"You ask me to talk about myself. Nothing pleases me better; for I am selfish and subjective."I am a gambler. I went to Monte Carlo some time ago. Oh, golden-voiced, green-eyed Roulette! I gambled away all my money and all the money of everyone else that I could lay hands on. I laid hands on a good deal. I have rather pretty hands."I am a dreamer. I have wandered out in deserted country roads dreaming of you, my unknown hero, and of Uhland's mysterious forests, and of Maeterlinck's lost princesses, until I could feel the warmth welling up at the back of my eyes, which is the nearest approach to tears that is vouchsafed me."I am a heathen. I have a hot, unruly worship for everything beautiful, man, woman, or thing. I believe in Joy; I trust in Happiness; I adore Pleasure."I am a savage—an overcivilized, hypercultivated savage with some of the growls and the hankerings after feathers still left in him. I adore jewels. I have somediamonds—diamonds with blue eyes and white smiles—as large as my heart. No, no! larger! I wear them at all seasons and everywhere; round my throat, my arms, my ankles, all over me! I like men to wear jewels. If ever I fall in love with you, I shall insist upon your wearing rings up to your finger-tips. Do not protest, or I willnotfall in love with you."I am feminine; over-and ultra-feminine. I wear nothing but fluffinesses—trailing, lacey, blow-away fluffinesses, floppy hats on my soft hair, and flimsy scarves on my small shoulders. I have no views. I belong to no clubs. I drink no cocktails—or, when I do, I make delicious little grimaces over them, and say they burn. Theydoburn! I smoke Russian cigarettes scented with white heliotrope, because surely no man would dream of doing such a sickening thing."I am careless; I am extravagant; I am lazy—oh, exceedingly lazy. I envy La Belle au Bois dormant, who slept a hundred years. Until Prince Charming...."Good-bye, Prince Charming."Eve."
"You ask me to talk about myself. Nothing pleases me better; for I am selfish and subjective.
"I am a gambler. I went to Monte Carlo some time ago. Oh, golden-voiced, green-eyed Roulette! I gambled away all my money and all the money of everyone else that I could lay hands on. I laid hands on a good deal. I have rather pretty hands.
"I am a dreamer. I have wandered out in deserted country roads dreaming of you, my unknown hero, and of Uhland's mysterious forests, and of Maeterlinck's lost princesses, until I could feel the warmth welling up at the back of my eyes, which is the nearest approach to tears that is vouchsafed me.
"I am a heathen. I have a hot, unruly worship for everything beautiful, man, woman, or thing. I believe in Joy; I trust in Happiness; I adore Pleasure.
"I am a savage—an overcivilized, hypercultivated savage with some of the growls and the hankerings after feathers still left in him. I adore jewels. I have somediamonds—diamonds with blue eyes and white smiles—as large as my heart. No, no! larger! I wear them at all seasons and everywhere; round my throat, my arms, my ankles, all over me! I like men to wear jewels. If ever I fall in love with you, I shall insist upon your wearing rings up to your finger-tips. Do not protest, or I willnotfall in love with you.
"I am feminine; over-and ultra-feminine. I wear nothing but fluffinesses—trailing, lacey, blow-away fluffinesses, floppy hats on my soft hair, and flimsy scarves on my small shoulders. I have no views. I belong to no clubs. I drink no cocktails—or, when I do, I make delicious little grimaces over them, and say they burn. Theydoburn! I smoke Russian cigarettes scented with white heliotrope, because surely no man would dream of doing such a sickening thing.
"I am careless; I am extravagant; I am lazy—oh, exceedingly lazy. I envy La Belle au Bois dormant, who slept a hundred years. Until Prince Charming....
"Good-bye, Prince Charming.
"Eve."
The next day at luncheon the German lady stared again, and looked away quickly.
Anne-Marie asked her mother: "What is Irish stew when he is alive?" Nancy smiled and dimpled. Then the German lady, who had seen the dimple and the smile, said in a sudden, loud voice, over which she had no control: "Is your name Nancy?"
Nancy looked up with a start. "Yes!" she said. And everyone was silent.
"My name is Fräulein Müller," said the German lady,taking a pink-edged handkerchief from her pocket and making ready for tears.
"Fräulein Müller! Fräulein Müller!" said Nancy dreamily. "You read Uhland to me, and Lenau, and ... 'shine out little head sunning over with curls.'"
Then Fräulein Müller wept in her handkerchief, and Nancy rose from her seat and went round and kissed her. Then it was Fräulein Müller's turn to get up and go round and kiss Anne-Marie; whereupon the sulphur-haired lady remarked how small the world was; and the witty man said they would next discover that he and she were brother and sister, and had she not a strawberry mark on her left shoulder?
After lunch Fräulein Müller asked Nancy to her room, and she held Anne-Marie on her lap, and had to say the baby rhyme, "Da hast du 'nen Thaler, geh' auf den Markt" about fifty times, with the accompanying play on Anne-Marie's pink, outstretched palm, before she was allowed to talk to Nancy. Then she told them all about the years she had passed in an American family after leaving the Grey House, and about the little house she had just rented on Staten Island—a tiny little house in a garden, where she was going to live for the rest of her life. She was furnishing it now, and it would be ready next week.
"You must come to see it. You must stay with me there," said Fräulein Müller, looking for a dry spot on the sodden handkerchief. "Oh, meine kleine Nancy! My little Genius! Und was ist mit der Poesie?"
The following week Fräulein Müller left Lexington Avenue for her "Gartenhaus," as she called it, and three days later Nancy and Anne-Marie went to stay with her for a fortnight.
"What for an education has the child?" inquired the old governess, when Anne-Marie had been put to bed after a day of wonders. What? Strawberries grew on plants? Anne-Marie had always thought they came in baskets.
"She seems to know nothing," said Fräulein Müller. "I tried her with a little arithmetic. Did she know the metric system? Oh yes, she said she did, and wanted to speak about something else. But I kept her to it," said Fräulein sternly, "and asked her: 'What are millimetres?' Do you know what the child said? She said that she supposed they were relations of the centipedes!"
Nancy laughed, and told Fräulein Müller about the Sixth Avenue School. Fräulein clasped horrified hands.
"I will educate her myself. I suppose she is also a genius."
"No, I am afraid not," said Nancy, shaking her head regretfully. "I wish she were!"
The two women were silent; and from the little bedroom upstairs, through the open window, came Anne-Marie's voice, like tinkling water.
