The Price She Paid Part 22

"You and I will get on. We'll let each other alone. We have to be more or less intimate, but we'll never be familiar."

After a time she discovered that Mrs. Brindley's first name was Cyrilla, but Mrs. Brindley and Miss Stevens they remained to each other for a long time--until circ.u.mstances changed their accidental intimacy into enduring friends.h.i.+p. Not to antic.i.p.ate, in the course of that same conversation Mildred said:

"If there is anything about me--about my life--that you wish me to explain, I shall be glad to do so."

"I know all I wish to know," replied Cyrilla Brindley. "Your face and your manner and your way of speaking tell me all the essentials."

"Then you must not think it strange when I say I wish no one to know anything about me."

"It will be impossible for you entirely to avoid meeting people," said Cyrilla. "You must have some simple explanation about yourself, or you will attract attention and defeat your object."

"Lead people to believe that I'm an orphan--perhaps of some obscure family--who is trying to get up in the world. That is practically the truth."

Mrs. Brindley laughed. "Quite enough for New York," said she. "It is not interested in facts. All the New-Yorker asks of you is, 'Can you pay your bills and help me pay mine?'"

Competent men are rare; but, thanks to the advantage of the male s.e.x in having to make the struggle for a living, they are not so rare as competent women. Mrs. Brindley was the first competent woman Mildred had ever known. She had spent but a few hours with her before she began to appreciate what a bad atmosphere she had always breathed--bad for a woman who has her way to make in the world, or indeed for any woman not willing to be content as mere more or less s.h.i.+ftless, more or less hypocritical and pretentious, dependent and parasite. Mrs.

Brindley--well bred and well educated--knew all the little matters which Mildred had been taught to regard as the whole of a lady's education. But Mildred saw that these trifles were but a trifling incident in Mrs. Brindley's knowledge. She knew real things, this woman who was a thorough-going housekeeper and who trebled her income by giving music lessons a few hours a day to such pupils as she thought worth the teaching. When she spoke, she always said something one of the first things noticed by Mildred, who, being too lazy to think except as her naturally good mind insisted on exercising itself, usually talked simply to kill time and without any idea of getting anywhere. But while Cyrilla--without in the least intending it--roused her to a painful sense of her own limitations, she did not discourage her. Mildred also began to feel that in this new atmosphere of ideas, of work, of accomplishment, she would rapidly develop into a different sort of person. It was extremely fortunate for her, thought she, that she was living with such a person as Cyrilla Brindley. In the old atmosphere, or with any taint of it, she would have been unable to become a serious person. She would simply have dawdled along, twaddling about "art" and seriousness and careers and sacrifice, content with the amateur's methods and the amateur's results--and deluding herself that she was making progress. Now--It was as different as public school from private school--public school where the mind is rudely stimulated, private school where it is sedulously mollycoddled. She had come out of the hothouse into the open.

At first she thought that Jennings was to be as great a help to her as Cyrilla Brindley. Certainly if ever there was a man with the air of a worker and a place with the air of a workshop, that man and that place were Eugene Jennings and his studio in Carnegie Hall. When Mildred entered, on that Sat.u.r.day morning, at exactly half-past ten, Jennings--in a plain if elegant house-suit--looked at her, looked at the clock, stopped a girl in the midst of a burst of tremulous noisy melody.

"That will do, Miss Bristow," said he. "You have never sung it worse.

You do not improve. Another lesson like this, and we shall go back and begin all over again."

The girl, a fattish, "temperamental" blonde, burst into tears.

"Kindly take that out into the hall," said Jennings coldly. "Your time is up. We cannot waste Miss Stevens's time with your hysterics."

Miss Bristow switched from tears to fury. "You brute! You beast!" she shrieked, and flung herself out of the room, slamming the door after her. Jennings took a book from a pile upon a table, opened it, and set it on a music-stand. Evidently Miss Bristow was forgotten--indeed, had pa.s.sed out of his mind at half-past ten exactly, not to enter it again until she should appear at ten on Monday morning. He said to Mildred:

"Now, we'll see what you can do. Begin."

"I'm a little nervous," said Mildred with a shy laugh. "If you don't mind, I'd like to wait till I've got used to my surroundings."

Jennings looked at her. The long sharp nose seemed to be rapping her on the forehead like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r's beak on the bark of the tree.

"Begin," he said, pointing to the book.

Mildred flushed angrily. "I shall not begin until I CAN begin," said she. The time to show this man that he could not treat her brutally was at the outset.

Jennings opened the door into the hall. "Good day, Miss Stevens," he said with his abrupt bow.

Mildred looked at him; he looked at her. Her lip trembled, the hot tears flooded and blinded her eyes. She went unsteadily to the music-stand and tried to see the notes of the exercises. Jennings closed the door and seated himself at the far end of the room. She began--a ridiculous attempt. She stopped, gritted her teeth, began again. Once more the result was absurd; but this time she was able to keep on, not improving, but maintaining her initial off-key quavering.

She stopped.

"You see," said she. "Shall I go on?"

"Don't stop again until I tell you to, please," said he.

She staggered and stumbled and somersaulted through two pages of DO-RE-ME-FA-SOL-LA-SI. Then he held up his finger.

"Enough," said he.

Silence, an awful silence. She recalled what Mrs. Belloc had told her about him, what Mrs. Brindley had implied. But she got no consolation.

She said timidly:

"Really, Mr. Jennings, I can do better than that. Won't you let me try a song?"

"G.o.d forbid!" said he. "You can't stand. You can't breathe. You can't open your mouth. Naturally, you can't sing."

She dropped to a chair.

"Take the book, and go over the same thing, sitting," said he.

She began to remove her wraps.

"Just as you are," he commanded. "Try to forget yourself. Try to forget me. Try to forget what a brute I am, and what a wonderful singer you are. Just open your mouth and throw the notes out."

She was rosy with rage. She was reckless. She sang. At the end of three pages he stopped her with an enthusiastic hand-clapping. "Good!

Good!" he cried. "I'll take you. I'll make a singer of you. Yes, yes, there's something to work on."

The door opened. A tall, thin woman with many jewels and a superb fur wrap came gliding in. Jennings looked at the clock. The hands pointed to eleven. Said he to Mildred:

"Take that book with you. Practice what you've done to-day. Learn to keep your mouth open. We'll go into that further next time." He was holding the door open for her. As she pa.s.sed out, she heard him say:

"Ah, Mrs. Roswell. We'll go at that third song first."

The door closed. Reviewing all that had occurred, Mildred decided that she must revise her opinion of Jennings. A money-maker he no doubt was. And why not? Did he not have to live? But a teacher also, and a great teacher. Had he not destroyed her vanity at one blow, demolished it?--yet without discouraging her. And he went straight to the bottom of things--very different from any of the teachers she used to have when she was posing in drawing-rooms as a person with a voice equal to the most difficult opera, if only she weren't a lady and therefore not forced to be a professional singing person. Yes, a great teacher--and in deadly earnest. He would permit no trifling! How she would have to work!

And she went to work with an energy she would not have believed she possessed. He instructed her minutely in how to stand, in how to breathe, in how to open her mouth and keep it open, in how to relax her throat and leave it relaxed. He filled every second of her half-hour; she had never before realized how much time half an hour was, how use could be made of every one of its eighteen hundred seconds. She went to hear other teachers give lessons, and she understood why Jennings could get such prices, could treat his pupils as he saw fit. She became an extravagant admirer of him as a teacher, thought him a genius, felt confident that he would make a great singer of her. With the second lesson she began to progress rapidly. In a few weeks she amazed herself. At last she was really singing. Not in a great way, but in the beginnings of a great way. Her voice had many times the power of her drawing-room days. Her notes were full and round, and came without an effort. Her former ideas of what const.i.tuted facial and vocal expression now seemed ridiculous to her. She was now singing without making those dreadful faces which she had once thought charming and necessary. Her lower register, always her best, was almost perfect. Her middle register--the test part of a voice--was showing signs of strength and steadiness and evenness. And she was fast getting a real upper register, as distinguished from the forced and shrieky high notes that pa.s.s as an upper register with most singers, even opera singers. After a month of this marvelous forward march, she sang for Mrs. Brindley--sang the same song she had essayed at their first meeting. When she finished, Mrs. Brindley said:

"Yes, you've done wonders. I've been noticing your improvement as you practiced. You certainly have a very different voice and method from those you had a month ago," and so on through about five minutes of critical and discriminating praise.

Mildred listened, wondering why her dissatisfaction, her irritation, increased as Mrs. Brindley praised on and on. Beyond question Cyrilla was sincere, and was saying even more than Mildred had hoped she would say. Yet-- Mildred sat moodily measuring off octaves on the keyboard of the piano. If she had been looking at her friend's face she would have flared out in anger; for Cyrilla Brindley was taking advantage of her abstraction to observe her with friendly sympathy and sadness.

Presently she concealed this candid expression and said:

"You are satisfied with your progress, aren't you, Miss Stevens?"

Mildred flared up angrily. "Certainly!" replied she. "How could I fail to be?"

Mrs. Brindley did not answer--perhaps because she thought no answer was needed or expected. But to Mildred her silence somehow seemed a denial.

"If you can only keep what you've got--and go on," said Mrs. Brindley.

"Oh, I shall, never fear," retorted Mildred.

"But I do fear," said Mrs. Brindley. "I think it's always well to fear until success is actually won. And then there's the awful fear of not being able to hold it."

After a moment's silence Mildred, who could not hide away resentment against one she liked, said: "Why aren't YOU satisfied, Mrs. Brindley?"