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

the door of the music-room, Mrs. Nathanmeyer turned a switch that threw on many lights. The room was even larger than the library, all glittering surfaces, with two Steinway pianos.

Mrs. Nathanmeyer rang for her own maid. “Selma will take you upstairs, Miss Kronborg, and you will find some dresses on the bed. Try several of them, and take the one you like best. Selma will help you. She has a great deal of taste. When you are dressed, come down and let us go over some of your songs with Mr. Ottenburg.”

After Thea went away with the maid, Ottenburg came up to Mrs. Nathanmeyer and stood beside her, resting his hand on the high back of her chair.

“Well, gnädige Frau, do you like her?”

“I think so. I liked her when she talked to father. She will always get on better with men.”

Ottenburg leaned over her chair. “Prophetess! Do you see what I meant?”

“About her beauty? She has great possibilities, but you can never tell about those Northern women. They look so strong, but they are easily battered. The face falls so early under those wide cheekbones. A single idea⁠—hate or greed, or even love⁠—can tear them to shreds. She is nineteen? Well, in ten years she may have quite a regal beauty, or she may have a heavy, discontented face, all dug out in channels. That will depend upon the kind of ideas she lives with.”

“Or the kind of people?” Ottenburg suggested.

The old Jewess folded her arms over her massive chest, drew back her shoulders, and looked up at the young man. “With that hard glint in her eye? The people won’t matter much, I fancy. They will come and go. She is very much interested in herself⁠—as she should be.”

Ottenburg frowned. “Wait until you hear her sing. Her eyes are different then. That gleam that comes in them is curious, isn’t it? As you say, it’s impersonal.”

The object of this discussion came in, smiling. She had chosen neither the blue nor the yellow gown, but a pale rose-color, with silver butterflies. Mrs. Nathanmeyer lifted her lorgnette and studied her as she approached. She caught the characteristic things at once: the free, strong walk, the calm carriage of the head, the milky whiteness of the girl’s arms and shoulders.

“Yes, that color is good for you,” she said approvingly. “The yellow one probably killed your hair? Yes; this does very well indeed, so we need think no more about it.”

Thea glanced questioningly at Ottenburg. He smiled and bowed, seemed perfectly satisfied. He asked her to stand in the elbow of the piano, in front of him, instead of behind him as she had been taught to do.

“Yes,” said the hostess with feeling. “That other position is barbarous.”

Thea sang an aria from Gioconda, some songs by Schumann which she had studied with Harsanyi, and the “Tak for Ditt Rod” which Ottenburg liked.

“That you must do again,” he declared when they finished this song. “You did it much better the other day. You accented it more, like a dance or a galop. How did you do it?”

Thea laughed, glancing sidewise at Mrs. Nathanmeyer. “You want it roughhouse, do you? Bowers likes me to sing it more seriously, but it always makes me think about a story my grandmother used to tell.”

Fred pointed to the chair behind her. “Won’t you rest a moment and tell us about it? I thought you had some notion about it when you first sang it for me.”

Thea sat down. “In Norway my grandmother knew a girl who was awfully in love with a young fellow. She went into service on a big dairy farm to make enough money for her outfit. They were married at Christmas-time, and everybody was glad, because they’d been sighing around about each other for so long. That very summer, the day before St. John’s Day, her husband caught her carrying on with another farmhand. The next night all the farm people had a bonfire and a big dance up on the mountain, and everybody was dancing and singing. I guess they were all a little drunk, for they got to seeing how near they could make the girls dance to the edge of the cliff. Ole⁠—he was the girl’s husband⁠—seemed the jolliest and the drunkest of anybody. He danced his wife nearer and nearer the edge of the rock, and his wife began to scream so that the others stopped dancing and the music stopped; but Ole went right on singing, and he danced her over the edge of the cliff and they fell hundreds of feet and were all smashed to pieces.”

Ottenburg turned back to the piano. “That’s the idea! Now, come Miss Thea. Let it go!”

Thea took her place. She laughed and drew herself up out of her corsets, threw her shoulders high and let them drop again. She had never sung in a low dress before, and she found it comfortable. Ottenburg jerked his head and they began the song. The accompaniment sounded more than ever like the thumping and scraping of heavy feet.

When they stopped, they heard a sympathetic tapping at the end of the room. Old Mr. Nathanmeyer had come to the door and was sitting back in the shadow, just inside the library, applauding with his cane. Thea threw him a bright smile. He continued to sit there, his slippered foot on a low chair, his cane between his fingers, and she glanced at him from time to time. The doorway made a frame for him, and he looked like a man in a picture, with the long, shadowy room behind him.

Mrs. Nathanmeyer summoned the maid again. “Selma will pack that gown in a box for you, and you can take it home in Mr. Ottenburg’s carriage.”

Thea turned to follow the maid, but hesitated. “Shall I wear gloves?” she asked, turning again to Mrs. Nathanmeyer.

“No, I think not. Your arms are good, and you will feel freer without. You will need light slippers, pink⁠—or white, if you have them, will do quite as well.”

Thea went