She was sitting by her balcony, sewing.
“Did you have a good walk?” she asked softly.
She seemed less sad. When I had tossed my hat and stick aside and
entered her room, it seemed to me even that a smile was hovering on her
lovely face. I could not be certain of this, for she kept her head bowed
over her work.
I dropped into a chair by her, and looked at her. Yes, she seemed
distinctly softer, even more subtly feminine (as we say) than usual,
bending over the needle that moved nimbly to and fro. It struck me that
sewing brought out the beauty of her hands.
Finally she raised her head and looked at me. She _was_ smiling.
“I've got it,” she said. “Listen.”
And with a quick breath and a slight stiffening of her shoulders she
began singing the scale upward from middle _c_--sitting there with her
sewing in her lap. I listened closely. Heretofore she had usually begun
to miss the eighth-tone intervals when she reached _a_ and _b_. Now she
took them perfectly. I could not detect the slightest inaccuracy of
pitch. I noticed that she kept to a marked rhythm, all the way up. The
upper _c_ she held, with a sudden triumphant glance at me, and trilled
on it, very softly.
It brought me to my feet. “Come,” I said gruffly, “we'll take that down
on the machine.” She followed into my room, explaining eagerly as she
watched me putting on the cylinder--“You see, to-day, I realized all at
once that I've been downright stupid about it. It occurred to me that
singing with a rhythm might carry me right along through it. And then
besides I just stopped fussing, and made up my mind that _of course_ I
could do it. I can do it again, too. You'll see.”
She promptly did it again. Again and again, as rapidly as I could put
on new cylinders. I seized the occasion to make twelve records. Then we
both listened attentively while I played them all over. There was not
the slightest doubt that ten were perfect--or so nearly perfect that
they satisfied us. And that is near enough. My hands trembled as I put
each cylinder back in its box and carefully wrote the labels. Oh, it has
been a tremendous day, this day!
She stood right over the machine throughout this performance--and we
must have been an hour at it. I asked her to sit, but she laughed a
little and said she was too excited.
When the labeled boxes were all carefully put away in a drawer of my
bureau, where no accident short of fire could reach them, I came to her
and took her two hands. Then suddenly I could not say anything at all.
But she looked right at me, and returned, very frankly, the pressure of
my hands, and smiled, though there were tears in her own eyes.
“I'm so glad,” she said. “You just don't know--I've wanted so to be of
_use_--”
She gently tried to withdraw her hands. I released one, but, still
unable to speak, clung to the other; and hand in hand we walked to the
French window and stepped out, side by side, on the narrow balcony.
Then I let her hand go, and we leaned on the railing and breathed in the
sweet April air.
[Illustration: 0143]
It was evening now. Electric lights were twinkling. Gay paper lanterns
hung out from nearby buildings. The confusion of street cries floated up
faintly to our ears.
My time had come.
But it was hard to speak directly. First I told her how wonderfully she
has helped me, and to what a practical end.
All she said to this was--very softly, gazing off at the lights--“I'm
glad.”
I rambled on. Which would not do. My time _had_ come, and I was
letting it slip away. It was characteristic of me, I thought almost
bitterly--always, except in the one narrow channel of my work,
blundering ineffectually, missing the realities of life.
I gathered my forces, with a great effort. I felt sober, stem, all at
once.
“Listen, please,” I began.
Instantly I knew that she had caught the change in me. I thought I felt
her nerves tighten, though I was not touching her. I blundered on.
“You have come to know me,” I said.
“Yes,” she breathed, “I have come to know you.”
“And by this time you know just about the sort of man I am. I must
assume that you know that, because I expect you to take all of me into
account in what I am going to say. I know I shall say it badly. I doubt
if I shall succeed at all in saying even what I mean. Yet, you've got to
understand me.”
She kept silent; but it seemed to me, in the subtle understanding we had
somehow reached, that she assented to this preliminary condition.
“I am going to put it bluntly,” I rushed on “It's the only way I can say
it at all. I see two facts, as regards you and me. One is that you are
a wonderful woman. You have great gifts. You have what we call
temperament--a silly word, but there is no other for the precise
meaning. It is an absurd waste to keep you here. You must go to Berlin
or Paris--Paris, I think, for the French music is the most stimulating
of any today. You must be prepared for opera just as rapidly as
possible. There is no time to lose.”
Her mouth twisted into a fleeting half-smile. “It is quite out of the
question,” she murmured.
“No, it is not out of the question!” My voice was rising, and she had
to give me a warning look. “I do not know quite how it is to be managed,
but I can see a beginning, at least.”
She seemed surprised at this, so I talked more and more rapidly. “First,
you must consider my second fact. Remember, I am speaking only as a
practical scientist--quite impersonally.” God forgive me, this seemed
true at the moment! “What you have done for me has a value that I dare
not even estimate. Though my income is not great, even from my text
books, I would gladly have traveled thousands of miles and devoted
months of work to the securing of the phonographic close-interval scale
that now is securely mine.”
She was beginning to stir restlessly. But I would not let her speak.
“Take your copying and clerical work alone--perhaps, I should not
say this--I could not possibly get such devoted and expert assistance
anywhere in the world without paying a reasonable price by the week. Now
hear me! You must not close your mind to what I am saying!” For I
knew she was doing just that, as women will. I caught her arm--and her
hand--in my two hands and clung to her. She did not resist. Nor did she
respond--merely looked soberly off over the city, and seemed, all the
time, to be drifting away from me. My head was burning hot. My forehead
was dripping wet, and I had to shake the drops of sweat out of my eyes.
Great, wild thoughts were gripping my mind, that had been so confused.
I knew then that I must get her out of Peking, away from that ugly,
persistent old man across the hall, away from the drink-crazed younger
man who thought he could by a violent act restore what he called his
honor. I knew that I must be equal to this task. I must find the way.
And I must persuade her.