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

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




For Leonore was singing to herself: "He isn't dead. He isn't dead."

And Peter was thinking: "She loves me. She must love me."




CHAPTER LVIII.

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.




CHAPTER LIX.

"GATHER YE ROSEBUDS WHILE YE MAY."


If Peter had roamed about the hall that evening, he was still more
restless the next morning. He was down early, though for no apparent
reason, and did nothing but pass from hall to room, and room to hall,
spending most of his time in the latter, however.

How Leonore could have got from her room into the garden without Peter's
seeing her was a question which puzzled him not a little, when, by a
chance glance out of a window, he saw that personage clipping roses off
the bushes. He did not have time to spare, however, to reason out an
explanation. He merely stopped roaming, and went out to--to the roses.

"Good-morning," said Leonore pleasantly, though not looking at Peter, as
she continued her clipping.

Peter did not say anything for a moment. Then he asked, "Is that all?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Leonore, innocently. "Besides,
someone might be looking out of a window."

Peter calmly took hold of the basket to help Leonore sustain its
enormous weight. "Let me help you carry it," he said.

"Very well," said Leonore. "But there's no occasion to carry my hand
too. I'm not decrepit."

"I hoped I was helping you," said Peter.

"You are not. But you may carry the basket, since you want to hold
something."

"Very well," said Peter meekly.

"Do you know," said Leonore, as she snipped, and dropped roses into the
basket, "you are not as obstinate as people say you are."

"Don't deceive yourself on that score," said Peter.

"Well! I mean you are not absolutely determined to have your own way."

"I never give up my own views," said Peter, "unless I can see more to be
gained by so doing. To that extent I am not at all obstinate."

"Suppose," said Leonore, "that you go and cut the roses on those
furthest bushes while I go in and arrange these?"

"Suppose," said Peter calmly, and with an evident lack of enthusiasm.

"Well. Will you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"The motion to adjourn," said Peter, "is never debatable."

"Do you know," said Leonore, "that you are beginning very badly?"

"That is what I have thought ever since I joined you."

"Then why don't you go away?"

"Why make bad, worse?"

"There," said Leonore, "Your talking has made me cut my finger, almost."

"Let me see," said Peter, reaching out for her hand.

"I'm too busy," said Leonore.

"Do you know," said Peter, "that if you cut many more buds, you won't
have any more roses for a week. You've cut twice as many roses as you
usually do."

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A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

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