The Woman-Hater | Page 8

poor. I gave all my savings to my dear mother, and settled her on a farm in dear old Denmark. But I really sing for you more than for Homburg, so make no difficulties. Above all, do not discuss salary with me. Settle it and draw it for me, and let me hear no more about that. I am on thorns."

He soon found the director, and told him, excitedly, there was a way out of his present difficulty. Ina Klosking was in the town. He had implored her to return to the opera. She had refused at first; but he had used all his influence with her, and at last had obtained a half promise on conditions--a two months' engagement; certain parts, which he specified out of his own head; salary, a hundred thalers per night, and a half clear benefit on her last appearance.
The director demurred to the salary.
Ashmead said he was mad: she was the German Alboni; her low notes like a trumpet, and the compass of a mezzo-soprano besides.
The director yielded, and drew up the engagement in duplicate. Ashmead then borrowed the music and came back to the inn triumphant. He waved the agreement over his head, then submitted it to her. She glanced at it, made a wry face, and said, "Two months! I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Not worth your while to do it for less," said Ashmead. "Come," said he, authoritatively, "you have got a good bargain every way; so sign."
She lifted her head high, and looked at him like a lioness, at being ordered.
Ashmead replied by putting the paper before her and giving her the pen.
She cast one more reproachful glance, then signed like a lamb.
"Now," said she, turning fretful, "I want a piano."
"You shall have one," said he coaxingly. He went to the landlord and inquired if there was a piano in the house.
"Yes, there is one," said he.
"And it is mine," said a sharp female voice.
"May I beg the use of it?"
"No," said the lady, a tall, bony spinster. "I cannot have it strummed on and put out of tune by everybody."
"But this is not everybody. The lady I want it for is a professional musician. Top of the tree."
"The hardest strummers going."
"But, mademoiselle, this lady is going to sing at the opera. She must study. She must have a piano.
"But [grimly] she need not have mine.
"Then she must leave the hotel."
"Oh [haughtily], that is as she pleases."
Ashmead went to Ina Klosking in a rage and told her all this, and said he would take her to another hotel kept by a Frenchman: these Germans were bears. But Ina Klosking just shrugged her shoulders, and said, "Take me to her."
He did so; and she said, in German, "Madam, I can quite understand your reluctance to have your piano strummed. But as your hotel is quiet and respectable, and I am unwilling to leave it, will you permit me to play to you? and then you shall decide whether I am worthy to stay or not."
The spinster drank those mellow accents, colored a little, looked keenly at the speaker, and, after a moment's reflection, said, half sullenly, "No, madam, you are polite. I must risk my poor piano. Be pleased to come with me."
She then conducted them to a large, unoccupied room on the first-floor, and unlocked the piano, a very fine one, and in perfect tune.
Ina sat down, and performed a composition then in vogue.
"You play correctly, madam," said the spinster; "but your music--what stuff! Such things are null. They vex the ear a little, but they never reach the mind."
Ashmead was wroth, and could hardly contain himself; but the Klosking was amused, and rather pleased. "Mademoiselle has positive tastes in music," said she; "all the better."
"Yes," said the spinster, "most music is mere noise. I hate and despise forty-nine compositions out of fifty; but the fiftieth I adore. Give me something simple, with a little soul in it--if you can."
Ina Klosking looked at her, and observed her age and her dress, the latter old-fashioned. She said, quietly, "Will mademoiselle do me the honor to stand before me? I will sing her a trifle my mother taught me."
The spinster complied, and stood erect and stiff, with her arms folded. Ina fixed her deep eyes on her, playing a liquid prelude all the time, then swelled her chest and sung the old Venetian cauzonet, "Il pescatore de'll' onda." It is a small thing, but there is no limit to the genius of song. The Klosking sung this trifle with a voice so grand, sonorous, and sweet, and, above all, with such feeling, taste, and purity, that somehow she transported her hearers to Venetian waters, moonlit, and thrilled them to the heart, while the great glass chandelier kept ringing very audibly, so