"He's a great one for poetry," said his sister.
George passed 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 God: 'There are too many useless things in the world. Roses, for instance. We could do without them, and have vegetables instead.' So God 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 God 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 God will say when the dead worlds come rolling in at his feet, at the end of Eternity.
X
Poverty and loneliness pushed Nancy along the dreary year, and she went in her brown dress, with her heels worn down at the side, through the autumn and the winter. Aldo was away for weeks at a time, and although he seemed in good humour when he was at home, and dressed elaborately, he was always parsimonious in the house, warning against rashness and expense.
Anne-Marie went to a kindergarten, where the grocer's children, and the baker's children, and the milkman's children went, and she liked them, and they liked her.
And now April was here. Where it could, it pushed and penetrated; through the trestles of the elevated railroads it spilt its sunshine on the ground. And it ran into the open window of the 82nd Street flat, and stretched its sweetness on the faded yellow silk of the hated lampshade.
To Nancy, who was moping in her dingy brown dress, April said: "Go out." So she put on her hat, and went out. And, having no reason to turn to the right, she turned to the left, and after a few blocks, having no reason to turn to the left, she turned to the right, and ran straight into a little messenger-boy, who was coming round the corner carrying some flowers in tissue-paper, and whistling.
Some trailing maidenhair escaping from the paper caught in her dress, and broke off. "I am sorry," she said.
"Can't yer use yer eyes!" said the boy rudely.
Then April said to Nancy: "Smile!" And she smiled, dimpling, and said again: "I am sorry."
The boy looked at her, and turned his tongue round in his mouth; then he sniffed, and said: "Here you are! This is for you."
He pushed the bunch of flowers into Nancy's hand, then turned back, and went round the corner again, whistling. Nancy ran after him, but he ran quicker, looking round every now and then and laughing at her. When he turned another corner Nancy stood with the flowers in her hand, wondering.
She opened the paper a little at the top, and looked in. Mauve orchids and maidenhair—a bouquet for a queen. She walked slowly back to her house, carrying the flowers in front of her with both hands, and their idle beauty and extravagant loveliness lifted her prostrate spirit above the dust around her.
She went to her room with them, avoiding Minna, who was clattering dishes in the kitchen, and, locking her door, sat down near the bed. She drew the tissue-paper away, and the fairy-like flowers, scintillant and bedewed, nodded at her.
In their midst lay a letter, with the crest of a Transatlantic steamship on the envelope. She opened it with timid hands.
"Dear Unknown in the Pale Blue Dress,
"I am sending this to you as a child sends a walnut-shell boat sailing down a river. Where will it go to? Whom will it reach? I am leaving America to-day. By the time you read this—are you smiling with wondering eyes? or is your mouth grave, and your heart subdued?—I shall be throbbing away to Europe on board the Lusitania, and we shall probably never meet. But I am superstitious. As I drove down to the steamer just now the words that are often in my mind when I travel sprang with loud voices to my ear:
"'Dort wo du nicht bist, dort ist dein Glück.'
"Do you know German?
"'There where thou art not, is thy happiness.'
"I am leaving America because I hate it, and have never been happy here; probably my happiness was meanwhile in Europe, or Asia, or Australia. But what, now that I am going to Europe, if my happiness were in America after all? What if I were driving away from it, taking ships and sailing from it, catching trains and leaving it behind? I stopped the cab, and got these flowers on chance.
"The steward has called a messenger, an impish boy with a crooked mouth. He stands here waiting.
"I look at him, and like to think that you will see him too. But you? How shall we find you, the flowers, and my heart, and the messenger-boy?
"I shall tell him to stop the first girl he meets who is dressed in light blue. That is you. And I reason that if you wear a light blue dress you must be young; and if you are young you are happy; and if you are happy you are kind; and if you are kind you will write to me, who am a lonely, crabbed, and crusty man.
"My address is the Métropole, London.
Nancy placed the letter on the bed beside the flowers; she sat a long time, with folded hands, looking at them. They brought but one message to her eyes that were vexed with shabbiness, to her soul that was shrunk by privation—riches.
They belonged to another sphere. They had come up the wrong street, into the wrong house. If they could have life and motion they would rise quickly—Nancy could imagine them—lifting dainty skirts and tripping hurriedly out from the sordid flat.
Nancy laid her cheek near to the delicate petals, and her hand on the letter. Her fancy played with an answer—an answer that should startle him, surprise him.
Yes, she could quote Browning to him, and Heine; she could paint a fantastic picture of her light blue gown, against which the mauve orchids melted in divine dissonance of colour; she would be wearing with it a large black hat, with feathers curving over a shading velvet brim....
She sighed, and went to the rickety bamboo-table, where the inkstand stood on a cracked plate, and the ivory pen lay in demoralized familiarity, with a red wooden penholder belonging to Anne-Marie. On the cheap notepaper which she used when she wrote to borrow a saucepan from Mrs. Schmidl, or to ask Mrs. Johnstone to wait until next week, she wrote: