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.
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 thetable 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 'Märchen,' 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 aboutboy 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 withday?"
No. Anne-Marie did not know what rhymed with day.
"Play, of course, my goosie dear! Now what rhymes withdear?"
"Play," said Anne-Marie.
"No; do think a little, sweetheart. Withdear!—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 girlishbrow. 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 adjoiningflat—the piano that drove Nancy to distraction and despair whenever she tried to work.
"Rose of my spirit, Fountain of my love,Lilial blue-veinèd 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-veinèd 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 andaghast, 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 intothe 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 roomabout 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 naughtyof 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.
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, andstretched 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-paperaway, 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 theLusitania, 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 Glück.'"Do you know German?"'Therewhere 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 Métropole, London."Robert Beauchamp Leese."
"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 theLusitania, 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 Glück.'
"Do you know German?
"'Therewhere 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 Métropole, 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 redwooden 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 inbrown."
"Dear Sir,
"The wrong girl got your letter. I was dressed inbrown."
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 rosesDu 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 rosesDu 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 rosesDu 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 Nancywas 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."
"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 fromGeorge, 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 signedhis 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 littlesigh, 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 ofthe 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 Métropole." 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 asoupçonof 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-leggedpoliceman, 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.
"Idolike 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 oldgentleman 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 fromil bel paese ove il sì 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.