Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  The blanket and rope were taken away and the piano rolled into place. Mrs. Opdike herself sang first, accompanied on the piano by her daughter, a gawky adolescent a little older than Herma, who had ten thumbs for fingers and could barely keep up with her mother. Mrs. Opdike trilled through The Lord’s Prayer in a version which repeated each line several times at different places on the scale, and concluded with an “Amen” so piercing, variegated, and prolonged that it provoked a ripple of applause, even though it was a sacred song. While Mrs. Opdike was coming down from the platform to take her place at the piano, and the last of the clapping died away, Beebie Fennerman punched Herma with her elbow.

  “Look. There’s Madame Modjeska.”

  “Where?”

  Beebie pointed. A tall lady in a queenlike gray gown had just come in and taken her seat in the rear. She had a beautiful complexion, with dark eyes set in shadows, and her hair was arranged in a coil on her head. Since it was not polite to stare, Herma turned away.

  “Well, who cares?”

  “She’s a famous actress,” said Beebie, “and she has performed all over the world. She’s very rich. She has a ranch in Santiago Canyon, and a castle in Poland.”

  Herma felt something dark inside her like a little knife. It was her first pang of professional jealousy. She said rather impatiently, “Yes, yes. I know who she is,” and turned her attention back to the stage.

  The musical part of the Program was continuing. A Mr. Felt, whom nobody knew very well, sang The Lost Chord in a vigorous baritone, and Gogo Larson, Arvie’s brother, played The Flight of the Bumblebee or something like it on the xylophone. Next the Fennerman girls—their names were Aidie, Beebie, and Cecie—mounted onto the platform. After a certain amount of nervousness and shuffling they launched into We Three Kings of Orient Are, which was really a Christmas song, but it was the only song they knew—each sister took a different king in the verses, a rendition illustrating, if nothing else, that oriental kings are tone deaf. Mrs. Opdike ended the thing with an arpeggio in minor key from the piano. Now it was Herma’s turn.

  Hardly knowing how she got there, she found herself on the platform looking out over the audience. There was a soft dominant chord from the piano, resolved into the tonic. Herma began with In the Garden, followed by The Old Rugged Cross and What a Friend We Have in Jesus. After these token gestures to the ecclesiastical, she launched into the secular part of her repertory. On account of her exceptional talent, Mrs. Opdike had allowed her a longer program than anyone else, although nobody seemed to notice this. First came the Schubert lieder as sung by Madame Schumann-Heink—these were easy, and Herma warbled the German cadences while Mrs. Opdike plunked down the chords on the piano. Next, the Bell Song from Lakmé in the manner of Tetrazzini. In the middle of these coloratura intricacies, which she trilled out as effortlessly as a bird on a branch, she caught sight of Madame Modjeska at the rear of the hall sitting up in her chair and gazing at her with a certain curiosity. Herma came to the end of the bells, and Mrs. Opdike finished the thing off with a single low G with her forefinger, like a period at the end of a sentence.

  Herma and Mrs. Opdike exchanged a glance, and then Mrs. Opdike performed one of her specialties as an accompanist—the infinitely delayed chord. This one was an augmented triad with an E at the top, just above the middle of the piano. The chord hung there, trembling, until finally Herma joined it, in her small and slightly hesitant soprano of perfect purity. It was exactly the voice of Melba.

  “Sì. Mi chiamano Mimì,

  ma il mio nome è Lucia.

  La storia mia è breve.”

  Every inflection and catch in the voice was impeccable—even the very faint hint, no more than a ghost, of an Australian twang in the stretched-out i’s and a’s: “… è loo … CHEE … aaah.” There were three people here mingled: Herma herself, then Melba, and then Mimì. They all merged into Mimì, who was still hesitant and uncertain at this point—she did not really know Rodolfo yet, even though he had told her frankly, “Sono un poeta.” But, taking courage as she proceeded into her autobiography, she repeated the five notes of the theme in a stronger tone—rising, then falling to the lingering and tremulous D, as though resting for a moment, before it soared upward again. The aria slipped magically from one minor key into another, and then offered the listener unexpectedly, as a kind of gift, an enchanting tonic in the major—Puccini was a sorcerer and did not need to take account of ordinary harmony. Herma’s voice was no longer tiny or hesitant. It drove with force and accuracy through the aria; it had become that of the exultant Mimì, discovering love in herself as she told her own story. It was lyric, lyric in the extreme, it was the epitome of lyric. But there was death in it too, the melancholy echo of the minor—for Mimì would die. This the voice knew, but it was also moved by love, and it plunged and soared, exulted or lapsed into the minor key, as the two impulses moved it. The high A at the climax, almost two octaves above the middle of the piano, was of such a piercing purity that it made the old hall tremble slightly. Herma held it for an exquisite moment—it seemed as though her larynx must break, but it poised on the note effortlessly—before she slipped down, almost regretfully, to the A flat and then to the E three notes below it, Mimì concluded her story by remarking to Rodolfo—in a flat recitative, almost as though she were speaking it—“Altro di me non le saprei narrare.”

  Herma stood waiting for the applause to end—patiently and without affectation, as though the long rattle of clapping in the hall were for somebody else. There was a moment of silence while people coughed and shuffled in their seats. Then, glancing at Mrs. Opdike and rising in a silver note from the G seventh chord of the piano, she began in a slow tempo The Last Rose of Summer. After the Italianate complexities of Puccini this was simpler and more suited to the audience. The self-pitying catch in the voice was gone, and the song was direct and fresh—even though it had its own kind of pathos, an evening sadness that was enhanced by the virginal, half-tremulous, and yet confident sweetness of the voice. When it lifted to the high C in the first line it did so effortlessly, yet the soaring up of the thin girlish voice seemed almost more impressive, and more affecting, than the great A of the Puccini almost an octave higher. And this simplicity, with its faint note of the pensive, was exactly suited to the evocative twilight melancholy of the words.

  “’Tis the last rose of summer

  Left blooming alone;

  All her lovely companions

  Are faded and gone;

  No flower of her kindred,

  No rosebud is nigh,

  To reflect back her blushes,

  Or give sigh for sigh.”

  During the second stanza Madame Modjeska, sitting in the rear, shifted in her seat a little and Herma was able to get a good look at her for the first time. She recognized her now as the same lady who had sat with such queenly dignity in the private car—years before, when Herma was only a tiny girl—as it paused briefly at the S. P. station. The regal posture, the coiled diadem of hair, the watchful eyes were exactly the same. But Madame Modjeska had not turned to look at her then—or had she? Now the steady glance was fixed on Herma as she finished the second stanza and started on the third. And watching, Herma saw a hand come up slowly with a square of white cambric in it and touch at the corner of the eye. The hand with the handkerchief disappeared, and the face went on looking—the dark watchful eyes with the pattern of spiderwebs around them, a glance penetrating and yet thoughtful, as though it had not yet made up its mind about what it was seeing. The clear dulcet, nearing the end, slowed to follow the ritardando of Mrs. Opdike’s chords.

  “When true hearts lie withered,

  And fond ones are flown,

  Oh! who would inhabit

  This bleak world alone?”

  Who indeed? The audience seemed moved by the question, so melancholy and yet posed by one so young, and applauded it with a ragged clattering that went on for a long time. Madame Modjeska kept her eyes fixed on Herma. When the clapping had no
t quite died out she stood up and gathered her reticule, with a little smile on her lips. She had an odd way of smiling. It was not that she smiled spontaneously, but as though she had decided to smile, because she wished to indicate something to the person at whom she was looking. And that, Herma told herself with a little thrill, is because she is an actress.

  Madame Modjeska lingered a little at the rear of the hall, while the others came forward to pump Herma’s hand and Papa hung back shyly, chewing his mustache. Then she advanced in a dignified way, her chin slightly raised, until she stopped without a word a few feet from Herma. With her, behind and a little to one side, was a scholarly looking gentleman with a high pale forehead whom she did not introduce. And Madame Modjeska herself didn’t say anything for quite some time. Then, simply and in a slight foreign accent, she said, “I am Modjeska.”

  “I am Herma.”

  Madame Modjeska smiled again at this. Then she said, “Tell me something about yourself, my dear.”

  “I live on Ross Street. My Papa is editor of the Blade, and Mrs. Opdike gives me lessons. I have been singing since I was five years old, and I hope to be an opera star. Altro di me,” she concluded, “non le saprei narrare.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I wouldn’t know what else to tell you about me.”

  “Your Italian accent,” said Madame Modjeska in a suggestive tone, as though she were asking a question, “is flawless.”

  Herma said nothing.

  Madame Modjeska made her little smile again, only for a second.

  “Are you acquainted with Nellie Melba, my dear?”

  Herma shook her head.

  “But you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Madame Modjeska hesitated while she studied her a little longer. “Well, you are a curious little thing. You must study hard and pay attention to your teacher.” They both glanced dubiously at Mrs. Opdike, a large and pale cloud in a flowered dress, who stood nearby simpering at this attention paid to her pupil. “Some day, of course, you must go away to a larger city, where you can receive proper training. But for now,” she concluded, “let me only thank you for having given me a moment of pleasure.” She reached into her reticule for something, and pressed it into Herma’s hand, in the most natural way in the world. It was a twenty-dollar gold piece, Herma perceived as she opened her fingers and folded them again over the coin.

  “I can’t.” She held the coin out to Madame Modjeska.

  “Let me tell you something, my dear. Always take money when it is offered you. Give what you like in return for it, but only what you like. That is what I have done, and I have become rich and famous. Also, many men have loved me, and a few, perhaps, unselfishly.” Here Herma caught the eye of the pale man standing behind Madame Modjeska, and he chewed his lip and looked the other way.

  “If you take money,” said Madame Modjeska, “it is only for Art. And Art,” she went on, “is never paid highly enough. So whatever is offered you, it is only your due. Tonight you have made Modjeska get out her handkerchief, and that is not easily done. So put the money in your pocket and be careful with it.” Here she stared without a word at the pale man, and he offered her his arm. She let her glance linger for a final moment on Herma. She said, “Do widzenia, my dear.” Then, turning in her queenly way, she allowed the pale man to lead her from the hall.

  8.

  As everybody agreed, Mama was not well, but not in any way that excited pity or even sympathy. Instead it was simply that she was tired and “didn’t feel up to things,” so that she languished all day indoors in her own way, something like an odalisque in a harem—and in fact there was something Persian about the pale and perfect complexion, the dark eyes, and the aureole of dark hair that framed her face like a veil. However, Mama’s lord and master was not a Pasha, but instead only Papa, who labored long and earnestly to support his little family in the office of the Blade, where he composed homilies on the day’s events, obituary notices, squibs about weddings, and remarks about unusual phenomena of weather, such as hailstones or spells of unprecedented warmth. Whatever journalistic event he commented on—a mad dog on Fourth Street, or the excessive water bills charged by the County—he seldom failed to conclude by recommending that we place our trust in the hands of Heaven. He was solidly embedded in his Baptist faith, yet there were signs in him of a vague and unspecified anxiety or melancholy, that dread of empty spaces noted by Pascal. He did not understand the new century very well. He hoped, through his modest efforts as Editor-in-Chief of the Blade, to arrest these alarming changes and steer society back into the safe Eden of his youth, where Darwin was hardly heard of and “workers” were people who strove in the Fields of the Lord, serving as deacons or baking cakes for socials according to sex. He attributed Herma’s wild-animal qualities—her roaming about with short hair, climbing trees, swinging upside down from branches with her drawers showing, even her uncanny and slightly weird gift of music—to the influence of the new era, without being able to explain very precisely what he meant by this. As he told himself more and more frequently, he didn’t understand children very well. He himself did not remember being a child, and none of his relatives, as far as he could recall, had ever been children. He was aware that there were children in the world, but the custom, as he understood it, was that they were taken care of by their Mamas until they were old enough to launch out into the world for themselves. But Herma’s Mama (her name was Dell, but Papa, out of some modesty or embarrassment, never pronounced this vocable, calling her “you” when he spoke to her directly, and referring to her with Herma as Your Mama) had barely enough energy to see to the minimum household tasks, preparing the meals and touching the furniture languidly with a feather duster, without supervising some wild creature who tore from one end of the town to the other as though possessed by demons. In short, both Papa and Mama were embodiments of the previous century—he representing Victorian rigor and morality, suspicion or anxiety about science, vague religious doubt, and she the wan, dark-eyed, sweetly melancholy notion of Victorian beauty—and so, in the new century, she began little by little to fade away, as though she were only an image in a magic lantern with a defective bulb.

  As for Herma, he had for some months now been observing her in secret, with an anxious if somewhat distracted eye. She still roamed about and swung from trees, but now he began to note other and even more disquieting phenomena, certain sprouts and swellings the meaning of which was unmistakable, and yet which seemed to him surely premature—even though Herma was almost as tall as Mama now, and her head came up to his chin when he kissed her chastely goodnight on the brow. He knew little about the physiology of the tender sex, but he was vaguely aware that the menarche was a perilous gateway through which, nevertheless, God had willed that every female child must pass. It was terrible for the thing to happen, but it would be even worse if it did not happen. And, even if it did happen, many things might go wrong. There were women who—Sapphic love it was called. There were the Kessler Girls who had never married and were as queer as Dick’s hatband. And there was a child at the other end of town—Papa knew about it only because he worked at the Blade—who had deposited an unspeakable tiny parcel in a trash barrel and then went off to Los Angeles, never to be seen again. Of course he never mentioned such things to Mama, but perhaps she had heard hints of them anyhow. How could one protect one’s family from this sea of peril, this Knowledge of Good and Evil that lapped all about like a Noah’s Flood that was rising to engulf them all? Gazing sidelong at Herma and stroking his wispy mustache, he reminded himself that in all things we must place our trust in the hands of Heaven. Yet another authority, he considered on reflection, might do no harm.

  “I wonder,” he suggested to Mama, “whether we ought after all to call in Violet.”

  “Dr. Violet?” she repeated, slightly pale, as though alarmed.

  “To look at Herma.”

  “To look at her?”

  “Because of the age she is.�
�� This with a fixed and significant stare.

  “Well,” said Mama vaguely, and yet with a faint flush of color in her cheeks, “I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm. The child is growing rather fast. Although,” she added, “Violet does charge two dollars.”

  “Money is of no account where matters of health are concerned,” he told her. “I would appreciate it if you left the financial worries of the family to me.”

  * * *

  Dr. Violet wore the same costume on all occasions: an old-fashioned frock coat like a stage magician, a shirt with a wing collar, striped trousers which he appeared to have slept in, and a pair of disgraceful shoes. His pockets were stuffed with a miscellaneous and random collection of objects: papers, medical journals, a brown bottle of cough medicine, wooden tongue depressors, a Blade of two or three days back, a mauve female stocking which was part of a blood-pressure apparatus, and a kind of long-dead octopus with metal fittings that passed for a stethoscope. With the help of these pockets he got along without the usual black bag; or perhaps he had lost his.

  He dyed his mustaches—they were a glossy black, but the rest of his hair was gray. His teeth were eaten away like an unevenly melted honeycomb. He had a mannerism of lifting the disarrayed hair from his brow and pushing it aside with his pale, long-fingered hand with its not quite clean nails. He looked around the parlor with his gimlet eye, seeming to ignore the three people in it and instead appraising the furnishings. After a while he said, “I will have to examine the patient privately.”