by Willa Cather
“Plenty of time, my lad, plenty of time. Of course you play and take plenty of exercise to make you strong?”
“We have a gymnasium and exercise there. I fence half an hour every morning. I will need to know how some day, when I sing Faust and parts like that.”
“And what do you do, Miss? Do you take good care of your dolls?”
“I haven’t any now. I used to have a dear one, but one day when we were driving in from Fontainebleau I left her in the carriage. We advertised for her, but we never found her and I never wanted another.”
“Ad cared so much for that one, you see,” explained the boy. “Next day when we were taking our lesson she felt so badly about it she cried and Madame asked what was the matter and said, ‘Never mind, ma chere, wait a little and you will have dolls enough. Girls who sing like you never lack for toys in this world. I taught the beautiful Sybil, and behold what toys she has!’ I have often wondered what she meant. But it was often very difficult to tell just what Madame meant. Sometimes I used to think she was making fun of us.”
Mackenzie looked at the boy sharply and veered into safer waters.
“Aren’t you glad to be home again?”
“Yes, but of course we are better abroad. There’s no artistic atmosphere over here. I think we go back to Paris in the spring, or London, maybe.”
“You go to the opera often, don’t you?”
“Yes,” replied the little girl, “we are going to the ‘Damnation of Faust’ tomorrow night,—that is if we don’t go somewhere else.”
“Now Ad, don’t you tell secrets,” said her brother sternly.
“Well, I thought we might just tell him. Perhaps he’d coax her for us.”
“You’ll not laugh at us and you’ll not tell?”
“On my honor,” said Mackenzie.
“You see,” explained Hermann, “we want to see the dog show tomorrow night. We’ve never been to one and I think we might. The Hamilton children go every night and they say there are just hundreds of dogs.”
“And why can’t you, pray?”
“Well, you see it’s the only time they will sing Berlioz’s ‘Damnation of Faust’ here this season, and we ought to hear it. Then mamma don’t like us to go to such things.”
Mackenzie set his teeth. “Now I’ll just tell you; my children are going to the dog show and you shall go with them. I’ll fix it up with your mother. And what’s more I’ll send you over one of our skye terrier pups. Even singers are permitted to have dogs, aren’t they? At least they are always losing them. You go and ask your mother if you may keep the pup, my son.”
As the boy shot off the little girl nestled closer to him. “I’m so awfully glad! Hermann has just been wild to go. And perhaps we’ll see the Hamilton children. You see mamma doesn’t like the Hamilton children very well. They wear lots of jewels and are not always careful about their grammar, but they do have good times. Sometimes Hermann and I play we are the Hamilton children; and he pretends he has been off skating and tells me what he saw, and I pretend I’ve been to school and making fancy work like Mollie Hamilton. That’s a very secret play and we only play it when we’re alone.”
So these poor little prodigies loved to play that they were just the common children of the “new rich” next door! Mackenzie took the little hand that a single ruby made look so bloodless and his eyes were very tender.
“Why, my child, how hot your hands are, and your checks are all flushed. Your pulse is going like a trip-hammer. Are you ill?”
“O no, I’m just tired. We’ve been working very hard for our big concert next week. That’s a very important concert, you know. But there, they are all going out to dinner, and you are to take mamma out, I think. Good-bye.”
“But aren’t you coming too?”
“O no! We sing later, so of course we can’t dine now.”
“O no, of course you can’t dine!” said Mackenzie.
After dinner the more formal guests arrived and the party again assembled in the music room.
They are going to sing the parting scene from Juliette, those babies! Why will Kate select such music for them? The effect will be little short of grotesque. But then it’s just like Kate, she never admits of distinctions or conditions,” whispered Mrs. Mackenzie to her husband. “Here they come. O Nelson, that boy Romeo and his baby Juliet, it’s sacrilege!”
They quietly took their places, “the boy Romeo and his baby Juliette,” looking earnestly at each other, and began that frenzied song of pain and parting: “Tu die partir ohime!” Poor little children! What could they know of the immeasurable anguish of that farewell—or of the immeasurable joy which alone can make such sorrow possible? What could they know of the fearful potency of the words they uttered—words that have governed nations and wrecked empires! They sang bravely enough, but the effect was that of trying to force the tones of a ’cello from a violin.
Suddenly a quick paleness came over the face of the little Juliet. Still struggling with the score she threw out her hand and caught her Romeo’s shoulder, swaying like a flower before the breath of a hurricane.
“Ad, Ad!” shrieked the boy as he sank upon one knee with his sister in his arms.
There was wild confusion among the guests; the men threw open the doors and struggled with the windows. Mackenzie sprang to the child’s side, but her mother was there before him, whiter than the little Juliet herself.
“Doctor, what does it mean? She has never done like this before, she is never ill.”
As she bent over the child her husband thrust her back, lifting the little girl in his arms.
“Let me take her now,—you have done enough!” he said sternly, with an ominous flash in his eyes. It was the only time he was ever heard to issue a command in his own household.
“O Nelson, it is terrible!” said Mrs. Mackenzie as they drove home that night. “Kate Massey must be mad. Poor little girl! And the boy—why I wouldn’t have that haunted look in Billy’s eyes for the world!”
“Not even to make a tenor of him?” asked Mackenzie.
A month later Mackenzie stood again in the Massey’s music room with Kate beside him. The woman was so pale and broken that he could almost find it in his heart to be sorry for her.
“I don’t think I need come again now, Mrs. Massey, unless there is a relapse.”
“And you still think, Doctor, that there is no hope at all? For her voice, I mean?”
“The best specialists in New York agree with me in that. Your foreign teachers have not been content with duping you out of your money, they have simply drained your child’s life out of her veins,” said Mackenzie brutally.
There was a ghost of the old superior smile. “Doctor, you forget yourself. Whatever you American physicians may say, I know that the child was properly taught. This has broken my heart, but it has not convinced me that I am in error. I have said I could make any sacrifice for their art, but God knows I never thought it would be this!”
The little boy entered the room with a roll of music under his arm. His mother caught him to her impulsively.
“Ah, my boy, you must travel your way alone now. I suppose the day must have come when one of you must have suffered for the other. Two of the same blood can never achieve equally. Perhaps it is best that it should come now. But remember, my son, you carry not one destiny in your throat, but two. You must be great enough for both!”
The boy kissed her and said gently, “Don’t cry, mother. I will try.”
His mother hid her face on his shoulder and he turned to the Doctor, who was drawing on his gloves, and shrugging his frail shoulders smiled. It was the smile which might have touched the face of some Roman youth on the bloody sand, when the reversed thumb of the Empress pointed deathward.
NANETTE: AN ASIDE
Of course you do no
t know Nanette. You go to hear Tradutorri, go every night she is in the cast perhaps, and rave for days afterward over her voice, her beauty, her power, and when all is said the thing you most admire is a something which has no name, the indescribable quality which is Tradutorri herself. But of Nanette, the preserver of Madame’s beauty, the mistress of Madame’s finances, the executrix of Madame’s affairs, the power behind the scenes, of course you know nothing.
It was after twelve o’clock when Nanette entered Madame’s sleeping apartments at the Savoy and threw up the blinds, for Tradutorri always slept late after a performance. Last night it was Cavalleria Rusticana, and Santuzza is a trying role when it is enacted not merely with the emotions but with the soul, and it is this peculiar soul-note that has made Tradutorri great and unique among the artists of her generation.
“Madame has slept well, I hope?” inquired Nanette respectfully, as she presented herself at the foot of the bed.
“As well as usual, I believe,” said Tradutorri rather wearily. “You have brought my breakfast? Well, you may put it here and put the ribbons in my gown while I eat. I will get up afterward.”
Nanette took a chair by the bed and busied herself with a mass of white tulle.
“We leave America next week, Madame?”
