"The sailors on that ship was awful," began Clara. "The sailors on that ship was just awful. The poor girl was sinking there in the water and they wouldn't let her into the lifeboat. Every time she came up, Margie, one of the sailors hit her over the head with an oar."
Margie began to laugh stridently.
"What are you laughing for, Margie? Did you hear what I was telling you? I said every time the poor girl came up a sailor hit her over the head with an oar."
"Wasn't she the fool to come up," said Margie.
Peter knew that was not a joke. Here was his case against life summed up in a sentence. Idiots about him were laughing. Couldn't they see the bitterness of it. "Wasn't she the fool to come up!" That was his folly. He was going on taking the buffeting of the oars and for no reason. And yet he knew perfectlywell that he would continue to come up no matter what blows fell about his head and shoulders. There was no use making any resolve to quit it all. Peter had no facility for suicide. He did not dare and he tried to justify himself in this unwillingness.
"After all," he thought, "it would be a pretty rotten trick to play on Kate. I promised her she could have Sunday off."
One piece of positive action he could and did take. He did not wait to gather any further pessimistic contributions to cosmic philosophy from "Dave Shean's Joy Girls," but walked out in the middle of Shean's drunken act. The comedian was pretending that the edge of the stage was the brass rail along a bar. Now he was swaying far over the orchestra pit and seemed about to fall into it. A woman in front of Peter screamed. Shean slowly straightened himself up and shook a reproving finger at the laughing audience. "My wife's bes' lil' woman in worl'," he said and did a hiccough. Still he seemed sober enough when Peter sitting on the aisle in the second row got up and started out of the theatre.
"Don't you like our show?" he called after him.
Peter flushed and made no answer.
"I guess I'm too natural," said Shean. "He can't stand it. You know how it is. He's a married man himself."
"Hey, Percy," he shouted after the retreating figure of Peter in a high falsetto, "you'll find a saloon right around the corner. Tell the bartender to let you have one on Otto Schmaltz."
Peter conscientiously walked past the saloon mentioned by the impertinent Shean and went into the next one three blocks farther on. He began to drink doggedly and consequently with slight effect. He was like a sleepless person. No blur came over the acuteness of his consciousness. He might just as well have tried counting sheep jumping over a fence. "Wasn't she the fool to come up!" recurred in his ears as if it had been a clock ticking late at night in a big silent house. Straight whiskey tasted abominably and returned no reward for his efforts. In the back room somebody was singing "Mother Machree" and cheating on the high notes. An idea for a newspaper paragraph came to Peter. Somebody had been conducting an agitation in the Bulletin against the use of "The Star Spangled Banner" as a national anthem on the ground that the air was originally that of a drinking song. "Weought to point out," thought Peter, "that it takes a few drinks to make anybody think he can get up to 'the rockets' red glare.'"
He wished his mind would stop pelting him with ideas. Thinking ought not to keep up when he hated it so. Leaving the bar, Peter took his drink over into the corner and sat down at a table. On the wall to his left hung a large colored picture labelled "Through the Keyhole." Peter looked at it and then moved his chair around so that he couldn't see it. He realized that he must get much drunker.
It was after ten when Peter came into Billy Gallivan's, the restaurant of the singing waiters. By now he could not see distinctly every sheep which jumped over the fence but he was still counting them. "I am drunk," he said to himself. "I am so drunk that nothing matters." But he knew that it was not so. Unfortunately the formula of Coué had not yet been given to the world and Peter lacked the prevision to say, "Drink by drink I am getting drunker and drunker and drunker."
And the singing waiters failed to inspire him with that reckless disregard for present, past and future which he desired. One of them, a fat man who had blonde hair and sang bass, eventually took Peter's order. He set the glass on the table and then moved away no more than a step to begin his song. "When I'm a-a-lone I'm lonely," he thundered in Peter's ear, "when I'm a-a-lone I'm bloo." Probably he was not as lonely as Peter. It made it worsebecause the song was so silly. "Every other girl and brother," the verse went on later, "has some pal just like a mother."
By this time the waiters were gathering from all over the long low room. Six of them stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Peter's table and sang together. "When I'm a-a-lone I'm lonely, when I'm a-a-lone I'm bloo." One of them went up high and quavered. Others went elsewhere. There was a voice for every level. It was part singing. And they swayed back and forth from one foot to another. The room swayed with them but it would not keep time. The rhythm of the room was much longer. Peter could feel it pound as if he had been a mile runner and the finish lay a hundred yards ahead of him. He still knew that he was a fool to come up.
After a long time the song stopped. The patrons of the place began to throw money out to the singers. With painstaking recklessness Peter fumbled in his pockets and found a silver dollar. It almost filled his hand as if it had been a baseball. He shook his head vehemently. What did he care if the count was two and three, he was not going to lay it over. The curve was the trick. The outside corner wasthe nervy spot to shoot for. Drawing back his arm he flung the dollar and it crashed against a table and bounded away. For a second the coin spun around and then it waddled in a long arc straight home to Peter's chair. He put his foot on it and picked it up. No, he was too sober not to know that a dollar was excessive.
These men were not very good waiters—any of them—but that did not make them artists. They were not very good singers either. Peter remembered that he had read in his little leather Bible, "You cannot serve God and mammon." That was the trouble. Art and utility should never meet. A fine tenor ought not to serve drinks and even indifferent singing seemed to spoil a man as a waiter. This theme had been in his mind before. A great dancer could not be a mother. Yes, that was the point where this speculation had begun. At last he found a quarter and threw that and he left a ten cent tip on the table.
"Hello, big boy," said a woman as he was going out. She was as blonde and as fat as the lonely waiter and much redder. Peter made no reply but went out and up the street to the Eldorado. Eldorado! That was a land of which the Spaniards haddreamed, a land of gold. They never found it. Perhaps that was just as well. Somebody in a tub had said, "Eldorado!" No, he didn't—that was "Eureka!"
At the Eldorado the waiters didn't sing at all. Special people did that. But mostly it was just dancing. The floor was filled with couples. A long flight of steps led down to the tables. At the foot of the steps a girl sat alone. She was a young girl and pretty but hard and brazen enough. And she didn't call him, "Dearie." She merely said, "Buy me a drink."
Peter sat down.
"My name's Elaine," she said. "But you don't have to call me that. I think it's sort of a cold name, don't you? I'm not cold. People that like me call me 'Red,' on account of my hair. Now you tell me your name."
"John Whittier," said Peter, reverting to the slumming name he had used in his Freshman year at Harvard. It was the name of the proctor in his entry.
"Maybe John Greenleaf Whittier," said Elaine.
"Perhaps you're a poet. Yes, I can see you're a poet."
Peter was annoyed. "John Whittier's not my real name," he said. "My name's Peter Neale."
That aroused no flash of recognition. Peter was surprised that this girl of the Eldorado should know John Greenleaf Whittier and never have heard of Peter Neale.
"I don't think it's very nice of you," she said, "not to give me your real name. I gave you mine. Are you ashamed of me?"
"No," replied Peter, "I'm ashamed of myself."
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to get drunk."
"We'll get drunk together. I'll help you."
Drinking with somebody did seem to help. At any rate after two rounds Peter achieved for the first time during the evening that detached feeling which he had been seeking. All the dancers now were dim and distant. The music was something which tinkled from down a long corridor. Even the obligation to drink seemed lighter. Peter merely sat and stared at Elaine. Gray-eyed, firm and flaming, it was a face which blotted out all other images. He found himself thinking only of this woman in front of him. And she was real. She was close. He could touch her.
"Who are you looking at?" said the girl.
"Elaine."
"I told you that people that liked me called me Red. Why don't you call me that? Why don't you like me?"
"I like you a lot."
Elaine made a face at him. In her no barriers seemed to have been set up against the potency of drinking. Already she was in the babbling stage.
"I'm not like the rest of the girls around here. You don't need to be ashamed of me. I've had a good education. I can prove it to you. Ask me about the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle."
"What about it?"
"It's equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. You see, if it wasn't for hard luck I wouldn't be in a place like this. I'm a lady. I know Latin too.Amo, that's love.Amo, I love.Amas, you love."
"Don't," said Peter crossly. The spell was broken. The woman was making him think. Now he could hear the drums again. This was the meanest trick of many which the fate of the day had played him. With all the evil women of a great cityto choose from it had been Peter's misfortune to happen upon an educated harlot. He had drugged himself steadfastly to be rowdy and here was a lady who talked about Latin and right angles.
Elaine sensed a mistake in technique. "Come away from here, Peter," she said. "Come on. You're just a tired little baby. You don't want to talk any more. You're my little baby."
Peter got up and had to catch the table to keep from falling over. "My name's Otto Schmaltz," he said and did a silly imitation of the accent of the comedian in "The Joy Girls." But the possibility of a revision of the material came to him. "My baby's bes' lil' baby in the world."
He would have gone away at once, but a man came down the stairs at that moment and approached the table. "Red," he said, "if you ever stand me up again I'll bust your face."
"Honest, Jim," said the girl, "I waited half an hour. I thought you weren't coming."
"Let that lady alone," said Peter. "She's with me."
He didn't like Elaine any more, but he knew that the code demanded that he should show resentment of the intrusion.
"Keep your face out of this," said the newcomer. "What damned business is it of yours?"
There was a ready-made answer for that in the code.
"You come outside and I'll make it my business," said Peter.
"Don't waste your time on the big souse, Jim," said Elaine clutching at the arm of the man who had threatened her. But the fact that the girl absolved Peter from all the cares of guardianship did not remove his responsibilities according to the code. "Come on outside," he repeated. He went slowly up the stairs but when he reached the sidewalk and turned around there was no Jim. Peter waited. He wanted very much to hit somebody and Jim seemed wholly appropriate. After a few seconds the man came out. He walked up close to Peter but he held his hands behind his back. According to the code nothing could be done until each had extended an arm.
"Come on," said Peter impatiently, "put up your hands and I'll punch your head off."
Jim suddenly drew his right arm from behind his back and clipped him sharply over the head with a bottle. Peter stared at him wonderingly for almosta second. Surprise seemed to halt the message to his brain. Slowly he crumpled up on the sidewalk. The blow was not painful, but the swinging arc of all things visible was now longer than ever before. The lights, the lamp-posts and the buildings slowly turned end over end in a complete circle. Peter put one hand to his head. It was wet and sticky. For a second or so he considered that and wondered. Finally he realized that it was blood. Lifting himself up on his hands and knees he saw Jim and Elaine scrambling into a taxicab.
"I'll bet she doesn't talk about right angles to him," thought Peter. For a moment he considered pursuit, but before he could make up his mind the taxicab had started. It swept past him no more than ten feet away. He could see the red head of the woman in the window. One week later he decided that he should have cupped his hands and shouted, "You hypotenuse hussy!" That night he could think of nothing. The fragments of glass lay about him. Peter examined them and found it had been a champagne bottle. After a bit he called a taxicab for himself and said, "Go to some hospital that's near." He had begun to feel a little faint.
A doctor in the reception room dug the glass out of Peter's scalp bit by bit and hurt him dreadfully. Every stab of pain cut through the fumes and left him clear-headed. Nothing was forgotten any more. He was able to compare the relative poignancy of two sorts of pain and decided that he did not care much how long the doctor kept it up. At last the job was finished and Peter's head bandaged.
"You were drunk, weren't you?" said the doctor.
"Yes," said Peter, "I was."
There was no other comment. Nobody would call Peter Sir Galahad on account of this fight and yet it was honorable enough he thought, even if the issues were a little mixed. Nor was it entirely unsatisfactory. At least he had been able to taunt Fate into an overt act. He knew a poem by a man who wrote, "My head is bloody but unbowed." Peter had often used that line in prizefight stories. Still he was a little sick now and perfectly sober. He looked at his watch. In an hour or so it would be dawn. There didn't seem to be anything to do but go home.
Opening the door of his apartment, Peter tripped over something in the dark and fell with a bang.Kate woke and called out in obvious terror, "Who's there?"
"It's only me," said Peter, "Mr. Neale. I decided not to stay out after all. I'm sorry I woke you up. I fell over the baby carriage."
Somebody at the office must have heard about the flight of Maria Algarez, for when Peter returned from Goldfield he had found at his flat a telegram which said, "Lay off a couple of weeks. Longer if you like—Miles, managing editor." That was an extraordinary thing because the material for Peter's column—"Looking Them Over with Peter Neale"—was only up one week ahead. A two weeks' vacation would mean not only that there would be no Peter Neale in the Bulletin, but that in thirty-one other papers throughout the country the feature would be missing. Peter wondered how Miles could suggest a thing like that so calmly. Maria's running away ought not to wrench a whole chain of newspapers in that fashion. In daydreams Peter had often pictured himself dying from flood, or earthquake or a stray bullet in some great riot. When the rescuers picked him up and bent over to hear what he might say his lips framed the words, "Send a story to the Bulletin!"
The Bulletin couldn't be bothered about people's dying or running away. The Bulletin was bigger than that. The newspaper yarn of Rusk's which had impressed Peter the most was about a man named O'Brale in San Francisco. O'Brale was secretly engaged to a girl in Alameda and then a week or so before they were to be married she had eloped with a man who said he was a Polish Count. According to Rusk by some strange coincidence O'Brale received the assignment to cover the story. He didn't beg off. He sat down to write it and he finished up his story with: "And when the news of Miss Lee's elopement drifted into the office of the Chronicle a reporter on the city staff sighed and said, 'Scooped again.'"
Miles must be a fool not to know that even after Peter Neale had been smashed that part of him which was the Bulletin would go on. A picture suddenly came to Peter. That was the way he did his thinking. "I can go on wriggling," he said to himself, "until the first edition."
Peter felt that it was up to him to go down to the office and show them that. He would have to show Miles. Miles was new to him. The managing editor traffic through the office of the Bulletin wasprodigious. After all Peter had been away for two weeks and it was only natural that there should be a new man in charge. Peter wasn't a veteran, but he had seen five managing editors in his time and probably a couple of hundred copy readers. "Looking Them Over" was different. That was something vital and rooted in the Bulletin. It wasn't so much that Peter Neale was a part of the Bulletin as that the Bulletin was a part of Peter Neale. "This other thing," thought Peter, "is just my private life."
