The Devourers. Annie Vivanti

day at dinner he said: "Where is Nancy?"

      Mrs. Avory and Edith glanced at each other, and Valeria looked up in surprise.

      "Where is Nancy?" repeated the grandfather impatiently.

      Mrs. Avory coughed. Then she laid her hand gently on his sleeve. "Nancy is in heaven," she said softly.

      "What!" cried the old gentleman, throwing down his table-napkin and glaring round the table.

      "Your dear little daughter Nancy died many, many years ago," said Mrs. Avory.

      The old gentleman rose. "It is not true!" he said with shaking voice. "She was here this morning. I saw her." Then his lips trembled, and he began to cry.

      Valeria suddenly started up and ran from the room. In a moment she was back again, with her baby in its pink nightdress, kicking and crowing in her arms.

      "Here's Nancy!" she said, with a little break in her voice.

      "Why, of course!" cried Edith, clapping her hands. "Don't cry, grandpapa. Here's Nancy."

      "Yes," said Mrs. Avory. "See, father dear, here's Nancy!"

      The old man looked up, and his dim blue eyes met and held the sparkling eyes of the child. Long and deeply he looked into the limpid depths that returned his unwavering gaze.

      "Yes, here's Nancy," said the old man.

      So the baby was Nancy ever after.

      IV

      When Nancy had three candles round her birthday-cake, and was pulling crackers with her eyes shut, and her mother's hands pressed tightly over her ears, Edith put her elbows on the table, and said:

      "What is Nancy going to be?"

      "Good," answered Nancy quickly—"veddy good. Another cwacker."

      So she got another cracker, and Edith repeated her question.

      Mrs. Avory said: "What do you mean?"

      "Well," said Edith, whose two plaits had melted into one, with a large black bow fastened irrelevantly to the wrong end of it, "you don't want her to be just a girl, do you?"

      Valeria blushed, and said: "I have often thought I should like her to be a genius."

      Edith nodded approval, and Mrs. Avory looked dubiously at the little figure, now discreetly dragging the tablecloth down in an attempt to reach the crackers. Nancy noted the soft look, and sidled round to her grandmother.

      "Hold my ears," she said, "and give me a cwacker."

      Mrs. Avory patted the small head, and smoothed out the blue ribbon that tied up the tuft of black curls.

      "Why do you want me to hold your ears?"

      "Because I am afwaid of the cwackers."

      "Then why do you want the crackers?"

      "Because I like them."

      "But why do you like them?"

      "Because I am afwaid of them!" and Nancy smiled bewitchingly.

      Everybody found this an astonishingly profound reply, and the question of Nancy's genius recurred constantly in the conversation.

      Edith said: "Of course, it will be painting. Her father, poor dear Tom, was such a wonderful landscape-painter. And I believe he did some splendid figures, too."

      Mrs. Avory concurred; but Valeria shook her head and changed colour. "Oh, I hope not!" she said, instant tears gathering in her eyes.

      Mrs. Avory looked hurt. "Why not, Valeria?" she said.

      "Oh, the smell," sobbed Valeria; "and the models … and I could not bear it. Oh, my Tom—my dear Tom!" And she sobbed convulsively, with her head on Mrs. Avory's shoulder, and with Edith's arm round her.

      Nancy screamed loud, and had to be taken away to the nursery, where Fräulein Müller, the German successor of Wilson, shook her.

      "Could it not be music?" said Valeria, after a while, drying her eyes dejectedly. "My mother was a great musician; she played the harp, and composed lovely songs. When she died, and I went to live in Milan with Uncle Giacomo, I used to play all Chopin's mazurkas and impromptus to him, although he said he hated music if anyone else played.... And, then, when I married …"—Valeria's sobs burst forth again—"dear Tom … said …"

      Edith intervened quickly. "I certainly think it ought to be music;" and she kissed Valeria's hot face. "The kiddy sings 'Onward, Christian Soldiers,' and 'Schlaf, Kindchen' in perfect tune. Fräulein was telling me so, and said how remarkable it was."

      So Nancy was sent for again, and was brought in by Fräulein, who had a scratch on her cheek.

      Nancy was told to sing, "Schlaf, Kindchen, schlaf, da draussen steht ein Schaf," and she did so with very bad grace and not much voice. But loud and servile applause from everyone, including Fräulein, gratified her, and she volunteered her entire repertoire, comprising "There'll be razors a-flyin' in the air," which she had learned incidentally from the attractive and supercilious gardener's boy, Jim Brown.

      So it was decided that Nancy should be a great musician, and a piano with a small keyboard was obtained for her at once. A number of books on theory and harmony were bought, and Edith said Valeria was to read them carefully, and to teach Nancy without letting her notice it. But Nancy noticed it. And at last she used to cry and stamp her feet as soon as she saw her mother come into the room.

      Fräulein, with much diplomacy, and according to a German book on education, taught her her notes and her alphabet at the same time; but the result was confusion. Nancy insisted on spelling words at the piano, and could find no "o" for dog, and no "t" for cat, and no anything; while the Italian Valeria added obscurity and bewilderment by calling "d" re, and "g" sol, and "b" c. Nancy became sour and suspicious. In everything that was said to her she scented a trap for the conveying of musical knowledge, and she trusted no one, and would speak to no one but Jim Brown and the grandfather.

      At last she lit upon a device that afflicted and horrified her tormentors. One day, when her mother was drawing little men, that turned out to be semibreves, Nancy, speechless with anger, put her hand to her soft hair, and dragged out a handful of it. Valeria gave a cry; she opened the little fist, and saw the soft black fluff lying there.

      "Oh, baby, baby! how could you!" she cried. "What a dreadful thing! How can you grieve your poor mother so!"

      That ended the musical education. Every time that a note lifted its black head over Nancy's horizon, up went her hand, and she pulled out a tuft of her hair. Then she opened her fist and showed it. Books on harmony were put away; the piano was locked. No more Beethoven or Schumann was sung to her in the guise of lullabies by Fräulein at night; but her old friend, "Baby Bunting," returned, and accompanied her, as of old, when she sailed down the stream of sleep, afloat on the darkness.

      "Bye, Baby Bunting,

      Father's gone a-hunting,

      To shoot a rabbit for its skin,

      To wrap little Baby Bunting in."

      … Nancy sat on the grass, nursing her doll, and watching three small rampant feathers on Fräulein Müller's hat, nodding, like little plumes on a hearse, in time with something she was reading.

      "What are you reading?" asked Nancy.

      Fräulein Müller went on nodding, and read aloud: "'Shine out, little het, sunning over with gurls.'"

      "What?" said Nancy.

      "'Shine out, little het, sunning over with gurls,'" repeated Fräulein Müller.

      "What does mean 'sunning over with girls'?" cried Nancy, frowning.

      "Gurls, gurls—hair-gurls!" explained Fräulein.

      "Curls! Are you sure it is curls?" said Nancy, dropping her doll in the grass, and folding her hands. "Read it again. Slowly."

      "'Shine out, little het,'" repeated Fräulein. And Nancy said it after her. "'Shine out, little head, shine out, little head … sunning