After Peter had known Vonnie for two months she did move to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street. Peter took her out to supper a week later and made the long journey up town. She was more subdued than usual as they stood at the door of the apartment house. He put both hands on her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her good night.
"Don't you like me, Peter?" she said.
"Of course I do. You know that."
"I don't want you to go away, now. I don't want you to go away tonight."
"I've got to."
"Why have you got to?"
"I think I ought to go."
"Oh, if it's just morals, forget it. There's nothing to be afraid of. You're not in love with me and I'm not in love with you. I just like you. And I'm lonely. They won't let me keep Michael in this place, but I guess I can sneak you in if you don't bark as we go up the stairs."
"Maybe this'll spoil everything," said Peter. "It's been so nice and easy and pleasant going around with you, Vonnie. If I get in love with you something will happen to me sure. I can't stand anything like that again. I do like you a lot. That's the trouble."
"Oh, Hell! nothing like that's going to happen. I'm a tough bird. I'll make you a promise, Peter. The minute I see you're falling in love with me any I'll tell you that story about the tattooed man and the girl from Oshkosh and shock it right out of you. Don't make any noise, Peter. I've found the janitor's a light sleeper. And don't be so awful solemn. Try and think up something worse that could have happened to you."
Still when Vonnie kissed him again after they had tiptoed up two flights and into her flat, Peter noticed that this time she did not laugh.
Peter worried a good deal over Vonnie's predictions as to Pat's future. The doubt which she had cast upon the feasibility of his scheme heightened after the victrola was introduced into the flat. The man on the floor below happened to be moving and meeting Peter in the hall one night he struck up a bargain to sell his phonograph and all the records. After the bargain was made and the machine duly delivered, Peter looked over the repertoire and found it queer stuff according to his notions. "Werther—Ah! non mi ridestar!" sung by Mattia Battistini; "Siegfried's Funeral March;" "The Funeral March of a Marionette." It seemed morbid to Peter. "Minuet in G, No. 2" played by Ysaye; "Lucia—il dolce suono (mad scene)." "Merry old bird," thought Peter. "Invitation to the Waltz—Weber." That was a tune he knew, but it could hardly be classed as cheerful.
Peter went out and purchased a few of the latestsong hits—"The Sextette from Floradora," "Under the Shade of the Sheltering Palm," and to his delight he found "Any Little Thing for You, Dear." Unfortunately the phonograph company had chosen another voice instead of Vonnie's for the record. Nevertheless, Peter bought it and some more.
Pat was now a year and a half old, but he manifested the most violent interest in the phonograph. That pleased Peter but he did not like it quite so well when Kate reported to him, "'Tis a queer child, Mr. Neale. It's them red records he does be playing all the time. He wants the one about somebody's funeral all the time. Would you believe it he cries when I put on a nice tune for him."
The report was not exaggerated. Pat liked the song from Werther, but the Siegfried record was his favorite, with Gounod a close second. Indeed his passion to have his own particular favorites played and no others seemed to be the compelling influence which brought him to language. Almost his first articulate words were "Boom-Boom" which Peter eventually and regretfully identified as an attempt to designate the Siegfried Funeral March. When more words were developed The Funeral March of a Marionette became "the other Boom-Boom."
Before Pat was quite two he could mess about in the cabinet of the victrola and pick out a dozen records in response to Peter's request.
"Go get the red Bat," Peter would say and Pat would gravely pull out a handful of records and return with Battistini's Werther. For that matter he knew Floradora well enough to pick it out of the pile but he never held it out to Peter with an imperious, "I want" as he did whenever he got his hands on "Siegfried" or "The Funeral March of a Marionette." It was still more thrilling, a little later, when he abandoned his descriptive "Boom-Boom" for "Siegfried's Funeral March" and began to call it, "Go to Bed Tired." Peter never knew just how Pat could identify the records by looking at them. He supposed that some of the titles were longer than others and that the child was able to bear in mind the picture created by some certain series of signs.
But a still more shocking discovery came when Peter learned that his tiny son could identify by sound as well as sight. Peter, for instance, was never quite certain whether the record being played was the Mad Scene from Lucia or the Floradora Sextette. At any rate not until it had gone alongabout to "On bended knee—on bended knee." But there was no fooling Pat. He never needed more than a few notes before he was able to exclaim with a well justified assurance that the piece in question was "Chi-Chi" or "Floor" as the case might be. The Weber waltz was never played much and Pat had no name for it, but he evidently knew it well enough for no sooner was it started than he would get up and swing slowly from side to side. Peter finally got a hammer and broke that record. He would have liked to pass the victrola on to somebody else but Kate would have protested as well as Pat. Music had solved for her the problem of what to do with Pat on rainy days. Outside of a little cranking these once difficult experiences had now become practically painless.
On Pat's second birthday Peter was startled to receive at the office of the Bulletin a package directed in the handwriting of Maria Algarez. Peter had travelled a little of the way toward forgetting Maria Algarez. Time had done something, but Vonnie had done more. It was almost seven months now since Peter first went to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street. In the package he found a letter and a phonograph record. On the disc he read "Chanson deSolveig—Maria Algarez." The letter said—"Dear Peter—I send to your son a present for his second birthday. I hope he will like it. Is his name Peter, too? So it should be. He will be a fine boy I think, big and strong like his father. And make it so that he shall grow up not to have the fear of anything and not the shame of anything. Here for two years I have studied the English hard. You see I write it much better. Now I have not danced for two years. First it was because of the baby. It was not his fault. Maybe I have left the hospital too soon. I did not want to stay longer and to die. All the time I sing. The voice it is magnificent. Perhaps it is next season I am to sing in the Opera Comique. For the phonograph company I have made the one record and they say it will be more. I do not know. It is not necessary ever for me to see your son, or for him to see me but some time you will play for him this record. That he should hear me I want. You need not say who it is. That does not matter. In you, Peter, there is no song. For little Peter that should be different. Perhaps you will say no. I do not think so. I want that he should hear my song—Maria."
There was no address. Peter played Solveig's song that Sunday. It stirred him strangely. This was almost a tune. When the notes went high he could not only see Maria in the room, he could almost feel her. He was so intent with this presence that he did not watch Pat. The child was lying on the floor. He said nothing until the last note had almost died away. "I want the red Bat," he said.
Vonnie never came to the flat except on Sundays. It wouldn't do to have Kate know anything about her. Several weeks after the arrival of Maria's letter she happened in just as Peter was playing the Solveig song for Pat. The child never put this particular record into his list of imperatives, but he was reconciled to it. Perhaps interested. And Peter felt a sort of compulsion of duty to play it every once and so often. He had been surprised in the beginning that no miracle of recognition had occurred in Pat's mind. To Pat she was merely a lady singing. Yet Peter could not be sure what currents might move beneath the surface. Anyhow it was enough for him that Maria had asked that he play the record. And to him there was acertain instinct to play the record for his own sake. Now that the memory was not so painful he rather wanted to keep it alive. The thing was far enough away by now to be romantic. Peter took a definite pride in the fact that once his heart had been broken. That didn't happen to everybody.
His feeling about Vonnie was different. She was ever so much more fun than Maria, but she wasn't romantic. He felt that he knew her better. Certainly he was more assured and easy with her than he had ever been with Maria, but she could not move him to that curious exalted unhappiness which he had once known. People about to become monks or missionaries must feel something of what he felt for Maria. Still, that wasn't it exactly. Maria was that moment before you hit the water in a chute the chutes. Living with her was like watching a baseball game with the bases always full and two strikes on the batter. Even marriage was no windbreak. There was never a moment in that year when he had not felt the tang of a gale full upon him. Having an affair with Vonnie was highly respectable in comparison. This passion was even hospitable to little jokes. Life had become comfortable.
He did not know whether or not Vonnie realized that she and Maria were different. They no longer talked ever of Maria Algarez. Even when she came in upon the Solveig song Peter would have said nothing about it.
"It's Maria, isn't it?" asked Vonnie.
"Yes."
"Where did you get it?"
"She sent it to me."
"Has she come back?"
"No, it just said Paris."
"Maybe she thinks she don't need to come back. She can bean you just as good with a phonograph record."
Peter said nothing, but let the song die out and then took the disc from the machine.
"Here," said Vonnie, "let me see it."
Peter handed it over. Vonnie looked at it for a moment, then she moved across the room.
"Pete," she said, "what would you do if I dropped this thing out the window." She made a move as if to put the suggestion into execution.
"Don't do that," cried Peter.
"Don't do that," mimicked Vonnie. "You're still a damn fool, hey?"
"It's not mine. It was sent to Pat."
"Oh, yes, blame it on the kid. I don't suppose he's a nut about her, too. Are you, Pat?"
Pat seemed to have no comprehension of the issue and made no answer.
"Look here, Pete," said Vonnie, "nobody can say I've ever been jealous. You can be daffy about anybody you like. That's none of my business, but I can't stand it to have you such a fool that you'll let this damn woman slap you in the face and then come back for more. If you didn't know she was no good in the first place you ought to know it now."
"I don't want you to say that."
"Well, what is she good for?"
"She's the greatest dancer in the world."
"Don't make me laugh."
"You know she is. You heard them cheering her that night."
"Hell to that. Everything was set for her. Somebody gets sick and on she waltzes. Any audience'll fall for that. If Carmencita should fall down and break her leg I could do the same thing. 'Miss Vonnie Ryan with one hour's rehearsing will take the place of Carmencita.' It's a cinch."
"All right. You've got your opinion and I've got mine. Don't let's talk about it."
"I'm going to talk about it. This gets settled right now. I don't have to be first with you, Pete, or anybody else, but I'm not going to run second to a dish-faced mutt. I've got some pride in the people that cut me out. Either I smash that phonograph record or you and I smash."
"Give me that."
Vonnie handed it over.
"All right," she said. "I'm sorry. It was silly for me to bawl you out. You haven't done anything to me. God knows I can't stand here and say you seduced me. I had to get a half-nelson on you to pull you into the flat that night. Maybe that's what makes me so sore. I put a lot of work in on you, Pete."
"Please don't go way, Vonnie. It's silly for us to scrap over a phonograph record."
"Everything's silly. I got to go way. I'm going to get just as far away as I can. I'm going to get in some road company going to the Coast and then by God, I hope we get stranded. You poor mutt, I'm in love with you."
"Oh, please, Vonnie, don't cry. I know I'm nogood. I just can't help it about that phonograph record."
"Well, you don't suppose I'd bawl this way if I could help it. Now don't be patting me on the back. I don't love you enough to let you, 'There! there!' me."
She moved resolutely to the door and by the time she reached it the line had come to her.
"I ought've known," said Vonnie, "no good could come out of taking up with a fellow that thinks Mertes is a better outfielder than George Browne."
Vonnie made good her threat and two weeks after the quarrel Peter received a picture postcard of a giant redwood. The message said, "Well Peter here I am in San Francisco—Vonnie." It was the first written communication he had ever received from her and so he did not know whether or not the brevity was habitual or was intended to convey a rebuke. It seemed safe to assume the latter as Vonnie sent no address.
Peter found himself turning to Pat for companionship. Perhaps he did not exactly turn, but was rather tugged about without will of his own. The needs of Pat were increasingly greater and Peter was caught up into them now that he had nothing in particular to do with his evenings. Instead of taking Vonnie out to an early dinner before the show he helped to put Pat to bed. It didn't seem quite virile to Peter, but it was easier than hanging around Jack's or Joel's or the Eldorado. Of course, Pat was supposed to be in bed long before the nightlife of New York had really begun, but bit by bit he edged his time ahead until it was often eleven or after before he fell off to sleep. The child fought against sleep as if it were a count of ten. Never within Peter's memory did Pat express a willingness to go to sleep, much less a desire. It was always necessary to conduct him forcibly over the line where consciousness ceased.
Peter was swept under the tyranny of this obligation a couple of nights after Vonnie went away. Unable to think up anything to do, he came back to the flat a little after ten. He saw a light burning down the hall in Pat's room and occasional entreaties and commands drifted out. Pat wanted a drink of water and the toy alligator and the electric engine and six freight cars. Looking at his watch Peter found that it was half past ten. He walked into the child's room and exclaimed sternly, "What's all this racket about?"
"He wants the funny section read to him," explained Kate, "and it's been lost some place. I can't find it anywhere."
"That's perfect rubbish," said Peter.
"I've looked all over for it, Mr. Neale."
"That wasn't what I meant was rubbish, Kate.I'm glad you lost it. I want you to keep on losing it. I meant it's rubbish for him to be staying up this late and asking for things."
"Yes sir."
"Now we'll both say good night to him, Kate, and let him go to sleep."
Pat began to cry not only loudly but with a certain note of sincerity which caught Peter's ear. "What's the matter with him now?"
"He made me promise I'd tell him a story if I couldn't find the funny paper," said Kate.
"It's too late now and anyway if he made you do it, Kate, it isn't a promise. It don't count."
"Yes, Mr. Neale. But it's so set he is he'll be calling me back all the night long for me to tell him the story. It's nothing he does be forgetting."
"All right, Kate, we'll settle that very easily. You go out and I'll stay and he can cry his head off."
"Where'll I go, Mr. Neale?"
"I don't care, Kate. Go any place you like. It isn't eleven o'clock yet. Where do you usually go?"
"To my sister's in Jamaica, but it's no time to be routing them out at this hour."
"Well, let me see. I tell you, Kate, there's a moving picture theatre down there at Fifty-ninthStreet that keeps going till after one. Here's some money. You go there and see the picture and I'll stay and show this young man he can't get everything he cries for."
"I want to see the picture," said Pat, sitting up in bed.
"Now don't be silly. You get back there on your pillow," said Peter, "or I'll just knock you down."
Kate rummaged around for her bonnet and finally went out. During all this time Pat kept up a suppressed sobbing. As soon as the door slammed behind Kate he was sufficiently rested again to begin crying full force.
"Well, what is it now?" said Peter as fiercely as he could.
Pat's utterance was muffled with tears. "I want a story."
"You heard Kate go out. If you've got any sense you know she can't tell you a story."
"You tell me a story."
"I'm too busy. Go to sleep."
"Why are you busy?"
"Because I am. Now go to sleep."
"I don't want to go to sleep. I want you to tell me a story."
Pat commenced to cry again. He had sensed an opening.
Peter dropped his guard. "Just one story?" he asked.
Upon the instant Pat ceased crying and sat up. "Tell me about the old beggarman and Saint Pat."
"I don't know it," said Peter. In fact he felt almost as if he had been suddenly called upon to make a speech at a public banquet. Of course, he had heard of Cinderella and Red Riding Hood and Aladdin and the wonderful lamp, but he could not quite remember what any of them did. Suddenly he remembered another source book.
"Once," he began, "there was a man named Goliath and he was the biggest man in the world. He could beat any man in the world. And one day there was a little man named David——."
"I'm bigger than David," interrupted Pat.
"I guess you are. He was a little bit of a man, but he wasn't afraid of Goliath. He said, 'Ole Goliath, you talk too much. You make me sick.' And he picked up a rock and hit Goliath and knocked him down."
"Why did he knock Goliath down?" Pat wanted to know.
"I guess he knocked Goliath down because it was Goliath's bedtime and Goliath wouldn't go to bed."
Pat remained alert in spite of the moralizing. He gave no hint of recognition that the end of a story had been reached. Anyhow, the creative impulse had seized upon Peter particularly since it might be so unblushingly combined with propaganda.
"Well," he continued, "pretty soon George Browne came out of his house and he was the second biggest man in the world and he wouldn't go to bed and so David picked up another great big rock and knocked him down. And then your friend the Red Bat came out of his house and he was the next biggest man in the world and he wouldn't go to bed and so David picked up another rock and knocked him down."
"No, he didn't," broke in Pat.
"I'm telling this story. David hit the Red Bat with a rock and knocked him down because he wouldn't go to bed."
"No, he didn't."
"Oh, all right then, if you know so much about it, he didn't. What did he do?"
"He knocked David down."
Peter realized that his narrative was overburdened with propaganda and he was artist enough to throw over some of his moralizing ballast.
"Well, this was the way it happened, Pat. David picked up a big rock and threw it at the Red Bat, but the Red Bat was too smart for him. The Red Bat caught the rock and threw it back at David and knocked him down. That was it, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Pat.
When Kate returned a little after one Peter reported, "I didn't have any bother with him. He just went right off to sleep."
David and Goliath became set as a bedtime story and lasted through the next six months almost without change. Indeed Pat resented changes. "Once," Peter would begin, "there was a man named Goliath and he was the biggest man in the world and he could lick any man in the world."
"Not lick," Pat would interrupt. "Beat."
"Oh, yes, he could beat any man in the world." Peter found himself coming home for Pat's bedtime with increasing frequency. Once or twice he tried to break away, but upon such occasions Katereported that the child had cried for him and had kept awake until after midnight asking for the story of David and Goliath.
"You tell it to him," said Peter. "I think I can teach it to you. He wants it just this way." And he repeated the accepted version.
Kate shook her head. "I'm too old a woman to be learning so many words, Mr. Neale," she said. "And it's not a story I think Father Ryan would like me to be telling. That's not the way the story do be going in our Bible."
"Gosh," thought Peter to himself. "She thinks it was Martin Luther made those changes."
Notwithstanding Goliath, Peter made a gallant attempt to break away from his newly found responsibilities. He felt that he ought to. He felt that in the restaurants and poolrooms there lay the sort of sporting gossip he ought to pick up for his column. Of course, not all New York kept Pat's hours in those days but there was something almost auto-hypnotic in getting the child to sleep. In addition to the bedtime story, Peter found it necessary to feign great weariness in order to suggest a similar feeling in Pat. He would yawn prodigiously immediately after the Red Bat hadknocked down David and pretend to doze off on the foot of Pat's bed. Presently, he would hear the boy's regular breathing and would tiptoe out of the room. But Peter acted his rôle much too well. After so much shamming he generally was actually tired himself and indisposed to wander down to Jack's or any of the other places where he might find fighters or their managers.
Indeed, he made the discovery that the material to be extracted from these people was not inexhaustible. Like David and Goliath they had a tendency to run into formula. "And I yell at him, don't box him; fight him. Keep rushing him. Don't let him set. And when he comes to his corner at the end of the third round I bawl in his ear, 'You kike so and so, begging your pardon, Mr. Neale, if you don't get that lousy wop I'm done with you.' And would you believe me it did him a lot of good. It put guts in him. In the fourth we nail him with a right and we win. Now we're going after the champ and if we ever get him into a ring we'll lick him."
A year or so before Neale could have taken stuff like that and worked it over into a column on "The Psychology of a Prizefight Manager." But nowall the inspiration was gone. He had heard precisely the same tale in much the same language too many times. He was almost tempted to cry out, "Not lick him, beat him."
Nor was there much more available color in the fighters themselves. They were a silent crowd, most of them, particularly if they happened to have a manager along.
Once, Peter found Dave Keyes, the Brooklyn lightweight, sitting all alone in Jack's. He was going great guns that year and Peter thought of him as the logical successor to the champion. They had met a couple of times at fight clubs, but Keyes did not seem to remember Peter. He was sober but not bright. Still, Peter felt that he might draw him out during the course of the evening. In time Keyes began to talk freely enough. He was even confidential but fighting seemed to be the last thing in the world he cared to discuss.
"You see there's two dames fall for me. And the tough break is the both of them lives on the same block. See. Well, let me tell you how I works it. First I give Helen, that's the blonde one, a ring and then rightbang on top of that I has the call switched over to Gracie's flat——."
"Life," thought the harassed Peter Neale, "is just one bedtime story after another."
In the Spring a long swing around the baseball training camps took Peter away for almost two months and another month and a half went in a fruitless journey to Juarez to wait for a fight which never happened. It was June when Peter returned and to his horror he found that the child had picked up theology in his absence. A storm helped the discovery. The roll of the thunder was still a long way off when Peter called it to Pat's attention. "We're going to have a thunderstorm," he said.
"No, we're not," answered the child. "Thunder storms only come when you're bad."
"What's that?" asked Peter.
"A thunderstorm's God showing his ankle," explained Pat.
This did not seem a dogma altogether iron clad and yet it worried Peter.
"Thunder's got nothing to do with you're being bad," he told Pat. "If that was it we'd have thunder all the time. Thunder's nothing to be afraid of. It's just somebody up the sky saying 'Booh' at you for fun."
"God lives up in the sky."
"How do you know that? Did you see him?"
"Yes," said Pat stoutly.
That made the question difficult to argue.
"All right," continued Peter. "Call him God if you want to. Anyhow, when it's thunder he's just saying 'Booh' at you and if you get scared you haven't got any sense. Remember that's what thunder is. Just somebody named God saying 'Booh.'"
"No, it isn't."
"Well, you tell me then."
"When it's thunder," said Pat, pointing up the street in the direction of Central Park, "it's a big giant in the trees."
The child paused. "A blind giant," he added.
Peter stared at him and wondered whether the phrase and figure were his own or whether he had picked them up from Kate. Later Peter took occasion to ask her and she denied it. "God's ankle," she admitted but only after revision. "You know, Mr. Neale, it's the way he has of getting things twisted in his little head. You understand now it was 'God's anger' I was a telling him."
"Oh, I knew that all right, Kate. I knew he made up the ankle part of it. But you're sure you didn'ttell him anything about thunder and a giant in the trees—a blind giant."
"No, sir."
Peter got to thinking things over and began to remember what Vonnie had said concerning the future of Pat. He was worried. This idolatry of the Red Bat who sang on the phonograph he didn't like. After this it would have to be somebody else who knocked David down. Sandow Mertes maybe. Then there was this blind giant in the trees. He didn't mind Pat's growing up to be a poet. That would fit into the column nicely enough, but not wild poetry. The thing had to be kept in bounds or there wasn't any way to syndicate it. Still the next column of "Looking Them Over" which Peter wrote contained a little poem somewhat outside his usual manner. It was called, "The Big Blind Giant."
Three days later the syndicate manager on the Bulletin called up Peter. "We've got six telegrams already about that poem of yours," he said. "The one about the big blind giant running around and hitting his head against the trees."
"What's the matter with it?" asked Peter aggressively.
"Nothing at all, Peter, they all say it's great. All but that sporting editor of the Des Moines Register—you know him, Caleb Powers?"
"No, I don't know him. What's he say?"
"He just gives the name of the poem and then he says in his telegram, 'Don't tell me the answer, I want to guess.'"
"Five out of six is plenty," said Peter. "And say, Bill, where do you suppose I got the idea from?"
"Where?"
"From my kid—Peter Neale, 2nd. He isn't four yet, but you see I've got him working for the Bulletin already."
Pat furnished copy for Peter again within a month. Kate came in from the Park all breathless with an account of a fight between the child and his friend and playmate Bobby, last name not given.
"It was about an engine," explained Kate. "Bobby give it to Pat and then he wanted to take it away again. Before we could get to them Pat hit Bobby in the mouth so hard it made his mouth bleed. And that Bobby, him almost six years old. And a head taller than Pat. He bled something terrible, Mr. Neale. First I thought it was just Bobby's blood on Pat's hand, but it kept on and when I looked closer there was all the skin off of the knuckles of Pat. It must have been the teeth of that Bobby when Pat hit him. I'll be putting iodine on it this very minute if you'll watch till I get back, Mr. Neale."
"Put down that engine and come here, Pat," said Peter.
"I can't hear you."
"Yes, you can. I said put down that engine. Nobody's going to take it away from you. Not just now, anyway. It's not yours but I suppose you've won it. Come here, I want to see your hand."
Very reluctantly Pat placed the engine on the sofa and advanced slowly.
"It's all red," he said.
Peter took off the handkerchief. "Nonsense," he said, "you haven't more than scratched it."
He was about to dismiss the matter from his mind and start for the office when he noticed something he'd overlooked. "Kate, Kate," cried Peter in great excitement, "this hand that Pat cut hitting that boy is his left hand."
"Yes, 'tis his left hand he'd be using all the time when I'm not noticing him," said Kate, returning with the iodine. "That's where the strength is. It'll be hard to teach him out of it."
"I don't want him taught out of it, Kate. Don't you ever try to stop him. It's bad to try to change children around. Anyway I don't want him changed. This is fine for him. When he grows up and plays baseball he'll be two steps nearer first base and besides the swing will throw him into his stride.Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about, Kate, but remember I want him to stay a left-hander."
Peter went down to the office and wrote, "There seems to be no shadow of doubt from which hope can spring—I am the father of a southpaw." He nursed the theme and the incident along for almost a column, and there were other by-products of comfort. In the City Room Peter ran into Deane Taylor, the venerable music critic of the Bulletin.
"Mr. Taylor," he asked, "did you ever see a left-handed violin player?"
"No, Peter," said the old man, "there's no such thing. Of course there might be left-handed piano players, but certainly all the fiddlers and all the conductors are right-handed. Come to think of it, I don't know any left-handed musicians at all. But if you're writing something about that you better ask somebody else. I might be wrong. You see I've never gone into music from that angle."
"No," replied Peter, "this is just something I'm interested in personally. Your impression's good enough for me. You don't have to prove it. Thank you very much."
Peter went away greatly pleased. "There's oneof Vonnie's guesses gone wrong anyhow," he said.
From his observations of professional baseball, Peter had worked out the theory that lefthanders were more difficult to handle than anybody else. There was Rube Waddell for instance. Peter had seen him call the outfielders in for the ninth inning and retire the side with only an infield behind him. And everybody knew about the way Rube used to disappear every now and then during the middle of a season and go fishing. Only the day before he had had a Rube Waddell story in his column. It was about Rube and the animal crackers. The man who told Peter said the story came straight from Connie Mack and that there was no doubt about its being true. Ollie Shreck, Rube's regular catcher, wouldn't sign a contract one season. When they asked him the trouble he said, "They always put me in to room with Rube on the road. Maybe they think I understand him after catching him so much. Well, Mr. Mack, I won't sign no contract unless you put in a clause that Rube can't eat animal crackers in our bed."
Pat lived up to most of Peter's theories about southpaws. Before the child had quite turned four Peter discovered that Kate had no control over him.She had given him a little theology but no discipline. The facts came out through her complaint that Pat wouldn't eat any of the things which he was supposed to eat. A doctor called in to attend a passing cold had remained to suggest a diet. He was horrified to learn that Kate had allowed the child to eat meat two or three times a day, with the exception of Friday, just as she did.
"Your child is just about one ton behind in spinach," said Dr. Whiting to Peter. "He's got to catch up, but there won't be any particular trouble about that. He's pretty sure to like spinach. All children do. And I want him to have more milk."
Peter found upon inquiry that Pat had never known spinach. "I don't like it," explained Kate.
"Well, he's got to have a lot of it," said Peter. "I want you to start right in today."
The report next morning was unsatisfactory. "How did the spinach go?" asked Peter. "He wouldn't eat any of it," answered Kate. "He said he didn't like it."
"How could he tell he didn't like it if he didn't eat any," objected Peter sharply.
"I don't know. But he said he didn't like it. He threw the plate on the floor."
"How about the milk?"
"He wouldn't drink any."
"Didn't you tell him that he had to."
"I did that, Mr. Neale. I told him God wouldn't love him if he didn't eat his nice spinach and that, begging your pardon, sir, you'd cry."
"Today," said Peter with a certain magnificence, "I'll stay home and eat lunch with him myself. And for lunch we'll have just spinach and milk."
"Well, well," said Peter, with great gusto as lunch was served, "isn't this fine—milk and spinach. Kate, how did you know just what we wanted?"
"I don't want any lunch," said Pat.
"No spinach?"
Pat did not deign a reply.
"What do you want?"
"I want crackerjack and ice cream."
"Spinach is what you're going to get."
Pat began to cry, but Peter found that it was only a sign of rage and not of weakness. The child's refusal remained steadfast. Finally, Peter spanked him for the first time in his life. It was not a success. Pat cried a lot more but he ate no spinach. Press of other work kept Peter from pursuing the problem for three days, during whichtime the child reverted to his old diet. In a second personally conducted test, Peter Neale managed to induce Pat both to drink milk and eat spinach, but it was not exactly a triumph. The result was gained by strategy, which was ingenious but also abject. Moreover, it was almost wholly accidental. Driven desperate by an unyielding stubbornness, Peter at length lost his temper and shouted at the child. "All right then, don't eat any spinach. I won't let you eat any spinach."
Pat scowled and, reaching all the way across the table, helped himself to a large spoonful. "I'm eating spinach," he said, "I'm eating it right now."
The only thing of which Peter had a right to boast was that he did not allow any false pride to stand between him and the object which he sought. He was quick to seize his opportunity. Pat's seeming free will was harnessed to serve the predetermined purposes of an ego less powerful but more unscrupulous.
"Maybe you are eating a little spinach," said Peter, "but I guess you won't dare take any milk when I tell you not to."
Pat fell into the trap. "Look at me now, Peter, I'm drinking it all up."
Once he learned the method Peter became a strict disciplinarian. Almost invariably Pat disobeyed with alacrity when he heard the stalwart and ringing command, "Now, Pat, I don't want you to go to bed and I don't want you to go this very minute." Of course the thing became a little complicated. Even after much practice Peter used to get somewhat mixed up over such instructions as, "No, the nightgown I don't want you to wear is the one over there."
The eating problem was subjected to still further complexities. Peter was shrewd enough to realize that the scheme of indirect discourse might become strained beyond all usefulness if employed too much. Pat conformed and yet it became evident at length that he saw through the trickery. On his fifth birthday, for instance, at his party he made no rush for the ice cream which was placed before him but looked up plaintively and said, "Peter, why don't you tell me not to eat my ice cream."
Accordingly, other games were invented. The milk race proved generally useful but rules had to be devised to prevent Pat from going too fast. Eventually the contest was introduced by Peter as "a slow milk race." In order to prevent Patfrom choking to death he would cry every now and then "Measure!" At that signal both would lower their glasses and set one against the other on the table. Pat took over the announcing of these results. He used only one decision—"I'm ahead"—and this bore no accurate relation to the actual quantity of milk in the two glasses.
As a matter of fact, the milk race never was a very sporting proposition. Pat always won and as the practice continued he began to demand new guarantees of success. "You mustn't start till I'm through, Peter," he would say. "I want to win." Peter also hit upon the device of serving Pat with nothing but "special milk." His own came out of the same bottle but had no title. Nobody but Pat was supposed under any circumstances to be allowed to touch "special milk." The story, circulated by Peter, was that the cow wouldn't like it.
Another incentive to appetite was playing burglar. This game was also one of Peter's inventions, but Pat eventually became the aggressor. "You must be asleep," he would say, "and I must be a burglar and come along and steal some of your spinach. Shut your eyes."
Even years afterward Peter could never look at spinach without blinking.
Kate was not very apt at any of the eating games and the result was that Peter found himself more bound to the flat than ever. Now he seldom got down to the office except during the hours between lunch and dinner. The feeding and more particularly, the urging of Pat came to be almost a regular duty. Peter was never quite sure whether he liked or hated these activities. Although they were confining and arduous he got an undeniable satisfaction out of them. He was succeeding with something a good deal more personal than a syndicate. He was succeeding where Kate, the mother of five or six, had failed.
"Maybe women are all right for children when they get a little older," was the way Peter expressed it to himself, "but they haven't imagination enough to handle a little one like Pat. That's a man's job."
Pat was six years old when he saw his first ball game up at the old hill top park of the New York Yankees who were then the Highlanders. The Red Sox were the visiting team.
"That's Sea Lion Harry Hall," said Peter, pointing to a man in a gray uniform who was throwing the ball. Pat tried to follow the direction in which Peter pointed.
"I don't see no sea lion," he complained.
"Right over there," replied Peter, "the pitcher. Don't you see the man that's throwing the ball. That's his name, Sea Lion Harry Hall."
Pat was enormously disappointed. He had thought that maybe it was some sort of circus which they were going to see in this great open park. The sea lion had sounded like a promise of elephants to come. He tried to beat back his grief, but presently tears rolled out of his eyes. The best he could do was to make no sound. Eventually Peter noticed the damp tracks across his face.
"What are you crying about?" he asked in surprise.
"You said it was a sea lion," sobbed Pat, "and it isn't any sea lion."
"Oh, that's it. Don't you understand: his name's Sea Lion. Just as they call you Pat."
"Why do they call him a Sea Lion?"
"Well," said Peter, "to tell the truth I don't know exactly. It's just one of those things. I've been writing about Sea Lion Harry Hall a couple of years and now I never stopped to think up any reason for it. It was smart of you to ask me, Pat. That's right. Don't you go taking in things people tell you without asking why. That's the first thing a newspaperman ought to learn. You just wait here a minute and I'll go and find out why they call him Sea Lion Harry Hall."
Peter went over to the wire screen which ran in front of the press box and called to a short little man who was sitting on his heels and balancing himself with his bat which he had dug into the ground. The player straightened up and came over. Peter conversed earnestly with him for a moment. Then he came back. "Now," he said, "I know all about it. Kid Elberfeld—that was Kid Elberfeld I wastalking to—he says they call him Sea Lion Harry Hall because he roars so—just like a sea lion."
For the next half hour Pat abandoned all thought of the game. Peter rattled off words and the meaning of them. There were hits and errors and flies and grounders. Once everybody in the park shouted and stood up and Peter said it was a home run, but Pat gave very little heed to this. He paid no more attention to the rooting than if it had been Peter talking to him. It was another sound for which he was waiting. He couldn't be burdened with learning about hits and errors or even the thing called a home run. What he wanted was to hear Sea Lion Harry Hall roar like a sea lion. For hours Pat heard nothing. The man just did his exercises and threw the ball. Then something happened which made him mad. He threw the ball and after it was thrown he walked straight up to a man in blue who had on a false face. And he talked at him. Very loud and hoarse he said, "Jesus, Tim, call 'em right."
"There goes the Sea Lion," said Peter who had been busy with something else and had caught no more than the rumble. "Didn't that sound just like a sea lion?"
Pat scorned to cry. He did not even bother to say "No." By now he knew that the baseball park was the land of disappointment. It was a place where things were cried up with words which were not so. Peter had said he would roar like a sea lion. And he didn't. He was just a man who said "Jesustim" pretty loud.
Pat heard a seal lion once. "Jesustim" didn't sound anything like a sea lion.
Interesting inquiry might have centred around "Too hot to handle" if Peter had used it earlier in the day, but by the time it came Pat knew that it was just a grown up way of talking big. When Peter said, "That's Birdie Cree," Pat did not look or even ask any questions. He knew there was not a birdie.
Only one romantic concept came to Pat from the game.
"That's Tris Speaker, that kid in centre field," said Peter.
Of course, Pat knew that he really wouldn't be a kid. It didn't surprise him to find that Tris was a man but he was quite a lot different from pretty nearly all the other grown-ups that Pat had ever seen. They didn't run like Tris. Probably theycouldn't. The other men in this baseball park ran, but Tris was the fastest. But it wasn't just looking at him that Pat liked. He said the name over to himself several times. "Tris Speaker, Tris Speaker." There was fun in the sound of it. Not quite enough for a whole afternoon, to be sure. This was a park without sandpiles or a merry-go-round. And there were no policemen to make everybody keep off the grass. Pat wished they would.
"I want to go home," he said at last.
"Tired already?" asked Peter. "Well, there's only half an inning more. It wasn't much of a game, was it? Too one-sided. But we're not going home right off. I've got to go straight to the office and I'm going to take you with me."
In another ten minutes the game was over. "You didn't like it, did you?" asked Peter. The formula nettled Pat.
"Yes, I did," he said.
After a long trip in the subway they came to the big building where Peter worked. Pat had never been there before. At the end of a long corridor was a small office and Peter opened the door and went in. "I've got to write the paper," he said."You keep quiet till I'm done. Here's the funny section for you."
Upon examination Pat found that it was last Sunday's pictures. He had already seen the one about how the kids put dynamite in the Captain's high hat. Still he followed the adventure again. When Kate read it to him on Sunday it had made him a little sad. It seemed to him that it must have hurt the Captain when Maude, the mule, kicked him in the head. Now he found a new significance in the last picture. Maude and the Captain were floating in the air high above the roof. Coming out of the Captain's mouth were marks like this, "!——!!!" And yet it must be pleasant to go floating away in the sky like that. Pat looked out of the window and he could see the river and the great bridge. He would like to have a high hat and some dynamite and a mule. Then he could float through the window like Davey and the Goblin. That would be better than sitting there in the little office so quietly while Peter pounded the keys of his typewriter. Peter kept taking sheets of paper out of it and tearing them up.
