The Devourers Part 36

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 b.u.t.tons 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 room about 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d: 'There are too many useless things in the world. Roses, for instance. We could do without them, and have vegetables instead.' So G.o.d 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 G.o.d put a few roses back, for little Anne-Maries who don't like vegetables (which is very naughty of 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 G.o.d will say when the dead worlds come rolling in at his feet, at the end of Eternity.

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