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

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Peter merely shook his head.

"But I tell you it's done," cried one of the men, a little excitedly.
"It's too late to backslide! We want to please you, Stirling, but we
can't this time. We must do what's right for the party."

"I'm not letting my own feeling decide it," said Peter. "I'm thinking of
the party. For every vote the Labor people give Maguire, the support of
that party will lose us a Democratic vote."

"But we can't win with a triangular fight. The Republicans will simply
walk over the course."

If Peter had been a hot-headed reformer, he would have said: "Better
that than that such a scoundrel shall win." But Peter was a politician,
and so saw no need of saying the unpleasantest thing that occurred to
him, even if he felt it. Instead, he said: "The Labor party will get as
many votes from the Republicans as from us, and, for every vote the
Labor party takes from us, we shall get a Republican vote, if we put up
the right kind of a man."

"Nonsense," cried Number One.

"How do you figure that?" asked another.

"In these panic times, the nomination of such a man as Maguire, with his
truckling to the lowest passions and his socialistic speeches, will
frighten conservative men enough to make them break party lines, and
unite on the most certain candidate. That will be ours."

"But why risk it, when, with Maguire, it's certain?"

Peter wanted to say: "Maguire shall not be endorsed, and that ends it."
Instead, he said: "We can win with our own man, and don't need to trade
with or endorse the Labor party. We can elect Maguire by the aid of the
worst votes in this city, or we can elect our own man by the aid of the
best. The one weakens our party in the future; the other strengthens
it."

"You think that possible?" asked the man who had sought information as
to what they "were here for."

"Yes. The Labor party makes a stir, but it wouldn't give us the oyster
and be content with the shells if it really felt strong. See what it
offers us. All the local and State ticket except six assemblymen, two
senators, and a governor, tied hand and foot to us, whose proudest claim
for years has been that he's a Democrat."

"But all this leaves out of sight the fact that the thing's done," said
Number One.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Yes. It's too late. The polls are closed," said another.

Peter stopped puffing. "The convention hasn't met," he remarked,
quietly.

That remark, however, seemed to have a sting in it, for Number Two
cried:

"Come. We've decided. Now, put up or shut up. No more beating about the
bush."

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Tell us what you intend, Stirling," said Number One. "We are committed
beyond retreat. Come in with us, or stay outside the breastworks."

"Perhaps," said Peter, "since you've taken your own position, without
consulting me, you will allow me the same privilege."

"Go to--where you please," said Number Six, crossly.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Well, what do you intend to do?" asked Number One.

Peter knocked the ash off his cigar. "You consider yourselves pledged to
support Maguire?"

"Yes. We are pledged," said four voices in unison.

"So am I," said Peter.

"How?"

"To oppose him," said Peter.

"But I tell you the majority of the convention is for him," said Number
One. "Don't you believe me?"

"Yes."

"Then what good will your opposition do?"

"It will defeat Maguire."

"No power on earth can do that."

Peter puffed his cigar.

"You can't beat him in the convention, Stirling. The delegates pledged
to him, and those we can give him elect him on the first ballot."

"How about November fourth?" asked Peter.

Number One sprang to his feet. "You don't mean?" he cried.

"Never!" said Number Three.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Come, Stirling, say what you intend!"

"I intend," said Peter, "if the Democratic convention endorses Stephen
Maguire, to speak against him in every ward of this city, and ask every
man in it, whom I can influence, to vote for the Republican candidate."

Dead silence reigned.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"You'll go back on the party?" finally said one, in awe-struck tones.

"You'll be a traitor?" cried another.

"I'd have believed anything but that you would be a dashed Mugwump!"
groaned the third.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Say you are fooling?" begged Number Seven.

"No," said Peter, "Nor am I more a traitor to my party than you. You
insist on supporting the Labor candidate and I shall support the
Republican candidate. We are both breaking our party."

"We'll win," said Number One.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"I'm not so sure," said the gentleman of the previous questions. "How
many votes can you hurt us, Stirling?"

"I don't know," Peter looked very contented.

