Dancers in the Dark. Dorothy Speare
clear through. Raw gold, of course—but gold. It’s the kind of voice which, if I had, I would go through hell’s seventy furies to train and refine until I was at the pinnacle of my possibility—which means the top of the world. You’ve got everything to put you there.” She stopped with a sigh. “We’ll turn in now, and talk it over to-morrow.”
“Sarah?” Joy questioned as they went down the hall.
“Sal? She’ll sleep right through till to-morrow—she’s been run pretty ragged lately.”
The morrow found Joy more at home in her new quarters, as her luggage had come and she was refreshed by sleep that was not disturbed until late in the morning. Sarah appeared in her kimono, her hair in a dead-looking braid, while Jerry and Joy were picking up a sketchy breakfast in the kitchenette. Jerry had explained the big club-room—the partition between an already large living-room and the dining-room had been removed. Hence there was no dining-room, and as Jerry said, they didn’t really need one. When they were home, they ate in the kitchen, and as for having guests: “most men hate to eat formally, anyway. They like to come out in the kitchen, and then we have chafing-dish parties or sent-up spreads in the living-room.”
Sarah expressed a moderate amount of pleasure at seeing Joy, permitting a line or so to cross her brow at the same time. Her attention was diverted as she seemed on the point of making additional remarks, by Jerry’s information: “Packy was here last night, by the way.”
“Packy was here? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Oh, I forgot to. He didn’t bring it back to my memory, either. He saw Joy first.”
Sarah’s look was not amiable. She turned and left the kitchen, muttering something about dressing.
“Oh, Jerry, what did you say that for?” Joy demanded. “Is she in love with him?”
“In love with Packy?” Jerry laughed noisily. “Don’t strain yourself so, Joy. That girl never was in love with anything. She’s somewhat dashed about Packy because he’s the ideal playmate—lots of income and a thoughtful disposition—the combination gets rarer all the time.”
The doorbell interrupted them. “I hope no more blades to sleep off a jag,” said Jerry as they went down the hall. “This is no hotel.”
But it was a special messenger boy to whom they opened the door, who extended two boxes to Joy and a receipt book to Jerry. Jerry signed in a blurred scribble and the two darted to the living-room with the boxes, one of which was addressed to Jerry, and one, to Joy’s surprise, marked with her name. Jerry made short work of hers, tearing it open in one swift motion. All Jerry’s motions were swift—whether she exhausted a cigarette in less time than some people take in lighting, or leaped into her clothes. She held up before her one of the most beautiful negligées Joy had ever seen—a shimmering purple brocaded satin, with folds of chiffon floating away from it.
“I knew Packy’d do that,” said Jerry; “but I must say it’s quick work. What’s your little keepsake?”
“Joy’s little keepsake” was a huge mass of American Beauties, with a note which read: “I suppose you’re used to this sort of thing, but I feel gay just to add myself onto the crowd. From—the only man who ever loved you the way I do.”
“Mine has Twink’s card, with ‘Part Payment for Hotel Bill’ written on it,” said Jerry. “This is what I meant, Joy, when I said Packy was thoughtful.”
Joy could not help being thrilled—despite the fact that she thought she never could be thrilled again. It was the first time in her life she had received American Beauties, and the accompanying note was in tune with the roses.
“Sal will be fretful,” said Jerry; “we’d best get under way before she comes out.”
“Why, where are we going?”
“To find you a singing teacher. Put on your hat and fade away quietly with me.”
There was a pause while Joy put the roses in the umbrella stand, and then the two stole out of the flat and down to the car line.
“Father has the address of a teacher I was to go to, you know,” said Joy.
Jerry threw up her hands, whereat a car stopped and they got on before she could speak. Then she exploded: “Getting the right kind of a singing teacher is more important than a safe doctor! An address that you don’t know anything about may be all right, but the chances are that the person isn’t as good as the one I’ve got lined out for you.”
“You have one all picked out, then?”
“Well, you can try him. Pa Graham is considered pretty good, but you’ll have to see for yourself. Any teacher may be all right for a voice that’s just a voice. But your voice isn’t going to be just a voice. It’s going to be pearls and tears and bliss and agony and all that stuff—if you start on the right road and no one hammers that quality out of you.”
Presently they descended from the car and walked through Beacon Street past innumerable tall, narrowly-wedged-in brown stone houses to one near Dartmouth Street. They were admitted to a tiny waiting room by a colored man-servant, and waited fifteen minutes before a haughty young lady, who, Jerry had whispered, was the occasional accompanist, informed them that Mr. Graham could see them now.
A high, wide room, with busts and pictures and beautiful rugs; two pianos; and Pa Graham standing at one end. The picture was one that Joy was to see so often that it would become a part of her. Just now the picture dissolved as Pa came forward with an old-fashioned bow. A little man, with high forehead and silvery hair well kept on his still gallant head; piercing light eyes which might once have been blue; a little old man who smiled when he bowed. Joy could not respond to the smile; she was going through her first attack of stage fright.
“So you have brought me someone, Jerry,” he was saying in a resonant voice that sounded oddly younger than he. “She is young and beautiful; that adds greatly; others may contradict me at leisure. But let us hear what she can do; after all, one cannot sing with golden hair and azure eyes, although sometimes it comes near to it.” He whirled upon her. “What did you bring?”
Scarlet, she opened her music roll and brought forth the two arias that she had attempted under Miss Bessie’s instruction: “Depuis le Jour,” from Louise, and “Plus Grand Dans Son Obscurité,” from the Queen of Sheba.
“Always they bring grand opera—no matter if they are sixteen or sixty. H’m—one is for a lyric, one for dramatic. Well, I take it you are a soprano, anyway; let us hope so, at least. Come and sing; best get it over with. I am discouraged already. With that face, one cannot expect much else.”
Joy felt what little spirit she had left oozing away. “How could anyone learn anything from a man who said he was discouraged before she had set free a single note?”
The accompanist, with a resigned look that spoke of the thousands of beautiful airs she must have heard suffering, whipped the Louise air to the rack of one of the pianos. This piano was on a raised platform, and Pa Graham motioned to Joy to go and stand by it. As she stumbled up the steps, he went off to the darkness of the other end of the room, and Jerry sat down near by with a reassuring wink.
“Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée …
L’âme encore grisée
De ton premier—baiser!”
Poor Louise with her “soul yet drunk from thy first kiss.” A shiver ran through the words that should have been ecstatic. Joy knew that Louise didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she pulled herself together, floating a long, soft high note that left the air palpitant and hushed. She ought to try to be Louise—but somehow she couldn’t, with that man off in the shadows, and Jerry sitting so near, and such a cross accompanist, and such unpleasant memories disturbing the thought of her song.
As far as interpretive value went, the song was a failure. But the lovely floated high notes, and the golden middle register, led the song