The Boy Grew Older

Combined with an elevated eyebrow an effect was produced ample to carry off the handicaps of both carriage and bandages.

Nevertheless, he felt a little conspicuous when he started for the Park. And pushing a carriage was dull work. There was no future to it, no competitive value, no opportunity for advancement. One could not very well come to the point of being able to say, "I can wheel a carriage a little bit better than anybody else in New York." The thing was without standards. Of all outdoor sports this was the most dreary and democratic. But in spite of the ease of manipulation he was under the impression that a carriage required constant attention. Quite by accident he discovered that it would space nicely between shoves if he happened to let go of the handlebar. This led to the creation of a rather amusing game. Peter called it putting the sixteen pound carriage.

Not far from the Sixty-fifth Street entrance of the Park he found a large hill and for a moment it was clear of pedestrians. Standing at the foot of this hill Peter gave the carriage a violent shove and let go. Up the hill it sped until its momentum was exhausted and then it rolled back again. The game was to try and make it reach the top. Peter never succeeded in that although he came within four feet eight inches of accomplishing the feat which he had set for himself. He was handicapped by the fact that he did not quite dare to put all his back and shoulders into the preliminary shove. Indeed on his best heave, the one which took the missile within four feet eight inches of the top, the carriage careened precariously. More than that it almost hit a stout woman who was coming down the hill. She stopped and spoke to Peter. "Haven't you got any better sense than to do a thing like that," she said. "That carriage almost upset. I've a good mind to follow you home and tell the father of that baby some of the things you're doing with his child. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, a grown man carrying on like that. And on Sunday too."

Peter didn't want her to follow him home and so he merely said, "Yes, mam, I won't do it any more."

And for that day he kept his word. However, the baby did not seem to mind much. It continued to sleep. Peter pushed the carriage aimlessly about for a little while, never letting go of the handlebar. He felt like an Atlantic City Negro with a wheel chair hired for the day by a tired business man. There was nobody to whom he could talk. The baby had slept so long by now that Peter began to worry that something might be wrong with him. Bending over the carriage he ascertained that the child was still breathing. He wished it would wake up. Of course he might not actually be company if aroused but he seemed even less animated when asleep.

Perhaps Christy would be a good name for him. Christopher Mathewson Neale had a fine resounding swing to it. Still maybe Matty wouldn't turn out to be a great pitcher after all. Peter was tremendously confident about him, but it might be best to wait until time had tested him. After a World's Series or something like that one could be absolutely certain. No good taking chances until then. It was still within the bounds of possibility that Matty might be a bloomer and it would hardly be fair to name the child after somebody in the Three I League.

Finding a tree and a bench Peter sat down to continue his speculations. How about a newspaper name? Greeley Neale wouldn't be so bad. Yes, it would. Everybody would be sure to make it Greasy Neale. A prizefight name offered possibilities. Nelson Neale, for instance, had alliteration. Peter had given the lightweight a name – the Durable Dane was his invention – and it seemed no more than a fair exchange to take his in return. Still he had never been convinced that Nelson was a really first class man. He had neither speed nor a punch. It was just stamina which carried him along. The youngster ought not to go through life head down. Besides a name like that would serve to remind Peter of his return from Goldfield and the flight of Maria.

Just then a sound came from the carriage. It was a gurgle. Peter pushed back the hood. The baby looked at him fixedly and Peter fancied that there was a certain trace of emotion in the small face. Surprise seemed to be indicated. And it was not altogether agreeable surprise for as Peter returned the stare the baby's right eyebrow went up and the left one didn't.

"God!" said Peter, "he is Peter Neale."

But there must be more ceremony than that. Peter looked around to see that he and the baby were alone. Then he spoke to him distinctly although emotionally. He realized now that his intuition had been sound when he had said way back weeks ago at the Newspaper Club. "My son has just been born." He had never had any doubt about his physical paternity but that did not seem important. It was spiritual kinship which counted and an eyebrow like that was a thing of the spirit.

"You're my son all right," said Peter, "and you're going to have my name. Peter Neale, that's your name."

He thought it would complicate things to go into the question of whether he should be Peter Neale, Jr. or Peter Neale, 2nd. The Peter Neale was the important part of it. "I guess maybe you can do a lot more with that name than I have, but I've made it a good newspaper name. You can make it a better one maybe. We'll wait and see." He reached out and took the small hand of Peter Neale and shook it. The prayer which went with it was silent. "O God, give him some of the breaks and I will." That completed the christening. It was all that young Peter ever got.

The red-headed boy up the block who had contributed disturbing ideas in other fields also threw a bombshell into Peter's boyhood theology. "Can God do anything?" was his catch question. "Of course He can," replied Peter. "Well, I'll just bet you a million billion dollars He can't make a trolley car go in two directions at the same time." Peter didn't see how He could. He puzzled over the problem for months and at last he decided that maybe God could work it by making the trolley car like an elastic so that it could be stretched up town and down town at the same time. It was not an entirely satisfactory solution of the problem. If a passenger stood in the middle of the car he wouldn't get any place at all.

But for the moment Peter was not much concerned with the potential relationship between the Deity and young Peter. He could bide his time and think up an answer for the day when the child should ask him, "Who's God?" The immediate problem was what place he should fill on the Bulletin. Eventually, of course, he would conduct the column called, "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale." Already there were thirty-one papers in the syndicate and some day Peter could step down and the column would still be "Looking Them Over With Peter Neale."

It would be pleasant not to die in the office but to have ten years or so with no worries as to whether Jim Jeffries could have beaten John L. Sullivan in his prime. And he didn't want to go on forever writing on the question of whether more nerve was required to hole a ten foot putt in a championship match or bring down a halfback on the five yard line. In those last ten years he would have all the fun of reading a Peter Neale column without having to write it. The job had come to him by the merest chance. But young Peter could be trained from the beginning for the work. "I'll start his education right now," Peter resolved and then he looked at the baby and decided that there didn't seem to be anything specific which could be done immediately. Still an early start was possible. Long division ought to be easy and interesting for a child who knew that it was something used in computing batting averages. Of course young Peter would receive an excellent general education. There wasn't any reason why a sporting writer shouldn't be a person of well rounded culture. Sometimes Peter regretted that his Harvard career had lasted only a year. Probably his sporting poems might have been better if he had been able to go on and take that course in versification. Fine arts and history would not be a waste of time.

There was never any telling when some stray scrap of information could be pressed into service for a sporting story. For instance Peter had been struck by that quotation from Walter Pater about the Mona Lisa which he had happened upon in a Sunday newspaper story. Two years later he had been able to use it about Ed Dunkhurst, the human freight car, by paraphrasing the line to read, "Here is the head upon which all the jabs of the world have come and the eyelids are a little weary."

The quotation had given distinction to the story. Sporting writing ought to be just as distinguished as a man could make it. The days of the lowbrow commentator were disappearing. Young Peter might very well carry on and expand the tradition which he had begun. To be sure, there wasn't any hurry about giving him the job. Twenty-five years more for himself would be about right. By that time young Peter would be just twenty-five years and three weeks old. A year or so of general work on the city staff of the Bulletin might be good for him. Indeed anything on the newspaper would do for a start. That was, anything real. Book critics and people like that weren't really newspaper men. On his fiftieth birthday, perhaps, Peter would go to the managing editor and say, "I'm through and there's just one thing I want from the Bulletin. I think it's only fair that you should let me name my successor."

And the managing editor would say, "Why, of course, Neale, who is it to be?"

"His name is Peter Neale."

Naturally, the managing editor would express some regrets. He would pay a warm tribute to the worth and career of Peter Neale, at the end of which Peter would remark, "I'm glad you feel that way about it, sir." After that formality the substitution would be accepted. The line of Neale would remain unbroken.

All this gazing into the future cheered up Peter so much that he started out very gaily that afternoon to compose a column and mind the baby at the same time. Unfortunately the five o'clock feeding time came around just as he was getting into the swing of an article on the advantages of being lefthanded for the purposes of baseball. Somebody had told him that the Bible had something to say on the subject. Peter found it in the twentieth chapter of Judges where he read: "The inhabitants of Gibeah… Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; everyone could sling stones at an hair-breadth, and not miss."

That was just meat for Peter.

"The average southpaw of today," he began, "may have even more speed than the inhabitants of old Gibeah but his control isn't so good." Before he could develop the theme further young Peter began to cry. When searched nothing seemed wrong with him but then Peter remembered about the bottle. He was already half an hour late. The milk was mixed and ready in individual containers in the icebox but Kate had told him to be sure and have it warm. Peter had never warmed anything in his life. After some thought he decided that he could put water into a pot and heat it and then dip the bottle in. He waited until the water was boiling. But the next problem was more difficult. What did Kate mean by warm? How hot could the child stand it? His first three estimates were wrong. Young Peter spit out the milk and yelled. It was annoying for the mixture was hardly steaming.

Cooling it seemed ever so much more difficult than heating. Peter stood the bottle on the window ledge and waved it over his head and blew on it without much appreciable effect upon the temperature. More than half an hour was wasted before the child consented to accept the milk. When Peter went back to his column about lefthanders the spirit and swing of the thing had disappeared. He tried to write a poem to Rube Waddell called, "The Great Gibean" and couldn't find any rhymes. The notion limped home.

Kate's ten o'clock turned out to be past midnight. Shortly before her return the baby went to sleep.

"How did you find your niece's child?" asked Peter.

"Oh, she's fine," said Kate. "She's a girl. A fine little girl, but she's not a patch on himself."

"He's got a name now," said Peter. "We won't have to be saying 'him,' and 'it' and 'the baby' any more. His name's Peter Neale."

CHAPTER XI

The name Peter did not stick to the baby long. Old Peter noticed that Kate never used it. Her first move was to modify it into Petey, then Pete and suddenly it became an unmistakable Pat. "What have you got against the name Peter?" he asked her.

"It's not for me to be criticising a saint in Heaven," answered Kate piously.

"I won't tell on you. Why didn't you like him, He was a good man, wasn't he?"

"A good man, is it? – begging your pardon and that of the blessed saints in Heaven – didn't he deny the name of our blessed Lord and Him seized by the dirty Jews?"

Peter had forgotten about it but he found the striking story in the Gospel according to St. Mark.

"'And thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth.' But he denied, saying – 'I know not, neither understand I what thou sayest.'"

Of course, it was not admirable conduct, but Peter could understand and sympathize with the motives of his namesake. He himself, he felt, would have done much the same thing. Cowardice was not the only factor which prompted the denial. The incident was more complicated than that. Maybe Peter didn't want to make a scene. If he had said yes he was a Christian everybody in the palace of the High Priest would have felt self-conscious and uncomfortable. It might have been necessary for some one to change the subject. Saying "No" made things easier for everybody. Courage may be admirable but tact is not altogether contemptible. Peter Neale usually agreed with people when he felt that they wanted him to.

Still, he hoped that his son would move through the world with a freer and more courageous mood and the next time Kate called the baby Pat, Peter did not object much. He merely said:

"I don't think that name's much of an improvement, Kate."

"And why not?"

"Well, what did this St. Patrick of yours ever do?"

"The blessed St. Patrick that drove the snakes out of Ireland!"

"Yes, but he left the Irish."

Nevertheless for all practical purposes little Peter became Pat from that time on. Kate got most things which she wanted. Peter lived in constant fear of her suddenly quitting her job. He dreaded the task of invading the agencies in search of a new nurse and there did not seem to be any other feasible arrangement.

About three months after he assumed the duties of Sunday father he did contemplate dimly a move which might well have revolutionized the existence of himself and Pat and Kate as well. He met Margaret quite by chance. Pat had colic in the Park. Of course, Peter didn't know it was colic. He only knew that the child screamed in a manner more violent than any he had yet known. His inability to handle the situation was so obvious that Margaret who was sitting with her four-year-old charge on a bench nearby came over and showed him how to roll the baby. After Pat had been rolled sufficiently he recovered but Margaret and Peter did not part company immediately.

"You're a funny one to be sending out with a baby," said Margaret.

"I'm not sent out with him. I go out with him. I'm his father."

Peter realized afterwards that his admission, indeed his boast, of not belonging to the employed classes was largely responsible for the blight which lay under the surface of his relationship to Margaret and finally led to tragedy. There were many meetings following the afternoon of the colic. For a month or so the pretense was kept up that these were merely accidental, but finally one Sunday Peter and Pat and Margaret and Bobby, the boy she was in charge of, were driven under an archway by a thunderstorm. There was so much thunder that Margaret grew very frightened. Peter could think of nothing better to do than put an arm around her. He realized an obligation. Hadn't she rolled Pat out of colic? By and by there was lightning and Peter kissed her. After that they met by acknowledged premeditation every Sunday – close to the entrance of the tunnel.

Peter found it almost as difficult to talk to Margaret as to Pat, but she was better company. The long Sundays went faster when he could sit holding hands in some moderately obscure corner of the park. Margaret was the sort of person who didn't seem to expect much in the way of conversation. All she required was an occasional answer to some simple hypothetical question. These were generally somewhat similar in character. Did he think (she never reached the stage of calling him Peter) that a rich man could marry a poor girl and be happy? Did he realize that a girl could be a child's nurse and a lady at the same time? Wasn't it a fact that widowers led a desperately lonely and unhappy life? Peter happened to have adopted the easy expedient of disposing of Maria by means of a fever.

Margaret was unmistakably a fool, but Peter thought her rather an appealing one. She seemed pretty and he knew that she was expert in handling children. The things required by Bobby and Pat never gave her more than the briefest trouble. And then as Peter was becoming more and more liberal about unintelligence the fatal Sunday arrived. They had lingered a little longer in the Park than usual. Bobby in obedience to the usual command, "Now run away and play, Bobby, and don't get your clothes dirty," had done so. Suddenly he came running back across the meadow as fast as his legs would carry him straight to Margaret.

"I want to make a river," he said.

"Shush! Bobby," answered Margaret in a low voice.

"But I want to make a river," repeated Bobby, even more insistently.

Margaret, her face flaming scarlet, got up and seized the child roughly by the wrist. As she dragged him away he screamed. Peter heard her say, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself!" Presently from out of the bushes in addition to frantic screaming there came the unmistakable sound of a child being spanked.

When Margaret returned to the bench, if indeed she did, Peter had gone. He saw her once weeks afterwards at a distance, but they never talked again. This time it was Peter who did the blushing for the more he thought about the whole business the more degraded he found himself. He had come within at least an appreciable distance of selling his soul for a colic cure. A disgusting snip of a person had moved between him and those bitter but glamorous memories of Maria Algarez. Maybe Maria did ruin all his hope of happiness and yet he knew that but for Maria he would never have made up enough ground in his pursuit of life to learn the great truth that propriety is one of the vices.

CHAPTER XII

Pat grew but it was slow work. Kate would speak of an ounce as if it were some silver trophy which the child had won. Like Samuel Butler her admiration was unbounded for the intelligence which manifested itself in the process of developing bone and muscle and tissue. Peter was not inclined to give the child any credit for this. If you poured water on a lawn, grass sprang up. All the credit belonged to the gardener and Pat became bigger and bigger through no obvious efforts of his own but merely because Peter and Kate plied him with milk and sometimes carrots. Raising grass was easier. The gardener didn't have to deal with a moving target and he could administer water quite irrespective of the wishes of the grass.

Of course, there were moments when Pat displayed intelligence but it was of the most rudimentary sort. When he was about six months old Peter found that if he put a finger in front of him Pat would try to bite it. Sometimes he laughed but only at his own jokes. At seven months he began to crawl. This was moderately interesting but it doubled Peter's Sunday responsibilities and even affected his literary style. Short paragraphs appeared more frequently than ever before in the Looking Them Over column. Longer flights were subject to interruption as Peter had to put Pat away from places such as the steam radiator or the gas logs. It was no longer even possible to leave safety razor blades about.

Eventually somebody told Peter to buy a stockade and he did so. The arrangement was a collapsible fence which could be set up in the middle of the floor to imprison the child and curtail its wanderings. The only trouble lay in the fact that it was much too collapsible. In a month or so Pat was able to pull himself to his feet by holding on to the rail and after a few violent tugs the whole contraption would come down on top of him.

And yet when Kate came to Peter and said that her niece, the one in Jamaica, was looking for a part time job and would take care of Pat on Sundays for $3 a week, Peter refused the offer. He never knew quite why. Somehow or other his Sunday fatherhood had become part of a routine. Perhaps he would have felt foot-loose without it. He merely told Kate that $3 was too much. And one night when Pat was suddenly assailed by croup Peter almost worried himself sick. It was a short illness, but terrific while it lasted. The child seemed to be strangling. The cough which racked it was deep and in its agony the child took on maturity. Against death it fought back. Peter was moved not only because this was his son but because here was a fellow human being grappling with the common enemy. He waited in the hall outside while Dr. Clay was making his examination. There he had more room to walk up and down.

Presently the doctor came out and, taking Peter's arm, led him to the front of the flat. "The child's very ill," he said, "I'm going to send for a trained nurse."

Pat cried his best, but every now and then this would be broken by the fearful cough. It was like the baying of an animal. A spasm from the back room interrupted Dr. Clay. "It almost sounds as if there was another person in that room," he said. "I'm going back."

Peter knew who that thing or person was. He went with Clay and lifted Pat out of his crib and held him in his arms. This gave him a curious feeling that he was doing something; as if he were trying to throw his body between Pat and someone else. In a dim way he felt that he and Pat and the other one, all three, were running down a football field. He must keep close to Pat and block off the tackler.

"Part of my tiredness it goes into your arm." Maria had said that. And now Peter wanted to give something of his own strength to Pat against the fury of the attack. It did not seem fantastic. There was a current in the contact. The man had lied when he said Peter and Maria were one. That couldn't be done. Men and women were grown people, individuals, all finished, but this was only a little person. He was part of Peter. Father and son were one. He was holding Pat so tightly that nobody could take him away. His prayer was all the more fervent from the fact that he did not believe in God. He had to create God. "Don't let him die. Don't let him die." God began to take form in his mind. God was Maria. She was gone and not gone. To her he did not need to make a prayer. "Maria" was enough.

The doorbell rang and Dr. Clay answered it. He brought Miss Haine back. "I guess you know this baby," he said. "We've got to make him well." The nurse spoke to Peter and set about fixing a croup kettle beside the crib. The fumes filled the room. It was a pleasant smell. "Better lay him down in his crib, now," said the Doctor, touching Peter on the shoulder, "so he can get the benefit of this. I think he's a little better already."

Peter knew that he was. Pat was no longer gasping and in a few minutes he was asleep. For a time Peter sat beside the bed. The child's breathing was regular and his cheek was cool to the touch. "Why, he's fine now," Miss Haine told him. "You go to bed. In the morning you won't even know that he's been sick."

There was no trace of the shadow upon Pat next day. Peter was the haggard one. Something had gone out of him during the night as he held Pat in his arms. Father and child were doing as well as could be expected.

CHAPTER XIII

At the age of eleven months and eight days Pat walked for the first time. Peter thought he might have been considerate enough to have chosen a Sunday. His first tooth came on a Sunday, but that wasn't any fun. Besides, it couldn't be tied exactly to some particular day and minute the way that the walking could. Nor was there any gaiety about it. However, Peter did not quite miss the walking for he came in time to see the last couple of hundred yards.