"You can't expect to beat us single?"

Peter smiled quietly. "I haven't had time to see many men. But--I'm not
single. Bohlmann says the brewers will back me, Hummel says he'll be
guided by me, and the President won't interfere."

"You might as well give up," continued the previous questioner. "The
Sixth is a sure thirty-five hundred to the bad, and between Stirling's
friends, and the Hummel crowd, and Bohlmann's people, you'll lose
twenty-five thousand in the rest of the city, besides the Democrats
you'll frighten off by the Labor party. You can't put it less than
thirty-five thousand, to say nothing of the hole in the campaign fund."

The beauty about a practical politician is that votes count for more
than his own wishes. Number One said:

"Well, that's ended. You've smashed our slate. What have you got in its
place?"

"Porter?" suggested Peter.

"No," said three voices.

"We can't stand any more of him," said Number One.

"He's an honest, square man," said Peter.

"Can't help that. One dose of a man who's got as little gumption as he,
is all we can stand. He may have education, but I'll be hanged if he has
intellect. Why don't you ask us to choose a college professor, and have
done with it."

"Come, Stirling," said the previous questioner, "the thing's been messed
so that we've got to go into convention with just the right man to rally
the delegates. There's only one man we can do it with, and you know it."

Peter rose, and dropped his cigar-stump into the ash-receiver. "I don't
see anything else," he said, gloomily. "Do any of you?"

A moment's silence, and then Number One said: "No."

"Well," said Peter, "I'll take the nomination if necessary, but keep it
back for a time, till we see if something better can't be hit upon."

"No danger," said Number One, holding out his hand, gleefully.

"There's more ways of killing a pig than choking it with butter," said
Number Three, laughing and doing the same.

"It's a pity Costell isn't here," added the previous questioner. "After
you're not yielding to him, he'd never believe we had forced you to take
it."

And that was what actually took place at that very-much-talked-about
dinner.

Peter went downstairs with a very serious look on his face. At the door,
the keeper of it said: "There are six reporters in the strangers' room,
Mr. Stirling, who wish to see you."

A man who had just come in said: "I'm sorry for you, Peter."

Peter smiled quietly. "Tell them our wishes are not mutual." Then he
turned to the newcomer. "It's all right," he said, "so far as the party
is concerned, Hummel. But I'm to foot the bill to do it."

"The devil! You don't mean--?"

Peter nodded his head.

"I'll give twenty-five thousand to the fund," said Hummel, gleefully.
"See if I don't."

"Excuse me, Mr. Stirling," said a man who had just come in.

"Certainly," said Peter promptly, "But I must ask the same favor of you,
as I am going down town at once." Peter had the brutality to pass out of
the front door instantly, leaving the reporter with a disappointed look
on his face.

"If he only would have said something?" groaned the reporter to himself.
"Anything that could be spun into a column. He needn't have told me what
he didn't care to tell, yet he could have helped me to pay my month's
rent as easily as could be."

As for Peter, he fell into a long stride, and his face nearly equalled
his stride in length. After he reached his quarters he sat and smoked,
with the same serious look. He did not look cross. He did not have the
gloom in his face which had been so fixed an expression for the last
month. But he looked as a man might look who knew he had but a few hours
to live, yet to whom death had no terror.

"I am giving up," Peter thought, "everything that has been my true life
till now. My profession, my friends, my chance to help others, my books,
and my quiet. I shall be misunderstood, reviled and hated. Everything I
do will be distorted for partisan purposes. Friends will misjudge.
Enemies will become the more bitter. I give up fifty thousand dollars a
year in order to become a slave, with toadies, trappers, lobbyists and
favor-seekers as my daily quota of humanity. I even sacrifice the larger
part of my power."

So ran Peter's thoughts, and they were the thoughts of a man who had not
worked seventeen years in politics for nothing. He saw alienation of
friends, income, peace, and independence, and the only return a mere
title, which to him meant a loss, rather than a gain of power. Yet this
was one of the dozen prizes thought the best worth striving for in our
politics. Is it a wonder that our government and office-holding is left
to the foreign element? That the native American should prefer any other
work, rather than run the gauntlet of public opinion and press, with
loss of income and peace, that he may hold some difficult office for a
brief term?

