By four the next afternoon, Joy had nearly scared herself into a chill.
Félicie had gone down to Princeton for a party, but Jerry had remained
with her. First, her costume offered trouble. After three changes, she
was almost ready to start, when there was a heartsick moment of losing
her short gloves. Then a worse moment when she found a rip in them that
Jerry repaired with lightning skill. Hesitation over her music which Pa
had told her to take indiscriminately, since the great one would select
what she pleased to hear. It seemed such a lot to take in one music
roll. Finally Jerry bundled her off, going down with her to the door of
the waiting car, a dark green Cadillac, such as anyone,—well most
anyone—might have. She was driven to the door of a Park Avenue
apartment house, where the chauffeur instructed her to go to the top
floor. A little maid admitted her to a room beautifully appointed in
grey, relieved by sharp touches of black and the inevitable grand piano.
Music was piled on the piano in indeterminate heaps; some of it was even
trickling off to the floor. Another sheet fell as Joy came into the
room, and she went over to pick it up, restoring the others to place as
she did so.
“Ah, so we have a neat little housewife’s soul, in a singer!”
A full, perfectly poised voice, each word as flawless as if it had been
engraved on a cameo. Joy turned, crimson with embarrassment and
excitement, and straightway forgot both. The queen of music had a most
understanding smile. Moreover, she did not look like a diva. She was not
even large, as singers went, and certainly not of terrifying aspect. She
was dainty as a little wren, standing by the doorway in a grey teagown,
her head tipped to one side, her eyes—the eyes that looked so
awe-inspiring in her pictures—surrounded by a network of little
smile-wrinkles.
“Well,” she said, and came to take Joy’s hands; “have you nothing at all
to say to me—or must all be sung, as in op-era? Never mind—” and she
drew Joy to a sofa—“I once remember when I was younger than you, and
they sent me to sing for Patti. Oh, how I died! It was after a
performance, and Patti was in no charm to hear me. She was weary of
child-wonders. How well I remember that long time ago! She was in her
room at the hotel; there was a wood fire; she always had one go ahead of
her, turn off the steam, and have a fire built ready for her coming. I
sat in a tremble; and what I had brought to sing—at sixteen? The waltz
song from Romeo and Juliet! But no matter. She came in all wrapped
around with cloaks and hoods and shawls. How poisonous is the night air
to a singer, and all other things that lend joy and romance! Her table
was spread with her supper. I was to sing while she ate. She sat down,
giving me a look with those black eyes, while her maid unwound her from
the shawls. I was so unhappy! She pointed to the piano. ‘I do not know
why they want me to hear them sing,’ she said. ‘I know nothing, just
what I like or do not like, and how it sounds to me—I will listen not
for the things the critics discuss. But sing! And I will tell you what I
think.’”
She looked at Joy, her eyes twinkling up again. “I was in a horror! I
shook, how I shook! And the noble Adelina saw that I could not do
anything, although the young man was waiting for me at the piano. She
arose from her clear soup, did Adelina, and went to look at what I had
brought. ‘Ah, it is the waltz!’ she said. ‘Have you heard Nellie Melba
sing this, child?’
“Nellie Melba was then dazzling the world. I had heard and rejoiced, as
had everyone. I could only nod. But Adelina went on. ‘In my time,’ she
said, ‘Nellie Melba’s voice would have been termed a light-opera voice.
You gasp? But listen how we were taught to run the descent of the
chromatic in this waltz.’”
She closed her eyes, her features sinking into a repose of prayer. “Oh,
those notes that came floating from that supreme woman! Golden,
perfectly matched, each one a pearl on the perfect string! She stopped
on the B flat, and laughed a little at my face. ‘Now I will show you,’
said she, ‘how Nellie Melba pours it forth!’ And that Adelina ran it up
and down in just the way I had heard Melba sing it many times. I cannot
tell you the difference. Still beautiful, but—it was as if she had
taken the bottom away from everything, that second time!”
“What did she say when you sang?” Joy asked eagerly, as she came to a
pause.
The little wren tossed her hands and shoulders, laughing lightly. “The
story ends there! I have gotten you to speak! Come—let us see what you
have brought. I hope a variety, for I like to choose!” She ran her
fingers lightly through the music-roll, pulling out “The Messiah,” to
Joy’s horror. She had not dreamed that the heroine of thirty operas, and
mistress of the concert stage, would even glance at oratorio.
“Behold what is complete in one,” she was saying. “We have everything
here, from the dramatics to the dynamics. Come, let us be off!”
“I didn’t suppose—this is the hardest thing I ever tried to do—” Joy
faltered, following her to the piano.
“No matter! You have saved yourself already, in saying ‘tried to do,’
instead of—‘done’!” She modulated into the pastoral symphony, still
talking: “This is so cruel! Nearly eighty pages while the soprano sits
like a rock! Many have no voice left when their time comes!”
She played for Joy to sing through the four first recitatives, then
without comment plunged into the “Come Unto Him,” followed by “Rejoice
Greatly,” and ending with “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”
Then she turned on the bench. “We all have fads, which we call
convictions,” she said quietly; “and mine is that this music we have
just done can show plainly as nothing else, what one has and what one
has learned. Now let us have some fun and do some op-era. What can you
do?”
“Pa hasn’t given me anything but Faust——”
“He wouldn’t; I am glad; for I know you have other airs, and I shall
wish to see what you have done without Pa, with your own brain and
soul-fire. Come, shall we do something so banal you shall have to lend
it your own self, lest we remember the hurdy-gurdy?”
Joy hesitated, as she had been about to suggest her beloved Louise.
“But-terfly!” cried the little wren, and tore a wail of beauty from the
keys.
So Joy sang Madame Butterfly . . . with a pulse beating in her voice
that made the great one turn on the last note and kiss her exultantly.
“When I have a new sensation with that song, I am won!” she cried. “And
you gave it—why, you little girl—with years before your maiden voice
grows into your woman’s voice—you had not only the longing of Butterfly
but the longing of all! Do you see what I mean? It is so that the
American shop girl could hear you sing it in Italian and weep!”
She became quiet, judicial. “Pa Graham is right. The greatest of
teachers are not always right—when the pupil has beauty which dazzles
and deafens the beholder—but Pa is right with you. You have everything,
everything and to spare, in equipment. Now it is the question of the
years of preparation. Many young girls start out as you, with high hopes
and encouragement. Many do not finish—of their own fault and choosing.
Are you of a steadfast mind?”
“I will let nothing come in my way,” said Joy breathlessly, “not even
love——”
“That is the thing that may end all. . . . And perhaps you may be glad
that all is over, if you love greatly.” She looked down at the gorgeous
rings on her fingers, and there was a little silence before she
continued. “But most loves are not the great loves of which we sing and
act; they are not the blazing altar-fires of which we dream; love comes
down to a hearth-fire, after marriage. And we who sing are not content
with hearth-fires. Remember that always, little one; _we who sing are
not content with hearth-fires_.”
The maid came into the far end of the room, spraying the air with water
from an atomizer. “My substitute for Adelina’s wood-fires,” the wren
said with a smile. “Steam dries you up in your throat—oh, it is
terrible! Bring the tea, will you, Aimée?” A pause, while she played
rippling cadenzas and frowned at the keys. Joy longed to ask her to
sing, but would not, when suddenly without apparent preparation or
setting, her voice floated out in a great, full note that swelled to the
power of the room until the very windows sang, and then quivered itself
into silence. Under the little white hands the keys wove a melody above
which the voice rang out, first dazzling with its fireworks, then
charming with its beauty. Joy, listening, thought it the most perfect
voice in the world, as it came close to being. It ended on a long high
note as small and clear as a thread of silver, that hung in the air and
charmed the echoes.
“It is an old Italian air,” she said, before Joy could speak. “I have
not sung it for a long time; no one sings it any more; the new music is
all different.”
“Thank you,” said Joy, reverently; “the memory of that will always spur
me on. And thank you for not singing before I did!”
Her laugh, as lovely a thing as one of her runs, rippled out, and she
turned to the wagon Aimée was wheeling into the room. “And now for tea.
Here is a splendid illustration of the hardships of the singer. We must
forswear life’s sweet things for the voice and the figure. Often I
think, when shall I taste that French pastry my friends always de-vour?”
She rolled her eyes, almost upsetting the teacup she was passing Joy.
“But no, I do not even know what it would seem like.”
Tea with lemon and without sugar; buttered toast; flat little sponge
cakes that tasted like sawdust.
“Once I let myself go and ate a caramel before a concert,” the little
wren related, between sips of tea. “Never shall I forget! I came out and
sang My Lovely Celia. I had not sung much in English, and they were
ready to notice anything. I sang on, ‘as lilies sweet, as soft as air,’
and when I came to soft—you know it is but a G, but a tiny, small,
floated thing—my voice stuck, I strangled, and the whole hall choked
for me! I could feel that caramel sticking to my cords!”
Tea was over, and Joy knew that she must go. She managed to express her
appreciation coherently, in spite of the fact that her hostess kissed
her again.
“When you return to New York, you must come here once more,” she said,
and put Joy’s music back into the roll for her. “And when you are
through with all your work, we will get you that hearing.”
Joy rode back to the Belmont holding her music-roll gingerly. It was
awesome, when you considered who had closed it. Would she ever want to
open it again. . . . The queen of music had spoken as though her success
were a matter of time. . . .
Jerry was sitting by the window, looking out into the darkness; a
desolate Jerry with her hair pulled back into a brush, leaving her white
face without shading.
“New York’s getting under my skin,” she said rapidly before Joy could
speak; “there’s no use, Joy; it spells Phil Lancaster to me, and a lot
of other things that do me no good to think about; I’ve got to get out
of here.”
Joy put down her music roll before coming nearer, and as Jerry’s eyes
fell on it, she jumped up, shaking her hair until it fell about her face
once more. “I’m a selfish fool! Tell me all about it—quick!”
Joy had nearly finished her thrilling story when Jerry interrupted her.
“Here’s a note they pushed under the door. I forgot to give it to you
before.”
It was a little hotel envelope containing the information that Mrs.
Eustace Drew had called and would call again at six-thirty. Joy looked
at her watch wildly. It was that now.
“Does ‘will call at six-thirty’ mean in person, or by telephone?” she
demanded. The telephone rang by way of answer, and a voice informed her
that “Mrs. Drew was in the lobby.”
“She might at least have spoken to me herself,” she grumbled, flying to
the mirror.
“Who?” said Jerry.
“My New York cousin. Things always come in bunches with me!”
Yes, Cousin Mabel certainly might have talked to her, if only to tell
her what to expect, she thought as she went down to attack the lobby
vaguely. But Cousin Mabel was standing by a pillar and came over to her
immediately.
“Joy?” she asked with a smile its recipient recognised as genuine:
“Well, I think we should have known each other anywhere—or is it mere
fond vanity that tells me we look alike?”
Cousin Mabel was a pretty woman in her late twenties, a trifle faded
already, but very dainty and luxurious-looking wrapped in her sables.
She was of the same blond type as Joy, but her hair was already losing
its brightness and her eyes were grey rather than the radiant blue that
marked Joy’s greatest appeal. She was unvarnishedly pale, which made Joy
conscious of the dab of rouge on her cheeks. As she stood exchanging
amenities, Joy found herself contrasting Cousin Mabel’s style with
Jerry’s. Jerry was always put together perfectly, with just the right
amount of carelessness; but her style was the type that burst upon one.
Mabel undoubtedly had style; but it was so quiet that one had to look
many times to appreciate the small, perfect little details that made the
unobtrusive whole.
“I have been trying to get you for so long, my dear,” she was saying.
“But last night you were evidently making the most of being in New York;
also this afternoon. Is it too late for you to run up to dine informally
with us to-night? My big brother will be there, and my husband and one
or two others.”