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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Devourers, by Annie Vivanti Chartres
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Devourers
+
+Author: Annie Vivanti Chartres
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2012 [EBook #39145]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVOURERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Valentina, Sue Fleming, Carlo Traverso and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              The Devourers
+
+
+                                    By
+
+                           A. Vivanti Chartres
+
+
+                           G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+                           NEW YORK AND LONDON
+                         The Knickerbocker Press
+                                   1910
+
+
+
+                           COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
+                           A. VIVANTI CHARTRES.
+
+
+
+                            TO MY WONDERCHILD
+
+                                  VIVIEN
+
+                TO READ WHEN SHE HAS WONDERCHILDREN OF HER OWN
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+There was a man, and he had a canary. He said, "What a dear little
+canary! I wish it were an eagle." God said to him: "If you give your
+heart to it to feed on, it will become an eagle." So the man gave his
+heart to it to feed on. And it became an eagle, and plucked his eyes
+out.
+
+There was a woman, and she had a kitten. She said: "What a dear little
+kitten! I wish it were a tiger." God said to her: "If you give your
+life's blood to it to drink, it will become a tiger." So the woman gave
+her life's blood to it to drink. And it became a tiger, and tore her to
+pieces.
+
+There was a man and a woman, and they had a child. They said: "What a
+dear little child! We wish it were a genius."...
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The baby opened its eyes and said: "I am hungry."
+
+Nothing moved in the silent, shadowy room, and the baby repeated its
+brief inarticulate cry. There were hurrying footsteps; light arms raised
+it, and a laughing voice soothed it with senseless, sweet-sounding
+words. Then its cheek was laid on a cool young breast, and all was tepid
+tenderness and mild delight. Soon, on the wave of a light-swinging
+breath, it drooped into sleep again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Edith Avory had hurried home across the meadow from the children's party
+at the vicarage, her pendant plaits flying, her straw hat aslant, and
+now she entered the dining-room of the Grey House fluttered and
+breathless.
+
+"Have they come?" she asked of Florence, who was laying the cloth for
+tea.
+
+"Yes, dear," answered the maid.
+
+"Where are they? Where is the baby?" and, without waiting for an answer,
+the child ran out of the room and helter-skeltered upstairs.
+
+In front of the nursery she stopped. It was her own room, but through
+the closed door she had heard a weak, shrill cry that plucked at her
+heart. Slowly she opened the door, then paused on the threshold,
+startled and disappointed.
+
+Near the window, gazing out across the verdant Hertfordshire fields, sat
+a large, square-faced woman in pink print, and on her lap, face
+downward, wrapped in flannel, lay a baby. The nurse was slapping it on
+the back with quick, regular pats. Edith saw the soles of two little red
+feet, and at the other end a small, oblong head, covered with soft black
+hair.
+
+"Oh dear!" said Edith. "Is _that_ the baby?"
+
+"Please shut the door, miss," said the nurse.
+
+"I thought babies had yellow hair, with long muslin dresses and blue
+bows," faltered Edith.
+
+The square-faced nurse did not answer, but continued pat--pat--pat with
+her large hand on the small round back.
+
+Edith stepped a little nearer. "Why do you do that?" she asked.
+
+The woman looked the little girl up and down before she answered. Then
+she said, "Wind," and went on patting.
+
+Edith wondered what that meant. Did it refer to the weather? or was it,
+perhaps, a slangy servant's way of saying, "Leave me alone" or "Hold
+your tongue"?
+
+"Has the baby's mother come too?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said the nurse; "and when you go out, will you please shut the
+door behind you?"
+
+Edith did so.
+
+She heard voices in her mother's room, and looked in. Sitting near her
+mother on the sofa was a girl dressed in black, with black hair, like
+the baby's. She was crying bitterly into a small black-edged
+handkerchief.
+
+"Oh, Edith dear," said her mother, "that's right! Come here. This is
+your sister Valeria. Kiss her, and tell her not to cry."
+
+"But where is the baby's mother?" said Edith, glad to gain time before
+kissing the wet, unknown face.
+
+The girl in mourning lifted her eyes, dark and swimming, from the
+handkerchief. "It is me," she said, with a swift, shining smile, and one
+of her tears rolled into a dimple and stopped there. "What a dear little
+girl for my baby to play with!" she added, and kissed Edith on both
+cheeks.
+
+"That size baby cannot play," said Edith, drying her face with the back
+of her hand. "And the woman was hitting it!"
+
+"Hitting it!" cried the girl in black, jumping up.
+
+"Hitting it!" cried Edith's mother.
+
+And they both hurried out.
+
+Edith, left alone, looked round the familiar room. On her mother's bed
+lay a little flannel blanket like the one the baby was wearing, and a
+baby's cap, and some knitted socks, and a rubber rattle. On a chair was
+a black jacket and a hat trimmed with crape and dull black cherries.
+Edith squeezed one of the cherries, which broke stickily. Then she went
+to the looking-glass and tried the hat on. Her long small face looked
+back at her gravely under the caliginous head-dress, as she shook her
+head from side to side, to make it totter and tilt. "When I am a widow I
+shall wear a thing like this," she said to herself, and then dropped it
+from her head upon the chair. She quickly squeezed another cherry, and
+went out to look at the baby.
+
+It was in the nursery in its grandmother's arms, being danced up and
+down; its fist was in its mouth, and its large eyes stared at nothing.
+Its mother, the girl in black, was on her knees before it, clapping her
+hands and saying: "Cara! Cara! Cara! Bella! Bella! Bella!" Wilson, the
+nurse, with her back to them, was emptying Edith's chest of drawers, and
+putting all Edith's things neatly folded upon the table, ready to be
+taken to a little room upstairs that was henceforth to be hers. For the
+baby needed Edith's room.
+
+The little girl soon tired of looking, and went down to the garden.
+Passing the verandah, she could hear the gardener laughing and talking
+with Florence. He was saying:
+
+"Now, of course, Miss Edith's nose is quite put out of joint."
+
+Florence said: "I'm afraid so, poor lamb!"
+
+Edith ran to the shrubbery, and put her hand to her nose. It did not
+hurt her; it felt much the same as usual. Still, she was anxious and
+vaguely disturbed. "I must tell the Brown boy," she said, and went to
+the kitchen-garden to look for him.
+
+There he was, on his knees, patting mould round the strawberry-plants; a
+good deal of earth was on his face and in his rusty hair.
+
+"Good-evening," said Edith, stopping near him, with her hands behind
+her.
+
+"Hullo!" said the gardener's boy, looking up.
+
+"They've come," said Edith.
+
+"Have they?" and Jim Brown sat back on his heels and cleaned his fingers
+on his trousers.
+
+"The baby is black," said Edith.
+
+"Sakes alive!" said Jim, opening large light eyes that seemed to have
+dropped into his face by mistake.
+
+"It has got black hair," continued Edith, "and a red face."
+
+"Oh, Miss Edith, you are a goose!" said the Brown boy. "That's all
+right. I thought you meant it was all black, because of its mother being
+a foreigner."
+
+Edith shook her head. "It's not all right. Babies should have golden
+hair."
+
+"What is the mother like?" asked Jim.
+
+"She's black, too; and the nurse is horrid. And what is the matter with
+my nose?"
+
+"Eh?" said Jim Brown.
+
+"Yes. Look at my nose. What's wrong with it?"
+
+The Brown boy looked at it. Then he looked closer. Little by little an
+expression of horror came over his face. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Oh my!
+Just think of it!"
+
+"What? What is it?" cried Edith. "It was all right just now." And as the
+boy kept staring at her nose with growing amazement, she screamed: "Tell
+me what it is! Tell me, or I'll hit you!"
+
+Then the Brown boy got up and danced round her in a frenzy of horror at
+what was the matter with her nose; so she took a small stone and threw
+it at him. Whereupon he went back to his strawberry-plants, and declined
+to speak to her any more.
+
+When he saw her walking forlornly away with her hand to her nose, and
+her two plaits dangling despondently behind, he felt sorry, and called
+her back.
+
+"I was only larking, Miss Edith. Your nose is all right." So she was
+comforted, and sat down on the grass to talk to him.
+
+"Valeria speaks Italian to the baby, and they have come to stay always,"
+she said. "The baby is going to have my room, and I am going to be
+upstairs near Florence. We are all going to dress in black, because of
+my brother Tom having died. And mamma has been crying about it for the
+last four days. And that baby is my niece."
+
+"Your brother, Master Tom, was the favourite with them all, wasn't he?"
+said Jim.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Edith. "There were so many of us that, of course, the
+middle ones were liked best."
+
+"I don't quite see that," said Jim.
+
+"Oh, well," explained Edith, "I suppose they were tired of the old ones,
+and did not want the new ones, so that's why. Anyhow," she added, "it
+doesn't matter. They're all dead now."
+
+Then she helped him with the strawberry-plants until it was time for
+tea.
+
+Her grandfather came to call her in--a tall, stately figure, shuffling
+slowly down the gravel path. Edith ran to meet him, and put her warm
+fingers into his cool, shrivelled hand. Together they walked towards the
+house.
+
+"Have you seen them, grandpapa?" she asked, curvetting round him, as he
+proceeded at gentle pace across the lawn.
+
+"Seen whom, my dear?" asked the old gentleman.
+
+"Valeria and the baby."
+
+"What baby?" said the grandfather, stopping to rest and listen.
+
+"Why, Tom's baby, grandpapa," said Edith. "You know--the baby of Tom who
+is dead. It has come to stay here with its mother and nurse. Her name is
+Wilson."
+
+"Dear me!" said the grandfather, and walked on a few steps.
+
+Then he paused again. "So Tom is dead."
+
+"Oh, you knew that long ago. I told you so."
+
+"So you did," said the old gentleman. He took off his skullcap, and
+passed his hand over his soft white hair. "Which Tom is that--my son Tom
+or his son Tom?"
+
+"Both Toms," said Edith. "They're both dead. One died four days ago, and
+the other died six years ago, and you oughtn't to mix them up like that.
+One was my papa and your son, and the other was his son and the baby's
+papa. Now don't forget that again."
+
+"No, my dear," said the grandfather. Then, after a while: "And you say
+his name is Wilson?"
+
+"Whose name?" exclaimed Edith.
+
+"Why, my dear, how should I know?" said the grandfather.
+
+Then Edith laughed, and the old gentleman laughed with her.
+
+"Never mind," said Edith. "Come in and see the baby--your son Tom's
+son's baby."
+
+"Your son's Tom's sons," murmured the grandfather, stopping again to
+think. "Tom's sons your son's Tom's sons ... Where do I put in the
+baby?"
+
+Edith awoke in the middle of the night, listening and alert. "What is
+that?" she said, sitting up in bed.
+
+Florence's voice came from the adjoining room: "Go to sleep, my lamb.
+It's only the baby."
+
+"Why does it scream like that?"
+
+"It must have got turned round like," explained Florence sleepily.
+
+"Then why don't they turn it straight again?" asked Edith.
+
+"Oh, Miss Edith," replied Florence impatiently, "do go to sleep. When a
+baby gets 'turned round,' it means that it sleeps all day and screams
+all night."
+
+And so it did.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+A gentle blue February was slipping out when March tore in with
+screaming winds and rushing rains. He pushed the diffident greenness
+back, and went whistling rudely across the lands. The chilly drenched
+season stood still. One morning Spring peeped round the corner and
+dropped a crocus or two and a primrose or two. She whisked off again,
+with the wind after her, but looked in later between two showers. And
+suddenly, one day, there she was, enthroned and garlanded.
+Frost-spangles melted at her feet, and the larks rose.
+
+Valeria borrowed Edith's garden-hat, tied it under her chin with a black
+ribbon, and went out into the young sunshine across the fields. Around
+her was the gloss of recent green, pushing upwards to the immature blue
+of the sky. And Tom, her husband, was dead.
+
+Tom lay in the dark, away from it all, under it all, in the distant
+little cemetery of Nervi, where the sea that he loved shone and danced
+within a stone's-throw of his folded hands.
+
+Tom's folded hands! That was all she could see of him when she closed
+her eyes and tried to recall him. She could not remember his face. Try
+as she would, shutting her eyes with concentrated will, the well-known
+features wavered and slipped away; and nothing remained before her but
+those dull white hands as she had seen them last--terrible,
+unapproachable hands!
+
+Were those the hands Tom was so particular about and rather vain of--the
+hands she had patted and laid her cheek against? Were those
+hands--fixed, cessated, all-relinquishing--the hands that had painted
+the Italian landscapes she loved, and the other pictures she hated,
+because in them all stood Carlotta of Trastevere, rippling-haired, bare,
+and deliberate? Were those the hands that had rowed her and Uncle
+Giacomo in the little boat _Luisa_ on the Lake Maggiore?--the hands that
+had grasped hers suddenly at the Madonna del Monte the day she had put
+on her light blue dress, with the sailor collar and scarlet tie? She
+seemed to hear him say, with his droll English accent: "Volete essere
+sposina mia?" And she had laughed and answered him in the only two
+English words she knew, and which he himself had taught her across the
+table d'hote: "Please! Thank you!" Then they had both laughed, until Zio
+Giacomo had said that the Madonna would punish them.
+
+The Madonna had punished them. She had struck him down in his
+twenty-sixth year, a few months after they were married, shattering his
+youth like a bubble of glass. Valeria had heard him, day after day,
+night after night, coughing his life away in little hard coughs and
+clearings of his throat; then in racking paroxysms that left him
+breathless and spent; then in a loose, easy cough that he scarcely
+noticed. They had gone from Florence, where it was too windy, to Nervi,
+where it was too hot; from Nice, where it was too noisy, to Airolo,
+where it was too dull; then, with a rush of hope, with hurried packing
+of coats and shawls, of paintbrushes and colours, of skates and
+snowshoes, they had journeyed up to Davos. And there the sun shone, and
+the baby was born; and Tom Avory went skating and bob-sleighing, and
+gained six pounds in eight weeks.
+
+Then one day an American woman, whose son was dying, said to Valeria:
+"It is bad for your baby to stay up here. Send her away, or when she is
+fifteen she will start coughing too."
+
+"Send her away!" Yes, the baby must be sent away. The deadly swarm of
+germs from all the stricken lungs seemed to Valeria to envelope her and
+her child like a cloud--the cloud of death. She could feel it, see it,
+taste it. The smell of it was on her pillow at night; the sheets and
+blankets exhaled it; her food was impregnated with it. She herself was
+full-grown, and strong and sound; but her baby--her fragile, rose-bud
+baby--was Tom's child, too! All Tom's brothers and sisters, except one
+little girl called Edith, who was in England, had died in their
+adolescence--one in Bournemouth; one in Torquay; one in Cannes; one,
+Tom's favourite sister, Sally, in Nervi--all fleeing from the death they
+carried within them. Now Davos had saved Tom. But the baby must be sent
+away.
+
+They consulted three doctors. One said there was no hurry; another said
+there was no danger; the third said there was no knowing.
+
+Valeria and Tom determined that they would not take risks. One snowy day
+they travelled down to Landquart. There Tom was to leave them and return
+to Davos. But the baby was crying, and Valeria was crying; so Tom jumped
+into the train after them, and said he would see them as far as Zuerich,
+where Uncle Giacomo would be waiting to take them to Italy.
+
+"Then you will be all right, helpless ones," he said, putting his arm
+round them both, as the little train carried them down towards the
+mists. And he gave his baby-girl a finger to clutch.
+
+But Tom never reached Zuerich. What reached Zuerich was stern and awful,
+with limp, falling limbs and blood-stained mouth. The baby cried, and
+Valeria cried, and crowds and officials gathered round them. But Tom
+could help his helpless ones no more.
+
+His will was found in his breast-pocket. "Sposina mia, with all my
+worldly goods I thee endow. Take our baby to England. Bury me in Nervi,
+near Sally. I have been very happy.--TOM."
+
+These things Valeria Avory remembered as she walked in the soft English
+sunshine, crying under Edith's garden-hat. When she reached a little
+bridge across an angry stream, she leaned over the parapet to look at
+the water, and the borrowed hat fell off and floated away.
+
+Valeria ran down the bank after it, but it was in midstream, resting
+lightly against a protruding stone. She threw sticks and pebbles at it,
+and it moved off and sailed on, with one black ribbon, like a thin arm,
+stretched behind it. Valeria ran along the sloping bank, sliding on
+slippery grass and wet stones; and the hat quivered and curtseyed away
+buoyantly on the miniature waves. When the stream elbowed off towards
+the wood, the hat bobbed along with it, and so did Valeria. As she and
+the stream and the hat turned the corner, she heard an exclamation of
+surprise, and, raising her flushed face, she saw a young man, in grey
+tweeds, fishing on the other side of the water.
+
+The young man said: "Hang it all! Good-bye, trout!" And Valeria said:
+"Can you catch my hat?"
+
+He caught it with great difficulty, holding it with the thick end of his
+rod, and flattering it towards him with patient man[oe]uvres.
+
+"My trout!" he murmured. "I had been after that fat fellow for three
+days." Then he dragged the large splashing hat out of the water and held
+it up. "Here's your hat." It had never been a beautiful hat; it was a
+dreary-looking thing that Edith had had much wear out of. It had not the
+appearance of a hat worth fishing three days for.
+
+"Oh, thank you so much! How shall I reach it?" said Valeria, extending a
+small muddy hand from her side of the stream.
+
+"I suppose I must bring it across," said the young man, still holding
+the dripping adornment at arm's length.
+
+"Oh no!" said Valeria. "Throw it."
+
+The young man laughed, and said: "Don't try to catch! It will give you a
+cold." He flung the hat across, and it fell flat and sodden at Valeria's
+feet.
+
+"Oh dear!" she said, picking it up, with puckered brows, while the black
+tulle ruffles fell from it, soft and soaking. "What shall I do with it
+now? I can't put it on. And I don't think I can carry it, walking along
+these slippery banks."
+
+"Well, throw it back again," said the young man, "and I'll carry it for
+you."
+
+So she threw the heavy melancholy thing at him, and they walked along,
+with the water between them, smiling at each other. On the bridge they
+met, and shook hands.
+
+"I am sorry about your fishes," she said.
+
+"My fishes?" He laughed. "Oh, never mind them. I am sorry about your
+hat." Then, noting the damp ringlets on her forehead and the dimple in
+her cheek, he added: "What will you put on when you come to-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow?" she asked, raising simple eyes.
+
+"Yes; will you?" he said, blushing a little, for he was very young. "At
+this time"--he looked at his watch--"about eleven o'clock?"
+
+Valeria blushed, too--a sudden crimson flush that left her face white
+and waxen. "Is it eleven o'clock?" she exclaimed. "Are you sure?"
+
+"Yes; what is the matter?"
+
+"The baby!" gasped Valeria. "I had forgotten the baby!" And she turned
+and ran down the bridge and across the fields, her black gown flying,
+the wet hat flapping at her side.
+
+She reached home breathless. The nurse was on the verandah, waiting. "Am
+I late, Wilson?" she panted.
+
+"Yes, madam," said the nurse, with tight and acid lips.
+
+"How is baby?" gasped Valeria.
+
+"The baby," said the woman, gazing at her, sphinx-like and severe, "is
+hungry."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The young man went to fish in the little stream every day, but he only
+caught his fat trout. The dimpled girl in mourning did not come again.
+His holiday was ended, and he returned to his rooms in London, but he
+left a love-letter for Valeria on the bank, pinned to the crumpled black
+ruffle that had fallen off her hat, and with a stone on it to keep it
+down.
+
+Valeria found the love-letter. She had stayed indoors a week, repenting.
+Then Spring and her youth joined hands, and drew her out of doors and
+across the fields again. She went, blushing and faltering, with a bunch
+of violets pinned at her belt. No one saw her but a tail-flicking,
+windy-haired pony in a meadow, who frisked suddenly after her and made
+her shiver.
+
+Close to the stream her eye caught the tattered black ruffle and the
+note pinned to it. The young man wrote that his name was Frederick
+Allen; that he was reading for the Bar and writing for newspapers. He
+said that she had haunting eyes, and that they would probably never meet
+again. He wondered whether she had found the baby, and where she had
+forgotten it, and what baby it was. And she _might_ have turned round
+just once to wave him farewell! He hoped she would not be displeased if
+he said that he loved her, and would never forget her. Would she tell
+him her name? Only her name! Please, please! He was hers in utter
+devotion, FREDERICK.
+
+Valeria went back in a dream and looked up the word "haunting" in her
+English-Italian Dictionary. She did not remember his eyes: they were
+blue, she thought, or perhaps brown. But his face was clear and
+sunburnt, and his smooth-parted hair was bright when he took off his hat
+on the bridge.
+
+She thought she would simply return his letter. Then she decided that
+she would add a few words of rebuke. Finally one rainy day, when
+everybody had seemed cross, and Edith had answered rudely, and the baby
+had screamed for Wilson who was not there, Valeria, with qualms and
+twinges, took a sheet of paper and wrote her name on it. The paper had a
+black border. Valeria suddenly fell on her knees and kissed the black
+border, and prayed that Tom might forgive her. Then she burned it, and
+went to her baby, who was quarrelling with everything and trying to kill
+an India-rubber sheep.
+
+Yet one day in April--an April swooning with soft suggestions, urging
+its own evanescence and the fleeting sweetness of life--Mr. Frederick
+Allen, in his London lodgings, received two letters instead of one.
+Hannah, the pert maid who brought them to his room, lingered while he
+opened them. In the first was a cheque for six guineas from a
+periodical; in the other was a visiting-card:
+
+      VALERIA NINA AVORY.
+
+"Who the dickens...?" he said, turning the card over. "Here!" and he
+threw it across to Hannah. "Here's a French modiste, or something, if
+you want falals!"
+
+Then, as he had received six guineas when he had only expected four, he
+shut up his law-book, pinched Hannah's cheek _en passant_, and went out
+for a day up the river with the man next door.
+
+The card was thrown into the coal-box, and the kitchen-maid burnt it.
+And that is all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+April brought the baby a tooth.
+
+May brought it another tooth, and gave a wave to its hair. June took
+away its bibs, and gave it a smile with a dimple copied from Valeria's.
+July brought it short lace frocks and a word or two. August stood it
+upright and exultant, with its back to the wall; and September sent it
+tottering and trilling into its mother's arms.
+
+Its name was Giovanna Desiderata Felicita.
+
+"I cannot remember that," said the grandfather. "Call him Tom."
+
+"But, grandpapa, it is a girl," said Edith.
+
+"I know, my dear. You have told me so before," said the old gentleman
+testily. He had become very irritable since there had been so much noise
+in the house.
+
+"Well, what girl's name can you remember?" asked Mrs. Avory, patting her
+old father's hand, and frowning at her daughter, Edith.
+
+"None--none at all," said the old man.
+
+"Come now, come now, dear!" said Mrs. Avory. "Can you remember Annie, or
+Mary?"
+
+"No, I cannot," said her father.
+
+Then Edith suggested "Jane," and Valeria "Camilla." And Florence, who
+was laying the cloth, said: "Try him with 'Nellie' or 'Katy.'" But the
+old gentleman peevishly refused to remember any of those names.
+
+And for months he called the baby Tom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day at dinner he said: "Where is Nancy?"
+
+Mrs. Avory and Edith glanced at each other, and Valeria looked up in
+surprise.
+
+"Where is Nancy?" repeated the grandfather impatiently.
+
+Mrs. Avory coughed. Then she laid her hand gently on his sleeve. "Nancy
+is in heaven," she said softly.
+
+_"What!"_ cried the old gentleman, throwing down his table-napkin and
+glaring round the table.
+
+"Your dear little daughter Nancy died many, many years ago," said Mrs.
+Avory.
+
+The old gentleman rose. "It is not true!" he said with shaking voice.
+"She was here this morning. I saw her." Then his lips trembled, and he
+began to cry.
+
+Valeria suddenly started up and ran from the room. In a moment she was
+back again, with her baby in its pink nightdress, kicking and crowing in
+her arms.
+
+"Here's Nancy!" she said, with a little break in her voice.
+
+"Why, of course!" cried Edith, clapping her hands. "Don't cry,
+grandpapa. Here's Nancy."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Avory. "See, father dear, here's Nancy!"
+
+The old man looked up, and his dim blue eyes met and held the sparkling
+eyes of the child. Long and deeply he looked into the limpid depths that
+returned his unwavering gaze.
+
+"Yes, here's Nancy," said the old man.
+
+So the baby was Nancy ever after.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+When Nancy had three candles round her birthday-cake, and was pulling
+crackers with her eyes shut, and her mother's hands pressed tightly over
+her ears, Edith put her elbows on the table, and said:
+
+"What is Nancy going to be?"
+
+"Good," answered Nancy quickly--"veddy good. Another cwacker."
+
+So she got another cracker, and Edith repeated her question.
+
+Mrs. Avory said: "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well," said Edith, whose two plaits had melted into one, with a large
+black bow fastened irrelevantly to the wrong end of it, "you don't want
+her to be just a girl, do you?"
+
+Valeria blushed, and said: "I have often thought I should like her to be
+a genius."
+
+Edith nodded approval, and Mrs. Avory looked dubiously at the little
+figure, now discreetly dragging the tablecloth down in an attempt to
+reach the crackers. Nancy noted the soft look, and sidled round to her
+grandmother.
+
+"Hold my ears," she said, "and give me a cwacker."
+
+Mrs. Avory patted the small head, and smoothed out the blue ribbon that
+tied up the tuft of black curls.
+
+"Why do you want me to hold your ears?"
+
+"Because I am afwaid of the cwackers."
+
+"Then why do you want the crackers?"
+
+"Because I like them."
+
+"But why do you like them?"
+
+"Because I am afwaid of them!" and Nancy smiled bewitchingly.
+
+Everybody found this an astonishingly profound reply, and the question
+of Nancy's genius recurred constantly in the conversation.
+
+Edith said: "Of course, it will be painting. Her father, poor dear Tom,
+was such a wonderful landscape-painter. And I believe he did some
+splendid figures, too."
+
+Mrs. Avory concurred; but Valeria shook her head and changed colour.
+"Oh, I hope not!" she said, instant tears gathering in her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Avory looked hurt. "Why not, Valeria?" she said.
+
+"Oh, the smell," sobbed Valeria; "and the models ... and I could not
+bear it. Oh, my Tom--my dear Tom!" And she sobbed convulsively, with her
+head on Mrs. Avory's shoulder, and with Edith's arm round her.
+
+Nancy screamed loud, and had to be taken away to the nursery, where
+Fraeulein Mueller, the German successor of Wilson, shook her.
+
+"Could it not be music?" said Valeria, after a while, drying her eyes
+dejectedly. "My mother was a great musician; she played the harp, and
+composed lovely songs. When she died, and I went to live in Milan with
+Uncle Giacomo, I used to play all Chopin's mazurkas and impromptus to
+him, although he said he hated music if anyone else played.... And,
+then, when I married ..."--Valeria's sobs burst forth again--"dear
+Tom ... said ..."
+
+Edith intervened quickly. "I certainly think it ought to be music;" and
+she kissed Valeria's hot face. "The kiddy sings 'Onward, Christian
+Soldiers,' and 'Schlaf, Kindchen' in perfect tune. Fraeulein was telling
+me so, and said how remarkable it was."
+
+So Nancy was sent for again, and was brought in by Fraeulein, who had a
+scratch on her cheek.
+
+Nancy was told to sing, "Schlaf, Kindchen, schlaf, da draussen steht ein
+Schaf," and she did so with very bad grace and not much voice. But loud
+and servile applause from everyone, including Fraeulein, gratified her,
+and she volunteered her entire repertoire, comprising "There'll be
+razors a-flyin' in the air," which she had learned incidentally from the
+attractive and supercilious gardener's boy, Jim Brown.
+
+So it was decided that Nancy should be a great musician, and a piano
+with a small keyboard was obtained for her at once. A number of books on
+theory and harmony were bought, and Edith said Valeria was to read them
+carefully, and to teach Nancy without letting her notice it. But Nancy
+noticed it. And at last she used to cry and stamp her feet as soon as
+she saw her mother come into the room.
+
+Fraeulein, with much diplomacy, and according to a German book on
+education, taught her her notes and her alphabet at the same time; but
+the result was confusion. Nancy insisted on spelling words at the piano,
+and could find no "o" for dog, and no "t" for cat, and no anything;
+while the Italian Valeria added obscurity and bewilderment by calling
+"d" _re_, and "g" _sol_, and "b" _c_. Nancy became sour and suspicious.
+In everything that was said to her she scented a trap for the conveying
+of musical knowledge, and she trusted no one, and would speak to no one
+but Jim Brown and the grandfather.
+
+At last she lit upon a device that afflicted and horrified her
+tormentors. One day, when her mother was drawing little men, that turned
+out to be semibreves, Nancy, speechless with anger, put her hand to her
+soft hair, and dragged out a handful of it. Valeria gave a cry; she
+opened the little fist, and saw the soft black fluff lying there.
+
+"Oh, baby, baby! how could you!" she cried. "What a dreadful thing! How
+can you grieve your poor mother so!"
+
+That ended the musical education. Every time that a note lifted its
+black head over Nancy's horizon, up went her hand, and she pulled out a
+tuft of her hair. Then she opened her fist and showed it. Books on
+harmony were put away; the piano was locked. No more Beethoven or
+Schumann was sung to her in the guise of lullabies by Fraeulein at night;
+but her old friend, "Baby Bunting," returned, and accompanied her, as of
+old, when she sailed down the stream of sleep, afloat on the darkness.
+
+     "Bye, Baby Bunting,
+     Father's gone a-hunting,
+     To shoot a rabbit for its skin,
+     To wrap little Baby Bunting in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+... Nancy sat on the grass, nursing her doll, and watching three small
+rampant feathers on Fraeulein Mueller's hat, nodding, like little plumes
+on a hearse, in time with something she was reading.
+
+"What are you reading?" asked Nancy.
+
+Fraeulein Mueller went on nodding, and read aloud: "'Shine out, little
+het, sunning over with gurls.'"
+
+_"What?"_ said Nancy.
+
+"'Shine out, little het, sunning over with gurls,'" repeated Fraeulein
+Mueller.
+
+"What does mean 'sunning over with girls'?" cried Nancy, frowning.
+
+"Gurls, gurls--hair-gurls!" explained Fraeulein.
+
+"_Curls!_ Are you sure it is curls?" said Nancy, dropping her doll in
+the grass, and folding her hands. "Read it again. Slowly."
+
+"'Shine out, little het,'" repeated Fraeulein. And Nancy said it after
+her. "'Shine out, little head, shine out, little head ... sunning over
+with curls.'"
+
+Then she said to her governess: "Say that over and over and over again,
+until I tell you not to;" and she shut her eyes.
+
+"Aber warum?" asked Fraeulein Mueller.
+
+Nancy did not open her eyes nor answer.
+
+"Komische Kleine," said Fraeulein; and added, in order to practise her
+English, "Comic small!" Then she did as she was told.
+
+That night Nancy quarrelled with "Baby Bunting." She sat up in bed with
+flushed cheeks and small, tight fists, and said to Fraeulein Mueller: "Do
+not tell me that any more."
+
+Fraeulein, who had been droning on in the dusk over her knitting, and
+thinking that at this hour in Duesseldorf her sister and mother were
+eating _belegte Broedchen_, looked up in surprise.
+
+"What it is, mein Liebchen?"
+
+"Do not tell me any more about that rabbit. I cannot hear about him any
+more. You keep on--you keep on till I am ill."
+
+Fraeulein Mueller was much troubled in suggesting other songs. She tried
+one or two with scant success.
+
+Nancy sat up again. "All those silly words tease me. Sing without saying
+them."
+
+So Fraeulein hummed uncertain tunes with her lips closed, and she was
+just drifting into Beethoven, when Nancy sat up once more:
+
+"Oh, don't do that!" she said. "Say words without those silly noises.
+Say pretty words until I go to sleep."
+
+So Fraeulein, after she had tried all the words she could think of, took
+Lenau's poems from her own bookshelf, and read Nancy to sleep. On the
+following evenings she read the "Waldlieder," and then "Mischka," until
+it was finished. Then she started Uhland; and after Uhland, Koerner, and
+Freiligrath, and Lessing.
+
+Who knows what Nancy heard? Who knows what visions and fancies she took
+with her to her dreams? In the little sleep-boat where Baby Bunting used
+to be with her, now sat a row of German poets, long of hair, wild of
+eye, fulgent of epithet. Night after night, for months and years, little
+Nancy drifted off to her slumber with lyric and lay, with ode and epic,
+lulled by cadenced rhythm and resonant rhyme. On one of these nights the
+poets cast a spell over her. They rowed her little boat out so far that
+it never quite touched shore again.
+
+And Nancy never quite awoke from her dreams.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+In Milan the cross-grained old architect, Giacomo Tirindelli, Valeria's
+"Zio Giacomo," stout of figure and short of leg, got up in the middle of
+the night and went to his son Antonio's room.
+
+The room was empty. He had expected this, but he was none the less
+incensed. He went to the window and threw the shutters open. Milan
+slept. Silent and deserted, Via Principe Amedeo lay at his feet. Every
+alternate lamp already extinguished showed that it was past twelve
+o'clock; and a dreary cat wandered across the road, making the street
+emptier for its presence.
+
+Zio Giacomo closed the window, and walked angrily up and down his son's
+room. On the walls, on the mantelpiece, on the desk, were
+photographs--Nunziata Villari as Theodora, in stiff regal robes;
+Nunziata Villari as Cleopatra, clad in jewels; Nunziata Villari as
+Marguerite Gautier, in her nightdress, or so it appeared to Zio
+Giacomo's angry eyes; Villari as Norah; Villari as Sappho; Villari as
+Francesca. Then, in a corner, in an old frame, the portrait of a little
+girl: _"My Cousin Valeria, twelve years old."_ Zio Giacomo stopped with
+a short angry sigh before the picture of his favourite niece, whom he
+had hoped one day to call his daughter. "Foolish girl," he grumbled, "to
+marry that idiotic Englishman instead of my stupid, disobedient son----"
+Then another profile of Nunziata Villari caught his eye, and then again
+Nunziata Villari, all hair and smile.... Zio Giacomo had time to learn
+the strange, strong face by heart before he heard the street-door fall
+to, and his son's footsteps on the stairs.
+
+Antonio, who from the street had seen the light in his room, entered
+with a cheerful smile. "Well, father," he said, "why are you not
+asleep?" He received the inevitable counter-question with a little Latin
+gesture of both hands (the gesture that Theodora specially liked!).
+"Well, father dear, I am twenty-three, and you are--you are not;" and he
+patted his father's small shoulder and laughed (his best laugh--the
+laugh that Cleopatra could not resist).
+
+"Jeune homme qui veille, vieillard qui dort, sont tous deux pres de la
+mort," quoted his father, in deep stern tones.
+
+"Eh! father mine, if life is to be short, let it be pleasant," said
+Antonio, lighting a cigarette.
+
+Giacomo sat very straight; his dressing-gown was tight, and his feet
+were chilly. His good-looking, good-tempered son irritated him.
+
+"Are you not ashamed?" he said, pointing a dramatic forefinger at the
+row of portraits. "She is an old woman of fifty!"
+
+"Thirty-eight," said Antonio, seating himself in the armchair.
+
+"An actress! a masquerading mountebank, whom every porter with a franc
+in his pocket can see when he will; a creature whose husband has run
+away from her to the ends of the earth----"
+
+"To South America," interpolated Antonio.
+
+--"With the cook." And Zio Giacomo snorted with indignation.
+
+"I am afraid her cooking _is_ bad," said Antonio; and he blew rings of
+smoke and puckered up his young red mouth in the way that made Phaedra
+flutter and droop her passion-shaded lids.
+
+"I have enough of it," said his father, "and we leave for England
+to-morrow."
+
+"For England? To-morrow?" Antonio started up. "You don't mean it! You
+can't mean it, father! Why to England?"
+
+"I telegraphed yesterday to Hertfordshire. I told your cousin Valeria we
+should come to see them; and she has answered that she is delighted, and
+her mother is delighted, and everybody is delighted." Zio Giacomo nodded
+a stubborn head. "We shall stay in England three months, six months,
+until you have recovered from your folly."
+
+"Ah! because of Cousin Valeria. I see!" and Antonio laughed. "Oh,
+father, father! you dear old dreamer! Are you at the old dream again? It
+cannot be, believe me; it was a foolish idea of yours years ago. Valeria
+was all eyes for her Englishman then, and is probably all tears for him
+now. Stay here and be comfortable, father!"
+
+But his father would not stay there, and he would not be comfortable. He
+went away shaking his head, and losing his slipper on the way, and
+dropping candle-grease all over the carpet in stooping to pick it up. A
+sore and angry Zio Giacomo got into bed, and tried to read the _Secolo_,
+and listened to hear if the street-door banged again.
+
+It banged again.
+
+One o'clock struck as Antonio turned down Via Monte Napoleone, and when
+he rang the bell at No. 36, the _portinaio_ kept him waiting ten
+minutes. Then Marietta, the maid, kept him waiting fifteen minutes on
+the landing before she opened the door; and then the Signora kept him
+waiting fifteen eternities until she appeared, white-faced and
+frightened, draped in white satin, with her hair bundled up anyhow--or
+nearly anyhow--on the top of her head.
+
+Antonio took both her hands and kissed them, and pressed them to his
+eyes, and told her he was leaving to-morrow--no, to-day--to-day! In a
+few hours! For ever! For England! And what would she do? She would be
+false! She would betray him! She was infamous! He knew it! And would she
+die with him now?
+
+She gave the little Tosca scream, and turned from him with the second
+act "Dame aux Camelias" shiver, and stepped back like Fedora, and
+finally flung herself, like Francesca, upon his breast. Then she
+whispered five words to him, and sent him home.
+
+She called Marietta, who loosened her hair again, and plaited it, and
+put away what was not wanted, and gave her the lanoline; and she greased
+her face and went to bed like Nunziata Villari, aged thirty-eight.
+
+But Antonio went through the nocturnal streets, repeating the five
+words: "London. In May. Twelve performances." And this was March.
+
+Enough! He would live through it somehow. "Aber fragt mich nur nicht
+wie," he said to himself, for he knew enough German to quote Heine's
+"Buch der Lieder," and he had read "Die Jungfrau von Orleans" in the
+original, in order to discuss it with La Villari.
+
+La Villari liked to discuss her roles with him. She also practised her
+attitudes and tried her gestures on him without his knowing it. He
+always responded, as a violin that one holds in one's hand thrills and
+responds when another violin is played. When she was studying Giovanna
+d'Arco, he felt that he was le Chevalier Bayard, and he dreamed of an
+heroic life and an epic death. When she was preparing herself for the
+role of Clelia, and practising the attitudes of that famous adventuress,
+he became a sceptic and a _noceur_, and gave Zio Giacomo qualms for
+three weeks by keeping late hours and gambling all night at the
+Patriottica. When she took up the role of Messalina, and for purposes of
+practice assumed Messalina attitudes and expounded Messalina views, he
+drifted into a period of extreme demoralization, and became perverted
+and blasphemous. But during the six weeks in which she arrayed her mind
+in the candid lines of La Samaritana, he became once more spiritual and
+pure: he gave up the Patriottica and the Cafe Biffi, and went to early
+Mass every morning.
+
+"You funny boy!" said Villari to him one day. "You will do foolish
+things in your life. Why don't you work?"
+
+"I don't know," said Antonio. "I am in the wrong set, I suppose. And,
+besides, there is no time. After a canter on the Bastioni in the
+morning, it is lunch-time; and after luncheon one reads or goes out; and
+then it is visiting-time--the Marchesa Adda expects one every Monday,
+and the Della Rocca every Tuesday, and somebody else every Wednesday....
+Then it is dinner-time and theatre-time and bed-time. And there you
+are!"
+
+"It is a pity," said La Villari, kindly maternal, forgetting to be
+Messalina, or Giovanna, or anyone else. "You have no character. You are
+nice; you are good to look at; you are not stupid. But your nose is, as
+one would say, a nose of putty--yes, of putty! And anyone can twist it
+here and there. Take care! You will suffer much, or you will make other
+people suffer. Noses of putty," she added thoughtfully, "are fountains
+of grief."
+
+Zio Giacomo was one whose nose was not of putty. Much as he hated
+journeys, many as were the things that he always lost on them, sorely as
+his presence was needed in his office, where the drawings for a new town
+hall were lying in expectant heaps on his desk, he had made up his mind
+to start for England, and start they should. He packed off his
+motherless daughter, the tall and flippant Clarissa, to a convent school
+in Paris, bade good-bye to his sister Carlotta and to his niece Adele,
+and scrambled wrathfully into the train for Chiasso, followed by the
+unruffled Antonio.
+
+Antonio seemed to enjoy the trip; and soon Zio Giacomo found himself
+wondering why they had taken it. Was the tale that his niece Adele had
+told him about Antonio's infatuation for the actress all foolish
+nonsense? Adele was always exaggerating.
+
+Zio Giacomo watched his son with growing anger. Antonio was cheerful and
+debonair. Antonio slept when his father was awake; Antonio ate when his
+father was sick. By the time they reached Dover Giacomo, who knew no
+word of English but _rosbif_ and the _Times_, was utterly broken. But
+Antonio twisted up his young moustache, and ran his fingers through his
+tight black curls, and made long eyes at the English girls, who smiled,
+and then passed hurriedly, pretending they had not seen him.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+At Charing Cross to meet them were Valeria and Edith--both charming,
+small-waisted, and self-conscious. Valeria flung herself with Latin
+demonstrativeness into her old uncle's arms, while Edith tried not to be
+ashamed of the noise the Italian new-comers made and of the attention
+they attracted. When, later, they were all four in the train on their
+way to Wareside, she gave herself up entirely to the rapture of watching
+Uncle Giacomo's gestures and Cousin Antonio's eyes. Cousin Antonio, whom
+Valeria addressed as Nino, spoke to her in what he called
+"banana-English," and was so amusing that she laughed until she coughed,
+and coughed until she cried; and then they all said they would not laugh
+any more. And altogether it was a delightful journey.
+
+When they alighted at the peaceful country station, there was Mrs. Avory
+and little Nancy and the grandfather awaiting them; and there were more
+greetings and more noise. And when the carriage reached the Grey House,
+Fraeulein stood at the door step, all blushes and confusion, with a
+little talcum-powder sketchily distributed over her face, and her
+newly-refreshed Italian vocabulary issuing jerkily from her.
+
+They were a very cheerful party at tea; everybody spoke at once, even
+the old grandfather, who kept on inquiring, "Who are they--who are
+they?"--addressing himself chiefly to Zio Giacomo--at intervals during
+the entire afternoon. Towards evening Nancy became excited and
+unmanageable, and Mrs. Avory went to bed with a headache. But Fraeulein
+entertained Zio Giacomo, and Nino sat at the piano and sang Neapolitan
+songs to Valeria and Edith, who listened, sitting on one stool, with
+arms interlaced.
+
+Then followed days of tennis and croquet, of picnics and teas with the
+Vicar's pretty daughters and the Squire's awkward sons. Mrs. Avory had
+only brief glimpses of Valeria and Edith darting indoors and out again;
+running up to their rooms to change their skirts; calling through the
+house for their racquets. Zio Giacomo walked about the garden, giving
+advice to Fraeulein about the cultivation of tomatoes, and wondering why
+English people never ate macaroni.
+
+"Nor _Knodel_," said Fraeulein.
+
+"Nor _risotto_," said Zio Giacomo.
+
+"Nor _Leberwurst_," said Fraeulein.
+
+"Nor _cappelletti al sugo_," said Zio Giacomo.
+
+"It is so as with the etucation," said Fraeulein. "The etucation is again
+already quite wrong; not only the eating and the cooking of the
+foot...." And so they rambled along. And Zio Giacomo was homesick.
+
+Suddenly Valeria was homesick too. It began on the first day of the
+tennis tournament--a resplendent light-blue day. Nino said that the sky
+matched Edith's dress and also her eyes, which reminded him of Lake
+Como. Their partnership was very successful; Edith, airy and swift,
+darted and flashed across the court, playing almost impossible balls. In
+the evening, as she lay back in the rocking-chair, pale and sweet, with
+her shimmering hair about her, Nino called her a tired butterfly, and
+sang "La Farfalla" to her. Valeria was miserable. She said it was
+homesickness. She felt that she was homesick for the sun of Italy and
+the language of Italy; homesick for people with loud voices and easy
+gesticulations and excitable temperaments; homesick for people with dark
+eyes and dark hair.
+
+On the second day of the tournament, at tea on the Vicar's lawn, she
+became still more homesick. Her partner was offering her
+cress-sandwiches, and telling her that it was very warm for April, and
+that last year in April it had been much colder. Meanwhile, she could
+see Nino at the other side of the lawn tuning a guitar that had been
+brought to him; he was laughing and playing chords on it with his
+teaspoon. Edith and two other girls stood near him; their three fair
+heads shone in the sunlight. Suddenly Valeria felt as if she could not
+breathe in England any more. She said to herself that it must be the
+well-bred voices, the conversation about the weather, the trimness, the
+tidiness, the tea, the tennis, that were insufferable to her chagrined
+heart. Meanwhile her dark eyes rested upon Nino and upon the three
+blonde heads, inclined towards him, and glistening in different sheens
+of gold. She felt hot tears pricking her eyes.
+
+That evening in her room, as they were preparing for bed, Edith talked
+to her sister-in-law through the open door. "What fun everything is,
+Val, isn't it?" she said, shaking out her light locks, and brushing them
+until they crackled and flew, and stood out like pale fire round her
+face. "Life is a delightful institution!"
+
+As no answer came from Valeria's room, Edith looked in. Valeria was
+lying on her bed, still in her pink evening dress, with her face hidden
+in the pillow.
+
+"Why? What has happened, dear?" asked Edith, bending over the dark bowed
+head.
+
+"Oh, I hate everything!" murmured Valeria. "That horrid tennis, and
+those horrid girls, always laughing, always laughing, always laughing."
+
+Edith sat down beside her. "But we laughed, too--at least, I know _I_
+did! And as for Nino, he laughed all the time."
+
+"That is it," cried Valeria, sitting up, tearful and indignant. "In
+Italy Nino never laughed. In Italy we do not laugh for nothing, just to
+show our teeth and pretend we are vivacious."
+
+Edith was astonished. She sat for a long while looking at Valeria's
+disconsolate figure, and thinking matters over. Quite suddenly she bent
+down and kissed Valeria, and said: "Don't cry." So Valeria, who had left
+off crying, began to cry again. And still more she cried when she raised
+her head and saw Edith's shower of scintillant hair, and the two little
+Lakes of Como brimming over with limpid tears. They kissed each other,
+and called themselves silly and goose-like; and then they laughed and
+kissed each other again, and went to bed.
+
+Valeria fell asleep.
+
+But Edith lay thinking in the dark.
+
+She got up quite early, and took little Nancy primrosing in the woods;
+so Nino and Valeria went to the tennis tournament alone. A fat, torpid
+girl took Edith's place, and Valeria laughed all the morning.
+
+Edith and Nancy came in from the woods late for luncheon. When they
+appeared, Nino looked up at Edith in surprise. Mrs. Avory said: "Edith,
+my dear, what have you done? You look a sight!"
+
+"Do I?" said Edith. "Why, this is the famous North-German coiffure
+Fraeulein has made me."
+
+Valeria's face had flushed. "You ought not to have let her drag your
+hair back so tight," she said. And Mrs. Avory added: "I thought you had
+given that ugly brown dress away long ago."
+
+Then Nancy spoke of the primroses and Nino of the tennis; and Edith kept
+and adopted the North-German coiffure. She dropped out of the tournament
+because it gave her a pain in her shoulders, and she went for long walks
+with Nancy.
+
+Nancy was good company. Edith grew to look forward to the walks and to
+the warm clasp of Nancy's little hand in hers, and the sound of Nancy's
+treble voice beside her. Nancy asked few questions. She preferred not to
+know what things were. She had never liked fireworks after she had seen
+them in the day-time packed in a box. What! they were not baby stars?
+All Fraeulein's definitions of things and of phenomena were painful to
+her mind as to her ear. But the seventeen years of Edith and the eight
+springtimes of the child kept step harmoniously. Nancy's dawning spirit,
+urged by a presaging flame, pressed forward to its morning; while
+Edith's early day, chilled by an unseen blight, turned back, and stopped
+before its noon. Her springtide faded before its flowering.
+
+Thus the two girl-souls met, and their love bloomed upwards in concord
+like two flames.
+
+On Easter Sunday Fraeulein entered late for luncheon, and Nancy did not
+come at all. Fraeulein apologized for her: "Nancy is in the summer-house
+writing a poetry. She says she will not have any lunch."
+
+Mrs. Avory laughed, and Nino said: "What is the poetry about?"
+
+"I think," replied Fraeulein, shaking out her table-napkin, and tucking
+it carefully into her collar, "it is about her broken doll and her dead
+canary."
+
+"Is the canary dead?" exclaimed Valeria. "Why did you not tell me?"
+
+"She shall have a new doll," said Mrs. Avory, "at once."
+
+"But it isn't--she hasn't--they are not!" explained Fraeulein, much
+confused. "Only she says she cannot write a poetry about things that are
+not broken and dead."
+
+The old grandfather, who now rarely spoke, raised his head, and said
+mournfully, "Broken and dead--broken and dead," and went on repeating
+the words all through lunch, until he was coaxed and scolded into
+silence.
+
+There was much excitement over Nancy's poem that afternoon. It was read
+aloud by Edith, and then by Valeria, and then by Fraeulein, and then
+again by Edith. Valeria improvised a translation of it into Italian for
+Zio Giacomo and Nino; and then it was read aloud once more by Edith.
+Everybody laughed and wept; and then Valeria kissed everybody. Nancy was
+a genius! They had always known it. Zio Giacomo said that it was in his
+brother's family; whereupon Mrs. Avory said, "Indeed?" and raised her
+eyebrows and felt hurt. But how--said Valeria--had it come into Nancy's
+head to write a poem? And what if she were never to be able to write
+another? Such things had happened. Could she try again and write
+something else? Just now! Oh, anything!... Saying how she wrote this
+poem, for instance!
+
+So little Nancy, all flushed and wild and charming, extemporized in
+Fraeulein's note-book:
+
+    "This morning in the orchard
+    I chased the fluttering birds:
+    The winging, singing things I caught--
+        Were words!
+
+    "This morning in the garden
+    Where the red creeper climbs,
+    The vagrant, fragrant things I plucked--
+        Were rhymes!
+
+    "This morning in the...."
+
+Nancy looked up and bit her lip. "This morning--in the what?"
+
+"In the garden," suggested Valeria.
+
+"I have already said that," frowned Nancy.
+
+Zio Giacomo suggested "kitchen," and was told to keep quiet. Edith said
+"woodlands," and that was adopted. Then Nancy found out that she wanted
+something quite different, and could they give her a rhyme for "verse"?
+
+"Curse," said Nino.
+
+"Disburse," said Fraeulein.
+
+"Oh, that is not poetic, but rather the reverse!" cried Nancy.
+
+"Terse," said Edith.
+
+"Purse," said Nino.
+
+"Hearse," said the old grandfather gloomily.
+
+Nancy laughed. "We go from bad to worse," she exclaimed, dimpling and
+blushing. "Wait a minute."
+
+      "And if I cage the birdlings...."
+
+"What birdlings?" said Fraeulein.
+
+"Why, the words that I caught in the orchard," said Nancy hurriedly.
+
+Everybody looked vague. "Why do you want to cage them?" asked Fraeulein,
+who had a tidy mind.
+
+"Because," said Nancy excitedly, making her reasons while she spoke,
+"words must not be allowed to fly about anyhow as they like--they must
+be caught, and shut in lines; they must be caged by the--by the----"
+
+"The rhythm," suggested Edith.
+
+"What is that?" said Nancy.
+
+"The measure, the time, as in music."
+
+"Yes, that's it!" said Nancy.
+
+      "And if the flowers I nurse...."
+
+"The flowers are the rhymes, of course," explained Nancy, flourishing
+her pencil triumphantly.
+
+    "And if the flowers I nurse,
+    The rambling, scrambling things I write--
+      Are verse!"
+
+"Beautiful! wonderful!" cried everybody; and Uncle Giacomo and Nino
+clapped their hands a long time, as if they were at the theatre.
+
+When they left off, Mrs. Avory said: "I do not quite like those last
+lines. They are not clear. But, of course, they are quite good enough
+for poetry!" she added. And everyone agreed. Mrs. Avory said she thought
+they ought to have somebody, some poet, down from London at once to
+teach the child seriously. And Fraeulein went into long details about
+publishers in Berlin, and how careful one must be if one prints a volume
+of poems not to let them cheat you.
+
+From that day onward the spirit of Nancy's inspiration ruled the house.
+Everybody was silent when she came into the room, lest her ideas should
+be disturbed; meals must wait until Nancy had finished thinking. When
+Nancy frowned and passed her hand across her forehead in a little quick
+gesture she often used, Edith would quietly shut the windows and the
+doors, so that nothing should disturb the little poetess, and no
+butterfly-thought of hers should fly away. Valeria hovered round,
+usually followed by Nino; and Fraeulein, in the library, read long
+chapters of Dante to Zio Giacomo, whether he slept or not, in order, as
+she put it in her diary: "(_a_) To practise my Italian; (_b_) to keep in
+the house the atmosphere of the Spirit of Poetry."
+
+But the grandfather, who could not understand the silence and the
+irregular meals, thought that somebody had died, and wandered drearily
+about, opening doors to see if he could find out who it was. And he
+frequently made Mrs. Avory turn sick and chilly by asking her suddenly,
+when she sat at her work, "Who is dead in the house?"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Meanwhile Nunziata Villari in Milan was flustering the maid Marietta
+over the packing of her trunks, and getting ready to leave for her
+twelve performances in England.
+
+Nino had written to her twice a day during the first week of his
+absence; every two days during the second week; only once in the third
+week; and in this, the fourth week, not at all. "Some stupid English
+girl has turned his nose of putty from me," mused La Villari, and
+scolded Marietta for what she had packed, and for what she had not
+packed, and for how she had packed it. But La Villari was mistaken. No
+stupid English girl had turned Nino's nose of putty from her. Edith, who
+might have done so had she willed, had chosen to stab his nascent
+passion with the hairpins that fixed the North-German coiffure at its
+most unbecoming angle half-way up her head. She had left him to himself,
+and gone off primrosing with Nancy, whose love--the blind, far-seeing
+love of a child--depended not on a tendril of hair, or the tint of a
+cheek, or the glance of an eye.
+
+Nino, standing alone, looking vaguely round for adoration, met Valeria's
+deep eyes fixed on him; and, suddenly remembering that this little
+cousin of his had been destined to his arms since both their childhood,
+he let his heart respond to her timid call. As she bent her head over a
+letter to her cousin Adele, Nino watched her with narrowing eyes. Had
+Fate not sent Tom Avory, the tall and leisurely Englishman, bronzed and
+fair, sauntering into her life and his years ago, painting pictures,
+quoting poets, rowing her and Zio Giacomo about the lake, this dark,
+graceful head, thought Nino would have found its resting-place against
+his own breast; the little dimpled hand, the slender shoulders--all
+would belong to him. Had he not always loved her? He asked himself the
+question in all sincerity, quite forgetting his brief and violent fancy
+for Cousin Adele, and his longer and more violent passion for Nunziata
+Villari. True, he would never have noticed Adele had she not sighed at
+him first. And he would certainly never have loved La Villari had she
+not looked at him first. But now--Adele was nowhere; and La Villari was
+in Milan packing her trunks; and here was Valeria, with her dark head
+and her dimples.
+
+"Valerietta!" he said; and she raised her eyes. "It is May-day. Come out
+into the fields."
+
+So Valeria put away her letter, and went to look for her hat. As she
+passed the schoolroom she heard voices, and peeped in. There was her
+little Nancy, pen in hand, wild-eyed and happy, and Edith bending over
+her, reading half-aloud what the inspired child-poet had just written.
+
+"I am going into the fields with Nino," said Valeria. "Edith dear, won't
+you come, too?"
+
+"Oh no! It is too windy," said her sister-in-law. "The wind takes my
+breath away and makes me cough. Besides, Nancy could not spare me."
+
+"No!" said Nancy, laying her pink cheek against Edith's arm and smiling,
+"I could not spare her!"
+
+Valeria laughed, and blew a kiss to them both. Then she ran upstairs for
+her hat, and went out across the fields with Nino.
+
+Adjoining the schoolroom was the drawing-room where Mrs. Avory and the
+grandfather were sitting together in silence. "Sally's cough is worse,"
+said the grandfather suddenly.
+
+(The Fates were spinning. _"Here is a black thread,"_ said One. _"Weave
+it in,"_ said the Other. And the Third sharpened her scissors.)
+
+"Sally's cough is worse," said the grandfather again.
+
+Mrs. Avory looked up from her crocheting. "Hush, father dear!" she said.
+
+"I said Sally's cough is worse," repeated the old man. "I hear it every
+night."
+
+"No, dear; no, dear," said Mrs. Avory. "Not poor Sally. Sally has been
+at rest many years. Perhaps you mean Edith. She has a little cold."
+
+"I know Sally's cough," said the old man.
+
+Mrs. Avory put her work down and folded her hands. A slow, icy shiver
+crept over her and enveloped her like a wet sheet.
+
+"Sally is my favourite grandchild," continued her father, shaking his
+white head. "Poor little Sally--poor little Sally!"
+
+Mrs. Avory sat still. Terror, heavy and cold, crawled like a snake into
+her heart. "Edith! It is Edith!" she said.
+
+_"It is Sally!"_ cried the old man, rising to his feet. "I remember
+Sally's cough, and in the night I hear it."
+
+There was a moment's silence. Then in the schoolroom Edith coughed. The
+grandfather came close to his daughter. "There," he whispered, "that is
+Sally. And you told me she was dead."
+
+Mrs. Avory rose tremblingly to her feet. In her eyes was the vision of
+her tragic children, all torn to death by the shuddering and insidious
+Ill that crouched in their breasts and clutched at their throats, and
+sprang upon them and strangled them when they reached the threshold of
+their youth. And now Edith, too? Edith, her last-born!
+
+She raised her eyes of Madre Dolorosa to her father's face. Then she
+fell fainting before him, her grey head at his feet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the fields, that were alight with daisies, Nino took Valeria's
+hand and drew her arm through his. "Little cousin," he said, "do you
+remember how I loved you when you were twelve years old, and scorned
+me?"
+
+"Yes," laughed Valeria; "and how I loved you when you were sixteen, and
+had forgotten me."
+
+"But, again," said Nino, "how I loved you when you were eighteen, and
+refused me."
+
+Valeria looked at him with timorous eyes. "And now I am twenty-seven and
+a half, and you are only twenty-three."
+
+"True," said Nino. "How young you are! The woman I love is thirty-eight
+years old."
+
+Valeria's face paled; then it flushed rose-pink, and she laughed.
+"Thirty-eight! Nearly forty? I don't believe it!" All her pretty teeth
+shone, and the dimple dipped in her cheek.
+
+"I hardly believe it myself," said Nino, laughing.
+
+"Perhaps it is not true, after all."
+
+Did Zio Giacomo in the library hear with his astral ear his son's
+gratifying assertion? Fraeulein certainly thought that she saw him smile
+in his sleep, while through her careful lips "Conte Ukolino," in the
+thirty-third canto of the "Inferno," gnawed noisomely at the
+Archbishop's ravaged skull.
+
+"Are you sure that she is not seventeen?" asked Valeria, biting a blade
+of grass, and glancing up sideways at her cousin's face.
+
+Nino stopped. "'She?' Who? Why? Who is seventeen?" he asked.
+
+"Edith," breathed Valeria.
+
+Nino shook his head. "No, not Edith, poor little thing!" Then he bent
+forward and kissed Valeria decisively and authoritatively long before
+she expected it.
+
+"Why did you call Edith a poor little thing?" asked Valeria, when she
+had forgiven him, and been kissed again.
+
+Nino looked grave, and tapped his chest with his finger. _"E tisica!"_
+he said.
+
+Valeria started back, and dragged her hands from his. "Tisica!" Her
+heart stopped beating, and then galloped off like a bolting horse.
+"Tisica!" In the terrible half-forgotten word the memory of Tom and the
+tragic past flamed up again. Yes; Edith had a cough. But everybody in
+England coughed. Edith--Edith, with her fair hair and pink cheeks! It
+was not true! It could not be true. Sweet, darling Edith, with the
+hideous North-German coiffure that she had made for Valeria's sake!
+Edith, little Nancy's best friend! Ah, _Nancy!_... Valeria's thought,
+like some maddened quarry, darted off in another direction. Nancy!
+Nancy! She was with Edith now! She was always with Edith, laughing,
+talking, bending over the same book, kissing her good-night and
+good-morning.
+
+"I must go back," said Valeria suddenly, with a face grown pinched and
+small. Nino held her tight.
+
+"What is it, love of mine?" he said.
+
+"The baby!" gasped Valeria, with a sob. Nancy was the baby again. The
+baby that had to be taken away from danger--from Tom first, and now from
+Edith. It was the baby for whom she had run across these fields one
+morning years ago, tripping and stumbling in her haste, leaving what
+perhaps was love behind her, lest the baby should be hungry, lest the
+baby should cry. And now again she ran, tripping and stumbling in her
+haste, leaving what perhaps was love behind her. Nancy must be saved.
+What if it were too late! What if Nancy had already breathed the blight?
+If Nancy, too, were soon to begin to cough ... to cough, and clear her
+throat, and perspire in the night, and have her temperature taken twice
+a day, and then one day--one day her eyes frightened, her fists
+clenched, and her mouth full of blood.... Valeria held her hands to her
+cheeks, crying aloud, as she tottered and ran across the flowering
+fields.
+
+When she reached the garden there was Nancy, standing on the swing,
+alone--swinging and singing, with her curls all ablow.
+
+"Fraeulein came out and called Edith away," said the child, with a little
+pout. "She said I was not to come. Perhaps somebody has arrived. Could
+it be the poet from London?"
+
+"Not yet, dear," said Valeria, voiceless, and with hammering heart. She
+embraced the little black legs standing on the swing, and laid her
+throbbing temple against the child's pinafore. "Ave Maria, Mater Dei,
+Ora pro nobis," she murmured.
+
+"Go out of the way, mother dear, and see how high I swing," said Nancy.
+Valeria stepped aside; then she saw Fraeulein's face appear at the
+drawing-room window and Fraeulein's hand beckoning to her to come in.
+
+"I must go indoors for a moment. Don't swing too high, darling," cried
+Valeria, and hurried into the house.
+
+When she entered the drawing-room her heart stood still. Mrs. Avory was
+on the sofa, with grey lips and trembling hands. Fraeulein stood by her,
+holding smelling-salts and a saucer of vinegar; while Edith, kneeling
+beside her, was crying: "Mother darling! mother darling! are you
+better?" In a corner stood the grandfather and Zio Giacomo, looking
+bewildered and alarmed.
+
+"What has happened?" cried Valeria.
+
+"She fainted," whispered Edith, with a sob, as she kissed and chafed the
+cold hands. Then her mother's arm went round her neck, and her mother's
+tears rained on her.
+
+"Edith, my little girl, my own little girl!" she cried.
+
+Valeria wept with her, and Edith wept too, little knowing the reason of
+her mother's tears.
+
+... Out in the garden Nancy was alone, swinging and singing, with her
+curls all ablow, when the German poet's spell came over her.
+
+    "Die linden Luefte sind erwacht,
+    Sie saeuseln und wehen Tag und Nacht,
+    Sie kommen von allen Enden...."
+
+The poets murmured it in her ear. Through the darkening trees beyond the
+lawn she could see a gilt line where the sunset struck its light in the
+sky.
+
+    "Die Welt wird schoener mit jeden Tag,
+    Man weiss nicht was noch werden mag,
+    Das Bluehen will nicht enden!"
+
+Nancy slipped from the swing. The poets were whispering and urging. Had
+not Fraeulein in yesterday's lessons taught her the wonderful fact that
+the world was a round star, swinging in the blue, with other stars
+above it and below it? If one walked to the edge of the world, just to
+where it curves downward into roundness, and if one bent
+forward--holding to a tree, perhaps, so as not to fall--surely one would
+be able to look down into the sky and see the stars circling beneath
+one's feet! Nancy felt that she must go to the edge of the world and
+look down. The edge of the world! She could see it! It was behind the
+trees beyond Millpond Farm, where the sun had dipped down and left the
+horizon ablaze. So Nancy went out of her garden to go to the edge of the
+world.
+
+When Mrs. Avory had been tenderly helped to a seat in the garden, and
+had had a footstool and a pillow, and some eau de Cologne, Edith said:
+
+"Where is Nancy?"
+
+"Where is Nancy?" said Valeria.
+
+Fraeulein called through the garden and through the house. Then Valeria
+called through the house and through the garden, and Edith ran upstairs,
+and through all the rooms and into the attics, and down again into the
+garden and to the summer-house and the shrubbery. Nino came in, and was
+sent to the village to see if Nancy was there. But Nancy was not there,
+nor had anyone seen her. Zio Giacomo and the stable-boy set out in one
+direction, and Jim Brown in another. Nino went across the fields towards
+the station--you could hear his call and his whistle for miles--and
+Florence went out and past the chapel along the road to Fern Glen.
+Valeria, wringing her hands, ran out after Florence, telling Edith to
+stay in, and mind and take care of Mrs. Avory and the grandfather.
+
+But Edith put on her hat, and said to Mrs. Avory: "I shall be back
+directly. Stay here quite quietly, mother dear, and mind you get
+Fraeulein to look after you and grandfather."
+
+But her mother would not let her go alone. No, no; she would go, too! So
+they both started out towards Baker's End, telling Fraeulein to mind and
+stay indoors, and look after grandfather.
+
+But Fraeulein, who had recently read "Misunderstood," was suddenly seized
+by a horrible thought regarding the water-lilies on Castlebury Pond, and
+she went out quickly, just stopping to tell the cook to prepare dinner
+and to mind and look after the grandfather. But the cook ran across to
+Smith's Farm, and the scullery-maid went with her.
+
+The grandfather remained alone in the silent house.
+
+(The Fates were spinning. _"Here is a black thread. Weave it in."_)
+
+The grandfather was alone in the silent house. He called his daughter;
+he called Valeria, and Edith, and Nancy. Then he remembered that Nancy
+was lost. He called Sally; he called Tom; he rang the bells. Nobody
+came; nobody answered. Then again he remembered that Nancy was lost, and
+that everyone had gone to look for her. He opened the front-door and
+walked down the avenue; he opened the gate and looked up and down the
+deserted road. Then he stepped out and turned to the left, away from the
+village, and went towards the cross-roads at Heather's Farm; but before
+he reached them he crossed the field to the left, and went past
+Wakeley's Ditch towards the heath.
+
+The sun had dropped out of sight, and night, soft-footed and grey, was
+stealing like a cat across the meadows; and Jim Brown had found Nancy on
+Three Cedars Hill when the old grandfather left the heath and turned
+his slow footsteps into the dark and silent fields. He saw something
+waving and moving against the sky.
+
+"That is Nancy," he said, and called her. But it was a
+threshing-machine, covered with black cloths that moved in the wind. And
+the grandfather hurried a little when he passed it. He said aloud: "I am
+eighty-seven years old." He felt that nothing would hurt him that knew
+this, and the threshing-machine let him pass, and did not follow with
+its waving rags, as he had feared. Then some sheep penned in a fold
+startled him, running towards him with soft hoofs, bleating and standing
+still suddenly, with black faces turned towards him. As he tottered on
+something started up and ran away from him, and then it ran after him
+and darted past him. He was chilled with fear.
+
+"I am eighty-seven years old. It is not right that I should be alone in
+the night," he said; and he began to cry whiningly like a little child.
+But nobody heard him, and he was afraid of the noises he made.
+
+He turned to go home, and passed the shrouded machine again, and then in
+a field to the right he saw someone standing and moving.
+
+"Have you seen Nancy?" he cried. "Hullo! Good-evening! Is Nancy there?"
+
+The figure in the field beckoned to him, and he went stumbling in the
+ruts. When he got near, he said: "I am eighty-seven years old."
+
+The figure waved both arms, greatly impressed; and the grandfather sat
+down on the ground, for he was tired.
+
+Nancy had reached home, and the lights were lit and voices rang through
+the house; but the grandfather sat on the hill-side in the dark, and
+talked to the scarecrow.
+
+"When you go home, sir, I shall go with you," said the grandfather, and
+the scarecrow made no objection. "You will tell me when you are
+ready to go."
+
+But as the figure waved to him to wait, the grandfather tried not to be
+cross. "All right, all right," he said. "I am in no hurry." But it was
+very cold.
+
+Suddenly across the hill, with long light steps, came Tom, and Tom's son
+Tom; and all his dead grandchildren came down the hill with long, light
+steps and sat around him. And the darker it grew the closer they sat.
+Sally, who was the favourite, laid her head against his arm, and he
+could touch her cool face with his hand.
+
+He asked if they had seen Nancy, but they had not; and he asked Sally
+how her cough was. But they all laughed softly, and did not answer. The
+threshing-machine passed, waving its wings, and his dead children sat
+with him through the night. Before dawn they rose up and left him,
+crossing the hill again with light, long steps.
+
+But the scarecrow stayed with him till he slept.
+
+(_"Cut the thread,"_ said Fate.)
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+A fortnight after the funeral Nino twisted up his moustache and went to
+London. His father had made no objection; indeed, Zio Giacomo himself
+found everything exaggeratedly doleful, and Valeria, in her black dress,
+going about the house with the expression of a hunted cat, annoyed him
+exceedingly. She was always jumping up in the midst of any
+conversation, and running out to look for Nancy.
+
+What if Fraeulein happened to be busy with Mrs. Avory or with the
+servants? said her uncle angrily. Surely there was Edith always with the
+child, petting her and spoiling her. Valeria need not worry so! But
+Valeria worried. She paid no attention to Zio Giacomo, never even gave
+him the promised _minestrone freddo_ on his birthday, and Nino might
+have ceased to exist so far as she was concerned. She seemed to be
+always looking at Nancy or looking at Edith. When the two sat happily
+together, reading or talking, she would call Nancy with a rough strained
+voice, hurriedly sending the child on some useless errand, or keeping
+her by her side and making long foolish talk with her. Edith sometimes
+looked up in surprise when Valeria called the child away from her so
+suddenly and so sternly; but seeing Valeria's pale and anxious face,
+then glancing over to Nino, who usually looked bored and absent-minded,
+Edith thought of lovers' quarrels, and asked no questions.
+
+But there was no lovers' quarrel between Nino and Valeria. In Valeria's
+terror-stricken heart maternal love had pushed all else aside, and only
+one thought possessed her--the thought of keeping Nancy out of danger,
+out of reach of Edith's light breath, out of reach of Edith's tender
+kisses; while Nino, seeing her with little Nancy on her lap or at her
+side all day, gradually grew to look upon her in the light of Valeria
+the mother, and lost sight of her as Valeria the betrothed. A child on
+its mother's breast forbids and restrains passion.
+
+One evening he took up a paper and improved his English by reading the
+news. The news interested him. It was on the following day that he
+twisted up his moustache and went to London. He had dinner at Pagani's.
+There he met Carlo Fioretti, an old fellow-student of his at Pavia, who
+was dining with a golden-haired Englishwoman at a table near to his.
+They invited him to drink coffee and _pousse-cafe_ with them, and
+Fioretti told Nino that he was doctor to the Italian colony in London,
+and getting on splendidly. And would he join them at the comedy later
+on? Nino was sorry--he was really desolated!--but he could not. He was
+going to the Garrick.
+
+"Oh," cried the fair lady, "to be sure! La Villari is playing there
+to-night, isn't she? Wonderful creature!" Then she shook an arch
+forefinger at Fioretti. "Why did you not think of taking me to hear
+her?"
+
+Fioretti promised to take her the next day, and the day after, and every
+day, and for ever! Then Nino took his leave with much bowing and
+hand-kissing, and Fioretti accompanied him as far as the door.
+
+"Who is she?" said Nino.
+
+"A lady of title," said Fioretti. "Divorced."
+
+_"Deliziosa,"_ said Nino.
+
+_"Milionaria,"_ said Fioretti. And having quickly shaken hands with
+Nino, he hurried back to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The seven mourning women in Cossa's tragedy were already chanting their
+woes when Nino entered the theatre and took his seat in the fourth row
+of the stalls. His heart opened to the swing and cadence of the Italian
+words, to the loud sweetness of the Italian voices, to the graceful
+violence of the Italian gestures. His Latin blood thrilled in
+understanding and response.
+
+Suddenly Villari was on the stage, and no one else existed. Fervid and
+lovely, keen and lithe, soon she held in her small, hot hands the hearts
+of the cool English audience, tightening their nerves, swaying and
+drawing them into paths of unaccustomed passion. Nino sat still with
+quick heart-beats, wondering if she would see him.
+
+He remembered the first time that her eyes had met his at the Manzoni in
+Milan four years ago. She was playing Sappho. He was with his cousin
+Adele and Aunt Carlotta in one of the front rows, and they were laughing
+at the vehemence of the love-scene in the second act, when suddenly he
+saw that Villari was looking at him. Yes, at him! She gazed at him long
+and deliberately, while Jean was sobbing at her feet, and she said
+Daudet's famous words, "Toi tu ne marchais pas encore, que moi deja je
+roulais dans les bras des hommes," with her deep and steadfast eyes
+fixed on Nino's face. She had said the words in French in the midst of
+the Italian play, for she was whimsical and wilful, and did as she
+pleased. Then she had turned away, and gone on with her part without
+noticing him any more. Cousin Adele had been acid and sarcastic all the
+evening. The next day--how well he remembered it all!--he had sent
+Villari flowers, as she intended that he should, and a week after that
+he had sent her a bracelet, having sold Aunt Carlotta and Adele's piano
+during their absence in order to do so.
+
+Now she was before him once more, fervid and lovely, keen and lithe, and
+Nino sat motionless, with quick heart-beats, wondering if she would see
+him.
+
+Suddenly she looked straight at him, with long and deliberate gaze--so
+long, indeed, that he thought everyone must notice it, and he could
+hardly breathe for the violence of his rushing veins. When the curtain
+fell he sent his card to her dressing-room, but she did not receive him,
+nor did she do so at the end of the play. The next day he sent her
+flowers, as she had intended that he should, but when he called at her
+hotel she was out. He sat through nine of her twelve performances, and
+still she would not see him, for she was thirty-eight and wily, and knew
+men's hearts. She also knew her own, and had more than once thought that
+she detected symptoms of what she called a _grande passion_, a
+_toquade_, for this curly-headed, vehement young Nino with the light
+laugh and the violent eyes. Nunziata Villari dreaded her grand passions.
+She knew of old how disastrous they were, how unbecoming to her
+complexion, how ruinous to her affairs, how gnawing during their
+process, how painful at their end. And she especially dreaded a grand
+passion for Nino, remembering that he was one who had a nose of putty,
+and would probably be a fountain of grief. So night after night Nino sat
+in his stall and watched her, and counted the days that remained before
+she would go away again. Every night she was different--she was Sappho
+and Magdalen; she was Norah and Fedora; she was Phaedra and Desdemona.
+Every night she was before him, laughing or weeping, loving or hating,
+dying delicate deaths. She was terrible and sweet, fierce and alluring;
+she embraced and she killed; she was resplendent Purity, she was
+emblazoned Sin; she was _das Ewig Weibliche_, the immortal mistress of
+all lovers, the ever-desiring and the ever-desired.
+
+When, after her tenth performance, he was allowed to see her in her
+dressing-room, he could not speak. Without a word of greeting, without
+responding to her smile, he dropped into a chair and hid his face in his
+hands, to the great amusement of Marietta the maid.
+
+But Nunziata Villari was not amused. She suddenly realized that she had
+been acting for this Nino every night, that especially for him she had
+sobbed and raved, she had laughed and languished; and as she saw him
+sitting there with his face in his hands, she felt in her heart the
+intermittent throb that she recognized and dreaded. It was the _grande
+passion;_ it was the _toquade._ "Ca y est!" she said. "Now I am in love
+again."
+
+And she was.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+In Wareside Fraeulein still read Dante to the unwitting Uncle Giacomo.
+The apple-blossoms fluttered and the sun shone. Butterflies, like
+blow-away flowers, flitted past Edith as she lay on a couch in the
+sunshine, too lazy to move, and too peaceful to read; while little Nancy
+ruffled up her hair and puckered her brow, frightened and gladdened at
+once by the luxuriance of words and ideas that sang in her brain, that
+romped out in lines and paired off in rhymes, like children dancing.
+
+And the two mothers sat in the shade and watched.
+
+When Edith called Nancy, and the child ran to her, Valeria's lips
+tightened, and soon she would call the little girl to her side and keep
+her. Then Mrs. Avory's face grew hard, and her heart was bitter with
+grief. She would rise quickly and go to Edith, trying to divert her
+thoughts by some futile question about her crochet, or a book, or the
+colour of the sky. Edith would answer, wondering a little, and shut her
+eyes, too lazy to think.
+
+Over their children's heads the two mothers' glances met, hostile and
+hard, each shielding her own, each defending and each accusing.
+
+"Edith is ill," said Valeria's eyes. "Nancy must not be near her."
+
+"Edith is ill," said Mrs. Avory's eyes, "but she must not know it."
+
+"Nancy must not be endangered."
+
+"Edith must not be hurt."
+
+"Mother," pipes up Nancy's treble voice suddenly, "do you think May is a
+girl?"
+
+"Who is May, dear?"
+
+"Why, the month of May. Do you think it is a girl with roses in her
+arms, dancing across the lands, and touching the hedges into flower?"
+
+"Yes, dear; I think so."
+
+"Or do you think it is a boy, with curls falling over his eyes, wilful
+and naughty, who drags the little leaves out from the trees, and tosses
+the birds across the sky, whirling and piping?"
+
+"Yes, I think so, dear."
+
+"Oh, mother, you are not listening!" cries Nancy, and scampers off,
+improvising as she goes:
+
+    "Says May: 'I am a girl!
+    May is short for Margaret,
+    Margaret or Daisy.
+    The petals of a jessamine
+    No boy's hand could unfurl!'
+    Says May: 'I am a girl.'
+
+    "Says May: 'I am a boy!
+    May is short for...'"
+
+"For what?" thinks Nancy, frowning impatiently at the word that will not
+come. Then she skips gaily on across the grass:
+
+    "Says May: 'I am a boy!
+    May is short for Marmaduke,
+    As all the world should know!
+    I taught the birds their trills and shakes,
+    No girl could whistle so!'
+
+    "So May the girl, and May the boy, they quarrel all day long;
+    While the flowers stop their budding, and the birds forget their
+          song.
+    And God says: 'Now, to punish you, I'll hang out the new moon
+    And take and bundle both of you into the month of June.'"
+
+"Of course, May is _not_ short for Marmaduke," muses Nancy, "but that
+cannot be helped."
+
+... On her couch on the lawn Edith opened her eyes and said: "Nancy?
+Where is Nancy?"
+
+Valeria sprang up. "Is there anything you want, Edith dear?"
+
+"No; I should like Nancy. I love to see her, and I am too lazy to run
+after her."
+
+"I will call her," said Valeria.
+
+At this unexpected reply Mrs. Avory raised eyes shining with gratitude
+to her daughter-in-law's face.
+
+Valeria found her little girl declaiming verses to the trees in the
+orchard. She knelt down on the grass to fasten the small button-shoe,
+and said, without raising her face: "Nancy, you are to go to Edith; but,
+Nancy, _you are not to kiss her_."
+
+"Oh, mother! has she been naughty?"
+
+"No." Valeria remained on her knees, and put her arm round the child.
+"Edith is ill," she said slowly.
+
+"Then I will kiss her double," cried Nancy, flushing.
+
+"Nancy, Nancy, try to understand," said Valeria. "Edith is ill, as your
+father was, and he died; and as her sisters were, and they died. And if
+you kiss her, you may get ill, too, and die. And every time you kiss
+her--oh, Nancy, Nancy, child of mine, it is a sword struck into your
+mother's heart!"
+
+There was a long pause. "And if I refuse to kiss her, will that not be a
+sword struck into her heart?" asked Nancy.
+
+"Yes," said Valeria.
+
+"And if a sword is in Edith's heart, there will be a sword in
+grandmother's heart, too?"
+
+"Yes," said Valeria.
+
+A long pause; then Nancy said: "There is a sword for every heart.... I
+could make a beautiful poetry about that." Her eyes were large, and saw
+nothing--not her mother, not Edith who was ill--but the bleeding heart
+of the world, sword-struck and gigantic, and in her ears the lines began
+to swing and flow.
+
+"Mother of God, help us!" sighed Valeria, shaking her head. "Go to
+Edith."
+
+Nancy went; and she kissed Edith, because she had forgotten all that her
+mother had said.
+
+Presently Zio Giacomo came out to them with an open letter in his hand.
+It was a letter from Nino, and Zio Giacomo's wrath knew no bounds. He
+called Nino a perfidious traitor and a foolish viper, and an imbecile
+and the son of an imbecile. He called Valeria a blundering and insensate
+one, who might have stopped Nino, and kept Nino, and married Nino, and
+made him behave himself; and Nino was an angel, and no husband would
+ever be such an angel as Nino would have been as a husband to Valeria.
+And now the triple extract of insensate imbecility had gone off with an
+actress, a perfidious, senile snake, who had followed him to England,
+and it was all Valeria's fault, and Fraeulein's fault. Yes, Fraeulein was
+an absurd, moon-struck, German creature, who had turned him, Zio
+Giacomo, into a preposterous, doddering idiot by reading preposterous,
+senseless, twaddling Dante's "Inferno" to him all day long.
+
+Fraeulein wept, and Valeria wept; but that did not help Zio Giacomo. Nor
+did it bring back Nino from San Remo, where he was strolling under
+palm-trees with La Villari; and La Villari was smiling and sighing and
+melting in the throes of her new _toquade_.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Nino, before leaving London, had borrowed some money from Fioretti, who
+had borrowed it from the lady of title; then he had written to Nunziata
+Villari's impresario, and cancelled all her engagements; then he wrote
+to his father, and said he was sorry, and to Valeria, and said he was a
+miserable hound. After that he started for the Riviera with Nunziata,
+who was meek and docile and lovely in her incredible hats and
+unverisimilar gowns.
+
+They were happy in San Remo; but as May was ended, and the weather was
+hot, Nino suggested spending June in Switzerland; so they went to
+Lucerne and up to Buergenstock.
+
+The large hotel was already filled with English-speaking people, and the
+striking Italian couple was much looked at and discussed. At luncheon
+their table was set next to a family of Americans--father, mother, and
+three lovely daughters with no manners. The three girls shook their
+curls, and laughed in their handkerchiefs, and made inaudible remarks to
+each other about the new arrivals. In the evening they all three
+appeared in rose-silk dresses, low-necked and tight-waisted--even the
+youngest, who looked scarcely fourteen. They carried three Teddy-bears
+to table with them, and were noisy and giggling and ill-mannered; but
+their beauty was indescribable. The two eldest wore their red-gold curls
+pinned on the top of their heads with immense black bows, whereas the
+youngest had her flowing hair parted in the middle, and it fell like a
+sheet of gilt water to her waist.
+
+Nino, who sat facing them, twisted up his moustache, and forgot to offer
+sweets to Nunziata; and Nunziata laughed and talked, and was charming,
+biting her red lips until they were scarlet, and turning her rings round
+and round on her delicate fingers.
+
+Then she said--oh, quite casually!--that she had received a letter from
+Count Jerace that afternoon. Count Jerace? The name of the handsome
+Neapolitan _viveur_ always grated upon Nino, and he became angry, and
+made many stinging remarks; whereupon Nunziata, still sweet and patient,
+biting her red lips until they were scarlet, and turning her rings round
+and round on her delicate fingers, said that Jerace thought of coming to
+Buergenstock towards the end of the week.
+
+Nino pushed his plate aside, and said he would leave the place
+to-morrow. Then Nunziata laughed and said: "So will I!" and Nino called
+her an angel, and finished his dinner peacefully.
+
+They left the next day.
+
+They went to Engelberg. In Engelberg there were golf-links and
+tennis-courts, and English girls in shirt-waists and sailor
+hats--laughing girls, blushing girls, twittering girls. Engelberg was
+full of them. Nunziata soon got a letter to say that the Count was
+thinking of coming to Engelberg, and Nino took her on to Interlaken.
+
+But all Switzerland was a-flower with girlhood. Everybody in the world
+seemed to be seventeen or eighteen years old. Nunziata would say
+nervously a hundred times a day:
+
+"What a lovely girl!"
+
+And Nino would ask: "What girl?"
+
+"Why, the girl that just passed us."
+
+Nino had not seen her.
+
+"But you must have seen her," insisted Nunziata.
+
+No; Nino had not seen anybody. He never did. But Nunziata saw everyone.
+Every uptilted profile, every golden head, every flower-like figure,
+every curve of every young cheek, struck thorns and splinters into her
+hurting heart. She wore her incredible gowns and her unverisimilar hats,
+but they seemed strange and out of place in Switzerland; and the
+brief-skirted, tennis-playing girls, passing in twos and threes in the
+cruel June sunshine, with their arms round each other's waists, would
+turn and look after her and smile.
+
+Soon Nunziata felt that what had been a caprice for four years, while
+she had had her roles and her audiences, her impresarios and her
+critics, her adorers and her enemies to distract her, was a caprice no
+longer. What had been merely a _toquade_, to laugh at and to talk about,
+was no more a _toquade_. The fire had flamed up, and was a
+conflagration; it was, indeed, _la grande passion_. And Nino was alone
+in her world. Nino was not Nino to her any more. He was youth itself, he
+was love, he was life, he was all that she had had in the fulness of her
+past, all that would soon slip from her for ever. And her heart grew
+bitter, as does the heart of every woman who is older than the man she
+loves. Her thirty-eight years were to her as a wound of shame.
+Sometimes, when he looked at her, she would bend forward and put her
+hands over his eyes. "Don't look at me! don't look at me!" And when he
+laughed and drew her hands aside, she murmured: "Your eyes are my
+enemies. I dread them." For she knew that his eyes would gaze upon and
+desire all the beauty and the youngness of the world.
+
+Late one afternoon they sat on their balcony, while an Italian orchestra
+in the gardens beneath them played some Sicilian music that they loved.
+
+Nunziata spoke her thought. "Are you not tiring of me, Nino? Oh, Nino!
+are you sure you are not tiring of me yet?"
+
+"Yet?" exclaimed Nino. "I shall never tire of you--never!"
+
+"Ils faisaient d'eternels serments!..." murmured Nunziata, with a bitter
+smile.
+
+Nino grasped her white helpless hands. "Why will you not be happy?" he
+said; for he knew her heart.
+
+"I do not know," said Nunziata.
+
+"You are unhappy. I feel it--I feel it all through the day, even when
+you laugh," said Nino. "Would you be happier without me?"
+
+"Neither with you nor without you can I live," said Nunziata.
+
+The orchestra was playing Lola's song, and her soul was filled with the
+hunger of the unattainable and the thirst of death; then, as it was
+late, she got up with a little sigh, and having powdered her face and
+patted her hair, and said a little prayer to the Madonna, she slipped
+her arm through his, and they went down to dinner together.
+
+"I promise I shall not be so foolish again!" she said. "It is absurd; it
+is morbid!"
+
+But after dinner a girl from Budapest was asked if she would dance. The
+girl laughed and hesitated; then she vanished for a few minutes, during
+which time Nunziata turned faint and sick. The girl reappeared,
+barefooted and lightly draped; then she danced. She danced like the
+incarnation of spring, and she looked like a blossom blown from the
+almond-tree. And Nunziata was morbid again.
+
+Nino was in despair. He looked gloomy, and sighed, and quoted Verlaine:
+
+    "Mourons ensemble, voulez-vous?"
+
+She laughed a little broken laugh, and quoted the succeeding line:
+
+    "Oh! la folle idee!"
+
+And she did not quite mean her laugh, as he did not quite mean his sigh.
+
+Thus the two lovers toyed lightly with thoughts of the grave, while far
+away, at the Grey House, Death had uncovered his face, and was knocking
+at the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Avory had awakened one morning to find the last of her daughters
+pale, with blood-stained lips, fighting for breath. A doctor, summoned
+in haste, had said: "Davos!" A knighted specialist from London had
+repeated: "Davos!"
+
+In less than a week the house was dismantled, the trunks packed, the
+servants dismissed. Fraeulein, all tears, had migrated into an American
+family staying in the neighbourhood; Valeria, pale and trembling, and
+little Nancy, sobbing, and clinging to Edith's neck, had said "Good-bye,
+good-bye!" and had left for Italy with Uncle Giacomo. The tragic mother
+and daughter turned their steps to the mountains alone.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Davos glistened clear and keen-cut in the winter sunshine, and Edith lay
+on the southern terrace of the Belvedere, with a rug tucked round her
+and a parasol over her head. She was happy. Her mother had just brought
+her a letter from Nancy. Her little niece Nancy, waiting in
+Italy--waiting just for a short time until Edith should be quite well
+again--wrote a letter of love and longing, and told Edith to get well
+quickly. Life without Edith, she wrote, was a horrid nightmare. Italy
+without Edith was a green splash and a name on the map, but did not
+really exist at all. Aunt Carlotta and Cousin Adele were very kind
+people with loud voices, but she did not understand them, and did not
+want to understand them. All she wanted was to be with Edith again. She
+had written two poems in Italian, which her mother said were better than
+anything she had ever written before. And good-bye--and oh! let Edith
+get well quickly, and let them be together in England again. There was a
+tender postscript from Valeria telling her to be good and get well
+quickly.
+
+Yes, yes; Edith felt that she would get well quickly. Her temperature
+was up, and the slight prickle of fever in her blood gave her a
+sensation of eagerness, almost of hurry, as if she were hastening
+through illness to health, and she felt gladly and intensely alive. She
+pressed little Nancy's letter to her lips, and lay back in her chair.
+
+Hers was the last but one of a long row of couches on the southern
+terrace of the Belvedere. On either side of her were other reclining
+figures. Next to her on the right was a Russian girl, a few years older
+than herself, with a pinched and hectic face. On her left was Fritz
+Klasen, a German, twenty-four years old, ruddy and broad-shouldered. His
+blue eyes were open when Edith turned her face towards him.
+
+"How do you like Davos?" he said.
+
+Edith answered: "Very much," and the young man nodded and smiled.
+
+The Russian girl opened her black eyes and looked at Edith. "Have you
+just come up?" she asked.
+
+Edith said: "Yes; we arrived three days ago. How long have you been
+here?"
+
+"Four years," said the girl, and shut her eyes again.
+
+Edith turned her head to the young German, and exchanged with him a
+pitying glance.
+
+"And you?" she asked him.
+
+"I have been here eight months. I am quite well. I am going home in
+May."
+
+The Russian opened her dark eyes again, but did not speak.
+
+"Are you going to the dance to-night?" said the young man after a while.
+
+"A dance? Where?" asked Edith.
+
+"Here, in the hotel--in the big ball-room. We have a dance here every
+Wednesday, and the Grand Hotel has one every Saturday. Great fun." And
+he cleared his throat and hummed "La Valse Bleue."
+
+Edith went into the ball-room that evening, and although she did not
+dance, she enjoyed herself very much. Mrs. Avory repeatedly asked her if
+she was tired. "No, mother--no." There was a wild feverish excitement
+all round her that she felt and shared without understanding it--the
+excitement of the _danse macabre_.
+
+Fritz Klasen came to where she sat, and, striking his heels together,
+introduced himself to her and to her mother.
+
+"I had no idea Davos was so gay," said Mrs. Avory, raising her light
+gentle eyes to the young man's face.
+
+"Gayest place in the world," he said. "No time to mope."
+
+A girl in strawberry silk came rushing to him. "Lancers," she said, and
+took his arm. They went off hurriedly, sliding like children on the
+polished floor.
+
+"He does not look ill," said Mrs. Avory.
+
+"Nor does she," said Edith.
+
+"No one does." And the mother gazed at the laughing, dancing crowd, and
+wondered if they all had within them the gnawing horror that she knew
+was shut in her daughter's fragile breast.
+
+"Have you noticed," she said, "that nobody coughs?"
+
+"It is true," said Edith. "Nobody coughs."
+
+After a short silence Mrs. Avory said: "Probably most of them are here
+for the winter sports."
+
+For a long time she believed this. Young faces with pink cheeks and
+vivid eyes, and laughter, much laughter, surrounded her. There were
+balls and concerts, routs and bazaars, and everywhere the vivid eyes,
+and the pink cheeks, and the laughter. The only strange thing that Mrs.
+Avory noticed about her new friends was that when she said good-night to
+them, and shook hands with them, their hands were strange to the touch,
+and gave her a little shock.
+
+They were not like the hands of other people that one clasps and thinks
+not of. "Good-night," to one. "What a hot hand!" she would think.
+"Good-night," to another. "What a cold, moist hand!" Hands of fire, and
+hands of ice; arid hands, that felt brittle to the touch; humid hands,
+which made her palms creep; weak, wet hands, from which her own
+recoiled. Each told their tragic tale. But the faces laughed, and the
+feet danced, and nobody coughed.
+
+Edith soon stopped coughing, too. The doctor had forbidden it. She
+coughed in the night, when no one except her mother heard. The months
+swung past, promising and not fulfilling, but promising again, and Edith
+went to her fate submissive, with light tread.
+
+One thing only tore at her soul--the longing to see Nancy. Nancy, Nancy,
+Nancy! She would say the name to herself a hundred times a day, and
+close her eyes to try and picture the little face, and the tuft of black
+curls on the top of the buoyant head. Her feverish hands felt vacant and
+aching for the touch of the soft, warm fingers she had held. Mrs. Avory
+comforted her. In the spring, or at latest in the summer, Edith should
+see Nancy again. Edith would be quite well in a month or two if she ate
+many raw eggs and was brave.
+
+So Edith ate raw eggs and was brave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring climbed up the five thousand feet and reached Davos at the end of
+May. Fritz Klasen was leaving. He was going back to Leipzig.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye."
+
+He walked round the verandah at the resting-hour, shaking hands with
+everyone, saying, "Gute Besserung," and "Auf wiedersehen in
+Deutschland," to two or three Germans.
+
+When he reached the Russian girl she was asleep. But Edith said:
+"Good-bye; I am so glad--I am so glad for you!"
+
+When he had passed she saw that the Russian girl's eyes were open, and
+fixed on her.
+
+"Did you speak?" said Edith.
+
+"No," said the Russian in her strange, empty voice; "I thought."
+
+Edith smiled. "What did you think?"
+
+"I thought, why do you lie?"
+
+Edith sat up, flushing, and her breath went a little shorter. "What?"
+she said.
+
+Rosalia Antonowa kept her deep eyes on Edith's face.
+
+"You said you were glad that he was going. Perhaps you meant it," she
+said. "You are here so short a time; but in a year, in two years, or
+four years, your lips will not be able to say that, and your heart will
+turn sick when another goes away, and you know that you will never
+go--never." Her bistre lids closed.
+
+Edith tried to find something comforting to say to her.
+
+"Davos is so beautiful, one ought not to mind. Surely you must love all
+this blue and white loveliness--the mountains, and the snow, and the
+sun."
+
+"Oh, the mountains!" murmured Rosalia, with clenched teeth. "The
+mountains, weighing on my breast, and the snow freezing and choking me,
+and the sun blazing and blinding me. Oh!"--she raised her thin fist to
+the towering immensity round her--"oh, this unspeakable, this monstrous
+prison of death!"
+
+Just then a Belgian girl passed, with pale lips and a tiny waist. She
+stopped to ask Antonowa how she was.
+
+"Ill," said the Russian curtly.
+
+When the girl had passed she spoke again to Edith. "And you will know
+what they mean when they ask you how you are. It is not the '_comment ca
+va_?' of the rest of the world. No; here they mean it. They want to
+know. 'How are you? Are you better? Are you getting better more quickly
+than I am? Surely you are worse than I am! What! no haemorrhage for a
+month? No temperature? That is good.' And then you see the hatred
+looking out of their eyes."
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," said Edith.
+
+The Russian kept silent for a while; then she said: "Klasen will come
+back again. He is not cured. The doctor told him not to go. He will soon
+come back again."
+
+He came back four months later. Edith was pained to see how grey and
+dull his face looked. Now he would have to stay two or three years more.
+But he said he did not mind; he was happy.
+
+He had been married a month, and his wife was with him. He introduced
+his girl-wife to Edith and to Mrs. Avory on the day following his
+arrival. She was a gentle blonde of nineteen, a blue-blooded flower of
+German aristocracy, who had married Klasen against her parents' will.
+
+"I shall cure him," she said.
+
+The summer was magnificent. She went out a great deal for long walks and
+steep climbs, and she sang at all parties and concerts, for she had a
+lovely young voice, all trills and runs like a lark's. She would sit on
+the verandah at resting-time beside her husband, and near Edith, for he
+had his old place again, and then after a while she would kiss his
+forehead and run off to pay calls, or to practise, or to drive down to
+Klosters.
+
+Klasen's bright blue eyes would follow her. The Russian from her couch
+looked at him and read his thoughts. She read: "I married that I might
+not be alone--alone with my ill and my terror in the night and in the
+day--but I am still alone. When my wife is with me, and I cough, she
+says: 'Poor darling!' When in the night I choke and perspire, she turns
+in her sleep, and says: 'Poor darling!' and goes to sleep again. And I
+am alone with my ill and my terror."
+
+The Russian girl thought that Klasen's blue eyes burned with something
+that was not all love.
+
+After a time the girl-wife practised less, and paid fewer calls. She
+said she had lost weight, and one day with her husband she went to see
+the doctor.
+
+Yes, there was something--oh, very slight, very slight!--at the apex of
+the left lung. So a couch was brought out for her on the terrace near
+her husband, and she rested in the afternoons with a rug tucked round
+her and a parasol over her head.
+
+Fritz held the little hand with the new wedding-ring still bright upon
+it. When she coughed he said: "Poor darling!" And he was no more alone.
+In the day-time they laughed, and were very cheerful; in the night
+Fritz slept better; but his wife lay awake, and thought of her sister
+and her two little brothers safely at home with her father and mother in
+Berlin.
+
+Sometimes holiday-makers and sport-lovers came up to Davos for a
+fortnight or a month, especially in the winter. Mrs. Avory noticed that
+they laughed much less than the invalids did. When they hurried through
+the lounge with their skates and skis, Klasen would say:
+
+"See how they overdo things. They wear themselves out skiing, skating,
+curling, bobsleighing. Yes," he would add, nodding to his wife and to
+Edith, "almost everyone who comes here as a sportsman returns here as an
+invalid."
+
+His little laugh made Edith shiver. Sometimes the girl-wife would bend
+forward. "See, Fritz; two more have arrived to-day!"
+
+"Do you think they are tourists?"
+
+"Oh no, no; they are ill." And in the young eyes that gazed upon the
+new-comers was no sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The months and the years swung round, and Edith passed along them with
+light and ever lighter tread. And still and always the longing for Nancy
+tore at her heart with poisoned teeth. Every hour of her day was bitter
+with longing for the sound of the childish voice, the touch of the soft,
+warm hand. She sometimes thought: "If I were dying, Valeria would let
+Nancy come here to say good-bye." Then again she thought:
+
+"If Nancy came I should recover. I cannot eat enough now to get strong
+because I am so often near to crying; but if Nancy were here I should
+not cry. I should eat much more; I should not feel so sad; I should go
+out for walks with her. I know I should recover...."
+
+But Nancy was in Italy in the house of Aunt Carlotta and Cousin Adele,
+and Edith's letters were not given to her, lest the paper over which
+Edith had bent should carry poison in its love-laden pages.
+
+Nancy now spoke Italian and wrote Italian poems. She went out for walks
+with Adele, and Adele held the soft, warm hand and heard the sweet
+treble voice. Adele kept the house quiet and the meals waiting when
+Nancy was writing; and when Nancy frowned and passed her hand across her
+forehead with the little quick gesture she often used, Adele laughed her
+loud Milanese laugh that drove all the butterfly-thoughts away. Adele
+tidied Nancy's things and threw away the dried primroses Edith had
+picked with her in the Hertfordshire woods, and gave the string of blue
+beads Edith had put round Nancy's neck the day she left for Davos to the
+hall-porter's child, and she tore up all the poems Nancy had written in
+England, because they were old things that nobody could understand.
+
+Thus, as the months and the years swung round, Edith went from Nancy's
+memory. Softly, slowly, with light tread, the girl-figure passed from
+her recollection and was gone; for children and poets are forgetful and
+selfish, and a child who is a poet is doubly selfish, and doubly
+forgetful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Nancy was fifteen, Zardo, the Milan publisher, accepted her first
+book--"A Cycle of Lyrics." By the post that brought the first proofs to
+the little poet came also a letter, black-edged, from Switzerland, for
+her mother.
+
+"Mother, mother!" cried Nancy, drawing the printed pages from the large
+envelope, and shaking them out before her, "Look, the proofs, the
+proofs! This is my book, my own book!"
+
+And she lifted all the rough sheets to her face and kissed them.
+
+But Valeria had opened the black-edged letter, and was gazing at it,
+pale, with tears in her eyes.
+
+"Nancy," she said, "Edith is dead."
+
+"Oh, mother dear!" exclaimed Nancy, "I am so sorry!" And she bent over
+her mother and kissed her. Then she went back to her proofs and turned
+over the first page.
+
+"She died on Thursday morning," sobbed Valeria. "And oh, Nancy, she
+loved you so!"
+
+But Nancy had not heard. Before her lay her first printed poem. The
+narrow verses on the wide white sheet looked to her like a slender
+pathway.
+
+And along this pathway went Nancy with starry matutinal eyes, beyond the
+reach of love and the call of Death, leading her dreams far out past the
+brief arch of Fame, into the shining plains of Immortality.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+So Valeria had her wish. Her child was a genius, and a genius recognized
+and glorified as only Latin countries glorify and recognize their own.
+Nancy stepped from the twilight of the nursery into the blinding uproar
+of celebrity, and her young feet walked dizzily on the heights. She was
+interviewed and quoted, imitated and translated, envied and adored. She
+had as many enemies as a Cabinet Minister, and as many inamorati as a
+_premiere danseuse_.
+
+To the Signora Carlotta's tidy apartment in Corso Venezia came all the
+poets of Italy. They sat round Nancy and read their verses to her, and
+the criticisms of their verses, and their answers to the criticisms.
+There were tempestuous poets with pointed beards, and successful poets
+with turned-up moustaches; there were lonely, unprinted poets, and
+careless, unwashed poets; there was also a poet who stole an umbrella
+and an overcoat from the hall. Aunt Carlotta said it was the Futurist,
+but Adele felt sure it was the Singer of the Verb of Magnificent
+Sterility, the one with the red and evil eyes.
+
+Soon came a letter from Rome bearing the arms of the royal house. Her
+Majesty the Queen desired to hear Giovanna Desiderata read her poems at
+the Quirinal at half-past four o'clock of next Friday afternoon.
+
+The house was in a flutter. Everywhere and at all hours, in the
+intervals of packing trunks, Aunt Carlotta, Adele, Valeria, and Nancy
+practised deep curtseying and kissing of hand, and wondered if they had
+to say "Your Majesty" every time they spoke, or only casually once or
+twice. They started for Rome at once. A gorgeous dress and plumed hat
+was bought for Nancy, a white veil was tied for the first time over her
+childish face, and in very tight white gloves, holding the small volume
+of her poems, she went with trembling heart--accompanied by Valeria,
+Carlotta, and Adele in large feather boas--to the Quirinal.
+
+A gentle-voiced, simply-gowned lady-in-waiting received them, and smiled
+a little as she explained that only Nancy was expected and could be
+received. Nancy was then told to remove her veil and her right-hand
+glove. Carlotta, Valeria, and Adele embraced her as if she were leaving
+them for a week, and made the sign of the cross on her forehead; then
+the lady-in-waiting conducted her through a succession of yellow rooms,
+of blue rooms, of red rooms, into the white and gold room where the
+Queen awaited her.
+
+More gentle-voiced and more simply gowned than her lady-in-waiting, the
+Queen, standing beside a table laden with flowers, moved to meet the
+little figure in the huge plumed hat. Nancy forgot the practised curtsey
+and the rehearsed salute. She clasped and held the gracious hand
+extended to her, and suddenly, as the awed, childish eyes filled with
+tears, the Queen bent forward and kissed her....
+
+It was late and almost dark when Nancy returned, dream-like, with pale
+lips, to her mother, her aunt, and her cousin, who were having a nervous
+meal of sandwiches and wines with a gentleman in uniform standing
+beside them, and two powdered footmen waiting on them. They all three
+hurriedly put on their boas as soon as Nancy appeared, and they left,
+escorted and bowed out by the gentleman in uniform. "Probably the Duke
+of Aosta," said Aunt Carlotta vaguely. Another powdered footman
+conducted them to the royal automobile in which they returned to the
+hotel.
+
+Nancy was disappointing in her description of everything. She sat in the
+dusky carriage with her eyes shut, holding her mother's hand. She could
+not tell Aunt Carlotta what she had eaten. Tea? Yes, tea. And cakes?
+Yes, cakes. But what kind of cakes, and what else? She did not remember.
+And she could not tell Adele how the Queen was dressed. In white? No,
+not in white. Was it silk? She did not know. What rings did the Queen
+wear, and what brooch? Nancy could not remember. And had she said "Your
+Majesty" to her, or "Signora"? Nancy did not know. Neither, she thought.
+Then her mother asked timidly: "Did she like your poems?" And Nancy
+tightened the clasp on her mother's hand and said, "Yes."
+
+Carlotta and Adele were convinced that Nancy had made a fiasco of the
+visit and of the reading. She had blundered over the greeting, and had
+forgotten to say "Maesta." But they talked to everybody in the hotel
+about their afternoon at the Quirinal, and pretended not to be surprised
+when the hall-porter brought to them at the luncheon-table a packet
+containing three pictures of the Queen with her signature, one for each;
+and for Nancy a jewel-case, with crown and monogram, containing a brooch
+of blue enamel with the royal initial in diamonds.
+
+Nancy bought a diary, and wrote on the first page the date and a
+name--the name of a flower, the name of the Queen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They returned to Milan in a dream. A crowd of friends awaited them at
+the station, foremost among them Zio Giacomo, shorter of breath and
+quicker of temper than ever, and beside him the returned prodigal, Nino,
+who had never been seen and seldom been heard of for the past eight
+years. Adele turned crimson, and Valeria turned white as the
+well-remembered dark eyes smiled at them from the handsome, sunburnt
+face; and Nino turned up his moustache and helped them to alight from
+the train, and kissed them all loudly on both cheeks. Nancy did not
+remember him at all. She looked at him gravely while he rapidly
+described to her a pink pinafore she used to wear in England eight years
+ago, and a Punch-and-Judy show, stage-managed by a Fraeulein Something or
+other, and a dimple just like her mother's that she then possessed.
+Immediately the dimple reappeared, dipping sweetly in the young curved
+cheek, and Valeria smiled with tears in her eyes and kissed Nancy. Then
+Nino kissed Valeria and kissed Nancy, and then he kissed Adele, too, who
+was acidly looking on. At last Zio Giacomo, growing very impatient,
+hurried them off the crowded platform and into cabs and carriages. They
+drove home, Nino crushing in at the last moment with Valeria, Carlotta,
+and Nancy. He did not ask about the Queen, nor did he tell them anything
+about his own long absence; but he quoted Baudelaire and Mallarme to
+them all the way home in a low resonant voice broken by the jolts of the
+carriage. He did not quote Nancy's poems. "They are sacrosanct," he
+said. "My lips are unworthy." Then he drifted into Richepin:
+
+    "Voici mon sang et ma chair,
+    Bois et mange!"
+
+he said, looking straight before him at Valeria. And Valeria turned pale
+again, uselessly, hopelessly; for the eyes that looked at her did not
+see her.
+
+Zio Giacomo and Nino stayed with them to dinner, and two of the poets, a
+successful one and an unwashed one, came later in the evening.
+
+"What do you think of D'Annunzio?" asked Nino of Nancy, when the poets
+had stopped a moment to take breath.
+
+"I have not read him. I have read nobody and nothing," said Nancy.
+
+"That is right," cried Marvasi, the unwashed, nodding his rusty head and
+clapping his dusty fingers. "Read nothing, and retain your originality."
+
+"Read everything," cried Cesare Raffaelli, "and cultivate form."
+
+During the discussion that followed, the din of the two poets' voices
+built a wall of solitude round Nino and Nancy.
+
+"How old are you?" asked Nino, looking at her mild forehead, where the
+dark eyebrows lay over her light grey eyes like quiet wings.
+
+"Sixteen," said Nancy; and the dimple dipped.
+
+Nino did not return her smile. "Sixteen!" he said. And because his eyes
+were used to the line of a fading cheek and the bitterness of a tired
+mouth, his heart fell, love-struck and conquered, before Nancy's cool
+and innocent youth. It was inevitable.
+
+"Sixteen!" he repeated, looking at her, grave and wondering. "Is anybody
+in the world sixteen?"
+
+And it was not the inspired author of the poems over which half Italy
+raved, but the little girl with the wing-like eyebrows, that his wonder
+went to; and it was the chilly little hand of the maiden, not the pulse
+of the poet, that shook his heart loose from those other white,
+well-remembered hands, where the blue veins, soft and slightly turgid,
+marked the slower course of the blood--those sad blue veins which moved
+his pity and strangled his desire.
+
+"May I call you by your right name?" he asked. "'Nancy' seems
+so--geographical."
+
+Nancy laughed. "Call me as you will."
+
+"_Desiderata_" he said slowly, and the colour left his face as he
+pronounced it.
+
+That evening Nancy wrote on the second page of her diary the date, and a
+name; then she scratched the name out again, and the Queen remained in
+the book alone.
+
+Every morning since the visit to the Quirinal Nancy's chocolate and her
+letters were brought in to her at eight o'clock by Adele herself, who
+regarded it now as an office of honour to wait on the little Sappho of
+Italy. She came in, in dressing-gown and slippers, with her long black
+hair in a plait, and placed the dainty tray by Nancy's bed; then she
+opened the shutters and came back to sit beside Nancy, and open her
+correspondence for her. Nancy the while, like a lazy princess, sipped
+her chocolate, with her little finger in the air. Newspaper cuttings
+about Nancy were read first; requests for autographs were carefully put
+aside for Adele to answer. Adele said that she could write Nancy's
+autograph more like Nancy than Nancy herself. Then poems and
+love-letters were read and commented upon with peals of laughter--and
+business letters were put aside and not read at all.
+
+So many people came and spoke to Nancy of what she had written that she
+had no time to write anything new. But her brain was stimulated by all
+the modernists and symbolists and futurists who recited their works to
+her; and in the long lamp-lit evenings, while Aunt Carlotta was playing
+briscola with Zio Giacomo, Nino read Carducci's "Odi Barbare" to the
+three listening women--Valeria, Adele, and Nancy--who sat in their large
+armchairs with drooping lids and folded hands, like a triptichi of the
+seasons of love.
+
+Valeria always sat a little apart in the shadow, and if anyone spoke to
+her she replied softly and smiled wanly. Valeria's dimple had slipped
+into a little line on her cheek. Valeria herself was not Valeria any
+more. She was Nancy's mother. She had moved back into the shadow, where
+mothers sit with kind eyes that no one gazes into, and sweet mouths that
+no one kisses, and white hands that bless and renunciate. The baby had
+pushed her there. Gently, inexorably, with the first outstretching of
+the tiny fist, with the first soft pressure of the pink fragile fingers
+against the maternal breast, the child had pushed the mother from her
+place in the sunlight--gently, inexorably, out of love, out of joy, out
+of life--into the shadow where mothers sit with eyes whose tears no one
+kisses away, with heart-beats that no one counts. Nancy sooner than
+others had taken her own high place in the sun; for if most children are
+like robin redbreasts, slayers of their old, Genius, the devourer, is
+like an eagle that springs full-fledged, with careless, devastating
+wings, from the nest of a dove.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Nancy," cried Adele, bursting into her cousin's room one afternoon,
+"here is an Englishman to see you. Come quickly. I cannot understand a
+word he says."
+
+"Oh, send mother to him," said Nancy. "I have forgotten all my English.
+Besides, I must read this noxious Gabriele to the end."
+
+"Your mother has gone out. Do come!" And Adele gave Nancy's hair a
+little pull on each side and a pat on the top, and hurried her to the
+drawing-room, where the Englishman was waiting. He rose, a
+stern-looking, clean-shaven man, with friendly eyes in a hard face.
+
+Nancy put out her hand and said: "Buon giorno."
+
+He answered: "How do you do? My Italian is very poor. May I speak
+English?"
+
+Nancy dimpled. "You may speak it, but I may not understand it," she
+said.
+
+But she understood him. He had written a critical essay on her book,
+with prose translations of some of the lyrics, and wished to close the
+article with an _apercu_ of her literary aims and intentions. What work
+was she doing at present! What message----?
+
+"Nothing," said Nancy, with a little helpless Latin gesture of her
+hands. "I am doing nothing."
+
+"_Peccato!_" said the Englishman. And he added: "I mean your Italian
+word in both senses--a pity and a sin."
+
+Nancy nodded, and looked wistful.
+
+"Why are you not working?" asked her visitor severely.
+
+Nancy repeated the little helpless gesture. "I don't know," she said;
+then she smiled. "In Italy we talk so much. We say all the beautiful
+things we might write. That is why Italian literature is so poor, and
+Italian cafes so interesting. As for our thoughts, when we have said
+them they are gone--blown away like the fluff of the dandelions I used
+to tell the time by when I was a little girl in England."
+
+That childish reminiscence brought her very near to him, and he told her
+about his mother and his younger sister, who lived in Kent, in an
+old-fashioned house in the midst of a great garden.
+
+"You make me homesick for England," said Nancy.
+
+Mr. Kingsley looked pleased. "Do you remember England?" he asked.
+
+"No," said Nancy; "I am always homesick for things that I have
+forgotten, or for things that I never have known." And she smiled, but
+in her eyes wavered the nostalgic loneliness of the dreamer's soul.
+
+The Englishman cleared his throat, and said in a practical voice: "I
+hope that you will work very hard, and do great things."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She tried to. She got up early the next morning, and wrote in her diary,
+"_Incipit vita nova!_" and she made an elaborate time-table for every
+hour of the day; then she made a list of the things she intended to
+write--subjects and ideas that had stirred in her mind for months past,
+but had been scattered by distracting visits, dispersed in futile
+conversations. She felt impatient and happy and eager. On the large
+white sheet of paper which lay before her, like a wonderful unexplored
+country full of resplendent possibilities, she traced with reverent
+forefinger the sign of the cross.
+
+Some one knocked at the door. It was Clarissa della Rocca, Nino's
+married sister, tall, trim, and sleek in magnificent clothes.
+
+"_Mes amours!_" she exclaimed, embracing Nancy, and pressing her long
+chin quickly against Nancy's cheek. "Do put on your hat and come for a
+drive with me. Aldo has come from America. He is downstairs in the
+stanhope. He is trying my husband's new sorrels, and so, of course, I
+insisted on going with him. Now I am frightened, and I have nobody to
+scream to and to catch hold of."
+
+"Catch hold of Aldo, whoever he may be," said Nancy, laughing.
+
+"He is my brother-in-law. But I can't," said Clarissa, waving
+explanatory mauve-gloved hands; "he is driving. Besides, he is horribly
+cross. Have you never seen him? He is Carlo's youngest brother. Do come.
+He will be much nicer if you are there."
+
+"But he does not know me," said Nancy, still with her pen in her hand.
+
+"That's why. He is always nice to people he does not know. Come quickly,
+_ma cherie_. He is _ravissant_. He has been to America on a wild and
+lonely ranch in Texas. He speaks English and German, and he sings like
+an angel. Make yourself beautiful, _mon chou aime_."
+
+Nancy slipped into a long coat, and pinned a large hat on her head
+without looking in the glass.
+
+Clarissa watched her from out of her long careful eyelids, and said:
+"Mon Dieu!" Then she asked suddenly: "How young are you?"
+
+"Nearly seventeen," said Nancy, looking for her gloves.
+
+"What luck!" sighed Clarissa. "And you are sure you won't mind if I
+pinch you? I must! The near horse rears."
+
+Then they ran downstairs together, where Aldo della Rocca sat, holding
+the two impatient sorrels in with shortened reins. He was flicking at
+their ears and making them plunge with curved, angry necks and frothing
+mouths. He was certainly _ravissant_. His profile, as Nancy saw it
+against the blue June sky, was like Praxiteles' Hermes. His glossy hair
+gleamed blue-black as he raised his hat with a sweeping gesture that
+made Nancy smile. Then they were seated behind him, and the puissant
+horses shot off down the Corso and towards the Bastioni at a magnificent
+pace. Clarissa shrieked a little now and then when she remembered to,
+but Aldo did not seem to hear her, so she soon desisted.
+
+"Is he not seraphically beautiful?" she said to Nancy, pointing an
+ecstatic forefinger at her brother-in-law's slim back. "I often say to
+Carlo: 'Why, why did I meet you first, and not your Apolline brother?'"
+
+Nancy smiled. "But surely he is rather young."
+
+"He is twenty-four, you little stinging-nettle," said Clarissa; "and he
+has been so much petted and adored by all the women of Naples that he
+might be a thousand."
+
+"How horrid!" said Nancy, looking disdainfully at the unwitting back
+before her, at the shining black hair above the high white collar, and
+at the irreproachable hat sitting correctly on the top of it all.
+
+"Oh yes, he is horrid," said Clarissa; "but how visually delectable!"
+
+Aldo della Rocca turned his profile towards them. "I shall take you
+along the Monza road," he said.
+
+"Oh," cried Clarissa, "such an ugly old road, where no one will see us."
+
+"I am driving the horses out to-day," said her brother-in-law, "not your
+Paris frocks." And he turned away again, and took the road towards
+Monza at a spanking gait.
+
+"Il est si spirituel!" laughed Clarissa, who bubbled over into French at
+the slightest provocation. The straight, white, dusty road, bordered
+with poplars, stretched its narrowing line before them, and the sorrels
+went like the wind. Suddenly, as they were nearing the first
+ugly-looking houses of Sesto, the driver checked suddenly, and the
+ladies bent forward to see why. A hundred paces before them, struggling
+and swaying, now on the side-walk, now almost in the middle of the road,
+were two women and a man. Some children standing near a door shrieked,
+but the struggling, scuffling group uttered no sound. Nancy stood up.
+The man, whose hat had fallen in the road--one could see his dishevelled
+hair and red face--had wrenched one arm loose from the clutch of the
+women, and with a quick gesture drew from his pocket something that the
+sun glanced on.
+
+"He has a knife or a pistol!" gasped Nancy.
+
+The struggling women had seen it, too, and now they shrieked, clutching
+and grappling with him, and screaming for help.
+
+Nancy thrust her small, strong hands forward. "I can hold the horses,"
+she said, and seized the reins from Della Rocca's fingers.
+
+He turned and looked at her in surprise. "Why, what----?" And he
+stopped.
+
+She read the doubt in his face, and read it wrong.
