Star-Dust

Fannie Hurst

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• Publié par: chowyong
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Star-Dust, by
Fannie Hurst
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Title: Star-DustAuthor: Fannie Hurst
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9858]
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Edition: 10
Language: English
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[Illustration: "HER BLOOD WAS POUNDING AND
HER VOICE WAS IN FLIGHT"]
STAR-DUST
A Story of an American Girl
BY FANNIE HURST
1921Book One
THE VINE
Oh, the little more and how much it is:
And the little less, and what worlds away.
—BROWNING.
[Greek: Zoae]CHAPTER I
When Lilly Becker eked out with one hand that
most indomitable of pianoforte selections,
Rubinstein's "Melody in F," her young mind had a
habit of transcending itself into some such illusory
realm as this: Springtime seen lacily through a
phantasmagoria of song. A very floral sward.
Fountains that tossed up coloratura bubbles of
sheerest aria and a sort of Greek frieze of youth
attitudinized toward herself.
This frieze was almost invariably composed of
Estelle Foote, a successful rival in a class
candidacy for the sponge-and-basin monitorship;
Sydney Prothero, infallible of spitball aim; Miss
Lare with her spectacles very low on her nose and
a powdering of chalk dust down her black alpaca;
Flora Kemble with infinitely fewer friendship
bangles on her silver link bracelet; Roy Kemble,
kissing her yellow, rather than yanking her brown,
braids.
And then suddenly, apropos of nothing except the
sweet ache of Lilly's little soul, the second
movement would freeze itself into a proscenium
arch of music, herself, like a stalagmite, its slim
center.
At this point, "Melody in F" veils itself in a mist of
arpeggios, and Mrs. Becker, who invariably, during
the after-school practice hour, sat upstairs withMrs. Kemble in her sunny second-story back,
would call down through the purposely opened floor
register.
"Lilly, not so fast on that part."
"Yes'm."
Were it not that the salient spots, the platform
places in experience, are floored over in little more
or less identical mosaics of all the commonplace
day by days, Lilly Becker, at the rented-by-the-
month piano in her parents' back parlor in Mrs.
Schum's boarding house, her two chestnut braids
rather precociously long and thick down her back,
her mother rocking rhythmically overhead, were
spurious to this narrative.
Yet how much more potently than by the mere
exposition of it and because you have looked in on
the nine-year-old chemistry of a vocal and blond
dream in the dreaming, are you to know the Lilly of
seventeen, who secretly and unsuccessfully
washed her hair in a solution of peroxide, and at
eighteen, through the patent device of a
megaphone inserted through a plate-glass window,
was singing to—But anon.
There was a game Lilly used to play on the front
stairs of Mrs. Schum's boarding house, winter
evenings after dinner. She and Lester Eli, who, at
seventeen, was to drown in a pleasure canoe;
Snow Horton—clandestinely present—daughter of
a neighborhood dentist and forbidden to play with
the "boarding-house children"; Flora and Roythe "boarding-house children"; Flora and Roy
Kemble, twins; and little Harry Calvert, who would
creep up like a dirty little white mouse from the
basement kitchen.
"C"—hissed sibilantly.
"Can't carry cranky cats!"
"No fair, Snow; that doesn't make sense."
"Does."
"Your turn, Roy."
"Z."
"No fair. Nothing begins with 'Z.'"
LILLY: "Does so. Z! Z—zounds—zippy—zingorella
—zoe! Zoe!"
By similar strain of alliterative classification, Mrs.
Schum's boarding house might have been indexed
as Middle West, middle class, medium price, and
meager of meal.
Poor, callous-footed Mrs. Schum, with her spotted
bombazine bosom and her loosely anchored knob
of gray hair! She was the color of cold dish water
at that horrid moment when the grease begins to
float, her hands were corroded with it, and her
smile somehow could catch you by the
heartstrings, which smiles have no right to do. How
patiently and how drearily she padded throughthese early years of Lilly's existence. There were
rubber insets in her shoes which sagged so that
her ankles seemed actually to touch the floor from
the climbing upstairs and downstairs on her
missionary treadmill of the cracked slop jar; the fly
in the milk; the too-tepid shaving water; the
bathroom monopoly; the infant cacophony of
midnight colic; salt on the sleety sidewalk, the
pasted handkerchief against a front window pane;
ice water. Towels. Towels. Towels.
And how saucily after school would Lilly plant
herself down in the subterranean depths of the
kitchen.
"Mrs. Schum, mamma says to give me a piece of
bread and butter."
With her worried eyes Mrs. Schum would smile and
invariably hand out a thick slice, thinly buttered.
"More butter, mamma said."
"That's plenty, dearie; too much isn't good for little
girls' complexions."
"More but-ter!"
"Here, then."
Scalloping the air with it before little Harry's meek
eyes: "You can't have any. You don't pay board.
We do!"
"My Mamma-Annie she paid board once. Uh-huh!my Mamma-Annie she's an angel in heaven and
you aren't. Uh-huh!" This from little Harry, who was
far too pale and wore furiously stained blouses.
"But your mamma-Annie's dead now. You can't be
a real live angel without being dead first, and I'd
rather be me."
"Lilly, aren't you ashamed? You run on now, or I'll
tell your mamma. Poor little Harry can't help it he's
an orphan with only his old gramaw to look after
him. You a great big girl with your mother and
father to do for you. It's not nice to be against
Harry."
"Well, what was I saying so much, Mrs. Schum?
Can I help it he says she's an angel? Here, Harry,
you can have it. Mamma's got a whole basket of
apples in the closet and a dozen oranges. Honest,
take it, I'm not hungry."
He would mouth into it, round eyes gazing at her
above the rim of crust.
There were times again when Lilly would bare her
teeth and crunch them in a paroxysm of rage and
tyranny over little Harry. She would delight in
making herself terrible to him, pinch and tower over
the huddle of him with her hands hooked inward
like talons. His meekness hurt her to frenzy, and
because she was ashamed of tears she clawed.
"Oh, you! You! You just make me feel like—I don't
know what.""Ouch! Lilly, you pinch!"
"Well, then, don't always hold your head off to one
side like somebody was going to hit you. I hate it. It
makes me feel like wanting to hit you."
"I won't."
"You aren't such a goody-goody. You steal. You
stole some balls of twine my papa brought home
from his factory. Mamma says you got it behind
your ears."
"I haven't anything behind my ears."
"Oh, silly! Everything isn't there just because you
say it's there. If I close my eyes just a little eeny, I
can see birds and fountains and a beautiful stage,
and me with my hair all gold, and a blue satin train
that kicks back when I walk, and all the music in
the world winding around me like—like everything
—like smoke. But it isn't truly there, silly, except
inside of me."
"Haw."
"I'm going to be the beautifulest singer in the world
some day, with a voice that goes as high as
anything, and be on the stage, and you can't even
be on it with me."
"'N' I'm going to work in a butcher shop and give
gramaw all the meat she wants without even
putting it down in the book."