The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (best reads .TXT) 📕

“Why not go down this evening?” Fred suggested hopefully, glancing at his watch. “That is, if you’d like to go. I can telephone and find what time he comes on.”

Thea hesitated. “No, I think not. I took a long walk this afternoon and I’m rather tired. I think I can get to sleep early and be so much ahead. I don’t mean at once, however,” seeing Dr. Archie’s disappointed look. “I always like to hear Landry,” she added. “He never had much voice, and it’s worn, but there’s a sweetness about it, and he sings with such taste.”

“Yes, doesn’t he? May I?” Fred took out his cigarette case. “It really doesn’t bother your throat?”

“A little doesn’t. But cigar smoke does. Poor Dr. Archie! Can you do with one of those?”

“I’m learning to like them,” the doctor declared, taking one from the case Fred proffered him.

“Landry’s the only fellow I know in this country who can do that sort of thing,” Fred went on. “Like the best English ballad singers. He can sing even popular stuff by higher lights, as it were.”

Thea nodded. “Yes; sometimes I make him sing his most foolish things for me. It’s restful, as he does it. That’s when I’m homesick, Dr. Archie.”

“You knew him in Germany, Thea?” Dr. Archie had quietly abandoned his cigarette as a comfortless article. “When you first went over?”

“Yes. He was a good friend to a green girl. He helped me with my German and my music and my general discouragement. Seemed to care more about my getting on than about himself. He had no money, either. An old aunt had loaned him a little to study on.⁠—Will you answer that, Fred?”

Fred caught up the telephone and stopped the buzz while Thea went on talking to Dr. Archie about Landry. Telling someone to hold the wire, he presently put down the instrument and approached Thea with a startled expression on his face.

“It’s the management,” he said quietly. “Gloeckler has broken down: fainting fits. Madame Rheinecker is in Atlantic City and Schramm is singing in Philadelphia tonight. They want to know whether you can come down and finish Sieglinde.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight fifty-five. The first act is just over. They can hold the curtain twenty-five minutes.”

Thea did not move. “Twenty-five and thirty-five makes sixty,” she muttered. “Tell them I’ll come if they hold the curtain till I am in the dressing-room. Say I’ll have to wear her costumes, and the dresser must have everything ready. Then call a taxi, please.”

Thea had not changed her position since he first interrupted her, but she had grown pale and was opening and shutting her hands rapidly. She looked, Fred thought, terrified. He half turned toward the telephone, but hung on one foot.

“Have you ever sung the part?” he asked.

“No, but I’ve rehearsed it. That’s all right. Get the cab.” Still she made no move. She merely turned perfectly blank eyes to Dr. Archie and said absently, “It’s curious, but just at this minute I can’t remember a bar of Walkure after the first act. And I let my maid go out.” She sprang up and beckoned Archie without so much, he felt sure, as knowing who he was. “Come with me.” She went quickly into her sleeping-chamber and threw open a door into a trunk-room. “See that white trunk? It’s not locked. It’s full of wigs, in boxes. Look until you find one marked ‘Ring 2.’ Bring it quick!” While she directed him, she threw open a square trunk and began tossing out shoes of every shape and color.

Ottenburg appeared at the door. “Can I help you?”

She threw him some white sandals with long laces and silk stockings pinned to them. “Put those in something, and then go to the piano and give me a few measures in there⁠—you know.” She was behaving somewhat like a cyclone now, and while she wrenched open drawers and closet doors, Ottenburg got to the piano as quickly as possible and began to herald the reappearance of the Volsung pair, trusting to memory.

In a few moments Thea came out enveloped in her long fur coat with a scarf over her head and knitted woolen gloves on her hands. Her glassy eye took in the fact that Fred was playing from memory, and even in her distracted state, a faint smile flickered over her colorless lips. She stretched out a woolly hand, “The score, please. Behind you, there.”

Dr. Archie followed with a canvas box and a satchel. As they went through the hall, the men caught up their hats and coats. They left the music-room, Fred noticed, just seven minutes after he got the telephone message. In the elevator Thea said in that husky whisper which had so perplexed Dr. Archie when he first heard it, “Tell the driver he must do it in twenty minutes, less if he can. He must leave the light on in the cab. I can do a good deal in twenty minutes. If only you hadn’t made me eat⁠—Damn that duck!” she broke out bitterly; “why did you?”

“Wish I had it back! But it won’t bother you, tonight. You need strength,” he pleaded consolingly.

But she only muttered angrily under her breath, “Idiot, idiot!”

Ottenburg shot ahead and instructed the driver, while the doctor put Thea into the cab and shut the door. She did not speak to either of them again. As the driver scrambled into his seat she opened the score and fixed her eyes upon it. Her face, in the white light, looked as bleak as a stone quarry.

As her cab slid away, Ottenburg shoved Archie into a second taxi that waited by the curb. “We’d better trail her,” he explained. “There might be a holdup of some kind.” As the cab whizzed off he broke into an eruption of profanity.

“What’s the matter, Fred?” the doctor asked. He was a good deal dazed by the rapid evolutions of the last ten minutes.

“Matter enough!” Fred growled, buttoning his overcoat with a shiver. “What a