“Your mother was a lady and a pretty woman to boot,” Horace said. “But the family trees all come by your father, and don’t you forget that, all the shrubbery. I remember how Mike O’Connor laughed one time when I said, ‘Two lions couchant, male and female created he them.’ You ought to ’a’ heard old Mike O’Connor roar to that. ‘But don’t you ever let any woman get a hold onto you,’ Mike O’Connor says. ‘Not a firm hold. She’ll make you roll a baby buggy, and what does a man look like a-rollen a baby buggy? You never saw a Irishman a-rollen a baby buggy,’ Mike says. ‘Think back,’ Mike says, ‘and see if ever you saw a Irishman rollen one of them things. Not a real God-knows Irishman. You never did. And you never will.’”
Horace called for more sugar for his last cup of coffee, and Theodosia searched the sideboard and the pantry. “I’m part Irish,” he said. “And I need more sugar.” When Siver was called he found a little in an unused sugar dish on a high shelf. Theodosia knew the indifferent economic plan of the house. Either Horace or Anthony paid the bills, as they had money by. It was Anthony who owned the house, his inheritance along with the farm, Linden Hill, which had now passed to other hands. There had been some talk between Anthony and Mr. Reed of a mortgage, and when Horace went to his rehearsal she looked for the word mortgage in a dictionary to find its meaning.
From beyond her playing, as a recitative, Albert and his declarations reached her continually. “I hope you’re keepen the count of the weeks,” he said. “Six weeks is what you’ve got to get ready in.” Her continual reply, spoken or unspoken, beat and throbbed with the pulse of the music as she advanced her lyric work and won praise from her master, “I want to play the fiddle to the end of the earth. I want to go to the end of music and look over the edge at what’s on the other side.”
She thought of Albert as strong and good. She knew the beauty of his vigorous body, clean as it was with health. On the hills beyond the town the laborers were burning the plant beds and making ready for the long growing year. From her chamber she saw the smoke arise and “They’re burning tobacco beds,” she said, her mind running over the fields in a swift going and over the earth as it lay away in shield-like masses that were brown now with the uses of winter. “He makes love like a tomcat,” her lips said suddenly once while she paused in her playing to tinker with a bad string. “Albert. He makes love like a tomcat.”
The music teacher had her changing moods; in her entrance her mood was stated, in her down-flung coat and her quick bowing; but her presence, whatever it was, would never crush her student’s zeal.
“What’s that? I want to do that,” Theodosia said. “I want to learn to do that. I intend to learn it. Give it to me for an exercise. It can’t get away from me. I will have it. I want it.”
“You will never do that in this world,” she said. “Your hand wasn’t made for that. You couldn’t do successive octaves, Miss. Don’t cry for the moon. Artificial harmonics will always be beyond you. It’s no great matter.”
They were laughing, speaking idly. “I want it. I want that passage inside my skin. It’ll liberate my soul. I must have a showy, idle, ornamental soul, full of ruffles and grill-work. I want that very passage. Oh, God, how I want it.”
She did not believe what the teacher said of her hand. Eventually she would grow to that playing, she thought, and she would surprise her master. “I will go to the end of everything, I’ll look over the edge of the last precipice of music,” she said inwardly. “I’ll look over the last precipice of music and say, ‘God!’ I’ll say ‘Where are you?’ I’ll climb all the musical stairs there are.”