“Oh, excellently! Thea told me it was quite wonderful, the way you can do Wagner scores on the piano. So few people can give one any idea of the music. Go ahead, as long as you like. I can smoke, too.” Landry flattened himself out on his cushions and abandoned himself to ease with the circumstance of one who has never grown quite accustomed to ease.
Ottenburg played on, as he happened to remember. He understood now why Thea wished him to hear her in “Rheingold.” It had been clear to him as soon as FRICKA rose from sleep and looked out over the young world, stretching one white arm toward the new Gotterburg shining on the heights. “WOTAN! GEMAHL! ERWACHE!” She was pure Scandinavian, this FRICKA: “Swedish summer”! he remembered old Mr. Nathanmeyer's phrase. She had wished him to see her because she had a distinct kind of loveliness for this part, a shining beauty like the light of sunset on distant sails. She seemed to take on the look of immortal loveliness, the youth of the golden apples, the shining body and the shining mind. FRICKA had been a jealous spouse to him for so long that he had forgot she meant wisdom before she meant domestic order, and that, in any event, she was always a goddess. The FRICKA of that afternoon was so clear and sunny, so nobly conceived, that she made a whole atmosphere about herself and quite redeemed from shabbiness the helplessness and unscrupulousness of the gods. Her reproaches to WOTAN were the pleadings of a tempered mind, a consistent sense of beauty. In the long silences of her part, her shining presence was a visible complement to the discussion of the orchestra. As the themes which were to help in weaving the drama to its end first came vaguely upon the ear, one saw their import and tendency in the face of this clearest-visioned of the gods.
In the scene between FRICKA and WOTAN, Ottenburg stopped. “I can't seem to get the voices, in there.”
Landry chuckled. “Don't try. I know it well enough. I expect I've been over that with her a thousand times. I was playing for her almost every day when she was first working on it. When she begins with a part she's hard to work with: so slow you'd think she was stupid if you didn't know her. Of course she blames it all on her accompanist. It goes on like that for weeks sometimes. This did. She kept shaking her head and staring and looking gloomy. All at once, she got her line—it usually comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at all—and after that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice into it, it got more and more of that 'gold' quality that makes her FRICKA so different.”
Fred began FRICKA'S first aria again. “It's certainly different. Curious how she does it. Such a beautiful idea, out of a part that's always been so ungrateful. She's a lovely thing, but she was never so beautiful as that, really. Nobody is.” He repeated the loveliest phrase. “How does she manage it, Landry? You've worked with her.”
Landry drew cherishingly on the last cigarette he meant to permit himself before singing. “Oh, it's a question of a big personality—and all that goes with it. Brains, of course. Imagination, of course. But the important thing is that she was born full of color, with a rich personality. That's a gift of the gods, like a fine nose. You have it, or you haven't. Against it, intelligence and musicianship and habits of industry don't count at all. Singers are a conventional race. When Thea was studying in Berlin the other girls were mortally afraid of her. She has a pretty rough hand with women, dull ones, and she could be rude, too! The girls used to call her DIE WOLFIN.”
Fred thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the piano. “Of course, even a stupid woman could get effects with such machinery: such a voice and body and face. But they couldn't possibly belong to a stupid woman, could they?”
Landry shook his head. “It's personality; that's as near as you can come to it. That's what constitutes real equipment. What she does is interesting because she does it. Even the things she discards are suggestive. I regret some of them. Her conceptions are colored in so many different ways. You've heard her ELIZABETH? Wonderful, isn't it? She was working on that part years ago when her mother was ill. I could see her anxiety and grief getting more and more into the part. The last act is heart-breaking. It's as homely as a country prayer meeting: might be any lonely woman getting ready to die. It's full of the thing every plain creature finds out for himself, but that never gets written down. It's unconscious memory, maybe; inherited memory, like folk-music. I call it personality.”
Fred laughed, and turning to the piano began coaxing the FRICKA music again. “Call it anything you like, my boy. I have a name for it myself, but I shan't tell you.” He looked over his shoulder at Landry, stretched out by the fire. “You have a great time watching her, don't you?”
“Oh, yes!” replied Landry simply. “I'm not interested in much that goes on in New York. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll have to dress.” He rose with a reluctant sigh. “Can I get you anything? Some whiskey?”
“Thank you, no. I'll amuse myself here. I don't often get a chance at a good piano when I'm away from home. You haven't had this one long, have you? Action's a bit stiff. I say,” he stopped Landry in the doorway, “has Thea ever been down here?”
Landry turned back. “Yes. She came several times when I had erysipelas. I was a nice mess, with two nurses. She brought down some inside window-boxes, planted with crocuses and things. Very cheering, only I couldn't see them or her.”
“Didn't she like your place?”
“She thought she did, but I fancy it was a good deal cluttered up for her taste. I could hear her pacing about like something in a cage. She pushed the piano back against the wall and the chairs into corners, and she broke my amber elephant.” Landry took a yellow object some four inches high from one of his low bookcases. “You can see where his leg is glued on,—a souvenir. Yes, he's lemon amber, very fine.”
Landry disappeared behind the curtains and in a moment Fred heard the wheeze of an atomizer. He put the amber elephant on the piano beside him and seemed to get a great deal of amusement out of the beast.
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 elevator 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 perhaps 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 Friday 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 always 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,—serious 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 began to pour the coffee, standing. She wore a white dress trimmed with crystals which had rattled a good deal during 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 hostess.” 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 announcement.
“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 apparent 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 Friday 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. Something 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 despairingly, looking out of the open window. “It's inaccessibly 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 system's well enough for phlegmatic singers; it only drains me. Every single feature of operatic routine is detrimental 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 stupidity 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, hesitating. “Yes, I should like that. But he'll be busy, maybe?”
“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.”
