Читать книгу The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him - Paul Leicester Ford - Страница 8

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Mr. Pierce and those about him had clearly indicated by the conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that Peter was in a sense an odd number in the "Sunrise's" complement of pleasure-seekers. Whether or no Mr. Pierce's monologue also indicated that he was not a map who dealt in odd numbers, or showered hospitality on sons of mill-overseers, the fact was nevertheless true. "For value received," or "I hereby promise to pay," were favorite formulas of Mr. Pierce, and if not actually written in such invitations as he permitted his wife to write at his dictation to people whom he decided should be bidden to the Shrubberies, a longer or shorter time would develop the words, as if written in sympathetic ink. Yet Peter had had as pressing an invitation and as warm a welcome at Mr. Pierce's country place as had any of the house-party ingathered during the first week of July. Clearly something made him of value to the owner of the Shrubberies. That something was his chum, Watts D'Alloi.

Peter and Watts were such absolute contrasts that it seemed impossible that they could have an interest or sympathy, in common. Therefore they had become chums. A chance in their freshman year had brought them together. Watts, with the refined and delicate sense of humor abounding in collegians, had been concerned with sundry freshmen in an attempt to steal (or, in collegiate terms, "rag") the chapel Bible, with a view to presenting it to some equally subtle humorists at Yale, expecting a similar courtesy in return from that college. Unfortunately for the joke, the college authorities had had the bad taste to guard against the annually attempted substitution. Two of the marauders were caught, while Watts only escaped by leaving his coat in the hands of the watchers. Even then he would have been captured had he not met Peter in his flight, and borrowed the latter's coat, in which he reached his room without detection. Peter was caught by the pursuers, and summoned before the faculty, but he easily proved that the captured coat was not his, and that he had but just parted from one of the tutors, making it certain that he could not have been an offender. There was some talk of expelling him for aiding and abetting in the true culprit's escape, and for refusing to tell who it was. Respect for his motives, however, and his unimpeachable record saved him from everything but an admonition from the president, which changed into a discussion of cotton printing before that august official had delivered half of his intended rebuke. People might not enthuse over Peter, but no one ever quarrelled with him. So the interview, after travelling from cotton prints to spring radishes, ended with a warm handshake, and a courteous suggestion that he come again when there should be no charges nor admonitions to go through with. Watts told him that he was a "devilish lucky" fellow to have been on hand to help, for Peter had proved his pluck to his class, had made a friend of the president and, as Watts considerately put it: "but for your being on the corner at 11:10 that evening, old chap, you'd never have known me." Truly on such small chances do the greatest events of our life turn. Perhaps, could Peter have looked into the future, he would have avoided that corner. Perhaps, could he have looked even further, he would have found that in that chance lay the greatest happiness of his life. Who can tell, when the bitter comes, and we later see how we could have avoided it, what we should have encountered in its place? Who can tell, when sweet comes, how far it is sweetened by the bitterness that went before? Dodging the future in this world is a success equal to that of the old woman who triumphantly announced that she had borrowed money enough to pay all her debts.

As a matter of course Watts was grateful for the timely assistance, and was not slow either to say or show it. He told his own set of fellows that he was "going to take that Stirling up and make him one of us," and Watts had a remarkable way of doing what he chose. At first Peter did not respond to the overtures and insistance of the handsome, well-dressed, free-spending, New York swell. He was too conscious of the difference between himself and Watts's set, to wish or seek identification with them. But no one who ever came under Watts's influence could long stand out against his sunny face and frank manner, and so Peter eventually allowed himself to be "taken up." Perhaps the resistance encountered only whetted Watts's intention. He was certainly aided by Peter's isolation. Whether the cause was single or multiple, Peter was soon in a set from which many a seemingly far more eligible fellow was debarred.

Strangely enough, it did not change him perceptibly. He still plodded on conscientiously at his studies, despite laughter and attempts to drag him away from them. He still lived absolutely within the comfortable allowance that his mother gave him. He still remained the quiet, serious looking fellow of yore. The "gang," as they styled themselves, called him "kill-joy," "graveyard," or "death's head," in their evening festivities, but Peter only puffed at his pipe good-naturedly, making no retort, and if the truth had really been spoken, not a man would have changed him a particle. His silence and seriousness added the dash of contrast needed to make the evening perfect. All joked him. The most popular verse in a class-song Watts wrote, was devoted to burlesquing his soberness, the gang never tiring of singing at all hours and places:

"Goodness gracious! Who's that in the 'yard' a yelling in the rain?

That's the boy who never gave his mother any pain,

But now his moral character is sadly on the wane,

'Tis little Peter Stirling, bilin' drunk again.

Oh, the Sunday-school boy,

His mamma's only joy,

Is shouting drunk as usual, and raising Cain!"

Yet joke Peter as they would, in every lark, be it drive, sail, feed, drink, or smoke, whoever's else absence was commented upon, his never passed unnoticed.

In Sophomore year, Watts, without quite knowing why, proposed that they should share rooms. Nor would he take Peter's refusal, and eventually succeeded in reversing it.

"I can't afford your style of living," Peter had said quietly, as his principal objection.

"Oh, I'll foot the bills for the fixings, so it shan't cost you a cent more," said Watts, and when Peter had finally been won over to give his assent, Watts had supposed it was on this uneven basis. But in the end, the joint chambers were more simply furnished than those of the rest of the gang, who promptly christened them "the hermitage," and Peter had paid his half of the expense. And though he rarely had visitors of his own asking at the chambers, all cost of wine and tobacco was equally borne by him.

