CHAPTER XI
OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
_Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by mere Chance collided with aSide-tracked Star_
Many miles of sand and silence lay between Heart's Desire and Sky Top,by the winding trail over the high plateau and in among the foot-hillsof the Sacramentos. The silence was unbroken by any music from the"heavenly maid," which lay disused beneath the wagon seat; nor did thetwo occupants of Tom Osby's freight wagon often emerge from thereticence habitual in a land where spaces were vast, men infrequent,and mountains ever looking down. The team of gnarled gray horses kepton their steady walk, hour after hour, and day after day; and bivouacafter bivouac lay behind them, marked by the rude heap of brush piledup at night as an excuse for shelter against the wind or by the tinycircle of ashes where had been a small but sufficient fire. At lastthe line of the bivouacs ended, far up toward the crest of the heavilytimbered Sacramentos, after a weary climb through miles of mountaincanons.
"We'll stop at the lowest spring," said Tom Osby, who knew the countryof old. "That'll leave us a half mile or so from where they've builttheir fool log hotel. It beats the dickens how these States folks,that lives in cities, is always tryin' to imertate some other way oflivin'. Why didn't they build it out of boards? They've got asaw-mill, blame 'em, and they're cuttin' off all the timber in thesemountings; but they got to have logs to build their house with. Folksthat builds real log houses, and not toys, does it because they ain'tgot no boards. But these States folks always was singerler."
By this time Tom Osby was unhitching and feeding his team, and throwingout the blanket rolls upon the ground. "Go easy on the 'Annie Laurie'machine there," called out Dan Anderson, hearing a suspicious rattlingof brass against the wagon box. But his companion heeded him little,casting the phonograph at the foot of a tree, where the great hornswung wide, disconsolately.
"A imertation," said Tom, "is like I was just sayin'. It ain't thereal thing.
"Now look here, friend," he went on a moment later, "you've got to dolike you said you would. Of course, I know melons don't grow up herein the pine mountains, even if they was ripe yet; but you said you wascomin' along to see fair play, and you got to do it."
Dan Anderson looked at him queerly. "Wait," said he; "it'll be nightbefore long. Then you go on up to the house, and prospect around alittle. If you get scared, come back, and I'll--I'll take care of you.I'll be around here somewhere, so you needn't be afraid to go right onin alone, you know. Tell her you know her preserved songs, and likedthem so much you just had to come down here. Tell her about thewatermelons. Tell her--"
"You're actin' a _leetle_ nervous your own self, man," said Tom Osby,keenly. "But you watch Papa. I been married four times, or maybefive, so what's a woman here or there to me? What is there to anywoman to scare a feller, anyway?"
"I'm damned if I know!" replied Dan Andersen;--"there isn't--of coursethere isn't, of course not. You're perfectly safe. Why, just go righton up. Have your sand along!"
"Sure," said Tom Osby. "All right; I'll just mosey along up the trailafter a while."
And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting onthe wagon tongue. "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back."If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up andview the remains."
Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhatdismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top.She was in effect a prisoner. El Paso seemed like a dream, SanFrancisco a figment of the brain, and New York a wholly imaginary spotupon some undiscovered planet, lost in the nebulous universe of space.She trod the uneven floor as some creature caged, on her face thatwhich boded no good to the next comer, whoever he might be.
The next comer was Signer Peruchini, the tenor. Unhappy Peruchini! Hestarted back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deepcadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, nowresumed.
"How dare you!" cried the _diva_. "How dare you intrude on me?"
"The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini. "What service is zere here? Iknock, but you do not hear. Madame, what horror is zis place!"
"Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage. "The beast!How dare he bring me here--_me_!" (she smote her bosom)--"who havesung in the grand in the best houses of the Continent--in Italy, Paris,London, St. Petersburg! I shall not survive this!"
"_Perfide_!" cried Peruchini, in assent. "_Perfide_! R-r-rascal!_Cochon_! Pig unspikkab'!"
"But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable forthe scene. "Behole! It is I who have lofe you so long. To lofe--ah,it is so divine! How can you riffuse?"
Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity. "Never!" shecried. "You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this. I bid you go.Begone!"
"Vooman, you mad meh!" cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his handsfirst extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properlytumbled, his eyes correctly rolling. "I vill not be teniet! Yourputy, it is too much! Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret? PyHeaven, I--"
With a swift motion he grasped her wrists. Color rose to the Donatellicheek. Her eyes flashed. She was about to sing. She checked herselfin time. "Unhand me, sir!" she cried.
The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined. And now thelog fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally tolight for them this unusual stage. They did not hear the door openbehind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, asthere came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slackservant been directed thither.
The door did open. In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced. He was dressedin his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but whichdid not disguise him nor the region which was his home. His boots werenew, sharp at toe and heel. His hat, now removed, was new, but wideand white. His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat,neither did white collar confine his neck.
A quick glance took in the scene before him. A little dark man wascontending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beautythat he had ever seen or dreamed. Tom Osby stepped a swift pace intothe room. There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voicethat brought an instant conviction. This--this was the Voice that hehad worshipped! This was that divine being whom he had heard and seenin so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nightsafar in the desert lands. She was assailed. She was beset. Thereswept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of lifein that comer of the world. In a flash his weapon leaped from itsscabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure ofthis little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.
"Git back, you feller'" cried Tom Osby. "Leggo! What are you doin'there? Break, now, and git out. This ain't right."
And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the lattersprang back and away into an immediate oblivion. Tom Osby from thatinstant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman's presence.Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing forwarlike action rather than that now grown needful.
Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standardsof her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather thanactress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze ofwide-eyed astonishment. She had read in certain journals wild storiesof doings of wild men. Was that sort of thing actually true?
"Sir," she said, "how dare you!" At this, Tom Osby stood upon one leg.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, at length. "I didn't know anybodywas in here. I just come in lookin' for somebody."
She did not answer him, but turned upon him the full glance of a deep,dark eye, studying him curiously.
"I don't live here, ma'am," resumed Tom. "I'm camped down the hill bythe spring. I left my _compadre_ there. I--I belong to Heart'sDesire, up north of here. I--I come along in here this mornin'. Theysaid
there wasn't any one in the parlor--they said there might be someone in the parlor, though, maybe. And I was--I was--ma'am, I waslookin'--I reckon I was lookin' for you!"
He laid his hat and gun upon the table, and stood with one hand againstits edge. "Yes, I come down from Heart's Desire," he began again.
"From where?" broke in a low, sweet voice. "From Heart's Desire? Whatan exquisite name! Where is it? What is it? That sounds likeheaven," she said.
"It might be, ma'am," said Tom Osby, simply, "but it ain't. The watersupply ain't reg'lar enough. It's just a little place up in themountains. Heaven, ma'am, I reckon is just now located something likea hundred miles south of Heart's Desire!" And he laughed so sudden andhearty a man's laugh at this that it jostled Alicia Donatelli out ofall her artificiality, and set the two at once upon a footing. Itseemed to her that, after all, men were pretty much alike, no matterwhere one found them.
"Sit down," she said, ceasing to bite at her fingertips, as was herhabit when perturbed. "Tell me about Heart's Desire."
"Well, Heart's Desire, ma'am," said Tom Osby, "why, it ain't much.It's mostly men."
"But how do you live? What do you do?"
"Well, now, I hadn't ever thought of that. But now you mention it, Ican't say I really know. The fellers all seem to get along, somehow."
"But yourself?"
"Me? I drive a freight wagon between Las Vegas and Heart's Desire.There is stores, you know, at Heart's Desire, and a saloon. We held aco'te there, onct. You see, along of cattle wars and killings, for agood many years back, folks has been kind of shy of that part of thecountry. Most of the men easy scared, they went back home to theStates. Some stayed. And it's--why, I can't rightly explain it toyou, ma'am--but it's--it's Heart's Desire."
The face of the woman before him softened. "It's a beautiful name,"said she. "Heart's Desire!" She said it over and over again,wistfully. The cadence of her tone was the measure of an irrevocableloss. "Heart's Desire!" she whispered--"I wonder--
"Tell me," she cried at length, arising and pacing restlessly, "what doyou do at Heart's Desire?"
"Nothing," said Tom Osby. "I just told you, I reckon."
"Do you have any amusements? Are there ever any entertainments?"
"Why, law! no, ma'am!"
She threw back her head and laughed. There rose before her the pictureof a primitive world, whose swift appeal clutched at her heart,saturated and sated with unreal things grown banal.
"Besides," went on Tom Osby, "if we had an op'ry house, it wouldn't dono good. Why--I don't want to be imperlite, but I've heard that op'rysingers cost as high as ten dollars a night, or maybe more. Wecouldn't afford it. Onct we had a singin'-school teacher. Fellow bythe name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music. Heused to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.' Used to have adaughter, and she sung, too. Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, thePrairie Flower.' They made quite a lot of money holdin'singin'-school. The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, andthat broke up the singin'-school. There ain't been any kind of show atHeart's Desire for five years. But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "aboutthat feller that had hold of you when I come in. Did he hurt you any?"
"That's our leading tenor, Signer Peruchini! He's a great artist."She laughed, a ripple of soft, delicious laughter. "No, don't botherhim. We'll need him out on the Coast. Don't you know, we are justhere in the mountains for a little while."
"Don't you like these mountings, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, sinking backinto his seat. "I always did. They always remind me of the Smokies,in Car'lina, back South."
"You came from the South?"
"Georgy, ma'am."
"Georgia! So did I! We should be friends," she said, and, smiling,held out her hand. Tom Osby took it.
"Ma'am," said he, gravely, "I'm right glad to see you. I've not beenback home for a good many years. I've been all over."
"Nor have I been home," said she, sadly. "I've been all over, too.But now, what brought you here? Tell me, did you want to see me?"
"Yes!" Tom Osby answered simply. "I said that's why I come!"
"You want me to come up to Heart's Desire to sing? Ah, I wish thatwere not impossible."
"No, there's no one sent me," said Tom Osby. "Though, of course, theboys would do anything for you they could. What we want in Heart'sDesire--why, sometimes I think it's nothing, and then, again,everything. Maybe we didn't want any music; and then, again, maybe wewas just sick and pinin' for it, and didn't know it."
She looked at him intently as he bent his head, his face troubled."Listen," said he, at length, "I'll tell you all about it. Up at VegasI heard a funny sort of singin' machine. It had voices in it. Ma'am,it had a Voice in it. It--it sung--" he choked now.
"And some of the songs?"
Strangely enough, he understood the question of her eyes. She flushedlike a girl as he nodded gravely. "'Annie Laurie,'" he said.
"I am very glad," said she, with a long breath. "It reconciles me toselling my art in that way. No, I'm very glad, quite outside of that."
Tom Osby did not quite follow all her thoughts, but he went on.
"It was 'Annie Laurie,'" said he. "I knew you sung it. Ma'am, Iplayed her all the way from Vegas down."
"But why did you come?" She was cruel; but a woman must have her toll.The renewed answer cost courage of Tom Osby.
"Ma'am," said he, "I won't lie to you. I just come to see you, or tohear you, I can't rightly tell which. It must have been both." Now hearose and flung out a hand, rudely but eloquently. "Ma'am," he wenton, "I knowed you come from Georgy onct, the same as me. And I knowedthat a Georgy girl, someway, somewhere, somehow, would have a soft spotin her heart. I come to hear you sing. There's things that us fellerswant, sometimes."
The woman before him drew a deep, long breath.
"I reckon you'll have to sing again," the man went on. "You'll have tosing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct,before I went away from home."
The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed itherself, unconsciously.
"My friend," said she, "you're right. I reckon I'll have to sing."
"When?" said Tom Osby.
"Now," said Alice Strowbridge. She rose and stepped toward the pianoopen near the fire.
The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above adeep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion. A splendid creature,bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none theless, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her handstwined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sangin public as a child. The very shoulders under the heavy laces caughta plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land. Thered rose at her hair--the rose got from some mysterious source--halftrembled. Fear, a great fear--the first stage fright known inyears--swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman. Theresat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, thislone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire--a place wheremen, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for thatwhich was not theirs. She felt them gazing into her soul, asking howshe had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her,what she had done for the heart of humanity. Halfway across the floorshe stopped, her hand at her throat.
"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding,"for me to do this-a-way. It's right embarrassin' for a lady like youto try to oblige a feller like me. But, ma'am, all I can say is, allthe boys'll be mightily obliged to you."
She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it. Tom Osby grew moreconfident, more bold.
"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but Ireckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sortof dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to thethings you are singin' right then. Ain't that so?"
"We have many costumes," said she, simply. "
We play many parts.Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."
"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschumeto go along with that?"
"You mean--"
"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it alwaysseemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right_white_." He blushed and hastened to apologize. "Not sayin' anythingagainst that dress you've got on," he said. "I never saw one as fineas that in all my life. I never saw any woman, never in all my life,like you. I--I--ma'am"--he flushed, but went on with a Titanicsimplicity--"I _worship_ you, right where you stand, in that theredress; but--could you--"
"You are an artist yourself!" cried she. "Yes! Wait!"
In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring atthe flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening.In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared. The rich blacklaces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone.She was clad in simple white--and yes! a blue sash was there. Thepiled masses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids. Bythe grace of the immortal gods all misdeeds were lifted from her thatnight. For once in many years she was sincere. Now she was a girlagain, and back at the old home. Those were the southern mountainshalf hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days,swinging up again. There was the gallery at the window of the oldGeorgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and thetrailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth--Youth, theunspeakable glory of Youth--it all was hers once more! The souls of athousand Georgia mocking-birds--the soul of that heritage which came toher out of her environment--lay in her throat that hour.
And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor--nay, perhaps, after all,to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls--shesang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who satcrumpled up, shaken, undone.
She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; shecould not deprive herself of her own little triumph. Or perhaps,deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which itwould have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear. Shesang first the leading _arias_ of her more prominent operatic roles.She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearanceon a critical stage. "_Nobil signors_," she sang, her voicelingering. And then presently there fell from her lips the sparklingmeasures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant inher rendition. Melody after melody, score after score, product of thegreatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who neverdefinitely realized what privilege had been his. She slipped on andon, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at leastof the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to herfingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, noflorid triviality from any land. With a voice which had mastered theworld, she sang the best of the masters of the world. So music, withall its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for atime filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth latercomers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught therein the chinks of the rude-hewn walls.
All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the pianobroke, dropped, and paused. And then, with no more interlude, thatgreat instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfecthuman woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "AnnieLaurie." At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, anda freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman withbowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.
Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one whoapproached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery.Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail tothe hotel. Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he nevergot even so far as the door. The voice of Donatelli caught and heldhim as it had her other auditor. He stopped midway of the gallery,listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away,returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines. He started even atthe whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside thelittle fire. He could not sleep. A face looked at him out of thedark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens.The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproachedhim for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly headmitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of aFace that was the Fairest.
He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time. It was Tom Osby,who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with acrooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figureon the camper's bed. Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him thathis companion was not asleep.
"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his headas he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow verymuch up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers backhome with us."
"Passengers?" A voice came from the blankets.
"Yes. Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin'train from El Paso. Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow,Barkley, I believe his name is. I reckon he's attoreney for the road."
Deep silence greeted this. Tom reached forward and picked up a brandto light his pipe more thoroughly.
"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here totake care of me."
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