The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him by Paul Leicester Ford

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THE HONORABLE PETER STIRLING and WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF HIM

by

PAUL LEICESTER FORD

Stitt Publishing Company New York
Henry Holt & Co.

1894

To

THOSE DEAR TO ME
AT
STONEY WOLDE,
TURNERS, NEW YORK;
PINEHURST;
NORWICH, CONNECTICUT;
BROOK FARM,
PROCTORSVILLE, VERMONT;
AND
DUNESIDE,
EASTHAMPTON, NEW YORK,

THIS BOOK,
WRITTEN WHILE AMONG THEM,
IS DEDICATED.

CHAPTER I.

ROMANCE AND REALITY.

Mr. Pierce was talking. Mr. Pierce was generally talking. From the day
that his proud mamma had given him a sweetmeat for a very inarticulate
"goo" which she translated into "papa," Mr. Pierce had found speech
profitable. He had been able to talk his nurse into granting him every
indulgence. He had talked his way through school and college. He had
talked his wife into marrying him. He had talked himself to the head of
a large financial institution. He had talked his admission into society.
Conversationally, Mr. Pierce was a success. He could discuss
Schopenhauer or cotillion favors; St. Paul, the apostle, or St. Paul,
the railroad. He had cultivated the art as painstakingly as a
professional musician. He had countless anecdotes, which he introduced
to his auditors by a "that reminds me of." He had endless quotations,
with the quotation marks omitted. Finally he had an idea on every
subject, and generally a theory as well. Carlyle speaks somewhere of an
"inarticulate genius." He was not alluding to Mr. Pierce.

Like most good talkers, Mr. Pierce was a tongue despot. Conversation
must take his course, or he would none of it. Generally he controlled.
If an upstart endeavored to turn the subject, Mr. Pierce waited till the
intruder had done speaking, and then quietly, but firmly would remark:
"Relative to the subject we were discussing a moment ago--" If any one
ventured to speak, even _sotto voce_, before Mr. Pierce had finished all
he had to say, he would at once cease his monologue, wait till the
interloper had finished, and then resume his lecture just where he had
been interrupted. Only once had Mr. Pierce found this method to fail in
quelling even the sturdiest of rivals. The recollection of that day is
still a mortification to him. It had happened on the deck of an ocean
steamer. For thirty minutes he had fought his antagonist bravely. Then,
humbled and vanquished, he had sought the smoking-room, to moisten his
parched throat, and solace his wounded spirit, with a star cocktail. He
had at last met his superior. He yielded the deck to the fog-horn.

At the present moment Mr. Pierce was having things very much his own
way. Seated in the standing-room of a small yacht, were some eight
people. With a leaden sky overhead, and a leaden sea about it, the boat
gently rose and fell with the ground swell. Three miles away could be
seen the flash-light marking the entrance to the harbor. But though
slowly gathering clouds told that wind was coming, the yacht now lay
becalmed, drifting with the ebb tide. The pleasure-seekers had been
together all day, and were decidedly talked out. For the last hour they
had been singing songs--always omitting Mr. Pierce, who never so trifled
with his vocal organs. During this time he had been restless. At one
point he had attempted to deliver his opinion on the relation of verse
to music, but an unfeeling member of the party had struck up "John
Brown's Body," and his lecture had ended, in the usual serial style, at
the most interesting point, without even the promise of a "continuation
in our next." Finally, however, the singers had sung themselves hoarse
in the damp night air, the last "Spanish Cavalier" had been safely
restored to his inevitable true-love, and the sound of voices and banjo
floated away over the water. Mr. Pierce's moment had come.

Some one, and it is unnecessary to mention the sex, had given a sigh,
and regretted that nineteenth century life was so prosaic and
unromantic. Clearing his throat, quite as much to pre-empt the pause as
to articulate the better, Mr. Pierce spoke:

