Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/484

 pearl in his black ascot. His hair was longer and more bushy than he used to wear it, and there was now one gray lock on the right side. He had always been an elegant figure, even when he went about in shabby clothes and was crushed with work. Before the curtain rose he was restless and nervous, and kept looking at his watch and wishing he had got a few more letters off before he left his hotel. He had not been in New York since the advent of the taxicab, and had allowed himself too much time. His wife knew that he was afraid of being disappointed this afternoon. He did not often go to the opera because the stupid things that singers did vexed him so, and it always put him in a rage if the conductor held the tempo or in any way accommodated the score to the singer.

When the lights went out and the violins began to quaver their long D against the rude figure of the basses, Mrs. Harsanyi saw her husband's fingers fluttering on his knee in a rapid tattoo. At the moment when Sieglinde entered from the side door, she leaned toward him and whispered in his ear, "Oh, the lovely creature!" But he made no response, either by voice or gesture. Throughout the first scene he sat sunk in his chair, his head forward and his one yellow eye rolling restlessly and shining like a tiger's in the dark. His eye followed Sieglinde about the stage like a satellite, and as she sat at the table listening to Siegmund's long narrative, it never left her. When she prepared the sleeping draught and disappeared after Hunding, Harsanyi bowed his head still lower and put his hand over his eye to rest it. The tenor,—a young man who sang with great vigor, went on:

Harsanyi smiled, but he did not look forth again until Sieglinde reappeared. She went through the story of her shameful bridal feast and into the Walhall' music, which