Our Little Girl/Chapter 1
I
ANOTHER CHAPTER ON EARS
For three months Dorothy did not differ radically from any other baby-and then Mrs. Loamford decided that the child was a Reitz rather than a Loamford. After that, you might have persuaded Mrs. Loamford that the circumstances and the doctor and the nurse attending her daughter's birth were commonplace enough. Perhaps you might have convinced her that Dorothy was formed and nourished like other infants. But there your arguments would have ended.
If you had said that Dorothy was a sweet child, a well-behaved child or even a normal child, Mrs. Loamford would have laughed in a superior way - it was the only in which she could laugh—and produced a book with padded covers. This volume was the work of Mrs. Loamford. It was, as she used to observe, written with her own hands. The name of the work was "Darling's Diary," and it was punched in gold letters into the silky pillows which protected the leaves.
The first page was ordinary, although you might have had some difficulty in persuading Mrs. Loamford of that. It proclaimed the tidings that there had been born at 137 West 88th Street, New York City to Chas. Sam'l Loamford and Martha Reitz Loamford a daughter, Dorothy Reitz Loamford, weight at birth, 6½ lbs., and recorded the names of Dr. Knight and Miss Haviland, the medical officiaries. Near the bottom of the page the anonymous compiler of the manual had left a space for "Mother's First Thoughts.” Mother had lost little time in setting down these first thoughts, which were noted in a post-Spencerian holograph: “My baby is here and it is a wonderful baby as all of us agree and give thanks that it is here. The doctor says it is a fine child and may it prove to be a blessing for all of us. Motherhood is a wonderful thing and I am so happy and proud that I cannot speak.”
Here the space became a trifle crowded and the remainder of the First Thought had to be wedged about the margins of the page.
“We shall have baby baptized Dorothy Reitz Loamford after my grandmother Dorothy and my family name Reitz and a prettier or more appropriate name could not be bestowed. Baby will be fed for the first time tomorrow God bless her little soul and may she grow up to be a blessing for all of us.”
On the back of this page was a crushed sliver of crocheting. This sheet bore the caption “Baby’s First Sock.”
The great discovery that Dorothy was an unusual girl seems to have been established in Baby’s Third Month.
“Uncle Elliott was here today and looked over baby and said ‘Yes, she is a typical Reitz.’ All ready I can see the Reitz look on baby’s face when she is smiling and when she is ill she looks a little like her father who is very happy and proud of her. I know that she will grow up to be an unusual woman and may I be spared to help her.”
It was on Baby’s First Anniversary that the field in which Dorothy was to achieve greatness was indicated.
“We had a little party in honor of baby today and it was a great event with all of her surviving grandparents present. She smiled at Grandma Reitz and Uncle Elliott. Uncle Elliott brought her a toy piano and she would not look at any of her other toys, only at the piano, and cried when we tried to take her away from it. Our Dorothy loves music, she would not be a Reitz if she did not. I am saving up a little sum so that our darling may take music lessons at an early age. Uncle Elliott says, ‘As the twig is bent, so the leaf will fall.’”
The presence of a hostile critic came to light a year later.
“Papa does not think that baby is musical. He is mistaken. One should not judge others by oneself. Baby is always happy when she plays her toy piano. She likes to have me sing to her and she can tell pieces of sheet music apart. Papa says she cries when he sings. I have a little joke on papa however because any one might cry when he sings.”
The matter was settled definitely in the following year. “Uncle Elliott has made baby and me very happy. He brought baby a fine new toy piano for her birthday, all the paint was off the old one and several keys broken. Baby was very happy and said “Thank you, Uncle Elly’ many times and could not be taken from her fine new gift. Uncle Elliott says baby has a wonderful ear for music, she is a little Mozart. Mozart, he says also had a wonderful ear for music when young.”
Professor Abendschein stepped into the pages of Darling’s Diary on her fifth birthday.
“We have found.a teacher for Dorothy, Professor Abendschein, he is highly recommended and most reasonable. He says she has a wonderful ear, which I have always maintained and that she will make a fine pianist. May she never lose her love for music. If I had practised when I was young I might have become a good performer but now my fingers are stiff and I have no time to practise but this will not be the case with Dorothy. She played ‘America’ with one finger today, and Professor Abendschein says there are many adults who cannot do that.
“Her teacher at school, Miss Prince, says that Dorothy is not so remarkable in some of her studies as in singing, she can hear her above everybody in the class when they all sing together every morning. She thinks Dorothy may have vocal talent, I hope so because I have always wanted to have a daughter who could sing and so give joy to many people, it is such a gift to be able to sing well!”
Why Darling’s Diary was discontinued after this entry cannot be told. Possibly Mrs. Loamford’s election to the Board of the Parents’ Association of Dorothy’s school may have curtailed her hours for biographical endeavor. Yet the hope expressed in the final installment was not in vain. Oddly enough, it was the death of Professor Abendschein that prompted Mrs. Loamford to make Dorothy a musician.
The Professor was a short, stout, blue-eyed German, with long white hair and an unkempt moustache that dropped about his mouth in a melancholy curve. His clientele was not large, for the Professor—the title had been bestowed on him by his students only—had little genius for self-advertisement, but his pupils were loyal. He brought with him an atmosphere of old-world coffee cups and an echo of conservatory days when he had been the companion of many a young artist whose fame since had become international. “Scharwenka played it so,” he would say when a student attempted his own version of the Polish Dance which was the Professor’s ponsasinorum, If the student played it like Scharwenka, concertos and concert études followed; if the student failed to realize the composer’s intention, lessons somehow terminated.
There were no other musical gods in the households which the Professor had visited. His instruction was a personal dispensation from a melodic deity. He had a rigid curriculum of exercises and display pieces which he set before every student. Every Abendschein pupil could perform his current “piece’”—as distinguished from the works of Czerny, Clementi and Kullak—to the satisfaction of his parents, who usually were summoned by the Professor when the pupil had acquired control of the “piece.” There was nothing beyond the “piece” save the next “piece.” Tommy Borge, who once had taken a few lessons from the Professor, but whose reluctance to practise scales and such matters had led to an amicable rupture, used to delight in describing Carl Abendschein as a “piece worker.” The Professor frowned on public performances of music which he had not taught.
“Play your piece,” he would say, “and play it well—as I have taught you. That is enough.”
The Professor never appeared in public as a virtuoso, although he carried with him a battered program of a concert of thirty years ago when he performed on the same platform with several men whose names now meant sold-out houses at Carnegie Hall. He did not pretend to be a great pianist, yet he managed somehow always to play a bit better than his most advanced pupil. His musical sphere was determined entirely by his routine of teaching material. When beginners asked about Debussy or Ravel, Abendschein would smile vaguely and say “we will come to that when you have mastered Kullak.” He was a paternal dictator in a tiny monarchy.
And when a wife of whose existence the Professor’s pupils had hardly been aware sent out little black-bordered notices announcing that the Professor had given his last lessons, Dorothy, like the rest of the Abendschein students, felt an intangible but distinct grief in the passing of this mild martinet of the keyboard. The Professor had taught his disciples something more than music; he had taught them to rely on him. Without him they hardly knew which way to turn.
A week after the Profesor had been buried, Mrs. Loamford considered the question of Dorothy’s musical future.
“Dorothy must continue her lessons,” she informed her husband. “You know how it is. Poor dear Professor used to tell us what Rubinstein said to him: ‘If I do not practise for a day I know it; if I do not practise for a week, the critics know it; if I do not practise for a month, everybody knows it.’”
Loamford looked at her quizzically. To the outsider this mysterious gaze connoted some cryptic knowledge; actually, it was the defensive gesture of a man who had long since learned that his only gesture was one of defence. He had found out who was boss around there without starting anything. Mrs. Loamford invariably started everything in the Loamford ménage.
“Dorothy is sixteen,” continued Mrs. Loamford. “We naust consider her career.”
Her husband nodded abstractedly.
“Poor dear Professor always considered her one of his most talented pupils,” she went on. “He said she had a real gift for music. He said she had a great ear.”
