Dan—Miss Clergy has promised to take me to New York and let me study. I was telling you the truth about it. I know it is for the best, we could never make each other happy—forgive and forget,Thurley.
Dan—
Miss Clergy has promised to take me to New York and let me study. I was telling you the truth about it. I know it is for the best, we could never make each other happy—forgive and forget,
Thurley.
“Well—I always liked you, ’Raine,” he forced himself into saying. “And it’s mighty sensible—I guess your father will say yes.”
“He may think a marriage for—spite,” she added half inaudibly, “isn’t right, but I’ll marry you anyway, Dan,” this to his surprise.
“It hurts to love so hard, doesn’t it?” he asked impersonally. “I thought she was only joking about the fair—but I guess if she knows her own mind, I can know mine!” Determination to turn the tables on Thurley and the town surged to the front. “It’s nobody’s business whether I marry you to-morrow—I’m going right on with the plans for the house and the ring—and all of it! I guess we can learn to be happy in our own way,” he touched her hair gently. “You’re an awful good little girl to care enough not to be jealous of Thurley. I don’t think you’ll ever be sorry we married ... sometimes it takes a funny sort of thing—like my being engaged to Thurley, you know,” he stumbled over the situation in poorly chosen words, “and her wanting a career and leaving me, to make other people happy!” He tried to laugh, lovable, broken-hearted boy, and Lorraine tried to laugh, too, lovable girl whose broken heart was beginning to mend. “And here I am marrying the same little girl I played with—so here’s our pledge to be happy—no matter what.”
To Lorraine’s father, who questioned the suddencourtship, he said with Birge aggression, “Lorraine loves me and she’ll never marry any other fellow. I guess you know all there is to my being engaged to Thurley, sir. I’m sorry it ever got into the paper, but that’s done and there is no taking it back. I loved Thurley, but I’d be a fool to mope my life away like Miss Clergy did because a girl wanted to sing instead of be my wife. After all, it’s not a matter of life and death.” He wondered if the Reverend McDowell knew how loud his heart was thumping, great irregular thumps, each one trying to say in its dumb fashion, “Oh, Thurley-dear!” But he finished bravely, “I’m making plans to build and I guess you know I’ll take good care of ’Raine. If you’ve any other objection to me, I’d like to hear it.”
“Nothing but the haste, my lad,” the older man said slowly. “My child would never marry another man—but yourself—this ‘heart on the rebound’—”
“I want ’Raine!” Dan cried, striking the chair arm with the flat of his palm. “And I’m going to marry her. I’ll wait until the house is built, if you think it best, but she’s promised to marry me and she won’t change.”
“Then why bother me at all?” Lorraine’s father could not refrain from saying. “It was never a Birge habit, as I recall it.”
After Dan left the parsonage study to tell Lorraine her father approved, but they would wait until Fairview was ready for occupancy, and diligently measured her ring finger, finding it two sizes smaller than Thurley’s, he left her, dazed with joy yet trying to still the something which whispered,
“He loves Thurley; you must always be content with crumbs.”
Lorraine began counting over the things in the long-closedhope chest and planning to crowd it to overflowing. What mattered it, if they were not married for a year or two? Was she not “bespoken” to Dan Birge? And Lorraine was quite positive she would not change her mind.
Upon leaving Lorraine that day, Dan went to the box-car wagon to sit for a long time on its steps, thinking the bitter, rebellious things of youth, that dangerous noon-time, trying to forget the glorious moment when he had measured Thurley’s ring finger with a blade of grass she had plucked near Philena’s grave, how every bit of him thrilled with a new, savage joy and new, savage longings ... well, it was to be Lorraine! He flipped the bit of ribbon she had used as a ring guide on the end of his thumb in disdain. After all, it must hurt Thurley a very little when she should hear the news, and, like most of the world, when they cannot have their way unhampered, to hurt the object of past adoration is quite the natural procedure!
When Birge’s Corners exhibited customary signs of fall, with winter clothes hung out to be beaten, smells of catsup and corn relish, the broken panes in the opera house windows repaired and the poster of a gaudy burlesque queen pasted on the billboard, a full line of mufflers and overcoats crowding the emporium show cases, bonfires of leaves and misty haze veiling the early mornings, Thurley Precore and Abby Clergy, two islands of old-fashionedness, entirely surrounded by seas of new fashion, safely ensconced in a comfortable hotel suite, were chatting like schoolgirls over the momentous event of the morrow.
For Thurley was to meet the Napoleon of grand opera, the master critic and coach, who could make or mar the most talented person in creation—Bliss Hobart, amysterious, powerful, never-erring judge of one’s abilities, both latent and developed.
Miss Clergy’s solicitors and Miss Clergy’s checkbook skilfully deciphered false lures of singing teachers and alleged powerful agents, and had, at the same time, discovered the nucleus of the New York art world. So Thurley was to make her bow, as it were, to the very public itself at noon to-morrow.
Bliss Hobart was impossible to describe, Thurley concluded. As she first spied him behind his carved teakwood desk, one of a hundred luxuries in his elaborate studio, he appeared a small, insignificant person with an overlarge head betraying the aristocracy of an old race and piercing gray eyes. His hair, a salt and pepper affair with a wild front-lock waving as signal for a controversy, showed the result of a fever, not age, she afterwards learned, and his long, almost grotesque nose and flexible mouth with its deeply-dimpled chin inspired her with a desire to laugh. But as he came across the room to greet Miss Clergy and give Thurley a cheerful nod, she saw that he was as tall as her own self and his shoulders were broad and powerful, while his wonderfully shaped hands championed his abilities. He was dressed more foppishly than she had ever seen a man dress—a blue serge with a corded white waistcoat, an exquisite sapphire pin in the cream satin scarf and a watch chain as slender as a woman’s. As he whisked out his handkerchief characteristically, she discovered it to be of more cobwebby texture than her own.
Facing him, her blue eyes staring in naïve wonderment, Thurley asked herself why she had experienced the illusion of this man’s being a clever dwarf with cruel, calculating eyes! Whatever Bliss Hobart thought of Thurley would have been impossible to state. He seemed more interested in Miss Clergy whose thin face was flushedwith excitement and whose small self wore a sheathlike dress of black silk, which suited her well.
For the moment Bliss Hobart seemed a respectful footman solicitous about his mistress’ comfort, as he “fussed” over selecting a chair for Miss Clergy and asked as to draughts. Thurley was left in confusion in the middle of the great room, looking out at Central Park.
She tried to steady her thoughts by taking inventory of the room’s contents, but it added to her bewilderment. There was something of every period in furnishings—shrug-shouldered French, the burly Jacobean, the Victorian redolent of posies, curls and lace mitts, subtle Oriental and convenient Mission—there was rare glass which had successfully imprisoned Italian sunshine, Holland delft-ware, cloisonne, snowy linen panels from China encrusted with gold dragons, lamps with the magic of India and great jars of Navajo pottery. Behind the desk was a door halfway ajar—Thurley caught her breath as she looked at it. This must be the sacred spot where one was “tried out.” The agent finally arranging the interview had told them that when Bliss Hobart was convinced he had a find, he went into the little anteroom and played accompaniments or scales or whatever he wished, while he tested voices. But before he heard one sing, he had a way of deciding whether or not it was worth while to pass through the anteroom door.
Thurley wondered if she could make any sound at all—her voice seemed frozen. Supposing she did not meet Miss Clergy’s expectations? Supposing she were forced to return to Birge’s Corners or to stay in New York as a ribbon clerk, sharing another ribbon clerk’s hall bedroom? She began looking at the collection of autographed photographs which lined thewalls, the marble statues, the bas reliefs, some paintings of an interesting, delicate sort in pastels and shadowy outlines which hung close beside the teakwood desk. Then the portrait of a striking, but not beautiful, woman claimed Thurley’s attention. The woman had a clever, quick face with flashing black eyes, almost as black as Dan’s, and blue-black hair, quite like Dan’s, combed into a huge knot at the nape of her thin, yet attractive, neck. She were a Grecian frock—two layers of white voile and a layer of black with a jet cord for a girdle. It was a merciless frock, Thurley decided, for it showed the woman’s bony, frail figure and unlovely, long arms with wonderfullylivehands and surprisingly stubby fingers. On the third finger of each hand was an antique ring, the glow of the jewels shining on the white lap of her frock. Something about the picture fascinated Thurley. She was wondering if this woman were not Bliss Hobart’s wife; if she did not find it a stupendous task to be as clever and as keen as her husband. Yet those well-modeled scarlet lips and the rather masculine chin told Thurley that the woman was equal to almost any task. By contrast, glancing in a side mirror, Thurley felt herself overdone and impossible. She longed to exit silently and drop down the nearest elevator shaft in peaceful oblivion.
Before she had reached the studio she had felt sure of herself, scornful of criticism. Miss Clergy told her she looked a picture in her frock of white crêpe, embroidered with dull red, and a smart crimson sailor to match. But as she pulled off her gloves in nervousness she felt unfit, impossible, one mammoth gaucherie—her wilful brown hair would creep out in untidy strands and her face grow flushed in spite of the conventional coating of powder. She wondered what Dan Birge would say if he came intothe studio of the “wisest and most cynical man in New York’s art world” and saw her!
“Ah,” Hobart was saying, “we can go inside now—”
Thurley started. Miss Clergy was sitting in blissful rapture in an easy chair by the window, her gray head nodding at Thurley in delight.
Thurley wondered how long she had been standing spellbound. She had thought and felt so many strange things and emotions that the time she was sure must be great.
“I won’t keep you out here,” Hobart was saying, just the suggestion of a blur in his pleasant voice. “Some one might stray in, and I’ve an appointment for lunch. Miss Clergy, please help yourself to something to read.”
“I sha’n’t be lonesome,” Miss Clergy answered. They were a strange pair, this wild-rose girl and the little ghost-lady who had quickened just in time to make the wild rose become hothouse variety.
“What were you looking at so intently?” Hobart paused before they went ahead.
“That picture of your wife,” Thurley answered without delay.
He laughed. “Dear me, that is a very famous person who is an intimate friend of mine and a friend of my other intimate friends. Her name is Ernestine Christian and she is a pianist. Paderewski thinks no one plays Beethoven as well as Ernestine—you may meet her some day. But remember that in New York the portraits of ladies hanging nearest gentlemen’s desks are never likely to be their wives. Tell me, what do you think of the painting?”
“That it was by the same artist who did those.” Thurley pointed childishly.
“Right—Collin Hedley—you’ve heard of him?”
She shook her head. “We live at Birge’s Corners,” she said demurely.
“Then you will hear of him, particularly if you meet Miss Christian. Collin painted her portrait as a revenge, because she insisted that men with Van Dyke beards always have a queer sense of humor. I take it you understand who boasts of a Van Dyke beard. Then they gave me the picture because I am so fond of them both.” He was leading the way across the room.
As she stepped inside the anteroom, Hobart closed the door. Looking about she saw tawny, rough plaster walls, highly polished floors, a white marble mantel seemingly unconscious of the fire of birch logs ready to be kindled. Gold-colored curtains shut out daylight; peasant chairs with rush seats and a great, dark-wooded settle piled with cushions gave the proper background for the piano which stood in the center of the room.
“Sit down,” Hobart said pleasantly. “I was so interested in your fairy godmother that I have not had a good look at you. There—so—I can see your eyes. How old are you?” His voice changed to that of an impersonal and rather impatient stranger’s.
“A little past twenty. Does it matter how old a person is?”
“Find that out for yourself! Sometimes—sometimes not. Now tell me, where were you born and educated and are you engaged to half a dozen lads in Birge’s Backyard or wherever it is? And why do you want to be an opera singer, and what has led you to fancy you could be? Is it because Miss Clergy has advanced you money? Before you answer, let me add that money does not keep you in grand opera or any other art work. I’m not saying that occasionally it does not get you in, although not as often as envious laymen like to imagine. But it cannotkeep you on the stage or in the hearts of the people unless you merit the so doing. You must use your brain, as well as sing. You may have the voice of angels and yet fail on the operatic or dramatic stage. You may have the angelic voice and heavenly beauty and celestial gowns—and still be registered as zero, unless you use your brain. You must employ intellect, wit, sincerity, industry, the same as if you were building a house or cooking a meal or raising a family. A mediocre singer with brains can always surpass naturally endowed, but mentally sluggish, singers. Remember that!” He leaned back in his chair and his gray eyes narrowed somewhat; the dimples in his chin vanished and with them the good-natured, kindly expression.
As if she were pleading with a judge, Thurley, who all in an instant swept from her savage little self everything she had fancied she believed, found herself beginning with admirable logic,
“I was born in Thurley, Idaho, so they named me Thurley. Just think—if I hadn’t been born until the next day, it would have been Hoskins, Idaho! So far luck was with me!”
Half an hour later she ended with, “I shall never go back to the Corners, and I shall pay Miss Clergy for all she is doing, no matter if she has no need of the money. And I shall never marry any one! You see that was my one promise to Miss Clergy. At least not for twenty years, she said, because by that time she would be dead and could haunt me if I went to behaving foolishly.”
Hobart smiled at her as genially as he had smiled at Miss Clergy, remarking, “Ah, thede luxeTopsy, I take it! I much prefer a Topsy prospect to a Little Eva prospect with a myriad of interested relations who feel certain I cannot comprehend the wonderful way their Little Evasings ‘Madame Butterfly,’ proving it with clippings from the music column of the Standing StoneGazette! After all, no one is really interested inyou. I take it Miss Clergy is keen on seeing you cheat a man of love; isn’t that it?”
“Yes,” loneliness swept over Thurley for the instant, “I don’t suppose any one really cares about me, because the people who did care I ran away and left.” She caught her underlip quickly.
“Then the decks are cleared for action,” Hobart said with relief. “Before you sing to-day, let me add that the greatest lesson to learn in order to be a genius, no matter in what capacity, is to be impersonal. Talent ispersonal. That is why you have so excellent a foundation.”
“Always impersonal?”
He shrugged his shoulders, impatient of the interruption. “We can’t tell when I haven’t even heard you sing. My dear child, were I to map out destinies for every one who comes to me, I should be quite mad. As it is, to be the ‘final judgment’ takes the disposition of a dove and the constitution of a lion. You’ll see what I mean later on. You have had so little education in one way that it will be hard for you to catch up. You’ll have to work without ceasing. But you don’t look like a shirker.”
“I’m not,” she said, hating herself for the flat remark.
“There are two kinds of persons in this world,” he mused, rising and going over to the piano, “those who wait for a dead man’s shoes and those keen enough to employ their own bootmaker. I never hear any one sing unless I judge them to be of the last class and so,” sitting down and magically running his fingers over the keys, “tell me—what can you sing?”
“I love the rôle ofMarguerite,” she began innocently.
He paused to chuckle. “Bravo! There never was a really normal soprano who did not aspire toMargueritefor her début. It is as much a soprano symptom, as it is a tenor symptom to yearn to do sacred arias on Easter Sunday and a basso to growl to be heard at open air music festivals. The only rhythmic thing about contraltos is their delight in having cigars named after them.” He looked up to see if she was laughing at his nonsense.
“But why?” she demanded seriously.
“Well, why are brides fond of trying scalloped potatoes in new silver pudding dishes? Why do young widows join bridge clubs or why does a boy cherish his first teeth to trade in at school for king-chestnuts?” He picked out a flippant little chord as punctuation.
“You must not call me too stupid,” Thurley said unexpectedly, leaning her arms on the piano, “but my original sense of humor—the one I was born with—had to be put in cold storage when I settled down at Birge’s Corners and began to borrow the minister’s library in sections. They just could not have understood it. But I do believe it is reviving.”
“A sense of humor is the most precious thing in the world,” Hobart told her. “It ranks with a sense of honor. And if you had to repress it, I am glad you merely put it in cold storage. Sing this scale, please,” he added, rapidly striking the notes.
Thurley sang it; then another and some exercises which she thought difficult and felt proud of having done so easily. They were exercises the city organist had halfway taught her and which she had practised diligently by means of Betsey Pilrig’s parlor organ.
“Some more—lightly, quickly—no, no, you’re hissing—trymi—mi-mi—so.” Again she followed the notes cleverly—so she thought.
Hobart interrupted with a discord. “You naturally breathe well, but you are frightened. You are not singing but faking, and trying to make me think you are not. My dear young person, if I were not able to tell in half a second who is really singing and who is not, I would be forced to abdicate instanter. Now either go home and rest up and take off that company manner and then come back here and sing or admit you cannot sing or else—sing!” He rested his hands on the keys again.
“I can sing,” Thurley said almost sullenly. “I gave up marrying the man I love in order to sing.”
“Good plot! I’ll tell it to Caleb Patmore, the novelist, but my line is not writing. Because you have done this so-called heroic feat, do not fancy you can become a grand opera singer as a reward, any more than the schoolgirl’s fancy is true that nuns are broken-hearted young women taking poetic refuge in the veil. You are so young and fearless that you remind me of a nice, willing but as yet impossible puppy dog who needs to be shown his place in life. You do not understand that if you have been given a voice and the will and brains to train it and the soul of a true artist to preside over all,” his voice was earnest, “what a gigantic task you are taking upon yourself. No one has said it better than Tolstoy and Aylmer Maude. The former tells us, ‘The task of art is enormous, art should cause violence to be set aside ... art is not a pleasure, a solace nor an amusement, it is a great matter, art is an organ of human life transmitting man’s reasonable perceptions into feeling.’ And Maude has, to my mind, finished the situation by saying that ‘the one great quality which makes a work of art truly contagious is its sincerity.’Voila!” he began strumming bass notes.
“I must write those things down,” Thurley whispered. “I must learn them—”
“Why?”
“They’re so—so—what is it? Help me out! Remember I’m from Birge’s Corners, I’ve such lots of things to learn and I’m really quite afraid of you!” She leaned nearer him. “I’ll have to study languages and history and no end of stuff and have hours a day of music and love no one and be impersonal, until I am able to have the samelookthat Ernestine Christian has—she has learned to be impersonal! I want to cease to be a country girl with a good voice and be an individual. Please, Mr. Hobart, let me singMargueritefor you! I’m not half so afraid of that as I am of scales—”
He began the music, and, looking away from him at the rough, plaster walls, Thurley peopled them with a sea of faces, as she had done hundreds of times in Betsey Pilrig’s parlor or at the little cemetery while she was waiting for Dan. She wondered if Miss Clergy heard her sing and if there would come a chilling burst of criticism from this man. She felt that, if this were so, she would turn on him in unexplainable defense of her voice, ignorant as she was of the things still to be achieved.
Hobart rose from the piano and came to put his firm hands on her shoulders. “Genius has as many symptoms as measles,” he said abruptly. “I’m afraid you’ve every last one of them!”
“You mean,” she said, tense as an unsprung trap, “that it is going to be worth while?” Things were black and queerly shaped to her eyes, due to annoying tears. She thought Hobart’s face a dozen cynical, smiling faces peeping at her from all sides. “Is it worth while, if I work very, very hard?”
“Thurley (almost Hoskins) Precore,” it was as if hepronounced a decree, “for us to stand here and exchange the compliments and promises and superlative statements we are both thinking would be as annoying as women haggling over which shall pay the cabfare! We could drag all manner of red herring over the course and merely waste smart sentences which are in demand for after-dinner speeches. But if you work as I tell you and do not become personal either in your relationship with me or your other musical associates—it isn’t as hard-hearted as it sounds—and if this presuming young rustic from Birge’s Backyard stays in the offing—well—you’ll make your début in about a year!”
Thurley did not answer.
“If you are going to faint,” he continued nonchalantly, “the settle is well-cushioned and handy. I had to have one put in here, for they would go down in absurd little lumps all about the room—sometimes with joy, more often rage! I see you are not going to faint, so please sing something else—something to show up the bad spots.Margueriteis rather full of deceptive curlycues—ah, I know—hymns—yes, real old-time gospel hymns! Then we’ll do more exercises, because fright has taken wings.”
He played half a dozen hymns, all of which she sang without hesitation, laughing down at him between stanzas. She could not understand her attitude towards this baffling, fearsome person, young-old or old-young whichever he might prove to be. She found herself wondering if she would ever meet Ernestine Christian and Collin Hedley and Caleb Patmore, or if being impersonal was to exclude them as well as Hobart....
“Good, good,” he said, turning from the piano and hugging up his knees. “Well, we’ll have to get to work as fast as ever we can. I believe in ‘muscular art,’ thesame as some one else has said of ‘muscular Christianity’—a sound mind in a sound body is the best foundation for lasting success. Success is the sincerity with which you do your work and the good your work does some one else—remember that when ennui bursts in an unwelcomed guest and you begin to ape some of the near-great who hover about. Art is the expression of a man’s joy in his work and you’ve everything about and in you, as well as before you, to prove to the world the truth of that saying. Many new and confusing things will happen shortly. All sorts and conditions of people, attentions, praise, blame, drudgery, ease, dissipations, monotonous routine—heavens, child, it makes my head ache to think of an absolutelyde luxeTopsy from Birge’s Backyard with the voice of an announcing angel set down in New York and told to prepare herself for grand opera!”
He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t look startled, Thurley—I’ll have to call you Thurley because Precore sticks in my throat—you’ll weather through and some time—I’ll tell you a pet scheme of mine that perhaps—” He actually was confused as if he regretted the remark. “But for now, I’ll start you off with having you report here every day at eleven and again at three—and you’re to do all the other things I tell you. Well, did you think I would order you to Italy first to get mellow, fall in love with one of those damned Italian officers with a heliotrope-lined coat and then come back and let me teach you to sing? God taught you to sing before you came to earth, and you’ve remembered His teaching.... Just learn the things we men are fools enough to think we must know and you have won!”
He closed the pianoforte and opened the door.
“No more exercises?” Thurley was tingling with excitement.
“You’re all nerves! Do you think I need more exercises to make me quite sure about you—the same as an apron never fails to convince a man of the wearer’s domesticity? To-morrow we begin to polish and prune. Go home and lie down and think about the frivolous things in the world. You’ll be set to work fast enough ... ah, Miss Clergy, and did you hear us?”
“I heard Thurley sing,” Miss Clergy said abruptly. “Well—well?”
Thurley answered by stooping down and clasping the ghost lady in her arms. “He says it is worth your while,” she whispered.
“Then it has been worth everything,” Miss Clergy answered, more to herself than to Thurley.
Hobart’s secretary came in with some announcement cards and Hobart paused before he read them to say good-by.
“To-morrow at eleven, and Baxter will see you this afternoon about other teachers. Good-by, Miss Clergy, and, Thurley, happy days!”
He was so kindly again and with the suggestion of a schoolboy pal that Thurley could not resist the asking, “Oh, do you find many people worth all your trouble?”
Hobart’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “To quote a most reliable authority, the pushcart man, ‘What I maka on the peanut, I losa on the banan!’”
As they passed out the door, Thurley heard a woman’s voice saying, “Tell him Lissa Dagmar has come to say good-by. He won’t keep me waiting. I’m sailing this afternoon.” There was both a snarl and a purr in the voice, and Thurley wondered if Lissa Dagmar had proved “peanut or banan.”
If Miss Clergy and Thurley were mysteries to the hotel guests and attendants, so were the guests and attendants mysteries untold to Thurley and Miss Clergy. To be placed suddenly in New York with unlimited leeway in opportunities and money, cut off from every simple, human tie which heretofore had impressed itself on one’s emotional heart and be put to work at such a multitude of things that one could hardly remember which hour was designated for this and which for that—to say the very least, it was “tizzy,” as Hobart obligingly expressed it for Thurley during one of their lessons.
No less “tizzy” was it for Miss Clergy to waken from a selfish lethargy, with revenge the stimulating impulse; to try, all in an instant, to find her way back to the proper method of living combined with modern requirements and readjustments; to become accustomed to strange noises, vehicles, buildings, all manner of new and bewildering novelties which every one else, save her wild-rose Thurley, accepted as commonplace; to refrain from telling every one who talked with her the reason she had taken this homeless country girl to New York and was prepared to spend a fortune to make her a success.
The modistes and milliners used to gossip about it, after they had been in Miss Clergy’s rooms to take measurements and orders. So did the bootmaker Hobart had sent up, and the riding master and the language teacher and the social secretary, who somehow slipped into her place and became one of them. A veritable monumentto fashion and smartness she was, with the way of making one sit up straight when one was least expecting the command, of smoothing out personal pronouns to the ease of every one concerned, who found time every day to make Thurley practise entering and leaving a room, bowing, shaking hands, smiling, laughing, holding her head just so, who had stacks of hateful cards and sheets of paper on which Thurley must write invitations to imaginary dinners and affairs and then reply to the invitations, who told one that the easiest way to carry on a conversation was to be an excellent listener, and yet, all in the same breath, made one memorize certain smart phrases or witty bon mots, historical dates of importance, soothing sentences which would fit in for the weather, a clay pigeon match or the assassination of the president—all these things and more did the social secretary achieve, Thurley groaning inwardly as the hour approached for her arrival.
Yet she stumbled through her lessons without bringing down too many frowns on her young shoulders, and when she sat at the improvised dinner table with a startling array of crystal glasses, goblets and small silver, and was requested to demonstrate the use of each, the social secretary nodded approval in a short time and said one day in that well-bred, monotonous voice,
“You’re so shockingly bright, Miss Precore, I’m sure there’s a scandal in the family somewhere,” laughing outright at Thurley’s embarrassment.
“Have you really had people more stupid than I?” she demanded.
“Dear, yes! My last two pupils were twins, Golda and Silva Muggins from New Mexico. It would take a regiment to count their fortunes—but their manners!” She shrugged her trim shoulders. “And yet they bothare engaged and doing nicely—I’m to finish buying the trousseaux to-morrow.”
“What frightful work to teach—” Thurley began. At which the social secretary fled lest Thurley entangle her in a really human vein of conversation and endanger her poise.
Following these lessons Miss Clergy would have Thurley come into her room and have her repeat all she had learned, after which Thurley would manage to escape to her own bedroom to burst into rebellious, beautiful song. For singing at the present time seemed to be of the least importance of all the things she did!
A gymnast came each morning before breakfast and made her exercise and do folk dances, all manner of antics strange and, to her mind, ludicrous. There was a beauty doctor who did her nails and took charge of her hair and skin, showing her which colors were becoming and which were not and the test for any woman in doubt as to the proper shade to wear—to lay a strip of the proposed goods across the hair, not the throat or cheek, as women fondly delude themselves—and see if the light and effect are to be desired.
“How many teachers does one great big girl need, Aunt Abby?” Thurley said, six weeks after Hobart had told her the little story of the peanut and the banana. “How do they think one brain can remember everything? How do you know Mr. Hobart isn’t going to be disappointed after all? He has never said a word about my voice since that first day, just scales and horrid nasal exercises and that grimy little Bohemian man to take me in tow half the time.... I’m dead tired, that’s the truth—” She flung herself down in characteristic fashion beside Miss Clergy. She wanted some one to ruffle up her hair affectionately or whisper there would be achestnut party that afternoon near Wood’s Hollow. And here the memory of Dan Birge would steal in, an unwelcome yet paramount personage, so she jumped up and ran over to the window.
“You can’t disappoint me,” Miss Clergy protested. “Mr. Hobart has said you wouldn’t.”
“Really?” Her face flushed. “Why, he’s never mentioned it—”
“It’s a secret,” Miss Clergy added childishly. “Don’t give me away. Most girls have to study for years and go abroad, but Mr. Hobart wants to prove that an American trained girl can be as great a prima donna as one who enters the stage by way of Vienna or Paris. Come back, Thurley, I want to tell you something.” She held out her arms as stiltedly as a marionette.
Thurley obeyed.
“I want you to be happy because you will be both rich and famous. Isn’t that enough?” Her bright eyes peered into Thurley’s face.
“You mean because I’ll keep my vow to you about not marrying—and I ought to be satisfied to have the other things?”
“Maybe so. I’m a queer old woman and I choose to live the rest of my queer old life as I please. But I saved you from the terrible, but common fate—marrying a small-town bully and being a faded drudge. We’ll leave that for the minister’s daughter.”
“But Dan would never marry Lorraine—why—” Thurley paused. She was remembering the day Lorraine had brought her the embroidered set. How very sweet was Betsey Pilrig’s garden, far sweeter than the imported scent they had her use! How lovely and peaceful were the green fields which stretched as far as eye could see ... not tall, dirty buildings with myriads of shaded windows,each concealing some human being with woes and longings greater than her own! How lovely was the old box-car, the first home the girl had known! She had worn pink linen that day Lorraine came! She had paid for it by extra lessons given in South Wales, and Dan had sent her the sash for a surprise. How simple but how sane it all had been! She glanced at her blue velvet frock trimmed with moleskin—“so ultra,” they murmured when they fitted it. Perhaps this was the better way.
Miss Clergy caught the drift of her thoughts and the withered hand closed firmly over Thurley’s. “If he did marry her, you’d be glad to dance at the wedding, wouldn’t you?” she insisted.
The actress in Thurley rescued her so that she could say, “Of course, that’s all left behind. No use being like a story-book girl unless you have a s-story-book heart. Now it’s time for Mr. Hobart’s lesson,mia, so I’m off. I wish you’d let me walk sometimes or take a subway! I’m tired of being whirled away in taxis! Why, I haven’t even had a moment alone at Grant’s Tomb,” laughing in spite of herself.
Miss Clergy smiled. “I’m so proud of you!” she declared. “If I had only found you years ago—”
“I tried to find you,” Thurley reminded.
“Ah, but you didn’t sing that day! If you had, everything would have changed for us both. When you sing, Thurley, the world is yours—”
Thurley was at the mirror fitting on a high black hat with a bunch of old-blue plumes. “Do you think any one would love me, if I could not sing?” she demanded impetuously.
Miss Clergy became confused. “Dear me, Thurley, I cannot think of you as separate from your voice. Therewould be no Thurley if there were no Thurley voice.”
Thurley trilled a scale or so. She was thinking of a black-haired lad who had said many’s the time, “Hang your voice, Thurley! It’s you I love—just you!” Pink linen and old-fashioned parlor organs did have compensations.
“When you come back, we’ll plan about our real home,” Miss Clergy added. “My lawyers try to impress on me what a neglectful person I’ve been. They want me to mend my ways and spend my money—not be a sort of Hetty Green always travelling about with a little satchel of securities!” Miss Clergy’s sense of humor was reviving with the rest.
“Our real home—besides the Fincherie? You’ll never give that up?”
Miss Clergy frowned. “Not the Fincherie! I mean here in New York. We can’t go on living in a hotel. It is too common, too parvenu. I want the right sort of home for you, the sort that your ability will deserve.”
Thurley was in the doorway. “I beg you will do nothing of the sort,” she said. “You have loaded me now with the treasures of Arabia. I beg you will not! I want to earn things myself—as I did at the Corners—you must let me. Being supported takes something out of me, I don’t know what,” she clasped her hands in her rapt fashion. “I’d rather live in a tiny room, or a box-car, you know, and have very skimpy meals and old-style clothes and study hard and forget the meals and clothes and then earn the beautiful, lovely things. That would make me feel right, ’way inside.”
Miss Clergy’s withered face lost some of its haunted expression. “Well, my dear, you shall wait then and earn your home, but I am afraid that, if it is quite yourown home, you will not want to share it with a funny old per—”
At which Thurley flew across the room and put her fresh cheek against the faded one to promise with the enthusiasm of untried youth that the home she should earn would be but half her home, for the other half would belong to a certain dear person.
Whirling towards the studio, Thurley drew Betsey Pilrig’s letter from her bag. It was the second letter she had had from the Corners, for Betsey Pilrig undertook writing a letter with the same solemn preparation that most people give to making a will. It required several days of deciding “what to say to her” and a battle against natural inertia before she could sit at the red-covered dining-table and force her toil-worn fingers to write in cramped characters unreal-sounding phrases. Besides, Betsey Pilrig had always sealed letters with the firm conviction that maybe they would never get there anyway, letters seemed such queer things to go flying about the country.
Not that Betsey had not thought of Thurley every hour in the day, standing in the doorway of her house and of the Fincherie to picture again the blue-eyed young goddess dancing imperiously up the walk or sitting under gnarled apple trees to shell peas or peel potatoes, singing in glorious tones as she did so.
When Thurley’s letters had come to Betsey, she and Hopeful read them aloud to Ali Baba and the trio sat discussing the fate of their songbird. To their minds the “happening” was still something to be talked of with suspicion. One does not fancy a “ghost” taking a beloved child to the city, never to return, and being responsible, so it had become known, for Dan Birge’s broken heart and his mad engagement to Lorraine.
“She’ll never come back the same,” Ali Baba would insist.
“Abby Clergy will leave her every nickel,” Hopeful would supplement. “Then she’s bound to come back and lord it over Dan Birge.”
“She’ll be a great singer—God love and keep her,” was Betsey’s plea.
As Thurley broke the seal on the letter, she felt as if she wanted to drive to the station willy-nilly to take the first train to the Corners, to come into the emporium and, upon seeing Dan, say that she was “sorry” and she still wanted him to plan for the new house ... but she was on her way to Bliss Hobart’s studio, envied of the envied, dressed as a “princess,” with strange wisdom concerning many things making inroads into her simple heart.
She read the letter hastily:
Dear Thurley:I don’t know how to tell you but you ought to know that Dan and Lorraine are engaged and every one knows Dan don’t care two straws for Lorraine, poor girl, but she is dead in love with him. He done it for spite and I guess they will both be sorry. Unless he leaves town he can’t get out of marrying her because her father is the minister. He looks haunted like and my heart aches for him and for her. Dear Thurley, you will not mind, you are in such a big city with so many things to see and do and all the lovely clothes you say you have and your teachers and all the rest. Sometimes it seems a dream to me.Will you ever come back to us, Thurley, tell me if you go to church and have they asked you to sing in meeting? How is Miss Clergy, does she ever talk about that Eyetalian fellow?We are well and Hopeful and me get along so well in this house except that it seems pretty big and that it ain’t right to take charity. Ali Baba misses you, he says he will send a box of apples when he gets the ones he wants for you. Thank you for the dress andcoat, they are too fine for my old self. God bless Thurley Precore,from,yours respectfully,B. Pilrig.
Dear Thurley:
I don’t know how to tell you but you ought to know that Dan and Lorraine are engaged and every one knows Dan don’t care two straws for Lorraine, poor girl, but she is dead in love with him. He done it for spite and I guess they will both be sorry. Unless he leaves town he can’t get out of marrying her because her father is the minister. He looks haunted like and my heart aches for him and for her. Dear Thurley, you will not mind, you are in such a big city with so many things to see and do and all the lovely clothes you say you have and your teachers and all the rest. Sometimes it seems a dream to me.
Will you ever come back to us, Thurley, tell me if you go to church and have they asked you to sing in meeting? How is Miss Clergy, does she ever talk about that Eyetalian fellow?
We are well and Hopeful and me get along so well in this house except that it seems pretty big and that it ain’t right to take charity. Ali Baba misses you, he says he will send a box of apples when he gets the ones he wants for you. Thank you for the dress andcoat, they are too fine for my old self. God bless Thurley Precore,
from,
yours respectfully,
B. Pilrig.
The driver was opening the door for Thurley to leave the cab. After a moment she handed him a bill, threading her way through the crowd until she reached the studio building. She wondered if Hobart would notice her manner and comment on it; if she could manage to get through her lesson without breaking down. Dan and Lorraine engaged—with her ring—and it would be Lorraine’s house with the sun parlor that Thurley once planned and the big living room (right across the front of the house, Danny boy, and a fireplace big enough for two Santa Clauses); Lorraine would revel in the garden pergola and plan the sun dial—oh, it hurt,it hurt—she was a miserable, jealous coward!
How dared Lorraine take her Dan, pale-faced, scheming little creature willing to be a doormat for some one who did not love her! As Thurley entered the elevator, the thought stimulated her in dangerous fashion.... Even yet, if she were to return to Birge’s Corners and say to Dan, “I am sorry—love me, darling,” he would fling discretion and Lorraine to the winds and all would be as it once had been.... Well, she might do it ... after she was famous ... it would have twice the sting and double the triumph.... He would have had time to regret.... She did not love Dan as dearly as she loved love itself, he being the ardent agent of the great force. She wondered if she could love fame as much. She had a flash of realization of what a broken heart such as Miss Clergy’s must have been. Miss Clergy had no talent. Love had been her all.
Hobart was playing a new song as she came into the room. He did not pause to greet her but said, after a moment, looking into a mirror over the piano in which he could see her quite distinctly, “What is wrong? Only a tight slipper? Take off that ridiculous bonnet and come here! I want you to try this—” It was such a jarring contrast, with that wonderful element of sustained and hidden force which such men as Hobart need in order to conquer genius, that Thurley felt the past, of Birge’s Corners and its petty woes and happenings, fade as if some one had painted it out with a mighty brush.
She came to stand beside him, while he taught her the song, making no comment when she finished but turning to a book of prosaic scales.
“Please answer some questions,” Thurley demanded, putting her hand on his arm.
“This is lesson time!” He adjusted a pair of reading glasses critically.
“Let me miss a lesson. I never see you other times and I’ve the right to ask questions.”
With an amused smile he flipped at the keys. “Shoot away,” he sighed.
“What do you think of me?” she began promptly.
“I never tell women what I think of them. Please let’s get to work.”
“Tell me this—am I a real genius?” unconscious of the implied egotism.
“Of course,” he answered simply. “Would I bother so much with you if you were not? Would I send a regiment of teachers and coaches to get you into proper form? But enough of that! Only don’t let it spoil you. Still I don’t think it will, because you’ve the sort of talent that is rock-bottom foundation. You’re going tobe immeasurably silly and have all kinds of notions and adventures. I’m not interested in that part of your career. I want you to be clear on this point.” As he spoke, he seemed aloof, absolutely impersonal and removed from workaday affairs, and Thurley experienced the sensation of embarrassment at having asked him any questions.
“Your voice is my hobby just now.” The enthusiasm of youth was in his own. “It is God-given, art concealing art. You have that fire, dash,touch of strangenessthat one sees very seldom. You really would have hard work to spoil your voice, Thurley. Moreover, I would have hard work to teach you how to sing. Are you surprised? Oh, you thought as do so many that I would teach you to sing as one learns to dance or paint on china, some systematic, mechanical accomplishment ... all wrong!” He brushed the entire range of keys with his hands as if to express denial of the fact. “God taught you to sing, Thurley. You sang as well in your Birge’s Corners as you will sing in opera—and perhaps better. But you need polish, general education along many lines, endless drill and routine. As for singing,per se, there is nothing I can teach or tell you. I can direct and restrain—that is my part. So it is with all great artists, the gift is quite complete and quite their own; it is for them to be willing to be directed and not to shirk drudgery.” He was about to add something else, something which it seemed to Thurley was a secret of his very heart, but he broke off abruptly with,
“Now, you young country scamp, sing hey and sing ho, for you’re wasting time!” So taking her cue, Thurley fell to work with a zest.
The lesson ended with a surprise.
“Try this aria of Rosina’s in ‘Barber of Seville’—the‘Una voce poco fa.’ I’ve a notion you can make it celestial harmony if you like. If you can’t do the Italian, take a syllable and stick to it. Now—” Handing her the music he dashed into the aria in contagious spirit.
“Very bad,” he commented, making a wry face and taking the music from her, “but that’s nothing against the voice. A year from now we shall have the music critics sitting up and exclaiming. Run along, Thurley, and don’t let the rustic swains make you lose time from your lessons.”
She was putting on her hat and fancied he could not see her expression. But he surprised her with,
“You will have all the time in the world for nonsense after you’ve mastered the things you need to know. What you want to do is to put your heart in cold storage for a while, as you did your sense of humor. Just be an amiable and obedient genius-flapper and everything else will true up and appear in due season, just as the curtain speeches during the last act reveal the missing will, the lost child and soften the irate parent’s heart against the poor but proud hero.”
“But I don’t want always to have some part of me in cold storage,” Thurley protested. “I’ve always been such—such a very real person that it’s hard to—”
“Of course, that’s the best part of it. Easy things never get you anywhere. Effective medicine is almost always bitter.” He came to put his hands on her shoulders.
“Why, you’re not so old,” she said bluntly, “are you?”
“Not half so old as I’d like to be; age is so safe, Thurley, when you are dealing in temperament! You can growl much more effectively.”
“You mean people fall in love with you?” she askedspiritedly. “Is that what you shrink from?” Her naïve impertinence was unconscious.
“I cringe! Which is worse than mere shrinking.” He gave her a little shake. “You funny, round-cheeked girl, run along. You’ll be in opera before we realize it and adopting the airs and graces of an empress. But I shall remember you as the direct, rosy-cheeked young person who demanded if I feared having people love me.” His eyes closed briefly and then he whirled her around as if she were a small boy. “Be off! Ah, yes, here’s a note—I nearly did forget.” He reached in an inner pocket and handed over a cream-colored envelope with a heavy lavender seal.
“From her who you fancied was my wife,” he explained, enjoying her confusion. “Ernestine Christian, one of our ‘family.’ She does not start her season until January, but then she’s going to tell you all that. You’ll have to drive fast to be on time, for you’re to take tea with her at half after four. And don’t forget two things: First, you sang the aria in five-and-ten-cent style; and, secondly, you’re a nice apple-cheeked kiddie and deserve splendid things!” He waved her out jocularly, and she found herself going through the anterooms reading the note and not speaking to the secretary.
All it said was: