“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 Glück ist nun dahin.”
Wunsch sang the aria with much feeling. It was evidently one that was very dear to him.
“Nock einmal, alone, yourself.” He played the introductory measures, then nodded at her vehemently, and she began:—
“Ach, ich habe sie verloren.”
When she finished, Wunsch nodded again. “Schön,” 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 satisfaction 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 Tellamantez, 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, “Künst-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.
When Wunsch looked for his score late that afternoon, he found that Thea had not forgotten to take it with her. He smiled his loose, sarcastic smile, and thoughtfully rubbed his stubbly chin with his red fingers. When Fritz came home in the early blue twilight the snow was flying faster, Mrs. Kohler was cooking Hasenpfeffer in the kitchen, and the professor was seated at the piano, playing the Gluck, which he knew by heart. Old Fritz took off his shoes quietly behind the stove and lay down on the lounge before his masterpiece, where the firelight was playing over the walls of Moscow. He listened, while the room grew darker and the windows duller. Wunsch always came back to the same thing:—
“Ach, ich habe sie verloren,
. . .
Euridice, Euridice!”
From time to time Fritz sighed softly. He, too, had lost a Euridice.
XI
One Saturday, late in June, Thea arrived early for her lesson. As she perched herself upon the piano stool,—a wobbly, old-fashioned thing that worked on a creaky screw,—she gave Wunsch a side glance, smiling. “You must not be cross to me to-day. This is my birthday.”
“So?” he pointed to the keyboard.
After the lesson they went out to join Mrs. Kohler, who had asked Thea to come early, so that she could stay and smell the linden bloom. It was one of those still days of intense light, when every particle of mica in the soil flashed like a little mirror, and the glare from the plain below seemed more intense than the rays from above. The sand ridges ran glittering gold out to where the mirage licked them up, shining and steaming like a lake in the tropics. The sky looked like blue lava, forever incapable of clouds,—a turquoise bowl that was the lid of the desert. And yet within Mrs. Kohler’s green patch the water dripped, the beds had all been hosed, and the air was fresh with rapidly evaporating moisture.
The two symmetrical linden trees were the proudest things in the garden. Their sweetness embalmed all the air. At every turn of the paths,—whether one went to see the hollyhocks or the bleeding heart, or to look at the purple morning-glories that ran over the bean-poles,—wherever one went, the sweetness of the lindens struck one afresh and one always came back to them. Under the round leaves, where the waxen yellow blossoms hung, bevies of wild bees were buzzing. The tamarisks were still pink, and the flower-beds were doing their best in honor of the linden festival. The white dove-house was shining with a fresh coat of paint, and the pigeons were crooning contentedly, flying down often to drink at the drip from the water tank. Mrs. Kohler, who was transplanting pansies, came up with her trowel and told Thea it was lucky to have your birthday when the lindens were in bloom, and that she must go and look at the sweet peas. Wunsch accompanied her, and as they walked between the flower-beds he took Thea’s hand.
“Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen,”—he muttered. “You know that von Heine? Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen?” He looked down at Thea and softly pressed her hand.
“No, I don’t know it. What does flüstern mean?”
“Flüstern?—to whisper. You must begin now to know such things. That is necessary. How many birthdays?”
“Thirteen. I’m in my ‘teens now. But how can I know words like that? I only know what you say at my lessons. They don’t teach German at school. How can I learn?”
“It is always possible to learn when one likes,” said Wunsch. His words were peremptory, as usual, but his tone was mild, even confidential. “There is always a way. And if some day you are going to sing, it is necessary to know well the German language.”
Thea stooped over to pick a leaf of rosemary. How did Wunsch know that, when the very roses on her wall-paper had never heard it? “But am I going to?” she asked, still stooping.
“That is for you to say,” returned Wunsch coldly. “You would better marry some Jacob here and keep the house for him, may-be? That is as one desires.”
Thea flashed up at him a clear, laughing look. “No, I don’t want to do that. You know,” she brushed his coat sleeve quickly with her yellow head. “Only how can I learn anything here? It’s so far from Denver.”
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Wunsch’s loose lower lip curled in amusement. Then, as if he suddenly remembered something, he spoke seriously. “Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing—desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little. It brought Columbus across the sea in a little boat, und so weiter.” Wunsch made a grimace, took his pupil’s hand and drew her toward the grape arbor. “Hereafter I will more speak to you in German. Now, sit down and I will teach you for your birthday that little song. Ask me the words you do not know already. Now: Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen.”