"She is singing," said Fräulein Müller.
"Oh yes; she always sings herself to sleep. She likes music." And Nancy told her about the violin.
"We shall buy her a violin to-morrow," said Fräulein Müller.
And so she did. The violin was new and bright and brown; it was labelled "Guarnerius," and cost three dollars. Anne-Marie pushed the bow up and down on it with great pleasure for a short time. Then she became very impatient, and took it out into the garden, and looked for a large stone.
"...It made ugly voices at me," she said, standingsmall and unrepentant by the broken brown pieces, while Fräulein Müller and Nancy shook grieved heads at her.
"I do not think that music is her vocation after all," said Fräulein Müller. "But we shall see."
"Good-morning, my tenebrious Unknown. I am in the country, perched up on a stone wall with nothing in sight but vague, distant hills and sleepy fields. Queer insects buzz in the sun, and make me feel pale. I dread buzzing insects with a great shivery dread.
"Why are you not here? I am wearing a large straw hat with blue ribbons, and a white dress and a blue sash, like theingénuein a drawing-room comedy. And there is no one to see me. And the fields are full of flowers, and I pick them, and have no one to give them to. Surely it is the time in all good story-books when the heroine in a white dress and blue sash is sitting on a wall for Prince Charming to pass and see her, and stop suddenly.... But life is a badly constructed novel; uninteresting people walk in and walk out, and all is at contra-tempo, like a Brahms Hungarian Dance.
"Prince Charming, why have you gone three thousand miles away?"
"Good-morning again.
"This is a divine day—cool winds and curtseying grasses.
"I am still here, living on herbs and sunsets and memories of things that have not been. You are a thing that has not been. Perhaps that is why you are somuch in my thoughts. I have many friends whom I seldom think of. I have a few lovers whom I never think of. And I have you who are nothing, and whom I always think of. It is absurd and wonderful.
"My lovers! You ask me who they are and why I have them. I have them because they make me look pretty. I look pretty when I laugh. A woman's beauty depends entirely upon how much she is loved. Did you not know that? The best 'fard pour la beauté des dames' is other people's adoration.
"My lovers therefore have their use, but they are not entertaining. They are uniformly sad or angry. Yet I am good to my lovers. I let them trot in and out of their tempers like nice tame animals that nobody need mind. I do not require them to perform in public; I sit and watch their innocent tricks with kind and wondering eyes.
"Et vous, mon Prince Charmant? What of you? Who are you making to look prettier? Whose cheeks are you tinting? Whose eyes are you brightening? Whose heart are you making to flutter by the hurry of yours? Who smiles and dimples and blushes for your sake? I suppose you are falling in love with your fair countrywomen—tall, tennis-playing English girls, with cool, unkissed mouths and white, inexperienced hands. Ah, Prince Charming, whom do you love?
"Eve."
He replied: "You have spoken. Whom do I love? Eve."
He replied: "You have spoken. Whom do I love? Eve."
She was glad. She lived a life of fevered joy. She was not Nancy. She was the Girl in the Letters; and the Girl in the Letters was a wild, unfettered, happycreature. Nothing seemed sweeter to her than this subtleamor di lontano—this love across the distance. Ah, how modern and piquant and recherché! And, again, how thirteenth-century! Was it not Jaufré Rudel, the Poet-Prince, who had loved the unseen Countess Melisenda for so many years?
"Amore di terra lontana,Per voi tutto il core mi duol,"
and who at last, coming to her, had died at her feet? Could they not also love each other across the distance, wildly and blindly, without the aid of any one of their senses? Surely that was the highest, the divinest, the most perfect way of love!
So Nancy lived her dream, and tossed the tender little love-letters across the ocean with light hands.
"Cher Inconnu,
"I write to you because it is raining and the sky is of grey flannel. You will say that I wrote to you yesterday because the weather was fine and the sky was of blue silk.
"Ah, dear Unknown! It is true. You have grown into my life, like some strange, startling modern flower, out of place, out of season, yet sweet to my unwondering eyes. You are a black and white flower of words, growing through your brief wild letters into the garden of my heart.
"What a garden, mon ami! What a growth of weeds! what a burst of roses! what a burgeoning of cabbages! An unnatural, degenerate garden, where the trees carrymarrons glacésand the flowers are scented with patchouli.
"Into this luxuriance of perversity, this decadent brilliance of vegetation, you have blossomed up, strange and new, for the delight of my soul. That you should say you love me, you who have never seen me, is sweeter perfume to my sated senses than the incense of all the thousand seraph-flowers that bow and swing at my feet.
"Good-bye. My name is Nancy."
To this letter he replied by cable: "Nancy, come here at once."
To this letter he replied by cable: "Nancy, come here at once."
"'Come here at once!' The arrogant words go with a shock of pleasure to my heart. I am unused to the imperative; nobody has ever bullied me or told me to do this and that. I think I like it. I like being meek and frightened, and having to obey.
"'Come here at once!' I find myself timidly looking round for my hat and gloves, and wondering whether I shall wear my blue or my grey dress on the journey. I am nice on journeys. I am good-tempered, and wear mousie-coloured clothes that fit well, and I have a small waist. All this is very important in travelling, and makes people overlook and forgive the many, many small packages I carry into the compartment, and the hatboxes I lose, and the umbrellas I forget. When I am tired I can put my head down anywhere and go to sleep; I sleep nicely and quietly and purrily, like a cat.
"I am really very nice on journeys. Also I am very popular with useful people, like conductors and porters and guards. They take care of me and give me advice, and open and shut my windows, and lock my compartments even when it does not matter; and they bring me things to eat, and run after all the satchels and parcels I leave about.
"Your last letter says you are going to Switzerland. How nice! I should like to be with you, throbbing away on excitable little Channel steamers, puffing along in smoky, deliberate Continental trains, driving the bell-shaking horses slowly up the wide white roads that coil like wind-blown ribbons round the swelling breasts of the Alps; table-d'hôting at St. Moritz; tennis-playing at Maloya; clattering and rumbling over the covered bridges near Splügen; wandering through the moonlike sunshine of Sufer's pine-forest, where beady-eyed squirrels stop and look, and then scuttle, tail flourishing, up the trees. I am friends with every one of those squirrels. Greet them from me.
"Nancy."
New York.
