Good Night, Mr. Holmes (20 page)

It must be borne in mind that Irene is the artist, the Bohemian, the free spirit. I have always been the mere chronicler. Yet over the course of our friendship I had altered many of the firmest prejudices of my sheltered upbringing, surprising myself at times—and even Irene.

Nothing, however, was to test my resolve and loyalty as did the long train of events that began in the wet and drear October of 1885.

The initial incident began innocuously enough. I shall never forget the transparent grey curtain of rain and fog buffeting our windows day after day. My shoes were seldom dry, though I faithfully deposited them by the fire each night. Typewriting assignments had been brisk. Irene’s and my paths were in a state of what she called “Transatlantic crossing.” We met only when each was bound in the opposite direction.

I was toasting my soggy stocking toes upon the fender late one Thursday afternoon when Irene came flying in the door, wearing the chill and damp like a cape. She could not doff her hat and gloves quickly enough, laying her indispensable muff so near the fire that the fur would have singed had I not rescued it.

“Let it burn! I’ve an opportunity that will permit me to buy a dozen muffs if I succeed.” She began pacing in excitement, struggling to untie a bundle of oversize papers she carried.

“You must dry your shoes at least,” I urged. “Sit down and have some Twinings—”

‘Damn tea! Damn shoes. I shall wear glass slippers from now on, Nell.”

Irene rushed to the piano stool and sat, pausing only to spin from side to side for a moment before facing the instrument and poising her hands over the keys.

“Are you mad, Irene?” I demanded, rising in consternation.

“No, merely wildly fortunate. Look at this! Music in the composer’s own hand. Listen!”

She laid some sheets of music on the stand and began picking out the notes. The first hesitant rhythms soon smoothed into a lively and varied melody.

“Quite nice. A country piece, is it not?”

“Absolutely correct, my dear Nell. But what country?” Irene asked over the music.

“Not ours? Well, then... Germany, I should think.”

“A very near guess. Read the lyrics.”

I came over as she broke off playing, then I donned my pince-nez. “What an odd language—virtually nothing but consonants. I should go quite mad if I had to type this routinely. It can’t be German, nor even Dutch.”

“It is
Bohemian”
Irene beamed at me in smug triumph, though I couldn’t fathom why.

“Bohemian? Who would write songs in Bohemian?”

“Mr. Antonin Dvořák, the noted Czech composer, that is who. And I shall sing them. Or one, at least”

“You don’t speak Bohemian.”

“It is not necessary to speak it, only to sing it.”

“How will you...
pronounce such unspeakable sounds?”

“I have transcribed a pronunciation guide with the aid of a visiting Czech violinist. By Sunday afternoon I must be letter-perfect. I perform at a concert honoring Mr. Dvořák at Henry Littleton’s home. It is more than an honor for me, it is an unparalleled opportunity.”

“Could they not have given you more notice? I would refuse such an imposition. How can you learn new music and a new language so quickly?”

“Practice,” Irene intoned in the same stern way she instructed hopeless little Sofia, her fingers rippling over the keys. “I hope you have employment tomorrow and Saturday, for I must be a quicker study than I have ever been. I will eat and sleep at this poor piano until Sunday noon.”

“I will not sleep at all then,” said I. “Can I do nothing to help you?”

“Can you sew?”

“Certainly I can... oh!” I sank to the arm of an easy chair. “I see. You must not only learn Czech and a new song by Sunday, but must have something splendid to wear for the occasion. I will try my best. What else may I do?”

Irene sang a long, lovely phrase in gibberish so thick her mouth seemed full of potatoes. “Only tell me I sound Bohemian-born.”

“My dear Irene, I would not know a Bohemian from a Fabian.”

With that I fled the premises to pursue errands in a larger and infinitely more comprehensible world.

By Sunday morning I felt that I knew more Bohemian than I had ever wished. Irene’s song was No. 4 in the Dvořák opuses, a peasant ditty titled “Kydžmne stará matka.” I cannot transcribe here the bizarre diacritical marks that littered the lyrics like so many dead flies. Irene said the phrase translated to “Songs My Mother Taught Me.” I would have accepted any translation as truth, including “Songs That Kept Me Awake.”

