, gown, and things in general, were much too tempting to make this distant glimpse over lengthy. So he descended to get a closer view. The pose said nothing, and Peter strolled to the fire, and did likewise. But if he did not speak he more than made up for his silence with his eyes.

Finally the pose said, “I suppose it’s time we started?”

“Some one’s got to speak,” the pose had decided. Evidently the pose felt uneasy under that silent gaze.

“It’s only a little past ten,” said Peter, who was quite satisfied with the _status quo_.

Then silence came again. After this had held for a few moments, the pose said: “Do say something!”

“Something,” said Peter. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“Unless you can be more entertaining, we might as well be sitting in the Purdies’ dressing-rooms, as standing here. Suppose we go to the library and sit with mamma and papa?” Clearly the pose felt nervous.

Peter did not like this idea. So he said: “I’ll try to amuse you. Let me tell you something very interesting to me. It’s my birthday to-morrow.”

“Oh!” said Leonore. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Then I would have had a gift for you.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Don’t you want me to give you something?”

“Yes.” Then Peter’s hands trembled, and he seemed to have hard work in adding, “I want you to give me—a kiss.”

“Peter!” said Leonore, drawing back grieved and indignant. “I didn’t think you would speak to me so. Of all men!”

“You mustn’t think,” said Peter, “that I meant to pain you.”

“You have,” said Leonore, almost ready to cry.

“Because,” said Peter, “that isn’t what I meant.” Peter obviously struggled to find words to say what he did mean as he had never struggled over the knottiest of legal points, or the hardest of wrestling matches. “If I thought you were a girl who would kiss a man for the asking, I should not care for a kiss from you.” Peter strayed away from the fire uneasily. “But I know you are not.” Peter gazed wildly round, as if the furnishings, of the hall might suggest the words for which he was blindly groping. But they didn’t, and after one or two half-begun sentences, he continued: “I haven’t watched you, and dreamed about you, and loved you, for all this time, without learning what you are.” Peter roamed about the great hall restlessly. “I know that your lips will never give what your heart doesn’t.” Then his face took a despairing look, and he continued quite rapidly: “I ask without much hope. You are so lovely, while I—well I’m not a man women care for. I’ve tried to please you. Tried to please you so hard, that I may have deceived you. I probably am what women say of me. But if I’ve been otherwise with you it is because you are different from any other woman in the world.” Here the sudden flow of words ended, and Peter paced up and down, trying to find what to say. If any one had seen Peter as he paced, without his present environment, he would have thought him a man meditating suicide. Suddenly his voice and face became less wild, and he said tenderly: “There is no use in my telling you how I love you. You know it now, or will never learn it from anything I can say.” Peter strode back to the fire. “It is my love which asks for a kiss. And I want it for the love you will give with it, if you can give it.”

Leonore had apparently kept her eyes on the blazing logs during the whole of this monologue. But she must have seen something of Peter’s uneasy wanderings about the room, for she had said to herself: “Poor dear! He must be fearfully in earnest, I never knew him so restless. He prowls just like a wild animal.”

A moment’s silence came after Peter’s return to the fire. Then he said: “Will you give it to me, Miss D’Alloi?” But his voice in truth, made the words, “Give me what I ask, my darling.”

“Yes,” said Leonore softly. “On your birthday.” Then Leonore shrank back a little, as if afraid that her gift would be sought sooner. No young girl, however much she loves a man, is quite ready for that first kiss. A man’s lips upon her own are too contrary to her instinct and previous training to make them an unalloyed pleasure. The girl who is over-ready for her lover’s first kiss, has tasted the forbidden fruit already, or has waited over-long for it.

Peter saw the little shrinking and understood it. What was more, he heeded it as many men would not have done. Perhaps there was something selfish in his self-denial, for the purity and girlishness which it indicated were very dear to him, and he hated to lessen them by anything he did. He stood quietly by her, and merely said, “I needn’t tell you how happy I am!”

Leonore looked up into Peter’s face. If Leonore had seen there any lack of desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, she would never have forgiven him. But since his face showed beyond doubt that he was longing to do it, Leonore loved him all the better for his repression of self, out of regard for her. She slipped her little hand into Peter’s confidingly, and said, “So am I.” It means a good deal when a girl does not wish to run away from her lover the moment after she has confessed her love.

So they stood for some time, Leonore looking down into the fire, and Peter looking down at Leonore.

Finally Peter said, “Will you do me a great favor?”

“No,” said Leonore, “I’ve done enough for one night. But you can tell me what it is.”

“Will you look up at me?”

“What for?” said Leonore, promptly looking up.

“I want to see your eyes,” said Peter.

“Why?” asked Leonore, promptly looking down again.

“Well,” said Peter, “I’ve been dreaming all my life about some eyes, and I want to see what my dream is like in reality.”

“That’s a very funny request,” said Leonore perversely. “You ought to have found out about them long ago. The idea of any one falling in love, without knowing about the eyes!”

“But you show your eyes so little,” said Peter. “I’ve never had a thoroughly satisfying look at them.”

“You look at them every time I look at you,” said Leonore. “Sometimes it was very embarrassing. Just supposing that I showed them to you now, and that you find they aren’t what you like?”

“I never waste time discussing impossibilities,” said Peter. “Are you going to let me see them?”

“How long will it take?”

“I can tell better after I’ve seen them,” said Peter, astutely.

“I don’t think I have time this evening,” said Leonore, still perversely, though smiling a look of contentment down into the fire.

