CHAPTER I
Peter was coming back to America. He had been through the war and then the peace and he was very tired. The tension of it all was still upon him. Even though he lay back in his steamer chair and looked over the rail at a wide and peaceful ocean the jangle within him continued. For him there was no friendship in the sea. Probably there never would be any more. He had come to hate it that afternoon on the Espagne when they ran from the submarine. That was almost four years ago, but Peter had not forgotten. He had been playing poker in the card-room when the little gun on the forward deck went "bang!" The man across the table had his whole stack of chips in his hand. He was just about to say, "I'll raise you, Neale." And then he said nothing. He just sat there holding the chips and grinning. Some of them trickled out of his hands and a yellow one fell on the floor. The man stooped down and rummaged for it under his chair. Yellow chips represented five dollars. Peter couldn't stand the comedy of it. His capacity for irony was limited.
"Don't do that," he said sharply. "Maybe it's going to sink us. Come on. We can look for the chips afterwards."
Still the man didn't come. His right hand was trembling but he held on to the cards.
"Oh," said Peter, "you win if that's what you're waiting for. For God's sake, come on."
Peter didn't have the courage to be the first man out of the smoking-room. He walked slowly enough to let two players pass him. Going to his room he found a life preserver and put it on clumsily. Outside in the hall a very white-faced steward was saying over and over again, "There is no danger. There is no danger." Coming out on deck a passenger almost ran into Peter. He was dashing up and down the deck shouting, "Don't get excited." Peter saw his poker friend standing beside the rail and took his place alongside him.
"There she is," said the man, pointing to a thing about a mile away which looked like a stray beanpole thrust into the ocean. "It's the periscope," he explained. The gun on the Espagne went "bang!" once more.
"If we don't get her, she'll get us, won't she?" asked Peter.
The man nodded. The beanpole disappeared. "She'll come up some other place," he told Peter.
They both stared at the ocean, looking for the sprouting of the weed. Peter kept silent for at least two minutes. He held on to the rail because his right leg was shaking. The man must not know that he was afraid.
"What did you have?" asked Peter. "What did you have?" he repeated.
"How's that?"
"A minute ago when I dropped. What did you have?"
"A king high flush."
Peter was just about to confess his full house, but thought better of it. "I guess the submarine didn't hurt me any," he said. "Mine was only aces and eights."
His companion turned and looked at him. He was a little white, too. There was a growing horror in his face. Peter wondered and then realized the reason for the curious look. Somehow it cheered him enormously to find terror in another. The man had shamed him by sticking to the card room and looking for the yellow chip. Now Peter could pay him back. Even the huskiness was gone from his voice. "Yes," he said slowly, "aces and eights. That was queer, wasn't it? The dead man's hand."
The beanpole never did come up again and now in the year 1919 there would be none in this pleasant glassy ocean and yet Peter couldn't look at it very long without seeing black stakes rise up against him. In the twenty minutes of watching which followed the remark about aces and eights Peter planted firmly and deeply in himself another abiding fear. He wondered idly now whether the man who stood with him, the name was Bentwick, would ever enjoy ocean travel again.
Peter found that it was not physically possible to be afraid of everything which he encountered in the war. Everybody had his pet fear. Peter specialized on submarines, which was convenient since, after arriving in France, he saw nothing more of warfare on the water. He never liked shells, particularly the big ones, airplanes or machine guns and yet he could stand them well enough to do his work. Before going he had assumed that he would be unable to endure the strain of getting under fire. Indeed he told Miles, "You mustn't expect a lot of stuff from me about how things look in a front line trench."
Miles had said, "All right. Give us the news and we won't kick."
The news had been enough to take Peter into hell and keep him there. Miles had been smart. Dying for his country might very likely have been an insufficient ideal for Peter, but there never was any place he refused to go to get a story for the Bulletin. He never knew why. There wasn't any person on the Bulletin whom Peter idolized. The owner lived in Arizona and Peter had never seen him. The paper itself was a person. That was what Miles had seemed to say that afternoon in the office when he asked Peter to go over as a war correspondent. "I think you ought to go for the paper," he said. First, of course, he teetered back and forth on his chair three times. "Sport don't look so important now," he began. "This thing is much bigger than baseball. It's going to get bigger. The syndicate's selling you to one hundred and ten papers now but that doesn't make any difference, Neale. There's no good waiting for the bottom to drop out of a thing. We've got to beat 'em to it."
"I don't know anything about war," suggested Peter.
"We don't want war stuff. I wouldn't give a damn for the regular war correspondent stuff. You can humanize all that. You've got a light touch. Some of this is going to be funny. Most of the papers are overlooking that. And mark my words, by and by we're going to get in it."
"Maybe it won't be so funny then," said Peter.
Miles paid no attention. "Don't you see the big start you'll have if you're already over there when America comes in. You'll have the hang of the thing. You'll know a lot more about it than most of the generals. You'll be on the spot to jump right into it."
Miles did not foresee that by the time America came into the war there wouldn't be much jump left in Peter. Blood and, more than that, a desperate boredom fell upon the light touch. Almost all of Peter's romantic enthusiasm was spent in his first two years on the fighting line of the English and the French. The American war correspondents used to tell with wonder and amusement of the afternoon upon which Peter started off to join the American army with the other correspondents. They just filled the compartment, but a minute before the train left the Gare du Nord, a Y. M. C. A. man who had reserved his seat bustled in. He picked out Peter and slapped him on the back. "I'm very sorry, old scout," he said, "but you've got my seat."
Peter got up. "You can have the seat, you son of a——," he answered, "but don't you 'old scout' me."
Whatever romantic feeling might have been left in Peter about America and the war broke on the military bearing of John J. Pershing. Peter was with him the day he inspected the newly arrived First Division. Aides and war correspondents without number trailed at his heels. They followed him into a stable which had been transformed into a company kitchen. Just inside the door stood a youngster only a year or so older than Pat. He was peeling potatoes but when the General entered he dropped his work and stood at attention. Pershing went on to the far end of the stable and, as he passed by, the boy who had never seen the commander-in-chief of all the American expeditionary forces, stole just a fleeting look over his shoulder. Pershing saw him and strode back, followed by all the war correspondents and his aides.
"What's the matter with you?" he shouted at the boy. "You don't know the first thing about being a soldier." Turning to a lieutenant he said, "Take this man out and make him stand at attention for two hours." Not even the dead men upon the wire ever moved Peter to the same violent revulsion against the war. Nor did he have a chance to write it out of himself. His cable dispatch which began, "They will never call him Papa Pershing," did not get by the censors.
Censorship was among the horrors of war which Peter never thought of as he stood in the office of Miles. He was a little hesitant about accepting the assignment and the managing editor misunderstood him somewhat.
"You'll find your war stuff will sell in time just as well as sports," he said.
"I've got enough money, almost enough," Peter told him. "I don't know what to do about Pat, that's my son. He's here in school. He's fourteen. There isn't a soul to look after him."
"Yes," said Miles, "that makes it hard. I tell you what I'll do. Will you let him come and live with me and Mrs. Miles? Next year he can go to boarding-school. This thing can't last forever. You'll be back in a little while."
"Well," said Peter, "that's nice of you but I don't know how it'll work out."
"What are you planning for the boy?"
"Why, I've always figured that as soon as he got old enough I'd try to get him on the paper. I want him to be a newspaper man."
Miles broke in so eagerly that he even neglected to do his three preliminary tilts. "That's fine. Don't you see how that all fits in? You go to France for us and I'll promise you a job for the boy on the Bulletin. You won't have to just think about it. The thing's done. He's nominated for the Bulletin right now. And you can start him off the minute you think he's old enough. Don't fret about that. I'll give him an ear full of shop. Is it a bargain?"
"All right," said Peter, "I'll go over for the paper for a little while."
The little while lasted almost five years.
CHAPTER II
It was a June night in the fourth year of the war when Peter saw Maria Algarez. He was walking up the Avenue de l'Opera when a woman cut across in front of him, turning into a side street. The street was crowded with soldiers and women, sauntering and peering, but this woman was walking fast. She almost bumped into Peter. They were under a shaded light which fell on her face as she looked up. Peter looked at her without much curiosity. He did not want to invite friendliness. Hospitality had been hurled at him all the way down the avenue. He knew instantly that it was Maria. When she left him she had seemed a child. After seventeen years there was the same youthful quality in her face. The only change was, it was much more tired. And there was paint.
"Hello," said Peter.
Maria smiled at him without obvious recognition, but made no answer.
"I'm Peter Neale."
Maria's smile grew broader. "I thought I have made a conquest," she said, "and it is a husband."
She held out her hand. Peter took it, but his eager surprise at seeing her was chilled by a sudden thought.
"You're not—," he said, but he could not phrase it. He tried again. "You're not walking here alone?"
Maria's smile became a laugh. "And what then?" she asked.
"Good God!" said Peter in horror. And then almost to himself, "And it might have been any other soldier on the avenue."
"There, there," said Maria, checking her laughter and patting him on the arm. "It is not right for me to laugh at you. I should not forget to remember that you are the worrier. You think that maybe it is my living to walk in L'avenue de L'Opera and to look for the good-looking soldier. It should please that it is you I have selected, Peter. But no, there, it is not so. Come with me. My car it is around the corner. Do not let us stand here where maybe you will be compromised. We will drive to my studio. There we can talk."
Peter followed Maria around the corner where a limousine was waiting and got in.
"How do you manage to have a car in war time?" he asked.
"It is because I am the important person. Yes, that is true. You have not heard of me, Peter? Really? That is so extraordinary. You do not know that I am the singer?"
"Well," said Peter, "of course I heard that phonograph record you sent for Pat but that was fifteen years ago. I never heard from you again. Sometimes I went to the shops and asked if they had records of Maria Algarez but none of them had ever heard of you."
"Pooh," said Maria, "in America you do not know anything. But here in Paris do you never hear anybody speak of Maria Algarez?"
Peter shook his head. "I've been with the American army almost all the time. What would I know if I had heard? What do they say about you?"
"Maybe it is better that I should say it myself," answered Maria. "The others might not make it enough. When I send the phonograph record so long ago I say in my letter to you 'the voice is magnificent.' That is true. It is much more than that. Peter, sometimes it makes me sad that I cannot sit off a little way and hear the voice. The phonograph, it is not the same thing. That is the pity of it, I alone of everybody in Europe cannot truly hear Maria Algarez sing. It has been the great voice in the world. It is still the great voice."
"Oh," said Peter, "and that is what anybody would have told me if I asked."
Maria shook her head. "People, they are not so smart. You remember when I was a dancer they did not know about me all that you and I, we knew. It is the same now. They do not know. A little, yes, but not all."
"But they realize it enough to give you a job, don't they?"
"The job, pooh! Yes, the job. First I sing in Comique. I sing in Russia and Spain and for the seven, eight years I am the leading soprano of the Paris opera house. Where is it that you hide yourself that all this you do not know?"
"In mud in Flanders, I guess."
"Yes, it is not your fault. The war, it is so loud in all the world there is no other noise. That is why I go away. I have the contract to sing in Argentine."
The limousine drew up in front of an apartment and Maria took Peter up to a studio on the top floor. They went into a big room with one great window of glass covering an entire wall. Through it Peter could see the defense of Paris aviators moving across the skyline like high riding fireflies.
"It's a nice place for air raids," suggested Peter.
"The Boche—the German—he comes sometime but I am not afraid. You know, Peter, now I know that there is the God. It is something. I cannot tell you just what. But he is smart. When the others did not know about the voice it was that I remembered. He would know. If there was nobody else he would be smart enough. He is not silly. Nothing can happen to Maria Algarez."
