The Devourers

"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 Fräulein 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 Fräulein.

"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, Fräulein 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 Fräulein and the Professor. Violins and violas tapped applause on their instruments.

And now Jaroslav Kalas raps his desk with the bâton 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. Fräulein, 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 Gesù. 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 Fräulein?"

Fräulein 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! glückliche 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 Fräulein.

"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 Fräulein 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 début, 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. Fräulein 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.