ADMITTING DEFEAT
The first Saturday after the organization of the Irish-American League
brought a blessed spring rain, especially heaven-sent on her account,
Eveley felt quite sure, for she was greatly worn from coping with motor
salesmen and the father-in-law situation. And this was a rain that not
even boys could stand, so she had a blissful afternoon alone, purring and
puttering about contentedly in her Cloud Cote.
But on the second Saturday, according to agreement, the League met in the
appointed field for a game. This was Eveley's first opportunity to
witness the development of American principles in her chosen flotsam. The
meeting had been called for one-thirty, and although Eveley arrived
fifteen minutes early she found the field occupied by fully twenty youths
of varying sizes, colors and brogues. She gazed upon the motley array in
helpless horror.
"Ern Swanson is going to be the captain," said John Hop, with his
ingratiating Oriental smile. "We just had an election and elected him."
"But we already have a captain," protested Eveley, looking not without
sympathy to the corner where Ivan Kerensky nursed his humiliation.
"We didn't know Ern was coming in," said Alfredo Masseno, who had hurried
up with half a dozen others to greet her. "Ern, he ought to be the
captain. He's awful rough; and baseball, why, he eats baseball alive! And
he won't come in unless he is the captain, and if he don't come with us
he'll join the Red Dogs on National Avenue, and we want him with us
because we have challenged them to a game and if they get Ern they'll
lick us."
Then the newly elected captain sauntered up, his good-natured face
reflecting the glory of his new command as well as his natural Swedish
temperament.
"He doesn't look rough," said Eveley critically.
"No'm, not when things suits him, but you ought to see him when he is
mad. Golly! Why, even the cops lets that kid alone."
"But it isn't parliamentary--I mean, it isn't proper to have one election
after another like this. We chose one captain, and we ought to stand by
him."
"That wasn't no quorum what elected him, ma'm," said Ern Swanson, smiling
broadly. "They was only eight in the club then, and now we got
twenty-three. That little bunch o' Greasers couldn't represent us. No,
ma'm. We want regular Americans at the head of this club, and so we had a
regular election."
Eveley knew this was dead against American principles, and she looked
once more toward the sulking ex-captain. Then she remembered that he had
won his own election in her absence by plain coercion, and decided to
pass this one irregularity, but never again.
"Very well, then," she said weakly, "have it your own way this time. But
there must be no more elections until the right time. Now, what are you
going to do? Have a practise game? Then suppose we let Ivan be captain of
the second team, anyhow, and you can pick your men and have a good game."
This seemed a simple proposition to Eveley in her innocence, but on a
sudden, pandemonium reigned. The whole crowd of boys propelled itself
violently into the air, and there was a shrieking of voices and a tossing
of bats and gloves, and a seemingly endless number of arms flying about.
From out the clamor Eveley could distinguish repeated hoarse roars of
"Pi-i-i-i-tcher," "Pi-i-i-i-tcher," "Ca-a-a-a-a-atcher," "Ca-a-a-a-atcher,"
and she retired to a remote spot to await the proper moment for gathering
up the remains. Being a lady, she could make no sense at all of the deadly
uproar, and she was quite thrilled and charmed when of a sudden the tumult
subsided, and she found that out of that apparently aimless clamor, two
teams had been selected and the players assigned to their various positions
on the field. It was black magic to her.
Eveley thought she knew baseball. She knew what a "foul" was, and she
knew what happened when one passed four balls, and she knew when one was
out. And she had often said fatuously that she loved baseball, because
she understood it. But she did not understand it. She understood a mild
respectable game that was played by scholarly young men in college.
Baseball as played by the wild creatures on that Saturday afternoon was a
sealed book to her. And she devoutly hoped and prayed it would remain
sealed. She felt that death would be preferable to a full working
knowledge of what went on in the Irish-American Club that afternoon.
For an interval of perhaps three minutes the thing progressed with some
degree of reason. Then issued a sudden roar from a dozen throats, every
one came tearing in from his proper location on the field, and there was
a yelling, huddled group in the center. Then Eveley crept timidly from
the corner where she was engaging in prayer for the safety of herself and
her club, and advanced cautiously toward the swaying pile of shrieking
boys.
She placed soft entreating hands on the outside layer, she even jumped up
and down and yelled "Boys," at the top of her healthy voice. But she was
only an atom in a world gone upside down. Presently, however, and from no
reason she could determine, the mob disentangled itself into distinct
entities, the roar subsided into a few threatening growls and murmurs,
and Captain Swanson hitched up his trousers and yelled "Play ball"
triumphantly. Then the game went on. This identical thing occurred at
intervals of about eight minutes during the entire afternoon.
Eveley hoped devoutly that she was by her very presence helping to
Americanize these particular bits of flotsam and jetsam--she trusted so.
She was quite confident that so much personal agonizing on her part ought
to be doing something to the wild beings. But there was no apparent
development.
She stood her ground bravely until four o'clock, and then, thanks to the
merciful Providence who protects the fools gone in where angels would not
dare, it seemed the whole club had to set about delivering papers. But as
there were important details to be attended to, such details as arranging
for a permanent place to play, and providing protection for the balls and
bats bought from Eveley's inheritance, and paying dues, it was decided to
have a meeting in the Service Hall that evening at seven.
Eveley went home, and to bed.
At six-thirty she got up, made a percolator full of strong coffee and
drank it all.
Then she went to the Service Hall to meet the Irish-American Bloodhounds,
as she irreverently called them in her inner heart.
Eveley was out of her element, and she knew it.
She was bent on Americanization, but not this kind. She would be glad to
assist in the development of quick and kind-eyed Angelo at the office, or
the courteous Jap in the tea garden, but for a baseball club she had no
talent. She explained her needs and her deficiencies to the manager of
the Recreation Center, and he finally agreed that the Bloodhounds needed
a young virile athlete as their director. "And for his own sake," said
Eveley almost tearfully, "he ought to be a pugilist. I say this for his
good. We need all our assimilators and should not expose them to sudden
and violent death."
Then Eveley talked to the boys, and told them how she had enjoyed and
liked them, but explained that being only a woman she was terribly
handicapped, and so would leave them to the discretion of one yet to be
selected. She hoped they would remember they were good Americans, that
they stood for honor and loyalty and right. Then she thanked God she was
free, took her coat and hat and went out.
"Why, Miss Ainsworth! Is it really you? What in the world are you doing
here?"
Eveley, startled on the threshold of the Service Club, looked up into the
face of the blue-eyed Bemis salesman.
"Oh, Mr. Hiltze," she said mysteriously. "It is a deadly secret. You must
never breathe a word of it. But since you have caught me in the act, I
may as well confess. I am an Americanizer."
"Great Scott!"
"You know what that is, don't you? Helping to sort out and assimilate the
flotsam and jetsam of the foreign element, and imbue it with sturdy
American principles, and all that."
Mr. Hiltze laughed.
"Perhaps you do not understand the new great movement of Americanization,"
she said with dignity. "It is the one immense fine movement of the day. It
is to effect the amalgamation of all the riff-raff of humanity into a new
America." Eveley did not mention the quotation marks which circled her
words.
"That is wonderful," he said warmly. "It is a great surprise and a great
pleasure, to find women of your type taking an interest in this
progressive movement."
Eveley leaned excitedly toward him. "Oh, Mr. Hiltze, are you interested
in it, too?"
"None more so, though like yourself I feel the best work is done silently
and unobtrusively, and I prefer not to be exploited from the housetops."
"Oh, this gives me courage again--and I had nearly lost it. Have you been
working to-night? Are you through for the evening?"
"Yes, and if your labors have been as exhaustive and soul-wracking as
mine, perhaps you can spare an hour for nourishment with me at the Grant.
Of all the jobs in the world! Selling motors is a game beside it."
"We agree again. I think it was rather foolish of me to tackle it in the
beginning. I haven't brains enough. Those boys may be flotsam and jetsam
and all that, but they know more about patriotism than I do. Why, one
little Italian, the cutest thing, with dimples and curly hair, told me
more about country-love than I could have thought up in a month. He says,
isn't it patriotic for them to come here and pick up all the good they
can, and take it back to enrich their own country? And when you come
right down to it, isn't it? Anyhow, the little Italians and Mexicans and
Jews and I have organized an Irish-American Baseball Team, and I suppose
we are amalgamating something into something. I think they are
amalgamating me. I feel terribly amalgamated right now."
"I am not in sympathy with the club idea," said Hiltze thoughtfully, as
they turned down Broadway toward the Grant. "It is such a treat to find
your kind of woman in this--I mean, the womanly kind--I abhor the
high-brow women that are so full of forward movement they can't settle
down to pal around comfortably and be human."
Eveley, too, was kindling with the charm of a common interest and
enthusiasm. Nolan took a very masculine stand on the subject. He said
bruskly that the growth of Americanization must come from Americans. He
said you couldn't cram American ideals into the foreign-born until the
home-born lived them. And he said the way to "teach Americanization was
by being a darned good American yourself inside and outside and all the
way through." Which may have been good sense, but was no help in the
forward movement.
So Eveley looked upon Mr. Hiltze with great friendliness and sympathy,
though she did glance up at the National Building as they went by,
noticing the light in Nolan's window, wondering if he was working
hard--and if the work necessitated the presence of the new, good-looking
stenographer the firm had lately acquired.
"Now, my idea of Americanization," Mr. Hiltze was saying when she finally
tore her thoughts away from the National Building, "is pure personal
effort. You take a club, and mix a lot of nationalities, and types, and
interests up together--they work upon one another, and work upon you, and
you get nowhere. But take an individual. Get chummy with him. Be with
him. Study him. Make him like you--interest him in your work, and your
sport, and your life--and there you have an American pretty soon. Club
work is not definite, not decisive. It is the personal touch that counts.
You could fritter away hours with a baseball club, and end at last just
where you began. But you put the same time into definite personal contact
with one individual foreigner--a girl, of course it would be in your
case--it is young men in mine. You take a girl--a foreigner--win her
confidence, then her interest, then her love--and you've made an
American. That is the only Americanization that will stick. Suppose in a
whole year you have won only one--still see what you have done. That one
will go out among her friends, her relatives, she will marry and have
children--and your Americanization is sown and re-sown, and goes on
multiplying itself--yes, forever."
"You are right," said Eveley. "And you find me a girl, and I will do it."
"It is a bargain," he said quickly, stopping in the street to grasp her
hand. "You are a little thoroughbred, aren't you? It may take time, but
as I go about among the young men I work with--well, I am pretty sure to
find a girl among them."