Thea had been in Chicago for two months. She had a small church position which partly paid her living expenses, and she paid for her singing lessons by playing Bowers’s accompaniments every afternoon from two until six. She had been compelled to leave her old friends Mrs. Lorch and Mrs. Andersen, because the long ride from North Chicago to Bowers’s studio on Michigan Avenue took too much time—an hour in the morning, and at night, when the cars were crowded, an hour and a half. For the first month she had clung to her old room, but the bad air in the cars, at the end of a long day’s work, fatigued5 her greatly and was bad for her voice. Since she left Mrs. Lorch, she had been staying at a students’ club to which she was introduced by Miss Adler, Bowers’s morning accompanist, an intelligent Jewish girl from Evanston.
Thea took her lesson from Bowers every day from eleven-thirty until twelve. Then she went out to lunch with an Italian grammar under her arm, and came back to the studio to begin her work at two. In the afternoon Bowers coached professionals and taught his advanced pupils. It was his theory that Thea ought to be able to learn a great deal by keeping her ears open while she played for him.
The concert-going public of Chicago still remembers the long, sallow, discontented face of Madison Bowers. He seldom missed an evening concert, and was usually to be seen lounging somewhere at the back of the concert hall, reading a newspaper or review, and conspicuously6 ignoring the efforts of the performers. At the end of a number he looked up from his paper long enough to sweep the applauding audience with a contemptuous eye. His face was intelligent, with a narrow lower jaw7, a thin nose, faded gray eyes, and a close-cut brown mustache. His hair was iron-gray, thin and dead-looking. He went to concerts chiefly to satisfy himself as to how badly things were done and how gullible8 the public was. He hated the whole race of artists; the work they did, the wages they got, and the way they spent their money. His father, old Hiram Bowers, was still alive and at work, a genial9 old choirmaster in Boston, full of enthusiasm at seventy. But Madison was of the colder stuff of his grandfathers, a long line of New Hampshire farmers; hard workers, close traders, with good minds, mean natures, and flinty eyes. As a boy Madison had a fine barytone voice, and his father made great sacrifices for him, sending him to Germany at an early age and keeping him abroad at his studies for years. Madison worked under the best teachers, and afterward10 sang in England in oratorio11. His cold nature and academic methods were against him. His audiences were always aware of the contempt he felt for them. A dozen poorer singers succeeded, but Bowers did not.
Bowers had all the qualities which go to make a good teacher—except generosity12 and warmth. His intelligence was of a high order, his taste never at fault. He seldom worked with a voice without improving it, and in teaching the delivery of oratorio he was without a rival. Singers came from far and near to study Bach and Handel with him. Even the fashionable sopranos and contraltos of Chicago, St. Paul, and St. Louis (they were usually ladies with very rich husbands, and Bowers called them the “pampered jades13 of Asia”) humbly14 endured his sardonic15 humor for the sake of what he could do for them. He was not at all above helping16 a very lame17 singer across, if her husband’s check-book warranted it. He had a whole bag of tricks for stupid people, “life-preservers,” he called them. “Cheap repairs for a cheap ’un,” he used to say, but the husbands never found the repairs very cheap. Those were the days when lumbermen’s daughters and brewers’ wives contended in song; studied in Germany and then floated from Sängerfest to Sängerfest. Choral societies flourished in all the rich lake cities and river cities. The soloists18 came to Chicago to coach with Bowers, and he often took long journeys to hear and instruct a chorus. He was intensely avaricious19, and from these semi-professionals he reaped a golden harvest. They fed his pockets and they fed his ever-hungry contempt, his scorn of himself and his accomplices20. The more money he made, the more parsimonious21 he became. His wife was so shabby that she never went anywhere with him, which suited him exactly. Because his clients were luxurious22 and extravagant23, he took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes halfsoled a second time, and in getting the last wear out of a broken collar. He had first been interested in Thea Kronborg because of her bluntness, her country roughness, and her manifest carefulness about money. The mention of Harsanyi’s name always made him pull a wry24 face. For the first time Thea had a friend who, in his own cool and guarded way, liked her for whatever was least admirable in her.
Thea was still looking at the musical paper, her grammar unopened on the window-sill, when Bowers sauntered in a little before two o’clock. He was smoking a cheap cigarette and wore the same soft felt hat he had worn all last winter. He never carried a cane25 or wore gloves.
Thea followed him from the reception-room into the studio. “I may cut my lesson out to-morrow, Mr. Bowers. I have to hunt a new boarding-place.”
Bowers looked up languidly from his desk where he had begun to go over a pile of letters. “What’s the matter with the Studio Club? Been fighting with them again?”
“The Club’s all right for people who like to live that way. I don’t.”
Bowers lifted his eyebrows26. “Why so tempery?” he asked as he drew a check from an envelope postmarked “Minneapolis.”
“I can’t work with a lot of girls around. They’re too familiar. I never could get along with girls of my own age. It’s all too chummy. Gets on my nerves. I didn’t come here to play kindergarten games.” Thea began energetically to arrange the scattered27 music on the piano.
Bowers grimaced28 good-humoredly at her over the three checks he was pinning together. He liked to play at a rough game of banter29 with her. He flattered himself that he had made her harsher than she was when she first came to him; that he had got off a little of the sugar-coating Harsanyi always put on his pupils.
“The art of making yourself agreeable never comes amiss, Miss Kronborg. I should say you rather need a little practice along that line. When you come to marketing30 your wares in the world, a little smoothness goes farther than a great deal of talent sometimes. If you happen to be cursed with a real talent, then you’ve got to be very smooth indeed, or you’ll never get your money back.” Bowers snapped the elastic31 band around his bank-book.
Thea gave him a sharp, recognizing glance. “Well, that’s the money I’ll have to go without,” she replied.
“Just what do you mean?”
“I mean the money people have to grin for. I used to know a railroad man who said there was money in every profession that you couldn’t take. He’d tried a good many jobs,” Thea added musingly32; “perhaps he was too particular about the kind he could take, for he never picked up much. He was proud, but I liked him for that.”
Bowers rose and closed his desk. “Mrs. Priest is late again. By the way, Miss Kronborg, remember not to frown when you are playing for Mrs. Priest. You did not remember yesterday.”
“You mean when she hits a tone with her breath like that? Why do you let her? You wouldn’t let me.”
“I certainly would not. But that is a mannerism33 of Mrs. Priest’s. The public like it, and they pay a great deal of money for the pleasure of hearing her do it. There she is. Remember!”
Bowers opened the door of the reception-room and a tall, imposing34 woman rustled35 in, bringing with her a glow of animation36 which pervaded37 the room as if half a dozen persons, all talking gayly, had come in instead of one. She was large, handsome, expansive, uncontrolled; one felt this the moment she crossed the threshold. She shone with care and cleanliness, mature vigor38, unchallenged authority, gracious good-humor, and absolute confidence in her person, her powers, her position, and her way of life; a glowing, overwhelming self-satisfaction, only to be found where human society is young and strong and without yesterdays. Her face had a kind of heavy, thoughtless beauty, like a pink peony just at the point of beginning to fade. Her brown hair was waved in front and done up behind in a great twist, held by a tortoiseshell comb with gold filigree39. She wore a beautiful little green hat with three long green feathers sticking straight up in front, a little cape40 made of
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