Theodosia leaned over the instrument, her mind cool before these words, a sensation as of a keen blade cutting a cold path down her back near her spine. “Then I’ll make a new instrument,” her sad arrogance said. Determination yielded nothing before the words of her master. “I’ll not be stopped,” she said. “If this instrument can’t serve me.... I’m still here.”
At practice her mind turned continually to Conway, relating to him the curious limitations of musical machines, tools, implements, and retold to him her predicament in half-amused despair that yielded nothing. “We’re here,” she said, addressing Song, taking Conway with her as she walked impudently up to the face of Song. “They can remake the thing,” she said. “They must make a new kind.... You’re not done with us yet.”
The summer was passing. Mr. Reed called on Anthony again, sitting with him in the shade of the gallery, and after his departure Theodosia felt the renewed distress that had settled over her grandfather’s day. Ruth Robinson came but seldom now, or if she came she seemed vague, matter-of-fact, unlovely, preoccupied, ready to go soon after her coming. “Ours is a dull house now,” Theodosia thought, and she turned again to her grandfather’s need. She decided to stop her lessons for a time, for she was afraid that the bill would never be paid. She scarcely dared to give her distrust of her grandfather’s further ability to pay as a reason for her act, and so she asked for a vacation. She was in need of a rest, she said. She stressed her weariness and recalled that the summer had been very warm. Having established the season of vacation with the teacher, she said, “I will pay whatever is owed. You may send the bill to me.”
One or two students had applied to her for tuition, and presently another came, boys who were too immature in their talent to interest her own teacher, and she thought that after a little she might find a class of beginning students in the town. She practised many hours, relating her playing over and over to her devotion to Conway, glancing at his beautiful pictured face. “We’re here,” she said, addressing Song with her mind where the value of a phrase was tasted even before it was played and where harmonies were heard. She took delight in the lyric quality of the instrument and in her running fingers, and she had a pensive happiness in the running, singing parts she played, or she supplied a second-fiddle part in her thought, her ear leaning inwardly to listen. The whispers of the town came but faintly into her intense preoccupations. “I can’t be called upon to decide the paternity of Minnie Harter’s young one,” she said, addressing the town as she set her bow over the strings, a cruel saying, as she knew, as she commented upon all cruelty then with plucked wires. “Her lameness has set her apart,” the plucked strings said, “and her isolation has made her wanton.”
“A smart say-so,” her own lips replied to the last speaker. “It’s easy to summarize other people in their talents and ways. It’s all, likely, not so easy to Minnie Harter herself.” The dialogue continued.
The whispers of the town became less hushed. They began to penetrate her chamber or to meet her in her walks, to meet her in Frank’s diligent talk of other matters. The settled fact, accepted by the town, came accidentally upon her in her passing to and fro, came from Aunt Bet, from Siver’s shuffled tread and shifted glance, from Americy’s lowered eyelids. Horace brought the last bold word, the summary. Minnie Harter had called out a name in the hour of birth.
“I see by the papers that Conway was acquainted with Minnie,” Horace said. “Did you know Minnie, Dosia?”
“Oh, yes. At school, I knew her.”