"Gosh," said Peter, abashed and puzzled by this outburst, "I hope he feels the same way about me. Most of the last three years I've been needing him more than you do."
Maria's rapt expression faded. "I am the pig. All the time I talk about myself. And you, you, Peter, what is it you do? You are the officer, that I know, but captain, colonel, general that I do not know."
"I see I've got a kick coming, too. Where have you been hiding? I'm not an officer. I'm a war correspondent. If you can say it I guess I can. Any way I will. I'm the best war correspondent in the world," Peter grinned. "That's not such a joke either. Maybe I am. Didn't you ever hear of my book—'Lafayette, Nous Voila?' All the rest of it's English. It means 'Lafayette, We're Here.' I forgot you'd know that. They've sold seventy-five thousand copies. Didn't you ever hear of it?"
"No, I have not heard. I think you are still the newspaper man."
"Well, a war correspondent's a sort of a newspaper man, only more so. I'm still on the Bulletin. That was my paper years ago when—when we knew each other."
Maria was almost startled. "The boy," she said suddenly. "Your boy, how is he? He is well? He is big? What is it that you call him?"
"Yes," said Peter, "bigger than I know, I guess. I haven't seen him for almost three years. His name is Peter Neale, Jr."
"But you hear from him? He writes? What is it he says?"
"Well, as a matter of fact I just got a letter from him today. There isn't anything much in it. I don't know whether you'd be interested. It's just about stuff he's doing in school."
"Yes, I want to know what it is he learns. Here, let me see?"
Peter fumbled in his pocket and found Pat's letter.
"Maybe I'd better read it you. Handwriting is one of the things they haven't taught him. I don't believe you could make out his writing."
He picked up the letter and began, "'Dear Peter—— '
"'Peter,' it is so he calls you?"
"Yes 'father' sounds terribly formal to me and I don't want to be 'pop' or 'dad' or anything like that. 'Peter' seems closer. Before this war Pat and I were pretty chummy."
Maria settled back and Peter went on with the letter.
"'Perhaps, I didn't tell you about my joining the fraternity here last month. It's called Alpha Kappa Phi. The letters stand for Greek words which are secret and mean friends and brothers or maybe it's brothers and friends. And of course the initiation is secret, but I guess it won't be any harm if I tell you about it. I had to report at the fraternity house in the afternoon and they took me down in the cellar and put me in a coffin. It wasn't really a coffin, but a big packing case but we tell the fellows that come in that it's a coffin and that scares the life out of some of them. I wasn't scared any, but it got pretty tiresome lying around all afternoon. In the evening they took me out and told me they were going to put the initials of the fraternity on my chest. They pretended to be heating up an iron. There was a long speech which went with this and it is quite beautiful. While they were pretending to heat up the irons they burned something, meat I guess, and it made an awful smell. They did make me a little nervous but when they got around to cutting the initials in my chest it was just an electric battery they had and they ran the current over my chest. It hurt a little, but I knew they weren't really cutting initials and so I didn't mind. After that they took a chemical called lunar caustic and traced out Alpha Kappa Phi on my chest. It didn't do anything just then, but the next day it turned all black. Every time I took a shower in the gym all the younger kids stared at me. One asked me what I got on my chest and I said maybe I fell down in some mud. After I was branded they took me up some stairs and down some more. I was still blindfolded, you know. They said to me, "You must jump the last fifteen steps." Well, I jumped and it was just one step and it nearly ruined me. Then there were some more things like having to stand on your head and sing the first verse of the school song. They helped you a little by holding up your feet. And you had to get down on the floor and scramble like an egg. Then there was something very impressive. They took the bandage off and I was standing just in front of a skull. A man all in white read out about the secrets of the society. It was quite beautiful but I can't remember enough to tell you. Just when he came where it said what would happen to any neophyte who divulged aught on the sacred scroll of Alpha Kappa Phi, a great big tongue of flame shot out of the mouth of the skull. They do it by pinching the end of a piece of gas pipe and putting it in the mouth of the skull and when you turn on the gas the thing shoots out. That was about all except all of us being stood up against a wall and hitting us in the tail with tennis balls. Of course there was supper finally and I shook hands with all the brothers and they said most of them get scared a lot more than I did. We've put in a couple of lots since I got in and I certainly got square with them for what they did to me. I suppose you read in the paper about my kicking a goal from the thirty-three yard line and winning the game from the Columbia freshmen.'"
There was a good deal more about the game, almost a complete play by play account, but Peter, peeking over the edge of the letter saw that Maria was yawning. He just put in a "With love—Pat," and stopped in the middle of a paragraph.
"He is nice. I think he is like you," she said. "How old is he, Peter?"
"Just about seventeen."
"Like you he will be the writer for the Bulletin? Is it so that you want it?"
"Yes, I've set my heart on that."
"It is good. He knows about the baseball that you know and all your sport. Is he big too like you, Peter?""I guess he must be by now. He sent me a picture. It's an enlargement of a snapshot. Just a head like one of these motion picture closeups."
Maria held out her hand casually. "Let me see."
She took the picture under a lamp and looked closely. For a full minute or more Maria held the picture and stared at it. She said nothing, but Peter was conscious in some way that the casual mood had gone. He could tell that she was enormously moved. He did not even dare break in upon her silence. Still looking at the picture Maria whispered, "He is my son. It is my nose. It is my nose exactly."
"Yes," said Peter, in a matter of fact way, "there is quite a resemblance."
Maria waved her left hand impatiently. "No, no, it is not a resemblance. The rest does not look alike. It is the nose. That is not a resemblance. It is the same. It is my nose. Here you see," she slapped the bridge of her nose violently, "so it would be if the bone it had been broken. You see in the picture of my son it is the break. The same. The hook in the nose. But it is not broken. Never it has not been?"
"Why, no," said Peter, "his nose has always been like that."
"Yes, yes, it is from me he has it. Yes, and from the God. Do you not know why it is the break in the nose?"
"Well, he's got to have some kind of a nose I suppose."
"But this kind, Peter, it is for just one thing. It marks him like those foolish letters on his chest in the letter. You cannot read the marking. I can read it for you. It says singer, singer, singer. It must be. The singing nose it is always so. Sometimes it is not so much. But this is my nose. It says more than singer. It says great singer."
"Well," said Peter somewhat impatient at the fervency of Maria, "he says in his letter that he sang the first verse of the school song standing on his head. That must have been hard."
"Yes," replied Maria fiercely, "he is standing on his head. He writes to you only foolishness. It is about skulls and jumping steps. And about the sport. And there was more. I know you did not read it all. You have made him to stand on his head. They have made him. He lives only for foolishness. The mark is there but first there must be work. Years of work. He is not a child to jump over steps. He must come with me to the Argentine."
"Whoa," cried Peter. "We can't let a nose run away with us. Just stop and think a minute. It's impossible for Pat to go to Argentine with you. In a year or so he may be old enough to go into the army. It would look as if he was running away."
Peter's attempt at a conciliatory speech was conspicuously a failure.
"The army! The war!" said Maria between clenched teeth. "That is the most silly of all. Better he should stay with the good brothers and jump down the steps. My God! Peter, you won't, you can't let him go to the war. If there was in him not one note of music you would not let him. He is a boy. He is something alive. And don't you understand? I think it is in him the fire. They won't kill him. This I will not let."
"All right, but if the war goes on and he comes of age what can anybody do about it?"
"I have much money, Peter. It can be all spent to save him if there is the need."
"Money, I've got money too. Lots of it. That's all foolishness. It won't work."
"Is it that you want him to go?"
"Damn you," said Peter, almost sobbing in his anger, "you mustn't say things like that. He's my son too. He was my son when you ran away and left him. I've seen war. I've got lately so I see it all from one angle. Any time our lines go forward I think of them fighting for just one thing, fighting to keep Pat out of it. You get all excited and worked up about a nose in a photograph. A picture of a boy you don't even know. I've wheeled him in the park. I saw him walk the first time. I'm not looking to save him because he's some kind of a genius. I want him to live because he's Pat."
"I said wrong, Peter. I am sorry. Both of us we must wait. It will be all right. I know God won't be silly."
Presently Maria said, "I do not know him. That is what you have said. Tell me about him—about Pat."
Peter did. It was mostly things about when Pat was a small boy. He remembered God's ankle and told Maria, and about the blind giant. She was enormously interested to hear of how Pat had picked out phonograph records. "And mine," she said eagerly, "did he like that?"
Peter lied a little. "It was the one he asked for first all the time," he answered. It surprised Peter that he remembered so much about Pat. All sorts of little things which he hadn't thought of for years welled up in his mind. Some of them were things that he had hardly noticed at the time.
"And of course you never heard about Judge Krink," he said. "He was a man Pat invented when he was about five years old. He used to tell me that he wrote letters to Judge Krink and Judge Krink wrote letters to him. 'What did he say?' I'd ask him. 'Nothing,' said Pat. I remember Judge Krink had dirty fingernails. He never went to bed. I don't know just where he lived, but it was some place in a garden. He sat there and dug dirt. All the things that Pat couldn't do, Judge Krink did. Maybe I got asking him about Judge Krink too much because one day he said, 'I don't have Judge Krink any more. He's got table manners.'"
"You see," broke in Maria, "it is not the truth when you said I do not even know him—my son. I have seen him many times. I have played with him."
"Where?" asked Peter, puzzled.
"At the house of the Judge Krink."
Later they talked about themselves. Peter told Maria about Vonnie. Somehow he could not bear to have her think that he had been altogether desolated by her flight seventeen years ago or that he had spent his life entirely in persuading Pat to eat spinach. Certainly Maria was not displeased by the story. She smiled cheerfully when told of the devastation wrought by her phonograph record but she said, "Oh, Peter, you should not have let her go. I did not teach you enough or you would have broken the record of the song." Maria met confession with confession and rather overtopped Peter.
"How about this God you were telling me about. Do you think he liked that?" he inquired.
"Oh," said Maria, "it is not such little things about which he bothers."
"Didn't you ever love me?" Peter protested.
"Not after the baby," said Maria. "It was not your fault but in my heart I blamed you. It seemed to me the thing mean and silly. To be hurt so much, that cannot be good. Now I am not so sure. If he is to sing it cannot be too much. Nothing. Not even that."
She moved to the piano and ran over an air which sounded familiar to Peter. "You remember?" she said.
On a chance he guessed. "That's what you danced to in 'Adios'."
"That is smart. You remember. It is the Invitation to the Waltz. All these years you have remembered."
"When do you go back to the war?" she asked suddenly.
"Tomorrow," said Peter.
"It is seventeen years and you go away tomorrow." She came across the room and bending across the back of the chair in which Peter sat she kissed him on the eyes. "There is something more I want you to remember," she said.
Peter was swept as he had been years ago by a gust of emotion. He started to get up but his legs were a little unsteady. Maria moved across the room to the piano.
"Maybe," she said, "you will remember me for the seventeen years more if I sing 'Depuis Le Jour.'"
CHAPTER III
Maria went to the Argentine a month later but Peter heard from her every now and then. Her letters were mostly brief, acknowledging the letters from Pat which Peter forwarded to her. Occasionally he would supply a footnote to something which Pat had written if it touched upon things which were known only to himself and the boy and could not be understood by an outsider without explanation. Or it might be that some sporting reference, simple enough in itself, seemed to require clarification for the sake of Maria. For instance when Pat wrote, "He tried a forward pass but I managed to grab it on the two yard line and ran all the way for a touchdown," Peter added the note, "A football field is a hundred yards long. Pat's feat was most unusual."
