The Boy Grew Older

CHAPTER IX

On sports Pat worked better and more cheerfully. It was Pat who devised the note at one of the Princeton football games, "The Tiger eleven has three fine backs and the greatest of these is Gharrity." And he came through splendidly when he was assigned to cover Marshal Foch's activities at another game and report in detail what the Frenchman did. Peter found the story posted on the board in the Bulletin office. In fact Twice had allowed Pat to have his signature in the paper. Right after Peter's own story it came – "By Peter Neale, Jr."

This was the third reading for Peter but he could not resist the pleasure of standing in front of the board in the City Room and looking over it again slowly:

"Ferdinand Foch, field marshal, was outranked this afternoon by Malcolm Aldrich, captain. The Field Marshal was received enthusiastically by the 80,000 spectators but he found he could not hold the attention of the throng once the whistle had blown. He became then just a spectator at one of the greatest football games ever played between Yale and Princeton. Come to think of it he was rather less a part of the proceedings than the young men in the cheering section behind him. Foch did not have a blue feather, or a girl, or a bet on the game. The greatest military leader in the world was assigned today to the humble job of being just a neutral. He must have known that momentous things were happening when 40,000 roared defiance and another 40,000 roared back. Undoubtedly he was stirred when huge sections of the Bowl turned into fluttering banks of orange and black, or of blue, but probably there was much of it which he could not understand. It would be hard, for instance, to explain to a man who had been at Verdun the justice of penalizing anybody for holding, nor did the rival teams pay any respect to the slogan 'They shall not pass!' They did it all the time.

"The young American officer detailed to help the distinguished visitor did his best. 'You see, Marshal,' he would explain, 'it's this way. Yale has la balle on Princeton's 35-yard line and it's premier bas with dix yards to go.' Just at that point Aldrich or O'Hearn would tear through the Tigers for a run and the American officer grew so excited that he would lose the thread of his explanations. Foch never did catch up."

"It's just the way I would have written it myself," thought Peter.

Pat was grinning when he found him. "How did you like my parody?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you see yourself in that story about Foch. That business about 'They shall not pass' ought've tipped you off. I thought that was a regular Peter Neale touch."

"Oh," said Peter, "you were just fooling."

"But here's the best of it," added Pat. He held out a letter from Rufus Twice which read:

"Dear Pat, I want to congratulate you on the story you wrote about Foch at the football game. It was excellent. All the facts were there and you handled them with a fresh and original touch of your own. When I saw the Marshal at luncheon today he said he was very much amused by our story – Twice."

"Well," said Peter a little bitterly, "if that was just an imitation keep it up."

Pat did keep it up although he grew a little restive during the winter. "If they're going to be many more of these indoor track meets," he complained, "I want to be put back on the Museum of Natural History. Clark there in the sporting department is just crazy about facts. You have to squeeze them all into the first paragraph. Even if anything exciting ever did happen there wouldn't be any chance to tell about it. You'd have to start out just the same and say how many people there were in the hall and what the temperature was and whether it was raining or snowing outside."

Still he had conformed with sufficient fidelity to remain in the graces of the powers on the Bulletin and when Summer came around Pat was assigned to go with Peter to Atlantic City and watch Jack Dempsey train. Pat's part was to write a half column of notes called 'Sidelights On The Big Show.' After the first day or so Pat lost interest in the actual boxing at Dempsey's camp.

"Where do you see anything in that?" he asked Peter as they sat at the ringside in the enclosure near the training camp of the champion. Dempsey was whaling away with both hands at Larry Williams, an unfortunate blonde heavyweight who seemed to be under a contract or some other compulsion to go two rounds every day.

"Watch him," exclaimed Pat as Williams clinched desperately and tucked his head over Dempsey's shoulder. "He looks like an old cow leaning over a fence."

"That's a good line," said Peter, "don't waste it on me. Use it in the Bulletin."

But Pat wandered off and loafed around the training quarters. When he came back to the hotel late that afternoon he had something else.

"This is all right, isn't it?" he asked. Peter looked over the copy which Pat had written.

"Dempsey is taking a great deal of electricity into his system," he read, "in preparation for his fight with Carpentier. This portion of his training is being handled by S. J. Foster, D.C.M.T., chiropractor, mechano-therapist and electrical therapeutist. In other words Doc Foster is the man who rubs Dempsey after his workouts. But the rubbing is only a small part of it. Doc Foster insists on that. His chief pride and reliance is the polysine generator. 'Why, that machine,' said Doc Foster, this afternoon, 'has got some currents in it that would break your arm in a minute. Yes, sir, they'd break your arm quicker than that.' And as he boasted he looked rather longingly at the fattest arm of the fattest newspaper correspondent. Of course, there are more soothing currents as well in the polysine generator. 'They just reach down after the deep muscles,' the old Doc explained, 'and grab 'em.' He neglected to add just what the electricity does with the deep muscles after it has grabbed them. Presumably it does not break them, but just frolics around with the muscles and then casts them aside like withered violets."

"Sure," said Peter, "that's fine. You don't have to bother with Larry Williams at all. I'll put all the stuff about him into the lead."

Next morning Peter awoke with a splitting headache. Toward noon it got much worse. He called Pat in from the next room. "I'm up against it," he told him. "I'm sick as a dog. Of course I could telegraph to the office and get them to send somebody down but I don't want to do that. This is your chance. You'll have to do the lead story. You say you can imitate me or parody me or whatever you call it. Now's the time to go to it. And say nobody has to know that I'm not doing it. Just sign your story 'by Peter Neale.'"

"I'll do my best," said Pat. Peter dozed off late that afternoon and the doze became a deep slumber. He did not wake until morning when there came a violent rapping on his door. In the hall was a messenger with a telegram. Peter opened it and read:

"What happened? We didn't get the story. Never mind telephoning explanations because I'm coming down over the week-end. I'll be at the hotel at one – Twice."

Pat was nowhere around the hotel and nobody seemed to know where he had gone. Peter was still mystified when Rufus Twice arrived. He thought at first of trying to conceal the fact that Pat had acted as his substitute and then decided not to. "It isn't fair to expect me to do as much as that," he thought. However he found that any such deception would have been useless.

"What happened to you?" was Twice's first question.

"I was sick. I had a blinding headache and I told Pat to do the story. Didn't he send anything?"

"Yes, but it might as well have been nothing. All we had to go by was the A. P. Dempsey cut loose yesterday and knocked Larry Williams down three times. The last time they had to carry him out of the ring. And our story was something about a man named Daredevil Oliver that's doing a high dive at an amusement park down here. It was signed Peter Neale but I knew it couldn't be you."

Twice picked some copy out of his pocket and flourished it in the air. "Lights. Gray mist. East wind," he read. "Good God! Peter, nobody can say I don't appreciate Walt Whitman or Amy Lowell, but I tell you Dempsey knocked Larry Williams down three times. The last time he was out clean as a whistle."

"You mean to say there wasn't any Peter Neale story in the paper?" asked Peter terrified.

"Yes, you get off all right. You don't suffer any. I did it myself. I rewrote the A. P. and signed your name. But it was just the merest chance that I happened to drop in at the office. You should have called me up and let me send a man down."

"But I didn't know he'd blow up like that. The other story he did from here seemed all right."

"Yes, but it wasn't news. I think Pat can write but somebody's got to stand over him and tell him what news is. The one he sent might have been all right for an editorial page feature though it was a little esoteric. What do you suppose 'gigglegold' means or is that something the operator did?"

"I don't know what it means but it's a word James Joyce uses in 'Ulysses.'"

"I'd forgotten," said Twice. "Of course. I was trying to place it. Great book, 'Ulysses,' never should have been suppressed. But you couldn't use any of it on the sporting page."

"Was it all like that?"

"Pretty much. It was about this Daredevil Oliver doing a high dive of a hundred and five feet into four feet of water. And there were only nine people there to watch him and how ironic it would have been if he'd broken his neck. And then some more about Eugene O'Neill and the tragic drama in America. Jack Dempsey or Larry Williams or the fight never got mentioned at all."

Pat came in without knocking. He was flushed and angry. "Mr. Twice," he said, "that story in the Bulletin signed 'Peter Neale' wasn't the story I sent. I wouldn't have written anything like that."

"I know it," said Twice, "that's why I wrote it."

"Didn't you go down to see the workout?" asked Peter.

"Of course I did. I didn't stay all through it. I waited until Jack Dempsey knocked that old cow Larry Williams down for the third time and then I got bored and went out."

"But that was the story," cried Peter. "Can't you see that."

"Why Dempsey could knock out Larry Williams a hundred times in an afternoon," objected Pat.

"That isn't the point," Twice broke in. "News isn't things that might happen. News is things that do happen. When a reporter goes out on a story there are four things for him to remember."

"I know," said Pat. "When! Where! What! and Why!"

"Yes, and there are two ways of doing a story. One of them is the way I want it to be done. The other doesn't count. I don't want you to argue with me. I tell you that your story should have been about Larry Williams getting knocked out. Some day you'll learn why. Pat, I'm not going to fire you. You've got stuff. Deering's had a crack at you and so has your father. Now I'm going to see what I can do. You're to go back to New York this afternoon. Report at my office on Monday. Hereafter you'll get your assignments from me and turn your copy over to me. I've never been licked yet and I'm not going to be licked now. I'm going to make a newspaperman of you or my name's not Rufus Twice."

After Twice had gone Peter asked, "Pat, what made you want to throw me down?"

"You don't think I made all this trouble for you on purpose?"

"Well, why did you go and write a story about Daredevil Oliver and leave Dempsey out of it?"

"It seemed so much more important to me. You'd have thought so too if you'd seen him. He just leaned back off the platform so slowly. He could have stopped himself any second. And then all of a sudden he couldn't. And he started to fall."

"But the story was signed with my name. Didn't you think of that?"

"Of course I did."

"Didn't you remember that I'd get blamed for it."

Pat was pale with earnestness and almost crying. "I didn't think anybody'd be blamed. I wanted to do something for you."

"Do you mean to say," asked Peter in surprise, "that you thought it was as good a story as I'd write."

"I thought it was a better story. It was a better story than you ever wrote."

Peter was silent with astonishment. Where, he wondered, did his son Peter Neale, second, ever unearth such amazing and audacious confidence. Suddenly it came to him that he was not the only parent. He remembered Maria. Obviously there was no use in arguing with Pat any further. Indeed he was almost a little frightened at so bold a blaze of spirit.

"Well," he said at length, "what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to report to Mr. Twice on Monday," answered Pat.

Peter sent down and got a "Bulletin" in order to find out just what it was that Peter Neale had written. He read only the first line, "Can Jack Dempsey sock? Ask Larry Williams."

CHAPTER X

Not until after the big fight did Peter get back to the Bulletin office. He found a subdued and cheerless Pat. "How are things going?" he asked.

"I'm learning a trade," said Pat.

Rufus Twice was more optimistic. "He's getting along fine," he reported. "I flatter myself that he's picked up more of the newspaper angle on things in the last two weeks than he got in a whole year before this. You see I call him into the office every afternoon and go over the paper with him and show him why we've used each story and the reason for handling it the way we do. He's been a good soldier. I'll tell you what I'll do. You take your vacation next week and I'll let him go with you. You ought to have a month but I don't believe the syndicate can spare you. Three weeks is the best I can do."

Peter and Pat planned to go out in the country some place, but they kept putting it off and two weeks were gone before they decided on Westport, Conn., and bought the tickets. On the morning set for the journey Pat came into Peter's room with the paper.

"Don't let's go," he said.

"All right but why not."

"Maria Algarez is here. They've got her picture in the Bulletin. It isn't a very good one. She got in from Argentine yesterday afternoon."

"Maria Algarez here in New York? Where?"

"It doesn't say."

A messenger arrived with a letter a few hours later. Peter opened it and read:

"You must not hide from me. I have called up the Bulletin and they say you are not there. When I ask for the number of your house they tell me it is the rule that they must not tell. Is it, Peter, that so many ladies call you up? The next time I am more smart. I say that your father is very sick and that I am the nurse and must know where you are. But I should have known. It is twenty years and the flat it is the same. You are like that Peter. You do not change. I thought not to see you and Pat until next year in Paris but from Buenos Aires I decided suddenly I will go to New York. Here I am. My hotel it is the Ritz. You and Pat you will come tonight at eight and have supper with me – Maria."

"I didn't want to go to Westport much anyway," said Pat.

He was more nervous than Peter when they came to the door of Maria's suite. She kissed Peter but Pat only held out his hand. Maria laughed. "He does not know me. I know him. He is like the picture."

Pat was almost silent during supper. He spoke up only once. Maria was ordering. "We will have some vegetable," she said. "What is the name? I do not know the English. Les épinards."

"That's spinach," said Peter and added slyly. "Pat doesn't like spinach. He won't want that."

"Yes, I do," said Pat promptly.

Peter smiled but he had the joke all to himself. Pat had forgotten.

After dinner they talked sparsely with Peter doing most of the work. Suddenly Maria said, "It is necessary that somebody he ask me."

Peter was puzzled, but Pat understood. "I've waited for five years to hear you sing. Won't you?"

"It is nice, but it is the twenty years I have waited. First you must sing."

"I can't."

"Maybe. It must be that sometimes you have sung."

"Oh, just with other people. Swipes you know."

"I do not know what it is but you sing and the swipes I will do."

"Just anything. That's all I can sing – anything."

Maria moved over to the piano. "The accompaniment it is not necessary but it I can do if what you sing it is not too hard."

"It's just something you sing around with a crowd."

"Come nearer."

Pat moved over beside the piano.

"Allons!"

Maria looked up at him and whispered, "You can. I know."

There was no banter in it. Pat began a little husky at first but then louder and clearer.

Maria looked up and smiled. Peter waited in an agony. He remembered that he had not heard Pat sing since he was a small child. He waited for somebody to speak. He did not know whether or not it was good. Somebody would have to tell him if this was the singing voice for which Maria had hoped.

She continued to look at Pat and smile and he smiled back now more boldly.

Peter couldn't stand it any longer. "Tell me … Maria. Can he sing?"

Getting up from the piano she put a hand on Pat's shoulder.

"It is the fine voice that I know. I think it will be the greatest voice in all the world."

Peter took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Maria turned to him. "The time it is not up. I have come too soon. There is still the year. But you must not. We cannot wait."

"Ask him. Tell him," said Peter hoarsely.

"Pat," she said, "if you will come with me to Paris you can be the great singer. It will not be tomorrow. It will be two years. Maybe three years. You must work. You must do what I say."

"When?" asked Pat trembling.

"In the week."

Peter said nothing, but he looked at Pat. The boy continued to stare at Maria.

"Pat," he said.

His son turned to him.

"I want to, Peter. I want to."