Dr. Archie saw nothing of Thea during the following week. After several fruitless efforts, he succeeded in getting a word with her over the telephone, but she sounded so distracted and driven that he was glad to say good-night and hang up the instrument. There were, she told him, rehearsals2 not only for “Walküre,” but also for “Götterdämmerung,” in which she was to sing Waltraute two weeks later.
On Thursday afternoon Thea got home late, after an exhausting rehearsal1. She was in no happy frame of mind. Madame Necker, who had been very gracious to her that night when she went on to complete Gloeckler’s performance of Sieglinde, had, since Thea was cast to sing the part instead of Gloeckler in the production of the “Ring,” been chilly3 and disapproving4, distinctly hostile. Thea had always felt that she and Necker stood for the same sort of endeavor, and that Necker recognized it and had a cordial feeling for her. In Germany she had several times sung Brangaena to Necker’s Isolde, and the older artist had let her know that she thought she sang it beautifully. It was a bitter disappointment to find that the approval of so honest an artist as Necker could not stand the test of any significant recognition by the management. Madame Necker was forty, and her voice was failing just when her powers were at their height. Every fresh young voice was an enemy, and this one was accompanied by gifts which she could not fail to recognize.
Thea had her dinner sent up to her apartment, and it was a very poor one. She tasted the soup and then indignantly put on her wraps to go out and hunt a dinner. As she was going to the elevator, she had to admit that she was behaving foolishly. She took off her hat and coat and ordered another dinner. When it arrived, it was no better than the first. There was even a burnt match under the milk toast. She had a sore throat, which made swallowing painful and boded5 ill for the morrow. Although she had been speaking in whispers all day to save her throat, she now perversely6 summoned the housekeeper7 and demanded an account of some laundry that had been lost. The housekeeper was indifferent and impertinent, and Thea got angry and scolded violently. She knew it was very bad for her to get into a rage just before bedtime, and after the housekeeper left she realized that for ten dollars’ worth of underclothing she had been unfitting herself for a performance which might eventually mean many thousands. The best thing now was to stop reproaching herself for her lack of sense, but she was too tired to control her thoughts.
While she was undressing—Therese was brushing out her Sieglinde wig8 in the trunk-room—she went on chiding9 herself bitterly. “And how am I ever going to get to sleep in this state?” she kept asking herself. “If I don’t sleep, I’ll be perfectly10 worthless to-morrow. I’ll go down there to-morrow and make a fool of myself. If I’d let that laundry alone with whatever nigger has stolen it—why did I undertake to reform the management of this hotel to-night? After to-morrow I could pack up and leave the place. There’s the Phillamon—I liked the rooms there better, anyhow—and the Umberto—” She began going over the advantages and disadvantages of different apartment hotels. Suddenly she checked herself. “What am I doing this for? I can’t move into another hotel to-night. I’ll keep this up till morning. I shan’t sleep a wink11.”
Should she take a hot bath, or shouldn’t she? Sometimes it relaxed her, and sometimes it roused her and fairly put her beside herself. Between the conviction that she must sleep and the fear that she couldn’t, she hung paralyzed. When she looked at her bed, she shrank from it in every nerve. She was much more afraid of it than she had ever been of the stage of any opera house. It yawned before her like the sunken road at Waterloo.
She rushed into her bathroom and locked the door. She would risk the bath, and defer12 the encounter with the bed a little longer. She lay in the bath half an hour. The warmth of the water penetrated13 to her bones, induced pleasant reflections and a feeling of well-being14. It was very nice to have Dr. Archie in New York, after all, and to see him get so much satisfaction out of the little companionship she was able to give him. She liked people who got on, and who became more interesting as they grew older. There was Fred; he was much more interesting now than he had been at thirty. He was intelligent about music, and he must be very intelligent in his business, or he would not be at the head of the Brewers’ Trust. She respected that kind of intelligence and success. Any success was good. She herself had made a good start, at any rate, and now, if she could get to sleep—Yes, they were all more interesting than they used to be. Look at Harsanyi, who had been so long retarded15; what a place he had made for himself in Vienna. If she could get to sleep, she would show him something to-morrow that he would understand.
She got quickly into bed and moved about freely between the sheets. Yes, she was warm all over. A cold, dry breeze was coming in from the river, thank goodness! She tried to think about her little rock house and the Arizona sun and the blue sky. But that led to memories which were still too disturbing. She turned on her side, closed her eyes, and tried an old device.
She entered her father’s front door, hung her hat and coat on the rack, and stopped in the parlor16 to warm her hands at the stove. Then she went out through the diningroom, where the boys were getting their lessons at the long table; through the sitting-room17, where Thor was asleep in his cot bed, his dress and stocking hanging on a chair. In the kitchen she stopped for her lantern and her hot brick. She hurried up the back stairs and through the windy loft18 to her own glacial room. The illusion was marred19 only by the consciousness that she ought to brush her teeth before she went to bed, and that she never used to do it. Why—? The water was frozen solid in the pitcher20, so she got over that. Once between the red blankets there was a short, fierce battle with the cold; then, warmer—warmer. She could hear her father shaking down the hard-coal burner for the night, and the wind rushing and banging down the village street. The boughs21 of the cottonwood, hard as bone, rattled22 against her gable. The bed grew softer and warmer. Everybody was warm and well downstairs. The sprawling23 old house had gathered them all in, like a hen, and had settled down over its brood. They were all warm in her father’s house. Softer and softer. She was asleep. She slept ten hours without turning over. From sleep like that, one awakes in shining armor.
On Friday afternoon there was an inspiring audience; there was not an empty chair in the house. Ottenburg and Dr. Archie had seats in the orchestra circle, got from a ticket broker24. Landry had not been able to get a seat, so he roamed about in the back of the house, where he usually stood when he dropped in after his own turn in vaudeville25 was over. He was there so often and at such irregular hours that the ushers26 thought he was a singer’s husband, or had something to do with the electrical plant.
Harsanyi and his wife were in a box, near the stage, in the second circle. Mrs. Harsanyi’s hair was noticeably gray, but her face was fuller and handsomer than in those early years of struggle, and she was beautifully dressed. Harsanyi himself had changed very little. He had put on his best afternoon coat in honor of his pupil, and wore a pearl in his black ascot. His hair was longer and more bushy than he used to wear it, and there was now one gray lock on the right side. He had always been an elegant figure, even when he went about in shabby clothes and was crushed with work. Before the curtain rose he was restless and nervous, and kept looking at his watch and wishing he had got a few more letters off before he left his hotel. He had not been in New York since the advent27 of the taxicab, and had allowed himself too much time. His wife knew that he was afraid of being disappointed this afternoon. He did not often go to the opera because the stupid things that singers did vexed28 him so, and it always put him in a rage if the conductor held the tempo29 or in any way accommodated the score to the singer.
When the lights went out and the violins began to quaver their long D against the rude figure of the basses30, Mrs. Harsanyi saw her husband’s fingers fluttering on his knee in a rapid tattoo31. At the moment when Sieglinde entered from the side door, she leaned toward him and whispered in his ear, “Oh, the lovely creature!” But he made no response, either by voice or gesture. Throughout the first scene he sat sunk in his chair, his head forward and his one yellow eye rolling restlessly and shining like a tiger’s in the dark. His eye followed Sieglinde about the stage like a satellite, and as she sat at the table listening to Siegmund’s long narrative32, it never left her. When she prepared the sleeping draught33 and disappeared after Hunding, Harsanyi bowed his head still lower and put his hand over his eye to rest it. The tenor34,—a young man who sang with great vigor35, went on:—
“Wälse! Wälse!
Wo ist dein Schwert?”
Harsanyi smiled, but he did not look forth36 again until Sieglinde reappeared. She went through the story of her shameful37 bridal feast and into the Walhall’ music, which she always sang so nobly, and the entrance of the one-eyed stranger:—
“Mir allein
Weckte das Auge.”
Mrs. Harsanyi glanced at her husband, wondering whether the singer on the stage could not feel his commanding glance. On came the crescendo:—
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