“That you, Archie? Won’t you come up? I’m having some supper and I’d like company. Late? What does that matter? I won’t keep you long.”
Archie dropped his overcoat and set out for room 811. He found Ottenburg in the act of touching2 a match to a chafing-dish, at a table laid for two in his sitting-room3. “I’m catering4 here,” he announced cheerfully. “I let the waiter off at midnight, after he’d set me up. You’ll have to account for yourself, Archie.”
The doctor laughed, pointing to three wine-coolers under the table. “Are you expecting guests?”
“Yes, two.” Ottenburg held up two fingers,—“you, and my higher self. He’s a thirsty boy, and I don’t invite him often. He has been known to give me a headache. Now, where have you been, Archie, until this shocking hour?”
“Bah, you’ve been banting!” the doctor exclaimed, pulling out his white gloves as he searched for his handkerchief and throwing them into a chair. Ottenburg was in evening clothes and very pointed5 dress shoes. His white waistcoat, upon which the doctor had fixed6 a challenging eye, went down straight from the top button, and he wore a camelia. He was conspicuously8 brushed and trimmed and polished. His smoothly9 controlled excitement was wholly different from his usual easy cordiality, though he had his face, as well as his figure, well in hand. On the serving-table there was an empty champagne10 pint11 and a glass. He had been having a little starter, the doctor told himself, and would probably be running on high gear before he got through. There was even now an air of speed about him.
“Been, Freddy?”—the doctor at last took up his question. “I expect I’ve been exactly where you have. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming on?”
“I wasn’t, Archie.” Fred lifted the cover of the chafingdish and stirred the contents. He stood behind the table, holding the lid with his handkerchief. “I had never thought of such a thing. But Landry, a young chap who plays her accompaniments and who keeps an eye out for me, telegraphed me that Madame Rheinecker had gone to Atlantic City with a bad throat, and Thea might have a chance to sing Elsa. She has sung it only twice here before, and I missed it in Dresden. So I came on. I got in at four this afternoon and saw you registered, but I thought I wouldn’t butt7 in. How lucky you got here just when she was coming on for this. You couldn’t have hit a better time.” Ottenburg stirred the contents of the dish faster and put in more sherry. “And where have you been since twelve o’clock, may I ask?”
Archie looked rather self-conscious, as he sat down on a fragile gilt12 chair that rocked under him, and stretched out his long legs. “Well, if you’ll believe me, I had the brutality13 to go to see her. I wanted to identify her. Couldn’t wait.”
Ottenburg placed the cover quickly on the chafing-dish and took a step backward. “You did, old sport? My word! None but the brave deserve the fair. Well,”—he stooped to turn the wine,—“and how was she?”
“She seemed rather dazed, and pretty well used up. She seemed disappointed in herself, and said she hadn’t done herself justice in the balcony scene.”
“Well, if she didn’t, she’s not the first. Beastly stuff to sing right in there; lies just on the ‘break’ in the voice.” Fred pulled a bottle out of the ice and drew the cork14. Lifting his glass he looked meaningly at Archie. “You know who, doctor. Here goes!” He drank off his glass with a sigh of satisfaction. After he had turned the lamp low under the chafing-dish, he remained standing15, looking pensively16 down at the food on the table. “Well, she rather pulled it off! As a backer, you’re a winner, Archie. I congratulate you.” Fred poured himself another glass. “Now you must eat something, and so must I. Here, get off that bird cage and find a steady chair. This stuff ought to be rather good; head waiter’s suggestion. Smells all right.” He bent17 over the chafing-dish and began to serve the contents. “Perfectly innocuous: mushrooms and truffles and a little crab-meat. And now, on the level, Archie, how did it hit you?”
Archie turned a frank smile to his friend and shook his head. “It was all miles beyond me, of course, but it gave me a pulse. The general excitement got hold of me, I suppose. I like your wine, Freddy.” He put down his glass. “It goes to the spot to-night. She was all right, then? You weren’t disappointed?”
“Disappointed? My dear Archie, that’s the high voice we dream of; so pure and yet so virile18 and human. That combination hardly ever happens with sopranos.” Ottenburg sat down and turned to the doctor, speaking calmly and trying to dispel19 his friend’s manifest bewilderment. “You see, Archie, there’s the voice itself, so beautiful and individual, and then there’s something else; the thing in it which responds to every shade of thought and feeling, spontaneously, almost unconsciously. That color has to be born in a singer, it can’t be acquired; lots of beautiful voices haven’t a vestige20 of it. It’s almost like another gift—the rarest of all. The voice simply is the mind and is the heart. It can’t go wrong in interpretation21, because it has in it the thing that makes all interpretation. That’s why you feel so sure of her. After you’ve listened to her for an hour or so, you aren’t afraid of anything. All the little dreads22 you have with other artists vanish. You lean back and you say to yourself, ‘No, that voice will never betray.’ Treulich geführt, treulich bewacht.”