Loamford nodded again, a trifle more abstractedly. His wife spoke sharply.
“Aren’t you listening?” she demanded. I said Dorothy had a great ear.”
“'Ear, ’ear,” commented Loamford.
Mrs. Loamford took no retaliatory measures. She had become hardened to her husband’s habit of concocting puns when there was nothing to be said, and this pun had become almost traditional.
“Elliott is coming tonight,’ Mrs. Loamford resumed, “We must have his advice. As I see it, it’s a question of whether we shall find a new piano teacher for Dorothy or whether we shall have her take singing Iessons.”
“Do you really want her to take singing lessons?” inquired Loamford.
“How many times have I told you that?” demanded his wife. “She has a remarkable natural voice. There’s no use going over that again. And she’s at the right age to start studying seriously if she’s going to get anywhere.”
Loamford carefully shoved the ashes from his cigar and moved over to a little desk where he kept the family account books, over which he worked every night, although there was no necessity for these labors. During the day he was head accountant for the Cosmopolitan Bonding Company. His thoroughness, accuracy and originality had carried him far in his work, and his chief interest in life was figures—unless one considered travel lectures an interest in life. Whenever domestic discussions reached a point where he could contribute less than usual he would retreat to his little desk in the parlor and begin to check up the grocer’s book with a small, miraculously sharp pencil.
“Oh, well,” concluded Mrs. Loamford, “I suppose it’s no use trying to tell you anything. If I were Dorothy’s father, I’d show some interest in my daughter’s career!”
“But you’re not,” murmured Loamford, turning about with a mirthless grin, and sniffing a bit as was his custom whenever he thought he had made a singularly felicitous retort. At such moments he looked not unlike a highly intelligent horse.
"No, but you are!" cried Mrs. Loamford triumphantly. The flutter of pages at the desk indicated a victory for Mrs. Loamford. They fluttered frequently of nights.
"I don't see why Dorothy shouldn't be a great singer," Mrs. Loamford resumed, partly for her husband's benefit and more for her own satisfaction. "I've been reading of this new singer at the Metropolitan who was known once as the girl who had no voice. Now they say she gets two thousand dollars a night and everybody raves about her. It shows what you can do with good instruction and will power. Dorothy has will power. Look at the way she passed her history after flunking it twice. And she has a voice. There's no reason why she shouldn't become a really great singer. All she needs is a little encouragement. I've often said that many geniuses never are recognized because their parents don't help them out. It's the duty of a parent to do everything possible for her child. We go about making a great hullabaloo about foreigners and when we have a genius right in our very home we don't even notice it. It's the system that's at fault. It's time we begin to recognize-"
Here the bell rang.
"Elliott's here," announced Loamford.
A puff of cigarette smoke preceded the entrance of Elliott Reitz. It was to her brother that Mrs. Loamford turned for satisfaction. He was one of the big men in the men's hats industry and he was famous as an executive. In the trade magazines he was known as "Brass Tacks" Reitz and the only question involved was whether or his sister was prouder of the nickname. He was large, stout and aggressively bald.
“I’m so glad you came!” sighed Mrs. Loamford.
“Thanks,” said Elliott. “How are you, Loamford? Look a little thin. Ought to take up golf. Best tonic in the world.”
He stretched himself across a chair.
“What’s the argument tonight?”
His sister looked at him as to a judge of appeals.
“Don’t you think that Dorothy ought to take up singing?” she asked.
"Sure."
Mrs. Loamford turned to her husband, as who should say, “That settles it.”
“Singing,” asserted Mr. Reitz, although no one had solicited his opinion, “is a great art.”
He breathed heavily after this utterance, like the successful after-dinner speaker that he was.
“Tt’s something you can’t learn in a day—a week—a month—a year—two years,” he continued. “It takes talent, application, practice. It means that you’ve got a big job ahead of you and that you’ve got to tackle it with all the stuff that’s in you.”
“Dorothy has a beautiful voice,” interrupted Mrs. Loamford.
“Looking at it from my point of view,” continued her brother, “I should say that isn’t enough. She has a beautiful voice, you say. Very good. But will she make the most of it? Will she go in for singing the way a young man might go in for law, medicine, engineering? That’s the answer. To put it very plainly, has she got the guts?”
Loamford was always a bit annoyed at this question, which was his brother-in-law’s favorite.
“Dorothy has plenty of will power,” said Mrs. Loamford.
Loamford sniffed assent.
“Very good,” continued Mr. Reitz. “Now it isn’t enough to have her taught to sing in good shape. She’s got to be prepared to face the world as a singer. She can’t go in for social foolishness or any lahdeda stuff. She’s got a big job cut out for her. Can she make good? That’s what you want to ask!”
“She will succeed!” insisted his sister. “She must succeed!”
“Good enough,” went on the speaker. “It costs money to put any proposition on the market. Now, look at those green hats everybody’s wearing this spring. Do you see any other color hat on a fashionably dressed man? You do not! Green has caught on. It looks like a natural enough thing, doesn’t it? Well, believe me, it took a long sales campaign to sell green to the men. Green’s a pretty color. All right. But you’ve got to convince the public of that. You’ve got to make em want green hats. We did it. But it cost us a damn big lot of money to make ’em want green.
“Now it’s the same way with everything else. It’s all right to talk about art. There’s an art to designing hats, too, but that isn’t what keeps the hat business going. It’s salesmanship. If Dorothy’s going to be a singer it won’t do just to let her sing. You’ve got to build her up into a big thing. I don’t say it'll cost as much as it would to put over a new style hat. I guess you can afford it if you keep her from getting any freak ideas. But it’s no use looking at it as an artistic matter only. Put the proposition this way: Has she got the goods and can she deliver ’em?”
He paused and drew a cigarette from a heavily embossed silver case.
“I’m not so much interested in the professional side of it,” Loamford began.
Reitz shut the cigarette case with a loud snap. In fact, he had produced it so that he could close it that way.
"In my business," he said, "we don't do things just to do them. Make no mistake about that. We do things to fill a demand. If the demand isn't there, we make it. The point is that goods have to serve a purpose or they’re no use. Now, if Dorothy’s going to have hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of singing lessons just to show off for company, you’d be doing better investing that money in dresses and shoes and stockings so that she can make a showing when she goes out with the boys. Don’t get me wrong on this. I’m not suggesting that you should look at your daughter as a business proposition. But what I’ve always said is just this: If a thing’s worth doing at all it’s worth doing up to the hilt. You don’t want Dorothy to be just a girl who sings. You want her to be one of the best singers going. No two ways about that!”
“No two ways about that” meant that the argument was concluded, that rebuttal was in order, and that rebuttal wasn’t possible.
“I’m so glad you look at it so sensibly, Elliott,” Mrs. Loamford acquiesced.
“It’s the only way to look at it!" snapped Reitz. “Isn’t it, Loamford?”
He swung around suddenly at his brother-in-law.
“I’m not saying,” remarked Loamford. “Whatever is best for Dorothy, of course"
“Well, if you’re going to make her a singer,” announced Reitz, “make her a singer!”
He opened and shut the cigarette case again. He jerked his head forward sharply, placed his hands on his hips as though awaiting a question, and then settled back in the chair and crossed his knees with the air of a man who had just consummated a fifteen-million-dollar merger.
Loamford carefully closed the account books, tucked his pencil away discreetly and rose neatly from his desk.
“Now that you have settled the future for the tenth time this year,” he said, “you'll excuse me if I go to bed.”
He extracted a small penknife and trimmed off the ragged end of a half-burned cigar. He placed the cigar on a smoking-stand, switched off the light over the desk and moved down the hall to the bedroom.
“Isn’t it a pity,” observed Mrs. Loamford, “that Samuel has so little interest in Dorothy’s career?”
“It’s just as good,” retorted her brother. “A boy who’s tied to his mother’s apron strings never gets anywhere. And, believe me, a girl that hangs on to her father’s coat-tails too long is in the same boat. She hasn’t any more chance than a snowball in hell. Mark my words!”