She tripped across the schoolroom and took her chosen paper from the bundle. She read the theatrical advertisements, the repertoire, and the criticisms, of which she understood but little. But it was about “those over there.” She needed a lengthy time to go the length of a column, following the words with one gracefully pointed finger. When she had finished reading she crossed the hall and knocked once more at the other door. “Well?” said the teacher. “Anything new happened in the city?”
“It’s only about—those over there—the old friends—” she would answer.
The schoolteacher looked after her, as she wandered home to her knitting. “Poor little creature!” he sighed. “She’s really quite excited about her dancing master—” It was the news of a new ballet, by a lately promoted master of the ballet, that had so excited her. Miss Holm knew the list of names by heart, and knew the names of every solo dance. “We went to school together,” she would say.
And on the evening when the ballet was performed for the first time she fevered with excitement, as if she were to dance in it herself. She lit the two candles, gray with age and dust, that stood one on each side of a plaster cast of Thorwaldsen’s Christ on the bureau, and sat down on her champagne basket, staring into the light. But she couldn’t bear to be alone that evening. All the old unrest of theatrical life came over her. She went into the room where the smith and his wife were, and sat down beside the tall clock. She talked more during the next hour than she had talked for a whole year. She talked about the theatre and about first nights; she talked about the big “solos” and the famous “pas.” She hummed and she swayed in her chair while she talked.
The novelty of it all so excited the smith that he began to sing an old cavalry song, and finally called out: “Mother, shan’t we have a punch to-night?”
The punch was brewed, the two candles brought out from the little room, and they sat there and chatted merrily. But in the midst of all the gaiety, Miss Holm grew suddenly silent, and sat still, great tears welling up in her eyes. Then she rose quietly and went to her room. In there she sat down on her basket and wept quietly and bitterly, before she undressed and went to bed. She did not practise her steps that evening. She could think of but one thing. He had gone to school with her.
She lay sobbing gently in the darkness. Her head moved uneasily on the pillow as the remembered voice of the old dancing master of the school rang in her ears, cross and excited: “Holm has no élan—Holm has no élan—” He cried it out for all the hall to hear. How plainly she could hear it now—how plainly she could see the great bare hall—the long rows of figurantes practising their steps—she herself leaning for a moment against the wall with the feeling as if her tired limbs had been cut off from her body altogether—and then the voice of the dancing master: “Haven’t you any ambition, Holm?”
Then she saw her little home, her mother shrunken down into the great armchair, her sister bending over the rattling sewing-machine. And she heard her mother ask, in her asthmatic voice: “Didn’t Anna Stein dance a solo?”—“Yes, mother.”—“Did they give her 'la grande Napolitaine’?”—“Yes, mother.”—“You both entered the school at the same time,” she asked, looking over at her from behind the lamp.
“Yes, mother.” And she saw Anna Stein in her gay-colored skirts, with the fluttering ribbons on her tambourine, so happy and smiling in the glare of the footlights as she danced her solo.
And suddenly the little woman in the darkness buried her head in her pillow and sobbed convulsive, heart-breaking, unchecked sobs of impotent and despairing grief. It was dawn before she fell asleep.