"And you love her still?"

"I have no right to."

"She is married?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"I--I would rather not."

Miss De Voe sat quietly for a moment, and then rose. "Dear friend," she said, laying her hand on Peter's shoulder, "we have both missed the great prize in life. Your lot is harder than the one I have told you about. It is very,"--Miss De Voe paused a moment,--"it is very sad to love--without being loved."

And so ended Lispenard's comedy.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

CONFLICTS.

Lispenard went back with Peter to the city. He gave his reason on the train:

"You see I go back to the city occasionally in the summer, so as to make the country bearable, and then I go back to the country, so as to make the city endurable. I shall be in Newport again in a week. When will you come back?"

"My summering's over."

"Indeed. I thought my cousin would want you again!"

"She did not say so."

"The deuce she didn't. It must be the only thing she didn't say, then, in your long confabs?"

Peter made no reply, though Lispenard looked as well as asked a question.

"Perhaps," continued Lispenard, "she talked too much, and so did not remember to ask you?"

Still Peter said nothing.

"Are you sure she didn't give you a chance to have more of her society?"

Lispenard was smiling.

"Ogden," said Peter gently, "you are behaving contemptibly and you know it."

The color blazed up into Lispenard's face and he rose, saying:

"Did I understand you aright?" The manner and att.i.tude were both threatening though repressed.

"If you tell me that I misunderstood you, I will apologize. If you think the statement insulting, I will withdraw it. I did not speak to insult you; but because I wished you to know how your questions impressed me."

"When a man tells another he is contemptible, he cannot expect to escape results. This is no place to have a scene. You may send me your apology when we reach New York--"

Peter interrupted. "I shall, if you will tell me I wronged you in supposing your questions to be malicious."

Lispenard paid no attention to the interjection. "Otherwise," he finished, "we will consider our relations ended." He walked away.

Peter wrote Lispenard that evening a long letter. He did not apologize in it, but it ended:

"There should be no quarrel between us, for we ought to be friends. If alienation has come, it is due to what has occurred to-day, and that shall not cause unkind feelings, if I can help it. An apology is due somewhere. You either asked questions you had no right to ask, or else I misjudged you. I have written you my point of view. You have your own. I leave the matter to your fairness. Think it over, and if you still find me in the wrong, and will tell me so, I will apologize."

He did not receive a reply. Meeting Ogden Ogden a few days later, he was told that Lispenard had gone west for a hunting trip, quite unexpectedly. "He said not to expect him back till he came. He seemed out of sorts at something." In September Peter had a letter from Miss De Voe. Merely a few lines saying that she had decided to spend the winter abroad, and was on the point of sailing. "I am too hurried to see my friends, but did not like to go without some good-byes, so I write them." On the whole, as in the case of most comedies, there was little amus.e.m.e.nt for the actual performers. A great essayist has defined laughter as a "feeling of superiority in the laugher over the object laughed at." If this is correct, it makes all humor despicable.

Certainly much coa.r.s.eness, meanness and cruelty are every day tolerated, because of the comic covering with which it is draped.

It is not to be supposed that this comedy nor its winter prologue had diverted Peter from other things. In spite of Miss De Voe's demands on his time he had enough left to spend many days in Albany when the legislature took up the reports of the Commissions. He found strong lobbies against both bills, and had a long struggle with them. He had the help of the newspapers, and he had the help of Costell, yet even with this powerful backing, the bills were first badly mangled, and finally were side-tracked. In the actual fight, Pell helped him most, and Peter began to think that a man might buy an election and yet not be entirely bad. Second only to Pell, was his whilom enemy, the former District-Attorney, now a state senator, who battled himself into Peter's reluctant admiration and friendship by his devotion and loyalty to the bills. Peter concluded that he had not entirely done the man justice in the past. Curiously enough, his chief antagonist was Maguire.

