Kitabı oku: «The Boy Grew Older», sayfa 8

Book II

CHAPTER I

Peter was coming back to America. He had been through the war and then the peace and he was very tired. The tension of it all was still upon him. Even though he lay back in his steamer chair and looked over the rail at a wide and peaceful ocean the jangle within him continued. For him there was no friendship in the sea. Probably there never would be any more. He had come to hate it that afternoon on the Espagne when they ran from the submarine. That was almost four years ago, but Peter had not forgotten. He had been playing poker in the card-room when the little gun on the forward deck went "bang!" The man across the table had his whole stack of chips in his hand. He was just about to say, "I'll raise you, Neale." And then he said nothing. He just sat there holding the chips and grinning. Some of them trickled out of his hands and a yellow one fell on the floor. The man stooped down and rummaged for it under his chair. Yellow chips represented five dollars. Peter couldn't stand the comedy of it. His capacity for irony was limited.

"Don't do that," he said sharply. "Maybe it's going to sink us. Come on. We can look for the chips afterwards."

Still the man didn't come. His right hand was trembling but he held on to the cards.

"Oh," said Peter, "you win if that's what you're waiting for. For God's sake, come on."

Peter didn't have the courage to be the first man out of the smoking-room. He walked slowly enough to let two players pass him. Going to his room he found a life preserver and put it on clumsily. Outside in the hall a very white-faced steward was saying over and over again, "There is no danger. There is no danger." Coming out on deck a passenger almost ran into Peter. He was dashing up and down the deck shouting, "Don't get excited." Peter saw his poker friend standing beside the rail and took his place alongside him.

"There she is," said the man, pointing to a thing about a mile away which looked like a stray beanpole thrust into the ocean. "It's the periscope," he explained. The gun on the Espagne went "bang!" once more.

"If we don't get her, she'll get us, won't she?" asked Peter.

The man nodded. The beanpole disappeared. "She'll come up some other place," he told Peter.

They both stared at the ocean, looking for the sprouting of the weed. Peter kept silent for at least two minutes. He held on to the rail because his right leg was shaking. The man must not know that he was afraid.

"What did you have?" asked Peter. "What did you have?" he repeated.

"How's that?"

"A minute ago when I dropped. What did you have?"

"A king high flush."

Peter was just about to confess his full house, but thought better of it. "I guess the submarine didn't hurt me any," he said. "Mine was only aces and eights."

His companion turned and looked at him. He was a little white, too. There was a growing horror in his face. Peter wondered and then realized the reason for the curious look. Somehow it cheered him enormously to find terror in another. The man had shamed him by sticking to the card room and looking for the yellow chip. Now Peter could pay him back. Even the huskiness was gone from his voice. "Yes," he said slowly, "aces and eights. That was queer, wasn't it? The dead man's hand."

The beanpole never did come up again and now in the year 1919 there would be none in this pleasant glassy ocean and yet Peter couldn't look at it very long without seeing black stakes rise up against him. In the twenty minutes of watching which followed the remark about aces and eights Peter planted firmly and deeply in himself another abiding fear. He wondered idly now whether the man who stood with him, the name was Bentwick, would ever enjoy ocean travel again.

Peter found that it was not physically possible to be afraid of everything which he encountered in the war. Everybody had his pet fear. Peter specialized on submarines, which was convenient since, after arriving in France, he saw nothing more of warfare on the water. He never liked shells, particularly the big ones, airplanes or machine guns and yet he could stand them well enough to do his work. Before going he had assumed that he would be unable to endure the strain of getting under fire. Indeed he told Miles, "You mustn't expect a lot of stuff from me about how things look in a front line trench."

Miles had said, "All right. Give us the news and we won't kick."

The news had been enough to take Peter into hell and keep him there. Miles had been smart. Dying for his country might very likely have been an insufficient ideal for Peter, but there never was any place he refused to go to get a story for the Bulletin. He never knew why. There wasn't any person on the Bulletin whom Peter idolized. The owner lived in Arizona and Peter had never seen him. The paper itself was a person. That was what Miles had seemed to say that afternoon in the office when he asked Peter to go over as a war correspondent. "I think you ought to go for the paper," he said. First, of course, he teetered back and forth on his chair three times. "Sport don't look so important now," he began. "This thing is much bigger than baseball. It's going to get bigger. The syndicate's selling you to one hundred and ten papers now but that doesn't make any difference, Neale. There's no good waiting for the bottom to drop out of a thing. We've got to beat 'em to it."

"I don't know anything about war," suggested Peter.

"We don't want war stuff. I wouldn't give a damn for the regular war correspondent stuff. You can humanize all that. You've got a light touch. Some of this is going to be funny. Most of the papers are overlooking that. And mark my words, by and by we're going to get in it."

"Maybe it won't be so funny then," said Peter.

Miles paid no attention. "Don't you see the big start you'll have if you're already over there when America comes in. You'll have the hang of the thing. You'll know a lot more about it than most of the generals. You'll be on the spot to jump right into it."

Miles did not foresee that by the time America came into the war there wouldn't be much jump left in Peter. Blood and, more than that, a desperate boredom fell upon the light touch. Almost all of Peter's romantic enthusiasm was spent in his first two years on the fighting line of the English and the French. The American war correspondents used to tell with wonder and amusement of the afternoon upon which Peter started off to join the American army with the other correspondents. They just filled the compartment, but a minute before the train left the Gare du Nord, a Y. M. C. A. man who had reserved his seat bustled in. He picked out Peter and slapped him on the back. "I'm very sorry, old scout," he said, "but you've got my seat."

Peter got up. "You can have the seat, you son of a – ," he answered, "but don't you 'old scout' me."

Whatever romantic feeling might have been left in Peter about America and the war broke on the military bearing of John J. Pershing. Peter was with him the day he inspected the newly arrived First Division. Aides and war correspondents without number trailed at his heels. They followed him into a stable which had been transformed into a company kitchen. Just inside the door stood a youngster only a year or so older than Pat. He was peeling potatoes but when the General entered he dropped his work and stood at attention. Pershing went on to the far end of the stable and, as he passed by, the boy who had never seen the commander-in-chief of all the American expeditionary forces, stole just a fleeting look over his shoulder. Pershing saw him and strode back, followed by all the war correspondents and his aides.

"What's the matter with you?" he shouted at the boy. "You don't know the first thing about being a soldier." Turning to a lieutenant he said, "Take this man out and make him stand at attention for two hours." Not even the dead men upon the wire ever moved Peter to the same violent revulsion against the war. Nor did he have a chance to write it out of himself. His cable dispatch which began, "They will never call him Papa Pershing," did not get by the censors.

Censorship was among the horrors of war which Peter never thought of as he stood in the office of Miles. He was a little hesitant about accepting the assignment and the managing editor misunderstood him somewhat.

"You'll find your war stuff will sell in time just as well as sports," he said.

"I've got enough money, almost enough," Peter told him. "I don't know what to do about Pat, that's my son. He's here in school. He's fourteen. There isn't a soul to look after him."

"Yes," said Miles, "that makes it hard. I tell you what I'll do. Will you let him come and live with me and Mrs. Miles? Next year he can go to boarding-school. This thing can't last forever. You'll be back in a little while."

"Well," said Peter, "that's nice of you but I don't know how it'll work out."

"What are you planning for the boy?"

"Why, I've always figured that as soon as he got old enough I'd try to get him on the paper. I want him to be a newspaper man."

Miles broke in so eagerly that he even neglected to do his three preliminary tilts. "That's fine. Don't you see how that all fits in? You go to France for us and I'll promise you a job for the boy on the Bulletin. You won't have to just think about it. The thing's done. He's nominated for the Bulletin right now. And you can start him off the minute you think he's old enough. Don't fret about that. I'll give him an ear full of shop. Is it a bargain?"

"All right," said Peter, "I'll go over for the paper for a little while."

The little while lasted almost five years.

CHAPTER II

It was a June night in the fourth year of the war when Peter saw Maria Algarez. He was walking up the Avenue de l'Opera when a woman cut across in front of him, turning into a side street. The street was crowded with soldiers and women, sauntering and peering, but this woman was walking fast. She almost bumped into Peter. They were under a shaded light which fell on her face as she looked up. Peter looked at her without much curiosity. He did not want to invite friendliness. Hospitality had been hurled at him all the way down the avenue. He knew instantly that it was Maria. When she left him she had seemed a child. After seventeen years there was the same youthful quality in her face. The only change was, it was much more tired. And there was paint.

"Hello," said Peter.

Maria smiled at him without obvious recognition, but made no answer.

"I'm Peter Neale."

Maria's smile grew broader. "I thought I have made a conquest," she said, "and it is a husband."

She held out her hand. Peter took it, but his eager surprise at seeing her was chilled by a sudden thought.

"You're not – ," he said, but he could not phrase it. He tried again. "You're not walking here alone?"

Maria's smile became a laugh. "And what then?" she asked.

"Good God!" said Peter in horror. And then almost to himself, "And it might have been any other soldier on the avenue."

"There, there," said Maria, checking her laughter and patting him on the arm. "It is not right for me to laugh at you. I should not forget to remember that you are the worrier. You think that maybe it is my living to walk in L'avenue de L'Opera and to look for the good-looking soldier. It should please that it is you I have selected, Peter. But no, there, it is not so. Come with me. My car it is around the corner. Do not let us stand here where maybe you will be compromised. We will drive to my studio. There we can talk."

Peter followed Maria around the corner where a limousine was waiting and got in.

"How do you manage to have a car in war time?" he asked.

"It is because I am the important person. Yes, that is true. You have not heard of me, Peter? Really? That is so extraordinary. You do not know that I am the singer?"

"Well," said Peter, "of course I heard that phonograph record you sent for Pat but that was fifteen years ago. I never heard from you again. Sometimes I went to the shops and asked if they had records of Maria Algarez but none of them had ever heard of you."

"Pooh," said Maria, "in America you do not know anything. But here in Paris do you never hear anybody speak of Maria Algarez?"

Peter shook his head. "I've been with the American army almost all the time. What would I know if I had heard? What do they say about you?"

"Maybe it is better that I should say it myself," answered Maria. "The others might not make it enough. When I send the phonograph record so long ago I say in my letter to you 'the voice is magnificent.' That is true. It is much more than that. Peter, sometimes it makes me sad that I cannot sit off a little way and hear the voice. The phonograph, it is not the same thing. That is the pity of it, I alone of everybody in Europe cannot truly hear Maria Algarez sing. It has been the great voice in the world. It is still the great voice."

"Oh," said Peter, "and that is what anybody would have told me if I asked."

Maria shook her head. "People, they are not so smart. You remember when I was a dancer they did not know about me all that you and I, we knew. It is the same now. They do not know. A little, yes, but not all."

"But they realize it enough to give you a job, don't they?"

"The job, pooh! Yes, the job. First I sing in Comique. I sing in Russia and Spain and for the seven, eight years I am the leading soprano of the Paris opera house. Where is it that you hide yourself that all this you do not know?"

"In mud in Flanders, I guess."

"Yes, it is not your fault. The war, it is so loud in all the world there is no other noise. That is why I go away. I have the contract to sing in Argentine."

The limousine drew up in front of an apartment and Maria took Peter up to a studio on the top floor. They went into a big room with one great window of glass covering an entire wall. Through it Peter could see the defense of Paris aviators moving across the skyline like high riding fireflies.

"It's a nice place for air raids," suggested Peter.

"The Boche – the German – he comes sometime but I am not afraid. You know, Peter, now I know that there is the God. It is something. I cannot tell you just what. But he is smart. When the others did not know about the voice it was that I remembered. He would know. If there was nobody else he would be smart enough. He is not silly. Nothing can happen to Maria Algarez."

"Gosh," said Peter, abashed and puzzled by this outburst, "I hope he feels the same way about me. Most of the last three years I've been needing him more than you do."

Maria's rapt expression faded. "I am the pig. All the time I talk about myself. And you, you, Peter, what is it you do? You are the officer, that I know, but captain, colonel, general that I do not know."

"I see I've got a kick coming, too. Where have you been hiding? I'm not an officer. I'm a war correspondent. If you can say it I guess I can. Any way I will. I'm the best war correspondent in the world," Peter grinned. "That's not such a joke either. Maybe I am. Didn't you ever hear of my book – 'Lafayette, Nous Voila?' All the rest of it's English. It means 'Lafayette, We're Here.' I forgot you'd know that. They've sold seventy-five thousand copies. Didn't you ever hear of it?"

"No, I have not heard. I think you are still the newspaper man."

"Well, a war correspondent's a sort of a newspaper man, only more so. I'm still on the Bulletin. That was my paper years ago when – when we knew each other."

Maria was almost startled. "The boy," she said suddenly. "Your boy, how is he? He is well? He is big? What is it that you call him?"

"Yes," said Peter, "bigger than I know, I guess. I haven't seen him for almost three years. His name is Peter Neale, Jr."

"But you hear from him? He writes? What is it he says?"

"Well, as a matter of fact I just got a letter from him today. There isn't anything much in it. I don't know whether you'd be interested. It's just about stuff he's doing in school."

"Yes, I want to know what it is he learns. Here, let me see?"

Peter fumbled in his pocket and found Pat's letter.

"Maybe I'd better read it you. Handwriting is one of the things they haven't taught him. I don't believe you could make out his writing."

He picked up the letter and began, "'Dear Peter – '

"'Peter,' it is so he calls you?"

"Yes 'father' sounds terribly formal to me and I don't want to be 'pop' or 'dad' or anything like that. 'Peter' seems closer. Before this war Pat and I were pretty chummy."

Maria settled back and Peter went on with the letter.

"'Perhaps, I didn't tell you about my joining the fraternity here last month. It's called Alpha Kappa Phi. The letters stand for Greek words which are secret and mean friends and brothers or maybe it's brothers and friends. And of course the initiation is secret, but I guess it won't be any harm if I tell you about it. I had to report at the fraternity house in the afternoon and they took me down in the cellar and put me in a coffin. It wasn't really a coffin, but a big packing case but we tell the fellows that come in that it's a coffin and that scares the life out of some of them. I wasn't scared any, but it got pretty tiresome lying around all afternoon. In the evening they took me out and told me they were going to put the initials of the fraternity on my chest. They pretended to be heating up an iron. There was a long speech which went with this and it is quite beautiful. While they were pretending to heat up the irons they burned something, meat I guess, and it made an awful smell. They did make me a little nervous but when they got around to cutting the initials in my chest it was just an electric battery they had and they ran the current over my chest. It hurt a little, but I knew they weren't really cutting initials and so I didn't mind. After that they took a chemical called lunar caustic and traced out Alpha Kappa Phi on my chest. It didn't do anything just then, but the next day it turned all black. Every time I took a shower in the gym all the younger kids stared at me. One asked me what I got on my chest and I said maybe I fell down in some mud. After I was branded they took me up some stairs and down some more. I was still blindfolded, you know. They said to me, "You must jump the last fifteen steps." Well, I jumped and it was just one step and it nearly ruined me. Then there were some more things like having to stand on your head and sing the first verse of the school song. They helped you a little by holding up your feet. And you had to get down on the floor and scramble like an egg. Then there was something very impressive. They took the bandage off and I was standing just in front of a skull. A man all in white read out about the secrets of the society. It was quite beautiful but I can't remember enough to tell you. Just when he came where it said what would happen to any neophyte who divulged aught on the sacred scroll of Alpha Kappa Phi, a great big tongue of flame shot out of the mouth of the skull. They do it by pinching the end of a piece of gas pipe and putting it in the mouth of the skull and when you turn on the gas the thing shoots out. That was about all except all of us being stood up against a wall and hitting us in the tail with tennis balls. Of course there was supper finally and I shook hands with all the brothers and they said most of them get scared a lot more than I did. We've put in a couple of lots since I got in and I certainly got square with them for what they did to me. I suppose you read in the paper about my kicking a goal from the thirty-three yard line and winning the game from the Columbia freshmen.'"

There was a good deal more about the game, almost a complete play by play account, but Peter, peeking over the edge of the letter saw that Maria was yawning. He just put in a "With love – Pat," and stopped in the middle of a paragraph.

"He is nice. I think he is like you," she said. "How old is he, Peter?"

"Just about seventeen."

"Like you he will be the writer for the Bulletin? Is it so that you want it?"

"Yes, I've set my heart on that."

"It is good. He knows about the baseball that you know and all your sport. Is he big too like you, Peter?"

"I guess he must be by now. He sent me a picture. It's an enlargement of a snapshot. Just a head like one of these motion picture closeups."

Maria held out her hand casually. "Let me see."

She took the picture under a lamp and looked closely. For a full minute or more Maria held the picture and stared at it. She said nothing, but Peter was conscious in some way that the casual mood had gone. He could tell that she was enormously moved. He did not even dare break in upon her silence. Still looking at the picture Maria whispered, "He is my son. It is my nose. It is my nose exactly."

"Yes," said Peter, in a matter of fact way, "there is quite a resemblance."

Maria waved her left hand impatiently. "No, no, it is not a resemblance. The rest does not look alike. It is the nose. That is not a resemblance. It is the same. It is my nose. Here you see," she slapped the bridge of her nose violently, "so it would be if the bone it had been broken. You see in the picture of my son it is the break. The same. The hook in the nose. But it is not broken. Never it has not been?"

"Why, no," said Peter, "his nose has always been like that."

"Yes, yes, it is from me he has it. Yes, and from the God. Do you not know why it is the break in the nose?"

"Well, he's got to have some kind of a nose I suppose."

"But this kind, Peter, it is for just one thing. It marks him like those foolish letters on his chest in the letter. You cannot read the marking. I can read it for you. It says singer, singer, singer. It must be. The singing nose it is always so. Sometimes it is not so much. But this is my nose. It says more than singer. It says great singer."

"Well," said Peter somewhat impatient at the fervency of Maria, "he says in his letter that he sang the first verse of the school song standing on his head. That must have been hard."

"Yes," replied Maria fiercely, "he is standing on his head. He writes to you only foolishness. It is about skulls and jumping steps. And about the sport. And there was more. I know you did not read it all. You have made him to stand on his head. They have made him. He lives only for foolishness. The mark is there but first there must be work. Years of work. He is not a child to jump over steps. He must come with me to the Argentine."

"Whoa," cried Peter. "We can't let a nose run away with us. Just stop and think a minute. It's impossible for Pat to go to Argentine with you. In a year or so he may be old enough to go into the army. It would look as if he was running away."

Peter's attempt at a conciliatory speech was conspicuously a failure.

"The army! The war!" said Maria between clenched teeth. "That is the most silly of all. Better he should stay with the good brothers and jump down the steps. My God! Peter, you won't, you can't let him go to the war. If there was in him not one note of music you would not let him. He is a boy. He is something alive. And don't you understand? I think it is in him the fire. They won't kill him. This I will not let."

"All right, but if the war goes on and he comes of age what can anybody do about it?"

"I have much money, Peter. It can be all spent to save him if there is the need."

"Money, I've got money too. Lots of it. That's all foolishness. It won't work."

"Is it that you want him to go?"

"Damn you," said Peter, almost sobbing in his anger, "you mustn't say things like that. He's my son too. He was my son when you ran away and left him. I've seen war. I've got lately so I see it all from one angle. Any time our lines go forward I think of them fighting for just one thing, fighting to keep Pat out of it. You get all excited and worked up about a nose in a photograph. A picture of a boy you don't even know. I've wheeled him in the park. I saw him walk the first time. I'm not looking to save him because he's some kind of a genius. I want him to live because he's Pat."

"I said wrong, Peter. I am sorry. Both of us we must wait. It will be all right. I know God won't be silly."

Presently Maria said, "I do not know him. That is what you have said. Tell me about him – about Pat."

Peter did. It was mostly things about when Pat was a small boy. He remembered God's ankle and told Maria, and about the blind giant. She was enormously interested to hear of how Pat had picked out phonograph records. "And mine," she said eagerly, "did he like that?"

Peter lied a little. "It was the one he asked for first all the time," he answered. It surprised Peter that he remembered so much about Pat. All sorts of little things which he hadn't thought of for years welled up in his mind. Some of them were things that he had hardly noticed at the time.

"And of course you never heard about Judge Krink," he said. "He was a man Pat invented when he was about five years old. He used to tell me that he wrote letters to Judge Krink and Judge Krink wrote letters to him. 'What did he say?' I'd ask him. 'Nothing,' said Pat. I remember Judge Krink had dirty fingernails. He never went to bed. I don't know just where he lived, but it was some place in a garden. He sat there and dug dirt. All the things that Pat couldn't do, Judge Krink did. Maybe I got asking him about Judge Krink too much because one day he said, 'I don't have Judge Krink any more. He's got table manners.'"

"You see," broke in Maria, "it is not the truth when you said I do not even know him – my son. I have seen him many times. I have played with him."

"Where?" asked Peter, puzzled.

"At the house of the Judge Krink."

Later they talked about themselves. Peter told Maria about Vonnie. Somehow he could not bear to have her think that he had been altogether desolated by her flight seventeen years ago or that he had spent his life entirely in persuading Pat to eat spinach. Certainly Maria was not displeased by the story. She smiled cheerfully when told of the devastation wrought by her phonograph record but she said, "Oh, Peter, you should not have let her go. I did not teach you enough or you would have broken the record of the song." Maria met confession with confession and rather overtopped Peter.

"How about this God you were telling me about. Do you think he liked that?" he inquired.

"Oh," said Maria, "it is not such little things about which he bothers."

"Didn't you ever love me?" Peter protested.

"Not after the baby," said Maria. "It was not your fault but in my heart I blamed you. It seemed to me the thing mean and silly. To be hurt so much, that cannot be good. Now I am not so sure. If he is to sing it cannot be too much. Nothing. Not even that."

She moved to the piano and ran over an air which sounded familiar to Peter. "You remember?" she said.

On a chance he guessed. "That's what you danced to in 'Adios'."

"That is smart. You remember. It is the Invitation to the Waltz. All these years you have remembered."

"When do you go back to the war?" she asked suddenly.

"Tomorrow," said Peter.

"It is seventeen years and you go away tomorrow." She came across the room and bending across the back of the chair in which Peter sat she kissed him on the eyes. "There is something more I want you to remember," she said.

Peter was swept as he had been years ago by a gust of emotion. He started to get up but his legs were a little unsteady. Maria moved across the room to the piano.

"Maybe," she said, "you will remember me for the seventeen years more if I sing 'Depuis Le Jour.'"