Chapter VIII

When Peter came into his office one afternoon a couple of weeks after the Yale game he found Pat sitting at his desk waiting for him.

"I'm through," said Pat.

"What's the matter?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, they're through with me. They've fired me."

Pat looked across the desk expectantly awaiting a question. Peter didn't ask it. "I'm sorry," was all he said.

"You know about it. I suppose you must have the letter from the dean by now. It took me three days getting back from Cambridge."

"I don't know anything about it. You can tell me if you want to."

"Well, I got fired the worst way. It wasn't just flunking courses. I didn't even mean to do it. Not ahead of time anyway. It just sort of happened."

Peter waited and then suddenly he remembered his interview with Miles years ago, the day he came to the office in bandages and was never offered a chance to tell about it. A question would be kinder.

"What happened, Pat?" he asked.

"The proctor reported me. I had a girl in my room. No, that's slicking it up and making it sound romantic and pretty. What I mean is I had a woman in my room. You know ... a woman."

"I know," said Peter.

"You remember I was low in my mind after the football game. It let me down. I don't care what I wrote you before the game. I really did think it was going to be fine. I thought I'd get stirred by it and after it was all over the only things I remembered were Bill French sitting on the side-lines crying and Charlie Bullitt out on the field putting his lunch. You don't mind if I tell it this way--the long way."

"Take your time."

"Well, I know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me that I just had to go out and find something that was thrilling and beautiful too. I saw this girl--this woman--walking across Harvard Square. It was night and raining and blowing. The wind was almost carrying her along. You know it made her seem so alive."

He paused again. Peter could not resist an impulse to break into the story. "She said to you, 'Come along' or a something like that," he suggested.

"No, I spoke to her. I said, 'Why get wet?' It was dark and we sneaked up the stairs in Weld to my room. And then it wasn't beautiful at all." Pat buried his head in his hands.

This time Peter did put his arm around his shoulders. "That's right," said Peter, "it wasn't beautiful. You couldn't know that. Nobody ever does. I didn't."

Pat looked up and in the second he had snapped back to normal. The shame had gone somewhere; into Peter's protecting arm perhaps. He managed a smile.

"Peter," he said, "there's something more I'm sorry about. I'm sorry for what I said about that football story. It was a good football story. A peach of a story--all but that part about Charlie Bullitt and Dr. Nichols."

Peter grinned back at him. "That's my weakness. I can't help being a little yellow sometime."

A sudden elation swept over Peter. Here at last was a secret shared just by him and Pat. Of course, the Dean of Harvard College and the proctor and the woman who walked in the rain knew about it, but they didn't count.

"The proctor saw her when she was going out," Pat added just to finish up the story. There they left it and went on to talk of other things but presently Miss Nathan came in.

"Mr. Neale," she said, "Mr. Twice wants to see you in his office."

Peter got up. "No," she said, "it's Mr. Pat Neale he wants to see. He's been asking for him for a couple of days now. I told him that he was here this afternoon."

"What's Twice want to see you for, I wonder?"

"I know," said Pat. "I've just thought of it. He must have got the Dean's letter. Don't you remember it was Mr. Twice arranged about my going to Harvard before you got back? I suppose they think he's still my guardian."

"Do you want me to come in with you?"

"Never mind. Now that I've got it off my chest once I guess I can do it again."

Pat was gone for almost three quarters of an hour. Peter walked up and down nervously. He wondered what was happening. From across the transoms of Twice's office he could hear just the rumbling of the editor's voice. Pat didn't seem to be saying anything. At last he came back.

"What did he say to you? He seemed to be raising Cain."

"No, he didn't say anything much. At least not much about the Dean's letter. He had that all right. He got talking to me about Krafft-Ebing."

"Oh, was that all?"

"No, there was more than that. I report down here for work on Monday."

* * * * *

"The trouble with him," said Rufus Twice, "is that he doesn't seem to understand that you've got to have a certain routine in a newspaper office. Deering tells me that he hardly ever gets in at one o'clock. Along about two he calls up on the phone and wants to get his assignment that way. And last night Warren says that he called up after ten and said, 'It's raining like hell. You don't really want me to go out and cover that story, do you?' Warren told him, 'Oh no, Mr. Neale. I didn't know it was raining. Of course, if this keeps up we won't get out any paper at all.'"

Peter couldn't laugh because Twice was telling him of the reportorial shortcomings of Pat. He spoke to Pat about it when he got home to the apartment. The old flat in Sixty-sixth Street was again theirs.

"But I get such lousy assignments," said Pat. "I think Deering's down on me. I suppose I've given him cause all right, but he's taking it out on me. He sends me where there isn't any chance of getting anything. If I do write something it never gets in the paper anyway. I did tell him it was raining. What was the use of my getting wet for nothing? They wanted me to go up to a meeting of the trustees of the Museum of Natural History. Now what could I get out of that?"

"Didn't you go up?" said Peter aghast. "He was just being sarcastic when he told you there wouldn't be any paper if the rain kept up."

"Oh, I know that. The Bulletin comes out every day all right. That's the trouble with it, but I took him up literally on what he said. I don't think the joke was on me. It was on him."

"You shouldn't do things like that."

"Suppose I had gone. There wouldn't have been any story anyway."

"You've got to quit supposing. Let the city editor do that. The worst-looking assignment may turn out to be something if you go after it."

"Yes, once in every twenty years those directors of the Museum of Natural History get into an awful row about whether to put the ichthyosaurus on the second floor or in the basement and if anything like that happened they'd turn over the whole front page to me."

Peter shook his head gloomily. "You've got the wrong spirit. Even if your assignments are no good keep your eyes and your ears open when you go round the city and something will turn up. That's the way to show them. Bring in something you pick up yourself. Every day of the year there must be whole pagefuls of stuff just as good and better than the stuff we get in the paper. Only we don't find out about it. Keep scouting for stuff like that. When you say newspaper work's stupid you're practically saying that life's stupid."

"Maybe it is," said Pat, "but I'm not so sure about that as I am about newspapers."

"It's the same thing."

"I don't think so. Here's the sort of thing that makes life amusing and isn't worth anything for a newspaper. I was riding in one of those B.R.T. subway trains the other day and there were two women sitting next me on one of those cross seats. One was fat and middle-aged and the other was younger. I didn't notice her so much. It was the fat one who was doing the talking. She was very much excited and she was explaining something to the younger woman. 'Why, I said to him,' she told her--'I said to him, 'Why, Mr. Babcock, I don't want to be sacrilegious but that girl she's so sweet and so pretty I don't even believe our Lord himself could be mean to her.' That made me satisfied with the whole day, but imagine coming in and trying to put it over on Warren or Deering for a story."

"A story's got to begin some place and end some place," objected Peter.

"The kind I get don't begin any place and so I don't have to wait around for them to end."

Peter went to Rufus Twice and told him that Pat didn't seem to be making any progress in general work.

"You ought to be more patient, Neale," answered Twice. "What's all this hurry about Pat? He won't be twenty-one yet for a couple of years."

"It's nearer than that. It's just thirteen months and three days." Peter could have told him the hours and the minutes too which lay between Pat and his eight o'clock appointment in Paris.

"That doesn't make him exactly aged. He's learning or he ought to be learning all the time. Even if he didn't get a line in the paper all year he wouldn't be wasting his time. Just being here helps him to pick up my way of doing things. Of course, when I say 'my' I mean the paper's."

"All that's perfectly true, Mr. Twice, but I have a very special reason for wanting him to get ahead right now. I want him to be interested. I want him to feel that he's important."

"There isn't any job around here that isn't important. You ought to know that, Neale. None of us count as individuals. We're all part of the Bulletin. Nobody can say that one cog's more important than another. Did you ever see a Liberty motor assembled?"

"Yes," said Peter with as much haste and emphasis as he could muster, but it was probably the convenient ringing of the phone which saved him.

"If Mr. Boone has anything to say in reply to the story we printed this morning he's welcome to come to my office and see me. That is if he's got facts. I want you to know that I resent his making his complaint through an advertising agency. I don't care if I am impolite. I intend to be. Don't bother to threaten me about your advertising. You can't take it out. I'll beat you to that. It's thrown out. Good-bye."

Twice swung his chair around and faced Peter. "I've just cost the paper $65,000 a year in advertising," he said cheerfully. "The Dubell Agency was trying to bawl me out about that Sun Flower Oil story we had on the front page this morning. Did you see it?"

"Well, I saw the headlines," said Peter untruthfully.

"I want you to read it. Weed did it. I told you I was going to make something out of that young man. Let's see, what were we talking about?"

Peter almost said, "The Liberty Motor," but stopped himself in time. "We were talking about Pat."

"Oh yes, I remember. I suppose, Neale, you and I could say without egotism that we're important cogs here on the Bulletin. I suppose sometimes it seems to us that we're vital cogs, but if you should die tomorrow the Bulletin would come out just the same. I'd give you a good obit but work would go on. Nobody is indispensable. Pat's got to get it through his head that he's just part of an army."

"I think he has," said Peter, "but the trouble is he feels that he's got a permanent assignment on kitchen police."

"But consider this, Neale. I didn't seduce Pat away from college and on to the Bulletin. I did promise him a job and he's got it. He can't expect to hang around here for a year or so and jump right in and write lead stories. What is it you want me to do anyway?"

"Well, I thought maybe it would be a good thing to shift him over on sports. He knows baseball and football and I'd like to have him come out with me and do notes of the games and things like that. That would be down his alley. That would interest him and I think he could do it."

"I don't think it's the best way. I think you're forgetting that general news is the backbone of a paper. All the rest is tacked on. You're wrong but I tell you what I'll do. I'm going to yield to your judgment. Go in and tell Clark that I want Pat to report to him from now on. Go and send Pat in. I want to have a talk with him."

Peter ran into Pat late that night in the Newspaper Club.

"Did Twice get hold of you?" he asked.

"He certainly did," said Pat. "He's decided to take me off general work and put me on sports. His idea is to send me around with you to football games and baseball and have me write notes. You know 'Diamond Chips' or 'Hot Off The Gridiron.'"

"Did he say anything else to you?"

"Yes, he asked me if I'd ever seen a Liberty Motor assembled and I said, 'No,' and he told me about it. Oh yes, and he said, 'When a reporter goes out on a story there are four things he ought to remember--When! Where! What! and Why!'"

"What's the matter with that?" Peter felt that Pat ought to show a little more delight and gratitude at being fairly launched on his career as a sporting writer.

"Well, I tried it out on that assignment I had to cover--the directors of the Museum of Natural History. It worked out like this--When--last night. Where--the palatial apartment of Mr. Harold Denny at 605 Park avenue. What--the annual report of the directors of the Museum of Natural History. Why--God knows."

Pat was busily engaged with three other men in a game called horse racing. Each contestant had two pool balls and all were lined up at one end of the table with a piece of board behind them. The starter's job rotated among the players. He sent the balls spinning up the table and the one which landed nearest to the rail on the rebound won the purse. Peter wanted to talk to Pat, but he seemed anxious to get away.

"There's a newspaper man over in the corner that I'd like to have you meet," said Peter.

"Who is it?"

"His name's Heywood Broun. He's on the World."

"Which one do you mean? The one with the shave?"

"No, the other one."

"I'm too busy," said Pat. "I can't be bothered. We're just going to run the Suburban Handicap, That costs fifty cents for each horse."

As the balls were shoved away Pat raced down the table with them shouting, "Come on Ulysses. Come on James Joyce." He ran over to Peter with a handful of coins. "Ulysses won," he said, "and James Joyce was second."

"What do you call them that for?"

"They're named after a book I've been reading."

Peter was about to head up town, but Pat urged him to stay. "Stick around awhile," he said, "as soon as Nick Carter shows up the quartette's going to have a concert."

"What quartette?"

"Oh just me and three other fellows. We're pretty good. At least I am. We get in a few swipes almost every night."

"Are you still going to the opera so much?" asked Peter anxiously.

"No, I haven't had any time. There isn't any opera now anyway but it's almost a year since I've been."

"Have you heard from Maria lately?"

"The last letter I got was almost six months ago. She didn't say anything much except she said that before long she was going to see me in Paris. I don't know how. You haven't heard Mr. Twice say anything about giving me an assignment over there, the annual meeting of the house committee of the Louvre or anything like that?"

"He hasn't said anything to me about it."

Peter didn't wait for the singing nor was he particularly worried about it. He was cheered by the fact that Pat had spoken so casually of the opera and of Maria. When he got home to the flat he noticed a big book in blue paper covers on the table. It was "Ulysses" by James Joyce.

"Why, that's the book Pat named the pool balls after." He picked it up and began at the beginning and then skipped ahead frantically. An hour or so later Pat came in. Peter pointed to the book and looked at him reproachfully.

"What does it mean, Pat?" he asked. Stumbling over it at random he read:

"In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended. Douce with
Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze
gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other,
signals to each other, high piercing notes."

"I don't know," said Pat. "I haven't got that far yet. But what difference does it make what it means? That isn't the point. There's music in it."

As Peter was going to bed he cursed silently to himself. "Damn this music. They're even trying to play it on typewriters now."