The three succeeding years welded very strong bands round these two. It was natural that they should modify each other strongly, but in truth, as in most cases, when markedly different characteristics are brought in contact, the only effect was to accentuate each in his peculiarities. Peter dug at his books all the harder, by reason of Watts's neglect of them. Watts became the more free-handed with his money because of Peter's prudence. Watts talked more because of Peter's silence, and Peter listened more because of Watts's talk. Watts, it is true, tried to drag Peter into society, yet in truth, Peter was really left more alone than if he had been rooming with a less social fellow. Each had in truth become the complement of the other, and seemed as mutually necessary as the positive and negative wires in electricity. Peter, who had been taking the law lectures in addition to the regular academic course, and had spent his last two summers reading law in an attorney's office, in his native town, taking the New York examination in the previous January, had striven to get Watts to do the same, with the ultimate intention of their hanging out a joint legal shingle in New York.

"I'll see the clients, and work up the cases, Watts, and you'll make the speeches and do the social end," said Peter, making a rather long speech in the ardor of his wishes.

Watts laughed. "I don't know, old man. I rather fancy I shan't do anything. To do something requires that one shall make up one's mind what to do, and that's such devilish hard work. I'll wait till I've graduated, and had a chin with my governor about it Perhaps he'll make up my mind for me, and so save my brain tissue. But anyway, you'll come to New York, and start in, for you must be within reach of me. Besides, New York's the only place in this country worth living in."

Such were the relations between the two at graduation time. Watts, who had always prepared his lessons in a tenth part of the time it had taken Peter, buckled down in the last few weeks, and easily won an honorable mention. Peter had tried hard to win honors, but failed.

"You did too much outside work, old man," said Watts, who would cheerfully have given his own triumph to his friend. "If you want success in anything, you've got to sacrifice other things and concentrate on the object. The Mention's really not worth the ink it's written with, in my case, but I knew it would please mammy and pappy, so I put on steam, and got it. If I'd hitched on a lot of freight cars loaded with stuff that wouldn't have told in Exams, I never could have been in on time."

Peter shook his head rather sadly. "You outclass me in brains, Watts, as much as you do in other things"

"Nonsense," said Watts. "I haven't one quarter of your head. But my ancestors—here's to the old coves—have been brain-culturing for three hundred years, while yours have been land-culturing; and of course my brain moves quicker and easier than yours. I take to a book, by hereditary instinct, as a duck to water, while you are like a yacht, which needs a heap of building and fitting before she can do the same. But you'll beat me in the long run, as easily as the boat does the duck. And the Honor's nothing."

"Except, as you said, to one's"—Peter hesitated for a moment, divided in mind by his wish to quote accurately, and his dislike of anything disrespectful, and then finished "to one's mother."

"That's the last person it's needed for, chum," replied Watts. "If there's one person that doesn't need the world's or faculty's opinion to prove one's merit, it's one's dear, darling, doating, self-deluded and undisillusioned mamma. Heigh-ho. I'll be with mine two weeks from now, after we've had our visit at the Pierces'. I'm jolly glad you are going, old man. It will be a sort of tapering-off time for the summer's separation. I don't see why you insist on starting in at once in New York? No one does any law business in the summertime. Why, I even think the courts are closed. Come, you'd better go on to Grey-Court with me, and try it, at least. My mammy will kill the fatted calf for you in great style."

"We've settled that once," said Peter, who was evidently speaking journalistically, for he had done the settling.

Watts said something in a half-articulate way, which certainly would have fired the blood of every dime museum-keeper in the country, had they been there to hear the conversation, for, as well as could be gathered from the mumbling, it related to a "pig-headed donkey" known of to the speaker. "I suppose you'll be backing out of the Pierce affair yet," he added, discontentedly.

"No," said Peter.

"An invitation to Grey-Court is worth two of the Shrubberies. My mother knows only the right kind of people, while Mr. Pierce—"

"Is to be our host," interrupted Peter, but with no shade of correction in his voice.

"Yes," laughed Watts, "and he is a host. He'll not let any one else get a word in edgewise. You are just the kind of talker he'll like. Mark my word, he'll be telling every one, before you've been two hours in the house, that you are a remarkably brilliant conversationalist."

"What will he say of you?" said Peter, in a sentence which he broke up into reasonable lengths by a couple of pulls at his pipe in the middle of it.

"Mr. Pierce, chum," replied Watts, with a look in his eyes which Peter had learned to associate with mischief on Watts's part, "has too great an affection for yours truly to object to anything I do. Do you suppose, if I hadn't been sure of my footing at the Shrubberies, that I should have dared to ask an invitation for"—then Watts hesitated for a moment, seeing a half-surprised, half-anxious look come into Peter's face, "for myself?" he continued.

"Tell truth and shame the devil," said Peter.

Watts laughed. "Confound you! That's what comes of letting even such a stupid old beggar as you learn to read one's thoughts. It's mighty ungrateful of you to use them against me. Yes. I did ask to have you included in the party. But you needn't put your back up, Mr. Unbendable, and think you were forced on them. Mr. Pierce gave me carte blanche, and if it hadn't been you, it would have been some other donkey."

"But Mrs. Pierce?" queried Peter.

"Oh," explained Watts, "of course Mrs. Pierce wrote the letter. I couldn't do it in my name, and so Mr. Pierce told her to do it. They're very land of me, old man, because my governor is the largest stockholder, and a director in Mr. P.'s bank, and I was told I could bring down some fellows next week for a few days' jollity. I didn't care to do that, but of course I wouldn't have omitted you for any amount of ducats."

Which explanation solves the mystery of Peter's presence at the Shrubberies. To understand his face we must trace the period between his arrival and the moment this story begins.