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.
“The journey?” queried Watts.
“You mean Newport, don’t you?” said Leonore helpfully, when Peter said
nothing. Leonore was looking out from under her lashes—at things in
general, of course.
Peter said nothing. Peter was not going to lie about what he had meant,
and Leonore liked him all the better for not using the deceiving
loophole she had opened.
Watts said, “Oh, of course. It improves every year. But wasn’t the
journey hot, old man?”
“I didn’t notice,” said Peter.
“Didn’t notice! And this one of the hottest days of the year.”
“I had something else to think about,” explained Peter.
“Politics?” asked Watts.
“Oh, Peter,” said Leonore, “we’ve been so interested in all the talk.
It was just as maddening as could be, how hard it was to get New York
papers way out west. I’m awfully in the dark about some things. I’ve
asked a lot of people here about it, but nobody seems to know anything.
Or if they do, they laugh at me. I met Congressman Pell yesterday at
the Tennis Tournament, and thought he would tell me all about it. But
he was horrid! His whole manner said: ‘I can’t waste real talk on a
girl.’ I told him I was a great friend of yours, and that you would
tell me when you came, but he only laughed and said, he had no doubt
you would, for you were famous for your indiscretion. I hate men who
laugh at women the moment they try to talk as men do.”
“I think,” said Peter, “we’ll have to turn Pell down. A Congressman who
laughs at one of my friends won’t do.”
“I really wish you would. That would teach him,” said Leonore,
vindictively. “A man who laughs at women can’t be a good Congressman.”
“I tell you what we’ll do,” said Peter. “I don’t want to retire him,
because—because I like his mother. But I will tell you something for
you to tell him, that will astonish him very much, and make him want to
know who told you, and so you can tease him endlessly.”
“Oh, Peter!” said Leonore. “You are the nicest man.”
“What’s that?” asked Watts.
“It’s a great secret,” said Peter. “I shall only tell it to Miss
D’Alloi, so that if it leaks beyond Pell, I shall know whom to blame
for it.”
“Goody!” cried Leonore, giving a little bounce for joy.
“Is it about that famous dinner?” inquired Watts.
“No.”
“Peter, I’m so curious about that. Will you tell me what you did?”
“I ate a dinner,” said Peter smiling.
“Now don’t be like Mr. Pell,” said Leonore, reprovingly, “or I’ll take
back what I just said.”
“Did you roar, and did the tiger put its tail between its legs?” asked
Watts.
“That is the last thing our friends, the enemies, have found,” said
Peter.
“You will tell me about it, won’t you, Peter?” said Leonore,
ingratiatingly.
“Have you a mount for me, Watts, for to-morrow? Mutineer comes by boat
to-night, but won’t be here till noon.”
“Yes. I’ve one chap up to your weight, I think.”
“I don’t like dodgers,” said Leonore, the corners of her mouth drawn
down.
“I was not dodging,” said Peter. “I only was asking a preliminary
question. If you will get up, before breakfast, and ride with me, I
will tell you everything that actually occurred at that dinner. You
will be the only person, I think, who wasn’t there, who knows.” It was
shameful and open bribery, but bosses are shameful and open in their
doings, so Peter was only living up to his rôle.
The temptation was too strong to be resisted, Leonore said, “Of coarse
I will,” and the corners of her mouth reversed their position. But she
said to herself: “I shall have to snub you in something else to make up
for it.” Peter was in for a bad quarter of an hour somewhere.
Leonore had decided just how she was going to treat Peter. To begin
with, she intended to accentuate that “five years” in various ways.
Then she would be very frank and friendly, just as long as he, too,
would keep within those limits, but if Peter even verged on anything
more, she intended to leave him to himself, just long enough to show
him that such remarks as his “not caring to be friends,” brought
instant and dire punishment. “And I shan’t let him speak,” Leonore
decided, “no matter if he wants to. For if he does, I’ll have to say
‘no,’ and then he’ll go back to New York and sulk, and perhaps never
come near me again, since he’s so obstinate, while I want to stay
friends.” Many such campaigns have been planned by the party of the
first part. But the trouble is that, usually, the party of the second
part also has a plan, which entirely disconcerts the first. As the
darkey remarked: “Yissah. My dog he wud a beat, if it hadn’t bin foh de
udder dog.”
Peter found as much contrast in his evening, as compared with his
morning, as there was in his own years. After dinner. Leonore said:
“I always play billiards with papa. Will you play too?”
“I don’t know how,” said Peter.
“Then it’s time you learned. I’ll take you on my side, because papa
always beats me. I’ll teach you.”
So there was the jolliest of hours spent in this way, all of them
laughing at Peter’s shots, and at Leonore’s attempts to show him how.
“Every woman ought to play billiards,” Peter thought, when it was
ended. “It’s the most graceful sight I’ve seen in years.”
Leonore said, “You get the ideas very nicely, but you hit much too
hard. You can’t hit a ball too softly. You pound it as if you were
trying to smash it.”
“It’s something I really must learn,” said Peter, who had refused over
and over again in the past.
“I’ll teach you, while you are here,” said Leonore.
Peter did not refuse this time.
Nor did he refuse another lesson. When they had drifted into the
drawing-room, Leonore asked: “Have you been learning how to valse?”
Peter smiled at so good an American using so European a word, but said
seriously, “No. I’ve been too busy.”
“That’s a shame,” said Leonore, “because there are to be two dances
this week, and mamma has written to get you cards.”
“Is it very hard?” asked Peter.
“No,” said Leonore. “It’s as easy as breathing, and much nicer.”
“Couldn’t you teach me that, also?”
“Easily. Mamma, will you play a valse? Now see.” Leonore drew her
skirts back with one hand, so as to show the little feet, and said:
“one, two, three, so. One, two, three, so. Now do that.”
Peter had hoped that the way to learn dancing was to take the girl in
one’s arms. But he recognized that this would follow. So he set to work
manfully to imitate that dainty little glide. It seemed easy as she did
it. But it was not so easy when he tried it.
“Oh, you clumsy,” said Leonore laughing. “See. One, two, three, so.
One, two, three, so.”
Peter forgot to notice the step, in his admiration of the little feet
and the pretty figure.
“Well,” said Leonore after a pause, “are you going to do that?”
So Peter tried again, and again, and again. Peter would have done it
all night, with absolute contentment, so long as Leonore, after every
failure, would show him the right way in her own person.
Finally she said, “Now take my hands. No. Way apart, so that I can see
your feet. Now. We’ll try it together. One, two, change. One, two,
change.”
Peter thought this much better, and was ready to go on till strength
failed. But after a time, Leonore said, “Now. We’ll try it the true
way. Take my hand so and put your arm so. That’s the way. Only never
hold a girl too close. We hate it. Yes. That’s it. Now, mamma. Again.
One, two, three. One, two, three.”
This was heavenly, Peter thought, and could have wept over the
shortness, as it seemed to him, of this part of the lesson.
But it ended, and Leonore said: “If you’ll practice that in your room,
with a bolster, you’ll get on very fast.”
“I always make haste slowly,” said Peter, not taking to the bolster
idea at all kindly. “Probably you can find time to-morrow for another
lesson, and I’ll learn much quicker with you.”
“I’ll see.”
“And will you give me some waltzes at the dances?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Leonore. “You shall have the dances
the other men don’t ask of me. But you don’t dance well enough, in case
I can get a better partner. I love valsing too much to waste one with a
poor dancer.”
A moment before Peter thought waltzing the most exquisite pleasure the
world contained. But he suddenly changed his mind, and concluded it was
odious.
“Nevertheless,” he decided, “I will learn how.”