The Devourers

"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 him self, 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, unæsthetic 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 Caffè 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 édition 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 Crœsus."

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 Adèle, 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."