tired.” She knew he never tired. “I’ll sign them after lunch and mail
them myself.” Then he turned to Junior. “Now you and I are going out to
have a grand old time together, eh, what, old top?”
He slapped Junior on the back. Then Mrs. Allison left the room, and
father and son were alone together. It frightened them.
Already the old clamping habit of reserve was trying to have its way
with them, though each was determined to prevent it. Both of them
laughed and said, “Well, well!” hoping to bluff it off.
“First, let’s have a look at you,” said Phil; and he playfully dragged
Junior toward the window. The boy’s laughter suddenly died, and Phil now
had a disquieting sense of making an ass of himself in his son’s eyes.
But that was not it. Junior dreaded the strong light of the window. With
his changing voice had arrived a few not very conspicuous pimples; such
little ones, but they distressed him enormously.
“Well, feel as if you could eat something?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Junior. He feared it sounded cold and formal. He
couldn’t help it.
They went to a club on the top of a high office building. Junior’s name
was written in the guest book, which awed him agreeably. A large,
luxurious luncheon was outlined by Phil, beginning with a cantaloupe and
ending with ice cream--a double portion for Junior. This was first
submitted to Junior for approval. He had forgotten his facial blemishes.
“Golly! You bet I approve,” said Junior laughing. That was more like it.
Phil summoned a waiter and then sent for the head waiter. A great man,
his father, not afraid even of head waiters. And he ordered with the air
of one who knew. No wonder the waiters seemed honoured to serve him.
Only, how was one to “get this over” to the boys without seeming to
boast?
“A little fish, sir, after the melon?”
“Yes, if you’ll bring some not on the menu.” That was puzzling. Phil
explained. Fish which had arrived at the club after the menu had been
printed was sure to be fresh.
“Oh, I see,” said Junior. This would make a hit with the boys.
There was no doubt about it, his handsome father was the most
distinguished personage in the whole large roomful of important-looking
people. Several of them gathered around to welcome Phil. Junior was
presented. Their greetings to the son showed their warm affection, their
high regard for the father. Junior wallowed in filial pride. If only
Smithy could see him now! What a father! A citizen of the world who did
big things and wore perfect-fitting clothes, cut by his Bond Street
tailor in London--the finishing touch of greatness to a boy of Junior’s
age--and he recalled what one of the engineers had said to Aunt Mary,
“Even in camp he shaves every day.”
“Well, tell me how everything is going at school,” said the father, who
did not dream that he was being hero-worshipped.
But Junior could not be easy and natural, as with Aunt Mary. He blushed
as in the presence of a stranger. He heard his own raucous voice and
hated it. He took unnecessary sips of water.
He felt better and bolder after the delicious food arrived. Phil looked
on with amusement, amazement at the amount the youngster consumed.
“Next year I hope you can find time to come down to see us at school,”
Junior ventured with his double portion of ice cream. “All the fellows
want to meet you.”
“I want to meet them,” said his father. “This fall on the way back,
maybe.”
“Oh, you’re going away again?”
“Next week I’m going up into the woods with Billy Norton on a long canoe
trip. Some new country I want to show him. Trout streams never yet
fished by a white man.”
“Gosh! That’ll be great,” said Junior.
“Some day I’ll take you up there. It’s time you learned that game. Fly
casting, like swinging a golf club, should begin before your muscles are
set. Would you care to go on a camping trip with me?”
Care to! Of course it was the very thing he was doing all the time in
his daydreams, but he could not say that to his father. He said, “Yes,
thanks,” and paused for another sip of water. “You wouldn’t--no, of
course, you wouldn’t want me to go along this time.”
“Not this time. You see, I promised Billy. Some day though--you and I
alone. Much better, don’t you think?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir! Makes me feel like a master. I’m your father.” They
laughed at that and went back to the office. “Only take me a second to
sign these letters,” said Phil. Junior looked at the neat pile of them,
again impressed by his father’s importance.
“That’s awfully nice paper,” he said, coveting the engraved letterhead
with his father’s name on it, which was also his name.
“If you like it, take some,” said Phil as he rapidly signed that name.
“Help yourself, all you want. Wait, I’ll get you a whole box.” He
touched a bell and a boy came in. “Get a box of my stationery and ship
it to this address.” He turned to his letters again. “Then you won’t
have to pack it all the afternoon.” Pack it? Oh, yes, out-of-doors men
said “pack” instead of “carry.” He would say it hereafter.