He felt pretty rocky when he got up. During the night the bandages had turned bloody. It made him shaky to look at himself. Something of the rhythm of the buildings as they swung in the long arc and turned over was still in the pulse of Peter. All right, but he had seen Gans get up when his legs would barely hold him. Not only get up but walk deliberately across the ring to meet the charge of Battling Nelson.
Neale went down town. There was no one else in the elevator when he went up to the ninth floor to the office of the Bulletin, but Sykes, the head office boy, was in the hall outside the city room. He looked up and said, "Hello, Mr. Neale."
So far it was all right. Nelson had knocked outGans and Maria had run away since Peter and Sykes had last seen each other. Sykes had been able to take all that in his stride. Peter wondered if Miles would be as smart. There was a man at the desk, a fat placid man, in the office of the managing editor. Peter knocked at the door and went in before the man looked up. "My name's Peter Neale," he said. "You're Mr. Miles, aren't you? I got your telegram. It was nice of you, but I don't want any time off. There's a whole batch of stuff due for the syndicate tomorrow."
Miles nodded. He tilted his chair back three times without saying anything. It was like a pitcher's wind-up. Peter found Miles always spoke just after the third tilt. "Have a cigarette," he said. He also provided a match. Then letting the chair rest on the floor he sat looking at Peter. There wasn't any surprise or inquiry in his face. Peter felt acutely conscious of his bloody bandages. He sat waiting to hear, "Have an accident?" or something like that, but Miles seemed to take it as a matter of course that Peter was all cut up. Apparently the managing editor accepted it as something inevitable in an out-of-town assignment. Peter dreaded the question so long that he would have felt easier ifMiles had asked him about the bandages. He was prepared to say something about a taxicab. After all it wasn't fair that Miles should assume that he had been drunk just because he had. Presently the tilting began again. One, two, three, Peter counted to himself. "I want you to do baseball in addition to your column," said Miles. "Monday isn't too soon to start in, is it?"
"Monday's all right," said Peter.
"All right," said Miles. "You need a match," he added. "Your cigarette's gone out."
Neither of them said anything then for a minute. Miles continued to look at him and ignore the bandages.
"All right on Monday," said Peter and went across the hall to his own office. Putting the catch on, he closed the door. Miles hadn't talked about his private life, but Peter felt that he must know about it. Probably he was thinking about it every time he quit tilting. That was the trouble.
Out there in the City Room they were talking about it too. They must be. Nothing happened to anybody on the Bulletin that didn't get talked about in the City Room. No district in the town was covered so perfectly as the reporters covered the livesof each other. When Woolstone, the Sunday editor, started living with that little girl, Miss Gray, the one who wrote the piece about the Haymarket, it was common gossip within a week. Woolstone hadn't told anybody. Indeed he hadn't said a word except that the Haymarket story was the finest piece of English prose since De Quincey. But somehow after that everybody knew that Woolstone was living with Miss Gray.
Peter put a sheet of paper into his typewriter and rapidly wrote at the top of the upper right-hand corner Neale—Sports—Syndicate. Then he turned half of the sheet through the machine and wrote "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale—(Copyright)." There he stuck.
The sheet of paper had not been blemished but after a while Peter took it out and wrote the same thing on another. After that he sharpened a pencil. He wanted to get a drink of water but that was out in the City Room. It was foolish of him not to have brought cigarettes. Miles had cigarettes, but Peter didn't want to face that scrutiny any more. "Gans," he wrote, "was not outboxed but he was outfought." That wouldn't do. There had been a line almost like that in his fight story. Of course he might do somesort of prediction story about how long Battling Nelson would hold the title. A man who took all that punishment couldn't last so very long. But suddenly Peter realized that he didn't give a damn about Gans or about Nelson. The Bulletin didn't make so much difference either. Maria was more than all this. He'd ask Miles to send him to Africa or China or some place. Sedition seeped in. Baseball wasn't exciting enough to make him forget. He tried to make his mind do him a picture of Matty bending back and then shooting over his fast one. Instead he saw Maria Algarez standing in the middle of the big stage.
That wouldn't do. Peter gripped the edge of his desk. If his mind was only something that would stand up to him and fight like a man. He could heave it back all right if only he could get a hand on it. Instead he pushed against the desk. Very slowly the picture began to fade. Maria was taller and broader. Now it was Matty. Dim but unmistakably Matty. But the figure stood in the centre of the big stage. He must get him out of there. If he was to hold the thing it would have to move and take on life. Suddenly Peter realized the trick. The picture ought not to be Matty throwinghis fast one. The fadeway! That was the thing which marked Matty in his mind above all others. He closed his eyes in order to help. The figure bent back. The arms came up over the head. The left leg kicked. No, it was not Maria kicking. This was a huge clumsy leg which moved slowly, ever so slowly, grinding power for the swing of back and shoulders which was to come. Then there was the lunge forward. Matty had thrown the ball straight at his head. He conquered the impulse to duck. This was the slow ball. He could see the seams. Now it was slower and growing bigger and bigger all the time. It would walk past him shoulder high. Peter swung at it and the ball wasn't there. A sudden decision had come upon it. Down it swooped and out. It had passed him. Peter opened his eyes. He didn't want to go to China or Africa after all. Honus Wagner and the Pirates would be at the Polo Grounds on Monday.
Peter got up and started for his drink of water. There were only three men in the City Room. Charlie Hall was sitting at his desk right beside the ice cooler. Perhaps Charlie had had a lot of fun out of that story of Maria Algarez running away. Women didn't run away from Charlie. Peter rememberedthe time Charlie was marooned in the Press Club. He stuck in the poker game for two days not daring to leave the building. The elevator man had told him of the woman who kept coming in every half an hour or so and asking for Mr. Hall. According to the elevator man she was very much excited. Charlie said it sounded a lot like Ethel. He wouldn't be surprised if she wanted to shoot him. She had often threatened to do that. Twice during those two days Peter had volunteered to go down and scout around. Both times he had seen a woman pacing the sidewalk just across the street from the Press Club. It looked like the same woman. Charlie said probably it was. Ethel was very determined. Finally they had to get a policeman to come and tell Ethel to go away. Nobody ever seemed so glamorous to Peter as Charlie during those two days. Peter wondered if any woman would ever want to shoot him.
There was no way of getting to the ice cooler without passing Charlie. Peter did it slowly. Charlie looked up. "Have any fun at the fight?" he asked.
"No, it was too hot. Anyhow I wanted to see Gans win."
"It was a great story you wrote."
"I'm glad you liked it."
"Too bad about the nigger—he was the smartest of the lot, wasn't he?"
"Yes, and don't forget he could hit too. Nelson wouldn't have had a chance with him five years ago."
Peter was turning to go back to his office when Charlie Hall thrust out a hand and slapped him on the shoulder. "I hear you've had some hard luck," he said. "I'm sorry."
