Chapter VI.9
WHEN Archie and Ottenburg dined with Thea on Saturday evening, they were served downstairs in the hotel dining-room, but they were to have their coffee in her own apartment. As they were going up in the elevator after dinner, Fred turned suddenly to Thea. "And why, please, did you break Landry's amber elephant?"
She looked guilty and began to laugh. "Hasn't he got over that yet? I didn't really mean to break it. I was perhaps careless. His things are so over-petted that I was tempted to be careless with a lot of them."
"How can you be so heartless, when they're all he has in the world?"
"He has me. I'm a great deal of diversion for him; all he needs. There," she said as she opened the door into her own hall, "I shouldn't have said that before the elevator boy."
"Even an elevator boy couldn't make a scandal about Oliver. He's such a catnip man."
Dr. Archie laughed, but Thea, who seemed suddenly to have thought of something annoying, repeated blankly, "Catnip man?"
"Yes, he lives on catnip, and rum tea. But he's not the only one. You are like an eccentric old woman I know in Boston, who goes about in the spring feeding catnip to street cats. You dispense it to a lot of fellows. Your pull seems to be more with men than with women, you know; with seasoned men, about my age, or older. Even on Friday afternoon I kept running into them, old boys I hadn't seen for years, thin at the part and thick at the girth, until I stood still in the draft and held my hair on. They're always there; I hear them talking about you in the smokingroom. Probably we don't get to the point of apprehending anything good until we're about forty. Then, in the light of what is going, and of what, God help us! is coming, we arrive at understanding."
"I don't see why people go to the opera, anyway,--serious people." She spoke discontentedly. "I suppose they get something, or think they do. Here's the coffee. There, please," she directed the waiter. Going to the table she began to pour the coffee, standing. She wore a white dress trimmed with crystals which had rattled a good deal during dinner, as all her movements had been impatient and nervous, and she had twisted the dark velvet rose at her girdle until it looked rumpled and weary. She poured the coffee as if it were a ceremony in which she did not believe. "Can you make anything of Fred's nonsense, Dr. Archie?" she asked, as he came to take his cup.
Fred approached her. "My nonsense is all right. The same brand has gone with you before. It's you who won't be jollied. What's the matter? You have something on your mind."
"I've a good deal. Too much to be an agreeable hostess." She turned quickly away from the coffee and sat down on the piano bench, facing the two men. "For one thing, there's a change in the cast for Friday afternoon. They're going to let me sing SIEGLINDE." Her frown did not conceal the pleasure with which she made this announcement.
"Are you going to keep us dangling about here forever, Thea? Archie and I are supposed to have other things to do." Fred looked at her with an excitement quite as apparent as her own.
"Here I've been ready to sing SIEGLINDE for two years, kept in torment, and now it comes off within two weeks, just when I want to be seeing something of Dr. Archie. I don't know what their plans are down there. After Friday they may let me cool for several weeks, and they may rush me. I suppose it depends somewhat on how things go Friday afternoon."
"Oh, they'll go fast enough! That's better suited to your voice than anything you've sung here. That gives you every opportunity I've waited for." Ottenburg crossed the room and standing beside her began to play "DU BIST DER LENZ."
With a violent movement Thea caught his wrists and pushed his hands away from the keys.
"Fred, can't you be serious? A thousand things may happen between this and Friday to put me out. Something will happen. If that part were sung well, as well as it ought to be, it would be one of the most beautiful things in the world. That's why it never is sung right, and never will be." She clenched her hands and opened them despairingly, looking out of the open window. "It's inaccessibly beautiful!" she brought out sharply.
Fred and Dr. Archie watched her. In a moment she turned back to them. "It's impossible to sing a part like that well for the first time, except for the sort who will never sing it any better. Everything hangs on that first night, and that's bound to be bad. There you are," she shrugged impatiently. "For one thing, they change the cast at the eleventh hour and then rehearse the life out of me."
Ottenburg put down his cup with exaggerated care. "Still, you really want to do it, you know."
"Want to?" she repeated indignantly; "of course I want to! If this were only next Thursday night-- But between now and Friday I'll do nothing but fret away my strength. Oh, I'm not saying I don't need the rehearsals! But I don't need them strung out through a week. That system's well enough for phlegmatic singers; it only drains me. Every single feature of operatic routine is detrimental to me. I usually go on like a horse that's been fixed to lose a race. I have to work hard to do my worst, let alone