"I knew it was useless," said the Surgeon angrily. The face was covered, and the stretcher was wheeled away.
An hour later Zio Giacomo, Nino, and Aunt Carlotta came hurrying in, red-eyed and white-faced. It was over. Aunt Carlotta wrung her hands, and the Sister consoled her, and assured her that there had been no suffering.
"I want to see her," said Aunt Carlotta, sobbing.
"No, no," said the Sister. "Don't."
"Don't!" said Giacomo brokenly, the tears streaming down his face. Nino said not a word, but went with one of the young doctors into the large bare room where two stretchers stood, each with a shrouded burden.
"This one," said the doctor, he who had held the mask. Nino saw, gasped, and turned away.
Aunt Carlotta was being led in, supported by the Sister. Nino grasped her hand.
"Come away," he whispered; "come away at once."
Carlotta shook her head, her face buried in her handkerchief. "My sister's child! My sister's only child! I must close her eyes." Nino went out.
Carlotta was led to the farther of the two stretchers. The cloth was lifted from Valeria's face. Then shriek after shriek resounded through the bare chill room, echoing through the wide corridors, reaching the patients lying selfish and sad in their wards. Shriek after shriek. But the two quiet figures on the stretchers were not disturbed.
Valeria was buried in Nervi near Tom.
IX
When Nancy in New York received the news of her mother's death she wore black instead of brown, and wept, and wept, and wept, as children weep for their mothers. Then she wore brown again, and went on living for Anne-Marie, as mothers live for their children.
They had left Mrs. Schmidl's kindly, dingy roof, and moved a little further away from the niggers, into a small flat in 82nd Street. Mrs. Schmidl's niece, Minna, came and did the housework, and took Anne-Marie for walks. Anne-Marie loved Minna. Anne-Marie watched her with entranced gaze when she spoke to the tradesmen, and followed her from room to room when she swept and did the beds. Minna wore low-necked collars, and a little black velvet ribbon round her neck, and pink beads. She was beautiful in Anne-Marie's sight, and Anne-Marie imitated as much as possible her manner, her walk, and her language. Nancy could hear them talking together in the kitchen. Minna's voice: "What did you have for your tea? A butter-bread?" And Anne-Marie's piping treble: "Yes, two butter-breads mit sugar." Minna: "That's fine! To-morrow Tante Schmidl makes a cake, a good one. We eat it evenings." "A cake—a good one!" echoed Anne-Marie.
Nancy's soul crumbled with mortification. She had taken out her manuscript, and it lay before her on the table once more. Its broad pages were dear to her touch. They felt thick and solid. The tingling freshness of thought, the little thrill that always preceded the ripple and rush of inspiration, caught at her, and the ivory pen was in her hand.
"A cake—a good one," repeated in the next room Anne-Marie, who liked the substantial German sound of that phrase.
"Oh, my little girl! My little girl! How will she grow up?" And Nancy the mother took the ivory pen from Nancy the poet's hand, and Anne-Marie was called and kept, and taught, for the rest of the day.
During the months that followed, Nancy played a game with her little daughter which, to a certain extent, was successful.
"We will play that you are a little book of mine, that I have written. A pretty little book like Andersen's 'Märchen,' with the pictures in it. And in this book that I love–"
"What colour is it?" asked Anne-Marie.
"Pink, and white, and gold," said Nancy, kissing the child's shining hair.
"Well, in it, in the midst of the loveliest fairy-tale, somebody has come and written dreadfully silly, ugly words, like—like 'butter-bread.' I must take all those out, mustn't I? And put pretty words and pretty thoughts in instead. Otherwise nobody will like to read the book."
"No," said Anne-Marie, looking slightly dazed. "And will you put pictures in it?"
"Oh yes," said Nancy. "And I wish I could put rhymes into it too."
But that was not to be. Long explanations about boy and toy—rain and pain—fly and cry—far and star—left Anne-Marie bewildered and cross.
Nancy coaxed and petted her. "Just you say a rhyme! Only one. Now what rhymes with day?"
No. Anne-Marie did not know what rhymed with day.
"Play, of course, my goosie dear! Now what rhymes with dear?"
"Play," said Anne-Marie.
"No; do think a little, sweetheart. With dear!—dear?"
"Vegetables?" asked Anne-Marie, who had spent many hours in Frau Schmidl's kitchen.
Nancy groaned. "Dear!" she repeated again.
"Darling!" cried Anne-Marie triumphantly, and was lifted up and embraced.
"I wish you were a poet, Anne-Marie!" said her mother, pushing the fair locks from the child's level brow.
"What for?" said Anne-Marie, wriggling.
"Poets never die," said Nancy, thus placing a picture in the fairy-tale book.
"Then I'll be," said Anne-Marie, who knew death from having buried a dead kitten in the Schmidls' yard, and dug it up a day or two after to see what it was like.
But Anne-Marie was not to be a poet. In the little pink and white books that mothers think they create, the Story is written before ever they reach the tender maternal hands. And Anne-Marie was not to be a poet.
But Nancy herself could not forget that Fate had printed the seal of immortality upon her own girlish brow. She thought: "I cannot finish The Book now. The Book must wait until later on, when Anne-Marie does not need me every moment. But now, now I can write a cycle of child-poems on Anne-Marie."
So she watched her little daughter through narrowed eyelids, throwing over the unconscious blonde head the misty veil of imagery, searching in the light blue eyes for the source of word and symbol, standing Anne-Marie like a little neoteric statue on the top of a sonnet, trying to fix her in some rare, archaic pose. But Anne-Marie was the child of her surroundings; Anne-Marie wore clothes of Minna's cutting and fitting, and on her yellow head a flat pink cotton hat like a lid. Anne-Marie had spoken Italian like a royal princess, but her German-American English was of 7th Avenue and 82nd Street. And Anne-Marie's pleasures were, as are those of every child, taken where she found them; for her no wandering in a shady garden, nursing an expensive, mellifluously-named doll. Since the Monte Carlo "Marguerite-Louise," whose eyes, attached to two small lumps of lead now lay in a box on a shelf, Anne-Marie's dolls had been numerous but unloved. At Mrs. Schmidl's suggestion, and for economic motives, Nancy had gone down town one day to a wholesale shop in Lower Broadway, where she had been able to buy "one dozen dolls, size nine, quality four, hair yellow, dress blue," for two dollars and seventy cents.
The first of the dozen was the same evening presented to Anne-Marie. It was rapturously kissed; it was christened Hermina—Minna's name; its clotted yellow hair was combed; attempts were made to undress it, but as it did not undress, it was put to sleep as it was, and Anne-Marie went to bed carefully beside it. In due time Hermina broke and died. What unbounded joy was Anne-Marie's when Hermina herself, with the self-same azure eyes, clotted yellow hair, blue dress, angel smile, reappeared before her. She was rapturously kissed. In due time also this second Hermina, legless, and with pendulous, dislocated head, was taken away from Anne-Marie's fond arms, and a new stiff Hermina was produced, with clotted hair and angel smile renewed. Anne-Marie's eyes opened large and wide, and she drew a deep breath. With more amazement than love she accepted the third Hermina, and did not kiss her. That Hermina died quickly, and Nancy, with a triumphant smile, produced a fourth. With a shriek of hatred Anne-Marie took her by the well-known painted boots, and hit the well-known face against the floor.