IX
WHEN Archie and Ottenburg dined with Thea on
Saturday evening, they were served downstairs in
the hotel dining-room, but they were to have their coffee
in her own apartment. As they were going up in the ele-
vator after dinner, Fred turned suddenly to Thea. "And
why, please, did you break Landry's amber elephant?"
She looked guilty and began to laugh. "Hasn't he got
over that yet? I didn't really mean to break it. I was per-
haps careless. His things are so over-petted that I was
tempted to be careless with a lot of them."
"How can you be so heartless, when they're all he has
in the world?"
"He has me. I'm a great deal of diversion for him; all he
needs. There," she said as she opened the door into her
own hall, "I shouldn't have said that before the elevator
boy."
"Even an elevator boy couldn't make a scandal about
Oliver. He's such a catnip man."
Dr. Archie laughed, but Thea, who seemed suddenly to
have thought of something annoying, repeated blankly,
"Catnip man?"
"Yes, he lives on catnip, and rum tea. But he's not the
only one. You are like an eccentric old woman I know in
Boston, who goes about in the spring feeding catnip to
street cats. You dispense it to a lot of fellows. Your pull
seems to be more with men than with women, you know;
with seasoned men, about my age, or older. Even on Fri-
day afternoon I kept running into them, old boys I hadn't
seen for years, thin at the part and thick at the girth, until
I stood still in the draft and held my hair on. They're al-
ways there; I hear them talking about you in the smoking-
room. Probably we don't get to the point of apprehending
anything good until we're about forty. Then, in the light
of what is going, and of what, God help us! is coming, we
arrive at understanding."
"I don't see why people go to the opera, anyway,--seri-
ous people." She spoke discontentedly. "I suppose they
get something, or think they do. Here's the coffee. There,
please," she directed the waiter. Going to the table she be-
gan to pour the coffee, standing. She wore a white dress
trimmed with crystals which had rattled a good deal dur-
ing dinner, as all her movements had been impatient and
nervous, and she had twisted the dark velvet rose at her
girdle until it looked rumpled and weary. She poured the
coffee as if it were a ceremony in which she did not believe.
"Can you make anything of Fred's nonsense, Dr. Archie?"
she asked, as he came to take his cup.
Fred approached her. "My nonsense is all right. The
same brand has gone with you before. It's you who won't
be jollied. What's the matter? You have something on
your mind."
"I've a good deal. Too much to be an agreeable hos-
tess." She turned quickly away from the coffee and sat
down on the piano bench, facing the two men. "For one
thing, there's a change in the cast for Friday afternoon.
They're going to let me sing SIEGLINDE." Her frown did not
conceal the pleasure with which she made this announce-
ment.
"Are you going to keep us dangling about here forever,
Thea? Archie and I are supposed to have other things to
do." Fred looked at her with an excitement quite as ap-
parent as her own.
"Here I've been ready to sing SIEGLINDE for two years,
kept in torment, and now it comes off within two weeks,
just when I want to be seeing something of Dr. Archie. I
don't know what their plans are down there. After Friday
they may let me cool for several weeks, and they may rush
me. I suppose it depends somewhat on how things go Fri-
day afternoon."
"Oh, they'll go fast enough! That's better suited to
your voice than anything you've sung here. That gives
you every opportunity I've waited for." Ottenburg
crossed the room and standing beside her began to play
"DU BIST DER LENZ."
With a violent movement Thea caught his wrists and
pushed his hands away from the keys.
"Fred, can't you be serious? A thousand things may
happen between this and Friday to put me out. Some-
thing will happen. If that part were sung well, as well as
it ought to be, it would be one of the most beautiful things
in the world. That's why it never is sung right, and never
will be." She clenched her hands and opened them de-
spairingly, looking out of the open window. "It's inac-
cessibly beautiful!" she brought out sharply.
Fred and Dr. Archie watched her. In a moment she
turned back to them. "It's impossible to sing a part like
that well for the first time, except for the sort who will
never sing it any better. Everything hangs on that first
night, and that's bound to be bad. There you are," she
shrugged impatiently. "For one thing, they change the
cast at the eleventh hour and then rehearse the life out of
me."
Ottenburg put down his cup with exaggerated care.
"Still, you really want to do it, you know."
"Want to?" she repeated indignantly; "of course I want
to! If this were only next Thursday night-- But between
now and Friday I'll do nothing but fret away my strength.
Oh, I'm not saying I don't need the rehearsals! But I
don't need them strung out through a week. That sys-
tem's well enough for phlegmatic singers; it only drains
me. Every single feature of operatic routine is detri-
mental to me. I usually go on like a horse that's been
fixed to lose a race. I have to work hard to do my worst,
let alone my best. I wish you could hear me sing well,
once," she turned to Fred defiantly; "I have, a few times
in my life, when there was nothing to gain by it."
Fred approached her again and held out his hand. "I
recall my instructions, and now I'll leave you to fight it out
with Archie. He can't possibly represent managerial stu-
pidity to you as I seem to have a gift for doing."
As he smiled down at her, his good humor, his good
wishes, his understanding, embarrassed her and recalled
her to herself. She kept her seat, still holding his hand.
"All the same, Fred, isn't it too bad, that there are so
many things--" She broke off with a shake of the head.
"My dear girl, if I could bridge over the agony between
now and Friday for you-- But you know the rules of the
game; why torment yourself? You saw the other night
that you had the part under your thumb. Now walk, sleep,
play with Archie, keep your tiger hungry, and she'll spring
all right on Friday. I'll be there to see her, and there'll be
more than I, I suspect. Harsanyi's on the Wilhelm der
Grosse; gets in on Thursday."
"Harsanyi?" Thea's eye lighted. "I haven't seen him
for years. We always miss each other." She paused, hesi-
tating. "Yes, I should like that. But he'll be busy, may-
be?"
"He gives his first concert at Carnegie Hall, week after
next. Better send him a box if you can."
"Yes, I'll manage it." Thea took his hand again. "Oh,
I should like that, Fred!" she added impulsively. "Even
if I were put out, he'd get the idea,"--she threw back
her head,--"for there is an idea!"
"Which won't penetrate here," he tapped his brow and
began to laugh. "You are an ungrateful huzzy, COMME LES
AUTRES!"
Thea detained him as he turned away. She pulled a
flower out of a bouquet on the piano and absently drew
the stem through the lapel of his coat. "I shall be walking
in the Park to-morrow afternoon, on the reservoir path,
between four and five, if you care to join me. You know
that after Harsanyi I'd rather please you than anyone else.
You know a lot, but he knows even more than you."
"Thank you. Don't try to analyze it. SCHLAFEN SIE
WOHL!" he kissed her fingers and waved from the door,
closing it behind him.
"He's the right sort, Thea." Dr. Archie looked warmly
after his disappearing friend. "I've always hoped you'd
make it up with Fred."
"Well, haven't I? Oh, marry him, you mean! Perhaps
it may come about, some day. Just at present he's not
in the marriage market any more than I am, is he?"
"No, I suppose not. It's a damned shame that a man
like Ottenburg should be tied up as he is, wasting all the
best years of his life. A woman with general paresis ought
to be legally dead."
"Don't let us talk about Fred's wife, please. He had no
business to get into such a mess, and he had no business to
stay in it. He's always been a softy where women were
concerned."
"Most of us are, I'm afraid," Dr. Archie admitted
meekly.
"Too much light in here, isn't there? Tires one's eyes.
The stage lights are hard on mine." Thea began turning
them out. "We'll leave the little one, over the piano."
She sank down by Archie on the deep sofa. "We two have
so much to talk about that we keep away from it altogether;
have you noticed? We don't even nibble the edges. I wish
we had Landry here to-night to play for us. He's very
comforting."
"I'm afraid you don't have enough personal life, outside
your work, Thea." The doctor looked at her anxiously.
She smiled at him with her eyes half closed. "My dear
doctor, I don't have any. Your work becomes your per-
sonal life. You are not much good until it does. It's like
being woven into a big web. You can't pull away, because
all your little tendrils are woven into the picture. It takes
you up, and uses you, and spins you out; and that is your
life. Not much else can happen to you."
"Didn't you think of marrying, several years ago?"
"You mean Nordquist? Yes; but I changed my mind.
We had been singing a good deal together. He's a splendid
creature."
"Were you much in love with him, Thea?" the doctor
asked hopefully.
She smiled again. "I don't think I know just what that
expression means. I've never been able to find out. I
think I was in love with you when I was little, but not
with any one since then. There are a great many ways of
caring for people. It's not, after all, a simple state, like
measles or tonsilitis. Nordquist is a taking sort of man.
He and I were out in a rowboat once in a terrible storm.
The lake was fed by glaciers,--ice water,--and we
couldn't have swum a stroke if the boat had filled. If we
hadn't both been strong and kept our heads, we'd have
gone down. We pulled for every ounce there was in us,
and we just got off with our lives. We were always being
thrown together like that, under some kind of pressure.
Yes, for a while I thought he would make everything
right." She paused and sank back, resting her head on a
cushion, pressing her eyelids down with her fingers. "You
see," she went on abruptly, "he had a wife and two chil-
dren. He hadn't lived with her for several years, but
when she heard that he wanted to marry again, she began
to make trouble. He earned a good deal of money, but he
was careless and always wretchedly in debt. He came to
me one day and told me he thought his wife would settle
for a hundred thousand marks and consent to a divorce.
I got very angry and sent him away. Next day he came
back and said he thought she'd take fifty thousand."
Dr. Archie drew away from her, to the end of the sofa.
"Good God, Thea,"-- He ran his handkerchief over his
forehead. "What sort of people--" He stopped and shook
his head.
Thea rose and stood beside him, her hand on his shoul-
der. "That's exactly how it struck me," she said quietly.
"Oh, we have things in common, things that go away back,
under everything. You understand, of course. Nordquist
didn't. He thought I wasn't willing to part with the
money. I couldn't let myself buy him from Fru Nord-
quist, and he couldn't see why. He had always thought I
was close about money, so he attributed it to that. I am
careful,"--she ran her arm through Archie's and when
he rose began to walk about the room with him. "I
can't be careless with money. I began the world on six
hundred dollars, and it was the price of a man's life. Ray
Kennedy had worked hard and been sober and denied him-
self, and when he died he had six hundred dollars to show
for it. I always measure things by that six hundred dol-
lars, just as I measure high buildings by the Moonstone
standpipe. There are standards we can't get away from."
Dr. Archie took her hand. "I don't believe we should
be any happier if we did get away from them. I think it
gives you some of your poise, having that anchor. You
look," glancing down at her head and shoulders, "some-
times so like your mother."
"Thank you. You couldn't say anything nicer to me
than that. On Friday afternoon, didn't you think?"
"Yes, but at other times, too. I love to see it. Do you
know what I thought about that first night when I heard
you sing? I kept remembering the night I took care of you
when you had pneumonia, when you were ten years old.
You were a terribly sick child, and I was a country doctor
without much experience. There were no oxygen tanks
about then. You pretty nearly slipped away from me.
If you had--"
Thea dropped her head on his shoulder. "I'd have
saved myself and you a lot of trouble, wouldn't I? Dear
Dr. Archie!" she murmured.
"As for me, life would have been a pretty bleak stretch,
with you left out." The doctor took one of the crystal
pendants that hung from her shoulder and looked into it
thoughtfully. "I guess I'm a romantic old fellow, under-
neath. And you've always been my romance. Those
years when you were growing up were my happiest. When
I dream about you, I always see you as a little girl."
They paused by the open window. "Do you? Nearly
all my dreams, except those about breaking down on the
stage or missing trains, are about Moonstone. You tell
me the old house has been pulled down, but it stands in
my mind, every stick and timber. In my sleep I go all
about it, and look in the right drawers and cupboards for
everything. I often dream that I'm hunting for my rub-
bers in that pile of overshoes that was always under the
hatrack in the hall. I pick up every overshoe and know
whose it is, but I can't find my own. Then the school bell
begins to ring and I begin to cry. That's the house I rest
in when I'm tired. All the old furniture and the worn
spots in the carpet--it rests my mind to go over them."
They were looking out of the window. Thea kept his
arm. Down on the river four battleships were anchored in
line, brilliantly lighted, and launches were coming and
going, bringing the men ashore. A searchlight from one
of the ironclads was playing on the great headland up the
river, where it makes its first resolute turn. Overhead the
night-blue sky was intense and clear.
"There's so much that I want to tell you," she said at
last, "and it's hard to explain. My life is full of jealousies
and disappointments, you know. You get to hating people
who do contemptible work and who get on just as well as you
do. There are many disappointments in my profession, and
bitter, bitter contempts!" Her face hardened, and looked
much older. "If you love the good thing vitally, enough to
give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you
must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there
is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives
you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose
everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever
knew you could be." As she glanced at Dr. Archie's face,
Thea stopped short and turned her own face away. Her
eyes followed the path of the searchlight up the river and
rested upon the illumined headland.
"You see," she went on more calmly, "voices are acci-
dental things. You find plenty of good voices in common
women, with common minds and common hearts. Look
at that woman who sang ORTRUDE with me last week. She's
new here and the people are wild about her. `Such a beau-
tiful volume of tone!' they say. I give you my word she's
as stupid as an owl and as coarse as a pig, and any one
who knows anything about singing would see that in an
instant. Yet she's quite as popular as Necker, who's a
great artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the
enthusiasm of a house that likes her atrociously bad per-
formance at the same time that it pretends to like mine?
If they like her, then they ought to hiss me off the stage.
We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely.
You can't try to do things right and not despise the peo-
ple who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If
that doesn't matter, then nothing matters. Well, some-
times I've come home as I did the other night when you
first saw me, so full of bitterness that it was as if my mind
were full of daggers. And I've gone to sleep and wakened
up in the Kohlers' garden, with the pigeons and the white
rabbits, so happy! And that saves me." She sat down
on the piano bench. Archie thought she had forgotten all
about him, until she called his name. Her voice was soft
now, and wonderfully sweet. It seemed to come from some-
where deep within her, there were such strong vibrations
in it. "You see, Dr. Archie, what one really strives for in
art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when
you drop in for a performance at the opera. What one
strives for is so far away, so deep, so beautiful"--she
lifted her shoulders with a long breath, folded her hands
in her lap and sat looking at him with a resignation that
made her face noble,--"that there's nothing one can
say about it, Dr. Archie."
Without knowing very well what it was all about,
Archie was passionately stirred for her. "I've always be-
lieved in you, Thea; always believed," he muttered.
She smiled and closed her eyes. "They save me: the old
things, things like the Kohlers' garden. They are in every-
thing I do."
"In what you sing, you mean?"
"Yes. Not in any direct way,"--she spoke hurriedly,
--"the light, the color, the feeling. Most of all the feeling.
It comes in when I'm working on a part, like the smell of
a garden coming in at the window. I try all the new
things, and then go back to the old. Perhaps my feelings
were stronger then. A child's attitude toward everything
is an artist's attitude. I am more or less of an artist now,
but then I was nothing else. When I went with you to
Chicago that first time, I carried with me the essentials,
the foundation of all I do now. The point to which I could
go was scratched in me then. I haven't reached it yet, by
a long way."
Archie had a swift flash of memory. Pictures passed
before him. "You mean," he asked wonderingly, "that
you knew then that you were so gifted?"
Thea looked up at him and smiled. "Oh, I didn't know
anything! Not enough to ask you for my trunk when I
needed it. But you see, when I set out from Moonstone
with you, I had had a rich, romantic past. I had lived a
long, eventful life, and an artist's life, every hour of it.
Wagner says, in his most beautiful opera, that art is only
a way of remembering youth. And the older we grow the
more precious it seems to us, and the more richly we can
present that memory. When we've got it all out,--the
last, the finest thrill of it, the brightest hope of it,"--she
lifted her hand above her head and dropped it,--"then
we stop. We do nothing but repeat after that. The stream
has reached the level of its source. That's our measure."
There was a long, warm silence. Thea was looking hard
at the floor, as if she were seeing down through years and
years, and her old friend stood watching her bent head.
His look was one with which he used to watch her long
ago, and which, even in thinking about her, had become a
habit of his face. It was full of solicitude, and a kind of
secret gratitude, as if to thank her for some inexpressible
pleasure of the heart. Thea turned presently toward the
piano and began softly to waken an old air:--
"Ca' the yowes to the knowes,
Ca' them where the heather grows,
Ca' them where the burnie rowes,
My bonnie dear-ie."
Archie sat down and shaded his eyes with his hand. She
turned her head and spoke to him over her shoulder.
"Come on, you know the words better than I. That's
right."
"We'll gae down by Clouden's side,
Through the hazels spreading wide,
O'er the waves that sweetly glide,
To the moon sae clearly.
Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,
Thou'rt to love and Heav'n sae dear,
Nocht of ill may come thee near,
My bonnie dear-ie!"
"We can get on without Landry. Let's try it again, I
have all the words now. Then we'll have `Sweet Afton.'
Come: `CA' THE YOWES TO THE KNOWES'--"
