Chapter VI: Book II: I (1)

When eighteen thousand of the forty thousand francs were gone, Aldo said: "I must do something." And when eighteen thousand of the forty thousand francs were left, he said: "Something must be done." Carlo had washed his hands of him; all that Lady Sainsborough had sent him was her portrait, one "taken on the lawn with Fido," and another, "starting for my morning ride with Baron Cucciniello." "Flighty old lunatic!" said Aldo, throwing the pictures into the fire and digging at them with the poker. Then he called Nancy and told her how matters stood.

Nancy did not seem to realize that it made much difference. She crawled under the table and hid behind the green table-cloth. "Peek-a-boo!" The baby crawled after her and pulled her hair.

"Well, what are we going to do?" said Aldo.

"As soon as the baby can walk," replied Nancy, looking up at him from under the table, "I shall start my work again. As long as it is such a teeny, weeny, helpless lamb"--and she kissed the small, soft head on which the hair grew in yellow tufts here and there--"its mother is not going to be such a horrid (kiss), naughty (kiss), ugly (kiss) tigress (kiss, kiss) as to leave a poor little forlorn (kiss)----"

Aldo left the room, and nobody under the table noticed that he had gone.

He went to Zio Giacomo, who for Nancy's sake took him into his office to make architectural drawings and plans at a salary of two hundred francs a month.

At the end of the third week Aldo looked round the room where four other men were drawing plans, and observed them meditatively. Two were sallow and thin, one was sallow and fat, and one was red and fat. The sallow, thin ones had little hair, the sallow, fat one had no hair; the red, fat one wore glasses. They had all been here drawing plans for four, six, and twelve years at salaries between two hundred and six hundred and fifty francs a month.

Aldo made a calculation on his blotting-paper. Say he stayed five years. He would get 200 francs a month for the first two years = 4,800 francs; 300, or say 350, for the next two years = 8,400 francs; 400, or perhaps 450, for the following year = 5,400 francs. Total: 18,600 francs.

Eighteen thousand six hundred francs! So that, supposing he spent nothing, but went on living on what remained of Nancy's _dot_ for five years (which was out of the question, of course, as it was not enough), at the end of five years he would find himself exactly where he was to-day, and just five years older. Probably thin and sallow; or fat and sallow; or red and fat, with glasses. It was preposterous. It was out of the question. Here he was to-day, with the eighteen thousand francs and the five years still before him.

He took his hat and walked out of the office.

He wrote to Zio Giacomo, who said he was an addlepated and clot-headed imbecile. Aldo explained the situation mathematically to Valeria and Nancy, who looked vague, and said that it seemed true.

"Eighteen thousand francs," said Aldo, "cleverly used, might set us on our feet. Now, what shall we do with it?"

Valeria folded gentle hands; and Nancy said: "Peek-a-boo." So the baby, at Aide's request, was sent out for a walk with the sour-faced thing chosen by Aunt Carlotta to be its nurse.

"You could go into partnership with someone," said Nancy sweetly, with her head on one side, to show that she took an interest.

Valeria nodded, and said: "Mines are a good thing."

Aldo was silent. "Eighteen thousand francs," he said thoughtfully. "It is not much." Then he said: "Of course, one could buy a shop."

In his deep, dreaming eyes passed the vision of his grandfather's nice little _negozio_ in the Strada Caracciolo at Naples, with its strings of coral hanging row on row; tortoise-shell combs and brushes with silver initials; brooches of lava and of mosaic, that were sold for a franc each; shells of polished mother-of-pearl; pictures of Vesuvius by night, reproduced on convex glass; and booklets of photographs, that English people would always come to look at. He could see his grandfather now, stepping in front of the counter with a booklet of views in his hand, and shaking it out suddenly, br-r-r ... in front of his English customers. Also he could see his grandfather tying up neat little parcels, giving change, bowing and smiling with still handsome eye and gleaming smile, and accompanying people to the door, waving an obsequious and yet benevolent hand. Aldo would have liked a little shop in Naples, and easy-going, trustful English customers who would not haggle and bargain, but pass friendly remarks about the weather, and pay their good money. Ah, the good little money coming in that one can count every evening, and put away, and look at, and count again; not this vague, distant "salary," that one does not see, or count, or have, with no surprises and no possibilities.

But Valeria was speaking. "A shop! My dear Aldo! What a dreadful idea! How can you say such a thing?"

And Nancy, who thought he was joking, said, with all her dimples alight: "That's right, Aldo. We shall have a toy-shop--five hundred rattles for the baby, eight hundred rubber dolls for the baby, ten thousand woolly sheep and cows that squeak when you squeeze them. Let us have a toy-shop, there's a dear boy." She jumped up and kissed his straight, narrow parting on the top of his shining black head. "And if all the toys are broken by the baby, and have the paint licked off, and the woolliness pulled out," she added, with her cheek against his, "I shall give away an autograph poem with each of the damaged beasts, and charge two francs extra."

The allusion to the autograph poem made Aldo realize that it was impossible that his wife, the celebrated author, could keep a shop, so he sighed, and said: "I have a good mind to try Monte Carlo. I have never been there, but my friend Delmonte once gave me a system."

"Why doesn't he play it himself?" said Nancy. "He looks as if he needed it."

"He has played it," said Aldo; "but he is a man lacking the strength of character that one needs to play a system. A system is a thing one has to stick to and go through with, no matter how one may be tempted to do something else. This is really a rather wonderful system."

And Aldo took out a pencil and a note-book, and showed the system to Valeria and Nancy.

"You see, N. is black and R. is red." Then he made rows of little dots irregularly under each initial. "You see, I win on all this."

"Do you?" said Nancy and Valeria, bending over the table with heads close together.

"Yes; I win on the intermittences."

"What are they?"

"Oh, never mind what they are," said Aldo. "And I win on all the twos, and the threes, and the fives."

"And the fours," said Nancy, who did not understand what he was saying, but wanted to show an interest.

"No, I don't win on the fours," said Aldo. "I lose on the fours. But I win on the fives and sixes, and everything else. And, of course, fours come seldom."

"Of course," echoed Nancy and Valeria, looking vacantly at the little dots under the N. and the R.

"I could make the game cheaper," said Aldo thoughtfully, "by waiting, and letting the intermittences pass, and only starting my play on the twos."

"Perhaps that would be a good plan," said Nancy, with vacant eyes.

"But," said Valeria, "I thought you won on the intermittences."

"I do," said Aldo, frowning, "if they _are_ intermittences. But supposing they are fours?"

This closed the door on all comprehension so far as Nancy was concerned. But Valeria, who had been to Monte Carlo for four days on her wedding-tour, said decisively: "Then I think I should wait and see. If they _are_ fours, then play only on the fives and sixes."

"There is something in that," said Aldo, rubbing his chin. "But I must try it. Now you just say 'black' or 'red' at random, as it comes into your head."

Nancy and Valeria said "black" and "red" at random, and Aldo staked imaginary five-franc pieces, and doubled them, and played the system. After about fifteen minutes he had won nearly two thousand francs.

So it was decided that he should quietly go to Monte Carlo and try the system, starting as soon as possible.

"Do not speak about it to anyone," he said. "Delmonte made a special point of that. If too many people knew of a thing like this, it would spoil everything."

So no one was told, but they set about making preparations for Aldo's departure.

"I shall not stay more than a month at a time," said Aldo. "One must be careful not to arouse suspicions that one is playing a winning game."

"Of course," said Valeria.

And Nancy said: "Is it not rather mean to go there when you know that you _must_ win?"

Aldo explained that the administration was not a person, and added that the few thousand francs that he needed every year would never be missed by such a wealthy company.

Then Nancy said: "I know Monte Carlo is a dreadful place. Full of horrid women. I hope--oh dear----!"

Aldo kissed her troubled brow. "Dear little girl, I am going there to make money, and nothing else will interest me."

"I know that," said Nancy, with a little laugh and a little sigh. "But the nasty creatures are sure to look at you."

"That cannot be helped," said Aldo, raising superior eyebrows.

Nancy kissed him and laughed. "Such a funny boy!" she said. "I believe your Closed Garden, your _hortus conclusus_, is nothing but a potato patch! But I like to sit in it all the same."

II

May brought the baby a tooth. June brought it another tooth and a golden shine for its hair. August brought it a word or two; September stood it, upright and exultant, with its back to the wall; and October sent it tottering and trilling into its mother's arms.

Its names were Lilien Astrid Rosalynd Anne-Marie.

"Now baby can walk," said Valeria to her daughter, "you ought to take up your work again."

"Indeed I must," said Nancy, lifting the baby to her lap. "Have you seen her bracelets?" And she held the chubby wrist out to Valeria, showing three little lines dinting the tender flesh. "Three little bracelets for luck." And Nancy kissed the small, fat wrist, and bit it softly.

"Where has your manuscript been put?" said Valeria.

"Oh, somewhere upstairs," said Nancy, pretending to eat the baby's arm. "Good, good! Veddy nice! Mother, this baby tastes of grass, and cowslips, and violets. Taste!" And she held the baby's arm out to Valeria.

"Tace," said the baby. So the grandmother tasted and found it very nice. Then she had to taste the other arm, and then a small piece of cheek. Then the baby stuck out her foot in its white leather shoe, but grandmamma would not taste it, and called it nasty-nasty. And the other foot was held up and called nasty-nasty. But the baby said "Tace!" and the corners of her mouth drooped. So grandmamma tasted the shoe and found it very nice, and then the other shoe, and it was very nice. And then Nancy had to taste everything all over again.

Thus the days passed busily, bringing much to do.

Aldo wrote that "the system" was incomparable. His only fear was that the administration might notice it. He now played with double stakes. A few days later he wrote again. There was a flaw in the system. But never mind. He had found another one, a much better one. He had bought it for a hundred francs from a man who had been shut out of the Casino because the administration was afraid of his system. Of course, he had promised to give the man a handsome present before he left. He had won eight hundred francs in ten minutes with the new system last night. Of course, he had to be very careful, because the flaw of the other system had been disastrous.

A third letter came. After winning steadily for four days, he had had the most incredible _guigne_: a run of twenty-four on black when he was doubling on red. But he would stick to the system; it was the only way. People that pottered round and skipped about from one thing to another were bound to lose. Love to all.

Then came a postcard. "Have discovered that all previous "s's" were wrong. Have made friends with a 'cr,' who will put things all right again."

Valeria and Nancy puzzled over the "cr." The "s's" of course meant "systems," but what could a "cr" be? Valeria felt anxious, and sent a messenger for Nino. Nino left Carlo's office at once, and hurried to Via Senato, where, since Aldo's departure, Valeria was staying with Nancy and the baby. All three were on the balcony, and waved hands to him as he crossed the Ponte Sant' Andrea, and hurried across the Boschetti to No. 12.

"How do you do, Valeria?" and he kissed her cheek. "How do you do, Nancy?" and he kissed her hand. "How do you do, Anne-Marie?" and he kissed the baby on the top of the head. "What is the matter? What has Aldo done?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Nancy. "How could you guess that it was about Aldo?"

Nino smiled.

Valeria held the postcard out for him to see, and covering everything but the last line, said: "What does 'cr' mean?"

Nino looked, and said: "Where does he write from?"

Nancy and Valeria exchanged glances, and decided that they could trust Nino. He would not use the system or give it to other people. Besides, the system had a flaw.

"Monte Carlo," they said in unison.

Nino made a mouth as if to whistle, and did not whistle. The baby sitting on the rug watched him and wished he would do it again.

"I suppose 'cr' is croupier," said Nino. Then there was silence. After a while Nino said: "How much did he take with him?"

"Everything," said Valeria.

Then Nino made the mouth again, and the baby was pleased.

"You had better go and fetch him. Quick!" said Nino, looking at Nancy.

"Oh!" gasped Nancy, "must I? Is it bad?"

"Quite bad," said Nino. "He has probably lost half of your forty thousand francs already."

"He only had eighteen," said Nancy, with a twinkle in her grey eye.

"That's better," said Nino. "But go and fetch him all the same."

Nancy was greatly excited and rather pleased. The baby should see the Mediterranean. Valeria, "grandmamma," must come too, of course.

"No, dear," said Valeria, "I cannot. I have promised Aunt Carlotta to help her with her reception to-morrow evening. But I will take you part of the way--as far as Alessandria or Genoa."

"But I am sure Nino could come," said Nancy, looking up at him interrogatively.

"Yes," said Nino, and then quickly said no, he was sorry, he could not possibly leave Carlo's office. Besides, she would manage Aldo better without him.

The next morning he went to the station to see them off. Valeria had Anne-Marie in her arms, and Nancy walked beside them, looking like the baby's elder sister. They had no luggage but a small valise, for Valeria was returning to Milan in the afternoon, and Nancy was sure that she would come back with Aldo the day after to-morrow.

Nino found comfortable places for them, and then stepped down and stood in front of the window, looking up with that vacant half-smile that everyone has who, having said good-bye, stands waiting for the train to start. Nancy was looking down at him with sweet eyes. There was something blue in her hat that made her eyes look bluer. Behind her the baby, held up by Valeria, was waving a short arm up and down as the spirit of Valeria's hand moved it. The bell rang, the whistle blew, and as the train passed him slowly, Nino suddenly jumped on to the step at the end of the carriage, turned the stiff handle, and went in. "I will come as far as Valeria does," he said. He was greeted with delight, but the baby continued irrelevantly to wave good-bye to him for a long time. They passed Alessandria and Genoa, and went on to Savona. The baby looked at the Mediterranean, and Nancy looked at the baby, and Nino looked at Nancy, and Valeria looked at them all, and loved them all with an aching maternal love. At Savona Valeria and Nino got out. They had half an hour to wait for the return train that would take them back to Milan.

They stood on the platform in front of the carriage window, and looked up at Nancy with that vacant half-smile that people have when they have said good-bye.... Nancy leaned out of the window and looked down tenderly at her mother's upturned face, and then at Nino, and then at her mother again. The baby stood on the seat beside her, waving its short arm up and down, with yellow curls falling over its eyes.

_"In vettura!"_ called the guard.

"We shall be back the day after to-morrow," said Nancy for the fourth time; "or perhaps to-morrow."

"Perhaps to-mollow," echoed the baby, who always repeated what other people said. Nino went close to the window, and put up his hand to touch the baby's.

"You don't know what 'to-morrow' means," he said. Anne-Marie let him take her hand. He felt the small, warm fist closed in his. "When is to-morrow, Anne-Marie?"

"To-mollow is ... to-mollow is when I am to have evlything," explained Anne-Marie.

"That sounds like a long time away," said Nancy, laughing.

"Yes, indeed," said Valeria.

"Yeth, indeed," echoed the baby.

_"Pronti, partenza?"_ said the guard.

"Good-bye, Nancy! Good-bye, baby!" The bell sounded and the whistle blew.

"Good-bye, mother dear." The train moved slightly and Nancy waved her hand.

"Good-bye, Nancy! Good-bye, baby! Good-bye, my two darlings!"

The train was moving swiftly away.

"Perhaps to-morrow," cried Nancy, waving again. Then she drew back, lest a spark should fly into the baby's eyes.

Valeria stood like a statue looking after them. "Good-bye, Nancy! Good-bye, baby!"

They were gone.

And to-morrow was a long time away.

III

When the leisurely Riviera train drew into the station at Monte Carlo, Nancy looked out of the window to see Aldo, to whom she had telegraphed. He was not there. A group of laughing women in light gowns, two Englishmen with their hands in their pockets, and a German honeymoon-couple were on the platform. No one else. A handsome, indolent porter helped Nancy and the baby to descend, and, taking their valise, walked out in front of them, and handed it to the omnibus-driver of the Hotel de Paris.

"Non, non," said Nancy. "J'attends mon mari."

"Ah!" said the porter; "elle attend son mari." Then he and the omnibus-driver grinned, and spat, and looked at her.

"Donnez-moi ma valise," said Nancy.

"Donnez-lui sa valise," said the porter.

"J'vas la lui donner," said the omnibus-driver, climbing slowly up the little ladder, and taking the valise down again.

"Voila la valise." And he put it on the ground. Nancy told the porter to take it. The omnibus-driver looked astonished. "Quoi? Et moi donc? Pas de pourboire?" And the porter spat and grinned, and said to Nancy: "Faut lui donner son pourboire."

So Nancy gave the omnibus-driver fifty centimes, and told the porter to take the valise to the Hotel des Colonies. He shouldered the small portmanteau, and stepped briskly and lightly up the flight of steps that leads to the Place du Casino. Nancy followed, with Anne-Marie holding on to her skirts. An old woman sitting with her basket at the foot of the stairs offered them oranges. Nancy said, "Non, merci," and hurried on. But Anne-Marie wanted one. She was tired and hungry, and began to cry. So Nancy stopped and bought an orange. Then she lifted Anne-Marie in her arms, and hurried up the steps after the porter. At the top of the winding flight Nancy looked round. It was a light June evening. Where the sky was palest the new moon looked like a little gilt slit in the sky, letting the light of heaven show through.

The street was deserted. The porter had vanished. Anne-Marie began to cry because she wanted her orange peeled, and Nancy, after hurrying forward a few steps, stopped, lifted the child on to the low wall, sat down beside her, and peeled the orange. Nancy was convinced that her portmanteau was gone for ever, but nothing seemed to matter much, so long as Anne-Marie did not cry. She looked at the light sky, the palm-trees, and the smooth pearl-grey sea. She wondered where the Hotel des Colonies was, and whether Aldo had not received the telegram. The legends of Monte Carlo murders and suicides traversed her mind for an instant. Then Anne-Marie, who had never sat on a wall eating oranges, lifted her face, smudged with tears and juice, and said: "Nice! Nice evelything. I like." So Nancy liked too.

They found the Hotel des Colonies after many wanderings, and there was the porter with the valise waiting for them. Did Monsieur della Rocca live here? Yes. Had he received a telegram? No; here was the telegram waiting for monsieur. Did they know where was monsieur?

"Eh! you will find him at the Casino," said the stout proprietress.

Nancy asked to be shown to her husband's room, but as it turned out to be a very small _mansarde_ at the top of the house, Nancy took another room, and there Anne-Marie went to bed under the mosquito-netting, and was asleep at once. Nancy went downstairs. The salon was dark. Madame la Proprietaire sat in the garden with an old lady and a little fat boy.

"If you want to go to the Casino," she said, "I will look after the little angel upstairs!"

But Nancy said: "Oh no, thank you."

Then the old lady said: "Allez donc! Allez donc! Vous savez bien les hommes!... Ca pourrait ne pas rentrer." Then she added: "I have been here twelve years. This, my little grandson, was born here. You can go, tranquillement. The petit ange will be all right."

Nancy went upstairs for her hat. Anne-Marie was asleep and never stirred. So Nancy went through the little garden again with hesitant feet, and turned her face to the Casino. The streets were almost empty. She was in her dark travelling-dress, and nobody noticed her. As she passed the Hotel de Paris she saw the people dining at the tables with the little red lights lit. In the square round the flower-beds other people sat in twos and threes; and over the way, in the Cafe de Paris, the Tziganes in red coats were playing "Sous la Feuillee."

Nancy suddenly felt frightened and sad. What was she doing here, all alone, at night in this unknown place, and little Anne-Marie sleeping in that large bed all alone in a strange hotel? She felt as if she were in a dream, and hurried on, dizzy and scared. A man, passing, said: "Bonsoir, mademoiselle;" and Nancy ran on with a beating heart, up the steps and into the brilliantly lighted atrium. Two men in scarlet and white livery stopped her, and asked what she wanted; then they showed her into an open room on the left, where men that looked like judges and lawyers sat in two rows behind desks waiting for her.

She stepped uncertainly up to one of them--he was bald with a pointed beard--and said: "Pardon ... I am looking for Monsieur della Rocca."

"Ah, indeed," said the man with the beard. "I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance." And a fair man sitting near him smiled.

"Have you no idea where I can find him?" said Nancy, blushing until tears came to her eyes.

"What is he? What does he do?" asked the fair man.

"He--he came here three weeks ago. He--has a system," stammered Nancy. "I telegraphed, but he did not receive my telegram. And the lady of the hotel said I should find him here."

A few people who had entered and stood about were listening with amused faces.

"Ha, ha! You say monsieur has a system?" said the man with a beard in a loud voice. And he nodded significantly to someone opposite him whom Nancy could not see. She felt that by mentioning the system she had ruined her husband's chances for ever. But nothing seemed to matter except to find him, and not to be alone any more.

"At what hotel are you staying, mademoiselle?" asked the fair man.

"Hotel des Colonies," said Nancy, in a trembling voice.

"And your name, mademoiselle?"

"Giovanna Desiderata Felicita della Rocca," said Nancy. And the whole row of men smiled, while the one before whom she stood wrote her name in a large book.

"Your profession?"

Nancy had read "Alice in Wonderland" when she was a child, and now she knew that she was asleep. Otherwise, why should she be telling these people that she wrote poems?

She told them so. And they pinched their noses and pulled their moustaches, because they were laughing--they were _pouffant de rire_--and they did not want to show it.

"And ... she did nothing else but write poems? Nothing else at all?"

"No, nothing." And as the man with the beard seemed suddenly to be staring her through and through, she added nervously: "Except ... I have begun a book ... a novel. But it is not finished."

The fair man suddenly handed her a little piece of blue cardboard, and requested her to write her name on it. She said, "Why?" and the man made a gesture with his hand that meant, "It has nothing to do with me. Do not do so if you do not wish."

All the others smiled and bent their heads down, and pretended to write.

Nancy looked round her with the expression of a hunted rabbit. A man was coming in, sauntering along with his hand in his pocket. He was English, Nancy saw at a glance. He reminded her a little of Mr. Kingsley. Tom Avory's daughter went straight towards the new-comer, and said:

"You are English?"

"I am," said the Englishman.

"Will you please help me? My father was English," said Nancy, with a little break in her voice. "They ... they want me to write my name. Shall I do it?"

The Englishman smiled slightly under his straight-clipped, light moustache. "Do you want to go into the gaming-rooms?"

