Mrs. Harsanyi sat down on the piano chair. She spoke a little bitterly: “How can you be sure of that? She was, at least, the best you had. I thought you meant to have her play at your students’ recital next fall. I am sure she would have made an impression. I could have dressed her so that she would have been very striking. She had so much individuality.”
Harsanyi bent forward, looking at the floor. “Yes, I know. I shall miss her, of course.”
Mrs. Harsanyi looked at her husband’s fine head against the gray window. She had never felt deeper tenderness for him than she did at that moment. Her heart ached for him. “You will never get on, Andor,” she said mournfully.
Harsanyi sat motionless. “No, I shall never get on,” he repeated quietly. Suddenly he sprang up with that light movement she knew so well, and stood in the window, with folded arms. “But some day I shall be able to look her in the face and laugh because I did what I could for her. I believe in her. She will do nothing common. She is uncommon, in a common, common world. That is what I get out of it. It means more to me than if she played at my concert and brought me a dozen pupils. All this drudgery will kill me if once in a while I cannot hope something, for somebody! If I cannot sometimes see a bird fly and wave my hand to it.”
His tone was angry and injured. Mrs. Harsanyi understood that this was one of the times when his wife was a part of the drudgery, of the “common, common world.”
He had let something he cared for go, and he felt bitterly about whatever was left. The mood would pass, and he would be sorry. She knew him. It wounded her, of course, but that hurt was not new. It was as old as her love for him. She went out and left him alone.
VIII
One warm damp June night the Denver Express was speeding westward across the earthy-smelling plains of Iowa. The lights in the day-coach were turned low and the ventilators were open, admitting showers of soot and dust upon the occupants of the narrow green plush chairs which were tilted at various angles of discomfort. In each of these chairs some uncomfortable human being lay drawn up, or stretched out, or writhing from one position to another. There were tired men in rumpled shirts, their necks bare and their suspenders down; old women with their heads tied up in black handkerchiefs; bedraggled young women who went to sleep while they were nursing their babies and forgot to button up their dresses; dirty boys who added to the general discomfort by taking off their boots. The brakeman, when he came through at midnight, sniffed the heavy air disdainfully and looked up at the ventilators. As he glanced down the double rows of contorted figures, he saw one pair of eyes that were wide open and bright, a yellow head that was not overcome by the stupefying heat and smell in the car. “There’s a girl for you,” he thought as he stopped by Thea’s chair.
“Like to have the window up a little?” he asked.
Thea smiled up at him, not misunderstanding his friendliness. “The girl behind me is sick; she can’t stand a draft. What time is it, please?”