The Boy Grew Older. Heywood Hale Broun
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."
CHAPTER IV
Maria blamed a good many things upon the institution of marriage for which the explanation probably lay elsewhere. If Peter had been a lover rather than a husband he would still have been insensitive to Chopin. In all the range of Maria's repertoire he was never able to detect more than a single tune. That itself seemed to him an achievement for the Fantaisie Impromptu had not yet been discovered to be actually, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows." But as a matter of fact Peter did not really understand Maria Algarez any better than he understood Chopin. He loved her throughout the year of their married life but he was not happy.
"It is the curse of the witch on you," she said, "or maybe it is not the witch but that America of yours. There is something in you, Peter, that will not let you be happy. You are afraid of it. Of me you are afraid, Peter."
He protested that this was not so but Maria knew better.
"Love – what you call sex – that is one of the things which has frightened you the most of any. Somebody has put black thoughts into that head. Yes, I tell you it is so. A terrible thing has been done to you. Somebody has brought you up carefully."
But in an instant she had come across the room to him and had a protecting arm about him.
"Now I have made you the more sad. You must tell me what it is."
"I can't, Maria. I don't know whether I know. But anyhow I can't."
"Perhaps it is the sound of it which you fear. You tell me. You must. Whisper it."
Peter did whisper. "You remember that night you told me – you told me about the others."
"You mean those oh so few lovers. But that did not make you sad then. You were not angry."
"I'm not angry now. But I can't help it, Maria, that I worry."
"And for what do you worry?"
"I think that maybe those other lovers they made you happier than I can."
"So! That I should have known. You think you are not the so great lover. These men they are gone but they are still your rivals. Perhaps I remember. That is it?"
"Yes," said Peter.
He was startled when Maria laughed.
"Why do you laugh at me?"
"It is to you like the baseball game. It is what you call it? Oh yes, a competition."
Peter made no answer.
"Now listen to me, Peter. You I love the most of anybody in the world. I tell you that but it is not enough. You still worry. Something I must do to show you. This blackness I must drive away. Peter, you must have a baby. Yes, it is a son you need. Then you can worry about him."
Maria spoke upon the conviction but also upon impulse and babies are not born that way. The time of her trial beat fiercely upon her. She had to quit the show just a day after a new rôle and several new songs were promised to her. During the last three months of her pregnancy she never left the apartment. "I do not want anybody to point at me," she told Peter, "and say that is Maria Algarez who did the Butterfly Dance in 'Adios.'"
In the note which Dr. Clay handed to Peter, Maria had written: "I did keep my promise. It is a baby and a son. That was all I promised. More I cannot do. Peter, I must be Maria Algarez, the dancer. I cannot be the wife and the mother. You should not be sad altogether. I think it is good that we have met. When you look at your son you will forget some of the rubbish that was in your head. That is more than that you should remember Maria Algarez. And the boy, Peter, remember it is fair that from life he should get fun. Thank God, nobody can ever make of him the wife and mother. Miss Haine says he is like me. If that is so, Peter, you may have much trouble. But leave him just a little bad."
The last sentence was hard to decipher. Peter could not make out whether Maria had written, "I love you," or "I loved you."
Peter must have gone to sleep eventually on the sofa in the reception room of Dr. Clay's hospital. It was almost dark when he woke. He had been dreaming hard. In the dream some vague figure, forgotten by the time he awoke, presented him with a small lion cub as a pet. Throughout the dream Peter worried about the lion cub. The apartment house in which he lived had a strict rule against dogs. The janitor did not actually come into the dream, but much of Peter's sleeping consciousness was concerned with planning arguments for that official. "But it isn't a dog," Peter was prepared to say, "it's a lion. Your rules don't say anything about lions. Anyhow it's only a little lion." There had been a lion cub in Battling Nelson's camp and Peter had often watched the fighter fool around with it and slap the animal when it tried to nip him. Nelson had a trick of rubbing the rough stubble of his beard against the lion's nose. Peter hated that.
Disentangling himself from his dream he decided that his nightmare had been an echo he remembered from Goldfield. It took him several minutes to get himself back from the Nevada fight to the hospital in New York. While he slept he had forgotten that Maria had run away and that his son was in a room upstairs. He was about to skirmish out in search of one of the nurses when Dr. Clay came into the room.
"Feeling any better?" asked the doctor.
"I feel all right. I'm all ready to take the baby