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Thea particularly hated to accompany for Miss Darcey
because she sang off pitch and didn't mind it in the least.
It was excruciating to sit there day after day and hear her;
there was something shameless and indecent about not
singing true.
One morning Miss Darcey came by appointment to go
over the programme for her Peoria concert. She was such
a frail-looking girl that Thea ought to have felt sorry for
her. True, she had an arch, sprightly little manner, and
a flash of salmon-pink on either brown cheek. But a nar-
row upper jaw gave her face a pinched look, and her eye-
lids were heavy and relaxed. By the morning light, the
purplish brown circles under her eyes were pathetic enough,
and foretold no long or brilliant future. A singer with a
poor digestion and low vitality; she needed no seer to cast
her horoscope. If Thea had ever taken the pains to study
her, she would have seen that, under all her smiles and
archness, poor Miss Darcey was really frightened to death.
She could not understand her success any more than Thea
could; she kept catching her breath and lifting her eye-
brows and trying to believe that it was true. Her loqua-
city was not natural, she forced herself to it, and when she
confided to you how many defects she could overcome by
her unusual command of head resonance, she was not so
much trying to persuade you as to persuade herself.
When she took a note that was high for her, Miss Darcey
always put her right hand out into the air, as if she were
indicating height, or giving an exact measurement. Some
early teacher had told her that she could "place" a tone
more surely by the help of such a gesture, and she firmly
believed that it was of great assistance to her. (Even when
she was singing in public, she kept her right hand down
with difficulty, nervously clasping her white kid fingers
together when she took a high note. Thea could always
see her elbows stiffen.) She unvaryingly executed this
gesture with a smile of gracious confidence, as if she were
actually putting her finger on the tone: "There it is,
friends!"
This morning, in Gounod's "Ave Maria," as Miss Dar-
cey approached her B natural,--
DANS---NOS A--LAR-- -- --MES!
out went the hand, with the sure airy gesture, though it
was little above A she got with her voice, whatever she
touched with her finger. Often Bowers let such things
pass--with the right people--but this morning he
snapped his jaws together and muttered, "God!" Miss
Darcey tried again, with the same gesture as of putting
the crowning touch, tilting her head and smiling radiantly
at Bowers, as if to say, "It is for you I do all this!"
DANS--NOS A--LAR------MES!
This time she made B flat, and went on in the happy belief
that she had done well enough, when she suddenly found
that her accompanist was not going on with her, and this
put her out completely.
She turned to Thea, whose hands had fallen in her lap.
"Oh why did you stop just there! It IS too trying! Now
we'd better go back to that other CRESCENDO and try it
from there."
"I beg your pardon," Thea muttered. "I thought you
wanted to get that B natural." She began again, as Miss
Darcey indicated.
After the singer was gone, Bowers walked up to Thea
and asked languidly, "Why do you hate Jessie so? Her
little variations from pitch are between her and her public;
they don't hurt you. Has she ever done anything to you
except be very agreeable?"
"Yes, she has done things to me," Thea retorted hotly.
Bowers looked interested. "What, for example?"
"I can't explain, but I've got it in for her."
Bowers laughed. "No doubt about that. I'll have to
suggest that you conceal it a little more effectually. That
is--necessary, Miss Kronborg," he added, looking back
over the shoulder of the overcoat he was putting on.
He went out to lunch and Thea thought the subject
closed. But late in the afternoon, when he was taking his
dyspepsia tablet and a glass of water between lessons, he
looked up and said in a voice ironically coaxing:--
"Miss Kronborg, I wish you would tell me why you
hate Jessie."
Taken by surprise Thea put down the score she was
reading and answered before she knew what she was say-
ing, "I hate her for the sake of what I used to think a singer
might be."
Bowers balanced the tablet on the end of his long fore-
finger and whistled softly. "And how did you form your
conception of what a singer ought to be?" he asked.
"I don't know." Thea flushed and spoke under her
breath; "but I suppose I got most of it from Harsanyi."
Bowers made no comment upon this reply, but opened
the door for the next pupil, who was waiting in the recep-
tion-room.
It was dark when Thea left the studio that night.
She knew she had offended Bowers. Somehow she had
hurt herself, too. She felt unequal to the boarding-house
table, the sneaking divinity student who sat next her and
had tried to kiss her on the stairs last night. She went
over to the waterside of Michigan Avenue and walked
along beside the lake. It was a clear, frosty winter night.
The great empty space over the water was restful and
spoke of freedom. If she had any money at all, she would
go away. The stars glittered over the wide black water.
She looked up at them wearily and shook her head. She
believed that what she felt was despair, but it was only one
of the forms of hope. She felt, indeed, as if she were bid-
ding the stars good-bye; but she was renewing a promise.
Though their challenge is universal and eternal, the stars
get no answer but that,--the brief light flashed back to
them from the eyes of the young who unaccountably
aspire.
The rich, noisy, city, fat with food and drink, is a
spent thing; its chief concern is its digestion and its little
game of hide-and-seek with the undertaker. Money and
office and success are the consolations of impotence. For-
tune turns kind to such solid people and lets them suck
their bone in peace. She flecks her whip upon flesh that
is more alive, upon that stream of hungry boys and girls
who tramp the streets of every city, recognizable by their
pride and discontent, who are the Future, and who possess
the treasure of creative power.
III
WHILE her living arrangements were so casual and
fortuitous, Bowers's studio was the one fixed thing
in Thea's life. She went out from it to uncertainties, and
hastened to it from nebulous confusion. She was more
influenced by Bowers than she knew. Unconsciously she
began to take on something of his dry contempt, and to
share his grudge without understanding exactly what it
was about. His cynicism seemed to her honest, and the
amiability of his pupils artificial. She admired his drastic
treatment of his dull pupils. The stupid deserved all they
got, and more. Bowers knew that she thought him a very
clever man.
One afternoon when Bowers came in from lunch Thea
handed him a card on which he read the name, "Mr.
Philip Frederick Ottenburg."
"He said he would be in again to-morrow and that he
wanted some time. Who is he? I like him better than the
others."
Bowers nodded. "So do I. He's not a singer. He's a
beer prince: son of the big brewer in St. Louis. He's been
in Germany with his mother. I didn't know he was
back."
"Does he take lessons?"
"Now and again. He sings rather well. He's at the
head of the Chicago branch of the Ottenburg business, but
he can't stick to work and is always running away. He
has great ideas in beer, people tell me. He's what they call
an imaginative business man; goes over to Bayreuth and
seems to do nothing but give parties and spend money, and
brings back more good notions for the brewery than the
fellows who sit tight dig out in five years. I was born too
long ago to be much taken in by these chesty boys with
flowered vests, but I like Fred, all the same."
"So do I," said Thea positively.
Bowers made a sound between a cough and a laugh.
"Oh, he's a lady-killer, all right! The girls in here are al-
ways making eyes at him. You won't be the first." He
threw some sheets of music on the piano. "Better look
that over; accompaniment's a little tricky. It's for that
new woman from Detroit. And Mrs. Priest will be in this
afternoon."
Thea sighed. "`I Know that my Redeemer Liveth'?"
"The same. She starts on her concert tour next week,
and we'll have a rest. Until then, I suppose we'll have
to be going over her programme."
The next day Thea hurried through her luncheon at a
German bakery and got back to the studio at ten minutes
past one. She felt sure that the young brewer would come
early, before it was time for Bowers to arrive. He had
not said he would, but yesterday, when he opened the door
to go, he had glanced about the room and at her, and some-
thing in his eye had conveyed that suggestion.
Sure enough, at twenty minutes past one the door of the
reception-room opened, and a tall, robust young man with
a cane and an English hat and ulster looked in expect-
antly. "Ah--ha!" he exclaimed, "I thought if I came
early I might have good luck. And how are you to-day,
Miss Kronborg?"
Thea was sitting in the window chair. At her left elbow
there was a table, and upon this table the young man sat
down, holding his hat and cane in his hand, loosening his
long coat so that it fell back from his shoulders. He was a
gleaming, florid young fellow. His hair, thick and yellow,
was cut very short, and he wore a closely trimmed beard,
long enough on the chin to curl a little. Even his eye-
brows were thick and yellow, like fleece. He had lively
blue eyes--Thea looked up at them with great interest
as he sat chatting and swinging his foot rhythmically.
He was easily familiar, and frankly so. Wherever people
met young Ottenburg, in his office, on shipboard, in a
foreign hotel or railway compartment, they always felt
(and usually liked) that artless presumption which...
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