She found him keen, alert, the personification of energy but as noncommittal as to his summer as the sphinx, annoyed at some of Thurley’s mistakes, a hint of nervousness at daring to bring her out so soon—in short, a taskmaster with scant time for jokes or confidences. Indeed, Thurley found herself snubbed by the entire family; they had their parties without her, explaining that she needed her time for study and preparation. Even Miss Clergy, who was refreshed from her summer, became a mild sort of “goader-on.” As the hour for her triumph drew near, she was irritable and impatient if Thurley wandered away for a walk, was five minutes late or said her headache prevented a lesson.
It was annoying to have a grownup, cynical world suddenly center its interest on Thurley, the wild-rose Thurley who had basked in the Old-World beauties, responding to French vivacity, “toning in,” as Collin said, to the mellowed charms of Spain and feeling at home directly upon reaching London. Thurley longed to tarry on in Europe a year, she had told Ernestine.
“It makes me feel unprepared; I see how very new and crude I am.” But Ernestine had planned their schedule without thought as to Thurley’s wishes, so on they went with Thurley learning how to travel and speak her French, to dress, to practise all the things the social secretary had labored to impart. She sent back impractical trifles to the inhabitants of the Fincherie, writing to Miss Clergy dutifully, and mentally writing whole volumes to Bliss Hobart yet seldom mentioning his name aloud.
So passed her summer. And after the weeks of preparation there came a reaction, a bored languor, indifference to her success. Dreams seemed dead and visions vanished; the girl Thurley who had exchanged love for a career was some one else; surely, she had never heard tell of her. At the present moment she was in a veritable squirrel cage, racing after what seemed unattainable fame; she had so many persons to suit, so many persons waited to hear and criticize her and yet there was only one person whom she really wished to please. He had told her quite forcibly,
“As soon as you are nicely launched, Thurley, I’ve a contralto from Argentine whom Baxter has in tow—stocky build and will have to bant, but she has an organlike voice and can do wonders in Wagner—only she’ll take time which, thank fortune, you did not.”
This Thurley took as a personal expression of relief and she went away more bored and numbed than ever, thoroughly insolent to all who crossed her path that day. Ernestine herself could not have achieved it better.
There was the introduction to the stage itself and her future associates. Thurley thanked heaven for blasé indifference at that time. She conducted herself at rehearsals with the poise of a diplomat and when she sang the impassioned love scene in the singing lesson of “The Barber of Seville” she almost laughed at the famous tenor who irritably accepted this rôle with a “so-great-nobody,” as he mockingly informed Thurley, rushing off to meet his last affinity and be properly comforted.
She began to see the truth of Lissa’s prophecy regarding the life of opera singers. Yet this anesthesia of indifference spared her harsh emotions or critical judgments. She was merely keeping her pledge, she told herself night after night when she was finally alone with her thoughts.
All of which won her the title of conceited and spoiled and certain to fail. Bliss Hobart saw her ruse and kept his own counsel; Miss Clergy thought it her eternal triumph over personal affection and whispered to Thurley of her satisfaction. And when the great night of nights came and Thurley, as unconcernedly as if she were at the old meeting house on a Sunday morning, stood and accepted curtain calls and baskets of flowers, trying not to remember the tenor’s repeated comment, “You so-great-nobody, you been drinking witches’ broth,”—Thurley knew she had succeeded. Her début was ended. Hereafter she was free to command her own life—life was really beginning for her anew, since it had temporarily stopped the day she left the Corners and these strange people had lived it for her in a vicarious fashion. Now that she had won fame—with the loss of love—she had won freedom and she was Thurley Precore, prima donna!
After the last act, when Thurley’s dressing-room was a buzz of animated conversation and the scent of the flowers almost sickish, when her new maid fluttered nervously about and Bliss Hobart came in to say, “I knew you would—so there’s nothing to exclaim about, is there?”—and all the sisters of the press clamored for “a word,” with others crowding about and looking properly animated and delighted, Miss Clergy whispered,