The Devourers Part 57

Anne-Marie glanced at the man again and at the hat again. Then she put her cheek against her mother's arm, as she always did, when she asked a favour. "Rather not, Liebstes," she whispered.

The Arbiter had spoken.

Aldo said only a few words more to Nancy. He placed his hands on Anne-Marie's head, and looked at her a long time. Then he turned suddenly, took up his square hat, and left the room.

"That was a strange man," said Anne-Marie. "Was he really my father?"

Nancy, with pale lips, said: "Yes."

"Are you sure?" questioned Anne-Marie, raising her eyes to the balloon.

"Yes, dear," said Nancy; and her tears fell.

Suddenly Anne-Marie flew to the door. "Father!" she cried in a shrill treble voice.

Aldo, on the stairs, heard and stood still. His hand gripped the bannisters, his heart leaped to his throat.

"Father!"

He turned slowly, doubtingly.

"Father!" came the treble voice again; and he mounted the steps, and went trembling and stumbling along the pa.s.sage. Anne-Marie was standing at the door.

"Do you think," she said, "you could catch my balloon before you go?"

He caught her balloon. Then he went--out of the room, out of their lives, out of the story.

XXVI

"MINA DE L'AGUA.

"Nancy,--The years and the yearning are over. I am leaving for Europe.

You will come to meet me in Genoa; and we shall sit on the balcony where three years ago you told me of your Book, which you feared would die like a babe unborn in your breast.

"I am coming to take you to Porto Venere, 'white in the sunshine--tip-tilted over the sea'; and the Book shall live at last.

"And we, also, shall live. Oh, Nancy, Nancy! I have been a silent and a lonely man so long, that my love has no words, my happiness no language.

Even now I can hardly believe that the years of exile and solitude are over. But I know that you, having loved me once, still love me and will love me. I know that your heart is not a heart that changes, and that the words that drew you to me across the ocean three years ago will bring you to me again. Nancy, come to me. To my empty arms, to my sad and solitary heart, Nancy, come at once. And for ever."

"DEAR OGRE, dear friend and love of mine, your call has shaken my soul.

All my longings, all my dreams, have joined their voices with yours, crying to me to go to you. Alas! a little prayer that Fraulein used to make me say when I was a child whispers to me, and its small voice drowns the cry of my desires. It is the prayer of the Three Angels that stand round one's bed in the night:

"'One holds my hands, One holds my feet, And the Third One holds my heart.'

"Can I come to you when I am thus bound--bound hands and feet by Law and Church? My small conventional soul shrinks from the unlawful and the forbidden.

"But, believe me, were I free as air, were my hands unbound to lie in yours, my feet unloosed to fly to you, the Third Angel remains. 'And the Third One holds my heart.' Anne-Marie is the Third Angel. Anne-Marie holds my heart. How could I bring her with me? Think and reply for me.

How could I leave her? Think and reply. Dear Ogre, I am one of the Devoured. Little Anne-Marie has devoured me, and it is right that it should be so; she has absorbed me, and I am glad; she has consumed me, and I am grateful. For it is in the nature of things that to these lives given to us, our lives should be given. What matter that I fall back into the shadow--my course not run, my goal not reached, my mission unfulfilled? Anne-Marie will have what I have missed; Anne-Marie will reach the completeness that has failed me; for her will be the heights I have not conquered, the Glory I have not attained.

"Oh, lover and friend of mine, understand and forgive me. There is no room for love in my life. My life is full of haste and turmoil, full of Kings and Queens, full of rushing trains, and shouting voices, and clapping hands....

"Can you not see it all as in a picture--the Pied Piper whistling and dancing on ahead; little Anne-Marie, Fame-drunken, music-struck, whirlwinding after him; and I following them in breathless, palpitant haste, leaving all that was once mine behind me--my Books, my Dreams, my Love?... Love in the picture is not a rose-crowned G.o.d of laughter and pa.s.sion. Love is a lonely figure, lonely and stern and sad. Oh, love, forgive me, and understand! And say good-bye--good-bye to Nancy!"

He forgave her, and understood, and said good-bye to Nancy.

XXVII

The days swung on. And they swung Anne-Marie from triumph to triumph.

And they poured sunshine into her hair, and sea-shine into her eyes. And they reared her into fulgent maidenhood, as a white lily is reared on a fragile stem.

They swung Nancy back into the shadow where mothers sit with gentle hands folded, and eyes whose tears no one counts. She learned to forget that she had even known a poem about "La belle qui veut, la belle qui n'ose, ceuillir les roses du jardin bleu!" The blue garden of youth closed its gates silently behind her, and the roses that Nancy's hand had not gathered would bloom for her no more.

But for Anne-Marie, when the time was ripe, the Pied Piper tossed his flute to another Player. Anne-Marie stood still and listened to the new call--the far-away call of Love. Soon she faltered, and turned and followed the silver-toned call of Love.

XXVIII

The carriage that was to take the bride and bridegroom to the station was waiting in the Tuscan sunlight, surrounded by the laughing, impatient crowd. As Anne-Marie appeared--her rose-lit face half hidden in her furs, her travelling-hat poised lightly at the back of her shining head--the crowd shouted and cheered, just as it had always done after her concerts. And she smiled and nodded, and said, "Good-bye!

Good-bye! Thank you, and good-bye!" just as she always did at the close of her concerts. The bridegroom, tall and serious beside her, would have liked to hurry her into the carriage, but she took her hand from his arm and stopped, turning and smiling to the right and to the left, shaking hands with a hundred people who knew her and loved and blessed her. With one foot on the carriage-step, she still nodded and smiled and waved her hand. Then the young husband lifted her in, jumped in beside her, and shut the carriage-door. Cheers and shouts and waving hats followed them as the horses, striking fire from their hoofs, broke into a gallop, and carried them down the street and out of sight.

... Nancy had not left the house. She had not gone to the window. She could hear the cheers and the laughter, and for a moment she pictured herself with Anne-Marie in the carriage, driving home after the concerts--Anne-Marie still nodding, first out of one window, then out of the other, laughing, waving her hand; then falling into her mother's arms with a little sigh of delight. At last they were alone--alone after all the crowd--in the darkness and the silence, after all the noise and light. And Anne-Marie's hand was in hers; Anne-Marie's soft hair was on her breast. Again the well-known dulcet tones: "Did you like my concert, Liebstes? Are you happy, mother dear?" Then silence all the way home--home to strange hotels, no matter in what town or in what land. It was always home, for they were together.

Nancy stepped to the window, both hands held tightly to her heart. The road was empty. The house was empty. The world was empty. Then she cried, loud and long--cried, stretching her arms out before her, kneeling by the window: "Oh, my little girl! My own child! What shall I do? What shall I do?"

But there was nothing left for Nancy to do.