The Devourers Part 45

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 apres?"

"I should like to go to Switzerland. Only to one or two little places there--the Via Mala, Splugen, 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.

XVI

They went. They went through Switzerland. They drove down the wide white roads that coil like wind-blown ribbons round the swelling b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Alps; they went up the barren Julier Pa.s.s, and through the shuddering Via Mala, breakfasting at St. Moritz, table d'hoting at Maloya, wandering through the moonlike suns.h.i.+ne of Splugen'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-flouris.h.i.+ng, up the branches, while the bland Helvetian cows stood in the green meadows to watch them pa.s.s.

Every evening they went together down boot-adorned pa.s.sages 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 Sh.e.l.ley; 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 ate _vongole_ and other horrible, ill-smelling _frutti di mare_. And every evening, in the boot-adorned pa.s.sages 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 brown hand 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 Fraulein Muller's _Gartenhaus_, 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 G.o.d! 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 n.o.body, and to write a crazy letter _in's Blaue hinein_--into s.p.a.ce. 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 pa.s.sed 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. Then your 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 unb.u.t.toned 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 marche." 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 has been 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 Jaufre 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 Jaufre Rudel.