Peter said nothing for a moment, wishing to give Leonore’s conscience a chance to begin to prick. Then be ended the silence by saying: “If I had anything that would give you pleasure, I wouldn’t make you ask for it twice.”

“That’s—different,” said Leonore. “Still, I’ll—well, look at them,” and Leonore lifted her eyes to Peter’s half laughingly and half timidly.

Peter studied those eyes in silence—studied them till Leonore, who did not find that steady look altogether easy to bear, and yet was not willing to confess herself stared out of countenance, asked: “Do you like them?”

“Yes,” said Peter.

“Is that all you can say? Other people have said very complimentary things!” said Leonore, pretending to be grieved over the monosyllable, yet in reality delighting in its expressiveness as Peter said it.

“I think,” said Peter, “that before I can tell you what I think of your eyes, we shall have to invent some new words.”

Leonore looked down again into the fire, smiling a satisfied smile. Peter looked down at that down-turned head, also with a satisfied smile. Then there was another long silence. Incidentally it is to be noted that Peter still held the hand given him some time before. To use a poker term, Peter was standing “pat,” and wished no change. Once or twice the little hand had hinted that it had been held long enough, but Peter did not think so, and the hand had concluded that it was safest to let well alone. If it was too cruel It might rouse the sleeping lion which the owner of that hand knew to exist behind that firm, quiet face.

Presently Peter put his unoccupied hand in his breast-pocket, and produced a small sachet. “I did something twice,” he said, “that I have felt very meanly about at times. Perhaps you’ll forgive me now?” He took from the sachet, a glove, and a small pocket-handkerchief, and without a word showed them to Leonore.

Leonore looked at them. “That’s the glove I lost at Mrs. Costell’s, isn’t it?” she asked gravely.

Peter nodded his head.

“And is that the handkerchief which disappeared in your rooms, at your second dinner?”

Peter nodded his head.

“And both times you helped me hunt for them?”

Peter nodded his head. He at last knew how prisoners felt when he was cross-examining them.

“I knew you had them all the time,” said Leonore laughing. “It was dreadfully funny to see you pretend to hunt, when the guilty look on your own face was enough to show you had them. That’s why I was so determined to find them.”

Peter knew how prisoners felt when the jury says, “Not guilty.”

“But how did the holes come in them?” said Leonore. “Do you have mice in your room?” Leonore suddenly looked as worried as had Peter the moment before.

Peter put his hand in the sachet, and produced a bent coin. “Look at that,” he said.

“Why, it’s my luck-piece!” exclaimed Leonore. “And you’ve spoiled that too. What a careless boy!”

“No,” said Peter. “They are not spoiled to me. Do you know what cut these holes and bent this coin?”

“What?”

“A bullet.”

“Peter!”

“Yes. Your luck-piece stopped it, or I shouldn’t be here.”

“There,” said Leonore triumphantly, “I said you weren’t hurt, when the news of the shooting came, because I knew you had it. I was so glad you had taken it!”

“I am going to give it back to you by and by,” said Peter.

“I had rather that you should have it,” said Leonore. “I want you to have my luck.”

“I shall have it just the same even after I’ve given it to you,” said Peter.

“How?”

“I’m going to have it made into a plain gold ring,” replied Peter, “and when I give it to you, I shall have all your luck.”

Then came a silence.

Finally Peter said, “Will you please tell me what you meant by talking about five years!”

“Oh! Really, Peter,” Leonore hastened to explain, in an anxious way, as if Peter had charged her with murder or some other heinous crime. “I did think so. I didn’t find it out till—till that night. Really! Won’t you believe me?”

Peter smiled. He could have believed anything.

“Now,” he said, “I know at last what Anarchists are for.”

His ready acceptance of her statement made Leonore feel a slight prick of conscience. She said: “Well—Peter—I mean—that is—at least, I did sometimes think before then—that when I married, I’d marry you—but I didn’t think it would come so soon. Did you? I thought we’d wait. It would have been so much more sensible!”

“I’ve waited a long time,” said Peter.

“Poor dear!” said Leonore, putting her other hand over Peter’s, which held hers.

Peter enjoyed this exquisite pleasure in silence for a time, but the enjoyment was too great not to be expressed So he said;

“I like your hands almost as much as your eyes.”

“That’s very nice,” said Leonore.

“And I like the way you say ‘dear,’” said Peter. “Don’t you want to say it again?”

“No, I hate people who say the same thing twice.”

Then there was a long pause.

“What poor things words are?” said Peter, at the end of it.

“I know just what you mean,” said Leonore.

Clearly they both meant what they said, for there came another absence of words. How long the absence would have continued is a debatable point. Much too soon a door opened.

“Hello!” said a voice. “Back already? What kind of an evening had you?”

“A very pleasant one,” said Peter, calmly, yet expressively.

“Let go my hand, Peter, please,” a voice whispered imploringly. “Oh, please! I can’t to-night. Oh, please!”

“Say ‘dear,’” whispered Peter, meanly.

“Please, dear,” said Leonore. Then Leonore went towards the stairs hurriedly.

“Not off already, Dot, surely?”

“Yes. I’m going to bed.”

“Come and have a cigar, Peter,” said Watts, walking towards the library.

“In a moment,” said Peter. He went to the foot of the stairs and said, “Please, dear,” to the figure going up.

“Well?” said the figure.

Peter went up five steps. “Please,” he begged.

“No,” said the figure, “but there is my hand.”

So Peter turned the little soft palm uppermost and kissed it Then he forgot the cigar and Watts. He went to his room, and thought of—of his birthday gift.