Peter did not give up the fight with this defeat. His work for the bills had revealed to him the real under-currents in the legislative body, and when it adjourned, making further work in Albany only a waste of time, he availed himself of the secret knowledge that had come to him, to single out the real forces which stood behind and paid the lobby, and to interview them. He saw the actual princ.i.p.als in the opposition, and spoke with utmost frankness. He told them that the fight would be renewed, on his part, at every session of the legislature till the bills were pa.s.sed; that he was willing to consider proposed amendments, and would accept any that were honest. He made the fact very clear to them that they would have to pay yearly to keep the bills off the statute book. Some laughed at him, others quarrelled. But a few, after listening to him, stated their true objections to the bills, and Peter tried to meet them.

When the fall elections came, Peter endeavored to further his cause in another way. Three of the city's a.s.semblymen and one of her senators had voted against the bills. Peter now invaded their districts, and talked against them in saloons and elsewhere. It very quickly stirred up hard feeling, which resulted in attempts to down him. But Peter's blood warmed up as the fight thickened, and hisses, eggs, or actual attempts to injure him physically did not deter him. The big leaders were appealed to to call him off, but Costell declined to interfere.

"He wouldn't stop anyway," he told Green, "so we should do no good. Let them fight it out by themselves." Both of which sentences showed that Mr. Costell understood his business.

Peter had challenged his opponents to a joint debate, and when that was declined by them, he hired halls for evenings and spoke on the subject.

He argued well, with much more feeling than he had shown since his speech in "the case." After the first attempt of this kind, he had no difficulty in filling his halls. The rumor came back to his own district that he was "talkin' foin," and many of his friends there turned out to hear him. The same news went through other wards of the city and drew men from them. People were actually excluded, for want of room, and therefore every one became anxious to hear his speeches. Finally, by subscription of a number of people who had become interested, headed by Mr. Pell, the Cooper Union was hired, and Peter made a really great speech to nearly three thousand people.

The papers came to his help too, and stood by him manfully. By their aid, it was made very clear that this was a fight against a selfish lobby. By their aid, it became one of the real questions of the local campaign, and was carried beyond the borders of the city, so as to play a part in the county elections. Peter met many of the editors, and between his expert knowledge, acquired on the Commissions, and his practical knowledge, learned at Albany, proved a valuable man to them.

They repaid his help by kind words and praise in their columns, and brought him forward as the chief man in the movement. Mrs. Stirling concluded that the conspiracy to keep Peter in the background had been abandoned.

"Those York papers couldn't help my Peter's getting on," was the way she put it.

The results of this fight were even better than he had hoped. One a.s.semblyman gave in and agreed no longer to oppose the bills. Another was defeated. The Senator had his majority so cut down that he retired from the opposition. The questions too had become so much more discussed and watched, and the blame so fastened upon the lobby that many members from the country no longer dared to oppose legislation on the subject. Hence it was that the bills, newly drawn by Peter, to reduce opposition as far as possible, when introduced by Schlurger soon after the opening of the legislature, went through with a rush, not even ayes and nays being taken. Aided by Mr. Costell, Peter secured their prompt signing by Catlin, his long fight had ended in victory.

The "sixt" was wild with joy over the triumph. Whether it was because it was a tenement ward, or because Peter had talked there so much about it, or because his success was felt to redound to their credit, the voters got up a display of fireworks on the night when the news of the signing of the bills reached New York. When Peter returned to the city, he was called down to a hall one evening, to witness a torchlight procession and receive resolutions "engrossed and framed" from his admiring friends. Blunkers was chairman and made a plain speech which set the boys cheering by its combination of strong feeling and lack of grammar.

Then Justice Gallagher made a fine-sounding, big-worded presentation. In the enthusiasm of the moment, Dennis broke the programme by rising and giving vent to a wild burst of feeling, telling his audience all that they owed to Peter, and though they knew already what he told them, they cheered and cheered the strong, natural eloquence.

"Yer was out a order," said Blunkers, at the end of the speech.

"Yez loi!" said Dennis, jumping on his feet again. "It's never out av order to praise Misther Stirling."

The crowd applauded his sentiment.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE END OF THE CONFLICT.