The Devourers Part 30

"What message was that you sent?" she asked, with her graceful head on one side.

My voice had almost left me. "I said Hugo Wolff told me to come in. I heard you singing 'Der Musikant'...."

She laughed, and said: "Are you a musician?"

I said: "No." And I thought of telling her the History of the Wolf. But I feared she might know my name, and tell the Italians in New York. And the Italo-Americano would print an article about it--and the Corriere della Sera in Milan would reprint it....

"Is there anything I can do for you?" she said.

I nodded.

"Money?" she asked softly.

I nodded.

"How much do you need?"

"Five dollars," I said.

She smiled, and said: "Is that all? I should willingly do more for a friend of Hugo Wolff's!"

She went out of the room, and closed the door behind her. She left me in my shabby clothes, in my black straw hat and my need of five dollars, in her gorgeous drawing-room, scattered with priceless ornaments in silver and gold, jewelled frames and trinkets lying all about the tables. I covered my face with my hands, and the tears rolled through my fingers.

She came back a few minutes afterwards with a gold twenty-dollar piece in her hand. She gave it to me, and said, "For luck!" and added:

"Is there nothing else I can do?" I nodded, with my eyes full of tears.

"Yes!" and I looked at the piano.

She smiled and sat down. She sang for me. I know she sang her very best.

She had a lovely voice.

When I went through the hall to the door two men-servants bowed me out as if I were a princess. And I went down the stairs weeping bitterly.

I went along the street, crying and not caring who saw me. Then I sat down in Madison Square. Suddenly someone came and sat beside me. A woman. I felt her eyes fixed on me for a long time, and I turned and looked at her. There, under a turquoise toque, sat the golden hair and the large face of the prairie chicken.

"How do you do, Mrs. Doyle?" I said.

"What?" She turned quickly. "How do you know my name?" And she added, frowning: "What are you crying for?"

"For love of a woman who has been kind to me," I said.

"There are lots of kind women," she answered. "I'm kind. What do you want?"

"I want you to come and talk to my husband," I said. "You know him. You met him in Monte Carlo. His name is Aldo della Rocca."

"What? Della Rocca? That lovely Italian creature? That Apollo of Belvedere? Of course I remember him. Where is he? What is he doing here?"

"Come and see," I said.

And she came up to Mrs. Schmidl's house in 28th Street.

That evening we dined with the prairie chicken, or rather, she invited herself to dine with us. She said "Poison!" when she tasted the Knodelsuppe, and "Poison!" when she tasted the Blutwurst and Kraut. She is probably a very great lady, judging by her bad behaviour.

In my heart hope opens timid eyes.

VII

Mrs. Doyle was a very great lady. Her husband had been a political "boss"; her sister had married an English baronet; and her daughter, Marge, eighteen years old, "a mere infant," as she said, had married Herbert van Osten, the Congressman.

She was full of good ideas. "Now, you two might be the rage of New York in no time," she said, at the end of the dinner. "You are a Count, aren't you?" And she looked confidently at Aldo. "'Della Rocca'! That sounds like a Count."

"Oh yes," said Aldo, with his shining white smile, humorously remembering his grandfather's name, "Esposito," which means a foundling, and the "Della Rocca" added to it because the little Esposito had been left on a rock near Posilippo.

"Well, let me see. You must have an atelier of some kind. Ateliers are all the rage. And your wife----" Mrs. Doyle raised her sepia eyebrows and pinched her large chin pensively.

"My wife is a great poetess," said Aldo.

"Is she?" said Mrs. Doyle. "Well--let me see. She must--she must dress a little differently--red scarves and things--and look picturesque, and read her poems in salons here. Poetry is all the rage. And if it is Eyetalian, you know," she added encouragingly to Nancy, "no one will understand it. I shall discover you. I shall give an At Home.

'Eyetalian poetry' in a corner of the cards. That's an elegant idea!"

But Nancy was refractory. She said she would not wear red scarves, nor recite her poetry; and what was Aldo going to do in an atelier?

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Doyle, "faces like his are not met with every day on Broadway. I don't know how it is in your country, but his looks alone are enough to make him the rage here."

Aldo nodded, looking at Nancy as if to say: "You see?"

"But what is the good of being the rage if one has nothing to live on?

What are we to eat?" asked Nancy, feeling brutal and unlovely, and _terre a terre_.

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Doyle. "If once you are the rage in a place like New York!" ... And she raised her round blue eyes to Frau Schmidl's ceiling, where languid flies walked slowly.

But Nancy a.s.sured her that it was impossible. Could she not find some work for Aldo to do?

"What work?" said Mrs. Doyle, resting an absent-minded blue gaze on the l.u.s.trous convolutions of Aldo's hair, on his white, narrow forehead, on his intense and violent eyes, and the scarlet arcuation of his vivid lips. "What work can he do?"

"Oh!" Nancy said vaguely, "what work do men do? He has been to the University and taken a degree. He has studied law, but has not practised. I am sure he could do anything. He is very clever."

"Oh yes," a.s.sented Mrs. Doyle dreamily.

She was thinking. She was thinking of something her married daughter had been saying to her that very morning. Suddenly, she got up and said good-bye. She let Aldo help her into her long turquoise coat, and find her gloves; and then she sent him off to fetch a motor-cab. Alone with Nancy, she was about to open her large silver-net reticule when she saw Nancy's straight gaze fixed upon her. So she refrained, and kissed her instead.

"Ta-ta, Apollo," she said, shaking a fat, white-gloved hand out of the carriage window to Aldo, who stood on the side-walk, bare-headed and deferential. Then, leaning back as the carriage slid along 7th Avenue and turned into 66th Street, she mused: "He will do--he will do elegantly. Won't Marge be delighted! That will teach Bertie to sit up.

Elegant idea! Bertie will have to sit up."