CHAPTER XIII
Although he had gone reluctantly, once he was out it seemed fine to be on his bicycle again. His forgotten body reacted with a rush to exercise and fresh air. Generally he expected to make at least fifty miles in a half-day but to-day was hot. Pedaling easily through Nutley he caught sight of a young man playing tennis against two girls and stopped in the shade of a maple to watch the game, still sitting on his wheel, his right pedal locked over the curb-stone. Tennis was not so universal then as now: Neale knew little about the game.
Presently a chance stroke sent the ball into the street. "Out!" announced the young man, and turning ran back to retrieve it. As any American would do anywhere in the world when a ball is in question, Neale stooped, picked it up and was just going to toss it back when amazement paralyzed his arm. Could this slim youth in immaculate flannels possibly be Don Roberts? Don, the big boy who had played shinny and vacant-lot baseball with him, whom he had never seen but with a dirty shirt and unkempt hair! The elegant youth cried out, "Neale Crittenden! I'll be blessed if it isn't old man Crit! That's luck! Come on and meet my friends and we'll have a set of doubles."
He ushered Neale up to the net, where laying a patronizing hand on his friend's shoulder, he presented him. "Ladies, my old friend, Crittenden. We used to be boys together long ago. Neale, the Misses Underbill, Nutley's peerless blondine duet, Polly and Natalie. Now, how about some doubles? Neale can use my old racket."
"But I don't play," said Neale, alarmed at the idea. "No, I honestly don't. I've never had a racket in my hand. I'll watch."
"Oh, fudge! That's all right. You'll learn. Nat and Neale, that's your team. Polly, my dear, come over to this court and back up your Uncle Don. No fair banging everything at Polly."
The essential rudiments were explained. Neale gripped the racket and the game began. At first his partner politely kept her own court but as the completeness of his ineptness became awfully apparent, she began covering more and more territory, running across and snatching the ball from in front of his hesitating racket. In vain, for Don continually placed his return down her undefended alley. The set was soon over, 6—love.
"Now, Crit," said Don, jumping over the net, "we'll have sex against sex."
The second set went better. Now that he was playing on Don's side, Don gave him a little coaching. Neale learned to run in to the net and found volleying much simpler than playing ground strokes. Natalie's low returns often went through him and he did nothing with her service, but not infrequently he managed to pat back Polly's gentle offerings. When points were needed Don monopolized the court. The boys won,—a love set.
Don lit a cigarette and pretended to fan himself with his racket. "How about lemonade for the victors?" he cried, but the girls demurred. It was five o'clock, they had to go home and dress. They laughed over nothing at all, shook hands with Neale, told a few friendly lies about his progress, and walked off laughing over nothing at all, swinging their rackets; white-shod, yellow-haired, pink-skinned.
"Dear little sweethearts, aren't they?" commented Don. "A little insipid like most nice girls, but you have to take what you can get. Polly's a dub at tennis, of course, uses her racket like a snow-shovel, but she's not such a worse little flirt. Look here, Crit, old boy. I've got to stay in this stinking hole all summer, cramming for deficient exams. The old man won't let me go to the Water Gap till I can answer those damn questions. And there isn't a soul to play with but those girls. It's rotten for my game. Why don't you come out here? Come to-morrow. Of course you can't play, but I'll teach you. I can teach anybody."
Neale blushed and accepted the magnificent offer.
"Well, ta, ta, old man, sorry you can't stay to supper."
Neale mounted his wheel with a very high heart. This was something like. Something was beginning to happen in his life. Wasn't Don great? As he rode home he decided that he would ask his father to let him go to Princeton. Don was at Princeton.
But he didn't. Father read him Mother's latest letter, all about the particular great-aunt she was visiting in Cambridge, and after they had commented on this, Father looked at his evening paper sideways as he ate, and Neale went over in his mind the events of the afternoon, and the wonder of Don Roberts turning out such a splendid fellow, such a good sport, such clothes, such a way with him. Neale thought about him a great deal more than about the girls, and with vastly more admiration. He was sure that David Copperfield's Steerforth was nothing to Don Roberts. Once when he glanced up, he saw Father looking at him instead of his newspaper.
"Well, Neale," he asked, "what are you up to these days?"
This was his opportunity, Neale knew it was, to introduce the subject of Princeton, but he could not think of any way to do it. Instead he said vaguely, "Oh, nothing much. Sort of hanging around." And then with a great effort, he brought out, for once, a vital piece of news, "I'm learning to play tennis."
"That's good," said Father. "It's a great game."
This seemed to be final. He looked back at his newspaper. But after a while, as though something had occurred to him he asked, "Who's teaching you? Where do you play?"
