“It is always possible to learn when one likes,” said Wunsch. His words were peremptory, as usual, but his tone was mild, even confidential. “There is always a way. And if some day you are going to sing, it is necessary to know well the German language.”
Thea stooped over to pick a leaf of rosemary. How did Wunsch know that, when the very roses on her wall-paper had never heard it? “But am I going to?” she asked, still stooping.
“That is for you to say,” returned Wunsch coldly. “You would better marry some Jacob here and keep the house for him, may-be? That is as one desires.”
Thea flashed up at him a clear, laughing look. “No, I don’t want to do that. You know,” she brushed his coat sleeve quickly with her yellow head. “Only how can I learn anything here? It’s so far from Denver.”
Wunsch’s loose lower lip curled in amusement. Then, as if he suddenly remembered something, he spoke seriously. “Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing—desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little. It brought Columbus across the sea in a little boat, und so weiter.” Wunsch made a grimace, took his pupil’s hand and drew her toward the grape arbor. “Hereafter I will more speak to you in German. Now, sit down and I will teach you for your birthday that little song. Ask me the words you do not know already. Now: Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen.”
Thea memorized quickly because she had the power of listening intently. In a few moments she could repeat the eight lines for him. Wunsch nodded encouragingly and they went out of the arbor into the sunlight again. As they went up and down the gravel paths between the flowerbeds, the white and yellow butterflies kept darting before them, and the pigeons were washing their pink feet at the drip and crooning in their husky bass. Over and over again Wunsch made her say the lines to him. “You see it is nothing. If you learn a great many of the Lieder, you will know the German language already. Weiter, nun.” He would incline his head gravely and listen.
“Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen
Geh’ ich im Garten herum;
Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen,
Ich aber, ich wandte stumm.
“Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen
Und schau’n mitleidig mich an:
‘Sei unserer Schwester nicht böse,
Du trauriger, blasser Mann!’”
(In the soft-shining summer morning
I wandered the garden within.
The flowers they whispered and murmured,
But I, I wandered dumb.
The flowers they whisper and murmur,
And me with compassion they scan:
“Oh, be not harsh to our sister,
Thou sorrowful, death-pale man!”)
Wunsch had noticed before that when his pupil read anything in verse the character of her voice changed altogether; it was no longer the voice which spoke the speech of Moonstone. It was a soft, rich contralto, and she read quietly; the feeling was in the voice itself, not indicated by emphasis or change of pitch. She repeated the little verses musically, like a song, and the entreaty of the flowers was even softer than the rest, as the shy speech of flowers might be, and she ended with the voice suspended, almost with a rising inflection. It was a nature-voice, Wunsch told himself, breathed from the creature and apart from language, like the sound of the wind in the trees, or the murmur of water.
“What is it the flowers mean when they ask him not to be harsh to their sister, eh?” he asked, looking down at her curiously and wrinkling his dull red forehead.