Peter couldn't answer for a second. "I guess nobody ever is happy so very much," Charlie continued, sensing that Peter was stumped for the moment. "Now you take me. I suppose you'd say I was happily married. I've been married fifteen years and I've got five children. Well, sometimes when I sit down at home I wonder, 'What's the use of all this anyway?' There ought to be a law that reporters can't get married. It's bad for them and it's bad for the paper."
"I guess you're right," said Peter.
"The thing to do is not to take women seriously. They'll bust hell out of you if you do."
Peter brightened perceptibly. "Do you rememberthat time you got stuck up in the Press Club and the girl was waiting downstairs to shoot you?" he inquired with a certain eagerness.
"Oh yes, sure, Gracie."
"No, that wasn't the name. It was Ethel."
"Ethel?—I remember now. I had it mixed up with a business in Chicago. Ethel! Oh yes, indeed. She was a wild one. She was just about the most dangerous woman south of Fifty-ninth Street. That was a couple of years ago. I can't stand so much excitement now."
"Go on," said Peter, "I suppose you'll be telling me you've reformed."
"That wouldn't be so far off the truth. Anyhow where do you get off. Who beaned you?"
Another burden of reticence was snatched away. At last Peter had a chance to tell somebody about the bandages.
"I was with a woman up at the Eldorado. You know the Eldorado. And a big fellow comes over and tries to butt in. I bawled him out and we went up on the sidewalk. I made a couple of passes at him and he hauled off and clipped me with a bottle—a champagne bottle. I guess I was pretty drunk."
Charlie Hall nodded his head. "You're all right. I'm glad. Some of the boys around here have been telling me that you were all busted up about that girl you married. I'm glad it's not so. I knew you had too much sense for that. There isn't a one of them in the whole world that's worth getting busted up over. Don't take 'em seriously. That's what I say. I ought to know. I've been married fifteen years. Well, almost fifteen years. It'll be fifteen years in October."
"I'm all right, Charlie. You tell that to the rest. I'm back on the job, you know."
"That's good. It wouldn't seem like the Bulletin without you."
Charlie turned to the story in front of him and put one second of energy into pounding the space bar before coming back to conversation.
"Where is this Eldorado?" he asked.
"Fiftieth Street and Seventh Avenue."
"Does it stay open all night?"
"Well, it's open all night but after one there's a man on the door and he won't let you in unless he knows you."
"Are they strict about it?"
"Pretty strict, lately," said Peter, "but that's allright, Charlie. Any time you want to go up late you let me know. I'll be glad to show you round. I'm always free nights. Any night at all—That is any night except Sunday."
THE baby carriage was kept in the kitchen thereafter and Peter did not see it again until Sunday, his first Sunday at home. Kate left the flat very early. Peter could not very well object to that because she said she was going to mass. He wished that she might be converted to one of the eleven o'clock denominations, but he supposed at her age there was small hope of that. She would be gone, she told him, until nine or ten o'clock in the evening. Her niece, the one who lived in Jamaica, had a new baby five weeks old. Kate was going there right after church. Peter thought that if he had Kate's job he would prefer to spend his day off at an old folks' home or some other spot exclusively mature.
Still he could understand the psychology of it. Out in Jamaica, Kate could sit around and when the baby cried she need not move hand or foot. She could watch other people bustle around and fulfillits needs. And then every now and then she might give advice and see it carried out. He himself had spent many a day off in the office of the Bulletin sitting on the desk of somebody who was working and interrupting him.
Before Kate left she gave Peter a complete list of directions for the baby's day and also a problem for him to ponder over. "What will I be calling the boy?" she wanted to know. "I find it hard to be talking to him and him with no name."
"I'll think it over," Peter told her. After she left he did think it over. He went into the baby's room and looked at him as he lay there to see if the child suggested any name in particular. Being asleep he seemed a little more impersonal than usual. Of course, Peter Neale was a pretty good name, but there didn't seem to be any point in calling him that unless in some way or other he seemed to be Peter. He did sleep with his head buried face down in the pillow but that was an insufficient bond. Perhaps there were millions of people in the world who slept that way. Probably there were no statistics on the subject.
Maybe one Peter Neale was enough. It did mean something. After all it was Peter Neale who hadwritten in the Bulletin: "If Horace Fogel goes through with his plan of making a first baseman out of Christy Mathewson he will be committing the baseball crime of the century. Mathewson, or Matty as his team mates call him, is still green, but he has in him the makings of one of the greatest pitchers the world has ever known. He has the speed and control and more than that he has a head on his shoulders. Horace Fogel hasn't."
And they didn't switch Matty to first base after all and now everybody was beginning to realize that he was a great pitcher. But Peter Neale knew it first of all. More than that it was Peter Neale who had begun his round by round story of the Gans-Nelson fight, only two weeks ago, with the memorable line, "The Dane comes up like thunder." He had invented the name of "Hooks" for George Wiltse and had written that "Frank Bowerman runs the bases like somebody pulling Grover Cleveland in a rickshaw." And Peter was still progressing. He would go on, years hence, to make the most of McGraw's practice of starting games with Rube Schauer and finishing them with Ferdie Schupp by contriving the lead, "It never Schauers but it Schupps." Perhaps he had prevision enough torealize that it was he, Peter Neale, who would eventually ascribe to Jack Dempsey the motto, "Say it with cauliflowers" and write after a Crimson disaster on the Thames, "Harvard's most perplexing race problems appear to be crewish and Jewish."
He looked at the sleeping child and wondered if there were any leads like that in the little head. By and by, of course, the baby would grow up and in some newspaper there would be articles under his name. Peter would like to see the articles before he was willing to have them signed "By Peter Neale." Every now and then somebody wandered into his office at the Bulletin and asked him to use his good influences with the managing editor. Peter always said, "Will you let me see something you've written." Here in front of him was a candidate not only for a job but for his job. And the applicant had nothing to show.
It was a hot bright Sunday and Kate had recommended that the baby go out. The carriage was deplorable. Peter had not bothered to look at it before, but now he examined it and found it wholly lacking in distinction. It could not be that all the things which were wrong with it had resulted from his falling over it a few mornings back. That hadhurt him much more than the carriage. The paint was splotchy and all the wheels squeaked. Kate must have seized the first available vehicle in the neighborhood. What with that carriage and his heavily bandaged head he felt that the caravan which he was about to conduct would be disreputable. The numerous chin straps which held the bandages in place made it difficult for Peter to shave. In order to avoid that difficulty Peter hadn't shaved. He only hoped that nobody in the Park would stop the procession and ask him to accept a quarter. Peter practised an expression of scorn in front of a mirror in order to be ready for some such contingency. Nature had endowed him with a loose scalp. He could wiggle both ears, together or separately. So far this had never been of much use although he found that it helped him enormously to qualify as a nursery entertainer. But there was another manœuvre which he used habitually and successfully to indicate utter disagreement and contempt. He could elevate his right eyebrow without disturbing the other. This never failed to strike terror to all observers. Peter had that so well in hand that he needed no mirror practice to perfect it. He worked on curling his lip, a device which was new to him.
Combined with an elevated eyebrow an effect was produced ample to carry off the handicaps of both carriage and bandages.
