The Devourers

"Ah, mais c'est par trop fort," cried the other, who was French, and had a loud voice. He pushed Aldo's rake aside, and took the money.

Aldo appealed to the croupiers, and to the people near him, and to the people opposite him. They shrugged their shoulders and raised their eyebrows. They had not seen, they did not know.

"Faites vos jeux, messieurs," said the croupier.

The ball whizzed; the game went on. Aldo, burning with rage, and Nancy pale and dazed, left the table.

"Oh, Aldo! Let us go away. This is a horrible place. Let us go away."

Aldo did not answer.

They went out into the sunshine. Laughing women lifting light dresses and showing their high heels came hurrying across the square. The warm air was heavy with the scent of flowers. They turned into the gardens, and before them was the dancing sea; and Anne-Marie, looking like an Altezza Serenissima, tripped up and down in her white corded silk coat, her brief curls bobbing under her white-plumed hat.

Behind her walked the Vintimille servant with the Scotch silk bow on her head, and carried the doll with the real eyelashes.

VI

New York.    

Mother Dear,

        I shall send you this letter when nothing that I have written in it is true any more. If we ever live through and out of it, you shall know; if not—but, of course, we shall. We must. One cannot die of poverty, can one? One does not really, actually suffer real hunger, does one, mother dear? "Zu Grunde gehen!" The sombre old German words keep rumbling in my head like far-away thunder. "Zu Grunde gehen!"

I do not suppose one really does go "zu Grunde." But when one has forty-five dollars in the world, and a funny little bird with its beak open expecting to be fed—and fed on chocolates and bonbons when it wants them—one becomes demoralized and frightened, and pretends to think that one might really starve.

Do not think it unkind that I did not come to Milan to kiss you and say good-bye. I had not the heart to do so. Aldo, too, said we could not afford it, and, indeed, our combined viatiques and our jewellery only just enabled us to come here.

We landed three days ago. Yesterday morning I sent you a postcard: "Arrived happily." Happily! Oh, mother dear, I think there must be a second higher and happier heaven for those who are brave enough to tell untruths of this kind. Enough; we landed, Anne-Marie looking like a spoilt princess; I with my Monte Carlo hat and coat, and high-heeled, impertinent shoes; and Aldo, a pallid Antinous, with forty-five dollars in his pocket-book.

Then came the Via Crucis of looking for rooms. Mother, did I ever stay at the Hôtel Nazionale in Rome, and descend languidly the red-carpeted stairs to the royal automobile that was to drive me to the Quirinal? Did I ever sit at home in Uncle Giacomo's large arm-chair and listen benignly to moon-struck poets reading their songs? Did I ever with languid fingers ring bells for servants, and order what I wanted?

"Cio avvenne forse ai tempiD'Omero e di Valmichi–"

That was another Nancy. This Nancy trudged for hours through straight and terrible streets called avenues, with a dismal husband and a tired baby at her side. Third Avenue, Fourth Avenue, then quickly across Fifth Avenue, which had nothing to do with us, and again across to Sixth Avenue … and everywhere dirty shops, screaming children, jostling girls, rude men, trains rushing overhead, street-cars screeching and clanging. Then, at last, Seventh Avenue, where there were streets full of quiet, squalid boarding-houses, fewer screaming children, fewer dirty shops, and no trains. We went into a cheap, clean-looking place that a porter had told us of. A woman opened. She looked at my hat and coat, and at my shoes, and said: "What do you want?" "A room–" began Aldo. She shut the door without answering. At the next house a woman in a dirty silk dressing-gown opened the door. "Yes, they had rooms. Eight dollars a day. Meals a dollar." In the next house they took no children. In the next, no foreigners. Our expensive clothes in their cheap street made them suspicious. Aldo's handsome face made them suspicious. His Italian accent frightened them. And Anne-Marie cried every time a new face appeared at a new door.

At last Aldo said: "I will go to the Italian consul. You wait here in a baker's shop." The consulate was at the other end of New York, and was closed when Aldo got there. When he returned, harassed and haggard, I had made friends with the baker's wife. She was German. I told her our History of the Wolf—that I was a poetess, and had met the Queen, and all about Monte Carlo. I don't think she believed or understood much, but she was sorry for me; and Anne-Marie, hearing us talk German, suddenly started piping: "Schlaf, Kindchen, schlaf!" The woman caught her up in her arms, and said: "Ach, du süsses! How does she come to know that?" And she took us all to 28th Street to the house of her sister, who gave us this room. It is clean, and the woman is kind.

And now, what?

I have bought myself a frightful pepper-and-salt coloured dress, and a black straw hat. I look like a "deserving poor." And Anne-Marie is wearing a dark blue woolly horror belonging to the woman's daughter. She must wear it, or Frau Schmidl would be offended. Frau Schmidl is the only friend we have in America.

For the ranch is a myth of Aldo's. He never was on a ranch in his life. He met a Frenchman once with weak lungs, who had been in Texas, and who gave him all the romantic details that he used to recount to us. Do you remember, mother? On Lake Maggiore? He talked vaguely, and not much, it is true, of those bucking bronchoes he used to ride across the sweeping Western prairies, feeling the wind in his hair.... When I reproach him for his fables, he tells me that it was our fault. We insisted upon the details. We would hear all about it! He says Clarissa started the ranch legend, because she thought it sounded well. Then she left him to keep it up as best he could. Poor Aldo! He hates us in these clothes. And he hates the German things Frau Schmidl gives us to eat. He has gone to the Italian Consul for the third time to see if he can find some correspondence to do. I could give lessons, but it seems that there are many more people who want to give lessons than there are who want to take them. And then—there is Anne-Marie, who has to be taken care of. Anne-Marie! Frau Schmidl loves her because of her name. She says it is echt deutsch! She is a stout, fair woman, who speaks English strangely. When she enters the room, she says, nodding and laughing, "Now, and what makes the Anne-Marie?"

The Anne-Marie likes the sound of the language, and imitates her. I dread to think what English the Anne-Marie will learn.

Aldo has found nothing to do. The Americans will have nothing to do with an Italian, and Italians will have still less to do with an Italian. We have eight dollars left.

If I write to you for money you will send it. And then? A few weeks hence we shall be where we are now. We must fight our battles alone.

We have nothing left.

Mr. Schmidl says he will let us keep the room—"for another week or two," he added gruffly; but his wife is not to feed us. "At least—not all of you," he added still more gruffly. "Only you—and the Anne-Marie." He is a poor man. He is quite right. But what about Aldo?

We have sold the Monte Carlo clothes for twelve dollars. We feel that we are rehabilitated. And what have I been dreaming of? I can write. I shall send an article to the Giornale Italo-Americano. Unsigned, of course. I shall write it to-night.

It is done.

It is accepted.

It is printed.

It seems that that is all. They have told Aldo that they never pay for articles that are sent to them from the outside—even if they are as brilliant and original as this one. They only pay their own staff. Have they room on their staff for a brilliant and original writer? Plenty of room. But no money.

Aldo is living on dates and a little rice. He speaks less than ever. I do not know what his thoughts are. I am afraid for him.

To-day as I was taking Anne-Marie for a run in front of the house I met a man whom we knew in Italy, a Dr. Fioretti. He was an old friend of Nino's. Do you remember? He looked at me, and past me, blankly, unrecognizing. I thanked the fates. My knees ached with fear lest he should stop and say: "You here! What are you doing? Where do you live?" Where do I live? In this vile street near the negro quarter. What am I doing? Starving. Are we dreaming, mother? Oh, mother! mother! when did I fall asleep? I should like to wake up a little girl again in England. Was there not another little girl called Edith, with yellow hair? Surely I remember her. What became of her?… Or was she the girl who died?…

Aldo will not leave the house any more. He will not speak to us any more. He sits and stares at us. I am afraid of him. I shall telegraph to you if I can find the money to do so. Mrs. Schmidl keeps Anne-Marie downstairs in her kitchen. But she is afraid of Aldo, too. I think they will turn us out. But they will keep the child, and take care of her.