But sports did not figure quite so large in the letters as they had done before. Rather often the boy wrote about books. In one letter he outlined the entire plot of "Mr. Polly" for Peter. In another somewhat to Peter's astonishment he wrote "Heard Galli again last Saturday. She does not excite me so much as she used to." Maria returned this letter with her acknowledgment and Peter found that this time she was supplying a footnote. "Galli," she wrote, "is Galli Curci, an opera singer with the voice and nothing else."
When the letter came in which Pat announced that he had entered the officer's training school at Harvard, Peter cabled to Maria. She replied almost immediately, "Have broken my contract, coming back to Paris." Before she arrived the armistice was signed. Peter went to see her almost immediately. He wanted to explain to her why her schemes about Pat were wholly impossible and he felt that now with the war issue removed it would be easier to discuss the matter calmly and rationally. He plunged into the question immediately.
"Now let's both make a solemn promise, Maria, to tell nothing but the truth without letting emotion or anything like that come in."
"But then," objected Maria, "it would not be the truth."
"Oh, you know what I mean. When I showed you Pat's picture that night you got very much excited. You said he had a nose just like yours and that it meant he was all cut out to be a singer. A great singer you said. Well, we're not excited now. Be honest with me. You can't really tell anything about whether he could be a singer or not just by looking at his nose in a picture. That was a little far-fetched, wasn't it? I mean it wasn't plain, cold, common-sense."
"What you ask me is a little hard, Peter. This common-sense you talk to me about, for that I care nothing. It is no good. It is not so that I see things. I was excited when I see the picture. That is true but it makes no difference. To have the much sense it is necessary for me to get excited. It is so I see things. If you mean can I write it down on the piece of paper like the contract, Pat he will be the singer, the great singer, I must say no. That I cannot promise. But contracts too I do not like."
"Yes," said Peter, "I've observed that."
"But I feel it, Peter. That is so much more. Can you not understand? You have sometimes maybe look into the crystal. It is so when I look at the picture. Here is my nose again in the world. It is for something."
"Maybe," suggested Peter, "it's a nose for news."
Maria paid no attention. "Do you not see? If it is the failure that does not matter. Just so long as it is the possibility it is necessary that we try.
"You don't begin to understand how far apart we are, Maria. I'll tell you frankly where I stand. Even if I knew Pat could be the greatest singer in the world I'd rather have him a newspaperman. That's my angle."
"You are not serious."
"But I am. Newspaper work's real. It's got roots into life. It is life. It makes people in the world a little different. Singing is just something you go and hear in the evening."
"For you it is enough that he should go to the baseball and the football and perhaps the next war and write the book 'Lafayette Voulez Vous.'"
Peter flushed. "I think there's more sense to it," he said. "And it's pretty probable that Pat'll think something like I do. We were together and you weren't there. And we went around together and talked about Matty and Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker."
Maria looked a little puzzled.
"You wouldn't know," said Peter a little bitterly, "they're none of them singers."
"I didn't mean to be rotten," he added hastily. "I'm just trying to tell you the truth."
Maria smiled. "It is all right. You tell me, Peter, the truth—— your truth."
"Well, you see, Maria, he is like me. The nose may be you, but the rest is me. It's just got to be. In the beginning he wasn't anything but just sort of red clay or he was like a phonograph record before you cut the tune on it. He's been brought up around baseball games and newspaper offices. He knows, and everybody knows, that he's coming on the Bulletin and will take my place. In fact the job's been promised him. I'm not trying to lay down the law. It's just the way things are. I don't see what I could do about it even if I wanted to. He's all made by now. What's the use of my saying, 'Yes, let him go over and learn to be a singer.' It just hasn't been put in him."
Peter paused.
"I'm sorry, Maria. The trouble is he's a boy. If he'd been a girl I'd have jumped at the chance to have you make a singer of him. Newspaper work's no good for women."
"And singing, it is not good for men?" asked Maria.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I don't honestly think it is."
"Peter, I understand better now what this is you feel, but it is not all the truth you say. When I go away he is red clay, that is what you say. It is not so simple. I have looked at him then and to me he was just what you have said. But it is more. Inside the clay all the time there is something. The little bug, I do not know what it is you call it."
"Do you mean germ?"
"Yes, I think so. That you cannot touch and I cannot. So we do not need to talk and to get angry. It is for him to say. Is it not so?"
"Well, within reason—yes."
"So! You go back to America and you make him the newspaper man. That is fair. When he is twenty-one you will come here. And he will come. You will say 'yes'."
"That's almost four years off."
"The day I know; it is the twentieth in August. The year it will be 1922."
Peter hesitated.
"But it is fair, Peter. You should like it. Do you not see it is what you call it 'sporting'."
"You're on," said Peter.
"There, now we will not quarrel any more. Some things I want to know. You will tell me. You have heard him singing? Sometimes he sings a little?"
"I suppose so. I never noticed particularly. Yes, I remember when he was a kid he used to sing something that went, 'Tell me, pretty maiden'—— I can't remember the rest of it. He's got a loud voice, I say that for him. When he was playing out in front of the house with other kids I could always hear him a way above all the others. I guess he's got lungs all right."
"Those he has got from you. If he is the singer, you see, it will not be all my fault."
Maria was leaving for Spain within a few days and Peter said he expected to get back to America pretty soon.
"Here we shall meet on the twentieth in August, in nineteen twenty-two," said Maria. "Good-bye, Peter. I want you to bring my son at eight o'clock."
CHAPTER IV
A few months later while the peace conference was still raging fiercely, Peter was puzzled by a cablegram which he received from America. "Congratulations on your story," it read, "we want more just like it. Convey my respects to President Wilson and tell him I am solidly behind him,—— Twice."
Peter couldn't remember anybody named Twice which made it still more difficult for him to understand why he was being congratulated. He wondered just how urgent was the message to Wilson. Of course it sounded a little bit like somebody on the paper, but the manner was not that of Miles even if he assumed that the signature had been in some way or other so curiously distorted. Cheeves, the Paris correspondent of the Bulletin, solved his perplexity.
"You're kidding me," he said. "It isn't possible that you never heard of Twice. Why, it's Rufus Twice of course, but he always signs just his last name. You know how it is on state documents, 'Lansing,' 'Bryan' or whoever the current boy on the job happens to be."
"It doesn't help any that his first name's Rufus. Who's Rufus Twice, anyhow?"
"Well, since yesterday afternoon he happens to be your boss. He's the new managing editor of the Bulletin, only they don't call him that. He's got a title. They call him Supervising Editor."
"He didn't lose any time cabling, did he?"
"No, everybody around here got one."
"Were they all congratulations?"
"All that I've seen, but most of them are much briefer than yours."
"How about this message I'm to give Wilson, is that really necessary?"
"Oh, I guess not. But the president ought to feel flattered that Rufus Twice is behind him and not about three feet out in front pulling him along. On the level, don't you remember Rufus Twice on the Bulletin?"
"No, I don't. I've been away for years and years now. I don't remember anybody."
"Big black-haired fellow. Snappy dresser. Always made a point of coming in late and just barely catching the first edition."
"That fits any one of twenty people around the shop."
"Maybe they were all Rufus Twice. My God! there've been times when he seemed like ad nauseam. You'll remember him if I remind you of the story about Twice and the district attorney."
"Go on. Remind me. What district attorney?"
"Hell! I can't be bothered remembering the names of district attorneys. He don't figure anyway. We'll just call him Smith. It was about that Haldeman murder case. I suppose you've forgotten that too, but Haldeman was a fellow said he had something on the police and the day before he was to spill it they found him murdered up in his apartment. This was about twelve o'clock at night and all the reporters come down to the station. Rufus Twice is there and this district attorney fellow he shows up too. After getting all the facts they go out for sandwiches and one of the reporters says, 'Mr. Smith, haven't you some statement to make to the papers about this murder.' The district attorney just looks at him and sits there trying to make up his mind. And while he's thinking Rufus Twice hops in. 'I think Mr. Smith would like to say something about as follows,' he begins. It goes on for about a thousand words and when he's all done he turns to Smith and says, 'That's about right, isn't it?' And Smith says, 'Yes.' And after that all through the case Twice gives out the statements the same way except that he doesn't bother to say, 'That's about right' any more."
"Is that a true story?"
"I don't know. That's the way Twice always tells it."
As Peter was going out, Cheeves called him back.
"Say, I suppose now that the cruel peace conference is almost over you'll be going back. I don't want to give you a wrong steer about Twice. Maybe you got the impression from what I said that he's just a big bluff. That's only about ten per cent right. He is a big bluff but in addition to that he's got the stuff. You could make about ten of Miles out of him. When you pack up your stuff to go back don't forget to take along a grain of salt."
There must have been something of prophetic vision in the remarks of Cheeves for Peter received his message of recall the next day. The cable said, "Baseball beginning to look more important peace conference stop much quicker stop we want you back right away stop advise you take Espagne—Twice."
Peter looked at his watch. He had just twenty-two hours to dig up such roots as he had sprouted during his four years in France. He made the boat by the closest possible margin. Of course he would rather that it had been any vessel afloat except the Espagne haunted by the ghost of what was probably by now a dead submarine. Still catching the boat was a sort of assignment. And it was the quickest way home. Pat would be waiting on the pier in New York. Peter had cabled ahead to him.
CHAPTER V
It was a Pat prodigiously grown who met Peter as he came down the gangplank. Not much had altered in the look of him but just the added inches and heft gave him a curiously disturbing air of maturity. Peter would have liked to put his arms around him but he didn't dare. The handshake was not adequate and there was nothing he could say to express what he wanted to. It seemed better not to try.
"Hello, Pat," he said.
"Hello, Father," said the boy.
"Don't," exclaimed Peter almost as if in pain. "I've got a name. I don't want to be father. I never have been father. Four years oughtn't to do that."
"I'm sorry, Peter," Pat said it almost shyly.
The baggage was passed promptly, but as Peter was about to leave the pier a man came up to him.
"You're Peter Neale, aren't you?" he asked.
Peter nodded.
"I'm a reporter from the Bulletin. My name's Weed. Mr. Twice sent me down. He told me to tell you to come right up to the office."
"What's the rush?" asked Peter.
"I don't know. He didn't say."
"I think maybe we'd better go," broke in Pat. "He gave me the same message for you yesterday. I forgot about it."
"What has he got to do with you?" Peter inquired, after Weed had gone.
"Don't you see, when Mr. Twice became editor he inherited me along with the paper. Mr. Miles never did anything much the last couple years about managing me. He just turned over the allowance you gave me every week. Mr. Twice has taken complete charge. He's got my whole life mapped out."
"What's it going to be?"
"He's got it all fixed up for me to go to Harvard one more year and then start on the Bulletin."
"How do you like that?"
"I like it fine. But that doesn't make any difference. It's all fixed up that way anyhow. Twice has made up his mind about it."
"I'm obliged to him, but why can't he let me alone the first day. They didn't do things like this on the Bulletin in the old days. Here it is four years and I want to sit down some place and talk with you."
They waited in the outer office less than half an hour before a young woman ushered them into Twice's room. Peter had seen him before. The description which Cheeves gave was not so very good after all. His hair wasn't very black.
"Glad to see you back, Neale," said Twice, "and you, Pat. Won't you just sit down. I'll be with you in a second."
"Miss Nathan," he called across the room to his secretary, "I want you to take a cablegram to Speyer in Berlin. 'Fine story today. We think Ebert is doing constructive service to humanity. Tell him I said so.' And oh, Miss Nathan, let me know the minute that call from Washington comes through. But don't disturb me for anything else. I'm going to be busy now for some time. Don't forget to make that note about finding out when Blake's contract is up. I want to know about that the first thing in the morning. And tell Mr. O'Neill not to go home until he sees me. You can hold the rest of those letters over till I get back from dinner tonight. You know where to get me. Just a minute. Take a note for Booth. The Milwaukee offer is far too low. Tell 'em I've been thinking it over and that the price for the series is now three hundred instead of two.' That's the cheapest crowd I ever had to deal with. Don't put that in the letter. 'Price for the series now three hundred instead of two.' That's the end of it."