+
+"I can--I can!" she cried. "Go quickly! We shall be all right!"
+
+He twisted his mouth in curious fashion; then he jumped from his seat,
+and ran in light leaps across the road. The man was holding the
+revolver high out of the women's reach, while they clung to him and held
+him frantically, convulsively, crying: "Help! Madonna! Help!"
+
+Della Rocca reached him in an instant, and wrenched the short revolver
+away. With a quick gesture he opened the barrel and shook the cartridges
+out upon the ground. He tossed the weapon to one of a dozen men who had
+now come hurrying out of a neighbouring wine-shop, and, running lightly
+across the dusty road, he was back at the side of the carriage in an
+instant. He glanced up at Nancy, and raised his hat again with the
+exaggerated sweep that had caused her to smile before.
+
+"Pardon me for keeping you waiting," he said.
+
+"Ah, _quel poseur!_" cried Clarissa, who had sat with her eyes shut,
+holding her ears during the excitement.
+
+Della Rocca smiled, and, jumping into his place, took the reins from
+Nancy's strained and trembling hands. She dropped back in her seat
+feeling faint and excited. The horses plunged and started forward again.
+
+"What courage!" said Clarissa, taking Nancy's fingers in her own.
+
+"Yes," said Nancy, looking with approval at the straight, slim shoulders
+and the black hair and the irreproachable hat. "I like a brave man."
+
+Clarissa gave one of her little Parisian shrieks.
+
+"_Ouiche!_ it is not Aldo--it is you who are brave! Aldo is as cautious
+as a hare, but, being a preposterous _poseur_, he would not miss an
+effect for worlds!" And Clarissa flourished an imaginary hat in the
+Della Rocca style.
+
+Nancy laughed, and believed not a word about the hare.
+
+When they left her at her door she answered his sweeping salutation with
+a serious little nod; she ran up the stairs hurriedly, and into her
+room. On her writing-table lay an unopened letter from Nino; he wrote to
+her every morning and called on her every afternoon.
+
+Nancy did not glance at it. She ran out on to the balcony. But the
+stanhope had already turned out of sight.
+
+Nancy stepped back into her room and slowly drew off her gloves. For
+some unexplained reason she was glad that her wrists still ached, and
+that her fingers were bruised by the dragging of the hard, stiff reins.
+
+From the open balcony the wind blew into the room, and scattered the
+papers on her writing-table. It blew away Nino's letter; it blew away
+the elaborate time-table she had drawn up and the lists of the work she
+was to do; it blew away the large white sheet of paper--the fair sheet
+full of resplendent possibilities--on which she had traced with reverent
+finger the sign of the cross.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+When the Englishman called again to bring her a copy of the
+_Fortnightly_ with the article on "An Italian Lyrist," he found that she
+had not worked at all; she looked as sweet and helpless and idle as
+ever, and the room was full of visitors. He was introduced to her
+mother, whom he found gentle and subdued, and to the vigorous,
+loud-voiced Aunt Carlotta, and to all the poets.
+
+"I am afraid, mother dear," said Nancy, leaning her billowy head against
+her mother's arm and looking up at her new friend with May-morning eyes,
+"that Mr. Kingsley will think I have no character."
+
+"You have a complexion," interposed Aunt Carlotta. "That is enough for a
+girl."
+
+Valeria laughed. "It is true. Italian girls must not have characters
+until they marry. Then their husbands make it for them, according to
+their own tastes."
+
+Mr. Kingsley smiled down at Nancy. "Why should I think you have no
+character?"
+
+"Because you told me to work. And I promised; and I have not," said
+Nancy.
+
+"Have you done nothing at all since I saw you?" he asked.
+
+Nancy shook her head.
+
+"And have you no thoughts, no ideas that urge for expression?"
+
+"Oh yes!" said Nancy, waving eloquent, impatient fingers. "Ideas
+and thoughts grow and bloom and blow in my mind like flowers in a
+garden. Then all these people come and talk to me.... Alas," she sighed,
+looking round the murmuring, laughing room, "in the evening my garden is
+barren, for I have cut all my flowers and given them away."
+
+The Englishman forgot that he was English, and said what he thought:
+
+"I wish I could carry you off, and lock you up for a year, with nothing
+but books and a table and an inkstand," he said.
+
+"I wish you could," laughed Nancy, clasping eager hands. "I should love
+it. Not a soul would be allowed to speak to me. And I should have my
+meals passed in through the window."
+
+The Englishman laughed the sudden laugh of one who laughs seldom. "And I
+should walk up and down outside with a gun."
+
+Nancy looked at him, and a quick, shy thought, like a bird darting into
+an open window, entered her mind for an instant. Surely it would be good
+to have this strong, kind sentinel between herself and the world; to
+feel the light firmness of his touch on her shoulder keeping her to her
+work--to the work she loved, and yet was willing to neglect at the call
+of every passing voice. This stern, fair countenance would face the
+world for her; these strong shoulders would carry her burdens; these
+candid eyes would look into her soul and keep it clear and bright.
+
+Then the bird-thought flew out of the window of her mind, for the door
+opened and love and destiny came in. It was Aldo della Rocca, more than
+ever visually delectable.
+
+With him came his sister-in-law Clarissa, and Nino. Nino looked
+depressed and dreary; La Villari was writing to him; his conscience was
+harassing him; Aldo della Rocca's self-confident beauty irritated him.
+
+"What, Nino! Here again?" said Nancy, with a laugh. "You said last night
+that henceforward you would never come to see us more than twice a
+week."
+
+"That's right," said Nino. "Yesterday was the last visit of last week,
+and this is the first visit of this week. Besides, Della Rocca told me
+he was coming, so I felt that I had to come too. Of course, I did all I
+could to shake him off, but he is as persistent and adhesive as one of
+his compatriot cab-drivers in Santa Lucia. So that is why I could not
+come alone."
+
+"How confusing!" said Nancy, turning to greet Della Rocca.
+
+Della Rocca smiled; and his smile was sudden and brilliant, as if a row
+of lights had been lit at the back of his eyes.
+
+He bent over Nancy's proffered hand. "Signora--your slave!" he said in
+ceremonious Southern fashion.
+
+Clarissa's high voice rang out. "He has been reading your poems day and
+night, Nancy. And he has put them to music. Glorious! Quite a la Richard
+Strauss or Tosti or Hugo Wolff! He must sing them to you."
+
+Then she sailed round, greeting the poets, many of whom she knew. The
+Englishman was introduced as the Signor Kingsley, and Clarissa asked him
+many questions about London, and did not wait to hear what he answered,
+but went off with Adele and Aunt Carlotta to a French lecture on
+"Napoleon et les Femmes." The poets, as soon as they had had vermouth
+and biscottini di Novara, also went away.
+
+Then Della Rocca seated himself at the piano, and, preluding softly,
+strayed from harmony to harmony into the songs he had composed for
+Nancy. He played with his head bent forward and his soft hair falling
+darkly over half his face, making him look like a younger brother of
+Velasquez's Christ. He had the musical talent of a Neapolitan street-boy
+and the voice of an angel who had studied singing in Germany. Nancy felt
+happy tears welling into her eyes, and Della Rocca's clear-cut,
+down-curving profile wavered before her gaze.
+
+The Signor Kingsley sat silent in his corner near the window. Valeria
+was in the shadow with some quiet work in her hand, and Nino, who was
+sulky and bored, smoked cigarette after cigarette and yawned.
+
+Nancy bent forward with clasped hands, listening to her own words, the
+lovelier for their garb of music as children are more lovely when
+clothed in shimmering robes and crowned with roses. She had sent her
+thoughts out into the world, in their innocent and passionate
+immaturity, bare and wild. And, behold, he brought them back to her
+veiled in silver minor keys, borne on palanquins of rhythmic harmonies,
+regal, measured, stately, like the young sisters of a queen.
+
+Mr. Kingsley's mouth tightened as he watched the back of the singer's
+black head nodding to the music, and listened to the soft tenor voice
+rolling over the "r's" and broadening on the mellow "a's" of the tender
+Italian words. He felt his own good English baritone contracting in his
+throat, and he wondered what made "these Latin idiots" sing as they did.
+Then he glanced at Nancy, who had closed her eyes, and at Nino, who was
+in the rocking-chair staring at the ceiling; and suddenly he felt that
+he must take his leave. He rose at the end of the cycle of songs, and
+Nancy turned to him with vague eyes to say good-bye. His kind clear gaze
+rested on her face.
+
+"Do not cut all your flowers," he said.
+
+Nancy shook her head. "No, no!" she said. "I won't. I really won't."
+
+"Remember that your masterpiece is before you, and the little poems are
+done with. Lock your doors. Shut out the world, and start on a new work
+to-morrow."
+
+Nancy said, "Yes, yes, I will." Then an absent look stole over her light
+eyes. "Ah! _der Musikant!_" she cried, turning to Della Rocca, who was
+singing in German, and pronouncing as if it were Genovese. "I remember
+that. Is it not Eichendorff?"
+
+"'Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts,'" said Della Rocca.
+
+"Oh, do you really speak German? I love people who speak German," cried
+Nancy, on whom the German poet's spell still rested.
+
+"I learned it at Goettingen," said Della Rocca, with his illuminating
+smile.
+
+"Ach, de Stadt die am schoensten ist wenn man sie mit dem Ruecken
+ansieht," quoted Nancy, laughing.
+
+Della Rocca laughed too, although he did not understand what she had
+said; then he turned to the piano again.
+
+Nancy felt happy and inclined to kindness. "Do not go yet," she said to
+Mr. Kingsley. "Sit down and talk to me."
+
+But Mr. Kingsley knew better. Della Rocca's melting notes were drawing
+the girl's thoughts away again, and he could notice the little shiver
+creep round her face, leaving it slightly paler, as the silver tenor
+voice took a high A in falsetto and held it long and pianissimo.
+
+"I will come again some day, if I may," he said. "But I almost hope that
+I shall find your doors locked."
+
+Again the bird-thought came fluttering into the window of Nancy's mind,
+as the Englishman's strong hand closed firm and warm round hers.
+
+Then the door was shut on Mr. Paul Kingsley, and the thought flew away
+and was gone.
+
+"Who is that conceited fool of an Englishman?" said Nino, who felt cross
+and liked to show it.
+
+Nancy flushed. "Please don't speak like that about Englishmen. My father
+was English." Then she added, with a little toss of her head: "And he
+was not a bit of a conceited fool."
+
+"I never said he was," said Nino.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nancy, "you did!"
+
+"I said nothing of the kind," declared Nino. "Your father was a good and
+noble man."
+
+"You know I was not talking of my father," said Nancy.
+
+"No more was I," said Nino.
+
+Nancy turned to Della Rocca, who was preluding carelessly with smooth
+fingers and all his smiles alight.
+
+"Nino always cavils and confuses until one does not know what one is
+talking about!"
+
+Della Rocca nodded. "That is just what his celebrated friend, Nunziata
+Villari, said about him when I saw her in Naples. By the way, Nino,"--he
+ran up a quick scale of fourths and let them fall in a minor arpeggio
+like tumbling water--"they say La Villari tried to commit suicide last
+month. Locked herself up with a brazier of coke, like a love-sick
+grisette. Did you hear about it?"
+
+"No," said Nino, "I did not." Then he looked long, mildly, fixedly at
+Della Rocca, who after a moment got up and said good-bye.
+
+When he had left, Nancy said to Nino: "Who is La Villari? And why did
+she try to kill herself? La Villari! I thought that was an actress who
+had died a hundred years ago."
+
+Nino took her hand. "You don't know anything, Nancy," he said. "You
+don't even know that you are a vulture and a shark."
+
+Nancy laughed. "Yes, but who is La Villari?"
+
+"She is someone you have devoured," said Nino.
+
+And, remembering the brazier of coke, he left for Naples by the next
+train; for, though he had a nose of putty, he had a heart of gold.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+During the long, dreary journey in an empty carriage of the slow train
+Nino fought his battles and chastened his soul. He set his conscience on
+the empty seat before him and looked it in the face. The desires of his
+heart sat near him, and took his part. His conscience had a dirty face
+that irritated him; his desires were fair as lilies and had high treble
+voices that spoke loud. His conscience said nothing, only sat there
+showing its dirty face and irritating him.
+
+By the time Bologna was reached the lilies had it all their own way.
+After all he was young--well, comparatively young; thirty-one is young
+for a man--and he had his life before him, while Nunziata--well, she had
+lived her life. And she had had eight years of his: the eight best
+years, for after all at thirty-one a man is not young--well, not so
+young. His conscience was staring at him, so he changed argument.
+Nunziata did not really love him any more, she had told him so a hundred
+times during the last two years; it was a burden, a chain of misery to
+them both. She had herself begged him to leave her after one of those
+well-remembered, never-ending scenes that were always occurring since
+she had finally abandoned the theatre for his sake.
+
+She had said: "Go! I implore you to go! I cannot live like this any
+longer! For my sake, go!" So it was really in order to please her that
+he had gone.
+
+The face of his conscience opposite him was looking dirtier than ever.
+But the treble voices of his desires rang shrill: "He must not forget
+his duties to himself and to others. He had a duty to his father, who
+longed to have him near him, settled happily and normally; he had a duty
+to Valeria, who----" Here he quickly changed argument again. "He had a
+duty to Nancy, to little, innocent, wonderful Nancy, who understood
+nothing of the world; she must be saved from designing knaves, from
+struggling _litterateurs_ and poets who would like to marry her and use
+her vogue in order to scramble up to a reputation, from the professional
+_beau jeune homme_ like Aldo, who would break her heart.... It really
+was his duty----" The train slowed, shivered, and stopped. He was glad
+to get out, and rush to a hurried supper in the buffet, because the ugly
+face opposite him was more than he could stand.
+
+All through the night in the slow train to Rome he fought his battles
+and chastened his soul, and the little ugly face said not a word, but
+looked at him.
+
+When day dawned he had broken the lilies, and they lay, whiter than
+before, at his feet. And the face of his conscience was clean. When Rome
+was reached, where he had three hours to wait for the Naples express, he
+hurried into the telegraph-office and sent a message to Nunziata:
+
+"Arriving this evening at nine. Forgive. Yours for ever, NINO."
+
+Then, just as he was getting into the hotel omnibus, he learned that a
+special excursion train was leaving for Naples at once. He could arrive
+four hours sooner. He hastened back into the station, caught the train,
+and was already approaching Naples when La Villari received his
+telegram.
+
+La Villari had just begun her luncheon, and the _spaghetti al burro e
+formaggio_ lay in a goodly heap of pale gold on her plate. She had just
+put her fork into them and begun to turn it round and round, when Teresa
+came in excitedly.
+
+"A telegram, Illustrissima," she said.
+
+La Villari opened the telegram. "Misericordia!" she said. "He is coming
+back."
+
+Teresa cleaned her hands on her apron. What? The Signorino? He was
+returning?
+
+"Yes, to-night. At nine o'clock," sighed La Villari.
+
+Well, let the Illustrissima not allow the spaghetti to get cold. And
+Teresa sighed also, as she left the room and hustled the telegraph-boy
+off without giving him a tip.
+
+They had been so happy without the Signorino. They had had such quiet,
+comfortable meals. The Illustrissima had had no nerves, no convulsions,
+but a good appetite and a pleasant temper. Now it would all begin again:
+the excitements, the tempers of the Illustrissima; the dinner left to
+get cold while the Illustrissima and the Signorino quarrelled; the
+rushings out of the Signorino; the tears of the Illustrissima; the
+telephone messages; the visitors and relations to argue with and console
+the Illustrissima; then the returnings of the Signorino; and supper for
+everybody in the middle of the night. It was not a life.
+
+Teresa brought in the auburn cutlet a la Milanese. There! already it was
+beginning. The Illustrissima had not eaten the spaghetti!
+
+"Do not bother me with the spaghetti," said the Illustrissima, who
+already had the nerves. "Let us think about this evening."
+
+"Yes," said Teresa. "Shall we have vol-au-vent that His Excellency
+likes?"
+
+"Oh, do not bother me with vol-au-vent!" cried the Illustrissima. "Do
+you not understand that he must not find us like this?"
+
+"Vossignoria will put on the blue crepe-de-chine gown," said Teresa;
+"and I will order the coiffeuse for six o'clock."
+
+Yes, yes; but that was not sufficient. Nino must not find her sitting
+there waiting for him, as if she had no one in the world but him.
+
+"Go away, Teresa, go away! I must think," she said. And Teresa went to
+her kitchen grumbling.
+
+La Villari's views of life and her manner of dealing with situations
+were according to Sardou, Dumas, or D'Annunzio. Nino must either find
+her supine in a darkened room, with etiolated cheeks and blue shadows
+under her spent eyes; or then, after his arrival, she must enter, coming
+from some brilliant banquet, rose-crowned and laughing. She sees him!
+She vacillates. Her jewelled hand clutches at her heart. "_Nino!_"--and
+he is at her feet.... Then he makes her a scene of jealousy. Where has
+she been? With whom? Where was she when his telegram arrived? Who sends
+her all these flowers? Pah! He throws them out of the window--and all is
+as it should be.
+
+As it happened, there were no flowers in the room. So La Villari rang
+the bell and told Teresa to order fifty francs worth of white roses and
+tuberoses from the florist, to be brought as soon as possible, and the
+hair-dresser for six o'clock, and the brougham for seven.
+
+"And, Teresa!..."
+
+Teresa turned back with a dreary face.
+
+"Remember that it was you who opened the telegram. I was out. I am
+always out. With many people, you understand."
+
+Yes, Teresa understood. And with callous back and shuffling shoes she
+went away to order the flowers, and the brougham, and the hair-dresser.
+
+La Villari unpinned her hair, put the greater part of it neatly on the
+dressing-table in readiness for the coiffeuse, rubbed a little lanoline
+round her eyes, and settled herself with Matilde Serao's "Indomani" to
+one more peaceful afternoon.
+
+Love was not peaceful, it was agitating and uncomfortable; and keeping
+up the pretence of being twenty-eight when one is forty-five is a labour
+and a toil. Of course, she adored Nino; the mere thought of his ever
+tiring of her, or leaving her, brought visions of despair and vengeance,
+of vitriol and dagger to her mind. But oh! how she envied those placid
+women who surrender their youth submissively, and slip serenely into
+gentle middle-age as a ship glides into quiet waters. With her, because
+her lover was young, she must grasp and grapple with the engulfing
+years. She must clutch at her youth as a child clutches a wild bird
+fluttering to escape. Alas! when the child opens its fingers the
+prisoner is dead. Better let it fly when it will.
+
+So thought Nunziata Villari. The feathers and the wings still lay in her
+hand, but youth, the bird, was dead.
+
+She took up the book, and stifled thought under the blanket of Matilde
+Serao's warm prose.
+
+The excursion train ran into Naples at five o'clock, just as a florist
+in the Strada Caracciolo was threading a wire into the green throat of
+the last white rose for the Illustrissima. Fifty francs worth of roses
+in Naples in the month of June are enough to consummate the perfumed
+death in Freiligrath's "Blumenrache," and then enough to cover the
+maiden's coffin from wider to narrowest end. It took two men to carry
+them, tied in huge bunches, along the Strada Caracciolo to the Palazzo
+Imparato.
+
+Nino from his cab saw two men bearing white flowers far ahead of him,
+and wondered vaguely for whom they might be.
+
+Then he thought of Nunziata's face as he had last seen it--pallid, with
+a tortured smile, as she said good-bye. But now he would see her smile
+again, that pretty tilted smile that was still young....
+
+(The men with the flowers had turned a corner. Nino's cab turned it,
+too, and there were the men again, marching before him.)
+
+He had been a brute and a hound, but he would atone. He would do the
+right thing. Nunziata should not be left in tears again, nor again be
+driven to the little brazier of coke, like a love-sick grisette....
+
+(The men with the white flowers were alongside. Now they were left
+behind.)
+
+And now the carriage stopped at the door of the Palazzo Imparato. The
+driver handed the luggage down, and a waiting lazzarone grabbed and
+shouldered it. While Nino was paying the fare the men with the flowers
+came up, and Nino turned to glance at them as they passed. _But they did
+not pass._ They turned into the Palazzo Imparato and vanished in the
+shadow of the gateway.
+
+Nino's heart leaped up, and stood still. The lazzarone, watching him,
+saw tragedy in his face, and was satisfied that the tip would be a large
+one; for the lazzarone knew that despair is as generous as happiness.
+
+Nino ran, blind with his terrors, up the wide flights of stairs. On
+Nunziata's landing the men with the flowers stood waiting.
+
+Teresa opened the door, and saw behind the roses Nino's wild, white
+face.
+
+"The Signorino! Santa Vergine!"
+
+In an instantaneous vision she thought of the Illustrissima, unpowdered,
+unprepared, reading Matilde Serao, her tresses lying on the
+dressing-room table. The servant's stupefied, stricken face confirmed
+Nino's fears. He stumbled forward, and, dropping into a seat in the
+hall, covered his face with his hands.
+
+The Illustrissima, who had heard the noise, opened the drawing-room
+door. At a glance she saw it all, and quietly closed the door again.
+
+When, an instant later, Nino rushed in, the room was darkened, the
+shutters closed; Nunziata lay on the couch with etiolated face, a soft
+shimmering scarf was wound becomingly round her head, but no blue
+shadows were under her eyes, for there had been no time to make them.
+
+Then all began over again; for although she was peaceful and comfortable
+when Nino was away, as soon as he was present she felt that all things
+depended upon his love, and that his absence would end her life. Tighter
+and tighter she grasped the little dead bird in her white, ringed hands,
+and louder and louder she told her tired heart that youth was living and
+singing still.
+
+Nino was kind and considerate. He also wrote letters to the Italian
+Consulates in Rio and Buenos Ayres, asking them to make sure that
+Eduardo Villari was really dead--as his cook, who had returned with a
+good deal of money and had married a baron, declared he was.
+
+If the thought of Nancy knocked with light fingers at Nino's heart, he
+never opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Clarissa in her villa on Lake Maggiore was bored, so she wrote to Nancy
+to come and stay with her.
+
+"I am weary of my sweet blue lake and of my sour blue husband. Come and
+stay with me a month. You shall have a large room at the top of the
+house, with a huge table and an inkstand large enough to drown in, and
+before you the view that inspired Manzoni. Come and write your
+masterpiece."
+
+By the same post she sent a note to her brother-in-law:
+
+"Aldo, _mon joli_, do come. Carlo is insufferable. He growls all day and
+snores all night. Why did I marry him? This is the fourth time I invite
+you this year, and you never come. Last year it was different.
+
+      "Yours,
+            "CLARISSA.
+
+"P.S.--The little _poetessa_ is going to stay here for a month."
+
+He arrived next day. After greetings, he asked: "Where is Sappho, the
+violet-haired?" Clarissa explained that Nancy had not arrived, and he
+sulked and played the piano all the evening, while Carlo on the sofa
+snored. Clarissa looked from one to the other, uncertain which of the
+two was insulting her most.
+
+Nancy arrived the following day. She had brought her notebooks with her
+and a broken ivory pen that she always wrote with; she was full of the
+masterpiece. She was going to work immediately.
+
+Driving up from the landing-place to the Villa Solitudine she told her
+plans to Clarissa, who nodded and smiled as she whipped up the fat cob.
+She was going to write a book--_The Book!_--a great, noble piece of
+work, not a little volume of flyaway poems that one reads and forgets in
+a day. She was going to think of and dream of The Book; to live for The
+Book; to breathe and walk for it, to eat and sleep for it. In Milan,
+with people always round her, talking and distracting, it was
+impossible; but here in the large bare room at the top of the
+house----How sweet and dear of Clarissa to think of it! Never, never
+could Nancy thank her enough.... Clarissa nodded and smiled, and the fat
+cob turned into the chestnut drive of Villa Solitudine.
+
+Down the steps, with a couple of dogs barking and leaping at his heels,
+came Aldo to meet them, clad in Neapolitan fashion in white flannels and
+scarlet sash. His uncovered head gleamed darkly in the sun.
+
+"Behold Endymion awakened!" said Clarissa, laughing, to Nancy.
+"Charmides, Adonais, Narcissus! The gods have cast upon him all the
+beauty of the world!" As Nancy did not answer, Clarissa turned to look
+at her. "Oh, what a stern face, _ma cherie!_ You are quite white. What
+are you thinking of?"
+
+"The Book," said Nancy; and she felt as if it were a child of hers that
+was to die unborn.
+
+"You shall write it, _mon ange!_ Aldo shall not disturb you." And she
+threw the reins to the little stiff groom; then, daintily raising her
+fluffy skirts, she alighted in Aldo's uplifted arms. Nancy put her foot
+on the step, but Aldo raised her lightly and lifted her down. His red,
+smiling mouth was close to her face. She thanked him, and he kissed her
+hand with the ceremonious Southern salute, "Signora, I am your slave."
+
+Nancy went to her room--the large, bare room with the beautiful
+view--and stayed there all the afternoon. She put her notes in order;
+she placed the large sheets of paper before her; and she dipped the
+broken ivory pen into the huge inkstand. Then she sat and looked out of
+the window. She could hear the dogs barking in the garden and Clarissa's
+trilling laugh. On the sweet blue lake a tiny sail, like a pocket
+handkerchief, dipped and curtseyed away, and through the open windows of
+the drawing-room Aldo could be heard playing a Valse Triste. Nancy
+dipped the pen into the inkstand again--and looked at the view.
+
+Now she heard the music wander off in modulating chords which resolved
+themselves into the rippling accompaniment of Hugo Wolff's "Musikant."
+
+    "Wenn wir zwei zusammen waeren
+     Wuerd' das Singen mir vergeh'n."
+
+She could hear the soft tenor voice, and felt it drawing at her heart.
+She closed the window and sat down again. She dipped the ivory pen into
+the inkstand, and wrote at the top of the white sheet, "Villa
+Solitudine," and the date. Under it, as she had not thought of a title
+yet, she wrote in large letters:
+
+            "THE BOOK."
+
+Then she jumped up and ran downstairs.
+
+At sunset they went out in a sailing-boat. Clarissa held the rudder, and
+Aldo stood in easy attitudes of beauty at the sail. The glow of the west
+was on his pure young face, and the wind of the _tramontana_ raised his
+waved hair and blew it lightly across his forehead. He was silent,
+satisfied to know that the two women could see him, and that the
+red-gold sky was a good background for his profile. Clarissa talked and
+laughed, twittered and purred; but Aldo never spoke. And it was his
+silence that enraptured Nancy.
+
+    "Ed io che intesi cio che non dicevi,
+     M'innamorai di te perche tacevi."
+
+Stecchetti's words sang in her brain with new meaning, and in the days
+that followed the two smooth lines were always in her mind.
+
+Aldo knew little, but he knew the value of silence. He knew the lure of
+the _hortus conclusus_--the Closed Garden into which one has not
+stepped. Nancy stood outside its gates and dreamed of its unseen roses,
+of fountains and shadowy paths and water-lilied lakes. For Aldo was a
+closed garden.
+
+Aldo also knew the value of his eyes--deep, passion-lit eyes, that
+looked, Clarissa said, as if he had rubbed the lids with burnt cork to
+darken them. When he raised them suddenly, and looked straight at Nancy,
+she felt a little shock of pleasure that took her breath away. Little by
+little, day by day, those eyes drew Nancy's spirit to their depths--she
+leaned over them as over an abyss. In them she sunk and drowned her
+soul.... Then, when from his eyes her own passionate purity gazed back
+at her, she thought she saw his soul and not her own.
+
+The Book cried in her now and then, but she stifled its voice and
+whispered: "Wait!"
+
+And The Book waited.
+
+One day in the garden Aldo spoke to Clarissa. She was in the hammock
+pretending to read.
+
+"Clarissa, I am twenty-five years old."
+
+"Vlan! ca y est!" said Clarissa, dropping her book. Then she drew a deep
+breath, and her nostrils turned a little pale; but the superposed roses
+of her cheeks bloomed on, independent of her ebbing blood and sickening
+heart.
+
+"I am penniless," continued Aldo, picking a piece of grass and chewing
+it; "and Carlo has given me to understand that he can exist without me
+if he tries very hard."
+
+Clarissa sat up. "When? What did he say? Does he ... has he ... did he
+mean anything?"
+
+Aldo shook his comely head. "Carlo never means anything. But I shall
+have to go back to--to the Texas ranch, or marry."
+
+The Texas ranch was a romantic invention of Clarissa's, the only
+foundation for which was a three weeks' holiday which Aldo had once
+spent in the city of New York.
+
+Clarissa bit her red, narrow lips. "Yes," she said.
+
+During the long pause that followed Aldo picked another piece of grass
+and chewed it.
+
+"I suppose," said Clarissa, looking at him sideways through her long
+lids, "you will marry some affectionate old thing with money."
+
+"No. I know them," said Aldo. "They demand the affection, and keep the
+money."
+
+After a pause, in which he felt Clarissa's angry eyes on his face, he
+said: "I am going to marry the little Sappho."
+
+Clarissa laughed suddenly and loud. "You do that for your pleasure!
+_Farceur, va!_" Aldo lifted his perfect eyebrows and did not reply. "She
+has nothing, not a little black sou!" And Clarissa stuck her long
+pointed thumbnail behind her long pointed teeth and jerked it forward.
+
+"Oh! I dare say she has something," said Aldo, pretending to yawn
+carelessly. "Besides, she is a genius, and can earn what she will."
+
+"You are the perfect Neapolitan pig," said Clarissa, and closed her
+eyes.
+
+The perfect Neapolitan pig rose with an offended air and left her. He
+strolled into the house and took his hat and stick, then he strolled out
+again and through the garden into the hot street and down to the
+landing-place. A boat was leaving for Intra, so he went on board, and at
+Intra took the train for Milan. He dined at Biffi's, feeling happy.
+
+"They will be miserable," he said. "That will teach them." Then he went
+to his furnished rooms on the Corso, and slept well.
+
+In Villa Solitudine they were miserable, and it taught them.
+
+It taught Nancy that the Closed Garden she had had a glimpse of for so
+brief an hour was the only garden in the world that she ever wanted to
+enter; and that all the words Aldo had not said were the only words she
+ever wanted to hear; that perfect goodness and unwavering strength must
+lie behind his portentous beauty, white and immovable like marble lions
+at a palace gate.
+
+It taught Clarissa that one must accept the inevitable--that half a loaf
+was better than no bread, and that a married Aldo was better than no
+Aldo at all. It made her look at Nancy with closer eyes, and say to
+herself that she was a little creature one would easily tire of, in
+spite of--or because of--her intellectuality. Aldo was not a closed
+garden for Clarissa; she knew the feeble flowers that bowed behind its
+gates.
+
+A hot, dreary week passed with no news from Aldo. Then Clarissa
+telegraphed to him at Milan. She said she had told Carlo about their
+conversation regarding his wish to marry Nancy, and Carlo approved.
+Would he come back?
+
+Yes; Aldo would come back. He waited another day or two, and at the
+close of a sultry afternoon he sauntered in, just as he had sauntered
+out, across the sleepy, bee-droning lawns of the Villa Solitudine. He
+stopped at the entrance of the summer-house, where Nancy sat reading a
+letter--a long letter. Already two of the blue sheets had fallen at her
+side. Before her on the table was the inkstand and the ivory pen and The
+Book. As his shadow passed the threshold she looked up; she drew a
+quick breath, and her face turned milky white, with a pallor that
+gripped at Aldo's nerves.
+
+Once more, and for the last time, he bent his head over her hand.
+"Signora, I am your slave," he said. But as he raised his eyes she knew
+that he had said: "Nancy, I am your master."
+
+"Who writes to you?" he asked.
+
+She drooped submissive lashes, and the colour ran into her cheeks. "Mr.
+Kingsley, the English friend," she said. "Do you remember him?"
+
+Aldo took her hand and with it the letter in his own.
+
+"What does he want?"
+
+Her dimples fluttered. "He wants me to be good," she said, laughing,
+with wistful eyes. "And to write."
+
+Aldo pressed the little fist with the crumpled blue letter in it to his
+lips. "Well, write," he said. "Write at once."
+
+He took the ivory pen and dipped it in the ink and put it in her hand;
+then he pulled the sheet of white paper which was to be The Book before
+her.
+
+"Write: 'Dear Englishman, I am going to marry Aldo della Rocca. He
+adores me.'"
+
+And Nancy, with her hair almost touching the paper, wrote: "Dear
+Englishman, I am going to marry Aldo della Rocca. I adore him."
+
+The Englishman never got the letter. But he heard of it afterwards; and
+his English fists closed tight.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Nancy walked among asphodels and morning glory; and her soul was plunged
+in happiness and her eyes were washed with light.
+
+The Book waited.
+
+They went out in the little boat at sunset. Aldo stood at the sail, and
+the red sky was a background for his profile.
+
+"Oh," sighed Nancy, looking at him and clasping puerile hands, "your
+beauty _aches_ me!"
+
+Aldo quite understood it, and was pleased.
+
+They went for long walks to Premeno and San Salvatore; as Clarissa
+refused to accompany them, Carlo chaperoned them, blandly bored.
+
+Soon Valeria arrived. Nancy went down to meet her at the landing-place,
+looking ethereal and pink as a spray of apple-blossom. Valeria kissed
+her with hot tears. "Oh! my baby, my baby!" she said, and wished that
+the seventeen years were a dream, and that her child's small head were
+still safely nestling at her breast. In Nancy's young love she lived the
+days of her own betrothal over again, and Tom arose in her memory and
+was with her day and night. On this same silky blue lake Tom had so
+often rowed her with Zio Giacomo, in a little boat called _Luisa_. She
+tearfully begged Nancy and Aldo to come with her and see if they could
+not find that very self-same boat.
+
+They found, indeed, three _Luisas_, but Valeria could not recognize
+them; still, all three of the boatmen declared that they remembered her
+perfectly, and got the expected tip.
+
+"Of course," said Valeria, deeply moved, "it cannot have been all three
+of them."
+
+And Aldo said: "You should not have given them anything. They were none
+of them more than twenty-five years old." Whereupon Valeria sighed
+deeply.
+
+Then it was decided that they should go in reverent pilgrimage to the
+Madonna del Monte, where Nancy's father had asked Nancy's mother to
+marry him. The road was lined with beggars: shouting cripples,
+exhibiting sores and stumps.
+
+"Some of these are very old," sighed Valeria. "I am sure they were here
+that day, and must have seen me."
+
+"I shall give a franc to every one of them," said Nancy, taking out her
+small fat purse, as the first one-armed mendicant held out his greasy
+hat.
+
+"My dear Nancy, what nonsense!" said Aldo. "There are about a hundred of
+them!"
+
+"Well?" and Nancy raised clear, questioning eyes to his.
+
+"Oh, _I_ don't mind," said Aldo, with a little Neapolitan shrug.
+
+Valeria looked at the handsome figure and impeccable profile of her
+future son-in-law, as he strolled beside them up the steep wide road.
+Her heart was heavy with recollections. Up this road she had walked in
+her blue dress and scarlet tie with Tom beside her--Tom, broad and
+careless in his slouchy brown suit, who had given the beggars all his
+coppers and silver, just as Tom's daughter was doing to-day. Again she
+looked at Aldo's slim, straight shoulders and sighed. "I wish it had
+been an Englishman!" she thought. Then, as her memory took her to
+England, she saw someone else. "Or, then, poor dear Nino." And she
+sighed again; but not altogether for Nancy's sake.
+
+She wrote to Nino that evening, and, almost without knowing it, began
+her letter, "Poor dear Nino!"
+
+Nino was out interviewing Consuls about the presumably deceased Eduardo
+Villari when the letter arrived. So Nunziata opened the letter.
+
+In it Valeria told Nino that Nancy, "our little Nancy," was betrothed
+to Aldo della Rocca, and could Nino not do anything to prevent it? And
+why, oh why, had his sister Clarissa invited them both to stay at the
+Villa Solitudine, so that, as Fraeulein Mueller or was it Heine?--used to
+say, "Wie koennte es anders sein," for how could anyone see Nancy in the
+resplendency of her seventeen Aprils and not fall in love with her? And
+oh, she was so sorry for poor, dear Nino, for she knew the secret of his
+heart. And how true it was what he had said about Nancy's eyes being so
+pure that they seemed never to have gazed at aught but the sky; and she
+understood him and his sufferings, for had she not herself suffered
+dreadfully through him, years ago--but never mind, that was nothing. And
+it had never been dear, dear Nino's fault at all; it was her own foolish
+fault and Fate.... And she hoped Nino did not think that she had really
+suffered, for she had not, and now she never, never thought of it any
+more! And if he came quickly he might still be in time; and oh, she knew
+he must be heart-broken, but he was not to mind, because it could not be
+helped. And she was ever his unhappy Valeria.
+
+Nunziata read the rambling letter three times before she understood it.
+The letter opened her eyes.
+
+When her eyes were open Nunziata saw well. She saw the chain of desire
+stretching out ring on ring: from Valeria's heart to Nino; from Nino's
+heart to Nancy; from Nancy's heart to Aldo, as in a children's game; and
+Love passing down from one to the other, stopping before each with gift
+of passion, of pain, of joy. She saw that her years placed her behind
+Valeria--far back, far back, out of the game; and she knew that Love had
+passed her, and would not stop before her any more. Then she remembered
+that she had had her gifts; that Love had heaped roses at her feet, and
+that she had moved through passions as through a field of flowers.
+
+Nunziata decided that she would play the game.
+
+She went with her newly-opened eyes to her room and threw the shutters
+back. She looked at her tired pink face in the glass, at her crimson
+lips and complicated hair. She went on her knees beside her bed and said
+three _Paters_ and three Aves. Then she opened her reluctant hands and
+gave her dead youth back to God.
+
+She washed her face with warm water and soap, and unpinned her elaborate
+curls. She wound her own soft hair round her head, and put on a plain
+black gown. Then, looking, although she did not think so, twenty years
+younger and twenty times sweeter than she did before, she went
+downstairs to wait for Nino.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same evening she sent him back to his father. His luggage was
+packed and the brougham was waiting for him at the door, and still he
+declared he would not go. He would not leave her. Her face was whiter
+than any _poudre de lys_ could ever make it as she kissed his forehead,
+and blessed it with the sign of the cross, and told him that he must
+indeed go, and not return again.
+
+At last, before his stubborn refusal, she took the weapon that hurt her
+most, and used it to pierce her own heart. "Think of Nancy!" she said.
+"You may still be in time to prevent her from marrying an adventurer."
+
+Nino looked into the pale, kind face, from which every trace of
+triviality had been washed by the warm water and the tears. And, being a
+man, he did not wait, and refuse, and then catch a later train; but with
+candid cruelty he said: "You are right. You are an angel. May the saints
+bless you!"
+
+... She stood on the balcony and watched the carriage drive away into
+the night; it turned up Corso Umberto and was gone. With it the lights
+went out in Nunziata Villari's life.
+
+Youth, love, hope, desire--Fate blew all the candles out, and left her
+in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Aldo's curved red lips under his very young moustache opened to words as
+well as to kisses under Nancy's impelling, eager love. During the long
+hours they spent together she spoke and he must answer. His splendid,
+silent eyes urged her to quick questionings, and his kisses did not
+still the thirst of her soul for his soul. Little by little she pushed
+back the gates of the Closed Garden; gently, day by day, she ventured a
+step farther adown the mysterious paths. Where are the arbours of roses?
+Where the fountains and the deep, water-lilied lakes? She tiptoed down
+the narrow paths that Clarissa and many others had trodden before her,
+and when she had come to the end she said: "I am mistaken. I have not
+entered the Garden yet."
+
+They were to be married almost at once. Aldo was impatient, and Nancy
+was in love; and The Book was waiting. So Valeria left for Milan to
+prepare the trousseau, and Nancy must follow a week later. On the eve of
+her journey Clarissa went up to say good-night to Nancy in her room--the
+large, bare room in which the masterpiece had not been written. Nancy's
+trunks were packed. The ivory pen and The Book were put away. The large
+inkstand stood alone on the large table.
+
+Nancy was leaning out of the window looking at the stars. Clarissa came
+and stood behind her and looked up into the cobalt depths.
+
+"I hate the stars," said Nancy; "I am afraid of them."
+
+"Why?" said Clarissa, to whom a star was a star.
+
+"Oh, I want to be sure that somewhere they leave off," said Nancy. "It
+terrifies me to think of fabulous nothingness behind unending space, of
+perpetual neverness beyond unceasing time. I should like a wall built
+round the universe, a wall that would shut me safely in, away from the
+terrible infinity."
+
+Clarissa laughed. "Perhaps when you are married you will feel less
+little and lonely."
+
+"Perhaps," said Nancy. And she added: "Aldo must be the wall."
+
+"Oh, my dear," said Clarissa, "Don't try to make poor Aldo anything that
+he isn't. He is sweet; he is lovely; he is full of talent. But he is no
+more a wall than this is." And she waved her filmy gossamer scarf that
+blew lightly in the air.
+
+That evening Carlo said to his wife: "I feel like a brute, letting that
+good-for-nothing brother of mine marry the nice little girl. He will
+make her miserable."
+
+"Not at all," said Clarissa, putting out the candle with her book, a
+thing Carlo could not bear. "She will write poems on his profile and be
+perfectly happy, until she gets tired of him for not being something
+that he isn't."
+
+"Oh, well," growled Carlo. "I suppose you know her best. Women are
+cackling cats."
+
+"Mixed metaphor," murmured Clarissa, and went to sleep comfortably,
+feeling that Carlo was a wall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nancy was married in Rome. All the poets of Italy came with poems, and
+Nino brought a necklet of pearls. From the Quirinal came a pendant, with
+a picture of a boy's face set in diamonds.
+
+After the wedding-breakfast all the guests left, passing to their
+carriages down the red carpet that stretched from the door to the edge
+of the pavement. Then Nancy, in her mouse-grey travelling-gown, kissed
+Valeria, and wept and said good-bye. And kissed Nino, and wept and said
+good-bye. And she went with her husband down the red carpet to the
+carriage. Carlo and Clarissa, Aunt Carlotta and Adele followed to the
+station, where there were great crowds waiting to see them off.
+
+Valeria and Nino remained alone in the desolate room. Valeria's face was
+hidden in her hands. She was looking down the days of the future, and
+saw them lonely, dark and desolate. Nino gazed through tear-blurred eyes
+at the bowed figure before him, and his thoughts went back through the
+years. Bending forward, he took her hand and kissed it. She smiled
+wanly.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" she said.
+
+"I was thinking of Nancy, and of the past," said Nino. "Of her father,
+poor Tom, who died so suddenly----"
+
+"It was to save Nancy," said Valeria.
+
+"And of the old grandfather who died alone on the hill-side----"
+
+"We had to find Nancy," said Valeria.
+
+"And of little Edith and her poor mother, forsaken in their darkest hour
+by those they loved----"
+
+"But it was to safeguard Nancy," said Valeria.
+
+Hearing her words, he realized the puissance of all-conquering, maternal
+love. Nothing mattered but Nancy, though Nancy herself, with gentle,
+unconscious hands, had taken all things from her. Had not he himself,
+the lover of Valeria's girlhood, turned from her, heart-stricken for
+Nancy?
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"And I am thinking of you, Valeria, over whose heart I have
+trampled,..." said Nino, with a break in his voice.
+
+"You could not help it. You loved Nancy," said Valeria. "And now"--her
+pitying eyes filled with tears--"your hope is shipwrecked and your heart
+broken, too."
+
+Nino did not answer. He turned away and gazed out of the window. He was
+thinking of Nancy, so mild and sweet-voiced, with eyes like blue
+hyacinths under the dark drift of her hair. And once more he realized
+how Nancy in her dove-like innocence had absorbed and submerged the
+existence of those around her. Her sweet helplessness itself had wrecked
+and shattered, had devastated and destroyed. The lives of all those who
+loved her had gone to nourish the clear flame of her genius, the white
+fire of her youth.
+
+Nino gazed down at the red wedding-carpet that stretched its scarlet
+line to the pavement's edge like a narrow path of blood.
+
+"Behold," he said, "the trail of the dear devourer--the course of the
+dove of prey!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the train glided out of the station, and shook and ran, and the
+cheers and the waving handkerchiefs were left behind, Nancy raised her
+eyes, tender and tear-lit, to Aldo's face. Her white wedded hand was to
+open the gates of the Closed Garden.
+
+Now the bowers of roses, and the fountains, and the water-lilied lakes!
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+They had chosen to go to Paris, because Aldo said he had had enough of
+landscapes to last him a lifetime. Also Clarissa had remarked to Nancy:
+"If you want to have a clear vision of life, and a well-balanced brain,
+always be properly dressed. And you cannot be dressed at all unless you
+are dressed by Paquin."
+
+"But I have my work to think about," said Nancy. "I do not mind much
+about clothes."
+
+"Very well," said Clarissa, "if you want to be a dowdy genius and
+quarrel with your husband before you have been married two months, go
+your own way, and wear coats and skirts."
+
+So they went to Paris, and soon Paquin's gibble-gabbling demoiselles
+were busy sewing cloudy blues and faint mauves to save Nancy from
+quarrelling with Aldo two months afterwards.
+
+At Aldo's suggestion they took rooms in a small hotel in Rue Lafayette,
+for, as he said, they were not millionaires, and one could use one's
+money better than in spending it at grand hotels. Nancy said he was
+quite right, and wondered at his wisdom. Indeed, he knew many things. He
+knew the prices of everything one ate, and he pounced on the waiters as
+soon as there was any attempt at overcharging, or if they
+absent-mindedly reckoned in the date written at the top of the bill in a
+line with the francs.
+
+Nancy rather dreaded that moment in the brilliant restaurant when Aldo
+opened and inspected the neatly-folded bill, while the solemn-nosed
+waiter looked down sarcastically at his smooth, well-brushed head.
+Nancy noticed that, whenever they entered a place, everyone ran to meet
+them, opening doors for them with obsequious bows, showing them places
+with flourish of arm and of table-napkin. Aldo's hat was taken from him
+with reverential hand, and her cloak was carried tenderly from her. But
+when, after settling the bill, they got up to go, nobody seemed to pay
+much attention to them. Aldo had to fetch his own hat and look for the
+cloak, and even to open the heavy glass doors himself, for the small boy
+would be absent, or looking another way and making faces at the
+head-waiter. Cabs also had a way of being all smiles and hat-touchings
+and little jokes when they were hailed, and all sullenness and loud
+monologue when they were dismissed.
+
+"They think that because we are on our honeymoon we must be fools. Money
+is money," said Aldo.
+
+He had learnt the phrase from his grandfather, who had kept a shop in
+Via Caracciolo. The grandfather's wife--who in her radiant girlhood in
+Piedigrotta had sat for English and German painters--had said: "Yes; but
+education is education," and had sent her three sons to school in Modena
+and Milan. The eldest son, who was the father of Carlo and Aldo, had
+then learnt to say: "A gentleman is a gentleman." And on the strength of
+this he would have nothing more to do with his shopkeeping parents in
+Naples. When he died Carlo, who was twenty, went and hunted up the old
+people. They did not need him, and were afraid of him, and called him
+"Eccellenza." But Aldo, who was thirteen, and unverisimilarly beautiful,
+they called "l'Amorino"; they petted and spoiled him, and let him count
+the money in the till. And he liked them and their shop. And he learnt
+that money was money. The phrase always struck Nancy mute. Aldo,
+strolling beside her along the boulevard, continued: "It is people like
+Carlo that spoil things. Carlo is a perfect idiot with his money."
+
+"Oh, but he is very kind," said Nancy; and Aldo wondered whether she
+knew that Carlo was paying all their expenses--made out with fanciful
+additions by Aldo--and had promised to do so for a year after their
+marriage.
+
+"After that, not one penny. Never as long as I live," Carlo had said to
+his young brother a week before the wedding. "So hustle and do something
+useful."
+
+But Aldo did not intend to hustle. Rude, unaesthetic word! A man with his
+physique could not hustle. Carlo lacked all sense of the fitness of
+things. Clarissa said so, too. But on this occasion Aldo did not consult
+Clarissa, because she had once said: "I understand adoring a man, but I
+do not understand paying his debts."
+
+Nancy soon found that Aldo's knowledge extended further than accounts
+and prices. He knew places in Paris, and he knew people--such places and
+such people as she had never heard of, read of, or dreamt of. He always
+said to Nancy: "Now you shall see things that will make you laugh." But
+Nancy laughed little, then less; until one day she could not laugh at
+all. She felt as if she would never laugh any more. Everything was
+horrible, everything made her shrink and weep.
+
+"It is life, my dear," said Aldo, with his habitual little gesture of
+both hands outwards and upwards. "How can you write books if you do not
+know what is life?"
+
+Oh, but she did not want to know what is life. She could write books
+without knowing. And oh, she wished that Aldo did not know either. And
+let them go away quickly, and forget, and never, never remember it any
+more.
+
+So Aldo, who was not unkind, and who had not found the enlightening of
+Nancy as amusing as he had expected, called for the hotel bill, said it
+was preposterous, got the proprietor to deduct twelve per cent., and
+then told him they were leaving the next day.
+
+The next day they left. They went to the Villa Solitudine, which
+Clarissa and Carlo were not using, and for which it was arranged that
+Aldo should pay rent to Clarissa. Clarissa let him off the rent; and
+Carlo, not knowing, paid it back to him. So that, on the whole, it was
+not an unprofitable arrangement for Aldo.
+
+Nancy tried to forget what life was, and smiled and blossomed in tenuous
+sunrise beauty. And because of all she knew, and was trying to forget,
+and because she wore trailing Parisian gowns and large, plumed hats,
+Aldo burned with volcanic meridional love for her.
+
+The Book waited.
+
+One evening, when Aldo was at the piano, improvising music and words on
+Nancy's loveliness, and she sat on a stool beside him, she asked
+suddenly: "When shall we begin to work?"
+
+"Oh, never!" said Aldo, putting his right arm round her neck without
+interrupting the chords he was playing with his left hand.
+
+Nancy laughed, and laid her head against his arm.
+
+"Oh, but we must, Aldo. I want to write my book. It is to be a great
+book."
+
+Aldo nodded, and went on playing.
+
+"And you, Aldo. You cannot pass your life saying that you adore me."
+
+"Oh yes, I can," said Aldo.
+
+Nancy laughed softly and kissed his sleeve. Then suddenly a strange
+feeling came over her--a feeling of loneliness and fear. She felt as if
+she were alone in the world, and small and helpless, with no one to take
+care of her. She felt as if Aldo were younger and weaker and more
+helpless than she. And the terror of the Infinite fell upon her soul.
+Aldo was singing softly, meltingly, with his head bent forward and his
+dark hair falling over his face. Suddenly Nancy thought that it would be
+good to be safely locked in a large light room with nothing but books
+and an inkstand, and someone walking up and down outside with a gun.
+
+"The wall!" she said to herself as the Englishman's light eyes and
+stalwart figure came before her mind. Then she said: "Work shall be my
+wall." And she went to her room and unpacked her ivory pen.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Four months before the year of Carlo's bounty was up, Aldo made up his
+mind that he must hustle after all. They had settled in Milan; then
+nothing had happened. Carlo would never change his mind. Valeria had
+shown him her banking account, and proved to him that there was nothing
+Nancy could have beyond her skimpy forty thousand francs; Lady
+Sainsborough, the elderly English person in Naples who had taken such a
+fancy to him, had not answered his last two letters, and had probably
+altered her will; so there was nothing to do or to hope for. He must
+hustle.
+
+He did so. He wrote a third letter to Lady Sainsborough. Then he decided
+to ask Carlo to make room for him in his silk mills, which Carlo refused
+to do.
+
+Then he looked up Nancy's publishers, and asked them if they would
+advance a substantial sum on the unwritten book, which they also refused
+to do. So having done all he could, he decided not to hustle any more,
+but to let events take their course.
+
+Nancy did not help him at all. She was selfishly engrossed in her book,
+and sat in her room all day, with hair pinned tightly back and wild and
+lucent eyes. Whenever he came into the room she put up her hand without
+turning round--a gesture he could not bear--and went on with her
+writing. If he disregarded the gesture, she looked up at him with those
+wild, light eyes, and he felt hurried, and forgot what he wanted to say.
+So he muddled along with her forty thousand francs, and read the papers,
+played the piano, and went out to the Caffe Biffi every evening until it
+was time to go to the Patriottica for a game of billiards.
+
+There he frequently saw Nino sitting glumly with the corners of his
+mouth turned down; and they turned down further when Aldo came in, so
+that Aldo positively hated the sight of him. Besides, Carlo, who had
+refused to do anything for Aldo, had actually taken Nino into
+partnership; and, just to irritate and show off, Nino was working
+vulgarly, like a nigger, twelve or fourteen hours a day. The gratified
+Carlo was to be seen with Nino in the evenings walking through the
+Galleria arm-in-arm with him as if they were brothers, with that absurd
+Zio Giacomo trotting alongside, grinning like an old hen, while he,
+Aldo, Carlo's own brother, had to mooch about alone, smoking cheap
+cigarettes, or else to run alongside of Giacomo like an outsider, and
+listen for the thousandth time to the recital of the prodigal Nino's
+reform and rehabilitation.
+
+He went to Clarissa and complained; but she was unsympathetic. She
+rubbed her left-hand nails against her right-hand palm and looked out of
+the window. He had expected her to pass a white, jewelled hand lightly
+over his bowed head and say, "_Povero bello!_ Poor beauteous one!" as
+she had sometimes done a year or so ago; but when he bowed his head she
+continued rubbing the nails of her left hand against her right-hand palm
+and looking out of the window.
+
+He felt that a great deal depended upon her friendship, and it was
+almost out of a sense of duty to Nancy that he grasped her hand and
+kissed it in his best and softest manner. "Oh, don't be a snail, Aldo,"
+said Clarissa, taking her hand away. Then she looked down at him and
+shook her head: "I _am_ thankful I married Carlo."
+
+This was untrue, of course, said Aldo to himself; but, added to the
+other things, it rankled. When he left her he understood that Clarissa
+considered him as much Nancy's property as the pair of antique silver
+candle-sticks she had given to Nancy for a wedding-present, and that
+never would she take them back or light the candles in them again.
+
+Nancy had written one-third of The Book. It was a great book--a book the
+world would speak of. Like the portent of Jeanne of Orleans, a vision
+had fallen upon her young, white heart and set it aflame. She felt
+genius like an eagle beating great wings against her temples.
+Inspiration, nebulous and wan, stretched thin arms to her, and young
+ideas went shouting through her brain. Then the phrase, like a
+black-and-white flower, rolled back its thundering petals, and the
+masterpiece was born.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Aldo was not allowed to play the piano any more, because it disturbed
+Nancy's thoughts. He also stayed at home to see anyone who called, so
+that Nancy should not be interrupted. He himself brought her meals into
+her room when she did not wish to break her train of thought by going to
+table, and when the loud-footed, cheerful servant annoyed and distracted
+her.
+
+A reverential hush was on the house.
+
+The Rome publisher, Servetti, heard of The Book, and came to Milan to
+ask if he could have it. Zardo, the publisher of the "Cycle of Lyrics,"
+who had omitted to pay for the last two editions of that distinguished
+and fortunate volume, sent, unasked, an unverisimilarly large cheque;
+and suggested for her new work a special _edition de luxe_. Nancy
+replied to no one, heeded no one. The Book held her soul.
+
+It was a winter evening, and the lamps were lit, when Nancy wrote at the
+summit of a candid page, "Chapter XVII." She wrote the heading
+carefully, reverentially, painting over the Roman numbers with loving
+pen. This was the culminating chapter of The Book. It had been worked up
+to in steep and audacious ascent, and after it and from it the story
+would flow down in rushing, inevitable stream to its portentous close.
+But this chapter was the climax and the crown.
+
+Nancy passed a quick hand across her forehead and pushed back her
+ruffled hair. Then she looked across at Aldo. He was sitting at the
+opposite side of the table with some sheets of music-paper before him.
+The shine of the lamp fell blandly on his narrow head. He looked
+dejected and dull.
+
+"What is it, Aldo?" she asked, stretching her hand affectionately across
+the table to him. In the joy and the overflowing ease of inspiration she
+felt kind and compassionate.
+
+"Oh, nothing," sighed Aldo. "I was thinking of writing a symphony; but I
+cannot do anything without trying it at the piano. And that disturbs
+you. Never mind! Don't worry about me."
+
+"Oh, but I do worry," said Nancy, getting up and going round to his
+side. She bent over him with her arm on his shoulder. Before him on the
+sheet was half a line of breves and semibreves, which Nancy remembered
+from her childhood as little men getting over stiles.
+
+"You know," said Aldo, with his pen going over and over the face of one
+of the little men and making it blacker and larger than the others,
+"Ricordi is publishing those songs of mine; but I believe it is only
+because they have your words. So I thought I would try a symphony which
+will be all my own. But I ought to be able to try it at the piano."
+
+"I know, dear," said Nancy, smoothing his soft, thick hair. "I know I am
+a horrid, selfish thing, upsetting everything and everybody. But never
+mind!" And she glanced across to the large "Chapter XVII" at the top of
+the fair sheet, and the wet ink of the "XVII" glistened and beckoned to
+her upside down at the other side of the table. "Wait till I have
+finished my book. Then you shall do all you want; and we shall go and
+pass blue days in the country and be as happy as sandboys, and"--she
+added for him--"as rich as Cr[oe]sus."
+
+He raised his dark eyes to her, and she thought that he looked like
+Murillo's Saint Sebastian.
+
+"Your writing has swallowed up all your love for me," he said.
+
+"Oh no!" said Nancy, and she caressed the beautiful brow. "It is you,
+your presence, your beauty, that inspires me and helps me to write."
+
+Aldo sighed. "I suppose I am a nonentity. And I must be grateful if the
+fact of my having a straight nose has helped you to write your book."
+
+Nancy felt conscience-stricken. "Don't be bitter, dear heart," she said.
+"I must be selfish! If I do not sit there and write, I feel as if I had
+a maniac shut up in my brain, beating and shrieking to get out. And oh,
+Aldo, when I do write, coolly and quickly and smoothly, I feel like a
+mountain-spring gushing out my life in glad, scintillant waters."
+
+Aldo drew her face down and kissed her. "Nothing shall interfere with
+your book," he said.
+
+"No, nothing," said Nancy--"nothing!"
+
+As she spoke a strange, quivering sensation passed over her, a quick
+throb shook her heart, and the roots of her hair prickled. Then it was
+past and gone. She stepped back to her place at the table and stood
+looking down at Chapter XVII. The wet ink still glistened on it. She was
+waiting.... She knew she was waiting for that strange throb to clutch at
+her heart again. She looked across at Aldo. He was thoughtfully painting
+the face of another semibreve and making it large and black. She sat
+down and dipped the ivory pen into the gaping mouth of the inkstand.
+
+Ah, _again!_ the throb! the throb! like a soft hand striking at her
+heart. And now a flutter as of an imprisoned bird!
+
+"Aldo! Aldo!" she cried, falling forward with her face hidden on her
+arm. And her waving hair trailed over Chapter XVII, and blurred the
+waiting page.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+NANCY stirred, sighed, and awoke.
+
+
+In the room adjoining, Valeria was sobbing in Zio Giacomo's arms, and
+Aunt Carlotta was kissing Adele, and Aldo was shaking hands with
+everybody.
+
+Nancy could hear the whispering voices through the half-open door, and
+they pleased her. Then another sound fell on her ear, like the ticking
+of a slow clock--click, click, a gentle, peaceful, regular noise that
+soothed her. She turned her head and looked. It was the cradle. The
+Sister sat near it, dozing, with one elbow on the back of the chair and
+her hand supporting her head; the other hand was on the edge of the
+cradle. With gentle mechanical gesture, in her half sleep, she rocked it
+to and fro. Nancy smiled to herself, and the gentle clicking noise
+lulled her near to sleep again.
+
+She felt utterly at peace--utterly happy. The waiting was over; the fear
+was over. Life opened wider portals over wider, shining lands. All
+longings were stilled; all empty places filled. Then with a soft tremor
+of joy she remembered her book. It was waiting for her where she had
+left it that evening when futurity had pulsed within her heart. The
+masterpiece that was to live called softly and the folded wings of the
+eagle stirred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the gently-rocking twilight of the cradle the baby opened its eyes
+and said: "I am hungry."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+When eighteen thousand of the forty thousand francs were gone, Aldo
+said: "I must do something." And when eighteen thousand of the forty
+thousand francs were left, he said: "Something must be done." Carlo had
+washed his hands of him; all that Lady Sainsborough had sent him was her
+portrait, one "taken on the lawn with Fido," and another, "starting for
+my morning ride with Baron Cucciniello." "Flighty old lunatic!" said
+Aldo, throwing the pictures into the fire and digging at them with the
+poker. Then he called Nancy and told her how matters stood.
+
+Nancy did not seem to realize that it made much difference. She crawled
+under the table and hid behind the green table-cloth. "Peek-a-boo!" The
+baby crawled after her and pulled her hair.
+
+"Well, what are we going to do?" said Aldo.
+
+"As soon as the baby can walk," replied Nancy, looking up at him from
+under the table, "I shall start my work again. As long as it is such a
+teeny, weeny, helpless lamb"--and she kissed the small, soft head on
+which the hair grew in yellow tufts here and there--"its mother is not
+going to be such a horrid (kiss), naughty (kiss), ugly (kiss) tigress
+(kiss, kiss) as to leave a poor little forlorn (kiss)----"
+
+Aldo left the room, and nobody under the table noticed that he had
+gone.
+
+He went to Zio Giacomo, who for Nancy's sake took him into his office to
+make architectural drawings and plans at a salary of two hundred francs
+a month.
+
+At the end of the third week Aldo looked round the room where four other
+men were drawing plans, and observed them meditatively. Two were sallow
+and thin, one was sallow and fat, and one was red and fat. The sallow,
+thin ones had little hair, the sallow, fat one had no hair; the red, fat
+one wore glasses. They had all been here drawing plans for four, six,
+and twelve years at salaries between two hundred and six hundred and
+fifty francs a month.
+
+Aldo made a calculation on his blotting-paper. Say he stayed five years.
+He would get 200 francs a month for the first two years = 4,800 francs;
+300, or say 350, for the next two years = 8,400 francs; 400, or perhaps
+450, for the following year = 5,400 francs. Total: 18,600 francs.
+
+Eighteen thousand six hundred francs! So that, supposing he spent
+nothing, but went on living on what remained of Nancy's _dot_ for five
+years (which was out of the question, of course, as it was not enough),
+at the end of five years he would find himself exactly where he was
+to-day, and just five years older. Probably thin and sallow; or fat and
+sallow; or red and fat, with glasses. It was preposterous. It was out of
+the question. Here he was to-day, with the eighteen thousand francs and
+the five years still before him.
+
+He took his hat and walked out of the office.
+
+He wrote to Zio Giacomo, who said he was an addlepated and clot-headed
+imbecile. Aldo explained the situation mathematically to Valeria and
+Nancy, who looked vague, and said that it seemed true.
+
+"Eighteen thousand francs," said Aldo, "cleverly used, might set us on
+our feet. Now, what shall we do with it?"
+
+Valeria folded gentle hands; and Nancy said: "Peek-a-boo." So the baby,
+at Aide's request, was sent out for a walk with the sour-faced thing
+chosen by Aunt Carlotta to be its nurse.
+
+"You could go into partnership with someone," said Nancy sweetly, with
+her head on one side, to show that she took an interest.
+
+Valeria nodded, and said: "Mines are a good thing."
+
+Aldo was silent. "Eighteen thousand francs," he said thoughtfully. "It
+is not much." Then he said: "Of course, one could buy a shop."
+
+In his deep, dreaming eyes passed the vision of his grandfather's nice
+little _negozio_ in the Strada Caracciolo at Naples, with its strings of
+coral hanging row on row; tortoise-shell combs and brushes with silver
+initials; brooches of lava and of mosaic, that were sold for a franc
+each; shells of polished mother-of-pearl; pictures of Vesuvius by night,
+reproduced on convex glass; and booklets of photographs, that English
+people would always come to look at. He could see his grandfather now,
+stepping in front of the counter with a booklet of views in his hand,
+and shaking it out suddenly, br-r-r ... in front of his English
+customers. Also he could see his grandfather tying up neat little
+parcels, giving change, bowing and smiling with still handsome eye and
+gleaming smile, and accompanying people to the door, waving an
+obsequious and yet benevolent hand. Aldo would have liked a little shop
+in Naples, and easy-going, trustful English customers who would not
+haggle and bargain, but pass friendly remarks about the weather, and
+pay their good money. Ah, the good little money coming in that one can
+count every evening, and put away, and look at, and count again; not
+this vague, distant "salary," that one does not see, or count, or have,
+with no surprises and no possibilities.
+
+But Valeria was speaking. "A shop! My dear Aldo! What a dreadful idea!
+How can you say such a thing?"
+
+And Nancy, who thought he was joking, said, with all her dimples alight:
+"That's right, Aldo. We shall have a toy-shop--five hundred rattles for
+the baby, eight hundred rubber dolls for the baby, ten thousand woolly
+sheep and cows that squeak when you squeeze them. Let us have a
+toy-shop, there's a dear boy." She jumped up and kissed his straight,
+narrow parting on the top of his shining black head. "And if all the
+toys are broken by the baby, and have the paint licked off, and the
+woolliness pulled out," she added, with her cheek against his, "I shall
+give away an autograph poem with each of the damaged beasts, and charge
+two francs extra."
+
+The allusion to the autograph poem made Aldo realize that it was
+impossible that his wife, the celebrated author, could keep a shop, so
+he sighed, and said: "I have a good mind to try Monte Carlo. I have
+never been there, but my friend Delmonte once gave me a system."
+
+"Why doesn't he play it himself?" said Nancy. "He looks as if he needed
+it."
+
+"He has played it," said Aldo; "but he is a man lacking the strength of
+character that one needs to play a system. A system is a thing one has
+to stick to and go through with, no matter how one may be tempted to do
+something else. This is really a rather wonderful system."
+
+And Aldo took out a pencil and a note-book, and showed the system to
+Valeria and Nancy.
+
+"You see, N. is black and R. is red." Then he made rows of little dots
+irregularly under each initial. "You see, I win on all this."
+
+"Do you?" said Nancy and Valeria, bending over the table with heads
+close together.
+
+"Yes; I win on the intermittences."
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"Oh, never mind what they are," said Aldo. "And I win on all the twos,
+and the threes, and the fives."
+
+"And the fours," said Nancy, who did not understand what he was saying,
+but wanted to show an interest.
+
+"No, I don't win on the fours," said Aldo. "I lose on the fours. But I
+win on the fives and sixes, and everything else. And, of course, fours
+come seldom."
+
+"Of course," echoed Nancy and Valeria, looking vacantly at the little
+dots under the N. and the R.
+
+"I could make the game cheaper," said Aldo thoughtfully, "by waiting,
+and letting the intermittences pass, and only starting my play on the
+twos."
+
+"Perhaps that would be a good plan," said Nancy, with vacant eyes.
+
+"But," said Valeria, "I thought you won on the intermittences."
+
+"I do," said Aldo, frowning, "if they _are_ intermittences. But
+supposing they are fours?"
+
+This closed the door on all comprehension so far as Nancy was concerned.
+But Valeria, who had been to Monte Carlo for four days on her
+wedding-tour, said decisively: "Then I think I should wait and see. If
+they _are_ fours, then play only on the fives and sixes."
+
+"There is something in that," said Aldo, rubbing his chin. "But I must
+try it. Now you just say 'black' or 'red' at random, as it comes into
+your head."
+
+Nancy and Valeria said "black" and "red" at random, and Aldo staked
+imaginary five-franc pieces, and doubled them, and played the system.
+After about fifteen minutes he had won nearly two thousand francs.
+
+So it was decided that he should quietly go to Monte Carlo and try the
+system, starting as soon as possible.
+
+"Do not speak about it to anyone," he said. "Delmonte made a special
+point of that. If too many people knew of a thing like this, it would
+spoil everything."
+
+So no one was told, but they set about making preparations for Aldo's
+departure.
+
+"I shall not stay more than a month at a time," said Aldo. "One must be
+careful not to arouse suspicions that one is playing a winning game."
+
+"Of course," said Valeria.
+
+And Nancy said: "Is it not rather mean to go there when you know that
+you _must_ win?"
+
+Aldo explained that the administration was not a person, and added that
+the few thousand francs that he needed every year would never be missed
+by such a wealthy company.
+
+Then Nancy said: "I know Monte Carlo is a dreadful place. Full of horrid
+women. I hope--oh dear----!"
+
+Aldo kissed her troubled brow. "Dear little girl, I am going there to
+make money, and nothing else will interest me."
+
+"I know that," said Nancy, with a little laugh and a little sigh. "But
+the nasty creatures are sure to look at you."
+
+"That cannot be helped," said Aldo, raising superior eyebrows.
+
+Nancy kissed him and laughed. "Such a funny boy!" she said. "I believe
+your Closed Garden, your _hortus conclusus_, is nothing but a potato
+patch! But I like to sit in it all the same."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+May brought the baby a tooth. June brought it another tooth and a golden
+shine for its hair. August brought it a word or two; September stood it,
+upright and exultant, with its back to the wall; and October sent it
+tottering and trilling into its mother's arms.
+
+Its names were Lilien Astrid Rosalynd Anne-Marie.
+
+"Now baby can walk," said Valeria to her daughter, "you ought to take up
+your work again."
+
+"Indeed I must," said Nancy, lifting the baby to her lap. "Have you seen
+her bracelets?" And she held the chubby wrist out to Valeria, showing
+three little lines dinting the tender flesh. "Three little bracelets for
+luck." And Nancy kissed the small, fat wrist, and bit it softly.
+
+"Where has your manuscript been put?" said Valeria.
+
+"Oh, somewhere upstairs," said Nancy, pretending to eat the baby's arm.
+"Good, good! Veddy nice! Mother, this baby tastes of grass, and
+cowslips, and violets. Taste!" And she held the baby's arm out to
+Valeria.
+
+"Tace," said the baby. So the grandmother tasted and found it very
+nice. Then she had to taste the other arm, and then a small piece of
+cheek. Then the baby stuck out her foot in its white leather shoe, but
+grandmamma would not taste it, and called it nasty-nasty. And the other
+foot was held up and called nasty-nasty. But the baby said "Tace!" and
+the corners of her mouth drooped. So grandmamma tasted the shoe and
+found it very nice, and then the other shoe, and it was very nice. And
+then Nancy had to taste everything all over again.
+
+Thus the days passed busily, bringing much to do.
+
+Aldo wrote that "the system" was incomparable. His only fear was that
+the administration might notice it. He now played with double stakes. A
+few days later he wrote again. There was a flaw in the system. But never
+mind. He had found another one, a much better one. He had bought it for
+a hundred francs from a man who had been shut out of the Casino because
+the administration was afraid of his system. Of course, he had promised
+to give the man a handsome present before he left. He had won eight
+hundred francs in ten minutes with the new system last night. Of course,
+he had to be very careful, because the flaw of the other system had been
+disastrous.
+
+A third letter came. After winning steadily for four days, he had had
+the most incredible _guigne_: a run of twenty-four on black when he was
+doubling on red. But he would stick to the system; it was the only way.
+People that pottered round and skipped about from one thing to another
+were bound to lose. Love to all.
+
+Then came a postcard. "Have discovered that all previous "s's" were
+wrong. Have made friends with a 'cr,' who will put things all right
+again."
+
+Valeria and Nancy puzzled over the "cr." The "s's" of course meant
+"systems," but what could a "cr" be? Valeria felt anxious, and sent a
+messenger for Nino. Nino left Carlo's office at once, and hurried to Via
+Senato, where, since Aldo's departure, Valeria was staying with Nancy
+and the baby. All three were on the balcony, and waved hands to him as
+he crossed the Ponte Sant' Andrea, and hurried across the Boschetti to
+No. 12.
+
+"How do you do, Valeria?" and he kissed her cheek. "How do you do,
+Nancy?" and he kissed her hand. "How do you do, Anne-Marie?" and he
+kissed the baby on the top of the head. "What is the matter? What has
+Aldo done?"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Nancy. "How could you guess that it was about Aldo?"
+
+Nino smiled.
+
+Valeria held the postcard out for him to see, and covering everything
+but the last line, said: "What does 'cr' mean?"
+
+Nino looked, and said: "Where does he write from?"
+
+Nancy and Valeria exchanged glances, and decided that they could trust
+Nino. He would not use the system or give it to other people. Besides,
+the system had a flaw.
+
+"Monte Carlo," they said in unison.
+
+Nino made a mouth as if to whistle, and did not whistle. The baby
+sitting on the rug watched him and wished he would do it again.
+
+"I suppose 'cr' is croupier," said Nino. Then there was silence. After a
+while Nino said: "How much did he take with him?"
+
+"Everything," said Valeria.
+
+Then Nino made the mouth again, and the baby was pleased.
+
+"You had better go and fetch him. Quick!" said Nino, looking at Nancy.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nancy, "must I? Is it bad?"
+
+"Quite bad," said Nino. "He has probably lost half of your forty
+thousand francs already."
+
+"He only had eighteen," said Nancy, with a twinkle in her grey eye.
+
+"That's better," said Nino. "But go and fetch him all the same."
+
+Nancy was greatly excited and rather pleased. The baby should see the
+Mediterranean. Valeria, "grandmamma," must come too, of course.
+
+"No, dear," said Valeria, "I cannot. I have promised Aunt Carlotta to
+help her with her reception to-morrow evening. But I will take you part
+of the way--as far as Alessandria or Genoa."
+
+"But I am sure Nino could come," said Nancy, looking up at him
+interrogatively.
+
+"Yes," said Nino, and then quickly said no, he was sorry, he could not
+possibly leave Carlo's office. Besides, she would manage Aldo better
+without him.
+
+The next morning he went to the station to see them off. Valeria had
+Anne-Marie in her arms, and Nancy walked beside them, looking like the
+baby's elder sister. They had no luggage but a small valise, for Valeria
+was returning to Milan in the afternoon, and Nancy was sure that she
+would come back with Aldo the day after to-morrow.
+
+Nino found comfortable places for them, and then stepped down and stood
+in front of the window, looking up with that vacant half-smile that
+everyone has who, having said good-bye, stands waiting for the train to
+start. Nancy was looking down at him with sweet eyes. There was
+something blue in her hat that made her eyes look bluer. Behind her the
+baby, held up by Valeria, was waving a short arm up and down as the
+spirit of Valeria's hand moved it. The bell rang, the whistle blew, and
+as the train passed him slowly, Nino suddenly jumped on to the step at
+the end of the carriage, turned the stiff handle, and went in. "I will
+come as far as Valeria does," he said. He was greeted with delight, but
+the baby continued irrelevantly to wave good-bye to him for a long time.
+They passed Alessandria and Genoa, and went on to Savona. The baby
+looked at the Mediterranean, and Nancy looked at the baby, and Nino
+looked at Nancy, and Valeria looked at them all, and loved them all
+with an aching maternal love. At Savona Valeria and Nino got out.
+They had half an hour to wait for the return train that would take them
+back to Milan.
+
+They stood on the platform in front of the carriage window, and looked
+up at Nancy with that vacant half-smile that people have when they have
+said good-bye.... Nancy leaned out of the window and looked down
+tenderly at her mother's upturned face, and then at Nino, and then at
+her mother again. The baby stood on the seat beside her, waving its
+short arm up and down, with yellow curls falling over its eyes.
+
+_"In vettura!"_ called the guard.
+
+"We shall be back the day after to-morrow," said Nancy for the fourth
+time; "or perhaps to-morrow."
+
+"Perhaps to-mollow," echoed the baby, who always repeated what other
+people said. Nino went close to the window, and put up his hand to touch
+the baby's.
+
+"You don't know what 'to-morrow' means," he said. Anne-Marie let him
+take her hand. He felt the small, warm fist closed in his. "When is
+to-morrow, Anne-Marie?"
+
+"To-mollow is ... to-mollow is when I am to have evlything," explained
+Anne-Marie.
+
+"That sounds like a long time away," said Nancy, laughing.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Valeria.
+
+"Yeth, indeed," echoed the baby.
+
+_"Pronti, partenza?"_ said the guard.
+
+"Good-bye, Nancy! Good-bye, baby!" The bell sounded and the whistle
+blew.
+
+"Good-bye, mother dear." The train moved slightly and Nancy waved her
+hand.
+
+"Good-bye, Nancy! Good-bye, baby! Good-bye, my two darlings!"
+
+The train was moving swiftly away.
+
+"Perhaps to-morrow," cried Nancy, waving again. Then she drew back, lest
+a spark should fly into the baby's eyes.
+
+Valeria stood like a statue looking after them. "Good-bye, Nancy!
+Good-bye, baby!"
+
+They were gone.
+
+And to-morrow was a long time away.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When the leisurely Riviera train drew into the station at Monte Carlo,
+Nancy looked out of the window to see Aldo, to whom she had telegraphed.
+He was not there. A group of laughing women in light gowns, two
+Englishmen with their hands in their pockets, and a German
+honeymoon-couple were on the platform. No one else. A handsome, indolent
+porter helped Nancy and the baby to descend, and, taking their valise,
+walked out in front of them, and handed it to the omnibus-driver of the
+Hotel de Paris.
+
+"Non, non," said Nancy. "J'attends mon mari."
+
+"Ah!" said the porter; "elle attend son mari." Then he and the
+omnibus-driver grinned, and spat, and looked at her.
+
+"Donnez-moi ma valise," said Nancy.
+
+"Donnez-lui sa valise," said the porter.
+
+"J'vas la lui donner," said the omnibus-driver, climbing slowly up the
+little ladder, and taking the valise down again.
+
+"Voila la valise." And he put it on the ground. Nancy told the porter to
+take it. The omnibus-driver looked astonished. "Quoi? Et moi donc? Pas
+de pourboire?" And the porter spat and grinned, and said to Nancy: "Faut
+lui donner son pourboire."
+
+So Nancy gave the omnibus-driver fifty centimes, and told the porter to
+take the valise to the Hotel des Colonies. He shouldered the small
+portmanteau, and stepped briskly and lightly up the flight of steps that
+leads to the Place du Casino. Nancy followed, with Anne-Marie holding on
+to her skirts. An old woman sitting with her basket at the foot of the
+stairs offered them oranges. Nancy said, "Non, merci," and hurried on.
+But Anne-Marie wanted one. She was tired and hungry, and began to cry.
+So Nancy stopped and bought an orange. Then she lifted Anne-Marie in her
+arms, and hurried up the steps after the porter. At the top of the
+winding flight Nancy looked round. It was a light June evening. Where
+the sky was palest the new moon looked like a little gilt slit in the
+sky, letting the light of heaven show through.
+
+The street was deserted. The porter had vanished. Anne-Marie began to
+cry because she wanted her orange peeled, and Nancy, after hurrying
+forward a few steps, stopped, lifted the child on to the low wall, sat
+down beside her, and peeled the orange. Nancy was convinced that her
+portmanteau was gone for ever, but nothing seemed to matter much, so
+long as Anne-Marie did not cry. She looked at the light sky, the
+palm-trees, and the smooth pearl-grey sea. She wondered where the Hotel
+des Colonies was, and whether Aldo had not received the telegram. The
+legends of Monte Carlo murders and suicides traversed her mind for an
+instant. Then Anne-Marie, who had never sat on a wall eating oranges,
+lifted her face, smudged with tears and juice, and said: "Nice! Nice
+evelything. I like." So Nancy liked too.
+
+They found the Hotel des Colonies after many wanderings, and there was
+the porter with the valise waiting for them. Did Monsieur della Rocca
+live here? Yes. Had he received a telegram? No; here was the telegram
+waiting for monsieur. Did they know where was monsieur?
+
+"Eh! you will find him at the Casino," said the stout proprietress.
+
+Nancy asked to be shown to her husband's room, but as it turned out to
+be a very small _mansarde_ at the top of the house, Nancy took another
+room, and there Anne-Marie went to bed under the mosquito-netting, and
+was asleep at once. Nancy went downstairs. The salon was dark. Madame la
+Proprietaire sat in the garden with an old lady and a little fat boy.
+
+"If you want to go to the Casino," she said, "I will look after the
+little angel upstairs!"
+
+But Nancy said: "Oh no, thank you."
+
+Then the old lady said: "Allez donc! Allez donc! Vous savez bien les
+hommes!... Ca pourrait ne pas rentrer." Then she added: "I have been
+here twelve years. This, my little grandson, was born here. You can go,
+tranquillement. The petit ange will be all right."
+
+Nancy went upstairs for her hat. Anne-Marie was asleep and never
+stirred. So Nancy went through the little garden again with hesitant
+feet, and turned her face to the Casino. The streets were almost empty.
+She was in her dark travelling-dress, and nobody noticed her. As she
+passed the Hotel de Paris she saw the people dining at the tables with
+the little red lights lit. In the square round the flower-beds other
+people sat in twos and threes; and over the way, in the Cafe de Paris,
+the Tziganes in red coats were playing "Sous la Feuillee."
+
+Nancy suddenly felt frightened and sad. What was she doing here, all
+alone, at night in this unknown place, and little Anne-Marie sleeping in
+that large bed all alone in a strange hotel? She felt as if she were in
+a dream, and hurried on, dizzy and scared. A man, passing, said:
+"Bonsoir, mademoiselle;" and Nancy ran on with a beating heart, up the
+steps and into the brilliantly lighted atrium. Two men in scarlet and
+white livery stopped her, and asked what she wanted; then they showed
+her into an open room on the left, where men that looked like judges and
+lawyers sat in two rows behind desks waiting for her.
+
+She stepped uncertainly up to one of them--he was bald with a pointed
+beard--and said: "Pardon ... I am looking for Monsieur della Rocca."
+
+"Ah, indeed," said the man with the beard. "I have not the pleasure of
+his acquaintance." And a fair man sitting near him smiled.
+
+"Have you no idea where I can find him?" said Nancy, blushing until
+tears came to her eyes.
+
+"What is he? What does he do?" asked the fair man.
+
+"He--he came here three weeks ago. He--has a system," stammered Nancy.
+"I telegraphed, but he did not receive my telegram. And the lady of the
+hotel said I should find him here."
+
+A few people who had entered and stood about were listening with amused
+faces.
+
+"Ha, ha! You say monsieur has a system?" said the man with a beard in a
+loud voice. And he nodded significantly to someone opposite him whom
+Nancy could not see. She felt that by mentioning the system she had
+ruined her husband's chances for ever. But nothing seemed to matter
+except to find him, and not to be alone any more.
+
+"At what hotel are you staying, mademoiselle?" asked the fair man.
+
+"Hotel des Colonies," said Nancy, in a trembling voice.
+
+"And your name, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Giovanna Desiderata Felicita della Rocca," said Nancy. And the whole
+row of men smiled, while the one before whom she stood wrote her name in
+a large book.
+
+"Your profession?"
+
+Nancy had read "Alice in Wonderland" when she was a child, and now she
+knew that she was asleep. Otherwise, why should she be telling these
+people that she wrote poems?
+
+She told them so. And they pinched their noses and pulled their
+moustaches, because they were laughing--they were _pouffant de
+rire_--and they did not want to show it.
+
+"And ... she did nothing else but write poems? Nothing else at all?"
+
+"No, nothing." And as the man with the beard seemed suddenly to be
+staring her through and through, she added nervously: "Except ... I have
+begun a book ... a novel. But it is not finished."
+
+The fair man suddenly handed her a little piece of blue cardboard, and
+requested her to write her name on it. She said, "Why?" and the man made
+a gesture with his hand that meant, "It has nothing to do with me. Do
+not do so if you do not wish."
+
+All the others smiled and bent their heads down, and pretended to write.
+
+Nancy looked round her with the expression of a hunted rabbit. A man was
+coming in, sauntering along with his hand in his pocket. He was English,
+Nancy saw at a glance. He reminded her a little of Mr. Kingsley. Tom
+Avory's daughter went straight towards the new-comer, and said:
+
+"You are English?"
+
+"I am," said the Englishman.
+
+"Will you please help me? My father was English," said Nancy, with a
+little break in her voice. "They ... they want me to write my name.
+Shall I do it?"
+
+The Englishman smiled slightly under his straight-clipped, light
+moustache. "Do you want to go into the gaming-rooms?"
+
+"Yes," said Nancy.
+
+"Well, write your name, then," he said, and walked back to the desk
+beside her. "You will see me do it too," he added, smiling, as he gave
+up a card and got another one in return, on the back of which he wrote
+"Frederick Allen."
+
+All the employes were quite serious again, and seemed to have forgotten
+Nancy's existence. She signed her card, and entered the atrium at the
+Englishman's side.
+
+"I am looking for my husband," she explained, and told him the story of
+the system, and the telegram, and the hotel. "I feel as if I had been
+telling all this over and over and over again, like the history of the
+wolf." She smiled, and the dimple dipped sweetly in her left cheek. She
+was flushed, and her dark hair had twisted itself into little damp
+ringlets on her forehead. Mr. Allen looked at her curiously.
+
+"I am sure I have seen you before," he said. But he could not remember
+where. Nancy said she thought not.
+
+"Oh, I am sure of it," said Mr. Allen. "I remember your smile."
+
+But the smile he remembered had belonged to Valeria, when she stood on a
+little bridge in Hertfordshire, and took from his hands a garden hat
+that had fallen into the water.
+
+They went through the rooms, and the chink, chink, of the money, and the
+heavy perfume, made Nancy dizzy and bewildered. Aldo was nowhere to be
+seen. They went from table to table--the season was ended, and one could
+see each player at a glance--then into the _trente-et-quarante_ rooms,
+which were hushed and darkened; then through the "buffet," and out into
+the atrium again.
+
+Nancy looked up at her companion, and tears gathered in her eyes. "I
+cannot imagine where he is! You do not think--you do not think----" And
+in her wide, frightened eyes passed the vision of Aldo, lifeless under
+a palm-tree in the gardens, his divine eyes broken, his soft hair
+clotted with blood.
+
+"I think he is all right enough," said the Englishman. "We can look in
+the Cafe de Paris."
+
+They left the atrium and went down the steps and out into the square
+again. The "Valse Bleue" was swaying its hackneyed sweetness across the
+dusk. Nancy started--surely that was Aldo! There, coming out of the Cafe
+de Paris, with a fat woman in white walking beside him. That was Aldo!
+Nancy hurried on, then stopped. The Englishman stood still beside her,
+and stared discreetly at the trees on his right-hand side. Aldo and the
+woman had sauntered off to the left, and now sat down on a bench facing
+the Credit Lyonnais.
+
+"Will you wait a minute?" said Nancy. And she ran off towards the bench,
+while Mr. Allen waited and gazed into the trees.
+
+Yes, it was Aldo. She heard him laugh. Who could that fat woman be? She
+hurried on, and stopped a few paces from them.
+
+Aldo, turning round, saw her. He was motionless with astonishment for
+one moment. Then he bent forward, and said a word or two to his
+companion. She nodded, and he rose and came quickly forward to Nancy.
+
+"What is it?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
+
+"Oh, Aldo!" she said, tears of relief filling her eyes. "At last! I have
+looked for you everywhere."
+
+"What is it?" repeated Aldo, in an impatient whisper. "Not--not
+Anne-Marie? She is all right?"
+
+"Oh yes, dear," said Nancy, drying her eyes. "Poor little sweet thing!
+She is fast asleep at the hotel. Come along! Come and thank an English
+gentleman who----" She was about to slip her arm through his when he
+drew back.
+
+"Don't!" he said. "Go back to the hotel at once! I shall be there in
+five minutes. You don't want to spoil everything, do you?"
+
+"Spoil what?" said Nancy.
+
+"Everything," said Aldo. "Our prospects, our future, everything."
+
+"Why? How? What do you mean?" Nancy looked across at the broad figure in
+white sitting on the bench; she had turned round, and seemed to be
+looking at Nancy through a _lorgnon_. Nancy could discern a large face
+and golden hair under a white straw hat. "Who is that?"
+
+"Oh, she's all right," said Aldo. "I have no time to explain now. Go
+home, and do as I tell you. If you don't," he added, as he saw indignant
+protest rising to Nancy's lips, "you and the child will have to bear the
+consequences. Remember what I tell you----you and the child."
+
+Then he raised his hat, and went back to the bench where the woman was
+awaiting him. Nancy, paralyzed with astonishment, saw him sit down, saw
+his plausible back and explanatory gestures, while the woman still
+looked at her through her long-handled _lorgnon_.
+
+She walked slowly back in stupefaction. The Englishman stood where she
+had left him, at the foot of the Casino steps, facing the trees. He had
+lit a cigarette. He turned, when she was near him, and threw the
+cigarette away. He said:
+
+"Are you coming into the rooms again?"
+
+"No," said Nancy.
+
+"Shall I see you to your hotel?"
+
+"No," said Nancy; and stood there, dull and ashamed.
+
+"Well," said the Englishman, putting out his hand in a brisk,
+matter-of-fact way, "good-night." He shook her chilly hand. Then he
+ventured consolation. "All the same a hundred years hence," he said, and
+turned quickly into the Casino.
+
+He did not stay. He came out a moment afterwards, and followed the
+dreary little figure in its grey travelling dress that went slowly up
+the street, and round to the right. When he had seen her safely enter
+the garden of the hotel he turned back.
+
+"Poor little girl!" he said. "I wonder where I met her before?"
+
+Aldo entered the hotel half an hour later, and went to Nancy's room,
+armed with soothing and diplomatic explanations. But Nancy was on her
+knees by Anne-Marie's bed, with her face buried in the mosquito-netting,
+and did not move when he entered.
+
+"Why, Nancy, what's the matter?"
+
+"Don't wake her, please," said Nancy.
+
+"But I wanted to tell you----"
+
+"Hush!" said Nancy, with her finger on her lips and her eyes on
+Anne-Marie.
+
+"Then come to my room. I want to speak to you," said Aldo.
+
+"No," said Nancy.
+
+"Well," said Aldo, "I think I ought to explain----"
+
+"Hush!" said Nancy again. Then she sat on a chair near the child's bed,
+and put her face down again in the mosquito-netting.
+
+Aldo stood about the room for a time. He called her name twice, but she
+did not answer. Then he went upstairs to his little room feeling
+injured.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Early next morning Aldo went out to buy a doll for Anne-Marie. He got it
+at the Condamine, where things are cheaper. It went to his heart to
+spend seven francs fifty centimes--a _mise_ and a half--but the cheaper
+ones were really too hideous to buy peace with. For one mad moment he
+thought of buying a doll with real eyelashes that cost twenty-eight
+francs. But considerations of economy were stronger than his fears, and
+he took the one for seven francs fifty, whose painted eyelashes remained
+irrelevantly at the top of the eyelids even when they were closed.
+
+Anne-Marie was delighted.
+
+Nancy was a pale and chilly statue. Aldo sent Anne-Marie and the
+Condamine doll to play in the garden, while he in the _salon de lecture_
+explained.
+
+The systems were rank and rotten. All of them. Rank--and--rotten.
+Grimaux, the croupier, had told him so. There was only one way of
+winning, and that was----
+
+"I know all that," said Nancy. "Who was that woman?"
+
+Aldo raised reproachful, nocturnal eyes to her face. She looked smaller
+than usual, but very stern.
+
+"Nancy," he said. "Tesoro mio! My treasure!..."
+
+But Nancy ignored the eyes and the outstretched hand. "Who is she?"
+
+"She is nobody--absolutely nobody! An old thing with a yellow wig. Her
+name is Doyle. How can you go on like that, my love?"
+
+But Nancy could go on, and did. "She is English?"
+
+"No, no; American. A weird old thing from the prairies." And Aldo
+laughed loudly, but alone.
+
+"Well?" said Nancy, with tight lips, when Aldo had quite finished
+laughing.
+
+"Well, Grimaux, who has been here sixteen years, said to me: 'The
+mistake everyone makes is to double on their losses. When you lose----'"
+
+Aldo's slim hands waved, his shoulders shrugged, his long eyes turned
+upward. Nancy watched him, cold and detached. "He looks like the
+oyster-sellers of Santa Lucia!" she said to herself. "How could I ever
+think him beautiful?" Then she saw Anne-Marie in the garden kissing the
+Condamine doll, and she forgave him.
+
+"When you lose," Aldo was saying, "you run after your losses--you
+double, you treble, you go on, _et voila! la debacle_--whereas when you
+win you go carefully, staking little stakes, satisfied with a louis at a
+time, and when you have won one hundred francs, out you go, saying:
+'That is enough for to-day!' Now that is wrong, quite wrong. What you
+ought to do is to follow up your wins, so that when the streak of luck
+_does_ come--"
+
+"I have heard quite enough about that," said Nancy. "Tell me the rest."
+
+"Well," said Aldo sulkily, "I wish you would not jump at a fellow. The
+rest is merely this: The good old prairie-chicken"--he went off into
+another peal of laughter, and left off again when he had finished--"she
+was--she was just promising to put up the money when you came along. And
+you know what women are. They--they hate families," said Aldo.
+
+Nancy raised her eyes to his face without moving.
+
+"I do not know why you look at me like that," said Aldo sulkily.
+
+Nancy got up. "There is a train at one o'clock," she said; "we will take
+it."
+
+She went upstairs; Aldo went out into the garden and played with
+Anne-Marie and the Condamine doll.
+
+At twelve Nancy looked out of the window. She called Anne-Marie, who
+came unwillingly, dragging the doll upstairs, and followed by Aldo.
+
+"We are ready," said Nancy, tying the white ribbons of a floppy straw
+hat under Anne-Marie's chin. Anne-Marie sat on the bed kicking her feet
+in their tan travelling-boots up and down. Aldo sat near the table, and
+drummed on it with his fingers.
+
+"Who is going to pay the hotel bill?" he said.
+
+Nancy looked up. "Have you no money?"
+
+"I have eighty-two francs and forty centimes," said Aldo.
+
+"Where is the rest?"
+
+"Gone."
+
+Nancy sat down on the bed near Anne-Marie. There was a long silence.
+
+Aldo fidgeted, and said: "I told you the systems were all wrong."
+
+Nancy did not answer. She was thinking. She understood nothing about
+money, but she knew what this meant. How were they to go back to Milan?
+How were they to live? With her mother? Her mother had had to scrape and
+be careful since the forty thousand francs had been given to Aldo. She
+had brought smaller boxes of chocolate to Anne-Marie. She took no cabs,
+and was wearing a last year's cloak of Aunt Carlotta's. Aunt Carlotta
+herself was always grumbling that when she wanted to spend five francs
+she turned them over three times, and then put them into her purse
+again, and that Adele could not find a husband because her dot was
+small, and men asked for nothing but money nowadays. There was Zio
+Giacomo, dear, grumpy old man. But he had all Nino's old debts to pay,
+and everybody was always borrowing from him. Distant relations and seedy
+old friends visited and wrote to him periodically; and Zio Giacomo was
+enraged, and always vowed that this would be the last time.... The only
+wealthy person connected with the family was Aldo's brother, Carlo. But
+Nancy knew that Aldo had exhausted all from that source. What would
+happen? What were they going to do? She looked at Aldo, who sat in the
+arm-chair, with his head thrown back and his eyes on the ceiling. He
+knew she had likened him to San Sebastian, and now to move her pity as
+much as possible he assumed the expression of the adolescent saint
+pierced with arrows.
+
+Nancy turned her eyes from him. The sight of him irritated her beyond
+endurance. She looked at Anne-Marie, sitting good and happy beside her,
+playing with the doll. She bent and kissed the child's cool pink cheek.
+
+Aldo sat up, and said: "I had better go."
+
+"Where to?" said Nancy.
+
+"To the Casino, of course," said Aldo. "I promised to be there at
+twelve-thirty."
+
+"To meet that woman?"
+
+"Yes," said Aldo sulkily.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nancy, and her hands clasped in deepest shame for him.
+"What blood is in your veins?"
+
+It was the blood of many generations of Neapolitan lazzaroni--beautiful,
+lazy animals, content to lie stretched in the sun--crossed and altered
+by the blood of the economical shopkeeping grandfather, who sold corals
+and views of Vesuvius in the Via Caracciolo.
+
+Aldo felt that it was time to hold his own. "It is easy enough for you
+to talk," he said. "But what else can I do?"
+
+Anne-Marie lifted the Condamine doll to her mother. "Kiss," she said.
+Then she stretched it out towards her father. "Kiss," she said. Aldo
+jumped up, and fell on his knees before them both. He kissed the doll,
+and he kissed Anne-Marie's little coat, and Nancy's knees, and then he
+put his head on Anne-Marie's lap and wept. Anne-Marie screamed and
+cried, and Nancy kissed them both, and comforted them.
+
+"Never mind--never mind! It will all come right. Don't cry, Aldo! It is
+dreadful! I cannot bear to see you cry."
+
+Aldo sobbed, and said he ought to go and shoot himself. And after Nancy
+had forgiven, and comforted, and encouraged him, he raised his reddened
+eyes and blurred face. "Well, then, shall I go?" he said.
+
+Nancy turned white. It was hopeless. He did not understand. He was what
+he was, and did not know that one could be anything else.
+
+"No," she said. And he sat down and sighed, and looked out of the
+window.
+
+Nancy went to the stout proprietress and asked for the bill. While it
+was being made out, the kindly woman said: "Are you leaving to-day,
+madame?"
+
+Nancy blushed, and said: "I do not know until I have seen the bill."
+
+The proprietress, who had heard the noise upstairs--for Aldo cried loud
+like a child--and was slightly anxious in regard to her money, said:
+"Has monsieur already had the _viatique_?" Nancy did not understand.
+"The _viatique_ of the Casino. If monsieur has played and lost, the
+administration will give him something back. Let him go and ask for it.
+And," she added, glancing at the brooch at Nancy's neck, "if perhaps
+madame should wish to know it, the Mont de Piete is not far--just past
+the Credit Lyonnais."
+
+The bill was one hundred and twenty-three francs. Nancy told Aldo about
+the _viatique_, and he said, with a hang-dog air, he would go and ask
+for it.
+
+"How much do you think it will be?" asked Nancy.
+
+"I don't know," said Aldo, who felt that he must be glum.
+
+"Two or three thousand francs?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Aldo.
+
+"You will accept nothing from that woman. You promise!"
+
+"I promise," said Aldo, laying flabby fingers in her earnest,
+outstretched hand.
+
+So he went, and when he was out of sight of the hotel he hurried.
+
+Nancy packed his trunk for him, and felt pity and half remorse as she
+folded his limp, well-known clothes, his helpless coats and defenceless
+waistcoats, and put them away. He had no character. It was not his
+fault. She ought not to have allowed him to come here. He was not a
+wall; Clarissa had told her so long ago. He was weak, and limp, and
+foolish. Well, Nancy would be the wall. Already she knew what to do. Say
+the Casino gave them back three or four thousand francs. They would go
+back to Milan, give up the home in Via Senato, and take a cheaper
+apartment in the Quartieri Nuovi. She would write. She would work again.
+Ah! at the thought of her work her blood quickened. The baby should stay
+with Valeria, because it was impossible to do any serious work with
+Anne-Marie tugging at one's skirts and at one's heart-strings. She
+would go and see the baby every evening after she had written five or
+six hours. Aldo would return to Zio Giacomo's office. Good old Zio
+Giacomo would be glad to take him back for Valeria's and Nancy's sake,
+and they would live quietly and modestly. Aldo should superintend the
+household expenses, and squabble over the bills with the servant--he
+loved to do that; and by the time the three, or four, or five thousand
+francs that the Casino had given them were finished The Book would be
+out. "The Cycle of Lyrics" had brought her in twenty thousand francs,
+and it was only a slender volume of verse. This book would make a great
+stir in Italy--she knew it--and it would be translated into all
+languages. She wished she had the manuscript here. She felt that she
+could start it again at once.
+
+She closed her eyes and remembered. All the people she had created,
+bound together by the scarlet thread of the conception, rushed out from
+the neglected pages, and entered her heart again. She felt like
+Browning's lion; you could see by her eye, wide and steady, she was
+leagues in the desert already....
+
+Suddenly Anne-Marie, who had been playing like a little lamb of gold on
+the balcony, gave a scream: the doll had gone. The doll had fallen over
+the balcony. It was gone! It was dead! Nancy looked over the ledge. Yes,
+there lay the Condamine doll on the gravel-path in the garden. And it
+was dead. Half of its face had jumped away and lay some distance off.
+
+Aldo, entering the garden at that moment, saw it, and picked it up. Then
+he looked up at the balcony, and saw Nancy's troubled face and the
+distracted countenance of his little daughter.
+
+He waved his hand, and went out again, taking the dead doll with him. He
+hailed a carriage, and told the driver to drive quickly to the
+Condamine. He bought the doll with the real eyelashes for twenty-two
+francs--he made them knock off six francs--and returned with clatter of
+horses and cracking of whip to the hotel.
+
+When Anne-Marie saw the doll, and when Nancy saw Anne-Marie's face, Aldo
+knew he was forgiven and reinstated.
+
+"What have they given you back at the Casino?" asked Nancy.
+
+"I don't know. I am to go again in two hours," said Aldo. "Let us have
+luncheon."
+
+They had an excellent luncheon, for, confronted with a desperate
+situation in which the economizing of fifty centimes meant nothing, the
+ancestral shopkeeper in Aldo's veins bowed, and left room for the
+lazzarone, who ate his spaghetti to-day, and troubled not about the
+morrow.
+
+"If they give you five or six thousand francs, I suppose we must not
+complain. We cannot expect to get back the entire eighteen thousand,"
+said Nancy.
+
+"No," said Aldo, with downcast eyelids. He knew something about
+_viatiques_, but he would not let this knowledge spoil their lunch.
+After all, the luncheon cost twelve francs. It must not be wasted.
+
+"Did you see her?" asked Nancy, tying a table-napkin round the doll's
+neck at Anne-Marie's request.
+
+"Whom?" said Aldo, with his mouth full.
+
+"The--the prairie-chicken," said Nancy, to make him feel that he was
+quite forgiven.
+
+"Oh yes; I saw her," said Aldo.
+
+Nancy put down her knife and fork, and felt faint. "Well?"
+
+Aldo cleared his throat, took a sip of wine, and said, "She is an old
+beast."
+
+There was a pause, then he continued: "I made a clean breast of it. I
+told her who you were, and about Anne-Marie; and when I had finished she
+called me a--a--oh, some vulgar American name, and off she walked."
+
+Nancy reached across the table and patted his hand. "That's right,
+Aldo."
+
+"I told you," he said, nodding his head, "that that kind of woman cannot
+stand the idea of a fellow having a family."
+
+"Perhaps," suggested Nancy, dimpling, "she could not stand the idea of
+the way the fellow treated his family."
+
+"Well, never mind," said Aldo. "She's done with."
+
+But she wasn't.
+
+At four o'clock Aldo, Nancy, Anne-Marie, and the doll went out, and down
+to the square in front of the Casino. Nancy and the child sat on a bench
+facing the Casino, and Aldo went in to get the _viatique_. He came out a
+few minutes later looking flushed and angry.
+
+"The _canailles_! The thieves! The robbers!"
+
+"What is it?" said Nancy.
+
+"They have given me one hundred and fifty francs!" and he held out the
+three fifty-franc notes contemptuously.
+
+"A hundred--and--fifty francs!" gasped Nancy.
+
+"Nancy, there is only one thing to do," said Aldo. "Go in and play them.
+Plank them down on a number, and if they go, let them go, and be done
+with."
+
+"Do it," said Nancy, for nothing mattered.
+
+"I can't," said Aldo. "I can't go in--not until this miserable dole is
+paid back. You must go. They will let you in. Go on."
+
+Nancy rose, flushed and trembling. "What do I do? How do I play it?"
+
+"Oh, anyhow. It makes no difference," said Aldo, with his face in his
+hands, suddenly realizing that they three possessed in the world one
+hundred and ninety francs, and a debt of one hundred and twenty-three.
+He turned to the child.
+
+"Say a number, Anne-Marie! Any old number!"
+
+Anne-Marie did not understand.
+
+"You know your numbers, darling," said Nancy, "that grandmamma taught
+you."
+
+"Oh, yeth," said Anne-Marie. "One, two, three, four."
+
+"Stop. All right," said Aldo. "Nancy, go in and play--at any table you
+like--the _quatre premiers_ and _quatre en plein_. That gives you zero,
+too. Go ahead! _Les quatre premiers_ and _quatre en plein_. Remember.
+Tell the croupier to do it for you."
+
+Nancy went straight in, and to the left, where the men sat who had
+laughed at her the night before. They recognized her, and gave her a
+card at once.
+
+She went into the rooms. Chink, chink; chink, chink. She went to the
+table on the left. A red-haired croupier sat at the end of the table
+nearest her, and she went to him, and gave him one of the fifty-franc
+notes.
+
+"Les quatre premiers et quatre en plein," she said.
+
+But it was too late. "Rien ne va plus," said the man in the centre.
+"Trente-deux, noir, pair et passe."
+
+The croupier handed her back the note. "You're lucky," he said. "You
+would have lost." She repeated her phrase, and he put the note on the
+top of his rake and passed it across the table. "Quatre premiers," he
+said, and the man in the middle placed it.
+
+"Et quoi encore?" said the croupier, looking at Nancy.
+
+"Quatre premiers et quatre en plein," repeated Nancy, mechanically.
+
+"Combien a l'en plein?" said the man, holding out his hand.
+
+Nancy gave him the second fifty-franc note, and he passed it up on his
+rake. "Quatre en plein."
+
+"Quatre en plein. Tout va aux billets," said the man in the centre; and
+the ball whizzed round. Nancy's heart was thumping; it shook her; it
+beat like a drum. The little ball dropped, ran along awhile, stopped,
+clattered and clicked, and fell into a compartment.
+
+"Trois."
+
+Everybody looked at Nancy as she was paid, and she collected the gold
+and silver with clumsy hands. "Encore," she said, giving the croupier
+the remaining bill and some louis.
+
+"Quoi?" said the croupier.
+
+"Encore la meme chose." The ball was running round.
+
+"Mais ca y est," said the croupier, for the fifty-franc note that had
+won still lay at the corner of the top line.
+
+"Mais non, mais non," said Nancy, who was very much confused, "premier
+quatre"--the man placed the note on the other note still lying
+there--"et quatre en plein." But for this last it was too late.
+
+"Rien ne va plus. Zero!"
+
+"Voila! ca y est!" said the croupier, returning the gold to her, and
+waiting with the rake on the table for the eight hundred francs to be
+paid.
+
+What is the secret of luck? How shall it be forced? How explained?
+Whatever Nancy did, she won. Wherever her money lay there the ball
+went. When she thought she had enough--her hands were full, her place at
+the table was piled up with louis and silver and notes--and she was
+withdrawing her remaining stake and the gold paid on it with clumsy
+rake, she moved it away from the numbers, and left it on "pair" while
+she put down the rake. A minute was lost while a woman said something to
+her, and before she could take the money up the ball had fallen. "Vingt.
+Pair et passe." It was doubled.
+
+When she at last tremblingly collected it all in her hands, and put gold
+and notes as best she could into her pocket, she rose, and could hardly
+see. Her cheeks were flaming. She passed out of the rooms, into the
+atrium, and down the steps. Aldo sat on the bench with his elbows on his
+knees and his head in his hands and the doll in his arms. Anne-Marie was
+running up and down in front of him.
+
+"Aldo," said Nancy, and sat down weakly at his side.
+
+"Gone?" asked Aldo, raising a miserable face.
+
+"No!" Nancy had a little hysterical laugh. She piled the money into his
+hands, then into her lap, while he counted it quickly, deftly. People
+passing looked at them, and smiled.
+
+"Seven thousand eight hundred francs," said Aldo, very pale.
+
+"Oh, but there is more;" and Nancy dived into her pocket again. There
+was over fourteen thousand francs.
+
+"Come into the Cafe de Paris," said Aldo.
+
+They drank coffee and _creme de menthe_, and Anne-Marie had strawberry
+ice and cakes. The band played "Sous la Feuillee."
+
+"Oh what a lovely world it is!" said Nancy, with a little sob. "Oh,
+what a glorious place! I love it all! I love everybody!"
+
+"I love evlybody," said Anne-Marie, taking a third cake with careful
+choice. Aldo and Nancy laughed.
+
+The Englishman passed, and Nancy called him. She introduced him to Aldo,
+and Aldo thanked him for being kind to Nancy the evening before. Nancy
+told him about the fourteen thousand francs she had won, and they all
+laughed, and the band played, and the sun shone and went down.
+
+"The best train for Italy," said Mr. Allen suddenly, "is at six-twenty.
+You have just an hour. It's a splendid train. You get to Milan at
+eleven."
+
+Aldo looked at Nancy, and Nancy looked at the sky. It was light and
+tender, and the air was still. The Tsiganes were playing "Violets," and
+in the distance lay the sea.
+
+"We must take that train," said Aldo, getting up and rapping his saucer
+for the waiter.
+
+"Oh no!" said Nancy. "Please not! Let us stay here and be happy."
+
+"Stay here and be happy," said Anne-Marie, with a bewitching smile.
+
+They stayed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Aldo repaid the _viatique_ and went into the gambling-rooms with Nancy.
+The proprietress of the hotel got them a _bonne_ from Vintimille, who
+walked up and down in the gardens with Anne-Marie, and carried the doll.
+She cost nothing--only fifty francs a month! They arranged to take
+_pension_ at the hotel. That also cost nothing--twelve francs a day
+each. They took drives that cost nothing--sixteen francs to La Turbie,
+twenty francs to Cap Martin. Nothing cost anything. Ten minutes at the
+tables, and Nancy had won enough to pay everything for a month.
+
+She sent a cloak to her mother, which Valeria vowed was much too
+beautiful to wear. She sent presents to Aunt Carlotta and Zio Giacomo,
+to Adele and to Nino, to Carlo and to Clarissa. And she remembered a man
+with no legs, who sat in a little cart on the Corso in Milan, and she
+sent her mother one hundred francs to give him. Anne-Marie was dressed
+in a white corded silk coat, and a white-plumed hat. The _bonne_ had a
+large Scotch bow with streamers.
+
+This lasted ten days. On the eleventh day it was ended. Nancy played
+gaily, and lost. She played carefully, and lost. She played tremblingly,
+and lost. She played recklessly, and lost. Aldo, who did not trust his
+own luck, followed her from table to table, saying: "Be careful!...
+Don't!... Do!... Why did you? Why didn't you? I told you so!" And at
+each table _la guigne_ was waiting for them, pushing Nancy's hand in the
+wrong direction, whispering the wrong numbers in her ear. Ten times they
+made up their minds to stop, and ten times they decided to try just once
+more. "We have about nine thousand francs left. With that we are paupers
+for the rest of our lives. With luck we might recoup."
+
+This lasted two days. On the third day they had one thousand and eighty
+francs left. "Play the eighty," said Aldo, "and we will keep the
+thousand." They lost the eighty, and then four hundred francs more.
+"What is the good of six hundred francs," said Aldo, and they played
+on.
+
+Their last two louis Aldo threw on a _transversale_. They won. "Let us
+leave it all on," said Aldo. They won again.
+
+"Shall we risk it again?" said Nancy, with flushed cheeks and galloping
+heart.
+
+Aldo's lips were dry and pale; he could not speak. He nodded. And a
+third time they won. The croupier flattened the notes out on the table
+and knocked the little pile of gold lightly over with his rake. He
+counted, and paid five times the already quintupled stake.
+
+Aldo bent forward and picked up a rake to draw in his winnings. A man
+sitting near the centre of the table put out his hand, and took the
+piled-up notes and gold.
+
+"Ah, _pardon_!" cried Aldo, striking the rake down on the notes and
+holding them; "that is mine."
+
+"Pardon! pardon! pardon!" said the man, laying his hand firmly on the
+notes. "C'est ma mise a moi! Voila deja trois coups que je l'y
+laisse----"
+
+Aldo was incoherent with excitement, and Nancy joined in, very pale. "It
+is ours, monsieur."
+
+"Ah, mais c'est par trop fort," cried the other, who was French, and had
+a loud voice. He pushed Aldo's rake aside, and took the money.
+
+Aldo appealed to the croupiers, and to the people near him, and to the
+people opposite him. They shrugged their shoulders and raised their
+eyebrows. They had not seen, they did not know.
+
+"Faites vos jeux, messieurs," said the croupier.
+
+The ball whizzed; the game went on. Aldo, burning with rage, and Nancy
+pale and dazed, left the table.
+
+"Oh, Aldo! Let us go away. This is a horrible place. Let us go away."
+
+Aldo did not answer.
+
+They went out into the sunshine. Laughing women lifting light dresses
+and showing their high heels came hurrying across the square. The warm
+air was heavy with the scent of flowers. They turned into the gardens,
+and before them was the dancing sea; and Anne-Marie, looking like an
+Altezza Serenissima, tripped up and down in her white corded silk coat,
+her brief curls bobbing under her white-plumed hat.
+
+Behind her walked the Vintimille servant with the Scotch silk bow on her
+head, and carried the doll with the real eyelashes.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                     NEW YORK.
+
+MOTHER DEAR,
+
+I shall send you this letter when nothing that I have written in it is
+true any more. If we ever live through and out of it, you shall know; if
+not--but, of course, we shall. We must. One cannot die of poverty, can
+one? One does not really, actually suffer real hunger, does one, mother
+dear? "Zu Grunde gehen!" The sombre old German words keep rumbling in my
+head like far-away thunder. "Zu Grunde gehen!"
+
+I do not suppose one really does go "_zu Grunde_." But when one has
+forty-five dollars in the world, and a funny little bird with its beak
+open expecting to be fed--and fed on chocolates and bonbons when it
+wants them--one becomes demoralized and frightened, and pretends to
+think that one might really starve.
+
+Do not think it unkind that I did not come to Milan to kiss you and say
+good-bye. I had not the heart to do so. Aldo, too, said we could not
+afford it, and, indeed, our combined _viatiques_ and our jewellery only
+just enabled us to come here.
+
+We landed three days ago. Yesterday morning I sent you a postcard:
+"Arrived happily." Happily! Oh, mother dear, I think there must be a
+second higher and happier heaven for those who are brave enough to tell
+untruths of this kind. Enough; we landed, Anne-Marie looking like a
+spoilt princess; I with my Monte Carlo hat and coat, and high-heeled,
+impertinent shoes; and Aldo, a pallid Antinous, with forty-five dollars
+in his pocket-book.
+
+Then came the Via Crucis of looking for rooms. Mother, did I ever stay
+at the Hotel Nazionale in Rome, and descend languidly the red-carpeted
+stairs to the royal automobile that was to drive me to the Quirinal? Did
+I ever sit at home in Uncle Giacomo's large arm-chair and listen
+benignly to moon-struck poets reading their songs? Did I ever with
+languid fingers ring bells for servants, and order what I wanted?
+
+    "Cio avvenne forse ai tempi
+     D'Omero e di Valmichi----"
+
+That was another Nancy. This Nancy trudged for hours through straight
+and terrible streets called avenues, with a dismal husband and a tired
+baby at her side. Third Avenue, Fourth Avenue, then quickly across Fifth
+Avenue, which had nothing to do with us, and again across to Sixth
+Avenue ... and everywhere dirty shops, screaming children, jostling
+girls, rude men, trains rushing overhead, street-cars screeching and
+clanging. Then, at last, Seventh Avenue, where there were streets full
+of quiet, squalid boarding-houses, fewer screaming children, fewer dirty
+shops, and no trains. We went into a cheap, clean-looking place that a
+porter had told us of. A woman opened. She looked at my hat and coat,
+and at my shoes, and said: "What do you want?" "A room----" began Aldo.
+She shut the door without answering. At the next house a woman in a
+dirty silk dressing-gown opened the door. "Yes, they had rooms. Eight
+dollars a day. Meals a dollar." In the next house they took no children.
+In the next, no foreigners. Our expensive clothes in their cheap street
+made them suspicious. Aldo's handsome face made them suspicious. His
+Italian accent frightened them. And Anne-Marie cried every time a new
+face appeared at a new door.
+
+At last Aldo said: "I will go to the Italian consul. You wait here in a
+baker's shop." The consulate was at the other end of New York, and was
+closed when Aldo got there. When he returned, harassed and haggard, I
+had made friends with the baker's wife. She was German. I told her our
+History of the Wolf--that I was a poetess, and had met the Queen, and
+all about Monte Carlo. I don't think she believed or understood much,
+but she was sorry for me; and Anne-Marie, hearing us talk German,
+suddenly started piping: "Schlaf, Kindchen, schlaf!" The woman caught
+her up in her arms, and said: "Ach, du suesses! How does she come to know
+that?" And she took us all to 28th Street to the house of her sister,
+who gave us this room. It is clean, and the woman is kind.
+
+And now, what?
+
+I have bought myself a frightful pepper-and-salt coloured dress, and a
+black straw hat. I look like a "deserving poor." And Anne-Marie is
+wearing a dark blue woolly horror belonging to the woman's daughter.
+She must wear it, or Frau Schmidl would be offended. Frau Schmidl is the
+only friend we have in America.
+
+For the ranch is a myth of Aldo's. He never was on a ranch in his life.
+He met a Frenchman once with weak lungs, who had been in Texas, and who
+gave him all the romantic details that he used to recount to us. Do you
+remember, mother? On Lake Maggiore? He talked vaguely, and not much, it
+is true, of those bucking bronchoes he used to ride across the sweeping
+Western prairies, feeling the wind in his hair.... When I reproach him
+for his fables, he tells me that it was our fault. We insisted upon the
+details. We would hear all about it! He says Clarissa started the ranch
+legend, because she thought it sounded well. Then she left him to keep
+it up as best he could. Poor Aldo! He hates us in these clothes. And he
+hates the German things Frau Schmidl gives us to eat. He has gone to the
+Italian Consul for the third time to see if he can find some
+correspondence to do. I could give lessons, but it seems that there are
+many more people who want to give lessons than there are who want to
+take them. And then--there is Anne-Marie, who has to be taken care of.
+Anne-Marie! Frau Schmidl loves her because of her name. She says it is
+echt deutsch! She is a stout, fair woman, who speaks English strangely.
+When she enters the room, she says, nodding and laughing, "Now, and what
+makes the Anne-Marie?"
+
+The Anne-Marie likes the sound of the language, and imitates her. I
+dread to think what English the Anne-Marie will learn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aldo has found nothing to do. The Americans will have nothing to do with
+an Italian, and Italians will have still less to do with an Italian. We
+have eight dollars left.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If I write to you for money you will send it. And then? A few weeks
+hence we shall be where we are now. We must fight our battles alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have nothing left.
+
+Mr. Schmidl says he will let us keep the room--"for another week or
+two," he added gruffly; but his wife is not to feed us. "At least--not
+all of you," he added still more gruffly. "Only you--and the
+Anne-Marie." He is a poor man. He is quite right. But what about Aldo?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have sold the Monte Carlo clothes for twelve dollars. We feel that we
+are rehabilitated. And what have I been dreaming of? I can write. I
+shall send an article to the _Giornale Italo-Americano_. Unsigned, of
+course. I shall write it to-night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is accepted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is printed.
+
+It seems that that is all. They have told Aldo that they never pay for
+articles that are sent to them from the outside--even if they are as
+brilliant and original as this one. They only pay their own staff. Have
+they room on their staff for a brilliant and original writer? Plenty of
+room. But no money.
