The Devourers

"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 marché." 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 Jaufré 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 Jaufré 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 Fräulein 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 Christ mas-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.

Fräulein, 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 Fräulein for telling naughty untruths, and had whispered in the hairy ear of Schopenhauer that she would never again believe a word Fräulein ever said again. Schopenhauer—whose name had been chosen by Fräulein 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 Fräulein Müller 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 Fräulein 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 Fräulein 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, Fräulein 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, Fräulein, that will never do!" said Nancy, as they went down the little staircase together arm-in-arm. "You spoil her shockingly."

"Hush!" said Fräulein. 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, Fräulein stopped, and said impressively, "You do not know that that child is a Genius!"

In Fräulein'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. Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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 Fräulein 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 Fräulein 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. Fräulein 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'oseCueillir les rosesDu 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 Fräulein'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 Fräulein 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 re member. I believe you are not learning anything new. You are remembering something you have known before."

Fräulein 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 überhaupt 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 Gesù, 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 Fräulein, 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, Fräulein 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 Fräulein 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."