OTTENBURG dismissed his taxicab at the 91st Street
entrance of the Park and floundered across the drive
through a wild spring snowstorm. When he reached the
reservoir path he saw Thea ahead of him, walking rapidly
against the wind. Except for that one figure, the path was
deserted. A flock of gulls were hovering over the reservoir,
seeming bewildered by the driving currents of snow that
whirled above the black water and then disappeared with-
in it. When he had almost overtaken Thea, Fred called
to her, and she turned and waited for him with her back
to the wind. Her hair and furs were powdered with snow-
flakes, and she looked like some rich-pelted animal, with
warm blood, that had run in out of the woods. Fred
laughed as he took her hand.
"No use asking how you do. You surely needn't feel
much anxiety about Friday, when you can look like
this."
She moved close to the iron fence to make room for him
beside her, and faced the wind again. "Oh, I'm WELL enough,
in so far as that goes. But I'm not lucky about stage
appearances. I'm easily upset, and the most perverse
things happen."
"What's the matter? Do you still get nervous?"
"Of course I do. I don't mind nerves so much as getting
numbed," Thea muttered, sheltering her face for a mo-
ment with her muff. "I'm under a spell, you know, hoo-
dooed. It's the thing I WANT to do that I can never do.
Any other effects I can get easily enough."
"Yes, you get effects, and not only with your voice.
That's where you have it over all the rest of them; you're
as much at home on the stage as you were down in
Panther Canyon--as if you'd just been let out of a cage.
Didn't you get some of your ideas down there?"
Thea nodded. "Oh, yes! For heroic parts, at least. Out
of the rocks, out of the dead people. You mean the idea
of standing up under things, don't you, meeting catas-
trophe? No fussiness. Seems to me they must have been
a reserved, somber people, with only a muscular language,
all their movements for a purpose; simple, strong, as if
they were dealing with fate bare-handed." She put her
gloved fingers on Fred's arm. "I don't know how I can
ever thank you enough. I don't know if I'd ever have got
anywhere without Panther Canyon. How did you know
that was the one thing to do for me? It's the sort of thing
nobody ever helps one to, in this world. One can learn how
to sing, but no singing teacher can give anybody what I
got down there. How did you know?"
"I didn't know. Anything else would have done as well.
It was your creative hour. I knew you were getting a lot,
but I didn't realize how much."
Thea walked on in silence. She seemed to be thinking.
"Do you know what they really taught me?" she
came out suddenly. "They taught me the inevitable
hardness of human life. No artist gets far who doesn't
know that. And you can't know it with your mind. You
have to realize it in your body, somehow; deep. It's an
animal sort of feeling. I sometimes think it's the strongest
of all. Do you know what I'm driving at?"
"I think so. Even your audiences feel it, vaguely: that
you've sometime or other faced things that make you
different."
Thea turned her back to the wind, wiping away the snow
that clung to her brows and lashes. "Ugh!" she exclaimed;
"no matter how long a breath you have, the storm has
a longer. I haven't signed for next season, yet, Fred. I'm
holding out for a big contract: forty performances. Necker
won't be able to do much next winter. It's going to be one
of those between seasons; the old singers are too old, and
the new ones are too new. They might as well risk me as
anybody. So I want good terms. The next five or six
years are going to be my best."
"You'll get what you demand, if you are uncompro-
mising. I'm safe in congratulating you now."
Thea laughed. "It's a little early. I may not get it at
all. They don't seem to be breaking their necks to meet
me. I can go back to Dresden."
As they turned the curve and walked westward they
got the wind from the side, and talking was easier.
Fred lowered his collar and shook the snow from his
shoulders. "Oh, I don't mean on the contract particularly.
I congratulate you on what you can do, Thea, and on all
that lies behind what you do. On the life that's led up to
it, and on being able to care so much. That, after all, is
the unusual thing."
She looked at him sharply, with a certain apprehension.
"Care? Why shouldn't I care? If I didn't, I'd be in a
bad way. What else have I got?" She stopped with a
challenging interrogation, but Ottenburg did not reply.
"You mean," she persisted, "that you don't care as much
as you used to?"
"I care about your success, of course." Fred fell into a
slower pace. Thea felt at once that he was talking seri-
ously and had dropped the tone of half-ironical exaggera-
tion he had used with her of late years. "And I'm
grateful to you for what you demand from yourself, when
you might get off so easily. You demand more and more
all the time, and you'll do more and more. One is grateful
to anybody for that; it makes life in general a little less
sordid. But as a matter of fact, I'm not much interested
in how anybody sings anything."
"That's too bad of you, when I'm just beginning to
see what is worth doing, and how I want to do it!" Thea
spoke in an injured tone.
"That's what I congratulate you on. That's the great
difference between your kind and the rest of us. It's how
long you're able to keep it up that tells the story. When
you needed enthusiasm from the outside, I was able to
give it to you. Now you must let me withdraw."
"I'm not tying you, am I?" she flashed out. "But with-
draw to what? What do you want?"
Fred shrugged. "I might ask you, What have I got?
I want things that wouldn't interest you; that you prob-
ably wouldn't understand. For one thing, I want a son
to bring up."
"I can understand that. It seems to me reasonable.
Have you also found somebody you want to marry?"
"Not particularly." They turned another curve, which
brought the wind to their backs, and they walked on in
comparative calm, with the snow blowing past them. "It's
not your fault, Thea, but I've had you too much in my
mind. I've not given myself a fair chance in other direc-
tions. I was in Rome when you and Nordquist were there.
If that had kept up, it might have cured me."
"It might have cured a good many things," remarked
Thea grimly.
Fred nodded sympathetically and went on. "In my
library in St. Louis, over the fireplace, I have a property
spear I had copied from one in Venice,--oh, years ago,
after you first went abroad, while you were studying.
You'll probably be singing BRUNNHILDE pretty soon now,
and I'll send it on to you, if I may. You can take it and
its history for what they're worth. But I'm nearly forty
years old, and I've served my turn. You've done what
I hoped for you, what I was honestly willing to lose you
for--then. I'm older now, and I think I was an ass. I
wouldn't do it again if I had the chance, not much! But
I'm not sorry. It takes a great many people to make
one--BRUNNHILDE."
Thea stopped by the fence and looked over into the
black choppiness on which the snowflakes fell and dis-
appeared with magical rapidity. Her face was both angry
and troubled. "So you really feel I've been ungrateful.
I thought you sent me out to get something. I didn't
know you wanted me to bring in something easy. I
thought you wanted something--" She took a deep
breath and shrugged her shoulders. "But there! nobody
on God's earth wants it, REALLY! If one other person wanted
it,"--she thrust her hand out before him and clenched
it,--"my God, what I could do!"
Fred laughed dismally. "Even in my ashes I feel my-
self pushing you! How can anybody help it? My dear
girl, can't you see that anybody else who wanted it as you
do would be your rival, your deadliest danger? Can't you
see that it's your great good fortune that other people
can't care about it so much?"
But Thea seemed not to take in his protest at all. She
went on vindicating herself. "It's taken me a long while
to do anything, of course, and I've only begun to see day-
light. But anything good is--expensive. It hasn't
seemed long. I've always felt responsible to you."
Fred looked at her face intently, through the veil of
snowflakes, and shook his head. "To me? You are a truth-
ful woman, and you don't mean to lie to me. But after the
one responsibility you do feel, I doubt if you've enough
left to feel responsible to God! Still, if you've ever in an
idle hour fooled yourself with thinking I had anything to
do with it, Heaven knows I'm grateful."
"Even if I'd married Nordquist," Thea went on, turn-
ing down the path again, "there would have been some-
thing left out. There always is. In a way, I've always been
married to you. I'm not very flexible; never was and never
shall be. You caught me young. I could never have that
over again. One can't, after one begins to know anything.
But I look back on it. My life hasn't been a gay one, any
more than yours. If I shut things out from you, you shut
them out from me. We've been a help and a hindrance to
each other. I guess it's always that way, the good and the
bad all mixed up. There's only one thing that's all beau-
tiful--and always beautiful! That's why my interest keeps
up."
"Yes, I know." Fred looked sidewise at the outline of
her head against the thickening atmosphere. "And you
give one the impression that that is enough. I've gradu-
ally, gradually given you up."
"See, the lights are coming out." Thea pointed to where
they flickered, flashes of violet through the gray tree-tops.
Lower down the globes along the drives were becoming a
pale lemon color. "Yes, I don't see why anybody wants
to marry an artist, anyhow. I remember Ray Kennedy
used to say he didn't see how any woman could marry a
gambler, for she would only be marrying what the game
left." She shook her shoulders impatiently. "Who marries
who is a small matter, after all. But I hope I can bring
back your interest in my work. You've cared longer and
more than anybody else, and I'd like to have somebody
human to make a report to once in a while. You can send
me your spear. I'll do my best. If you're not interested,
I'll do my best anyhow. I've only a few friends, but I
can lose every one of them, if it has to be. I learned how
to lose when my mother died.-- We must hurry now. My
taxi must be waiting."
The blue light about them was growing deeper and
darker, and the falling snow and the faint trees had be-
come violet. To the south, over Broadway, there was an
orange reflection in the clouds. Motors and carriage lights
flashed by on the drive below the reservoir path, and the
air was strident with horns and shrieks from the whistles
of the mounted policemen.
Fred gave Thea his arm as they descended from the
embankment. "I guess you'll never manage to lose me or
Archie, Thea. You do pick up queer ones. But loving
you is a heroic discipline. It wears a man out. Tell me
one thing: could I have kept you, once, if I'd put on every
screw?"
Thea hurried him along, talking rapidly, as if to get it
over. "You might have kept me in misery for a while,
perhaps. I don't know. I have to think well of myself, to
work. You could have made it hard. I'm not ungrateful.
I was a difficult proposition to deal with. I understand now,
of course. Since you didn't tell me the truth in the be-
ginning, you couldn't very well turn back after I'd set
my head. At least, if you'd been the sort who could, you
wouldn't have had to,--for I'd not have cared a button
for that sort, even then." She stopped beside a car that
waited at the curb and gave him her hand. "There. We
part friends?"
Fred looked at her. "You know. Ten years."
"I'm not ungrateful," Thea repeated as she got into
her cab.
"Yes," she reflected, as the taxi cut into the Park carriage
road, "we don't get fairy tales in this world, and he has,
after all, cared more and longer than anybody else." It
was dark outside now, and the light from the lamps along
the drive flashed into the cab. The snowflakes hovered
like swarms of white bees about the globes.
Thea sat motionless in one corner staring out of the
window at the cab lights that wove in and out among
the trees, all seeming to be bent upon joyous courses.
Taxicabs were still new in New York, and the theme of
popular minstrelsy. Landry had sung her a ditty he heard
in some theater on Third Avenue, about
"But there passed him a bright-eyed taxi
With the girl of his heart inside."
Almost inaudibly Thea began to hum the air, though she
was thinking of something serious, something that had
touched her deeply. At the beginning of the season, when
she was not singing often, she had gone one afternoon to
hear Paderewski's recital. In front of her sat an old Ger-
man couple, evidently poor people who had made sacri-
fices to pay for their excellent seats. Their intelligent
enjoyment of the music, and their friendliness with each
other, had interested her more than anything on the pro-
gramme. When the pianist began a lovely melody in the
first movement of the Beethoven D minor sonata, the
old lady put out her plump hand and touched her hus-
band's sleeve and they looked at each other in recognition.
They both wore glasses, but such a look! Like forget-me-
nots, and so full of happy recollections. Thea wanted to
put her arms around them and ask them how they had
been able to keep a feeling like that, like a nosegay in a
glass of water.
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