I shall go out. I shall ask everybody, anybody, to help me....

I have been to the Italian Church, to the Italian Consul, to the Italian Embassy. They will see. They will do what they can. There are many pitiable cases. Are we a "pitiable case"? How strange! They would not give me any money to send a telegram. They said they would telegraph themselves, after they had come to see us, and made inquiries....

I stopped a woman in the street, and said, "I beg your pardon. Will you–" and then my courage failed and I asked where West 28th Street was. She directed me, and I turned back and walked in the direction I had come from.

I came to Fifth Avenue, and walked up it in my shabby clothes. I passed rows of large houses. One of them had the windows open, and someone inside was playing "Der Musikant" of Hugo Wolff. And a woman's voice was singing:

"Wenn wir zwei zusammen wärenWürd' das Singen mir vergeh'n."

I stopped. I turned back, and walked up the wide stone steps. I rang the visitors' bell, and a manservant in ornate livery opened at once.

"I wish to speak to the lady who is singing," I said.

"Oh," said the man. I knew he thought me a beggar, and was going to send me away.

"Tell her—tell her quickly," I said, "that—that Hugo Wolff told me I might come."

Something in my face—oh, my despairing face, mother!—touched something human in the pompous automaton. He went straight into the drawing-room and gave my message. There was a basket of Easter lilies on the hall-table.

The music stopped, and almost at once on the threshold of the drawing-room a lady appeared. She was young—hardly older than I—and beautiful, dressed in soft mauve cloth. She looked at me curiously, and then said suddenly:

"Will you come in?"

I went into the large, luxurious drawing-room. Titian's "Bella" looked down at me blandly with her reddened eyelids.

"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 Knödelsuppe, 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 à 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 assured 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 lustrous 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," assented 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."

Bertie was not sitting up. His wife, Mrs. Doyle's daughter, was. And very straight she sat, with defiant, frizzy head and narrow lips, when she heard the front door open and close. But it was not to her husband's insubordinate footsteps. It was the indulgent swish of her mother's silken skirts that rustled slowly upwards.

Bertie's wife sprang up and opened the door.

"'Mum'? At this hour? What has happened?"

"Nothing, Marge—nothing. Is Bertie at home?" said Mrs. Doyle.

"No," and the young pink lips narrowed again. "It is only eleven o'clock at night. Why should he be at home?"

"Marge, I have an elegant idea," said Mrs. Doyle, seating herself resolutely in an armchair opposite her daughter. "I have found the very thing we need. The bo ideel, my lambkin."

When Mrs. Doyle rose to go at midnight they were both wreathed in smiles.

"You will have to be very careful, dear," said Mrs. Doyle. "Don't be rash, and unlikely, and over-generous. The wife is a stubborn creature who spells things with a capital letter: you know what I mean—Work and Art and Dignity, and all that kind of thing. She must not be rubbed up the wrong way. Besides, it will answer just as well if he does not know what he is doing."

"That's so," said her daughter. "Mum, you're a daisy."

The unsuspecting Bertie came home that night a little before one o'clock, keyed up for the usual withering sarcasm and darkling reproach. He found his wife asleep, lamb-like and dove-like, her frizzy head foundered contentedly in the pillows, a book of Gyp on the coverlet, and a mild smile—was it of indulgence or of treason?—playing on her soft half-open lips.

The next day Mrs. Doyle called on Aldo and Nancy. Anne-Marie was introduced and patted on the head, and sent down into the kitchen.

"I have a secretaryship for you," said Mrs. Doyle to Aldo. "You can start at once. Twenty dollars a week. They won't give more."

Aldo was graciously complacent, and Nancy looked anxious.

"His English is very imperfect," she said.

"Oh, the English is chiefly copying; he can do that, can't he?"

"Of course," said Aldo, frowning at Nancy.

Nancy asked for particulars, and Mrs. Doyle folded her fat hands and gave them. It was a confidential post. He was to be "secretary to her daughter"—catching Nancy's steady grey eye, Mrs. Doyle added—"'s husband, Mr. Van Osten;" and the work was chiefly of a political character. He would have to—er—copy speeches, and … etcetera. He would have a study, not in the Van Osten's house, but—er—in the same street a few doors off, opposite. He was not to talk about his work, because it was of a very—er—private character.

