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.