The Devourers

The London audience and the London critics came en masse to hear Anne-Marie. The London audiences clapped and shouted. The London critics carped and reproved. How sad it was, said they, that a child with such a marvellous gift should waste her genius on music of the cheap virtuoso kind! What a responsibility on the shoulders of parents and masters who withheld from her the classic glories of Beethoven and Bach!

The manager, coming for the programme of the second concert, said: "Pile it on. Give it to them heavy. It's the heavy stuff they want." Then he went out and played golf.

So Anne-Marie played the Beethoven Concerto and the Beethoven Romance, the Bach Chaconne and Fugue, Prelude and Sarabande. And the audience shouted and clapped.

But the critics carped and reproved. How can a mere child understand Beethoven and Bach? How wrong to overweight the puerile brain with the giants of classic composition! It is almost a sacrilege to hear a little girl venturing to approach the Chaconne. Let her play Handel and Mozart.

So in the third concert Anne-Marie played Handel and Mozart, and the audience shouted and clapped.

But the critics said that, though she played the easy, simple music very nicely for her age, still, in a London concert hall one expected to hear something more puissant and authoritative. And why did she give concerts at all? Why not do something else? Study composition, for instance?

"That's England all over," said the manager, and went out and played golf.

Nancy was bewildered and unhappy. Bemolle danced about in helpless Latin rage, and Fräulein sat down and wrote a long letter to the Times. But it is uncertain whether the Times printed it.

Anne-Marie, who did not know that critics existed, nor care what critics said, was happy and cheerful, and bought a dog in Regent Street, to replace the quarantined Schopenhauer. He was a young and thin and careless dog, and answered to the name of Ribs. Then Anne-Marie decided that she loved England very much.

Many people called at the hotel to ask for autographs, and to express their views. One elderly musician was very stern with Anne-Marie, and sterner still with Nancy. He began by asking Nancy what she thought her child was going to be in the future.

"I do not know," said Nancy. "I am grateful for what she is now."

"Ah! but you must think of the future. You want her to be a great artist—"

"I don't know that I do," said Nancy. "She is a great artist now. If she degenerates"—and Nancy smiled—"into merely a happy woman, she will have had more than her share of luck."

"Take care! The prodigy will kill the artist!" repeated the stern man. "You pluck the flower and you lose the fruit."

Nancy laughed. "It is as if you said: 'Beware of being a rose-bud lest you never be an apple!' I am content that she should bloom unhindered, and be what she is. Why should she not be allowed to play Bach like an angel to-day, lest she should not be able to play him like Joachim ten years hence?"

"Yes, why not!" piped up Anne-Marie, who had paid no attention to the conversation, but who liked to say "Why not?" on general principles.

The stern man turned to her. "Bach, my dear child–" he began.

Anne-Marie gave a little laugh. "Oh, I know!" she said cheerfully.

"What do you know?" asked the gentleman severely.

"You are going to say, 'Always play Bach; nothing else is worthy,'" said Anne-Marie, regretting that she had joined in the conversation.

"I was not going to say anything of the kind," said the stern man.

"Oh, then you were going to say the other thing: 'Do not attempt to play Bach—no child can understand him.' Professors always say one or the other of those two things. Much stupid things are said about music."

"It is so," said the gentleman severely. "You cannot possibly understand Bach."

Anne-Marie suddenly grasped him by the sleeve.

"What do you understand in Bach? I want to know. You must tell me what you understand. Exactly what it is that you understand and I don't. Bemolle!" she cried, still holding the visitor's sleeve. "Give me the violin!"

Bemolle jumped up and obeyed with beaming face.

"Anne-Marie, darling!" expostulated Nancy.

But Anne-Marie had the violin in her hand and wildness in her eye.

"Stay here," she said to the visitor, relinquishing his sleeve with unwilling hand, and hastily tuning the fiddle. "Now you have got to tell me what you understand in Bach." She played the first five of the thirty-two variations of the Chaconne; then she stopped.

"What does Bach mean? What have you understood?" she cried. The English musician leaned back in his chair and smiled with benevolent superiority.

"And now—now I play it differently." She played it again, varying the lights and shades, the piani and the forti. "What different thing have you understood?"

"And now—now I play it like Joachim. So, exactly so, he played it for me and with me …

"…Now what have you understood that I have not? What has Bach said to you, and not to me, you silly man?"

Nancy took Anne-Marie's hand. "Hush, Anne-Marie! For shame!"

"I will not hush!" cried Anne-Marie, with flaming cheeks. "I am tired of hearing them always say the same stupid things."

The visitor, smiling acidly, stood up to go. "I am afraid too much music is not good for a little girl's manners," he said.

"Mother," said Anne-Marie, with her head against her mother's breast. "Tell him to wait. I want to say a thing that I can't. Help me."

"What is it, dear?"

"When we were to have gone to a country that you said was hot and pretty—and dirty—where was that?"

"Spain?"

"Yes, yes, yes! You said something about the little hotels there … the funny little hotels. What did you say about them?"

Nancy thought a moment. Then she smiled and remembered. "I said: 'You can only find in them what you bring with you yourself.'"

"Yes, yes!" cried Anne-Marie, raising her excited eyes. "Now say that about music."

And Nancy said it. "You will only find in music what you bring to it from your own soul."

"Yes," said Anne-Marie, turning to the visitor; "how can you know what I bring? How can you know that what you bring is beautifuller or gooder? How can you know that Bach meant what you think and not what I think?"

"Don't get excited, you funny little girl," said the visitor; and he took his leave with dignity.

But Anne-Marie was excited, and did not sleep all night.

XXII

"Anne-marie, the King wants to hear you play!"

"The King? The real King?"

"Yes."

"Not a fairy-tale king?"

"No."

"The King who was ill when I had a birthday-cake long ago?"

"Yes."

"And that I made get well again?"

"Oh, did you, dear?" laughed Nancy. "I did not know that."

"I did it," said Anne-Marie, with deep and serious mien. "I made him get well. Do you remember the seven candles round my cake?"

"I heard of them. You were seven when you were at the Gartenhaus; and I was away from you." And Nancy sighed.

"And you know about the birthday wishes?" asked the eager Anne-Marie. "The Poetry says:

"The heart must be pure,The Wish must be sure,The blow must be one—The magic is done!"

"What terrible lines!" said Nancy.

"Fräulein did them, from the German," said Anne-Marie.

"What is the blow?"

"The blowing-out of the candles. You may only blow once. And 'the Wish must be sure.' You must not change about, and regret, and wish you hadn't. Fräulein told me it would be safest to make a list of all my wishes beforehand. So I made a list days and days before my birthday. They were to be seven things—one for each candle. There was a white pony, and a kennel for Schopenhauer, and a steamer to go and fetch you home in, and a lovely dress for Fräulein, and a gold watch for you, and something else for Elisabeth, and another dog for me, and to go to the theatre every day, and—"

"There seem to be more than seven things already," said Nancy.

"Well, they were most beautiful. Especially the pony and the steamer.... And then you wrote about the King."

"I remember," said Nancy.

"You said he was ill, and that he was your papa's King, and that he was good and forgave everybody: whole countries-full of bad people! And you wrote that I was to say a prayer, and ask God to make him well."

"I remember."

"Well, I didn't, I said to God: 'Wait a minute!' because next day was my birthday, and I had the cake with the seven Wishes. I thought first I would just give up the kennel, and wish once for the King to get well. So I did it, and blew out one candle; then I gave up the present for Elisabeth, and wished for the King again. Then I thought I could do without the dress for Fräulein. And without the theatre.... And then I let the steamer and the pony go too. And I blew out all seven candles for the King!" Anne-Marie folded her hands in her lap. "So that's how I made him get well."

"How nice," said Nancy.

"And now I am going to see him, and to play to him," said Anne-Marie dreamily. "It is very strange." She raised her simple eyes to her mother. "Do you think I ought to tell him about my having saved him?"

"I think not," said Nancy. "It is much nicer to have saved him without his knowing it."

So Anne-Marie did not tell him.

… But he knew. "I know that he knew!" sobbed Anne-Marie in the evening of the great day, trembling with emotion in her mother's arms. "I saw it in the kindness of his eyes. And mother! mother! I think that was why he kissed me."

XXIII

The Piper piped tunes into Anne-Marie's ear, tunes that she had to hum, and to sing, and to play; tunes that enraptured her when she created them, and hurt her when she forgot them. So Bemolle had to write them down. Everything she heard wandered off into melodies, melted into harmonies, divided itself up into rhythms. Mother Goose rhymes and Struwwelpeter were put to music, and all the favourites in Andersen's Märchen—the Princess and the Mermaid, the Swineherd and the Goblins—corresponded to some special bars of music in Anne-Marie's mind. "She has the sense of the Leitmotiv," said Bemolle, with awestruck eyes and oracular forefinger.

It had been arranged that Bemolle should have his mornings to himself for his own compositions. He had, two years before, by dint of much scraping, paid five hundred francs to secure a good libretto for his much-dreamed-of opera, of which he had already composed the principal themes when he first went with the Professor to play for Anne-Marie; he was also half-way through a tone-poem on Edgar Allan Poe's "Eldorado." He played it occasionally to Anne-Marie; frequently to Nancy:

"Gaily bedight, a gallant Knight,In sunshine and in shadow–"

"Do you hear?" he would say, playing with much pedal, while his rough black head bounced and dipped. "Do you hear the canter and gallop and thump? It is the Horse, and the Heart, and the Hope of the Knight!"

Yes; Nancy could hear the Horse, and the Heart, and the Hope quite clearly.

"Now!" Bemolle's curly black mat would swoop over the keys and stay there quite near to his fingers, "Now—the Hag appears! Do you hear the Hag murmur and mumble? This is the Hag murmuring and mumbling."

"I should make her mumble in D flat," said Anne-Marie airily. And then she trotted out of the room, leaving in Bemolle's heart a vague sense of dissatisfaction with his Hag, because she was mumbling in A natural.

Soon, as there was much to do, programmes to prepare, letters to answer, engagements to accept, tours to refuse, and they were all four rather unbusiness-like and confusionary, Bemolle had to put aside his opera and his tone-poem, and dedicate himself exclusively to the business arrangements of the party.

They frequently got confused in their dates. "The Costanzi in Rome has telegraphed, asking for three concerts in February, and I have accepted!" cried Bemolle triumphantly, when Nancy and Anne-Marie returned from one of the dreaded and inevitable afternoon receptions given in their honour.

"I thought we had accepted Stockholm for February," said Nancy, with troubled brow.

"So we had!" exclaimed Bemolle. "Oh dear! Now we must cancel it."

"Oh, don't cancel Rome! Cancel Stockholm," said Nancy.

And so they cancelled Stockholm with great difficulty, promising Stockholm a date in March, immediately after Rome, and immediately before Berlin, where Anne-Marie was to play for the Kaiserfest the Max Bruch Concerto, accompanied by the great composer himself.

A week later, Nancy, looking at Bemolle's little book of dates and engagements, said: "How can we get from Rome to Stockholm, and from Stockholm to Berlin in six days, and give three concerts in between?"

"We cannot do so," said Fräulein. "From Berlin to Warnemünde—"

"Oh, never mind details, Fräulein," sighed Nancy. "It cannot be done."

"We must cancel Rome," said Fräulein.

"No, you can't do that," said Bemolle.

"Well, then, we must cancel Berlin," said Nancy.

"Impossible!"

"Then I suppose we must cancel Stockholm again."

So they cancelled Stockholm again, by telegrams that cost one hundred and fifty francs, and by paying damages to the extent of two thousand francs, and by swallowing and ignoring threats of lawsuits and acrimonious letters.

"I think we ought to have an impresario," said Nancy. "We do not seem to manage our business affairs well."

So they decided to have an impresario. After wavering for a long time between a little black man from Rome, who had followed them all over the Continent, and a great Paris impresario who had only telegraphed twice, they decided on a nice-looking man in Vienna, who had seemed honest, and had promised them many things. He was telegraphed for—nobody ever wrote letters if it could be helped; indeed, the correspondence which flowed in on them from all parts of the world was only half read and a quarter answered. The impresario from Vienna replied, asking for two hundred kronen for travelling expenses. These were sent to him by telegraph. And then he did not come. "We must not put up with it," said Fräulein. So they did not put up with it. They went to a solicitor, who asked for the correspondence and ten pounds for preliminary expenses, which were given to him. And that was all—except that about a year afterwards, when they had forgotten all about it, a bill from the solicitor for four pounds two shillings followed them across Europe, and finally reached them in St. Petersburg. And they paid it.

