“No, but I’ve rehearsed it. That’s all right. Get the cab.” Still she

made no move. She merely turned perfectly blank eyes to Dr. Archie and

said absently, “It’s curious, but just at this minute I can’t remember

a bar of ‘Walküre’ after the first act. And I let my maid go out.” She

sprang up and beckoned Archie without so much, he felt sure, as knowing

who he was. “Come with me.” She went quickly into her sleeping-chamber

and threw open a door into a trunk-room. “See that white trunk? It’s

not locked. It’s full of wigs, in boxes. Look until you find one marked

‘Ring 2.’ Bring it quick!” While she directed him, she threw open a

square trunk and began tossing out shoes of every shape and color.

Ottenburg appeared at the door. “Can I help you?”

She threw him some white sandals with long laces and silk stockings

pinned to them. “Put those in something, and then go to the piano and

give me a few measures in there—you know.” She was behaving somewhat

like a cyclone now, and while she wrenched open drawers and closet

doors, Ottenburg got to the piano as quickly as possible and began to

herald the reappearance of the Volsung pair, trusting to memory.

In a few moments Thea came out enveloped in her long fur coat with a

scarf over her head and knitted woolen gloves on her hands. Her glassy

eye took in the fact that Fred was playing from memory, and even in her

distracted state, a faint smile flickered over her colorless lips. She

stretched out a woolly hand, “The score, please. Behind you, there.”

Dr. Archie followed with a canvas box and a satchel. As they went

through the hall, the men caught up their hats and coats. They left the

music-room, Fred noticed, just seven minutes after he got the telephone

message. In the elevator Thea said in that husky whisper which had so

perplexed Dr. Archie when he first heard it, “Tell the driver he must

do it in twenty minutes, less if he can. He must leave the light on in

the cab. I can do a good deal in twenty minutes. If only you hadn’t

made me eat—Damn that duck!” she broke out bitterly; “why did you?”

“Wish I had it back! But it won’t bother you, to-night. You need

strength,” he pleaded consolingly.

But she only muttered angrily under her breath, “Idiot, idiot!”

Ottenburg shot ahead and instructed the driver, while the doctor put

Thea into the cab and shut the door. She did not speak to either of

them again. As the driver scrambled into his seat she opened the score

and fixed her eyes upon it. Her face, in the white light, looked as

bleak as a stone quarry.

As her cab slid away, Ottenburg shoved Archie into a second taxi that

waited by the curb. “We’d better trail her,” he explained. “There might

be a hold-up of some kind.” As the cab whizzed off he broke into an

eruption of profanity.

“What’s the matter, Fred?” the doctor asked. He was a good deal dazed

by the rapid evolutions of the last ten minutes.

“Matter enough!” Fred growled, buttoning his overcoat with a shiver.

“What a way to sing a part for the first time! That duck really is on

my conscience. It will be a wonder if she can do anything but quack!

Scrambling on in the middle of a performance like this, with no

rehearsal! The stuff she has to sing in there is a fright—rhythm,

pitch,—and terribly difficult intervals.”

“She looked frightened,” Dr. Archie said thoughtfully, “but I thought

she looked—determined.”

Fred sniffed. “Oh, determined! That’s the kind of rough deal that makes

savages of singers. Here’s a part she’s worked on and got ready for for

years, and now they give her a chance to go on and butcher it. Goodness

knows when she’s looked at the score last, or whether she can use the

business she’s studied with this cast. Necker’s singing _Brünnhilde;_

she may help her, if it’s not one of her sore nights.”

“Is she sore at Thea?” Dr. Archie asked wonderingly.

“My dear man, Necker’s sore at everything. She’s breaking up; too

early; just when she ought to be at her best. There’s one story that

she is struggling under some serious malady, another that she learned a

bad method at the Prague Conservatory and has ruined her organ. She’s

the sorest thing in the world. If she weathers this winter through,

it’ll be her last. She’s paying for it with the last rags of her voice.

And then—” Fred whistled softly.

“Well, what then?”

“Then our girl may come in for some of it. It’s dog eat dog, in this

game as in every other.”

The cab stopped and Fred and Dr. Archie hurried to the box office. The

Monday-night house was sold out. They bought standing room and entered

the auditorium just as the press representative of the house was

thanking the audience for their patience and telling them that although

Madame Gloeckler was too ill to sing, Miss Kronborg had kindly

consented to finish her part. This announcement was met with vehement

applause from the upper circles of the house.

“She has her—constituents,” Dr. Archie murmured.

“Yes, up there, where they’re young and hungry. These people down here

have dined too well. They won’t mind, however. They like fires and

accidents and _divertissements_. Two _Sieglindes_ are more unusual than

one, so they’ll be satisfied.”

After the final disappearance of the mother of Siegfried, Ottenburg and

the doctor slipped out through the crowd and left the house. Near the

stage entrance Fred found the driver who had brought Thea down. He

dismissed him and got a larger car. He and Archie waited on the

sidewalk, and when Kronborg came out alone they gathered her into the

cab and sprang in after her.

Thea sank back into a corner of the back seat and yawned. “Well, I got

through, eh?” Her tone was reassuring. “On the whole, I think I’ve

given you gentlemen a pretty lively evening, for one who has no social

accomplishments.”

“Rather! There was something like a popular uprising at the end of the

second act. Archie and I couldn’t keep it up as long as the rest of

them did. A howl like that ought to show the management which way the

wind is blowing. You probably know you were magnificent.”

“I thought it went pretty well,” she spoke impartially. “I was rather

smart to catch his tempo there, at the beginning of the first

recitative, when he came in too soon, don’t you think? It’s tricky in

there, without a rehearsal. Oh, I was all right! He took that

syncopation too fast in the beginning. Some singers take it fast

there—think it sounds more impassioned. That’s one way!” She sniffed,

and Fred shot a mirthful glance at Archie. Her boastfulness would have

been childish in a schoolboy. In the light of what she had done, of the

strain they had lived through during the last two hours, it made one

laugh,—almost cry. She went on, robustly: “And I didn’t feel my dinner,

really, Fred. I am hungry again, I’m ashamed to say,—and I forgot to

order anything at my hotel.”

Fred put his hand on the door. “Where to? You must have food.”

“Do you know any quiet place, where I won’t be stared at? I’ve still

got make-up on.”

“I do. Nice English chop-house on Forty-fourth Street. Nobody there at

night but theater people after the show, and a few bachelors.” He

opened the door and spoke to the driver.

As the car turned, Thea reached across to the front seat and drew Dr.

Archie’s handkerchief out of his breast pocket.

“This comes to me naturally,” she said, rubbing her cheeks and

eyebrows. “When I was little I always loved your handkerchiefs because

they were silk and smelled of Cologne water. I think they must have

been the only really clean handkerchiefs in Moonstone. You were always

wiping my face with them, when you met me out in the dust, I remember.

Did I never have any?”

“I think you’d nearly always used yours up on your baby brother.”

Thea sighed. “Yes, Thor had such a way of getting messy. You say he’s a

good chauffeur?” She closed her eyes for a moment as if they were

tired. Suddenly she looked up. “Isn’t it funny, how we travel in

circles? Here you are, still getting me clean, and Fred is still

feeding me. I would have died of starvation at that boarding-house on

Indiana Avenue if he hadn’t taken me out to the Buckingham and filled

me up once in a while. What a cavern I was to fill, too. The waiters

used to look astonished. I’m still singing on that food.”

Fred alighted and gave Thea his arm as they crossed the icy sidewalk.

They were taken upstairs in an antiquated lift and found the cheerful

chop-room half full of supper parties. An English company playing at

the Empire had just come in. The waiters, in red waistcoats, were

hurrying about. Fred got a table at the back of the room, in a corner,

and urged his waiter to get the oysters on at once.

“Takes a few minutes to open them, sir,” the man expostulated.

“Yes, but make it as few as possible, and bring the lady’s first. Then

grilled chops with kidneys, and salad.”

Thea began eating celery stalks at once, from the base to the foliage.

“Necker said something nice to me tonight. You might have thought the

management would say something, but not they.” She looked at Fred from

under her blackened lashes. “It _was_ a stunt, to jump in and sing that

second act without rehearsal. It doesn’t sing itself.”

Ottenburg was watching her brilliant eyes and her face. She was much

handsomer than she had been early in the evening. Excitement of this

sort enriched her. It was only under such excitement, he reflected,

that she was entirely illuminated, or wholly present. At other times

there was something a little cold and empty, like a big room with no

people in it. Even in her most genial moods there was a shadow of

restlessness, as if she were waiting for something and were exercising

the virtue of patience. During dinner she had been as kind as she knew

how to be, to him and to Archie, and had given them as much of herself

as she could. But, clearly, she knew only one way of being really kind,

from the core of her heart out; and there was but one way in which she

could give herself to people largely and gladly, spontaneously. Even as

a girl she had been at her best in vigorous effort, he remembered;

physical effort, when there was no other kind at hand. She could be

expansive only in explosions. Old Nathanmeyer had seen it. In the very

first song Fred had ever heard her sing, she had unconsciously declared

it.

Thea Kronborg turned suddenly from her talk with Archie and peered

suspiciously into the corner where Ottenburg sat with folded arms,

observing her. “What’s the matter with you, Fred? I’m afraid of you

when you’re quiet,—fortunately you almost never are. What are you

thinking about?”

“I was wondering how you got right with the orchestra so quickly, there

at first. I had a flash of terror,” he replied easily.

She bolted her last oyster and ducked her head. “So had I! I don’t know

how I did catch it. Desperation, I suppose; same way the Indian babies

swim when they’re thrown into the river. I _had_ to. Now it’s over, I’m

glad I had to. I learned a whole lot to-night.”

Archie, who usually felt that it behooved him to be silent during such

discussions, was encouraged by her geniality to venture, “I don’t see

how you can learn anything in such a turmoil; or how you can keep your

mind on it, for that matter.”

Thea glanced about the room and suddenly put her hand up to her hair.

“Mercy, I’ve no hat on! Why didn’t you tell me? And I seem to be

wearing a rumpled dinner dress, with all this paint on my face! I must

look like something you picked up on Second Avenue. I hope there are no

Colorado reformers about, Dr. Archie. What a dreadful old pair these

people must be thinking you! Well, I had to eat.” She sniffed the savor

of the grill as the waiter uncovered it. “Yes, draught beer, please.

No, thank you, Fred, _no_ champagne.—To go back to your question, Dr.

Archie, you can believe I keep my mind on it. That’s the whole trick,

in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there every second.

If I think of anything else for a flash, I’m gone, done for. But at the

same time, one can take things in—with another part of your brain,

maybe. It’s different from what you get in study, more practical and

conclusive. There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in

storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an audience.”

“Heaven help us,” gasped Ottenburg. “Weren’t you hungry, though! It’s

beautiful to see you eat.”

“Glad you like it. Of course I’m hungry. Are you staying over for

‘Rheingold’ Friday afternoon?”

“My dear Thea,”—Fred lit a cigarette,—“I’m a serious business man now.

I have to sell beer. I’m due in Chicago on Wednesday. I’d come back to

hear you, but _Fricka_ is not an alluring part.”

“Then you’ve never heard it well done.” She spoke up hotly. “Fat German

woman scolding her husband, eh? That’s not my idea. Wait till you hear

my _Fricka_. It’s a beautiful part.” Thea leaned forward on the table

and touched Archie’s arm. “You remember, Dr. Archie, how my mother

always wore her hair, parted in the middle and done low on her neck

behind, so you got the shape of her head and such a calm, white

forehead? I wear mine like that for _Fricka_. A little more coronet

effect, built up a little higher at the sides, but the idea’s the same.

I think you’ll notice it.” She turned to Ottenburg reproachfully: “It’s

noble music, Fred, from the first measure. There’s nothing lovelier

than the _wonniger Hausrath_. It’s all such comprehensive sort of

music—fateful. Of course, _Fricka knows_,” Thea ended quietly.

Fred sighed. “There, you’ve spoiled my itinerary. Now I’ll have to come

back, of course. Archie, you’d better get busy about seats to-morrow.”

“I can get you box seats, somewhere. I know nobody here, and I never

ask for any.” Thea began hunting among her wraps. “Oh, how funny! I’ve

only these short woolen gloves, and no sleeves. Put on my coat first.

Those English people can’t make out where you got your lady, she’s so

made up of contradictions.” She rose laughing and plunged her arms into

the coat Dr. Archie held for her. As she settled herself into it and

buttoned it under her chin, she gave him an old signal with her eyelid.

“I’d like to sing another part to-night. This is the sort of evening I

fancy, when there’s something to do. Let me see: I have to sing in

‘Trovatore’ Wednesday night, and there are rehearsals for the ‘Ring’

every day this week. Consider me dead until Saturday, Dr. Archie. I

invite you both to dine with me on Saturday night, the day after

‘Rheingold.’ And Fred must leave early, for I want to talk to you

alone. You’ve been here nearly a week, and I haven’t had a serious word

with you. _Tak for mad_, Fred, as the Norwegians say.”

VIII

The “Ring of the Niebelungs” was to be given at the Metropolitan on

four successive Friday afternoons. After the first of these

performances, Fred Ottenburg went home with Landry for tea. Landry was

one of the few public entertainers who own real estate in New York. He

lived in a little three-story brick house on Jane Street, in Greenwich

Village, which had been left to him by the same aunt who paid for his

musical education.

Landry was born, and spent the first fifteen years of his life, on a

rocky Connecticut farm not far from Cos Cob. His father was an

ignorant, violent man, a bungling farmer and a brutal husband. The

farmhouse, dilapidated and damp, stood in a hollow beside a marshy

pond. Oliver had worked hard while he lived at home, although he was

never clean or warm in winter and had wretched food all the year round.

His spare, dry figure, his prominent larynx, and the peculiar red of

his face and hands belonged to the choreboy he had never outgrown. It

was as if the farm, knowing he would escape from it as early as he

could, had ground its mark on him deep. When he was fifteen Oliver ran

away and went to live with his Catholic aunt, on Jane Street, whom his

mother was never allowed to visit. The priest of St. Joseph’s Parish

discovered that he had a voice.

Landry had an affection for the house on Jane Street, where he had

first learned what cleanliness and order and courtesy were. When his

aunt died he had the place done over, got an Irish housekeeper, and

lived there with a great many beautiful things he had collected. His

living expenses were never large, but he could not restrain himself

from buying graceful and useless objects. He was a collector for much

the same reason that he was a Catholic, and he was a Catholic chiefly

because his father used to sit in the kitchen and read aloud to his

hired men disgusting “exposures” of the Roman Church, enjoying equally

the hideous stories and the outrage to his wife’s feelings.

At first Landry bought books; then rugs, drawings, china. He had a

beautiful collection of old French and Spanish fans. He kept them in an

escritoire he had brought from Spain, but there were always a few of

them lying about in his sitting-room.

While Landry and his guest were waiting for the tea to be brought,

Ottenburg took up one of these fans from the low marble mantel-shelf

and opened it in the firelight. One side was painted with a pearly sky

and floating clouds. On the other was a formal garden where an elegant

shepherdess with a mask and crook was fleeing on high heels from a

satin-coated shepherd.

“You ought not to keep these things about, like this, Oliver. The dust

from your grate must get at them.”

“It does, but I get them to enjoy them, not to have them. They’re

pleasant to glance at and to play with at odd times like this, when one

is waiting for tea or something.”

Fred smiled. The idea of Landry stretched out before his fire playing

with his fans, amused him. Mrs. McGinnis brought the tea and put it

before the hearth: old teacups that were velvety to the touch and a

pot-bellied silver cream pitcher of an Early Georgian pattern, which

was always brought, though Landry took rum.

Fred drank his tea walking about, examining Landry’s sumptuous

writing-table in the alcove and the Boucher drawing in red chalk over

the mantel. “I don’t see how you can stand this place without a

heroine. It would give me a raging thirst for gallantries.”

Landry was helping himself to a second cup of tea. “Works quite the

other way with me. It consoles me for the lack of her. It’s just

feminine enough to be pleasant to return to. Not any more tea? Then sit

down and play for me. I’m always playing for other people, and I never

have a chance to sit here quietly and listen.”

Ottenburg opened the piano and began softly to boom forth the shadowy

introduction to the opera they had just heard. “Will that do?” he asked

jokingly. “I can’t seem to get it out of my head.”

“Oh, excellently! Thea told me it was quite wonderful, the way you can

do Wagner scores on the piano. So few people can give one any idea of

the music. Go ahead, as long as you like. I can smoke, too.” Landry

flattened himself out on his cushions and abandoned himself to ease

with the circumstance of one who has never grown quite accustomed to

ease.

Ottenburg played on, as he happened to remember. He understood now why

Thea wished him to hear her in “Rheingold.” It had been clear to him as

soon as _Fricka_ rose from sleep and looked out over the young world,

stretching one white arm toward the new Götterburg shining on the

heights. “_Wotan! Gemahl! erwache!_” She was pure Scandinavian, this

_Fricka:_ “Swedish summer”! he remembered old Mr. Nathanmeyer’s phrase.

She had wished him to see her because she had a distinct kind of

loveliness for this part, a shining beauty like the light of sunset on

distant sails. She seemed to take on the look of immortal loveliness,

the youth of the golden apples, the shining body and the shining mind.

_Fricka_ had been a jealous spouse to him for so long that he had

forgot she meant wisdom before she meant domestic order, and that, in

any event, she was always a goddess. The _Fricka_ of that afternoon was

so clear and sunny, so nobly conceived, that she made a whole

atmosphere about herself and quite redeemed from shabbiness the

helplessness and unscrupulousness of the gods. Her reproaches to

_Wotan_ were the pleadings of a tempered mind, a consistent sense of

beauty. In the long silences of her part, her shining presence was a

visible complement to the discussion of the orchestra. As the themes

which were to help in weaving the drama to its end first came vaguely

upon the ear, one saw their import and tendency in the face of this

clearest-visioned of the gods.

In the scene between _Fricka_ and _Wotan_, Ottenburg stopped. “I can’t

seem to get the voices, in there.”

Landry chuckled. “Don’t try. I know it well enough. I expect I’ve been

over that with her a thousand times. I was playing for her almost every

day when she was first working on it. When she begins with a part she’s

hard to work with: so slow you’d think she was stupid if you didn’t

know her. Of course she blames it all on her accompanist. It goes on

like that for weeks sometimes. This did. She kept shaking her head and

staring and looking gloomy. All at once, she got her line—it usually

comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at all—and

after that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice into

it, it got more and more of that ‘gold’ quality that makes her _Fricka_

so different.”

Fred began _Fricka’s_ first aria again. “It’s certainly different.

Curious how she does it. Such a beautiful idea, out of a part that’s

always been so ungrateful. She’s a lovely thing, but she was never so

beautiful as that, really. Nobody is.” He repeated the loveliest

phrase. “How does she manage it, Landry? You’ve worked with her.”

Landry drew cherishingly on the last cigarette he meant to permit

himself before singing. “Oh, it’s a question of a big personality—and

all that goes with it. Brains, of course. Imagination, of course. But

the important thing is that she was born full of color, with a rich

personality. That’s a gift of the gods, like a fine nose. You have it,

or you haven’t. Against it, intelligence and musicianship and habits of

industry don’t count at all. Singers are a conventional race. When Thea

was studying in Berlin the other girls were mortally afraid of her. She

has a pretty rough hand with women, dull ones, and she could be rude,

too! The girls used to call her _die Wölfin_.”

Fred thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the

piano. “Of course, even a stupid woman could get effects with such

machinery: such a voice and body and face. But they couldn’t possibly

belong to a stupid woman, could they?”

Landry shook his head. “It’s personality; that’s as near as you can

come to it. That’s what constitutes real equipment. What she does is

interesting because she does it. Even the things she discards are

suggestive. I regret some of them. Her conceptions are colored in so

many different ways. You’ve heard her _Elizabeth?_ Wonderful, isn’t it?

She was working on that part years ago when her mother was ill. I could

see her anxiety and grief getting more and more into the part. The last

act is heart-breaking. It’s as homely as a country prayer meeting:

might be any lonely woman getting ready to die. It’s full of the thing

every plain creature finds out for himself, but that never gets written

down. It’s unconscious memory, maybe; inherited memory, like

folk-music. I call it personality.”

Fred laughed, and turning to the piano began coaxing the _Fricka_ music

again. “Call it anything you like, my boy. I have a name for it myself,

but I shan’t tell you.” He looked over his shoulder at Landry,

stretched out by the fire. “You have a great time watching her, don’t

you?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Landry simply. “I’m not interested in much that goes

on in New York. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to dress.” He rose

with a reluctant sigh. “Can I get you anything? Some whiskey?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll amuse myself here. I don’t often get a chance at a

good piano when I’m away from home. You haven’t had this one long, have

you? Action’s a bit stiff. I say,” he stopped Landry in the doorway,

“has Thea ever been down here?”

Landry turned back. “Yes. She came several times when I had erysipelas.

I was a nice mess, with two nurses. She brought down some inside

window-boxes, planted with crocuses and things. Very cheering, only I

couldn’t see them or her.”

“Didn’t she like your place?”

“She thought she did, but I fancy it was a good deal cluttered up for

her taste. I could hear her pacing about like something in a cage. She

pushed the piano back against the wall and the chairs into corners, and

she broke my amber elephant.” Landry took a yellow object some four

inches high from one of his low bookcases. “You can see where his leg

is glued on,—a souvenir. Yes, he’s lemon amber, very fine.”

Landry disappeared behind the curtains and in a moment Fred heard the

wheeze of an atomizer. He put the amber elephant on the piano beside

him and seemed to get a great deal of amusement out of the beast.

IX

When Archie and Ottenburg dined with Thea on Saturday evening, they

were served downstairs in the hotel dining-room, but they were to have

their coffee in her own apartment. As they were going up in the

elevator after dinner, Fred turned suddenly to Thea. “And why, please,

did you break Landry’s amber elephant?”

She looked guilty and began to laugh. “Hasn’t he got over that yet? I

didn’t really mean to break it. I was perhaps careless. His things are

so over-petted that I was tempted to be careless with a lot of them.”

“How can you be so heartless, when they’re all he has in the world?”

“He has me. I’m a great deal of diversion for him; all he needs.

There,” she said as she opened the door into her own hall, “I shouldn’t

have said that before the elevator boy.”

“Even an elevator boy couldn’t make a scandal about Oliver. He’s such a

catnip man.”

Dr. Archie laughed, but Thea, who seemed suddenly to have thought of

something annoying, repeated blankly, “Catnip man?”

“Yes, he lives on catnip, and rum tea. But he’s not the only one. You

are like an eccentric old woman I know in Boston, who goes about in the

spring feeding catnip to street cats. You dispense it to a lot of

fellows. Your pull seems to be more with men than with women, you know;

with seasoned men, about my age, or older. Even on Friday afternoon I

kept running into them, old boys I hadn’t seen for years, thin at the

part and thick at the girth, until I stood still in the draft and held

my hair on. They’re always there; I hear them talking about you in the

smoking room. Probably we don’t get to the point of apprehending

anything good until we’re about forty. Then, in the light of what is

going, and of what, God help us! is coming, we arrive at

understanding.”

“I don’t see why people go to the opera, anyway,—serious people.” She

spoke discontentedly. “I suppose they get something, or think they do.

Here’s the coffee. There, please,” she directed the waiter. Going to

the table she began to pour the coffee, standing. She wore a white

dress trimmed with crystals which had rattled a good deal during

dinner, as all her movements had been impatient and nervous, and she

had twisted the dark velvet rose at her girdle until it looked rumpled

and weary. She poured the coffee as if it were a ceremony in which she

did not believe. “Can you make anything of Fred’s nonsense, Dr.

Archie?” she asked, as he came to take his cup.

Fred approached her. “My nonsense is all right. The same brand has gone

with you before. It’s you who won’t be jollied. What’s the matter? You

have something on your mind.”

“I’ve a good deal. Too much to be an agreeable hostess.” She turned

quickly away from the coffee and sat down on the piano bench, facing

the two men. “For one thing, there’s a change in the cast for Friday

afternoon. They’re going to let me sing _Sieglinde_.” Her frown did not

conceal the pleasure with which she made this announcement.

“Are you going to keep us dangling about here forever, Thea? Archie and

I are supposed to have other things to do.” Fred looked at her with an

excitement quite as apparent as her own.

“Here I’ve been ready to sing _Sieglinde_ for two years, kept in

torment, and now it comes off within two weeks, just when I want to be

seeing something of Dr. Archie. I don’t know what their plans are down

there. After Friday they may let me cool for several weeks, and they

may rush me. I suppose it depends somewhat on how things go Friday

afternoon.”

“Oh, they’ll go fast enough! That’s better suited to your voice than

anything you’ve sung here. That gives you every opportunity I’ve waited

for.” Ottenburg crossed the room and standing beside her began to play

“_Du bist der Lenz_.”

With a violent movement Thea caught his wrists and pushed his hands

away from the keys.

“Fred, can’t you be serious? A thousand things may happen between this

and Friday to put me out. Something will happen. If that part were sung

well, as well as it ought to be, it would be one of the most beautiful

things in the world. That’s why it never is sung right, and never will

be.” She clenched her hands and opened them despairingly, looking out

of the open window. “It’s inaccessibly beautiful!” she brought out

sharply.

Fred and Dr. Archie watched her. In a moment she turned back to them.

“It’s impossible to sing a part like that well for the first time,

except for the sort who will never sing it any better. Everything hangs

on that first night, and that’s bound to be bad. There you are,” she

shrugged impatiently. “For one thing, they change the cast at the

eleventh hour and then rehearse the life out of me.”

Ottenburg put down his cup with exaggerated care. “Still, you really

want to do it, you know.”

“Want to?” she repeated indignantly; “of course I want to! If this were

only next Thursday night—But between now and Friday I’ll do nothing but

fret away my strength. Oh, I’m not saying I don’t need the rehearsals!

But I don’t need them strung out through a week. That system’s well

enough for phlegmatic singers; it only drains me. Every single feature

of operatic routine is detrimental to me. I usually go on like a horse

that’s been fixed to lose a race. I have to work hard to do my worst,

let alone my best. I wish you could hear me sing well, once,” she

turned to Fred defiantly; “I have, a few times in my life, when there

was nothing to gain by it.”

Fred approached her again and held out his hand. “I recall my

instructions, and now I’ll leave you to fight it out with Archie. He

can’t possibly represent managerial stupidity to you as I seem to have

a gift for doing.”

As he smiled down at her, his good humor, his good wishes, his

understanding, embarrassed her and recalled her to herself. She kept

her seat, still holding his hand. “All the same, Fred, isn’t it too

bad, that there are so many things—” She broke off with a shake of the

head.

“My dear girl, if I could bridge over the agony between now and Friday

for you—But you know the rules of the game; why torment yourself? You

saw the other night that you had the part under your thumb. Now walk,

sleep, play with Archie, keep your tiger hungry, and she’ll spring all

right on Friday. I’ll be there to see her, and there’ll be more than I,

I suspect. Harsanyi’s on the Wilhelm der Grosse; gets in on Thursday.”

“Harsanyi?” Thea’s eye lighted. “I haven’t seen him for years. We

always miss each other.” She paused, hesitating. “Yes, I should like

that. But he’ll be busy, maybe?”

“He gives his first concert at Carnegie Hall, week after next. Better

send him a box if you can.”

“Yes, I’ll manage it.” Thea took his hand again. “Oh, I should like

that, Fred!” she added impulsively. “Even if I were put out, he’d get

the idea,”—she threw back her head,—“for there is an idea!”

“Which won’t penetrate here,” he tapped his brow and began to laugh.

“You are an ungrateful huzzy, _comme les autres!_”

Thea detained him as he turned away. She pulled a flower out of a

bouquet on the piano and absently drew the stem through the lapel of

his coat. “I shall be walking in the Park to-morrow afternoon, on the

reservoir path, between four and five, if you care to join me. You know

that after Harsanyi I’d rather please you than anyone else. You know a

lot, but he knows even more than you.”

“Thank you. Don’t try to analyze it. _Schlafen sie wohl!_” he kissed

her fingers and waved from the door, closing it behind him.

“He’s the right sort, Thea.” Dr. Archie looked warmly after his

disappearing friend. “I’ve always hoped you’d make it up with Fred.”

“Well, haven’t I? Oh, marry him, you mean! Perhaps it may come about,

some day. Just at present he’s not in the marriage market any more than

I am, is he?”

“No, I suppose not. It’s a damned shame that a man like Ottenburg

should be tied up as he is, wasting all the best years of his life. A

woman with general paresis ought to be legally dead.”

“Don’t let us talk about Fred’s wife, please. He had no business to get

into such a mess, and he had no business to stay in it. He’s always

been a softy where women were concerned.”

“Most of us are, I’m afraid,” Dr. Archie admitted meekly.

“Too much light in here, isn’t there? Tires one’s eyes. The stage

lights are hard on mine.” Thea began turning them out. “We’ll leave the

little one, over the piano.” She sank down by Archie on the deep sofa.

“We two have so much to talk about that we keep away from it

altogether; have you noticed? We don’t even nibble the edges. I wish we

had Landry here to-night to play for us. He’s very comforting.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have enough personal life, outside your work,

Thea.” The doctor looked at her anxiously.

She smiled at him with her eyes half closed. “My dear doctor, I don’t

have any. Your work becomes your personal life. You are not much good

until it does. It’s like being woven into a big web. You can’t pull

away, because all your little tendrils are woven into the picture. It

takes you up, and uses you, and spins you out; and that is your life.

Not much else can happen to you.”

“Didn’t you think of marrying, several years ago?”

“You mean Nordquist? Yes; but I changed my mind. We had been singing a

good deal together. He’s a splendid creature.”

“Were you much in love with him, Thea?” the doctor asked hopefully.

She smiled again. “I don’t think I know just what that expression

means. I’ve never been able to find out. I think I was in love with you

when I was little, but not with any one since then. There are a great

many ways of caring for people. It’s not, after all, a simple state,

like measles or tonsilitis. Nordquist is a taking sort of man. He and I

were out in a rowboat once in a terrible storm. The lake was fed by

glaciers,—ice water,—and we couldn’t have swum a stroke if the boat had

filled. If we hadn’t both been strong and kept our heads, we’d have

gone down. We pulled for every ounce there was in us, and we just got

off with our lives. We were always being thrown together like that,

under some kind of pressure. Yes, for a while I thought he would make

everything right.” She paused and sank back, resting her head on a

cushion, pressing her eyelids down with her fingers. “You see,” she

went on abruptly, “he had a wife and two children. He hadn’t lived with

her for several years, but when she heard that he wanted to marry

again, she began to make trouble. He earned a good deal of money, but

he was careless and always wretchedly in debt. He came to me one day

and told me he thought his wife would settle for a hundred thousand

marks and consent to a divorce. I got very angry and sent him away.

Next day he came back and said he thought she’d take fifty thousand.”

Dr. Archie drew away from her, to the end of the sofa.

“Good God, Thea,”—He ran his handkerchief over his forehead. “What sort

of people—” He stopped and shook his head.

Thea rose and stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. “That’s

exactly how it struck me,” she said quietly. “Oh, we have things in

common, things that go away back, under everything. You understand, of

course. Nordquist didn’t. He thought I wasn’t willing to part with the

money. I couldn’t let myself buy him from Fru Nordquist, and he

couldn’t see why. He had always thought I was close about money, so he

attributed it to that. I am careful,”—she ran her arm through Archie’s

and when he rose began to walk about the room with him. “I can’t be

careless with money. I began the world on six hundred dollars, and it

was the price of a man’s life. Ray Kennedy had worked hard and been

sober and denied himself, and when he died he had six hundred dollars

to show for it. I always measure things by that six hundred dollars,

just as I measure high buildings by the Moonstone standpipe. There are

standards we can’t get away from.”

Dr. Archie took her hand. “I don’t believe we should be any happier if

we did get away from them. I think it gives you some of your poise,

having that anchor. You look,” glancing down at her head and shoulders,

“sometimes so like your mother.”

“Thank you. You couldn’t say anything nicer to me than that. On Friday

afternoon, didn’t you think?”

“Yes, but at other times, too. I love to see it. Do you know what I

thought about that first night when I heard you sing? I kept

remembering the night I took care of you when you had pneumonia, when

you were ten years old. You were a terribly sick child, and I was a

country doctor without much experience. There were no oxygen tanks

about then. You pretty nearly slipped away from me. If you had—”

Thea dropped her head on his shoulder. “I’d have saved myself and you a

lot of trouble, wouldn’t I? Dear Dr. Archie!” she murmured.

“As for me, life would have been a pretty bleak stretch, with you left

out.” The doctor took one of the crystal pendants that hung from her

shoulder and looked into it thoughtfully. “I guess I’m a romantic old

fellow, underneath. And you’ve always been my romance. Those years when

you were growing up were my happiest. When I dream about you, I always

see you as a little girl.”

They paused by the open window. “Do you? Nearly all my dreams, except

those about breaking down on the stage or missing trains, are about

Moonstone. You tell me the old house has been pulled down, but it

stands in my mind, every stick and timber. In my sleep I go all about

it, and look in the right drawers and cupboards for everything. I often

dream that I’m hunting for my rubbers in that pile of overshoes that

was always under the hatrack in the hall. I pick up every overshoe and

know whose it is, but I can’t find my own. Then the school bell begins

to ring and I begin to cry. That’s the house I rest in when I’m tired.

All the old furniture and the worn spots in the carpet—it rests my mind

to go over them.”

They were looking out of the window. Thea kept his arm. Down on the

river four battleships were anchored in line, brilliantly lighted, and

launches were coming and going, bringing the men ashore. A searchlight

from one of the ironclads was playing on the great headland up the

river, where it makes its first resolute turn. Overhead the night-blue

sky was intense and clear.

“There’s so much that I want to tell you,” she said at last, “and it’s

hard to explain. My life is full of jealousies and disappointments, you

know. You get to hating people who do contemptible work and who get on

just as well as you do. There are many disappointments in my

profession, and bitter, bitter contempts!” Her face hardened, and

looked much older. “If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give

up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the

cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative

hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk

everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you

ever knew you could be.” As she glanced at Dr. Archie’s face, Thea

stopped short and turned her own face away. Her eyes followed the path

of the searchlight up the river and rested upon the illumined headland.

“You see,” she went on more calmly, “voices are accidental things. You

find plenty of good voices in common women, with common minds and

common hearts. Look at that woman who sang _Ortrude_ with me last week.

She’s new here and the people are wild about her. ‘Such a beautiful

volume of tone!’ they say. I give you my word she’s as stupid as an owl

and as coarse as a pig, and any one who knows anything about singing

would see that in an instant. Yet she’s quite as popular as Necker,

who’s a great artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the

enthusiasm of a house that likes her atrociously bad performance at the

same time that it pretends to like mine? If they like her, then they

ought to hiss me off the stage. We stand for things that are

irreconcilable, absolutely. You can’t try to do things right and not

despise the people who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If that

doesn’t matter, then nothing matters. Well, sometimes I’ve come home as

I did the other night when you first saw me, so full of bitterness that

it was as if my mind were full of daggers. And I’ve gone to sleep and

wakened up in the Kohlers’ garden, with the pigeons and the white

rabbits, so happy! And that saves me.” She sat down on the piano bench.

Archie thought she had forgotten all about him, until she called his

name. Her voice was soft now, and wonderfully sweet. It seemed to come

from somewhere deep within her, there were such strong vibrations in

it. “You see, Dr. Archie, what one really strives for in art is not the

sort of thing you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance

at the opera. What one strives for is so far away, so deep, so

beautiful”—she lifted her shoulders with a long breath, folded her

hands in her lap and sat looking at him with a resignation that made

her face noble,—“that there’s nothing one can say about it, Dr.

Archie.”

Without knowing very well what it was all about, Archie was

passionately stirred for her. “I’ve always believed in you, Thea;

always believed,” he muttered.

She smiled and closed her eyes. “They save me: the old things, things

like the Kohlers’ garden. They are in everything I do.”

“In what you sing, you mean?”

“Yes. Not in any direct way,”—she spoke hurriedly,—“the light, the

color, the feeling. Most of all the feeling. It comes in when I’m

working on a part, like the smell of a garden coming in at the window.

I try all the new things, and then go back to the old. Perhaps my

feelings were stronger then. A child’s attitude toward everything is an

artist’s attitude. I am more or less of an artist now, but then I was

nothing else. When I went with you to Chicago that first time, I

carried with me the essentials, the foundation of all I do now. The

point to which I could go was scratched in me then. I haven’t reached

it yet, by a long way.”

Archie had a swift flash of memory. Pictures passed before him. “You

mean,” he asked wonderingly, “that you knew then that you were so

gifted?”

Thea looked up at him and smiled. “Oh, I didn’t know anything! Not

enough to ask you for my trunk when I needed it. But you see, when I

set out from Moonstone with you, I had had a rich, romantic past. I had

lived a long, eventful life, and an artist’s life, every hour of it.

Wagner says, in his most beautiful opera, that art is only a way of

remembering youth. And the older we grow the more precious it seems to

us, and the more richly we can present that memory. When we’ve got it

all out,—the last, the finest thrill of it, the brightest hope of

it,”—she lifted her hand above her head and dropped it,—“then we stop.

We do nothing but repeat after that. The stream has reached the level

of its source. That’s our measure.”

There was a long, warm silence. Thea was looking hard at the floor, as

if she were seeing down through years and years, and her old friend

stood watching her bent head. His look was one with which he used to

watch her long ago, and which, even in thinking about her, had become a

habit of his face. It was full of solicitude, and a kind of secret

gratitude, as if to thank her for some inexpressible pleasure of the

heart. Thea turned presently toward the piano and began softly to waken

an old air:—

“Ca’ the yowes to the knowes,

Ca’ them where the heather grows,

Ca’ them where the burnie rowes,

My bonnie dear-ie.”

Archie sat down and shaded his eyes with his hand. She turned her head

and spoke to him over her shoulder. “Come on, you know the words better

than I. That’s right.”

“We’ll gae down by Clouden’s side,

Through the hazels spreading wide,

O’er the waves that sweetly glide,

To the moon sae clearly.

Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,

Thou’rt to love and Heav’n sae dear,

Nocht of ill may come thee near,

My bonnie dear-ie!”

“We can get on without Landry. Let’s try it again, I have all the words

now. Then we’ll have ‘Sweet Afton.’ Come: ‘_Ca’ the yowes to the

knowes_’—”

X

Ottenburg dismissed his taxicab at the 91st Street entrance of the Park

and floundered across the drive through a wild spring snowstorm. When

he reached the reservoir path he saw Thea ahead of him, walking rapidly

against the wind. Except for that one figure, the path was deserted. A

flock of gulls were hovering over the reservoir, seeming bewildered by

the driving currents of snow that whirled above the black water and

then disappeared within it. When he had almost overtaken Thea, Fred

called to her, and she turned and waited for him with her back to the

wind. Her hair and furs were powdered with snowflakes, and she looked

like some rich-pelted animal, with warm blood, that had run in out of

the woods. Fred laughed as he took her hand.

“No use asking how you do. You surely needn’t feel much anxiety about

Friday, when you can look like this.”

She moved close to the iron fence to make room for him beside her, and

faced the wind again. “Oh, I’m _well_ enough, in so far as that goes.

But I’m not lucky about stage appearances. I’m easily upset, and the

most perverse things happen.”

“What’s the matter? Do you still get nervous?”

“Of course I do. I don’t mind nerves so much as getting numbed,” Thea

muttered, sheltering her face for a moment with her muff. “I’m under a

spell, you know, hoodooed. It’s the thing I _want_ to do that I can

never do. Any other effects I can get easily enough.”

“Yes, you get effects, and not only with your voice. That’s where you

have it over all the rest of them; you’re as much at home on the stage

as you were down in Panther Canyon—as if you’d just been let out of a

cage. Didn’t you get some of your ideas down there?”

Thea nodded. “Oh, yes! For heroic parts, at least. Out of the rocks,

out of the dead people. You mean the idea of standing up under things,

don’t you, meeting catastrophe? No fussiness. Seems to me they must

have been a reserved, somber people, with only a muscular language, all

their movements for a purpose; simple, strong, as if they were dealing

with fate bare-handed.” She put her gloved fingers on Fred’s arm. “I

don’t know how I can ever thank you enough. I don’t know if I’d ever

have got anywhere without Panther Canyon. How did you know that was the

one thing to do for me? It’s the sort of thing nobody ever helps one

to, in this world. One can learn how to sing, but no singing teacher

can give anybody what I got down there. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know. Anything else would have done as well. It was your

creative hour. I knew you were getting a lot, but I didn’t realize how

much.”

Thea walked on in silence. She seemed to be thinking.

“Do you know what they really taught me?” she came out suddenly. “They

taught me the inevitable hardness of human life. No artist gets far who

doesn’t know that. And you can’t know it with your mind. You have to

realize it in your body, somehow; deep. It’s an animal sort of feeling.

I sometimes think it’s the strongest of all. Do you know what I’m

driving at?”

“I think so. Even your audiences feel it, vaguely: that you’ve sometime

or other faced things that make you different.”

Thea turned her back to the wind, wiping away the snow that clung to

her brows and lashes. “Ugh!” she exclaimed; “no matter how long a

breath you have, the storm has a longer. I haven’t signed for next

season, yet, Fred. I’m holding out for a big contract: forty

performances. Necker won’t be able to do much next winter. It’s going

to be one of those between seasons; the old singers are too old, and

the new ones are too new. They might as well risk me as anybody. So I

want good terms. The next five or six years are going to be my best.”

“You’ll get what you demand, if you are uncompromising. I’m safe in

congratulating you now.”

Thea laughed. “It’s a little early. I may not get it at all. They don’t

seem to be breaking their necks to meet me. I can go back to Dresden.”

As they turned the curve and walked westward they got the wind from the

side, and talking was easier.

Fred lowered his collar and shook the snow from his shoulders. “Oh, I

don’t mean on the contract particularly. I congratulate you on what you

can do, Thea, and on all that lies behind what you do. On the life

that’s led up to it, and on being able to care so much. That, after

all, is the unusual thing.”

She looked at him sharply, with a certain apprehension. “Care? Why

shouldn’t I care? If I didn’t, I’d be in a bad way. What else have I

got?” She stopped with a challenging interrogation, but Ottenburg did

not reply. “You mean,” she persisted, “that you don’t care as much as

you used to?”

“I care about your success, of course.” Fred fell into a slower pace.

Thea felt at once that he was talking seriously and had dropped the

tone of half-ironical exaggeration he had used with her of late years.

“And I’m grateful to you for what you demand from yourself, when you

might get off so easily. You demand more and more all the time, and

you’ll do more and more. One is grateful to anybody for that; it makes

life in general a little less sordid. But as a matter of fact, I’m not

much interested in how anybody sings anything.”

“That’s too bad of you, when I’m just beginning to see what is worth

doing, and how I want to do it!” Thea spoke in an injured tone.

“That’s what I congratulate you on. That’s the great difference between

your kind and the rest of us. It’s how long you’re able to keep it up

that tells the story. When you needed enthusiasm from the outside, I

was able to give it to you. Now you must let me withdraw.”

“I’m not tying you, am I?” she flashed out. “But withdraw to what? What

do you want?”

Fred shrugged. “I might ask you, What have I got? I want things that

wouldn’t interest you; that you probably wouldn’t understand. For one

thing, I want a son to bring up.”

“I can understand that. It seems to me reasonable. Have you also found

somebody you want to marry?”

“Not particularly.” They turned another curve, which brought the wind

to their backs, and they walked on in comparative calm, with the snow

blowing past them. “It’s not your fault, Thea, but I’ve had you too

much in my mind. I’ve not given myself a fair chance in other

directions. I was in Rome when you and Nordquist were there. If that

had kept up, it might have cured me.”

“It might have cured a good many things,” remarked Thea grimly.

Fred nodded sympathetically and went on. “In my library in St. Louis,

over the fireplace, I have a property spear I had copied from one in

Venice,—oh, years ago, after you first went abroad, while you were

studying. You’ll probably be singing _Brünnhilde_ pretty soon now, and

I’ll send it on to you, if I may. You can take it and its history for

what they’re worth. But I’m nearly forty years old, and I’ve served my

turn. You’ve done what I hoped for you, what I was honestly willing to

lose you for—then. I’m older now, and I think I was an ass. I wouldn’t

do it again if I had the chance, not much! But I’m not sorry. It takes

a great many people to make one—_Brünnhilde_.”

Thea stopped by the fence and looked over into the black choppiness on

which the snowflakes fell and disappeared with magical rapidity. Her

face was both angry and troubled. “So you really feel I’ve been

ungrateful. I thought you sent me out to get something. I didn’t know

you wanted me to bring in something easy. I thought you wanted

something—” She took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders. “But

there! nobody on God’s earth wants it, _really!_ If one other person

wanted it,”—she thrust her hand out before him and clenched it,—“my

God, what I could do!”

Fred laughed dismally. “Even in my ashes I feel myself pushing you! How

can anybody help it? My dear girl, can’t you see that anybody else who

wanted it as you do would be your rival, your deadliest danger? Can’t

you see that it’s your great good fortune that other people can’t care

about it so much?”

But Thea seemed not to take in his protest at all. She went on

vindicating herself. “It’s taken me a long while to do anything, of

course, and I’ve only begun to see daylight. But anything good

is—expensive. It hasn’t seemed long. I’ve always felt responsible to

you.”

Fred looked at her face intently, through the veil of snowflakes, and

shook his head. “To me? You are a truthful woman, and you don’t mean to

lie to me. But after the one responsibility you do feel, I doubt if

you’ve enough left to feel responsible to God! Still, if you’ve ever in

an idle hour fooled yourself with thinking I had anything to do with

it, Heaven knows I’m grateful.”

“Even if I’d married Nordquist,” Thea went on, turning down the path

again, “there would have been something left out. There always is. In a

way, I’ve always been married to you. I’m not very flexible; never was

and never shall be. You caught me young. I could never have that over

again. One can’t, after one begins to know anything. But I look back on

it. My life hasn’t been a gay one, any more than yours. If I shut

things out from you, you shut them out from me. We’ve been a help and a

hindrance to each other. I guess it’s always that way, the good and the

bad all mixed up. There’s only one thing that’s all beautiful—and

always beautiful! That’s why my interest keeps up.”

“Yes, I know.” Fred looked sidewise at the outline of her head against

the thickening atmosphere. “And you give one the impression that that

is enough. I’ve gradually, gradually given you up.”

“See, the lights are coming out.” Thea pointed to where they flickered,

flashes of violet through the gray tree-tops. Lower down the globes

along the drives were becoming a pale lemon color. “Yes, I don’t see

why anybody wants to marry an artist, anyhow. I remember Ray Kennedy

used to say he didn’t see how any woman could marry a gambler, for she

would only be marrying what the game left.” She shook her shoulders

impatiently. “Who marries who is a small matter, after all. But I hope

I can bring back your interest in my work. You’ve cared longer and more

than anybody else, and I’d like to have somebody human to make a report

to once in a while. You can send me your spear. I’ll do my best. If

you’re not interested, I’ll do my best anyhow. I’ve only a few friends,

but I can lose every one of them, if it has to be. I learned how to

lose when my mother died.—We must hurry now. My taxi must be waiting.”

The blue light about them was growing deeper and darker, and the

falling snow and the faint trees had become violet. To the south, over

Broadway, there was an orange reflection in the clouds. Motors and

carriage lights flashed by on the drive below the reservoir path, and

the air was strident with horns and shrieks from the whistles of the

mounted policemen.

Fred gave Thea his arm as they descended from the embankment. “I guess

you’ll never manage to lose me or Archie, Thea. You do pick up queer

ones. But loving you is a heroic discipline. It wears a man out. Tell

me one thing: could I have kept you, once, if I’d put on every screw?”

Thea hurried him along, talking rapidly, as if to get it over. “You

might have kept me in misery for a while, perhaps. I don’t know. I have

to think well of myself, to work. You could have made it hard. I’m not

ungrateful. I was a difficult proposition to deal with. I understand

now, of course. Since you didn’t tell me the truth in the beginning,

you couldn’t very well turn back after I’d set my head. At least, if

you’d been the sort who could, you wouldn’t have had to,—for I’d not

have cared a button for that sort, even then.” She stopped beside a car

that waited at the curb and gave him her hand. “There. We part

friends?”

Fred looked at her. “You know. Ten years.”

“I’m not ungrateful,” Thea repeated as she got into her cab.

“Yes,” she reflected, as the taxi cut into the Park carriage road, “we

don’t get fairy tales in this world, and he has, after all, cared more

and longer than anybody else.” It was dark outside now, and the light

from the lamps along the drive flashed into the cab. The snowflakes

hovered like swarms of white bees about the globes.

Thea sat motionless in one corner staring out of the window at the cab

lights that wove in and out among the trees, all seeming to be bent

upon joyous courses. Taxicabs were still new in New York, and the theme

of popular minstrelsy. Landry had sung her a ditty he heard in some

theater on Third Avenue, about:

“But there passed him a bright-eyed taxi

With the girl of his heart inside.”

Almost inaudibly Thea began to hum the air, though she was thinking of

something serious, something that had touched her deeply. At the

beginning of the season, when she was not singing often, she had gone

one afternoon to hear Paderewski’s recital. In front of her sat an old

German couple, evidently poor people who had made sacrifices to pay for

their excellent seats. Their intelligent enjoyment of the music, and

their friendliness with each other, had interested her more than

anything on the programme. When the pianist began a lovely melody in

the first movement of the Beethoven D minor sonata, the old lady put

out her plump hand and touched her husband’s sleeve and they looked at

each other in recognition. They both wore glasses, but such a look!

Like forget-menots, and so full of happy recollections. Thea wanted to

put her arms around them and ask them how they had been able to keep a

feeling like that, like a nosegay in a glass of water.

XI

Dr. Archie saw nothing of Thea during the following week. After several

fruitless efforts, he succeeded in getting a word with her over the

telephone, but she sounded so distracted and driven that he was glad to

say good-night and hang up the instrument. There were, she told him,

rehearsals not only for “Walküre,” but also for “Götterdämmerung,” in

which she was to sing _Waltraute_ two weeks later.

On Thursday afternoon Thea got home late, after an exhausting

rehearsal. She was in no happy frame of mind. Madame Necker, who had

been very gracious to her that night when she went on to complete

Gloeckler’s performance of _Sieglinde_, had, since Thea was cast to

sing the part instead of Gloeckler in the production of the “Ring,”

been chilly and disapproving, distinctly hostile. Thea had always felt

that she and Necker stood for the same sort of endeavor, and that

Necker recognized it and had a cordial feeling for her. In Germany she

had several times sung _Brangaena_ to Necker’s _Isolde_, and the older

artist had let her know that she thought she sang it beautifully. It

was a bitter disappointment to find that the approval of so honest an

artist as Necker could not stand the test of any significant

recognition by the management. Madame Necker was forty, and her voice

was failing just when her powers were at their height. Every fresh

young voice was an enemy, and this one was accompanied by gifts which

she could not fail to recognize.

Thea had her dinner sent up to her apartment, and it was a very poor

one. She tasted the soup and then indignantly put on her wraps to go

out and hunt a dinner. As she was going to the elevator, she had to

admit that she was behaving foolishly. She took off her hat and coat

and ordered another dinner. When it arrived, it was no better than the

first. There was even a burnt match under the milk toast. She had a

sore throat, which made swallowing painful and boded ill for the

morrow. Although she had been speaking in whispers all day to save her

throat, she now perversely summoned the housekeeper and demanded an

account of some laundry that had been lost. The housekeeper was

indifferent and impertinent, and Thea got angry and scolded violently.

She knew it was very bad for her to get into a rage just before

bedtime, and after the housekeeper left she realized that for ten

dollars’ worth of underclothing she had been unfitting herself for a

performance which might eventually mean many thousands. The best thing

now was to stop reproaching herself for her lack of sense, but she was

too tired to control her thoughts.

While she was undressing—Therese was brushing out her _Sieglinde_ wig

in the trunk-room—she went on chiding herself bitterly. “And how am I

ever going to get to sleep in this state?” she kept asking herself. “If

I don’t sleep, I’ll be perfectly worthless to-morrow. I’ll go down

there to-morrow and make a fool of myself. If I’d let that laundry

alone with whatever nigger has stolen it—_why_ did I undertake to

reform the management of this hotel to-night? After to-morrow I could

pack up and leave the place. There’s the Phillamon—I liked the rooms

there better, anyhow—and the Umberto—” She began going over the

advantages and disadvantages of different apartment hotels. Suddenly

she checked herself. “What _am_ I doing this for? I can’t move into

another hotel to-night. I’ll keep this up till morning. I shan’t sleep

a wink.”

Should she take a hot bath, or shouldn’t she? Sometimes it relaxed her,

and sometimes it roused her and fairly put her beside herself. Between

the conviction that she must sleep and the fear that she couldn’t, she

hung paralyzed. When she looked at her bed, she shrank from it in every

nerve. She was much more afraid of it than she had ever been of the

stage of any opera house. It yawned before her like the sunken road at

Waterloo.

She rushed into her bathroom and locked the door. She would risk the

bath, and defer the encounter with the bed a little longer. She lay in

the bath half an hour. The warmth of the water penetrated to her bones,

induced pleasant reflections and a feeling of well-being. It was very

nice to have Dr. Archie in New York, after all, and to see him get so

much satisfaction out of the little companionship she was able to give

him. She liked people who got on, and who became more interesting as

they grew older. There was Fred; he was much more interesting now than

he had been at thirty. He was intelligent about music, and he must be

very intelligent in his business, or he would not be at the head of the

Brewers’ Trust. She respected that kind of intelligence and success.

Any success was good. She herself had made a good start, at any rate,

and now, if she could get to sleep—Yes, they were all more interesting

than they used to be. Look at Harsanyi, who had been so long retarded;

what a place he had made for himself in Vienna. If she could get to

sleep, she would show him something to-morrow that he would understand.

She got quickly into bed and moved about freely between the sheets.

Yes, she was warm all over. A cold, dry breeze was coming in from the

river, thank goodness! She tried to think about her little rock house

and the Arizona sun and the blue sky. But that led to memories which

were still too disturbing. She turned on her side, closed her eyes, and

tried an old device.

She entered her father’s front door, hung her hat and coat on the rack,

and stopped in the parlor to warm her hands at the stove. Then she went

out through the diningroom, where the boys were getting their lessons

at the long table; through the sitting-room, where Thor was asleep in

his cot bed, his dress and stocking hanging on a chair. In the kitchen

she stopped for her lantern and her hot brick. She hurried up the back

stairs and through the windy loft to her own glacial room. The illusion

was marred only by the consciousness that she ought to brush her teeth

before she went to bed, and that she never used to do it. Why—? The

water was frozen solid in the pitcher, so she got over that. Once

between the red blankets there was a short, fierce battle with the

cold; then, warmer—warmer. She could hear her father shaking down the

hard-coal burner for the night, and the wind rushing and banging down

the village street. The boughs of the cottonwood, hard as bone, rattled

against her gable. The bed grew softer and warmer. Everybody was warm

and well downstairs. The sprawling old house had gathered them all in,

like a hen, and had settled down over its brood. They were all warm in

her father’s house. Softer and softer. She was asleep. She slept ten

hours without turning over. From sleep like that, one awakes in shining

armor.

On Friday afternoon there was an inspiring audience; there was not an

empty chair in the house. Ottenburg and Dr. Archie had seats in the

orchestra circle, got from a ticket broker. Landry had not been able to

get a seat, so he roamed about in the back of the house, where he

usually stood when he dropped in after his own turn in vaudeville was

over. He was there so often and at such irregular hours that the ushers

thought he was a singer’s husband, or had something to do with the

electrical plant.

Harsanyi and his wife were in a box, near the stage, in the second

circle. Mrs. Harsanyi’s hair was noticeably gray, but her face was

fuller and handsomer than in those early years of struggle, and she was

beautifully dressed. Harsanyi himself had changed very little. He had

put on his best afternoon coat in honor of his pupil, and wore a pearl

in his black ascot. His hair was longer and more bushy than he used to

wear it, and there was now one gray lock on the right side. He had

always been an elegant figure, even when he went about in shabby

clothes and was crushed with work. Before the curtain rose he was

restless and nervous, and kept looking at his watch and wishing he had

got a few more letters off before he left his hotel. He had not been in

New York since the advent of the taxicab, and had allowed himself too

much time. His wife knew that he was afraid of being disappointed this

afternoon. He did not often go to the opera because the stupid things

that singers did vexed him so, and it always put him in a rage if the

conductor held the tempo or in any way accommodated the score to the

singer.

When the lights went out and the violins began to quaver their long D

against the rude figure of the basses, Mrs. Harsanyi saw her husband’s

fingers fluttering on his knee in a rapid tattoo. At the moment when

_Sieglinde_ entered from the side door, she leaned toward him and

whispered in his ear, “Oh, the lovely creature!” But he made no

response, either by voice or gesture. Throughout the first scene he sat

sunk in his chair, his head forward and his one yellow eye rolling

restlessly and shining like a tiger’s in the dark. His eye followed

_Sieglinde_ about the stage like a satellite, and as she sat at the

table listening to _Siegmund’s_ long narrative, it never left her. When

she prepared the sleeping draught and disappeared after _Hunding_,

Harsanyi bowed his head still lower and put his hand over his eye to

rest it. The tenor,—a young man who sang with great vigor, went on:—

“Wälse! Wälse!

Wo ist dein Schwert?”

Harsanyi smiled, but he did not look forth again until _Sieglinde_

reappeared. She went through the story of her shameful bridal feast and

into the Walhall’ music, which she always sang so nobly, and the

entrance of the one-eyed stranger:—

“Mir allein

Weckte das Auge.”

Mrs. Harsanyi glanced at her husband, wondering whether the singer on

the stage could not feel his commanding glance. On came the

_crescendo:_—

“Was je ich verlor,

Was je ich beweint

War’ mir gewonnen.”

(All that I have lost,

All that I have mourned,

Would I then have won.)

Harsanyi touched his wife’s arm softly.

Seated in the moonlight, the _Volsung_ pair began their loving

inspection of each other’s beauties, and the music born of murmuring

sound passed into her face, as the old poet said,—and into her body as

well. Into one lovely attitude after another the music swept her, love

impelled her. And the voice gave out all that was best in it. Like the

spring, indeed, it blossomed into memories and prophecies, it recounted

and it foretold, as she sang the story of her friendless life, and of

how the thing which was truly herself, “bright as the day, rose to the

surface” when in the hostile world she for the first time beheld her

Friend. Fervently she rose into the hardier feeling of action and

daring, the pride in hero-strength and hero-blood, until in a splendid

burst, tall and shining like a Victory, she christened him:—

“Siegmund—

So nenn ich dich!”

Her impatience for the sword swelled with her anticipation of his act,

and throwing her arms above her head, she fairly tore a sword out of

the empty air for him, before _Nothung_ had left the tree. _In höchster

Trunkenheit_, indeed, she burst out with the flaming cry of their

kinship: “If you are _Siegmund_, I am _Sieglinde!_” Laughing, singing,

bounding, exulting,—with their passion and their sword,—the _Volsungs_

ran out into the spring night.

As the curtain fell, Harsanyi turned to his wife. “At last,” he sighed,

“somebody with _Enough!_ Enough voice and talent and beauty, enough

physical power. And such a noble, noble style!”

“I can scarcely believe it, Andor. I can see her now, that clumsy girl,

hunched up over your piano. I can see her shoulders. She always seemed

to labor so with her back. And I shall never forget that night when you

found her voice.”

The audience kept up its clamor until, after many reappearances with

the tenor, Kronborg came before the curtain alone. The house met her

with a roar, a greeting that was almost savage in its fierceness. The

singer’s eyes, sweeping the house, rested for a moment on Harsanyi, and

she waved her long sleeve toward his box.

“She _ought_ to be pleased that you are here,” said Mrs. Harsanyi. “I

wonder if she knows how much she owes to you.”

“She owes me nothing,” replied her husband quickly. “She paid her way.

She always gave something back, even then.”

“I remember you said once that she would do nothing common,” said Mrs.

Harsanyi thoughtfully.

“Just so. She might fail, die, get lost in the pack. But if she

achieved, it would be nothing common. There are people whom one can

trust for that. There is one way in which they will never fail.”

Harsanyi retired into his own reflections.

After the second act Fred Ottenburg brought Archie to the Harsanyis’

box and introduced him as an old friend of Miss Kronborg. The head of a

musical publishing house joined them, bringing with him a journalist

and the president of a German singing society. The conversation was

chiefly about the new _Sieglinde_. Mrs. Harsanyi was gracious and

enthusiastic, her husband nervous and uncommunicative. He smiled

mechanically, and politely answered questions addressed to him. “Yes,

quite so.” “Oh, certainly.” Every one, of course, said very usual

things with great conviction. Mrs. Harsanyi was used to hearing and

uttering the commonplaces which such occasions demanded. When her

husband withdrew into the shadow, she covered his retreat by her

sympathy and cordiality. In reply to a direct question from Ottenburg,

Harsanyi said, flinching, “_Isolde?_ Yes, why not? She will sing all

the great roles, I should think.”

The chorus director said something about “dramatic temperament.” The

journalist insisted that it was “explosive force,” “projecting power.”

Ottenburg turned to Harsanyi. “What is it, Mr. Harsanyi? Miss Kronborg

says if there is anything in her, you are the man who can say what it

is.”

The journalist scented copy and was eager. “Yes, Harsanyi. You know all

about her. What’s her secret?”

Harsanyi rumpled his hair irritably and shrugged his shoulders. “Her

secret? It is every artist’s secret,”—he waved his hand,—“passion. That

is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is

inimitable in cheap materials.”

The lights went out. Fred and Archie left the box as the second act

came on.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the

sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy;

only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. That

afternoon nothing new came to Thea Kronborg, no enlightenment, no

inspiration. She merely came into full possession of things she had

been refining and perfecting for so long. Her inhibitions chanced to be

fewer than usual, and, within herself, she entered into the inheritance

that she herself had laid up, into the fullness of the faith she had

kept before she knew its name or its meaning.

Often when she sang, the best she had was unavailable; she could not

break through to it, and every sort of distraction and mischance came

between it and her. But this afternoon the closed roads opened, the

gates dropped. What she had so often tried to reach, lay under her

hand. She had only to touch an idea to make it live.

While she was on the stage she was conscious that every movement was

the right movement, that her body was absolutely the instrument of her

idea. Not for nothing had she kept it so severely, kept it filled with

such energy and fire. All that deep-rooted vitality flowered in her

voice, her face, in her very finger-tips. She felt like a tree bursting

into bloom. And her voice was as flexible as her body; equal to any

demand, capable of every _nuance_. With the sense of its perfect

companionship, its entire trustworthiness, she had been able to throw

herself into the dramatic exigencies of the part, everything in her at

its best and everything working together.

The third act came on, and the afternoon slipped by. Thea Kronborg’s

friends, old and new, seated about the house on different floors and

levels, enjoyed her triumph according to their natures. There was one

there, whom nobody knew, who perhaps got greater pleasure out of that

afternoon than Harsanyi himself. Up in the top gallery a gray-haired

little Mexican, withered and bright as a string of peppers beside

a’dobe door, kept praying and cursing under his breath, beating on the

brass railing and shouting “Bravó! Bravó!” until he was repressed by

his neighbors.

He happened to be there because a Mexican band was to be a feature of

Barnum and Bailey’s circus that year. One of the managers of the show

had traveled about the Southwest, signing up a lot of Mexican musicians

at low wages, and had brought them to New York. Among them was Spanish

Johnny. After Mrs. Tellamantez died, Johnny abandoned his trade and

went out with his mandolin to pick up a living for one. His

irregularities had become his regular mode of life.

When Thea Kronborg came out of the stage entrance on Fortieth Street,

the sky was still flaming with the last rays of the sun that was

sinking off behind the North River. A little crowd of people was

lingering about the door—musicians from the orchestra who were waiting

for their comrades, curious young men, and some poorly dressed girls

who were hoping to get a glimpse of the singer. She bowed graciously to

the group, through her veil, but she did not look to the right or left

as she crossed the sidewalk to her cab. Had she lifted her eyes an

instant and glanced out through her white scarf, she must have seen the

only man in the crowd who had removed his hat when she emerged, and who

stood with it crushed up in his hand. And she would have known him,

changed as he was. His lustrous black hair was full of gray, and his

face was a good deal worn by the _extasi_, so that it seemed to have

shrunk away from his shining eyes and teeth and left them too

prominent. But she would have known him. She passed so near that he

could have touched her, and he did not put on his hat until her taxi

had snorted away. Then he walked down Broadway with his hands in his

overcoat pockets, wearing a smile which embraced all the stream of life

that passed him and the lighted towers that rose into the limpid blue

of the evening sky. If the singer, going home exhausted in her cab, was

wondering what was the good of it all, that smile, could she have seen

it, would have answered her. It is the only commensurate answer.

Here we must leave Thea Kronborg. From this time on the story of her

life is the story of her achievement. The growth of an artist is an

intellectual and spiritual development which can scarcely be followed

in a personal narrative. This story attempts to deal only with the

simple and concrete beginnings which color and accent an artist’s work,

and to give some account of how a Moonstone girl found her way out of a

vague, easy-going world into a life of disciplined endeavor. Any

account of the loyalty of young hearts to some exalted ideal, and the

passion with which they strive, will always, in some of us, rekindle

generous emotions.

EPILOGUE

Moonstone again, in the year 1909. The Methodists are giving an

ice-cream sociable in the grove about the new court-house. It is a warm

summer night of full moon. The paper lanterns which hang among the

trees are foolish toys, only dimming, in little lurid circles, the

great softness of the lunar light that floods the blue heavens and the

high plateau. To the east the sand hills shine white as of old, but the

empire of the sand is gradually diminishing. The grass grows thicker

over the dunes than it used to, and the streets of the town are harder

and firmer than they were twenty-five years ago. The old inhabitants

will tell you that sandstorms are infrequent now, that the wind blows

less persistently in the spring and plays a milder tune. Cultivation

has modified the soil and the climate, as it modifies human life.

The people seated about under the cottonwoods are much smarter than the

Methodists we used to know. The interior of the new Methodist Church

looks like a theater, with a sloping floor, and as the congregation

proudly say, “opera chairs.” The matrons who attend to serving the

refreshments to-night look younger for their years than did the women

of Mrs. Kronborg’s time, and the children all look like city children.

The little boys wear “Buster Browns” and the little girls Russian

blouses. The country child, in made-overs and cut-downs, seems to have

vanished from the face of the earth.

At one of the tables, with her Dutch-cut twin boys, sits a fair-haired,

dimpled matron who was once Lily Fisher. Her husband is president of

the new bank, and she “goes East for her summers,” a practice which

causes envy and discontent among her neighbors. The twins are

well-behaved children, biddable, meek, neat about their clothes, and

always mindful of the proprieties they have learned at summer hotels.

While they are eating their icecream and trying not to twist the spoon

in their mouths, a little shriek of laughter breaks from an adjacent

table. The twins look up. There sits a spry little old spinster whom

they know well. She has a long chin, a long nose, and she is dressed

like a young girl, with a pink sash and a lace garden hat with pink

rosebuds. She is surrounded by a crowd of boys,—loose and lanky, short

and thick,—who are joking with her roughly, but not unkindly.

“Mamma,” one of the twins comes out in a shrill treble, “why is Tillie

Kronborg always talking about a thousand dollars?”

The boys, hearing this question, break into a roar of laughter, the

women titter behind their paper napkins, and even from Tillie there is

a little shriek of appreciation. The observing child’s remark had made

every one suddenly realize that Tillie never stopped talking about that

particular sum of money. In the spring, when she went to buy early

strawberries, and was told that they were thirty cents a box, she was

sure to remind the grocer that though her name was Kronborg she didn’t

get a thousand dollars a night. In the autumn, when she went to buy her

coal for the winter, she expressed amazement at the price quoted her,

and told the dealer he must have got her mixed up with her niece to

think she could pay such a sum. When she was making her Christmas

presents, she never failed to ask the women who came into her shop what

you _could_ make for anybody who got a thousand dollars a night. When

the Denver papers announced that Thea Kronborg had married Frederick

Ottenburg, the head of the Brewers’ Trust, Moonstone people expected

that Tillie’s vain-gloriousness would take another form. But Tillie had

hoped that Thea would marry a title, and she did not boast much about

Ottenburg,—at least not until after her memorable trip to Kansas City

to hear Thea sing.

Tillie is the last Kronborg left in Moonstone. She lives alone in a

little house with a green yard, and keeps a fancywork and millinery

store. Her business methods are informal, and she would never come out

even at the end of the year, if she did not receive a draft for a good

round sum from her niece at Christmas time. The arrival of this draft

always renews the discussion as to what Thea would do for her aunt if

she really did the right thing. Most of the Moonstone people think Thea

ought to take Tillie to New York and keep her as a companion. While

they are feeling sorry for Tillie because she does not live at the

Plaza, Tillie is trying not to hurt their feelings by showing too

plainly how much she realizes the superiority of her position. She

tries to be modest when she complains to the postmaster that her New

York paper is more than three days late. It means enough, surely, on

the face of it, that she is the only person in Moonstone who takes a

New York paper or who has any reason for taking one. A foolish young

girl, Tillie lived in the splendid sorrows of “Wanda” and “Strathmore”;

a foolish old girl, she lives in her niece’s triumphs. As she often

says, she just missed going on the stage herself.

That night after the sociable, as Tillie tripped home with a crowd of

noisy boys and girls, she was perhaps a shade troubled. The twin’s

question rather lingered in her ears. Did she, perhaps, insist too much

on that thousand dollars? Surely, people didn’t for a minute think it

was the money she cared about? As for that, Tillie tossed her head, she

didn’t care a rap. They must understand that this money was different.

When the laughing little group that brought her home had gone weaving

down the sidewalk through the leafy shadows and had disappeared, Tillie

brought out a rocking chair and sat down on her porch. On glorious,

soft summer nights like this, when the moon is opulent and full, the

day submerged and forgotten, she loves to sit there behind her

rose-vine and let her fancy wander where it will. If you chanced to be

passing down that Moonstone street and saw that alert white figure

rocking there behind the screen of roses and lingering late into the

night, you might feel sorry for her, and how mistaken you would be!

Tillie lives in a little magic world, full of secret satisfactions.

Thea Kronborg has given much noble pleasure to a world that needs all

it can get, but to no individual has she given more than to her queer

old aunt in Moonstone. The legend of Kronborg, the artist, fills

Tillie’s life; she feels rich and exalted in it. What delightful things

happen in her mind as she sits there rocking! She goes back to those

early days of sand and sun, when Thea was a child and Tillie was

herself, so it seems to her, “young.” When she used to hurry to church

to hear Mr. Kronborg’s wonderful sermons, and when Thea used to stand

up by the organ of a bright Sunday morning and sing “Come, Ye

Disconsolate.” Or she thinks about that wonderful time when the

Metropolitan Opera Company sang a week’s engagement in Kansas City, and

Thea sent for her and had her stay with her at the Coates House and go

to every performance at Convention Hall. Thea let Tillie go through her

costume trunks and try on her wigs and jewels. And the kindness of Mr.

Ottenburg! When Thea dined in her own room, he went down to dinner with

Tillie, and never looked bored or absent-minded when she chattered. He

took her to the hall the first time Thea sang there, and sat in the box

with her and helped her through “Lohengrin.” After the first act, when

Tillie turned tearful eyes to him and burst out, “I don’t care, she

always seemed grand like that, even when she was a girl. I expect I’m

crazy, but she just seems to me full of all them old times!”—Ottenburg

was so sympathetic and patted her hand and said, “But that’s just what

she is, full of the old times, and you are a wise woman to see it.”

Yes, he said that to her. Tillie often wondered how she had been able

to bear it when Thea came down the stairs in the wedding robe

embroidered in silver, with a train so long it took six women to carry

it.

Tillie had lived fifty-odd years for that week, but she got it, and no

miracle was ever more miraculous than that. When she used to be working

in the fields on her father’s Minnesota farm, she couldn’t help

believing that she would some day have to do with the “wonderful,”

though her chances for it had then looked so slender.

The morning after the sociable, Tillie, curled up in bed, was roused by

the rattle of the milk cart down the street. Then a neighbor boy came

down the sidewalk outside her window, singing “Casey Jones” as if he

hadn’t a care in the world. By this time Tillie was wide awake. The

twin’s question, and the subsequent laughter, came back with a faint

twinge. Tillie knew she was short-sighted about facts, but this

time—Why, there were her scrapbooks, full of newspaper and magazine

articles about Thea, and half-tone cuts, snap-shots of her on land and

sea, and photographs of her in all her parts. There, in her parlor, was

the phonograph that had come from Mr. Ottenburg last June, on Thea’s

birthday; she had only to go in there and turn it on, and let Thea

speak for herself. Tillie finished brushing her white hair and laughed

as she gave it a smart turn and brought it into her usual French twist.

If Moonstone doubted, she had evidence enough: in black and white, in

figures and photographs, evidence in hair lines on metal disks. For one

who had so often seen two and two as making six, who had so often

stretched a point, added a touch, in the good game of trying to make

the world brighter than it is, there was positive bliss in having such

deep foundations of support. She need never tremble in secret lest she

might sometime stretch a point in Thea’s favor.—Oh, the comfort, to a

soul too zealous, of having at last a rose so red it could not be

further painted, a lily so truly auriferous that no amount of gilding

could exceed the fact!

Tillie hurried from her bedroom, threw open the doors and windows, and

let the morning breeze blow through her little house.

In two minutes a cob fire was roaring in her kitchen stove, in five she

had set the table. At her household work Tillie was always bursting out

with shrill snatches of song, and as suddenly stopping, right in the

middle of a phrase, as if she had been struck dumb. She emerged upon

the back porch with one of these bursts, and bent down to get her

butter and cream out of the ice-box. The cat was purring on the bench

and the morning-glories were thrusting their purple trumpets in through

the lattice-work in a friendly way. They reminded Tillie that while she

was waiting for the coffee to boil she could get some flowers for her

breakfast table. She looked out uncertainly at a bush of sweet-briar

that grew at the edge of her yard, off across the long grass and the

tomato vines. The front porch, to be sure, was dripping with crimson

ramblers that ought to be cut for the good of the vines; but never the

rose in the hand for Tillie! She caught up the kitchen shears and off

she dashed through grass and drenching dew. Snip, snip; the

short-stemmed sweet-briars, salmon-pink and golden-hearted, with their

unique and inimitable woody perfume, fell into her apron.

After she put the eggs and toast on the table, Tillie took last

Sunday’s New York paper from the rack beside the cupboard and sat down,

with it for company. In the Sunday paper there was always a page about

singers, even in summer, and that week the musical page began with a

sympathetic account of Madame Kronborg’s first performance of _Isolde_

in London. At the end of the notice, there was a short paragraph about

her having sung for the King at Buckingham Palace and having been

presented with a jewel by His Majesty.

Singing for the King; but Goodness! she was always doing things like

that! Tillie tossed her head. All through breakfast she kept sticking

her sharp nose down into the glass of sweet-briar, with the old

incredible lightness of heart, like a child’s balloon tugging at its

string. She had always insisted, against all evidence, that life was

full of fairy tales, and it was! She had been feeling a little down,

perhaps, and Thea had answered her, from so far. From a common person,

now, if you were troubled, you might get a letter. But Thea almost

never wrote letters. She answered every one, friends and foes alike, in

one way, her own way, her only way. Once more Tillie has to remind

herself that it is all true, and is not something she has “made up.”

Like all romancers, she is a little terrified at seeing one of her

wildest conceits admitted by the hardheaded world. If our dream comes

true, we are almost afraid to believe it; for that is the best of all

good fortune, and nothing better can happen to any of us.

When the people on Sylvester Street tire of Tillie’s stories, she goes

over to the east part of town, where her legends are always welcome.

The humbler people of Moonstone still live there. The same little

houses sit under the cottonwoods; the men smoke their pipes in the

front doorways, and the women do their washing in the back yard. The

older women remember Thea, and how she used to come kicking her express

wagon along the sidewalk, steering by the tongue and holding Thor in

her lap. Not much happens in that part of town, and the people have

long memories. A boy grew up on one of those streets who went to Omaha

and built up a great business, and is now very rich. Moonstone people

always speak of him and Thea together, as examples of Moonstone

enterprise. They do, however, talk oftener of Thea. A voice has even a

wider appeal than a fortune. It is the one gift that all creatures

would possess if they could. Dreary Maggie Evans, dead nearly twenty

years, is still remembered because Thea sang at her funeral “after she

had studied in Chicago.”

However much they may smile at her, the old inhabitants would miss

Tillie. Her stories give them something to talk about and to conjecture

about, cut off as they are from the restless currents of the world. The

many naked little sandbars which lie between Venice and the mainland,

in the seemingly stagnant water of the lagoons, are made habitable and

wholesome only because, every night, a foot and a half of tide creeps

in from the sea and winds its fresh brine up through all that network

of shining waterways. So, into all the little settlements of quiet

people, tidings of what their boys and girls are doing in the world

bring real refreshment; bring to the old, memories, and to the young,

dreams.

THE END