Chapter 8

suddenly to attention. "Sing that again, little girl," he said.

Encouraged by his kind glance, Helen again sang the scale in her clear voice. A radiant look overspread Bear-Tone's big face.

"Wal, wal!" he cried. "But you've a voice, little one! Sing that with me."

Big voice and girl's voice blended and chorded.

"Ah, but you will make a singer, little one!" Bear-Tone exclaimed. "Now sing Woodland with me. Never mind notes, sing by ear."

A really beautiful volume of sound came through the window at which I listened. Bear-Tone and his new-found treasure sang The Star-Spangled Banner and several of the songs of the Civil War, then just ended--ballads still popular with us and fraught with touching memories: Tenting To-night on the Old Camp Ground, Dearest Love, Do You Remember? and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching. Bear-Tone's rich voice chorded beautifully with Helen's sweet, high notes.

As we were getting into the pung to go home after the meeting, and Helen and her older sister, Elizabeth, were setting off, Bear-Tone dashed out, bareheaded, with his big face beaming.

"Be sure you come again," he said to her, in a tone that was almost imploring. "You can sing! Oh, you can sing! I'll teach you! I'll teach you!"

The singing school that winter served chiefly as a pretty background for Bear-Tone's delight in Helen Thomas's voice, the interest he took in it, and the untiring efforts he made to teach her.

"One of the rarest of voices!" he said to the old Squire one night when he had come to the farmhouse on one of his frequent visits. "Not once will you find one in fifty years. It's a deep tribble. Why, Squire, that girl's voice is a discovery! And it will grow in her, Squire! It is just starting now, but by the time she's twenty-five it will come out wonderful."

The soprano of the particular quality that Bear-Tone called "deep tribble" is that sometimes called a "falcon" soprano, or dramatic soprano, in distinction from light soprano. It is better known and more enthusiastically appreciated by those proficient in music than by the general public. Bear-Tone, however, recognized it in his new pupil, as if from instinct.

The other pupils were somewhat neglected that winter; but no one complained, for it was such a pleasure to hear Bear-Tone and Helen sing. Many visitors came; and once the old Squire attended a meeting, in order to hear Bear-Tone's remarkable pupil. In Days of Old when Knights were Bold, dear old Juanita, and Roll on, Silver Moon, were some of their favorite songs, Still a "goat," and always a "goat," I am not capable of describing music; but school and visitors sat enchanted when Helen and Bear-Tone sang.

Helen's parents were opposed to having their daughter become a professional singer. They were willing that she should sing in church and at funerals, but not in opera. For a long time Bear-Tone labored to convince them that a voice like Helen's has a divine mission in the world, to please, to touch and to ennoble the hearts of the people.

At last he induced them to let him take Helen to Portland, in order that a well-known teacher there might hear her sing and give an opinion. Bear-Tone was to pay the expenses of the trip himself.

The city teacher was enthusiastic over the girl and urged that she be given opportunity for further study; but in view of the opposition at home that was not easily managed. But Bear-Tone would not be denied. He sacrificed the scanty earnings of a whole winter's round of singing schools in country school districts to send her to the city for a course of lessons.

The next year the question of her studying abroad came up. If Helen were to make the most of her voice, she must have it trained by masters in Italy and Paris. Her parents were unwilling to assist her to cross the ocean.

Bear-Tone was a poor man; his singing schools never brought him more than a few hundred dollars a year. He owned a little house in a neighboring village, where he kept "bachelor's hall"; he had a piano, a cabinet organ, a bugle, a guitar and several other musical instruments, including one fairly valuable old violin from which he was wont of an evening to produce wonderfully sweet, sad strains.

No one except the officials of the local savings bank knew how Bear-Tone raised the money for Helen Thomas's first trip abroad, but he did it. Long afterwards people learned that he had mortgaged everything he possessed, even the old violin, in order to provide the necessary money.

Helen went to Europe and studied for two years. She made her début at Milan, sang in several of the great cities on the Continent, and at last, with a reputation as a great singer fully established, returned home four years later to sing in New York.

Bear-Tone meanwhile was teaching his singing schools, as usual, in the rural districts of Maine. Once or twice during those two years of study he had managed to send a little money to Helen, to help out with the expenses. Now he postponed his three bi-weekly schools for one week and made his first and only trip to New York--the journey of a lifetime. Perhaps he had at first hoped that he might meet her and be welcomed. If so, he changed his mind on reaching the metropolis. Aware of his uncouthness, he resolved not to shame her by claiming recognition. But he went three times to hear her sing, first in Aïda, then in Faust, and afterwards in Les Huguenots; heard her magic notes, saw her in all her queenly beauty--but saw her from the shelter of a pillar in the rear of the great opera house. On the fifth day he returned home as quietly as he had gone.

Perhaps a month after he came back, while driving to one of his singing schools on a bitter night in February, he took a severe cold. For lack of any proper care at his little lonesome, chilly house, his cold a day or two later turned into pneumonia, and from that he died.

The savings bank took the house and the musical instruments. The piano, the organ, the old violin and other things were sold at auction. And probably Helen Thomas, whose brilliant career he had made possible, never heard anything about the circumstances of his death.