The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him

by Paul Leicester Ford

In the early morning and after dinner, in spite of the summer heat, he took long walks. During the day he sat in his office doing nothing, with the exception of an occasional letter to his mother, and one or two to Watts in respect to the coming wedding. Two visits to the tailor’s, and another to Tiffany’s, which resulted in a pearl pin rather out of proportion to his purse, were almost the sole variations of this routine. It was really a relief to this terrible inactivity, when he found himself actually at the Shrubberies, the afternoon before the wedding.

Peter was rather surprised at the ease with which he went through the next twenty-four hours. It is true that the house was too full, and each person too busy, to trouble the silent groomsman with attention, so he might have done pretty much what he wished, without being noticed. He arrived late, thus having no chance for greetings till after a hurried dressing for dinner, when they were made in the presence of the whole party, who had waited his coming to go to the meal. He went through the ordeal well, even that with Miss Pierce, actually showing less embarrassment than she did. What was more astonishing, he calmly offered his arm to the bridesmaid who fell to his lot, and, after seating her, chatted without thinking that he was talking. Indeed, he hardly heeded what he did say, but spoke mechanically, as a kind of refuge from thought and feeling.

“I didn’t find him a bit so,” the girl said to Miss Pierce, later in the evening, with an indefiniteness which, if not merely feminine, must presuppose a previous conversation. “He isn’t exactly talkative, but he is perfectly easy to get on with. I tried him on New York, and found he had gone into a good many odd places and can tell about them. He describes things very well, so that one sees them.”

“It must be your tact, then, Miss Leroy,” said Mrs. Pierce, “for we could get nothing out of him before.”

“No? I had nothing to do with it, and, between ourselves, I think he disapproved of me. If Helen hadn’t told me about him, I should have been very cool to him, his manner was so objectionable. He clearly talked to me because he felt it a duty, and not a pleasure.”

“That’s only that unfortunate manner of his,” said Helen. “I really think at heart he’s dreadfully afraid of us. At least that’s what Watts says. But he only behaves as if—as if—well, you know what I mean, Alice!”

“Exactly,” said Alice. “You can’t describe it. He’s so cool, and stolid, and silent, that you feel shoddy and cheap, and any simple little remark doesn’t seem enough to say. You try to talk up to him, and yet feel small all the time.”

“Not at all,” said Helen. “You talk down to him, as if he were—were—your old grandfather, or some one else you admired, but thought very dull and old-fashioned.”

“But the worst is the way he looks at you. So gravely, even when you try to joke. Now I really think I’m passably pretty, but Mr. Stirling said as plainly as could be: ‘I look at you occasionally because that’s the proper thing to do, when one talks, but I much prefer looking at that picture over your head.’ I don’t believe he noticed how my hair was dressed, or the color of my eyes. Such men are absolutely maddening. When they’ve finished their smoke, I’m going to make him notice me.”

But Miss Leroy failed in her plan, try as she would. Peter did not notice girls any more. After worrying in his school and college days, over what women thought of him and how they treated him, he had suddenly ceased to trouble himself about them. It was as if a man, after long striving for something, had suddenly discovered that he did not wish it—that to him women’s opinions had become worthless. Perhaps in this case it was only the Fox and the Grapes over again. At all events, from this time on Peter cared little what women did. Courteous he tried to be, for he understood this to be a duty. But that was all. They might laugh at him, snub him, avoid him. He cared not. He had struck women out of his plan of life. And this disregard, as we have already suggested, was sure to produce a strange change, not merely in Peter, but in women’s view and treatment of him. Peter trying to please them, by dull, ordinary platitudes, was one thing. Peter avoiding them and talking to them when needs must, with that distant, uninterested look and voice, was quite another.