He turned to Peter. "It's that diary of the sub-commander. I'm letting a few selected papers in on it. Miss Nathan—" In the moment of lull the secretary had gone.
"Well, Neale, I certainly am glad to have you back here again. We've got to begin to hammer sports. They're coming back terrifically. I put all the foreign politics in the paper because that's what I think the people ought to read. Baseball's the thing that actually gets 'em. If Babe Ruth and Lloyd George both died tomorrow Ruth would just blanket him. And let me tell you, Neale, George is one of the great men of our day. I have a very warm personal feeling for him. I don't suppose you remember Delehanty."
Peter was just about to answer that he had seen him several times but he wasn't nearly quick enough.
"Ruth reminds me more of him than any other player I've seen in the game," continued Twice. "Killed, jumping off a railroad bridge on June third, 1902. I've always made it a business not to be wrong. Remember that, Pat. It's just as easy to have the right date as the wrong one. It's just a knack. Anybody can do it. Come in some time and I'll explain the trick for you."
Peter broke in resolutely. "There was a man came down to the dock who said you wanted to see me. His name was Weed."
"Yes, Weed, good man. I dug him up myself. He came off a little paper in Reading. Of course he hasn't quite got the touch yet. The city's a little too big for him, but I think he's going to be a first rate newsman. Right now he tries too hard. He thinks he's got to dazzle people. The result is he's just a little esoteric. A little too esoteric. I must remember to tell him he's too esoteric."
"What is it you want to do with me?" asked Peter, returning to the attack.
"Yes," said Rufus Twice, "that's why I asked you to come here. I've been talking it over with Booth, the syndicate man, and a week from Monday'll be a good time for you to begin the sport column again. It takes a little time to get momentum up again but inside of a year I think we'll have a bigger list for you than when you went away. What did you have then?"
"A hundred and twelve," replied Peter.
"A hundred and twelve," repeated Twice. "Yes, that's just about right. Well, in a year we'll give you two hundred. I've got another name for your column. I don't like 'Looking Them Over With Peter Neale.' It's a little amorphous. How do you like 'Hit and Run?'"
"I'm not sure I like that at all," said Peter.
"That's just because it sounds strange to you. You'll get used to it in no time. Now, we want you to get your first column ready in a couple of days. We want to have a good margin of time there. I don't want to do any more than suggest, but I believe you want to say in your first column that fundamentally there is a kinship between war and sport. Take a football quarterback and you have the perfect prototype of the general in charge of operations. The line plunge gives you exactly the same problem the allies had in Flanders. If you have sufficient preparation the point of attack will be learned before you're ready. The quick thrust must be a surprise. Then you have the forward pass. What's that?"
"Why, I don't know," said Peter.
"An air raid," said Pat.
"Exactly. Work it out, Neale and you'll find it has almost innumerable possibilities. Of course you understand this is just a suggestion."
Miss Nathan ran in through the door. "Senator Borah's on the wire now," she cried.
"All right," said Twice, "I'll be there in a minute. While you were away, Neale, Miles told me I was supposed to take a look after Pat. That was an agreement he made with you, he told me. I've got that all fixed. He goes back to Harvard next week. His work in the officers' training camp will count him for a year. That means he'll be a sophomore and can play football. I think he might even make the team. Then the next year he comes to us. Four years of college is too much. A degree's just nonsense. I never got one and I wouldn't take an LL.D. I hope the arrangement's satisfactory to you. Will you please excuse me now? I've got to talk up disarmament in Washington. You and Pat come down and have lunch with me tomorrow. Ring me up at the house around noon. It's a private number but Miss Nathan will give it to you. Glad to have you back, Neale."
He was gone.
"Say, Pat," said Peter, "how did you know a forward pass was like an air raid?"
"Well, you see I've heard him do that a couple of times before. How do you like him?"
Peter did not obey his first impulse in answering. He suddenly realized that Rufus Twice was in a position to offer him the most useful sort of support in launching Pat safely and permanently into the newspaper business.
"I tell you, Pat," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a lot more sense than you'd think."
CHAPTER VI
"Let's go and dine at some terribly quiet place," suggested Peter as he and Pat came down in the elevator from the office of Rufus Twice. They went to the Harvard Club and sat in a corner of the dining-room where not even a waiter noticed them for the first half hour. Peter was distressed because he found it enormously difficult to talk to Pat. The years he had been away stood like a wall between them. It seemed to be an effort for the boy even to call him "Peter" as he had done for so many years. He was attentive and respectful. There didn't begin to be enough intimacy for banter.
In reply to questions Pat said that he had spent almost no time on football or baseball during his last year because the work at the officers' training camp had been much too difficult. He didn't know whether he ever could pitch again. In the last football game at school he had hurt his left shoulder and it was still a little stiff. It wouldn't keep him from football he thought, but when he tried to swing the arm up over his head he got a twinge in the bad shoulder. Anyway he had come to like football a good deal better than baseball. Twice had told him he ought to have a bully chance to make the team at Harvard but he wasn't sure. Perhaps he wouldn't have quite enough speed for a big college team.
"I said something like that to Mr. Twice," Pat added, "and he jumped all over me. He asked me if I'd ever heard of Freud and if I knew what an inferiority complex was, and I said I had, but he explained it all to me anyway."
"What is an inferiority complex?" asked Peter.
"Oh, you know—that business of thinking there's something wrong with you about something."
Pat rubbed the lower part of his neck. "Down here in the subconscious mind. A sort of a fear or shame or something like that gets stuck down there and you have rheumatism or you yell at people."
"What do you mean yell at people? Why do you yell at them?"
"I don't know exactly, sir. I guess it's to show 'em that you aren't inferior."
"Say, Pat, please don't call me 'sir' any more."
"I'm sorry."
"I guess there is something in that inferiority thing after all. I've seen it lots of times, but I never knew the name for it. Lots of pitchers come up from the sticks with all the stuff in the world and can't do anything because they're afraid it's going to be too tough for them. Say, Pat, you've got to pitch again some time. You know on account of this war I've never seen you pitch."
"Oh, yes. Don't you remember the year before you went away. We used to go over in the Park and you'd catch for me."
"That doesn't count. I mean in a game. How were you anyway?"
"Well, I guess I wasn't much good. Not with men on bases. If anything went wrong I always had a terrible time to keep from hurrying. I had to just stick the ball right over."
"Why?"
"Well, I always got to worrying that I was going to lose control. In my head I could keep a jump ahead of everything that was happening. I was always seeing fellows walking down to first. I didn't mind them hitting me so much. It was having 'em all walking around just as slow as they liked that got my goat. Sometimes I used to have nightmares about it."
"That's funny, maybe you can't pitch," said Peter. "It doesn't make any difference. You've had enough baseball already to help you a lot when you begin to write about it."
Pat made no reply.
"Don't you think so?" asked Peter a little sharply.
"Oh, yes, sir."
Peter made no comment. He realized that the sharpness of his tone had checked his advance into the confidence of Pat. That business about the nightmares was better. People didn't tell things like that to strangers. He tried to re-establish the mood.
"Speaking of nightmares," said Peter. "There's one I have a lot. Mine is about people running, running along the deck of a ship. I guess it's something left over from that time we had the fight with the submarine on the Espagne. But there isn't any submarine in the dream. It's just the people running that frightens me."
Pat merely listened. Peter paused a moment. "That's curious, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is," answered Pat.
A waiter came up now and took the order. After he went away they were silent. From the big lounging-room came the sound of a man more or less aimlessly fooling with the piano. After a while Peter broke the silence. He would have liked to know something about Pat's thoughts on this career which was being planned for him, and his attitude on the war and religion and women. "Are you in love with anybody and who is she and tell me about her?" Peter would have liked to ask a question like that, but he did not dare.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" was what he did ask.
"Mostly just hanging around to find out what Mr. Twice was deciding to do with me?" Pat answered.
Then there was more silence. The man in the next room was playing louder. "I wish, he'd either play that 'Invitation to the Waltz' or cut it out," said Pat.
So that was it. The "Invitation to the Waltz." It suggested to Peter that he bid boldly and offer close confidence in the hope that it would be met in kind.
"I wish he wouldn't play the 'Invitation to the Waltz' at all," he said. "That tune always tears me to bits."
He waited but Pat said nothing.
"I've never talked to you before about your mother. The first time I saw her she danced to that tune ... the 'Invitation to the Waltz.' She's a singer now but she was a dancer then. I don't suppose you even know her name."
"Yes," said Pat, "her name is Maria Algarez and she's singing now at the opera in Buenos Aires."
"How did you know that? I didn't even know myself that she was in Buenos Aires right now."
"I had a letter from her last week," explained Pat.
"She writes to you?" asked Peter in a good deal of surprise. "You mean she always has written to you?"
"Oh no, I never heard from her at all till during the war. It must have been a couple of years ago. Of course even when I was a kid I'd heard a little about her. You remember old Kate. Well, a long time ago she told me that my mother was an actress and a very bad woman and that I mustn't say anything about her to you. I don't believe I ever did, did I?"
"Kate had no right to say that. Your mother isn't a bad woman. She's a great artist."
"Well, I guess I never worried much about it anyway. Maybe I was a little sad about it at first, but I've forgotten. And then all of sudden I got this letter from Maria Algarez. She said she'd seen you in Paris and that you showed her my picture and she wanted to write to me. She told me all about her singing. After that I got a lot of letters from her. She'd say she'd just been singing in 'Butterfly' and then she'd tell me what it was all about. You know that funny broken way she has of writing things."
"Yes," said Peter, "I know."
"Well, it was a lot of fun. You see I'd never heard any of these operas but after I found out about Maria Algarez singing in them I used to go. If she wrote that she'd been singing 'Butterfly' I'd go to the Met and get a standup seat and then I'd write to her and tell her about Farrar and all the people I'd heard. She'd write back and tell me all the things that were the matter with Farrar and the way she did it differently and a lot better."
"She never showed any of those letters to me," said Peter.
"Didn't she?" asked Pat casually as if it made no difference. "Oh yes, I remember she wrote to me once that if I told you about going to the opera it might worry you and not to say anything about it. I don't know why. She used to send me clippings from the newspapers with the things critics said about her. They were all just crazy about her."
Peter in his bitterness was about to say, "Of course, she picked out the good ones," but Pat was in full swing and he decided not to throw him off his stride.
"You know I couldn't read this stuff at first. It was in French and Spanish, but there was an old fellow that taught at school and he was terribly excited too when I told him that Maria Algarez was sending me these clippings. He'd heard her sing, you know. He used to translate the clippings for me and he told me a lot about Maria Algarez."
"And now," said Peter, "I suppose you can read them yourself."
"Well, I can do the French all right but I'm not much on the Spanish. You see the old Frenchman, the fellow that taught at school, he was awful decent to me. He used to give me extra classes outside of school. You see we had a secret between us. It was like belonging to that kid fraternity we used to have in high school—Alpha Kappa Phi. That means something that nobody else knew. I can't remember what."
"Brothers and friends," prompted Peter.
"How did you know that?"
"You told me about it in one of the letters you wrote to me. But what was the secret you had with the old Frenchman?"
"Why, about Maria. He told me not to let any of the fellows know that Maria Algarez was my mother. He said that it was a beautiful romance but that here in America people wouldn't understand on account of American morality being so strict and that they might look down on me."
Peter was indignant. "Beautiful romance! Where did he get that idea? Maria Algarez and I were married just like anybody. Didn't she tell you that?"
