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

feathers sticking straight up in front, a little cape made of velvet and fur with a yellow satin rose on it. Her gloves, her shoes, her veil, somehow made themselves felt. She gave the impression of wearing a cargo of splendid merchandise.

Mrs. Priest nodded graciously to Thea, coquettishly to Bowers, and asked him to untie her veil for her. She threw her splendid wrap on a chair, the yellow lining out. Thea was already at the piano. Mrs. Priest stood behind her.

“ ’Rejoice Greatly’ first, please. And please don’t hurry it in there,” she put her arm over Thea’s shoulder, and indicated the passage by a sweep of her white glove. She threw out her chest, clasped her hands over her abdomen, lifted her chin, worked the muscles of her cheeks back and forth for a moment, and then began with conviction, “Re-jo-oice! Re-jo-oice!”

Bowers paced the room with his catlike tread. When he checked Mrs. Priest’s vehemence at all, he handled her roughly; poked and hammered her massive person with cold satisfaction, almost as if he were taking out a grudge on this splendid creation. Such treatment the imposing lady did not at all resent. She tried harder and harder, her eyes growing all the while more lustrous and her lips redder. Thea played on as she was told, ignoring the singer’s struggles.

When she first heard Mrs. Priest sing in church, Thea admired her. Since she had found out how dull the good-natured soprano really was, she felt a deep contempt for her. She felt that Mrs. Priest ought to be reproved and even punished for her shortcomings; that she ought to be exposed⁠—at least to herself⁠—and not be permitted to live and shine in happy ignorance of what a poor thing it was she brought across so radiantly. Thea’s cold looks of reproof were lost upon Mrs. Priest; although the lady did murmur one day when she took Bowers home in her carriage, “How handsome your afternoon girl would be if she did not have that unfortunate squint; it gives her that vacant Swede look, like an animal.” That amused Bowers. He liked to watch the germination and growth of antipathies.

One of the first disappointments Thea had to face when she returned to Chicago that fall, was the news that the Harsanyis were not coming back. They had spent the summer in a camp in the Adirondacks and were moving to New York. An old teacher and friend of Harsanyi’s, one of the best-known piano teachers in New York, was about to retire because of failing health and had arranged to turn his pupils over to Harsanyi. Andor was to give two recitals in New York in November, to devote himself to his new students until spring, and then to go on a short concert tour. The Harsanyis had taken a furnished apartment in New York, as they would not attempt to settle a place of their own until Andor’s recitals were over. The first of December, however, Thea received a note from Mrs. Harsanyi, asking her to call at the old studio, where she was packing their goods for shipment.

The morning after this invitation reached her, Thea climbed the stairs and knocked at the familiar door. Mrs. Harsanyi herself opened it, and embraced her visitor warmly. Taking Thea into the studio, which was littered with excelsior and packing-cases, she stood holding her hand and looking at her in the strong light from the big window before she allowed her to sit down. Her quick eye saw many changes. The girl was taller, her figure had become definite, her carriage positive. She had got used to living in the body of a young woman, and she no longer tried to ignore it and behave as if she were a little girl. With that increased independence of body there had come a change in her face; an indifference, something hard and skeptical. Her clothes, too, were different, like the attire of a shopgirl who tries to follow the fashions; a purple suit, a piece of cheap fur, a three-cornered purple hat with a pompon sticking up in front. The queer country clothes she used to wear suited her much better, Mrs. Harsanyi thought. But such trifles, after all, were accidental and remediable. She put her hand on the girl’s strong shoulder.

“How much the summer has done for you! Yes, you are a young lady at last. Andor will be so glad to hear about you.”

Thea looked about at the disorder of the familiar room. The pictures were piled in a corner, the piano and the chaise longue were gone. “I suppose I ought to be glad you have gone away,” she said, “but I’m not. It’s a fine thing for Mr. Harsanyi, I suppose.”

Mrs. Harsanyi gave her a quick glance that said more than words. “If you knew how long I have wanted to get him away from here, Miss Kronborg! He is never tired, never discouraged, now.”

Thea sighed. “I’m glad for that, then.” Her eyes traveled over the faint discolorations on the walls where the pictures had hung. “I may run away myself. I don’t know whether I can stand it here without you.”

“We hope that you can come to New York to study before very long. We have thought of that. And you must tell me how you are getting on with Bowers. Andor will want to know all about it.”

“I guess I get on more or less. But I don’t like my work very well. It never seems serious as my work with Mr. Harsanyi did. I play Bowers’s accompaniments in the afternoons, you know. I thought I would learn a good deal from the people who work with him, but I don’t think I get much.”

Mrs. Harsanyi looked at her inquiringly. Thea took out a carefully folded handkerchief from the bosom of her dress and began to draw the corners apart. “Singing doesn’t seem to be a very brainy profession, Mrs. Harsanyi,” she said slowly. “The people I see now are not a bit like the ones I used to meet