Thea memorized quickly because she had the power of listening intently. In a few moments she could repeat the eight lines for him. Wunsch nodded encouragingly and they went out of the arbor into the sunlight again. As they went up and down the gravel paths between the flowerbeds, the white and yellow butterflies kept darting before them, and the pigeons were washing their pink feet at the drip and crooning in their husky bass. Over and over again Wunsch made her say the lines to him. “You see it is nothing. If you learn a great many of the Lieder, you will know the German language already. Weiter, nun. He would incline his head gravely and listen.
“Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen
Geh’ ich im Garten herum;
Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen,
Ich aber, ich wandte stumm.
“Est flüstern und sprechen die Blumen
Und schau’n mitleidig mich an:
‘Sei Unserer Schwester nicht böse,
Du trauriger, blasser Mann!’”
(In the soft-shining summer morning
I wandered the garden within.
the flowers they whispered and murmured,
But I, I wandered dumb.
The flowers they whisper and murmur,
And me with the compassion they scan:
“Oh, be not harsh to our sister,
Thou sorrowful, death-pale man!”)
Wunsch had noticed before that when his pupil read anything in verse the character of her voice changed altogether; it was no longer the voice which spoke the speech of Moonstone. It was a soft, rich contralto, and she read quietly; the feeling was in the voice itself, not indicated by emphasis or change of pitch. She repeated the little verses musically, like a song, and the entreaty of the flowers was even softer than the rest, as the shy speech of flowers might be, and she ended with the voice suspended, almost with a rising inflection. It was a nature-voice, Wunsch told himself, breathed from the creature and apart from language, like the sound of the wind in the trees, or the murmur of water.
“What is it the flowers mean when they ask him not to be harsh to their sister, eh?” he asked, looking down at her curiously and wrinkling his dull red forehead.
Thea glanced at him in surprise. “I suppose he thinks they are asking him not to be harsh to his sweetheart—or some girl they remind him of.”
“And why trauriger, blasser Mann?”
They had come back to the grape arbor, and Thea picked out a sunny place on the bench, where a tortoise-shell cat was stretched at full length. She sat down, bending over the cat and teasing his whiskers. “Because he had been awake all night, thinking about her, wasn’t it? Maybe that was why he was up so early.”
Wunsch shrugged his shoulders. “If he think about her all night already, why do you say the flowers remind him?”
Thea looked up at him in perplexity. A flash of comprehension lit her face and she smiled eagerly. “Oh, I didn’t mean ‘remind’ in that way! I didn’t mean they brought her to his mind! I meant it was only when he came out in the morning, that she seemed to him like that,—like one of the flowers.”
“And before he came out, how did she seem?”
This time it was Thea who shrugged her shoulders. The warm smile left her face. She lifted her eyebrows in annoyance and looked off at the sand hills.
Wunsch persisted. “Why you not answer me?”
“Because it would be silly. You are just trying to make me say things. It spoils things to ask questions.”
Wunsch bowed mockingly; his smile was disagreeable. Suddenly his face grew grave, grew fierce, indeed. He pulled himself up from his clumsy stoop and folded his arms. “But it is necessary to know if you know some things. Some things cannot be taught. If you not know in the beginning, you not know in the end. For a singer there must be something in the inside from the beginning. I shall not be long in this place, may-be, and I like to know. Yes,”—he ground his heel in the gravel,—”yes, when you are barely six, you must know that already. That is the beginning of all things; der Geist, die Phantasie. It must be in the baby, when it makes its first cry, like der Rythmus, or it is not to be. You have some voice already, and if in the beginning, when you are with things-to-play, you know that what you will not tell me, then you can learn to sing, may-be.”
Wunsch began to pace the arbor, rubbing his hands together. The dark flush of his face had spread up under the iron-gray bristles on his head. He was talking to himself, not to Thea. Insidious power of the linden bloom! “Oh, much you can learn! Aber nicht die Americanischen Fräulein. They have nothing inside them,” striking his chest with both fists. “They are like the ones in the Märchen, a grinning face and hollow in the insides. Something they can learn, oh, yes, may-be! But the secret—what make the rose to red, the sky to blue, the man to love—in der Brust, in der Brust, it is, und ohne dieses giebt es kein Kunst, giebt es Kunst!”
He threw up his square hand and shook it, all the fingers apart and wagging. Purple and breathless he went out of the arbor and into the house, without saying good-bye. These outbursts frightened Wunsch. They were always harbingers of ill.
Thea got her music-book and stole quietly out of the garden. She did not go home, but wandered off into the sand dunes, where the prickly pear was in blossom and the green lizards were racing each other in the glittering light. She was shaken by a passionate excitement. She did not altogether understand what Wunsch was talking about; and yet, in a way she knew. She knew, of course, that there was something about her that was different. But it was more like a friendly spirit than like anything that was a part of herself. She thought everything to it, and it answered her; happiness consisted of that backward and forward movement of herself. The something came and went, she never knew how. Sometimes she hunted for it and could not find it; again, she lifted her eyes from a book, or stepped out of doors, or wakened in the morning, and it was there,—under her cheek, it usually seemed to be, or over her breast,—a kind of warm sureness. And when it was there, everything was more interesting and beautiful, even people. When this companion was with her, she could get the most wonderful things out of Spanish Johnny, or Wunsch, or Dr. Archie.
On her thirteenth birthday she wandered for a long while about the sand ridges, picking up crystals and looking into the yellow prickly-pear blossoms with their thousand stamens. She looked at the sand hills until she wished she were a sand hill. And yet she knew that she was going to leave them all behind some day. They would be changing all day long, yellow and purple and lavender, and she would not be there. From that day on, she felt there was a secret between her and Wunsch. Together they had lifted a lid, pulled out a drawer, and looked at something. They hid it away and never spoke of what they had seen; but neither of them forgot it.
XII
One July night, when the moon was full, Dr. Archie was coming up from the depot, restless and discontented, wishing there were something to do. He carried his straw hat in his hand, and kept brushing his hair back from his forehead with a purposeless, unsatisfied gesture. After he passed Uncle Billy Beemer’s cottonwood grove, the sidewalk ran out of the shadow into the white moonlight and crossed the sand gully on high posts, like a bridge. As the doctor approached this trestle, he saw a white figure, and recognized Thea Kronborg. He quickened his pace and she came to meet him.
“What are you doing out so late, my girl?” he asked as he took her hand.
&nb
sp; “Oh, I don’t know. What do people go to bed so early for? I’d like to run along before the houses and screech at them. Isn’t it glorious out here?”
The young doctor gave a melancholy laugh and pressed her hand.
“Think of it,” Thea snorted impatiently. “Nobody up but us and the rabbits! I’ve started up half a dozen of ‘em. Look at that little one down there now,”—she stooped and pointed. In the gully below them there was, indeed, a little rabbit with a white spot of a tail, crouching down on the sand, quite motionless. It seemed to be lapping up the moonlight like cream. On the other side of the walk, down in the ditch, there was a patch of tall, rank sunflowers, their shaggy leaves white with dust. The moon stood over the cottonwood grove. There was no wind, and no sound but the wheezing of an engine down on the tracks.
“Well, we may as well watch the rabbits.” Dr. Archie sat down on the sidewalk and let his feet hang over the edge. He pulled out a smooth linen handkerchief that smelled of German cologne water. “Well, how goes it? Working hard? You must know about all Wunsch can teach you by this time.”
Thea shook her head. “Oh, no, I don’t, Dr. Archie. He’s hard to get at, but he’s been a real musician in his time. Mother says she believes he’s forgotten more than the music-teachers down in Denver ever knew.”
“I’m afraid he won’t be around here much longer,” said Dr. Archie. “He’s been making a tank of himself lately. He’ll be pulling his freight one of these days. That’s the way they do, you know. I’ll be sorry on your account.” He paused and ran his fresh handkerchief over his face. “What the deuce are we all here for anyway, Thea?” he said abruptly.
“On earth, you mean?” Thea asked in a low voice.
“Well, primarily, yes. But secondarily, why are we in Moonstone? It isn’t as if we’d been born here. You were, but Wunsch wasn’t, and I wasn’t. I suppose I’m here because I married as soon as I got out of medical school and had to get a practice quick. If you hurry things, you always get left in the end. I don’t learn anything here, and as for the people—In my own town in Michigan, now, there were people who liked me on my father’s account, who had even known my grandfather. That meant something. But here it’s all like the sand: blows north one day and south the next. We’re all a lot of gamblers without much nerve, playing for small stakes. The railroad is the one real fact in this country. That has to be; the world has to be got back and forth. But the rest of us are here just because it’s the end of a run and the engine has to have a drink. Some day I’ll get up and find my hair turning gray, and I’ll have nothing to show for it.”