"Amor mio di Lontano,
"I am in the city again the horrible, glaring, screaming city, all loud and harsh in the uncompromising July sun. How I long to-day for the shade of the closed Italian houses, the friendly, indrawn shutters, the sleeping silence of the empty streets, and, far-off, the cerulean sweep of the Mediterranean!
"And a new lover at my side! A brand-new lover, whose voice would sound strange to my ears, whose eyes I had not fathomed, whose feelings I did not understand, whose thoughts I could only vaguely and wrongly guess at, whose nerves would respond strangely, like an unknown instrument, to the shy touch of my hand.
"Your letter is brought to me. Written at the Hotel Bellevue, Andermatt.Andermatt!How cool and buoyant and scintillant it sounds. It falls on my heart like a snowflake in the humid heat of this town.
"I have opened the letter. What? Only three words!
"Again: 'Come at once.' Again the words, with their brief, irresistible imperiousness, thrill my lazy soul.
"If you write it a third time ... by all that is sweet and unlikely, I shall come!
"Will you be glad? Will you kiss my white hands gratefully? Shall we be simple and absurd and happy? Or shall we fence and be brilliant, antagonistic, keen-witted? No matter! No matter! The fever of my heart will be stilled. My eyes will see you and be satisfied."
A cablegram to Andermatt. Reply paid. (Money borrowed from Fräulein Müller.)
"Dreamt that you had long black beard. Tell me that not true.—Nancy."
Reply from Andermatt:"Not true. Come at once."Nancy did not go at once. She had no money to go with; and, of course, she never intended to go at all.He wrote: "Will you meet me in Lucerne?" and she replied: "Impossible."He: "I shall expect you in Interlaken."She: "Out of the question."He: "I shall be in London in October. After that I am off to Peru."So in September she wrote to him again.
Reply from Andermatt:
"Not true. Come at once."
Nancy did not go at once. She had no money to go with; and, of course, she never intended to go at all.
He wrote: "Will you meet me in Lucerne?" and she replied: "Impossible."
He: "I shall expect you in Interlaken."
She: "Out of the question."
He: "I shall be in London in October. After that I am off to Peru."
So in September she wrote to him again.
"I lay awake last night dreaming of our first meeting. It will be framed in the conventional luxury of a little sitting-room in a Grand Hotel. It will be late in theafternoon—late enough to have the pretty pink-shaded lights lit, like shining fairy-tale flowers, all over the room. Then a knock at the door. And you will come into my life. What then, what then, dear Unknown? My hands will lie in yours like prisoned butterflies; my wilfulness and my courage, my flippancy and effrontery will throb away, foolishly, weakly, before your eyes. What then? Will Convention guide the steed of our Destiny gently back into the well-kept stables of the common-place? or shall we take the reins into our own hands, and lash it rearing and foaming over the precipice of the Forbidden, down into the flaming depths of passionate happiness?
"Good-bye. Of course I shall not come."
Fräulein Müller came to town three times a week and taught Anne-Marie arithmetic and geography. Of arithmetic Anne-Marie understood little; of geography no word. She pointed vaguely with a ruler at the map, and said: "Skagerrack and Kattegat," which were the words whose sounds pleased her most.
"The child is not at all a genius," said Fräulein Müller, much depressed.
One day George and Peggy came to visit them at the boarding-house. And with them they brought Mr. Markowski and his violin.
In the drawing-room after tea Nancy asked the shy and greasy-looking Hungarian to play: and the fiddle was taken tenderly out of its plush-lined case. Markowski was young and shabby, but his violin was old and valuable. Markowski had a dirty handkerchief, but thefiddle had a clean, soft white silk one. Markowski placed a small black velvet cushion on his greasy coat-collar, and raised the violin to it; he adjusted his chin over it, raised his bow, and shut his eyes. Then Markowski was a god.
Do you know the hurrying anguish of Grieg's F dur Sonata? Do you know the spluttering shrieks of laughter of Bazzini's "Ronde des Lutins"? The sobbing of the unwritten Tzigane songs? The pattering of wing-like feet in Ries's "Perpetuum Mobile?"
Little Anne-Marie stood in the middle of the room motionless, pale as linen, as if the music had taken life from her and turned her into a white statuette. Ah, here was the little neoteric statue that Nancy had tried to fix! The child's eyes were vague and fluid, like blue water spilt beneath her lashes; her colourless lips were open.
Nancy watched her. And a strange dull feeling came over her heart, as if someone had laid a heavy stone in it. What was that little figure, blanched, decolorized, transfigured? Was that Anne-Marie? Was that the little silly Anne-Marie, the child that she petted and slapped and put to bed, the child that was so stupid at geography, so brainless at arithmetic?
"Anne-Marie! Anne-Marie! What is it, dear? What are you thinking about?"
Anne-Marie turned wide light eyes on her mother, but her soul was not in them. For the Spirit of Music had descended upon her, and wrapped her round in his fabulous wings—wrapped her, and claimed her, and borne her away on the swell of his sounding wings.
"Fräulein, I have no more money—not one little brown cent in the wide world," said Nancy, sitting on the lawn of the Gartenhaus, and drinking afternoon tea out of Fräulein's new violet-edged cups.
"So?" said Fräulein. For a long time her lips moved in mental calculation. Then she said: "I could let you have forty-seven dollars."
Nancy put down the cup, and, bending forward, kissed Fräulein's downy cheek.
"Dear angel!" she said; "and then?"
"What is to be done?" said Fräulein, drying her lips on her new fringed serviette, and folding it in a small neat square.
"Mah!" said Nancy, raising her shoulders, swayed back into Italian by the stress of the moment.
"No news from your husband?"
"Bah!" said Nancy, shrugging her shoulders again, and waving her hand from the wrist downwards in a gesture of disdain.
Fräulein sighed, and looked troubled. Then she said:
"You must come and live here, you and Anne-Marie. I will send Elisabeth away—anyhow, she has broken already three lamp-glasses and a plate—and we must live with economy." Fräulein, who had lived with that lean and disagreeable comrade all her life, then coughed and looked practical. "Yes, I shall be glad to get rid of that clumsy girl, Elisabeth."
Nancy put one arm round her neck and kissed her again. Then she said: "I have only one hope."
"What is that?" asked Fräulein.
It was Nancy's turn to cough. She did so, and thensaid: "There is ... there are ... some ... some people in England who are interested in me—in my writings. I think ... they might help ... I ought to go over and see them."
"Certainly," said Fräulein, "you must go. And I will keep Anne-Marie here with me. Then she need not interrupt her violin-lessons."
"Yes," said Nancy. "You could keep Anne-Marie...." She sighed deeply. "Of course she must not interrupt her lessons. I suppose you think Ioughtto go?"
"Of course," said Fräulein, who was practical. "A firm like that won't do anything without seeing you and talking business. But mind, mind they do not cheat! Authoresses are always being cheated."
Nancy smiled. "I shall try not to let them."
"Being English, perhaps they will not. In Berlin——" And here Fräulein repeated a discourse she had made many, many years ago in Wareside when Nancy's first poem had been read aloud. Fräulein remembered that day, and spoke of it now with tearful tenderness. She also believed she remembered bits of the poem:
"This morning in the gardenI caught the little birds;This morning in the orchardI picked the little words."
"What!" said Nancy. "Why did I 'pick the little words'?"
"Perhaps it was 'plucked,'" said Fräulein, looking vague.
"This morning in the gardenI caught the little words;This morning in the orchardI plucked ... or picked the little birds——"
—"or caught them," continued Fräulein, much moved.
"I cannot say that that sounds very beautiful," said Nancy.
"Oh, but it was. It may have been a little different. But it was lovely. And you were a little tiny thing, like Anne-Marie!"
"Listen to Anne-Marie," said Nancy.
Anne-Marie had insisted upon bringing her violin to the Gartenhaus, and was now practising on it in the dining-room. The windows were open. She was playing a little cradle-song very softly, very lightly, in perfect tune.
"That is indeed a Wonderchild," said Fräulein.
Markowski had called her a Wonderchild directly. When he had seen her weeping convulsively after he had played, he had exclaimed: "This is a Wonderchild. I will teach her to play the fiddle."
And sure enough he had come to the house on the following day, with a little old half-sized fiddle, like a shabby reproduction of the dead Guarnerius, and had given Anne-Marie her first lesson. The lesson had been long, and Anne-Marie had emerged from it with feverish eyes and hot cheeks, and with anger in her heart. For the Bird, or the Fairy, or the Sorcerer, or the Witch that made music in other violins, did not seem to be inside the little shabby fiddle Markowski had brought her.
"Be gentle, be gentle! and do what I say," said Markowski, with his stringy black hair falling over his vehement eyes. "One day the Birds and the Witches will be in it, and they will sing to you. Now, practise scale of C."
And Anne-Marie had practised scale of C—to Nancy's amazement, for she thought that in one lesson no one could have learnt so much. In ten lessons Anne-Marie had learnt fifteen scales and a cradle-song. In two months she had learnt what other children learn in two years. So said Markowski, who got more and more excited, and gave longer and longer lessons, and came every day instead of twice a week.
"What do I owe you?" Nancy asked him. "I can't keep count of the lessons. You seem to be always coming."
"Never mind! never mind!" said Markowski, waving excited, unwashed hands. And as he had heard about their financial position from George and Peggy, he added, "You will pay me ... when she plays you the Bach Chaconne!"
"Very well," said Nancy, who thought that that meant in a week or two. "Just as you please, Herr Markowski."
And then she thought he must be insane, because he was bent with laughter as he packed away his violin.
Fräulein Müller made accounts in a little black book all one day and half one night, and in the morning she went to Lexington Avenue to see Nancy.
"I can give you eighty dollars. Will that pay your journey to England to see the firm of publishers?"
Oh yes, Nancy thought so. And how good of her! And how could Nancy ever thank her?
"Of course, those people will be glad to advance you something at once, even if the manuscript is not quite ready," said Fräulein, who was romantic besides being practical.
"I suppose so," said Nancy.
"See that you have a proper contract. You had better ask a barrister to make it for you." And Nancy promised that she would.
So Fräulein hurried off to the Deutsche Bank, and drew out eighty dollars and a little extra, because Anne-Marie would have to have puddings and good soups while she was with her. The thought of giving puddings to Anne-Marie made her hurriedly take her handkerchief from her pocket and blow her nose.
"One day it shall be sago, one day it shall be rice, and one day it shall be tapioca, withKonfitüre." And Fräulein Müller hurried with her eighty dollars to Nancy.
But then a strange thing happened. Nancy would not go. Day after day passed, and Nancy always had some excuse for not having packed her trunk or taken her berth. Surely it was not so difficult to pack the little things she wanted for a short business journey. Her new navy-blue serge, observed Fräulein, was very good, and the brown straw hat for autumn would do nicely.
"You must dress sensibly in a business-like way to go and see those people," said Fräulein. "It would never do if you went looking like a flimsy fly-away girl."
"No, indeed," said Nancy, smiling with pale lips. That evening she wrote to George. He came up to town at the lunch-hour next day, and asked to see her. She left Anne-Marie at table eating stewed steak, to go and speak to him.
"George," she said, keeping in hers the cool damp hand he held out, "I want money. I want a lot of money."
George slowly withdrew his hand, and pulled at a little beard he had recently and not very successfully grown on his receding chin.
"Then I guess you must have it," he said.
"But I want a great deal. Two or three hundred dollars," said Nancy. "Or four——"
"Stop right there," said George. "Don't go on like that, or I can't follow." And he pulled his beard again.
"Oh, George, how sweet of you! how dear of you!" And she clasped his moist left hand, which he left limply in hers.
"The bother of it is, I don't know how I shall get it," said George. "I'm just thinking that"——
"Oh, don't tell me—please don't tell me!" said Nancy. "I—I'd rather not know! I know you won't steal, or murder anyone, but get it, George! Oh, thank you! thank you so much! Good-bye!"
And Nancy, as she looked out of the window after him, at his cheap hat and his sloping shoulders, and saw him board a cable-car going down-town, felt that she was a vulture and a harpy.
"The Girl in the Letters has demoralized me," she said.
He brought her four hundred dollars on the following Monday, and she wept some pretty little tears over it, and covered her ears with her hands, and dimpled up at him, when he began to tell her how he had got them. She was the Girl in the Letters. She was practising. And with George it answered very well—too well! She had to stop quickly and be herself again. Then he went away.
And she went out and bought dresses. She bought drooping, trailing gowns and flimsy fly-away gowns, and an unbusiness-like hat, and shoes impossible to walk in. She boughtCrème des Crèmesfor her face, andCrème Simonfor her hands, and liquid varnish for her nails, and violet unguent for her hair.