But finally Peter rose. "Perhaps she'll like it," he said aloud, and
presumably, since no woman is allowed a voice in American politics, he
was thinking of Miss Columbia. Then he looked at some photographs, a
scrap of ribbon, a gold coin (Peter clearly was becoming a money
worshipper), three letters, a card, a small piece of blotting-paper, a
handkerchief (which Leonore and Peter had spent nearly ten minutes in
trying to find one day), a glove, and some dried rose-leaves and
violets. Yet this was the man who had grappled an angry tiger but two
hours before and had brought it to lick his hand.

He went to bed very happy.

CHAPTER XLIX.

CLOUDS.

But a month later he was far happier, for one morning towards the end of
August, his mail brought him a letter from Watts, announcing that they
had been four days installed in their Newport home, and that Peter would
now be welcome any time. "I have purposely not filled Grey-Court this
summer, so that you should have every chance. Between you and me and the
post, I think there have been moments when mademoiselle missed 'her
friend' far more than she confessed."

"Dat's stronory," thought Jenifer. "He dun eat mo' dis yar hot mo'nin'
dan he dun in two mumfs."

Then Jenifer was sent out with a telegram, which merely said: "May I
come to-day by Shore line limited? P.S."

"When you get back, Jenifer," said Peter, "you may pack my trunk and
your own. We may start for Newport at two." Evidently Peter did not
intend to run any risks of missing the train, in case the answer should
be favorable.

Peter passed into his office, and set to work to put the loose ends in
such shape that nothing should go wrong during his absence. He had not
worked long, when one of the boys told him that:

"Mr. Cassius Curlew wants to see you, Mr. Stirling."

Peter stopped his writing, looking up quickly: "Did he say on what
business?"

"No."

"Ask him, please." And Peter went on writing till the boy returned.

"He says it's about the convention."

"Tell him he must be more specific."

The boy returned in a moment with a folded scrap of paper.

"He said that would tell you, Mr. Stirling."

Peter unfolded the scrap, and read upon it: "A message from Maguire."

"Show him in." Peter touched a little knob on his desk on which was
stamped "Chief Clerk." A moment later a man opened a door. "Samuels,"
said Peter, "I wish you would stay here for a moment. I want you to
listen to what's said."

The next moment a man crossed the threshold of another door.
"Good-morning, Mr. Stirling," he said.

"Mr. Curlew," said Peter, without rising and with a cold inclination of
his head.

"I have a message for you, Mr. Stirling," said the man, pulling a chair
into a position that suited him, and sitting, "but it's private."

Peter said nothing, but began to write.

"Do you understand? I want a word with you private," said the man after
a pause.

"Mr. Samuels is my confidential clerk. You can speak with perfect
freedom before him." Peter spoke without raising his eyes from his
writing.

"But I don't want any one round. It's just between you and me."

"When I got your message," said Peter, still writing, "I sent for Mr.
Samuels. If you have anything to say, say it now. Otherwise leave it
unsaid."

"Well, then," said the man, "your party's been tricking us, and we won't
stand it."

Peter wrote diligently.

"And we know who's back of it. It was all pie down to that dinner of
yours."

"Is that Maguire's message?" asked Peter, though with no cessation of
his labors.

"Nop," said the man. "That's the introduction. Now, we know what it
means. You needn't deny it. You're squinting at the governorship
yourself. And you've made the rest go back on Maguire, and work for you
on the quiet. Oh, we know what's going on."

"Tell me when you begin on the message," said Peter, still writing.

"Maguire's sent me to you, to tell you to back water. To stop bucking."

"Tell Mr. Maguire I have received his message."

"Oh, that isn't all, and don't you forget it! Maguire's in this for fur
and feathers, and if you go before the convention as a candidate, we'll
fill the air with them."

"Is that part of the message?" asked Peter.

"By that we mean that half an hour after you accept the nomination,
we'll have a force of detectives at work on your past life, and we'll
hunt down and expose every discreditable thing you've ever done."

Peter rose, and the man did the same instantly, putting one of his hands
on his hip-pocket. But even before he did it, Peter had begun speaking,
in a quiet, self-contained voice: "That sounds so like Mr. Maguire, that
I think we have the message at last. Go to him, and say that I have
received his message. That I know him, and I know his methods. That I
understand his hopes of driving me, as he has some, from his path, by
threats of private scandal. That, judging others by himself, he believes
no man's life can bear probing. Tell him that he has misjudged for once.
Tell him that he has himself decided me in my determination to accept
the nomination. That rather than see him the nominee of the Democratic
party, I will take it myself. Tell him to set on his blood-hounds. They
are welcome to all they can unearth in my life."

Peter turned towards his door, intending to leave the room, for he was
not quite sure that he could sustain this altitude, if he saw more of
the man. But as his hand was on the knob, Curlew spoke again.

"One moment," he called. "We've got something more to say to you. We
have proof already."

Peter turned, with an amused look on his face. "I was wondering," he
said, "if Maguire really expected to drive me with such vague threats."

"No siree," said Curlew with a self-assured manner, but at the same time
putting Peter's desk between the clerk and himself, so that his flank
could not be turned. "We've got some evidence that won't be sweet
reading for you, and we're going to print it, if you take the
nomination."

"Tell Mr. Maguire he had better put his evidence in print at once. That
I shall take the nomination."

"And disgrace one of your best friends?" asked Curlew.

Peter started slightly, and looked sharply at the man.

"Ho, ho," said Curlew. "That bites, eh? Well, it will bite worse before
it's through with."

Peter stood silent for a moment, but his hands trembled slightly, and
any one who understood anatomy could have recognized that every muscle
in his body was at full tension. But all he said was: "Well?"

"It's about that trip of yours on the 'Majestic.'"

Peter looked bewildered.

"We've got sworn affidavits of two stewards," Curlew continued, "about
yours and some one else's goings on. I guess Mr. and Mrs. Rivington
won't thank you for having them printed."

Instantly came a cry of fright, and the crack of a revolver, which
brought Peter's partners and the clerks crowding into the room. It was
to find Curlew lying back on the desk, held there by Peter with one
hand, while his other, clasping the heavy glass inkstand, was swung
aloft. There was a look on Peter's face that did not become it. An
insurance company would not have considered Curlew's life at that moment
a fair risk.

But when Peter's arm descended it did so gently, put the inkstand back
on the desk, and taking a pocket-handkerchief wiped a splash of ink from
the hand that had a moment before been throttling Curlew. That worthy
struggled up from his back-breaking attitude and the few parts of his
face not drenched with ink, were very white, while his hands trembled
more than had Peter's a moment before.

"Peter!" cried Ogden. "What is it?"

"I lost my temper for a moment," said Peter.

"But who fired that shot?"

Peter turned to the clerks. "Leave the room," he said, "all of you. And
keep this to yourselves. I don't think the other floors could have heard
anything through the fire-proof brick, but if any one comes, refer them
to me." As the office cleared, Peter turned to his partners and said:
"Mr. Curlew came here with a message which he thought needed the
protection of a revolver. He judged rightly, it seems."

"Are you hit?"

"I felt something strike." Peter put his hand to his side. He unbuttoned
his coat and felt again. Then he pulled out a little sachet from his
breast-pocket, and as e did so, a flattened bullet dropped to the floor.
Peter looked into the sachet anxiously. The bullet had only gone through
the lower corner of the four photographs and the glove! Peter laughed
happily. "I had a gold coin in my pocket, and the bullet struck that.
Who says that a luck-piece is nothing but a superstition?"

"But, Peter, shan't we call the police?" demanded Ogden, still looking
stunned.

Curlew moved towards the door.

"One moment," said Peter, and Curlew stopped.

"Ray," Peter continued, "I am faced with a terrible question. I want
your advice?"