"That modern times are less romantic and interesting than bygone
centuries is a fallacy. From time immemorial, love and the battle
between evil and good are the two things which have given the world
romance and interest. Every story, whether we find it in the myths of
the East, the folklore of Europe, the poems of the Troubadours, or in
our newspaper of this morning, is based on one or the other of these
factors, or on both combined. Now it is a truism that love never played
so important a part as now in shaping the destinies of men and women,
for this is the only century in which it has obtained even a partial
divorce from worldly and parental influences. Moreover the great battle
of society, to crush wrong and elevate right, was never before so
bravely fought, on so many fields, by so many people as to-day. But
because our lovers and heroes no longer brag to the world of their
doings; no longer stand in the moonlight, and sing of their 'dering
does,' the world assumes that the days of tourneys and guitars were the
only days of true love and noble deeds. Even our professed writers of
romance join in the cry. 'Draw life as it is,' they say. 'We find
nothing in it but mediocrity, selfishness, and money-loving.' By all
means let us have truth in our novels, but there is truth and truth.
Most of New York's firemen presumably sat down at noon to-day to a
dinner of corned-beef and cabbage. But perhaps one of them at the same
moment was fighting his way through smoke and flame, to save life at the
risk of his own. Boiled dinner and burned firemen are equally true. Are
they equally worthy of description? What would the age of chivalry be,
if the chronicles had recorded only the brutality, filthiness and
coarseness of their contemporaries? The wearing of underclothing
unwashed till it fell to pieces; the utter lack of soap; the eating with
fingers; the drunkenness and foul-mouthedness that drove women from the
table at a certain point, and so inaugurated the custom, now continued
merely as an excuse for a cigar? Some one said once that a man finds in
a great city just the qualities he takes to it. That's true of romance
as well. Modern novelists don't find beauty and nobility in life,
because they don't look for them. They predicate from their inner souls
that the world is 'cheap and nasty' and that is what they find it to be.
There is more true romance in a New York tenement than there ever was in
a baron's tower--braver battles, truer love, nobler sacrifices. Romance
is all about us, but we must have eyes for it. You are young people,
with your lives before you. Let me give you a little advice. As you go
through life look for the fine things--not for the despicable. It won't
make you any richer. It won't make you famous. It won't better you in a
worldly way. But it will make your lives happier, for by the time you
are my age, you'll love humanity, and look upon the world and call it
good. And you will have found romance enough to satisfy all longings for
mediaeval times."

"But, dear, one cannot imagine some people ever finding anything
romantic in life," said a voice, which, had it been translated into
words would have said, "I know you are right, of course, and you will
convince me at once, but in my present state of unenlightenment it seems
to me that--" the voice, already low, became lower. "Now"--a moment's
hesitation--"there is--Peter Stirling."

"Exactly," said Mr. Pierce. "That is a very case in point, and proves
just what I've been saying. Peter is like the novelists of whom I've
been talking. I don't suppose we ought to blame him for it. What can you
expect of a son of a mill-foreman, who lives the first sixteen years of
his life in a mill-village? If his hereditary tendencies gave him a
chance, such an experience would end it. If one lives in the country,
one may get fine thoughts by contact with Nature. In great cities one is
developed and stimulated by art, music, literature, and contact with
clever people. But a mill-village is one vast expanse of mediocrity and
prosaicness, and it would take a bigger nature than Peter's to recognize
the beautiful in such a life. In truth, he is as limited, as exact, and
as unimaginative as the machines of his own village. Peter has no
romance in him; hence he will never find it, nor increase it in this
world. This very case only proves my point; that to meet romance one
must have it. Boccaccio said he did not write novels, but lived them.
Try to imagine Peter living a romance! He could be concerned in a dozen
and never dream it. They would not interest him even if he did notice
them. And I'll prove it to you." Mr. Pierce raised his voice. "We are
discussing romance, Peter. Won't you stop that unsocial tramp of yours
long enough to give us your opinion on the subject?"

A moment's silence followed, and then a singularly clear voice, coming
from the forward part of the yacht, replied: "I never read them, Mr.
Pierce."

Mr. Pierce laughed quietly. "See," he said, "that fellow never dreams of
there being romance outside of novels. He is so prosaic that he is
unconscious of anything bigger than his own little sphere of life. Peter
may obtain what he wants in this world, for his desires will be of the
kind to be won by work and money. But he will never be controlled by a
great idea, nor be the hero of a true romance."

Steele once wrote that the only difference between the Catholic Church
and the Church of England was, that the former was infallible and the
latter never wrong. Mr. Pierce would hardly have claimed for himself
either of these qualities. He was too accustomed in his business to
writing, "E. and O.E." above his initials, to put much faith in human
dicta. But in the present instance he felt sure of what he said, and the
little group clearly agreed. If they were right, this story is like that
recounted in Mother Goose, which was ended before it was begun. But Mr.
Pierce had said that romance is everywhere to those who have the spirit
of it in them. Perhaps in this case the spirit was lacking in his
judges--not in Peter Stirling.

CHAPTER II.

APPEARANCES.

The unconscious illustration of Mr. Pierce's theory was pacing backwards
and forwards on the narrow space between the cuddy-roof and the gunwale,
which custom dignifies with the name of deck. Six strides forward and
turn. Six strides aft and turn. That was the extent of the beat. Yet had
Peter been on sentry duty, he could not have continued it more regularly
or persistently. If he were walking off his supper, as most of those
seated aft would have suggested, the performance was not particularly
interesting. The limit and rapidity of the walk resembled the tramp of a
confined animal, exercising its last meal. But when one stands in front
of the lion's cage, and sees that restless and tireless stride, one
cannot but wonder how much of it is due to the last shin-bone, and how
much to the wild and powerful nature under the tawny skin. The question
occurs because the nature and antecedents of the lion are known. For
this same reason the yachters were a unit in agreeing that Stirling's
unceasing walk was merely a digestive promenade. The problem was whether
they were right? Or whether, to apply Mr. Pierce's formula, they merely
imposed their own frame of mind in place of Stirling's, and decided,
since their sole reason for walking at the moment would be entirely
hygienic, that he too must be striding from the same cause?

Dr. Holmes tells us that when James and Thomas converse there are really
six talkers. First, James as James thinks he is, and Thomas as Thomas
thinks he is. Second James as Thomas thinks him, and Thomas as James
thinks him. Finally, there are James and Thomas as they really are.
Since this is neither an autobiography nor an inspired story, the
world's view of Peter Stirling must be adopted without regard to its
accuracy. And because this view was the sum of his past and personal,
these elements must be computed before we can know on what the world
based its conclusions concerning him.

His story was as ordinary and prosaic as Mr. and Mrs. Pierce seemed to
think his character. Neither riches nor poverty had put a shaping hand
to it. The only child of his widowed mother, he had lived in one of the
smaller manufacturing cities of New England a life such as falls to most
lads. Unquestionably he had been rather more shielded from several forms
of temptation than had most of his playmates, for his mother's isolation
had made him not merely her son, but very largely her companion. In
certain ways this had tended to make him more manly than the average
fellow of his age, but in others it had retarded his development; and
this backwardness had been further accentuated by a deliberate mind,
which hardly kept pace with his physical growth. His school record was
fair: "Painstaking, but slow," was the report in studies. "Exemplary,"
in conduct. He was not a leader among the boys, but he was very
generally liked. A characteristic fact, for good or bad, was that he had
no enemies. From the clergyman to the "hired help," everybody had a
kind word for him, but tinctured by no enthusiasm. All spoke of him as
"a good boy," and when this was said, they had nothing more to say.

One important exception to this statement is worthy of note. The girls
of the High School never liked him. If they had been called upon for
reasons, few could have given a tangible one. At their age, everything
this world contains, be it the Falls of Niagara, or a stick of chewing
gum, is positively or negatively "nice." For some crime of commission or
omission, Peter had been weighed and found wanting. "He isn't nice," was
the universal verdict of the scholars who daily filed through the door,
which the town selectmen, with the fine contempt of the narrow man for
his unpaid "help," had labelled, "For Females." If they had said that he
was "perfectly horrid," there might have been a chance for him. But the
subject was begun and ended with these three words. Such terseness in
the sex was remarkable and would have deserved a psychological
investigation had it been based on any apparent data. But women's
opinions are so largely a matter of instinct and feeling, and so little
of judgment and induction, that an analysis of the mental processes of
the hundred girls who had reached this one conclusion, would probably
have revealed in each a different method of obtaining this product. The
important point is to recognize this consensus of opinion, and to note
its bearing on the development of the lad.

That Peter could remain ignorant of this feeling was not conceivable. It
puzzled him not a little when he first began to realize the prejudice,
and he did his best to reverse it. Unfortunately he took the very worst
way. Had he avoided the girls persistently and obviously, he might have
interested them intensely, for nothing is more difficult for a woman to
understand than a woman-hater; and from the days of mother Eve the
unknown is rumored to have had for her sex a powerful fascination. But
he tried to win their friendship by humbleness and kindness, and so only
made himself the more cheap in their eyes. "Fatty Peter," as they
jokingly called him, epitomized in two words their contempt of him.

Nor did things mend when he went to Harvard. Neither his mother's
abilities nor his choice were able to secure for him an _entree_ to the
society which Cambridge and Boston dole out stintedly to certain
privileged collegians. Every Friday afternoon he went home, to return by
an early train Monday morning. In his first year it is to be questioned
if he exchanged ten words with women whose names were known to him,
except during these home-visits. That this could long continue, was
impossible. In his second year he was several times taken by his chum,
Watts D'Alloi, to call. But always with one result. Invariably Peter
would be found talking to Mamma, or, better still, from his point of
view, with Pater-familias, while Watts chatted with the presumptive
attractions. Watts laughed at him always. Laughed still more when one of
these calls resulted in a note, "requesting the pleasure" of Mr. Peter
Stirling's company to dinner. It was Watts who dictated the acceptance,
helped Peter put the finishing touches to his toilet, and eventually
landed him safely in Mrs. Purdie's parlor. His description to the boys
that night of what followed is worthy of quotation:

"The old fellow shook hands with Mrs. P., O.K. Something was said about
the weather, and then Mrs. P. said, 'I'll introduce you to the lady you
are to take down, Mr. Stirling, but I shan't let you talk to her before
dinner. Look about you and take your choice of whom you would like to
meet?' Chum gave one agonized look round the room. There wasn't a woman
over twenty-five in sight! And what do you think the wily old fox said?
Call him simple! Not by a circumstance! A society beau couldn't have
done it better. Can't guess? Well, he said, 'I'd like to talk to you,
Mrs. Purdie.' Fact! Of course she took it as a compliment, and was as
pleased as could be. Well, I don't know how on earth he ever got through
his introduction or how he ever reached the dining-room, for my
inamorata was so pretty that I thought of nothing till we were seated,
and the host took her attention for a moment. Then I looked across at
chum, who was directly opposite, to see how he was getting on. Oh, you
fellows would have died to see it! There he sat, looking straight out
into vacancy, so plainly laboring for something to say that I nearly
exploded. Twice he opened his lips to speak, and each time closed them
again. The girl of course looked surprised, but she caught my eye, and
entered into the joke, and we both waited for developments. Then she
suddenly said to him, 'Now let's talk about something else.' It was too
much for me. I nearly choked. I don't know what followed. Miss Jevons
turned and asked me something. But when I looked again, I could see the
perspiration standing on Peter's forehead, while the conversation went
by jerks and starts as if it was riding over a ploughed field. Miss
Callender, whom he took in, told me afterwards that she had never had a
harder evening's work in her life. Nothing but 'yeses' and 'noes' to be
got from him. She wouldn't believe what I said of the old fellow."

Three or four such experiences ended Peter's dining out. He was
recognized as unavailable material. He received an occasional card to a
reception or a dance, for anything in trousers passes muster for such
functions. He always went when invited, and was most dutiful in the
counter-calls. In fact, society was to him a duty which he discharged
with the same plodding determination with which he did his day's
studies. He never dreamed of taking his social moments frivolously. He
did not recognize that society is very much like a bee colony--stinging
those who approached it shyly and quietly, but to be mastered by a bold
beating of tin pans. He neither danced nor talked, and so he was shunted
by the really pleasant girls and clever women, and passed his time with
wall-flowers and unbearables, who, in their normal sourness, regarded
and, perhaps, unconsciously made him feel, hardly to his encouragement,
that his companionship was a sort of penance. If he had been asked, at
the end of his senior year, what he thought of young women and society,
he would probably have stigmatized them, as he himself had been
formerly: "not nice." All of which, again to apply Mr. Pierce's theory,
merely meant that the phases which his own characteristics had shown
him, had re-acted on his own mind, and had led him to conclude that
girls and society were equally unendurable.

The condition was a dangerous one, and if psychology had its doctors
they would have predicted a serious heart illness in store for him. How
serious, would depend largely on whether the fever ran its natural
course, or whether it was driven inwards by disappointment. If these
doctors had ceased studying his mental condition and glanced at his
physical appearance, they would have had double cause to shake their
heads doubtingly.

Peter was not good-looking. He was not even, in a sense, attractive. In
spite of his taking work so hardly and life so seriously, he was
entirely too stout. This gave a heaviness to his face that neutralized
his really pleasant brown eyes and thick brown hair, which were his best
features. Manly the face was, but, except when speaking in unconscious
moments, dull and unstriking. A fellow three inches shorter, and
two-thirds his weight would have been called tall. "Big" was the
favorite adjective used in describing Peter, and big he was. Had he gone
through college ten years later, he might have won unstinted fame and
admiration as the full-back on the team, or stroke on the crew. In his
time, athletics were but just obtaining, and were not yet approved of
either by faculties or families. Shakespeare speaks of a tide in the
affairs of men. Had Peter been born ten years later the probabilities
are that his name would have been in all the papers, that he would have
weighed fifty pounds less, have been cheered by thousands, have been the
idol of his class, have been a hero, have married the first girl he
loved (for heroes, curiously, either marry or die, but never remain
bachelors) and would have--but as this is a tale of fact, we must not
give rein to imagination. To come back to realism, Peter was a hero to
nobody but his mother.

Such was the man, who, two weeks after graduation from Harvard, was
pacing up and down the deck of Mr. Pierce's yacht, the "Sunrise," as she
drifted with the tide in Long Island Sound. Yet if his expression, as he
walked, could for a moment have been revealed to those seated aft, the
face that all thought dull and uninteresting would have riveted their
attention, and set each one questioning whether there might not be
something both heroic and romantic underneath. The set determination of
his look can best be explained by telling what had given his face such
rigid lines.

CHAPTER III.

A CRAB CHAPTER.

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.

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