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mother had told her that, since she had some influence
with Tillie, it would be a good thing for them all if she could
tone her down a shade and "keep her from taking on any
worse than need be." Thea would sit on the foot of Tillie's
bed, her feet tucked under her, and stare at the silly text.
"I wouldn't make so much fuss, there, Tillie," she would
remark occasionally; "I don't see the point in it"; or,
"What do you pitch your voice so high for? It don't carry
half as well."
"I don't see how it comes Thea is so patient with Til-
lie," Mrs. Kronborg more than once remarked to her hus-
band. "She ain't patient with most people, but it seems
like she's got a peculiar patience for Tillie."
Tillie always coaxed Thea to go "behind the scenes"
with her when the club presented a play, and help her with
her make-up. Thea hated it, but she always went. She
felt as if she had to do it. There was something in Tillie's
adoration of her that compelled her. There was no family
impropriety that Thea was so much ashamed of as Tillie's
"acting" and yet she was always being dragged in to assist
her. Tillie simply had her, there. She didn't know why,
but it was so. There was a string in her somewhere that
Tillie could pull; a sense of obligation to Tillie's misguided
aspirations. The saloon-keepers had some such feeling of
responsibility toward Spanish Johnny.
The dramatic club was the pride of Tillie's heart, and her
enthusiasm was the principal factor in keeping it together.
Sick or well, Tillie always attended rehearsals, and was
always urging the young people, who took rehearsals
lightly, to "stop fooling and begin now." The young men
--bank clerks, grocery clerks, insurance agents--played
tricks, laughed at Tillie, and "put it up on each other"
about seeing her home; but they often went to tiresome
rehearsals just to oblige her. They were good-natured
young fellows. Their trainer and stage-manager was young
Upping, the jeweler who ordered Thea's music for her.
Though barely thirty, he had followed half a dozen pro-
fessions, and had once been a violinist in the orchestra of
the Andrews Opera Company, then well known in little
towns throughout Colorado and Nebraska.
By one amazing indiscretion Tillie very nearly lost her
hold upon the Moonstone Drama Club. The club had de-
cided to put on "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh," a very
ambitious undertaking because of the many supers needed
and the scenic difficulties of the act which took place in
Andersonville Prison. The members of the club consulted
together in Tillie's absence as to who should play the part
of the drummer boy. It must be taken by a very young
person, and village boys of that age are self-conscious and
are not apt at memorizing. The part was a long one, and
clearly it must be given to a girl. Some members of the
club suggested Thea Kronborg, others advocated Lily
Fisher. Lily's partisans urged that she was much prettier
than Thea, and had a much "sweeter disposition." No-
body denied these facts. But there was nothing in the
least boyish about Lily, and she sang all songs and played
all parts alike. Lily's simper was popular, but it seemed
not quite the right thing for the heroic drummer boy.
Upping, the trainer, talked to one and another: "Lily's
all right for girl parts," he insisted, "but you've got to
get a girl with some ginger in her for this. Thea's got
the voice, too. When she sings, `Just Before the Battle,
Mother,' she'll bring down the house."
When all the members of the club had been privately
consulted, they announced their decision to Tillie at the
first regular meeting that was called to cast the parts.
They expected Tillie to be overcome with joy, but, on the
contrary, she seemed embarrassed. "I'm afraid Thea
hasn't got time for that," she said jerkily. "She is always
so busy with her music. Guess you'll have to get somebody
else."
The club lifted its eyebrows. Several of Lily Fisher's
friends coughed. Mr. Upping flushed. The stout woman
who always played the injured wife called Tillie's attention
to the fact that this would be a fine opportunity for her
niece to show what she could do. Her tone was conde-
scending.
Tillie threw up her head and laughed; there was some-
thing sharp and wild about Tillie's laugh--when it was
not a giggle. "Oh, I guess Thea hasn't got time to do any
showing off. Her time to show off ain't come yet. I expect
she'll make us all sit up when it does. No use asking her to
take the part. She'd turn her nose up at it. I guess they'd
be glad to get her in the Denver Dramatics, if they could."
The company broke up into groups and expressed their
amazement. Of course all Swedes were conceited, but they
would never have believed that all the conceit of all the
Swedes put together would reach such a pitch as this.
They confided to each other that Tillie was "just a little
off, on the subject of her niece," and agreed that it would be
as well not to excite her further. Tillie got a cold reception
at rehearsals for a long while afterward, and Thea had a
crop of new enemies without even knowing it.
X
Wunsch and old Fritz and Spanish Johnny cele-
brated Christmas together, so riotously that
Wunsch was unable to give Thea her lesson the next day.
In the middle of the vacation week Thea went to the Kohl-
ers' through a soft, beautiful snowstorm. The air was a
tender blue-gray, like the color on the doves that flew in
and out of the white dove-house on the post in the Kohl-
ers' garden. The sand hills looked dim and sleepy. The
tamarisk hedge was full of snow, like a foam of blossoms
drifted over it. When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs.
Kohler was just coming in from the chicken yard, with five
fresh eggs in her apron and a pair of old top-boots on her
feet. She called Thea to come and look at a bantam egg,
which she held up proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss
in zeal, and she was always delighted when they accom-
plished anything. She took Thea into the sitting-room,
very warm and smelling of food, and brought her a plateful
of little Christmas cakes, made according to old and hal-
lowed formulae, and put them before her while she warmed
her feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen stairs
and called: "Herr Wunsch, Herr Wunsch!"
Wunsch came down wearing an old wadded jacket, with
a velvet collar. The brown silk was so worn that the wad-
ding stuck out almost everywhere. He avoided Thea's
eyes when he came in, nodded without speaking, and
pointed directly to the piano stool. He was not so insistent
upon the scales as usual, and throughout the little sonata
of Mozart's she was studying, he remained languid and
absent-minded. His eyes looked very heavy, and he kept
wiping them with one of the new silk handkerchiefs Mrs.
Kohler had given him for Christmas. When the lesson was
over he did not seem inclined to talk. Thea, loitering on
the stool, reached for a tattered book she had taken off the
music-rest when she sat down. It was a very old Leipsic
edition of the piano score of Gluck's "Orpheus." She turned
over the pages curiously.
"Is it nice?" she asked.
"It is the most beautiful opera ever made," Wunsch de-
clared solemnly. "You know the story, eh? How, when she
die, Orpheus went down below for his wife?"
"Oh, yes, I know. I didn't know there was an opera
about it, though. Do people sing this now?"
"ABER JA! What else? You like to try? See." He drew
her from the stool and sat down at the piano. Turning over
the leaves to the third act, he handed the score to Thea.
"Listen, I play it through and you get the RHYTHMUS. EINS,
ZWEI, DREI, VIER." He played through Orpheus' lament, then
pushed back his cuffs with awakening interest and nodded
at Thea. "Now, VOM BLATT, MIT MIR."
"ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN,
ALL' MEIN GLUCK IST NUN DAHIN."
Wunsch sang the aria with much feeling. It was evidently
one that was very dear to him.
"NOCH EINMAL, alone, yourself." He played the intro-
ductory measures, then nodded at her vehemently, and she
began:--
"ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN."
When she finished, Wunsch nodded again. "SCHON," he
muttered as he finished the accompaniment softly. He
dropped his hands on his knees and looked up at Thea.
"That is very fine, eh? There is no such beautiful melody
in the world. You can take the book for one week and learn
something, to pass the time. It is good to know--always.
EURIDICE, EU--RI--DI--CE, WEH DASS ICH AUF ERDEN BIN!" he
sang softly, playing the melody with his right hand.
Thea, who was turning over the pages of the third act,
stopped and scowled at a passage. The old German's
blurred eyes watched her curiously.
"For what do you look so, IMMER?" puckering up his
own face. "You see something a little difficult, may-be,
and you make such a face like it was an enemy."
Thea laughed, disconcerted. "Well, difficult things are
enemies, aren't they? When you have to get them?"
Wunsch lowered his head and threw it up as if he were
butting something. "Not at all! By no means." He took
the book from her and looked at it. "Yes, that is not so
easy, there. This is an old book. They do not print it so
now any more, I think. They leave it out, may-be. Only
one woman could sing that good."
Thea looked at him in perplexity.
Wunsch went on. "It is written for alto, you see. A
woman sings the part, and there was only one to sing that
good in there. You understand? Only one!" He glanced
at her quickly and lifted his red forefinger upright before
her eyes.
Thea looked at the finger as if she were hypnotized.
"Only one?" she asked breathlessly; her hands, hanging
at her sides, were opening and shutting rapidly.
Wunsch nodded and still held up that compelling finger.
When he dropped his hands, there was a look of satisfac-
tion in his face.
"Was she very great?"
Wunsch nodded.
"Was she beautiful?"
"ABER GAR NICHT! Not at all. She was ugly; big mouth,
big teeth, no figure, nothing at all," indicating a luxuriant
bosom by sweeping his hands over his chest. "A pole, a
post! But for the voice--ACH! She have something in
there, behind the eyes," tapping his temples.
Thea followed all his gesticulations intently. "Was she
German?"
"No, SPANISCH." He looked down and frowned for a
moment. "ACH, I tell you, she look like the Frau Tella-
mantez, some-thing. Long face, long chin, and ugly al-so."
"Did she die a long while ago?"
"Die? I think not. I never hear, anyhow. I guess she is
alive somewhere in the world; Paris, may-be. But old, of
course. I hear her when I was a youth. She is too old to
sing now any more."
"Was she the greatest singer you ever heard?"
Wunsch nodded gravely. "Quite so. She was the
most--" he hunted for an English word, lifted his hand
over his head and snapped his fingers noiselessly in the air,
enunciating fiercely, "KUNST-LER-ISCH!" The word seemed to
glitter in his uplifted hand, his voice was so full of emotion.
Wunsch rose from the stool and began to button his
wadded jacket, preparing to return to his half-heated room
in the loft. Thea regretfully put on her cloak and hood and
set out for home...
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