_ CHAPTER XI. OPERA AT HEART'S DESIRE
Telling how Two Innocent Travellers by mere Chance collided with a Side-tracked Star Many miles of sand and silence lay between Heart's Desire and Sky Top, by the winding trail over the high plateau and in among the foot-hills of the Sacramentos. The silence was unbroken by any music from the "heavenly maid," which lay disused beneath the wagon seat; nor did the two occupants of Tom Osby's freight wagon often emerge from the reticence habitual in a land where spaces were vast, men infrequent, and mountains ever looking down. The team of gnarled gray horses kept on their steady walk, hour after hour, and day after day; and bivouac after bivouac lay behind them, marked by the rude heap of brush piled up at night as an excuse for shelter against the wind or by the tiny circle of ashes where had been a small but sufficient fire. At last the line of the bivouacs ended, far up toward the crest of the heavily timbered Sacramentos, after a weary climb through miles of mountain canons.
"We'll stop at the lowest spring," said Tom Osby, who knew the country of old. "That'll leave us a half mile or so from where they've built their fool log hotel. It beats the dickens how these States folks, that lives in cities, is always tryin' to imertate some other way of livin'. Why didn't they build it out of boards? They've got a saw-mill, blame 'em, and they're cuttin' off all the timber in these mountings; but they got to have logs to build their house with. Folks that builds real log houses, and not toys, does it because they ain't got no boards. But these States folks always was singerler."
By this time Tom Osby was unhitching and feeding his team, and throwing out the blanket rolls upon the ground. "Go easy on the 'Annie Laurie' machine there," called out Dan Anderson, hearing a suspicious rattling of brass against the wagon box. But his companion heeded him little, casting the phonograph at the foot of a tree, where the great horn swung wide, disconsolately.
"A imertation," said Tom, "is like I was just sayin'. It ain't the real thing.
"Now look here, friend," he went on a moment later, "you've got to do like you said you would. Of course, I know melons don't grow up here in the pine mountains, even if they was ripe yet; but you said you was comin' along to see fair play, and you got to do it."
Dan Anderson looked at him queerly. "Wait," said he; "it'll be night before long. Then you go on up to the house, and prospect around a little. If you get scared, come back, and I'll--I'll take care of you. I'll be around here somewhere, so you needn't be afraid to go right on in alone, you know. Tell her you know her preserved songs, and liked them so much you just had to come down here. Tell her about the watermelons. Tell her--"
"You're actin' a
leetle nervous your own self, man," said Tom Osby, keenly. "But you watch Papa. I been married four times, or maybe five, so what's a woman here or there to me? What is there to any woman to scare a feller, anyway?"
"I'm damned if I know!" replied Dan Andersen;--"there isn't--of course there isn't, of course not. You're perfectly safe. Why, just go right on up. Have your sand along!"
"Sure," said Tom Osby. "All right; I'll just mosey along up the trail after a while."
And after a while he did depart, alone, leaving Dan Anderson sitting on the wagon tongue. "You come up after a while, Dan," he called back. "If you don't hear nothing from me, you'd better stroll along up and view the remains."
Madame Alicia Donatelli paced up and down the long room in the somewhat dismal hotel building which constituted the main edifice of Sky Top. She was in effect a prisoner. El Paso seemed like a dream, San Francisco a figment of the brain, and New York a wholly imaginary spot upon some undiscovered planet, lost in the nebulous universe of space. She trod the uneven floor as some creature caged, on her face that which boded no good to the next comer, whoever he might be.
The next comer was Signer Peruchini, the tenor. Unhappy Peruchini! He started back from the ominous swish of the Donatelli gown, the deep cadence of the Donatelli voice, the restless Donatelli walk, now resumed.
"How dare you!" cried the
diva. "How dare you intrude on me?"
"The saints!" cried Signer Peruchini. "What service is zere here? I knock, but you do not hear. Madame, what horror is zis place!"
"Ah, that Blauring!" cried Madame Donatelli, in her rage. "The beast! How dare he bring me here--
me!" (she smote her bosom)--"who have sung in the grand in the best houses of the Continent--in Italy, Paris, London, St. Petersburg! I shall not survive this!"
"
Perfide!" cried Peruchini, in assent. "
Perfide! R-r-rascal!
Cochon! Pig unspikkab'!"
"But, madame," he resumed, with gestures and intonations suitable for the scene. "Behole! It is I who have lofe you so long. To lofe--ah, it is so divine! How can you riffuse?"
Madame Donatelli withdrew with proper operatic dignity. "Never!" she cried. "You have sufficiently persecuted me ere this. I bid you go. Begone!"
"Vooman, you mad meh!" cried Peruchini, rushing forward, his hands first extended with palms upward, then clenched, his hair properly tumbled, his eyes correctly rolling. "I vill not be teniet! Your puty, it is too much! Vooman, vooman, ah, have you no harret? Py Heaven, I--"
With a swift motion he grasped her wrists. Color rose to the Donatelli cheek. Her eyes flashed. She was about to sing. She checked herself in time. "Unhand me, sir!" she cried.
The two wrestled back and forth, their hands intertwined. And now the log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to light for them this unusual stage. They did not hear the door open behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack servant been directed thither.
The door did open. In it stood Tom Osby, unannounced. He was dressed in his best, which was not quite so picturesque as his worst, but which did not disguise him nor the region which was his home. His boots were new, sharp at toe and heel. His hat, now removed, was new, but wide and white. His coat was loose, and under it there was no waistcoat, neither did white collar confine his neck.
A quick glance took in the scene before him. A little dark man was contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty that he had ever seen or dreamed. Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into the room. There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice that brought an instant conviction. This--this was the Voice that he had worshipped! This was that divine being whom he had heard and seen in so many sweet imaginings in the hot days and sweet, silent nights afar in the desert lands. She was assailed. She was beset. There swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life in that comer of the world. In a flash his weapon leaped from its scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable.
"Git back, you feller'" cried Tom Osby. "Leggo! What are you doin' there? Break, now, and git out. This ain't right."
And that was all he ever knew of Signer Peruchini, for the latter sprang back and away into an immediate oblivion. Tom Osby from that instant was himself swept on by the glory of this woman's presence. Confronting her, he stood half trembling, at once almost longing for warlike action rather than that now grown needful.
Madame Donatelli, for the first time in years jarred from the standards of her artificial life, and so, suddenly, become woman rather than actress, fell into a seat, turning toward the newcomer a gaze of wide-eyed astonishment. She had read in certain journals wild stories of doings of wild men. Was that sort of thing actually true?
"Sir," she said, "how dare you!" At this, Tom Osby stood upon one leg.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, at length. "I didn't know anybody was in here. I just come in lookin' for somebody."
She did not answer him, but turned upon him the full glance of a deep, dark eye, studying him curiously.
"I don't live here, ma'am," resumed Tom. "I'm camped down the hill by the spring. I left my
compadre there. I--I belong to Heart's Desire, up north of here. I--I come along in here this mornin'. They said there wasn't any one in the parlor--they said there might be some one in the parlor, though, maybe. And I was--I was--ma'am, I was lookin'--I reckon I was lookin' for you!"
He laid his hat and gun upon the table, and stood with one hand against its edge. "Yes, I come down from Heart's Desire," he began again.
"From where?" broke in a low, sweet voice. "From Heart's Desire? What an exquisite name! Where is it? What is it? That sounds like heaven," she said.
"It might be, ma'am," said Tom Osby, simply, "but it ain't. The water supply ain't reg'lar enough. It's just a little place up in the mountains. Heaven, ma'am, I reckon is just now located something like a hundred miles south of Heart's Desire!" And he laughed so sudden and hearty a man's laugh at this that it jostled Alicia Donatelli out of all her artificiality, and set the two at once upon a footing. It seemed to her that, after all, men were pretty much alike, no matter where one found them.
"Sit down," she said, ceasing to bite at her fingertips, as was her habit when perturbed. "Tell me about Heart's Desire."
"Well, Heart's Desire, ma'am," said Tom Osby, "why, it ain't much. It's mostly men."
"But how do you live? What do you do?"
"Well, now, I hadn't ever thought of that. But now you mention it, I can't say I really know. The fellers all seem to get along, somehow."
"But yourself?"
"Me? I drive a freight wagon between Las Vegas and Heart's Desire. There is stores, you know, at Heart's Desire, and a saloon. We held a co'te there, onct. You see, along of cattle wars and killings, for a good many years back, folks has been kind of shy of that part of the country. Most of the men easy scared, they went back home to the States. Some stayed. And it's--why, I can't rightly explain it to you, ma'am--but it's--it's Heart's Desire."
The face of the woman before him softened. "It's a beautiful name," said she. "Heart's Desire!" She said it over and over again, wistfully. The cadence of her tone was the measure of an irrevocable loss. "Heart's Desire!" she whispered--"I wonder--
"Tell me," she cried at length, arising and pacing restlessly, "what do you do at Heart's Desire?"
"Nothing," said Tom Osby. "I just told you, I reckon."
"Do you have any amusements? Are there ever any entertainments?"
"Why, law! no, ma'am!"
She threw back her head and laughed. There rose before her the picture of a primitive world, whose swift appeal clutched at her heart, saturated and sated with unreal things grown banal.
