"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 n.o.body"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 gla.s.s 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.body 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."