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 _entrée_ 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.