Archie looked envyingly at Fred’s excited, triumphant23 face. How satisfactory it must be, he thought, to really know what she was doing and not to have to take it on hearsay24. He took up his glass with a sigh. “I seem to need a good deal of cooling off to-night. I’d just as lief forget the Reform Party for once.
“Yes, Fred,” he went on seriously; “I thought it sounded very beautiful, and I thought she was very beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be as beautiful as that.”
“Wasn’t she? Every attitude a picture, and always the right kind of picture, full of that legendary25, supernatural thing she gets into it. I never heard the prayer sung like that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get an Elsa who can look through walls like that, and visions and Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess, that girl, after Lohengrin leaves her. She’s made to live with ideas and enthusiasms, not with a husband.” Fred folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and began to sing softly:—
“In lichter Waffen Scheine,
Ein Ritter nahte da.”
“Doesn’t she die, then, at the end?” the doctor asked guardedly.
Fred smiled, reaching under the table. “Some Elsas do; she didn’t. She left me with the distinct impression that she was just beginning. Now, doctor, here’s a cold one.” He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green glass, the cork gave and slipped out with a soft explosion. “And now we must have another toast. It’s up to you, this time.”
The doctor watched the agitation26 in his glass. “The same,” he said without lifting his eyes. “That’s good enough. I can’t raise you.”
Fred leaned forward, and looked sharply into his face. “That’s the point; how could you raise me? Once again!”
“Once again, and always the same!” The doctor put down his glass. “This doesn’t seem to produce any symptoms in me to-night.” He lit a cigar. “Seriously, Freddy, I wish I knew more about what she’s driving at. It makes me jealous, when you are so in it and I’m not.”
“In it?” Fred started up. “My God, haven’t you seen her this blessed night?—when she’d have kicked any other man down the elevator shaft27, if I know her. Leave me something; at least what I can pay my five bucks28 for.”
“Seems to me you get a good deal for your five bucks,” said Archie ruefully. “And that, after all, is what she cares about,—what people get.”
Fred lit a cigarette, took a puff29 or two, and then threw it away. He was lounging back in his chair, and his face was pale and drawn30 hard by that mood of intense concentration which lurks31 under the sunny shallows of the vineyard. In his voice there was a longer perspective than usual, a slight remoteness. “You see, Archie, it’s all very simple, a natural development. It’s exactly what Mahler said back there in the beginning, when she sang Woglinde. It’s the idea, the basic idea, pulsing behind every bar she sings. She simplifies a character down to the musical idea it’s built on, and makes everything conform to that. The people who chatter32 about her being a great actress don’t seem to get the notion of where she gets the notion. It all goes back to her original endowment, her tremendous musical talent. Instead of inventing a lot of business and expedients33 to suggest character, she knows the thing at the root, and lets the musical pattern take care of her. The score pours her into all those lovely postures34, makes the light and shadow go over her face, lifts her and drops her. She lies on it, the way she used to lie on the Rhine music. Talk about rhythm!”
The doctor frowned dubiously35 as a third bottle made its appearance above the cloth. “Aren’t you going in rather strong?”
Fred laughed. “No, I’m becoming too sober. You see this is breakfast now; kind of wedding breakfast. I feel rather weddingish. I don’t mind. You know,” he went on as the wine gurgled out, “I was thinking to-night when they sprung the wedding music, how any fool can have that stuff played over him when he walks up the aisle36 with some dough-faced little hussy who’s hooked him. But it isn’t every fellow who can see—well, what we saw tonight. There are compensations in life, Dr. Howard Archie, though they come in disguise. Did you notice her when she came down the stairs? Wonder where she gets that bright-and-morning star look? Carries to the last row of the family circle. I moved about all over the house. I’ll tell you a secret, Archie: that carrying power was one of the first things that put me wise. Noticed it down there in Arizona, in the open. That, I said, belongs only to the big ones.” Fred got up and began to move rhythmically37 about the room, his hands in his pockets. The doctor was astonished at his ease and steadiness, for there were slight lapses38 in his speech. “You see, Archie, Elsa isn’t a part that’s particularly suited to Thea’s voice at all, as I see her voice. It’s over-lyrical for her. She makes it, but there’s nothing in it that fits her like a glove, except, maybe, that long duet in the third act. There, of course,”—he held out his hands as if he were measuring something,—“we know exactly where we are. But wait until they give her a chance at something that lies properly in her voice, and you’ll see me rosier39 than I am to-night.”
Archie smoothed the tablecloth40 with his hand. “I am sure I don’t want to see you any rosier, Fred.”
Ottenburg threw back his head and laughed. “It’s enthusiasm, doctor. It’s not the wine. I’ve got as much inflated41 as this for a dozen trashy things: brewers’ dinners and political orgies. You, too, have your extravagances, Archie. And what I like best in you is this particular enthusiasm, which is not at all practical or sensible, which is downright Quixotic. You are not altogether what you seem, and you have your reservations. Living among the wolves, you have not become one. Lupibus vivendi non lupus sum.”
The doctor seemed embarrassed. “I was just thinking how tired she looked, plucked of all her fine feathers, while we get all the fun. Instead of sitting here carousing42, we ought to go solemnly to bed.”
“I get your idea.” Ottenburg crossed to the window and threw it open. “Fine night outside; a hag of a moon just setting. It begins to smell like morning. After all, Archie, think of the lonely and rather solemn hours we’ve spent waiting for all this, while she’s been—reveling.”
“I don’t mean this sort of thing.” Fred turned toward the light and stood with his back to the window. “That,” with a nod toward the wine-cooler, “is only a cheap imitation, that any poor stiff-fingered fool can buy and feel his shell grow thinner. But take it from me, no matter what she pays, or how much she may see fit to lie about it, the real, the master revel43 is hers.” He leaned back against the window sill and crossed his arms. “Anybody with all that voice and all that talent and all that beauty, has her hour. Her hour,” he went on deliberately45, “when she can say, ‘there it is, at last, wie im Traum ich—
“‘As in my dream I dreamed it,
As in my will it was.’”
He stood silent a moment, twisting the flower from his coat by the stem and staring at the blank wall with haggard abstraction. “Even I can say to-night, Archie,” he brought out slowly,
“‘As in my dream I dreamed it,
As in my will it was.’
Now, doctor, you may leave me. I’m beautifully drunk, but not with anything that ever grew in France.”
The doctor rose. Fred tossed his flower out of the window behind him and came toward the door. “I say,” he called, “have you a date with anybody?”
The doctor paused, his hand on the knob. “With Thea, you mean? Yes. I’m to go to her at four this afternoon—if you haven’t paralyzed me.”
“Well, you won’t eat me, will you, if I break in and send up my card? She’ll probably turn me down cold, but that won’t hurt my feelings. If she ducks me, you tell her for me, that to spite me now she’d have to cut off more than she can spare. Good-night, Archie.”
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收听单词发音
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1
scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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3
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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catering
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| n. 给养 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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8
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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15
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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virile
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| adj.男性的；有男性生殖力的；有男子气概的；强有力的 | |
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19
dispel
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| vt.驱走，驱散，消除 | |
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20
vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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21
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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22
dreads
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| n.恐惧，畏惧( dread的名词复数 )；令人恐惧的事物v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的第三人称单数 ) | |
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23
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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24
hearsay
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| n.谣传，风闻 | |
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legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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28
bucks
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| n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃 | |
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29
puff
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| n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气 | |
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30
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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31
lurks
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| n.潜在，潜伏；（lurk的复数形式）vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的第三人称单数形式） | |
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32
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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33
expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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postures
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| 姿势( posture的名词复数 )； 看法； 态度； 立场 | |
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dubiously
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| adv.可疑地，怀疑地 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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rhythmically
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| adv.有节奏地 | |
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38
lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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39
rosier
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| Rosieresite | |
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40
tablecloth
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| n.桌布，台布 | |
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41
inflated
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| adj.（价格）飞涨的；（通货）膨胀的；言过其实的；充了气的v.使充气（于轮胎、气球等）( inflate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）膨胀；（使）通货膨胀；物价上涨 | |
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42
carousing
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| v.痛饮，闹饮欢宴( carouse的现在分词 ) | |
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43
revel
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| vi.狂欢作乐，陶醉；n.作乐，狂欢 | |
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44
revels
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| n.作乐( revel的名词复数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉v.作乐( revel的第三人称单数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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45
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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