"Whatch you doing?" Pat asked when he could keep silent no longer.
"Hush," said Peter very sternly, "you mustn't ask questions now. I'm doing a story for the Bulletin. That's very important, I must do it right away."
"Why?"
"Well, pretty soon they're going to put the paper to bed." Pat knew that must be some sort of joke. Papers didn't go to bed. They didn't have any pajamas or nightgowns.
Somebody knocked at the door and before Peter could say anything Charlie Hall came in. "Is that your kid?" he asked.
"Yes," said Peter, "He's my son. Say hello to Charlie Hall, Pat."
"Well, what's your name?" said Hall just as if he was very much interested.
"My name's Pat."
"Tell him your big name," prompted Peter. "Go ahead."
"Peter Neale, second."
"I suppose you'll be down here doing baseball yourself pretty soon now that you're getting to be such a big boy," said Hall.
Pat picked up the funny paper again and pretended to become engrossed in it. Charlie Hall was diverted back to the first of the Peter Neales.
"I guess he's a little older than my youngest," he said. "Let me see, Joe—no, that's not the one I mean—Bill must be about four or five now. Just around there."
"Pat's older than that. He was six a couple of days ago."
"Getting pretty near time to begin figuring what to do with him."
"I know that already," said Peter, "he's going to be a newspaper man. He's going to be 'by Peter Neale'."
"I'd drown mine, all six of 'em, before I'd let 'em go into the newspaper business."
"What's the matter with it?"
"It don't get you any place. Now if I was in business I'd be just getting ready to be a president of the company or something. And as it is I'm just an old man around the shop. Forty-two my last birthday. In a couple of years more I'll be on the copy desk."
"That's mostly bunk, Charlie. But even if it was so, haven't you had a lot of fun?"
"What do you mean, fun?"
"Going out where things are happening and writing pieces and seeing them in the paper the nextday. Just writing a baseball story seems sort of exciting to me."
"Hell," said Charlie, "they're all faked, those baseball games. I wouldn't go across the street to see one."
He paused, but went on again before Peter could protest.
"It's a funny thing, but the longer you stay in newspaper work the more it gets to seem as if everything's faked. After a while you find out that all the murders are just alike. Somebody sleeps with somebody and somebody else don't like it and then you have what we call a 'mystery' and we get all steamed up about it. Railroad accidents—the engineer disregarded the signal—fires—somebody dropped a cigarette in a pile of waste. My God, Pete, there's only about ten things can happen any place in the world and then they must go on repeating themselves over and over."
Peter rushed in pellmell. "But don't you see, Charlie. It's the writing about them makes them different. A piano player might as well say, 'I haven't got anything but the same notes.'"
"Well," said Charlie, "I'd drown all five of them if they wanted to be piano players. Maybe there issome fun in writing. I don't know anything about that. But if a man wants to write why put it down some place where it's going to be swept up by the street cleaner the next day. At eleven o'clock tomorrow morning all that stuff you were writing before I came in will be dead and rotten. It'll have to make room for the home edition and on top of that'll come another. And so on all day long. Writing for a newspaper's like spitting in Niagara Falls. Anybody that can write ought to get on a magazine and do something that'll last anyway from breakfast to dinner time."
"It's no good for me," said Peter. "I've written for magazines a little—just sport stuff, you know. You do something and maybe you like it, but that's the last you hear about it for a month. By the time it comes out you've forgotten all about it and maybe by that time it isn't true anyway. It's like writing for posterity."
"All right," said Charlie, "go on with your story. If you make it a good one maybe there'll be somebody around the office'll remember it clear into next week."
Left alone, Peter proceeded at a furious rate. Even Pat was frightened out of interrupting by thebeat and pace of the noise which came from the typewriter. If there had been a steam whistle it would have sounded a good deal like a locomotive. Soon Peter called a copy boy and gave him the pages. It had grown almost dark now, but he did not switch on the electric light immediately. From the next room came the clicking sound of telegraph keys.
"Do you hear that," said Peter. "That's magic. Some place there's a war, or a king's just died, or maybe he's only sick and those clicks are telling us about it."
"Did he eat too much ice cream and cake?" asked Pat.
"I don't know. I can't tell till somebody writes it down. You have to makea b c'sout of it before anybody except just the man in the room understands about it."
"Come here," said Peter, suddenly getting up from his chair, "you sit down there, Pat."
"I don't want to," said Pat.
"All right, I won't let you sit in my chair."
Pat got up and took the seat.
"Now," said Peter earnestly, "I don't want you to grow up to be a newspaper man, and I don't wantyou to come into this office after I'm gone."
He put his arm around Pat's shoulder and drew him close. Then he took the boy's hand, the left one, and moved it forward near the typewriter.
"This is the desk," said Peter, "that I don't want you to use."
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. Petercouldn'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 andlooking 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'texpect 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 justfilled 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 theboy. "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.
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 ismagnificent.' 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 iswhy 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 Iknow, 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."