"Yes," said Nancy.

"Well, write your name, then," he said, and walked back to the desk beside her. "You will see me do it too," he added, smiling, as he gave up a card and got another one in return, on the back of which he wrote "Frederick Allen."

All the employes were quite serious again, and seemed to have forgotten Nancy's existence. She signed her card, and entered the atrium at the Englishman's side.

"I am looking for my husband," she explained, and told him the story of the system, and the telegram, and the hotel. "I feel as if I had been telling all this over and over and over again, like the history of the wolf." She smiled, and the dimple dipped sweetly in her left cheek. She was flushed, and her dark hair had twisted itself into little damp ringlets on her forehead. Mr. Allen looked at her curiously.

"I am sure I have seen you before," he said. But he could not remember where. Nancy said she thought not.

"Oh, I am sure of it," said Mr. Allen. "I remember your smile."

But the smile he remembered had belonged to Valeria, when she stood on a little bridge in Hertfordshire, and took from his hands a garden hat that had fallen into the water.

They went through the rooms, and the chink, chink, of the money, and the heavy perfume, made Nancy dizzy and bewildered. Aldo was nowhere to be seen. They went from table to table--the season was ended, and one could see each player at a glance--then into the _trente-et-quarante_ rooms, which were hushed and darkened; then through the "buffet," and out into the atrium again.

Nancy looked up at her companion, and tears gathered in her eyes. "I cannot imagine where he is! You do not think--you do not think----" And in her wide, frightened eyes passed the vision of Aldo, lifeless under a palm-tree in the gardens, his divine eyes broken, his soft hair clotted with blood.

"I think he is all right enough," said the Englishman. "We can look in the Cafe de Paris."

They left the atrium and went down the steps and out into the square again. The "Valse Bleue" was swaying its hackneyed sweetness across the dusk. Nancy started--surely that was Aldo! There, coming out of the Cafe de Paris, with a fat woman in white walking beside him. That was Aldo! Nancy hurried on, then stopped. The Englishman stood still beside her, and stared discreetly at the trees on his right-hand side. Aldo and the woman had sauntered off to the left, and now sat down on a bench facing the Credit Lyonnais.

"Will you wait a minute?" said Nancy. And she ran off towards the bench, while Mr. Allen waited and gazed into the trees.

Yes, it was Aldo. She heard him laugh. Who could that fat woman be? She hurried on, and stopped a few paces from them.

Aldo, turning round, saw her. He was motionless with astonishment for one moment. Then he bent forward, and said a word or two to his companion. She nodded, and he rose and came quickly forward to Nancy.

"What is it?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, Aldo!" she said, tears of relief filling her eyes. "At last! I have looked for you everywhere."

"What is it?" repeated Aldo, in an impatient whisper. "Not--not Anne-Marie? She is all right?"

"Oh yes, dear," said Nancy, drying her eyes. "Poor little sweet thing! She is fast asleep at the hotel. Come along! Come and thank an English gentleman who----" She was about to slip her arm through his when he drew back.

"Don't!" he said. "Go back to the hotel at once! I shall be there in five minutes. You don't want to spoil everything, do you?"

"Spoil what?" said Nancy.

"Everything," said Aldo. "Our prospects, our future, everything."

"Why? How? What do you mean?" Nancy looked across at the broad figure in white sitting on the bench; she had turned round, and seemed to be looking at Nancy through a _lorgnon_. Nancy could discern a large face and golden hair under a white straw hat. "Who is that?"

"Oh, she's all right," said Aldo. "I have no time to explain now. Go home, and do as I tell you. If you don't," he added, as he saw indignant protest rising to Nancy's lips, "you and the child will have to bear the consequences. Remember what I tell you----you and the child."

Then he raised his hat, and went back to the bench where the woman was awaiting him. Nancy, paralyzed with astonishment, saw him sit down, saw his plausible back and explanatory gestures, while the woman still looked at her through her long-handled _lorgnon_.

She walked slowly back in stupefaction. The Englishman stood where she had left him, at the foot of the Casino steps, facing the trees. He had lit a cigarette. He turned, when she was near him, and threw the cigarette away. He said:

"Are you coming into the rooms again?"

"No," said Nancy.

"Shall I see you to your hotel?"

"No," said Nancy; and stood there, dull and ashamed.

"Well," said the Englishman, putting out his hand in a brisk, matter-of-fact way, "good-night." He shook her chilly hand. Then he ventured consolation. "All the same a hundred years hence," he said, and turned quickly into the Casino.

He did not stay. He came out a moment afterwards, and followed the dreary little figure in its grey travelling dress that went slowly up the street, and round to the right. When he had seen her safely enter the garden of the hotel he turned back.

"Poor little girl!" he said. "I wonder where I met her before?"

Aldo entered the hotel half an hour later, and went to Nancy's room, armed with soothing and diplomatic explanations. But Nancy was on her knees by Anne-Marie's bed, with her face buried in the mosquito-netting, and did not move when he entered.

"Why, Nancy, what's the matter?"

"Don't wake her, please," said Nancy.

"But I wanted to tell you----"

"Hush!" said Nancy, with her finger on her lips and her eyes on Anne-Marie.

"Then come to my room. I want to speak to you," said Aldo.

"No," said Nancy.

"Well," said Aldo, "I think I ought to explain----"

"Hush!" said Nancy again. Then she sat on a chair near the child's bed, and put her face down again in the mosquito-netting.

Aldo stood about the room for a time. He called her name twice, but she did not answer. Then he went upstairs to his little room feeling injured.

IV

Early next morning Aldo went out to buy a doll for Anne-Marie. He got it at the Condamine, where things are cheaper. It went to his heart to spend seven francs fifty centimes--a _mise_ and a half--but the cheaper ones were really too hideous to buy peace with. For one mad moment he thought of buying a doll with real eyelashes that cost twenty-eight francs. But considerations of economy were stronger than his fears, and he took the one for seven francs fifty, whose painted eyelashes remained irrelevantly at the top of the eyelids even when they were closed.

Anne-Marie was delighted.

Nancy was a pale and chilly statue. Aldo sent Anne-Marie and the Condamine doll to play in the garden, while he in the _salon de lecture_ explained.

The systems were rank and rotten. All of them. Rank--and--rotten. Grimaux, the croupier, had told him so. There was only one way of winning, and that was----

"I know all that," said Nancy. "Who was that woman?"

Aldo raised reproachful, nocturnal eyes to her face. She looked smaller than usual, but very stern.

"Nancy," he said. "Tesoro mio! My treasure!..."

But Nancy ignored the eyes and the outstretched hand. "Who is she?"

"She is nobody--absolutely nobody! An old thing with a yellow wig. Her name is Doyle. How can you go on like that, my love?"

But Nancy could go on, and did. "She is English?"

"No, no; American. A weird old thing from the prairies." And Aldo laughed loudly, but alone.

"Well?" said Nancy, with tight lips, when Aldo had quite finished laughing.

"Well, Grimaux, who has been here sixteen years, said to me: 'The mistake everyone makes is to double on their losses. When you lose----'"

Aldo's slim hands waved, his shoulders shrugged, his long eyes turned upward. Nancy watched him, cold and detached. "He looks like the oyster-sellers of Santa Lucia!" she said to herself. "How could I ever think him beautiful?" Then she saw Anne-Marie in the garden kissing the Condamine doll, and she forgave him.

"When you lose," Aldo was saying, "you run after your losses--you double, you treble, you go on, _et voila! la debacle_--whereas when you win you go carefully, staking little stakes, satisfied with a louis at a time, and when you have won one hundred francs, out you go, saying: 'That is enough for to-day!' Now that is wrong, quite wrong. What you ought to do is to follow up your wins, so that when the streak of luck _does_ come--"

"I have heard quite enough about that," said Nancy. "Tell me the rest."

"Well," said Aldo sulkily, "I wish you would not jump at a fellow. The rest is merely this: The good old prairie-chicken"--he went off into another peal of laughter, and left off again when he had finished--"she was--she was just promising to put up the money when you came along. And you know what women are. They--they hate families," said Aldo.

Nancy raised her eyes to his face without moving.

"I do not know why you look at me like that," said Aldo sulkily.

Nancy got up. "There is a train at one o'clock," she said; "we will take it."

She went upstairs; Aldo went out into the garden and played with Anne-Marie and the Condamine doll.

At twelve Nancy looked out of the window. She called Anne-Marie, who came unwillingly, dragging the doll upstairs, and followed by Aldo.

"We are ready," said Nancy, tying the white ribbons of a floppy straw hat under Anne-Marie's chin. Anne-Marie sat on the bed kicking her feet in their tan travelling-boots up and down. Aldo sat near the table, and drummed on it with his fingers.

"Who is going to pay the hotel bill?" he said.

Nancy looked up. "Have you no money?"

"I have eighty-two francs and forty centimes," said Aldo.

"Where is the rest?"

"Gone."

Nancy sat down on the bed near Anne-Marie. There was a long silence.

Aldo fidgeted, and said: "I told you the systems were all wrong."

Nancy did not answer. She was thinking. She understood nothing about money, but she knew what this meant. How were they to go back to Milan? How were they to live? With her mother? Her mother had had to scrape and be careful since the forty thousand francs had been given to Aldo. She had brought smaller boxes of chocolate to Anne-Marie. She took no cabs, and was wearing a last year's cloak of Aunt Carlotta's. Aunt Carlotta herself was always grumbling that when she wanted to spend five francs she turned them over three times, and then put them into her purse again, and that Adele could not find a husband because her dot was small, and men asked for nothing but money nowadays. There was Zio Giacomo, dear, grumpy old man. But he had all Nino's old debts to pay, and everybody was always borrowing from him. Distant relations and seedy old friends visited and wrote to him periodically; and Zio Giacomo was enraged, and always vowed that this would be the last time.... The only wealthy person connected with the family was Aldo's brother, Carlo. But Nancy knew that Aldo had exhausted all from that source. What would happen? What were they going to do? She looked at Aldo, who sat in the arm-chair, with his head thrown back and his eyes on the ceiling. He knew she had likened him to San Sebastian, and now to move her pity as much as possible he assumed the expression of the adolescent saint pierced with arrows.

Nancy turned her eyes from him. The sight of him irritated her beyond endurance. She looked at Anne-Marie, sitting good and happy beside her, playing with the doll. She bent and kissed the child's cool pink cheek.

Aldo sat up, and said: "I had better go."

"Where to?" said Nancy.

"To the Casino, of course," said Aldo. "I promised to be there at twelve-thirty."

"To meet that woman?"

"Yes," said Aldo sulkily.

"Oh!" gasped Nancy, and her hands clasped in deepest shame for him. "What blood is in your veins?"

It was the blood of many generations of Neapolitan lazzaroni--beautiful, lazy animals, content to lie stretched in the sun--crossed and altered by the blood of the economical shopkeeping grandfather, who sold corals and views of Vesuvius in the Via Caracciolo.

Aldo felt that it was time to hold his own. "It is easy enough for you to talk," he said. "But what else can I do?"

Anne-Marie lifted the Condamine doll to her mother. "Kiss," she said. Then she stretched it out towards her father. "Kiss," she said. Aldo jumped up, and fell on his knees before them both. He kissed the doll, and he kissed Anne-Marie's little coat, and Nancy's knees, and then he put his head on Anne-Marie's lap and wept. Anne-Marie screamed and cried, and Nancy kissed them both, and comforted them.

"Never mind--never mind! It will all come right. Don't cry, Aldo! It is dreadful! I cannot bear to see you cry."

Aldo sobbed, and said he ought to go and shoot himself. And after Nancy had forgiven, and comforted, and encouraged him, he raised his reddened eyes and blurred face. "Well, then, shall I go?" he said.

Nancy turned white. It was hopeless. He did not understand. He was what he was, and did not know that one could be anything else.

"No," she said. And he sat down and sighed, and looked out of the window.

Nancy went to the stout proprietress and asked for the bill. While it was being made out, the kindly woman said: "Are you leaving to-day, madame?"

Nancy blushed, and said: "I do not know until I have seen the bill."

The proprietress, who had heard the noise upstairs--for Aldo cried loud like a child--and was slightly anxious in regard to her money, said: "Has monsieur already had the _viatique_?" Nancy did not understand. "The _viatique_ of the Casino. If monsieur has played and lost, the administration will give him something back. Let him go and ask for it. And," she added, glancing at the brooch at Nancy's neck, "if perhaps madame should wish to know it, the Mont de Piete is not far--just past the Credit Lyonnais."

The bill was one hundred and twenty-three francs. Nancy told Aldo about the _viatique_, and he said, with a hang-dog air, he would go and ask for it.

"How much do you think it will be?" asked Nancy.

"I don't know," said Aldo, who felt that he must be glum.

"Two or three thousand francs?"

"I suppose so," said Aldo.

"You will accept nothing from that woman. You promise!"

"I promise," said Aldo, laying flabby fingers in her earnest, outstretched hand.

So he went, and when he was out of sight of the hotel he hurried.

Nancy packed his trunk for him, and felt pity and half remorse as she folded his limp, well-known clothes, his helpless coats and defenceless waistcoats, and put them away. He had no character. It was not his fault. She ought not to have allowed him to come here. He was not a wall; Clarissa had told her so long ago. He was weak, and limp, and foolish. Well, Nancy would be the wall. Already she knew what to do. Say the Casino gave them back three or four thousand francs. They would go back to Milan, give up the home in Via Senato, and take a cheaper apartment in the Quartieri Nuovi. She would write. She would work again. Ah! at the thought of her work her blood quickened. The baby should stay with Valeria, because it was impossible to do any serious work with Anne-Marie tugging at one's skirts and at one's heart-strings. She would go and see the baby every evening after she had written five or six hours. Aldo would return to Zio Giacomo's office. Good old Zio Giacomo would be glad to take him back for Valeria's and Nancy's sake, and they would live quietly and modestly. Aldo should superintend the household expenses, and squabble over the bills with the servant--he loved to do that; and by the time the three, or four, or five thousand francs that the Casino had given them were finished The Book would be out. "The Cycle of Lyrics" had brought her in twenty thousand francs, and it was only a slender volume of verse. This book would make a great stir in Italy--she knew it--and it would be translated into all languages. She wished she had the manuscript here. She felt that she could start it again at once.

She closed her eyes and remembered. All the people she had created, bound together by the scarlet thread of the conception, rushed out from the neglected pages, and entered her heart again. She felt like Browning's lion; you could see by her eye, wide and steady, she was leagues in the desert already....

Suddenly Anne-Marie, who had been playing like a little lamb of gold on the balcony, gave a scream: the doll had gone. The doll had fallen over the balcony. It was gone! It was dead! Nancy looked over the ledge. Yes, there lay the Condamine doll on the gravel-path in the garden. And it was dead. Half of its face had jumped away and lay some distance off.

Aldo, entering the garden at that moment, saw it, and picked it up. Then he looked up at the balcony, and saw Nancy's troubled face and the distracted countenance of his little daughter.

He waved his hand, and went out again, taking the dead doll with him. He hailed a carriage, and told the driver to drive quickly to the Condamine. He bought the doll with the real eyelashes for twenty-two francs--he made them knock off six francs--and returned with clatter of horses and cracking of whip to the hotel.

When Anne-Marie saw the doll, and when Nancy saw Anne-Marie's face, Aldo knew he was forgiven and reinstated.

"What have they given you back at the Casino?" asked Nancy.

"I don't know. I am to go again in two hours," said Aldo. "Let us have luncheon."

They had an excellent luncheon, for, confronted with a desperate situation in which the economizing of fifty centimes meant nothing, the ancestral shopkeeper in Aldo's veins bowed, and left room for the lazzarone, who ate his spaghetti to-day, and troubled not about the morrow.

"If they give you five or six thousand francs, I suppose we must not complain. We cannot expect to get back the entire eighteen thousand," said Nancy.

"No," said Aldo, with downcast eyelids. He knew something about _viatiques_, but he would not let this knowledge spoil their lunch. After all, the luncheon cost twelve francs. It must not be wasted.

"Did you see her?" asked Nancy, tying a table-napkin round the doll's neck at Anne-Marie's request.

"Whom?" said Aldo, with his mouth full.

"The--the prairie-chicken," said Nancy, to make him feel that he was quite forgiven.

"Oh yes; I saw her," said Aldo.

Nancy put down her knife and fork, and felt faint. "Well?"

Aldo cleared his throat, took a sip of wine, and said, "She is an old beast."

There was a pause, then he continued: "I made a clean breast of it. I told her who you were, and about Anne-Marie; and when I had finished she called me a--a--oh, some vulgar American name, and off she walked."

