Big Timber Part 18

"You let out a link or two on those high notes just the same, whether you knew you were doing it or not," her brother returned impatiently.

"Go on. Turn yourself loose. Sing that song."

"Oh, I couldn't," Stella said ruefully. "I haven't tried for so long.

It's no use. My voice always cracks, and I want to cry."

"Crack fiddlesticks!" Benton retorted. "I know what it used to be.

Believe me, it sounded natural, even if you were just lilting. Here."

He came over to the piano and playfully edged her off the stool.

"I'm pretty rusty," he said. "But I can fake what I can't play of this.

It's simple enough. You stand up there and sing."

She only stood looking at him.

"Go on," he commanded. "I believe you can sing anything. You have to show me, if you can't."

Stella fingered the sheets reluctantly. Then she drew a deep breath and began.

It was not a difficult selection, merely a bit from a current light opera, with a closing pa.s.sage that ranged a trifle too high for the ordinary untrained voice to take with ease. Stella sang it effortlessly, the last high, trilling notes pouring out as sweet and clear as the carol of a lark. Benton struck the closing chord and looked up at her.

Fyfe leaned forward in his chair. Jack Junior, among his pillows on the floor, waved his arms, kicking and gurgling.

"You did pretty well on that," Charlie remarked complacently. "Now _sing_ something. Got any of your old pieces?"

"I wonder if I could?" Stella murmured. "I'm almost afraid to try."

She hurried away to some outlying part of the house, reappearing in a few minutes with a dog-eared bundle of sheets in her hand. From among these she selected three and set them on the rack.

Benton whistled when he glanced over the music.

"The Siren Song," he grunted. "What is it? something new? Lord, look at the scale. Looks like one of those screaming arias from the 'Flying Dutchman.' Some stunt."

"Marchand composed it for the express purpose of trying out voices,"

Stella said. "It _is_ a stunt."

"You'll have to play your own accompaniment," Charlie grinned. "That's too much for me."

"Oh, just so you give me a little support here and there," Stella told him. "I can't sing sitting on a piano stool."

Benton made a face at the music and struck the keys.

It seemed to Stella nothing short of a miracle. She had been mute so long. She had almost forgotten what a tragedy losing her voice had been.

And to find it again, to hear it ring like a trumpet. It did! It was too big for the room. She felt herself caught up in a triumphant ecstasy as she sang. She found herself blinking as the last note died away. Her brother twisted about on the piano stool, fumbling for a cigarette.

"And still they say they can't come back," he remarked at last. "Why, you're better than you ever were, Stella. You've got the old sweetness and flexibility that dad used to rave about. But your voice is bigger, somehow different. It gets under a man's skin."

She picked up the baby from the floor, began to play with him. She didn't want to talk. She wanted to think, to gloat over and hug to herself this miracle of her restored voice. She was very quiet, very much absorbed in her own reflections until it was time--very shortly--to put Jack Junior in his bed. That was a function she made wholly her own.

The nurse might greet his waking whimper in the morning and minister to his wants throughout the day, but Stella "tucked him in" his crib every night. And after the blue eyes were closed, she sat there, very still, thinking. In a detached way she was conscious of hearing Charlie leave.

Later, when she was sitting beside her dressing table brushing her hair, Fyfe came in. He perched himself on the foot rail of the bed, looking silently at her. She had long grown used to that. It was a familiar trick of his.

"How did it happen that you've never tried your voice lately?" he asked after a time.

"I gave it up long ago," she said. "Didn't I ever tell you that I used to sing and lost my voice?"

"No," he answered. "Charlie did just now. You rather took my breath away. It's wonderful. You'd be a sensation in opera."

"I might have been," she corrected. "That was one of my little dreams.

You don't know what a grief it was to me when I got over that throat trouble and found I couldn't sing. I used to try and try--and my voice would break every time. I lost all heart to try after a while. That was when I wanted to take up nursing, and they wouldn't let me. I haven't thought about singing for an age. I've crooned lullabies to Jacky without remembering that I once had volume enough to drown out an accompanist. Dad was awfully proud of my voice."

"You've reason to be proud of it now," Fyfe said slowly. "It's a voice in ten thousand. What are going to do with it?"

Stella drew the brush mechanically through her heavy hair. She had been asking herself that. What could she do? A long road and a hard one lay ahead of her or any other woman who essayed to make her voice the basis of a career. Over and above that she was not free to seek such a career.

Fyfe himself knew that, and it irritated her that he should ask such a question. She swung about on him.

"Nothing," she said a trifle tartly. "How can I? Granting that my voice is worth the trouble, would you like me to go and study in the East or abroad? Would you be willing to bear the expense of such an undertaking?

To have me leave Jack to nursemaids and you to your logs?"

"So that in the fullness of time I might secure a little reflected glory as the husband of Madame Fyfe, the famous soprano," he replied slowly.

"Well, I can't say that's a particularly pleasing prospect."

"Then why ask me what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back impatiently. "It'll be an a.s.set--like my looks--and--and--"

She dropped her face in her hands, choking back an involuntary sob. Fyfe crossed the room at a bound, put his arms around her.

"Stella, Stella!" he cried sharply. "Don't be a fool."

"D--don't be cross, Jack," she whispered. "Please. I'm sorry. I simply can't help it. You don't understand."

"Oh, don't I?" he said savagely. "I understand too well; that's the devil of it. But I suppose that's a woman's way,--to feed her soul with illusions, and let the realities go hang. Look here."

He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, facing him.

There was a fire in his eye, a hard shutting together of his lips that frightened her a little.

"Look here," he said roughly. "Take a brace, Stella. Do you realize what sort of a state of mind you're drifting into? You married me under more or less compulsion,--compulsion of circ.u.mstances,--and gradually you're beginning to get dissatisfied, to pity yourself. You'll precipitate things you maybe don't dream of now, if you keep on. d.a.m.n it, I didn't create the circ.u.mstances. I only showed you a way out. You took it. It satisfied you for a while; you can't deny it did. But it doesn't any more. You're nursing a lot of illusions, Stella, that are going to make your life full of misery."

"I'm not," she sobbed. "It's because I haven't any illusions that--that--Oh, what's the use of talking, Jack? I'm not complaining. I don't even know what gave me this black mood, just now. I suppose that queer miracle of my voice coming back upset me. I feel--well, as if I were a different person, somehow; as if I had forfeited any right to have it. Oh, it's silly, you'll say. But it's there. I can't help my feeling--or my lack of it."

Fyfe's face whitened a little. His hands dropped from her shoulders.

"Now you're talking to the point," he said quietly. "Especially that last. We've been married some little time now, and if anything, we're farther apart in the essentials of mating than we were at the beginning. You've committed yourself to an undertaking, yet more and more you encourage yourself to wish for the moon. If you don't stop dreaming and try real living, don't you see a lot of trouble ahead for yourself? It's simple. You're slowly hardening yourself against me, beginning to resent my being a factor in your life. It's only a matter of time, if you keep on, until your emotions center about some other man."

"Why do you talk like that?" she said bitterly. "Do you think I've got neither pride nor self-respect?"

"Yes. Both a-plenty," he answered. "But you're a woman, with a rather complex nature even for your s.e.x. If your heart and your head ever clash over anything like that, you'll be in perfect h.e.l.l until one or the other gets the upper hand. You're a thoroughbred, and high-strung as thoroughbreds are. It takes something besides three meals a day and plenty of good clothes to complete your existence. If I can't make it complete, some other man will make you think he can. Why don't you try?

Haven't I got any possibilities as a lover? Can't you throw a little halo of romance about me, for your own sake--if not for mine?"

He drew her up close to him, stroking tenderly the glossy brown hair that flowed about her shoulders.