+
+Aldo is living on dates and a little rice. He speaks less than ever. I
+do not know what his thoughts are. I am afraid for him.
+
+To-day as I was taking Anne-Marie for a run in front of the house I met
+a man whom we knew in Italy, a Dr. Fioretti. He was an old friend of
+Nino's. Do you remember? He looked at me, and past me, blankly,
+unrecognizing. I thanked the fates. My knees ached with fear lest he
+should stop and say: "You here! What are you doing? Where do you live?"
+Where do I live? In this vile street near the negro quarter. What am I
+doing? Starving. Are we dreaming, mother? Oh, mother! mother! when did I
+fall asleep? I should like to wake up a little girl again in England.
+Was there not another little girl called Edith, with yellow hair? Surely
+I remember her. What became of her?... Or was she the girl who died?...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aldo will not leave the house any more. He will not speak to us any
+more. He sits and stares at us. I am afraid of him. I shall telegraph to
+you if I can find the money to do so. Mrs. Schmidl keeps Anne-Marie
+downstairs in her kitchen. But she is afraid of Aldo, too. I think they
+will turn us out. But they will keep the child, and take care of her.
+
+I shall go out. I shall ask everybody, anybody, to help me....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been to the Italian Church, to the Italian Consul, to the Italian
+Embassy. They will see. They will do what they can. There are many
+pitiable cases. Are we a "pitiable case"? How strange! They would not
+give me any money to send a telegram. They said they would telegraph
+themselves, after they had come to see us, and made inquiries....
+
+I stopped a woman in the street, and said, "I beg your pardon. Will
+you----" and then my courage failed and I asked where West 28th Street
+was. She directed me, and I turned back and walked in the direction I
+had come from.
+
+I came to Fifth Avenue, and walked up it in my shabby clothes. I passed
+rows of large houses. One of them had the windows open, and someone
+inside was playing "Der Musikant" of Hugo Wolff. And a woman's voice was
+singing:
+
+    "Wenn wir zwei zusammen waeren
+     Wuerd' das Singen mir vergeh'n."
+
+I stopped. I turned back, and walked up the wide stone steps. I rang the
+visitors' bell, and a manservant in ornate livery opened at once.
+
+"I wish to speak to the lady who is singing," I said.
+
+"Oh," said the man. I knew he thought me a beggar, and was going to send
+me away.
+
+"Tell her--tell her quickly," I said, "that--that Hugo Wolff told me I
+might come."
+
+Something in my face--oh, my despairing face, mother!--touched something
+human in the pompous automaton. He went straight into the drawing-room
+and gave my message. There was a basket of Easter lilies on the
+hall-table.
+
+The music stopped, and almost at once on the threshold of the
+drawing-room a lady appeared. She was young--hardly older than I--and
+beautiful, dressed in soft mauve cloth. She looked at me curiously, and
+then said suddenly:
+
+"Will you come in?"
+
+I went into the large, luxurious drawing-room. Titian's "Bella" looked
+down at me blandly with her reddened eyelids.
+
+"What message was that you sent?" she asked, with her graceful head on
+one side.
+
+My voice had almost left me. "I said Hugo Wolff told me to come in. I
+heard you singing 'Der Musikant'...."
+
+She laughed, and said: "Are you a musician?"
+
+I said: "No." And I thought of telling her the History of the Wolf. But
+I feared she might know my name, and tell the Italians in New York. And
+the Italo-Americano would print an article about it--and the Corriere
+della Sera in Milan would reprint it....
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you?" she said.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"Money?" she asked softly.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"How much do you need?"
+
+"Five dollars," I said.
+
+She smiled, and said: "Is that all? I should willingly do more for a
+friend of Hugo Wolff's!"
+
+She went out of the room, and closed the door behind her. She left me in
+my shabby clothes, in my black straw hat and my need of five dollars, in
+her gorgeous drawing-room, scattered with priceless ornaments in silver
+and gold, jewelled frames and trinkets lying all about the tables. I
+covered my face with my hands, and the tears rolled through my fingers.
+She came back a few minutes afterwards with a gold twenty-dollar piece
+in her hand. She gave it to me, and said, "For luck!" and added:
+
+"Is there nothing else I can do?" I nodded, with my eyes full of tears.
+"Yes!" and I looked at the piano.
+
+She smiled and sat down. She sang for me. I know she sang her very best.
+She had a lovely voice.
+
+When I went through the hall to the door two men-servants bowed me out
+as if I were a princess. And I went down the stairs weeping bitterly.
+
+I went along the street, crying and not caring who saw me. Then I sat
+down in Madison Square. Suddenly someone came and sat beside me. A
+woman. I felt her eyes fixed on me for a long time, and I turned and
+looked at her. There, under a turquoise toque, sat the golden hair and
+the large face of the prairie chicken.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Doyle?" I said.
+
+"What?" She turned quickly. "How do you know my name?" And she added,
+frowning: "What are you crying for?"
+
+"For love of a woman who has been kind to me," I said.
+
+"There are lots of kind women," she answered. "I'm kind. What do you
+want?"
+
+"I want you to come and talk to my husband," I said. "You know him. You
+met him in Monte Carlo. His name is Aldo della Rocca."
+
+"What? Della Rocca? That lovely Italian creature? That Apollo of
+Belvedere? Of course I remember him. Where is he? What is he doing
+here?"
+
+"Come and see," I said.
+
+And she came up to Mrs. Schmidl's house in 28th Street.
+
+That evening we dined with the prairie chicken, or rather, she invited
+herself to dine with us. She said "Poison!" when she tasted the
+Knoedelsuppe, and "Poison!" when she tasted the Blutwurst and Kraut. She
+is probably a very great lady, judging by her bad behaviour.
+
+In my heart hope opens timid eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Mrs. Doyle was a very great lady. Her husband had been a political
+"boss"; her sister had married an English baronet; and her daughter,
+Marge, eighteen years old, "a mere infant," as she said, had married
+Herbert van Osten, the Congressman.
+
+She was full of good ideas. "Now, you two might be the rage of New York
+in no time," she said, at the end of the dinner. "You are a Count,
+aren't you?" And she looked confidently at Aldo. "'Della Rocca'! That
+sounds like a Count."
+
+"Oh yes," said Aldo, with his shining white smile, humorously
+remembering his grandfather's name, "Esposito," which means a foundling,
+and the "Della Rocca" added to it because the little Esposito had been
+left on a rock near Posilippo.
+
+"Well, let me see. You must have an atelier of some kind. Ateliers are
+all the rage. And your wife----" Mrs. Doyle raised her sepia eyebrows
+and pinched her large chin pensively.
+
+"My wife is a great poetess," said Aldo.
+
+"Is she?" said Mrs. Doyle. "Well--let me see. She must--she must dress
+a little differently--red scarves and things--and look picturesque, and
+read her poems in salons here. Poetry is all the rage. And if it is
+Eyetalian, you know," she added encouragingly to Nancy, "no one will
+understand it. I shall discover you. I shall give an At Home.
+'Eyetalian poetry' in a corner of the cards. That's an elegant idea!"
+
+But Nancy was refractory. She said she would not wear red scarves, nor
+recite her poetry; and what was Aldo going to do in an atelier?
+
+"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Doyle, "faces like his are not met with every
+day on Broadway. I don't know how it is in your country, but his looks
+alone are enough to make him the rage here."
+
+Aldo nodded, looking at Nancy as if to say: "You see?"
+
+"But what is the good of being the rage if one has nothing to live on?
+What are we to eat?" asked Nancy, feeling brutal and unlovely, and
+_terre a terre_.
+
+"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Doyle. "If once you are the rage in a
+place like New York!" ... And she raised her round blue eyes to Frau
+Schmidl's ceiling, where languid flies walked slowly.
+
+But Nancy assured her that it was impossible. Could she not find some
+work for Aldo to do?
+
+"What work?" said Mrs. Doyle, resting an absent-minded blue gaze on the
+lustrous convolutions of Aldo's hair, on his white, narrow forehead, on
+his intense and violent eyes, and the scarlet arcuation of his vivid
+lips. "What work can he do?"
+
+"Oh!" Nancy said vaguely, "what work do men do? He has been to the
+University and taken a degree. He has studied law, but has not
+practised. I am sure he could do anything. He is very clever."
+
+"Oh yes," assented Mrs. Doyle dreamily.
+
+She was thinking. She was thinking of something her married daughter had
+been saying to her that very morning. Suddenly, she got up and said
+good-bye. She let Aldo help her into her long turquoise coat, and find
+her gloves; and then she sent him off to fetch a motor-cab. Alone with
+Nancy, she was about to open her large silver-net reticule when she saw
+Nancy's straight gaze fixed upon her. So she refrained, and kissed her
+instead.
+
+"Ta-ta, Apollo," she said, shaking a fat, white-gloved hand out of the
+carriage window to Aldo, who stood on the side-walk, bare-headed and
+deferential. Then, leaning back as the carriage slid along 7th Avenue
+and turned into 66th Street, she mused: "He will do--he will do
+elegantly. Won't Marge be delighted! That will teach Bertie to sit up.
+Elegant idea! Bertie will have to sit up."
+
+Bertie was not sitting up. His wife, Mrs. Doyle's daughter, was. And
+very straight she sat, with defiant, frizzy head and narrow lips, when
+she heard the front door open and close. But it was not to her husband's
+insubordinate footsteps. It was the indulgent swish of her mother's
+silken skirts that rustled slowly upwards.
+
+Bertie's wife sprang up and opened the door.
+
+"'Mum'? At this hour? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing, Marge--nothing. Is Bertie at home?" said Mrs. Doyle.
+
+"No," and the young pink lips narrowed again. "It is only eleven o'clock
+at night. Why should he be at home?"
+
+"Marge, I have an elegant idea," said Mrs. Doyle, seating herself
+resolutely in an armchair opposite her daughter. "I have found the very
+thing we need. The bo ideel, my lambkin."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mrs. Doyle rose to go at midnight they were both wreathed in
+smiles.
+
+"You will have to be very careful, dear," said Mrs. Doyle. "Don't be
+rash, and unlikely, and over-generous. The wife is a stubborn creature
+who spells things with a capital letter: you know what I mean--Work and
+Art and Dignity, and all that kind of thing. She must not be rubbed up
+the wrong way. Besides, it will answer just as well if he does not know
+what he is doing."
+
+"That's so," said her daughter. "Mum, you're a daisy."
+
+The unsuspecting Bertie came home that night a little before one
+o'clock, keyed up for the usual withering sarcasm and darkling reproach.
+He found his wife asleep, lamb-like and dove-like, her frizzy head
+foundered contentedly in the pillows, a book of Gyp on the coverlet, and
+a mild smile--was it of indulgence or of treason?--playing on her soft
+half-open lips.
+
+The next day Mrs. Doyle called on Aldo and Nancy. Anne-Marie was
+introduced and patted on the head, and sent down into the kitchen.
+
+"I have a secretaryship for you," said Mrs. Doyle to Aldo. "You can
+start at once. Twenty dollars a week. They won't give more."
+
+Aldo was graciously complacent, and Nancy looked anxious.
+
+"His English is very imperfect," she said.
+
+"Oh, the English is chiefly copying; he can do that, can't he?"
+
+"Of course," said Aldo, frowning at Nancy.
+
+Nancy asked for particulars, and Mrs. Doyle folded her fat hands and
+gave them. It was a confidential post. He was to be "secretary to her
+daughter"--catching Nancy's steady grey eye, Mrs. Doyle added--"'s
+husband, Mr. Van Osten;" and the work was chiefly of a political
+character. He would have to--er--copy speeches, and ... etcetera. He
+would have a study, not in the Van Osten's house, but--er--in the same
+street a few doors off, opposite. He was not to talk about his work,
+because it was of a very--er--private character.
+
+"Mr. Van Osten is a peculiar man," added Mrs. Doyle. "But you will
+understand all that in time, when you get to know him. When can you
+start?"
+
+"Now," said Aldo.
+
+Mrs. Doyle laughed. "Well, I think next Monday will do. Meanwhile"--and
+she coughed--"the Van Ostens are very--oh, very much for appearance, you
+know. You had better go to Brooks and get him to rig you out. I shall
+drive round and speak to Brooks about you at once."
+
+Nancy flushed and protested. "You can pay it back to me," said Mrs.
+Doyle. "Don't bother me so."
+
+So Nancy flushed, and was silent; and Aldo went to Brooks, and was
+rigged out.
+
+He also had some visiting-cards with "Count Aldo della Rocca" printed on
+them, but not his address, which was near the nigger quarter, and
+probably would continue to be so for a long time to come.
+
+On the following Monday, at half-past eleven, he arrived at the Van
+Osten house in 66th Street. Mrs. Doyle had particularly impressed upon
+him that he was not to come earlier than half-past eleven. Mrs. Doyle
+was waiting for him in the drawing-room, and introduced him to her
+daughter. Mr. Van Osten was not in. The Count was to do his work alone
+for these first few days, as Mr. Van Osten was very busy in Washington.
+The two ladies had their hats on, and accompanied him across the street
+to No. 59. They had a latchkey which they gave to him, and went with him
+to the room that was to be his study on the top-floor. It was a large,
+light, almost empty, room. A wide desk stood in front of the window;
+there were a few chairs and tables, and a half-empty book-case. On the
+desk was a pile of papers, newspapers, and manuscripts. A typewriting
+machine stood on the table.
+
+"Oh," said Aldo blankly, "I do not know how to use a typewriter."
+
+"Never mind," said the ladies in unison.
+
+"We put it there in case you could," said Mrs. Doyle.
+
+Then Mrs. Doyle showed him his work. "All this has to be copied," she
+said, showing him the tidy manuscript sheets. "And then you ought to
+make extracts from these papers."
+
+She pointed to the newspapers--they were of the preceding week. He was
+to mark and cut out everything referring to the Congo, and underline
+with red ink Mr. Van Osten's name every time he came across it.
+
+"And everything that Mr. Van Osten himself says has to be copied in this
+large book."
+
+"Would it not be better to cut out the speeches in print and paste them
+in?" said Aldo.
+
+"Oh no," said Mrs. Doyle. "He wants them copied. Doesn't he, Marjorie?"
+
+Her daughter turned from the window and said:
+
+"Oh yes!" She had flittering green eyes and a funny smile. Her frizzy,
+light hair came down to the bridge of her small freckled nose, and she
+had a manner of throwing back her head in order to look from under her
+hair that was peculiar to her. She was dressed like an expensive French
+doll.
+
+"Oh yes," she repeated, with her head thrown back, and in her high
+childish voice. "I guess he wants it all copied." Her smile flickered,
+and she turned to the window again.
+
+The ladies left him, and he sat down to work. He copied steadily in his
+beautiful _commis voyageur_ handwriting until two o'clock. Then he
+went out and had a hasty lunch. At four o'clock Mrs. Doyle rustled in
+and asked him how he was getting on. He was getting on splendidly. At
+six he went home.
+
+This went on for three days, and on Wednesday afternoon he had nothing
+left to copy, or to cut out, or to paste in. He looked out of the
+window. He took a book from the book-case--they were almost all French
+novels. After reading an hour, he decided to go across to No. 8, the Van
+Ostens' house, and ask for instructions. He had not yet seen his
+employer, and, as all men who are sure of their tailor and their
+physique, he liked new acquaintances.
+
+The butler who opened the door looked at his clothes, then took his hat,
+and divested him of his overcoat. He presented a silver tray, on which
+Aldo, after a moment's hesitation, deposited his visiting-card. The man
+looked at it, opened the drawing-room door, and pronounced: "Count Aldo
+della Rocca." A subdued sound of voices and tea-cups subsided into
+silence, and Aldo entered the room.
+
+He bowed low, his secretary bow, standing at the door, for he did not
+want to offend his employers. When he raised his head, Mrs. Van Osten's
+light green flitter of a smile was greeting him from the sofa. His quick
+eye saw that she was nervous. She put out her hand and said:
+
+"Oh, Count della Rocca, how do you do? Just in time for a cup of tea."
+
+He stepped past the four or five ladies and an old gentleman who sat
+near her, and kissed her hand in Southern fashion. He was not to be the
+secretary? _Benissimo!_ He was not the secretary. He was the Count.
+
+"But perhaps," continued his hostess, "you don't like tea? Vermouth or
+Campari is what you take in your country at this hour, is it not?" And
+she held out a cup of tea to him, with her head thrown back and slightly
+on one side.
+
+"Oh, Madame! All what is taken from so fair a lady's hand is nectar!"
+said Aldo, with his best smile; and the ladies tittered approval.
+
+"Ah, Latin flattery, Count," said his hostess, and introduced him to her
+friends.
+
+Once or twice he noticed that she glanced anxiously at him, as if
+dreading what he might do or say; but Aldo, remembering the political
+and private character of his work, did not mention it. The ladies left
+one by one. And the old gentleman left. Then Mrs. Van Osten turned her
+little dry, hard face to Aldo.
+
+"Why did you come?" she asked.
+
+"I have finished my work," said Aldo, feeling himself very much the
+secretary again. "I knew not what I was to do."
+
+"Oh, I see. I will tell my mother--I mean my husband--about it." And at
+this moment Mrs. Doyle entered. Her daughter drew her to the window, and
+spoke to her in a whisper for some time. Mrs. Doyle replied: "Oh, all
+the better. I did not know how we should ever begin it." She turned to
+Aldo, standing stiff and secretarial in the middle of the room.
+
+"I am glad you took Mrs. Van Osten's cue," she said. Aldo wondered what
+"cue" meant, but did not ask. "Do so, always. It is of the greatest
+importance. And now about Mr. Van Osten. _Never_ speak to him about your
+work. He does not like it. Unless he mentions it to you, never speak
+about it at all. Let him see that you are absolutely discreet. Now you
+may stay till he comes."
+
+He stayed and made flat general conversation. Mrs. Van Osten looked
+bored. Mrs. Doyle answered him nervously and absentmindedly.
+
+The bell rang loud, and the butler opened the hall-door to admit his
+master. Aldo stood up. Suddenly he felt a hand on his sleeve. It was
+little Mrs. Van Osten's jewelled hand that pulled him down into his
+chair. She leaned forward, with her chin on her hand, and smiled.
+
+"I am sure you are musical," she said, smiling into his eyes, as through
+the open door Mr. Van Osten entered, large, leisurely, and good-looking.
+
+"Hulloa!" he said to his wife. "Well, mother?" to Mrs. Doyle. Then he
+looked at Aldo, who very slowly, wondering what he was to do, got up
+from his seat.
+
+"Bertie," said his wife, looking up at him with a look that was at once
+the look of a cat and of a mouse, "this is Count della Rocca whom I was
+telling you about."
+
+Van Osten put out his large hand. "Glad to meet you," he said. Then Mrs.
+Doyle sat down and talked to him.
+
+"You are musical?" said Mrs. Van Osten, lifting her small chin, and
+twinkling her eyes at Aldo.
+
+Aldo suddenly remembered what Dr. Fioretti, a friend of Nino's who had
+travelled in England and the United States, used to say about American
+women. He seemed to hear Fioretti speaking in his impressive manner, as
+if each word he said were three times underlined: "I tell you this about
+the American woman: as man and as doctor, my dear friend...." And Aldo
+decided that Fioretti was right.
+
+He found himself seated at the piano, while his hostess's tiny figure
+was thrown forward listening to him with rapt attention. Suddenly--while
+her husband was laughing loud at something Mrs. Doyle had said--she put
+out her hand and said: "Good-bye. Come next Saturday. Now go. Go quick."
+And he rose and took his leave.
+
+He described his visit to Nancy, who was so much astonished that he
+thought it wise to omit the reference to next Saturday. On the following
+morning another pile of papers lay on the desk for him, and he worked on
+conscientiously. On Saturday a mauve envelope containing twenty dollars
+was placed on the top of his papers; and on a slip of paper was written:
+"Come at six."
+
+At six he went to No. 8, and found Mrs. Van Osten alone. She scarcely
+spoke to him until her husband came in. Then she seemed suddenly to wake
+up, and was all smiles and pretty gestures; when Aldo spoke to her she
+drooped her lashes and played with her long chiffon scarf. He left her a
+little later, feeling dense and bewildered.
+
+A fortnight afterwards he was invited to dinner. "I am sure Van Osten
+feels that he can trust me now," said Aldo to Nancy, adjusting a
+faultless tie at the summit of an impeccable shirt-front. "And to-day he
+will probably speak to me of our work."
+
+"I am afraid Anne-Marie is going to have measles," said Nancy, sitting
+drearily on the old green armchair, while Anne-Marie pulled some of the
+stuffing out of it with languid feverish hand. "Seventh Avenue is full
+of it."
+
+"It is a beastly neighbourhood," said Aldo, buttoning his waistcoat, and
+fixing a sham gold chain into his watch-pocket with a safety-pin. "We
+must get out of it as soon as we can."
+
+"Did those people you met at Mrs. Van Osten's ask where we lived?" asked
+Nancy.
+
+"Yes. And on the spur of the moment I said Number 59 in the same street.
+That is where the office is, you know. I hope they won't make
+inquiries."
+
+Nancy sighed. Aldo kissed her, and carefully patted Anne-Marie, who had
+dirty hands and a tearful face. Then he ran down and got on a car that
+took him up town.
+
+No reference was made during dinner to politics or to the work. There
+were a dozen people present, and once--to try him, Aldo felt it!--his
+host said, looking straight at him: "And what are you doing in New York,
+Mr. Della Rocca?"
+
+With the corner of his eye Aldo had seen Mrs. Van Osten's small head
+start up like a disturbed snake at the end of the table. He answered
+imperturbably, looking Van Osten in the face:
+
+"Some literary work. I find it _very interesting_."
+
+He said this markedly, and Van Osten only said: "Oh, indeed?" But Aldo
+knew that he was pleased. Van Osten must now indeed feel that Aldo was
+absolutely discreet and intelligent.
+
+After dinner, when the men joined the ladies in the drawing-room, Mrs.
+Van Osten called him to her with her eyes. He sat down at her side, and
+talked about Italy. She drooped her head as if she were blushing, and
+he wondered why. He glanced round, and saw that her husband was looking
+at her.
+
+A tall thin woman stood near him, and Aldo heard her say: "What a
+splendid-looking man! Quite like that Somebody's Hyperion in
+that--er--what-do-you-call-it gallery."
+
+"Yes," said Van Osten. "Nice sleek animal." And he continued to look at
+his wife.
+
+To Aldo's astonishment, she suddenly smiled and put her hand into his
+own, palm upwards. He felt the little chilly hand trembling lightly on
+his. Her words were as astonishing as her gesture. She said:
+
+"Well, then, Count Aldo, if you insist, tell my fortune."
+
+He had not insisted; but he told her fortune, following the little
+crinkly lines in her palm with the light touch of his forefinger. She
+shivered and she laughed, and she threw her head back.
+
+Van Osten sauntered up to them with his hands in his pockets; he looked
+large and powerful. Aldo felt like a fool, with the little chilly hand
+still lying in his. He went on, however: "This is the line of the
+intellect--" Van Osten laid his hand casually on his wife's slim
+shoulder, and kept it there. She glanced up at him, and again in her
+eyes was the look of a cat, and also of a mouse.
+
+"... That is what I read in this hand," continued Aldo.
+
+Van Osten moved and put forward a large patent-leather shoe. "And what
+is it you read in this foot?" he said. "Kicks?"
+
+His wife burst into a ripple of laughter and withdrew her hand from
+Aldo's. Aldo also was much amused. The only one who did not seem to
+find the joke funny was Van Osten himself.
+
+A few days later in the study, when Aldo had copied four columns out of
+a newspaper, he leaned back in his chair. He was irritated and tired.
+There was not enough ink in the inkstand, and he had to dip in his pen
+at every second word. He felt exasperated and on edge. Little Mrs. Van
+Osten was getting on his nerves. What did she mean? What did she want?
+She was in love with him, of course. That was not surprising. But what
+was surprising was her behaviour when they were alone. Either she left
+the room at once, or she looked at him with green, far-away, wintry eyes
+as if he were a wall or a window.
+
+The night after the dinner-party he had been greatly agitated. This
+woman loved him. This very wealthy woman seemed to be willing to
+compromise herself for his sake. What should he do? For a moment the
+thought of running away with her crossed his mind. She was a plain
+little thing, but enormously rich. He might be able to be of more solid
+use to Nancy and his child by such a step than by slaving for them
+thirty years at twenty dollars a week. In a year perhaps, he might be
+able to return to Nancy, comfortably well off. These erratic American
+women were extravagant and generous, he knew.
+
+He had walked home that night with his head in the clouds, dreaming of
+automobile trips across Europe, of staying at the best hotels and not
+paying any bills. He had found Frau Schmidl awake, and Nancy in tears,
+and Anne-Marie with the measles. He had stayed at home three days,
+sitting in the darkened, stuffy little room, heating malted milk and
+Nestle's food on a spirit-lamp, and singing arias from grand operas to
+Anne-Marie, who liked nothing else.
+
+When he had gone back to the room in 66th Street nobody had been to ask
+after him, and his work lay as he had left it. He had gone across to the
+Van Osten's house, and had heard Mrs. Van Osten say in a high treble
+voice: "I am not at home." And he had felt she was looking at him behind
+the curtains as he crossed the road.
+
+He dipped his pen in the half-empty inkstand, and then impatiently
+leaned it up against a pen-box. It fell over, and was emptier than
+before. He looked round the room for an ink-bottle. He thought of
+ringing the bell, but the old servant that appeared on the rare
+occasions when he wanted her, had, after the first week, looked so
+ill-tempered that he dreaded asking for anything. He looked about, and
+opened drawers and closets. In a cupboard in the wall, on the top shelf,
+pushed far back, he saw a packet of papers which he seemed to recognize.
+He pulled them out and looked. It was his work of the week before--182
+pages, neatly written. What were they doing up there?
+
+He gazed at them for a long time; then he put them back. He resolved to
+make an experiment. He rang the bell, and asked the untipped and
+unamiable old servant to bring him some ink.
+
+When he had a full inkstand before him, he dipped in his pen and wrote:
+"The debate concluded with the usual majority for the Government. La
+donna e mobile qual piuma al vento. I wonder whether anyone will notice
+that I am writing rubbish. Sul mare luccica l'astro d'argento Santa
+Lucia, Santa Lucia."
+
+He finished the page, and put it on the others. Then he smoked
+cigarettes, and read "Autour du Mariage" until it was lunch-time. While
+he was at lunch a note was left for him.
+
+"Come this evening at eight, sharp."
+
+His finished sheets had been taken away as usual, and a new pile placed
+on the desk for him to copy. He went to the cupboard in the wall, and
+looked on the top shelf. Yes; the pile of papers at the back was larger.
+He pulled it out; on the top lay the page with the jumble of Italian
+words on it. He took a little heap of the sheets at random from the
+pile, placed them on his desk, and left them there. Then he lay back in
+his chair, and reflected.
+
+For three weeks he had been copying things out of old newspapers seven
+hours a day. He had been paid twenty dollars a week for it. Why? Was
+Mrs. Doyle a charitable angel who wished to help him and his family
+without being thanked? No. He felt that was not it. His eye fell on the
+note. "Come this evening." A light went up in his mind as he recognized
+the fact that he was paid for the hours he spent in No. 8, not for those
+he passed in No. 59.
+
+It probably meant that Mrs. Van Osten loved him, and must see him when
+she wanted to. The work was but a pretext to keep him near her, within
+call, away from others, perhaps. "Poor little woman!" he said. "How she
+must suffer!" Then he reflected that twenty dollars a week was not much.
+
+At a quarter past eight that evening he turned into 66th Street, and
+crossed Mr. Van Osten, who had just come out of his house. Aldo saluted
+him respectfully, but Van Osten stood still and lit his cigar without
+appearing to notice the greeting.
+
+He found Mrs. Van Osten alone, bare-shouldered, in black and diamonds.
+She was agitated and angry.
+
+"You are late!" she cried.
+
+"Forgive!" he said, kissing her hand.
+
+She dragged it from him. "Did you meet my husband?"
+
+"Yes," said Aldo.
+
+"Did he see you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you sure? Are you sure?" And she breathed quickly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He saw you? He saw you coming here and did not turn back----?" She
+stopped, and the narrow lips closed tightly. Aldo looked at her, and
+thought her positively ugly. She looked like a small, tight, thin,
+crumpled edition of Mrs. Doyle.
+
+"Little young prairie-chicken," said Aldo to himself. But the butler
+came in with the coffee on a large silver tray, and the under-butler
+followed with the cream and sugar on another large silver tray. And the
+riches, the atmosphere of calm, powerful wealth, overcame Aldo's soul;
+his senses swam in satisfaction, and he felt that, however thin and
+small and crumpled she might be, he yet could return the
+prairie-chicken's love.
+
+When the servants had left the room Aldo felt that he ought to speak.
+After a while he remembered what, once or twice, he had done with
+acceptable success in Italy when alone with a comparatively unknown
+woman. In a low voice he said:
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+Mrs. Van Osten raised glassy eyes. He repeated: "I do not yet know your
+name."
+
+She took a sip of coffee, and said, very slowly and very clearly:
+
+"Mrs.--Van--Osten."
+
+"No--not that name," he said. "Your own name--your little name----"
+
+There was a slight noise in the hall, and the outer door closed. Mrs.
+Van Osten heard it, and answered Aldo quickly with excited eyes.
+
+"Marjory," she said.
+
+Aldo bent forward over his coffee-cup. "Marjory?" he repeated softly.
+
+It succeeded. It succeeded far better than he had expected, or than it
+usually did.
+
+"Say it again!" she said quickly. "I like to hear it. Say it again.
+Quick!"
+
+"Marjory!" exclaimed Aldo, bending nearer, just as the door opened and
+her husband came in.
+
+She turned to him at once. "Oh, Bertie! You have come back?" and she
+laughed. Aldo looked at her. There was something in her voice and in her
+laugh that he knew. He had heard it in women's voices before. It was
+love. And love was in her eyes as she raised them to her husband's
+frowning face.
+
+Then Aldo understood what he was there for. And more than ever, as he
+looked at Mr. Van Osten's powerful frame, did he realize that twenty
+dollars was little.
+
+He stayed only a short time, during which he was sad, and silent, and
+bitter. And Mrs. Van Osten was pleased with his attitude. As he took his
+leave, he suddenly decided to show her that he had understood.
+
+"Would you honour me by seeing 'Tannhaeuser' from my box at the opera
+to-morrow night?"
+
+A gleam shot at him from Mrs. Van Osten's sly eye. Her husband laid his
+large hand on his wife's bare shoulder.
+
+"We are engaged," he said.
+
+Mrs. Van Osten put her head against his arm.
+
+"Indeed, we are more than that, Bertie," she said, looking up at him
+with an enamoured and rapturous smile.
+
+Aldo bowed and withdrew.
+
+The next day was Saturday. On his desk lay the mauve envelope, and in it
+was a hundred-dollar bill.
+
+"I shall not need you now for a month or two, I believe," said Mrs. Van
+Osten wistfully. She had come over to his "office" early on the Monday
+morning. "But"--and she sighed deeply--"I do not suppose the effect you
+have had upon my husband will last for ever."
+
+"Nothing does last for ever," said Aldo sententiously, seated before his
+desk.
+
+"Then I shall send for you to come to the house again. Meanwhile, you
+might hang round a little in a general way," said Mrs. Van Osten. "You
+can send me flowers if you like. See that they are expensive ones. But
+don't come over often. If he once kicks you out, it will make everything
+impossible."
+
+"Yes," said Aldo.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Van Osten; "why are such things necessary. Why are men
+such beasts?"
+
+After a short pause Aldo spoke respectfully in a subdued voice: "May I
+ask who _she_ is?"
+
+"You are impertinent," said Mrs. Van Osten, "but I may as well tell you.
+Everyone knows. It is Madeline Archer, that dancing minx. She has made
+half the wives in New York miserable!"
+
+Aldo made a little sympathizing, clucking sound with his tongue.
+Meanwhile his thoughts were quick and definite.
+
+"If," he said, as she rose to go, "any friend of yours, one of the wives
+you have just mentioned, wanted--er--would like--er--thought that I
+could assist...."
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. Van Osten, clasping her hands with peals of laughter,
+"you _are_ a daisy! Oh, you take the pumpkin-pie! Upon my word! You are
+the greatest ever!" And she laughed and laughed, rocking to and fro.
+
+Aldo laughed too, glad to think he was so funny.
+
+"Before you know where you are, you'll be opening a bureau--'First Aid
+for Neglected Wives.' 'Perfect jealousy-arouser of the careless or the
+cooling husband. Diploma. References. Moderate tariff. Success
+guaranteed.'"
+
+"Good idea!" said Aldo, laughing. And in a way he meant it.
+
+She stopped laughing suddenly. "You won't turn out to be a blackmailer,
+will you?"
+
+"No," said Aldo, looking at her straight from out of his beautiful eyes.
+
+"I believe you," she said, putting out her hand. "Besides, Mum, who
+knows a thing or two about human nature, said that you were a good, soft
+old thing. And now," she added, with solemnity, "for what you have done
+for me, and the way you've scared Bertie into good behaviour, you may
+give me a kiss."
+
+She put up her narrow mouth, and Aldo, laughing a little, kissed it.
+
+"... I'm glad I have kissed a Count," said Mrs. Van Osten, as she went
+down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was a bright autumn day when Valeria in Milan received Nancy's letter
+from New York, telling her about those first weeks of misery.
+
+Valeria had an income of two hundred francs a month, which Uncle
+Giacomo, who kept her securities for her, paid to her punctually; and
+which she as punctually paid over to Aunt Carlotta for her board and
+lodging, reserving apologetically thirty or forty francs for her own
+small needs. On the day the letter arrived, Valeria locked herself in
+her room, and went on her knees before Guido Reni's gipsy-faced Madonna.
+The Madonna must help Nancy. She, Valeria, must help Nancy.
+
+Uncle Giacomo would give nothing that might fall into Aldo's hands;
+Carlo less than nothing; he would only reproach and recriminate. As for
+Nino, he had nothing to give. Aunt Carlotta would possibly lend five
+hundred francs with great difficulty and many warnings. So Valeria
+decided that she would raise some money from her own investments, and
+arrange to have a smaller income for a few years. Nancy must have money.
+So Valeria put on her hat and her black silk bolero coat with the lace
+jabot down the front, and brown kid gloves, and went out to face a
+stormy interview with Zio Giacomo.
+
+The interview was stormy. Giacomo's temper shortened with his breath,
+and Valeria was wrung with anguish lest his anger should harm him, and
+was rent with remorse when she had succeeded in obtaining what she
+wanted. She would not say what the money was for, because she knew that
+Zio Giacomo would oppose it, so she was mysterious and wilful, hinted at
+tragic possibilities, wept and warned, and finally left Zio Giacomo
+convinced that she had got herself into some serious financial scrape.
+"Ah, these silly women," said Zio Giacomo, watching Valeria tripping
+across the road, holding her violet leather handbag, her umbrella and
+her long skirts in confused hands. At one moment she was right under a
+horse's nose, but the driver pulled up suddenly, and the swerving
+carriage went on, carrying on its box a red-faced, head-shaking,
+remark-making, driver. "Silly women!" said Uncle Giacomo again, and
+returned wrathfully to his desk.
+
+Valeria went to a bank, where, after much confusionary explanation, and
+a quarter of an hour's waiting, she emerged with five thousand francs,
+and some silver and pence. Her violet bag was fat with it all. "Now,"
+said Valeria to herself, "I will go to Cook's in the Via Manzoni, and
+change it into American money. Or perhaps they can send it over in some
+other way." Then she went along Piazza del Duomo, thinking of Nancy.
+Poor, penniless Nancy! Poor little helpless mother of the still more
+helpless Anne-Marie! "I wish Tom were here to look after us all!" she
+said, stepping off the pavement to cross into Via Manzoni.
+
+If Tom had been there he would have stopped her. He would have caught
+hold of her elbow, in the masterful way he always did when they crossed
+a street together, saying: "Wait a minute." Tom would have seen the
+tram-car coming rapidly from the right, and a carriage driving up from
+the left, and behind the carriage--oh, quite a distance off--a motor
+coming along smoothly and quickly. But Tom, or what was left of Tom, lay
+in Nervi with folded hands, and nobody told Valeria to wait a minute. So
+she stepped lightly off the pavement, holding her violet bag tightly in
+one hand, and her umbrella and her skirts in the other. She saw the
+tram-car coming from the right on the far side of the street, and
+thought she would run across and pass in front of it. She ran two steps,
+and then saw the carriage close to her, coming from the left. It was
+impossible to cross before it, so she stepped back quickly, very
+quickly, and the carriage passed. The driver's face was turned to her:
+was that anger in his face? What a mad, terrible face! He was screaming
+and gesticulating. What tempers people had in Italy, thought Valeria,
+for thought is rapid.... Then something struck her in the back, and she
+thought no more. A moment's maddening roar and clamour and confusion,
+then utter stillness.
+
+... Valeria felt a cadenced, gently oscillating movement, and opened her
+eyes. She could see nothing. A grey linen roof was above her, grey linen
+walls around her. Ah, the walls undulated, parted slightly, and let some
+light through. Valeria could see parts of shops, and of houses, and
+people passing.... She was being carried through the streets. What was
+the matter with her mouth? She raised her hand in its brown kid glove
+and touched her mouth, and down along one side of it where she felt
+something unusual; her glove seemed not to touch her cheek but her
+teeth; then something hot and viscid ran into the palm of her hand and
+down her arm. A hand--was it hers?--fell on her breast. Suddenly she
+remembered her violet bag, fat with money. Where was it? She tried to
+say, "Where is it? Where is it? It is Nancy's." She cried it out loud,
+but could hear only a muffled bubbling and blowing through her mouth.
+Then oblivion.
+
+... Now she was in a small, light room. Everything round her was light
+and white; she saw the ceiling first. It was of glass--white frosted
+glass. Everything was white; the people were white, except their faces,
+which looked dark and yellow over their white clothes. One of the faces
+looked at her very near, then another. Then a lighter face came with
+white wings round its head. Valeria knew what that was, but could not
+remember. She thought she would smile at that face, and did so, but the
+face did not smile back. It continued looking at her closely, and she
+felt a hand touch her forehead and smooth back her hair.
+
+Another face came, red, with bloodshot eyes, and someone took hold of
+her head and turned it. A voice said: "Useless. But we can try." Then a
+sound of running water. Valeria put out her hand to stop it. Immediately
+the winged face was bending over her. "Yes, dear? Yes, dear?" Valeria
+thought she told her to stop the running water. But the winged face only
+nodded and smiled, and said: "That is a good, brave dear! We shall soon
+be better--soon be better." Another face and a voice: "Shall I wash
+this?" Then something gushed over Valeria's cheek and trickled, warm and
+salt, down her throat. Something choked. Then there was a pain, a pain
+somewhere in the room, a burning, maddening pain. A man's voice said:
+"Leave alone. That's no use. Look at this." Valeria's head was turned
+round again, and she heard a crepitant sound as if her hair were being
+cut. Running water again.... Valeria's head lay sideways, and she could
+see the white-gowned back of a man washing his hands under a silver tap.
+She liked watching him. He turned round, shaking his wet hands in the
+air with his sleeves rolled back. It was he who had the red face and
+the bloodshot eyes, and a clipped grey moustache. He nodded to Valeria
+as he saw her eyes open, and said: "That's good, that's right. A little
+patience." Valeria smiled at him; she felt that her mouth did not move,
+so she blinked with her eyes, and the red face nodded back in friendly
+manner.
+
+Someone held her wrist, and for a while everything was silent. Again,
+again, a shooting, maddening pain. An exclamation, and then a word:
+"Useless." Valeria opened her eyes. She saw the white-winged woman's
+face with her eyes fixed on the red face, which was bending forward, and
+the two other faces were also bending over, looking down at something
+Valeria could not see, for it was on her own pillow. Then the red-faced
+man said: "Useless," again. And the white-winged face moved its lips.
+
+"Useless!" The word conveyed nothing clear to Valeria's mind, but
+something in her body responded to the word. Thump, thump, thump, her
+heart began to beat, loud and quick, louder and quicker, until it could
+be heard all over the room. Thump, thump, thump, it rolled like a drum,
+and Valeria turned her frightened eyes to the red face above her. She
+said to him: "Stop my heart. Stop my heart from beating like this." But
+the three men and the sister did not seem to hear. They stood quite
+still listening to it, and then Valeria knew that she had not spoken.
+Thud, thump; thud, thump; quicker and quicker, and Valeria's eyes rolled
+wildly, imploring help. Then the Sister said to the surgeon: "Oh, try!
+try, poor thing!" And again water rushed, and something was rolled
+stridently across the marble floor.
+
+"Ether," said the surgeon.
+
+One of the yellow faces bent over her, and he had a dark net mask in his
+hand. He held it over her face.
+
+Suddenly Valeria was wide awake. She sat up with a shriek, and struck
+out at the yellow face and the mask. She saw the two doctors and the old
+surgeon, and the Sister of Charity. She spoke and her voice came. She
+wanted to say: "Save me! Save me!" but she heard herself saying: "I have
+time to cross!" Then she tried to explain about the violet bag, and the
+money, but what she cried was: "Nancy! Nancy!" Then the surgeon was
+angry with the man who held the mask, and turned on him with impatient
+words. But the Sister stood over Valeria, and made the sign of the cross
+above her. "Lie down, dear, lie down," she said. So Valeria lay down.
+
+Thud, thump; thud, thump; thud, thump, rolled the drum of her heart.
+
+"Now," said the surgeon, "you must be good. Don't move! Count! Count to
+twenty."
+
+Valeria struggled to get up. The black mask was near her face again.
+
+"Now, dear, now!" said the Sister's voice. "Count: one--two--three----"
+
+"Breathe deeply," said someone, and Valeria did as she was told.
+
+Then she remembered that she was to count. But she had lost time, so she
+felt she must begin further on. "... Nine," she said, breathing deeply;
+"ten." She was on a swing--a large, wild swing in the air that swung her
+out in the sky and back through the wide, white air. "Eleven, twelve,"
+Valeria felt that she must say thirteen quickly because--unlucky
+number--"thirteen ... fourteen...."
+
+The swing swung her out, flying through the air with a swoop and a sweep
+beyond all the mountains. The people around her seemed to be left far
+away, down in the little white room. They would never hear her voice
+from so far away. "FIFTEEN!" she cried, shouting loud, loud, from afar.
+Then the sweep of a gigantic wave swung her out into Eternity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I knew it was useless," said the Surgeon angrily. The face was covered,
+and the stretcher was wheeled away.
+
+An hour later Zio Giacomo, Nino, and Aunt Carlotta came hurrying in,
+red-eyed and white-faced. It was over. Aunt Carlotta wrung her hands,
+and the Sister consoled her, and assured her that there had been no
+suffering.
+
+"I want to see her," said Aunt Carlotta, sobbing.
+
+"No, no," said the Sister. "Don't."
+
+"Don't!" said Giacomo brokenly, the tears streaming down his face. Nino
+said not a word, but went with one of the young doctors into the large
+bare room where two stretchers stood, each with a shrouded burden.
+
+"This one," said the doctor, he who had held the mask. Nino saw, gasped,
+and turned away.
+
+Aunt Carlotta was being led in, supported by the Sister. Nino grasped
+her hand.
+
+"Come away," he whispered; "come away at once."
+
+Carlotta shook her head, her face buried in her handkerchief. "My
+sister's child! My sister's only child! I must close her eyes." Nino
+went out.
+
+Carlotta was led to the farther of the two stretchers. The cloth was
+lifted from Valeria's face. Then shriek after shriek resounded through
+the bare chill room, echoing through the wide corridors, reaching the
+patients lying selfish and sad in their wards. Shriek after shriek. But
+the two quiet figures on the stretchers were not disturbed.
+
+Valeria was buried in Nervi near Tom.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+When Nancy in New York received the news of her mother's death she wore
+black instead of brown, and wept, and wept, and wept, as children weep
+for their mothers. Then she wore brown again, and went on living for
+Anne-Marie, as mothers live for their children.
+
+They had left Mrs. Schmidl's kindly, dingy roof, and moved a little
+further away from the niggers, into a small flat in 82nd Street. Mrs.
+Schmidl's niece, Minna, came and did the housework, and took Anne-Marie
+for walks. Anne-Marie loved Minna. Anne-Marie watched her with entranced
+gaze when she spoke to the tradesmen, and followed her from room to room
+when she swept and did the beds. Minna wore low-necked collars, and a
+little black velvet ribbon round her neck, and pink beads. She was
+beautiful in Anne-Marie's sight, and Anne-Marie imitated as much as
+possible her manner, her walk, and her language. Nancy could hear them
+talking together in the kitchen. Minna's voice: "What did you have for
+your tea? A butter-bread?" And Anne-Marie's piping treble: "Yes, two
+butter-breads mit sugar." Minna: "That's fine! To-morrow Tante Schmidl
+makes a cake, a good one. We eat it evenings." "A cake--a good one!"
+echoed Anne-Marie.
+
+Nancy's soul crumbled with mortification. She had taken out her
+manuscript, and it lay before her on the table once more. Its broad
+pages were dear to her touch. They felt thick and solid. The tingling
+freshness of thought, the little thrill that always preceded the ripple
+and rush of inspiration, caught at her, and the ivory pen was in her
+hand.
+
+"A cake--a good one," repeated in the next room Anne-Marie, who liked
+the substantial German sound of that phrase.
+
+"Oh, my little girl! My little girl! How will she grow up?" And Nancy
+the mother took the ivory pen from Nancy the poet's hand, and Anne-Marie
+was called and kept, and taught, for the rest of the day.
+
+During the months that followed, Nancy played a game with her little
+daughter which, to a certain extent, was successful.
+
+"We will play that you are a little book of mine, that I have written. A
+pretty little book like Andersen's 'Maerchen,' with the pictures in it.
+And in this book that I love----"
+
+"What colour is it?" asked Anne-Marie.
+
+"Pink, and white, and gold," said Nancy, kissing the child's shining
+hair.
+
+"Well, in it, in the midst of the loveliest fairy-tale, somebody has
+come and written dreadfully silly, ugly words, like--like
+'butter-bread.' I must take all those out, mustn't I? And put pretty
+words and pretty thoughts in instead. Otherwise nobody will like to read
+the book."
+
+"No," said Anne-Marie, looking slightly dazed. "And will you put
+pictures in it?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Nancy. "And I wish I could put rhymes into it too."
+
+But that was not to be. Long explanations about boy and toy--rain and
+pain--fly and cry--far and star--left Anne-Marie bewildered and cross.
+
+Nancy coaxed and petted her. "Just you say a rhyme! Only one. Now what
+rhymes with _day_?"
+
+No. Anne-Marie did not know what rhymed with day.
+
+"_Play_, of course, my goosie dear! Now what rhymes with _dear?_"
+
+"Play," said Anne-Marie.
+
+"No; do think a little, sweetheart. With _dear!--dear?_"
+
+"Vegetables?" asked Anne-Marie, who had spent many hours in Frau
+Schmidl's kitchen.
+
+Nancy groaned. _"Dear_!" she repeated again.
+
+_"Darling!"_ cried Anne-Marie triumphantly, and was lifted up and
+embraced.
+
+"I wish you were a poet, Anne-Marie!" said her mother, pushing the fair
+locks from the child's level brow.
+
+"What for?" said Anne-Marie, wriggling.
+
+"Poets never die," said Nancy, thus placing a picture in the fairy-tale
+book.
+
+"Then I'll be," said Anne-Marie, who knew death from having buried a
+dead kitten in the Schmidls' yard, and dug it up a day or two after to
+see what it was like.
+
+But Anne-Marie was not to be a poet. In the little pink and white books
+that mothers think they create, the Story is written before ever they
+reach the tender maternal hands. And Anne-Marie was not to be a poet.
+
+But Nancy herself could not forget that Fate had printed the seal of
+immortality upon her own girlish brow. She thought: "I cannot finish
+The Book now. The Book must wait until later on, when Anne-Marie does
+not need me every moment. But now, now I can write a cycle of
+child-poems on Anne-Marie."
+
+So she watched her little daughter through narrowed eyelids, throwing
+over the unconscious blonde head the misty veil of imagery, searching in
+the light blue eyes for the source of word and symbol, standing
+Anne-Marie like a little neoteric statue on the top of a sonnet, trying
+to fix her in some rare, archaic pose. But Anne-Marie was the child of
+her surroundings; Anne-Marie wore clothes of Minna's cutting and
+fitting, and on her yellow head a flat pink cotton hat like a lid.
+Anne-Marie had spoken Italian like a royal princess, but her
+German-American English was of 7th Avenue and 82nd Street. And
+Anne-Marie's pleasures were, as are those of every child, taken where
+she found them; for her no wandering in a shady garden, nursing an
+expensive, mellifluously-named doll. Since the Monte Carlo
+"Marguerite-Louise," whose eyes, attached to two small lumps of lead now
+lay in a box on a shelf, Anne-Marie's dolls had been numerous but
+unloved. At Mrs. Schmidl's suggestion, and for economic motives, Nancy
+had gone down town one day to a wholesale shop in Lower Broadway, where
+she had been able to buy "one dozen dolls, size nine, quality four, hair
+yellow, dress blue," for two dollars and seventy cents.
+
+The first of the dozen was the same evening presented to Anne-Marie. It
+was rapturously kissed; it was christened Hermina--Minna's name; its
+clotted yellow hair was combed; attempts were made to undress it, but as
+it did not undress, it was put to sleep as it was, and Anne-Marie went
+to bed carefully beside it.
+
+In due time Hermina broke and died. What unbounded joy was Anne-Marie's
+when Hermina herself, with the self-same azure eyes, clotted yellow
+hair, blue dress, angel smile, reappeared before her. She was
+rapturously kissed. In due time also this second Hermina, legless, and
+with pendulous, dislocated head, was taken away from Anne-Marie's fond
+arms, and a new stiff Hermina was produced, with clotted hair and angel
+smile renewed. Anne-Marie's eyes opened large and wide, and she drew a
+deep breath. With more amazement than love she accepted the third
+Hermina, and did not kiss her. That Hermina died quickly, and Nancy,
+with a triumphant smile, produced a fourth. With a shriek of hatred
+Anne-Marie took her by the well-known painted boots, and hit the
+well-known face against the floor.
+
+The other eight were given to her at once, and were hit, and hated, and
+stamped upon. For many nights Anne-Marie's dreams were peopled with dead
+and resuscitated Herminas--placid, smiling Herminas with no legs; booted
+Herminas with large pieces broken out of their cheeks; fearful Herminas
+all right in the back, but with darksome voids where their faces ought
+to be under the clotted yellow hair.
+
+She would have no more dolls, and her pleasures were taken where she
+found them mainly in the kitchen. She liked to wash dishes, because she
+was not allowed to; and she could be seen whisking a kitchen-towel under
+her arm in the brisk, important manner of Minna. She liked to see the
+butcher's man slap a piece of steak down on the table; and the laugh of
+the "coloured lady" who brought the washing was sweet in her ears. She
+also liked the piano that was played in the adjoining flat--the piano
+that drove Nancy to distraction and despair whenever she tried to work.
+
+    "Rose of my spirit, Fountain of my love,
+     Lilial blue-veined flower of my desire----"
+
+wrote Nancy, trying not to hear the climpering next door.
+
+"Minna! Minna! What is that tune?" called Anne-Marie, jumping from her
+chair. "Is it 'Eastside, Westside,' or 'Paradise Alley'?"
+
+"No, it ain't. It's 'Casey would waltz.'"
+
+"Oh, is it? Sing it. Do sing it, Minna."
+
+And from the kitchen came Minna's voice, a loud soprano:
+
+    "Casey would waltz with the strawberry blonde,
+     And the band--played--on."
+
+Then Anne-Marie's childish falsetto:
+
+    "Casey would waltz with the strawberry blonde,
+     And the band--play--don."
+
+Alas! even the cycle of child poems must wait until Nancy could afford a
+larger apartment, and a governess for the "lilial blue-veined flower of
+her desire." There was no "Stimmung" for lyrics in the left-top flat in
+82nd Street.
+
+Aldo was at home a good deal during the day-time, yawning, reading the
+interminable Sunday papers that lay about all the week, smoking
+cigarettes, and wishing they could afford this and that.
+
+In the evenings he went out. His work, it seemed, was to be done more in
+the evening than in the day-time, so he explained to Nancy. He explained
+very little to Nancy. Once he had brought home one hundred dollars
+instead of twenty, but she had been so startled and aghast, so nervous
+and impatient to know how he had got it, and, above all, it had been so
+impossible to make her understand the subtleties of his duties to Mrs.
+Van Osten, that he had finally declared it was simply a present for an
+extra important piece of work he had had to do. And the next time he
+received a hundred dollars--about three months afterwards, when more
+arduous duties once more developed upon him--he took eighty to the Dime
+Savings-Bank, and brought the usual twenty dollars home.
+
+As soon as the little savings-bank book was placed in his hand, the
+Caracciolo grandfather awoke in him again, and murdered the lazzarone
+who cared not for the morrow. He became heedful of little things,
+grudging of little expenses. The dingy flat was run on the strictest
+principles of economy, and when a dollar could be taken up the steps of
+the savings-bank and put away, he was happy. He had learned that by
+making deep, grateful eyes at Minna over the accounts, she would keep
+expenses down to please him; and many were the lumps of sugar and bits
+of butter taken from Mrs. Schmidl's larder by Minna's fat, pink hand and
+placed, sacrificial offerings, on the Della Roccas' shabby table.
+
+Anne-Marie's pink hats and Minna-made frocks had to last through the
+seasons long after the "coloured lady" had washed every vestige of tint
+and vitality out of them, and they were a thorn in Nancy's eye. Nancy
+wore her pepper-and-salt dress day after day; it turned, and it
+dyed--black, and when it was no more, she got another like it.
+
+The days passed meanly and quickly. And Nancy learned that one can be
+dingy, and sordid, and poverty-stricken, and yet go on living, and
+gently drift down into the habit of it, and hardly remember that things
+were ever otherwise.
+
+The evenings only were terrible. When Minna had gone home, and
+Anne-Marie slept, and Aldo had sauntered out to meet some Italians, or
+had hurried in full evening-dress to his work, Nancy sat drearily in the
+"parlour." From mantelpiece, shelf, and what-not photographs of unknown
+people, friends of Mrs. Johnstone, the landlady, gazed at her with faded
+faces and in obsolete attire; actresses in boy's clothes, and
+large-faced children; chinless young men in turned-down collars; Mr. and
+Mrs. Johnstone in bridal attire; their first-born baby with no clothes
+on, now a clerk at Macy's. Hanging on the wall, with whitish eyes that
+followed Nancy about, was the enlarged photograph of dead Mr. Johnstone,
+and Nancy, in her loneliness, feared him. She covered him one evening
+with a table-cloth, but it was worse. When, on her arrival months ago,
+she had collected all these photographs and hidden them away in a
+closet, Mrs. Johnstone, who liked to drop in suddenly, had arrived, and
+looked round with a red face.
+
+"You don't want to do that," she had said, taking all the pictures out
+again and setting them up in their places. She also would not allow the
+large ornamental piano-lamp, that took up half the stuffy little room,
+to be moved. It had cost thirty-two dollars. So it stood there in the
+dark-carpeted, obscure parlour, and its yellow silk shade with the grimy
+white silk roses pinned on it was an outrage to Nancy's pained gaze.
+
+One evening at bed-time Anne-Marie said to her mother: "I like the girl
+next door."
+
+"You do not know her, darling," said Nancy.
+
+"Oh yes, I do. I talked to her from the back-window."
+
+"What is her name?" said Nancy, unfastening strings and buttons on her
+daughter's back.
+
+"Oh, she told me--I don't know. A little dry name like a cough."
+
+Nancy laughed and kissed the nape of Anne-Marie's neck, which was plump,
+and fair, and sweet to smell. At that moment the girl-neighbour knocked
+and came in, with a bear made of chocolate for Anne-Marie. Her name--the
+dry name like a cough--was Peggy.
+
+"I've just come in because I thought you seemed kind of lonesome," she
+said, looking round the parlour after Anne-Marie had been tucked in and
+left in the adjoining bedroom with the door ajar.
+
+She then told Nancy that she worked in a hairdresser's shop down
+Broadway, "mostly fixing nails." "Sickening work," she added. "All those
+different hands I have to keep holding kind of turns me. Especially
+women's!"
+
+Nancy laughed. Peggy offered to fix her nails for nothing, and after
+some hesitation Nancy allowed her to do so.
+
+"My! you have hands quite like a lady," said Peggy; and the cup of
+Nancy's bitterness was full. Nancy quickly changed the subject.
+
+"Is it you who play the piano?" she asked.
+
+"No, my brother. He works in a shipping office. But he is great on
+music."
+
+At this point Anne-Marie's voice was heard from the adjoining room:
+"What is that piece that was lovely?"
+
+Peggy laughed, but could not say which piece Anne-Marie meant. After a
+while she went to call her brother, who came in, lanky and diffident,
+and was introduced as "George." Anne-Marie kept calling from her room
+about the piece that was lovely, and finally the young man went back to
+his flat, leaving the doors open, and played all the pieces of his
+repertoire.
+
+But "the piece that was lovely" was not among them. Peggy and Nancy
+said: "She probably dreamt it." But Anne-Marie cried "No, no, no!" at
+the first note of every piece that was started. At last she wept, and
+was naughty and rude, and the bear's hindlegs, which she had not yet
+eaten, were taken away from her.
+
+Peggy and George were very friendly, and promised to call again. They
+lived alone. Their parents had a sheep ranch in Dakota.
+
+"Rotten place," said George. "New York is good enough for me." And they
+shook hands and left.
+
+After that, when Mr. Johnstone frightened Nancy more than usual, she
+knocked at the wall in Anne-Marie's room with a hair-brush, and Peggy
+came in, and spent a friendly evening with her. Sometimes George came,
+too, and read the magazine supplements of the Sunday papers aloud.
+George read all the poems.
+
+"He's a great one for poetry," said his sister.
+
+George passed his manicured fingers through his thin hair, and looked
+self-conscious.
+
+"I guess all the real poets are dead long ago," he said.
+
+"I fear so," said Nancy.
+
+"Mamma!" came Anne-Marie's voice, distinct and wide-awake, through the
+half-open door.
+
+"Yes, dear," said Nancy. "Good-night."
+
+"Mamma!" cried Anne-Marie. "Come here."
+
+Nancy rose and went to her. Anne-Marie was sitting up in bed.
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+Nancy did not know.
+
+"He said the poets were dead. All the real ones. You said poets could
+never die."
+
+Nancy sat down on the bed, and pressed the little fair head to her
+heart.
+
+"I will tell you about that to-morrow," she said. "And you must not
+listen to what is said in another room. It is not honourable." After a
+long explanation of what "honourable" meant, Nancy rose and kissed her.
+
+"You had better shut the door," said Anne-Marie. "One can't be
+honourable if one can be not."
+
+So the door was closed.
+
+Early next morning Anne-Marie inquired about the poets.
+
+"Well," said Nancy, who had forgotten about it, and was taken unawares.
+She spoke slowly, making up her story as she went on, and trying to put
+another picture in the little book of Anne-Marie's mind. "Once the world
+was full of roses, and poets lived for ever."
+
+"Yes," said Anne-Marie.
+
+"Then one day some people said to God: 'There are too many useless
+things in the world. Roses, for instance. We could do without them, and
+have vegetables instead.' So God took away the roses. And all the poets
+died."
+
+"What of?"
+
+"Of silence," said Nancy. "They died because they had nothing more to
+say."
+
+Anne-Marie looked very sad. Nancy made haste to comfort her.
+
+"Then God put a few roses back, for little Anne-Maries who don't like
+vegetables (which is very naughty of them, because they do one good),
+and so also a few poets came back into the world."
+
+"But not the real ones?"
+
+"Well, not quite real ones, perhaps," said Nancy.
+
+"Then what is the good of them?" asked Anne-Marie.
+
+Nancy could not say. Nancy could not say what was the good of not quite
+real poets. But for that matter, what was the good of the real ones?
+What was the good of anything? Nancy's thoughts went in drooping file to
+her own work. What was the good of writing a Book? "I need not have
+written any story at all," she said to herself.
+
+Perhaps that is what God will say when the dead worlds come rolling in
+at his feet, at the end of Eternity.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Poverty and loneliness pushed Nancy along the dreary year, and she went
+in her brown dress, with her heels worn down at the side, through the
+autumn and the winter. Aldo was away for weeks at a time, and although
+he seemed in good humour when he was at home, and dressed elaborately,
+he was always parsimonious in the house, warning against rashness and
+expense.
+
+Anne-Marie went to a kindergarten, where the grocer's children, and the
+baker's children, and the milkman's children went, and she liked them,
+and they liked her.
+
+And now April was here. Where it could, it pushed and penetrated;
+through the trestles of the elevated railroads it spilt its sunshine on
+the ground. And it ran into the open window of the 82nd Street flat,
+and stretched its sweetness on the faded yellow silk of the hated
+lampshade.
+
+To Nancy, who was moping in her dingy brown dress, April said: "Go out."
+So she put on her hat, and went out. And, having no reason to turn to
+the right, she turned to the left, and after a few blocks, having no
+reason to turn to the left, she turned to the right, and ran straight
+into a little messenger-boy, who was coming round the corner carrying
+some flowers in tissue-paper, and whistling.
+
+Some trailing maidenhair escaping from the paper caught in her dress,
+and broke off. "I am sorry," she said.
+
+"Can't yer use yer eyes!" said the boy rudely.
+
+Then April said to Nancy: "Smile!" And she smiled, dimpling, and said
+again: "I am sorry."
+
+The boy looked at her, and turned his tongue round in his mouth; then he
+sniffed, and said: "Here you are! This is for you."
+
+He pushed the bunch of flowers into Nancy's hand, then turned back, and
+went round the corner again, whistling. Nancy ran after him, but he ran
+quicker, looking round every now and then and laughing at her. When he
+turned another corner Nancy stood with the flowers in her hand,
+wondering.
+
+She opened the paper a little at the top, and looked in. Mauve orchids
+and maidenhair--a bouquet for a queen. She walked slowly back to her
+house, carrying the flowers in front of her with both hands, and their
+idle beauty and extravagant loveliness lifted her prostrate spirit above
+the dust around her.
+
+She went to her room with them, avoiding Minna, who was clattering
+dishes in the kitchen, and, locking her door, sat down near the bed. She
+drew the tissue-paper away, and the fairy-like flowers, scintillant and
+bedewed, nodded at her.
+
+In their midst lay a letter, with the crest of a Transatlantic steamship
+on the envelope. She opened it with timid hands.
+
+  "DEAR UNKNOWN IN THE PALE BLUE DRESS,
+
+"I am sending this to you as a child sends a walnut-shell boat sailing
+down a river. Where will it go to? Whom will it reach? I am leaving
+America to-day. By the time you read this--are you smiling with
+wondering eyes? or is your mouth grave, and your heart subdued?--I shall
+be throbbing away to Europe on board the _Lusitania_, and we shall
+probably never meet. But I am superstitious. As I drove down to the
+steamer just now the words that are often in my mind when I travel
+sprang with loud voices to my ear:
+
+"'Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist dein Glueck.'
+
+"Do you know German?
+
+"'There _where thou art not_, is thy happiness.'
+
+"I am leaving America because I hate it, and have never been happy here;
+probably my happiness was meanwhile in Europe, or Asia, or Australia.
+But what, now that I am going to Europe, if my happiness were in America
+after all? What if I were driving away from it, taking ships and sailing
+from it, catching trains and leaving it behind? I stopped the cab, and
+got these flowers on chance.
+
+"The steward has called a messenger, an impish boy with a crooked mouth.
+He stands here waiting.
+
+"I look at him, and like to think that you will see him too. But you?
+How shall we find you, the flowers, and my heart, and the
+messenger-boy?
+
+"I shall tell him to stop the first girl he meets who is dressed in
+light blue. That is you. And I reason that if you wear a light blue
+dress you must be young; and if you are young you are happy; and if you
+are happy you are kind; and if you are kind you will write to me, who am
+a lonely, crabbed, and crusty man.
+
+"My address is the Metropole, London.
+
+      "ROBERT BEAUCHAMP LEESE."
+
+Nancy placed the letter on the bed beside the flowers; she sat a long
+time, with folded hands, looking at them. They brought but one message
+to her eyes that were vexed with shabbiness, to her soul that was shrunk
+by privation--riches.
+
+They belonged to another sphere. They had come up the wrong street, into
+the wrong house. If they could have life and motion they would rise
+quickly--Nancy could imagine them--lifting dainty skirts and tripping
+hurriedly out from the sordid flat.
+
+Nancy laid her cheek near to the delicate petals, and her hand on the
+letter. Her fancy played with an answer--an answer that should startle
+him, surprise him.
+
+    "How shall I hold you, fix you, freeze you,
+     Break my heart at your feet to please you!..."
+
+Yes, she could quote Browning to him, and Heine; she could paint a
+fantastic picture of her light blue gown, against which the mauve
+orchids melted in divine dissonance of colour; she would be wearing with
+it a large black hat, with feathers curving over a shading velvet
+brim....
+
+She sighed, and went to the rickety bamboo-table, where the inkstand
+stood on a cracked plate, and the ivory pen lay in demoralized
+familiarity, with a red wooden penholder belonging to Anne-Marie. On
+the cheap notepaper which she used when she wrote to borrow a saucepan
+from Mrs. Schmidl, or to ask Mrs. Johnstone to wait until next week, she
+wrote:
+
+  "DEAR SIR,
+
+"The wrong girl got your letter. I was dressed in _brown_."
+
+She did not sign her name, but she read his letter over again, and,
+seeing that he was lonely, and crabbed, and crusty, she added her
+address.
+
+He answered to "Miss '_brown_'" at the address she had given him, and he
+began his letter: "Dear wrong girl, write to me again." And she wrote
+back to say that indeed she would not dream of writing to him.
+
+He replied thanking her, and asking if she were not the Miss Brown he
+had met on board ship sixteen years ago, who had been so kind and
+maternal to him, and had then had smallpox so badly. He hoped and
+believed she was that Miss Brown.
+
+Nancy felt that she must tell him she was not that Miss Brown. And she
+did so. And there the correspondence ended. At least, so she told
+herself as she ran up the stairs after posting her letter at the corner
+of the street.
+
+She was alone that evening, as so often. The piano-lamp was lit. The
+little china clock on the mantelpiece ticked time away like a hurrying
+heart, and Nancy suddenly realized that life was passing quickly, and
+that she was not living. She was shut up in the dusky little flat with
+Mr. Johnstone, and was as dead as he. A fierce excitement overcame her
+suddenly, like a gust of wind, like a flame of fire--regret for her
+wasted talents, resentment against her fate, hatred of the poverty that
+was crippling and maiming and crushing her. What was she doing? Was she
+asleep? was she drugged? was she dreaming? What had come over her that
+she could let herself drift down into the nameless obscurity, the sullen
+ignominy of despair?
+
+When midnight struck, Nancy leaped from her chair as one who is called
+by a loud voice. Life was rushing past her; she would wake, and go too.
+Some old French verses came into her head about "la belle" who wanted to
+enter the "blue garden"; who passed it in the morning, and looked in
+through the open gates.
+
+    "La belle qui veut,
+     La belle qui n'ose,
+     Cueillir les roses
+     Du jardin bleu."
+
+And she passed at noon, and looked in through the open gates:
+
+    "La belle qui veut,
+     La belle qui n'ose,
+     Cueillir les roses
+     Du jardin bleu."
+
+In the evening she said: "Now I will enter." But she found that the
+gates were closed.
+
+    "La belle qui veut,
+     La belle qui n'ose,
+     Cueillir les roses
+     Du jardin bleu."
+
+Some characters evolve slowly, by imperceptible gradations, as a rose
+opens or a bird puts on its feathers. But Nancy broke through her
+chrysalis-shell in an hour. From one day to the next the gentle,
+submissive Nancy was no more; the passive, childlike soul clothed in
+the simplicity of genius died that night--for no other reason but that
+her hour had come--drifted off, perhaps, in the little dreamboat of her
+childhood, where Baby Bunting sat at the helm waiting for her. And
+together they went back, afloat on the darkness, to the Isle of What is
+No More.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "DEAR UNKNOWN,
+
+"You are very persistent. Is it not enough to know who I am not, that
+you needs must want to know who I am? What's in a name? A woman by any
+other name would be as false.
+
+"Then call me, if call me you will, by the sweeping, impersonal, fragile
+name of Eve. And picture me as Eve, with the serpent coiled round her
+neck like a boa, and the after-glimmer of a lost Paradise in her
+tranquil eyes. The tranquil eyes are blue, under dark hair.
+
+"What! more questions? Yes, I am young--not disconcertingly so. And
+good-tempered--not monotonously so. And almost pretty--not distractingly
+so.
+
+"And I write to you, not because I am temerarious, but because the month
+is April and the time is twilight. And you are the Unknown."
+
+The Unknown answered. And she wrote to him again. She put all her
+fancies and all her phrases into the letters. She wrote him lies and
+truth. She described herself to him as she thought she was not--but as
+perhaps she really was. In her letters she was a spoilt butterfly,
+whirling through life with vivid wings.
+
+As she wrote she grew to resemble the girl she wrote about. She borrowed
+money from Peggy and from George, who had fallen in love with her. She
+would pay it back some day. She bought clothes, and ran up debts, and
+signed notes, and resorted to expedients. All the cleverness that should
+have gone into her book she used in her everyday life to wrench herself
+free from the poverty that was choking her. "Nothing matters! Nothing
+matters!" Only to get out of the mire and the mud--to lift little
+Anne-Marie out of the hideous surroundings, to stand her up safe and
+high in the light, out of reach of the sordid struggle.
+
+One day--a chilly afternoon in May--Aldo did not come home. Minna had
+gone to fetch Anne-Marie from school, when a messenger rang and gave
+Nancy a sealed letter.
+
+In it Aldo said the chance of his life had come, and that he could not
+throw it aside--no! for her own sake, and for the child's, he would not
+do so. He thought not of himself. His thwarted ambitions, his warped
+talents, his stifled nature, had cried for a wider horizon. But not for
+this was he taking so grave a step. One day she would know how he was
+sacrificing himself for her sake. And he would open his arms, and she
+would fall on his breast and thank him. (Here was a blur--where Aldo's
+tear had fallen.) And he enclosed five hundred dollars. She was to be
+careful, as five hundred dollars was a large sum--two thousand five
+hundred francs. And she might take a smaller flat, and pay Minna eight
+dollars a month instead of ten. And she had better not write about this
+to Italy, as probably in a few months' time everything would be
+explained, and now farewell, and the Saints protect them! And she was to
+pray for him. And he was for ever her unhappy Aldo.
+
+The messenger had darted off as soon as she had signed his receipt, and
+Nancy sat down, rigid and dazed, with her letter and the
+five-hundred-dollar bill in her hand.
+
+Aldo was not coming back. Aldo had left her and the child to struggle
+through life alone. All that day she carried her heart cold and stern as
+a rock in her delicate breast.
+
+In the evening she went into his room. True, it was a mean and miserable
+room. Everything in it--from the small window that looked out on a dark,
+damp wall to the torn carpet, from the crooked folding-bedstead to the
+broken piece of mirror leaning against the wall on the narrow
+mantelpiece--everything was horrible, everything was good to get away
+from. Nancy looked round, and pity drove the stinging tears to her eyes.
+Poor Aldo! What had Aldo had, after all, to come home to? Not love. For
+the love that would have carried them through and over such wretchedness
+was not in Nancy's heart. Her love for him had been all for his beauty;
+her love had been a delicate, sensitive, blow-away creature, half ghost,
+half angel, whom to wound was to kill. And Fate had amused itself by
+throwing bricks and bats at it, choking it under mountains of ugliness,
+kicking it through crowded streets, dragging it up squalid stairs....
+When Nancy drew the sheet from its face, she saw that it had been dead a
+long time. And she was sorry for Aldo.
+
+She pulled his trunk out from under the bed, and remorsefully and
+compassionately put all his things into it--his books, his broken comb
+and cheap brushes, his old patent-leather shoes that he wore about the
+house instead of slippers, some packets of cigarettes. When she opened
+his dark cupboard, and saw that all the new clothes had been taken away,
+she smiled with a little sigh, and remembered how pale he had looked
+when he said good-bye that morning.
+
+How had he got those five hundred dollars to give her? She knelt down
+suddenly beside the open trunk, and said a prayer for him, as he had
+wished her to do. When she rose and shut the trunk, she shut in it the
+memory of Aldo, that was not to be with her any more.
+
+Anne-Marie hardly noticed her father's absence, talking of him
+occasionally in the airy, detached manner of children; but Minna went
+for a week with red eyes and swollen face. And after a while the
+accounts rose with a rush.
+
+Nancy paid all her debts, bought some clothes, and gave Mrs. Johnstone
+notice. She engaged a suite in a fashionable boarding-house on Lexington
+Avenue. Peggy and George stayed with her the last day in the flat, and
+helped her with her packing; but in the evening they went back to their
+rooms, for they were expecting a friend--Mr. Markowski, a Pole--who was
+to come and make music with George.
+
+Anne-Marie was asleep, and Nancy sat down in the denuded room where
+everything belonging to her had already been put away. The dead Mr.
+Johnstone looked sadly at her, and even the piano-lamp was bland and
+dulcet, shining on the roses that George had brought her.
+
+The postman's double knock startled her, and she received from his hand
+a letter. Aldo? No. It came from England, and was addressed to "Miss
+Brown." She called the grinning postman in, and gave him half a dollar.
+Thank you. He would see that all them "Miss Brown" letters and any
+others were brought to her new address. She opened the letter; the
+large, well-known handwriting was pleasant to her eyes. The little crest
+of the Grand Hotel spoke to her of cheerful, well-remembered things.
+She seemed to look through its round gold ring as through an
+opera-glass, that showed her far-away things she knew and loved. "Hotel
+Metropole." She imagined the brilliantly lit lounge, the gaily-gowned,
+laughing women rustling past with the leisurely, well-groomed men; the
+soft-footed, obsequious waiters; the ready, low-bowing porter; the
+willing, hurrying pageboys; and beyond the revolving glass doors
+London, bright, brilliant, luxurious, rolling to its pleasures.
+
+She sat down and answered the Unknown's letter:
+
+"The room is closed and warm and silent. The lamp and the fire give a
+mellow glow to the heavy old-rose curtains, and to the soft-tinted
+arabesques on the carpet. Some large pale roses are leaning drowsily
+over their vase, and dreaming their scented souls away.
+
+"I am smoking a Russian cigarette (with a _soupcon_ of white heliotrope
+added to its fragrance), and writing to you.
+
+"My unknown friend! Are you worthy of companionship with the scent of my
+roses and the smoke of my cigarette--such delicate, unselfish
+things?..."
+
+A piercing cry from the adjoining room made Nancy leap from her chair.
+Penholder in hand, she rushed into Anne-Marie's room. The child, a slip
+of white, was standing on her bed, pale of cheek, wild of eye, one hand
+extended towards the wall. Her tumbled hair stood yellow and flame-like
+round her head.
+
+"Listen!" she gasped--"listen!" And Nancy stopped and listened.
+
+Clearly and sweetly through the wall came the voice of a violin. Then
+the piano struck in, accompanying the "Romance" of Svendsen. Anne-Marie
+stood like a little wild prophetess, with her hand stretched out. Then
+she whispered: "It is the lovely piece--the lovely piece that he could
+not remember!"
+
+"It is a violin, darling," said Nancy, and sat down on the bed.
+
+But Anne-Marie was listening, and did not move. Nancy drew the blanket
+over the little bare feet, and put her arm round the slight, nightgowned
+figure.
+
+The last long-drawn note ended; then Anne-Marie moved. She covered her
+face with her hands and began to cry.
+
+"Why do you cry, darling--why do you cry?" asked Nancy embracing her.
+
+Anne-Marie's large eyes gazed at Nancy. "For many things--for many
+things!" she said. And Nancy for the first time felt that her child's
+spirit stood alone, beyond her reach and out of her keeping.
+
+"Is it the music, dear?"
+
+Anne-Marie held her tight, and did not answer. Nancy coaxed her back to
+bed, and soon tucked her up and left her. But the door between them was
+kept wide open, and the sound of Grieg's "Berceuse" and Handel's
+"Minuet" reached Nancy at her table, and helped her to add fantastic
+details to her letter.
+
+The next morning they moved to the boarding-house in Lexington Avenue.
+They did not see George, who had already gone down-town to his shipping
+office; but Peggy helped them into the carriage, and with Minna ran up
+and down the stairs after forgotten parcels.
+
+"What's wrong with the kiddy? She don't look festive," said Peggy,
+handing a hoop and a one-legged policeman, survivor of the Schmidl's
+Punch-and-Judy show, into the carriage to Anne-Marie.
+
+"Your music yesterday excited her very much," said Nancy. "She liked the
+violin."
+
+"Oh, that was Markowski. He's a funny old toad," said Peggy; and she got
+on to the carriage-step to kiss Anne-Marie. But Anne-Marie covered her
+face, and turned her head away. She seemed to be crying, and Peggy
+winked at Nancy, and said; "She's a queer little kid." And Nancy said,
+"She does not like good-byes." Then Minna got into the carriage with the
+cage of Anne-Marie's waltzing mice, for she was going to the
+boarding-house with them to help unpack.
+
+"Good-bye! Au revoir! Come and see us soon!"... The carriage rumbled
+off. Minna had counted and recounted on her fingers how many things they
+had, and how many things they had forgotten, when Anne-Marie raised her
+red face from her hands.
+
+"I _do_ like good-byes," she said. "But why did she say an old toad did
+the music?"
+
+Nancy comforted her, and said it did not matter, and they were going to
+a nice, nice, nice new house.
+
+The nice new house was expecting them, and a cheeky, pimply German
+page-boy took their packages up. He was rough with the hoop and the
+policeman, and held his nose as he carried up the waltzing mice. But the
+room they were to have was large and sunny, and everything was bright.
+
+They went down to luncheon, and sat down at a table with many strangers.
+Anne-Marie, who thought it was a party, was very shy in the beginning
+and very noisy at the end of the meal. The boarders were the kith and
+kin of all boarding-house guests. There was the silent old gentleman
+and the loud young man; the estimable couple that kept themselves to
+themselves; and the lady with the sulphur-coloured hair who did not keep
+herself to herself. There was the witty man and the sour woman; there
+were the ill-behaved children, that quarrelled all day and danced
+skirt-dances in the drawing-room at night; and their ineffectual mother
+and harassed father. There was also the Frenchman, the two Swedish
+girls, and the German lady.
+
+The German lady sat opposite Nancy, and, having looked at her and at
+Anne-Marie once, continued to do so at intervals all during lunch. Every
+time Nancy raised her eyes she met those of the German lady fixed upon
+her. They were kindly, inquisitive brown eyes behind glasses. Nobody
+spoke to Nancy at luncheon, the sulphur-haired lady and the witty man
+talking most of the time of their own affairs and their opinion of Sarah
+Bernhardt. Nancy was kept busy telling Anne-Marie in Italian not to
+stare at the two little girls, who seemed to fascinate her by their
+execrable behaviour.
+
+In the evening Nancy went down to dinner alone. After the soup the
+German lady spoke to her.
+
+"I hope the little girl is quite well," she said, nodding towards the
+empty place near Nancy.
+
+"Oh yes, thank you. She has early supper and goes to bed."
+
+"That is English habit," said the German lady. "Were you in England?"
+
+"When I was a child," said Nancy.
+
+Then the fish came; and always Nancy felt the brown eyes behind the
+glasses fixed on her face. At the mutton the German lady spoke again:
+
+"I heard you speak Italian," she said. "Are you from _il bel paese ove
+il si suona_?"
+
+Nancy laughed and said: "My mother was Italian. My father was English. I
+was born in Davos, in Switzerland." For some unaccountable reason the
+German lady flushed deeply. She did not speak again until the sago
+pudding had gone round twice and the fruit once--very quickly.
+
+"You speak German?" she said.
+
+"I had a German governess," said Nancy.
+
+Again the German lady's smooth cheeks flushed. Then every one rose and
+went into the drawing-room, and Nancy went to her room and wrote to the
+Unknown.
+
+"You ask me to talk about myself. Nothing pleases me better; for I am
+selfish and subjective.
+
+"I am a gambler. I went to Monte Carlo some time ago. Oh, golden-voiced,
+green-eyed Roulette! I gambled away all my money and all the money of
+everyone else that I could lay hands on. I laid hands on a good deal. I
+have rather pretty hands.
+
+"I am a dreamer. I have wandered out in deserted country roads dreaming
+of you, my unknown hero, and of Uhland's mysterious forests, and of
+Maeterlinck's lost princesses, until I could feel the warmth welling up
+at the back of my eyes, which is the nearest approach to tears that is
+vouchsafed me.
+
+"I am a heathen. I have a hot, unruly worship for everything beautiful,
+man, woman, or thing. I believe in Joy; I trust in Happiness; I adore
+Pleasure.
+
+"I am a savage--an overcivilized, hypercultivated savage with some of
+the growls and the hankerings after feathers still left in him. I adore
+jewels. I have some diamonds--diamonds with blue eyes and white
+smiles--as large as my heart. No, no! larger! I wear them at all seasons
+and everywhere; round my throat, my arms, my ankles, all over me! I like
+men to wear jewels. If ever I fall in love with you, I shall insist upon
+your wearing rings up to your finger-tips. Do not protest, or I will
+_not_ fall in love with you.
+
+"I am feminine; over- and ultra-feminine. I wear nothing but
+fluffinesses--trailing, lacey, blow-away fluffinesses, floppy hats on my
+soft hair, and flimsy scarves on my small shoulders. I have no views. I
+belong to no clubs. I drink no cocktails--or, when I do, I make
+delicious little grimaces over them, and say they burn. They _do_ burn!
+I smoke Russian cigarettes scented with white heliotrope, because surely
+no man would dream of doing such a sickening thing.
+
+"I am careless; I am extravagant; I am lazy--oh, exceedingly lazy. I
+envy La Belle au Bois dormant, who slept a hundred years. Until Prince
+Charming....
+
+"Good-bye, Prince Charming.
+
+      "EVE."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The next day at luncheon the German lady stared again, and looked away
+quickly.
+
+Anne-Marie asked her mother: "What is Irish stew when he is alive?"
+Nancy smiled and dimpled. Then the German lady, who had seen the dimple
+and the smile, said in a sudden, loud voice, over which she had no
+control: "Is your name Nancy?"
+
+Nancy looked up with a start. "Yes!" she said. And everyone was silent.
+
+"My name is Fraeulein Mueller," said the German lady, taking a pink-edged
+handkerchief from her pocket and making ready for tears.
+
+"Fraeulein Mueller! Fraeulein Mueller!" said Nancy dreamily. "You read
+Uhland to me, and Lenau, and ... 'shine out little head sunning over
+with curls.'"
+
+Then Fraeulein Mueller wept in her handkerchief, and Nancy rose from her
+seat and went round and kissed her. Then it was Fraeulein Mueller's turn
+to get up and go round and kiss Anne-Marie; whereupon the sulphur-haired
+lady remarked how small the world was; and the witty man said they would
+next discover that he and she were brother and sister, and had she not a
+strawberry mark on her left shoulder?
+
+After lunch Fraeulein Mueller asked Nancy to her room, and she held
+Anne-Marie on her lap, and had to say the baby rhyme, "Da hast du 'nen
+Thaler, geh' auf den Markt" about fifty times, with the accompanying
+play on Anne-Marie's pink, outstretched palm, before she was allowed to
+talk to Nancy. Then she told them all about the years she had passed in
+an American family after leaving the Grey House, and about the little
+house she had just rented on Staten Island--a tiny little house in a
+garden, where she was going to live for the rest of her life. She was
+furnishing it now, and it would be ready next week.
+
+"You must come to see it. You must stay with me there," said Fraeulein
+Mueller, looking for a dry spot on the sodden handkerchief. "Oh, meine
+kleine Nancy! My little Genius! Und was ist mit der Poesie?"
+
+The following week Fraeulein Mueller left Lexington Avenue for her
+"Gartenhaus," as she called it, and three days later Nancy and
+Anne-Marie went to stay with her for a fortnight.
+
+"What for an education has the child?" inquired the old governess, when
+Anne-Marie had been put to bed after a day of wonders. What?
+Strawberries grew on plants? Anne-Marie had always thought they came in
+baskets.
+
+"She seems to know nothing," said Fraeulein Mueller. "I tried her with a
+little arithmetic. Did she know the metric system? Oh yes, she said she
+did, and wanted to speak about something else. But I kept her to it,"
+said Fraeulein sternly, "and asked her: 'What are millimetres?' Do you
+know what the child said? She said that she supposed they were relations
+of the centipedes!"
+
+Nancy laughed, and told Fraeulein Mueller about the Sixth Avenue School.
+Fraeulein clasped horrified hands.
+
+"I will educate her myself. I suppose she is also a genius."
+
+"No, I am afraid not," said Nancy, shaking her head regretfully. "I wish
+she were!"
+
+The two women were silent; and from the little bedroom upstairs, through
+the open window, came Anne-Marie's voice, like tinkling water.
+
+"She is singing," said Fraeulein Mueller.
+
+"Oh yes; she always sings herself to sleep. She likes music." And Nancy
+told her about the violin.
+
+"We shall buy her a violin to-morrow," said Fraeulein Mueller.
+
+And so she did. The violin was new and bright and brown; it was labelled
+"Guarnerius," and cost three dollars. Anne-Marie pushed the bow up and
+down on it with great pleasure for a short time. Then she became very
+impatient, and took it out into the garden, and looked for a large
+stone.
+
+"... It made ugly voices at me," she said, standing small and
+unrepentant by the broken brown pieces, while Fraeulein Mueller and Nancy
+shook grieved heads at her.
+
+"I do not think that music is her vocation after all," said Fraeulein
+Mueller. "But we shall see."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+"Good-morning, my tenebrious Unknown. I am in the country, perched up on
+a stone wall with nothing in sight but vague, distant hills and sleepy
+fields. Queer insects buzz in the sun, and make me feel pale. I dread
+buzzing insects with a great shivery dread.
+
+"Why are you not here? I am wearing a large straw hat with blue ribbons,
+and a white dress and a blue sash, like the _ingenue_ in a drawing-room
+comedy. And there is no one to see me. And the fields are full of
+flowers, and I pick them, and have no one to give them to. Surely it is
+the time in all good story-books when the heroine in a white dress and
+blue sash is sitting on a wall for Prince Charming to pass and see her,
+and stop suddenly.... But life is a badly constructed novel;
+uninteresting people walk in and walk out, and all is at contra-tempo,
+like a Brahms Hungarian Dance.
+
+"Prince Charming, why have you gone three thousand miles away?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Good-morning again.
+
+"This is a divine day--cool winds and curtseying grasses.
+
+"I am still here, living on herbs and sunsets and memories of things
+that have not been. You are a thing that has not been. Perhaps that is
+why you are so much in my thoughts. I have many friends whom I seldom
+think of. I have a few lovers whom I never think of. And I have you who
+are nothing, and whom I always think of. It is absurd and wonderful.
+
+"My lovers! You ask me who they are and why I have them. I have them
+because they make me look pretty. I look pretty when I laugh. A woman's
+beauty depends entirely upon how much she is loved. Did you not know
+that? The best 'fard pour la beaute des dames' is other people's
+adoration.
+
+"My lovers therefore have their use, but they are not entertaining. They
+are uniformly sad or angry. Yet I am good to my lovers. I let them trot
+in and out of their tempers like nice tame animals that nobody need
+mind. I do not require them to perform in public; I sit and watch their
+innocent tricks with kind and wondering eyes.
+
+"Et vous, mon Prince Charmant? What of you? Who are you making to look
+prettier? Whose cheeks are you tinting? Whose eyes are you brightening?
+Whose heart are you making to flutter by the hurry of yours? Who smiles
+and dimples and blushes for your sake? I suppose you are falling in love
+with your fair countrywomen--tall, tennis-playing English girls, with
+cool, unkissed mouths and white, inexperienced hands. Ah, Prince
+Charming, whom do you love?
+
+          "EVE."
+
+He replied: "You have spoken. Whom do I love? Eve."
+
+She was glad. She lived a life of fevered joy. She was not Nancy. She
+was the Girl in the Letters; and the Girl in the Letters was a wild,
+unfettered, happy creature. Nothing seemed sweeter to her than this
+subtle _amor di lontano_--this love across the distance. Ah, how modern
+and piquant and recherche! And, again, how thirteenth-century! Was it
+not Jaufre Rudel, the Poet-Prince, who had loved the unseen Countess
+Melisenda for so many years?
+
+    "Amore di terra lontana,
+     Per voi tutto il core mi duol,"
+
+and who at last, coming to her, had died at her feet? Could they not
+also love each other across the distance, wildly and blindly, without
+the aid of any one of their senses? Surely that was the highest, the
+divinest, the most perfect way of love!
+
+So Nancy lived her dream, and tossed the tender little love-letters
+across the ocean with light hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"CHER INCONNU,
+
+"I write to you because it is raining and the sky is of grey flannel.
+You will say that I wrote to you yesterday because the weather was fine
+and the sky was of blue silk.
+
+"Ah, dear Unknown! It is true. You have grown into my life, like some
+strange, startling modern flower, out of place, out of season, yet sweet
+to my unwondering eyes. You are a black and white flower of words,
+growing through your brief wild letters into the garden of my heart.
+
+"What a garden, mon ami! What a growth of weeds! what a burst of roses!
+what a burgeoning of cabbages! An unnatural, degenerate garden, where
+the trees carry _marrons glaces_ and the flowers are scented with
+patchouli.
+
+"Into this luxuriance of perversity, this decadent brilliance of
+vegetation, you have blossomed up, strange and new, for the delight of
+my soul. That you should say you love me, you who have never seen me, is
+sweeter perfume to my sated senses than the incense of all the thousand
+seraph-flowers that bow and swing at my feet.
+
+"Good-bye. My name is Nancy."
+
+To this letter he replied by cable: "Nancy, come here at once."
+
+"'Come here at once!' The arrogant words go with a shock of pleasure to
+my heart. I am unused to the imperative; nobody has ever bullied me or
+told me to do this and that. I think I like it. I like being meek and
+frightened, and having to obey.
+
+"'Come here at once!' I find myself timidly looking round for my hat and
+gloves, and wondering whether I shall wear my blue or my grey dress on
+the journey. I am nice on journeys. I am good-tempered, and wear
+mousie-coloured clothes that fit well, and I have a small waist. All
+this is very important in travelling, and makes people overlook and
+forgive the many, many small packages I carry into the compartment, and
+the hatboxes I lose, and the umbrellas I forget. When I am tired I can
+put my head down anywhere and go to sleep; I sleep nicely and quietly
+and purrily, like a cat.
+
+"I am really very nice on journeys. Also I am very popular with useful
+people, like conductors and porters and guards. They take care of me and
+give me advice, and open and shut my windows, and lock my compartments
+even when it does not matter; and they bring me things to eat, and run
+after all the satchels and parcels I leave about.
+
+"Your last letter says you are going to Switzerland. How nice! I should
+like to be with you, throbbing away on excitable little Channel
+steamers, puffing along in smoky, deliberate Continental trains, driving
+the bell-shaking horses slowly up the wide white roads that coil like
+wind-blown ribbons round the swelling breasts of the Alps;
+table-d'hoting at St. Moritz; tennis-playing at Maloya; clattering and
+rumbling over the covered bridges near Spluegen; wandering through the
+moonlike sunshine of Sufer's pine-forest, where beady-eyed squirrels
+stop and look, and then scuttle, tail flourishing, up the trees. I am
+friends with every one of those squirrels. Greet them from me.
+
+      "NANCY."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                            NEW YORK.
+
+"AMOR MIO DI LONTANO,
+
+"I am in the city again the horrible, glaring, screaming city, all loud
+and harsh in the uncompromising July sun. How I long to-day for the
+shade of the closed Italian houses, the friendly, indrawn shutters, the
+sleeping silence of the empty streets, and, far-off, the cerulean sweep
+of the Mediterranean!
+
+"And a new lover at my side! A brand-new lover, whose voice would sound
+strange to my ears, whose eyes I had not fathomed, whose feelings I did
+not understand, whose thoughts I could only vaguely and wrongly guess
+at, whose nerves would respond strangely, like an unknown instrument, to
+the shy touch of my hand.
+
+"Your letter is brought to me. Written at the Hotel Bellevue, Andermatt.
+_Andermatt!_ How cool and buoyant and scintillant it sounds. It falls on
+my heart like a snowflake in the humid heat of this town.
+
+"I have opened the letter. What? Only three words!
+
+"Again: 'Come at once.' Again the words, with their brief, irresistible
+imperiousness, thrill my lazy soul.
+
+"If you write it a third time ... by all that is sweet and unlikely, I
+shall come!
+
+"Will you be glad? Will you kiss my white hands gratefully? Shall we be
+simple and absurd and happy? Or shall we fence and be brilliant,
+antagonistic, keen-witted? No matter! No matter! The fever of my heart
+will be stilled. My eyes will see you and be satisfied."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A cablegram to Andermatt. Reply paid. (Money borrowed from Fraeulein
+Mueller.)
+
+"Dreamt that you had long black beard. Tell me that not true.--NANCY."
+
+Reply from Andermatt:
+
+"Not true. Come at once."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nancy did not go at once. She had no money to go with; and, of course,
+she never intended to go at all.
+
+He wrote: "Will you meet me in Lucerne?" and she replied: "Impossible."
+
+He: "I shall expect you in Interlaken."
+
+She: "Out of the question."
+
+He: "I shall be in London in October. After that I am off to Peru."
+
+So in September she wrote to him again.
+
+"I lay awake last night dreaming of our first meeting. It will be framed
+in the conventional luxury of a little sitting-room in a Grand Hotel. It
+will be late in the afternoon--late enough to have the pretty
+pink-shaded lights lit, like shining fairy-tale flowers, all over the
+room. Then a knock at the door. And you will come into my life. What
+then, what then, dear Unknown? My hands will lie in yours like prisoned
+butterflies; my wilfulness and my courage, my flippancy and effrontery
+will throb away, foolishly, weakly, before your eyes. What then? Will
+Convention guide the steed of our Destiny gently back into the well-kept
+stables of the common-place? or shall we take the reins into our own
+hands, and lash it rearing and foaming over the precipice of the
+Forbidden, down into the flaming depths of passionate happiness?
+
+"Good-bye. Of course I shall not come."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Fraeulein Mueller came to town three times a week and taught Anne-Marie
+arithmetic and geography. Of arithmetic Anne-Marie understood little; of
+geography no word. She pointed vaguely with a ruler at the map, and
+said: "Skagerrack and Kattegat," which were the words whose sounds
+pleased her most.
+
+"The child is not at all a genius," said Fraeulein Mueller, much
+depressed.
+
+One day George and Peggy came to visit them at the boarding-house. And
+with them they brought Mr. Markowski and his violin.
+
+In the drawing-room after tea Nancy asked the shy and greasy-looking
+Hungarian to play: and the fiddle was taken tenderly out of its
+plush-lined case. Markowski was young and shabby, but his violin was old
+and valuable. Markowski had a dirty handkerchief, but the fiddle had a
+clean, soft white silk one. Markowski placed a small black velvet
+cushion on his greasy coat-collar, and raised the violin to it; he
+adjusted his chin over it, raised his bow, and shut his eyes. Then
+Markowski was a god.
+
+Do you know the hurrying anguish of Grieg's F dur Sonata? Do you know
+the spluttering shrieks of laughter of Bazzini's "Ronde des Lutins"? The
+sobbing of the unwritten Tzigane songs? The pattering of wing-like feet
+in Ries's "Perpetuum Mobile?"
+
+Little Anne-Marie stood in the middle of the room motionless, pale as
+linen, as if the music had taken life from her and turned her into a
+white statuette. Ah, here was the little neoteric statue that Nancy had
+tried to fix! The child's eyes were vague and fluid, like blue water
+spilt beneath her lashes; her colourless lips were open.
+
+Nancy watched her. And a strange dull feeling came over her heart, as if
+someone had laid a heavy stone in it. What was that little figure,
+blanched, decolorized, transfigured? Was that Anne-Marie? Was that the
+little silly Anne-Marie, the child that she petted and slapped and put
+to bed, the child that was so stupid at geography, so brainless at
+arithmetic?
+
+"Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie! What is it, dear? What are you thinking about?"
+
+Anne-Marie turned wide light eyes on her mother, but her soul was not in
+them. For the Spirit of Music had descended upon her, and wrapped her
+round in his fabulous wings--wrapped her, and claimed her, and borne her
+away on the swell of his sounding wings.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+"Fraeulein, I have no more money--not one little brown cent in the wide
+world," said Nancy, sitting on the lawn of the Gartenhaus, and drinking
+afternoon tea out of Fraeulein's new violet-edged cups.
+
+"So?" said Fraeulein. For a long time her lips moved in mental
+calculation. Then she said: "I could let you have forty-seven dollars."
+
+Nancy put down the cup, and, bending forward, kissed Fraeulein's downy
+cheek.
+
+"Dear angel!" she said; "and then?"
+
+"What is to be done?" said Fraeulein, drying her lips on her new fringed
+serviette, and folding it in a small neat square.
+
+"_Mah!_" said Nancy, raising her shoulders, swayed back into Italian by
+the stress of the moment.
+
+"No news from your husband?"
+
+"Bah!" said Nancy, shrugging her shoulders again, and waving her hand
+from the wrist downwards in a gesture of disdain.
+
+Fraeulein sighed, and looked troubled. Then she said:
+
+"You must come and live here, you and Anne-Marie. I will send Elisabeth
+away--anyhow, she has broken already three lamp-glasses and a plate--and
+we must live with economy." Fraeulein, who had lived with that lean and
+disagreeable comrade all her life, then coughed and looked practical.
+"Yes, I shall be glad to get rid of that clumsy girl, Elisabeth."
+
+Nancy put one arm round her neck and kissed her again. Then she said: "I
+have only one hope."
+
+"What is that?" asked Fraeulein.
+
+It was Nancy's turn to cough. She did so, and then said: "There is ...
+there are ... some ... some people in England who are interested in
+me--in my writings. I think ... they might help ... I ought to go over
+and see them."
+
+"Certainly," said Fraeulein, "you must go. And I will keep Anne-Marie
+here with me. Then she need not interrupt her violin-lessons."
+
+"Yes," said Nancy. "You could keep Anne-Marie...." She sighed deeply.
+"Of course she must not interrupt her lessons. I suppose you think I
+_ought_ to go?"
+
+"Of course," said Fraeulein, who was practical. "A firm like that won't
+do anything without seeing you and talking business. But mind, mind they
+do not cheat! Authoresses are always being cheated."
+
+Nancy smiled. "I shall try not to let them."
+
+"Being English, perhaps they will not. In Berlin----" And here Fraeulein
+repeated a discourse she had made many, many years ago in Wareside when
+Nancy's first poem had been read aloud. Fraeulein remembered that day,
+and spoke of it now with tearful tenderness. She also believed she
+remembered bits of the poem:
+
+    "This morning in the garden
+     I caught the little birds;
+     This morning in the orchard
+     I picked the little words."
+
+"What!" said Nancy. "Why did I 'pick the little words'?"
+
+"Perhaps it was 'plucked,'" said Fraeulein, looking vague.
+
+    "This morning in the garden
+     I caught the little words;
+     This morning in the orchard
+     I plucked ... or picked the little birds----"
+
+--"or caught them," continued Fraeulein, much moved.
+
+"I cannot say that that sounds very beautiful," said Nancy.
+
+"Oh, but it was. It may have been a little different. But it was lovely.
+And you were a little tiny thing, like Anne-Marie!"
+
+"Listen to Anne-Marie," said Nancy.
+
+Anne-Marie had insisted upon bringing her violin to the Gartenhaus, and
+was now practising on it in the dining-room. The windows were open. She
+was playing a little cradle-song very softly, very lightly, in perfect
+tune.
+
+"That is indeed a Wonderchild," said Fraeulein.
+
+Markowski had called her a Wonderchild directly. When he had seen her
+weeping convulsively after he had played, he had exclaimed: "This is a
+Wonderchild. I will teach her to play the fiddle."
+
+And sure enough he had come to the house on the following day, with a
+little old half-sized fiddle, like a shabby reproduction of the dead
+Guarnerius, and had given Anne-Marie her first lesson. The lesson had
+been long, and Anne-Marie had emerged from it with feverish eyes and hot
+cheeks, and with anger in her heart. For the Bird, or the Fairy, or the
+Sorcerer, or the Witch that made music in other violins, did not seem to
+be inside the little shabby fiddle Markowski had brought her.
+
+"Be gentle, be gentle! and do what I say," said Markowski, with his
+stringy black hair falling over his vehement eyes. "One day the Birds
+and the Witches will be in it, and they will sing to you. Now, practise
+scale of C."
+
+And Anne-Marie had practised scale of C--to Nancy's amazement, for she
+thought that in one lesson no one could have learnt so much. In ten
+lessons Anne-Marie had learnt fifteen scales and a cradle-song. In two
+months she had learnt what other children learn in two years. So said
+Markowski, who got more and more excited, and gave longer and longer
+lessons, and came every day instead of twice a week.
+
+"What do I owe you?" Nancy asked him. "I can't keep count of the
+lessons. You seem to be always coming."
+
+"Never mind! never mind!" said Markowski, waving excited, unwashed
+hands. And as he had heard about their financial position from George
+and Peggy, he added, "You will pay me ... when she plays you the Bach
+Chaconne!"
+
+"Very well," said Nancy, who thought that that meant in a week or two.
+"Just as you please, Herr Markowski."
+
+And then she thought he must be insane, because he was bent with
+laughter as he packed away his violin.
+
+Fraeulein Mueller made accounts in a little black book all one day and
+half one night, and in the morning she went to Lexington Avenue to see
+Nancy.
+
+"I can give you eighty dollars. Will that pay your journey to England to
+see the firm of publishers?"
+
+Oh yes, Nancy thought so. And how good of her! And how could Nancy ever
+thank her?
+
+"Of course, those people will be glad to advance you something at once,
+even if the manuscript is not quite ready," said Fraeulein, who was
+romantic besides being practical.
+
+"I suppose so," said Nancy.
+
+"See that you have a proper contract. You had better ask a barrister to
+make it for you." And Nancy promised that she would.
+
+So Fraeulein hurried off to the Deutsche Bank, and drew out eighty
+dollars and a little extra, because Anne-Marie would have to have
+puddings and good soups while she was with her. The thought of giving
+puddings to Anne-Marie made her hurriedly take her handkerchief from her
+pocket and blow her nose.
+
+"One day it shall be sago, one day it shall be rice, and one day it
+shall be tapioca, with _Konfituere_." And Fraeulein Mueller hurried with
+her eighty dollars to Nancy.
+
+But then a strange thing happened. Nancy would not go. Day after day
+passed, and Nancy always had some excuse for not having packed her trunk
+or taken her berth. Surely it was not so difficult to pack the little
+things she wanted for a short business journey. Her new navy-blue serge,
+observed Fraeulein, was very good, and the brown straw hat for autumn
+would do nicely.
+
+"You must dress sensibly in a business-like way to go and see those
+people," said Fraeulein. "It would never do if you went looking like a
+flimsy fly-away girl."
+
+"No, indeed," said Nancy, smiling with pale lips. That evening she wrote
+to George. He came up to town at the lunch-hour next day, and asked to
+see her. She left Anne-Marie at table eating stewed steak, to go and
+speak to him.
+
+"George," she said, keeping in hers the cool damp hand he held out, "I
+want money. I want a lot of money."
+
+George slowly withdrew his hand, and pulled at a little beard he had
+recently and not very successfully grown on his receding chin.
+
+"Then I guess you must have it," he said.
+
+"But I want a great deal. Two or three hundred dollars," said Nancy. "Or
+four----"
+
+"Stop right there," said George. "Don't go on like that, or I can't
+follow." And he pulled his beard again.
+
+"Oh, George, how sweet of you! how dear of you!" And she clasped his
+moist left hand, which he left limply in hers.
+
+"The bother of it is, I don't know how I shall get it," said George.
+"I'm just thinking that"----
+
+"Oh, don't tell me--please don't tell me!" said Nancy. "I--I'd rather
+not know! I know you won't steal, or murder anyone, but get it, George!
+Oh, thank you! thank you so much! Good-bye!"
+
+And Nancy, as she looked out of the window after him, at his cheap hat
+and his sloping shoulders, and saw him board a cable-car going
+down-town, felt that she was a vulture and a harpy.
+
+"The Girl in the Letters has demoralized me," she said.
+
+He brought her four hundred dollars on the following Monday, and she
+wept some pretty little tears over it, and covered her ears with her
+hands, and dimpled up at him, when he began to tell her how he had got
+them. She was the Girl in the Letters. She was practising. And with
+George it answered very well--too well! She had to stop quickly and be
+herself again. Then he went away.
+
+And she went out and bought dresses. She bought drooping, trailing gowns
+and flimsy fly-away gowns, and an unbusiness-like hat, and shoes
+impossible to walk in. She bought _Creme des Cremes_ for her face, and
+_Creme Simon_ for her hands, and liquid varnish for her nails, and
+violet unguent for her hair.
+
+Then she waited for the Unknown's next letter, saying
+
+"Come."
+
+The letter did not arrive. A day passed, and another. And he did not
+write. A week passed, and another, and he did not write. Nancy sat in
+the boarding-house with her dresses and her hats and her _Creme des
+Cremes_. The entire four hundred dollars of George, and fifteen dollars
+out of Fraeulein's eighty, were gone.
+
+Nancy sat and looked out of the window, and thought her thoughts. Could
+she write to the Unknown again? No. Hers had been the last letter. He
+had not answered it. Should she telegraph? Where to? And to say what? He
+had gone to Peru. She knew, she felt, he had gone to Peru. The pretty,
+silly, romantic story was ended--ended as she had wished it to end,
+without the banal _denouement_ of their meeting. Better so. Much better
+so. Nancy was really very glad that things were as they were.
+
+And now what was going to happen to her? She said to herself that she
+must have been insane to borrow all that money and buy those crazy
+dresses, those idiotic hats. What should she do? The terror of life came
+over her, and she wished she were safely away and asleep in the little
+Nervi cemetery between her father and her mother, cool and in the dark,
+with quiet upturned face.
+
+Oh yes, she was really exceedingly glad that things were as they were!
+
+Half-way through the third week a telegram was brought to her. It came
+from Paris.
+
+"Why not dine with me next Thursday at the Grand Hotel?"
+
+To-day was Thursday.
+
+She cabled back.
+
+"Why not? At eight o'clock.--NANCY."
+
+Oh, the excitement, the packing, the telegraphing to Fraeulein, the
+hurry, the joy, the confusion! The stopping every minute to kiss
+Anne-Marie; the sitting down suddenly and saying, "Perhaps I ought not
+to go!" And then, the jumping up again at the thought of the boat that
+left to-morrow at noon.
+
+Fraeulein came to fetch Anne-Marie at ten in the morning. She arrived
+joyful and agitated, bringing a fox-terrier pup in her arms, a present
+for Anne-Marie, to prevent her crying.
+
+"Why should I cry?" said Anne-Marie, with the hardness of tender years.
+
+"Why, indeed!" said Nancy, buttoning Anne-Marie's coat, while quick
+tears fell from her eyes. "Mother will come back very soon--very soon."
+
+"Of course," said Anne-Marie, holding the puppy tightly round the neck,
+and putting up a shoe to have it buttoned.
+
+"Don't let her catch cold, Fraeulein," sobbed Nancy, bending over the
+shoe; and when it was fastened, she kissed it.
+
+"No," said Fraeulein, beaming. "She shall wear flannel pellipands that I
+am making for her."
+
+The second shoe was buttoned and kissed. Her hat was put on with the
+elastic in front of her ears. Her gloves? Yes, in her coat-pocket.
+Handkerchief? Yes. The mice? Yes; Fraeulein had them, and the violin, and
+the music-roll, and the satchel. The box was already downstairs in the
+carriage. They were ready.
+
+"Let me carry down the puppy," said Nancy on the landing, with a break
+in her voice. "Then I can hold your dear little hand."
+
+"Oh no!" said Anne-Marie. "I'll carry the puppy. You can hold on to the
+bannisters."
+
+So Nancy walked down behind Anne-Marie and the puppy. Fraeulein was in
+front, dreading the moment of leave-taking, and thinking with terror of
+the possibility of travelling all the way to Staten Island with a loud
+and tearful Anne-Marie. So she started a new topic of conversation.
+
+"You shall have pudding every day," she said, trying to turn round on
+the second landing to Anne-Marie, close behind her, and nearly dropping
+the satchel and the mice, as the violin-case caught in the bannisters.
+"One day it shall be sago, another day tapioca...."
+
+"I don't like tapioca," said Anne-Marie, walking down the stairs. "I
+don't like nothing of all that."
+
+They were at the door. By request of Nancy, nobody was there to speak to
+them. But all the boarders who were in the house were looking at them
+from behind the drawing-room curtains.
+
+"Then what do you like for dessert?" said Fraeulein, going down the stone
+steps by Anne-Marie's side, while Nancy still followed.
+
+"I like peppermint bullseyes," said Anne-Marie, "and pink jelly." And
+she added: "Nothing else," while the pimply boy and the maid hoisted her
+into her carriage. Fraeulein got in after her, with the many packages.
+And the puppy barked at the mice.
+
+"Good-bye, Anne-Marie! Good-bye, darling!" cried Nancy, kissing her with
+great difficulty through the carriage-window across Fraeulein, and the
+violin, and the mice, that were on Fraeulein's lap. "God bless you! God
+bless you and keep you, my own darling!"
+
+The puppy barked deafeningly. The pimply boy nodded to the cabman, and
+off they were.
+
+Nancy walked slowly back into the house, and up the stairs, and into the
+desolate rooms.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Peggy and George accompanied her to the boat, Peggy excited and
+talkative, George depressed and silent. In his murky down-town office
+George had felt himself of late more poet than clerk, and now he was all
+elegy. She was leaving! She was going away with his heart, and she might
+perhaps never return! She might perhaps never return the four hundred
+dollars either. They belonged to a friend of George's--a mean and sordid
+soul. George stifled the unlovely thought, born of the clerk, and
+surrendered his spirit to the grief of the poet.
+
+Farewell! Farewell! The ship turned its cruel side, and hid the little
+waving figure from his sight. It throbbed away like a great, unfaithful
+heart, abandoning the land. Farewell! What were four hundred dollars,
+belonging to a friend, compared with the torn and quivering heart-strings
+of a lover?
+
+The ship heaved forward towards the east, rising and sinking as ships
+rise and sink, carrying Nancy and her dresses, and her hats, and her
+little pots of cream, to the Unknown. And the nearer they got to him,
+the more frightened was Nancy. What if she should reach Paris, with the
+fourteen dollars she still possessed, and he were not there? What if he
+turned out to be a brute and a beast? What--oh, terrible thought!--if he
+were to think her not as pretty as he had expected? She was not really
+pretty. Oh, why had she not the pale sunshiny hair of the American girl
+opposite her at table? Why not the youth-splashed eyes of the little
+girl from the West, who was going to Paris to study art? Why not the
+long, up-curling lashes of her light and starry glance?
+
+Nancy comforted herself by hoping that he himself might be hideous. But
+if he were? How should she smile at him and talk to him if he were a
+repugnant, odious monster? Then she reasoned that if he were a monster,
+he would not have asked her to come. "Why not dine with me on Thursday?"
+is not the kind of telegram a monster would send. No, he was not a
+monster.
+
+What would he say to her when they met? Everything depended on the first
+moment. She pictured it in a thousand different ways. The pictures
+always began in the same manner. She arrived in Paris; she drove from
+the Gare du Nord, not to the Grand Hotel where he was staying, but to
+the Continental. She engaged a gorgeous suite of rooms. What! with
+fourteen dollars? Exactly so! What did it matter? It was Rouge or Noir.
+If Rouge came up, all was well. If Noir--_la debacle_! _le deluge_!
+Fifty francs more or less made absolutely no difference. A few hours'
+rest. An hour or two for an elaborate toilette; all the creams used, all
+the details perfect. Then she would send a messenger, at a quarter to
+eight, to his hotel:
+
+"Dear Unknown, I am here!"
+
+Then--ah! then, what? He arrives, he enters, he sees her. Then she must
+say something. Ah! what? What are her first words to be? "_How do you
+do?_" Dreadful! No, never that! "_Here I am!_" Worse, worse still. In
+French, perhaps? "_Me voila!_" Ridiculous! No; she will say nothing. He
+must speak first.
+
+Then she imagines his opening phrases. After a long silence his voice,
+deep and trembling with emotion: "Yes, you are the Woman of my Dreams!"
+That would be very nice. Or, then: "Ah! Eve! Eve! How I have longed for
+you!" That would strike the right note at once. Or, then, with both
+hands outstretched: "So _this_ is Nancy!" That would be rather nice. But
+perhaps he will say something more original: "Why did you not tell me
+you had a dimple in your chin?"
+
+Ah, how long Nancy lay awake thinking of those First Words! Nancy tossed
+in her little berth, and turned her pillow's freshest side to her hot
+cheek; and she palpitated and trembled, smiled and feared, repented and
+defied, until the huge boat creaked against the landing stage of the
+Havre dock.
+
+She arrived at the Gare du Nord at three o'clock. She drove to the
+Continental, and engaged a suite of rooms that cost eighty francs a day:
+a sitting-room, all tender greens and delicate greys, looking as if it
+were seen through water, and adjoining it a gorgeous scarlet bedroom,
+with a dozen mirrors a-shine, all deferentially awaiting the Elaborate
+Toilette.
+
+Sleep was out of the question. By four o'clock the note that was to be
+sent at half-past seven was written, and Nancy began her elaborate
+toilette. She thought of ordering the coiffeur, but she remembered that
+coiffeurs had always dressed her hair in wonderful twists and coils and
+rolls, until her head looked like a cake to which her face did not in
+any way belong. So she did her hair _a la Carmen_, parted on one side.
+It seemed the style of hair-dress that the Girl in the Letters would
+adopt. But when it was done it looked startling and impertinent. So she
+unpinned it again and decided in favour of a simple, unaffected
+coiffure. She parted her hair in the middle, plaited it, and pinned it
+round her head. It _was_ unaffected and simple. She looked like the
+youngest of the two Swedish girls in the boarding-house. She did not
+look at all like the Girl in the Letters. So once more she unpinned it,
+and did it _a la pierrot_--a huge puff in the middle, waving down over
+her forehead, and two huge puffs, one on each side. It looked pretty and
+unladylike.
+
+By this time it was six o'clock. The creams! First a little cold cream;
+then _Creme Imperatrice_; then--she remembered the directions given her
+by the person in the shop perfectly--a tiny amount of Leichner's rouge,
+mixed with a little _Creme des Cremes_ in the palm of the hand, gently
+rubbed into the cheeks and chin; then powder--rose-coloured and Rachel.
+Now a _soupcon_ of rouge on the lobes of the ears and in the nostrils.
+This, the person in the shop said, was very important. Then the eyebrows
+brushed with an atom of _mascaro_, a touch of Leichner on the lips, an
+idea of shadow round the eyes--and behold!
+
+Nancy beheld. Her face looked mauve, and her nostrils suggested a
+feverish cold. Her eyes looked large, and tired, and intense, like the
+eyes of the prairie chickens at Monte Carlo.
+
+Seven o'clock! She had forgotten her nails! For twenty minutes she
+painted her nails with the pink varnish, which was sticky, and, once on,
+would not wash off. Her fingers looked as if she had dipped them in
+blood.
+
+Half-past seven! She must send the note. She rang the bell, and a
+waiter came. He had been a nice, well-behaved German waiter, as he had
+shown her respectfully to her expensive rooms. When he saw her as she
+now appeared--she had hastily slipped into the lightest of the three
+trailing dresses--the waiter stared; he stared rudely, with raised
+eyebrows, at her, and took the note from her hand.
+
+He read the address, nodded, and said: "Jawohl! All right. C'est bon!"
+And then he smiled. He smiled--at her!--and went down the passage
+whistling softly.
+
+Nancy shut her door. She took off the trailing dress, and went to her
+bathroom. She turned on the hot water and washed her face. She washed
+off the shades and _soupcons_, the _cremes_ and the _mascaro_ from her
+eyebrows and her chin, her ears and her nostrils. Then she pinned her
+hair loosely on the top of her head, as she always did, and put on the
+darkest of the three trailing gowns. But her nails she scrubbed in vain.
+They remained aggressively rose-coloured, and Nancy blushed hotly every
+time she saw them. She decided to put her hat and gloves on. She did so.
+Then she sat down in her sitting-room and waited. She waited fifteen
+minutes.
+
+Then somebody knocked.
+
+Nancy started to her feet as if she had been shot. With beating heart
+she ran back into the bedroom and shut the door after her. No, it was
+not quite shut; it swung lightly ajar, and Nancy left it so. She heard
+the knock repeated more loudly at the outer door; she heard the door
+open, and someone enter. Then the door closed, and steps--the waiter's
+steps--went back along the hall.
+
+Somebody was in that room. Somebody! A man! A man whom she had never
+seen. A man to whom she had written forty or fifty letters, whom she had
+called "mon ami" and "mes amours," "Prince Charming," and "my unknown
+lover"!
+
+Nancy stood motionless, petrified with shame, her face hidden in her
+white-gloved hands. She would never go in--never! Not if she had to
+stand here for years! She could not face that silent man next door.
+
+The situation was becoming ridiculous. The silence was tense in both
+rooms. Ah, when three thousand miles had separated them, how near she
+had felt to him! And now, with a few feet of carpet and an open door
+between them, he was far away--incommensurably far away! A stranger, an
+intruder, an enemy!
+
+Utter silence. Was he there? Yes. Nancy knew he was there, waiting.
+
+Suddenly Nancy was frightened. The one idea possessed her to get away
+from that unseen, silent man. She would slip through the bathroom, and
+out into the passage and away! She took a step forward. Her trailing
+dress rustled. Her high-heeled boots creaked. And in the next room the
+man coughed.
+
+Nancy stood still again, transfixed--turned to stone.
+
+Another long silence, ludicrous, untenable. Then in the next room the
+First Words were spoken. He spoke them in a calm and well-bred voice.
+
+"Our dinner will be cold."
+
+Nancy laughed suddenly, softly, convulsively. Her voice was treble and
+sweet as she replied:
+
+"What have you ordered?"
+
+The man in the next room said: "Fillet of sole."
+
+"Fried?" asked Nancy earnestly; and, knowing that unless she slid in on
+that fillet of sole she would never do so, she passed quickly under the
+draped portiere and entered the room.
+
+They looked each other in the face. She saw a large and stalwart figure,
+a hard mouth, and a strong, curved nose in a sunburnt face, two chilly
+blue eyes under a powerful brow, and waving grey hair. He looked down at
+her, and was satisfied. His cool blue gaze took her in from the top of
+her large black feathered hat to the tips of her Louis XV. shoes.
+
+"Come," he said, offering his arm. And they went out together.
+
+The dinner was not cold. Nancy hardly spoke at all. She was nervous and
+charming. She sipped Liebfraunmilch, and dimpled and rippled while he
+told her that he had mines in Peru, and that he had been away from
+civilization for twenty years.
+
+"I went down to the mines when I was twenty, and came back when I was
+forty. That is four years ago. I have been fighting my way ever since,
+trying to keep clear of the wrong woman. I am afraid of women."
+
+"So am I," said Nancy, which was not true.
+
+He laughed, and said: "And of what else?"
+
+"Spiders," said Nancy, with her head on one side.
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"Lions," said Nancy.
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"Thunderstorms." And, as he seemed to be waiting, she added: "And of
+you, of course."
+
+He did not believe it. But she was.
+
+After dinner he took her to the Folies Bergeres and then to the Boite a
+Fursy; and he watched her narrowly, and was glad that she did not laugh.
+Then he took her back to the hotel. They went up together in the lift,
+and along the red-carpeted, boot-adorned corridor to her green and grey
+salon. He did not ask permission, but walked in and sat down--large and
+long--in the small brocaded armchair.
+
+"Are you tired?" he said.
+
+Nancy said, "No," and remained standing.
+
+He said, "Sit down," and she obeyed him.
+
+He sat staring before him for a while, with his underlip pushed up under
+his upper-lip, making his straight, short-cut moustache stand out. He
+was a strong, large, ugly man. Nancy suddenly remembered that she had
+called him "toi," and said, "adieu, mes amours" to him in her letters,
+and she felt faint with shame. He made a little noise, something between
+a cough and a growl, and looked up at her.
+
+"What are you thinking?" he said.
+
+She laughed. "I am thinking that I called you Prince Charming, whereas
+you really are the Ogre."
+
+"Yes," he said, and stared at her a long time. Then he got up suddenly
+and put out his large hand. "Good-night, Miss Brown," he said. He took
+his hat and stick, and went out, shutting the door decidedly behind him.
+
+The next morning at half-past eleven he came; he had a small bunch of
+lilies of the valley in his hand.
+
+"Will you invite me to lunch?" he said.
+
+Yes, Nancy would be very pleased. She thought of the twenty-two francs
+in her purse; but nothing mattered.
+
+They lunched in the dining-room, and he was very silent. Nancy spoke of
+music, but he did not respond.
+
+"Do you sing?" she asked at last.
+
+He looked up at her like an offended wild beast. "Do I look as if I
+could sing?"
+
+"No, you don't," she said. "You look as if you could growl."
+
+He smiled slightly under his clipped moustache, and did not answer.
+Nancy gave up all attempt at conversation. Her heart beat fast. Things
+were going wrong. He was tired of her already. He looked bored--well,
+no, not bored, but utterly indifferent and hard, as if he were alone.
+After their coffee he got up--every time he rose Nancy wondered anew at
+his breadth and length--and led the way out. Nancy trotted after him
+with short steps. He went into the lounge and took a seat near a table
+in the window, pushing a chair forward for Nancy.
+
+"May I smoke?" he said, taking a large cigar-case from his pocket.
+
+Nancy nodded. He chose his cigar carefully, clipped the end off, and lit
+it. Nancy could not think of a word to say. All her pretty, frivolous
+conversation, all the bright remarks and witty repartee, wavered away
+from her mind. She had not prepared herself for monologues.
+
+After the first puff he said: "You don't smoke, do you?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Nancy.
+
+As soon as she had said it a wave of crimson flooded her face. She
+remembered writing that she smoked Russian cigarettes perfumed with
+heliotrope. He had not believed her. How could she have written such an
+idiotic thing? And suddenly she realized that she was not the Girl in
+her Letters at all, and that he must be bored and disappointed. But no
+more was he the Man of his Letters; at least, she had imagined him quite
+different, with fair hair and droopy grey eyes, and a poet's soul. Then
+she remembered that he had never spoken about himself in his letters at
+all.
+
+At this point he looked up and said: "I like a woman who can keep quiet.
+You have not spoken for half an hour." And she laughed, and was glad.
+
+When he had finished his cigar, he said: "I hope you have not left any
+valuables in your room. It is not safe."
+
+"Oh no," said Nancy; "I haven't."
+
+"Have you given them to the office?"
+
+"No," said Nancy--"no;" and suddenly she remembered that she had told
+him in her letters that she wore jewels all over her.
+
+Without looking up, he said: "Will you give me your purse? I will take
+care of it."
+
+Nancy felt that if she went on flushing any more her hair would catch
+fire. She drew out her purse and handed it to him. He opened it slowly
+and deliberately. He took out the three sous and the two francs, and put
+them into his pocket. Then he opened the middle division, and looked at
+the twenty-franc piece. He took it out and placed it on the table. Then
+he went through all the other compartments, gazing pensively at an
+unused tramway ticket and at a medal of the Madonna del Monte. He put
+those back again, and handed Nancy the purse. The twenty-franc piece he
+put into a purse of his own, and into his pocket.
+
+"Now let us go for a drive," he said.
+
+Nancy, feeling dazed, rustled away, and took the lift to her room. She
+pinned on her hat, took her coat and gloves, and just caught the lift
+again as it was passing down. When he saw her, he said "That was quick,"
+and they went out together. A victoria was waiting for them. The porter
+was profusely polite, and the horses started off at a loose trot down
+the Boulevards and towards the Etoile. He asked her many questions
+during the drive, and in her answers she was as much as possible the
+Girl of the Letters.
+
+He sounded her about Monte Carlo, and she was glad that she was quite
+_au courant_, and could mention systems and the Cafe de Paris.
+
+"Would you like to go there again?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--oh yes!" she said, clasping her mauve kid gloves. Then she fell
+into a reverie, and she kept her hands clasped in her lap, for she was
+saying an _Ave_ and _a Pater_ for Anne-Marie.
+
+The carriage was turning into the Bois when her companion said:
+
+"Where do you want to go?"
+
+Nancy said: "This is very nice. The Bois is lovely."
+
+"I mean where do you want to go to to-morrow, or the day after, or next
+week. You do not want to stay in Paris for ever, do you?"
+
+She drew a little quick breath, and said, "Oh!" and then again, "Oh,
+really?" and looked up at him with uncertain eyes.
+
+"Do not look at me as if I were the spider, or the lion, or the
+thunderstorm. Tell me if there is any place on earth that you have
+longed to go to. And when. And with whom."
+
+Nancy's eyes filled quickly with glowing tears. "I should like to go to
+Italy," she said, "to a little village tip-tilted over the sea, called
+Porto Venere."
+
+The Ogre, who had read "Elle et Lui," nodded, and said: "I know.
+Anywhere else?"
+
+"I should like to stay a few days in Milan--to see some people who are
+dear."
+
+"Et apres?"
+
+"I should like to go to Switzerland. Only to one or two little places
+there--the Via Mala, Spluegen, Sufers--"
+
+"H'm--h'm," said he, and waited to hear more.
+
+"And then--and then--yes, perhaps to Monte Carlo--and oh, to Naples and
+to Rome! But I want to stay longest in Porto Venere."
+
+He nodded, and said: "When do you want to start?"
+
+"To-morrow," said Nancy.
+
+"And how? In a train? Or by motor? Or by boat?"
+
+"I don't mind," said Nancy, hiding her face in her handkerchief and
+beginning to weep.
+
+"And with whom?" There was a pause. "What about a maid?"
+
+"Oh, no maid!" said Nancy. Then she looked up. "With you," she said,
+because the Girl in the Letters would have said it, and also because she
+wanted him to come.
+
+"All right. Don't take much luggage," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+They went. They went through Switzerland. They drove down the wide white
+roads that coil like wind-blown ribbons round the swelling breasts of the
+Alps; they went up the barren Julier Pass, and through the shuddering
+Via Mala, breakfasting at St. Moritz, table d'hoting at Maloya,
+wandering through the moonlike sunshine of Spluegen's pine-forests,
+clattering and rumbling over the covered bridges of Sufers. The
+snow-tipped pine-trees, like regiments of monks with nightcaps on,
+nodded at them in stately gravity; the squirrels stopped with quick,
+beady glances, and scuttled away, tail-flourishing, up the branches,
+while the bland Helvetian cows stood in the green meadows to watch them
+pass.
+
+Every evening they went together down boot-adorned passages to the door
+of Nancy's room. And there he said, "Good-night, Miss Brown," and left
+her.
+
+They went on into Italy--straight down to Naples without stopping in
+Milan, for Nancy would not see anyone she loved after all; for she could
+not explain anything, and did not know what to say, and did not want to
+think of anything just now. She would think afterwards. They clambered
+up the Vesuvius; they wandered through Pompei; they went to Spezia, and
+remembered Shelley; they went on to Porto Venere, and trembled to think
+that the sharks might have eaten Byron when he swam across the bay; they
+rowed about the Golfo, and ate _vongole_ and other horrible,
+ill-smelling _frutti di mare_. And every evening, in the boot-adorned
+passages of the hotels, he took her to the door of her room, and said,
+"Good-night, Miss Brown."
+
+In Spezia a little steamer that was coasting northwards took them on
+board. They were sliding on blue waters into Genoa, when Nancy, seated
+on a basket of oranges, felt the touch of the Ogre's hand on her
+shoulder. She looked up and smiled. He sat down on another basket beside
+her. It creaked and groaned under his weight, so he got up and fetched a
+heavy wooden case, dragging it along the deck to Nancy's side.
+
+"Now what?" he said.
+
+Nancy had grown to understand him well. Not for an instant did she think
+that he was talking of the moment, or the next hour, as she had thought
+when they had driven in the Bois, now more than a month ago. She knew
+that he looked at life in large outlines, and seldom spoke of small,
+immediate things.
+
+"Now what?" she echoed. He put his large brown hand on her small one,
+and it was his first caress. It thrilled Nancy to the heart. His chilly
+blue eyes watched her face, and saw it paling slowly under his gaze.
+
+"Now you must go home," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Nancy, "now I must go home." And she wondered vaguely
+whether home was the boarding-house in Lexington Avenue or Mrs.
+Johnstone's flat in 82nd Street. She decided that it was the flat, where
+the bunch of orchids and maidenhair had come and lived almost a week.
+Peggy and George would be her friends again, and the dead Mr. Johnstone,
+and the naked baby, and the chinless young man would be with her in the
+evenings. And Anne-Marie must leave Fraeulein Mueller's _Gartenhaus_, and
+go back to school on Sixth Avenue.
+
+"What are your thoughts," said the Ogre.
+
+"... I was wondering what made you send that messenger-boy with the
+flowers and the letter--the letter to the girl in blue.... It was not a
+bit like you," she said. And, looking into the hard face, she added:
+"You are not at all like that."
+
+"I know I'm not," he said. Then he added, with a laugh, "Thank God! But
+we all do things that are not like ourselves now and then. Don't we?"
+She did not answer. "Don't you?" he insisted.
+
+Nancy sighed and wondered. "I don't know. What is like me, and what is
+not like me? I do not know at all. I do not know myself."
+
+"I do," said the Ogre. And there was another long silence. He had the
+aggravating habit of stopping short after a sentence that one would like
+to hear continued.
+
+"Speak," said Nancy. "Say more."
+
+"It was not like me to send those useless and expensive flowers out into
+the world to nobody, and to write a crazy letter _in's Blaue
+hinein_--into space. But we all have mad moments in our lives when we do
+things that are quite unlike us." A pause again. "It was not like you to
+write me those letters describing your old-rose curtains--afterwards
+they were blue velvet--and your scented cigarettes, and your jewels, and
+your lovers. And it was not like you to cross the Atlantic and come to
+Paris and to supper with a man you had never met, in order to see
+whether you could get money out of him."
+
+Nancy covered her face. "Oh!" she said, "have you thought that?"
+
+"Oh!" he said, "have you done that?" And there was silence.
+
+The Captain passed and remarked on the fine weather, adding that they
+would arrive in less than an hour. Then he went by.
+
+"I liked your first letter--poor little truthful letter on the cheap
+paper. You said you were the wrong girl. You were dressed in brown. I
+could see you in your shabby brown dress--I knew it must be shabby--and
+I liked the idea of doing something unexpected with a little money. Then
+I was amused at your letter saying you were not Miss Brown. After that
+the lies began."
+
+Nancy quivered. The houses of Quarto were coming into sight; the red
+hotel of Quinto was gliding past.
+
+"How could you think that I would believe in the old-rose curtains in
+the 300's of East 82nd Street, I who have lived five or six years in New
+York? That showed me that you were a foreigner, or you would have known
+that street numbers in New York tell their own tale. Then your letters
+told me that you were a fanciful creature, and they told me that you
+were lonely, or you would not have found time to write so much--a
+cultivated, little fibber, who quoted every poet under the sun,
+especially the out-of-the-way ones. Then, when I found out that you
+had a child--"
+
+"Oh!" gasped Nancy, and the tears welled over. "You know about
+Anne-Marie!"
+
+"I know about Anne-Marie. I even have a picture of her." He unbuttoned
+his coat, and drew out his pocket-book, and from it a little snapshot
+photograph, which he handed to Nancy. It was herself and Anne-Marie in
+front of a toy-shop. They were in the act of turning from it, and
+Anne-Marie's foot was lifted in the air. They were both laughing, and
+neither of them looking their best.
+
+"Oh, but that's hideous of her," said Nancy. "She is quite different
+from that."
+
+He smiled, and put the picture back into his pocket-book, and the
+pocket-book into his breast-pocket.
+
+"When I had found out that you had a child, and that your husband"--he
+hesitated--"was--er--Neapolitan, I understood what you were after, and
+decided that I would--walk into it--que je marcherais, as the French
+say. Et j'ai marche." A long silence, and then he said: "And now, what
+do you want?"
+
+But Nancy was crying, and could not answer. "Do you want to go on living
+in America?" Nancy shook her head.
+
+"What are you crying for?" and he took her wrist, and pulled one hand
+from her face.
+
+Nancy raised her reddened eyes. "I am crying," she said brokenly,
+"because all the--the prettiness has been taken out of everything. Yes,
+I was poor--yes, I was miserable, and I was inventing things in my
+letters; but I thought you believed them--and I thought you--you loved
+me, like Jaufre Rudel. And I have never, never been so happy as when--as
+when--I loved you across the distance--and you were the Unknown--and now
+it is all broken and spoilt--and all the time you thought I wanted
+money--I mean you knew I wanted money, and you had that hideous picture,
+and"--here Nancy broke into weak, wild sobs--"you thought I looked like
+that!"
+
+"That's so," said Jaufre Rudel.
+
+And he let her cry for a long time.
+
+Quarto had slipped back into the distance, and San Francesco D'Albaro
+was moving smoothly into view.
+
+"I can't go on crying for ever," said Nancy, raising her face with a
+quivering smile, "and the Captain will think you are a huge, horrid,
+scolding English Ogre."
+
+They were nearly in. "Get your little bag and things," he said to her,
+and she rose quickly and complied. Everybody was standing up waiting to
+land. Oh, how good it was to be taken care of and ordered about, to be
+told to do this and that! She stood behind him small and meek, holding
+her travelling-bag in one hand, and in the other the umbrellas and
+sticks strapped together. His large shoulders were before her like a
+wall. She raised the bundle of umbrellas to her face and kissed the
+curved top of his stick. And now, what?
+
+They drove to the hotel. Then they had dinner. In the evening they sat
+on the balcony, and watched the people passing below them. Handsome
+Italian officers, moustache-twisting and sword-clanking, passed in twos
+and threes, eyeing the hurrying modistes and the self-conscious
+_signorine_ that walked beside their portly mothers and fathers. The
+military band was playing in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, and the music
+reached the balcony faintly. Then Nancy told him about her work. About
+the first book of verse that had set all Italy aflame, about the second,
+The Book, the work of her life, that had been interrupted.
+
+He listened, smoking his cigar, and making no comment. Then he spoke.
+
+"There is a boat from here on Wednesday. The _Kaiser Wilhelm_. A good
+old boat. Go over and fetch the child." Then he halted, and said: "Or do
+you like her to be brought up in America?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Nancy.
+
+"Well, fetch her," he said. "And fetch the old Fraeulein across too, if
+she likes to come. Then go to Porto Venere, or to Spezia, or anywhere
+you like, and take a house, and sit down and work."
+
+She could not speak. She saw Porto Venere white in the sunshine,
+tip-tilted over the sea, and she saw The Book that was to live, to live
+after all.
+
+As she did not answer he said: "Don't you like it?"
+
+She took his hand, and pressed it to her lips, and to her cheek, and to
+her heart. She could not answer. And his chilly blue eyes grew suddenly
+lighter than usual. "Dear little Miss Brown," he said; "dear, dear,
+foolish, little Miss Brown." And, bending forward, he kissed her
+forehead.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+The _Gartenhaus_ on Staten Island in the twilight, with lamplight and
+firelight gleaming through its casements, and a little hat of snow on
+its roof, looked like a Christmas-card, when Nancy hurried through the
+narrow garden-gate, and ran up the tiny gravel-path. She had left all
+her belongings at the dock in order not to lose an instant. Anne-Marie's
+pink fingers were dragging at her heart.
+
+Fraeulein, foggy as to time-tables and arrivals of boats, had thought it
+wisest not to attempt a meeting at the crowded, draughty, New York
+landing-station. She had kept Anne-Marie indoors for the last three
+days, saying: "Your mother may be here any moment." After the first
+thirty-six hours of poignant expectancy and frequent runnings to the
+gate, Anne-Marie had silently despised Fraeulein for telling naughty
+untruths, and had whispered in the hairy ear of Schopenhauer that she
+would never again believe a word Fraeulein ever said again.
+Schopenhauer--whose name had been chosen by Fraeulein for educational
+purposes, namely (as she wrote in her diary), "to enlarge the childish
+mind by familiarity with the names of authors and philosophers"--was
+sympathetic and equally sceptical when Fraeulein Mueller sibilantly urged
+him: "Schoppi, Schoppi, mistress is coming. Go seek mistress! Seek
+mistress, sir." But Schoppi, who had searched and sniffed every corner
+of the hedge, and dug rapid holes round the early cabbages and in the
+flower-bed, knew that "mistress" was a pleasurably exciting, but merely
+delusive and empty sound. And so nobody expected Nancy as she ran up the
+path in the twilight, and saw the lights shining through the casement.
+
+Her heart beat in trepidant joy. She had been so anxious about
+Anne-Marie. During the last few hours of the journey she had had ghostly
+and tragic imaginings. What if Anne-Marie had been running about the
+island, and had fallen into the sea? What if a motor-car--her heart had
+given a great leap, and then dropped, like a ball of lead, turning her
+faint with reminiscent terror. She would not think about it. No, she
+would not think of such things any more. But what if Anne-Marie had
+scarlet fever? Yes! suddenly she felt convinced that Anne-Marie had
+scarlet fever, that she would see the little red flag of warning hanging
+out over the _Gartenhaus_ door....
+
+Nancy made ready to knock; then, before doing so, she dropped quickly to
+her knees on the snowy doorstep, and folded her hands in a childlike
+attitude of prayer: "O God! let me find Anne-Marie safe and happy!"
+
+Almost in answer a sound struck her ear--a chord of sweetness and
+harmony, then a long, lonely note, and after it a quick twirl of running
+notes like a ripple of laughter. The violin!
+
+Nancy sprang from the doorstep, and ran under the window that was lit
+up. She scrambled on to the rockery under it, and, scratching her hand
+against the climbing rose-branches, she grasped the ledge and looked in
+through the white-curtained glass. It was Anne-Marie. Standing in the
+circle of light from the lamp, with the violin held high on her left
+arm, and her cheek resting lightly against it, she looked like a little
+angel musician of Beato Angelico.
+
+Her eyes were cast down, her floating hair rippled over her face.
+Nancy's throat tightened as she looked. Then Nancy's brain staggered as
+she listened. For the child was playing like an artist. Trills and
+arpeggios ran from under her fingers like clear water. Now a full and
+sonorous chord checked their springing lightness, and again the bubbling
+runs rilled out, sprinkling the twilight with music.
+
+Nancy's hand slipped from the sill, and a rose-branch hit the window.
+Then the fox-terrier's sharp bark rang through the house; there were
+hurrying feet in the hall; the door was opened by the smiling
+Elisabeth--and Fraeulein was exclaiming and questioning, and Anne-Marie
+was in her mother's arms. Warm, and living, and tight she held her
+creature, thanking God for the touch of the fleecy hair against her
+face, for the fresh cheek that smelt of soap, and the soft breath that
+smelt of grass and flowers.
+
+"Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie! Have you missed me, darling?"
+
+Anne-Marie was sobbing wildly. "No! No! I haven't! Only now! Only now!"
+
+"But now you have me, my own love."
+
+"But now I miss you! Now I miss you," sobbed Anne-Marie, incoherent and
+despairing. And her mother understood. Mothers understand.
+
+"Anne-Marie! I shall never go away from you again! I promise!"
+
+Anne-Marie looked up through shimmering tears. "Honest engine?" she
+asked brokenly, putting out a small damp hand.
+
+"Honest engine," said Nancy, placing her hand solemnly in the hand of
+her little daughter. Schopenhauer, squirming with barks, was patted and
+admired, and made to sit up leaning against the leg of the table; and
+Fraeulein told the news about Anne-Marie having _doch gegessen_ the
+tapioca-puddings, but never the porridge, and seldom the vegetables.
+Then, as it was late, Anne-Marie was conducted upstairs by everybody,
+including Schopenhauer, and while Elisabeth unfastened buttons and
+tapes, Fraeulein brushed and plaited the golden hair, and Nancy, on her
+knees before the child, laughed with her and kissed her.
+
+When she was in bed Elisabeth and Schopenhauer had to sit in the dark
+beside her until she slept.
+
+"But, Fraeulein, that will never do!" said Nancy, as they went down the
+little staircase together arm-in-arm. "You spoil her shockingly."
+
+"Hush!" said Fraeulein. And as they entered the cheerful drawing-room,
+where the violin lay on the table, and the bow on a chair, and a piece
+of rosin on the sofa, Fraeulein stopped, and said impressively, "You do
+not know that that child is a Genius!"
+
+In Fraeulein's voice, as she said the word "genius," was awe and homage,
+service and genuflexion. Nancy sat down, and looked at the little piece
+of rosin stuck on its green cloth on the sofa. "A Genius!" The word and
+the awestruck tone brought a recollection to her mind. Years ago, when
+she had stepped into the dazzling light of her first success, and all
+the poets of Italy had come to congratulate and to flatter, One had not
+come. He was the great and sombre singer of revolt, the Pagan poet of
+modern Rome. He was the Genius, denounced, anathematized and exalted in
+turn by the hot-headed youth of Italy. He lived apart from the world,
+aloof from the clamour made around his name, shunning both laudators and
+detractors, impassive alike to invective and acclamation. To him, with
+his curt permission, Nancy herself had gone. A disciple and apostle of
+his, long-bearded and short of words, had come to conduct her to the
+Poet's house in Bologna. It was an old house on the broad, ancient
+ramparts of the city, where an armed sentinel marched, gun on shoulder,
+up and down. Nancy remembered that she had laughed, and said
+frivolously: "I suppose the Poet has the soldier on guard to prevent his
+ideas being stolen." The apostle had not smiled. Then she had entered
+the house alone, for the apostle was not invited.
+
+The Spirit of Silence was on the cold stone staircase. The door had been
+opened by a pale-faced, stupid-looking servant, whose only mission in
+life seemed to be not to make a noise. Three hushed figures, the
+daughters of the Poet, had bidden her in a half-whisper to sit down.
+They all had a look about them as if they lived with something that
+devoured them day by day. And they looked as if they liked it. They
+lived to see that the Genius was not disturbed. Then the Genius had
+entered the room--a fierce and sombre-looking man of sixty, with a
+leonine head and impatient eyes. And she, seeing him, understood that
+one should be willing to tiptoe through life with subdued gesture and
+hushed voice, so that he were not disturbed. She understood that he had
+the right to devour.
+
+He carried her little book in his hand, and spoke in brief, gruff tones.
+"Three women," he said, his flashing eyes looking her up and down as if
+he were angry with her, "have been poets: Sappho, Desbordes Valmore,
+Elizabeth Browning. And now--you. Go and work."
+
+That was all. But it had been enough to send Nancy away dazed with
+happiness. The Devoured Ones had opened the door for her, and silently
+shown her out; and as she went tremblingly down the steps she had heard
+a heavy tread above her, and had stopped to look back. He had come out
+on to the landing, and was looking after her. She stood still, with a
+beating heart. And he had spoken again. Three words: "Aspetto e
+confido--I wait and trust."
+
+She had replied, "Grazie," and then had gone running down the stairs,
+trembling and stumbling, knowing that his eyes were upon her.
+
+"_Aspetto e confido_." He had waited and trusted in vain. She had never
+written another book. And now he would never read what she might write,
+for he was dead.
+
+Nancy still stared at the little piece of rosin stuck on its dentelated
+green cloth--stared at it vaguely, unseeing. What? Anne-Marie was a
+Genius? The little tender, wild-eyed birdling was one of the Devourers?
+Yes, already in the _Gartenhaus_ there was the atmosphere of hushed
+reverence, the attitude of sacrifice and waiting. Fraeulein spoke in
+whispers; Elisabeth and the fox-terrier sat in the dark while the Genius
+went to sleep. Her violin possessed the table, her bow the armchair, her
+rosin the sofa. Fraeulein had all the amazed stupefaction of one of the
+Devoured.
+
+"The child is a Genius," she was repeating. "She will be like Wagner.
+Only greater."
+
+Then she seemed to awake to the smaller realities of life. "What did the
+Firm say? When does your book appear? My poor dear, you must be tired!
+you must be hungry! But, hush! the child's room is just overhead, so, if
+you do not mind, I will give you your supper in the back-kitchen.
+Anne-Marie, when she is not eating, does not like the sound of plates."
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+So Nancy did not go to Porto Venere after all. Nor to Spezia. For there
+was no great violin teacher in either of those blue and lovely places.
+
+There were only balconied rooms, with wide views over the Mediterranean
+Sea, where Nancy could have written her Book, and seen visions and
+dreamed dreams; but surely, as Fraeulein said, she could write her book
+in any nice quiet room, with a table in it, and pen and ink, while
+Anne-Marie must cultivate her gift and her calling. Anne-Marie must
+study her violin. So Nancy wrote, and explained this to the Ogre, and
+then she went with Anne-Marie and Fraeulein to Prague, where the greatest
+of all violin-teachers lived, fitting left hands with wonderful
+technique, and right hands with marvellous pliancy; teaching slim
+fingers to dance and scamper and skip on four tense strings, and supple
+wrists to wield a skimming, or control a creeping, bow. And this
+greatest of teachers took little Anne-Marie to his heart. He also called
+her the _Wunderkind_, and set her eager feet, still in their white socks
+and button shoes, on the steep path that leads up the Hill of Glory.
+
+Nancy unpacked her manuscripts in an apartment in one of the not very
+wide streets of old Prague; opposite her window was a row of brown and
+yellow stone houses; she had a table, and pen and ink, and there was
+nothing to disturb her. True, she could hear Anne-Marie playing the
+violin two rooms off, but that, of course, was a joy; besides, when all
+the doors were shut one could hardly hear anything, especially if one
+tied a scarf or something round one's head, and over one's ears.
+
+So Nancy had no excuse for not working. She told herself so a hundred
+times a day, as she sat at the table with the scarf round her head,
+staring at the yellow house opposite. Through the open window came the
+sound of loud, jerky Czech voices. The strange new language, of which
+Nancy had learned a few dozen words, rang in her ears continuously:
+Kavarna ... Vychod ... Lekarna ... the senseless words turned in her
+head like a many-coloured merry-go-round. Even at night in her dreams
+she seemed to be holding conversations in Czech. But that would pass,
+and she would be able to work; for now she had no anxieties and no
+preoccupations. Fraeulein looked after Anne-Marie, body and soul, with
+unceasing and agitated care, deeming it as important that she should
+have her walk as that she should play the "Zigeunerweisen," that she
+should say her prayers as that she should eat her soup. And Nancy had no
+material preoccupations either. She had decided to accept gratefully,
+and without scruple, all that she needed for two years from her friend
+the Ogre. Long before then The Book would be out, and she could repay
+him. And what mattered repaying him? All he wanted was that she should
+be happy, and live her own life for two years. He would have to go back
+to Peru, and stay there for about that period of time. Let her meanwhile
+live her own life and fulfil her destiny--thus he wrote to her. And the
+Prager Bankverein had money for her when she needed it.
+
+So Nancy sat before her manuscripts and lived her own life, and tried
+not to hear the violin, and not to mind interruptions. In her heart was
+a great longing--the longing to see the Ogre again before he left
+Europe, a great, aching desire for the blue chilliness of his eyes, for
+his stern manner, and his gruff voice, and for the shy greatness of his
+heart that her own heart loved and understood.
+
+And besides this ache was the yearn and strain and sorrow of her destiny
+unfulfilled. For once again the sense of time passing, of life running
+out of her grasp, bit at her breast like an adder.
+
+    "La belle qui veut,
+     La belle qui n'ose
+     Cueillir les roses
+     Du jardin bleu."
+
+She sat down and wrote to him. "I cannot work. I cannot work. I am swept
+away and overwhelmed by some chimeric longing that has no name. My soul
+drowns and is lost in its indefinite and fathomless desire. Will you
+take me away before you go, away to some rose-lit, jasmine-starred nook
+in Italy, where my heart may find peace again? I feel such strength,
+such boundless, turbulent power, yet my spirit is pinioned and held down
+like a giant angel sitting in a cave with huge wings furled....
+
+"You have unclosed the sweep of heaven before me; I will bring the
+sunshot skies down to your feet...."
+
+The door opened, and Fraeulein's head appeared, solemn and sibylline,
+with tears shining behind her spectacles.
+
+"Nancy, to-day for the first time Anne-Marie is to play Beethoven. Will
+you come?"
+
+Yes, Nancy would come. She followed Fraeulein into the room where
+Anne-Marie was with the Professor and his assistant.
+
+The Professor did not like to play the piano, so he had brought the
+assistant with him, who sat at the piano, nodding a large, rough black
+head in time to the music. Anne-Marie was in front of her stand. The
+Professor, with his hands behind him, watched her. The Beethoven Romance
+in F began.
+
+The simple initial melody slid smoothly from under the child's fingers,
+and was taken up and repeated by the piano. The willful crescendo of
+the second phrase worked itself up to the passionate high note, and was
+coaxed back again into gentleness by the shy and tender trills, as a
+wrathful man by the call of a child. Martial notes by the piano. The
+assistant's head bobbed violently, and now Beethoven led Anne-Marie's
+bow, gently, by tardigrade steps, into the first melody again. Once
+more, the head at the piano bobbed over his solo. Then, on the high F,
+down came the bow of Anne-Marie, decisive and vehement.
+
+"That's right!" shouted the Professor suddenly. "Fa, mi, sol--play that
+on the fourth string."
+
+Anne-Marie nodded without stopping. Eight accented notes by the piano,
+echoed by Anne-Marie.
+
+"That is to sound like a trumpet!" cried the master.
+
+"Yes, yes; I remember," said Anne-Marie.
+
+And now for the third time the melody returned, and Anne-Marie played it
+softly, as in a dream, with a _gruppetto_ in _pianissimo_ that made the
+Professor push his hands into his pockets, and the assistant turn his
+head from the piano to look at her. At the end the slowly ascending
+scales soared and floated into the distance, and the three last, calling
+notes fell from far away.
+
+No one spoke for a moment; then the Professor went close to the child
+and said:
+
+"Why did you say, 'I remember' when I told you about the trumpet
+notes?"
+
+"I don't know," said Anne-Marie, with the vague look she always had
+after she had played.
+
+"What did you mean?"
+
+"I meant that I understood," said Anne-Marie.
+
+The Professor frowned at her, while his lips worked.
+
+"You said, 'I remember.' And I believe you remember. I believe you are
+not learning anything new. You are remembering something you have known
+before."
+
+Fraeulein intervened excitedly. "Ach! Herr Professor! I assure you the
+child has never seen that piece! I have been with her since the first
+day she _ueberhaupt_ had the violin, and--"
+
+The Professor waved an impatient hand. He was still looking at
+Anne-Marie. "Who is it?" and he shook his grey head tremulously. "Whom
+have we here? Is it Paganini? Or Mozart? I hope it is Mozart." Then he
+turned to the man at the piano, who had his elbows on the notes, and his
+face hidden in his hands. "What say you, Bertolini? Who is with us in
+this involucrum?"
+
+"I know not. I am mute," said the black-haired man in moved tones.
+
+"Thank the Fates that you are not deaf," said the Professor, looking
+vaguely for his hat, "or you would not have heard this wonder."
+
+Then he took his leave, for he was a busy man. Bertolini remained to
+pack up the Professor's precious Guarnerius del Gesu, dearer to him than
+wife and child, and his music, and his gloves, and his glasses, and
+anything else that he left behind him, for the Professor was an
+absent-minded man.
+
+Then Nancy said to the assistant: "Are you Italian?"
+
+"Sissignora," said Bertolini eagerly.
+
+"So am I," said Nancy. And they were friends.
+
+Bertolini came the next day to ask if he might practise with "little
+Wunder," as he called her. He also came the next day, and the day after,
+and then every day. He was a second-rate violinist, and a third-rate
+pianist; but he was an absolutely first-rate musician, an extravagant,
+impassioned, boisterous musician, whose shouts of excitement, after the
+first half-hour of polite shyness, could be heard all over the house.
+
+Anne-Marie loved to hear him vociferate. She used to watch his face when
+she purposely played a false note; she liked to see him crinkle up his
+nose as if something had stung him, and open a wild mouth to shout. Once
+she played through an entire piece in F, making every B natural instead
+of flat. "Si bemolle! B flat!" said Bertolini the first time.
+"_Bemolle!_" cried Bertolini the second time. "BEMOLLE!" he roared,
+trampling on the pedals, and with his hand grasping his hair, that
+looked like a curly black mat fitted well over his head.
+
+"What is the matter with Bemolle?" asked Fraeulein, raising bland eyes
+from her needlework.
+
+Anne-Marie laughed. "I don't know what is the matter with him. I think
+he's crazy." And thus Signor Bertolini was christened Bemolle for all
+time.
+
+Bemolle, who was a composer, now composed no more. He soon became one of
+the Devoured. His mornings were given up to the Professor; his
+afternoons he gave to Anne-Marie. He would arrive soon after lunch, and
+sit down at the piano, tempting the child from playthings or story-book
+by rippling accompaniments or dulcet chords. And because the Professor
+had said: "With this child one can begin at the end," Bemolle lured her
+long before her ninth birthday across the ditches and pitfalls of Ernst
+and Paganini, over the peaks and crests of Beethoven and Bach.
+
+On the day that Nancy was called from her writing to hear Anne-Marie
+play Bach's "Chaconne," Nancy folded up the scarf that she had used to
+cover her ears with, and put it away. Then she took her manuscripts,
+and kissed them, and said good-bye to them for ever, and put them away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon afterwards the Ogre came to Prague. He had received Nancy's letter
+about Italy, and had come to answer it in person. It was good to see him
+again. His largeness filled the room, his mastery controlled and soothed
+the spirit. He was the "wall" that Clarissa had spoken of in the Villa
+Solitudine long ago.
+
+Lucky is the woman who belongs to a wall. When she has bruised and
+fretted herself in trying to push through it, and get round it, and jump
+over it, let her sit down quietly in its protecting shadow and be
+grateful.
+
+An hour after his arrival the imperious Anne-Marie was subjugated and
+entranced, Fraeulein was a-bustle and a-quiver with solicitude as to his
+physical welfare, and Nancy sat back in a large armchair, and felt that
+nothing could hurt, or ruffle, or trouble her any more.
+
+In the evening, when Fraeulein had taken Anne-Marie to bed, the Ogre
+smoked his long cigar, and said to Nancy:
+
+"There is no jasmine in this season in Italy. And not many roses. But
+the place that you asked for is ready. It has a large garden. When I
+have settled you there, I am going to Peru."
+
+"Oh, must you?" said Nancy. "Must you really?"
+
+"The Mina de l'Agua needs looking after. Something has gone wrong with
+it. I ought to have gone three months ago, when I first wrote to you
+that I should," said the Ogre. "But enough. That does not concern you."
+
+Nancy looked very meek. "I am sorry," she said apologetically.
+
+"Very well," said the Ogre "Now let us talk about your work and Italy.
+When do you start?"
+
+Those four words thrilled Nancy with indescribable joy. "When do you
+start?" What a serene, what an attractive phrase!
+
+"Can you be ready on Thursday?" Again the balm and charm of the question
+ran into Nancy's veins. She felt that she could listen to questions of
+this kind for ever. But he stopped questioning, and expected an answer.
+It was a hesitant answer. She said:
+
+"What about Anne-Marie's violin?"
+
+He waited for her to explain, and she did so. Anne-Marie was going to be
+a portentous virtuosa. The great master had said so. It would never do
+to take her away from Prague. Nowhere would she get such lessons,
+nowhere would there be a Bemolle to devote himself utterly and entirely
+to her.
+
+The Ogre listened with his eyes fixed on Nancy.
+
+"Well? Then what?"
+
+"Ah!" said Nancy. "Then what!" And she sighed.
+
+"Do you want to leave her here?" asked the Ogre.
+
+"No," said Nancy.
+
+"Do you want to take her with you?"
+
+"N-no," said Nancy.
+
+"Then what?" said the Ogre again.
+
+Nancy raised her clouded eyes under their wing-like eyebrows to his
+strong face. "Help me," she said.
+
+He finished smoking his cigar without speaking; then he helped her. He
+looked in her face with his firm eyes while he spoke to her.
+
+He said: "You cannot tread two ways at once. You said your genius was a
+giant angel sitting in a cave, with huge wings furled."
+
+"Yes; but since then the genius of Anne-Marie has flown with clarion
+wings into the light."
+
+"You said that your unexpressed thoughts, your unfulfilled destiny, hurt
+you."
+
+"Yes; but am I to silence a singing fountain of music in order that my
+silent, unwritten books may live?"
+
+He did not speak for some time. Then he said: "Has it never occurred to
+you that it might be better for the little girl to be just a little
+girl, and nothing else?"
+
+"No," said Nancy. "It never occurred to me."
+
+"Might it not have been better if you yourself, instead of being a poet,
+had been merely a happy woman?"
+
+"Ah, perhaps!" said Nancy. "But Glory looked me in the face when I was
+young--Glory, the sorcerer!--the Pied Piper!--and I have had to follow.
+Through the days and the nights, through and over and across everything,
+his call has dragged at my heart. And, oh! it is not his call that
+hurts; it is the being pulled back and stopped by all the outstretched
+hands. The small, everyday duties and the great loves that hold one and
+keep one and stop one--they it is that break one's heart in two. Yes,
+_in two_, for half one's heart has gone away with the Piper." She drew
+in a long breath, remembering many things. Then she said: "And now he is
+piping to Anne-Marie. She has heard him, and she will go. And if her
+path leads over my unfulfilled hopes and my unwritten books, she shall
+tread and trample and dance on them. And good luck to her!"
+
+"Well, then--good luck to her!" said the Ogre.
+
+And Nancy said: "Thank you."
+
+"Now you are quite clear," he said after a pause; "and you must never
+regret it. If you want your child to be an eagle, you must pull out your
+own wings for her."
+
+"Every feather of them!" said Nancy.
+
+"And when you have done so, then she will spread them and fly away from
+you."
+
+"I know it," said Nancy.
+
+"And you will be alone."
+
+"Yes," said Nancy.
+
+And she closed her eyes to look into the coming years.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The Ogre remained in Prague a week, and took Anne-Marie on the Moldau
+and to the White Mountain, to the Stromovka and the Petrin Hill. Bemolle
+was frantic. For six days Anne-Marie had not touched the violin. He had
+looked forward to long hours of music with Anne-Marie, and had prepared
+her entire repertoire carefully in contrasting programmes for the
+English visitor's pleasure. But the English visitor would have none of
+it, or very little, and that little not of the best. Not much Beethoven,
+scarcely any Bach, no Brahms! Only Schubert and Grieg. Short pieces!
+Then the large man would get up and shake hands, first with Anne-Marie,
+then with Bemolle, and say "Thank you, thank you," and the music was
+over.
+
+On the last day of his stay he came before luncheon, and went to the
+valley of the Sarka alone with "Miss Brown"--he never called Nancy
+anything else, and she loved the name. It was a clear midsummer day. The
+country was alight with poppies, like a vulgar summer hat. The heart of
+Miss Brown was sad.
+
+"I leave this evening," he said, "at 8.40."
+
+"You have told me that twenty times," said Miss Brown.
+
+"I like you to think of it," he said; and she did not answer. "I am
+going back to the mines, back to Peru--"
+
+"You have said that two hundred times," said Miss Brown pettishly.
+
+He paid no attention. "To Peru," he continued, "and I may have to stay
+there a year, or two years ... to look after the mine. Then I return."
+He coughed. "Or--I do not return."
+
+No answer.
+
+"You have not changed your mind about going to Italy and writing your
+book?"
+
+"No," said Nancy, with little streaks of white on each side of her
+nostrils.
+
+"I thought not."
+
+Then they walked along for a quarter of an hour in silence. The wind ran
+over the grasses, and the birds sang.
+
+"Nancy!" he said. It was the first time he had called her by her name.
+She covered her face and began to cry. He did not attempt to comfort
+her. After a while he said, "Sit down," and she sat on the grass and
+went on crying.
+
+"Do you love me very much?" he asked.
+
+"Dreadfully," said Nancy, looking up at him helplessly through her
+tears.
+
+He sat down beside her.
+
+"And do you know that I love you very much?"
+
+"Yes, I know," sobbed Nancy.
+
+There was a short silence. Then he said: "In one of your letters long
+ago you wrote: 'This love across the distance, without the aid of any
+one of our senses, this is the Blue Rose of love, the mystic marvel
+blown in our souls for the delight of Heaven.' Shall we pluck it, Nancy,
+and wear it for our own delight?"
+
+The grasses curtseyed and the river ran. He took her hand from her face.
+Nancy looked at him, and the tears brimmed over.
+
+"Then," she said brokenly, "it would not be the Blue Rose any more."
+
+"True," he said.
+
+"Then it would be a common, everyday, pink-faced flower like every
+other."
+
+"True," he said again.
+
+She withdrew her hand from his. Then his hand remained on his knee in
+the sunshine, a large brown hand, strong, but lonely.
+
+"Oh, dear Unknown!" said Nancy; and she bent forward and kissed the
+lonely hand. "Do not let us throw our blue dream-rose away!"
+
+"Very well," he said--"very well, dear little Miss Brown." And he kissed
+her forehead for the second time.
+
+That evening he went back to his mines.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The following winter, when Nancy had been in Prague nearly a year, the
+Professor said:
+
+"Next month Anne-Marie will give an orchestral concert."
+
+"Oh, Herr Professor!" gasped Nancy. "Was giebt's?" asked the Professor.
+
+"Was giebt's?" asked Anne-Marie.
+
+"She is only nine years old."
+
+"Well?" said the Professor.
+
+"Well?" said Anne-Marie.
+
+Who can describe the excitement of the following days? The excitement of
+Bemolle over the choice of a programme! The excitement of Fraeulein over
+the choice of a dress! The excitement of Nancy, who could close no eye
+at night, who pictured Anne-Marie breaking down or stopping in the
+middle of a piece, or beginning to cry, or refusing to go on to the
+platform, or catching cold the day before! Everyone was febrile and
+overwrought except Anne-Marie herself, who seemed to trouble not at
+all about it.
+
+She was to play the Max Bruch Concerto? _Gut!_ And the Fantasia
+Appassionata? All right. And the Paganini variations on the G string?
+Very well. And now might she go out with Schop? For Schopenhauer,
+long-bodied and ungainly, had come with them to Europe, and was now
+friends with all the gay dogs of Prague.
+
+"I will order the pink dress," said Fraeulein.
+
+"Oh no! Let it be white," said Nancy.
+
+"I want it blue," said Anne-Marie.
+
+So blue it was.
+
+One snowy morning Anne-Marie went to her first rehearsal with the
+orchestra. There was much friendly laughter among the strings and wind,
+the brass and reeds, when the small child entered through the huge glass
+doors of the Rudolfinum, followed by Bemolle carrying the violin, Nancy
+carrying the music, Fraeulein carrying the dog, and the Professor in the
+rear, with his hat pulled down deeply over his head, and a large unlit
+cigar twisting in his fingers. Anne-Marie was introduced to the Bohemian
+chef d'orchestre, and was hoisted up to the platform by Fraeulein and the
+Professor. Violins and violas tapped applause on their instruments.
+
+And now Jaroslav Kalas raps his desk with the baton and raises his
+arm. Then he remembers something. He stops and bends down to Anne-Marie.
+Has she the A? Yes, thank you. And the little girl holds the fiddle to
+her ear and plucks lightly and softly at the strings. She raises it to
+her shoulder, and stands in position.
+
+Again the conductor taps and raises his arms. B-r-r-r-r-r roll the
+drums. Re-do-si, re-do-si, re-e, whisper the clarinets. A pause.
+Anne-Marie lifts her right arm slowly, and strikes the low G--a long
+vibrating note, like the note of a 'cello. Then she glides softly up the
+cadenza, and ends on the long pianissimo high D. Bemolle, who has been
+standing up, sits down suddenly. The Professor, who has been sitting
+down, stands up. Now Anne-Marie is purling along the second cadenza.
+Fraeulein, beaming in her lonely stall in the centre of the empty hall,
+nods her head rapidly and continuously. Nancy has covered her face with
+her hands. But the little girl, with her cheek on the fiddle, plays the
+concerto and sees nothing. Only once she gives a little start, as the
+brass instruments blare out suddenly behind her and she turns slightly
+towards them with an anxious eye. Then she forgets them; and she carries
+the music along, winding through the andante, gliding through the
+adagio, tearing past the allegro, leaping into the wild, magnificent
+finale.
+
+Perfect silence. The orchestra has not applauded. Kalas folds his
+arms and turns round to look at the Professor. But the Professor is
+blowing his nose. So Kalas steps down from his desk, and, taking
+Anne-Marie's hand, lifts it, bow and all, to his lips. Then, stepping
+back briskly to the desk, he raps for silence. "Vieuxtemps' Fantasie,"
+he says, and the music-sheets are fluttered and turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All Prague sat expectant--rustling and murmuring and coughing--in the
+stalls and galleries of the Rudolfinum, on the night of the concert. The
+Bohemian orchestra were in their seats. Kalas stepped up to his
+desk, and an overture was played.
+
+A short pause. Then, in the midst of a tense silence, Anne-Marie
+appeared, threading her way through the orchestra, with her violin under
+her arm. Now she stands in her place, a tiny figure in a short blue silk
+frock, with slim black legs and black shoes, and her fair hair tied on
+one side with a blue ribbon. Unwondering and calm, Anne-Marie confronted
+her first audience, gazing at the thousand upturned faces with gentle,
+fearless eyes. She turned her quiet gaze upwards to the gallery, where
+row on row of people were leaning forward to see her. Then, with a
+little shake of her head to throw back her fair hair, she lifted her
+violin to her ear, plucked lightly, and listened, with her head on one
+side, to the murmured reply of the strings. Kalas, on his tribune,
+was looking at her, his face drawn and pale. She nodded to him, and he
+rapped the desk. B-r-r-r-r-r-r rolled the drums.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the artists' room at the close of the concert people were edging and
+pressing and pushing to get in and catch a glimpse of Anne-Marie. The
+Directors and the uniformed men pushed the crowd out again, and locked
+the doors. The Professor, who had listened to the concert hidden away in
+a corner of the gallery, elbowed his way through the crush and entered
+the artists' room. The doors were quickly locked again behind him.
+
+The Professor had his old black violin-case in his hands. He went to the
+table, and, pushing aside a quantity of flowers that lay on it, he
+carefully put down his violin-case. It looked like a little coffin in
+the midst of the flowers. Anne-Marie was having her coat put on by
+Kalas, and a scarf tied round her head by Nancy, who was white as
+a sheet. The Professor beckoned to her, and she ran to him, and stood
+beside him at the table. He opened his violin-case and lifted out the
+magnificent blond instrument that he had treasured for thirty years. He
+turned the key of the E string, and drew the string off. Then he drew
+the A string off; then the D. The violin, now with the single silver G
+string holding up its bridge, lay in the Professor's hands for a moment.
+He turned solemnly to the little girl.
+
+"This is my Guarnerius del Gesu. I give it to you."
+
+"Yes," said Anne-Marie.
+
+"You will always play the Paganini Variations for the G string on this
+violin. Put no other strings on it."
+
+"No," said Anne-Marie.
+
+The Professor replaced the violin in the case, and shut it. "I have
+taught you what I could," he said solemnly. "Life will teach you the
+rest."
+
+"Yes," said Anne-Marie, and took the violin-case in her arms. The
+Professor looked at her a long time. Then he said:
+
+"See that you put on warm gloves to go out; it is snowing." He turned
+away quickly and left the room.
+
+Nancy put her arm round Anne-Marie.
+
+"Oh, darling, you forgot to thank him!" she said.
+
+Anne-Marie raised her eyes. She held the violin-case tightly in both her
+arms. "How can one thank him? What is the good of thanking him?" she
+said. And Nancy felt that she was right.
+
+"Where are my gloves?" said Anne-Marie. "He told me to put them on. And
+where is Fraeulein?"
+
+Fraeulein had gone. She had been sent home in a cab after the second
+piece, for she had not a strong heart. Bemolle, who had been weeping
+copiously in a corner, stepped forward with the other violin-case in his
+hand.
+
+Now they were ready. Anne-Marie was carrying the Guarnerius and the
+flowers, so Nancy could not take her hand. The men in uniform saluted
+and unlocked the doors, throwing them wide open. Then Anne-Marie, who
+had started forward, stopped. Before her the huge passage was lined with
+people, crowded and crushed in serried ranks, with a narrow space
+through the middle. At the end of the passage near the doors they could
+be seen pushing and surging, like a troubled sea. Anne-Marie turned to
+her mother.
+
+"Mother, what are the people waiting for?" she asked.
+
+Nancy smiled with quivering lips. "Come, darling," she said.
+
+"No," said Anne-Marie; "I will not come. I am sure they are waiting to
+see something, and I want to wait, too."
+
+As the crowd caught sight of her and rushed forward, she was lifted up
+by a large policeman, who carried her on his shoulder and pushed his way
+through the tumult. Anne-Marie clutched her flowers and the violin-case,
+which knocked against the policeman's head with every step he took.
+Nancy followed in the crush, laughing and sobbing, feeling hands
+grasping her hands, hearing voices saying: "Gebenedeite Mutter!
+glueckliche Mutter!" And she could only say: "Thank you! Thank you! Oh,
+thank you!"
+
+Then they were in the carriage. The door was shut with a bang. Many
+faces surged round the windows.
+
+"Wave your hand," said Nancy. And Anne-Marie waved her hand. Cheers and
+shouts frightened the plunging horses, and they started off at a gallop
+through the nocturnal streets. Nancy put her arm round Anne-Marie, and
+the child's head lay on her shoulder. The Guarnerius was at their feet.
+The flowers fell from Anne-Marie's hand on to the Professor's old black
+case, that was like a shabby little coffin. So they drove away out of
+the noise and the lights into the dark and silent streets, holding each
+other without speaking. Then Anne-Marie said softly:
+
+"Did you like my concert, Liebstes?"
+
+She had learned the tender German appellative from Fraeulein.
+
+"Yes," whispered Nancy.
+
+"Did I play well, Liebstes?"
+
+"Yes, my dear little girl."
+
+A long pause. "Are you happy, Liebstes?"
+
+"Oh yes, yes, yes! I am happy," said Nancy.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Before a week had passed Nancy had discovered how difficult a thing it
+was to be the mother of a wonderchild, and had grown thin and harassed
+by the stream of visitors and the deluge of letters that overwhelmed
+their modest apartment in the Vinohrady. As early as eight o'clock in
+the morning rival violinists walked beneath the windows to hear if
+Anne-Marie was practising, and how she was practising, and what she was
+practising. As they did not hear her, they concluded that she practised
+on a mute fiddle, and were wrathful and disappointed. By ten o'clock
+Lori, the smiling maid, had introduced a reporter or two, an impresario
+or two, a mother or two with a child or two, and none of them seemed to
+need to go home to luncheon. Questions were asked, and advice was
+tendered. "How long did the child practise every day?" "Two or three
+hours," said Nancy. "Too much," cried the mothers. "Too little," said
+the impresarios. "At what age did she begin?" "When she was between
+seven and eight." "Too young," said the mothers. "Too old," said the
+impresarios. "How does she sleep?" asked the mothers. "What fees do you
+expect?" asked the impresarios. "Why do you dress her in blue?" asked
+the mothers. "Why not in white or in black velvet?" "Why don't you cut
+her hair quite short and dress her in boy's clothes, and say she is five
+years old?" asked the impresarios. "How old is she _really_?" "Does her
+father beat her?" There seemed to be no restraint to the kind and the
+quantity of questions people were prepared to ask.
+
+Meanwhile the fame of Anne-Marie had flashed to Vienna, and she was
+invited to play in the Musikverein Saal. They said good-bye to the
+Professor with tears of gratitude, and left--taking away with them his
+best violin and his only assistant, for Bemolle was to go with them and
+carry the violin, and run the messages, and see after the luggage, and
+attend to the business arrangements. This last duty neither Fraeulein nor
+Anne-Marie, and least of all Nancy, was capable of undertaking. Bemolle
+himself was nervous about it, but the Professor (who knew as much about
+business as Anne-Marie) had coached him.
+
+"All you have to do is to count the tickets they give you, and the money
+they give you. And there must be no discrepancy. Do you see?"
+
+Yes, Bemolle saw. And so that was what he did, everywhere and after each
+concert. He counted the tickets, and he counted the money that was given
+him very carefully and lengthily, while the smiling manager stood about
+and smoked, or went out and refreshed himself; and it was always all
+right, and there was never any discrepancy anywhere. So _that_ was all
+right.
+
+The great hall of the Musikverein was filled for Anne-Marie's first
+concert. It was crowded and packed for her second, and third, and
+fourth. A blond Archduchess asked her to play to her children, and
+Anne-Marie's lips were taught to frame phrases to Royal Highnesses, and
+her little black legs were trained to obeisance and curtsey. Then Berlin
+telegraphed for the Wonderchild, and the Wonderchild went to Berlin and
+played Bach and Beethoven in the Saal der Philharmonic. Two tall,
+white-haired gentlemen came into the artists' room at the end of the
+concert. Solemnly they kissed the child's forehead, and invoked God's
+blessing upon her. When they had left, Nancy saw Bemolle running after
+them and shaking their hands. Nancy said: "What are you doing, Bemolle?"
+The emotional Bemolle, who, since Anne-Marie's debut, passed his days
+turning pale and red, and always seemed on the verge of tears,
+exclaimed: "I have shaken hands with Max Bruch and with Joachim. I do
+not care if now I die."
+
+And always at the end of the concerts crowds waited at the doors for the
+child to appear. Anne-Marie passed through the cheering people with her
+arms full of flowers, nodding to the right, nodding to the left, smiling
+and thanking and nodding again, with Nancy nodding and smiling and
+thanking close behind her. Sometimes the crowd was so great that they
+could not pass, and Anne-Marie had to be lifted up and carried to the
+carriage buoyantly, laughing down at everybody and waving her hands.
+Then there was a rush round the carriage door. Nancy, crushed and
+breathless, tearful and laughing, managed to get in after her, the door
+banged, and off they were, Anne-Marie still nodding first at one window
+then at the other, and rapping her fingers against the glass in
+farewell.... At last the running, cheering crowds were left behind, and
+she would drop her head with a little sigh of happiness against Nancy's
+arm.
+
+"Did you like my concert, mother dear? Did I play well, Liebstes?"
+
+That was the hour of joy for Nancy's heart. The concerts themselves
+turned her into a statue of terror, enveloped her with fear as with a
+sheet of ice. While Anne-Marie played, swaying slightly like a flower in
+a breeze, her spirit carried away on the wing of her own music, Nancy
+sat in the audience petrified and blenched, her hands tightly
+interlaced, her heart thumping dull and fast in her throat and in her
+ears. If the blue dream-light of Anne-Marie's eyes wandered round and
+found her, and rested on her face, Nancy would try to smile--a strained,
+panic-stricken smile, which made Anne-Marie, even while she was playing,
+feel inclined to laugh. Especially if she were at that moment performing
+something very difficult, spluttering fireworks by Bazzini, or a
+romping, breakneck bravura by Vieuxtemps, she would look fixedly at her
+mother, while an impish smile crept into her eyes, and her fingers
+rushed and scampered up and down the strings, and her bow swept and
+skimmed with the darting flight of a swallow.
+
+Nancy, watching her and trying, with ashen lips, to respond to her
+smile, would say to herself: "She will stop suddenly! She will forget.
+She cannot possibly remember all those thousands and thousands of notes.
+She will let her bow drop. The string will break. Something will happen!
+And if my heart goes on hammering like this, I shall fall down and die."
+But nothing happened, and she did not die, and the piece ended. And the
+applause crackled and crashed around them. And the concert ended, and
+soon they were alone together in the flower-filled, fragrant penumbra of
+the moving carriage.
+
+"Are you happy, mother dear?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes! I am so happy, my own little girl!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the gentle month of May they went to London.
+
+London! Nancy's father's home! London! Close to Hertfordshire, where
+Nancy had lived the first eight years of her life.
+
+On board the Channel steamer Nancy, with beating heart, full of
+tenderness and awe, pointed out the white cliffs to Anne-Marie. "That is
+England."
+
+"Yes," said Anne-Marie, "I know."
+
+"You must love England, darling," said Nancy.
+
+"We shall see," said the Wonderchild, who was not prepared to love by
+command. Fraeulein was bubbling over with reminiscences. It was in Dover
+that Nancy's mother had come to meet her twenty-four years ago. They had
+had tea and sponge-cakes in the train. They had bought an umbrella
+somewhere, because she had left hers on the boat, and it was raining.
+
+So it was to-day, raining drearily, heavily on the sad green landscapes
+as the train ran through Kent and towards London.
+
+They went to a hotel, close to the hall where Anne-Marie was to play.
+And all the way driving to it Bemolle wept, with emotion at being in
+London, and with emotion at not being in Italy; for in a little village
+at the foot of the Appenines, his old mother still lived, following him
+with anxious letters while he rushed across Europe carrying the violin
+for Anne-Marie.
+
+The first London concert was to be the week after their arrival. The
+manager, pink-faced and blue-eyed, came to the hotel to talk about the
+programme.
+
+"England is not Berlin. Don't make it too heavy," he said. So the
+Beethoven Concerto was taken out, and the Vieuxtemps Concerto put in its
+stead. The Chaconne was taken out, and the Faust Phantasie put in its
+stead. The manager said, "That's right," and went out to play golf.
+
+The London audience and the London critics came _en masse_ to hear
+Anne-Marie. The London audiences clapped and shouted. The London critics
+carped and reproved. How sad it was, said they, that a child with such a
+marvellous gift should waste her genius on music of the cheap virtuoso
+kind! What a responsibility on the shoulders of parents and masters who
+withheld from her the classic glories of Beethoven and Bach!
+
+The manager, coming for the programme of the second concert, said: "Pile
+it on. Give it to them heavy. It's the heavy stuff they want." Then he
+went out and played golf.
+
+So Anne-Marie played the Beethoven Concerto and the Beethoven Romance,
+the Bach Chaconne and Fugue, Prelude and Sarabande. And the audience
+shouted and clapped.
+
+But the critics carped and reproved. How can a mere child understand
+Beethoven and Bach? How wrong to overweight the puerile brain with the
+giants of classic composition! It is almost a sacrilege to hear a little
+girl venturing to approach the Chaconne. Let her play Handel and Mozart.
+
+So in the third concert Anne-Marie played Handel and Mozart, and the
+audience shouted and clapped.
+
+But the critics said that, though she played the easy, simple music very
+nicely for her age, still, in a London concert hall one expected to hear
+something more puissant and authoritative. And why did she give concerts
+at all? Why not do something else? Study composition, for instance?
+
+"That's England all over," said the manager, and went out and played
+golf.
+
+Nancy was bewildered and unhappy. Bemolle danced about in helpless
+Latin rage, and Fraeulein sat down and wrote a long letter to the
+_Times_. But it is uncertain whether the _Times_ printed it.
+
+Anne-Marie, who did not know that critics existed, nor care what critics
+said, was happy and cheerful, and bought a dog in Regent Street, to
+replace the quarantined Schopenhauer. He was a young and thin and
+careless dog, and answered to the name of Ribs. Then Anne-Marie decided
+that she loved England very much.
+
+Many people called at the hotel to ask for autographs, and to express
+their views. One elderly musician was very stern with Anne-Marie, and
+sterner still with Nancy. He began by asking Nancy what she thought her
+child was going to be in the future.
+
+"I do not know," said Nancy. "I am grateful for what she is now."
+
+"Ah! but you must think of the future. You want her to be a great
+artist--"
+
+"I don't know that I do," said Nancy. "She is a great artist now. If she
+degenerates"--and Nancy smiled--"into merely a happy woman, she will
+have had more than her share of luck."
+
+"Take care! The prodigy will kill the artist!" repeated the stern man.
+"You pluck the flower and you lose the fruit."
+
+Nancy laughed. "It is as if you said: 'Beware of being a rose-bud lest
+you never be an apple!' I am content that she should bloom unhindered,
+and be what she is. Why should she not be allowed to play Bach like an
+angel to-day, lest she should not be able to play him like Joachim ten
+years hence?"
+
+"Yes, why not!" piped up Anne-Marie, who had paid no attention to the
+conversation, but who liked to say "Why not?" on general principles.
+
+The stern man turned to her. "Bach, my dear child----" he began.
+
+Anne-Marie gave a little laugh. "Oh, I know!" she said cheerfully.
+
+"What do you know?" asked the gentleman severely.
+
+"You are going to say, '_Always_ play Bach; nothing else is worthy,'"
+said Anne-Marie, regretting that she had joined in the conversation.
+
+"I was not going to say anything of the kind," said the stern man.
+
+"Oh, then you were going to say the other thing: 'Do not _attempt_ to
+play Bach--no child can understand him.' Professors always say one or
+the other of those two things. Much stupid things are said about music."
+
+"It is so," said the gentleman severely. "You cannot possibly understand
+Bach."
+
+Anne-Marie suddenly grasped him by the sleeve.
+
+"What do _you_ understand in Bach? I want to know. You must tell me what
+you understand. Exactly what it is that you understand and I don't.
+Bemolle!" she cried, still holding the visitor's sleeve. "Give me the
+violin!"
+
+Bemolle jumped up and obeyed with beaming face.
+
+"Anne-Marie, darling!" expostulated Nancy.
+
+But Anne-Marie had the violin in her hand and wildness in her eye.
+
+"Stay here," she said to the visitor, relinquishing his sleeve with
+unwilling hand, and hastily tuning the fiddle. "Now you have got to tell
+me what you understand in Bach." She played the first five of the
+thirty-two variations of the Chaconne; then she stopped.
+
+"What does Bach mean? What have you understood?" she cried. The English
+musician leaned back in his chair and smiled with benevolent
+superiority.
+
+"And now--now I play it differently." She played it again, varying the
+lights and shades, the piani and the forti. "What different thing have
+you understood?"
+
+"And now--now I play it like Joachim. So, exactly so, he played it for
+me and with me...
+
+"... Now what have you understood that I have not? What has Bach said to
+you, and not to me, you silly man?"
+
+Nancy took Anne-Marie's hand. "Hush, Anne-Marie! For shame!"
+
+"I will not hush!" cried Anne-Marie, with flaming cheeks. "I am tired of
+hearing them always say the same stupid things."
+
+The visitor, smiling acidly, stood up to go. "I am afraid too much music
+is not good for a little girl's manners," he said.
+
+"Mother," said Anne-Marie, with her head against her mother's breast.
+"Tell him to wait. I want to say a thing that I can't. Help me."
+
+"What is it, dear?"
+
+"When we were to have gone to a country that you said was hot and
+pretty--and dirty--where was that?"
+
+"Spain?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes! You said something about the little hotels there ... the
+funny little hotels. What did you say about them?"
+
+Nancy thought a moment. Then she smiled and remembered. "I said: 'You
+can only find in them what you bring with you yourself.'"
+
+"Yes, yes!" cried Anne-Marie, raising her excited eyes. "Now say that
+about music."
+
+And Nancy said it. "You will only find in music what you bring to it
+from your own soul."
+
+"Yes," said Anne-Marie, turning to the visitor; "how can you know what I
+bring? How can you know that what you bring is beautifuller or gooder?
+How can you know that Bach meant what _you_ think and not what I think?"
+
+"Don't get excited, you funny little girl," said the visitor; and he
+took his leave with dignity.
+
+But Anne-Marie was excited, and did not sleep all night.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+"Anne-marie, the King wants to hear you play!"
+
+"The King? The real King?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not a fairy-tale king?"
+
+"No."
+
+"The King who was ill when I had a birthday-cake long ago?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that I made get well again?"
+
+"Oh, did you, dear?" laughed Nancy. "I did not know that."
+
+"I did it," said Anne-Marie, with deep and serious mien. "I made him get
+well. Do you remember the seven candles round my cake?"
+
+"I heard of them. You were seven when you were at the _Gartenhaus_; and
+I was away from you." And Nancy sighed.
+
+"And you know about the birthday wishes?" asked the eager Anne-Marie.
+"The Poetry says:
+
+    "The heart must be pure,
+     The Wish must be sure,
+     The blow must be one--
+     The magic is done!"
+
+"What terrible lines!" said Nancy.
+
+"Fraeulein did them, from the German," said Anne-Marie.
+
+"What is the blow?"
+
+"The blowing-out of the candles. You may only blow once. And 'the Wish
+must be sure.' You must not change about, and regret, and wish you
+hadn't. Fraeulein told me it would be safest to make a list of all my
+wishes beforehand. So I made a list days and days before my birthday.
+They were to be seven things--one for each candle. There was a white
+pony, and a kennel for Schopenhauer, and a steamer to go and fetch you
+home in, and a lovely dress for Fraeulein, and a gold watch for you, and
+something else for Elisabeth, and another dog for me, and to go to the
+theatre every day, and--"
+
+"There seem to be more than seven things already," said Nancy.
+
+"Well, they were most beautiful. Especially the pony and the steamer....
+And then you wrote about the King."
+
+"I remember," said Nancy.
+
+"You said he was ill, and that he was your papa's King, and that he was
+good and forgave everybody: whole countries-full of bad people! And you
+wrote that I was to say a prayer, and ask God to make him well."
+
+"I remember."
+
+"Well, I didn't, I said to God: 'Wait a minute!' because next day was my
+birthday, and I had the cake with the seven Wishes. I thought first I
+would just give up the kennel, and wish _once_ for the King to get well.
+So I did it, and blew out one candle; then I gave up the present for
+Elisabeth, and wished for the King again. Then I thought I could do
+without the dress for Fraeulein. And without the theatre.... And then I
+let the steamer and the pony go too. And I blew out all seven candles
+for the King!" Anne-Marie folded her hands in her lap. "So that's how I
+made him get well."
+
+"How nice," said Nancy.
+
+"And now I am going to see him, and to play to him," said Anne-Marie
+dreamily. "It is very strange." She raised her simple eyes to her
+mother. "Do you think I ought to tell him about my having saved him?"
+
+"I think not," said Nancy. "It is much nicer to have saved him without
+his knowing it."
+
+So Anne-Marie did not tell him.
+
+... But he knew. "I know that he knew!" sobbed Anne-Marie in the evening
+of the great day, trembling with emotion in her mother's arms. "I saw it
+in the kindness of his eyes. And mother! mother! I think that was why he
+kissed me."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+The Piper piped tunes into Anne-Marie's ear, tunes that she had to hum,
+and to sing, and to play; tunes that enraptured her when she created
+them, and hurt her when she forgot them. So Bemolle had to write them
+down. Everything she heard wandered off into melodies, melted into
+harmonies, divided itself up into rhythms. Mother Goose rhymes and
+Struwwelpeter were put to music, and all the favourites in Andersen's
+Maerchen--the Princess and the Mermaid, the Swineherd and the
+Goblins--corresponded to some special bars of music in Anne-Marie's
+mind. "She has the sense of the Leitmotiv," said Bemolle, with awestruck
+eyes and oracular forefinger.
+
+It had been arranged that Bemolle should have his mornings to himself
+for his own compositions. He had, two years before, by dint of much
+scraping, paid five hundred francs to secure a good libretto for his
+much-dreamed-of opera, of which he had already composed the principal
+themes when he first went with the Professor to play for Anne-Marie; he
+was also half-way through a tone-poem on Edgar Allan Poe's "Eldorado."
+He played it occasionally to Anne-Marie; frequently to Nancy:
+
+    "Gaily bedight, a gallant Knight,
+     In sunshine and in shadow----"
+
+"Do you hear?" he would say, playing with much pedal, while his rough
+black head bounced and dipped. "Do you hear the canter and gallop and
+thump? It is the Horse, and the Heart, and the Hope of the Knight!"
+
+Yes; Nancy could hear the Horse, and the Heart, and the Hope quite
+clearly.
+
+"Now!" Bemolle's curly black mat would swoop over the keys and stay
+there quite near to his fingers, "Now--the Hag appears! Do you hear the
+Hag murmur and mumble? This is the Hag murmuring and mumbling."
+
+"I should make her mumble in D flat," said Anne-Marie airily. And then
+she trotted out of the room, leaving in Bemolle's heart a vague sense
+of dissatisfaction with his Hag, because she was mumbling in A natural.
+
+Soon, as there was much to do, programmes to prepare, letters to answer,
+engagements to accept, tours to refuse, and they were all four rather
+unbusiness-like and confusionary, Bemolle had to put aside his opera and
+his tone-poem, and dedicate himself exclusively to the business
+arrangements of the party.
+
+They frequently got confused in their dates. "The Costanzi in Rome has
+telegraphed, asking for three concerts in February, and I have
+accepted!" cried Bemolle triumphantly, when Nancy and Anne-Marie
+returned from one of the dreaded and inevitable afternoon receptions
+given in their honour.
+
+"I thought we had accepted Stockholm for February," said Nancy, with
+troubled brow.
+
+"So we had!" exclaimed Bemolle. "Oh dear! Now we must cancel it."
+
+"Oh, don't cancel Rome! Cancel Stockholm," said Nancy.
+
+And so they cancelled Stockholm with great difficulty, promising
+Stockholm a date in March, immediately after Rome, and immediately
+before Berlin, where Anne-Marie was to play for the Kaiserfest the Max
+Bruch Concerto, accompanied by the great composer himself.
+
+A week later, Nancy, looking at Bemolle's little book of dates and
+engagements, said: "How can we get from Rome to Stockholm, and from
+Stockholm to Berlin in six days, and give three concerts in between?"
+
+"We cannot do so," said Fraeulein. "From Berlin to Warnemuende--"
+
+"Oh, never mind details, Fraeulein," sighed Nancy. "It cannot be done."
+
+"We must cancel Rome," said Fraeulein.
+
+"No, you can't do that," said Bemolle.
+
+"Well, then, we must cancel Berlin," said Nancy.
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Then I suppose we must cancel Stockholm again."
+
+So they cancelled Stockholm again, by telegrams that cost one hundred
+and fifty francs, and by paying damages to the extent of two thousand
+francs, and by swallowing and ignoring threats of lawsuits and
+acrimonious letters.
+
+"I think we ought to have an impresario," said Nancy. "We do not seem to
+manage our business affairs well."
+
+So they decided to have an impresario. After wavering for a long time
+between a little black man from Rome, who had followed them all over the
+Continent, and a great Paris impresario who had only telegraphed twice,
+they decided on a nice-looking man in Vienna, who had seemed honest, and
+had promised them many things. He was telegraphed for--nobody ever wrote
+letters if it could be helped; indeed, the correspondence which flowed
+in on them from all parts of the world was only half read and a quarter
+answered. The impresario from Vienna replied, asking for two hundred
+kronen for travelling expenses. These were sent to him by telegraph. And
+then he did not come. "We must not put up with it," said Fraeulein. So
+they did not put up with it. They went to a solicitor, who asked for the
+correspondence and ten pounds for preliminary expenses, which were given
+to him. And that was all--except that about a year afterwards, when they
+had forgotten all about it, a bill from the solicitor for four pounds
+two shillings followed them across Europe, and finally reached them in
+St. Petersburg. And they paid it.
+
+But meanwhile they decided upon the Paris impresario. He was a great
+man, and had "launched" everybody who was anybody in the artistic world.
+He needed no travelling expenses. He arrived, gorgeous of waistcoat,
+resplendent of hat. He said he had already fixed up two Colonne concerts
+in Paris for Anne-Marie. He was none of your slow, sleepy, impresarios.
+Here was a contract in duplicate ready for them to sign. His bright
+brown eye wandered critically over Bemolle. Then he took Fraeulein in at
+a glance, and looking at Nancy's helpless and bewildered face he seemed
+to be satisfied with Anne-Marie's surroundings. To Anne-Marie herself he
+paid no attention. He had heard her play twice. That was enough.
+Anne-Marie, as Anne-Marie, interested him not at all. Anne-Marie as
+artist still less. Anne-Marie was a musical-box, ten years old, with
+yellow hair, whom he had wanted to get hold of for the last six months.
+
+Here was the contract. No father? Well, Nancy could sign it in the
+father's stead.
+
+Nancy, Bemolle, and Fraeulein read the contract over very carefully,
+while the impresario drank claret and smoked cigarettes. He had a way of
+sniffing the air up through his nostrils, and of swallowing with his
+lips turned up at the corners in an expectant, self-satisfied manner
+that distracted Nancy, and interfered with her understanding of the
+contract.
+
+There were fourteen clauses. "It seems all right," said Nancy softly to
+Bemolle. Bemolle frowned a businesslike frown, and Fraeulein said,
+"Sprechen wir Deutsch," which they did, to the placid amusement of the
+Paris impresario, who was born in Klagenfurt.
+
+After much reading and considering, Bemolle turned with his business
+frown to the impresario. "You say forty per cent to the artist?"
+
+The impresario sniffed and swallowed. "That's right," he said. "I have
+the risks and the expenses."
+
+"Of course," said Nancy.
+
+Bemolle touched her arm lightly and warningly.
+
+"Forty per cent of the _gross_ receipts?" asked Bemolle suspiciously.
+
+"Of the _net_ receipts," said the impresario.
+
+"Ah, that is better!" said the unenlightened Fraeulein. And Bemolle put
+out his foot gently and kicked her.
+
+"Now, what is this clause about three years?"
+
+"That's right," said the impresario. "You do not think I am to have all
+the trouble of launching her for you to take her away after six months,
+while I sit sucking my fingers."
+
+"Gemeiner Kerl!" said Fraeulein to Nancy.
+
+But Nancy said: "She is already launched."
+
+"Is she?" said the impresario. "I don't think so." And he sniffed and
+swallowed. "She must make about two million francs in the next two
+years. Otherwise she may as well quit."
+
+"Zwei Millionen!" gasped Fraeulein, under her breath.
+
+Bemolle kicked her again. "And what does this mean? Clause eight. 'The
+party of the second part agrees to give a minimum of one hundred and
+forty concerts per year for three years'?"
+
+"That is a matter of form," said the impresario. "We put that into all
+contracts lest we should feel inclined to sit about with our hands in
+our pockets doing nothing. Now, if you don't like it, you can leave it.
+I've not come over for this. I have a contract with the biggest star
+singer in Europe to sign here to-day. That is what I came for. Look at
+it." And he pulled out a contract made in the name of a world-famed
+tenor, and dotted over with tens of hundreds of pounds as a field is
+with daisies.
+
+Fraeulein was much impressed. "Better take him quick," she said in
+German. "He might go." So they took him quick, and signed the contract.
+And Bemolle was careful to have it stamped.
+
+"Und nun ist Alles in Ordnung," said the "gemeiner Kerl," grinning at
+Fraeulein. And then he sniffed and swallowed.
+
+They soon found out what Clause eight meant. The party of the second
+part was bound to give a minimum of one hundred and forty concerts a
+year--and the party of the second part was Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie was
+certainly not to be allowed to sit about with her hands in her pockets.
+In sixteen days she gave twelve concerts with eleven journeys between.
+She went from town to town, from platform to platform, looking like a
+little dazed seraph playing in its dreams. Fraeulein broke down on the
+sixth journey, and was left behind, half-way between Cologne and Mainz.
+Bemolle said nothing. He could only look at Anne-Marie dozing in the
+train, and great tears would gather in his round black eyes, linger and
+roll down, losing themselves in his dark moustache, that drooped over
+his mouth like a seal's. When the impresario travelled with them,
+smoking cigarettes in their faces, and going to sleep with his hands in
+his pockets, and his long legs stretched across the compartment, there
+was murder--black and scarlet murder--in Bemolle's eyes, and his gaze
+would wander from the impresario's flowered waistcoat to his blond,
+pointed beard, searching for a place.
+
+During the concerts the impresario was everywhere to be seen, with his
+hands in his pockets and his legs wide apart. Between the pieces he sat
+in the artists' room and talked to everyone who came in to see
+Anne-Marie, scenting out the journalists with the _flair_ of a dog.
+Nancy could hear him inventing startling anecdotes about Anne-Marie. He
+talked to the enthusiastic musicians and the tearful ladies that came to
+congratulate, and always could Nancy hear him recounting the same untrue
+and unlikely anecdotes. Yes, this child he had discovered playing the
+piano when she was three years old. When she was five she had, with the
+aid of her little brother, built a violin out of a soap-box. She had
+been kidnapped by some Nihilists in Russia, and had been kept by them
+three weeks in a kind of vault, where she had to play to them for hours
+when they asked her to. She had jewels and decorations worth ten
+thousands pounds. She had three Strads; one of them had belonged to
+Wagner and the other to the Tsar.
+
+At the end of the concerts the impresario got into the carriage with
+them. The impresario bore Anne-Marie through the clapping crowds. The
+impresario carried her flowers and her violin, and waved his hand out of
+the window to the people when Anne-Marie was too tired to do so.
+Anne-Marie sat in her corner of the carriage and fell asleep. Nancy bit
+her lips and tried not to cry. And Bemolle sat outside on the box,
+thinking evil Italian thoughts, and murmuring old Italian curses that
+had never been known to fail.
+
+This lasted just a fortnight. On the fifteenth day Anne-Marie said: "I
+don't want to see that man any more. And I want to have a picnic in the
+grass," she added, "with things to eat in parcels, and milk in a
+bottle."
+
+"Very well, dear," said Nancy. "You shall have it." And they had it. And
+it was very nice.
+
+When the impresario came that evening Anne-Marie was not to be seen. She
+was in bed and asleep, rosy and worn out by her long day in the open
+air.
+
+"Are you ready?" said the impresario, looking round. Nancy said:
+"Anne-Marie cannot play to-night. She is tired. I did not know where to
+find you, or I should have let you know before."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said the impresario. And he sniffed and swallowed.
+
+"And really," said Nancy. "I have come to the conclusion that this won't
+do. Anne-Marie must play only when she wants to. One or two concerts in
+a month, if she feels like it, and not more. She shall not play because
+she must, but because she loves to."
+
+"Gelungen!" said the impresario, sitting down and taking out his
+cigarette case.
+
+"So I think you had better just pay for the concerts she has given, and
+let us go."
+
+The impresario laughed long and loud. His shoulders shook with
+amusement.
+
+"Na, gelungen!" he said again, leaving off laughing to light his
+cigarette, and stretching out his long legs. "How much did you say I was
+to pay?" And he shook with laughter again.
+
+"Well, our share, I suppose," said Nancy timidly.
+
+"That's right," said the impresario, and he stopped laughing suddenly,
+and looked at his watch. "Now hurry up and come along. It is time to
+start."
+
+"Anne-Marie is asleep," said Nancy.
+
+"Then wake her," said the impresario.
+
+Nancy felt herself turning pale.
+
+"Get on," said the impresario; "it won't kill her to play to-night. And
+the concert-hall is sold out."
+
+"I am sorry," said Nancy; "but Anne-Marie never plays when she is
+tired."
+
+"That is foolish, my dear woman," said the impresario, getting up. "I
+shall be obliged to wake her myself if you don't." And he took a step
+towards the closed door which led into the room where Anne-Marie was
+sleeping.
+
+Now Anne-Marie's sleep was a sacred thing. A thing watched over and
+hallowed, approached on tip of toe, spoken of with finger on lip and
+bated breath. If Anne-Marie slept perfect silence was kept, and the
+world must stop. If Bemolle chanced to open a door or creak a careless
+shoe, he was frowned at with horrified brows. Anne-Marie's sleep was a
+thing inviolate and sacrosanct.
+
+Bemolle had been standing near the window looking out into the darkness
+while the impresario spoke to Nancy; but with the first step in the
+direction of the closed door Bemolle darted forward with a growl like
+that of a angry dog. Bemolle was short and stout, but his long
+accumulated anger and hatred stood him in lieu of height and muscles. He
+jumped at the impresario, he pulled his beard, he scratched his face, he
+pummelled him in the chest, and with short, excited legs he kicked him.
+When the big man recovered from the amazement caused by this unexpected
+onslaught, he lifted Bemolle off his legs and sat him on the floor. The
+he took his hat and his umbrella and walked out of the room, and out of
+the hotel.
+
+"Has he gone?" said Bemolle, after a while, sitting up, with papery
+cheeks and a reddened eye.
+
+"Yes, he has gone," said Nancy. "Poor Bemolle! Did he hurt you?"
+
+Bemolle did not rise from the floor. He shook his head, and muttered
+hoarsely:
+
+"He wanted to wake Anne-Marie. He actually wanted to wake Anne-Marie!"
+
+... It cost them twenty-five thousand francs to annul the contract, and
+five hundred francs in legal expenses. But they considered that it was
+cheap for the joy of having got rid of the impresario.
+
+They had picnics and played about until Fraeulein was well enough to join
+them again, and then they went to Rome, where they arrived with a
+fortnight to spare before the orchestral concerts at the Teatro
+Costanzi.
+
+Thither from Milan came Aunt Carlotta, bent and wrinkled, and Zio
+Giacomo, trembling and slow; and Adele and Nino and Carlo and Clarissa
+in a noisy and affectionate group. Many tender tears were shed in memory
+of Valeria, who had not lived to see her little grandchild's fame. "But
+she saw _your_ glory, Nancy," said Nino.
+
+They lived again in memory Nancy's visit to the Queen with her little
+volume of poems, as they all went one sunshiny afternoon up the hill of
+the Quirinal and past the Palace. Nino, whose hair was quite grey, and
+who, according to Aunt Carlotta, was rather difficult to please and easy
+to irritate, walked in front of them, and Anne-Marie trotted beside him,
+holding his hand. He told her interesting tales about a pink pinafore
+her mother had worn when she was eight years old, and what Fraeulein
+looked like when she was apple-cheeked and twenty-five. Fraeulein, who
+really did not show the twenty years' difference very much, walked
+beside them, deeply moved by these reminiscences; and Bemolle, who was
+to go and visit his lonely old mother as soon as the Costanzi concerts
+were over, walked behind them all, tearful on general principles.
+
+"By the way," said Nino to Nancy, "I saw the dear old Grey House again.
+I went to England on Carlo's affairs two months ago. I ran down to
+Hertfordshire and looked at it. It seemed to be empty."
+
+"Oh," said Fraeulein, "what a beautiful place it was! Don't you remember
+it, Nancy?"
+
+"I remember the garden," said Nancy, with vague eyes, "and the
+swing----"
+
+"What swing?" said Anne-Marie, taking an interest.
+
+Nancy told her about the swing in the orchard of that far-away home,
+where she had stood swinging and singing in the placid English sunshine
+when she was a little girl.
+
+... After a very few days the well-remembered envelope with the golden
+arms of the Royal House was put into Anne-Marie's small hands. On the
+following evening, Adele, Carlotta, and Clarissa were in a flutter
+preparing Nancy and Anne-Marie for their audience at the Quirinal.
+Bemolle was fevered with excitement, for he was to play Anne-Marie's
+accompaniments on the piano. He walked, pale and happy, carrying the
+violin and the music, behind Nancy and Anne-Marie, as they passed, with
+right hands bared, through the red room, and the yellow room, and the
+blue room, and at last into the white and gold room where the King and
+the Queen and many officers and ladies were waiting for them. The Queen
+was not the same Queen whom Nancy had known, and whose name--the name of
+a flower--was written on the first page of her old diary. But the
+little boy whose picture, framed in diamonds, Nancy had received on her
+wedding-day, was King.
+
+The Queen embraced Anne-Marie many times, and laughed when Anne-Marie
+talked, and wept when Anne-Marie played. Anne-Marie gazed at the tall,
+dark-eyed Queen with adoration, sparing a glance or two for a gorgeous
+man in scarlet tunic, with many decorations, whom she took to be the
+King.
+
+As the Adagio of Mendelssohn's concerto ended, a stern-faced man in
+plain evening-dress, sitting slightly apart from the others, said: "I do
+not care much for music, but this music I love." The Queen turned to him
+with a smile on her beautiful face--a smile that startled Anne-Marie.
+Anne-Marie followed the track of that shining smile, and her eyes
+fastened on the face of the stern man. Where had she seen that face
+before? Why was it so dear and familiar? Why did it make her think of
+New York, and her mother weeping over letters from home. Stamps! She had
+seen it on stamps! _He_ was the King of Italy! How could she have looked
+at that silly, yellow-haired man in the red tunic! Anne-Marie's small
+loyal heart prostrated itself in penitence before him who did not care
+for music. And as she played, he smiled back at her with piercing,
+friendly eyes.
+
+Bemolle, who had made his deep obeisance on entering the door, and had
+then stopped beside the piano, bent under the awful joy of the majestic
+presence, never straightened himself out again, but sat down and stood
+up when spoken to, in a tense curvilinear posture that was painful to
+look upon. He also played many wrong notes in the accompaniments, and
+could feel the anger of Anne-Marie flashing upon him, even though her
+small blue back was turned. Nancy sat beside the Queen, smiling through
+tear-lit eyes, replying to the many intimate and kindly questions the
+beautiful lips asked. The Queen addressed her by her maiden name that
+was famous, and quoted her poems to her with softly cadenced voice; and
+the past and the present melted into one in Nancy's heart, and she could
+not separate their beauty.
+
+They drove back to the hotel in moved and grateful spirit. Anne-Marie,
+fluffy and feathery in her mother's arms, chatted all the way home, for
+she had much to say.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+A year of dream-like travels from triumph to triumph, from success to
+success, scattered roses and myrtles at the feet of Anne-Marie. She went
+through life as a child wanders through a fairy-tale garden, alight with
+flowers that bow and bend to her hand. The concerts were her joy. Music
+filled her soul to overflowing, and, like a pure and chosen vessel,
+Anne-Marie poured it forth again upon the listening world. When she
+played she was fulfilling her destiny, as a lark must sing.
+
+One day in Genoa she was taken to see Paganini's violin, hanging mute
+and sealed in its glass case at the town hall. She looked at it silently
+and turned away.
+
+"What are you thinking, dear heart?" said Nancy. "You look so sad."
+
+"I am thinking," said Anne-Marie, with solemn eyes, "how it must hurt
+that violin and ache it, to be kept locked up, and not be allowed to
+sing!"
+
+The remark was heard, and repeated, and reached the ears of the Mayor of
+Genoa. One afternoon, with great pomp, Anne-Marie was invited to the
+palace of the Municipio, and, before a few invited guests, the seals
+were broken, and the hallowed instrument of the immortal Nicolo was
+placed in the little girl's hands. Anne-Marie had not slept for three
+nights thinking of that moment, imagining the joy of the imprisoned
+voice when her hands should let it loose.
+
+She drew a new E string quickly over the tarnished bridge. Now she
+plucked lightly at it, bending her head to listen. Then, raising her
+bow, she struck the bonds of silence from the quivering strings. The
+chord in D minor rippled out, hoarse and feeble. Anne-Marie struck a
+second chord, pressing down her fingers with a vehement vibrato. Again
+the reply came--muffled, quavering, weak. Anne-Marie's face grew white
+and tense. She removed the violin from her shoulder with a little sob.
+
+"It is dead," she said.
+
+Years after, if ever Nancy thought that it might have been better had
+Anne-Marie been held back, and not been allowed to play her heart out to
+the world, the memory of the Silent Violin, locked in its glass case,
+came back to her--the violin that had died of its own silence. And she
+was glad that her little skylark had been allowed to sing.
+
+And sing it did, in many climes and under many skies. Was it in Turin
+that the horses were taken from the carriage, and Anne-Marie and Nancy
+drawn in triumph through the cheering, waving streets? Was it in Bern
+that the police had to hold the crowd back, and clear the squares for
+their plunging horses to pass? Where was it that she was serenaded and
+called to the balcony twenty times by a crowd that seemed to have gone
+mad? Where did men lift little children up that they might touch her
+dress, and women, jostled in the crowd, with hats awry, fight for a
+glimpse of the fair nodding head, for a touch of the little gloved hand?
+Was it at Naples that they called her _la bambino, assistita_, and
+thought her possessed by a spirit, and begged her to predict to them the
+winning numbers of the following Saturday's lottery?
+
+Yes, that was in Naples. In the confused glory of the shifting scenes
+some memories stood out clearly, and held Nancy's recollection. It was
+in Naples that no seat had been reserved for her in the immense and
+crowded concert-hall, and that the manager had told her of a lady who
+would give her a seat in her own box: box 5, tier 2--Nancy remembered it
+still. And when Anne-Marie, duly kissed and blessed, stepped out, violin
+in hand, upon the platform, Nancy was still running along the empty
+corridors of tier 2, looking for box 5. Here it was! There was a lady in
+it alone. Nancy bowed to her and took her seat, murmuring: "Grazie."
+Then, with tightly folded hands, she had whispered the little prayer she
+always said for God to help Anne-Marie. And, as always, the prayer was
+answered, for Anne-Marie played grandly and suavely, never even dreaming
+that help could be needed.
+
+Nancy sat in the box, tense and terrified as usual, waiting for the
+tranquil eyes of Anne-Marie to wander round the auditorium and find her.
+There! They found her, and shone and twinkled. Then the Spirit of Music
+dropped its great wings between them, and carried away little
+Anne-Marie, swinging and singing her out of reach--out of reach of her
+mother's love, farther than Nancy could follow.
+
+The lady in black took her pocket-handkerchief and pressed it to her
+eyes. Nancy was used to the gesture, but it always moved her. She put
+her hand lightly on the arm of the unknown woman whose heart her little
+girl's music had wrung.
+
+The last piece was ended, and the well-known cries of applause were
+starting from all corners of the house, when Nancy rose quickly to go
+back to Anne-Marie. The woman in black put back her veil, and said:
+
+"My name is Villari."
+
+Nancy remembered the name. All that Aldo had told, all that Nino had not
+told, years ago swept into her mind. She looked curiously into the tired
+face, under its helmet of dark-red tinted hair. There were many lines in
+the face. Nancy thought it looked like a map, and along the many little
+lines Nancy's eyes seemed to travel into a sad and distant country. She
+put out her hand.
+
+"I know your name well," said Nancy. "I salute the great artist."
+
+The woman sighed deeply. "I salute the happy mother," she said. Then she
+pulled down her veil and turned away.
+
+Nancy hastened along the crowded corridors, where people in groups were
+discussing her little daughter, and the words, "wonderful! marvellous!
+incredible!" beat with their accustomed soft wing on her ears.
+
+"Happy mother!" Oh yes, she was a happy mother! She said it over and
+over again, and repeated it to herself as she tied the soft woollen
+scarf round Anne-Marie's head, and again as they made their way through
+the cheering crowd, and the outstretched hands, and the waving hats. She
+repeated it as she sat in the motor open to the balmy Neapolitan night,
+and held Anne-Marie tightly as she stood up on the seat, waving both
+small hands to the surrounding throng. The little standing figure swayed
+as the carriage moved swiftly down the street. Soon the shouting people
+were left behind, and Anne-Marie slid down to her place near her mother.
+Beyond the Gulf, Vesuvius breathed its glowing rhythmic breath, and the
+waters glittered. Nancy remembered that this was Aldo's birthplace; and
+then she forgot it in the lilt of the usual dulcet words:
+
+"Did you like my concert, mother dear?"
+
+The phrase had now become a formula which they repeated laughingly like
+the refrain of a song. Of all the hours of the rushing turbulent day,
+this was the hour of joy for Nancy. Anne-Marie, who was elfish and
+impish, made strange by her music, and made wild by the worship of many
+people, in this one hour became a little tender child again, softer and
+sweeter than the day-time Anne-Marie, nearer and more human than the
+concert Anne-Marie, who was a strange, inaccessible being that Nancy
+sometimes thought could not really belong to her.
+
+Fraeulein and Bemolle followed them in another carriage. No one since the
+impresario had ever dared to intrude upon this sacred starlit hour of
+their love.
+
+Did Nancy's heart ever regret her own hopes of glory? Did she remember
+her unwritten Book? Did she feel the wounded place of the wings that she
+had torn out? Never! She lived for Anne-Marie and in Anne-Marie. Little
+by little the chimera of inspiration drew away from her. She forgot that
+she had once clasped Fame to her own breast. No words, no visions, no
+dreams haunted her any more. She breathed in the music Anne-Marie
+played. She dreamed the music Anne-Marie composed. The Pied Piper had
+passed her; his call dragged at her soul no more. The eagle of her
+genius no more shook and shattered her with the wild beating of his
+wings. She was like the Silent Violin--the music that her soul had not
+sung was dead.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+It was in Paris that what Nancy had so often vaguely dreaded and
+expected happened at last. She was alone in the hotel in her own quiet
+sitting-room when the lift-boy knocked at the door, and on her careless
+response a visitor was ushered in. It was Aldo--Aldo with a square beard
+and a dangling eyeglass, hat in hand, and faultlessly attired.
+
+He stood before her, gazing at her face. Then he put his hat on a chair,
+extended both hands, and said in a deep, fervent voice:
+
+"Nancy!"
+
+Nancy had risen with quick, indrawn breath, and stood, slim and pale, in
+her soft-tinted dressing-gown. He took another step towards her, still
+with both hands outstretched. Nancy put out a diffident hand, and her
+husband clasped it fervently in both his own. On his little finger was a
+diamond ring. He bent his sleek black head over Nancy's hand and kissed
+it.
+
+"Thank God!" he murmured, and sank into a chair.
+
+Nancy wondered what he was thanking God for. Aldo himself was not very
+clear about it, but it seemed an appropriate thing to say. And he had
+nothing else ready. The embarrassing silence was broken by Aldo. He
+said:
+
+"Nancy, I have returned!"
+
+Nancy said, "Yes," and thought disconnected thoughts about his beard and
+his diamond ring.
+
+"You have thought cruel thoughts of me during all this time?"
+
+No, Nancy had not thought cruel thoughts.
+
+"You have left off loving me?"
+
+Nancy looked at him with vague, dazed eyes, and smiled without knowing
+why. Aldo tried not to notice the smile. He said:
+
+"Will you never forgive me?"
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose so," said Nancy; and she smiled again.
+
+She thought it funny that this strange man with the square beard and the
+dangling eyeglass should be asking her to forgive him, and questioning
+her about love. Nothing about him seemed in the least familiar. His
+hair, that used to be parted in the middle, now waved back from his
+forehead; his fan-shaped beard altered his face and made him look like a
+Frenchman; even his hat, square and high and narrow-rimmed, lying on her
+chair, had in it an element of utter strangeness.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" said Aldo. And some tone of offended vanity
+in his voice startled her memory, and suddenly it was up and awake.
+
+"I am not laughing," said Nancy, and she began to cry. That was the
+attitude that Aldo had expected, and knew how to cope with. A cold,
+light-eyed woman with an ambiguous smile was an uncomfortable and
+uncertain thing. But a woman in tears was a sight he had often seen, and
+he understood the meaning of the bowed head and the significance of the
+hidden face. He was beside her, his arm round her narrow shoulders.
+
+"Nancy, don't cry, don't cry! I have been a brute. But I will atone. I
+will repay you in happiness a thousandfold for all that you have
+suffered!"
+
+Still she wept with her face hidden in her hands.
+
+"I am rich. I have more money than we shall know how to spend."
+
+The heaving shoulders stopped heaving. They seemed to be waiting,
+listening. There was distrust in those waiting shoulders, so he hurried
+out:
+
+"It is all right. I have not gambled or done anything disreputable. The
+money has been left to me"--still the shoulders waited--"by a--by--an
+old person whom I befriended. She has died and left me her money. I
+deserved it. I was very good to her--"
+
+The shoulders heaved again in a deep sigh. Relief? Despair? Aldo was
+uncertain.
+
+"So all your troubles are at an end, Nancy. I have settled enough on you
+and the child, so that you need no more exploit Anne-Marie."
+
+Nancy started up and away from him. "Exploit Anne-Marie!"... Exploit
+Anne-Marie! Was that what he thought? Was that what other people
+thought?--that she was _exploiting Anne-Marie_?
+
+Nancy covered her face again and burst into wild, uncontrollable sobs of
+grief. She cried loud, like a child, and Aldo felt that these were not
+the tears that he was used to and understood.
+
+In these tears were all Nancy's broken hopes and lost aspirations, all
+that she had sacrificed and stifled and tried with prayers and fastings,
+for Anne-Marie's sake, not to regret. Her work, her Book, her hopes of
+Fame, her dreams of Glory, all that she had given up for love of
+Anne-Marie, laid down for Anne-Marie's little feet to trample on, stood
+up in her memory like murdered things. She remembered the beating wings
+of her own genius that she had torn out in order not to impede
+Anne-Marie in her flight, and the wounds burned and bled again.
+
+"I have not been exploiting Anne-Marie," she said, raising her
+tear-merged eyes to Aldo. "All that she has earned in her concerts has
+been put away for her. It is sacrosanct. No one has touched it."
+
+"Then how have you lived?" he said.
+
+"I have borrowed money," she said defiantly and angrily. "A lot of
+money, which I shall repay when I can."
+
+"From whom?" asked Aldo. Nancy did not answer.
+
+"You can repay it now," said Aldo, frowning. And then he was silent.
+
+The frivolous hotel clock struck four in tinkling chimes.
+
+"Where is Anne-Marie?" asked Aldo, in a low voice.
+
+"She is out." And Nancy's face grew hard as stone. "I do not want her to
+see you. She is not to be excited and upset."
+
+"Nancy!"--and Aldo's nostrils went white--"you must let me see her. I
+have longed for her day and night for the past three years. I have
+thought of nothing else. I have lain awake hours every night planning
+the meeting with her. When I should be free, when I should be
+rich"--Nancy flinched and shivered--"I thought of finding you struggling
+and in need. And I planned our meeting. I was going to send something to
+her--with no name--every day for a week beforehand, every day something
+better than the day before. The first day only a box of sweets, or of
+toys. Then a cageful of singing birds. Then a bankbook with money, and
+the last day"--Aldo's eyes were full of tears now, but Nancy's were dry
+and hard--"it was to be a pony-carriage with two white ponies and a
+stiff little groom sitting behind"--Aldo's voice broke--"and that was to
+fetch you both away, away from poverty, and misery, and loneliness, and
+bring you back to me!"
+
+Aldo covered his face with his hands, and his tears fell over the
+diamond ring.
+
+"Then I heard ... I read ... about Anne-Marie ... and I would not go to
+hear her. I could not go, I could not sit alone ... and see my own
+little girl ... standing there ... playing to a thousand strangers ...
+while I, her father----" He became incoherent with grief.
+
+"And I have never heard her, never heard her," he sobbed.
+
+Nancy's lips were shut, and her heart was shut. She did not speak.
+
+Aldo looked at her through his swimming orbs, and wished that she would
+weep too. He spoke in a broken whisper.
+
+"Am I not to be forgiven? Can we not all be happy again?"
+
+"No," said Nancy.
+
+"Do you mean never?" asked Aldo, and his beard worked strangely.
+
+"Never," said Nancy, and a shudder of dislike tightened her elbows to
+her side.
+
+Then Aldo raved and wept. He had dreamed of this meeting for three
+years; he had always loved her; he had always loved Anne-Marie; he had
+done what he had done for her sake and for Anne-Marie; he had saved, and
+skimped, and schemed for her and for Anne-Marie; he could not have lived
+but for the thought of her and of Anne-Marie; and he would not live a
+day longer unless it were with her and with Anne-Marie!
+
+As he spoke thus it was truth, and became truer while he said it, and
+while he saw her and felt that she would never be anything in his life
+again.
+
+"Oh, Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!" He grasped her cold, limp hand, and crushed
+it in his own. "You will let me see Anne-Marie. You cannot refuse it! I
+shall abide by what she says. If she does not want me I will go away.
+But if she wants me--if she remembers me and says that I may
+stay--promise me that you will let me! Promise! promise! I will not
+leave you--I will not leave you until you promise!"
+
+Nancy would not promise.
+
+"Nancy, remember how we loved each other! Remember the days on Lake
+Maggiore! Remember when you were writing your Book, and you used to read
+it to me in the evening with your head against my arm. Remember
+everything, Nancy, and promise that I may see Anne-Marie, and that if
+she is willing you will let me stay. Promise, Nancy, promise!"
+
+But Nancy would not promise.
+
+"Nancy, have you forgotten the hard times in New York? The hunger and
+the misery we went through together? For the sake of those dark days,
+the days in the old Schmidls' house, and in the little flat; for the
+sake of my dreary little dark room, that I have since so often longed
+for and regretted, because I could see you and the child asleep through
+the open door ... will you not promise, Nancy?"
+
+No; Nancy could not promise.
+
+"Do you remember when Anne-Marie had the measles?" sobbed Aldo. "And
+she would only eat the food I cooked?... And she would only go to sleep
+if she held my finger and I sang, 'Celeste Aida!' to her?... Will you
+remember that, and will you promise?"
+
+Nancy remembered that. And she promised.
+
+They sat waiting for Anne-Marie to come back from her walk. Neither
+spoke; but Aldo took a little picture-postcard of Anne-Marie with her
+violin that lay on the table, and held it in his hand, gazing at it with
+his elbow on his knee. Then his head drooped, and he sat with his
+forehead pressed against the little picture.
+
+The unconscious Arbiter of Destinies came running along the hotel
+passage with a balloon from the Bon Marche tied to her wrist. It was a
+large red balloon with the words "Bon Marche" in gold letters on it, and
+it had caused Fraeulein intense mortification as she had walked beside it
+down the Boulevard des Italiens to the hotel.
+
+"People will recognize you," she had said to Anne-Marie in the street,
+"and they will not take you and your music seriously any more. It is not
+for a great artist to walk about with a stupid balloon."
+
+"It is not stupider than any other balloon," said Anne-Marie, slapping
+its red inflated head, and watching it ascend slowly to the length of
+its string. Then she pulled it down again, and a slight puff of wind
+made it knock lightly against Fraeulein's cheek.
+
+Fraeulein was exceedingly vexed. "I cannot imagine how any one who plays
+the Beethoven Sonata--"
+
+"Which Sonata?" asked Anne-Marie, who was an adept at changing the
+conversation. "The Kreutzer or the Fruehling? I prefer the Kreutzer."
+
+Then she forcibly inserted her fingers under Fraeulein's hard and
+resisting arm, and trotted gaily beside her. The balloon bumped lightly
+against Fraeulein's hat, but Fraeulein did not mind; she merely said that
+she would have preferred if "Louvre" had been written on it instead of
+"Bon Marche," which looked so cheap.
+
+Anne-Marie now entered the sitting-room, balloon in hand. Fraeulein,
+seeing a visitor there, withdrew to her room.
+
+Anne-Marie was used to people calling on her and waiting for her. She
+put out a small warm hand to the stranger, who had started to his feet,
+and was looking at her with vehement, tearful eyes.... Anne-Marie had
+seen many strangers and many tearful eyes. She was not moved or
+surprised.
+
+"Bon jour," she said, judging by the beard.
+
+Then she went to her mother. "Look at my balloon, Liebstes," she said,
+slipping the string off her wrist. The balloon rose quickly and gently,
+and before it could be stopped it was knock-knocking against the
+ceiling. Anne-Marie's despairing eyes followed it. The room was high.
+The piece of string hung beyond human reach. Then the man with the beard
+took her hand, and said:
+
+"Anne-Marie!"
+
+Anne-Marie drew her hand away, rubbing it lightly against her dress.
+
+He again said: "Anne-Marie!" in a hoarse voice, with his hands clasped
+together. "Look at me," he said, and the blue eyes obediently left the
+ceiling and rested on his face. "Do you remember me?"
+
+"Yes," said Anne-Marie promptly and unveraciously. She had often been
+chided by Fraeulein for saying an abrupt "no" on these occasions. "It is
+rude to say 'no' and it hurts people's feelings. You must say: 'I am
+not sure ... I think I remember ...' Fraeulein had admonished. "Oh, if I
+must not say no, I had better say yes," said Anne-Marie, who believed in
+being brief. And so she did on this occasion.
+
+The hot blood had rushed like a flame to Aldo's face. He dropped upon
+his knee and took her hands, pressing them to his eyes, and to his
+forehead, and to his lips. "My little girl! My little girl!" he said,
+and the quick southern tears flowed. Anne-Marie said to herself: "He
+must be a German musician." Only German musicians had been as
+demonstrative as this. And she looked round to her mother, but her
+mother's face was turned away.
+
+"May I stay--may I stay, Anne-Marie? You don't want me to go away again,
+do you? Tell your mother that you want me to stay with you and take care
+of you!"
+
+Now it was for Anne-Marie to be bewildered.
+
+"I don't want to be taken care of, thank you," she said, as politely as
+she could.
+
+Aldo laughed through his tears. "Dear, funny little child of mine," he
+cried, kissing her hand and her sleeve.
+
+Anne-Marie was matter-of-fact. "Good-bye," she said decisively. "If you
+want an autograph, I will give you one."
+
+Aldo caught her by both arms, gazing into her face with blurred eyes.
+"Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie! you said you remembered me! Don't you know who
+I am? Don't you remember your father, Anne-Marie, who used to sing
+'Celeste Aida, forma divina' to you when you were ill, and who took you
+to see the squirrels in the park? Anne-Marie, don't you remember me?"
+
+Anne-Marie's underlip trembled. She shook her head. Aldo rose from his
+knees. He turned away and hid his face in his hands.
+
+Anne-Marie tiptoed to her mother's side, and nestled in her encircling
+arm. Then her eyes wandered upwards in search of the balloon. There it
+was, close to the ceiling. Anne-Marie thought that it looked smaller
+than it was before. She wondered how she would ever get it down again.
+
+Nancy had turned her face--a pinched white face that also looked
+smaller, thought Anne-Marie--towards her, and spoke in a low voice.
+
+"Anne-Marie, he is your father."
+
+"Is he?" said Anne-Marie, glancing at the tall figure with the sloping
+shoulders and the hidden face, and then at the hat on the chair.
+
+"Shall he stay with us?" questioned Nancy under her breath.
+
+"With us two?" asked Anne-Marie, with round, troubled eyes, and
+remembering the impresario.
+
+"With us two."
+
+"For always?" and Anne-Marie's eyes were larger and more troubled.
+
+"For always," said Nancy.
+
+Anne-Marie glanced at the man again and at the hat again. Then she put
+her cheek against her mother's arm, as she always did, when she asked a
+favour. "Rather not, Liebstes," she whispered.
+
+The Arbiter had spoken.
+
+Aldo said only a few words more to Nancy. He placed his hands on
+Anne-Marie's head, and looked at her a long time. Then he turned
+suddenly, took up his square hat, and left the room.
+
+"That was a strange man," said Anne-Marie. "Was he really my father?"
+
+Nancy, with pale lips, said: "Yes."
+
+"Are you sure?" questioned Anne-Marie, raising her eyes to the balloon.
+
+"Yes, dear," said Nancy; and her tears fell.
+
+Suddenly Anne-Marie flew to the door. "Father!" she cried in a shrill
+treble voice.
+
+Aldo, on the stairs, heard and stood still. His hand gripped the
+bannisters, his heart leaped to his throat.
+
+"Father!"
+
+He turned slowly, doubtingly.
+
+"Father!" came the treble voice again; and he mounted the steps, and
+went trembling and stumbling along the passage. Anne-Marie was standing
+at the door.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "you could catch my balloon before you go?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He caught her balloon. Then he went--out of the
+room, out of their lives, out of the story.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                         "MINA DE L'AGUA.
+
+"Nancy,--The years and the yearning are over. I am leaving for Europe.
+You will come to meet me in Genoa; and we shall sit on the balcony where
+three years ago you told me of your Book, which you feared would die
+like a babe unborn in your breast.
+
+"I am coming to take you to Porto Venere, 'white in the
+sunshine--tip-tilted over the sea'; and the Book shall live at last.
+
+"And we, also, shall live. Oh, Nancy, Nancy! I have been a silent and a
+lonely man so long, that my love has no words, my happiness no language.
+Even now I can hardly believe that the years of exile and solitude are
+over. But I know that you, having loved me once, still love me and will
+love me. I know that your heart is not a heart that changes, and that
+the words that drew you to me across the ocean three years ago will
+bring you to me again. Nancy, come to me. To my empty arms, to my sad
+and solitary heart, Nancy, come at once. And for ever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"DEAR OGRE, dear friend and love of mine, your call has shaken my soul.
+All my longings, all my dreams, have joined their voices with yours,
+crying to me to go to you. Alas! a little prayer that Fraeulein used to
+make me say when I was a child whispers to me, and its small voice
+drowns the cry of my desires. It is the prayer of the Three Angels that
+stand round one's bed in the night:
+
+    "'One holds my hands, One holds my feet,
+      And the Third One holds my heart.'
+
+"Can I come to you when I am thus bound--bound hands and feet by Law and
+Church? My small conventional soul shrinks from the unlawful and the
+forbidden.
+
+"But, believe me, were I free as air, were my hands unbound to lie in
+yours, my feet unloosed to fly to you, the Third Angel remains. 'And the
+Third One holds my heart.' Anne-Marie is the Third Angel. Anne-Marie
+holds my heart. How could I bring her with me? Think and reply for me.
+How could I leave her? Think and reply. Dear Ogre, I am one of the
+Devoured. Little Anne-Marie has devoured me, and it is right that it
+should be so; she has absorbed me, and I am glad; she has consumed me,
+and I am grateful. For it is in the nature of things that to these lives
+given to us, our lives should be given. What matter that I fall back
+into the shadow--my course not run, my goal not reached, my mission
+unfulfilled? Anne-Marie will have what I have missed; Anne-Marie will
+reach the completeness that has failed me; for her will be the heights I
+have not conquered, the Glory I have not attained.
+
+"Oh, lover and friend of mine, understand and forgive me. There is no
+room for love in my life. My life is full of haste and turmoil, full of
+Kings and Queens, full of rushing trains, and shouting voices, and
+clapping hands....
+
+"Can you not see it all as in a picture--the Pied Piper whistling and
+dancing on ahead; little Anne-Marie, Fame-drunken, music-struck,
+whirlwinding after him; and I following them in breathless, palpitant
+haste, leaving all that was once mine behind me--my Books, my Dreams, my
+Love?... Love in the picture is not a rose-crowned god of laughter and
+passion. Love is a lonely figure, lonely and stern and sad. Oh, love,
+forgive me, and understand! And say good-bye--good-bye to Nancy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He forgave her, and understood, and said good-bye to Nancy.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+The days swung on. And they swung Anne-Marie from triumph to triumph.
+And they poured sunshine into her hair, and sea-shine into her eyes. And
+they reared her into fulgent maidenhood, as a white lily is reared on a
+fragile stem.
+
+They swung Nancy back into the shadow where mothers sit with gentle
+hands folded, and eyes whose tears no one counts. She learned to forget
+that she had even known a poem about "La belle qui veut, la belle qui
+n'ose, ceuillir les roses du jardin bleu!" The blue garden of youth
+closed its gates silently behind her, and the roses that Nancy's hand
+had not gathered would bloom for her no more.
+
+But for Anne-Marie, when the time was ripe, the Pied Piper tossed his
+flute to another Player. Anne-Marie stood still and listened to the new
+call--the far-away call of Love. Soon she faltered, and turned and
+followed the silver-toned call of Love.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The carriage that was to take the bride and bridegroom to the station
+was waiting in the Tuscan sunlight, surrounded by the laughing,
+impatient crowd. As Anne-Marie appeared--her rose-lit face half hidden
+in her furs, her travelling-hat poised lightly at the back of her
+shining head--the crowd shouted and cheered, just as it had always done
+after her concerts. And she smiled and nodded, and said, "Good-bye!
+Good-bye! Thank you, and good-bye!" just as she always did at the close
+of her concerts. The bridegroom, tall and serious beside her, would have
+liked to hurry her into the carriage, but she took her hand from his arm
+and stopped, turning and smiling to the right and to the left, shaking
+hands with a hundred people who knew her and loved and blessed her. With
+one foot on the carriage-step, she still nodded and smiled and waved her
+hand. Then the young husband lifted her in, jumped in beside her, and
+shut the carriage-door. Cheers and shouts and waving hats followed them
+as the horses, striking fire from their hoofs, broke into a gallop, and
+carried them down the street and out of sight.
+
+... Nancy had not left the house. She had not gone to the window. She
+could hear the cheers and the laughter, and for a moment she pictured
+herself with Anne-Marie in the carriage, driving home after the
+concerts--Anne-Marie still nodding, first out of one window, then out of
+the other, laughing, waving her hand; then falling into her mother's
+arms with a little sigh of delight. At last they were alone--alone after
+all the crowd--in the darkness and the silence, after all the noise and
+light. And Anne-Marie's hand was in hers; Anne-Marie's soft hair was on
+her breast. Again the well-known dulcet tones: "Did you like my concert,
+Liebstes? Are you happy, mother dear?" Then silence all the way
+home--home to strange hotels, no matter in what town or in what land. It
+was always home, for they were together.
+
+Nancy stepped to the window, both hands held tightly to her heart. The
+road was empty. The house was empty. The world was empty. Then she
+cried, loud and long--cried, stretching her arms out before her,
+kneeling by the window: "Oh, my little girl! My own child! What shall I
+do? What shall I do?"
+
+But there was nothing left for Nancy to do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now it was late. Her Book was dead. Her child had left her. And the blue
+garden was closed.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Anne-Marie stirred, sighed, and awoke.
+
+
+The room was dim and silent. But soon a gentle, rhythmical sound fell on
+her ears, and pleased her. It was a soft, regular sound, like the
+ticking of a clock, like the beating of a heart--it was the rocking of a
+cradle.
+
+Anne-Marie smiled to herself, and her soul sank into peacefulness. The
+gentle clicking sound lulled her near to sleep again. She was utterly at
+peace--utterly happy. Life opened wider portals over wider shining
+lands.
+
+Then, with the awakening of memory, came the thought of her violin. With
+a soft tremor of joy, she realized that the brief silence of the past
+year was over. Music would stream again from her hands over the world.
+
+Her violin! Under her closed lashes she thought of it. She could see the
+gold-brown curves of the volute, the soft swing of the F's, the tense,
+sensitive strings resting on the lithe, slim bridge--all waiting for
+her, waiting for the touch of her wild young fingers to spring into life
+and song again.
+
+The tears welled into her closed eyes. How she would work! What songs,
+what symphonies she would create! How much she would say that nobody had
+yet said....
+
+Already Inspiration, nebulous and wan, laid soft hands upon her--drawing
+faint harmonies, like floating ribbons, through her brain. Then joy
+rushed through her like a living thing, and she saw her life before her.
+
+She would ascend the wide white road of Immortality with Love upholding
+her, with Genius burning and exalting her like a flaming star that had
+fallen into her soul....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the shadowy cradle the baby opened its eyes and said: "I am hungry."
+
+
+
+
+          _A Selection from the Catalogue of_
+
+                 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+
+         Complete Catalogues sent on application
+
+
+
+        "_No one who reads it can ever forget it._"
+                                 _Albany Times-Union._
+
+                        POPPY
+
+          _The Story of a South African Girl_
+
+                By Cynthia Stockley
+
+"Breezy freshness, strong masculinity, and almost reckless abandon in
+the literary texture and dramatic inventions."--_Phila. North American._
+
+"Has a charm that is difficult to describe." _St. Louis Post-Dispatch._
+
+"A book of many surprises, and a fresh new kind of heroine--strong,
+sweet, and unconventional."--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._
+
+"Extremely interesting--so much life, ardor, and color."--_New York
+Herald._
+
+"Shows undoubted power."--_N.Y. Times._
+
+_Second Printing_
+
+_With Frontispiece. $1.35 net ($1.50 by mail)_
+
+  New York    G. P. Putnam's Sons    London
+
+
+
+      "_Clever, original, entertaining, thrilling._"
+                               Cincinnati Times-Star.
+
+                    The Master Girl
+
+                  By Ashton Hilliers
+
+            Author of "As It Happened," etc.
+
+A vivid story of prehistoric times, when the wife-hunter prowled around
+the cave of the savage woman he intended to appropriate. Into this life
+of hard necessity, of physical conflict, of constant peril and unceasing
+vigilance, is introduced a love affair between a savage man and a savage
+woman that presents a blending of tenderness and savagery typical of an
+age when love and hate were more deeply rooted passions than they are
+to-day.
+
+"_This tale of the Master Girl and her amazing doings has only one
+fault. It is too short._"--New York Sun.
+
+_At all Booksellers. $1.25 net ($1.35 by mail)_
+
+  New York    G. P. Putnam's Sons    London
+
+
+
+                  _An ideal love story_
+
+                        THE ROSARY
+
+                 By Florence L. Barclay
+
+"Once in a long while there appears a story like _The Rosary_, in which
+there is but one adventure, the love of the two real persons superbly
+capable of love, the sacrifices they make for it, the sorrows it brings
+them, the exceeding reward. This can only be done by a writer of
+feeling, of imagination, and of the sincerest art. When it is done,
+something has been done that justifies the publishing business,
+refreshes the heart of the reviewer, strengthens faith in the outcome of
+the great experiment of putting humanity on earth. _The Rosary_ is a
+rare book, a source of genuine delight."--_The Syracuse Post._
+
+_Crown 8vo. $1.35 Net. ($1.50 by mail.)_
+
+  G. P. Putnam's Sons
+  New York     London
+
+
+
+                  ANNA KATHARINE GREEN'S
+
+                    _GREAT NEW NOVEL_
+
+            THE HOUSE OF THE WHISPERING PINES
+
+This is one of the strongest and best detective stories ever written,
+in which the popular author of "The Leavenworth Case" reaches the
+culmination of her peculiar powers.
+
+_Imagine the situation!_
+
+A rambling old country house surrounded by pines. Enter a man at
+midnight, believing it deserted. He sees a beautiful girl come down the
+stairs and depart. Upstairs he finds her sister, his fiancee, strangled.
+As he bends over the lifeless body, enter the police, summoned by a
+mysterious call. He is arrested.
+
+_Crown 8vo. $1.50_
+
+_With Frontispiece in Color by Arthur I. Keller_
+
+  New York    G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS    London
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes: There were a few printer's errors which have been
+corrected. The oe ligature is indicated by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Devourers, by Annie Vivanti Chartres
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