Then she waited for the Unknown's next letter, saying
"Come."
The letter did not arrive. A day passed, and another. And he did not write. A week passed, and another, and he did not write. Nancy sat in the boarding-house with her dresses and her hats and herCrème des Crèmes. The entire four hundred dollars of George, and fifteen dollars out of Fräulein's eighty, were gone.
Nancy sat and looked out of the window, and thought her thoughts. Could she write to the Unknown again? No. Hers had been the last letter. He had not answered it. Should she telegraph? Where to? And to say what? He had gone to Peru. She knew, she felt, he had gone to Peru. The pretty, silly, romantic story was ended—ended as she had wished it to end, without the banaldénouementof their meeting. Better so. Much better so. Nancy was really very glad that things were as they were.
And now what was going to happen to her? She said to herself that she must have been insane to borrow all that money and buy those crazy dresses, those idiotic hats. What should she do? The terror of life came over her, and she wished she were safely away and asleep in the little Nervi cemetery between her father and her mother, cool and in the dark, with quiet upturned face.
Oh yes, she was really exceedingly glad that things were as they were!
Half-way through the third week a telegram was brought to her. It came from Paris.
"Why not dine with me next Thursday at the Grand Hôtel?"
To-day was Thursday.
She cabled back.
"Why not? At eight o'clock.—Nancy."
Oh, the excitement, the packing, the telegraphing to Fräulein, the hurry, the joy, the confusion! The stopping every minute to kiss Anne-Marie; the sitting down suddenly and saying, "Perhaps I ought not to go!" And then, the jumping up again at the thought of the boat that left to-morrow at noon.
Fräulein came to fetch Anne-Marie at ten in the morning. She arrived joyful and agitated, bringing a fox-terrier pup in her arms, a present for Anne-Marie, to prevent her crying.
"Why should I cry?" said Anne-Marie, with the hardness of tender years.
"Why, indeed!" said Nancy, buttoning Anne-Marie's coat, while quick tears fell from her eyes. "Mother will come back very soon—very soon."
"Of course," said Anne-Marie, holding the puppy tightly round the neck, and putting up a shoe to have it buttoned.
"Don't let her catch cold, Fräulein," sobbed Nancy, bending over the shoe; and when it was fastened, she kissed it.
"No," said Fräulein, beaming. "She shall wear flannel pellipands that I am making for her."
The second shoe was buttoned and kissed. Her hat was put on with the elastic in front of her ears. Her gloves? Yes, in her coat-pocket. Handkerchief? Yes. The mice? Yes; Fräulein had them, and the violin, and the music-roll, and the satchel. The box was already downstairs in the carriage. They were ready.
"Let me carry down the puppy," said Nancy on the landing, with a break in her voice. "Then I can hold your dear little hand."
"Oh no!" said Anne-Marie. "I'll carry the puppy. You can hold on to the bannisters."
So Nancy walked down behind Anne-Marie and the puppy. Fräulein was in front, dreading the moment of leave-taking, and thinking with terror of the possibility of travelling all the way to Staten Island with a loud and tearful Anne-Marie. So she started a new topic of conversation.
"You shall have pudding every day," she said, trying to turn round on the second landing to Anne-Marie, close behind her, and nearly dropping the satchel and the mice, as the violin-case caught in the bannisters. "One day it shall be sago, another day tapioca...."
"I don't like tapioca," said Anne-Marie, walking down the stairs. "I don't like nothing of all that."
They were at the door. By request of Nancy, nobody was there to speak to them. But all the boarders who were in the house were looking at them from behind the drawing-room curtains.
"Then what do you like for dessert?" said Fräulein, going down the stone steps by Anne-Marie's side, while Nancy still followed.
"I like peppermint bullseyes," said Anne-Marie, "and pink jelly." And she added: "Nothing else," while the pimply boy and the maid hoisted her into her carriage. Fräulein got in after her, with the many packages. And the puppy barked at the mice.
"Good-bye, Anne-Marie! Good-bye, darling!" cried Nancy, kissing her with great difficulty through the carriage-window across Fräulein, and the violin, and the mice, that were on Fräulein's lap. "God bless you! God bless you and keep you, my own darling!"
The puppy barked deafeningly. The pimply boy nodded to the cabman, and off they were.
Nancy walked slowly back into the house, and up the stairs, and into the desolate rooms.
Peggy and George accompanied her to the boat, Peggy excited and talkative, George depressed and silent. In his murky down-town office George had felt himself of late more poet than clerk, and now he was all elegy. She was leaving! She was going away with his heart, and she might perhaps never return! She might perhaps never return the four hundred dollars either. They belonged to a friend of George's—a mean and sordid soul. George stifled the unlovely thought, born of the clerk, and surrendered his spirit to the grief of the poet.
Farewell! Farewell! The ship turned its cruel side, and hid the little waving figure from his sight. It throbbed away like a great, unfaithful heart, abandoning the land. Farewell! What were four hundred dollars, belonging to a friend, compared with the torn and quivering heart-strings of a lover?
The ship heaved forward towards the east, rising and sinking as ships rise and sink, carrying Nancy and her dresses, and her hats, and her little pots of cream, to the Unknown. And the nearer they got to him, the more frightened was Nancy. What if she should reach Paris, with the fourteen dollars she still possessed, and he were not there? What if he turned out to be a brute and a beast? What—oh, terrible thought!—if he were to think her not as pretty as he had expected? She was not really pretty. Oh, why had she not thepale sunshiny hair of the American girl opposite her at table? Why not the youth-splashed eyes of the little girl from the West, who was going to Paris to study art? Why not the long, up-curling lashes of her light and starry glance?
Nancy comforted herself by hoping that he himself might be hideous. But if he were? How should she smile at him and talk to him if he were a repugnant, odious monster? Then she reasoned that if he were a monster, he would not have asked her to come. "Why not dine with me on Thursday?" is not the kind of telegram a monster would send. No, he was not a monster.
What would he say to her when they met? Everything depended on the first moment. She pictured it in a thousand different ways. The pictures always began in the same manner. She arrived in Paris; she drove from the Gare du Nord, not to the Grand Hôtel where he was staying, but to the Continental. She engaged a gorgeous suite of rooms. What! with fourteen dollars? Exactly so! What did it matter? It was Rouge or Noir. If Rouge came up, all was well. If Noir—la débâcle!le déluge! Fifty francs more or less made absolutely no difference. A few hours' rest. An hour or two for an elaborate toilette; all the creams used, all the details perfect. Then she would send a messenger, at a quarter to eight, to his hotel:
"Dear Unknown, I am here!"