"Besides," went on Tom Osby, "if we had an op'ry house, it wouldn't do no good. Why--I don't want to be imperlite, but I've heard that op'ry singers cost as high as ten dollars a night, or maybe more. We couldn't afford it. Onct we had a singin'-school teacher. Fellow by the name of Dawes come in there from Kansas, and he taught music. He used to sing a song called the 'Sword of Bunker Hill.' Used to have a daughter, and she sung, too. Her favoright song was 'Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.' They made quite a lot of money holdin' singin'-school. The gal, she got married and moved to Tularosa, and that broke up the singin'-school. There ain't been any kind of show at Heart's Desire for five years. But say, ma'am," he interrupted, "about that feller that had hold of you when I come in. Did he hurt you any?"
"That's our leading tenor, Signer Peruchini! He's a great artist." She laughed, a ripple of soft, delicious laughter. "No, don't bother him. We'll need him out on the Coast. Don't you know, we are just here in the mountains for a little while."
"Don't you like these mountings, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, sinking back into his seat. "I always did. They always remind me of the Smokies, in Car'lina, back South."
"You came from the South?"
"Georgy, ma'am."
"Georgia! So did I! We should be friends," she said, and, smiling, held out her hand. Tom Osby took it.
"Ma'am," said he, gravely, "I'm right glad to see you. I've not been back home for a good many years. I've been all over."
"Nor have I been home," said she, sadly. "I've been all over, too. But now, what brought you here? Tell me, did you want to see me?"
"Yes!" Tom Osby answered simply. "I said that's why I come!"
"You want me to come up to Heart's Desire to sing? Ah, I wish that were not impossible."
"No, there's no one sent me," said Tom Osby. "Though, of course, the boys would do anything for you they could. What we want in Heart's Desire--why, sometimes I think it's nothing, and then, again, everything. Maybe we didn't want any music; and then, again, maybe we was just sick and pinin' for it, and didn't know it."
She looked at him intently as he bent his head, his face troubled. "Listen," said he, at length, "I'll tell you all about it. Up at Vegas I heard a funny sort of singin' machine. It had voices in it. Ma'am, it had a Voice in it. It--it sung--" he choked now.
"And some of the songs?"
Strangely enough, he understood the question of her eyes. She flushed like a girl as he nodded gravely. "'Annie Laurie,'" he said.
"I am very glad," said she, with a long breath. "It reconciles me to selling my art in that way. No, I'm very glad, quite outside of that."
Tom Osby did not quite follow all her thoughts, but he went on.
"It was 'Annie Laurie,'" said he. "I knew you sung it. Ma'am, I played her all the way from Vegas down."
"But why did you come?" She was cruel; but a woman must have her toll. The renewed answer cost courage of Tom Osby.
"Ma'am," said he, "I won't lie to you. I just come to see you, or to hear you, I can't rightly tell which. It must have been both." Now he arose and flung out a hand, rudely but eloquently. "Ma'am," he went on, "I knowed you come from Georgy onct, the same as me. And I knowed that a Georgy girl, someway, somewhere, somehow, would have a soft spot in her heart. I come to hear you sing. There's things that us fellers want, sometimes."
The woman before him drew a deep, long breath.
"I reckon you'll have to sing again," the man went on. "You'll have to sing that there song, 'Annie Laurie,' like I heard it more than onct, before I went away from home."
The soft Georgia speech came back to his tongue, and she followed it herself, unconsciously.
"My friend," said she, "you're right. I reckon I'll have to sing."
"When?" said Tom Osby.
"Now," said Alice Strowbridge. She rose and stepped toward the piano open near the fire.
The color was full on her cheek now; the jewels glanced now above a deep bosom laboring in no counterfeit emotion. A splendid creature, bedecked, bejewelled, sex all over, magnificent, terrible, none the less, although the eyes of Alice Strowbridge shone sombrely, her hands twined together in embarrassment, as they did the first time she sang in public as a child. The very shoulders under the heavy laces caught a plaintive droop, learned in no role of Marguerite in any land. The red rose at her hair--the rose got from some mysterious source--half trembled. Fear, a great fear--the first stage fright known in years--swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman. There sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire--a place where men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that which was not theirs. She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her, what she had done for the heart of humanity. Halfway across the floor she stopped, her hand at her throat.
"I know this here is right funny," said Tom Osby, misunderstanding, "for me to do this-a-way. It's right embarrassin' for a lady like you to try to oblige a feller like me. But, ma'am, all I can say is, all the boys'll be mightily obliged to you."
She flashed upon him a smile which had tears in it. Tom Osby grew more confident, more bold.
"Ma'am," said he, clearing his throat, "I want you to forgive me; but I reckon how, when you great people sing different things, you-all sort of dress up, different like, at different times, accordin' to the things you are singin' right then. Ain't that so?"
"We have many costumes," said she, simply. "We play many parts. Sometimes we hardly know we are ourselves."
"And when you sung that 'Annie Laurie' song, did you have any coschume to go along with that?"
"You mean--"
"Well, now, ma'am, when us fellers was talkin' it over, it always seemed to us, somehow, like the Annie Laurie coschume was right
white." He blushed and hastened to apologize. "Not sayin' anything against that dress you've got on," he said. "I never saw one as fine as that in all my life. I never saw any woman, never in all my life, like you. I--I--ma'am"--he flushed, but went on with a Titanic simplicity--"I
worship you, right where you stand, in that there dress; but--could you--"
"You are an artist yourself!" cried she. "Yes! Wait!"
In an instant she was gone from the room, leaving Tom Osby staring at the flickering fire, now brighter in the advancing shades of evening. In perhaps half an hour Alice Strowbridge reappeared. The rich black laces, and the ripe red rose, and the blazing jewels, all were gone. She was clad in simple white--and yes! a blue sash was there. The piled masses of her hair were replaced by two long, glossy braids. By the grace of the immortal gods all misdeeds were lifted from her that night. For once in many years she was sincere. Now she was a girl again, and back at the old home. Those were the southern mountains half hidden in the twilight; and yonder was the moon of the old days, swinging up again. There was the gallery at the window of the old Georgia home, and the gate, and the stairs, and the hedgerow, and the trailing vines, and the voices of little birds; and Youth--Youth, the unspeakable glory of Youth--it all was hers once more! The souls of a thousand Georgia mocking-birds--the soul of that heritage which came to her out of her environment--lay in her throat that hour.
And so, not to an audience, but to an auditor--nay, perhaps, after all, to the audience of Heart's Desire, an audience of unsated souls--she sang, although of visible audience there was but one man, who sat crumpled up, shaken, undone.
She could not, being a woman, oblige any man by direct compliance; she could not deprive herself of her own little triumph. Or perhaps, deliberately, she sought to give this solitary listener that which it would have cost thousands of dollars for a wider public to hear. She sang first the leading
arias of her more prominent operatic roles. She sang the Page's song, which had been hers in her first appearance on a critical stage. "
Nobil signors," she sang, her voice lingering. And then presently there fell from her lips the sparkling measures of Coquette, indescribably light, indescribably brilliant in her rendition. Melody after melody, score after score, product of the greatest composers of the world, she gave to a listener who never definitely realized what privilege had been his. She slipped on and on, forgetting herself, revelling, dreaming; and it was proof at least of the Alice Strowbridge which might have been, that there came to her fingers and her throat that night no sound of cheap sensuous melody, no florid triviality from any land. With a voice which had mastered the world, she sang the best of the masters of the world. So music, with all its wooing, its invitation, its challenge, its best appeal, for a time filled and thrilled this strange auditorium, until forsooth later comers might, as was the story, indeed have found jewels caught there in the chinks of the rude-hewn walls.
All at once the voice of the artist, the subsidiary voice of the piano broke, dropped, and paused. And then, with no more interlude, that great instrument, a perfect human voice, in the throat of a perfect human woman, swept gently into the melody of the old song of "Annie Laurie." At the beginning of it there was a schoolgirl of Georgia, and a freighter of the Plains, and at the end of it there was a woman with bowed head, and a man silent, whose head also was bowed.
Neither of the two in the great room heard the footfalls of one who approached in the dusk across the puncheon floor of the wide gallery. Dan Andersen, for reasons of his own, had also come on up the trail to the hotel. Perhaps he intended to make certain inquiries; but he never got even so far as the door. The voice of Donatelli caught and held him as it had her other auditor. He stopped midway of the gallery, listened to the very last note, then turned and quietly stole away, returning to the lonely bivouac beneath the pines. He started even at the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the little fire. He could not sleep. A face looked at him out of the dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens. The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a Face that was the Fairest.
He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time. It was Tom Osby, who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figure on the camper's bed. Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that his companion was not asleep.
"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers back home with us."
"Passengers?" A voice came from the blankets.
"Yes. Whole bunch of them railroad folks comin' up on the mornin' train from El Paso. Old man and the girl both, and a lawyer fellow, Barkley, I believe his name is. I reckon he's attoreney for the road."
Deep silence greeted this. Tom reached forward and picked up a brand to light his pipe more thoroughly.
"I just want to thank you," said he, "for comin' along down here to take care of me." _