Читать книгу Ladies-In-Waiting - Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith - Страница 3

Tommy had none too much to eat, and, according to her own æsthetic ambitions, nothing at all to wear; but she was busy all day long and absurdly happy. Her income was uncertain, but that was amusing and thrilling rather than pitiful or tragic. She had two or three “steadies” among singers, who gave her engagements as accompanist at small drawing-room recitals or charitable entertainments. There was a stout prima donna whose arias for dramatic soprano kept her practicing until midnight, and a rich young lady amateur who needed a very friendly and careful accompaniment because she sang flat and always lost her breath before the end of a long phrase. The manner in which Tommy concealed these defects was thoroughly ingenious and sympathetic. When Miss Guggenheim paused for breath, Tommy filled the gap with instrumental arabesques; when she was about to flat, Tommy gave her the note suggestively. If she was too dreadfully below pitch, and had breath enough to hang on to the note so long that the audience (always composed of invited guests) writhed obviously, Tommy would sometimes drop a sheet of music on the floor and create a diversion, always apologizing profusely for her clumsiness. The third patron was a young baritone, who liked Miss Tucker’s appearance on the platform and had her whenever he didn’t sing Schubert’s “Erl König,” which Tommy couldn’t play. This was her most profitable engagement, but it continued alas! for only three months, for the baritone wanted to marry her, and she didn’t like him because he was bald and his neck was too fat. Also, she was afraid she would have to learn to play the “Erl König” properly.

All this time Tommy was longing to sing in public herself, and trying to save money enough to take more lessons by way of preparation.

When she lost the baritone, who was really peevish at being rejected after suiting his programmes to her capacities for a whole season, Tommy conceived a new idea. She influenced Jessie Macleod, who had a fine contralto, and two other girls with well-trained voices, to form a quartette.

“We can’t get anything to do separately; perhaps we can make a pittance together,” she said. “We’ll do good simple things; our voices blend well, and if we practice enough there’s no reason why we shouldn’t sing beautifully.”

“Singing beautifully is one thing and getting engagements is another,” sighed Jessie Macleod.

“As if I didn’t know that! We can’t hope to be superior to other quartettes, so we must be different—unusual, unique—I can’t think just how at the moment, but I will before we make our début.”

And she did, for Tommy was nothing if not fertile in ideas.

Every hour that the girls could spare in the month of October was given to rehearsal, till the four fresh young voices were like one. They had decided to give nothing but English songs, to sing entirely from memory, and to make a specialty of good words well spoken. All the selections but one or two were to be without accompaniment, and in these Tommy would sit at the piano surrounded by the other three in a little group.

Miss Guggenheim was to give them their first appearance, invite fifty or sixty people, and serve tea. She kindly offered to sing some solos herself, but Tommy, shuddering inwardly, said she thought it was better that the quartette should test its own strength unaided.

Miss Guggenheim couldn’t sing, but she could dress, and she had an inspiration a week before the concert.

“What are you going to wear, girls?” she asked.

“Anything we have, is the general idea,” said Tommy. “Mine is black.”

“Mine’s blue”—“White”—“Pink!” came from the other three.

“But must you wear those particular dresses? Can’t you each compromise a little so as to look better together?”

“So hard to compromise when each of us has one dress hanging on one nail; one neck and sleeves filled up for afternoons and ripped out for evenings!”

“I should get four simple dresses just alike,” said Miss Guggenheim, who had a dozen.

“What if they should hang in our closets unworn and unpaid for?” asked Jessie Macleod.

“We’re sure to get at least one engagement some time or other. Nothing ventured, nothing have. We ought to earn enough to pay for the dresses, if we do nothing more,”—and Tommy’s vote settled it.

Miss Guggenheim knew people, if she did sing flat, and her drawing-room was full on the occasion of the début. Carl Bothwick, a friend of Tommy’s, was in a publishing office, and nobly presented programmes for the occasion. The quartette had not thought of naming itself, but Carl had grouped the songs under the heading, “The Singing Girls,” and luckily they liked the idea.

At four o’clock the hum of conversation ceased at the sound of singing voices in the distance. A sort of processional effect had been Tommy’s suggestion, and the quartette formed in the dressing-room and sang its way to the audience.