"Mr. Van Osten is a peculiar man," added Mrs. Doyle. "But you will understand all that in time, when you get to know him. When can you start?"

"Now," said Aldo.

Mrs. Doyle laughed. "Well, I think next Monday will do. Meanwhile"—and she coughed—"the Van Ostens are very—oh, very much for appearance, you know. You had better go to Brooks and get him to rig you out. I shall drive round and speak to Brooks about you at once."

Nancy flushed and protested. "You can pay it back to me," said Mrs. Doyle. "Don't bother me so."

So Nancy flushed, and was silent; and Aldo went to Brooks, and was rigged out.

He also had some visiting-cards with "Count Aldo della Rocca" printed on them, but not his address, which was near the nigger quarter, and probably would continue to be so for a long time to come.

On the following Monday, at half-past eleven, he arrived at the Van Osten house in 66th Street. Mrs. Doyle had particularly impressed upon him that he was not to come earlier than half-past eleven. Mrs. Doyle was waiting for him in the drawing-room, and introduced him to her daughter. Mr. Van Osten was not in. The Count was to do his work alone for these first few days, as Mr. Van Osten was very busy in Washington. The two ladies had their hats on, and accompanied him across the street to No. 59. They had a latchkey which they gave to him, and went with him to the room that was to be his study on the top-floor. It was a large, light, almost empty, room. A wide desk stood in front of the window; there were a few chairs and tables, and a half-empty book-case. On the desk was a pile of papers, newspapers, and manuscripts. A typewriting machine stood on the table.

"Oh," said Aldo blankly, "I do not know how to use a typewriter."

"Never mind," said the ladies in unison.

"We put it there in case you could," said Mrs. Doyle.

Then Mrs. Doyle showed him his work. "All this has to be copied," she said, showing him the tidy manuscript sheets. "And then you ought to make extracts from these papers."

She pointed to the newspapers—they were of the preceding week. He was to mark and cut out everything referring to the Congo, and underline with red ink Mr. Van Osten's name every time he came across it.

"And everything that Mr. Van Osten himself says has to be copied in this large book."

"Would it not be better to cut out the speeches in print and paste them in?" said Aldo.

"Oh no," said Mrs. Doyle. "He wants them copied. Doesn't he, Marjorie?"

Her daughter turned from the window and said:

"Oh yes!" She had flittering green eyes and a funny smile. Her frizzy, light hair came down to the bridge of her small freckled nose, and she had a manner of throwing back her head in order to look from under her hair that was peculiar to her. She was dressed like an expensive French doll.

"Oh yes," she repeated, with her head thrown back, and in her high childish voice. "I guess he wants it all copied." Her smile flickered, and she turned to the window again.

The ladies left him, and he sat down to work. He copied steadily in his beautiful commis voyageur handwriting until two o'clock. Then he went out and had a hasty lunch. At four o'clock Mrs. Doyle rustled in and asked him how he was getting on. He was getting on splendidly. At six he went home.

This went on for three days, and on Wednesday afternoon he had nothing left to copy, or to cut out, or to paste in. He looked out of the window. He took a book from the book-case—they were almost all French novels. After reading an hour, he decided to go across to No. 8, the Van Ostens' house, and ask for instructions. He had not yet seen his employer, and, as all men who are sure of their tailor and their physique, he liked new acquaintances.

The butler who opened the door looked at his clothes, then took his hat, and divested him of his overcoat. He presented a silver tray, on which Aldo, after a moment's hesitation, deposited his visiting-card. The man looked at it, opened the drawing-room door, and pronounced: "Count Aldo della Rocca." A subdued sound of voices and tea-cups subsided into silence, and Aldo entered the room.

He bowed low, his secretary bow, standing at the door, for he did not want to offend his employers. When he raised his head, Mrs. Van Osten's light green flitter of a smile was greeting him from the sofa. His quick eye saw that she was nervous. She put out her hand and said: