The Boy Grew Older Part 24

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

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

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

"What is an inferiority complex?" asked Peter.

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm sorry."

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

Pat made no reply.

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

"Oh, yes, sir."

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

He tried to re-establish the mood.

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

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

"Yes, it is," answered Pat.

A waiter came up now and took the order. After he went away they were silent. From the big lounging-room came the sound of a man more or less aimlessly fooling with the piano. After a while Peter broke the silence.

He would have liked to know something about Pat's thoughts on this career which was being planned for him, and his att.i.tude on the war and religion and women. "Are you in love with anybody and who is she and tell me about her?" Peter would have liked to ask a question like that, but he did not dare.

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

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

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

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

"I wish he wouldn't play the 'Invitation to the Waltz' at all," he said.

"That tune always tears me to bits."

He waited but Pat said nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, I guess I never worried much about it anyway. Maybe I was a little sad about it at first, but I've forgotten. And then all of sudden I got this letter from Maria Algarez. She said she'd seen you in Paris and that you showed her my picture and she wanted to write to me.

She told me all about her singing. After that I got a lot of letters from her. She'd say she'd just been singing in 'b.u.t.terfly' and then she'd tell me what it was all about. You know that funny broken way she has of writing things."

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

"Well, it was a lot of fun. You see I'd never heard any of these operas but after I found out about Maria Algarez singing in them I used to go.

If she wrote that she'd been singing 'b.u.t.terfly' I'd go to the Met and get a standup seat and then I'd write to her and tell her about Farrar and all the people I'd heard. She'd write back and tell me all the things that were the matter with Farrar and the way she did it differently and a lot better."

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, I can do the French all right but I'm not much on the Spanish.