Then—ah! then, what? He arrives, he enters, he sees her. Then she must say something. Ah! what? What are her first words to be? "How do you do?" Dreadful! No, never that! "Here I am!" Worse, worse still. In French, perhaps? "Me voilà!"Ridiculous! No; she will say nothing. He must speak first.
Then she imagines his opening phrases. After a long silence his voice, deep and trembling with emotion: "Yes, you are the Woman of my Dreams!" That would be very nice. Or, then: "Ah! Eve! Eve! How I have longed for you!" That would strike the right note at once. Or, then, with both hands outstretched: "Sothisis Nancy!" That would be rather nice. But perhaps he will say something more original: "Why did you not tell me you had a dimple in your chin?"
Ah, how long Nancy lay awake thinking of those First Words! Nancy tossed in her little berth, and turned her pillow's freshest side to her hot cheek; and she palpitated and trembled, smiled and feared, repented and defied, until the huge boat creaked against the landing stage of the Havre dock.
She arrived at the Gare du Nord at three o'clock. She drove to the Continental, and engaged a suite of rooms that cost eighty francs a day: a sitting-room, all tender greens and delicate greys, looking as if it were seen through water, and adjoining it a gorgeous scarlet bedroom, with a dozen mirrors a-shine, all deferentially awaiting the Elaborate Toilette.
Sleep was out of the question. By four o'clock the note that was to be sent at half-past seven was written, and Nancy began her elaborate toilette. She thought of ordering the coiffeur, but she remembered that coiffeurs had always dressed her hair in wonderful twists and coils and rolls, until her head looked like a cake to which her face did not in any way belong. So she did her hairà la Carmen, parted on one side. It seemed the style of hair-dress that the Girl in the Letters wouldadopt. But when it was done it looked startling and impertinent. So she unpinned it again and decided in favour of a simple, unaffected coiffure. She parted her hair in the middle, plaited it, and pinned it round her head. Itwasunaffected and simple. She looked like the youngest of the two Swedish girls in the boarding-house. She did not look at all like the Girl in the Letters. So once more she unpinned it, and did ità la pierrot—a huge puff in the middle, waving down over her forehead, and two huge puffs, one on each side. It looked pretty and unladylike.
By this time it was six o'clock. The creams! First a little cold cream; thenCrème Impératrice; then—she remembered the directions given her by the person in the shop perfectly—a tiny amount of Leichner's rouge, mixed with a littleCrème des Crèmesin the palm of the hand, gently rubbed into the cheeks and chin; then powder—rose-coloured and Rachel. Now asoupçonof rouge on the lobes of the ears and in the nostrils. This, the person in the shop said, was very important. Then the eyebrows brushed with an atom ofmascaro, a touch of Leichner on the lips, an idea of shadow round the eyes—and behold!
Nancy beheld. Her face looked mauve, and her nostrils suggested a feverish cold. Her eyes looked large, and tired, and intense, like the eyes of the prairie chickens at Monte Carlo.
Seven o'clock! She had forgotten her nails! For twenty minutes she painted her nails with the pink varnish, which was sticky, and, once on, would not wash off. Her fingers looked as if she had dipped them in blood.
Half-past seven! She must send the note. She rangthe bell, and a waiter came. He had been a nice, well-behaved German waiter, as he had shown her respectfully to her expensive rooms. When he saw her as she now appeared—she had hastily slipped into the lightest of the three trailing dresses—the waiter stared; he stared rudely, with raised eyebrows, at her, and took the note from her hand.
He read the address, nodded, and said: "Jawohl! All right. C'est bon!" And then he smiled. He smiled—at her!—and went down the passage whistling softly.
Nancy shut her door. She took off the trailing dress, and went to her bathroom. She turned on the hot water and washed her face. She washed off the shades andsoupçons, thecrèmesand themascarofrom her eyebrows and her chin, her ears and her nostrils. Then she pinned her hair loosely on the top of her head, as she always did, and put on the darkest of the three trailing gowns. But her nails she scrubbed in vain. They remained aggressively rose-coloured, and Nancy blushed hotly every time she saw them. She decided to put her hat and gloves on. She did so. Then she sat down in her sitting-room and waited. She waited fifteen minutes.
Then somebody knocked.
Nancy started to her feet as if she had been shot. With beating heart she ran back into the bedroom and shut the door after her. No, it was not quite shut; it swung lightly ajar, and Nancy left it so. She heard the knock repeated more loudly at the outer door; she heard the door open, and someone enter. Then the door closed, and steps—the waiter's steps—went back along the hall.
Somebody was in that room. Somebody! A man! A man whom she had never seen. A man to whom she had written forty or fifty letters, whom she had called"mon ami" and "mes amours," "Prince Charming," and "my unknown lover"!
Nancy stood motionless, petrified with shame, her face hidden in her white-gloved hands. She would never go in—never! Not if she had to stand here for years! She could not face that silent man next door.
The situation was becoming ridiculous. The silence was tense in both rooms. Ah, when three thousand miles had separated them, how near she had felt to him! And now, with a few feet of carpet and an open door between them, he was far away—incommensurably far away! A stranger, an intruder, an enemy!
Utter silence. Was he there? Yes. Nancy knew he was there, waiting.
Suddenly Nancy was frightened. The one idea possessed her to get away from that unseen, silent man. She would slip through the bathroom, and out into the passage and away! She took a step forward. Her trailing dress rustled. Her high-heeled boots creaked. And in the next room the man coughed.
Nancy stood still again, transfixed—turned to stone.
Another long silence, ludicrous, untenable. Then in the next room the First Words were spoken. He spoke them in a calm and well-bred voice.
"Our dinner will be cold."
Nancy laughed suddenly, softly, convulsively. Her voice was treble and sweet as she replied:
"What have you ordered?"
The man in the next room said: "Fillet of sole."
"Fried?" asked Nancy earnestly; and, knowing that unless she slid in on that fillet of sole she would never do so, she passed quickly under the draped portière and entered the room.
They looked each other in the face. She saw a large and stalwart figure, a hard mouth, and a strong, curved nose in a sunburnt face, two chilly blue eyes under a powerful brow, and waving grey hair. He looked down at her, and was satisfied. His cool blue gaze took her in from the top of her large black feathered hat to the tips of her Louis XV. shoes.