“Yes, Friday; on the Paris,” said Madame, absently glancing up from her strawberries. “Why, Nanette, you are crying! One would think you had sung ‘Voi lo sapete’ yourself last night. What is the matter, my child?”
“O, it is nothing worthy of Madame’s notice. One is always sorry to say good bye, that is all.”
“To one’s own country, perhaps, but this is different. You have no friends here; pray, why should you be sorry to go?”
“Madame is mistaken when she says I have no friends here.”
“Friends! Why, I thought you saw no one. Who, for example?”
“Well, there is a gentleman”—
“Bah! Must there always be a ‘gentleman,’ even with you? But who is this fellow? Go on!”
“Surely Madame has noticed?”
“Not I; I have noticed nothing. I have been very absent-minded, rather ill, and abominably busy. Who is it?”
“Surely Madame must have noticed Signor Luongo, the head waiter?”
“The tall one, you mean, with the fine head like Poor Sandro Salvini’s? Yes, certainly I have noticed him; he is a very impressive piece of furniture. Well, what of him?”
“Nothing, Madame, but that he is very desirous that I should marry him.”
“Indeed! And you?”
“I could wish for no greater happiness on earth, Madame.”
Tradutorri laid a strawberry stem carefully upon her plate.
“Um-m-m, let me see; we have been here just two months and this affair has all come about. You have profited by your stage training, Nanette.”
“O, Madame! Have you forgotten last season? We stopped here for six weeks then.”
“The same ‘gentleman’ for two successive seasons? You are very disappointing, Nanette. You have not profited by your opportunities after all.”
“Madame is pleased to jest, but I assure her that it is a very serious affair to me.”
“O, yes, they all are. Affaires tres serieux. That is scarcely an original remark, Nanette. I think I remember having made it once myself.”
The look of bitter unbelief that Nanette feared came over Madame’s face. Presently, as Nanette said nothing, Tradutorri spoke again.
“So you expect me to believe that this is really a serious matter?”
“No, Madame,” said Nanette quietly. “He believes it and I believe. It is not necessary that any one else should.”
Madame glanced curiously at the girl’s face and when she spoke again it was in a different tone.
“Very well: I do not see any objection. I need a man. It is not a bad thing to have your own porter in London and after our London engagement is over we will go directly to Paris. He can take charge of my house there, my present steward is not entirely satisfactory, you know. You can spend the summer together there and doubtless by next season you can endure to be separated from him for a few months. So stop crying and send this statuesque signor to me tomorrow and I will arrange matters. I want you to be happy, my girl—at least to try.”
“Madame is good—too good, as always. I know your great heart. Out of your very compassion you would burden yourself with this man because I fancy him as you once burdened yourself with me. But that is impossible, Madame. He would never leave New York. He will have his wife to himself or not at all. Very many professional people stay here, not all like Madame, and he has his prejudices. He would never allow me to travel, not even with Madame. He is very firm in these matters.”
“O, ho! So he has prejudices against our profession, this garçon? Certainly you have contrived to do the usual thing in a very usual manner. You have fallen in with a man who objects to your work.”
Tradutorri pushed the tray away from her and lay down laughing a little as she threw her arms over her head.
“You see Madame, that is where all the trouble comes. For of course I could not leave you.”
Tradutorri looked up sharply, almost pleadingly, into Nanette’s face.
“Leave me? Good Heavens, no! Of course you can not leave me. Why who could ever learn all the needs of my life as you know them? What I may eat and what I may not, when I may see people and when they will tire me, what costumes I can wear and at what temperature I can have my baths. You know I am as helpless as a child in these matters. Leave me? The possibility has never occurred to me. Why, girl, I have grown fond of you! You have come entirely into my life. You have been my confidante and friend, the only creature I have trusted these last ten years. Leave me? I think it would break my heart. Come, brush out my hair, I will get up. The thing is impossible!”
“So I told him, Madame,” said Nanette tragically. “I said to him: ‘Had it pleased Heaven to give me a voice I should have given myself wholly to my art, without one reservation, without one regret, as Madame has done. As it is, I am devoted to Madame and her art as long as she has need of me.’ Yes, that is what I said.”
Tradutorri looked gravely at Nanette’s face in the glass. “I am not at all sure that either I or my art are worth it, Nanette.”
II.
Tradutorri had just returned from her last performance in New York. It had been one of those eventful nights when the audience catches fire and drives a singer to her best, drives her beyond herself until she is greater than she knows or means to be. Now that it was over she was utterly exhausted and the life-force in her was low.
I have said she is the only woman of our generation who sings with the soul rather than the senses, the only one indeed since Malibran, who died of that prodigal expense of spirit. Other singers there are who feel and vent their suffering. Their methods are simple and transparent: they pour out their self-inflicted anguish and when it is over they are merely tired as children are after excitement. But Tradutorri holds back her suffering within herself; she suffers as the flesh and blood women of her century suffer. She is intense without being emotional. She takes this great anguish of hers and lays it in a tomb and rolls a stone before the door and walls it up. You wonder that one woman’s heart can hold a grief so great. It is this stifled pain that wrings your heart when you hear her, that gives you the impression of horrible reality. It is this too, of which she is slowly dying now.
See, in all great impersonation there are two stages. One in which the object is the generation of emotional power; to produce from one’s own brain a whirlwind that will sweep the commonplaces of the world away from the naked souls of men and women and leave them defenceless and strange to each other. The other is the conservation of all this emotional energy; to bind the whirlwind down within one’s straining
heart, to feel the tears of many burning in one’s eyes and yet not to weep, to hold all these chaotic faces still and silent within one’s self until out of this tempest of pain and passion there speaks the still, small voice unto the soul of man. This is the theory of “repression.” This is classical art, art exalted, art deified. And of all the mighty artists of her time Tradutorri is the only woman who has given us art like this. And now she is dying of it, they say.
Nanette was undoing Madame’s shoes. She had put the mail silently on the writing desk. She had not given it to her before the performance as there was one of those blue letters from Madame’s husband, written in an unsteady hand with the postmark of Monte Carlo, which always made Madame weep and were always answered by large drafts. There was also another from Madame’s little crippled daughter hidden away in a convent in Italy.
“I will see to my letters presently, Nanette. With me news is generally bad news. I wish to speak with you to night. We leave New York in two days, and the glances of this signor statuesque of yours is more than I can endure. I feel a veritable mère Capulet.”
“Has he dared to look impertinently at Madame? I will see that this is stopped.”
“You think that you could be really happy with this man, Nanette?”
Nanette was sitting upon the floor with the flowers from Madame’s corsage in her lap. She rested her sharp little chin on her hand.
“Is any one really happy, Madame? But this I know, that I could endure to be very unhappy always to be with him.” Her saucy little French face grew grave and her lips trembled.
Madame Tradutorri took her hand tenderly.
“Then if you feel like that I have nothing to say. How strange that this should come to you, Nanette; it never has to me. Listen: Your mother and I were friends once when we both sang in the chorus in a miserable little theatre in Naples. She sang quite as well as I then, and she was a handsome girl and her future looked brighter than mine. But somehow in the strange lottery of art I rose and she went under with the wheel. She had youth, beauty, vigor, but was one of the countless thousands who fall. When I found her years afterward, dying in a charity hospital in Paris, I took you from her. You were scarcely ten years old then. If you had sung I should have given you the best instruction; as it was I was only able to save you from that most horrible of fates, the chorus. You have been with me so long. Through all my troubles you were the one person who did not change toward me. You have become indispensable to me, but I am no longer so to you. I have inquired as to the reputation of this signor of yours from the proprietors of the house and I find it excellent. Ah, Nanette, did you really think I could stand between you and happiness? You have been a good girl, Nanette. You have stayed with me when we did not stop at hotels like this one, and when your wages were not paid you for weeks together.”