"I ran across Don Roberts, over in Nutley. They used to live here, on Central Avenue. He used to go to Number Two School." He wanted to go on and tell about Don's being in Princeton, but could not propel himself past the full-stop, where an inadvertent cadence of his voice had dropped him.
Next morning he found Don with a whitewash brush touching up the marking of the court. For three hours they practised—a most exhausting three hours! He thought he began to make a little progress. He knew he was almost all in, when noon came, worn out far more by the mental strain of struggling his way into a new technique, than by the physical effort, although that had been enough to leave him blown and panting, as they went into the house to have lunch.
The two boys were alone at the table. Don swaggered a little as he served his guest. "No one at home," he explained. "Mother and the girls are down at Asbury. The old man doesn't get back from the office till the 5.45. I can hear his train whistle from here. He finds his loving son deep in his books, you bet."
Through luncheon Don fired Neale's enthusiasm with stories of Big Bill Edwards, Arthur Poe, Lady Jayne and other heroes of his Alma Mater. Afterwards he strolled to the living-room, sat down at the piano, and sang "The Orange and the Black,"—"There's a college we call Princeton." Then lowering his voice, with many nods and knowing winks, he sang a long song with the refrain, "Keep your eye on tricky little Sarah."
Neale's play on the streets and in vacant lots with perfectly heterogeneous and casual little boys had given him quite enough of a vocabulary to understand the words of this song; and odds and ends of the older boys' talk overheard in the locker-room at Hadley made the spirit of it by no means unfamiliar. But this was the first time that either words or spirit had ever been more than one of the casual by-products of boy-life. What put it in the center of his attention now was his admiration of Don as the model of colorful, sophisticated life. Evidently this was a part of such life. Neale applied his mind therefore to the words and the spirit and learned to hum the air.
That evening Father read another uneventful letter from Mother; then they sat in silence till, as father was filling his pipe, he remarked, as if it had just come into his mind, "Oh, I thought you ought to have a racket of your own, Neale. I got one. It's in the hall on the coat-rack."
Neale bounded upstairs and carried his prize to his room. There was not only a Sears racket, but three Wright and Ditson balls, Spalding's "Tennis Guide," and a little pamphlet on "How to Play Lawn Tennis." Neale dropped into his Morris chair and devoured both books before going to bed.
The hard protective husk of his little boyhood was so newly sloughed off, that his adolescence had as yet received scarcely a mark upon its new freshness to impression. Ready now, responsive with an inward quiver to a whole range of experience to which he had been blind and deaf before, he was catching up from the chance materials about him, the stuff with which to construct his new world. And here was material ready to his hand. The editor, an enthusiast, an idealist of sportsmanship had put a great deal in his little treatise beside his copious advice as to the proper grip on the racket and the laying out of a court. Without the slightest self-consciousness (because he had the not-to-be-imitated single-heartedness of the sincere devotee) he had charged every section of his treatise with the spirit of the game, the spirit of sport, not of border warfare. So matter-of-factly was this message conveyed that even the adolescent soul, half-crusader, half-Hun, did not guess that it was being preached to. The word "honor" was never mentioned, yet Neale understood perfectly the significance of what he read, under the caption "Tournaments:" "The committee should provide adequate linesmen, for while the contestants themselves can generally tell whether a ball is good or not, yet close decisions occur in every match and it is obviously unfair to force a player to penalize himself (as he naturally would feel bound to do) by giving his opponent the benefit of the doubt on all uncertain cases." He nodded approvingly over the phrase, "as he naturally would feel bound to do." It did not strike him as a new idea, but merely a clearer statement of something he had always felt was in the air about sports. Yes, that was how a college man would act, how Don would act.
Again, among the illustrations he was struck by a photograph of the winner and runner-up shaking hands after the Newport tournament. Neale looked long at the expression of cordial congratulation and admiration on the loser's face. He moved uneasily in his chair at the recollection of a nine of disgruntled urchins muttering after a defeat, "Aw, you bunch of stiffs, wait till we get you on our own diamond." Neale had been one of those who muttered, one of those so stung by defeat that the idea of admiring the better playing which had beaten them would have been inconceivable to him. Neale knew himself well enough to know the fierceness of his lust for victory. He knew it was going to be a job to tame that lust to this civilized code. But he would try. Morally on tiptoe, he resolved to be worthy of Don's friendship.
When he turned the last page, relaxed the intense concentration with which he had been absorbing the essence and spirit of the book, and stood up to stretch and yawn before going to bed, he felt that he had learned a lot. And he had. Silently, with the incalculable silence of natural processes, an ideal had crystallized in his heart around a standard of conduct.
And yet this was all under the surface. As he dropped off to sleep, his mind retained as the chief lesson of the book a mass of stimulating suggestions about rolling strokes, the reverse twist service, and the advice for a solitary beginner to practise against a brick wall.
He knew where such a wall could be found; in a vacant lot on Poplar Street, just off Summit Avenue. He often had played hand-ball there in the old days. Next morning he went there after breakfast, postponing his ride to Nutley till after lunch. The result was so good that thereafter he spent every morning there.
The summer days went by. Neale progressed far in his imitation of Don and Don's manner and standards. He learned after practising with a box of his own, to accept the cigarettes Don constantly offered him. To be like Don, he learned to call the girls by their first names without choking, although he never could bring himself to squeeze their hands or pat their shoulders or stroke their hair as Don did so casually; and he did manage to pick up a fair game of tennis.
When he challenged Natalie to singles and beat her 7-5, Don looked at him with a new expression, and a few days later announced great news. "It's all arranged. Tournament here next Saturday, lemonade, lawn party, picnic-supper, dance. The old man's agreed not to butt in and spoil things. I've got four fellows from here, Peterson, and a friend of his from Montclair. You and I make eight. Just right for a day's tournament on one court."
"But I don't play well enough," protested Neale.
"You'll be put out in the first round of course," Don admitted, "but I need you to make the even eight, and you can chase balls and make yourself useful. Entry fee's a dollar. That'll buy a Pim racket as a prize. I need a new racket."
The great day came and Neale, flustered and tense, was put out in the first round according to schedule. It didn't surprise him, although deep in his heart he had had a fluttering hope—but no matter. What happened to him was of no consequence. Don came through easily, of course. After lunch Neale sat with Natalie and together they gasped and clapped and cried, "played!" as Don captured his match in the semi-finals.
"Isn't he splendid?" said Natalie. Neale nodded, too much moved to speak.
The finals were called. Neale focussed himself on the game, blind to anything else. Don was matched against the Peterson boy, a high-school lad from Montclair. Don got the first set. Good. The second set unexpectedly went to deuce. What had happened! Neale leaned forward, his eyes hot from staring, and tried to make out the meaning of what he saw. Peterson didn't hit the ball as hard as Don did, but his long, bony arm pulled off the most impossible of "gets." Deuce, vantage, deuce, vantage. Don put on more steam, served doubles, lost his service. Peterson won his own service, and the sets were even. Don's face was a blank. He walked to his place, hitched up his trousers, pulled the brim of his white felt sports-hat low over his eyes, set his jaw and faced his opponent. Neale's anxious eyes had not left him for a second.
The last set was astounding, paralyzing to the spectators. Don had gone to pieces and the high-school boy had pulled himself together. His gawky, graceless body and long arms seemed to cover the whole court. Don served with murderous force, his rising fury burning with a sensible heat all around him as he raced and plunged and stroked the ball. Peterson broke through his service again—four-two. Don struck out dazzling drives, but many of them landed in the net. He got by Peterson with wily stroke after stroke—only so many of them landed in the alleys; four-three; five-three. Peterson kept on steadily, with his stiff, mechanical, chopped returns, his intent eyes gleaming in his impassive face. He had Don forty-love. Neale's heart was bursting. Don rushed to the net. Peterson lobbed to the base-line, and it was all over. Don was beaten.
In a flash Neale found an excuse for his hero, "Every one has his off-days … but …"
Though half-forewarned by the look on Don's face, he could not turn his eyes away from the dashing figure in white flannels, which stood there frozen in mid-flight as the fatal ball fell inside the back-line. Then with a furious swing of his arm Don flung his racket from him as if he wished to break it into a thousand pieces. By good luck it did not hit one of the girl spectators, but fell with a little crash of broken twigs into the midst of a lilac bush. He took a step or two after this, as if he meant to leave the court at once. With an effort, he turned about, walked up to the net where the Peterson boy stood panting, and gave him in silence, a limp hand-shake.
Then he pushed through the spectators, and went into the house calling over his shoulder that Polly was to award the prize. Neale did not dare to look at Natalie; the moment was too awful.
The Peterson boy did not stay to flaunt his triumph. Pleading an impending thunder-storm as an excuse (the sky was as a matter of fact very black and lowering), he scorched off on his wheel back to Montclair with the spoils of victory bound to his handle-bars. With his departure, the atmosphere of gloom among Don's friends began to lift. When the storm broke, as it did shortly, they all hurried indoors. The girls set about getting supper with a great clatter of chafing-dishes, and much screaming, with each clap of thunder. By the time the cheese was melted, Don reappeared in blue serge and negligee silk shirt. Coming down stairs he passed Neale standing apart with his back against the newel post.
"Oh, drop your grouch, Crit, old man," he said. "Forget it! Of course Nordhoff's a pretty rotten umpire. I suppose he thought he'd give the kid a chance, but he needn't have stung me on all the close ones."
On this, he passed lightly to the supper-table, where later, on being loudly called, Neale followed him, starting up from his moody silence as though he had forgotten where he was. It was his first supper out with young people, the first time he had eaten welsh-rabbit; the first time he had seen anything prepared over a chafing-dish; the first time he had encountered the traditional young people's menu of that date—welsh-rabbit, fruit cake, nut-fudge made on the spot, all washed down with ginger-ale. It might have been bread and milk for all Neale knew. What he saw was the photograph in the Tennis Guide of Davis shaking hands with Whitman.
Presently loyalty flared up. If Don fell short of the standard perhaps the standard was wrong. . . . It would not do, even as he thought of this excuse, he knew it would not do. He was aware of a streak of iron in his soul. An idol might sweep away the warmth and color of life by its fall—let them go then! No warping of standards could keep it on its pedestal. But the real sorrow in his heart drove him to try to find excuses for Don. Great Scott! it was hard to lose! How could you blame anybody for not coming up to such a terribly high standard? Anybody on earth would naturally feel sore at being beaten in such a . . .
Even as he tried falteringly thus to lower his ideal to fit his affection, he was aware of something stern and relentless within him. The gallant face of the defeated player in the photograph stood out beside Don's startled, angry resentment at a wound to his vanity. Nine generations of Puritan forebears would not let Neale abandon his ideal because it hurt him.
He passed into a condition of acute amazement at the others. How could they take it so light-heartedly? Perhaps they didn't care. Or perhaps they felt themselves obliged to pretend since they were still in Don's house. Yes, of course, he ought to pretend too.
Smarting, he sprang up at a new word of command. "How about a little rag-time?" Don was crying in his role of master of ceremonies. "Polly, you to the piano. Get the old banjo, Dick. Clear the floor, boys. Oh, pitch the rugs out of the window, a little rain won't hurt 'em." For through the open windows came the steady voice of a summer downpour.
The musicians struck up "Whistling Rufus," couples were formed and racketed noisily to and fro from the dining-room to the sitting-room and back, with much bumping and giggling at the congested doorway. Neale danced absent-mindedly with a girl whose name he could not remember, and whom he exchanged for a similarly anonymous girl when the tune changed to the "Georgia Camp-meeting." He went on thus, setting his body to do the decent thing, while his spirit lay prostrate within him.
They were dancing harder than ever now, racing long-leggedly from one end of the room to the other, the boys carrying the girls bodily off their feet at some of the turns, the girls abandoning themselves like romping children to the whirlwind of the insistent rhythm, which they marked by shouting out as they danced, "Oh, la la, la, la-la, la la la! There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night!" Neale danced on with the rest. Under his grimly silent exterior, something fine and high and deeply wounded, cried out silently to the others, and received no answer.
The music ended with a crash, the exhausted couples sank into chairs, gasping and fanning each other. Neale's heart leaped to see, half-way up the stairs, Natalie sitting alone as if she had not been dancing. Why, of course. There was Natalie! He had forgotten her. She had understood. The tragedy of the afternoon must have gone home to her. She was a good sport! With a warm glow he hurried up to where she sat, and sank down beside her, his stifling sense of isolation gone.
She lifted the sweet, flower-like mask of her youth to him, her eyes gleaming in the half-light of the stairs. But at the moment, Neale had forgotten whether she was a girl or a boy. She was a good sport. That was what he needed. He started to speak, but a shout of laughter burst out of the room below them. They looked down. In the center of the vociferously amused circle of spectators, Don was making fun of his late adversary's gawky manners and poor eye-sight. He had a racket in his hand, and glaring through it with a burlesque of Peterson's intent short-sighted gaze, he was mimicking the school-boy's strained awkward position at the net.
Neale fell back appalled, and looked to Natalie for sympathy and understanding.
Natalie had also leaned forward, and as they turned towards each other, her face was so close to his that he could see the peach-like bloom on her cheeks.
All the pretty face was quivering with mirth. "Isn't Don the wittiest man!"
Neale got up stiffly and walked down the stairs without a word. Nobody in the crowd of laughing boys and girls paid the least attention to his silent passage through them. He went out on the porch, the beating down-pour of the rain suddenly loud in his ears. Oh, all the better! He'd like getting soaked.
He found his wheel on the side-porch, mounted it without troubling to light his lamp or turn up his coat collar, and delighting in the clammy discomfort of the streaming water, pedaled stolidly over the nine miles to his home.
Alone in his room he took off his steaming clothes, rubbed down and got into pajamas and a bath-robe.
"Crittenden," he said sternly, "the world is no place for you. You're a lone wolf. A lone wolf."