"Come," he said, offering his arm. And they went out together.
The dinner was not cold. Nancy hardly spoke at all. She was nervous and charming. She sipped Liebfraunmilch, and dimpled and rippled while he told her that he had mines in Peru, and that he had been away from civilization for twenty years.
"I went down to the mines when I was twenty, and came back when I was forty. That is four years ago. I have been fighting my way ever since, trying to keep clear of the wrong woman. I am afraid of women."
"So am I," said Nancy, which was not true.
He laughed, and said: "And of what else?"
"Spiders," said Nancy, with her head on one side.
"And what else?"
"Lions," said Nancy.
"And what else?"
"Thunderstorms." And, as he seemed to be waiting, she added: "And of you, of course."
He did not believe it. But she was.
After dinner he took her to the Folies Bergères and then to the Boîte à Fursy; and he watched her narrowly, and was glad that she did not laugh. Then he took her back to the hotel. They went up together in the lift, and along the red-carpeted, boot-adorned corridor to her green and grey salon. He did not ask permission,but walked in and sat down—large and long—in the small brocaded armchair.
"Are you tired?" he said.
Nancy said, "No," and remained standing.
He said, "Sit down," and she obeyed him.
He sat staring before him for a while, with his underlip pushed up under his upper-lip, making his straight, short-cut moustache stand out. He was a strong, large, ugly man. Nancy suddenly remembered that she had called him "toi," and said, "adieu, mes amours" to him in her letters, and she felt faint with shame. He made a little noise, something between a cough and a growl, and looked up at her.
"What are you thinking?" he said.
She laughed. "I am thinking that I called you Prince Charming, whereas you really are the Ogre."
"Yes," he said, and stared at her a long time. Then he got up suddenly and put out his large hand. "Good-night, Miss Brown," he said. He took his hat and stick, and went out, shutting the door decidedly behind him.
The next morning at half-past eleven he came; he had a small bunch of lilies of the valley in his hand.
"Will you invite me to lunch?" he said.
Yes, Nancy would be very pleased. She thought of the twenty-two francs in her purse; but nothing mattered.
They lunched in the dining-room, and he was very silent. Nancy spoke of music, but he did not respond.
"Do you sing?" she asked at last.
He looked up at her like an offended wild beast. "Do I look as if I could sing?"
"No, you don't," she said. "You look as if you could growl."
He smiled slightly under his clipped moustache, anddid not answer. Nancy gave up all attempt at conversation. Her heart beat fast. Things were going wrong. He was tired of her already. He looked bored—well, no, not bored, but utterly indifferent and hard, as if he were alone. After their coffee he got up—every time he rose Nancy wondered anew at his breadth and length—and led the way out. Nancy trotted after him with short steps. He went into the lounge and took a seat near a table in the window, pushing a chair forward for Nancy.
"May I smoke?" he said, taking a large cigar-case from his pocket.
Nancy nodded. He chose his cigar carefully, clipped the end off, and lit it. Nancy could not think of a word to say. All her pretty, frivolous conversation, all the bright remarks and witty repartee, wavered away from her mind. She had not prepared herself for monologues.
After the first puff he said: "You don't smoke, do you?"
"Oh no!" said Nancy.
As soon as she had said it a wave of crimson flooded her face. She remembered writing that she smoked Russian cigarettes perfumed with heliotrope. He had not believed her. How could she have written such an idiotic thing? And suddenly she realized that she was not the Girl in her Letters at all, and that he must be bored and disappointed. But no more was he the Man of his Letters; at least, she had imagined him quite different, with fair hair and droopy grey eyes, and a poet's soul. Then she remembered that he had never spoken about himself in his letters at all.
At this point he looked up and said: "I like a woman who can keep quiet. You have not spoken for half an hour." And she laughed, and was glad.
When he had finished his cigar, he said: "I hope you have not left any valuables in your room. It is not safe."
"Oh no," said Nancy; "I haven't."
"Have you given them to the office?"
"No," said Nancy—"no;" and suddenly she remembered that she had told him in her letters that she wore jewels all over her.
Without looking up, he said: "Will you give me your purse? I will take care of it."
Nancy felt that if she went on flushing any more her hair would catch fire. She drew out her purse and handed it to him. He opened it slowly and deliberately. He took out the three sous and the two francs, and put them into his pocket. Then he opened the middle division, and looked at the twenty-franc piece. He took it out and placed it on the table. Then he went through all the other compartments, gazing pensively at an unused tramway ticket and at a medal of the Madonna del Monte. He put those back again, and handed Nancy the purse. The twenty-franc piece he put into a purse of his own, and into his pocket.
"Now let us go for a drive," he said.
Nancy, feeling dazed, rustled away, and took the lift to her room. She pinned on her hat, took her coat and gloves, and just caught the lift again as it was passing down. When he saw her, he said "That was quick," and they went out together. A victoria was waiting for them. The porter was profusely polite, and the horses started off at a loose trot down the Boulevards and towards the Étoile. He asked her many questions during the drive, and in her answers she was as much as possible the Girl of the Letters.
He sounded her about Monte Carlo, and she was glad that she was quiteau courant, and could mention systems and the Café de Paris.
"Would you like to go there again?" he asked.
"Yes—oh yes!" she said, clasping her mauve kid gloves. Then she fell into a reverie, and she kept her hands clasped in her lap, for she was saying anAveanda Paterfor Anne-Marie.
The carriage was turning into the Bois when her companion said:
"Where do you want to go?"
Nancy said: "This is very nice. The Bois is lovely."
"I mean where do you want to go to to-morrow, or the day after, or next week. You do not want to stay in Paris for ever, do you?"
She drew a little quick breath, and said, "Oh!" and then again, "Oh, really?" and looked up at him with uncertain eyes.
"Do not look at me as if I were the spider, or the lion, or the thunderstorm. Tell me if there is any place on earth that you have longed to go to. And when. And with whom."
Nancy's eyes filled quickly with glowing tears. "I should like to go to Italy," she said, "to a little village tip-tilted over the sea, called Porto Venere."
The Ogre, who had read "Elle et Lui," nodded, and said: "I know. Anywhere else?"
"I should like to stay a few days in Milan—to see some people who are dear."
"Et après?"
"I should like to go to Switzerland. Only to one or two little places there—the Via Mala, Splügen, Sufers—"
"H'm—h'm," said he, and waited to hear more.
