Eve to the Rescue Part 11

"Oh, it was perfectly all right. He found out to-day that he had a friend who is a life-long friend of Kitty's and he brought him along, and we were all nicely introduced and everything was as proper as you please."

"Did you buy the car?" he asked witheringly.

"Oh, no, he advised me, confidentially, not to. He is going to change to the Bemis agency to-morrow, and he thinks he will find it much more satisfactory. Wasn't it a lovely night? Did you have a nice time with the High and Mighties? Kitty is going to stay all night with me, and we are just making some hot chocolate. Won't you come for a cup?--Oh, just Kitty and I, and it is quite early. Come along, and we'll tell you all the bad points about the Doric. But they say the Bemis is a wonder."

CHAPTER IX

ADMITTING DEFEAT

The first Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 Ma.s.seno, 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 pa.s.s 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 a.s.signed 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 pa.s.sed four b.a.l.l.s, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 ent.i.ties, 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 a.s.sist in the development of quick and kind-eyed Angelo at the office, or the courteous j.a.p 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 a.s.similators 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.similate the flotsam and jetsam of the foreign element, and imbue it with st.u.r.dy 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 un.o.btrusively, 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.