Thurley did not see much of Lissa or Mark for the next few weeks. Perhaps
Lissa deemed it wiser not to encourage Thurley’s becoming one of her
protégées because of Mark,—at least, until Thurley was a prima donna
and her mind busied with many things. At the present time Thurley was
amenable to all new faces and suggestions. Had she permitted her to be
more with Mark than was customary who knows but what the result would
spell disaster for Lissa’s contentment. Let Thurley taste of fame as
Lissa had, for a short time, tasted, and she knew no mere individuals
could claim her attention as they might now.
Neither did Thurley see Sam Sparling nor Ernestine for they were on
tour. Sam sent her a doll, a wonderful, fluffy-skirted young lady doll
with her brown hair combed modishly, bits of kid gloves reaching to the
dimpled, wax elbows and a paste brilliant necklace. The accompanying card
read, “Thurley Precore, prima donna, from an old beau!” And when Thurley
audaciously took the doll to Hobart’s studio the next lesson hour, Hobart
pretended to give the lesson to the doll and not Thurley, saying in
conclusion,
“As no one else is here, Thurley, I can lecture you all I like and say
what I really think—how charming you look in that costume—but please
don’t listen to Lissa’s nonsense, you’ll hear enough of it presently. Kid
gloves, too! I declare if Sam hasn’t lost his old heart—”
“Why not listen to Lissa?” asked Thurley, imitating a doll’s shrill voice.
“Because you must choose the straight, narrow path of hard work and
a terrific loneliness of soul if your success is to be lasting and
independent of others. You may bestow your affections on some one as a
gracious favor—after you have made for yourself your public place—but
never listen to what such women as Lissa chatter about—or such women as
you will meet in the opera house. You will see them come and go, quickly
appearing and more rapidly disappearing and that is because they have
followed Lissa’s logic.”
“But please,” still imitating the doll’s voice, “what in the world am I
to do? I’ve promised never to marry any one and I’m sure I won’t love
any one I cannot marry. I’m not keen on slum work and I don’t choose
cigarettes and Persian kitties for my home atmosphere as Ernestine
does—nor attics like Polly.”
Hobart’s face was grave. “Some day, we will talk about things and I will
tell my secrets—but not yet, you are too young and flushed with dreams.”
He stopped speaking to the doll as he added, “You must tramp abroad with
Ernestine this summer; Miss Clergy may go or not as she wishes. But when
you return you are to start rehearsals for your début.”
Thurley looked at him for a long, glorious moment. After all, it had
been worth the winter’s work and bewildering experiences. To make her
début—would she ever forget the day in the stableyard of the Hotel Button
when Dan engaged her to sing at his circus, rival to the “great swinging
man”—and she had told him then that some day she was to sing before great
audiences—maybe earning as much as a dollar a night!
“I’m not ready,” she began.
“You will be—stage directions, a good maid, a press agent, Santoza’s
coaching and a little polishing here and there. I told you the first day
you sang for me that God had taught you how to sing, man merely teaching
you what.”
“Abroad—London—Paris—Spain—” Thurley began to whisper. “It’s true—isn’t
it?—say that it is—,” dancing up to him, her eyes like stars.
“Don’t be too happy,” he suggested almost testily, “I can’t bear to see
it!”
“Why not?” she was the aggrieved, wild-rose child speaking her mind
regardless of the person who was listening. “Because _you_ are not happy?”
“No, because you must find out sooner or later that each life is given so
much happiness, pain, cowardice, bravery, all attributes and emotions,
the same as we are physically endowed with so much eyesight, hearing,
power of locomotion, and when you realize that and know that when you
burn up all the joy and ecstasy of unthinking youth, there is nothing,
nothing that can ever cause such joy to exist again or give one such an
abandon of mirth—all the rest of life snails on in gray patterns—I’d
like to have you save your joy for things more worth while than this,
distribute it so it will last through the gray days, Thurley!”
Looking at him, Thurley saw that his face was a dangerous, shiny white
as if he had been ill a long time and his eyes were deadish, burnt-out
things.
“I am sorry,” she began impulsively, “that you’ve no joy left—”
Hobart recalled himself and began pointing out errors in her last song.
They did not go beneath the surface again during the lesson. When it
was finished, Hobart said November would probably be the month of her
début,—not in “Faust” as she had fondly imagined but as the vivacious
_Rosina_ in “The Barber of Seville”; protest all she liked, _Rosina_ it
was to be.
“That is nearly seven months away,” he said, looking out at the April
sky. “Ernestine writes she will be home by June and you will start soon
after. You must be back by the middle of September—however, that gives
you quite a holiday. From now on, Thurley, I shall not see you—” he held
out his hand but she did not seem to notice.
“Where are you going?”
“London, to superintend some pantomime things and opera. I’ll be back in
June but not until you have sailed; we’ll almost be ships passing in the
night. But I’ll be here in September to hear you tell of the Old World
as seen by two very blue eyes. To-morrow you will please go to Santoza
for coaching. You don’t like him and he likes no one save his gnarled old
self—he has seen too many women play hob with too many men ever to like
the loveliest of beginners. But he will teach you all you need to know
and Antone will take you for the singing hour. If Lissa suggests that
she coach you, ward her off. Now, my little prodigy, good-by and a happy
summer.”
Still Thurley did not take his hand. “Where do you go from June until
September?” she demanded.
Hobart neither glowered nor started as she anticipated. He laughed and
patted her shoulder, whispering, “Ah, that would be telling—”
Some one tapped at his door and Thurley, perforce, tore herself away.
She would not see Bliss Hobart for nearly seven months ... seven months
... then she would make her début! Well, if she could glean from
Ernestine bits of her philosophy and from Polly her contagious jollity
and add a trifle of Lissa’s purring loveliness—and she became as famous
as her own voice could make any one—perhaps even Bliss Hobart might be
tempted to say where he disappeared each year!
Thurley was planning a startling series of events between herself and
Bliss Hobart as she left the building, trying not to let tears crowd
her blue eyes or betray she was perturbed.... Santoza, hateful ogre
with dirty, yellow hands, absurd, striped clothes and long, greasy
hair, always mumbling to himself in Italian—she must study with Santoza
and have those yellow, soiled fingers whirl angrily in the air as he
tried to explain wherein she was in error and with Antone, that cynical
little dandy with no more heart than flint, who stared at her through
half-closed lids and only ridiculed, never praised!
Then Thurley resolved a dangerous but very feminine thing. Had she but
known, many other younger and lovelier women than herself had resolved
the same thing regarding Bliss Hobart. She would make him _care_ for
her! Not even Miss Clergy’s vow should prove an obstacle. She would make
him care ... after that was an undetermined stage of rapture, a new and
alluring sort of ooze in which to take refuge after hateful hours with
Santoza and Antone and wondering moments as to what Hobart was doing and
where he hid for his summer holiday! Thurley would make him care. Having
achieved that, she would then employ Lissa’s theories as a vaulting pole
to take her well over the handicap which Miss Clergy fancied she had
forever placed in the way of romantic love.
No woman had yet succeeded. This Thurley did not know; like all the
others she was sure that she was to prove the exception.
She worked with Antone and Santoza cultivating an attitude of
indifference to offset their unpleasant personalities. Miss Clergy, in
her squirrel cage of a world, looked on with pleased but feeble eyes and
told Thurley she must go abroad with Ernestine Christian.
“You’ll come, too?” Thurley begged. “You must not stay so alone. All you
do is to drive and read—and you do read the same books over and over—and
talk with me a little and sleep a great deal. When I drag you into a shop
you are as timid as can be and you won’t meet people though I’ve coaxed
and begged. Please come with us—think of France, Spain, Italy,” Thurley
hurried on to produce many new and tempting arguments.
Miss Clergy shook her head. “He came from Italy,” she said. “I could not
bear it.”
Remorseful, undecided what was best to say, Thurley stood back abashed.
“Oh, don’t let it hurt for so long—you’ve burnt up all your joy,”
recalling Hobart’s words.
Miss Clergy waved Thurley off. “I’ll go to a rest cure,” she decided.
“Now be off, my head is starting to ache.”
Still Thurley hesitated. “You won’t go back to the Corners?” she asked.
Miss Clergy gave a cackling laugh. “Don’t worry, Thurley, I’d not go back
even to dance at Dan Birge’s wedding.”
Thurley left the room. She tried Ernestine’s antidote for heart stirrings
as she practised scales, louder and louder in more and more glorious a
voice until Miss Clergy fell asleep, happy at heart—for had she not at
the eleventh hour saved a genius from mediocrity and secured revenge for
her withered tragedy?
The first Sunday morning in May, Polly Harris appeared to carry Thurley
off, first to her attic to retrieve something she had forgotten, and next
to Collin Hedley’s garden and château a few miles up the Hudson.
“I knew this wasn’t lesson day and so I was sure you would come along.
Wear something old because Collin’s place is one of those shabby-elegant
affairs where new costumes seem vulgar. I think the only time when Lissa
is ever uncomfortable is at Collin’s garden parties, but she has to come
because she is jealous of Mark and there she is, a great, painted doll
among real things.”
Polly audaciously danced about Miss Clergy’s rooms while Thurley hurried
into her blue serge with a flat, black sailor. Polly kept up a pleasing
conversation with Miss Clergy as to Thurley’s début and the proposed trip
abroad, the wonderful things Bliss had been doing in London and what a
jolly world it was anyhow, actually tucking an extra pillow behind Miss
Clergy’s back and leaving her the last issue of a shocking art journal
as her proper Sabbath reading. Hobart had truly prophesied that when
Polly went to heaven she would be given the position of keeping every one
chirked up when things promised to be a trifle ponderous.
“Let’s be ordinary critters and fly down to my sky parlor on a Fifth
Avenue ’bus,” she proposed. “I pay the fares,” jingling her coin purse.
“Oh, no, Polly,” Thurley interposed. Thurley did not comprehend what
Ernestine had tried to impress so carefully upon her—that Polly was not
yet defeated, that she must be careful lest she hint of the opinions of
the family which were that defeat for Polly was inevitable.
Polly pursed up her mouth crossly. “Do, Thurley, this is my party,” she
insisted, after which Thurley gave way and let Polly spend two precious
dimes in lordly fashion.
As they proceeded down the Avenue, seated on the top of a Washington
Square ’bus and quite as happy as when Ernestine had taken them out in
her motor, Polly said,
“I haven’t had the chance of really doing anything for you, Thurley—”
“You have, too; there was Sam Sparling—”
“Yes, but no one is like Collin.” Her face was illumined from within.
Thurley’s dramatic sense caught the wonderful hopelessness of the
expression, cold-bloodedly resolving to copy it in any rôle which should
demand a similar emotion. “Collin is the most wonderful person in the
world, besides being the most wonderful painter. I’m so glad he asked us
out for Sunday. He’d have done so before but he’s terrifically busy. All
the world crowds his doorstep to be painted. Fancy, Collin has no New
York studio—if people wish his work they must come to him and come they
do. When you see Parva Sed Apta, you’ll understand why it is the only
place in the world of its kind and how beautiful and good is Collin’s own
self.” Polly was unconscious of her betrayal.
“Is he as wonderful as Bliss Hobart? Ernestine says Collin painted Mr.
Hobart’s portrait and it made him.”
Polly was loath to give up her argument. “Well, Bliss is wonderful—no one
denies that—but in a different way. There are so many sides to Bliss;
one day he is a hermit, the next a schoolboy, then a stern master,
a diplomat, a sarcastic critic, a taskmaster—sometimes, very rarely
of late, he is a dreamer, as idealistic as the tints of the skies in
Collin’s pictures. But Collin is always Collin, a child with a talent so
huge he does not comprehend it himself and, therefore, he can never be
spoiled.”
“Has he never married?” Thurley asked innocently.
“Oh, no,” Polly’s answer was made in breathless haste, “he never thinks
of such a thing—he is absorbed in work ... why, if one is his friend, it
is all one should expect ... it is enough,” she added bravely.
“Do you think Caleb Patmore will marry?” Thurley braced her little
boots against the front board of the ’bus as they rounded a bump in the
pavement.
“Not unless some one makes Ernestine realize she has a heart tucked
away in that austere bosom of hers.... I could beat Ernestine for not
loving that boy,” and the thought of Polly, so tiny and gentle in her
brown garb, and of Ernestine, stately and unapproachable, in some smoky
drapery, made Thurley give way to a chuckle.
“Don’t try it unless you take a course of jiu-jitsu,” she advised.
But Polly was rambling on in a new vein. “When Ernestine returns, she
will take you to Caleb’s house; then you’ll see how a famous novelist
who has commercialized himself lives—and you won’t like it! Every June
Ernestine visits Caleb and generally takes me as ballast—sort of grand
duchess conferring a favor, you know. The rest of the year, unless Caleb
entertains, he has to come to her whenever she will have him, starved
of heart, yet loyal. (Of course if people care they do stay loyal) ...
but wait until you see Caleb’s sleek establishment and contrast it with
Collin’s transplanted paradise.”
They jumped off the ’bus steps and made their way down a narrow side
street which was most distressingly dirty to Thurley’s mind, reaching a
dilapidated brownstone-front house with “Rooms for Rent” in the parlor
windows. Skipping up a fire escape on the outside, with Thurley toiling
after, Polly opened a bit of a window on the top floor, jumped down
inside while the boards creaked perilously and then assisted Thurley to
do likewise.
“I never go up the inside way unless it is winter,” she explained,
“because every poor devil would stop to ask for a loan. I can’t refuse
unless I’m stony broke and I can’t afford to part with the little I have.
Of course they can’t pay back, poor dears! So the fire escape affords
an excellent subterfuge and no one’s feelings are hurt. I want to take
Collin a book on woodcuts; I found it at an old bookstore the other day.”
She was prowling about a dusty secretary, opening drawers and failing to
close them.
Thurley stood in the center of the room aghast at Polly’s attic.
Ernestine and Caleb had prepared her for it, saying with almost reproach
that she, Thurley, was missing the glorious camaraderie with failures,
she was the proverbial jewel in the rough who was taken to an expert
lapidary, cut, polished and placed in platinum without any transitional
stage! And she would do well to learn more of Polly’s life so as to glean
the atmosphere of optimistic struggle, humorous cares and sometimes
indescribable pathos. So much Thurley did in the moment she waited for
Polly to find the book—a book costing a week’s earnings!
The room was badly in need of repair; the roof sloped down so Thurley
had to crouch if she moved but a foot either way—it reminded her of
Betsey Pilrig’s attic. There was a cot made into a divan with a turkey
red covering and pillows, a scrap of a rag rug, an easel, for Polly
did commercial drawings fairly well, a table one confusion of doll
furniture and china dolls dressed in wisps of silk, satin and burlap.
Polly explained this was her “tryout”—when she was planning scenes in her
opera, she had the puppets assume positions so as to gauge the effect.
She was so serious about the matter that Thurley was forced to conceal a
laugh as she said the idea was excellent.
“I have no typewriter; did have last winter, but I played in hard luck
and left it at ‘uncle’s.’—I scribble almost as swiftly and so it’s of
no consequence,” she added contentedly. “Just last week I had an idea
and I think it is a real idea, Thurley—as you are to sing the title
rôle I’ll tell it to you. Instead of having THE American opera founded
on the landing of Columbus and a romance of an Indian girl with one of
his knights and so on—of course I’ll finish it and have it produced
later,” she supplemented in all seriousness—“I have decided to do a
series of operas dealing with American wars. First, the Revolution—you
are to be Moll Pitcher—then 1812—then the Mexican War—the Civil War—the
Spanish-American—pray heaven there will be no other. Don’t you see how
great it will be—great—_great_?” her body swaying with excitement.
“Yesterday, I did two arias.” She fumbled about the secretary and
unearthed music paper covered with startling black notes. “Oh, Thurley,
I must succeed—I must. I won’t take no from either gods or half-gods.
I’ll defy them! I won’t slink away and become an upstate saleswoman for
victrolas! There!”
“I hope you will,” Thurley said gently.
“You say that as if you’d like to add, ‘Here, my pore gel, take this
quarter and wear a cap the next time you meet me!’ Wait—wait until you
fail.”
Thurley’s spirit was roused. “But I won’t—not in my work.”
“There are other ways than work—love, for instance?”
“I won’t fail in love,” the defiant, wild-rose Thurley was always on hand
to meet a challenge.
“Don’t promise yourself everything,” was Polly’s sage advice, “and now, I
believe we are ready to decamp.”