I
Maria was right. They did talk about it again and largely because Peter
surprised himself and her with enterprise. It was raining hard that
night when she came out into the alley. Peter grown bold was standing
not more than two feet away from the stage door at a spot where a
projecting fire escape offered some shelter from the rain. A big puddle
lay all the way across the alley.
"Here," said Peter, almost casually and he picked Maria up and carried
her across.
"Thank God, there's no winding staircase," Vonnie shouted after them.
Still it was an entirely natural and easy thing to keep one arm around
Maria when they got into the taxicab. She rested her head against his
shoulder. Peter realized then that he ought to kiss her. After all he
had known her three weeks. It seemed the conventional thing to do.
Besides he wanted to. She said nothing until the second time.
"I like the quiet ones better, Peter, my hermit. It is nice to lean
against you. With you the taxi does not jounce so much. Part of my
tiredness it goes into your arm."
"Won't you marry me?" asked Peter.
"Because we have kissed? And I have put my head on your shoulder? You
would make me the honest woman?"
"I want to marry you."
"First we must have some supper. Maybe it is that you are just hungry.
It is not upon an empty stomach to talk about getting married."
Maria would not take the table which the headwaiter offered. "No that
other. The little one in the corner."
After they had ordered Maria took up a long bread stick and began
breaking it into little pieces in her hand.
"Peter," she said, "I must make you very sad. Maybe I will be a little
sad. You do not think I am good?"
Peter stared at her.
"That is too bad. I am not good, not very good. You know what I mean.
You have heard the actress in the play say, 'I am a good woman?' Maria
is not. I do not know why I tell you but I will. First it was three
years ago in Paris. He was married and I knew that. I do not even like
him much but I go. It was wrong. It was not so wrong another time
because that boy I like a little. Now it was Mr. Casey, our manager, I
told you he was a fool. That I could not help. He is such a fool. I try
to get the job and he does not say you can dance. He say to me, 'I am a
nice man and you are a nice girl.' What is there for me to say except
'yes.' About the dance he does not know anything. What is the use for me
to say, 'No, I am not the nice girl, I am the great dancer.' Even if he
would watch me dance he would not know. And so for the week-end at Long
Beach I was the nice girl. I cannot help it that people are fools. It
does not make me sad, but I am sad because now you are unhappy."
But Peter was not exactly unhappy. He knew that by all the rules he
should be broken-hearted or raging. He wondered why he had no impulse to
shoot Casey. As a matter of fact he could think of nothing more silly.
His mind kept turning back to a play he had seen once called "The Second
Mrs. Tanqueray." In that the heroine had confessed in the first act to
the man she was going to marry. It was thrilling Peter found to have
somebody confessing to him. Maria the dancer was romantic, but Maria the
adventuress was a whole leap beyond that into the realm of fantasy. He
stole a glance around the long room and everywhere he saw men and women
talking. Some were laughing and some were earnest. "But," he thought to
himself, "probably this is the only table in the room where anybody is
making a confession."
And besides all the dramatic values of the situation, he was not quite
unconscious of the comic ones. There sat Maria, at least five feet high
and looking about ten years old, gravely lifting up one corner of life a
little gingerly to spare the feelings of Peter Neale, the best known
sporting writer in America. But every other impression was swept away by
the sudden feeling that it was extraordinarily honest for Maria to tell
him all this. It was more than that. It was like cheering when the Yale
captain got up again. It was sportsmanship.
Peter reached across the table and patted her hand. "I'm not sad, Maria.
I think it was awfully white of you to tell me. I'm not exactly a good
man myself. Anyhow things are different with you. Those things you said
are nothing. You know the way I feel is that you're an artist and it's
nobody's business what you do. We don't have to talk about that any
more. There's something else. You remember what we were saying in the
taxicab. You've had two pieces of bread now and a glass of water. Won't
you marry me?"
"Yes," said Maria, "I'm going to marry you."
II
Peter was surprised the day they went down to get the license to
discover that Maria was twenty-three. He was only twenty-six himself.
Maria had seemed a child. Nineteen would have been his guess.
"Maybe," she said, "you will not want me because I am so old."
"You could be a hundred," Peter answered.
They were to be married the next day but when he met her at the theatre
in the evening she told him that Dolly Vance was ill and that Mr. Casey
wanted her to take over four of the sick girl's numbers. "I have to come
to the theatre at ten o'clock and rehearse all the day."
"Then we'll get married at nine. I'm not going to take a chance like
that. I've read about it in books. The whole house will be cheering you
and then you'll ask for waivers on me. I want to get you signed up."
"Pooh, for me they will not cheer. These are the jazz dances. They are
not for me. And Peter, oh, Peter, I must sing."
"Can you sing?"
"Yes, my hermit, I am almost so good a singer as a dancer. And I could
play the piano if there was any one smart enough to know. You see I
bring you the dowry."
A very bored Alderman said that they were man and wife, but there was
some excitement when they came out of the City Hall and two newspaper
photographers took their pictures. Peter was proud of the fact that both
the camera men made a point of treating him as a person of a good deal
of importance. "You see," he said, "I'm somebody in my business."
"The paper you work on what is the name?"
"It's called the Bulletin."
"And what is it they pay you?"
"Well, with my share of the syndicate and all that it amounts to about
$100 a week."
"One hundred dollars a week! That is funny. My pay it is $50. I have
caught a millionaire. Peter, why do they pay you $100 a week?"
"I don't know, Maria----"
"One hundred dollars a week to write about the baseball game! Fifty
dollars a week to Maria Algarez. My God, what a country! I do not like
that, Peter. Still, it does not matter so much. Maybe I am glad that you
are rich. You can buy me a piano and I will show you that I know how to
play Chopin. You would like that."
"That'll be fine," said Peter.
"Where was it that you learned so much about this baseball that they pay
you $100 for the week?"
"I used to play myself at Harvard. At least I played one year. I pitched
against Yale and shut 'em out. The next year I got fired because I
couldn't learn French."
"But that is so easy, the French. I do not know what it is to shut Yale
out."
"Of course it's easy for you. You lived there, you told me ever since
you were five. Any foreigner ought to be able to speak French."
"But I am not. I am now the American, I know that. I am Mrs. Peter
Neale."
"Oh," she said, and made a fearful grimace, "that you must never call
me. It must be that I am still Maria Algarez. Mrs. Peter Neale I do not
know. Maria Algarez she will not die. Oh no, Peter, you understand
that?"
"It's all right with me," said Peter. "I'm just going to call you Maria
any way."
"And, Peter, I forgot, you have a father and a mother and the relations
for me to meet."
"Not a one. I've got an uncle in Salt Lake City. That's a long way off
if you don't know. But how about you?"
"Maybe, who can tell. They are no good. I do not care. Perhaps they are
dead. Peter, you are all I have in the world. That is why you must buy
me the grand piano."
They went straight from the City Hall to the theatre and Peter left her.
He was not to see her again until after the performance. Of course he
went to the show and sat in the second row. But Maria did not see him
when she came on to do the first of her new numbers. Or at any rate she
made no sign of recognition. She kept her eyes intently on the
conductor's baton. And then she began to sing. Even Peter had an inkling
of the fact that here was a lovely voice. If he had not been married to
Maria Algarez at nine o'clock that morning he would still have been
caught up in the excitement of the theatre. Almost everybody stopped
coughing. They honestly cheered and they kept it up. Nine times Maria
sang the chorus and five times more she came out to bow. Her fourth song
was the last number in the play with the exception of the parade of all
the nations and nobody paid any attention to that. They just kept on
applauding and shouting. Peter argued with the stage door man.
"I have to see Maria Algarez," he said. "I have to, I tell you. I'm her
husband."
"Write your name down on a piece of paper, and I'll take it up and see
what she says."
In three or four minutes he returned. "Miss Algarez says you're to come
up. It's number twelve. Two flights up at the head of the stairs."
Peter knocked.
"Come in," said Maria. She had thrown the blue and gold costume in a
corner, and slipped on a kimono.
"It was marvelous," said Peter; "nobody's ever heard anything like it in
a theatre. They're still cheering and applauding for you."
"For all that applause I do not give a damn," answered Maria and snapped
her fingers. "As long as you like. That is all."
Peter kissed her. "Maria, I was afraid I'd lost you." He held her at
arm's length and the kimono slipped down over one shoulder. "Cover
yourself up," said Peter almost sharply. Maria pulled the wrap back and
folded it closely around her. Peter had never seen that smile before.
"A husband," she said. "It is different."