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often advised violinists to study singing, and singers to
study violin. He told Harsanyi that he got his first con-
ception of tone quality from Jenny Lind.
"But, of course," he added, "the great thing I got from
Lind and Sontag was the indefinite, not the definite, thing.
For an impressionable boy, their inspiration was incalcu-
lable. They gave me my first feeling for the Italian style
--but I could never say how much they gave me. At that
age, such influences are actually creative. I always think
of my artistic consciousness as beginning then."
All his life Thomas did his best to repay what he felt he
owed to the singer's art. No man could get such singing
from choruses, and no man worked harder to raise the
standard of singing in schools and churches and choral
societies.
VII
All through the lesson Thea had felt that Harsanyi
was restless and abstracted. Before the hour was
over, he pushed back his chair and said resolutely, "I am
not in the mood, Miss Kronborg. I have something on my
mind, and I must talk to you. When do you intend to go
home?"
Thea turned to him in surprise. "The first of June,
about. Mr. Larsen will not need me after that, and I have
not much money ahead. I shall work hard this summer,
though."
"And to-day is the first of May; May-day." Harsanyi
leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands locked
between them. "Yes, I must talk to you about something.
I have asked Madison Bowers to let me bring you to him
on Thursday, at your usual lesson-time. He is the best
vocal teacher in Chicago, and it is time you began to work
seriously with your voice."
Thea's brow wrinkled. "You mean take lessons of
Bowers?"
Harsanyi nodded, without lifting his head.
"But I can't, Mr. Harsanyi. I haven't got the time,
and, besides--" she blushed and drew her shoulders up
stiffly--"besides, I can't afford to pay two teachers."
Thea felt that she had blurted this out in the worst possi-
ble way, and she turned back to the keyboard to hide her
chagrin.
"I know that. I don't mean that you shall pay two
teachers. After you go to Bowers you will not need me. I
need scarcely tell you that I shan't be happy at losing
you."
Thea turned to him, hurt and angry. "But I don't want
to go to Bowers. I don't want to leave you. What's the
matter? Don't I work hard enough? I'm sure you teach
people that don't try half as hard."
Harsanyi rose to his feet. "Don't misunderstand me,
Miss Kronborg. You interest me more than any pupil I
have. I have been thinking for months about what you
ought to do, since that night when you first sang for me."
He walked over to the window, turned, and came toward
her again. "I believe that your voice is worth all that you
can put into it. I have not come to this decision rashly. I
have studied you, and I have become more and more con-
vinced, against my own desires. I cannot make a singer of
you, so it was my business to find a man who could. I
have even consulted Theodore Thomas about it."
"But suppose I don't want to be a singer? I want to
study with you. What's the matter? Do you really think
I've no talent? Can't I be a pianist?"
Harsanyi paced up and down the long rug in front of
her. "My girl, you are very talented. You could be a
pianist, a good one. But the early training of a pianist,
such a pianist as you would want to be, must be something
tremendous. He must have had no other life than music.
At your age he must be the master of his instrument.
Nothing can ever take the place of that first training. You
know very well that your technique is good, but it is not
remarkable. It will never overtake your intelligence. You
have a fine power of work, but you are not by nature a stu-
dent. You are not by nature, I think, a pianist. You
would never find yourself. In the effort to do so, I'm
afraid your playing would become warped, eccentric."
He threw back his head and looked at his pupil intently
with that one eye which sometimes seemed to see deeper
than any two eyes, as if its singleness gave it privileges.
"Oh, I have watched you very carefully, Miss Kronborg.
Because you had had so little and had yet done so much for
yourself, I had a great wish to help you. I believe that the
strongest need of your nature is to find yourself, to emerge
AS yourself. Until I heard you sing I wondered how you
were to do this, but it has grown clearer to me every
day."
Thea looked away toward the window with hard, nar-
row eyes. "You mean I can be a singer because I haven't
brains enough to be a pianist."
"You have brains enough and talent enough. But to do
what you will want to do, it takes more than these--it
takes vocation. Now, I think you have vocation, but for
the voice, not for the piano. If you knew,"--he stopped
and sighed,--"if you knew how fortunate I sometimes
think you. With the voice the way is so much shorter, the
rewards are more easily won. In your voice I think Na-
ture herself did for you what it would take you many years
to do at the piano. Perhaps you were not born in the
wrong place after all. Let us talk frankly now. We have
never done so before, and I have respected your reticence.
What you want more than anything else in the world is to
be an artist; is that true?"
She turned her face away from him and looked down at
the keyboard. Her answer came in a thickened voice.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"When did you first feel that you wanted to be an
artist?"
"I don't know. There was always--something."
"Did you never think that you were going to sing?"
"Yes."
"How long ago was that?"
"Always, until I came to you. It was you who made me
want to play piano." Her voice trembled. "Before, I
tried to think I did, but I was pretending."
Harsanyi reached out and caught the hand that was
hanging at her side. He pressed it as if to give her some-
thing. "Can't you see, my dear girl, that was only be-
cause I happened to be the first artist you have ever known?
If I had been a trombone player, it would have been the
same; you would have wanted to play trombone. But all
the while you have been working with such good-will,
something has been struggling against me. See, here we
were, you and I and this instrument,"--he tapped the
piano,--"three good friends, working so hard. But all
the while there was something fighting us: your gift, and
the woman you were meant to be. When you find your
way to that gift and to that woman, you will be at peace.
In the beginning it was an artist that you wanted to be;
well, you may be an artist, always."
Thea drew a long breath. Her hands fell in her lap.
"So I'm just where I began. No teacher, nothing done.
No money."
Harsanyi turned away. "Feel no apprehension about
the money, Miss Kronborg. Come back in the fall and we
shall manage that. I shall even go to Mr. Thomas if neces-
sary. This year will not be lost. If you but knew what an
advantage this winter's study, all your study of the piano,
will give you over most singers. Perhaps things have come
out better for you than if we had planned them knowingly."
"You mean they have IF I can sing."
Thea spoke with a heavy irony, so heavy, indeed, that
it was coarse. It grated upon Harsanyi because he felt
that it was not sincere, an awkward affectation.
He wheeled toward her. "Miss Kronborg, answer me
this. YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN SING, do you not? You have
always known it. While we worked here together you
sometimes said to yourself, `I have something you know
nothing about; I could surprise you.' Is that also true?"
Thea nodded and hung her head.
"Why were you not frank with me? Did I not deserve
it?"
She shuddered. Her bent shoulders trembled. "I don't
know," she muttered. "I didn't mean to be like that. I
couldn't. I can't. It's different."
"You mean it is very personal?" he asked kindly.
She nodded. "Not at church or funerals, or with people
like Mr. Larsen. But with you it was--personal. I'm
not like you and Mrs. Harsanyi. I come of rough people.
I'm rough. But I'm independent, too. It was--all I had.
There is no use my talking, Mr. Harsanyi. I can't tell
you."
"You needn't tell me. I know. Every artist knows."
Harsanyi stood looking at his pupil's back, bent as if she
were pushing something, at her lowered head. "You can
sing for those people because with them you do not com-
mit yourself. But the reality, one cannot uncover THAT
until one is sure. One can fail one's self, but one must not
live to see that fail; better never reveal it. Let me help
you to make yourself sure of it. That I can do better than
Bowers."
Thea lifted her face and threw out her hands.
Harsanyi shook his head and smiled. "Oh, promise
nothing! You will have much to do. There will not be
voice only, but French, German, Italian. You will have
work enough. But sometimes you will need to be under-
stood; what you never show to any one will need com-
panionship. And then you must come to me." He peered
into her face with that searching, intimate glance. "You
know what I mean, the thing in you that has no business
with what is little, that will have to do only with beauty
and power."
Thea threw out her hands fiercely, as if to push him
away. She made a sound in her throat, but it was not
articulate. Harsanyi took one of her hands and kissed
it lightly upon the back. His salute was one of greeting,
not of farewell, and it was for some one he had never
seen.
When Mrs. Harsanyi came in at six o'clock, she found
her husband sitting listlessly by the window. "Tired?"
she asked.
"A little. I've just got through a difficulty. I've sent
Miss Kronborg away; turned her over to Bowers, for
voice."
"Sent Miss Kronborg away? Andor, what is the matter
with you?"
"It's nothing rash. I've known for a long while I ought
to do it. She is made for a singer, not a pianist."
Mrs. Harsanyi sat down on the piano chair. She spoke
a little bitter...
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