The Boy Grew Older

"Maybe this'll spoil everything," said Peter. "It's been so nice and easy and pleasant going around with you, Vonnie. If I get in love with you something will happen to me sure. I can't stand anything like that again. I do like you a lot. That's the trouble."

"Oh, Hell! nothing like that's going to happen. I'm a tough bird. I'll make you a promise, Peter. The minute I see you're falling in love with me any I'll tell you that story about the tattooed man and the girl from Oshkosh and shock it right out of you. Don't make any noise, Peter. I've found the janitor's a light sleeper. And don't be so awful solemn. Try and think up something worse that could have happened to you."

Still when Vonnie kissed him again after they had tiptoed up two flights and into her flat, Peter noticed that this time she did not laugh.

CHAPTER XV

I

Peter worried a good deal over Vonnie's predictions as to Pat's future. The doubt which she had cast upon the feasibility of his scheme heightened after the victrola was introduced into the flat. The man on the floor below happened to be moving and meeting Peter in the hall one night he struck up a bargain to sell his phonograph and all the records. After the bargain was made and the machine duly delivered, Peter looked over the repertoire and found it queer stuff according to his notions. "Werther – Ah! non mi ridestar!" sung by Mattia Battistini; "Siegfried's Funeral March;" "The Funeral March of a Marionette." It seemed morbid to Peter. "Minuet in G, No. 2" played by Ysaye; "Lucia – il dolce suono (mad scene)." "Merry old bird," thought Peter. "Invitation to the Waltz – Weber." That was a tune he knew, but it could hardly be classed as cheerful.

Peter went out and purchased a few of the latest song hits – "The Sextette from Floradora," "Under the Shade of the Sheltering Palm," and to his delight he found "Any Little Thing for You, Dear." Unfortunately the phonograph company had chosen another voice instead of Vonnie's for the record. Nevertheless, Peter bought it and some more.

Pat was now a year and a half old, but he manifested the most violent interest in the phonograph. That pleased Peter but he did not like it quite so well when Kate reported to him, "'Tis a queer child, Mr. Neale. It's them red records he does be playing all the time. He wants the one about somebody's funeral all the time. Would you believe it he cries when I put on a nice tune for him."

The report was not exaggerated. Pat liked the song from Werther, but the Siegfried record was his favorite, with Gounod a close second. Indeed his passion to have his own particular favorites played and no others seemed to be the compelling influence which brought him to language. Almost his first articulate words were "Boom-Boom" which Peter eventually and regretfully identified as an attempt to designate the Siegfried Funeral March. When more words were developed The Funeral March of a Marionette became "the other Boom-Boom."

Before Pat was quite two he could mess about in the cabinet of the victrola and pick out a dozen records in response to Peter's request.

"Go get the red Bat," Peter would say and Pat would gravely pull out a handful of records and return with Battistini's Werther. For that matter he knew Floradora well enough to pick it out of the pile but he never held it out to Peter with an imperious, "I want" as he did whenever he got his hands on "Siegfried" or "The Funeral March of a Marionette." It was still more thrilling, a little later, when he abandoned his descriptive "Boom-Boom" for "Siegfried's Funeral March" and began to call it, "Go to Bed Tired." Peter never knew just how Pat could identify the records by looking at them. He supposed that some of the titles were longer than others and that the child was able to bear in mind the picture created by some certain series of signs.

But a still more shocking discovery came when Peter learned that his tiny son could identify by sound as well as sight. Peter, for instance, was never quite certain whether the record being played was the Mad Scene from Lucia or the Floradora Sextette. At any rate not until it had gone along about to "On bended knee – on bended knee." But there was no fooling Pat. He never needed more than a few notes before he was able to exclaim with a well justified assurance that the piece in question was "Chi-Chi" or "Floor" as the case might be. The Weber waltz was never played much and Pat had no name for it, but he evidently knew it well enough for no sooner was it started than he would get up and swing slowly from side to side. Peter finally got a hammer and broke that record. He would have liked to pass the victrola on to somebody else but Kate would have protested as well as Pat. Music had solved for her the problem of what to do with Pat on rainy days. Outside of a little cranking these once difficult experiences had now become practically painless.

On Pat's second birthday Peter was startled to receive at the office of the Bulletin a package directed in the handwriting of Maria Algarez. Peter had travelled a little of the way toward forgetting Maria Algarez. Time had done something, but Vonnie had done more. It was almost seven months now since Peter first went to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street. In the package he found a letter and a phonograph record. On the disc he read "Chanson de Solveig – Maria Algarez." The letter said – "Dear Peter – I send to your son a present for his second birthday. I hope he will like it. Is his name Peter, too? So it should be. He will be a fine boy I think, big and strong like his father. And make it so that he shall grow up not to have the fear of anything and not the shame of anything. Here for two years I have studied the English hard. You see I write it much better. Now I have not danced for two years. First it was because of the baby. It was not his fault. Maybe I have left the hospital too soon. I did not want to stay longer and to die. All the time I sing. The voice it is magnificent. Perhaps it is next season I am to sing in the Opera Comique. For the phonograph company I have made the one record and they say it will be more. I do not know. It is not necessary ever for me to see your son, or for him to see me but some time you will play for him this record. That he should hear me I want. You need not say who it is. That does not matter. In you, Peter, there is no song. For little Peter that should be different. Perhaps you will say no. I do not think so. I want that he should hear my song – Maria."

There was no address. Peter played Solveig's song that Sunday. It stirred him strangely. This was almost a tune. When the notes went high he could not only see Maria in the room, he could almost feel her. He was so intent with this presence that he did not watch Pat. The child was lying on the floor. He said nothing until the last note had almost died away. "I want the red Bat," he said.

II

Vonnie never came to the flat except on Sundays. It wouldn't do to have Kate know anything about her. Several weeks after the arrival of Maria's letter she happened in just as Peter was playing the Solveig song for Pat. The child never put this particular record into his list of imperatives, but he was reconciled to it. Perhaps interested. And Peter felt a sort of compulsion of duty to play it every once and so often. He had been surprised in the beginning that no miracle of recognition had occurred in Pat's mind. To Pat she was merely a lady singing. Yet Peter could not be sure what currents might move beneath the surface. Anyhow it was enough for him that Maria had asked that he play the record. And to him there was a certain instinct to play the record for his own sake. Now that the memory was not so painful he rather wanted to keep it alive. The thing was far enough away by now to be romantic. Peter took a definite pride in the fact that once his heart had been broken. That didn't happen to everybody.

His feeling about Vonnie was different. She was ever so much more fun than Maria, but she wasn't romantic. He felt that he knew her better. Certainly he was more assured and easy with her than he had ever been with Maria, but she could not move him to that curious exalted unhappiness which he had once known. People about to become monks or missionaries must feel something of what he felt for Maria. Still, that wasn't it exactly. Maria was that moment before you hit the water in a chute the chutes. Living with her was like watching a baseball game with the bases always full and two strikes on the batter. Even marriage was no windbreak. There was never a moment in that year when he had not felt the tang of a gale full upon him. Having an affair with Vonnie was highly respectable in comparison. This passion was even hospitable to little jokes. Life had become comfortable.

He did not know whether or not Vonnie realized that she and Maria were different. They no longer talked ever of Maria Algarez. Even when she came in upon the Solveig song Peter would have said nothing about it.

"It's Maria, isn't it?" asked Vonnie.

"Yes."

"Where did you get it?"

"She sent it to me."

"Has she come back?"

"No, it just said Paris."

"Maybe she thinks she don't need to come back. She can bean you just as good with a phonograph record."

Peter said nothing, but let the song die out and then took the disc from the machine.

"Here," said Vonnie, "let me see it."

Peter handed it over. Vonnie looked at it for a moment, then she moved across the room.

"Pete," she said, "what would you do if I dropped this thing out the window." She made a move as if to put the suggestion into execution.

"Don't do that," cried Peter.

"Don't do that," mimicked Vonnie. "You're still a damn fool, hey?"

"It's not mine. It was sent to Pat."

"Oh, yes, blame it on the kid. I don't suppose he's a nut about her, too. Are you, Pat?"

Pat seemed to have no comprehension of the issue and made no answer.

"Look here, Pete," said Vonnie, "nobody can say I've ever been jealous. You can be daffy about anybody you like. That's none of my business, but I can't stand it to have you such a fool that you'll let this damn woman slap you in the face and then come back for more. If you didn't know she was no good in the first place you ought to know it now."

"I don't want you to say that."

"Well, what is she good for?"

"She's the greatest dancer in the world."

"Don't make me laugh."

"You know she is. You heard them cheering her that night."

"Hell to that. Everything was set for her. Somebody gets sick and on she waltzes. Any audience'll fall for that. If Carmencita should fall down and break her leg I could do the same thing. 'Miss Vonnie Ryan with one hour's rehearsing will take the place of Carmencita.' It's a cinch."

"All right. You've got your opinion and I've got mine. Don't let's talk about it."

"I'm going to talk about it. This gets settled right now. I don't have to be first with you, Pete, or anybody else, but I'm not going to run second to a dish-faced mutt. I've got some pride in the people that cut me out. Either I smash that phonograph record or you and I smash."

"Give me that."

Vonnie handed it over.

"All right," she said. "I'm sorry. It was silly for me to bawl you out. You haven't done anything to me. God knows I can't stand here and say you seduced me. I had to get a half-nelson on you to pull you into the flat that night. Maybe that's what makes me so sore. I put a lot of work in on you, Pete."

"Please don't go way, Vonnie. It's silly for us to scrap over a phonograph record."

"Everything's silly. I got to go way. I'm going to get just as far away as I can. I'm going to get in some road company going to the Coast and then by God, I hope we get stranded. You poor mutt, I'm in love with you."

"Oh, please, Vonnie, don't cry. I know I'm no good. I just can't help it about that phonograph record."

"Well, you don't suppose I'd bawl this way if I could help it. Now don't be patting me on the back. I don't love you enough to let you, 'There! there!' me."