Nancy reached across the table and patted his hand. "That's right, Aldo."

"I told you," he said, nodding his head, "that that kind of woman cannot stand the idea of a fellow having a family."

"Perhaps," suggested Nancy, dimpling, "she could not stand the idea of the way the fellow treated his family."

"Well, never mind," said Aldo. "She's done with."

But she wasn't.

At four o'clock Aldo, Nancy, Anne-Marie, and the doll went out, and down to the square in front of the Casino. Nancy and the child sat on a bench facing the Casino, and Aldo went in to get the _viatique_. He came out a few minutes later looking flushed and angry.

"The _canailles_! The thieves! The robbers!"

"What is it?" said Nancy.

"They have given me one hundred and fifty francs!" and he held out the three fifty-franc notes contemptuously.

"A hundred--and--fifty francs!" gasped Nancy.

"Nancy, there is only one thing to do," said Aldo. "Go in and play them. Plank them down on a number, and if they go, let them go, and be done with."

"Do it," said Nancy, for nothing mattered.

"I can't," said Aldo. "I can't go in--not until this miserable dole is paid back. You must go. They will let you in. Go on."

Nancy rose, flushed and trembling. "What do I do? How do I play it?"

"Oh, anyhow. It makes no difference," said Aldo, with his face in his hands, suddenly realizing that they three possessed in the world one hundred and ninety francs, and a debt of one hundred and twenty-three. He turned to the child.

"Say a number, Anne-Marie! Any old number!"

Anne-Marie did not understand.

"You know your numbers, darling," said Nancy, "that grandmamma taught you."

"Oh, yeth," said Anne-Marie. "One, two, three, four."

"Stop. All right," said Aldo. "Nancy, go in and play--at any table you like--the _quatre premiers_ and _quatre en plein_. That gives you zero, too. Go ahead! _Les quatre premiers_ and _quatre en plein_. Remember. Tell the croupier to do it for you."

Nancy went straight in, and to the left, where the men sat who had laughed at her the night before. They recognized her, and gave her a card at once.

She went into the rooms. Chink, chink; chink, chink. She went to the table on the left. A red-haired croupier sat at the end of the table nearest her, and she went to him, and gave him one of the fifty-franc notes.

"Les quatre premiers et quatre en plein," she said.

But it was too late. "Rien ne va plus," said the man in the centre. "Trente-deux, noir, pair et passe."

The croupier handed her back the note. "You're lucky," he said. "You would have lost." She repeated her phrase, and he put the note on the top of his rake and passed it across the table. "Quatre premiers," he said, and the man in the middle placed it.

"Et quoi encore?" said the croupier, looking at Nancy.

"Quatre premiers et quatre en plein," repeated Nancy, mechanically.

"Combien a l'en plein?" said the man, holding out his hand.

Nancy gave him the second fifty-franc note, and he passed it up on his rake. "Quatre en plein."

"Quatre en plein. Tout va aux billets," said the man in the centre; and the ball whizzed round. Nancy's heart was thumping; it shook her; it beat like a drum. The little ball dropped, ran along awhile, stopped, clattered and clicked, and fell into a compartment.

"Trois."

Everybody looked at Nancy as she was paid, and she collected the gold and silver with clumsy hands. "Encore," she said, giving the croupier the remaining bill and some louis.

"Quoi?" said the croupier.

"Encore la meme chose." The ball was running round.

"Mais ca y est," said the croupier, for the fifty-franc note that had won still lay at the corner of the top line.

"Mais non, mais non," said Nancy, who was very much confused, "premier quatre"--the man placed the note on the other note still lying there--"et quatre en plein." But for this last it was too late.

"Rien ne va plus. Zero!"

"Voila! ca y est!" said the croupier, returning the gold to her, and waiting with the rake on the table for the eight hundred francs to be paid.

What is the secret of luck? How shall it be forced? How explained? Whatever Nancy did, she won. Wherever her money lay there the ball went. When she thought she had enough--her hands were full, her place at the table was piled up with louis and silver and notes--and she was withdrawing her remaining stake and the gold paid on it with clumsy rake, she moved it away from the numbers, and left it on "pair" while she put down the rake. A minute was lost while a woman said something to her, and before she could take the money up the ball had fallen. "Vingt. Pair et passe." It was doubled.

When she at last tremblingly collected it all in her hands, and put gold and notes as best she could into her pocket, she rose, and could hardly see. Her cheeks were flaming. She passed out of the rooms, into the atrium, and down the steps. Aldo sat on the bench with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and the doll in his arms. Anne-Marie was running up and down in front of him.

"Aldo," said Nancy, and sat down weakly at his side.

"Gone?" asked Aldo, raising a miserable face.

"No!" Nancy had a little hysterical laugh. She piled the money into his hands, then into her lap, while he counted it quickly, deftly. People passing looked at them, and smiled.

"Seven thousand eight hundred francs," said Aldo, very pale.

"Oh, but there is more;" and Nancy dived into her pocket again. There was over fourteen thousand francs.

"Come into the Cafe de Paris," said Aldo.

They drank coffee and _creme de menthe_, and Anne-Marie had strawberry ice and cakes. The band played "Sous la Feuillee."

"Oh what a lovely world it is!" said Nancy, with a little sob. "Oh, what a glorious place! I love it all! I love everybody!"

"I love evlybody," said Anne-Marie, taking a third cake with careful choice. Aldo and Nancy laughed.

The Englishman passed, and Nancy called him. She introduced him to Aldo, and Aldo thanked him for being kind to Nancy the evening before. Nancy told him about the fourteen thousand francs she had won, and they all laughed, and the band played, and the sun shone and went down.