Landry was born, and spent the first fifteen years of his life, on a rocky Connecticut farm not far from Cos Cob. His father was an ignorant, violent man, a bungling2 farmer and a brutal3 husband. The farmhouse4, dilapidated and damp, stood in a hollow beside a marshy5 pond. Oliver had worked hard while he lived at home, although he was never clean or warm in winter and had wretched food all the year round. His spare, dry figure, his prominent larynx, and the peculiar6 red of his face and hands belonged to the choreboy he had never outgrown7. It was as if the farm, knowing he would escape from it as early as he could, had ground its mark on him deep. When he was fifteen Oliver ran away and went to live with his Catholic aunt, on Jane Street, whom his mother was never allowed to visit. The priest of St. Joseph’s Parish discovered that he had a voice.
Landry had an affection for the house on Jane Street, where he had first learned what cleanliness and order and courtesy were. When his aunt died he had the place done over, got an Irish housekeeper8, and lived there with a great many beautiful things he had collected. His living expenses were never large, but he could not restrain himself from buying graceful9 and useless objects. He was a collector for much the same reason that he was a Catholic, and he was a Catholic chiefly because his father used to sit in the kitchen and read aloud to his hired men disgusting “exposures” of the Roman Church, enjoying equally the hideous10 stories and the outrage11 to his wife’s feelings.
At first Landry bought books; then rugs, drawings, china. He had a beautiful collection of old French and Spanish fans. He kept them in an escritoire he had brought from Spain, but there were always a few of them lying about in his sitting-room12.
While Landry and his guest were waiting for the tea to be brought, Ottenburg took up one of these fans from the low marble mantel-shelf and opened it in the firelight. One side was painted with a pearly sky and floating clouds. On the other was a formal garden where an elegant shepherdess with a mask and crook13 was fleeing on high heels from a satin-coated shepherd.
“You ought not to keep these things about, like this, Oliver. The dust from your grate must get at them.”
“It does, but I get them to enjoy them, not to have them. They’re pleasant to glance at and to play with at odd times like this, when one is waiting for tea or something.”
Fred smiled. The idea of Landry stretched out before his fire playing with his fans, amused him. Mrs. McGinnis brought the tea and put it before the hearth14: old teacups that were velvety15 to the touch and a pot-bellied silver cream pitcher16 of an Early Georgian pattern, which was always brought, though Landry took rum.
Fred drank his tea walking about, examining Landry’s sumptuous17 writing-table in the alcove18 and the Boucher drawing in red chalk over the mantel. “I don’t see how you can stand this place without a heroine. It would give me a raging thirst for gallantries.”
Landry was helping19 himself to a second cup of tea. “Works quite the other way with me. It consoles me for the lack of her. It’s just feminine enough to be pleasant to return to. Not any more tea? Then sit down and play for me. I’m always playing for other people, and I never have a chance to sit here quietly and listen.”
Ottenburg opened the piano and began softly to boom forth20 the shadowy introduction to the opera they had just heard. “Will that do?” he asked jokingly. “I can’t seem to get it out of my head.”
“Oh, excellently! Thea told me it was quite wonderful, the way you can do Wagner scores on the piano. So few people can give one any idea of the music. Go ahead, as long as you like. I can smoke, too.” Landry flattened21 himself out on his cushions and abandoned himself to ease with the circumstance of one who has never grown quite accustomed to ease.
Ottenburg played on, as he happened to remember. He understood now why Thea wished him to hear her in “Rheingold.” It had been clear to him as soon as Fricka rose from sleep and looked out over the young world, stretching one white arm toward the new Götterburg shining on the heights. “Wotan! Gemahl! erwache!” She was pure Scandinavian, this Fricka: “Swedish summer”! he remembered old Mr. Nathanmeyer’s phrase. She had wished him to see her because she had a distinct kind of loveliness for this part, a shining beauty like the light of sunset on distant sails. She seemed to take on the look of immortal22 loveliness, the youth of the golden apples, the shining body and the shining mind. Fricka had been a jealous spouse23 to him for so long that he had forgot she meant wisdom before she meant domestic order, and that, in any event, she was always a goddess. The Fricka of that afternoon was so clear and sunny, so nobly conceived, that she made a whole atmosphere about herself and quite redeemed24 from shabbiness the helplessness and unscrupulousness of the gods. Her reproaches to Wotan were the pleadings of a tempered mind, a consistent sense of beauty. In the long silences of her part, her shining presence was a visible complement25 to the discussion of the orchestra. As the themes which were to help in weaving the drama to its end first came vaguely26 upon the ear, one saw their import and tendency in the face of this clearest-visioned of the gods.
In the scene between Fricka and Wotan, Ottenburg stopped. “I can’t seem to get the voices, in there.”
Landry chuckled27. “Don’t try. I know it well enough. I expect I’ve been over that with her a thousand times. I was playing for her almost every day when she was first working on it. When she begins with a part she’s hard to work with: so slow you’d think she was stupid if you didn’t know her. Of course she blames it all on her accompanist. It goes on like that for weeks sometimes. This did. She kept shaking her head and staring and looking gloomy. All at once, she got her line—it usually comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at all—and after that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice into it, it got more and more of that ‘gold’ quality that makes her Fricka so different.”
Fred began Fricka’s first aria28 again. “It’s certainly different. Curious how she does it. Such a beautiful idea, out of a part that’s always been so ungrateful. She’s a lovely thing, but she was never so beautiful as that, really. Nobody is.” He repeated the loveliest phrase. “How does she manage it, Landry? You’ve worked with her.”
Landry drew cherishingly on the last cigarette he meant to permit himself before singing. “Oh, it’s a question of a big personality—and all that goes with it. Brains, of course. Imagination, of course. But the important thing is that she was born full of color, with a rich personality. That’s a gift of the gods, like a fine nose. You have it, or you haven’t. Against it, intelligence and musicianship and habits of industry don’t count at all. Singers are a conventional race. When Thea was studying in Berlin the other girls were mortally afraid of her. She has a pretty rough hand with women, dull ones, and she could be rude, too! The girls used to call her die Wölfin.”
Fred thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the piano. “Of course, even a stupid woman could get effects with such machinery29: such a voice and body and face. But they couldn’t possibly belong to a stupid woman, could they?”
Landry shook his head. “It’s personality; that’s as near as you can come to it. That’s what constitutes real equipment. What she does is interesting because she does it. Even the things she discards are suggestive. I regret some of them. Her conceptions are colored in so many different ways. You’ve heard her Elizabeth? Wonderful, isn’t it? She was working on that part years ago when her mother was ill. I could see her anxiety and grief getting more and more into the part. The last act is heart-breaking. It’s as homely30 as a country prayer meeting: might be any lonely woman getting ready to die. It’s full of the thing every plain creature finds out for himself, but that never gets written down. It’s unconscious memory, maybe; inherited memory, like folk-music. I call it personality.”
Fred laughed, and turning to the piano began coaxing31 the Fricka music again. “Call it anything you like, my boy. I have a name for it myself, but I shan’t tell you.” He looked over his shoulder at Landry, stretched out by the fire. “You have a great time watching her, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes!” replied Landry simply. “I’m not interested in much that goes on in New York. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to dress.” He rose with a reluctant sigh. “Can I get you anything? Some whiskey?”
“Thank you, no. I’ll amuse myself here. I don’t often get a chance at a good piano when I’m away from home. You haven’t had this one long, have you? Action’s a bit stiff. I say,” he stopped Landry in the doorway32, “has Thea ever been down here?”
Landry turned back. “Yes. She came several times when I had erysipelas. I was a nice mess, with two nurses. She brought down some inside window-boxes, planted with crocuses and things. Very cheering, only I couldn’t see them or her.”
“Didn’t she like your place?”
“She thought she did, but I fancy it was a good deal cluttered33 up for her taste. I could hear her pacing about like something in a cage. She pushed the piano back against the wall and the chairs into corners, and she broke my amber34 elephant.” Landry took a yellow object some four inches high from one of his low bookcases. “You can see where his leg is glued on,—a souvenir. Yes, he’s lemon amber, very fine.”
Landry disappeared behind the curtains and in a moment Fred heard the wheeze35 of an atomizer. He put the amber elephant on the piano beside him and seemed to get a great deal of amusement out of the beast.
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1
metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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bungling
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| adj.笨拙的，粗劣的v.搞糟，完不成( bungle的现在分词 )；笨手笨脚地做；失败；完不成 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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7
outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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8
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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12
sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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13
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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velvety
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| adj. 像天鹅绒的, 轻软光滑的, 柔软的 | |
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pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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sumptuous
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| adj.豪华的，奢侈的，华丽的 | |
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alcove
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| n.凹室 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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spouse
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| n.配偶(指夫或妻) | |
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24
redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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complement
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| n.补足物，船上的定员；补语；vt.补充，补足 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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aria
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| n.独唱曲，咏叹调 | |
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29
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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31
coaxing
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的现在分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱；“锻炼”效应 | |
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32
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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33
cluttered
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| v.杂物，零乱的东西零乱vt.( clutter的过去式和过去分词 )；乱糟糟地堆满，把…弄得很乱；（以…） 塞满… | |
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34
amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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35
wheeze
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| n.喘息声，气喘声；v.喘息着说 | |
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