The Black Cross Part 26

CHAPTER XV.

The stage of the Opera House was crowded with the chorus. It was ten o'clock in the morning, but the day was rainy and the light that came from the windows at the back of the proscenium was feeble and dim, and the House itself was quite dark. The seats stretched out bare and ghostly, row after row; and beyond a dark cavern seemed yawning, mysterious and empty, the sound of the voices echoing and resounding through s.p.a.ces of silence.

In the centre of the stage stood the Conductor, mounted on a small platform with his desk before him; and around him were the chorus, huddled and watchful as sheep about a shepherd. He was tapping the desk with his baton and calling out to them, and the voices had ceased.

"Meine Herren--meine Damen!" he cried, "How you sing! It is like the squealing of guinea-pigs--and the tenors are false! Mein Gott! Stick to the notes, gentlemen, and sing in the middle of the tone. There now, once more. Begin on the D."

Kapellmeister Ritter glanced over his chorus with a fierce, compelling motion of his baton. He was like a general, compact and trim of figure with a short, pointed beard, and hair also short that was swiftly turning to grey. The only thing that suggested the musician was the heaviness and swelling of his brows, and the delicacy of his hands and wrists, which were white, like a woman's, of an extraordinary suppleness and full of power; hands that were watched instinctively and obeyed. The eyes of the entire chorus were fixed on them now, gazing as if hypnotized, and hanging on every movement of his beat.

"Na--na!" he cried, "Was that F, I ask you? You bellow like bulls!

Again--again, I tell you! On the D and approach the note softly.

"Hist-st!--Pianissimo!"

He stamped his foot in vexation and the baton struck the desk sharply: "Again--the sopranos alone! Hist! Piano--piano I say! Potztausend!"

The chorus glanced at one another sheepishly and a flush crept over the faces of the sopranos. The Kapellmeister was in a bad mood to-day; nothing suited him, and he beat the desk as if he would have liked to strike them all and fling the baton at their heads.

"Sheep!" he said, "Oxen--cows! You have no temperament, no feeling--nothing--nothing! Where are your souls? Haven't you any souls? Don't you hear what I say? Piano! P-i-a-n-o! When I say piano, do I mean forte?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and his eyes flashed scornfully over the stage and the singers. "Now ladies, attention if you please! Look at me--keep your eyes on my baton! Now--piano!"

The voices of the sopranos rose softly.

"Crescendo!" They increased.

"Donnerwetter! May the devil take you! Crescendo, I say! Crescendo!

Do you need all day to make crescendo?" He shrieked at them; and then, in a tempest of rage, he flung the baton down and leaped from the platform.

"Enough!" he said, "My teeth are on edge; my ears burn! Sit down.--Is Fraulein Neumann here?"

A stout woman in a red blouse stepped timidly forward.

"Oh, you are, are you? Well, Madame, you haven't distinguished yourself so far; perhaps you will do better alone. Have you the score?"

"Yes, Herr Kapellmeister."

"Begin then."

The soprano took a long breath and her cheeks grew red like her blouse.

She watched the eyes of the leader, and there was a light in them that she mistrusted, a reddish glimmer that boded evil to any who crossed him.

She began tremulously.

"Stop."

She started again.

"Your voice quavers like a jews'-harp. What's the matter with you?"

"I don't know, Herr Kapellmeister, it was all right when I tried it this morning."

"Well, it's all wrong now."

The soprano bit her lips: "I am doing my best, Herr Kapellmeister," she said, "It is very difficult to take that high A without the orchestra."

Her tone was slightly defiant, but she dropped her eyes when he stared at her.

"Humph!" he said, "Very difficult! You expect the orchestra to cover your shake I suppose. Go home and study it, Madame. Siegfried would listen in vain for a bird if you were in the flies. He would never recognize that--pah!" He waved his hand:

"Where is the Fraulein who wanted her voice tried?" he said curtly, "If she is present she may come forward." He took out his watch and glanced at it. "The chorus may wait," he said, "Look at your scores meanwhile, meine Herren, meine Damen--and notice the marks!

"Ah, Madame."

A slim figure with a cloak about her shoulders, bareheaded, approached from the wings; her curls, cut short like a boy's, sparkled and gleamed. The Kapellmeister surveyed her coldly as she drew nearer, and then he turned and seated himself at the piano.

"Your voice," he said shortly, "Hm--what?"

"Soprano, Monsieur."

"We have enough sopranos--too many now! We don't know what to do with them all."

The girl shivered a little under the cloak.

"Oh!" she faltered, "Then you won't hear me?"

"I never said I wouldn't hear you, Madame; I simply warned you. If you were alto now--but for a soprano there is one chance in a thousand, unless--" He struck a chord on the piano.

The chorus sat very still. The trying of a new voice was always a diversion; it was more amusing to watch the grilling of a victim than to be scorched themselves; and the Kapellmeister in that mood--oh Je!

They smiled warily at one another behind their scores, and stared at the slight, girlish figure beside the pianoforte.

She was stooping a little as if near-sighted, looking over the shoulder of the Conductor at the music on the piano rack.

"Can you read at sight, Madame?"

"Yes," said Kaya.

"Have you ever seen this before?"

"I studied it--once."

"This?"

"I studied that too."

"So," he said, "Then you either have a voice, or you haven't, one or the other. Where did you study?"