Still, Antonin Dvořák was not one to ridicule. The Czech composer had become something of a sensation in London over the past few years. I remembered reading that his opera,
The Spectre Bride,
had been well received, so I understood Irene’s enthusiasm for this Bohemian’s music. Dvořák’s favor could mean much to a young singer like herself, for the hidebound London operatic establishment forced an American abroad to pursue more out-of-the-way support.

Irene insisted that I accompany her to this private concert. I really would rather not have gone. I do not tolerate suspense well—and frankly feared that this time Irene had tackled a higher hurdle than even she could comfortably clear. I did not want to see her fail.

She had set me to stripping her best navy-blue moiré gown of its trim: serpents of flounces, frills and braid coiled at my feet as the abominable syllables of songs my mother distinctly had
not
taught me fell on my undefended ears. Small wonder that the vowel-ridden romance languages of French and Italian serve opera best; yet Irene slowly and surely endowed the unfortunate assemblage of consonants with dignity and even emotional appeal.

Despite her progress on the song, I despaired of finishing the gown in time. Irene dismissed my anxiety about new trims.

“We must improvise, Nell. When there is no time, we must improvise.”

On Sunday morning she ignored my eleventh-hour suggestions for trimming and decorated the gown with only white lace collar and cuffs. Despite the richness of the moiré and the fineness of the lace, she looked but one step above a well-dressed serving woman.

“Plain black suited Lillie Langtry quite well once, Nell,” she consoled me. “Navy is black’s first-cousin and Mr. Dvořák is a simple man; these are peasant songs, after all.”

So we went in a hansom cab as black as my expectations through the grey day to Mr. Littleton’s flat in Victoria Mansions. For once I unwittingly outshone Irene in a tea gown of pale beige Sicilienne trimmed in some of Whiteley’s amber velvet, which Irene had insisted I have for special occasions. The gown had elbow-length sleeves to which I was not accustomed and a narrow open neckline edged in a froth of lace.

Thus I was the peacock and Irene the wren for a change,  all of which—taken with the hasty circumstances of her appearance—made me exceedingly anxious.

Irene was expected and I was accepted as her friend. Mr. Littleton’s airy quarters were furnished with eighteenth-century antiques, including the piano. Many songs and singers made up the programme. I waited impatiently for the chitchat to cease, for guests like myself to be seated and the music to begin—or, in Irene’s case, to be faced.

Each unpronounceable song title was introduced. Each song was performed. All the other vocalists were men, and they preceded Irene. I waited, wringing the cords of my reticule, as tenor or baritone delivered song after song. The music was enchanting enough—quite different from our English country songs—but the tenors and baritones all sang with a stiff operatic zeal that ill-suited the simple subject matter, even when conveyed in the incomprehensible Bohemian words.

Disaster. That was the one English word that rang in my skull. I had a headache and my neck and forearms were cold, not being used to such exposure, although the other ladies present were equally revealed.

As I recognized the title called, Irene rose from the front row and stood sheltered in the grand piano’s inward curve. The accompanist awaited her nod. A silence from an audience bored to restlessness greeted her subdued appearance.

“At least we could have used the knotted fringe,” I moaned softly to myself. But it was too late to trim her gown, the day, the opportunity. All was lost.

Irene nodded to the man at the piano, lifted her chin and began singing. She did not use full power, but her dark contralto ranged lightly through the melody. The restraint added a poignancy I felt even through the alien words.

As for the gown—Irene had chosen impeccably. The white collar and cuffs drew all eyes to her expressive face and hands; the navy blue moiré gown acted as a dramatically dark curtain against which her pale hands pantomimed emotions that needed no translation.

Because she was the last to perform, daylight was receding. The room darkened around her while the candles’ mellow glow waxed warmer, flickering on her face almost in time to the dusky, cello-sweet sounds swelling from her throat.

The song had ended for several seconds before the audience accepted that finality. Applause burst forth like thunder. I was on my feet for joy, laughing and clapping and crying—and so were those around me.

Irene nodded once, casting her eyes down, and slipped back to her seat. I rushed toward her but was anticipated by a short, stout gentleman.

“Beauty-ful, beauty-ful,” he was murmuring, shaking her hand up and down like a pump handle, his eyes unabashedly bright with tears. “When I hear you at the Savoy I thought you might suit for this song. I prefer usually the tenor or the baritone. Nothing kills song so much as a wobbly contralto who must—the Italians say how?— use too much
portamento,
you understand?”