Nevertheless, he felt a little conspicuous when he started for the Park. And pushing a carriage was dull work. There was no future to it, no competitive value, no opportunity for advancement. One could not very well come to the point of being able to say, "I can wheel a carriage a little bit better than anybody else in New York." The thing was without standards. Of all outdoor sports this was the most dreary and democratic. But in spite of the ease of manipulation he was under the impression that a carriage required constant attention. Quite by accident he discovered that it would space nicely between shoves if he happened to let go of the handlebar. This led to the creation of a rather amusing game. Peter called it putting the sixteen pound carriage.
Not far from the Sixty-fifth Street entrance of the Park he found a large hill and for a moment it was clear of pedestrians. Standing at the foot of this hill Peter gave the carriage a violent shove and let go. Up the hill it sped until its momentum was exhausted and then it rolled back again. The gamewas to try and make it reach the top. Peter never succeeded in that although he came within four feet eight inches of accomplishing the feat which he had set for himself. He was handicapped by the fact that he did not quite dare to put all his back and shoulders into the preliminary shove. Indeed on his best heave, the one which took the missile within four feet eight inches of the top, the carriage careened precariously. More than that it almost hit a stout woman who was coming down the hill. She stopped and spoke to Peter. "Haven't you got any better sense than to do a thing like that," she said. "That carriage almost upset. I've a good mind to follow you home and tell the father of that baby some of the things you're doing with his child. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, a grown man carrying on like that. And on Sunday too."
Peter didn't want her to follow him home and so he merely said, "Yes, mam, I won't do it any more."
And for that day he kept his word. However, the baby did not seem to mind much. It continued to sleep. Peter pushed the carriage aimlessly about for a little while, never letting go of the handlebar. He felt like an Atlantic City Negro with a wheel chair hired for the day by a tired business man.There was nobody to whom he could talk. The baby had slept so long by now that Peter began to worry that something might be wrong with him. Bending over the carriage he ascertained that the child was still breathing. He wished it would wake up. Of course he might not actually be company if aroused but he seemed even less animated when asleep.
Perhaps Christy would be a good name for him. Christopher Mathewson Neale had a fine resounding swing to it. Still maybe Matty wouldn't turn out to be a great pitcher after all. Peter was tremendously confident about him, but it might be best to wait until time had tested him. After a World's Series or something like that one could be absolutely certain. No good taking chances until then. It was still within the bounds of possibility that Matty might be a bloomer and it would hardly be fair to name the child after somebody in the Three I League.
Finding a tree and a bench Peter sat down to continue his speculations. How about a newspaper name? Greeley Neale wouldn't be so bad. Yes, it would. Everybody would be sure to make it Greasy Neale. A prizefight name offered possibilities.Nelson Neale, for instance, had alliteration. Peter had given the lightweight a name—the Durable Dane was his invention—and it seemed no more than a fair exchange to take his in return. Still he had never been convinced that Nelson was a really first class man. He had neither speed nor a punch. It was just stamina which carried him along. The youngster ought not to go through life head down. Besides a name like that would serve to remind Peter of his return from Goldfield and the flight of Maria.
Just then a sound came from the carriage. It was a gurgle. Peter pushed back the hood. The baby looked at him fixedly and Peter fancied that there was a certain trace of emotion in the small face. Surprise seemed to be indicated. And it was not altogether agreeable surprise for as Peter returned the stare the baby's right eyebrow went up and the left one didn't.
"God!" said Peter, "he is Peter Neale."
But there must be more ceremony than that. Peter looked around to see that he and the baby were alone. Then he spoke to him distinctly although emotionally. He realized now that his intuition had been sound when he had said way back weeks ago at the Newspaper Club. "My son has just beenborn." He had never had any doubt about his physical paternity but that did not seem important. It was spiritual kinship which counted and an eyebrow like that was a thing of the spirit.
"You're my son all right," said Peter, "and you're going to have my name. Peter Neale, that's your name."
He thought it would complicate things to go into the question of whether he should be Peter Neale, Jr. or Peter Neale, 2nd. The Peter Neale was the important part of it. "I guess maybe you can do a lot more with that name than I have, but I've made it a good newspaper name. You can make it a better one maybe. We'll wait and see." He reached out and took the small hand of Peter Neale and shook it. The prayer which went with it was silent. "O God, give him some of the breaks and I will." That completed the christening. It was all that young Peter ever got.
The red-headed boy up the block who had contributed disturbing ideas in other fields also threw a bombshell into Peter's boyhood theology. "Can God do anything?" was his catch question. "Of course He can," replied Peter. "Well, I'll just bet you a million billion dollars He can't make a trolleycar go in two directions at the same time." Peter didn't see how He could. He puzzled over the problem for months and at last he decided that maybe God could work it by making the trolley car like an elastic so that it could be stretched up town and down town at the same time. It was not an entirely satisfactory solution of the problem. If a passenger stood in the middle of the car he wouldn't get any place at all.
But for the moment Peter was not much concerned with the potential relationship between the Deity and young Peter. He could bide his time and think up an answer for the day when the child should ask him, "Who's God?" The immediate problem was what place he should fill on the Bulletin. Eventually, of course, he would conduct the column called, "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale." Already there were thirty-one papers in the syndicate and some day Peter could step down and the column would still be "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale."
It would be pleasant not to die in the office but to have ten years or so with no worries as to whether Jim Jeffries could have beaten John L. Sullivan in his prime. And he didn't want to go on foreverwriting on the question of whether more nerve was required to hole a ten foot putt in a championship match or bring down a halfback on the five yard line. In those last ten years he would have all the fun of reading a Peter Neale column without having to write it. The job had come to him by the merest chance. But young Peter could be trained from the beginning for the work. "I'll start his education right now," Peter resolved and then he looked at the baby and decided that there didn't seem to be anything specific which could be done immediately. Still an early start was possible. Long division ought to be easy and interesting for a child who knew that it was something used in computing batting averages. Of course young Peter would receive an excellent general education. There wasn't any reason why a sporting writer shouldn't be a person of well rounded culture. Sometimes Peter regretted that his Harvard career had lasted only a year. Probably his sporting poems might have been better if he had been able to go on and take that course in versification. Fine arts and history would not be a waste of time.
There was never any telling when some stray scrap of information could be pressed into service for asporting story. For instance Peter had been struck by that quotation from Walter Pater about the Mona Lisa which he had happened upon in a Sunday newspaper story. Two years later he had been able to use it about Ed Dunkhurst, the human freight car, by paraphrasing the line to read, "Here is the head upon which all the jabs of the world have come and the eyelids are a little weary."
The quotation had given distinction to the story. Sporting writing ought to be just as distinguished as a man could make it. The days of the lowbrow commentator were disappearing. Young Peter might very well carry on and expand the tradition which he had begun. To be sure, there wasn't any hurry about giving him the job. Twenty-five years more for himself would be about right. By that time young Peter would be just twenty-five years and three weeks old. A year or so of general work on the city staff of the Bulletin might be good for him. Indeed anything on the newspaper would do for a start. That was, anything real. Book critics and people like that weren't really newspaper men. On his fiftieth birthday, perhaps, Peter would go to the managing editor and say, "I'm through and there's just one thing I want from the Bulletin. Ithink it's only fair that you should let me name my successor."
