The Boy Grew Older

"How about this message I'm to give Wilson, is that really necessary?"

"Oh, I guess not. But the president ought to feel flattered that Rufus Twice is behind him and not about three feet out in front pulling him along. On the level, don't you remember Rufus Twice on the Bulletin?"

"No, I don't. I've been away for years and years now. I don't remember anybody."

"Big black-haired fellow. Snappy dresser. Always made a point of coming in late and just barely catching the first edition."

"That fits any one of twenty people around the shop."

"Maybe they were all Rufus Twice. My God! there've been times when he seemed like ad nauseam. You'll remember him if I remind you of the story about Twice and the district attorney."

"Go on. Remind me. What district attorney?"

"Hell! I can't be bothered remembering the names of district attorneys. He don't figure anyway. We'll just call him Smith. It was about that Haldeman murder case. I suppose you've forgotten that too, but Haldeman was a fellow said he had something on the police and the day before he was to spill it they found him murdered up in his apartment. This was about twelve o'clock at night and all the reporters come down to the station. Rufus Twice is there and this district attorney fellow he shows up too. After getting all the facts they go out for sandwiches and one of the reporters says, 'Mr. Smith, haven't you some statement to make to the papers about this murder.' The district attorney just looks at him and sits there trying to make up his mind. And while he's thinking Rufus Twice hops in. 'I think Mr. Smith would like to say something about as follows,' he begins. It goes on for about a thousand words and when he's all done he turns to Smith and says, 'That's about right, isn't it?' And Smith says, 'Yes.' And after that all through the case Twice gives out the statements the same way except that he doesn't bother to say, 'That's about right' any more."

"Is that a true story?"

"I don't know. That's the way Twice always tells it."

As Peter was going out, Cheeves called him back.

"Say, I suppose now that the cruel peace conference is almost over you'll be going back. I don't want to give you a wrong steer about Twice. Maybe you got the impression from what I said that he's just a big bluff. That's only about ten per cent right. He is a big bluff but in addition to that he's got the stuff. You could make about ten of Miles out of him. When you pack up your stuff to go back don't forget to take along a grain of salt."

There must have been something of prophetic vision in the remarks of Cheeves for Peter received his message of recall the next day. The cable said, "Baseball beginning to look more important peace conference stop much quicker stop we want you back right away stop advise you take Espagne – Twice."

Peter looked at his watch. He had just twenty-two hours to dig up such roots as he had sprouted during his four years in France. He made the boat by the closest possible margin. Of course he would rather that it had been any vessel afloat except the Espagne haunted by the ghost of what was probably by now a dead submarine. Still catching the boat was a sort of assignment. And it was the quickest way home. Pat would be waiting on the pier in New York. Peter had cabled ahead to him.

CHAPTER V

It was a Pat prodigiously grown who met Peter as he came down the gangplank. Not much had altered in the look of him but just the added inches and heft gave him a curiously disturbing air of maturity. Peter would have liked to put his arms around him but he didn't dare. The handshake was not adequate and there was nothing he could say to express what he wanted to. It seemed better not to try.

"Hello, Pat," he said.

"Hello, Father," said the boy.

"Don't," exclaimed Peter almost as if in pain. "I've got a name. I don't want to be father. I never have been father. Four years oughtn't to do that."

"I'm sorry, Peter," Pat said it almost shyly.

The baggage was passed promptly, but as Peter was about to leave the pier a man came up to him.

"You're Peter Neale, aren't you?" he asked.

Peter nodded.

"I'm a reporter from the Bulletin. My name's Weed. Mr. Twice sent me down. He told me to tell you to come right up to the office."

"What's the rush?" asked Peter.

"I don't know. He didn't say."

"I think maybe we'd better go," broke in Pat. "He gave me the same message for you yesterday. I forgot about it."

"What has he got to do with you?" Peter inquired, after Weed had gone.

"Don't you see, when Mr. Twice became editor he inherited me along with the paper. Mr. Miles never did anything much the last couple years about managing me. He just turned over the allowance you gave me every week. Mr. Twice has taken complete charge. He's got my whole life mapped out."

"What's it going to be?"

"He's got it all fixed up for me to go to Harvard one more year and then start on the Bulletin."

"How do you like that?"

"I like it fine. But that doesn't make any difference. It's all fixed up that way anyhow. Twice has made up his mind about it."

"I'm obliged to him, but why can't he let me alone the first day. They didn't do things like this on the Bulletin in the old days. Here it is four years and I want to sit down some place and talk with you."

They waited in the outer office less than half an hour before a young woman ushered them into Twice's room. Peter had seen him before. The description which Cheeves gave was not so very good after all. His hair wasn't very black.

"Glad to see you back, Neale," said Twice, "and you, Pat. Won't you just sit down. I'll be with you in a second."

"Miss Nathan," he called across the room to his secretary, "I want you to take a cablegram to Speyer in Berlin. 'Fine story today. We think Ebert is doing constructive service to humanity. Tell him I said so.' And oh, Miss Nathan, let me know the minute that call from Washington comes through. But don't disturb me for anything else. I'm going to be busy now for some time. Don't forget to make that note about finding out when Blake's contract is up. I want to know about that the first thing in the morning. And tell Mr. O'Neill not to go home until he sees me. You can hold the rest of those letters over till I get back from dinner tonight. You know where to get me. Just a minute. Take a note for Booth. The Milwaukee offer is far too low. Tell 'em I've been thinking it over and that the price for the series is now three hundred instead of two.' That's the cheapest crowd I ever had to deal with. Don't put that in the letter. 'Price for the series now three hundred instead of two.' That's the end of it."

He turned to Peter. "It's that diary of the sub-commander. I'm letting a few selected papers in on it. Miss Nathan – " In the moment of lull the secretary had gone.

"Well, Neale, I certainly am glad to have you back here again. We've got to begin to hammer sports. They're coming back terrifically. I put all the foreign politics in the paper because that's what I think the people ought to read. Baseball's the thing that actually gets 'em. If Babe Ruth and Lloyd George both died tomorrow Ruth would just blanket him. And let me tell you, Neale, George is one of the great men of our day. I have a very warm personal feeling for him. I don't suppose you remember Delehanty."

Peter was just about to answer that he had seen him several times but he wasn't nearly quick enough.

"Ruth reminds me more of him than any other player I've seen in the game," continued Twice. "Killed, jumping off a railroad bridge on June third, 1902. I've always made it a business not to be wrong. Remember that, Pat. It's just as easy to have the right date as the wrong one. It's just a knack. Anybody can do it. Come in some time and I'll explain the trick for you."

Peter broke in resolutely. "There was a man came down to the dock who said you wanted to see me. His name was Weed."

"Yes, Weed, good man. I dug him up myself. He came off a little paper in Reading. Of course he hasn't quite got the touch yet. The city's a little too big for him, but I think he's going to be a first rate newsman. Right now he tries too hard. He thinks he's got to dazzle people. The result is he's just a little esoteric. A little too esoteric. I must remember to tell him he's too esoteric."

"What is it you want to do with me?" asked Peter, returning to the attack.

"Yes," said Rufus Twice, "that's why I asked you to come here. I've been talking it over with Booth, the syndicate man, and a week from Monday'll be a good time for you to begin the sport column again. It takes a little time to get momentum up again but inside of a year I think we'll have a bigger list for you than when you went away. What did you have then?"

"A hundred and twelve," replied Peter.

"A hundred and twelve," repeated Twice. "Yes, that's just about right. Well, in a year we'll give you two hundred. I've got another name for your column. I don't like 'Looking Them Over With Peter Neale.' It's a little amorphous. How do you like 'Hit and Run?'"

"I'm not sure I like that at all," said Peter.

"That's just because it sounds strange to you. You'll get used to it in no time. Now, we want you to get your first column ready in a couple of days. We want to have a good margin of time there. I don't want to do any more than suggest, but I believe you want to say in your first column that fundamentally there is a kinship between war and sport. Take a football quarterback and you have the perfect prototype of the general in charge of operations. The line plunge gives you exactly the same problem the allies had in Flanders. If you have sufficient preparation the point of attack will be learned before you're ready. The quick thrust must be a surprise. Then you have the forward pass. What's that?"

"Why, I don't know," said Peter.

"An air raid," said Pat.

"Exactly. Work it out, Neale and you'll find it has almost innumerable possibilities. Of course you understand this is just a suggestion."

Miss Nathan ran in through the door. "Senator Borah's on the wire now," she cried.

"All right," said Twice, "I'll be there in a minute. While you were away, Neale, Miles told me I was supposed to take a look after Pat. That was an agreement he made with you, he told me. I've got that all fixed. He goes back to Harvard next week. His work in the officers' training camp will count him for a year. That means he'll be a sophomore and can play football. I think he might even make the team. Then the next year he comes to us. Four years of college is too much. A degree's just nonsense. I never got one and I wouldn't take an LL.D. I hope the arrangement's satisfactory to you. Will you please excuse me now? I've got to talk up disarmament in Washington. You and Pat come down and have lunch with me tomorrow. Ring me up at the house around noon. It's a private number but Miss Nathan will give it to you. Glad to have you back, Neale."

He was gone.

"Say, Pat," said Peter, "how did you know a forward pass was like an air raid?"

"Well, you see I've heard him do that a couple of times before. How do you like him?"

Peter did not obey his first impulse in answering. He suddenly realized that Rufus Twice was in a position to offer him the most useful sort of support in launching Pat safely and permanently into the newspaper business.

"I tell you, Pat," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's got a lot more sense than you'd think."

CHAPTER VI

"Let's go and dine at some terribly quiet place," suggested Peter as he and Pat came down in the elevator from the office of Rufus Twice. They went to the Harvard Club and sat in a corner of the dining-room where not even a waiter noticed them for the first half hour. Peter was distressed because he found it enormously difficult to talk to Pat. The years he had been away stood like a wall between them. It seemed to be an effort for the boy even to call him "Peter" as he had done for so many years. He was attentive and respectful. There didn't begin to be enough intimacy for banter.

In reply to questions Pat said that he had spent almost no time on football or baseball during his last year because the work at the officers' training camp had been much too difficult. He didn't know whether he ever could pitch again. In the last football game at school he had hurt his left shoulder and it was still a little stiff. It wouldn't keep him from football he thought, but when he tried to swing the arm up over his head he got a twinge in the bad shoulder. Anyway he had come to like football a good deal better than baseball. Twice had told him he ought to have a bully chance to make the team at Harvard but he wasn't sure. Perhaps he wouldn't have quite enough speed for a big college team.

"I said something like that to Mr. Twice," Pat added, "and he jumped all over me. He asked me if I'd ever heard of Freud and if I knew what an inferiority complex was, and I said I had, but he explained it all to me anyway."

"What is an inferiority complex?" asked Peter.

"Oh, you know – that business of thinking there's something wrong with you about something."

Pat rubbed the lower part of his neck. "Down here in the subconscious mind. A sort of a fear or shame or something like that gets stuck down there and you have rheumatism or you yell at people."

"What do you mean yell at people? Why do you yell at them?"

"I don't know exactly, sir. I guess it's to show 'em that you aren't inferior."

"Say, Pat, please don't call me 'sir' any more."

"I'm sorry."

"I guess there is something in that inferiority thing after all. I've seen it lots of times, but I never knew the name for it. Lots of pitchers come up from the sticks with all the stuff in the world and can't do anything because they're afraid it's going to be too tough for them. Say, Pat, you've got to pitch again some time. You know on account of this war I've never seen you pitch."

"Oh, yes. Don't you remember the year before you went away. We used to go over in the Park and you'd catch for me."

"That doesn't count. I mean in a game. How were you anyway?"

"Well, I guess I wasn't much good. Not with men on bases. If anything went wrong I always had a terrible time to keep from hurrying. I had to just stick the ball right over."

"Why?"

"Well, I always got to worrying that I was going to lose control. In my head I could keep a jump ahead of everything that was happening. I was always seeing fellows walking down to first. I didn't mind them hitting me so much. It was having 'em all walking around just as slow as they liked that got my goat. Sometimes I used to have nightmares about it."

"That's funny, maybe you can't pitch," said Peter. "It doesn't make any difference. You've had enough baseball already to help you a lot when you begin to write about it."

Pat made no reply.

"Don't you think so?" asked Peter a little sharply.

"Oh, yes, sir."

Peter made no comment. He realized that the sharpness of his tone had checked his advance into the confidence of Pat. That business about the nightmares was better. People didn't tell things like that to strangers. He tried to re-establish the mood.

"Speaking of nightmares," said Peter. "There's one I have a lot. Mine is about people running, running along the deck of a ship. I guess it's something left over from that time we had the fight with the submarine on the Espagne. But there isn't any submarine in the dream. It's just the people running that frightens me."

Pat merely listened. Peter paused a moment. "That's curious, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," answered Pat.

A waiter came up now and took the order. After he went away they were silent. From the big lounging-room came the sound of a man more or less aimlessly fooling with the piano. After a while Peter broke the silence. He would have liked to know something about Pat's thoughts on this career which was being planned for him, and his attitude on the war and religion and women. "Are you in love with anybody and who is she and tell me about her?" Peter would have liked to ask a question like that, but he did not dare.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" was what he did ask.

"Mostly just hanging around to find out what Mr. Twice was deciding to do with me?" Pat answered.

Then there was more silence. The man in the next room was playing louder. "I wish, he'd either play that 'Invitation to the Waltz' or cut it out," said Pat.

So that was it. The "Invitation to the Waltz." It suggested to Peter that he bid boldly and offer close confidence in the hope that it would be met in kind.

"I wish he wouldn't play the 'Invitation to the Waltz' at all," he said. "That tune always tears me to bits."

He waited but Pat said nothing.

"I've never talked to you before about your mother. The first time I saw her she danced to that tune … the 'Invitation to the Waltz.' She's a singer now but she was a dancer then. I don't suppose you even know her name."

"Yes," said Pat, "her name is Maria Algarez and she's singing now at the opera in Buenos Aires."

"How did you know that? I didn't even know myself that she was in Buenos Aires right now."

"I had a letter from her last week," explained Pat.

"She writes to you?" asked Peter in a good deal of surprise. "You mean she always has written to you?"

"Oh no, I never heard from her at all till during the war. It must have been a couple of years ago. Of course even when I was a kid I'd heard a little about her. You remember old Kate. Well, a long time ago she told me that my mother was an actress and a very bad woman and that I mustn't say anything about her to you. I don't believe I ever did, did I?"

"Kate had no right to say that. Your mother isn't a bad woman. She's a great artist."

"Well, I guess I never worried much about it anyway. Maybe I was a little sad about it at first, but I've forgotten. And then all of sudden I got this letter from Maria Algarez. She said she'd seen you in Paris and that you showed her my picture and she wanted to write to me. She told me all about her singing. After that I got a lot of letters from her. She'd say she'd just been singing in 'Butterfly' and then she'd tell me what it was all about. You know that funny broken way she has of writing things."

"Yes," said Peter, "I know."

"Well, it was a lot of fun. You see I'd never heard any of these operas but after I found out about Maria Algarez singing in them I used to go. If she wrote that she'd been singing 'Butterfly' I'd go to the Met and get a standup seat and then I'd write to her and tell her about Farrar and all the people I'd heard. She'd write back and tell me all the things that were the matter with Farrar and the way she did it differently and a lot better."

"She never showed any of those letters to me," said Peter.

"Didn't she?" asked Pat casually as if it made no difference. "Oh yes, I remember she wrote to me once that if I told you about going to the opera it might worry you and not to say anything about it. I don't know why. She used to send me clippings from the newspapers with the things critics said about her. They were all just crazy about her."

Peter in his bitterness was about to say, "Of course, she picked out the good ones," but Pat was in full swing and he decided not to throw him off his stride.

"You know I couldn't read this stuff at first. It was in French and Spanish, but there was an old fellow that taught at school and he was terribly excited too when I told him that Maria Algarez was sending me these clippings. He'd heard her sing, you know. He used to translate the clippings for me and he told me a lot about Maria Algarez."

"And now," said Peter, "I suppose you can read them yourself."

"Well, I can do the French all right but I'm not much on the Spanish. You see the old Frenchman, the fellow that taught at school, he was awful decent to me. He used to give me extra classes outside of school. You see we had a secret between us. It was like belonging to that kid fraternity we used to have in high school – Alpha Kappa Phi. That means something that nobody else knew. I can't remember what."

"Brothers and friends," prompted Peter.

"How did you know that?"

"You told me about it in one of the letters you wrote to me. But what was the secret you had with the old Frenchman?"

"Why, about Maria. He told me not to let any of the fellows know that Maria Algarez was my mother. He said that it was a beautiful romance but that here in America people wouldn't understand on account of American morality being so strict and that they might look down on me."

Peter was indignant. "Beautiful romance! Where did he get that idea? Maria Algarez and I were married just like anybody. Didn't she tell you that?"

"No," said Pat in obvious disappointment, "she didn't."

"I guess she forgot about it," suggested Peter.

"It doesn't make any difference to me, but if I run into old Mons. Fournier I won't dare tell him. It would spoil the whole thing for him. He'll think I was just boasting. Gosh he got a lot of fun out of it."

"Fournier, there's a Jacques Fournier that plays first base for the White Sox."

"No, this man's named Antoine. He's the old French teacher I was telling you about. Maybe they're related. He never said anything about it."

"In these letters about the opera and singing and all that," asked Peter, "did Maria Algarez ever suggest that you ought to try and be a singer."

Pat broke into unrestrained merriment. "Good God! no," he said and added quickly, "I beg your pardon, Father, I didn't mean to curse but it would be so funny if Maria'd said anything like that about me."

Peter was nettled. "If you're going to call me 'father' why don't you call her 'mother'?"

"I'm sorry; I know you don't like to be called 'father'. I won't do it again."

"All right, but you haven't answered my question. Don't you ever think of calling her 'mother'?"

"Maria Algarez? No, it would sound so funny. I've never seen her. She doesn't seem like my mother or anybody's mother. She's around singing before people and all that. And look at her picture."

He took one out of his pocket and handed it across the table. For the first time since the conversation had turned upon Maria Peter smiled. He recognized the picture. He too had had one just like it a good many years ago. It was taken two or three months before he married Maria Algarez. However, Peter let it pass without comment.

"What does Maria say about what you're going to do?" he wanted to know. "She hasn't raised any objections to your going into the newspaper business?"

"No, she never mentioned that or anything definite. She's just kept hammering away at one thing. She keeps saying Pat don't do anything unless it's something you want to do very much. And she says if a man or a woman has something like that he wants to do he musn't let anything in the world stand in his way. He must go after it."

"Have you been living up to that? Have you been doing everything you wanted?"

"Well, no," said Pat, "not since Rufus Twice took me over."

Peter brightened. Maria had a fight on her hands. Rufus Twice was right behind him even as he had been behind President Wilson. But the next moment he was again sunk in gloom. They were done with dinner and Pat asked with unmistakable eagerness, "Couldn't we go some place and hear some music?"

Peter throttled down his chagrin but before he could answer Pat added, "Do you suppose there's any chance of our getting in to the Follies?"

CHAPTER VII

The plans of Rufus Twice did not work out quite according to specifications. Pat went to Harvard, but he failed to make the football team although he remained on the squad as a rather remotely removed substitute quarterback. He was not even taken to the Princeton game, but he wrote to Peter that he would be on the sidelines in uniform for the game with Yale at New Haven. It was arranged that he should meet Peter immediately afterwards at the Western Union office. Pat's letters from Harvard were sparse and infrequent.

"Football is the toughest course I have," he wrote, "and the dullest. Learning the signals here is worse than dates. You can't even guess at them. You have to know. Last week Bob Fisher gave us a blackboard talk in the locker-room and made a comparison between war and football. It sounded just like Mr. Twice. Maybe Mr. Twice put him up to it. It's beginning to seem to me as if that man ran everything in this world. The only thing I've enjoyed much is going round to Copeland's. He's an assistant professor in English. I take a course with him about Dr. Johnson and his Circle. I don't care anything about Dr. Johnson. He seems to have been the Rufus Twice of his day. But I do like hearing Copeland. The fellows that know him well call him 'Copey,' but I haven't nerve enough to do that. He has receptions in his room at night. There's a regular thing he tells you, 'Nobody comes much before ten or stays after eleven'. He talks about books and makes them exciting. I'm kind of steamed up about an English woman writer called May Sinclair. I've been reading 'Mary Olivier.' It isn't much like any writing I've ever seen before. She just sort of sails along over a story and whenever she sees anything that seems important to her she swoops down and collars it. All the stuff that doesn't matter is left out. There isn't much here that matters, but you can't leave it out because if you do the dean tells you about it. Do you remember that suggestion you made to me that night we took dinner at the Harvard Club. You remember you asked me if I ever thought any about singing myself. I got rather interested and thought some about going out for the Glee Club, but I knew Mr. Twice would raise the dickens if I didn't play football. Sometimes we sing up here in the room. Just swipes you know. I'm getting so I can work out chords on the piano. I don't know anything about my voice because it's always a bunch of us that sings together. I do know though that I can sing a lot louder than the rest. I think if you're smart you'll put a bet on us against Yale. Those lickings we got earlier in the season don't mean anything. We're just beginning to come along now. I don't know why I say 'we.' I mean 'they.' I haven't got anything to do with it. Somehow though I do get swept along into the whole business. Mr. Copeland was telling us the other night that we all take football a lot too seriously. He says nothing will crumble and fall down even if we don't beat Yale next Saturday. I know there's sense to that, but somehow I can't help caring about it. Keep your eyes on Charlie Bullitt when you come up to the game. When I watch him work I realize how far off I am from being a regular college quarterback. He's got a bean on him. I'll see you right after the game at the telegraph office. I suppose you're going to do the story for the Bulletin. See that Harvard doesn't get any the worst of it."