“Si,”
Irene answered quickly in Italian, with an unusually modest smile. “Too much gliding from note to note, rather than letting each syllable and tone speak for itself. Was my Bohemian passable, Mr. Dvořák?”

“Passable? This means...?” The composer looked around.

“Acceptable,” another gentleman supplied.

“Beauty-ful,” the composer trilled, waving his hand to dismiss Irene’s worries. “You will be only woman to sing my songs so long as Antonin Dvořák has say in the matter. We must talk more later. Adler,” he mused with narrowed eyes, “I know you are American. Adler is German, no?”

Irene retreated in a subtle way, as she did when anyone—including myself—inquired into her origins. “No,” she said, and said no more.

Mr. Dvořák patted her hand. “Does not matter. Something in the soul is Slavic. We are easily touched people. But only by quality. Now go I to other peoples, but unhappily.”

Waiting admirers quickly filled the gap the composer left. I toured the elegant rooms, contentedly eavesdropping on the praise being heaped on Irene’s voice, phrasing, demeanor and dress.

How could I have doubted, after all this time? Irene was the ultimate mistress of molding the world to her will. Having witnessed and shared in her various adventures, from the seamy matter of the drowned sailor, which remains a mystery to this day, to the glorious subjugation of a concert audience, I of all people should have known by now that Irene needed none of my worry.

Irene’s Dvořák recital was the first blast of the horns of change in our harmoniously orchestrated domestic lives. Our ordered life in London was never to be quite the same, although the great change itself was slow in coming.

The cold, wet weather of autumn had become the cold dry admonishment of winter before that day arrived. I had borrowed Irene’s muff to make my long omnibus journey to the Temple. Godfrey Norton had called upon me again for a bit of typewriting, as he did from time to time.

Irene had not regarded her muff with the same respect since that October day when she had arrived home with news of her command performance before Dvořák. It often lay about our rooms, abandoned like a no-longer-favorite pet. I had finally claimed it that morning, both for the practical warmth it lent and because I couldn’t bear to see an item once so necessary forgotten and tossed aside.

Mr. Norton had heard my step and was at the chamber door before I could knock.

“Come in, Miss Huxleigh, come in. A bitter wind blows through Fleet Street—why, what is the matter? Your face is rubbed raw from the cold!”

“The... wind, as you say. Quite bitter.”

“Indeed. Have a chair and a dish of tea.”

He had moved to larger chambers some months before, so I found myself installed in the sheltering arms of a leather wing chair in the inner sanctum with a piping cup presented to me shortly after.

The odor of peppermint tea wafting under my red nose undid me. I pulled a handkerchief from the recesses of the muff—Irene had long ago showed me its secret pockets—and buried my face in its unfurled folds.

“My dear Miss Huxleigh, what is the matter? You must tell me.”

“It’s the tea,” I sniffled openly and not too logically. “The very kind Irene bought me when she saved me from the urchin on the pavement, don’t you see? Peppermint.” Off I went into a most humiliating wail.

“No, I don’t see, but I think I’d better. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

I glanced with what I knew were very crimson eyes at Mr. Norton. I confess that his solicitude sat very pleasantly upon me, who was not used to gentlemen, handsome or other wise, taking any notice of me at all. Now I saw the sincerity behind it. I forgot completely that I had first met him in connection with a case of Irene’s. I was amazed to find myself regarding him as a friend.

“Irene has had another piece of great good fortune,” said I. “I learned of it just yesterday.” He stiffened slightly, as he always did at mention of Irene. “I must be weeping because I’m so happy for her.”

“Oh? Has she found herself another prominent client?”

“A prominent mentor.”

Mr. Norton’s face tightened. I knew he still regarded Irene with suspicion.

“Oh, no, nothing of that nature! It is her singing career. Mr. Antonin Dvořák, the composer, heard her sing in the autumn and was so enamored—taken—with her talent that he recommended her to the director of La Scala and Irene has been invited to become an understudy in Milan.” I paused before I should hiccough. “They need her immediately. She will study all the suitable major female roles; it will give her formidable versatility and I have no doubt she will be a
prima donna
one day.”