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

knees. While his wife and his pupil talked, Harsanyi sank into a chaise longue in which he sometimes snatched a few moments’ rest between his lessons, and smoked. He sat well out of the circle of the lamplight, his feet to the fire. His feet were slender and well shaped, always elegantly shod. Much of the grace of his movements was due to the fact that his feet were almost as sure and flexible as his hands. He listened to the conversation with amusement. He admired his wife’s tact and kindness with crude young people; she taught them so much without seeming to be instructing. When the clock struck nine, Thea said she must be going home.

Harsanyi rose and flung away his cigarette. “Not yet. We have just begun the evening. Now you are going to sing for us. I have been waiting for you to recover from dinner. Come, what shall it be?” he crossed to the piano.

Thea laughed and shook her head, locking her elbows still tighter about her knees. “Thank you, Mr. Harsanyi, but if you really make me sing, I’ll accompany myself. You couldn’t stand it to play the sort of things I have to sing.”

As Harsanyi still pointed to the chair at the piano, she left her stool and went to it, while he returned to his chaise longue. Thea looked at the keyboard uneasily for a moment, then she began “Come, ye Disconsolate,” the hymn Wunsch had always liked to hear her sing. Mrs. Harsanyi glanced questioningly at her husband, but he was looking intently at the toes of his boots, shading his forehead with his long white hand. When Thea finished the hymn she did not turn around, but immediately began “The Ninety and Nine.” Mrs. Harsanyi kept trying to catch her husband’s eye; but his chin only sank lower on his collar.

There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold.

Harsanyi looked at her, then back at the fire.

Rejoice, for the Shepherd has found his sheep.

Thea turned on the chair and grinned. “That’s about enough, isn’t it? That song got me my job. The preacher said it was sympathetic,” she minced the word, remembering Mr. Larsen’s manner.

Harsanyi drew himself up in his chair, resting his elbows on the low arms. “Yes? That is better suited to your voice. Your upper tones are good, above G. I must teach you some songs. Don’t you know anything⁠—pleasant?”

Thea shook her head ruefully. “I’m afraid I don’t. Let me see⁠—Perhaps,” she turned to the piano and put her hands on the keys. “I used to sing this for Mr. Wunsch a long while ago. It’s for contralto, but I’ll try it.” She frowned at the keyboard a moment, played the few introductory measures, and began:

Ach, ich habe sie verloren,

She had not sung it for a long time, and it came back like an old friendship. When she finished, Harsanyi sprang from his chair and dropped lightly upon his toes, a kind of entrechat that he sometimes executed when he formed a sudden resolution, or when he was about to follow a pure intuition, against reason. His wife said that when he gave that spring he was shot from the bow of his ancestors, and now when he left his chair in that manner she knew he was intensely interested. He went quickly to the piano.

“Sing that again. There is nothing the matter with your low voice, my girl. I will play for you. Let your voice out.” Without looking at her he began the accompaniment. Thea drew back her shoulders, relaxed them instinctively, and sang.

When she finished the aria, Harsanyi beckoned her nearer. “Sing ah⁠—ah for me, as I indicate.” He kept his right hand on the keyboard and put his left to her throat, placing the tips of his delicate fingers over her larynx. “Again⁠—until your breath is gone.⁠—Trill between the two tones, always; good! Again; excellent!⁠—Now up⁠—stay there. E and F. Not so good, is it? F is always a hard one.⁠—Now, try the halftone.⁠—That’s right, nothing difficult about it.⁠—Now, pianissimo, ah⁠—ah. Now, swell it, ah⁠—ah.⁠—Again, follow my hand.⁠—Now, carry it down.⁠—Anybody ever tell you anything about your breathing?”

“Mr. Larsen says I have an unusually long breath,” Thea replied with spirit.

Harsanyi smiled. “So you have, so you have. That was what I meant. Now, once more; carry it up and then down, ah⁠—ah.” He put his hand back to her throat and sat with his head bent, his one eye closed. He loved to hear a big voice throb in a relaxed, natural throat, and he was thinking that no one had ever felt this voice vibrate before. It was like a wild bird that had flown into his studio on Middleton Street from goodness knew how far! No one knew that it had come, or even that it existed; least of all the strange, crude girl in whose throat it beat its passionate wings. What a simple thing it was, he reflected; why had he never guessed it before? Everything about her indicated it⁠—the big mouth, the wide jaw and chin, the strong white teeth, the deep laugh. The machine was so simple and strong, seemed to be so easily operated. She sang from the bottom of herself. Her breath came from down where her laugh came from, the deep laugh which Mrs. Harsanyi had once called “the laugh of the people.” A relaxed throat, a voice that lay on the breath, that had never been forced off the breath; it rose and fell in the air-column like the little balls which are put to shine in the jet of a fountain. The voice did not thin as it went up; the upper tones were as full and rich as the lower, produced in the same way and as unconsciously, only with deeper breath.

At last Harsanyi threw back his head and rose. “You must be tired, Miss Kronborg.”

When she