Thea glanced questioningly at Ottenburg. He smiled and bowed, seemed perfectly satisfied. He asked her to stand in the elbow of the piano, in front of him, instead of behind him as she had been taught to do.
“Yes,” said the hostess with feeling. “That other position is barbarous.”
Thea sang an aria from ‘Gioconda,’ some songs by Schumann which she had studied with Harsanyi, and the “Tak for Dit Råd,” which Ottenburg liked.
“That you must do again,” he declared when they finished this song. “You did it much better the other day. You accented it more, like a dance or a galop. How did you do it?”
Thea laughed, glancing sidewise at Mrs. Nathanmeyer. “You want it rough-house, do you? Bowers likes me to sing it more seriously, but it always makes me think about a story my grandmother used to tell.”
Fred pointed to the chair behind her. “Won’t you rest a moment and tell us about it? I thought you had some notion about it when you first sang it for me.”
Thea sat down. “In Norway my grandmother knew a girl who was awfully in love with a young fellow. She went into service on a big dairy farm to make enough money for her outfit. They were married at Christmastime, and everybody was glad, because they’d been sighing around about each other for so long. That very summer, the day before St. John’s Day, her husband caught her carrying on with another farm-hand. The next night all the farm people had a bonfire and a big dance up on the mountain, and everybody was dancing and singing. I guess they were all a little drunk, for they got to seeing how near they could make the girls dance to the edge of the cliff. Ole—he was the girl’s husband—seemed the jolliest and the drunkest of anybody. He danced his wife nearer and nearer the edge of the rock, and his wife began to scream so that the others stopped dancing and the music stopped; but Ole went right on singing, and he danced her over the edge of the cliff and they fell hundreds of feet and were all smashed to pieces.”
Ottenburg turned back to the piano. “That’s the idea! Now, come Miss Thea. Let it go!”
Thea took her place. She laughed and drew herself up out of her corsets, threw her shoulders high and let them drop again. She had never sung in a low dress before, and she found it comfortable. Ottenburg jerked his head and they began the song. The accompaniment sounded more than ever like the thumping and scraping of heavy feet.
When they stopped, they heard a sympathetic tapping at the end of the room. Old Mr. Nathanmeyer had come to the door and was sitting back in the shadow, just inside the library, applauding with his cane. Thea threw him a bright smile. He continued to sit there, his slippered foot on a low chair, his cane between his fingers, and she glanced at him from time to time. The doorway made a frame for him, and he looked like a man in a picture, with the long, shadowy room behind him.