"What, Peter?"

"A man is trying to force me to stand aside and permit a political
wrong. To do this, he threatens to publish lying affidavits of worthless
scoundrels, to prove a shameful intimacy between a married woman and
me."

"Bosh," laughed Ray. "He can publish a thousand and no one would believe
them of you."

"He knows that. But he knows, too, that no matter how untrue, it would
connect her name with a subject shameful to the purest woman that ever
lived. He knows that the scavengers of gossip will repeat it, and gloat
over it. That the filthy society papers will harp on it for years. That
in the heat of a political contest, the partisans will be only too glad
to believe it and repeat it. That no criminal prosecution, no court
vindication, will ever quite kill the story as regards her. And so he
hopes that, rather than entail this on a woman whom I love, and on her
husband and family, I will refuse a nomination. I know of such a case in
Massachusetts, where, rather than expose a woman to such a danger, the
man withdrew. What should I do?"

"Do? Fight him. Tell him to do his worst."

Peter put his hand on Ray's shoulder.

"Even if--if--it is one dear to us both?"

"Peter!"

"Yes. Do you remember your being called home in our Spanish trip,
unexpectedly? You left me to bring Miss De Voe, and--Well. They've
bribed, or forged affidavits of two of the stewards of the 'Majestic.'"

Ray tried to spring forward towards Curlew. But Peter's hand still
rested on his shoulder, and held him back, "I started to kill him,"
Peter said quietly, "but I remembered he was nothing but the miserable
go-between."

"My God, Peter! What can I say?"

"Ray! The stepping aside is nothing to me. It was an office which I was
ready to take, but only as a sacrifice and a duty. It is to prevent
wrong that I interfered. So do not think it means a loss to me to
retire."

"Peter, do what you intended to do. We must not compromise with wrong
even for her sake."

The two shook hands, "I do not think they will ever use it, Ray," said
Peter. "But I may be mistaken, and cannot involve you in the
possibility, without your consent."

"Of course they'll use it," cried Ogden. "Scoundrels who could think of
such a thing, will use it without hesitation."

"No," said Peter. "A man who uses a coward's weapons, is a coward at
heart. We can prevent it, I think." Then he turned to Curlew. "Tell Mr.
Maguire about this interview. Tell him that I spared you, because you
are not the principal. But tell him from me, that if a word is breathed
against Mrs. Rivington, I swear that I'll search for him till I find
him, and when I find him I'll kill him with as little compunction as I
would a rattlesnake." Peter turned and going to his dressing-room,
washed away the ink from his hands.

Curlew shuffled out of the room, and, black as he was, went straight to
the Labor headquarters and told his story.

"And he'll do it too, Mr. Maguire," he said. "You should have seen his
look as he said it, and as he stood over me. I feel it yet."

"Do you think he means it?" said Ray to Ogden, when they were back in
Ray's room.

"I wouldn't think so if I hadn't seen his face as he stood over that
skunk. But if ever a man looked murder he did at that moment. And quiet
old Peter of all men!"

"We must talk to him. Do tell him that--"

"Do you dare do it?"

"But you--?"

"I don't. Unless he speaks I shall--"

"Ray and Ogden," said a quiet voice, "I wish you would write out what
you have just seen and heard. It may be needed in the future."

"Peter, let me speak," cried Ray. "You mustn't do what you said. Think
of such an end to your life. No matter what that scoundrel does, don't
end your life on a gallows. It--"

Peter held up his hand. "You don't know the American people, Ray. If
Maguire uses that lying story, I can kill him, and there isn't a jury in
the country which, when the truth was told, wouldn't acquit me. Maguire
knows it, too. We have heard the last of that threat, I'm sure."

Peter went back to his office. "I don't wonder," he thought, as he stood
looking at the ink-stains on his desk and floor, "that people think
politics nothing but trickery and scoundrelism. Yet such vile weapons
and slanders would not be used if there were not people vile and mean
enough at heart to let such things influence them. The fault is not in
politics. It is in humanity."

CHAPTER L.

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.

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