But meanwhile they decided upon the Paris impresario. He was a great man, and had "launched" everybody who was anybody in the artistic world. He needed no travelling expenses. He arrived, gorgeous of waistcoat, resplendent of hat. He said he had already fixed up two Colonne concerts in Paris for Anne-Marie. He was none of your slow, sleepy, impresarios. Here was a contract in duplicate ready for them to sign. His bright brown eye wandered critically over Bemolle. Then he took Fräulein in at a glance, and looking at Nancy's helpless and bewildered face he seemed to be satisfied with Anne-Marie's surroundings. To Anne-Marie herself he paid no attention. He had heard her play twice. That was enough. Anne-Marie, as Anne-Marie, interested him not at all. Anne-Marie as artist still less. Anne-Marie was a musical-box, ten years old, with yellow hair, whom he had wanted to get hold of for the last six months.

Here was the contract. No father? Well, Nancy could sign it in the father's stead.

Nancy, Bemolle, and Fräulein read the contract over very carefully, while the impresario drank claret and smoked cigarettes. He had a way of sniffing the air up through his nostrils, and of swallowing with his lips turned up at the corners in an expectant, self-satisfied manner that distracted Nancy, and interfered with her understanding of the contract.

There were fourteen clauses. "It seems all right," said Nancy softly to Bemolle. Bemolle frowned a businesslike frown, and Fräulein said, "Sprechen wir Deutsch," which they did, to the placid amusement of the Paris impresario, who was born in Klagenfurt.

After much reading and considering, Bemolle turned with his business frown to the impresario. "You say forty per cent to the artist?"

The impresario sniffed and swallowed. "That's right," he said. "I have the risks and the expenses."

"Of course," said Nancy.

Bemolle touched her arm lightly and warningly.

"Forty per cent of the gross receipts?" asked Bemolle suspiciously.

"Of the net receipts," said the impresario.

"Ah, that is better!" said the unenlightened Fräulein. And Bemolle put out his foot gently and kicked her.

"Now, what is this clause about three years?"

"That's right," said the impresario. "You do not think I am to have all the trouble of launching her for you to take her away after six months, while I sit sucking my fingers."

"Gemeiner Kerl!" said Fräulein to Nancy.

But Nancy said: "She is already launched."

"Is she?" said the impresario. "I don't think so." And he sniffed and swallowed. "She must make about two million francs in the next two years. Otherwise she may as well quit."

"Zwei Millionen!" gasped Fräulein, under her breath.

Bemolle kicked her again. "And what does this mean? Clause eight. 'The party of the second part agrees to give a minimum of one hundred and forty concerts per year for three years'?"

"That is a matter of form," said the impresario. "We put that into all contracts lest we should feel inclined to sit about with our hands in our pockets doing nothing. Now, if you don't like it, you can leave it. I've not come over for this. I have a contract with the biggest star singer in Europe to sign here to-day. That is what I came for. Look at it." And he pulled out a contract made in the name of a world-famed tenor, and dotted over with tens of hundreds of pounds as a field is with daisies.

Fräulein was much impressed. "Better take him quick," she said in German. "He might go." So they took him quick, and signed the contract. And Bemolle was careful to have it stamped.

"Und nun ist Alles in Ordnung," said the "gemeiner Kerl," grinning at Fräulein. And then he sniffed and swallowed.

They soon found out what Clause eight meant. The party of the second part was bound to give a minimum of one hundred and forty concerts a year—and the party of the second part was Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie was certainly not to be allowed to sit about with her hands in her pockets. In sixteen days she gave twelve concerts with eleven journeys between. She went from town to town, from platform to platform, looking like a little dazed seraph playing in its dreams. Fräulein broke down on the sixth journey, and was left behind, half-way between Cologne and Mainz. Bemolle said nothing. He could only look at Anne-Marie dozing in the train, and great tears would gather in his round black eyes, linger and roll down, losing themselves in his dark moustache, that drooped over his mouth like a seal's. When the impresario travelled with them, smoking cigarettes in their faces, and going to sleep with his hands in his pockets, and his long legs stretched across the compartment, there was murder—black and scarlet murder—in Bemolle's eyes, and his gaze would wander from the impresario's flowered waistcoat to his blond, pointed beard, searching for a place.

During the concerts the impresario was everywhere to be seen, with his hands in his pockets and his legs wide apart. Between the pieces he sat in the artists' room and talked to everyone who came in to see Anne-Marie, scenting out the journalists with the flair of a dog. Nancy could hear him inventing startling anecdotes about Anne-Marie. He talked to the enthusiastic musicians and the tearful ladies that came to congratulate, and always could Nancy hear him recounting the same untrue and unlikely anecdotes. Yes, this child he had discovered playing the piano when she was three years old. When she was five she had, with the aid of her little brother, built a violin out of a soap-box. She had been kidnapped by some Nihilists in Russia, and had been kept by them three weeks in a kind of vault, where she had to play to them for hours when they asked her to. She had jewels and decorations worth ten thousands pounds. She had three Strads; one of them had belonged to Wagner and the other to the Tsar.

At the end of the concerts the impresario got into the carriage with them. The impresario bore Anne-Marie through the clapping crowds. The impresario carried her flowers and her violin, and waved his hand out of the window to the people when Anne-Marie was too tired to do so. Anne-Marie sat in her corner of the carriage and fell asleep. Nancy bit her lips and tried not to cry. And Bemolle sat outside on the box, thinking evil Italian thoughts, and murmuring old Italian curses that had never been known to fail.

This lasted just a fortnight. On the fifteenth day Anne -Marie said: "I don't want to see that man any more. And I want to have a picnic in the grass," she added, "with things to eat in parcels, and milk in a bottle."

"Very well, dear," said Nancy. "You shall have it." And they had it. And it was very nice.

When the impresario came that evening Anne-Marie was not to be seen. She was in bed and asleep, rosy and worn out by her long day in the open air.

"Are you ready?" said the impresario, looking round. Nancy said: "Anne-Marie cannot play to-night. She is tired. I did not know where to find you, or I should have let you know before."

"Oh, indeed!" said the impresario. And he sniffed and swallowed.

"And really," said Nancy. "I have come to the conclusion that this won't do. Anne-Marie must play only when she wants to. One or two concerts in a month, if she feels like it, and not more. She shall not play because she must, but because she loves to."

"Gelungen!" said the impresario, sitting down and taking out his cigarette case.

"So I think you had better just pay for the concerts she has given, and let us go."

The impresario laughed long and loud. His shoulders shook with amusement.

"Na, gelungen!" he said again, leaving off laughing to light his cigarette, and stretching out his long legs. "How much did you say I was to pay?" And he shook with laughter again.

"Well, our share, I suppose," said Nancy timidly.

"That's right," said the impresario, and he stopped laughing suddenly, and looked at his watch. "Now hurry up and come along. It is time to start."

"Anne-Marie is asleep," said Nancy.

"Then wake her," said the impresario.

Nancy felt herself turning pale.

"Get on," said the impresario; "it won't kill her to play to-night. And the concert-hall is sold out."

"I am sorry," said Nancy; "but Anne-Marie never plays when she is tired."

"That is foolish, my dear woman," said the impresario, getting up. "I shall be obliged to wake her myself if you don't." And he took a step towards the closed door which led into the room where Anne-Marie was sleeping.

Now Anne-Marie's sleep was a sacred thing. A thing watched over and hallowed, approached on tip of toe, spoken of with finger on lip and bated breath. If Anne-Marie slept perfect silence was kept, and the world must stop. If Bemolle chanced to open a door or creak a careless shoe, he was frowned at with horrified brows. Anne-Marie's sleep was a thing inviolate and sacrosanct.

Bemolle had been standing near the window looking out into the darkness while the impresario spoke to Nancy; but with the first step in the direction of the closed door Bemolle darted forward with a growl like that of a angry dog. Bemolle was short and stout, but his long accumulated anger and hatred stood him in lieu of height and muscles. He jumped at the impresario, he pulled his beard, he scratched his face, he pummelled him in the chest, and with short, excited legs he kicked him. When the big man recovered from the amazement caused by this unexpected onslaught, he lifted Bemolle off his legs and sat him on the floor. The he took his hat and his umbrella and walked out of the room, and out of the hotel.

"Has he gone?" said Bemolle, after a while, sitting up, with papery cheeks and a reddened eye.

"Yes, he has gone," said Nancy. "Poor Bemolle! Did he hurt you?"

Bemolle did not rise from the floor. He shook his head, and muttered hoarsely: