Hobart’s face was grave. “Some day, we will talk about things and I will tell my secrets—but not yet, you are too young and flushed with dreams.” He stopped speaking to the doll as he added, “You must tramp abroad with Ernestine this summer; Miss Clergy may go or not as she wishes. But when you return you are to start rehearsals for your début.”
Thurley looked at him for a long, glorious moment. After all, it had been worth the winter’s work and bewildering experiences. To make her début—would she ever forget the day in the stableyard of the Hotel Button when Dan engaged her to sing at his circus, rival to the “great swinging man”—and she had told him then that some day she was to sing before great audiences—maybe earning as much as a dollar a night!
“I’m not ready,” she began.
“You will be—stage directions, a good maid, a press agent, Santoza’s coaching and a little polishing here and there. I told you the first day you sang for me that God had taught you how to sing, man merely teaching you what.”
“Abroad—London—Paris—Spain—” Thurley began to whisper. “It’s true—isn’t it?—say that it is—,” dancing up to him, her eyes like stars.
“Don’t be too happy,” he suggested almost testily, “I can’t bear to see it!”
“Why not?” she was the aggrieved, wild-rose child speaking her mind regardless of the person who was listening. “Because you are not happy?”
“No, because you must find out sooner or later that each life is given so much happiness, pain, cowardice, bravery, all attributes and emotions, the same as we are physically endowed with so much eyesight, hearing, power of locomotion, and when you realize that and know that when you burn up all the joy and ecstasy of unthinking youth, there is nothing, nothing that can ever cause such joy to exist again or give one such an abandon of mirth—all the rest of life snails on in gray patterns—I’d like to have you save your joy for things more worth while than this, distribute it so it will last through the gray days, Thurley!”
Looking at him, Thurley saw that his face was a dangerous, shiny white as if he had been ill a long time and his eyes were deadish, burnt-out things.