The Boy Grew Older

It was a rainy Saturday and Peter happened home early. Kate met him in the hall with a finger at her lips. "He's walking."

She seemed to feel that if anybody said anything about it the child would probably grow self-conscious and collapse. There appeared to be a certain sagacity in that. It was not an experiment but an adventure. One step led to another. At terrific speed Pat went round and round the room. He might have been Bobby Walthour trying to steal a lap in a six day race. Kate and Peter watched him breathlessly from behind the curtains of the living-room.

"How long has this been going on?" Peter wanted to know.

"It's these ten minutes."

Peter pulled out his gold stop watch and created thereby a psychic crisis. Perhaps Pat felt that his amateur standing was in jeopardy. At any rate he tripped on the edge of a rug, almost turned a somersault, blacked his eye and cried for half an hour.

He did not even attempt to walk again for a week. After that it became habitual. Up to this time Peter had never said much to anybody about his son. He did not talk to the men at the office about the child. There wouldn't be any sense in interrupting Charlie Hall in the middle of a story about city politics with, "My son's got two teeth." They were all busy men and it was not conceivable that they would care how much Pat Neale weighed.

Walking was a little different. Maybe it wasn't exactly a first page story but still Peter wanted to tell somebody about it. For the first time he was disposed to show off Pat – in person. Of course eleven months and eights days wasn't a record. Peter would have to look into that and find out the best accepted performance. He remembered being told that his own brother had walked at eight months but he had no means of knowing whether or not that was authentic.

The desire to confide in somebody eventually took Peter around to a stage door, though not the one at the end of the alley. From a Sunday graphic section he had noticed that Vonnie Bandana was playing in a musical show called "Harvest Moon." Vonnie Bandana wasn't really her name. The caption said Vonnie Ryan and Peter was sure it was the same girl. Evidently the Eight Bandana Sisters had gone the way of Brook Farm and Halcyon Hall and many another experiment in co-operation. Vonnie knew him all right.

"You're the man that married Maria Algarez," she said.

"Yes, but she's gone away."

"I'm sorry."

"That's all right. It was a long time ago. Almost a year now. She was a good dancer, wasn't she?"

"Maria, oh, yes, she could dance. I wondered what became of her."

"I don't know that. I haven't heard from her at all. I think she's abroad."

"Have you seen our show?"

"No, I just happened to notice your picture in the Bulletin last Sunday."

"Did you? Wasn't that smart of you? I've got a part in this. Lines and everything. I sing a song. You know I don't sing it much. Just one verse and the chorus and then I dance it. The dance is all right."

Peter and Vonnie had been slowly walking away from the theatre towards Broadway while they carried on this discussion and when they reached the avenue Vonnie stopped.

"Are you going my way? I go up to a Hundred and Sixty-eighth street. Just a little this side of Albany."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I was wondering if maybe you wouldn't come out and have supper with me. I just happened to be going by the theatre and I stopped around and thought I might run into you."

"Listen," said Vonnie. "I'll have supper with you, but don't pull any more of that 'I just happened to be going by the theatre.' That's awful. You ought to say you've been planning to come and see me for a week and came all the way in from New Rochelle just special. You don't know anything about women, do you?"

"I guess I don't," said Peter very soberly.

"Oh, I am sorry," Vonnie laid her hand on his arm. "I didn't mean anything by that. Forget it. You're all right even if I don't remember your name. Did you ever tell it to me?"

"My name's Peter Neale."

"You're not the Peter Neale that writes in the Bulletin, are you?"

"Yes, I do a sporting column. That looking 'em over stuff."

"I've been looking for you. Do you know I almost wrote you a letter. Where do you get that stuff about Sandow Mertes being a more valuable man than George Browne?"

"Browne can't hit lefthanders."

"That's the bunk. You and the rest of the sporting writers keep pulling that stuff about him and of course he can't. Suppose there was somebody standing in the wings every night just before I came on, yelling at me, 'Vonnie, you can't dance,' do you suppose I could go on and do that song for a cent? Of course I couldn't. You and the rest of you, you're just ruining this fellow. The best looking young outfielder I've seen in ten years. Why he could run up a hill faster than Mertes could roll down one."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Peter. It was the boldest speech he had ever made to a woman and he did it without turning a hair. Vonnie was wrong. George Browne couldn't hit lefthanders. Before he took her home Vonnie had arranged to go with him to the Polo Grounds the next day and to come and see the baby on Sunday.

"Here," she said as he was turning away from the door of her apartment, "you've got a kiss coming to you. When you live up as far as One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street you've got to do at least that much for any fellow that takes you home."

"And say, listen," said Vonnie, just before she closed the door, "next month I'm going to move to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street."

CHAPTER XIV

Vonnie came to the flat the next Sunday. The moment might have embarrassed Peter if it had been anybody else.

But Vonnie had such an imperious and lofty way of rising above all things traditionally embarrassing to Peter and snooting down at them that she carried him with her. At least part way.

"Why haven't you got the young Giant in his ball park over there," said Vonnie pointing to the Stockade.

"I'm changing him."

"No game," said Vonnie, "wet grounds."

"Get out of that. Never had a baby in my life," she continued, briskly rapping her knuckles on the woodwork above her head, "but I can't be worse at that job than you are."

She pushed Peter away, but did not begin on the business in hand immediately. "He's a good kid. A fine husky kid. I know now why you asked me here. You figured if I wanted one for myself you'd let me know where to apply."

"Never mind the compliments," said Peter. "Change his diapers."

Vonnie had brought the new freedom into his life.

"No doubt about his being yours," she went on. "Everything up to the chin is you – of course I'm just guessing – but Maria left him those eyes and that nose. Maybe she left him more than that. He's marked for the show business. You might as well make up your mind to that."

"He's going to be a newspaper man," cut in Peter sharply.

"Oh, I see. Got it all fixed. If he begins to bust out singing or playing the piano or something you won't let him. That's it, isn't it?"

"I'm going to shape him in that direction."

"Just shape him, hey? Boy, didn't you ever bust bang into the artistic temperament? I played a season once with William Faversham. Shape him? You can't beat him out of it with a club. I don't know yet what way he's going to jump but I want to put down a little bet this kid of yours is going to be some kind of an artist."

"Don't keep saying that. I tell you he's coming on the Bulletin. His name's Peter Neale."

"You could name him Rosenberg and that wouldn't make him a pawnbroker."

"But this is in his blood just like in mine. He can't help himself. He's just got to be a newspaper man."

"All right we won't fight about it. You say he's going to be a newspaper man and I tell you he's going to be an artist. Maybe he won't be anything but a moving picture actor."

Peter saw Vonnie frequently throughout the summer. She went to the ball games with him almost every afternoon except matinée days. The dispute about George Browne and Sandow Mertes persisted. There could be no question but that Browne had the speed. Even when he hit straight to an infielder it took a fast throw to nail him at first. But Peter didn't like him because his cap almost always fell off whenever he beat out a slow roller. Somebody would have to carry it down to first for him and while Browne was waiting he had a trick of bending his head back and shaking his long hair out of his eyes.

"He looks like a Goddamn violinist," said Peter.

"Yes," replied Vonnie, "and your friend Mertes looks like a piccolo player. Do you know the story about the piccolo player?"

"Not in the press box," interrupted Peter fearfully. He felt obliged to interrupt Vonnie a good deal. She was much given to tantalizing him by beginning in a loud clear voice, "It seems there was a travelling salesman came to a hotel," or "This fellow, you see, started to take his girl out for a ride."

"I don't want to hear it," Peter would say half in jest and half hoping to be effectual.

"But it's a nice story."

"It isn't a nice story or it wouldn't begin that way" was the agreed formula for Peter's reply, whereupon Vonnie would disturb his gravity and dignity by digging him in the ribs with her elbow. Another favorite device of hers was sedulously to brush an imaginary spot on Peter's coat lapel and when he looked down bring up her hand and flip him under the nose. Peter never seemed to remember not to look down. Perhaps he liked to have his nose flipped.

"It isn't necessary," he would object, "for everybody around here to know you're a chorus girl."

"Chorus girl, nothing. I got the song hit of the piece. 'Any little thing for you dear, any little thing for you,'" Vonnie indicated the tempo by scruffing her feet against the concrete floor of the press box.

"Cut it out. Pay attention to the game."

Sometimes the admonition was unnecessary. The day George Browne took a real cut at the ball and banged it over the ropes in right field Vonnie hopped into a chair and shouted, "The blessed lamb! Oh, you Georgie boy! Watch that kid go. Look at him, Peter, he runs just like my Michael."

Michael was Vonnie's white dog, said to be a Highland terrier. When Peter took Vonnie home to One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street it had become the custom for him to wait down in the street while she got Michael and took him a turn around the block before saying good night to Peter. Vonnie had a good deal to say about Michael from time to time, which was calculated to embarrass Peter. "You got to get me a book for Michael," she told Peter.

"What sort of a book?"

"Well, I guess it's called 'What a Young Dog Ought to Know.' He don't know any of the facts about life. I can take that dog past a million lamp-posts and ten minutes after I get him back in the flat I've got to lick him. Maybe you could give him a little plain talk, Peter. Coming from a man, you know, it'd carry more weight with him."

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.

CHAPTER XV

I

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 latest song 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 along about 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 de Solveig – 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.

II

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 a certain 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 no good. 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."

CHAPTER XVI

I

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.