"Washington!"
A basilisk glare shot across the table and turned the long boy to stone--all except his mouth, which opened feebly.
"Washington! Is this true?"
Washy closed his mouth, then let it slowly open again.
"My dear!" Mr. McCall"s voice was alarmed. "What is it?" His eyes had climbed up over his gla.s.ses and remained there. "What is the matter? Is anything wrong?"
"Wrong! Read for yourself!"
Mr. McCall was completely mystified. He could not even formulate a guess at the cause of the trouble. That it appeared to concern his son Washington seemed to be the one solid fact at his disposal, and that only made the matter still more puzzling. Where, Mr. McCall asked himself, did Washington come in?
He looked at the paper, and received immediate enlightenment. Headlines met his eyes: GOOD STUFF IN THIS BOY. ABOUT A TON OF IT. SON OF CORA BATES McCALL FAMOUS FOOD-REFORM LECTURER WINS PIE-EATING CHAMPIONSHIP OF WEST SIDE.
There followed a lyrical outburst. So uplifted had the reporter evidently felt by the importance of his news that he had been unable to confine himself to prose:-- My children, if you fail to shine or triumph in your special line; if, let us say, your hopes are bent on some day being President, and folks ignore your proper worth, and say you"ve not a chance on earth--Cheer up! for in these stirring days Fame may be won in many ways. Consider, when your spirits fall, the case of Washington McCall.
Yes, cast your eye on Washy, please! He looks just like a piece of cheese: he"s not a brilliant sort of chap: he has a dull and vacant map: his eyes are blank, his face is red, his ears stick out beside his head. In fact, to end these compliments, he would be dear at thirty cents. Yet Fame has welcomed to her Hall this self-same Washington McCall.
His mother (nee Miss Cora Bates) is one who frequently orates upon the proper kind of food which every menu should include. With eloquence the world she weans from chops and steaks and pork and beans. Such horrid things she"d like to crush, and make us live on milk and mush. But oh! the thing that makes her sigh is when she sees us eating pie. (We heard her lecture last July upon "The Nation"s Menace--Pie.") Alas, the hit it made was small with Master Washington McCall.
For yesterday we took a trip to see the great Pie Championship, where men with bulging cheeks and eyes consume vast quant.i.ties of pies. A fashionable West Side crowd beheld the champion, Spike O"Dowd, endeavour to defend his throne against an upstart, Blake"s Unknown. He wasn"t an Unknown at all. He was young Washington McCall.
We freely own we"d give a leg if we could borrow, steal, or beg the skill old Homer used to show. (He wrote the Iliad, you know.) Old Homer swung a wicked pen, but we are ordinary men, and cannot even start to dream of doing justice to our theme. The subject of that great repast is too magnificent and vast. We can"t describe (or even try) the way those rivals wolfed their pie. Enough to say that, when for hours each had extended all his pow"rs, toward the quiet evenfall O"Dowd succ.u.mbed to young McCall.
The champion was a willing lad. He gave the public all he had. His was a genuine fighting soul. He"d lots of speed and much control. No yellow streak did he evince. He tackled apple-pie and mince. This was the motto on his shield--"O"Dowds may burst. They never yield." His eyes began to start and roll. He eased his belt another hole. Poor fellow! With a single glance one saw that he had not a chance. A python would have had to crawl and own defeat from young McCall.
At last, long last, the finish came. His features overcast with shame, O"Dowd, who"d faltered once or twice, declined to eat another slice. He tottered off, and kindly men rallied around with oxygen. But Washy, Cora Bates"s son, seemed disappointed it was done. He somehow made those present feel he"d barely started on his meal. We ask him, "Aren"t you feeling bad?" "Me!" said the lion-hearted lad. "Lead me"--he started for the street--"where I can get a bite to eat!" Oh, what a lesson does it teach to all of us, that splendid speech! How better can the curtain fall on Master Washington McCall!
Mr. McCall read this epic through, then he looked at his son. He first looked at him over his gla.s.ses, then through his gla.s.ses, then over his gla.s.ses again, then through his gla.s.ses once more. A curious expression was in his eyes. If such a thing had not been so impossible, one would have said that his gaze had in it something of respect, of admiration, even of reverence.
"But how did they find out your name?" he asked, at length.
Mrs. McCall exclaimed impatiently.
"Is THAT all you have to say?"
"No, no, my dear, of course not, quite so. But the point struck me as curious."
"Wretched boy," cried Mrs. McCall, "were you insane enough to reveal your name?"
Washington wriggled uneasily. Unable to endure the piercing stare of his mother, he had withdrawn to the window, and was looking out with his back turned. But even there he could feel her eyes on the back of his neck.
"I didn"t think it "ud matter," he mumbled. "A fellow with tortoisesh.e.l.l-rimmed specs asked me, so I told him. How was I to know--"
His stumbling defence was cut short by the opening of the door.
"Hallo-allo-allo! What ho! What ho!"
Archie was standing in the doorway, beaming ingratiatingly on the family.
The apparition of an entire stranger served to divert the lightning of Mrs. McCall"s gaze from the unfortunate Washy. Archie, catching it between the eyes, blinked and held on to the wall. He had begun to regret that he had yielded so weakly to Lucille"s entreaty that he should look in on the McCalls and use the magnetism of his personality upon them in the hope of inducing them to settle the lawsuit. He wished, too, if the visit had to be paid that he had postponed it till after lunch, for he was never at his strongest in the morning. But Lucille had urged him to go now and get it over, and here he was.
"I think," said Mrs. McCall, icily, "that you must have mistaken your room."
Archie rallied his shaken forces.
"Oh, no. Rather not. Better introduce myself, what? My name"s Moffam, you know. I"m old Brewster"s son-in-law, and all that sort of rot, if you know what I mean." He gulped and continued. "I"ve come about this jolly old lawsuit, don"t you know."
Mr. McCall seemed about to speak, but his wife antic.i.p.ated him.
"Mr. Brewster"s attorneys are in communication with ours. We do not wish to discuss the matter."
Archie took an uninvited seat, eyed the Health Bread on the breakfast table for a moment with frank curiosity, and resumed his discourse.
"No, but I say, you know! I"ll tell you what happened. I hate to totter in where I"m not wanted and all that, but my wife made such a point of it. Rightly or wrongly she regards me as a bit of a hound in the diplomacy line, and she begged me to look you up and see whether we couldn"t do something about settling the jolly old thing. I mean to say, you know, the old bird--old Brewster, you know--is considerably perturbed about the affair--hates the thought of being in a posish where he has either got to bite his old pal McCall in the neck or be bitten by him--and--well, and so forth, don"t you know! How about it?" He broke off. "Great Scot! I say, what!"
So engrossed had he been in his appeal that he had not observed the presence of the pie-eating champion, between whom and himself a large potted plant intervened. But now Washington, hearing the familiar voice, had moved from the window and was confronting him with an accusing stare.
"HE made me do it!" said Washy, with the stern joy a sixteen-year- old boy feels when he sees somebody on to whose shoulders he can shift trouble from his own. "That"s the fellow who took me to the place!"
"What are you talking about, Washington?"
"I"m telling you! He got me into the thing."
"Do you mean this--this--" Mrs. McCall shuddered. "Are you referring to this pie-eating contest?"
"You bet I am!"
"Is this true?" Mrs. McCall glared stonily at Archie, "Was it you who lured my poor boy into that--that--"
"Oh, absolutely. The fact is, don"t you know, a dear old pal of mine who runs a tobacco shop on Sixth Avenue was rather in the soup. He had backed a chappie against the champion, and the chappie was converted by one of your lectures and swore off pie at the eleventh hour. Dashed hard luck on the poor chap, don"t you know! And then I got the idea that our little friend here was the one to step in and save the situash, so I broached the matter to him. And I"ll tell you one thing," said Archie, handsomely, "I don"t know what sort of a capacity the original chappie had, but I"ll bet he wasn"t in your son"s cla.s.s. Your son has to be seen to be believed! Absolutely! You ought to be proud of him!" He turned in friendly fashion to Washy. "Rummy we should meet again like this! Never dreamed I should find you here. And, by Jove, it"s absolutely marvellous how fit you look after yesterday. I had a sort of idea you would be groaning on a bed of sickness and all that."
There was a strange gurgling sound in the background. It resembled something getting up steam. And this, curiously enough, is precisely what it was. The thing that was getting up steam was Mr. Lindsay McCall.
The first effect of the Washy revelations on Mr. McCall had been merely to stun him. It was not until the arrival of Archie that he had had leisure to think; but since Archie"s entrance he had been thinking rapidly and deeply.
For many years Mr. McCall had been in a state of suppressed revolution. He had smouldered, but had not dared to blaze. But this startling upheaval of his fellow-sufferer, Washy, had acted upon him like a high explosive. There was a strange gleam in his eye, a gleam of determination. He was breathing hard.
"Washy!"
His voice had lost its deprecating mildness. It rang strong and clear.
"Yes, pop?"
"How many pies did you eat yesterday?"
Washy considered.
"A good few."
"How many? Twenty?"
"More than that. I lost count. A good few."
"And you feel as well as ever?"
"I feel fine."
Mr. McCall dropped his gla.s.ses. He glowered for a moment at the breakfast table. His eye took in the Health Bread, the imitation coffee-pot, the cereal, the nut-b.u.t.ter. Then with a swift movement he seized the cloth, jerked it forcibly, and brought the entire contents rattling and crashing to the floor.
"Lindsay!"
Mr. McCall met his wife"s eye with quiet determination. It was plain that something had happened in the hinterland of Mr. McCall"s soul.
"Cora," he said, resolutely, "I have come to a decision. I"ve been letting you run things your own way a little too long in this family. I"m going to a.s.sert myself. For one thing, I"ve had all I want of this food-reform foolery. Look at Washy! Yesterday that boy seems to have consumed anything from a couple of hundredweight to a ton of pie, and he has thriven on it! Thriven! I don"t want to hurt your feelings, Cora, but Washington and I have drunk our last cup of anti-caffeine! If you care to go on with the stuff, that"s your look-out. But Washy and I are through."
He silenced his wife with a masterful gesture and turned to Archie. "And there"s another thing. I never liked the idea of that lawsuit, but I let you talk me into it. Now I"m going to do things my way. Mr. Moffam, I"m glad you looked in this morning. I"ll do just what you want. Take me to Dan Brewster now, and let"s call the thing off, and shake hands on it."
"Are you mad, Lindsay?"
It was Cora Bates McCall"s last shot. Mr. McCall paid no attention to it. He was shaking hands with Archie.
"I consider you, Mr. Moffam," he said, "the most sensible young man I have ever met!"
Archie blushed modestly.
"Awfully good of you, old bean," he said. "I wonder if you"d mind telling my jolly old father-in-law that? It"ll be a bit of news for him!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
MOTHER"S KNEE.
Archie Moffam"s connection with that devastatingly popular ballad, "Mother"s Knee," was one to which he always looked back later with a certain pride. "Mother"s Knee," it will be remembered, went through the world like a pestilence. Scots elders hummed it on their way to kirk; cannibals crooned it to their offspring in the jungles of Borneo; it was a best-seller among the Bolshevists. In the United States alone three million copies were disposed of. For a man who has not accomplished anything outstandingly great in his life, it is something to have been in a sense responsible for a song like that; and, though there were moments when Archie experienced some of the emotions of a man who has punched a hole in the dam of one of the larger reservoirs, he never really regretted his share in the launching of the thing.
It seems almost bizarre now to think that there was a time when even one person in the world had not heard "Mother"s Knee"; but it came fresh to Archie one afternoon some weeks after the episode of Washy, in his suite at the Hotel Cosmopolis, where he was cementing with cigarettes and pleasant conversation his renewed friendship with Wilson Hymack, whom he had first met in the neighbourhood of Armentieres during the war.
"What are you doing these days?" enquired Wilson Hymack.
"Me?" said Archie. "Well, as a matter of fact, there is what you might call a sort of species of lull in my activities at the moment. But my jolly old father-in-law is bustling about, running up a new hotel a bit farther down-town, and the scheme is for me to be manager when it"s finished. From what I have seen in this place, it"s a simple sort of job, and I fancy I shall be somewhat hot stuff. How are you filling in the long hours?"
"I"m in my uncle"s office, darn it!"
"Starting at the bottom and learning the business and all that? A n.o.ble pursuit, no doubt, but I"m bound to say it would give me the pip in no uncertain manner."
"It gives me," said Wilson Hymack, "a pain in the thorax. I want to be a composer."
"A composer, eh?"
Archie felt that he should have guessed this. The chappie had a distinctly artistic look. He wore a bow-tie and all that sort of thing. His trousers bagged at the knees, and his hair, which during the martial epoch of his career had been pruned to the roots, fell about his ears in luxuriant disarray.
"Say! Do you want to hear the best thing I"ve ever done?"
"Indubitably," said Archie, politely. "Carry on, old bird!"
"I wrote the lyric as well as the melody," said Wilson Hymack, who had already seated himself at the piano. "It"s got the greatest t.i.tle you ever heard. It"s a lallapaloosa! It"s called "It"s a Long Way Back to Mother"s Knee." How"s that? Poor, eh?"
Archie expelled a smoke-ring doubtfully.
"Isn"t it a little stale?"
"Stale? What do you mean, stale? There"s always room for another song boosting Mother."
"Oh, is it boosting Mother?" Archie"s face cleared. "I thought it was a hit at the short skirts. Why, of course, that makes all the difference. In that case, I see no reason why it should not be ripe, fruity, and pretty well all to the mustard. Let"s have it."
Wilson Hymack pushed as much of his hair out of his eyes as he could reach with one hand, cleared his throat, looked dreamily over the top of the piano at a photograph of Archie"s father-in-law, Mr. Daniel Brewster, played a prelude, and began to sing in a weak, high, composer"s voice. All composers sing exactly alike, and they have to be heard to be believed.
"One night a young man wandered through the glitter of Broadway: His money he had squandered. For a meal he couldn"t pay."
"Tough luck!" murmured Archie, sympathetically.
"He thought about the village where his boyhood he had spent, And yearned for all the simple joys with which he"d been content."
"The right spirit!" said Archie, with approval. "I"m beginning to like this chappie!"
"Don"t interrupt!"
"Oh, right-o! Carried away and all that!"
"He looked upon the city, so frivolous and gay; And, as he heaved a weary sigh, these words he then did say: It"s a long way back to Mother"s knee, Mother"s knee, Mother"s knee: It"s a long way back to Mother"s knee, Where I used to stand and prattle With my teddy-bear and rattle: Oh, those childhood days in Tennessee, They sure look good to me! It"s a long, long way, but I"m gonna start to-day! I"m going back, Believe me, oh! I"m going back (I want to go!) I"m going back--back--on the seven-three To the dear old shack where I used to be! I"m going back to Mother"s knee!"
Wilson Hymack"s voice cracked on the final high note, which was of an alt.i.tude beyond his powers. He turned with a modest cough.
"That"ll give you an idea of it!"
"It has, old thing, it has!"
"Is it or is it not a ball of fire?"
"It has many of the earmarks of a sound egg," admitted Archie. "Of course--"