"No," said Pat in obvious disappointment, "she didn't."
"I guess she forgot about it," suggested Peter.
"It doesn't make any difference to me, but if I run into old Mons. Fournier I won't dare tell him. It would spoil the whole thing for him. He'll think I was just boasting. Gosh he got a lot of fun out of it."
"Fournier, there's a Jacques Fournier that plays first base for the White Sox."
"No, this man's named Antoine. He's the old French teacher I was telling you about. Maybe they're related. He never said anything about it."
"In these letters about the opera and singing and all that," asked Peter, "did Maria Algarez ever suggest that you ought to try and be a singer."
Pat broke into unrestrained merriment. "Good God! no," he said and added quickly, "I beg your pardon, Father, I didn't mean to curse but it would be so funny if Maria'd said anything like that about me."
Peter was nettled. "If you're going to call me 'father' why don't you call her 'mother'?"
"I'm sorry; I know you don't like to be called 'father'. I won't do it again."
"All right, but you haven't answered my question. Don't you ever think of calling her 'mother'?"
"Maria Algarez? No, it would sound so funny. I've never seen her. She doesn't seem like my mother or anybody's mother. She's around singing before people and all that. And look at her picture."
He took one out of his pocket and handed it across the table. For the first time since the conversation had turned upon Maria Peter smiled. He recognized the picture. He too had had one just like it a good many years ago. It was taken two or three months before he married Maria Algarez. However, Peter let it pass without comment.
"What does Maria say about what you're going to do?" he wanted to know. "She hasn't raised any objections to your going into the newspaper business?"
"No, she never mentioned that or anything definite. She's just kept hammering away at one thing. She keeps saying Pat don't do anything unless it's something you want to do very much. And she says if a man or a woman has something like that he wants to do he musn't let anything in the world stand in his way. He must go after it."
"Have you been living up to that? Have you been doing everything you wanted?"
"Well, no," said Pat, "not since Rufus Twice took me over."
Peter brightened. Maria had a fight on her hands. Rufus Twice was right behind him even as he had been behind President Wilson. But the next moment he was again sunk in gloom. They were done with dinner and Pat asked with unmistakable eagerness, "Couldn't we go some place and hear some music?"
Peter throttled down his chagrin but before he could answer Pat added, "Do you suppose there's any chance of our getting in to the Follies?"
CHAPTER VII
The plans of Rufus Twice did not work out quite according to specifications. Pat went to Harvard, but he failed to make the football team although he remained on the squad as a rather remotely removed substitute quarterback. He was not even taken to the Princeton game, but he wrote to Peter that he would be on the sidelines in uniform for the game with Yale at New Haven. It was arranged that he should meet Peter immediately afterwards at the Western Union office. Pat's letters from Harvard were sparse and infrequent.
"Football is the toughest course I have," he wrote, "and the dullest. Learning the signals here is worse than dates. You can't even guess at them. You have to know. Last week Bob Fisher gave us a blackboard talk in the locker-room and made a comparison between war and football. It sounded just like Mr. Twice. Maybe Mr. Twice put him up to it. It's beginning to seem to me as if that man ran everything in this world. The only thing I've enjoyed much is going round to Copeland's. He's an assistant professor in English. I take a course with him about Dr. Johnson and his Circle. I don't care anything about Dr. Johnson. He seems to have been the Rufus Twice of his day. But I do like hearing Copeland. The fellows that know him well call him 'Copey,' but I haven't nerve enough to do that. He has receptions in his room at night. There's a regular thing he tells you, 'Nobody comes much before ten or stays after eleven'. He talks about books and makes them exciting. I'm kind of steamed up about an English woman writer called May Sinclair. I've been reading 'Mary Olivier.' It isn't much like any writing I've ever seen before. She just sort of sails along over a story and whenever she sees anything that seems important to her she swoops down and collars it. All the stuff that doesn't matter is left out. There isn't much here that matters, but you can't leave it out because if you do the dean tells you about it. Do you remember that suggestion you made to me that night we took dinner at the Harvard Club. You remember you asked me if I ever thought any about singing myself. I got rather interested and thought some about going out for the Glee Club, but I knew Mr. Twice would raise the dickens if I didn't play football. Sometimes we sing up here in the room. Just swipes you know. I'm getting so I can work out chords on the piano. I don't know anything about my voice because it's always a bunch of us that sings together. I do know though that I can sing a lot louder than the rest. I think if you're smart you'll put a bet on us against Yale. Those lickings we got earlier in the season don't mean anything. We're just beginning to come along now. I don't know why I say 'we.' I mean 'they.' I haven't got anything to do with it. Somehow though I do get swept along into the whole business. Mr. Copeland was telling us the other night that we all take football a lot too seriously. He says nothing will crumble and fall down even if we don't beat Yale next Saturday. I know there's sense to that, but somehow I can't help caring about it. Keep your eyes on Charlie Bullitt when you come up to the game. When I watch him work I realize how far off I am from being a regular college quarterback. He's got a bean on him. I'll see you right after the game at the telegraph office. I suppose you're going to do the story for the Bulletin. See that Harvard doesn't get any the worst of it."
Peter did watch Bullitt, but more than that he watched the huddled crowd of Harvard players on the sidelines. He couldn't help feeling that in some way or other Pat would finally get into the game. His old habit of making pictures beforehand was with him. There was Pat throwing off his blanket and running out to report to the officials. Peter wondered if he would know him from his lofty seat at the top of the Stadium. He felt sure that he would. Still every time a Harvard substitute went in Peter shouted down the line to find out if at last this was Pat. The picture he had fashioned for himself couldn't be wrong. Pat would run down the field through the blue team yard after yard over the goal line. If it only could happen to Pat. Once let him hear the roar of the whole Harvard cheering section racketing behind him and there could never be any more talk about his being a singer or anything like that. It wouldn't be exciting enough.
Just to sit there and watch made Peter feel that he was a part of one of the most thrilling manifestations of life. When the British went over and captured Messines Ridge Peter had watched the show from the top of Kemmel Hill. He and the other correspondents knew the exact second when the mines were to explode. They all knew that this might be the decisive push of the war. And as he waited for the great crash which would show that the attack was on Peter trembled. But the excitement didn't begin to toss him about as it did now when Harvard was playing Yale. Yes, it was true as Pat had said that there wasn't any sense to it, but there it was. It was a symbol of something much greater. Peter didn't know quite what. Maybe there was some significance for him in the fact that the Yale line was so much bigger and heavier. Harvard would have to win with speed and skill.
Maria had always said that there was no song in him. He knew that she felt he didn't appreciate beauty. But what could she ever show Pat that would pound a pulse like this. How could anybody dream of making a singer out of Pat when he might be a quarterback and after his own playing was done go on living the thing over as he watched the games year after year. And perhaps when Pat came to write he could put in it this thing that was sport, and beauty, and life and fighting and everything else worth while in life. Perhaps he could do the things that he spoke of in the letter about that English novelist, the woman that sort of soared over things and then swooped down on them. All this that was happening belonged to him and Pat. Maria and the boy had nothing like this in common. She just couldn't have an ear for football.
By and by Peter forgot all about her. He didn't even remember very much that Pat was waiting in the sidelines. The affair grew too desperate to admit of any personal considerations. The one present and compelling tragedy of Peter's life dwarfing all others was that Yale was winning. He had stationed beside him a young undergraduate from New Haven who was supposed to give him the substitutions in the Yale lineup and identify the Eli who carried the ball or made the tackle. This young man had gone a little more insane than Peter. He paid no attention to any questions, but pounded his fist on the great pile of copy paper which lay in front of Peter and shouted: "Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!"
"Don't do that," said Peter. He didn't like the sentiment and he hated to have his notes knocked around. The Yale youngster didn't hear him. "Touchdown!" he screamed again and almost jarred Peter's typewriter over the edge of the Stadium.
A fumble lost three yards and halted the Yale attack. There came a punt and the Harvard quarterback raced down the field. Pat had said, "Watch Charlie Bullitt." They threw him on the fourteen yard line.
"Who made that tackle?" asked Peter.
"Hold 'em, Yale! Hold 'em, Yale!" chanted the undergraduate reporter.
Suddenly Peter jumped up scattering his notes all over the press box. His typewriter fell to the concrete with a clatter. "Harvard!" he said, and then much louder, "Harvard! Harvard!" And as he shouted the ball went over the line. It was only by chance that he happened to hit the Yale reporter on the back the first time, but he was so swept along by the wildness of the moment that he continued to slap him violently until the youngster moved away. A little later there was a field goal and presently the game was over and Harvard had won by a score of 10 to 3.
Peter didn't leave the press box immediately. He was much too shaky to attempt the journey down the long steps to the field. The Harvard stands had poured out on to the gridiron and the students were throwing their hats over the goal posts. The Yale undergraduates remained and across the field came booming, "For God! For Country! And for Yale!" Peter knew that he would have to cool off emotionally before he could write his story. That would have to tell who carried the ball and when and how far. He couldn't just write, "Harvard! Harvard! Harvard!" and let it go at that. He must make most of his story on that run of Bullitt's. The thing was almost perfect in its newspaper possibilities. It couldn't be better. The tackle which stopped the quarterback on the fourteen-yard line had knocked him out. Peter wished he knew what Dr. Nichols had said when he ran out to the player. Then he remembered somebody had told him once that the doctor had a formula which he invariably used when a player was knocked out. "What day of the week is it? Who are you playing? What's the score?" That was the test which must be passed by an injured man before he could remain in the game.
Suddenly an idea came to Peter. That was just the touch he needed. His story was made. He almost jogged all the way to the telegraph office. His first two starts were false ones. Then he achieved a sentence which suited him and pounded away steadily. No doubts assailed him. He was never forced to stop and hunt for any word. The thing just wrote itself. "There's a little trouble," said the chief operator, "but I can let you have a wire in about half an hour."
"I've got half of it done already," replied Peter. "Make it snappy." They were holding him up and he stopped to look over what he had written.
"Cambridge, Mass., November, 19—By Peter Neale—The Harvard worm turned into a snake dance. Tied by Penn State, beaten by Centre and by Princeton, the plucky Crimson eleven made complete atonement this afternoon when it won from Yale by a score of 10 to 3.
"Joy came in the evening. Harvard did all its scoring in the dusk of the final period. The Crimson backs showed that they were not afraid to go home in the dark.
"Charles K. Bullitt, quarterback, who weighs 156 pounds, earned most of the glory. In the past this slight young man has been valued chiefly for his head work. He is rather a delicate piece of thinking machinery and it has been the custom to guard him a little from the bumps of the game. His rÔle has been like that of a chief of staff.
"The customary procedure is for Bullitt to peer calmly over the opposing lines and then make a suggestion to one of the bigger backs as to where it might be advisable for him to go. In general his acquaintance with the ball has been only a passing one. He is expected merely to fair catch punts and not to run them back. Indeed for the last two years Bullitt has fairly thought his way into a place on the Harvard team.
"But today the scholar in football suddenly became the man of action. He proved that he could function from the neck down. Standing at midfield, late in the third period, Bullitt received a punt from Aldrich. He switched his tactics. Instead of playing safe he began to run. Leaving his philosophic cloister, he plunged headlong into life. And it was life of the roughest sort, for Yale men were all about him. Fortunately for the little anchorite of the football field he had achieved a theory during his sheltered meditations and it worked. Whenever a Yale tackler approached him he thrust out one foot. And then, just to fool the foe, he took it away again.
"The zest of living gripped him and he went on and on over the chalk marks. It seemed to him that the rigors of existence had been overstated. Drunk with achievement he set no limit on his journey. But the Yale tacklers did.
"In the end the world was too much with him. Disillusion came in the form of two tacklers in blue who hurled themselves upon him. Their hands touched him and held tight. Down went Bullitt. The big stadium turned three complete revolutions before his eyes. Pinwheels danced. From a distance of approximately one million miles he heard thousands of people crying 'Harvard! Harvard! Harvard!' Curiously enough they were all whispering. And then he lost consciousness. After several quarts of water had been poured over Bullitt he came to. Dr. Nichols the physician of the Harvard team was standing over him. The doctor waited while Bullitt blinked a couple of times and then he propounded his stock questions which he always uses after a player has been knocked out. The test of rationality was, 'What day is it? Whom are you playing? And what's the score?' Dr. Nichols was gravity itself but Bullitt grinned and answered, 'It's Saturday, November nineteenth. We're playing Yale and the score is three to nothing against us but Harvard's going to get a touchdown damn soon.'
"Dr. Nichols gave it as his professional opinion that Bullitt was rational. Four minutes later as the Crimson swept over the line for a touchdown, he knew it."
Just as he finished rereading his story the wire chief came in and announced that he had the Bulletin looped up. Before Peter could hand him the copy Pat walked into the office. Peter felt just as he had done at the pier. He wanted to throw his arms around Pat. "It was wonderful, wasn't it?" he cried. "That's the greatest game I ever saw in my life."
"Yes," said Pat, "I guess it was a good game. Have you finished your story?"
"Just the lead. Do you want to see it?"
"All right."
"The wire's waiting for me. Hand it over a sheet at a time as soon as you get done."
Peter turned to his typewriter, but he couldn't go on. He kept watching Pat. He waited to hear him say something. Pat read on to the end without comment. Then he looked up. "Where did you get that story about Charlie Bullitt and Doc Nichols?"
"I didn't get it. I knew that they said something to each other and I thought that would be about it."
"The part about Nichols is all right. Those are the questions he always asks, but Charlie Bullitt wouldn't have said anything like that. Don't you know how serious they take football. They'd put a man off the squad for making jokes like that. He winked, did he? They shook him up a long ways beyond winking. I don't believe he said it at all. Who told you anyway?"
"I've said nobody told me. It's just one of those things that might have happened."
"Don't stand there holding on to that copy," Peter added in exasperation. "The wire's waiting."
"But you're not going to send it, are you? It's not true. It doesn't even sound true."
"I'm writing this story," said Peter. "Hand it in."
"All right."
Pat carried it to the operator in the next room. Peter began to write again but all the zest and excitement of it was gone. He had to fumble around and look at his notes. Nothing went right. It was almost three quarters of an hour before he got to the last page. Pat sat across the table from him saying nothing.
"All done," said Peter at last. "Where shall we go?"
"I don't care."
"Maybe there's a party for the team that you've got to go to."
"I don't have to go. I'm not going."
"What's the matter with you, Pat. You'd think Yale had licked us. Are you sore because you didn't get into the game?"
"No, I knew I wouldn't get in. Pretty near the whole squad would have to be struck by lightning before I got in. That wasn't it. I found out this afternoon that Copeland was right. The thing doesn't matter. It's silly to get so worked up about it."
"What made you think that?"
"You remember that man that dropped the punt in the first quarter, that fumble that gave the Elis the chance for their field goal."
"Yes, I remember. He had it square in his hands and muffed it."
"Well, that was Bill French. I know him better than anybody else on the squad. He's a corker. They hauled him out right after that muff and as he came off one of the coaches said something to him. I don't know what, but he flopped down on the seat right beside me and began blubbering like a kid. He was trying not to, you understand, but just bawling away."
"Oh, he'll forget about all that by tomorrow."
"No, he won't and nobody else will. They won't let him forget. He'll be 'the man that dropped the punt.' If we hadn't won he'd be around thinking of committing suicide. It's just rotten. There oughtn't to be things like that."
"Well, you can't have any kind of a real struggle without somebody suffering."
"Then let 'em suffer for something worth while. The thing's all dolled up in the newspaper stories. You come along with that yarn about Bullitt saying, 'We're going to get a touchdown damn soon' and all that stuff about his getting knocked out."
"Well, he did get knocked out, didn't he?"
"You bet your life he did but it wasn't all nice and pretty. Pinwheels and whispering cheers in his ears and all that. You weren't close enough to see what happened when Jim came out with the sponge."
"What did happen?"
"He put his lunch, but that isn't pretty enough to get in your story."
"That's not going to disable him for life."
"I didn't say it would. He was just a sick pup and he would have liked to go off some place and lie down. But you can't. I'd die for dear old Harvard and all that. He had to get up and go on with it. If you don't you're a quitter and you haven't got any guts. I tell you I think it's damn rot. It's phoney like your story."
"Maybe you'll have a chance to write a better one some day," said Peter. He had hard work to steady himself. He didn't believe Bullitt had been hurt any worse than he was at that moment. Pat didn't answer.
"Wasn't there anything that gave you any kick all afternoon?" asked Peter after a pause.
"Sure, just one thing. It was the Yale stands singing 'Die Wacht Am Rhein.' I know they've got terribly silly words, but there is something that has got guts. I think that's just about ten times as exciting as all the football games ever played. There was our crowd tooting away, 'Hit the line for Harvard, for Harvard wins today' and that big song with all those marching feet in it throbbing over across the field."
"German feet," objected Peter.
"Well, but they are feet and you can't take the beat and the sweep out of it. Maybe we did win the game but they did sing the heads off us."
"Another moral victory for Yale," suggested Peter.
When Peter came into his office one afternoon a couple of weeks after the Yale game he found Pat sitting at his desk waiting for him.
"I'm through," said Pat.
"What's the matter?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, they're through with me. They've fired me."
Pat looked across the desk expectantly awaiting a question. Peter didn't ask it. "I'm sorry," was all he said.
"You know about it. I suppose you must have the letter from the dean by now. It took me three days getting back from Cambridge."
"I don't know anything about it. You can tell me if you want to."
"Well, I got fired the worst way. It wasn't just flunking courses. I didn't even mean to do it. Not ahead of time anyway. It just sort of happened."
Peter waited and then suddenly he remembered his interview with Miles years ago, the day he came to the office in bandages and was never offered a chance to tell about it. A question would be kinder.
"What happened, Pat?" he asked.
"The proctor reported me. I had a girl in my room. No, that's slicking it up and making it sound romantic and pretty. What I mean is I had a woman in my room. You know ... a woman."
"I know," said Peter.
"You remember I was low in my mind after the football game. It let me down. I don't care what I wrote you before the game. I really did think it was going to be fine. I thought I'd get stirred by it and after it was all over the only things I remembered were Bill French sitting on the side-lines crying and Charlie Bullitt out on the field putting his lunch. You don't mind if I tell it this way—the long way."
"Take your time."
"Well, I know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me that I just had to go out and find something that was thrilling and beautiful too. I saw this girl—this woman—walking across Harvard Square. It was night and raining and blowing. The wind was almost carrying her along. You know it made her seem so alive."
He paused again. Peter could not resist an impulse to break into the story. "She said to you, 'Come along' or a something like that," he suggested.
"No, I spoke to her. I said, 'Why get wet?' It was dark and we sneaked up the stairs in Weld to my room. And then it wasn't beautiful at all." Pat buried his head in his hands.
This time Peter did put his arm around his shoulders. "That's right," said Peter, "it wasn't beautiful. You couldn't know that. Nobody ever does. I didn't."
Pat looked up and in the second he had snapped back to normal. The shame had gone somewhere; into Peter's protecting arm perhaps. He managed a smile.
"Peter," he said, "there's something more I'm sorry about. I'm sorry for what I said about that football story. It was a good football story. A peach of a story—all but that part about Charlie Bullitt and Dr. Nichols."
Peter grinned back at him. "That's my weakness. I can't help being a little yellow sometime."
A sudden elation swept over Peter. Here at last was a secret shared just by him and Pat. Of course, the Dean of Harvard College and the proctor and the woman who walked in the rain knew about it, but they didn't count.
"The proctor saw her when she was going out," Pat added just to finish up the story. There they left it and went on to talk of other things but presently Miss Nathan came in.
"Mr. Neale," she said, "Mr. Twice wants to see you in his office."
Peter got up. "No," she said, "it's Mr. Pat Neale he wants to see. He's been asking for him for a couple of days now. I told him that he was here this afternoon."
"What's Twice want to see you for, I wonder?"
"I know," said Pat. "I've just thought of it. He must have got the Dean's letter. Don't you remember it was Mr. Twice arranged about my going to Harvard before you got back? I suppose they think he's still my guardian."
"Do you want me to come in with you?"
"Never mind. Now that I've got it off my chest once I guess I can do it again."
Pat was gone for almost three quarters of an hour. Peter walked up and down nervously. He wondered what was happening. From across the transoms of Twice's office he could hear just the rumbling of the editor's voice. Pat didn't seem to be saying anything. At last he came back.
"What did he say to you? He seemed to be raising Cain."
"No, he didn't say anything much. At least not much about the Dean's letter. He had that all right. He got talking to me about Krafft-Ebing."
"Oh, was that all?"
"No, there was more than that. I report down here for work on Monday."
. . . . . . . . . .
"The trouble with him," said Rufus Twice, "is that he doesn't seem to understand that you've got to have a certain routine in a newspaper office. Deering tells me that he hardly ever gets in at one o'clock. Along about two he calls up on the phone and wants to get his assignment that way. And last night Warren says that he called up after ten and said, 'It's raining like hell. You don't really want me to go out and cover that story, do you?' Warren told him, 'Oh no, Mr. Neale. I didn't know it was raining. Of course, if this keeps up we won't get out any paper at all.'"
Peter couldn't laugh because Twice was telling him of the reportorial shortcomings of Pat. He spoke to Pat about it when he got home to the apartment. The old flat in Sixty-sixth Street was again theirs.
"But I get such lousy assignments," said Pat. "I think Deering's down on me. I suppose I've given him cause all right, but he's taking it out on me. He sends me where there isn't any chance of getting anything. If I do write something it never gets in the paper anyway. I did tell him it was raining. What was the use of my getting wet for nothing? They wanted me to go up to a meeting of the trustees of the Museum of Natural History. Now what could I get out of that?"
"Didn't you go up?" said Peter aghast. "He was just being sarcastic when he told you there wouldn't be any paper if the rain kept up."
"Oh, I know that. The Bulletin comes out every day all right. That's the trouble with it, but I took him up literally on what he said. I don't think the joke was on me. It was on him."
"You shouldn't do things like that."
"Suppose I had gone. There wouldn't have been any story anyway."
"You've got to quit supposing. Let the city editor do that. The worst-looking assignment may turn out to be something if you go after it."
"Yes, once in every twenty years those directors of the Museum of Natural History get into an awful row about whether to put the ichthyosaurus on the second floor or in the basement and if anything like that happened they'd turn over the whole front page to me."
Peter shook his head gloomily. "You've got the wrong spirit. Even if your assignments are no good keep your eyes and your ears open when you go round the city and something will turn up. That's the way to show them. Bring in something you pick up yourself. Every day of the year there must be whole pagefuls of stuff just as good and better than the stuff we get in the paper. Only we don't find out about it. Keep scouting for stuff like that. When you say newspaper work's stupid you're practically saying that life's stupid."
"Maybe it is," said Pat, "but I'm not so sure about that as I am about newspapers."
"It's the same thing."
"I don't think so. Here's the sort of thing that makes life amusing and isn't worth anything for a newspaper. I was riding in one of those B.R.T. subway trains the other day and there were two women sitting next me on one of those cross seats. One was fat and middle-aged and the other was younger. I didn't notice her so much. It was the fat one who was doing the talking. She was very much excited and she was explaining something to the younger woman. 'Why, I said to him,' she told her—'I said to him, 'Why, Mr. Babcock, I don't want to be sacrilegious but that girl she's so sweet and so pretty I don't even believe our Lord himself could be mean to her.' That made me satisfied with the whole day, but imagine coming in and trying to put it over on Warren or Deering for a story."
"A story's got to begin some place and end some place," objected Peter.
"The kind I get don't begin any place and so I don't have to wait around for them to end."
Peter went to Rufus Twice and told him that Pat didn't seem to be making any progress in general work.
"You ought to be more patient, Neale," answered Twice. "What's all this hurry about Pat? He won't be twenty-one yet for a couple of years."
"It's nearer than that. It's just thirteen months and three days." Peter could have told him the hours and the minutes too which lay between Pat and his eight o'clock appointment in Paris.
"That doesn't make him exactly aged. He's learning or he ought to be learning all the time. Even if he didn't get a line in the paper all year he wouldn't be wasting his time. Just being here helps him to pick up my way of doing things. Of course, when I say 'my' I mean the paper's."
"All that's perfectly true, Mr. Twice, but I have a very special reason for wanting him to get ahead right now. I want him to be interested. I want him to feel that he's important."
"There isn't any job around here that isn't important. You ought to know that, Neale. None of us count as individuals. We're all part of the Bulletin. Nobody can say that one cog's more important than another. Did you ever see a Liberty motor assembled?"
"Yes," said Peter with as much haste and emphasis as he could muster, but it was probably the convenient ringing of the phone which saved him.
"If Mr. Boone has anything to say in reply to the story we printed this morning he's welcome to come to my office and see me. That is if he's got facts. I want you to know that I resent his making his complaint through an advertising agency. I don't care if I am impolite. I intend to be. Don't bother to threaten me about your advertising. You can't take it out. I'll beat you to that. It's thrown out. Good-bye."
Twice swung his chair around and faced Peter. "I've just cost the paper $65,000 a year in advertising," he said cheerfully. "The Dubell Agency was trying to bawl me out about that Sun Flower Oil story we had on the front page this morning. Did you see it?"
"Well, I saw the headlines," said Peter untruthfully.
"I want you to read it. Weed did it. I told you I was going to make something out of that young man. Let's see, what were we talking about?"
Peter almost said, "The Liberty Motor," but stopped himself in time. "We were talking about Pat."
"Oh yes, I remember. I suppose, Neale, you and I could say without egotism that we're important cogs here on the Bulletin. I suppose sometimes it seems to us that we're vital cogs, but if you should die tomorrow the Bulletin would come out just the same. I'd give you a good obit but work would go on. Nobody is indispensable. Pat's got to get it through his head that he's just part of an army."
"I think he has," said Peter, "but the trouble is he feels that he's got a permanent assignment on kitchen police."
"But consider this, Neale. I didn't seduce Pat away from college and on to the Bulletin. I did promise him a job and he's got it. He can't expect to hang around here for a year or so and jump right in and write lead stories. What is it you want me to do anyway?"
"Well, I thought maybe it would be a good thing to shift him over on sports. He knows baseball and football and I'd like to have him come out with me and do notes of the games and things like that. That would be down his alley. That would interest him and I think he could do it."
"I don't think it's the best way. I think you're forgetting that general news is the backbone of a paper. All the rest is tacked on. You're wrong but I tell you what I'll do. I'm going to yield to your judgment. Go in and tell Clark that I want Pat to report to him from now on. Go and send Pat in. I want to have a talk with him."
Peter ran into Pat late that night in the Newspaper Club.
"Did Twice get hold of you?" he asked.
"He certainly did," said Pat. "He's decided to take me off general work and put me on sports. His idea is to send me around with you to football games and baseball and have me write notes. You know 'Diamond Chips' or 'Hot Off The Gridiron.'"
"Did he say anything else to you?"
"Yes, he asked me if I'd ever seen a Liberty Motor assembled and I said, 'No,' and he told me about it. Oh yes, and he said, 'When a reporter goes out on a story there are four things he ought to remember—When! Where! What! and Why!'"
"What's the matter with that?" Peter felt that Pat ought to show a little more delight and gratitude at being fairly launched on his career as a sporting writer.
"Well, I tried it out on that assignment I had to cover—the directors of the Museum of Natural History. It worked out like this—When—last night. Where—the palatial apartment of Mr. Harold Denny at 605 Park avenue. What—the annual report of the directors of the Museum of Natural History. Why—God knows."
Pat was busily engaged with three other men in a game called horse racing. Each contestant had two pool balls and all were lined up at one end of the table with a piece of board behind them. The starter's job rotated among the players. He sent the balls spinning up the table and the one which landed nearest to the rail on the rebound won the purse. Peter wanted to talk to Pat, but he seemed anxious to get away.
"There's a newspaper man over in the corner that I'd like to have you meet," said Peter.
"Who is it?"
"His name's Heywood Broun. He's on the World."
"Which one do you mean? The one with the shave?"
"No, the other one."
"I'm too busy," said Pat. "I can't be bothered. We're just going to run the Suburban Handicap, That costs fifty cents for each horse."
As the balls were shoved away Pat raced down the table with them shouting, "Come on Ulysses. Come on James Joyce." He ran over to Peter with a handful of coins. "Ulysses won," he said, "and James Joyce was second."
"What do you call them that for?"
"They're named after a book I've been reading."
Peter was about to head up town, but Pat urged him to stay. "Stick around awhile," he said, "as soon as Nick Carter shows up the quartette's going to have a concert."
"What quartette?"
"Oh just me and three other fellows. We're pretty good. At least I am. We get in a few swipes almost every night."
"Are you still going to the opera so much?" asked Peter anxiously.
"No, I haven't had any time. There isn't any opera now anyway but it's almost a year since I've been."
"Have you heard from Maria lately?"
"The last letter I got was almost six months ago. She didn't say anything much except she said that before long she was going to see me in Paris. I don't know how. You haven't heard Mr. Twice say anything about giving me an assignment over there, the annual meeting of the house committee of the Louvre or anything like that?"
"He hasn't said anything to me about it."
Peter didn't wait for the singing nor was he particularly worried about it. He was cheered by the fact that Pat had spoken so casually of the opera and of Maria. When he got home to the flat he noticed a big book in blue paper covers on the table. It was "Ulysses" by James Joyce.
"Why, that's the book Pat named the pool balls after." He picked it up and began at the beginning and then skipped ahead frantically. An hour or so later Pat came in. Peter pointed to the book and looked at him reproachfully.
"What does it mean, Pat?" he asked. Stumbling over it at random he read:
"In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended. Douce with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other, high piercing notes."
"I don't know," said Pat. "I haven't got that far yet. But what difference does it make what it means? That isn't the point. There's music in it."
As Peter was going to bed he cursed silently to himself. "Damn this music. They're even trying to play it on typewriters now."
CHAPTER IX
On sports Pat worked better and more cheerfully. It was Pat who devised the note at one of the Princeton football games, "The Tiger eleven has three fine backs and the greatest of these is Gharrity." And he came through splendidly when he was assigned to cover Marshal Foch's activities at another game and report in detail what the Frenchman did. Peter found the story posted on the board in the Bulletin office. In fact Twice had allowed Pat to have his signature in the paper. Right after Peter's own story it came—"By Peter Neale, Jr."
This was the third reading for Peter but he could not resist the pleasure of standing in front of the board in the City Room and looking over it again slowly:
"Ferdinand Foch, field marshal, was outranked this afternoon by Malcolm Aldrich, captain. The Field Marshal was received enthusiastically by the 80,000 spectators but he found he could not hold the attention of the throng once the whistle had blown. He became then just a spectator at one of the greatest football games ever played between Yale and Princeton. Come to think of it he was rather less a part of the proceedings than the young men in the cheering section behind him. Foch did not have a blue feather, or a girl, or a bet on the game. The greatest military leader in the world was assigned today to the humble job of being just a neutral. He must have known that momentous things were happening when 40,000 roared defiance and another 40,000 roared back. Undoubtedly he was stirred when huge sections of the Bowl turned into fluttering banks of orange and black, or of blue, but probably there was much of it which he could not understand. It would be hard, for instance, to explain to a man who had been at Verdun the justice of penalizing anybody for holding, nor did the rival teams pay any respect to the slogan 'They shall not pass!' They did it all the time.
"The young American officer detailed to help the distinguished visitor did his best. 'You see, Marshal,' he would explain, 'it's this way. Yale has la balle on Princeton's 35-yard line and it's premier bas with dix yards to go.' Just at that point Aldrich or O'Hearn would tear through the Tigers for a run and the American officer grew so excited that he would lose the thread of his explanations. Foch never did catch up."
"It's just the way I would have written it myself," thought Peter.
Pat was grinning when he found him. "How did you like my parody?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you see yourself in that story about Foch. That business about 'They shall not pass' ought've tipped you off. I thought that was a regular Peter Neale touch."
"Oh," said Peter, "you were just fooling."
"But here's the best of it," added Pat. He held out a letter from Rufus Twice which read:
"Dear Pat, I want to congratulate you on the story you wrote about Foch at the football game. It was excellent. All the facts were there and you handled them with a fresh and original touch of your own. When I saw the Marshal at luncheon today he said he was very much amused by our story—Twice."
"Well," said Peter a little bitterly, "if that was just an imitation keep it up."
Pat did keep it up although he grew a little restive during the winter. "If they're going to be many more of these indoor track meets," he complained, "I want to be put back on the Museum of Natural History. Clark there in the sporting department is just crazy about facts. You have to squeeze them all into the first paragraph. Even if anything exciting ever did happen there wouldn't be any chance to tell about it. You'd have to start out just the same and say how many people there were in the hall and what the temperature was and whether it was raining or snowing outside."
Still he had conformed with sufficient fidelity to remain in the graces of the powers on the Bulletin and when Summer came around Pat was assigned to go with Peter to Atlantic City and watch Jack Dempsey train. Pat's part was to write a half column of notes called 'Sidelights On The Big Show.' After the first day or so Pat lost interest in the actual boxing at Dempsey's camp.
"Where do you see anything in that?" he asked Peter as they sat at the ringside in the enclosure near the training camp of the champion. Dempsey was whaling away with both hands at Larry Williams, an unfortunate blonde heavyweight who seemed to be under a contract or some other compulsion to go two rounds every day.
"Watch him," exclaimed Pat as Williams clinched desperately and tucked his head over Dempsey's shoulder. "He looks like an old cow leaning over a fence."
"That's a good line," said Peter, "don't waste it on me. Use it in the Bulletin."
But Pat wandered off and loafed around the training quarters. When he came back to the hotel late that afternoon he had something else.
"This is all right, isn't it?" he asked. Peter looked over the copy which Pat had written.
"Dempsey is taking a great deal of electricity into his system," he read, "in preparation for his fight with Carpentier. This portion of his training is being handled by S. J. Foster, D.C.M.T., chiropractor, mechano-therapist and electrical therapeutist. In other words Doc Foster is the man who rubs Dempsey after his workouts. But the rubbing is only a small part of it. Doc Foster insists on that. His chief pride and reliance is the polysine generator. 'Why, that machine,' said Doc Foster, this afternoon, 'has got some currents in it that would break your arm in a minute. Yes, sir, they'd break your arm quicker than that.' And as he boasted he looked rather longingly at the fattest arm of the fattest newspaper correspondent. Of course, there are more soothing currents as well in the polysine generator. 'They just reach down after the deep muscles,' the old Doc explained, 'and grab 'em.' He neglected to add just what the electricity does with the deep muscles after it has grabbed them. Presumably it does not break them, but just frolics around with the muscles and then casts them aside like withered violets."
"Sure," said Peter, "that's fine. You don't have to bother with Larry Williams at all. I'll put all the stuff about him into the lead."
Next morning Peter awoke with a splitting headache. Toward noon it got much worse. He called Pat in from the next room. "I'm up against it," he told him. "I'm sick as a dog. Of course I could telegraph to the office and get them to send somebody down but I don't want to do that. This is your chance. You'll have to do the lead story. You say you can imitate me or parody me or whatever you call it. Now's the time to go to it. And say nobody has to know that I'm not doing it. Just sign your story 'by Peter Neale.'"
"I'll do my best," said Pat. Peter dozed off late that afternoon and the doze became a deep slumber. He did not wake until morning when there came a violent rapping on his door. In the hall was a messenger with a telegram. Peter opened it and read:
"What happened? We didn't get the story. Never mind telephoning explanations because I'm coming down over the week-end. I'll be at the hotel at one—Twice."
Pat was nowhere around the hotel and nobody seemed to know where he had gone. Peter was still mystified when Rufus Twice arrived. He thought at first of trying to conceal the fact that Pat had acted as his substitute and then decided not to. "It isn't fair to expect me to do as much as that," he thought. However he found that any such deception would have been useless.
"What happened to you?" was Twice's first question.
"I was sick. I had a blinding headache and I told Pat to do the story. Didn't he send anything?"
"Yes, but it might as well have been nothing. All we had to go by was the A. P. Dempsey cut loose yesterday and knocked Larry Williams down three times. The last time they had to carry him out of the ring. And our story was something about a man named Daredevil Oliver that's doing a high dive at an amusement park down here. It was signed Peter Neale but I knew it couldn't be you."
Twice picked some copy out of his pocket and flourished it in the air. "Lights. Gray mist. East wind," he read. "Good God! Peter, nobody can say I don't appreciate Walt Whitman or Amy Lowell, but I tell you Dempsey knocked Larry Williams down three times. The last time he was out clean as a whistle."
"You mean to say there wasn't any Peter Neale story in the paper?" asked Peter terrified.
"Yes, you get off all right. You don't suffer any. I did it myself. I rewrote the A. P. and signed your name. But it was just the merest chance that I happened to drop in at the office. You should have called me up and let me send a man down."
"But I didn't know he'd blow up like that. The other story he did from here seemed all right."
"Yes, but it wasn't news. I think Pat can write but somebody's got to stand over him and tell him what news is. The one he sent might have been all right for an editorial page feature though it was a little esoteric. What do you suppose 'gigglegold' means or is that something the operator did?"
"I don't know what it means but it's a word James Joyce uses in 'Ulysses.'"
"I'd forgotten," said Twice. "Of course. I was trying to place it. Great book, 'Ulysses,' never should have been suppressed. But you couldn't use any of it on the sporting page."
"Was it all like that?"
"Pretty much. It was about this Daredevil Oliver doing a high dive of a hundred and five feet into four feet of water. And there were only nine people there to watch him and how ironic it would have been if he'd broken his neck. And then some more about Eugene O'Neill and the tragic drama in America. Jack Dempsey or Larry Williams or the fight never got mentioned at all."
Pat came in without knocking. He was flushed and angry. "Mr. Twice," he said, "that story in the Bulletin signed 'Peter Neale' wasn't the story I sent. I wouldn't have written anything like that."
"I know it," said Twice, "that's why I wrote it."
"Didn't you go down to see the workout?" asked Peter.
"Of course I did. I didn't stay all through it. I waited until Jack Dempsey knocked that old cow Larry Williams down for the third time and then I got bored and went out."
"But that was the story," cried Peter. "Can't you see that."
"Why Dempsey could knock out Larry Williams a hundred times in an afternoon," objected Pat.
"That isn't the point," Twice broke in. "News isn't things that might happen. News is things that do happen. When a reporter goes out on a story there are four things for him to remember."
"I know," said Pat. "When! Where! What! and Why!"
"Yes, and there are two ways of doing a story. One of them is the way I want it to be done. The other doesn't count. I don't want you to argue with me. I tell you that your story should have been about Larry Williams getting knocked out. Some day you'll learn why. Pat, I'm not going to fire you. You've got stuff. Deering's had a crack at you and so has your father. Now I'm going to see what I can do. You're to go back to New York this afternoon. Report at my office on Monday. Hereafter you'll get your assignments from me and turn your copy over to me. I've never been licked yet and I'm not going to be licked now. I'm going to make a newspaperman of you or my name's not Rufus Twice."
After Twice had gone Peter asked, "Pat, what made you want to throw me down?"
"You don't think I made all this trouble for you on purpose?"
"Well, why did you go and write a story about Daredevil Oliver and leave Dempsey out of it?"
"It seemed so much more important to me. You'd have thought so too if you'd seen him. He just leaned back off the platform so slowly. He could have stopped himself any second. And then all of a sudden he couldn't. And he started to fall."
"But the story was signed with my name. Didn't you think of that?"
"Of course I did."
"Didn't you remember that I'd get blamed for it."
Pat was pale with earnestness and almost crying. "I didn't think anybody'd be blamed. I wanted to do something for you."
"Do you mean to say," asked Peter in surprise, "that you thought it was as good a story as I'd write."
"I thought it was a better story. It was a better story than you ever wrote."
Peter was silent with astonishment. Where, he wondered, did his son Peter Neale, second, ever unearth such amazing and audacious confidence. Suddenly it came to him that he was not the only parent. He remembered Maria. Obviously there was no use in arguing with Pat any further. Indeed he was almost a little frightened at so bold a blaze of spirit.
"Well," he said at length, "what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to report to Mr. Twice on Monday," answered Pat.
Peter sent down and got a "Bulletin" in order to find out just what it was that Peter Neale had written. He read only the first line, "Can Jack Dempsey sock? Ask Larry Williams."
CHAPTER X
Not until after the big fight did Peter get back to the Bulletin office. He found a subdued and cheerless Pat. "How are things going?" he asked.
"I'm learning a trade," said Pat.
Rufus Twice was more optimistic. "He's getting along fine," he reported. "I flatter myself that he's picked up more of the newspaper angle on things in the last two weeks than he got in a whole year before this. You see I call him into the office every afternoon and go over the paper with him and show him why we've used each story and the reason for handling it the way we do. He's been a good soldier. I'll tell you what I'll do. You take your vacation next week and I'll let him go with you. You ought to have a month but I don't believe the syndicate can spare you. Three weeks is the best I can do."
Peter and Pat planned to go out in the country some place, but they kept putting it off and two weeks were gone before they decided on Westport, Conn., and bought the tickets. On the morning set for the journey Pat came into Peter's room with the paper.
"Don't let's go," he said.
"All right but why not."
"Maria Algarez is here. They've got her picture in the Bulletin. It isn't a very good one. She got in from Argentine yesterday afternoon."
"Maria Algarez here in New York? Where?"
"It doesn't say."
A messenger arrived with a letter a few hours later. Peter opened it and read:
"You must not hide from me. I have called up the Bulletin and they say you are not there. When I ask for the number of your house they tell me it is the rule that they must not tell. Is it, Peter, that so many ladies call you up? The next time I am more smart. I say that your father is very sick and that I am the nurse and must know where you are. But I should have known. It is twenty years and the flat it is the same. You are like that Peter. You do not change. I thought not to see you and Pat until next year in Paris but from Buenos Aires I decided suddenly I will go to New York. Here I am. My hotel it is the Ritz. You and Pat you will come tonight at eight and have supper with me—Maria."
"I didn't want to go to Westport much anyway," said Pat.
He was more nervous than Peter when they came to the door of Maria's suite. She kissed Peter but Pat only held out his hand. Maria laughed. "He does not know me. I know him. He is like the picture."
Pat was almost silent during supper. He spoke up only once. Maria was ordering. "We will have some vegetable," she said. "What is the name? I do not know the English. Les Épinards."
"That's spinach," said Peter and added slyly. "Pat doesn't like spinach. He won't want that."
"Yes, I do," said Pat promptly.
Peter smiled but he had the joke all to himself. Pat had forgotten.
After dinner they talked sparsely with Peter doing most of the work. Suddenly Maria said, "It is necessary that somebody he ask me."
Peter was puzzled, but Pat understood. "I've waited for five years to hear you sing. Won't you?"
"It is nice, but it is the twenty years I have waited. First you must sing."
"I can't."
"Maybe. It must be that sometimes you have sung."
"Oh, just with other people. Swipes you know."
"I do not know what it is but you sing and the swipes I will do."
"Just anything. That's all I can sing—anything."
Maria moved over to the piano. "The accompaniment it is not necessary but it I can do if what you sing it is not too hard."
"It's just something you sing around with a crowd."
"Come nearer."
Pat moved over beside the piano.
"Allons!"
Maria looked up at him and whispered, "You can. I know."
There was no banter in it. Pat began a little husky at first but then louder and clearer.
"Down by the stream where I first met Rebecca |
Down by the stream where the sun loves to shine. |
Sweet were the garlands I wound for Rebecca. |
Bright eyes gave answer, she said she'd be mine. |
One, two, three, four, |
Sometimes I wish there were more. |
Ein, zwei, drei, vier, |
I love the one that's near. |
Ut ne sam si, |
So says the heathen Chinee. |
Fair girls bereft |
There will get left, |
One, two, and three." |
Maria looked up and smiled. Peter waited in an agony. He remembered that he had not heard Pat sing since he was a small child. He waited for somebody to speak. He did not know whether or not it was good. Somebody would have to tell him if this was the singing voice for which Maria had hoped.
She continued to look at Pat and smile and he smiled back now more boldly.
Peter couldn't stand it any longer. "Tell me ... Maria. Can he sing?"
Getting up from the piano she put a hand on Pat's shoulder.
"It is the fine voice that I know. I think it will be the greatest voice in all the world."
Peter took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Maria turned to him. "The time it is not up. I have come too soon. There is still the year. But you must not. We cannot wait."
"Ask him. Tell him," said Peter hoarsely.
"Pat," she said, "if you will come with me to Paris you can be the great singer. It will not be tomorrow. It will be two years. Maybe three years. You must work. You must do what I say."
"When?" asked Pat trembling.
"In the week."
Peter said nothing, but he looked at Pat. The boy continued to stare at Maria.
"Pat," he said.
His son turned to him.
"I want to, Peter. I want to."
Peter mopped his forehead again.
"He wants to, Maria," he said. "I give up my year." Peter paused. "I give up all my years," he added in a low voice.
"But you must not give up the years," said Maria. "We will go to Paris, all three. It will be more and more. You must watch and listen. He is your son Peter."
But Peter shook his head. "No," he answered, "it wouldn't mean anything to me. I wouldn't know. I don't care anything about tunes."
Maria ran her hands over the keys playing softly "The Invitation to the Waltz." She watched Peter but he gave no sign of recognition. He was fumbling in his pocket for something. At last he found it and pulled out a letter.
"You see it wouldn't be possible for me to go anyway," he said. "This morning I got this letter from Rufus Twice. He's the Supervising Editor of the Bulletin. He writes and says, 'I'm sorry about your vacation, but it is imperative that you give up the last week of it. The syndicate's doing great work on your Hit And Run column. Booth has just come back from the West and he's sold you to eighteen more papers. When you got back from the war I promised you two hundred. This addition brings it up to two hundred and ten. You see I've made good for you. But Booth says they want the stuff right off. Another week might mean our losing some of them.'"
Peter folded up the letter and put it in his pocket. "There's no chance anyway. It's the tightest race they've had in the American League for years and pretty soon the World Series'll be on and right after that football starts. With all that going on there ought to be something in the paper by Peter Neale."
THE END