Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

  Archie turned a frank smile to his friend and shook his head. “It was all miles beyond me, of course, but it gave me a pulse. The general excitement got hold of me, I suppose. I like your wine, Freddy.” He put down his glass. “It goes to the spot to-night. She was all right, then? You weren’t disappointed?”

  “Disappointed? My dear Archie, that’s the high voice we dream of; so pure and yet so virile and human. That combination hardly ever happens with sopranos.” Ottenburg sat down and turned to the doctor, speaking calmly and trying to dispel his friend’s manifest bewilderment. “You see, Archie, there’s the voice itself, so beautiful and individual, and then there’s something else; the thing in it which responds to every shade of thought and feeling, spontaneously, almost unconsciously. That color has to be born in a singer, it can’t be acquired; lots of beautiful voices haven’t a vestige of it. It’s almost like another gift—the rarest of all. The voice simply is the mind and is the heart. It can’t go wrong in interpretation, because it has in it the thing that makes all interpretation. That’s why you feel so sure of her. After you’ve listened to her for an hour or so, you aren’t afraid of anything. All the little dreads you have with other artists vanish. You lean back and you say to yourself, ‘No, that voice will never betray.’ Treulich geführt, treulich bewacht.”

  Archie looked envyingly at Fred’s excited, triumphant face. How satisfactory it must be, he thought, to really know what she was doing and not to have to take it on hearsay. He took up his glass with a sigh. “I seem to need a good deal of cooling off to-night. I’d just as lief forget the Reform Party for once.

  “Yes, Fred,” he went on seriously; “I thought it sounded very beautiful, and I thought she was very beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be as beautiful as that.”

  “Wasn’t she? Every attitude a picture, and always the right kind of picture, full of that legendary, supernatural thing she gets into it. I never heard the prayer sung like that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get an Elsa who can look through walls like that, and visions and Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess, that girl, after Lohengrin leaves her. She’s made to live with ideas and enthusiasms, not with a husband.” Fred folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and began to sing softly:—

  “In lichter Waffen Scheine

  Ein Ritter nahte da.”

  “Doesn’t she die, then, at the end?” the doctor asked guardedly.

  Fred smiled, reaching under the table. “Some Elsas do; she didn’t. She left me with the distinct impression that she was just beginning. Now, doctor, here’s a cold one.” He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green glass, the cork gave and slipped out with a soft explosion. “And now we must have another toast. It’s up to you, this time.”

  The doctor watched the agitation in his glass. “The same,” he said without lifting his eyes. “That’s good enough. I can’t raise you.”

  Fred leaned forward, and looked sharply into his face. “That’s the point; how could you raise me? Once again!”

  “Once again, and always the same!” The doctor put down his glass. “This doesn’t seem to produce any symptoms in me to-night.” He lit a cigar. “Seriously, Freddy, I wish I knew more about what she’s driving at. It makes me jealous, when you are so in it and I’m not.”

  “In it?” Fred started up. “My God, haven’t you seen her this blessed night?—when she’d have kicked any other man down the elevator shaft, if I know her. Leave me something; at least what I can pay my five bucks for.”

  “Seems to me you get a good deal for your five bucks,” said Archie ruefully. “And that, after all, is what she cares about,—what people get.”

  Fred lit a cigarette, took a puff or two, and then threw it away. He was lounging back in his chair, and his face was pale and drawn hard by that mood of intense concentration which lurks under the sunny shallows of the vineyard. In his voice there was a longer perspective than usual, a slight remoteness. “You see, Archie, it’s all very simple, a natural development. It’s exactly what Mahler said back there in the beginning, when she sang Woglinde. It’s the idea, the basic idea, pulsing behind every bar she sings. She simplifies a character down to the musical idea it’s built on, and makes everything conform to that. The people who chatter about her being a great actress don’t seem to get the notion of where she gets the notion. It all goes back to her original endowment, her tremendous musical talent. Instead of inventing a lot of business and expedients to suggest character, she knows the thing at the root, and lets the musical pattern take care of her. The score pours her into all those lovely postures, makes the light and shadow go over her face, lifts her and drops her. She lies on it, the way she used to lie on the Rhine music. Talk about rhythm!”

  The doctor frowned dubiously as a third bottle made its appearance above the cloth. “Aren’t you going in rather strong?”

  Fred laughed. “No, I’m becoming too sober. You see this is breakfast now; kind of wedding breakfast. I feel rather weddingish. I don’t mind. You know,” he went on as the wine gurgled out, “I was thinking to-night when they sprung the wedding music, how any fool can have that stuff played over him when he walks up the aisle with some dough-faced little hussy who’s hooked him. But it isn’t every fellow who can see—well, what we saw tonight. There are compensations in life, Dr. Howard Archie, though they come in disguise. Did you notice her when she came down the stairs? Wonder where she gets that bright-and-morning star look? Carries to the last row of the family circle. I moved about all over the house. I’ll tell you a secret, Archie: that carrying power was one of the first things that put me wise. Noticed it down there in Arizona, in the open. That, I said, belongs only to the big ones.” Fred got up and began to move rhythmically about the room, his hands in his pockets. The doctor was astonished at his ease and steadiness, for there were slight lapses in his speech. “You see, Archie, Elsa isn’t a part that’s particularly suited to Thea’s voice at all, as I see her voice. It’s over-lyrical for her. She makes it, but there’s nothing in it that fits her like a glove, except, maybe, that long duet in the third act. There, of course,”—he held out his hands as if he were measuring something,—”we know exactly where we are. But wait until they give her a chance at something that lies properly in her voice, and you’ll see me rosier than I am to-night.”

  Archie smoothed the tablecloth with his hand. “I am sure I don’t want to see you any rosier, Fred.”

  Ottenburg threw back his head and laughed. “It’s enthusiasm, doctor. It’s not the wine. I’ve got as much inflated as this for a dozen trashy things: brewers’ dinners and political orgies. You, too, have your extravagances, Archie. And what I like best in you is this particular enthusiasm, which is not at all practical or sensible, which is downright Quixotic. You are not altogether what you seem, and you have your reservations. Living among the wolves, you have not become one. Lupibus vivendi non lupus sum.”

  The doctor seemed embarrassed. “I was just thinking how tired she looked, plucked of all her fine feathers, while we get all the fun. Instead of sitting here carousing, we ought to go solemnly to bed.”

  “I get your idea.” Ottenburg crossed to the window and threw it open. “Fine night outside; a hag of a moon just setting. It begins to smell like morning. After all, Archie, think of the lonely and rather solemn hours we’ve spent waiting for all this, while she’s been—reveling.”

  Archie lifted his brows. “I somehow didn’t get the idea to-night that she revels much.”

  “I don’t mean this sort of thing.” Fred turned toward the light and stood with his back to the window. “That,” with a nod toward the wine-cooler, “is only a cheap imitation, that any poor stiff-fingered fool can buy and feel his shell grow thinner. But take it from me, no matter what she pays, or how much she may see fit to lie about it, the real, the master revel is hers.” He leaned back against the window sill and crossed his arms. “Anybody with all tha
t voice and all that talent and all that beauty, has her hour. Her hour,” he went on deliberately, “when she can say, ‘there it is, at last, Wie im Traum ich. As in my dream I dreamed it, as in my will it was.’”

  He stood silent a moment, twisting the flower from his coat by the stem and staring at the blank wall with haggard abstraction. “Even I can say to-night, Archie,” he brought out slowly, “’As in my dream I dreamed it, as in my will it was.’ Now, doctor, you may leave me. I’m beautifully drunk, but not with anything that ever grew in France.”

  The doctor rose. Fred tossed his flower out of the window behind him and came toward the door. “I say,” he called, “have you a date with anybody?”

  The doctor paused, his hand on the knob. “With Thea, you mean? Yes. I’m to go to her at four this afternoon—if you haven’t paralyzed me.”

  “Well, you won’t eat me, will you, if I break in and send up my card? She’ll probably turn me down cold, but that won’t hurt my feelings. If she ducks me, you tell her for me, that to spite me now she’d have to cut off more than she can spare. Good-night, Archie.”

  VI

  It was late on the morning after the night she sang Elsa, when Thea Kronborg stirred uneasily in her bed. The room was darkened by two sets of window shades, and the day outside was thick and cloudy. She turned and tried to recapture unconsciousness, knowing that she would not be able to do so. She dreaded waking stale and disappointed after a great effort. The first thing that came was always the sense of the futility of such endeavor, and of the absurdity of trying too hard. Up to a certain point, say eighty degrees, artistic endeavor could be fat and comfortable, methodical and prudent. But if you went further than that, if you drew yourself up toward ninety degrees, you parted with your defenses and left yourself exposed to mischance. The legend was that in those upper reaches you might be divine; but you were much likelier to be ridiculous. Your public wanted just about eighty degrees; if you gave it more it blew its nose and put a crimp in you. In the morning, especially, it seemed to her very probable that whatever struggled above the good average was not quite sound. Certainly very little of that superfluous ardor, which cost so dear, ever got across the footlights. These misgivings waited to pounce upon her when she wakened. They hovered about her bed like vultures.

  She reached under her pillow for her handkerchief, without opening her eyes. She had a shadowy memory that there was to be something unusual, that this day held more disquieting possibilities than days commonly held. There was something she dreaded; what was it? Oh, yes, Dr. Archie was to come at four.

  A reality like Dr. Archie, poking up out of the past, reminded one of disappointments and losses, of a freedom that was no more: reminded her of blue, golden mornings long ago, when she used to waken with a burst of joy at recovering her precious self and her precious world; when she never lay on her pillows at eleven o’clock like something the waves had washed up. After all, why had he come? It had been so long, and so much had happened. The things she had lost, he would miss readily enough. What she had gained, he would scarcely perceive. He, and all that he recalled, lived for her as memories. In sleep, and in hours of illness or exhaustion, she went back to them and held them to her heart. But they were better as memories. They had nothing to do with the struggle that made up her actual life. She felt drearily that she was not flexible enough to be the person her old friend expected her to be, the person she herself wished to be with him.

  Thea reached for the bell and rang twice,—a signal to her maid to order her breakfast. She rose and ran up the window shades and turned on the water in her bathroom, glancing into the mirror apprehensively as she passed it. Her bath usually cheered her, even on low mornings like this. Her white bathroom, almost as large as her sleeping-room, she regarded as a refuge. When she turned the key behind her, she left care and vexation on the other side of the door. Neither her maid nor the management nor her letters nor her accompanist could get at her now.

  When she pinned her braids about her head, dropped her nightgown and stepped out to begin her Swedish movements, she was a natural creature again, and it was so that she liked herself best. She slid into the tub with anticipation and splashed and tumbled about a good deal. Whatever else she hurried, she never hurried her bath. She used her brushes and sponges and soaps like toys, fairly playing in the water. Her own body was always a cheering sight to her. When she was careworn, when her mind felt old and tired, the freshness of her physical self, her long, firm lines, the smoothness of her skin, reassured her. This morning, because of awakened memories, she looked at herself more carefully than usual, and was not discouraged. While she was in the tub she began to whistle softly the tenor aria, “Ah! Fuyez, douce image,” somehow appropriate to the bath. After a noisy moment under the cold shower, she stepped out on the rug flushed and glowing, threw her arms above her head, and rose on her toes, keeping the elevation as long as she could. When she dropped back on her heels and began to rub herself with the towels, she took up the aria again, and felt quite in the humor for seeing Dr. Archie. After she had returned to her bed, the maid brought her letters and the morning papers with her breakfast.

  “Telephone Mr. Landry and ask him if he can come at half-past three, Theresa, and order tea to be brought up at five.”

  When Howard Archie was admitted to Thea’s apartment that afternoon, he was shown into the music-room back of the little reception room. Thea was sitting in a davenport behind the piano, talking to a young man whom she later introduced as her friend Mr. Landry. As she rose, and came to meet him, Archie felt a deep relief, a sudden thankfulness. She no longer looked clipped and plucked, or dazed and fleeing.

  Dr. Archie neglected to take account of the young man to whom he was presented. He kept Thea’s hands and held her where he met her, taking in the light, lively sweep of her hair, her clear green eyes and her throat that came up strong and dazzlingly white from her green velvet gown. The chin was as lovely as ever, the cheeks as smooth. All the lines of last night had disappeared. Only at the outer corners of her eyes, between the eye and the temple, were the faintest indications of a future attack—mere kitten scratches that playfully hinted where one day the cat would claw her. He studied her without any embarrassment. Last night everything had been awkward; but now, as he held her hands, a kind of harmony came between them, a reestablishment of confidence.

  “After all, Thea,—in spite of all, I still know you,” he murmured.

  She took his arm and led him up to the young man who was standing beside the piano. “Mr. Landry knows all about you, Dr. Archie. He has known about you for many years.” While the two men shook hands she stood between them, drawing them together by her presence and her glances. “When I first went to Germany, Landry was studying there. He used to be good enough to work with me when I could not afford to have an accompanist for more than two hours a day. We got into the way of working together. He is a singer, too, and has his own career to look after, but he still manages to give me some time. I want you to be friends.” She smiled from one to the other.

  The rooms, Archie noticed, full of last night’s flowers, were furnished in light colors, the hotel bleakness of them a little softened by a magnificent Steinway piano, white bookshelves full of books and scores, some drawings of ballet dancers, and the very deep sofa behind the piano.

  “Of course,” Archie asked apologetically, “you have seen the papers?”

  “Very cordial, aren’t they? They evidently did not expect as much as I did. Elsa is not really in my voice. I can sing the music, but I have to go after it.”

  “That is exactly,” the doctor came out boldly, “what Fred Ottenburg said this morning.”

  They had remained standing, the three of them, by the piano, where the gray afternoon light was strongest. Thea turned to the doctor with interest. “Is Fred in town? They were from him, then—some flowers that came last night without a card.” She indicated the white lilacs on the window sill. “Yes, he would know, certainly,” she said
thoughtfully. “Why don’t we sit down? There will be some tea for you in a minute, Landry. He’s very dependent upon it,” disapprovingly to Archie. “Now tell me, Doctor, did you really have a good time last night, or were you uncomfortable? Did you feel as if I were trying to hold my hat on by my eyebrows?”

  He smiled. “I had all kinds of a time. But I had no feeling of that sort. I couldn’t be quite sure that it was you at all. That was why I came up here last night. I felt as if I’d lost you.”

  She leaned toward him and brushed his sleeve reassuringly. “Then I didn’t give you an impression of painful struggle? Landry was singing at Weber and Fields’ last night. He didn’t get in until the performance was half over. But I see the Tribune man felt that I was working pretty hard. Did you see that notice, Oliver?”

  Dr. Archie looked closely at the red-headed young man for the first time, and met his lively brown eyes, full of a droll, confiding sort of humor. Mr. Landry was not prepossessing. He was undersized and clumsily made, with a red, shiny face and a sharp little nose that looked as if it had been whittled out of wood and was always in the air, on the scent of something. Yet it was this queer little beak, with his eyes, that made his countenance anything of a face at all. From a distance he looked like the groceryman’s delivery boy in a small town. His dress seemed an acknowledgment of his grotesqueness: a short coat, like a little boys’ roundabout, and a vest fantastically sprigged and dotted, over a lavender shirt.