And the managing editor would say, "Why, of course, Neale, who is it to be?"
"His name is Peter Neale."
Naturally, the managing editor would express some regrets. He would pay a warm tribute to the worth and career of Peter Neale, at the end of which Peter would remark, "I'm glad you feel that way about it, sir." After that formality the substitution would be accepted. The line of Neale would remain unbroken.
All this gazing into the future cheered up Peter so much that he started out very gaily that afternoon to compose a column and mind the baby at the same time. Unfortunately the five o'clock feeding time came around just as he was getting into the swing of an article on the advantages of being lefthanded for the purposes of baseball. Somebody had told him that the Bible had something to say on the subject. Peter found it in the twentieth chapter of Judges where he read: "The inhabitants of Gibeah.... Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; everyone could sling stones at an hair-breadth, and not miss."
That was just meat for Peter.
"The average southpaw of today," he began, "may have even more speed than the inhabitants of old Gibeah but his control isn't so good." Before he could develop the theme further young Peter began to cry. When searched nothing seemed wrong with him but then Peter remembered about the bottle. He was already half an hour late. The milk was mixed and ready in individual containers in the icebox but Kate had told him to be sure and have it warm. Peter had never warmed anything in his life. After some thought he decided that he could put water into a pot and heat it and then dip the bottle in. He waited until the water was boiling. But the next problem was more difficult. What did Kate mean by warm? How hot could the child stand it? His first three estimates were wrong. Young Peter spit out the milk and yelled. It was annoying for the mixture was hardly steaming.
Cooling it seemed ever so much more difficult than heating. Peter stood the bottle on the window ledge and waved it over his head and blew on it without much appreciable effect upon the temperature. More than half an hour was wasted before the child consented to accept the milk. When Peter wentback to his column about lefthanders the spirit and swing of the thing had disappeared. He tried to write a poem to Rube Waddell called, "The Great Gibean" and couldn't find any rhymes. The notion limped home.
Kate's ten o'clock turned out to be past midnight. Shortly before her return the baby went to sleep.
"How did you find your niece's child?" asked Peter.
"Oh, she's fine," said Kate. "She's a girl. A fine little girl, but she's not a patch on himself."
"He's got a name now," said Peter. "We won't have to be saying 'him,' and 'it' and 'the baby' any more. His name's Peter Neale."
The name Peter did not stick to the baby long. Old Peter noticed that Kate never used it. Her first move was to modify it into Petey, then Pete and suddenly it became an unmistakable Pat. "What have you got against the name Peter?" he asked her.
"It's not for me to be criticising a saint in Heaven," answered Kate piously.
"I won't tell on you. Why didn't you like him, He was a good man, wasn't he?"
"A good man, is it?—begging your pardon and that of the blessed saints in Heaven—didn't he deny the name of our blessed Lord and Him seized by the dirty Jews?"
Peter had forgotten about it but he found the striking story in the Gospel according to St. Mark.
"'And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.' But he denied, saying—'I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest.'"
Of course, it was not admirable conduct, but Peter could understand and sympathize with themotives of his namesake. He himself, he felt, would have done much the same thing. Cowardice was not the only factor which prompted the denial. The incident was more complicated than that. Maybe Peter didn't want to make a scene. If he had said yes he was a Christian everybody in the palace of the High Priest would have felt self-conscious and uncomfortable. It might have been necessary for some one to change the subject. Saying "No" made things easier for everybody. Courage may be admirable but tact is not altogether contemptible. Peter Neale usually agreed with people when he felt that they wanted him to.
Still, he hoped that his son would move through the world with a freer and more courageous mood and the next time Kate called the baby Pat, Peter did not object much. He merely said:
"I don't think that name's much of an improvement, Kate."
"And why not?"
"Well, what did this St. Patrick of yours ever do?"
"The blessed St. Patrick that drove the snakes out of Ireland!"
"Yes, but he left the Irish."
Nevertheless for all practical purposes little Peter became Pat from that time on. Kate got most things which she wanted. Peter lived in constant fear of her suddenly quitting her job. He dreaded the task of invading the agencies in search of a new nurse and there did not seem to be any other feasible arrangement.
About three months after he assumed the duties of Sunday father he did contemplate dimly a move which might well have revolutionized the existence of himself and Pat and Kate as well. He met Margaret quite by chance. Pat had colic in the Park. Of course, Peter didn't know it was colic. He only knew that the child screamed in a manner more violent than any he had yet known. His inability to handle the situation was so obvious that Margaret who was sitting with her four-year-old charge on a bench nearby came over and showed him how to roll the baby. After Pat had been rolled sufficiently he recovered but Margaret and Peter did not part company immediately.
"You're a funny one to be sending out with a baby," said Margaret.
"I'm not sent out with him. I go out with him. I'm his father."
Peter realized afterwards that his admission, indeed his boast, of not belonging to the employed classes was largely responsible for the blight which lay under the surface of his relationship to Margaret and finally led to tragedy. There were many meetings following the afternoon of the colic. For a month or so the pretense was kept up that these were merely accidental, but finally one Sunday Peter and Pat and Margaret and Bobby, the boy she was in charge of, were driven under an archway by a thunderstorm. There was so much thunder that Margaret grew very frightened. Peter could think of nothing better to do than put an arm around her. He realized an obligation. Hadn't she rolled Pat out of colic? By and by there was lightning and Peter kissed her. After that they met by acknowledged premeditation every Sunday—close to the entrance of the tunnel.
Peter found it almost as difficult to talk to Margaret as to Pat, but she was better company. The long Sundays went faster when he could sit holding hands in some moderately obscure corner of the park. Margaret was the sort of person who didn't seem to expect much in the way of conversation. All she required was an occasional answer to somesimple hypothetical question. These were generally somewhat similar in character. Did he think (she never reached the stage of calling him Peter) that a rich man could marry a poor girl and be happy? Did he realize that a girl could be a child's nurse and a lady at the same time? Wasn't it a fact that widowers led a desperately lonely and unhappy life? Peter happened to have adopted the easy expedient of disposing of Maria by means of a fever.
Margaret was unmistakably a fool, but Peter thought her rather an appealing one. She seemed pretty and he knew that she was expert in handling children. The things required by Bobby and Pat never gave her more than the briefest trouble. And then as Peter was becoming more and more liberal about unintelligence the fatal Sunday arrived. They had lingered a little longer in the Park than usual. Bobby in obedience to the usual command, "Now run away and play, Bobby, and don't get your clothes dirty," had done so. Suddenly he came running back across the meadow as fast as his legs would carry him straight to Margaret.
"I want to make a river," he said.
"Shush! Bobby," answered Margaret in a low voice.
"But I want to make a river," repeated Bobby, even more insistently.
Margaret, her face flaming scarlet, got up and seized the child roughly by the wrist. As she dragged him away he screamed. Peter heard her say, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself!" Presently from out of the bushes in addition to frantic screaming there came the unmistakable sound of a child being spanked.
When Margaret returned to the bench, if indeed she did, Peter had gone. He saw her once weeks afterwards at a distance, but they never talked again. This time it was Peter who did the blushing for the more he thought about the whole business the more degraded he found himself. He had come within at least an appreciable distance of selling his soul for a colic cure. A disgusting snip of a person had moved between him and those bitter but glamorous memories of Maria Algarez. Maybe Maria did ruin all his hope of happiness and yet he knew that but for Maria he would never have made up enough ground in his pursuit of life to learn the great truth that propriety is one of the vices.
Pat grew but it was slow work. Kate would speak of an ounce as if it were some silver trophy which the child had won. Like Samuel Butler her admiration was unbounded for the intelligence which manifested itself in the process of developing bone and muscle and tissue. Peter was not inclined to give the child any credit for this. If you poured water on a lawn, grass sprang up. All the credit belonged to the gardener and Pat became bigger and bigger through no obvious efforts of his own but merely because Peter and Kate plied him with milk and sometimes carrots. Raising grass was easier. The gardener didn't have to deal with a moving target and he could administer water quite irrespective of the wishes of the grass.
Of course, there were moments when Pat displayed intelligence but it was of the most rudimentary sort. When he was about six months old Peter found that if he put a finger in front of him Pat would try to bite it. Sometimes he laughed butonly at his own jokes. At seven months he began to crawl. This was moderately interesting but it doubled Peter's Sunday responsibilities and even affected his literary style. Short paragraphs appeared more frequently than ever before in the Looking Them Over column. Longer flights were subject to interruption as Peter had to put Pat away from places such as the steam radiator or the gas logs. It was no longer even possible to leave safety razor blades about.
Eventually somebody told Peter to buy a stockade and he did so. The arrangement was a collapsible fence which could be set up in the middle of the floor to imprison the child and curtail its wanderings. The only trouble lay in the fact that it was much too collapsible. In a month or so Pat was able to pull himself to his feet by holding on to the rail and after a few violent tugs the whole contraption would come down on top of him.
And yet when Kate came to Peter and said that her niece, the one in Jamaica, was looking for a part time job and would take care of Pat on Sundays for $3 a week, Peter refused the offer. He never knew quite why. Somehow or other his Sunday fatherhood had become part of a routine. Perhapshe would have felt foot-loose without it. He merely told Kate that $3 was too much. And one night when Pat was suddenly assailed by croup Peter almost worried himself sick. It was a short illness, but terrific while it lasted. The child seemed to be strangling. The cough which racked it was deep and in its agony the child took on maturity. Against death it fought back. Peter was moved not only because this was his son but because here was a fellow human being grappling with the common enemy. He waited in the hall outside while Dr. Clay was making his examination. There he had more room to walk up and down.
Presently the doctor came out and, taking Peter's arm, led him to the front of the flat. "The child's very ill," he said, "I'm going to send for a trained nurse."
Pat cried his best, but every now and then this would be broken by the fearful cough. It was like the baying of an animal. A spasm from the back room interrupted Dr. Clay. "It almost sounds as if there was another person in that room," he said. "I'm going back."
Peter knew who that thing or person was. He went with Clay and lifted Pat out of his crib and heldhim in his arms. This gave him a curious feeling that he was doing something; as if he were trying to throw his body between Pat and someone else. In a dim way he felt that he and Pat and the other one, all three, were running down a football field. He must keep close to Pat and block off the tackler.
"Part of my tiredness it goes into your arm." Maria had said that. And now Peter wanted to give something of his own strength to Pat against the fury of the attack. It did not seem fantastic. There was a current in the contact. The man had lied when he said Peter and Maria were one. That couldn't be done. Men and women were grown people, individuals, all finished, but this was only a little person. He was part of Peter. Father and son were one. He was holding Pat so tightly that nobody could take him away. His prayer was all the more fervent from the fact that he did not believe in God. He had to create God. "Don't let him die. Don't let him die." God began to take form in his mind. God was Maria. She was gone and not gone. To her he did not need to make a prayer. "Maria" was enough.
The doorbell rang and Dr. Clay answered it. He brought Miss Haine back. "I guess you know thisbaby," he said. "We've got to make him well." The nurse spoke to Peter and set about fixing a croup kettle beside the crib. The fumes filled the room. It was a pleasant smell. "Better lay him down in his crib, now," said the Doctor, touching Peter on the shoulder, "so he can get the benefit of this. I think he's a little better already."
Peter knew that he was. Pat was no longer gasping and in a few minutes he was asleep. For a time Peter sat beside the bed. The child's breathing was regular and his cheek was cool to the touch. "Why, he's fine now," Miss Haine told him. "You go to bed. In the morning you won't even know that he's been sick."
There was no trace of the shadow upon Pat next day. Peter was the haggard one. Something had gone out of him during the night as he held Pat in his arms. Father and child were doing as well as could be expected.
At the age of eleven months and eight days Pat walked for the first time. Peter thought he might have been considerate enough to have chosen a Sunday. His first tooth came on a Sunday, but that wasn't any fun. Besides, it couldn't be tied exactly to some particular day and minute the way that the walking could. Nor was there any gaiety about it. However, Peter did not quite miss the walking for he came in time to see the last couple of hundred yards.
It was a rainy Saturday and Peter happened home early. Kate met him in the hall with a finger at her lips. "He's walking."
She seemed to feel that if anybody said anything about it the child would probably grow self-conscious and collapse. There appeared to be a certain sagacity in that. It was not an experiment but an adventure. One step led to another. At terrific speed Pat went round and round the room. He might have been Bobby Walthour trying to steal alap in a six day race. Kate and Peter watched him breathlessly from behind the curtains of the living-room.
"How long has this been going on?" Peter wanted to know.
"It's these ten minutes."
Peter pulled out his gold stop watch and created thereby a psychic crisis. Perhaps Pat felt that his amateur standing was in jeopardy. At any rate he tripped on the edge of a rug, almost turned a somersault, blacked his eye and cried for half an hour.
He did not even attempt to walk again for a week. After that it became habitual. Up to this time Peter had never said much to anybody about his son. He did not talk to the men at the office about the child. There wouldn't be any sense in interrupting Charlie Hall in the middle of a story about city politics with, "My son's got two teeth." They were all busy men and it was not conceivable that they would care how much Pat Neale weighed.
Walking was a little different. Maybe it wasn't exactly a first page story but still Peter wanted to tell somebody about it. For the first time he was disposed to show off Pat—in person. Of course eleven months and eights days wasn't a record.Peter would have to look into that and find out the best accepted performance. He remembered being told that his own brother had walked at eight months but he had no means of knowing whether or not that was authentic.
The desire to confide in somebody eventually took Peter around to a stage door, though not the one at the end of the alley. From a Sunday graphic section he had noticed that Vonnie Bandana was playing in a musical show called "Harvest Moon." Vonnie Bandana wasn't really her name. The caption said Vonnie Ryan and Peter was sure it was the same girl. Evidently the Eight Bandana Sisters had gone the way of Brook Farm and Halcyon Hall and many another experiment in co-operation. Vonnie knew him all right.
"You're the man that married Maria Algarez," she said.
"Yes, but she's gone away."
"I'm sorry."
"That's all right. It was a long time ago. Almost a year now. She was a good dancer, wasn't she?"
"Maria, oh, yes, she could dance. I wondered what became of her."
"I don't know that. I haven't heard from her at all. I think she's abroad."
"Have you seen our show?"
"No, I just happened to notice your picture in the Bulletin last Sunday."
"Did you? Wasn't that smart of you? I've got a part in this. Lines and everything. I sing a song. You know I don't sing it much. Just one verse and the chorus and then I dance it. The dance is all right."
Peter and Vonnie had been slowly walking away from the theatre towards Broadway while they carried on this discussion and when they reached the avenue Vonnie stopped.
"Are you going my way? I go up to a Hundred and Sixty-eighth street. Just a little this side of Albany."
"Well, as a matter of fact, I was wondering if maybe you wouldn't come out and have supper with me. I just happened to be going by the theatre and I stopped around and thought I might run into you."
"Listen," said Vonnie. "I'll have supper with you, but don't pull any more of that 'I just happened to be going by the theatre.' That's awful. You ought to say you've been planning to come and seeme for a week and came all the way in from New Rochelle just special. You don't know anything about women, do you?"
"I guess I don't," said Peter very soberly.
"Oh, I am sorry," Vonnie laid her hand on his arm. "I didn't mean anything by that. Forget it. You're all right even if I don't remember your name. Did you ever tell it to me?"
"My name's Peter Neale."
"You're not the Peter Neale that writes in the Bulletin, are you?"
"Yes, I do a sporting column. That looking 'em over stuff."
"I've been looking for you. Do you know I almost wrote you a letter. Where do you get that stuff about Sandow Mertes being a more valuable man than George Browne?"
"Browne can't hit lefthanders."
"That's the bunk. You and the rest of the sporting writers keep pulling that stuff about him and of course he can't. Suppose there was somebody standing in the wings every night just before I came on, yelling at me, 'Vonnie, you can't dance,' do you suppose I could go on and do that song for a cent? Of course I couldn't. You and the restof you, you're just ruining this fellow. The best looking young outfielder I've seen in ten years. Why he could run up a hill faster than Mertes could roll down one."
"You don't know what you're talking about," said Peter. It was the boldest speech he had ever made to a woman and he did it without turning a hair. Vonnie was wrong. George Browne couldn't hit lefthanders. Before he took her home Vonnie had arranged to go with him to the Polo Grounds the next day and to come and see the baby on Sunday.
"Here," she said as he was turning away from the door of her apartment, "you've got a kiss coming to you. When you live up as far as One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street you've got to do at least that much for any fellow that takes you home."
"And say, listen," said Vonnie, just before she closed the door, "next month I'm going to move to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street."
Vonnie came to the flat the next Sunday. The moment might have embarrassed Peter if it had been anybody else.
But Vonnie had such an imperious and lofty way of rising above all things traditionally embarrassing to Peter and snooting down at them that she carried him with her. At least part way.
"Why haven't you got the young Giant in his ball park over there," said Vonnie pointing to the Stockade.
"I'm changing him."
"No game," said Vonnie, "wet grounds."
"Get out of that. Never had a baby in my life," she continued, briskly rapping her knuckles on the woodwork above her head, "but I can't be worse at that job than you are."
She pushed Peter away, but did not begin on the business in hand immediately. "He's a good kid. A fine husky kid. I know now why you asked mehere. You figured if I wanted one for myself you'd let me know where to apply."
"Never mind the compliments," said Peter. "Change his diapers."
Vonnie had brought the new freedom into his life.
"No doubt about his being yours," she went on. "Everything up to the chin is you—of course I'm just guessing—but Maria left him those eyes and that nose. Maybe she left him more than that. He's marked for the show business. You might as well make up your mind to that."
"He's going to be a newspaper man," cut in Peter sharply.
"Oh, I see. Got it all fixed. If he begins to bust out singing or playing the piano or something you won't let him. That's it, isn't it?"
"I'm going to shape him in that direction."
"Just shape him, hey? Boy, didn't you ever bust bang into the artistic temperament? I played a season once with William Faversham. Shape him? You can't beat him out of it with a club. I don't know yet what way he's going to jump but I want to put down a little bet this kid of yours is going to be some kind of an artist."
"Don't keep saying that. I tell you he's coming on the Bulletin. His name's Peter Neale."
"You could name him Rosenberg and that wouldn't make him a pawnbroker."
"But this is in his blood just like in mine. He can't help himself. He's just got to be a newspaper man."
"All right we won't fight about it. You say he's going to be a newspaper man and I tell you he's going to be an artist. Maybe he won't be anything but a moving picture actor."
Peter saw Vonnie frequently throughout the summer. She went to the ball games with him almost every afternoon except matinée days. The dispute about George Browne and Sandow Mertes persisted. There could be no question but that Browne had the speed. Even when he hit straight to an infielder it took a fast throw to nail him at first. But Peter didn't like him because his cap almost always fell off whenever he beat out a slow roller. Somebody would have to carry it down to first for him and while Browne was waiting he had a trick of bending his head back and shaking his long hair out of his eyes.
"He looks like a Goddamn violinist," said Peter.
"Yes," replied Vonnie, "and your friend Mertes looks like a piccolo player. Do you know the story about the piccolo player?"
"Not in the press box," interrupted Peter fearfully. He felt obliged to interrupt Vonnie a good deal. She was much given to tantalizing him by beginning in a loud clear voice, "It seems there was a travelling salesman came to a hotel," or "This fellow, you see, started to take his girl out for a ride."
"I don't want to hear it," Peter would say half in jest and half hoping to be effectual.
"But it's a nice story."
"It isn't a nice story or it wouldn't begin that way" was the agreed formula for Peter's reply, whereupon Vonnie would disturb his gravity and dignity by digging him in the ribs with her elbow. Another favorite device of hers was sedulously to brush an imaginary spot on Peter's coat lapel and when he looked down bring up her hand and flip him under the nose. Peter never seemed to remember not to look down. Perhaps he liked to have his nose flipped.
"It isn't necessary," he would object, "for everybody around here to know you're a chorus girl."
"Chorus girl, nothing. I got the song hit of the piece. 'Any little thing for you dear, any little thing for you,'" Vonnie indicated the tempo by scruffing her feet against the concrete floor of the press box.
"Cut it out. Pay attention to the game."
Sometimes the admonition was unnecessary. The day George Browne took a real cut at the ball and banged it over the ropes in right field Vonnie hopped into a chair and shouted, "The blessed lamb! Oh, you Georgie boy! Watch that kid go. Look at him, Peter, he runs just like my Michael."
Michael was Vonnie's white dog, said to be a Highland terrier. When Peter took Vonnie home to One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street it had become the custom for him to wait down in the street while she got Michael and took him a turn around the block before saying good night to Peter. Vonnie had a good deal to say about Michael from time to time, which was calculated to embarrass Peter. "You got to get me a book for Michael," she told Peter.
"What sort of a book?"
"Well, I guess it's called 'What a Young Dog Ought to Know.' He don't know any of the factsabout life. I can take that dog past a million lamp-posts and ten minutes after I get him back in the flat I've got to lick him. Maybe you could give him a little plain talk, Peter. Coming from a man, you know, it'd carry more weight with him."