Puslapio vaizdai
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old philosopher who hears for the thousandth time a childish complaint.

"Tell me, then, what is shameful about a contralto voice? Bessie Palmer had one. Marianne Brandt had one. Schumann-Heink has one. But, understand, I've not promised that you will ever become like them. All else aside, one does n't become a Schumann-Heink without owning a great big heart. For all I know, you may have no more heart than ribspace. Why, in Heaven's name, do all you young women sink your chests, and stick out your stomachs, and breathe with the top half-inch of your lungs? What have you got, after all these years of such poses, to force a long, steady column of air up through the vocal chords? Besides, let me look down your throat." He thrust a laryngoscope into her mouth. His comment was: "The formation itself is not so bad. You smoke cigarettes? Never? Then your accursed soprano practice has made all this chronic irritation."

He advanced his ruddy face, which seemed to her, with its fan-shaped beard and nose like a beak, as terrible as the visage of an Assyrian despot pronouncing a sentence of death. He rumbled:

"At this moment you think: 'He is mad. I will go to some other man, who 'll say that my voice is soprano.' Hark to this, Signorina! In Italy are hundreds of teachers who, for the sake of the money, will tell you whatever you wish to hear. Only I promise you that five years hence they will have killed your last note. Now, then, if you choose to rely on me, you will not sing so much as a scale for three months, or even speak in loud tones. At the end of that time, if you return to this room, I shall tell you whether or not your voice can be saved."

Her limbs were weak as she rose from the chair to go.

"In three months!" she gasped. "At your service, Signorina-if you obey my orders."

Aglaia found herself in the street. She returned to the pension on feet that seemed weighted with lead. When

she entered her room, she saw Mr. Goodchild, stripped to his shirt-sleeves, beaming with pride, and striking an attitude of burlesque triumph beside a brand-new piano. The instrument had appeared that morning the moment Aglaia was clear of the pension. It was his gift on the eve of her great career, a surprise that had given him anticipatory delights for a month. Aurelius had even rummaged his trunk for the tools of an abandoned vocation, and, in a frenzy of haste, had tuned every key afresh.

For the first time in many years Aglaia stifled a sob on her father's breast.

The rest received her news in a blaze of revolt. She a contralto? That Greek, in the train, had been right about Valentino Mughetto: he must be a charlatan indeed, an ignoramus, an imbecile. But presently they remembered a time when her voice had seemed purer. Such things had happened before. Mr. Goodchild could not help recalling a similar case, an anecdote from the life of Manuel Garcia.

Again he took his pale daughter into his arms.

"My dear, in a moment like this one sees the true value of optimism." He quoted in trembling accents from his favorite sage: "What 's to be done? Make the best of what 's in our power, and take the rest as it happens. And how is that? As it pleases God.' Come, now, as Mr. Mughetto suggested, you would n't mind a future like SchumannHeink's? Who knows you won't make contralto singing the rage? Composers, when they 've heard you, may start to write all their main rôles for contraltos! Think what it would be to revolutionize the whole operatic world!"

"Poor old dad! And if my voice is

gone?"

"Gone!"

A unanimous hoot of derision. But all agreed that the new piano had better stay locked for three months.

One day soon afterward, Aurelius, in the Café Hirsch, read that Mme. Bertha Linkow, with other song-birds, was visiting Montecatini, scarcely two hours away!

Here was his chance. He would go to Montecatini, find Mme. Linkow, ask her whether Mughetto was to be trusted. Better still, he would take Aglaia along, in order that the famous singer herself might give an opinion. But wait! Suppose the prima donna, not so far-seeing as Valentino Mughetto, should say, "My poor child, I can give you no hope!" At last, he was even afraid to tell his daughters that she was at Montecatini.

Aurelius found it hard to be secretive. Whenever the girls spoke of Mme. Linkow, his conscience smote him, as if his silence constituted a lie. Then, too, he was troubled because that amiable celebrity was so near, yet so far. By her aid he had come into contact with the fair world that he would have liked to inhabit.

Well, he might enter those regions yet; his tragedy of Rodolfo and Fiammetta would make a perfect libretto.

On his walks through Florence he had not failed to discover some theaters. One, behind the Palazzo Vecchio, was called the Folies-Bergère. Another, out by the cavalry barracks, was named the Alhambra. Both seemed given up to variety shows; yet he passed them with the same excitement that he had felt in his youth while viewing through a shabby doorway the world of behind the scenes. Their lobbies were plastered with gaudy signs-of saturnine gentlemen taking rabbits out of glass bowls, of acrobats forming a pyramid, of dancing-women attired like odalisks. Before the Folies-Bergère, the largest sign portrayed a languishing brunette in a bersagliere hat and a spangled skirt, with the legend:

Prossima! Prossima! Prossima!
L'incomparabile

NELLA TESORE!
Stella Internazionale!!!

Why not bring the girls to see the magician, the acrobats, the odalisks, and this "incomparable Nella Tesore, the International Star"?

He returned to the pension. Beside the piano stood Frossie, hatted, just in from her outing, her figure stiffly drawn up, a

dazed look on her face. Before her bowed a handsome cavalry officer, of a creamy pallor, with crisp black hair and short mustaches brushed straight up from his lips. Beside these two hovered Mme. von Schwandorf, completing the introduction. Her eyes, beneath the yellow frizzes, glistened with relish; her wrinkled mouth displayed its most mischievous smile. Then she saw Aurelius in the doorway.

"Mr. Goodchild, permit me! Lieutenant Olivuzzi, of the Cavalry of Magenta. I had his mama's acquaintance when she was a little marchesina in pinafores, and used to visit the Buondelcampi, to whom I was governess. So this good boy sometimes comes to bring an old woman a message, and stays for a cup of tea. Just now, while he was telling me how he admires America, in walks a certain young lady who knows more than I about sky-scrapers and cow-boys. In revenge, she shall make him relate the war in Libya. You notice these two little ribbons on his coat?"

Lieutenant Olivuzzi thrust out his

hand.

"Ah, Madama Svandorp!"

"Tut, tut! The blue-and-crimson one is given for Tripoli service, the plain blue for valor. Nevertheless, you see, he 's still modest."

In fact, his clear skin was suffused with a blush. His large black eyes expressed a reproach that seemed genuine. Then he knitted his brows, stiffened his face, stared down at his sword-hilt. But abruptly raising his eyes, he caught Euphrosyne's glance, which said, "What a boy you are, after all!" Her gaze flinched from his face, for an instant clung to the blue and red ribbons on his coat, then plunged into space. Between the ebony what-not and the brass plaque from Benares, Frossie discerned yellow sands, bursting bombshells, the dust of a savage melley, a young lieutenant in pearl-gray trousers and tight blue-black jacket driving his sword through the heart of a dervish.

Her father was saying, with stately. courtesy:

"It's a great pleasure, Lieutenant, to

meet the Italian army. Your traditions, you know, are very much like our own: the struggle for liberty, Garibaldi, Cavour, and so on. I presume you speak English, sir?"

"A lit-tle, sir," Lieutenant Olivuzzi replied in a clear, soft voice. "I spick—” He frowned anxiously; then his face. lighted up "I read, yes; I lis-ten, yes; but spick?" He shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands, raised his eyes, made a mouth of humorous helplessness.

"He is really very well grounded," purred Mme. von Schwandorf, "but he has no ways to practise. He ought to exchange Italian lessons for English."

Olivuzzi stole a look at Euphrosyne. She was staring out of the window with studied indifference. But Aurelius, straightway falling into that trap, suggested cordially:

"Lieutenant, you ought to get my daughters to help you. I've thought myself how fine it would be to learn Italian while walking round town."

"But, my dear sir," protested Mme. von Schwandorf, "in Italy young ladies. and gentlemen must n't do that!"

"What, then, ma'am?"

"One calls, perhaps, if the chaperon is at home."

"Indeed," Mr. Goodchild exclaimed, "what more charming school-room could there be than the garden!"

And his long-pent hospitality gushing forth, he called for tea beneath the pal

metto.

Mme. von Schwandorf dexterously withdrew. Euphrosyne, after casting about for some decent excuse, surrendered, her head in a whirl. Federico, the piratical-looking waiter, brought the tray. with profound respect. From a window overhead, Giannina, the maid, stared down. The gray mohair frock-coat of Domenico, the little door-porter, kept flitting through the glass corridor. To the servants this ceremony conveyed but one thought: the lieutenant had come to ask for the hand of the Signorina Frossie in marriage!

Olivuzzi sat straight in his chair, his

knees and feet together, carefully poising the tea-cup under his chin. Not a hair on his head was out of place; not a wrinkle marred the fit of his uniform; not a speck dimmed the luster of his long, narrow boots. On his collar of stiff magenta cloth were fastened two silver stars. His gray trousers, strapped under his insteps, had double magenta stripes down the outside hems. In his sword-guard was stuffed a pair of white chamois-skin gloves. Could it be, Aurelius wondered, that this immaculate youth had gone to a war, been mixed up with smoke and blood, and maybe taken a life?

Old

"So you helped to carry the eagles back to the ancient battle-fields! Scipio Africanus, at Zama, must have occurred to your mind. No doubt it seemed to you that the ghosts of Roman legionaries rose on their elbows to cheer you forward. Marvelous! Really romantic! And yet, as our General Sherman said-"

While Aurelius rattled on, the lieutenant, who caught perhaps one word in a dozen, kept uttering respectful sounds of assent. Frossie imagined that if her father should say, in the same tone of voice, "The Italian army gives me a pain," the young man would go on eagerly nodding, as though to reply, "Me, too!" That thought-one of those bizarre ideas which flash through an overwrought mind

nearly cost her an hysterical snort. She felt her lips twitching; she knew the panic of those who are tempted to laugh in a church; for an instant she feared that the only alternative was to flee from the garden. But she saw Aglaia and Thallie approaching through the glass corridor.

Aurelius presented the stranger. Jumping up, clapping his spurred heels together, Lieutenant Olivuzzi made two bows, uttered twice a phrase in Italian. Alas! why did Aggie have on that new gown of yellow French print, with the panniers of golden brown, and the silken slippers to match! And why did Thallie, in apple-green and white, seem so much like a rosebud all dewy above its leaves! More acutely aware than ever was Fros

sie, now, of her wrinkled crash outingdress, her dust-powdered shoes, her damp forehead, her tumbling curls. But even if he had caught her dressed for the evening, she would n't have looked like them.

At last the tea-cups stood empty, and he was taking his leave. "You must come again," Aglaia said. With a gentle, wistful look she put out her hand in a movement that changed for the better the pose of her willowy form. Thallie's smile expressed an unconscious, yet even sweeter, allurement. He turned to Euphrosyne. She decided bitterly that her sisters had been seductive enough for all three.

"Good afternoon."

A painful modesty kept her from extending her hand. Indeed, throughout his call those words of farewell were the only ones she had uttered!

He walked to the gate, turned round, bowed again, departed. Aglaia remarked:

"I must say, Frossie, you might have been more polite!"

side of her nose, and she believed that the constant use of glasses had made her eyes smaller. If only she were better-looking, -not beautiful,-just comely enough to be sure! If only she knew how to smile on young men like Aglaia, or else, at least, escape her unfortunate awkwardness! Her sister was right: she had given him an impression of disapproval. And now he would never come back, never know her as she had meant to be!

That night more than once Thalia heard Frossie rise from her bed to sit by the window. Was this restlessness due only to the throes of literary production? Or could it be that steady, sensible Frossie was falling in love? Thallie knew that a sign of love was to lose one's sleep. Of late she had lost so much sleep herself!

In fact, Thallie had also lost weight. Her coloring was less brilliant, and under her sky-blue eyes were drawn two tiny violet streaks. Nowadays she was listless, too, and often fretful. Her appetite had

"If I did n't gush enough, you surely failed. When Federico brought round made up for it."

"Children!"

"One moment, Dad. Let me tell you something, Frossie. Because you imagine he tried to flirt with you once in the street, you need n't have given him a frost when he was our guest. Be as prim as you want by yourself, but don't interfere again with our social chances. I understand these cavalry officers know the best people in town. Who is he, anyhow?"

"His mother," said Frossie, "is a marchioness. You might even yet call him back and give him a flower for his buttonhole!"

"Soldiers don't have buttonholes, my dear," drawled Aglaia, calmly.

"Too bad! Sticking flowers in buttonholes is one of the best things you do." Leaving the rest aghast, she took herself off to her room.

She went straight to the looking-glass. Her hair had never seemed so flagrantly red. The strong sunshine of Florence had brought back all her freckles. The pince-nez clips had cut deep marks in each

the risotto, the spaghetti, the zuppa Inglese she made an involuntary gesture of disgust.

Mr. Goodchild believed it was the heat. He awaited anxiously the thunderstorms, already overdue, on which the Florentines depended for relief in August. Meanwhile it might be well for Thallie to interrupt her painting till the autumn? He knew from experience how high a toll was demanded of vitality by "creative effort"! But Thallie cried:

"If I did n't have something to occupy my mind, I should go crazy in this place!"

She found a bitter satisfaction in suggesting that the others were to blame for her distress, that life in Florence was a martyrdom for her. Yet when Aurelius, in desperation, asked her where she would. rather be, Thalia could not say. To her eyes all prospects appeared desolate, without the promise of one thrill of joy. Even Paris had ceased to be desirable; for of course the young man of the boat-deck was no longer there.

Or else, tossing on her hot bed, she

would mutter: "No more nonsense! I have my work to do, my name to make. Is n't it enough that I'm going to be another Rosa Bonheur?" But it was not enough that she was going to be another Rosa Bonheur.

Besides, if that hope should crumble, too! At such apprehensions, so plausible in the deep silence of the night, her brow became cold and moist. All at once she saw her canvases with a stranger's eye: their errors expanded to efface their merits; in mocking contrast there closed round them the masterpieces of the Uffizi and the Pitti Palaces, noble falls of drapery, gestures of an inspired grace, torsos that swelled with life, heads that mirrored living souls. Contemplating in memory the flesh of Titian's "Flora," the eyes of Rubens's wife, the hands of the clavichord-player attributed to Giorgione, she moaned, "I still know nothing, nothing, nothing!" And time was fleeting, and already she was nearly twenty-one!

Still, at nine o'clock every morning, she entered the studio of M. Alphonse Zolande, which had taken on the melancholy of a place where one has known only disappointment.

The painting-master had got his varnished boots resoled. He wore a new coat of purple velveteen already highly scented with Virginia cigarettes and chypre. His gray mustaches somehow looked less elderly these days. One morning, after staring for a moment, Thallie realized that he had shaved off his imperial. For the summer months, no doubt?

She had learned enough French to understand most of what he said, and even to reply. He, praising her accent, made her repeat a sentence. His eyes, small and sharp, surrounded by yellowish sclerotics, were focused on her young lips, ripe, vivid, moving with exquisite self-consciousness as she pronounced those unaccustomed sounds. "Brava!" he cried, and sprang up with a strained, gay look. But while he paced the floor, with neck bent, wriggling his fingers, his leathery, jaundiced visage was gradually distorted by a supreme dejection. When at last he re

turned to her easel, M. Zolande declared in tones unnaturally harsh:

"Mademoiselle, how many times must I tell you the supreme test of paint is a luminosity extending even to the shadows! Regard Bronzino! His flesh-tones are so because he made first a clean white underpainting, with very little oil. In Andrea del Sarto's portraits the shadows are painted light, on cool grisaille; the successive glazes give them depth, together with transparency. But when I say luminosity I do not mean these shiny whites, so easy to slop on, which remind me of that animal of a Bouguereau! Did the golden age of Titian stoop to them? No, Mademoiselle! Only modernsthese lazy, ignorant confectioners! True art has no subterfuges, no evasions, no labor-saving tricks. True art does always the large thing, the thing vastly difficult, that appears to those who do not know so simple!"

He brandished his fist; his wiry figure became tense and vibrant; he looked upward, as if glimpsing for an instant a fair mirage not seen since youth; his crackling voice resounded through the bare studio like a conjuration. The model followed his gesture with the dull gaze of a hypnotist's subject. But Thallie could not respond to-day even to that cry. She began to have a sense of unreality, as if all this were extraordinary, mad, and futile, like a dream. Bronzino, Andrea del Sarto, Titian! Why did people work so hard to imitate them? Why was she here, taking lessons from an eccentric “old man of fifty," to whom no other pupils ever came? Why did she want to learn painting, anyway-to spend her life daubing colors on a piece of cloth for folks to stare at? A knock rattled the door. M. Zolande was called into the corridor.

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