"And then—and then—yes, perhaps to Monte Carlo—and oh, to Naples and to Rome! But I want to stay longest in Porto Venere."
He nodded, and said: "When do you want to start?"
"To-morrow," said Nancy.
"And how? In a train? Or by motor? Or by boat?"
"I don't mind," said Nancy, hiding her face in her handkerchief and beginning to weep.
"And with whom?" There was a pause. "What about a maid?"
"Oh, no maid!" said Nancy. Then she looked up. "With you," she said, because the Girl in the Letters would have said it, and also because she wanted him to come.
"All right. Don't take much luggage," he said.
They went. They went through Switzerland. They drove down the wide white roads that coil like wind-blown ribbons round the swelling breasts of the Alps; they went up the barren Julier Pass, and through the shuddering Via Mala, breakfasting at St. Moritz, table d'hôting at Maloya, wandering through the moonlike sunshine of Splügen's pine-forests, clattering and rumbling over the covered bridges of Sufers. The snow-tipped pine-trees, like regiments of monks with nightcaps on, nodded at them in stately gravity; the squirrels stopped with quick, beady glances, and scuttled away, tail-flourishing, up the branches, while the bland Helvetian cows stood in the green meadows to watch them pass.
Every evening they went together down boot-adorned passages to the door of Nancy's room. And there he said, "Good-night, Miss Brown," and left her.
They went on into Italy—straight down to Naples without stopping in Milan, for Nancy would not see anyone she loved after all; for she could not explain anything, and did not know what to say, and did not want to think of anything just now. She would think afterwards. They clambered up the Vesuvius; they wandered through Pompei; they went to Spezia, and remembered Shelley; they went on to Porto Venere, and trembled to think that the sharks might have eaten Byron when he swam across the bay; they rowed about the Golfo, and atevongoleand other horrible, ill-smellingfrutti di mare. And every evening, in the boot-adorned passages of the hotels, he took her to the door of her room, and said, "Good-night, Miss Brown."
In Spezia a little steamer that was coasting northwards took them on board. They were sliding on blue waters into Genoa, when Nancy, seated on a basket of oranges, felt the touch of the Ogre's hand on her shoulder. She looked up and smiled. He sat down on another basket beside her. It creaked and groaned under his weight, so he got up and fetched a heavy wooden case, dragging it along the deck to Nancy's side.
"Now what?" he said.
Nancy had grown to understand him well. Not for an instant did she think that he was talking of the moment, or the next hour, as she had thought when they had driven in the Bois, now more than a month ago. She knew that he looked at life in large outlines, and seldom spoke of small, immediate things.
"Now what?" she echoed. He put his large brownhand on her small one, and it was his first caress. It thrilled Nancy to the heart. His chilly blue eyes watched her face, and saw it paling slowly under his gaze.
"Now you must go home," he said.
"Yes," said Nancy, "now I must go home." And she wondered vaguely whether home was the boarding-house in Lexington Avenue or Mrs. Johnstone's flat in 82nd Street. She decided that it was the flat, where the bunch of orchids and maidenhair had come and lived almost a week. Peggy and George would be her friends again, and the dead Mr. Johnstone, and the naked baby, and the chinless young man would be with her in the evenings. And Anne-Marie must leave Fräulein Müller'sGartenhaus, and go back to school on Sixth Avenue.
"What are your thoughts," said the Ogre.
"...I was wondering what made you send that messenger-boy with the flowers and the letter—the letter to the girl in blue.... It was not a bit like you," she said. And, looking into the hard face, she added: "You are not at all like that."
"I know I'm not," he said. Then he added, with a laugh, "Thank God! But we all do things that are not like ourselves now and then. Don't we?" She did not answer. "Don't you?" he insisted.
Nancy sighed and wondered. "I don't know. What is like me, and what is not like me? I do not know at all. I do not know myself."
"I do," said the Ogre. And there was another long silence. He had the aggravating habit of stopping short after a sentence that one would like to hear continued.
"Speak," said Nancy. "Say more."
"It was not like me to send those useless and expensive flowers out into the world to nobody, and to write a crazy letterin's Blaue hinein—into space. But we all have mad moments in our lives when we do things that are quite unlike us." A pause again. "It was not like you to write me those letters describing your old-rose curtains—afterwards they were blue velvet—and your scented cigarettes, and your jewels, and your lovers. And it was not like you to cross the Atlantic and come to Paris and to supper with a man you had never met, in order to see whether you could get money out of him."
Nancy covered her face. "Oh!" she said, "have you thought that?"
"Oh!" he said, "have you done that?" And there was silence.
The Captain passed and remarked on the fine weather, adding that they would arrive in less than an hour. Then he went by.
"I liked your first letter—poor little truthful letter on the cheap paper. You said you were the wrong girl. You were dressed in brown. I could see you in your shabby brown dress—I knew it must be shabby—and I liked the idea of doing something unexpected with a little money. Then I was amused at your letter saying you were not Miss Brown. After that the lies began."
Nancy quivered. The houses of Quarto were coming into sight; the red hotel of Quinto was gliding past.
"How could you think that I would believe in the old-rose curtains in the 300's of East 82nd Street, I who have lived five or six years in New York? That showed me that you were a foreigner, or you would have known that street numbers in New York tell their own tale. Thenyour letters told me that you were a fanciful creature, and they told me that you were lonely, or you would not have found time to write so much—a cultivated, little fibber, who quoted every poet under the sun, especially the out-of-the-way ones. Then, when I found out that you had a child—"
"Oh!" gasped Nancy, and the tears welled over. "You know about Anne-Marie!"
"I know about Anne-Marie. I even have a picture of her." He unbuttoned his coat, and drew out his pocket-book, and from it a little snapshot photograph, which he handed to Nancy. It was herself and Anne-Marie in front of a toy-shop. They were in the act of turning from it, and Anne-Marie's foot was lifted in the air. They were both laughing, and neither of them looking their best.
"Oh, but that's hideous of her," said Nancy. "She is quite different from that."
He smiled, and put the picture back into his pocket-book, and the pocket-book into his breast-pocket.
"When I had found out that you had a child, and that your husband"—he hesitated—"was—er—Neapolitan, I understood what you were after, and decided that I would—walk into it—que je marcherais, as the French say. Et j'ai 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 hasbeen 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-conscioussignorinethat 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. TheKaiser 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.