The voices rang high and clear, coming nearer and nearer. All the words could be heard and understood. The hall portières divided, and the girls entered, all in soft gray crêpe, gardenias at the belt, little brimmed hats of black velvet with a single gardenia on the side, the flowers being the offering of the dramatic soprano, who loved Tommy. They were young, they were pretty, they sang delightfully in tune, and with quite bewitching effect. Several ladies fell in love with them at first sight, and hoped that they would sing for nothing a few times, “just to get themselves known.” They had done nothing else for two years, so that Tommy said they must be acquainted with the entire State of New York, though nothing ever came of it. It was a joyous surprise, then, when an old gentleman in the company (who was seen to wipe tears away when the girls sang “Darby and Joan”) engaged them to sing at his golden wedding the next night. That was the beginning of a season of modest prosperity. Tommy’s baritone had married his new accompanist (he seemed determined to have a piano-playing wife), and wishing to show Miss Tucker that his heart was not broken by her rejection, he gave a handsome party and engaged the quartette, paying for their services in real coin of the realm. Other appearances followed in and out of town, and Tommy paid for her gray dress, spent a goodly sum for an attack of tonsillitis, the result of overwork, and still saved two hundred dollars. The season was over. She was fagged, but not disheartened. Who is at twenty-two? But it was late April, and drawing-room entertainments were no more. The two hundred dollars when augmented by the church salary would barely take her through till October.

“It is very annoying,” thought Tommy, “when you have to eat, drink, sleep, and dress twelve months in the year, that the income by which you do these things should cease abruptly for four months. Still, furriers can’t sell furs in hot weather, and summer boarders can’t board in winter, so I suppose other people have to make enough money in eight months to spend in twelve.”

she caroled, splashing about in her morning tub as she finished making these reflections, the tub being an excellent place for trills and scales.

Proceeding from tub to her sitting-room to make things ready for toilet and breakfast, her mind ran on her little problems.

“I want to learn more, see more, hear more,” she thought. “I have one of those nasty, unserviceable, betwixt-and-between talents: voice not high enough for ‘Robert, toi que j’aime,’ nor low enough for ‘Ständchen’; not flexible enough for ‘Caro Nome,’ nor big enough for ‘Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster’; poor French accent, worse German; awfully good English, but that doesn’t count. Can sing old ballads, folk-songs, and nice, forgotten things that make dear old gentlemen and ladies cry—but not pay. If I were billed at all, it ought to be

“First Appearance in Public

of

Behind-the-Times Tommy”

This appellation so tickled her fancy that she nearly upset the coffee-pot, and she continued to laugh at her own wit until a fat letter was pushed under her door from the hall outside. She picked it up. It had an English postmark.

“Helena Markham!” she cried, joyously.

Dear Tommy: [the letter read]

Don’t you want to come over to London for the season? You never make any money at home from June to October, and if by chance you have a penny in the bank (I don’t know why I say “if” when none of us ever had such a thing!) I think I can put enough in your way to pay part of your expenses. I am really beginning to get on!—three engagements in the provincial towns all arranged. My accompanist plays lots better than you do, but I don’t sing half so well with him as I used to with you. You somehow infuse the spirit into me that I lack. I incline to be lumpy and heavy. They may not notice it in the provinces, for I dare say they are lumpy and heavy there, too. However, though I shall have to have somebody well known over here for concerts of any great pretensions, I could work you into smaller ones, and coach with you, too, since I must have somebody. And you are so good-looking, Tommy dear, and have such a winning profile! I am plainer than ever, but no plainer than Madame Titiens, so the papers say. I never saw or heard her, of course, but the critics say I have the same large, “massive” style of voice and person. My present accompanist would take first prize for ugliness in any competition; he is more like a syndicate of plainness than one single exemplification of it! I must have a noble nature to think more of my audiences than of myself, but I should like to give them something to please their eyes—I flatter myself I can take care of their ears!

Oh, do come, Tommy! Say you will!

Helena.

Tommy pirouetted about the room like an intoxicated bird, waving the letter, and trilling and running joyful chromatic scales, for the most part badly done.

“Will I go to London?” she warbled in a sort of improvised recitative. “Will I take two or two and a half lessons of Georg Henschel? Will I grace platforms in the English provinces? Will I take my two hundred dollars out of the bank and risk it royally? Perhaps the bystanders will glance in at my windows and observe me giving the landlady notice, and packing my trunk, both of which delightful tasks I shall be engaged in before the hour strikes.”