THE SPOILS OF WAR
The rest of the evening flew by as though on wings, and Joe was startled
when he looked at his watch and found that it was nearly eleven o’clock.
“I’ll have to go,” he said reluctantly. “I had no idea it was so late.”
“Why should you hurry?” asked Reggie. “The season’s over now in the
National League, and the World Series won’t begin for a week or more. I
should think you might have a little leeway in the matter of sitting up
late.”
“I’ll have plenty of leeway before long,” laughed Joe. “But just now I
want to keep in the very pink of condition. I’ll need every ounce of
strength and vitality I’ve got before I get through the Series.”
He would have dearly loved a chance for a few words with Mabel in
private before he went away, but Reggie failed to appreciate that fact,
and he accompanied the pair even when they went out to the elevator.
But Joe avenged himself by holding Mabel’s hand much longer and more
closely than he had ever dared do before, and the girl did not dream of
calling for help.
But although Joe had been balked in saying what he had wanted to that
night, he felt much surer of Mabel’s feelings toward him, and his heart
was a tumult of joyous emotions as he made his way home to the rooms he
shared with Jim.
He found Barclay sound asleep, at which he rejoiced. He was in no mood
for chaff and banter. He wanted to go over in his mind every incident of
that memorable evening--to recall the tones of Mabel’s voice, the look
in Mabel’s eyes. It was a delightful occupation and took a good while,
so that it was late when he dropped off to sleep.
He was awakened at a much later hour than usual the next morning by a
vigorous tugging at the shoulder of his pajamas; and, opening one sleepy
eye, saw Jim fully dressed standing at the side of his bed.
“Go away and let me sleep,” grumbled Joe, turning over on his pillow for
another forty winks.
“For the love of Pete, man! how much sleep do you want?” snorted Jim.
“What are you trying to do, forget your sorrows? Here it is after nine
o’clock, and I’ve already had my breakfast and a shave. Get a wiggle on
and see what it is to be a popular hero.”
“Stop your joshing,” muttered Joe, sleepily.
“Josh nothing,” Jim came back at him. “If you’ll just open those liquid
orbs of yours and give this room the once over, you’ll see whether I’m
joshing or not.”
This stirred Joe’s curiosity and he sat up in bed with a jerk.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as he saw the room littered with a mass
of boxes and packages that covered every available spot on chairs and
tables and overflowed to the floor. “Where did you get all this junk?
Going to open a department store?”
“I guess you’ll be able to if they keep on coming,” returned Jim. “I’ve
been signing receipts for express packages until I’ve got the writer’s
cramp. And there’s a pile of letters and telegrams, and there’s a bunch
of reporters down in the lobby waiting for an interview with your Royal
Highness, and--but what’s the use? Get up, you lazy hulk, and get busy.”
“It surely looks as though it were going to be my busy day,” grinned
Joe, as he jumped out of bed and rushed to the shower.
He shaved and dressed in a hurry and then ate a hasty breakfast, after
which he saw the reporters.
Those clever and wideawake young men greeted him with enthusiasm and
overwhelmed him with questions that ranged from the date of his birth to
his opinion on the outcome of the World Series. They knew that their
papers would give them a free hand in the matter of space, and they were
in search not of paragraphs but of columns from the idol of the hour.
“You look limp and wilted, Joe,” laughed Jim, as they went back to their
rooms.
“It’s no wonder,” growled Joe. “Those fellows got the whole sad story
of my life. They hunted out every fact and shook it as a terrier shakes
a rat. They turned me inside out. The only thing they forgot to ask was
when I got my first tooth and whether I’d ever had the measles. And, oh,
yes, they didn’t find out what was my favorite breakfast food. But now
let’s get busy on these parcels and see what’s in them.”
“What’s in them is plenty,” prophesied Jim, “and these are only the few
drops before the shower.”
It was a varied collection of objects that they took from the packages.
There were boxes of cigars galore, enough to keep the chums in “smokes”
for a year to come. There were canes and silk shirts and neckties
accompanied by requests from dealers to be permitted to call their
product the “Matson.” There were bottles of wine and whiskey, which met
with short welcome from these clean young athletes, who took them over
to the bathroom, cracked their necks and poured the contents down the
drain of the washbasin, until, as Jim declared, the place smelled for
all the world like a “booze parlor.”
“No merry mucilage for ours,” declared Joe, grimly. “We’ve seen what it
did for Hartley, as clever a pitcher as ever twirled a ball.”
“Right you are,” affirmed Jim. “There’s none of us strong enough to down
old John Barleycorn, and the only way to be safe is never to touch it.”
After they had gone through the lot and rung for a porter to carry away
the litter of paper and boxes, they attacked the formidable pile of
letters and telegrams.
Among the former were two offers from vaudeville managers, urging Joe
to go on the stage the coming winter. They offered him a guarantee of
five hundred dollars a week. They would prepare a monologue for him,
or, if he preferred to pair up with a partner, they would have a sketch
arranged for him.
“That sounds awfully tempting, Joe,” said Jim, as they looked up from
the letters they had been reading together.
“It’s a heap of money,” agreed Joe, “and I do hate to pass it up. But
I won’t accept. I’m not an actor and I know it and they know it. I’d
simply be capitalizing my popularity. I’d feel like a freak in a dime
museum.”
“How do you know you’re not an actor?” asked Jim. “You might have it in
you. You never know till you try.”
But Joe shook his head.
“No,” he said, “there’s no use kidding myself. And even if I could
make good, I wouldn’t do it. You know what it did for Markwith the
season after he made his record of nineteen straight. He never was the
same pitcher after that. The late hours, the feverish atmosphere, the
irregular life don’t do a ball player any good. They take all the vim
and sand out of him. No vaudeville for yours truly.”
“Well,” said Jim, “you’re the doctor. And I guess you’re right. But it
certainly seems hard to let that good money get away when it’s fairly
begging you to take it.”
The telegrams came from all over the country. A lot were from Joe’s old
team-mates on the St. Louis club, including Rad Chase and Campbell.
Others were from newspaper publishers offering fancy prices if Joe would
write some articles for them, describing the games in the forthcoming
World Series. Joe knew perfectly well that this would entail no time
or labor on his part. Some bright reporter would actually write the
articles, and all Joe needed to do was to let his name be signed to them
as the author. But the practice was beginning to be frowned upon by
the baseball magnates, and it was in a certain sense a fraud upon the
public, so that Joe mentally decided in the negative.
One telegram was far more precious to Joe than all the others put
together. It came from Clara, his only sister, to whom he was devotedly
attached, and was sent in the name of all the little family at
Riverside. Joe’s eyes were a little moist as he read:
“Dearest love from all of us, Joe. We are proud of you.”
For a long time Joe sat staring at the telegram, while Jim considerately
buried himself in the newspaper descriptions of yesterday’s great game.
How dear the home folks were! How their hearts were wrapped up in
him and his success! What a splendid, wholesome influence that cozy
little village home had been in his life. He thought of his patient,
hard-working father, his loving mother, his winsome sister. He thought
of their quiet, circumscribed life, shut out from the great currents of
the world with which he had become so familiar.
They were proud of him! Yet all they could do was to read of his
triumphs. They had never seen him pitch.
He took a sudden resolution.
The home folks were in for one great, big, glorious fling!