On the way from the elevator, as they passed through the arcade, Junior
stopped to gaze with admiration at a camera in a shop window.
“Like one of those?” asked Phil. He led the way in. “Take your pick,” he
said. And then, “Ship it to this address.”
It was the only way this shy father knew how to express his affection.
It was not easy to say much to this boy. He seemed keen and critical
under his quiet manner.
Before the baseball game was over--a dull, unimportant game--they were
both talked out, each wondering what was the matter. “I suppose I bore
him,” said Phil to himself, and soon began thinking about his business.
When their grand old time together was finished each felt a horrible
sense of relief, though neither would acknowledge it to himself.
“Poor little cuss!” thought Phil. “I’d like to be a good father to him,
but I don’t know how.”
And the boy: “I’m afraid he’s disappointed in me. I’m so skinny and have
pimples.” If he were only a big, good-looking fellow like Smithy, who
played on the football team, his father would be proud of him. Smithy’s
parents saw him almost every week in term time and took him abroad every
summer. They were having his portrait painted.
“What kind of time did you have with your father in town?” asked his
Aunt Mary. Junior felt rather in the way at times, now that she had a
husband.
“Bully! Great!” and he made an attractive picture of it. “Father and I
are so congenial, now that I’m old. Next summer we’re going to the woods
together.”
“How do you talk to your kids?” Phil asked Bill Norton by the camp fire.
“I don’t talk to them. They aren’t interested in me except as a source
of supply. New generation!”
“I’m crazy about my boy,” said Phil, “but I have an idea that he
considers the old man a well-meaning ass. Funny thing; that little
fellow is the only person in the world I’m afraid of.”
“No father really knows his own son,” said Billy. “Some of them think
they do, but they don’t. It’s a psychological impossibility.”
* * * * *
Back at school again. A quick, scudding year. Summer vacation
approaching already!
“We’d be so pleased if you would spend the month of August with us in
Maine,” wrote Blackie’s mother. She had grown fond of the boy and was
sorry for him. Motherless--fatherless, too, for practical, for parental
purposes.
Junior, with his preternatural quickness, knew she was sorry for him and
appreciated her kindness, but he was not to be pitied and his father was
not to be criticized. “That’s awfully good of you,” he replied, “but
Father is counting upon my going up to the North Woods with him on a
long canoe trip. Some new country where no other white man has ever
been.”
He went to the woods, but not with his father. It was the school
camp--not the wild country his father penetrated; but there was trout
fishing all the same, and he loved it. Like many boys who are not
proficient at athletics, he took to camp life like a savage and
developed more expertness at casting and cooking and canoeing than did
certain stars of the football field or track. He had natural savvy. The
guides said so. Besides, he had an incentive to excel. He was not going
to be a nuisance to his father on the trip they would take together some
day. And though he reverted to a state of savagery in the woods, he kept
his tent and his outfit scrupulously neat and won first prize in this
department by a vote of the counsellors. For excellent reasons he did
not shave every day in camp, but he would some day.
He learned a great deal about the ways of birds while he was in the
woods, and back at school he persuaded Blackie to help organize The
Naturalists Club, despite the jeers of the athlete idolaters. He took
many bird pictures with the camera and he prepared a bird census of the
township. This was published in the school magazine, and so Junior
decided that when he got through college he would be a writer.
He had not seen his father for two years. South America this time--in
the Andes. The canoe trip was no longer mentioned. Junior went to the
school camp regularly now. He was acknowledged the best all-round camper
in school. He won first prize in fly casting and the second in canoeing.
He was getting big and strong, and became a good swimmer.
He spent his Christmas vacation with Aunt Mary, and while there Mrs.
Fielding, the wife of the housemaster, in town for the holidays, dropped
in for tea one day with Aunt Mary. They did not know that Junior was in
the adjoining room, reading Stewart Edward White.
“But it’s criminal the way Phil neglects that darling boy,” said Aunt
Mary.
“And he’s developing in such a fine way too,” said Mrs. Fielding. “He’s
one of the best liked boys in school.”
“I can’t understand my brother. Of course he’s terribly engrossed with
his career, now that he has won success, but he might at least send a
picture post card occasionally.”
“You mean to say he never writes to his own son!” Mrs. Fielding was
shocked and indignant. And then came this tragic revelation to Junior:
“Well, you see,” said Aunt Mary, “Phil never wanted children, and he’s
not really interested in the boy.”
“You don’t tell me so! Why, Aleck always speaks of your brother as if he
were so generous and warm-hearted.”
“Yes, that’s what makes it so pathetic. He is kind and tries to make up
for his lack of affection by giving Junior a larger allowance than is
good for him. But he never takes the trouble to send him a Christmas
present.”
So that explained it all. “He’s not interested in me. I wasn’t wanted.”
And after that he had his first experience with a sleepless night.
A few days later Junior remarked, “By the way, Aunt Mary, did I show you
the binoculars Father sent me for Christmas?” He handed them to her for
inspection. They looked secondhand. They were. He had picked them up
that morning in a pawnshop. “These are the very ones that Father carried
all through the war. He knew I’d like them better than new ones. Just
like Father to think of that. You remember his showing them to us when
he got back?”
Aunt Mary did not remember such things--he knew she wouldn’t--but she
rejoiced to hear it.
“He has sent me a typewriter too; only he ordered it shipped directly to
the school.”
“That was nice of him, wasn’t it?” said Aunt Mary.
“That’s the way he does with most of the presents he sends me. You
remember the camera?”
She did remember the camera.
The typewriter had been ordered on the installment plan. Junior hadn’t
saved enough money from his allowance to buy it outright.
“He’s not going to get me a radio set until he finds out which is the
best make on the market, he says.”
“Oh, has he written to you?” Aunt Mary was still more surprised.
“Every week,” said Junior.
“Oh, Junior! I’m so glad. But why haven’t you ever told me, dear?”
Junior smiled. “I didn’t want to make you jealous. He never writes to
you.”
“But didn’t you know how I would want to hear all his news?”
“You are so terribly engrossed in Uncle Robert’s career, I thought maybe
you weren’t interested in Father.”
At school the binoculars made a hit with the boys because they showed
the scars of war, but no one thought much of typewriters as Christmas
presents except Junior. He knew what he was doing.
A few days later, when Blackie entered the room he found his roommate
engrossed in reading a letter and so said nothing until Junior emitted
an absent-minded chuckle.
“What’s the joke?”
“Oh, nothing; just a letter from my father.”
“From your father? I thought he never wrote to you.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Well, I never see any envelopes with foreign stamps.”
“He always incloses mine in letters to my aunt.”
“But you never mentioned them, all the same,” said Blackie, “except the
one about the White House.”
“They are confidential, mostly.” Junior returned to the absorbing
letter. Presently he laughed outright.
“What does he say that’s so funny?”
“Oh, hell! Read it yourself.” Junior seemed irritated and tossed the
bulky letter across to his roommate.
It had taken the boy some time to compose this letter to himself, for it
required more than the possession of a typewriter and his father’s
engraved stationery to create a convincing illusion of a letter from a
father. Junior had seen so few, except for those Blackie had allowed him
to read, that he had no working model for long, interesting letters
worthy of a great man like his father.
The first draught had begun, “My darling boy,” but he changed that--it
sounded too much like Blackie’s mother. He made it “My dearest son.” He
rather fancied that, but finally played safe and addressed himself
simply as “Dear Junior.”
My work here is going fine. I have three thousand natives at work
under me not to speak of a hundred engineers on my staff doing the
technikal work. I am terribly busy but of course won’t let that
interfere with my regular weekly letter to you.
Junior was watching Blackie’s face.
I often think of the last canoe trip with you in Canada and can
hardly wait until I take another canoe trip with you in Canada.
Remember that time you hooked a four-pounder with your three ounce
rod? You were a little fellow then, that was before you went away
to school. Remember how you yelled to me for help to land same?
Business men always said “same,” but Junior didn’t like it, and besides,
his father was a professional man, so he changed “same,” to “him.”
Of course it wasn’t much of a trick for me to land that four pound
trout on a three ounce rod, because I am probly the best fisherman
in any of the dozen or more fishing clubs I belong to.
Junior revised that to read:
Because I happen to have quite a little experience landing trout
and salmon in some of the most important streams in the world, from
the high Sierras to the Ural Mountains.
It would never do to make his father guilty of blowing--the unforgivable
sin.
He thought that was all right for a beginning, but did not know how to
follow it up. He wanted to put in something about the Andes, with a few
stories of wild adventure and hairbreadth escapes, but although he read
up on the Andes in the encyclopædia, as he did on all his father’s
temporary habitats, he did not feel that the encyclopædia style suited
his father’s vivid personality. In an old copy of the _National
Geographic Magazine_ he found a traveller’s description of adventures in
that part of the world, and simply copied a page or two. It had to do
with an amusing though extremely dangerous adventure with a python,
which had treed one of the writer’s gun bearers--a narrow escape told
as a joke--quite his father’s sort of thing; and no one would ever
accuse Junior of inventing such a well-written narrative with such
circumstantial local colour.
Blackie was properly impressed by the three thousand natives and one
hundred experts, and he too, laughed aloud at the antics of the gun
bearer. He told the other boys about it, as Junior meant him to do, and
some of them wanted to read it too. They dropped in after study hour.
Junior, it seems, required urging, like an amateur vocalist who
nevertheless has brought her music.
“Oh, shoot!” he said. “It doesn’t amount to anything. Just a letter from
my father.”
“Why don’t you read it aloud?” suggested Blackie.
Junior seemed bored, but soon submitted. Like vocalists, he was afraid
that they might stop urging him.
“Oh, very well,” he said. He skimmed lightly over the opening personal
paragraph with the parenthetical voice people use when leading up to the
important part of a letter, though this was a very important part for
Junior, to get it over. Then, with the manner of saying, “Ah, here we
are,” he began reading in a louder and more deliberate tone, but not
without realistic hesitation here and there, as if unfamiliar with the
text. He read not only the amusing adventure with the python, but an
authoritative paragraph on the mineral deposits of the mountains. So his
audience never doubted that he had a real letter from a real mining
expert who signed himself “Your affectionate friend and father.”
Junior carelessly tossed the letter upon the table. “Some day I’ll read
you one of his interesting ones,” he said.
“Do it now,” said one of his admirers. “It’s great stuff.”
“No, I never keep letters,” said Junior and, to prove it, tore up the
carefully prepared document and tossed it in the fire.
“I’ll let you know when I get a good one.”
This was so successful that he did it again. There were plenty of other
quotable pages in the same magazine article, and Junior had a whole box
of his father’s stationery. But at the beginning and end of each letter
Junior always insinuated a few paternal touches, suggesting a rich past
of intimacy and affection, though just to make it a little more
convincing he would occasionally insert something like this, “But I
must tell you frankly, as man to man, that you spent entirely too much
money last term,” and interrupted his reading to say, “Gee! I didn’t
mean to read you fellows that part.” And they all laughed. A touch of
parental nature that made all the boys akin.
The fame of these letters spread from the boys’ end of the dinner table
to the master’s. Mr. Fielding said to Junior one day, “I’m so glad your
father has been writing to you lately.”
“Lately? Why, he always writes to me. But don’t tell my Aunt Mary. Might
make her jealous.”
Junior smiled as if he had a great joke on his Aunt Mary. There, he got
that over too! Neither of these ladies would dare criticize his father
again.
“Is your Aunt Mary so fond of him as all that?”
“Why, of course!”
“Well, I’m glad you’re hearing from him, anyway. I so seldom see letters
addressed to you on the hall table.
“I have a lock box at the post office.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Fielding.
So that explained it all. It was true about the lock box. Junior
exhibited the key while was he speaking, and he was seen at the post
office frequently to make the matter more plausible. He even opened the
box if any one was around to watch him, though he never found any
letters there except those he put in and pulled out again by sleight of
hand, whistling carelessly as he did so.
Mr. Fielding had asked Junior to step into the office a moment. “What do
you hear from your father?” he said.
“Oh, he’s quite well, thank you, sir. He’ll be starting for home soon.
He says he’s not going to let anything interfere with our canoe trip
this year. It’s the funniest thing how something has always happened
every summer to prevent it. Father says we’re going to break the hoodoo
this time.”
“I see,” said Mr. Fielding.
Junior had heard Mr. Fielding say “I see” before and he had been in
school too long now to undervalue its significance. He would have to be
on guard. He knew he had told conflicting stories.
“Do you hear from him regularly?”
“Oh, no; the mails are so irregular from that part of the world.”
“How often?”
“Well,” said Junior, with his engaging smile, “not so often as I’d like,
of course. But then he’s a very busy man.”
“That story about the python--it sounded like a corker as Blackie told
it secondhand. Mind letting me read that letter?”
“Sorry, sir. I destroyed it.” Blackie would vouch for that, if
necessary.
“I see.” The head master looked at Junior in silence, then he said with
a not unkind smile. “Junior, I’m very fond of your father. He’s one of
the finest fellows that ever lived.”
“Sure,” said Junior.
“I’ve known him longer than you have. I don’t think he ever did anything
dishonourable in his life.”
“Of course not.”
What was coming? He must keep his head now.
“You know how your father would feel if I couldn’t honestly say the same
thing about you?”
“Why, what do you mean, Mr. Fielding?”
“Just tell me the truth, Junior, and it needn’t ever go out of this
room. Does your father ever write to you at all?”
“Why, sir, you don’t think my father is the sort who wouldn’t write to
his own son, do you?” Then the boy added desperately, “I don’t see why
you all want to make him out a piker.”
“Did your father write the letter describing the fight with the python?”
“Look here, Mr. Fielding, you people don’t understand. I’m better
friends with my father than most boys. You see, my mother’s dead and all
that. So--well, don’t you see, he sort of takes it out in writing me
long letters. He thought that stuff about the python would amuse me.”
He was a loyal little liar and the head master admired him for it. But
it wouldn’t do. Mr. Fielding opened a drawer of his desk and took out an
old magazine.
“Does your father take the _National Geographic_?”
Junior crumpled up.
“I don’t know, sir.” He was in for it now--caught. Mr. Fielding opened
the magazine and pointed out a marked page to Junior.
“Junior, I know you won’t accuse an honourable gentleman like your
father of stealing another man’s writings, passing them off as his own.
There’s an ugly name for that. It’s called plagiarism.”
He had tried to defend his father, and look at the result!
“I wrote those letters, Mr. Fielding.”
“I knew that,” said Mr. Fielding gently. “You won’t do it again, though,
will you, Junior?”
“Hardly.”
“That’s all. You may go now.”
Junior turned at the door. He knew that this was not all. He was being
let down too easily.
“Mr. Fielding----” he began, and hesitated. “It won’t be necessary for
you to tell my father, will it?”
“I won’t tell him, but you will.”
“No, sir, I could never do that.”
“Well, we’ll see. Good night, Junior.”
So he could write no more letters to exhibit to the boys. He explained
that his father had gone on a long expedition inland. No chance for mail
for months. They made no comment, but the whole house knew that he had
been summoned “to the office.” They suspected something, but they would
never discover the truth from him. He would bluff it out to the end.
But now, more than ever, he wanted letters from father, even if written
by himself. He had formed the habit. They somehow did him good. They
made him feel that his father was interested in him.
So, once in a while, just for his own eyes, when Blackie was not around
he opened the typewriter and said all the things he wanted his father to
say to him. As no one would ever see these letters, he could go as far
as he liked. He went quite far. He even said things that only mothers
said:
_My darling son_: Don’t you care what he thinks about you; I
understand and I forgive you. You meant it all right and I like you
just the same, even if you are not an athlete and have got pimples.
When I get back we’ll go off to the West together and live down
this disgrace. Your devoted father and friend.
Sometimes he laughed a little, or tried to, when he realized how these
letters would bore his distinguished parent. But while writing them his
father seemed not only fond of him but actually proud of him. A writer
can invent anything.
I was so pleased to hear your poem about the meadow lark was
accepted by the magazine. Your article about Birds in Our Woods was
very interesting and very well written. I believe you will make a
great writer some day, and think how proud I will be when you are a
great writer, and people point to your picture in the newspapers!
I’ll say, “That’s my son; I’m his father.” Of course, I was
disappointed that you did not become a great athlete like me, but
intellectual destinction is good if you can’t get athletic
destinction, and it may be more useful for a career.
He got a good deal of comfort out of being a father to himself, and
sometimes the letters ran into considerable length, unless Blackie
butted in. His father, it seemed, even consulted him about his own
affairs: