By Willa Sibert Cather
THE SONG OF THE LARK
O PIONEERS!
ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN
COMPANY
Boston and New York
TO
Isabelle McClung
On uplands,
At morning,
The world was young, the winds were free;
A garden fair,
In that blue desert air,
Its guest invited me to be.
Dr. Howard Archie had
just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men
who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone. His offices were in the Duke
Block, over the drug store. Larry, the doctor's man, had lit the overhead light
in the waiting-room and the double student's lamp on the desk in the study. The
isinglass sides of the hard-coal burner were aglow, and the air in the study
was so hot that as he came in the doctor opened the door into his little
operating-room, where there was no stove. The waiting- room was carpeted and
stiffly furnished, something like a country parlor. The study had worn,
unpainted floors, but there was a look of winter comfort about it. The doctor's
flat-top desk was large and well made; the papers were in orderly piles, under
glass weights. Behind the stove a wide bookcase, with double glass doors,
reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was filled with medical books of
every thickness and color. On the top shelf stood a long row of thirty or forty
volumes, bound all alike in dark mottled board covers, with imitation leather
backs.
As the doctor in New
England villages is proverbially old, so the doctor in small Colorado towns
twenty-five years ago was generally young. Dr. Archie was barely thirty. He was
tall, with massive shoulders which he held stiffly, and a large, well-shaped
head. He was a distinguished- looking man, for that part of the world, at
least. There was something individual in the way in which his reddish-brown
hair, parted cleanly at the side, bushed over his high forehead. His nose was
straight and thick, and his eyes were intelligent. He wore a curly, reddish
mustache and an imperial, cut trimly, which made him look a little like the
pictures of Napoleon III. His hands were large and well kept, but ruggedly
formed, and the backs were shaded with crinkly reddish hair. He wore a blue
suit of woolly, wide-waled serge; the traveling men had known at a glance that
it was made by a Denver tailor. The doctor was always well dressed.
Dr. Archie turned up
the student's lamp and sat down in the swivel chair before his desk. He sat
uneasily, beating a tattoo on his knees with his fingers, and looked about him
as if he were bored. He glanced at his watch, then absently took from his
pocket a bunch of small keys, selected one and looked at it. A contemptuous
smile, barely perceptible, played on his lips, but his eyes remained
meditative. Behind the door that led into the hall, under his buffalo- skin
driving-coat, was a locked cupboard. This the doctor opened mechanically,
kicking aside a pile of muddy overshoes. Inside, on the shelves, were whiskey
glasses and decanters, lemons, sugar, and bitters. Hearing a step in the empty,
echoing hall without, the doctor closed the cupboard again, snapping the Yale
lock. The door of the waiting-room opened, a man entered and came on into the
consulting-room.
"Good-evening, Mr.
Kronborg," said the doctor carelessly. "Sit down."
His visitor was a tall,
loosely built man, with a thin brown beard, streaked with gray. He wore a frock
coat, a broad-brimmed black hat, a white lawn necktie, and steel- rimmed
spectacles. Altogether there was a pretentious and important air about him, as he
lifted the skirts of his coat and sat down.
"Good-evening,
doctor. Can you step around to the house with me? I think Mrs. Kronborg will
need you this evening." This was said with profound gravity and, curiously
enough, with a slight embarrassment.
"Any hurry?"
the doctor asked over his shoulder as he went into his operating-room.
Mr. Kronborg coughed
behind his hand, and contracted his brows. His face threatened at every moment
to break into a smile of foolish excitement. He controlled it only by calling
upon his habitual pulpit manner. "Well, I think it would be as well to go
immediately. Mrs. Kronborg will be more comfortable if you are there. She has
been suffering for some time."
The doctor came back
and threw a black bag upon his desk. He wrote some instructions for his man on
a prescription pad and then drew on his overcoat. "All ready," he
announced, putting out his lamp. Mr. Kronborg rose and they tramped through the
empty hall and down the stairway to the street. The drug store below was dark,
and the saloon next door was just closing. Every other light on Main Street was
out.
On either side of the
road and at the outer edge of the board sidewalk, the snow had been shoveled
into breast- works. The town looked small and black, flattened down in the
snow, muffled and all but extinguished. Overhead the stars shone gloriously. It
was impossible not to notice them. The air was so clear that the white sand
hills to the east of Moonstone gleamed softly. Following the Reverend Mr.
Kronborg along the narrow walk, past the little dark, sleeping houses, the
doctor looked up at the flashing night and whistled softly. It did seem that
people were stupider than they need be; as if on a night like this there ought
to be something better to do than to sleep nine hours, or to assist Mrs.
Kronborg in functions which she could have performed so admirably unaided. He
wished he had gone down to Denver to hear Fay Templeton sing
"See-Saw." Then he remembered that he had a personal interest in this
family, after all. They turned into another street and saw before them lighted
windows; a low story-and-a-half house, with a wing built on at the right and a
kitchen addition at the back, everything a little on the slant--roofs, windows,
and doors. As they approached the gate, Peter Kronborg's pace grew brisker. His
nervous, ministerial cough annoyed the doctor. "Exactly as if he were
going to give out a text," he thought. He drew off his glove and felt in
his vest pocket. "Have a troche, Kronborg," he said, producing some.
"Sent me for samples. Very good for a rough throat."
"Ah, thank you,
thank you. I was in something of a hurry. I neglected to put on my overshoes.
Here we are, doctor." Kronborg opened his front door--seemed delighted to
be at home again.
The front hall was dark
and cold; the hatrack was hung with an astonishing number of children's hats
and caps and cloaks. They were even piled on the table beneath the hatrack.
Under the table was a heap of rubbers and overshoes. While the doctor hung up
his coat and hat, Peter Kronborg opened the door into the living-room. A glare
of light greeted them, and a rush of hot, stale air, smelling of warming
flannels.
At three o'clock in the
morning Dr. Archie was in the parlor putting on his cuffs and coat--there was no
spare bedroom in that house. Peter Kronborg's seventh child, a boy, was being
soothed and cosseted by his aunt, Mrs. Kronborg was asleep, and the doctor was
going home. But he wanted first to speak to Kronborg, who, coatless and
fluttery, was pouring coal into the kitchen stove. As the doctor crossed the
dining-room he paused and listened. From one of the wing rooms, off to the
left, he heard rapid, distressed breathing. He went to the kitchen door.
"One of the
children sick in there?" he asked, nodding toward the partition.
Kronborg hung up the
stove-lifter and dusted his fingers. "It must be Thea. I meant to ask you
to look at her. She has a croupy cold. But in my excitement--Mrs. Kronborg is
doing finely, eh, doctor? Not many of your patients with such a constitution, I
expect."
"Oh, yes. She's a
fine mother." The doctor took up the lamp from the kitchen table and
unceremoniously went into the wing room. Two chubby little boys were asleep in
a double bed, with the coverlids over their noses and their feet drawn up. In a
single bed, next to theirs, lay a little girl of eleven, wide awake, two yellow
braids sticking up on the pillow behind her. Her face was scarlet and her eyes
were blazing.
The doctor shut the
door behind him. "Feel pretty sick, Thea?" he asked as he took out
his thermometer. "Why didn't you call somebody?"
She looked at him with
greedy affection. "I thought you were here," she spoke between quick
breaths. "There is a new baby, isn't there? Which?"
"Which?"
repeated the doctor.
"Brother or
sister?"
He smiled and sat down
on the edge of the bed. "Brother," he said, taking her hand.
"Open."
"Good. Brothers
are better," she murmured as he put the glass tube under her tongue.
"Now, be still, I
want to count." Dr. Archie reached for her hand and took out his watch.
When he put her hand back under the quilt he went over to one of the windows--
they were both tight shut--and lifted it a little way. He reached up and ran
his hand along the cold, unpapered wall. "Keep under the covers; I'll come
back to you in a moment," he said, bending over the glass lamp with his
thermometer. He winked at her from the door before he shut it.
Peter Kronborg was
sitting in his wife's room, holding the bundle which contained his son. His air
of cheerful importance, his beard and glasses, even his shirt-sleeves, annoyed
the doctor. He beckoned Kronborg into the living-room and said sternly:--
"You've got a very
sick child in there. Why didn't you call me before? It's pneumonia, and she
must have been sick for several days. Put the baby down somewhere, please, and
help me make up the bed-lounge here in the parlor. She's got to be in a warm
room, and she's got to be quiet. You must keep the other children out. Here,
this thing opens up, I see," swinging back the top of the carpet lounge.
"We can lift her mattress and carry her in just as she is. I don't want to
disturb her more than is necessary."
Kronborg was all
concern immediately. The two men took up the mattress and carried the sick
child into the parlor. "I'll have to go down to my office to get some
medicine, Kronborg. The drug store won't be open. Keep the covers on her. I
won't be gone long. Shake down the stove and put on a little coal, but not too
much; so it'll catch quickly, I mean. Find an old sheet for me, and put it
there to warm."
The doctor caught his
coat and hurried out into the dark street. Nobody was stirring yet, and the
cold was bitter. He was tired and hungry and in no mild humor. "The
idea!" he muttered; "to be such an ass at his age, about the seventh!
And to feel no responsibility about the little girl. Silly old goat! The baby
would have got into the world somehow; they always do. But a nice little girl
like that --she's worth the whole litter. Where she ever got it from--" He
turned into the Duke Block and ran up the stairs to his office.
Thea Kronborg,
meanwhile, was wondering why she happened to be in the parlor, where nobody but
company --usually visiting preachers--ever slept. She had moments of stupor
when she did not see anything, and moments of excitement when she felt that
something unusual and pleasant was about to happen, when she saw everything
clearly in the red light from the isinglass sides of the hard-coal burner--the
nickel trimmings on the stove itself, the pictures on the wall, which she
thought very beautiful, the flowers on the Brussels carpet, Czerny's
"Daily Studies" which stood open on the upright piano. She forgot,
for the time being, all about the new baby.
When she heard the
front door open, it occurred to her that the pleasant thing which was going to
happen was Dr. Archie himself. He came in and warmed his hands at the stove. As
he turned to her, she threw herself wearily toward him, half out of her bed.
She would have tumbled to the floor had he not caught her. He gave her some
medicine and went to the kitchen for something he needed. She drowsed and lost
the sense of his being there. When she opened her eyes again, he was kneeling
before the stove, spreading something dark and sticky on a white cloth, with a
big spoon; batter, perhaps. Presently she felt him taking off her nightgown. He
wrapped the hot plaster about her chest. There seemed to be straps which he
pinned over her shoulders. Then he took out a thread and needle and began to
sew her up in it. That, she felt, was too strange; she must be dreaming anyhow,
so she succumbed to her drowsiness.
Thea had been moaning
with every breath since the doctor came back, but she did not know it. She did
not realize that she was suffering pain. When she was conscious at all, she
seemed to be separated from her body; to be perched on top of the piano, or on
the hanging lamp, watching the doctor sew her up. It was perplexing and
unsatisfactory, like dreaming. She wished she could waken up and see what was
going on.
The doctor thanked God
that he had persuaded Peter Kronborg to keep out of the way. He could do better
by the child if he had her to himself. He had no children of his own. His
marriage was a very unhappy one. As he lifted and undressed Thea, he thought to
himself what a beautiful thing a little girl's body was,--like a flower. It was
so neatly and delicately fashioned, so soft, and so milky white. Thea must have
got her hair and her silky skin from her mother. She was a little Swede, through
and through. Dr. Archie could not help thinking how he would cherish a little
creature like this if she were his. Her hands, so little and hot, so clever,
too,--he glanced at the open exercise book on the piano. When he had stitched
up the flax- seed jacket, he wiped it neatly about the edges, where the paste
had worked out on the skin. He put on her the clean nightgown he had warmed
before the fire, and tucked the blankets about her. As he pushed back the hair
that had fuzzed down over her eyebrows, he felt her head thoughtfully with the
tips of his fingers. No, he couldn't say that it was different from any other
child's head, though he believed that there was something very different about
her. He looked intently at her wide, flushed face, freckled nose, fierce little
mouth, and her delicate, tender chin--the one soft touch in her hard little
Scandinavian face, as if some fairy godmother had caressed her there and left a
cryptic promise. Her brows were usually drawn together defiantly, but never
when she was with Dr. Archie. Her affection for him was prettier than most of
the things that went to make up the doctor's life in Moonstone.
The windows grew gray.
He heard a tramping on the attic floor, on the back stairs, then cries:
"Give me my shirt!" "Where's my other stocking?"
"I'll have to stay
till they get off to school," he reflected, "or they'll be in here
tormenting her, the whole lot of them."
For the next four days
it seemed to Dr. Archie that his patient might slip through his hands, do what
he might. But she did not. On the contrary, after that she recovered very
rapidly. As her father remarked, she must have inherited the "constitution"
which he was never tired of admiring in her mother.
One afternoon, when her
new brother was a week old, the doctor found Thea very comfortable and happy in
her bed in the parlor. The sunlight was pouring in over her shoulders, the baby
was asleep on a pillow in a big rocking-chair beside her. Whenever he stirred,
she put out her hand and rocked him. Nothing of him was visible but a flushed,
puffy forehead and an uncompromisingly big, bald cranium. The door into her
mother's room stood open, and Mrs. Kronborg was sitting up in bed darning
stockings. She was a short, stalwart woman, with a short neck and a
determined-looking head. Her skin was very fair, her face calm and unwrinkled,
and her yellow hair, braided down her back as she lay in bed, still looked like
a girl's. She was a woman whom Dr. Archie respected; active, practical,
unruffled; good- humored, but determined. Exactly the sort of woman to take
care of a flighty preacher. She had brought her husband some property,
too,--one fourth of her father's broad acres in Nebraska,--but this she kept in
her own name. She had profound respect for her husband's erudition and
eloquence. She sat under his preaching with deep humility, and was as much
taken in by his stiff shirt and white neckties as if she had not ironed them
herself by lamplight the night before they appeared correct and spotless in the
pulpit. But for all this, she had no confidence in his administration of
worldly affairs. She looked to him for morning prayers and grace at table; she
expected him to name the babies and to supply whatever parental sentiment there
was in the house, to remember birthdays and anniversaries, to point the
children to moral and patriotic ideals. It was her work to keep their bodies,
their clothes, and their conduct in some sort of order, and this she
accomplished with a success that was a source of wonder to her neighbors. As
she used to remark, and her husband admiringly to echo, she "had never
lost one." With all his flightiness, Peter Kronborg appreciated the
matter-of-fact, punctual way in which his wife got her children into the world
and along in it. He believed, and he was right in believing, that the sovereign
State of Colorado was much indebted to Mrs. Kronborg and women like her.
Mrs. Kronborg believed
that the size of every family was decided in heaven. More modern views would
not have startled her; they would simply have seemed foolish-- thin chatter,
like the boasts of the men who built the tower of Babel, or like Axel's plan to
breed ostriches in the chicken yard. From what evidence Mrs. Kronborg formed
her opinions on this and other matters, it would have been difficult to say,
but once formed, they were unchangeable. She would no more have questioned her
convictions than she would have questioned revelation. Calm and even- tempered,
naturally kind, she was capable of strong prejudices, and she never forgave.
When the doctor came in
to see Thea, Mrs. Kronborg was reflecting that the washing was a week behind,
and deciding what she had better do about it. The arrival of a new baby meant a
revision of her entire domestic schedule, and as she drove her needle along she
had been working out new sleeping arrangements and cleaning days. The doctor
had entered the house without knocking, after making noise enough in the hall
to prepare his patients. Thea was reading, her book propped up before her in
the sun-light. "Mustn't do that; bad for your eyes," he said, as Thea
shut the book quickly and slipped it under the covers.
Mrs. Kronborg called
from her bed: "Bring the baby here, doctor, and have that chair. She
wanted him in there for company."
Before the doctor
picked up the baby, he put a yellow paper bag down on Thea's coverlid and
winked at her. They had a code of winks and grimaces. When he went in to chat
with her mother, Thea opened the bag cautiously, trying to keep it from
crackling. She drew out a long bunch of white grapes, with a little of the
sawdust in which they had been packed still clinging to them. They were called
Malaga grapes in Moonstone, and once or twice during the winter the leading
grocer got a keg of them. They were used mainly for table decoration, about
Christmas-time. Thea had never had more than one grape at a time before. When
the doctor came back she was holding the almost transparent fruit up in the
sunlight, feeling the pale-green skins softly with the tips of her fingers. She
did not thank him; she only snapped her eyes at him in a special way which he
understood, and, when he gave her his hand, put it quickly and shyly under her
cheek, as if she were trying to do so without knowing it--and without his
knowing it.
Dr. Archie sat down in
the rocking-chair. "And how's Thea feeling to-day?"
He was quite as shy as
his patient, especially when a third person overheard his conversation. Big and
handsome and superior to his fellow townsmen as Dr. Archie was, he was seldom
at his ease, and like Peter Kronborg he often dodged behind a professional
manner. There was sometimes a contraction of embarrassment and self-
consciousness all over his big body, which made him awkward--likely to stumble,
to kick up rugs, or to knock over chairs. If any one was very sick, he forgot
himself, but he had a clumsy touch in convalescent gossip. Thea curled up on
her side and looked at him with pleasure. "All right. I like to be sick. I
have more fun then than other times."
"How's that?"
"I don't have to
go to school, and I don't have to practice. I can read all I want to, and have
good things,"-- she patted the grapes. "I had lots of fun that time I
mashed my finger and you wouldn't let Professor Wunsch make me practice. Only I
had to do left hand, even then. I think that was mean."
The doctor took her
hand and examined the forefinger, where the nail had grown back a little
crooked. "You mustn't trim it down close at the corner there, and then it
will grow straight. You won't want it crooked when you're a big girl and wear
rings and have sweethearts."
She made a mocking
little face at him and looked at his new scarf-pin. "That's the prettiest
one you ev-er had. I wish you'd stay a long while and let me look at it. What
is it?"
Dr. Archie laughed.
"It's an opal. Spanish Johnny brought it up for me from Chihuahua in his
shoe. I had it set in Denver, and I wore it to-day for your benefit."
Thea had a curious
passion for jewelry. She wanted every shining stone she saw, and in summer she
was always going off into the sand hills to hunt for crystals and agates and
bits of pink chalcedony. She had two cigar boxes full of stones that she had
found or traded for, and she imagined that they were of enormous value. She was
always planning how she would have them set.
"What are you
reading?" The doctor reached under the covers and pulled out a book of
Byron's poems. "Do you like this?"
She looked confused, turned
over a few pages rapidly, and pointed to "My native land,
good-night." "That," she said sheepishly.
"How about `Maid
of Athens'?" She blushed and looked at him suspiciously. "I like
'There was a sound of revelry,'" she muttered.
The doctor laughed and
closed the book. It was clumsily bound in padded leather and had been presented
to the Reverend Peter Kronborg by his Sunday-School class as an ornament for
his parlor table.
"Come into the
office some day, and I'll lend you a nice book. You can skip the parts you
don't understand. You can read it in vacation. Perhaps you'll be able to
understand all of it by then."
Thea frowned and looked
fretfully toward the piano. "In vacation I have to practice four hours
every day, and then there'll be Thor to take care of." She pronounced it
"Tor."
"Thor? Oh, you've
named the baby Thor?" exclaimed the doctor.
Thea frowned again,
still more fiercely, and said quickly, "That's a nice name, only maybe
it's a little--old- fashioned." She was very sensitive about being thought
a foreigner, and was proud of the fact that, in town, her father always
preached in English; very bookish English, at that, one might add.
Born in an old
Scandinavian colony in Minnesota, Peter Kronborg had been sent to a small
divinity school in Indiana by the women of a Swedish evangelical mission, who
were convinced of his gifts and who skimped and begged and gave church suppers
to get the long, lazy youth through the seminary. He could still speak enough
Swedish to exhort and to bury the members of his country church out at Copper
Hole, and he wielded in his Moonstone pulpit a somewhat pompous English
vocabulary he had learned out of books at college. He always spoke of "the
infant Saviour," "our Heavenly Father," etc. The poor man had no
natural, spontaneous human speech. If he had his sincere moments, they were
perforce inarticulate. Probably a good deal of his pretentiousness was due to
the fact that he habitually expressed himself in a book- learned language,
wholly remote from anything personal, native, or homely. Mrs. Kronborg spoke
Swedish to her own sisters and to her sister-in-law Tillie, and colloquial
English to her neighbors. Thea, who had a rather sensitive ear, until she went
to school never spoke at all, except in monosyllables, and her mother was
convinced that she was tongue-tied. She was still inept in speech for a child
so intelligent. Her ideas were usually clear, but she seldom attempted to
explain them, even at school, where she excelled in "written work"
and never did more than mutter a reply.
"Your music
professor stopped me on the street to-day and asked me how you were," said
the doctor, rising. "He'll be sick himself, trotting around in this slush
with no overcoat or overshoes."
"He's poor,"
said Thea simply.
The doctor sighed.
"I'm afraid he's worse than that. Is he always all right when you take
your lessons? Never acts as if he'd been drinking?"
Thea looked angry and
spoke excitedly. "He knows a lot. More than anybody. I don't care if he
does drink; he's old and poor." Her voice shook a little.
Mrs. Kronborg spoke up
from the next room. "He's a good teacher, doctor. It's good for us he does
drink. He'd never be in a little place like this if he didn't have some
weakness. These women that teach music around here don't know nothing. I
wouldn't have my child wasting time with them. If Professor Wunsch goes away,
Thea'll have nobody to take from. He's careful with his scholars; he don't use
bad language. Mrs. Kohler is always present when Thea takes her lesson. It's
all right." Mrs. Kronborg spoke calmly and judicially. One could see that
she had thought the matter out before.
"I'm glad to hear
that, Mrs. Kronborg. I wish we could get the old man off his bottle and keep
him tidy. Do you suppose if I gave you an old overcoat you could get him to
wear it?" The doctor went to the bedroom door and Mrs. Kronborg looked up
from her darning.
"Why, yes, I guess
he'd be glad of it. He'll take most anything from me. He won't buy clothes, but
I guess he'd wear 'em if he had 'em. I've never had any clothes to give him,
having so many to make over for."
"I'll have Larry
bring the coat around to-night. You aren't cross with me, Thea?" taking
her hand.
Thea grinned warmly.
"Not if you give Professor Wunsch a coat--and things," she tapped the
grapes significantly. The doctor bent over and kissed her.
Being sick was all very
well, but Thea knew from experience that starting back to school again was
attended by depressing difficulties. One Monday morning she got up early with
Axel and Gunner, who shared her wing room, and hurried into the back
living-room, between the dining-room and the kitchen. There, beside a soft-coal
stove, the younger children of the family undressed at night and dressed in the
morning. The older daughter, Anna, and the two big boys slept upstairs, where
the rooms were theoretically warmed by stovepipes from below. The first (and
the worst!) thing that confronted Thea was a suit of clean, prickly red
flannel, fresh from the wash. Usually the torment of breaking in a clean suit
of flannel came on Sunday, but yesterday, as she was staying in the house, she
had begged off. Their winter underwear was a trial to all the children, but it
was bitterest to Thea because she happened to have the most sensitive skin.
While she was tugging it on, her Aunt Tillie brought in warm water from the
boiler and filled the tin pitcher. Thea washed her face, brushed and braided
her hair, and got into her blue cashmere dress. Over this she buttoned a long
apron, with sleeves, which would not be removed until she put on her cloak to
go to school. Gunner and Axel, on the soap box behind the stove, had their usual
quarrel about which should wear the tightest stockings, but they exchanged
reproaches in low tones, for they were wholesomely afraid of Mrs. Kronborg's
rawhide whip. She did not chastise her children often, but she did it
thoroughly. Only a somewhat stern system of discipline could have kept any
degree of order and quiet in that overcrowded house.
Mrs. Kronborg's
children were all trained to dress themselves at the earliest possible age, to
make their own beds, --the boys as well as the girls,--to take care of their
clothes, to eat what was given them, and to keep out of the way. Mrs. Kronborg
would have made a good chess- player; she had a head for moves and positions.
Anna, the elder
daughter, was her mother's lieutenant. All the children knew that they must
obey Anna, who was an obstinate contender for proprieties and not always fair-
minded. To see the young Kronborgs headed for Sunday- School was like watching
a military drill. Mrs. Kronborg let her children's minds alone. She did not pry
into their thoughts or nag them. She respected them as individuals, and outside
of the house they had a great deal of liberty. But their communal life was
definitely ordered.
In the winter the
children breakfasted in the kitchen; Gus and Charley and Anna first, while the
younger children were dressing. Gus was nineteen and was a clerk in a dry-goods
store. Charley, eighteen months younger, worked in a feed store. They left the
house by the kitchen door at seven o'clock, and then Anna helped her Aunt
Tillie get the breakfast for the younger ones. Without the help of this
sister-in-law, Tillie Kronborg, Mrs. Kronborg's life would have been a hard
one. Mrs. Kronborg often reminded Anna that "no hired help would ever have
taken the same interest."
Mr. Kronborg came of a
poorer stock than his wife; from a lowly, ignorant family that had lived in a
poor part of Sweden. His great-grandfather had gone to Norway to work as a farm
laborer and had married a Norwegian girl. This strain of Norwegian blood came
out somewhere in each generation of the Kronborgs. The intemperance of one of
Peter Kronborg's uncles, and the religious mania of another, had been alike
charged to the Norwegian grandmother. Both Peter Kronborg and his sister Tillie
were more like the Norwegian root of the family than like the Swedish, and this
same Norwegian strain was strong in Thea, though in her it took a very
different character.
Tillie was a queer,
addle-pated thing, as flighty as a girl at thirty-five, and overweeningly fond
of gay clothes-- which taste, as Mrs. Kronborg philosophically said, did nobody
any harm. Tillie was always cheerful, and her tongue was still for scarcely a
minute during the day. She had been cruelly overworked on her father's
Minnesota farm when she was a young girl, and she had never been so happy as
she was now; had never before, as she said, had such social advantages. She
thought her brother the most important man in Moonstone. She never missed a
church service, and, much to the embarrassment of the children, she always "spoke
a piece" at the Sunday-School concerts. She had a complete set of
"Standard Recitations," which she conned on Sundays. This morning,
when Thea and her two younger brothers sat down to breakfast, Tillie was
remonstrating with Gunner because he had not learned a recitation assigned to
him for George Washington Day at school. The unmemorized text lay heavily on
Gunner's conscience as he attacked his buckwheat cakes and sausage. He knew
that Tillie was in the right, and that "when the day came he would be ashamed
of himself."
"I don't
care," he muttered, stirring his coffee; "they oughtn't to make boys
speak. It's all right for girls. They like to show off."
"No showing off
about it. Boys ought to like to speak up for their country. And what was the
use of your father buying you a new suit, if you're not going to take part in
anything?"
"That was for
Sunday-School. I'd rather wear my old one, anyhow. Why didn't they give the
piece to Thea?" Gunner grumbled.
Tillie was turning
buckwheat cakes at the griddle. "Thea can play and sing, she don't need to
speak. But you've got to know how to do something, Gunner, that you have. What
are you going to do when you git big and want to git into society, if you can't
do nothing? Everybody'll say, `Can you sing? Can you play? Can you speak? Then
git right out of society.' An' that's what they'll say to you, Mr.
Gunner."
Gunner and Alex grinned
at Anna, who was preparing her mother's breakfast. They never made fun of
Tillie, but they understood well enough that there were subjects upon which her
ideas were rather foolish. When Tillie struck the shallows, Thea was usually
prompt in turning the conversation.
"Will you and Axel
let me have your sled at recess?" she asked.
"All the
time?" asked Gunner dubiously.
"I'll work your
examples for you to-night, if you do."
"Oh, all right.
There'll be a lot of 'em."
"I don't mind, I
can work 'em fast. How about yours, Axel?"
Axel was a fat little
boy of seven, with pretty, lazy blue eyes. "I don't care," he
murmured, buttering his last buckwheat cake without ambition; "too much
trouble to copy 'em down. Jenny Smiley'll let me have hers."
The boys were to pull
Thea to school on their sled, as the snow was deep. The three set off together.
Anna was now in the high school, and she no longer went with the family party,
but walked to school with some of the older girls who were her friends, and
wore a hat, not a hood like Thea.
And it was Summer,
beautiful Summer!" Those were the closing words of Thea's favorite fairy
tale, and she thought of them as she ran out into the world one Saturday
morning in May, her music book under her arm. She was going to the Kohlers' to
take her lesson, but she was in no hurry.
It was in the summer
that one really lived. Then all the little overcrowded houses were opened wide,
and the wind blew through them with sweet, earthy smells of garden-planting.
The town looked as if it had just been washed. People were out painting their
fences. The cottonwood trees were a-flicker with sticky, yellow little leaves,
and the feathery tamarisks were in pink bud. With the warm weather came freedom
for everybody. People were dug up, as it were. The very old people, whom one
had not seen all winter, came out and sunned themselves in the yard. The double
windows were taken off the houses, the tormenting flannels in which children
had been encased all winter were put away in boxes, and the youngsters felt a
pleasure in the cool cotton things next their skin.
Thea had to walk more
than a mile to reach the Kohlers' house, a very pleasant mile out of town
toward the glittering sand hills,--yellow this morning, with lines of deep
violet where the clefts and valleys were. She followed the sidewalk to the
depot at the south end of the town; then took the road east to the little group
of adobe houses where the Mexicans lived, then dropped into a deep ravine; a
dry sand creek, across which the railroad track ran on a trestle. Beyond that
gulch, on a little rise of ground that faced the open sandy plain, was the
Kohlers' house, where Professor Wunsch lived. Fritz Kohler was the town tailor,
one of the first settlers. He had moved there, built a little house and made a
garden, when Moonstone was first marked down on the map. He had three sons, but
they now worked on the railroad and were stationed in distant cities. One of
them had gone to work for the Santa Fe, and lived in New Mexico.
Mrs. Kohler seldom
crossed the ravine and went into the town except at Christmas-time, when she
had to buy presents and Christmas cards to send to her old friends in Freeport,
Illinois. As she did not go to church, she did not possess such a thing as a
hat. Year after year she wore the same red hood in winter and a black sunbonnet
in summer. She made her own dresses; the skirts came barely to her shoe-tops,
and were gathered as full as they could possibly be to the waistband. She
preferred men's shoes, and usually wore the cast-offs of one of her sons. She
had never learned much English, and her plants and shrubs were her companions.
She lived for her men and her garden. Beside that sand gulch, she had tried to
reproduce a bit of her own village in the Rhine Valley. She hid herself behind
the growth she had fostered, lived under the shade of what she had planted and
watered and pruned. In the blaze of the open plain she was stupid and blind
like an owl. Shade, shade; that was what she was always planning and making.
Behind the high tamarisk hedge, her garden was a jungle of verdure in summer.
Above the cherry trees and peach trees and golden plums stood the windmill,
with its tank on stilts, which kept all this verdure alive. Outside, the
sage-brush grew up to the very edge of the garden, and the sand was always
drifting up to the tamarisks.
Every one in Moonstone
was astonished when the Kohlers took the wandering music-teacher to live with
them. In seventeen years old Fritz had never had a crony, except the
harness-maker and Spanish Johnny. This Wunsch came from God knew
where,--followed Spanish Johnny into town when that wanderer came back from one
of his tramps. Wunsch played in the dance orchestra, tuned pianos, and gave
lessons. When Mrs. Kohler rescued him, he was sleeping in a dirty, unfurnished
room over one of the saloons, and he had only two shirts in the world. Once he
was under her roof, the old woman went at him as she did at her garden. She
sewed and washed and mended for him, and made him so clean and respectable that
he was able to get a large class of pupils and to rent a piano. As soon as he
had money ahead, he sent to the Narrow Gauge lodging-house, in Denver, for a
trunkful of music which had been held there for unpaid board. With tears in his
eyes the old man--he was not over fifty, but sadly battered--told Mrs. Kohler
that he asked nothing better of God than to end his days with her, and to be
buried in the garden, under her linden trees. They were not American basswood,
but the European linden, which has honey- colored blooms in summer, with a
fragrance that surpasses all trees and flowers and drives young people wild
with joy.
Thea was reflecting as
she walked along that had it not been for Professor Wunsch she might have lived
on for years in Moonstone without ever knowing the Kohlers, without ever seeing
their garden or the inside of their house. Besides the cuckoo clock,--which was
wonderful enough, and which Mrs. Kohler said she kept for "company when
she was lonesome,"--the Kohlers had in their house the most wonderful thing
Thea had ever seen--but of that later.
Professor Wunsch went
to the houses of his other pupils to give them their lessons, but one morning
he told Mrs. Kronborg that Thea had talent, and that if she came to him he
could teach her in his slippers, and that would be better. Mrs. Kronborg was a
strange woman. That word "talent," which no one else in Moonstone,
not even Dr. Archie, would have understood, she comprehended perfectly. To any
other woman there, it would have meant that a child must have her hair curled
every day and must play in public. Mrs. Kronborg knew it meant that Thea must
practice four hours a day. A child with talent must be kept at the piano, just
as a child with measles must be kept under the blankets. Mrs. Kronborg and her
three sisters had all studied piano, and all sang well, but none of them had
talent. Their father had played the oboe in an orchestra in Sweden, before he
came to America to better his fortunes. He had even known Jenny Lind. A child
with talent had to be kept at the piano; so twice a week in summer and once a
week in winter Thea went over the gulch to the Kohlers', though the Ladies' Aid
Society thought it was not proper for their preacher's daughter to go
"where there was so much drinking." Not that the Kohler sons ever so
much as looked at a glass of beer. They were ashamed of their old folks and got
out into the world as fast as possible; had their clothes made by a Denver
tailor and their necks shaved up under their hair and forgot the past. Old
Fritz and Wunsch, however, indulged in a friendly bottle pretty often. The two
men were like comrades; perhaps the bond between them was the glass wherein
lost hopes are found; perhaps it was common memories of another country;
perhaps it was the grapevine in the garden-- knotty, fibrous shrub, full of
homesickness and sentiment, which the Germans have carried around the world
with them.
As Thea approached the
house she peeped between the pink sprays of the tamarisk hedge and saw the
Professor and Mrs. Kohler in the garden, spading and raking. The garden looked
like a relief-map now, and gave no indication of what it would be in August;
such a jungle! Pole beans and potatoes and corn and leeks and kale and red
cabbage --there would even be vegetables for which there is no American name.
Mrs. Kohler was always getting by mail packages of seeds from Freeport and from
the old country. Then the flowers! There were big sunflowers for the canary
bird, tiger lilies and phlox and zinnias and lady's-slippers and portulaca and
hollyhocks,--giant hollyhocks. Beside the fruit trees there was a great
umbrella-shaped catalpa, and a balm-of-Gilead, two lindens, and even a
ginka,--a rigid, pointed tree with leaves shaped like butterflies, which
shivered, but never bent to the wind.
This morning Thea saw
to her delight that the two oleander trees, one white and one red, had been
brought up from their winter quarters in the cellar. There is hardly a German
family in the most arid parts of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, but has its
oleander trees. However loutish the American-born sons of the family may be,
there was never one who refused to give his muscle to the back-breaking task of
getting those tubbed trees down into the cellar in the fall and up into the
sunlight in the spring. They may strive to avert the day, but they grapple with
the tub at last.
When Thea entered the
gate, her professor leaned his spade against the white post that supported the
turreted dove-house, and wiped his face with his shirt-sleeve; someway he never
managed to have a handkerchief about him. Wunsch was short and stocky, with
something rough and bear-like about his shoulders. His face was a dark, bricky
red, deeply creased rather than wrinkled, and the skin was like loose leather
over his neck band--he wore a brass collar button but no collar. His hair was
cropped close; iron-gray bristles on a bullet-like head. His eyes were always
suffused and bloodshot. He had a coarse, scornful mouth, and irregular, yellow
teeth, much worn at the edges. His hands were square and red, seldom clean, but
always alive, impatient, even sympathetic.
"MORGEN," he
greeted his pupil in a businesslike way, put on a black alpaca coat, and
conducted her at once to the piano in Mrs. Kohler's sitting-room. He twirled
the stool to the proper height, pointed to it, and sat down in a wooden chair
beside Thea. "The scale of B flat major," he directed, and then fell
into an attitude of deep attention. Without a word his pupil set to work.
To Mrs. Kohler, in the
garden, came the cheerful sound of effort, of vigorous striving. Unconsciously
she wielded her rake more lightly. Occasionally she heard the teacher's voice.
"Scale of E minor. . . . Weiter, weiter! . . . Immer I hear the thumb,
like a lame foot. Weiter . . . weiter, once; . . . Schön! The chords,
quick!"
The pupil did not open
her mouth until they began the second movement of the Clementi sonata, when she
remonstrated in low tones about the way he had marked the fingering of a
passage.
"It makes no
matter what you think," replied her teacher coldly. "There is only
one right way. The thumb there. Ein, zwei, drei, vier," etc. Then for an
hour there was no further interruption.
At the end of the
lesson Thea turned on her stool and leaned her arm on the keyboard. They
usually had a little talk after the lesson.
Herr Wunsch grinned.
"How soon is it you are free from school? Then we make ahead faster,
eh?"
"First week in
June. Then will you give me the `Invitation to the Dance'?"
He shrugged his
shoulders. "It makes no matter. If you want him, you play him out of
lesson hours."
"All right."
Thea fumbled in her pocket and brought out a crumpled slip of paper. "What
does this mean, please? I guess it's Latin."
Wunsch blinked at the
line penciled on the paper. "Wherefrom you get this?" he asked
gruffly.
"Out of a book Dr.
Archie gave me to read. It's all English but that. Did you ever see it
before?" she asked, watching his face.
"Yes. A long time
ago," he muttered, scowling. "Ovidius!" He took a stub of lead
pencil from his vest pocket, steadied his hand by a visible effort, and under
the words
"Lente currite, lente currite, noctis equi,"
he wrote in a clear, elegant Gothic hand,--
"Go slolwly, go slowly, ye steeds of the night."
He put the pencil back in his pocket and continued to stare at the Latin. It
recalled the poem, which he had read as a student, and thought very fine. There
were treasures of memory which no lodging-house keeper could attach. One
carried things about in one's head, long after one's linen could be smuggled out
in a tuning-bag. He handed the paper back to Thea. "There is the English,
quite elegant," he said, rising. Mrs.
Kohler stuck her head in at the door, and Thea slid off the stool. "Come
in, Mrs. Kohler," she called, "and show me the piece-picture."
The old woman laughed,
pulled off her big gardening- gloves, and pushed Thea to the lounge before the
object of her delight. The "piece-picture," which hung on the wall
and nearly covered one whole end of the room, was the handiwork of Fritz Kohler.
He had learned his trade under an old-fashioned tailor in Magdeburg who
required from each of his apprentices a thesis: that is, before they left his
shop, each apprentice had to copy in cloth some well- known German painting,
stitching bits of colored stuff together on a linen background; a kind of
mosaic. The pupil was allowed to select his subject, and Fritz Kohler had
chosen a popular painting of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. The gloomy Emperor
and his staff were represented as crossing a stone bridge, and behind them was
the blazing city, the walls and fortresses done in gray cloth with orange
tongues of flame darting about the domes and minarets. Napoleon rode his white
horse; Murat, in Oriental dress, a bay charger. Thea was never tired of
examining this work, of hearing how long it had taken Fritz to make it, how
much it had been admired, and what narrow escapes it had had from moths and
fire. Silk, Mrs. Kohler explained, would have been much easier to manage than
woolen cloth, in which it was often hard to get the right shades. The reins of
the horses, the wheels of the spurs, the brooding eyebrows of the Emperor,
Murat's fierce mustaches, the great shakos of the Guard, were all worked out
with the minutest fidelity. Thea's admiration for this picture had endeared her
to Mrs. Kohler. It was now many years since she used to point out its wonders
to her own little boys. As Mrs. Kohler did not go to church, she never heard
any singing, except the songs that floated over from Mexican Town, and Thea
often sang for her after the lesson was over. This morning Wunsch pointed to
the piano.
"On Sunday, when I
go by the church, I hear you sing something."
Thea obediently sat
down on the stool again and began, "Come, ye disconsolate." Wunsch
listened thoughtfully, his hands on his knees. Such a beautiful child's voice!
Old Mrs. Kohler's face relaxed in a smile of happiness; she half closed her
eyes. A big fly was darting in and out of the window; the sunlight made a
golden pool on the rag carpet and bathed the faded cretonne pillows on the
lounge, under the piece-picture. "Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot
heal," the song died away.
"That is a good
thing to remember," Wunsch shook himself. "You believe that?"
looking quizzically at Thea.
She became confused and
pecked nervously at a black key with her middle finger. "I don't know. I
guess so," she murmured.
Her teacher rose
abruptly. "Remember, for next time, thirds. You ought to get up
earlier."
That night the air was
so warm that Fritz and Herr Wunsch had their after-supper pipe in the grape
arbor, smoking in silence while the sound of fiddles and guitars came across
the ravine from Mexican Town. Long after Fritz and his old Paulina had gone to
bed, Wunsch sat motionless in the arbor, looking up through the woolly vine
leaves at the glittering machinery of heaven.
"Lente currite, noctis equi."
That line awoke many memories. He was thinking of youth; of his own, so long
gone by, and of his pupil's, just beginning. He would even have cherished hopes
for her, except that he had become superstitious. He believed that whatever he
hoped for was destined not to be; that his affection brought ill-fortune,
especially to the young; that if he held anything in his thoughts, he harmed
it. He had taught in music schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, where the
shallowness and complacency of the young misses had maddened him. He had
encountered bad manners and bad faith, had been the victim of sharpers of all kinds,
was dogged by bad luck. He had played in orchestras that were never paid and
wandering opera troupes which disbanded penniless. And there was always the old
enemy, more relentless than the others. It was long since he had wished
anything or desired anything beyond the necessities of the body. Now that he
was tempted to hope for another, he felt alarmed and shook his head. It was his pupil's power of application, her
rugged will, that interested him. He had lived for so long among people whose
sole ambition was to get something for nothing that he had learned not to look
for seriousness in anything. Now that he by chance encountered it, it recalled
standards, ambitions, a society long forgot. What was it she reminded him of? A
yellow flower, full of sunlight, perhaps. No; a thin glass full of
sweet-smelling, sparkling Moselle wine. He seemed to see such a glass before
him in the arbor, to watch the bubbles rising and breaking, like the silent
discharge of energy in the nerves and brain, the rapid florescence in young
blood--Wunsch felt ashamed and dragged his slippers along the path to the
kitchen, his eyes on the ground.
The children in the
primary grades were sometimes required to make relief maps of Moonstone in
sand. Had they used colored sands, as the Navajo medicine men do in their sand
mosaics, they could easily have indicated the social classifications of
Moonstone, since these conformed to certain topographical boundaries, and every
child understood them perfectly.
The main business
street ran, of course, through the center of the town. To the west of this
street lived all the people who were, as Tillie Kronborg said, "in
society." Sylvester Street, the third parallel with Main Street on the
west, was the longest in town, and the best dwellings were built along it. Far
out at the north end, nearly a mile from the court-house and its cottonwood
grove, was Dr. Archie's house, its big yard and garden surrounded by a white
paling fence. The Methodist Church was in the center of the town, facing the
court-house square. The Kronborgs lived half a mile south of the church, on the
long street that stretched out like an arm to the depot settlement. This was
the first street west of Main, and was built up only on one side. The
preacher's house faced the backs of the brick and frame store buildings and a
draw full of sunflowers and scraps of old iron. The sidewalk which ran in front
of the Kronborgs' house was the one continuous sidewalk to the depot, and all
the train men and roundhouse employees passed the front gate every time they
came uptown. Thea and Mrs. Kronborg had many friends among the railroad men,
who often paused to chat across the fence, and of one of these we shall have
more to say.
In the part of
Moonstone that lay east of Main Street, toward the deep ravine which, farther
south, wound by Mexican Town, lived all the humbler citizens, the people who
voted but did not run for office. The houses were little story-and-a-half
cottages, with none of the fussy architectural efforts that marked those on
Sylvester Street. They nestled modestly behind their cottonwoods and Virginia
creeper; their occupants had no social pretensions to keep up. There were no
half-glass front doors with door- bells, or formidable parlors behind closed
shutters. Here the old women washed in the back yard, and the men sat in the
front doorway and smoked their pipes. The people on Sylvester Street scarcely
knew that this part of the town existed. Thea liked to take Thor and her
express wagon and explore these quiet, shady streets, where the people never
tried to have lawns or to grow elms and pine trees, but let the native timber
have its way and spread in luxuriance. She had many friends there, old women
who gave her a yellow rose or a spray of trumpet vine and appeased Thor with a
cooky or a doughnut. They called Thea "that preacher's girl," but the
demonstrative was misplaced, for when they spoke of Mr. Kronborg they called
him "the Methodist preacher."
Dr. Archie was very
proud of his yard and garden, which he worked himself. He was the only man in
Moonstone who was successful at growing rambler roses, and his strawberries
were famous. One morning when Thea was downtown on an errand, the doctor
stopped her, took her hand and went over her with a quizzical eye, as he nearly
always did when they met.
"You haven't been
up to my place to get any strawberries yet, Thea. They're at their best just
now. Mrs. Archie doesn't know what to do with them all. Come up this afternoon.
Just tell Mrs. Archie I sent you. Bring a big basket and pick till you are
tired."
When she got home Thea
told her mother that she didn't want to go, because she didn't like Mrs.
Archie.
"She is certainly
one queer woman," Mrs. Kronborg assented, "but he's asked you so
often, I guess you'll have to go this time. She won't bite you."
After dinner Thea took
a basket, put Thor in his baby- buggy, and set out for Dr. Archie's house at
the other end of town. As soon as she came within sight of the house, she
slackened her pace. She approached it very slowly, stopping often to pick
dandelions and sand-peas for Thor to crush up in his fist.
It was his wife's
custom, as soon as Dr. Archie left the house in the morning, to shut all the
doors and windows to keep the dust out, and to pull down the shades to keep the
sun from fading the carpets. She thought, too, that neighbors were less likely
to drop in if the house was closed up. She was one of those people who are
stingy without motive or reason, even when they can gain nothing by it. She
must have known that skimping the doctor in heat and food made him more
extravagant than he would have been had she made him comfortable. He never came
home for lunch, because she gave him such miserable scraps and shreds of food.
No matter how much milk he bought, he could never get thick cream for his
strawberries. Even when he watched his wife lift it from the milk in smooth,
ivory-colored blankets, she managed, by some sleight-of- hand, to dilute it
before it got to the breakfast table. The butcher's favorite joke was about the
kind of meat he sold Mrs. Archie. She felt no interest in food herself, and she
hated to prepare it. She liked nothing better than to have Dr. Archie go to
Denver for a few days--he often went chiefly because he was hungry--and to be
left alone to eat canned salmon and to keep the house shut up from morning
until night.
Mrs. Archie would not
have a servant because, she said, "they ate too much and broke too
much"; she even said they knew too much. She used what mind she had in
devising shifts to minimize her housework. She used to tell her neighbors that
if there were no men, there would be no housework. When Mrs. Archie was first
married, she had been always in a panic for fear she would have children. Now
that her apprehensions on that score had grown paler, she was almost as much
afraid of having dust in the house as she had once been of having children in
it. If dust did not get in, it did not have to be got out, she said. She would
take any amount of trouble to avoid trouble. Why, nobody knew. Certainly her
husband had never been able to make her out. Such little, mean natures are
among the darkest and most baffling of created things. There is no law by which
they can be explained. The ordinary incentives of pain and pleasure do not
account for their behavior. They live like insects, absorbed in petty
activities that seem to have nothing to do with any genial aspect of human
life.
Mrs. Archie, as Mrs.
Kronborg said, "liked to gad." She liked to have her house clean,
empty, dark, locked, and to be out of it--anywhere. A church social, a prayer
meeting, a ten-cent show; she seemed to have no preference. When there was
nowhere else to go, she used to sit for hours in Mrs. Smiley's millinery and
notion store, listening to the talk of the women who came in, watching them
while they tried on hats, blinking at them from her corner with her sharp,
restless little eyes. She never talked much herself, but she knew all the
gossip of the town and she had a sharp ear for racy anecdotes--"traveling
men's stories," they used to be called in Moonstone. Her clicking laugh
sounded like a typewriting machine in action, and, for very pointed stories,
she had a little screech.
Mrs. Archie had been
Mrs. Archie for only six years, and when she was Belle White she was one of the
"pretty" girls in Lansing, Michigan. She had then a train of suitors.
She could truly remind Archie that "the boys hung around her." They
did. They thought her very spirited and were always saying, "Oh, that
Belle White, she's a case!" She used to play heavy practical jokes which
the young men thought very clever. Archie was considered the most promising
young man in "the young crowd," so Belle selected him. She let him
see, made him fully aware, that she had selected him, and Archie was the sort
of boy who could not withstand such enlightenment. Belle's family were sorry
for him. On his wedding day her sisters looked at the big, handsome boy--he was
twenty-four--as he walked down the aisle with his bride, and then they looked
at each other. His besotted confidence, his sober, radiant face, his gentle,
protecting arm, made them uncomfortable. Well, they were glad that he was going
West at once, to fulfill his doom where they would not be onlookers. Anyhow,
they consoled themselves, they had got Belle off their hands.
More than that, Belle
seemed to have got herself off her hands. Her reputed prettiness must have been
entirely the result of determination, of a fierce little ambition. Once she had
married, fastened herself on some one, come to port,--it vanished like the
ornamental plumage which drops away from some birds after the mating season.
The one aggressive action of her life was over. She began to shrink in face and
stature. Of her harum-scarum spirit there was nothing left but the little screech.
Within a few years she looked as small and mean as she was.
Thor's chariot crept
along. Thea approached the house unwillingly. She didn't care about the
strawberries, anyhow. She had come only because she did not want to hurt Dr.
Archie's feelings. She not only disliked Mrs. Archie, she was a little afraid
of her. While Thea was getting the heavy baby-buggy through the iron gate she
heard some one call, "Wait a minute!" and Mrs. Archie came running
around the house from the back door, her apron over her head. She came to help
with the buggy, because she was afraid the wheels might scratch the paint off
the gate- posts. She was a skinny little woman with a great pile of frizzy
light hair on a small head. "Dr. Archie told me to come up and pick some strawberries,"
Thea muttered, wishing she had stayed at home.
Mrs. Archie led the way
to the back door, squinting and shading her eyes with her hand. "Wait a
minute," she said again, when Thea explained why she had come.
She went into her
kitchen and Thea sat down on the porch step. When Mrs. Archie reappeared she
carried in her hand a little wooden butter-basket trimmed with fringed tissue
paper, which she must have brought home from some church supper. "You'll
have to have something to put them in," she said, ignoring the yawning
willow basket which stood empty on Thor's feet. "You can have this, and
you needn't mind about returning it. You know about not trampling the vines,
don't you?"
Mrs. Archie went back
into the house and Thea leaned over in the sand and picked a few strawberries.
As soon as she was sure that she was not going to cry, she tossed the little
basket into the big one and ran Thor's buggy along the gravel walk and out of
the gate as fast as she could push it. She was angry, and she was ashamed for
Dr. Archie. She could not help thinking how uncomfortable he would be if he
ever found out about it. Little things like that were the ones that cut him
most. She slunk home by the back way, and again almost cried when she told her
mother about it.
Mrs. Kronborg was
frying doughnuts for her husband's supper. She laughed as she dropped a new lot
into the hot grease. "It's wonderful, the way some people are made,"
she declared. "But I wouldn't let that upset me if I was you. Think what
it would be to live with it all the time. You look in the black pocketbook
inside my handbag and take a dime and go downtown and get an ice-cream soda.
That'll make you feel better. Thor can have a little of the ice-cream if you
feed it to him with a spoon. He likes it, don't you, son?" She stooped to
wipe his chin. Thor was only six months old and inarticulate, but it was quite
true that he liked ice-cream.
Seen from a balloon,
Moonstone would have looked like a Noah's ark town set out in the sand and
lightly shaded by gray-green tamarisks and cottonwoods. A few people were
trying to make soft maples grow in their turfed lawns, but the fashion of
planting incongruous trees from the North Atlantic States had not become
general then, and the frail, brightly painted desert town was shaded by the
light-reflecting, wind-loving trees of the desert, whose roots are always
seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of
rain. The long porous roots of the cottonwood are irrepressible. They break
into the wells as rats do into granaries, and thieve the water.
The long street which
connected Moonstone with the depot settlement traversed in its course a
considerable stretch of rough open country, staked out in lots but not built up
at all, a weedy hiatus between the town and the railroad. When you set out
along this street to go to the station, you noticed that the houses became
smaller and farther apart, until they ceased altogether, and the board sidewalk
continued its uneven course through sunflower patches, until you reached the
solitary, new brick Catholic Church. The church stood there because the land
was given to the parish by the man who owned the adjoining waste lots, in the
hope of making them more salable-- "Farrier's Addition," this patch
of prairie was called in the clerk's office. An eighth of a mile beyond the
church was a washout, a deep sand-gully, where the board sidewalk became a
bridge for perhaps fifty feet. Just beyond the gully was old Uncle Billy
Beemer's grove,--twelve town lots set out in fine, well-grown cottonwood trees,
delightful to look upon, or to listen to, as they swayed and rippled in the
wind. Uncle Billy had been one of the most worthless old drunkards who ever sat
on a store box and told filthy stories. One night he played hide-and-seek with
a switch engine and got his sodden brains knocked out. But his grove, the one
creditable thing he had ever done in his life, rustled on. Beyond this grove
the houses of the depot settlement began, and the naked board walk, that had
run in out of the sunflowers, again became a link between human dwellings.
One afternoon, late in
the summer, Dr. Howard Archie was fighting his way back to town along this walk
through a blinding sandstorm, a silk handkerchief tied over his mouth. He had
been to see a sick woman down in the depot settlement, and he was walking
because his ponies had been out for a hard drive that morning.
As he passed the
Catholic Church he came upon Thea and Thor. Thea was sitting in a child's
express wagon, her feet out behind, kicking the wagon along and steering by the
tongue. Thor was on her lap and she held him with one arm. He had grown to be a
big cub of a baby, with a constitutional grievance, and he had to be
continually amused. Thea took him philosophically, and tugged and pulled him
about, getting as much fun as she could under her encumbrance. Her hair was
blowing about her face, and her eyes were squinting so intently at the uneven
board sidewalk in front of her that she did not see the doctor until he spoke
to her.
"Look out, Thea.
You'll steer that youngster into the ditch."
The wagon stopped. Thea
released the tongue, wiped her hot, sandy face, and pushed back her hair.
"Oh, no, I won't! I never ran off but once, and then he didn't get
anything but a bump. He likes this better than a baby- buggy, and so do
I."
"Are you going to
kick that cart all the way home?"
"Of course. We
take long trips; wherever there is a sidewalk. It's no good on the road."
"Looks to me like
working pretty hard for your fun. Are you going to be busy to-night? Want to
make a call with me? Spanish Johnny's come home again, all used up. His wife
sent me word this morning, and I said I'd go over to see him to-night. He's an
old chum of yours, isn't he?"
"Oh, I'm glad.
She's been crying her eyes out. When did he come?"
"Last night, on
Number Six. Paid his fare, they tell me. Too sick to beat it. There'll come a
time when that boy won't get back, I'm afraid. Come around to my office about
eight o'clock,--and you needn't bring that!"
Thor seemed to
understand that he had been insulted, for he scowled and began to kick the side
of the wagon, shouting, "Go-go, go-go!" Thea leaned forward and
grabbed the wagon tongue. Dr. Archie stepped in front of her and blocked the
way. "Why don't you make him wait? What do you let him boss you like that
for?"
"If he gets mad he
throws himself, and then I can't do anything with him. When he's mad he's lots
stronger than me, aren't you, Thor?" Thea spoke with pride, and the idol
was appeased. He grunted approvingly as his sister began to kick rapidly behind
her, and the wagon rattled off and soon disappeared in the flying currents of
sand.
That evening Dr. Archie
was seated in his office, his desk chair tilted back, reading by the light of a
hot coal-oil lamp. All the windows were open, but the night was breathless
after the sandstorm, and his hair was moist where it hung over his forehead. He
was deeply engrossed in his book and sometimes smiled thoughtfully as he read.
When Thea Kronborg entered quietly and slipped into a seat, he nodded, finished
his paragraph, inserted a bookmark, and rose to put the book back into the
case. It was one out of the long row of uniform volumes on the top shelf.
"Nearly every time
I come in, when you're alone, you're reading one of those books," Thea
remarked thoughtfully. "They must be very nice."
The doctor dropped back
into his swivel chair, the mottled volume still in his hand. "They aren't
exactly books, Thea," he said seriously. "They're a city."
"A history, you
mean?"
"Yes, and no.
They're a history of a live city, not a dead one. A Frenchman undertook to
write about a whole cityful of people, all the kinds he knew. And he got them
nearly all in, I guess. Yes, it's very interesting. You'll like to read it some
day, when you're grown up."
Thea leaned forward and
made out the title on the back, "A Distinguished Provincial in
Paris."
"It doesn't sound
very interesting."
"Perhaps not, but
it is." The doctor scrutinized her broad face, low enough to be in the
direct light from under the green lamp shade. "Yes," he went on with
some satisfaction, "I think you'll like them some day. You're always
curious about people, and I expect this man knew more about people than anybody
that ever lived."
"City people or
country people?"
"Both. People are
pretty much the same everywhere."
"Oh, no, they're
not. The people who go through in the dining-car aren't like us."
"What makes you
think they aren't, my girl? Their clothes?"
Thea shook her head.
"No, it's something else. I don't know." Her eyes shifted under the
doctor's searching gaze and she glanced up at the row of books. "How soon
will I be old enough to read them?"
"Soon enough, soon
enough, little girl." The doctor patted her hand and looked at her index
finger. "The nail's coming all right, isn't it? But I think that man makes
you practice too much. You have it on your mind all the time." He had
noticed that when she talked to him she was always opening and shutting her
hands. "It makes you nervous."
"No, he
don't," Thea replied stubbornly, watching Dr. Archie return the book to
its niche.
He took up a black
leather case, put on his hat, and they went down the dark stairs into the street.
The summer moon hung full in the sky. For the time being, it was the great fact
in the world. Beyond the edge of the town the plain was so white that every
clump of sage stood out distinct from the sand, and the dunes looked like a
shining lake. The doctor took off his straw hat and carried it in his hand as
they walked toward Mexican Town, across the sand.
North of Pueblo,
Mexican settlements were rare in Colorado then. This one had come about
accidentally. Spanish Johnny was the first Mexican who came to Moonstone. He
was a painter and decorator, and had been working in Trinidad, when Ray Kennedy
told him there was a "boom" on in Moonstone, and a good many new
buildings were going up. A year after Johnny settled in Moonstone, his cousin,
Famos Serrenos, came to work in the brickyard; then Serrenos' cousins came to
help him. During the strike, the master mechanic put a gang of Mexicans to work
in the roundhouse. The Mexicans had arrived so quietly, with their blankets and
musical instruments, that before Moonstone was awake to the fact, there was a
Mexican quarter; a dozen families or more.
As Thea and the doctor
approached the 'dobe houses, they heard a guitar, and a rich barytone
voice--that of Famos Serrenos--singing "La Golandrina." All the Mexican
houses had neat little yards, with tamarisk hedges and flowers, and walks
bordered with shells or white- washed stones. Johnny's house was dark. His
wife, Mrs. Tellamantez, was sitting on the doorstep, combing her long,
blue-black hair. (Mexican women are like the Spartans; when they are in
trouble, in love, under stress of any kind, they comb and comb their hair.) She
rose without embarrassment or apology, comb in hand, and greeted the doctor.
"Good-evening;
will you go in?" she asked in a low, musical voice. "He is in the
back room. I will make a light." She followed them indoors, lit a candle
and handed it to the doctor, pointing toward the bedroom. Then she went back
and sat down on her doorstep.
Dr. Archie and Thea
went into the bedroom, which was dark and quiet. There was a bed in the corner,
and a man was lying on the clean sheets. On the table beside him was a glass
pitcher, half-full of water. Spanish Johnny looked younger than his wife, and when
he was in health he was very handsome: slender, gold-colored, with wavy black
hair, a round, smooth throat, white teeth, and burning black eyes. His profile
was strong and severe, like an Indian's. What was termed his
"wildness" showed itself only in his feverish eyes and in the color
that burned on his tawny cheeks. That night he was a coppery green, and his
eyes were like black holes. He opened them when the doctor held the candle
before his face.
"Mi testa!"
he muttered, "mi testa, doctor. "La fiebre!" Seeing the doctor's
companion at the foot of the bed, he attempted a smile. "Muchacha!"
he exclaimed deprecatingly.
Dr. Archie stuck a
thermometer into his mouth. "Now, Thea, you can run outside and wait for
me."
Thea slipped
noiselessly through the dark house and joined Mrs. Tellamantez. The somber
Mexican woman did not seem inclined to talk, but her nod was friendly. Thea sat
down on the warm sand, her back to the moon, facing Mrs. Tellamantez on her
doorstep, and began to count the moonflowers on the vine that ran over the
house. Mrs. Tellamantez was always considered a very homely woman. Her face was
of a strongly marked type not sympathetic to Americans. Such long, oval faces,
with a full chin, a large, mobile mouth, a high nose, are not uncommon in
Spain. Mrs. Tellamantez could not write her name, and could read but little.
Her strong nature lived upon itself. She was chiefly known in Moonstone for her
forbearance with her incorrigible husband.
Nobody knew exactly
what was the matter with Johnny, and everybody liked him. His popularity would
have been unusual for a white man, for a Mexican it was unprecedented. His
talents were his undoing. He had a high, uncertain tenor voice, and he played
the mandolin with exceptional skill. Periodically he went crazy. There was no
other way to explain his behavior. He was a clever workman, and, when he
worked, as regular and faithful as a burro. Then some night he would fall in
with a crowd at the saloon and begin to sing. He would go on until he had no voice
left, until he wheezed and rasped. Then he would play his mandolin furiously,
and drink until his eyes sank back into his head. At last, when he was put out
of the saloon at closing time, and could get nobody to listen to him, he would
run away--along the railroad track, straight across the desert. He always
managed to get aboard a freight somewhere. Once beyond Denver, he played his
way southward from saloon to saloon until he got across the border. He never
wrote to his wife; but she would soon begin to get newspapers from La Junta,
Albuquerque, Chihuahua, with marked paragraphs announcing that Juan Tellamantez
and his wonderful mandolin could be heard at the Jack Rabbit Grill, or the
Pearl of Cadiz Saloon. Mrs. Tellamantez waited and wept and combed her hair.
When he was completely wrung out and burned up,--all but destroyed,--her Juan
always came back to her to be taken care of,--once with an ugly knife wound in
the neck, once with a finger missing from his right hand,--but he played just
as well with three fingers as he had with four.
Public sentiment was
lenient toward Johnny, but everybody was disgusted with Mrs. Tellamantez for
putting up with him. She ought to discipline him, people said; she ought to
leave him; she had no self-respect. In short, Mrs. Tellamantez got all the
blame. Even Thea thought she was much too humble. To-night, as she sat with her
back to the moon, looking at the moonflowers and Mrs. Tellamantez's somber
face, she was thinking that there is nothing so sad in the world as that kind
of patience and resignation. It was much worse than Johnny's craziness. She
even wondered whether it did not help to make Johnny crazy. People had no right
to be so passive and resigned. She would like to roll over and over in the sand
and screech at Mrs. Tellamantez. She was glad when the doctor came out.
The Mexican woman rose
and stood respectful and expectant. The doctor held his hat in his hand and
looked kindly at her.
"Same old thing,
Mrs. Tellamantez. He's no worse than he's been before. I've left some medicine.
Don't give him anything but toast water until I see him again. You're a good
nurse; you'll get him out." Dr. Archie smiled encouragingly. He glanced
about the little garden and wrinkled his brows. "I can't see what makes
him behave so. He's killing himself, and he's not a rowdy sort of fellow. Can't
you tie him up someway? Can't you tell when these fits are coming on?"
Mrs. Tellamantez put
her hand to her forehead. "The saloon, doctor, the excitement; that is
what makes him. People listen to him, and it excites him."
The doctor shook his
head. "Maybe. He's too much for my calculations. I don't see what he gets
out of it."
"He is always
fooled,"--the Mexican woman spoke rapidly and tremulously, her long under
lip quivering.
"He is good at
heart, but he has no head. He fools himself. You do not understand in this
country, you are progressive. But he has no judgment, and he is fooled."
She stooped quickly, took up one of the white conch-shells that bordered the
walk, and, with an apologetic inclination of her head, held it to Dr. Archie's
ear. "Listen, doctor. You hear something in there? You hear the sea; and
yet the sea is very far from here. You have judgment, and you know that. But he
is fooled. To him, it is the sea itself. A little thing is big to him."
She bent and placed the shell in the white row, with its fellows. Thea took it
up softly and pressed it to her own ear. The sound in it startled her; it was
like something calling one. So that was why Johnny ran away. There was
something awe-inspiring about Mrs. Tellamantez and her shell.
Thea caught Dr.
Archie's hand and squeezed it hard as she skipped along beside him back toward
Moonstone. She went home, and the doctor went back to his lamp and his book. He
never left his office until after midnight. If he did not play whist or pool in
the evening, he read. It had become a habit with him to lose himself.
Thea's twelfth birthday
had passed a few weeks before her memorable call upon Mrs. Tellamantez. There
was a worthy man in Moonstone who was already planning to marry Thea as soon as
she should be old enough. His name was Ray Kennedy, his age was thirty, and he
was conductor on a freight train, his run being from Moonstone to Denver. Ray
was a big fellow, with a square, open American face, a rock chin, and features
that one would never happen to remember. He was an aggressive idealist, a
freethinker, and, like most railroad men, deeply sentimental. Thea liked him
for reasons that had to do with the adventurous life he had led in Mexico and
the South- west, rather than for anything very personal. She liked him, too,
because he was the only one of her friends who ever took her to the sand hills.
The sand hills were a constant tantalization; she loved them better than anything
near Moonstone, and yet she could so seldom get to them. The first dunes were
accessible enough; they were only a few miles beyond the Kohlers', and she
could run out there any day when she could do her practicing in the morning and
get Thor off her hands for an afternoon. But the real hills--the Turquoise
Hills, the Mexicans called them-- were ten good miles away, and one reached
them by a heavy, sandy road. Dr. Archie sometimes took Thea on his long drives,
but as nobody lived in the sand hills, he never had calls to make in that
direction. Ray Kennedy was her only hope of getting there.
This summer Thea had
not been to the hills once, though Ray had planned several Sunday expeditions.
Once Thor was sick, and once the organist in her father's church was away and
Thea had to play the organ for the three Sunday services. But on the first
Sunday in September, Ray drove up to the Kronborgs' front gate at nine o'clock
in the morning and the party actually set off. Gunner and Axel went with Thea,
and Ray had asked Spanish Johnny to come and to bring Mrs. Tellamantez and his
mandolin. Ray was artlessly fond of music, especially of Mexican music. He and
Mrs. Tellamantez had got up the lunch between them, and they were to make
coffee in the desert.
When they left Mexican
Town, Thea was on the front seat with Ray and Johnny, and Gunner and Axel sat
behind with Mrs. Tellamantez. They objected to this, of course, but there were
some things about which Thea would have her own way. "As stubborn as a
Finn," Mrs. Kronborg sometimes said of her, quoting an old Swedish saying.
When they passed the Kohlers', old Fritz and Wunsch were cutting grapes at the
arbor. Thea gave them a businesslike nod. Wunsch came to the gate and looked
after them. He divined Ray Kennedy's hopes, and he distrusted every expedition
that led away from the piano. Unconsciously he made Thea pay for frivolousness
of this sort.
As Ray Kennedy's party
followed the faint road across the sagebrush, they heard behind them the sound
of church bells, which gave them a sense of escape and boundless freedom. Every
rabbit that shot across the path, every sage hen that flew up by the trail, was
like a runaway thought, a message that one sent into the desert. As they went
farther, the illusion of the mirage became more instead of less convincing; a
shallow silver lake that spread for many miles, a little misty in the sunlight.
Here and there one saw reflected the image of a heifer, turned loose to live
upon the sparse sand-grass. They were magnified to a preposterous height and
looked like mammoths, prehistoric beasts standing solitary in the waters that
for many thousands of years actually washed over that desert; --the mirage
itself may be the ghost of that long-vanished sea. Beyond the phantom lake lay
the line of many-colored hills; rich, sun-baked yellow, glowing turquoise,
lavender, purple; all the open, pastel colors of the desert.
After the first five
miles the road grew heavier. The horses had to slow down to a walk and the
wheels sank deep into the sand, which now lay in long ridges, like waves, where
the last high wind had drifted it. Two hours brought the party to Pedro's Cup,
named for a Mexican desperado who had once held the sheriff at bay there. The
Cup was a great amphitheater, cut out in the hills, its floor smooth and packed
hard, dotted with sagebrush and greasewood.
On either side of the
Cup the yellow hills ran north and south, with winding ravines between them,
full of soft sand which drained down from the crumbling banks. On the surface of
this fluid sand, one could find bits of brilliant stone, crystals and agates
and onyx, and petrified wood as red as blood. Dried toads and lizards were to
be found there, too. Birds, decomposing more rapidly, left only feathered
skeletons.
After a little
reconnoitering, Mrs. Tellamantez declared that it was time for lunch, and Ray
took his hatchet and began to cut greasewood, which burns fiercely in its green
state. The little boys dragged the bushes to the spot that Mrs. Tellamantez had
chosen for her fire. Mexican women like to cook out of doors.
After lunch Thea sent
Gunner and Axel to hunt for agates. "If you see a rattlesnake, run. Don't
try to kill it," she enjoined.
Gunner hesitated.
"If Ray would let me take the hatchet, I could kill one all right."
Mrs. Tellamantez smiled
and said something to Johnny in Spanish.
"Yes," her
husband replied, translating, "they say in Mexico, kill a snake but never
hurt his feelings. Down in the hot country, muchacha," turning to Thea,
"people keep a pet snake in the house to kill rats and mice. They call him
the house snake. They keep a little mat for him by the fire, and at night he
curl up there and sit with the family, just as friendly!"
Gunner sniffed with
disgust. "Well, I think that's a dirty Mexican way to keep house; so
there!"
Johnny shrugged his
shoulders. "Perhaps," he muttered. A Mexican learns to dive below
insults or soar above them, after he crosses the border.
By this time the south
wall of the amphitheater cast a narrow shelf of shadow, and the party withdrew
to this refuge. Ray and Johnny began to talk about the Grand Canyon and Death
Valley, two places much shrouded in mystery in those days, and Thea listened
intently. Mrs. Tellamantez took out her drawn-work and pinned it to her knee.
Ray could talk well about the large part of the continent over which he had
been knocked about, and Johnny was appreciative.
"You been all
over, pretty near. Like a Spanish boy," he commented respectfully.
Ray, who had taken off
his coat, whetted his pocket- knife thoughtfully on the sole of his shoe.
"I began to browse around early. I had a mind to see something of this
world, and I ran away from home before I was twelve. Rustled for myself ever
since."
"Ran away?"
Johnny looked hopeful. "What for?"
"Couldn't make it
go with my old man, and didn't take to farming. There were plenty of boys at
home. I wasn't missed."
Thea wriggled down in
the hot sand and rested her chin on her arm. "Tell Johnny about the
melons, Ray, please do!"
Ray's solid, sunburned
cheeks grew a shade redder, and he looked reproachfully at Thea. "You're
stuck on that story, kid. You like to get the laugh on me, don't you? That was
the finishing split I had with my old man, John. He had a claim along the
creek, not far from Denver, and raised a little garden stuff for market. One
day he had a load of melons and he decided to take 'em to town and sell 'em
along the street, and he made me go along and drive for him. Denver wasn't the
queen city it is now, by any means, but it seemed a terrible big place to me;
and when we got there, if he didn't make me drive right up Capitol Hill! Pap
got out and stopped at folkses houses to ask if they didn't want to buy any
melons, and I was to drive along slow. The farther I went the madder I got, but
I was trying to look unconscious, when the end-gate came loose and one of the
melons fell out and squashed. Just then a swell girl, all dressed up, comes out
of one of the big houses and calls out, `Hello, boy, you're losing your
melons!' Some dudes on the other side of the street took their hats off to her
and began to laugh. I couldn't stand it any longer. I grabbed the whip and lit
into that team, and they tore up the hill like jack-rabbits, them damned melons
bouncing out the back every jump, the old man cussin' an' yellin' behind and
everybody laughin'. I never looked behind, but the whole of Capitol Hill must
have been a mess with them squashed melons. I didn't stop the team till I got
out of sight of town. Then I pulled up an' left 'em with a rancher I was
acquainted with, and I never went home to get the lickin' that was waitin' for
me. I expect it's waitin' for me yet."
Thea rolled over in the
sand. "Oh, I wish I could have seen those melons fly, Ray! I'll never see
anything as funny as that. Now, tell Johnny about your first job."
Ray had a collection of
good stories. He was observant, truthful, and kindly--perhaps the chief
requisites in a good story-teller. Occasionally he used newspaper phrases,
conscientiously learned in his efforts at self-instruction, but when he talked
naturally he was always worth listening to. Never having had any schooling to
speak of, he had, almost from the time he first ran away, tried to make good
his loss. As a sheep-herder he had worried an old grammar to tatters, and read
instructive books with the help of a pocket dictionary. By the light of many
camp-fires he had pondered upon Prescott's histories, and the works of
Washington Irving, which he bought at a high price from a book-agent.
Mathematics and physics were easy for him, but general culture came hard, and
he was determined to get it. Ray was a freethinker, and inconsistently believed
himself damned for being one. When he was braking, down on the Santa Fe, at the
end of his run he used to climb into the upper bunk of the caboose, while a
noisy gang played poker about the stove below him, and by the roof-lamp read
Robert Ingersoll's speeches and "The Age of Reason."
Ray was a loyal-hearted
fellow, and it had cost him a great deal to give up his God. He was one of the
step- children of Fortune, and he had very little to show for all his hard
work; the other fellow always got the best of it. He had come in too late, or
too early, on several schemes that had made money. He brought with him from all
his wanderings a good deal of information (more or less correct in itself, but
unrelated, and therefore misleading), a high standard of personal honor, a
sentimental veneration for all women, bad as well as good, and a bitter hatred
of Englishmen. Thea often thought that the nicest thing about Ray was his love
for Mexico and the Mexicans, who had been kind to him when he drifted, a
homeless boy, over the border. In Mexico, Ray was Senor Ken-ay-dy, and when he
answered to that name he was somehow a different fellow. He spoke Spanish
fluently, and the sunny warmth of that tongue kept him from being quite as hard
as his chin, or as narrow as his popular science.
While Ray was smoking
his cigar, he and Johnny fell to talking about the great fortunes that had been
made in the Southwest, and about fellows they knew who had "struck it
rich."
"I guess you been
in on some big deals down there?" Johnny asked trustfully.
Ray smiled and shook his
head. "I've been out on some, John. I've never been exactly in on any. So
far, I've either held on too long or let go too soon. But mine's coming to me,
all right." Ray looked reflective. He leaned back in the shadow and dug
out a rest for his elbow in the sand. "The narrowest escape I ever had,
was in the Bridal Chamber. If I hadn't let go there, it would have made me
rich. That was a close call."
Johnny looked
delighted. "You don' say! She was silver mine, I guess?"
"I guess she was!
Down at Lake Valley. I put up a few hundred for the prospector, and he gave me
a bunch of stock. Before we'd got anything out of it, my brother-in-law died of
the fever in Cuba. My sister was beside herself to get his body back to
Colorado to bury him. Seemed foolish to me, but she's the only sister I got.
It's expensive for dead folks to travel, and I had to sell my stock in the mine
to raise the money to get Elmer on the move. Two months afterward, the boys
struck that big pocket in the rock, full of virgin silver. They named her the
Bridal Chamber. It wasn't ore, you remember. It was pure, soft metal you could
have melted right down into dollars. The boys cut it out with chisels. If old
Elmer hadn't played that trick on me, I'd have been in for about fifty
thousand. That was a close call, Spanish."
"I recollec'. When
the pocket gone, the town go bust."
"You bet. Higher'n
a kite. There was no vein, just a pocket in the rock that had sometime or
another got filled up with molten silver. You'd think there would be more
somewhere about, but nada. There's fools digging holes in that mountain
yet."
When Ray had finished
his cigar, Johnny took his mandolin and began Kennedy's favorite, "Ultimo
Amor." It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, the hottest hour in the
day. The narrow shelf of shadow had widened until the floor of the amphitheater
was marked off in two halves, one glittering yellow, and one purple. The little
boys had come back and were making a robbers' cave to enact the bold deeds of
Pedro the bandit. Johnny, stretched gracefully on the sand, passed from
"Ultimo Amor" to "Fluvia de Oro," and then to "Noches
de Algeria," playing languidly.
Every one was busy with
his own thoughts. Mrs. Tellamantez was thinking of the square in the little
town in which she was born; of the white churchsteps, with people genuflecting
as they passed, and the round-topped acacia trees, and the band playing in the
plaza. Ray Kennedy was thinking of the future, dreaming the large Western dream
of easy money, of a fortune kicked up somewhere in the hills,--an oil well, a
gold mine, a ledge of copper. He always told himself, when he accepted a cigar
from a newly married railroad man, that he knew enough not to marry until he
had found his ideal, and could keep her like a queen. He believed that in the
yellow head over there in the sand he had found his ideal, and that by the time
she was old enough to marry, he would be able to keep her like a queen. He
would kick it up from somewhere, when he got loose from the railroad.
Thea, stirred by tales
of adventure, of the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, was recalling a great
adventure of her own. Early in the summer her father had been invited to
conduct a reunion of old frontiersmen, up in Wyoming, near Laramie, and he took
Thea along with him to play the organ and sing patriotic songs. There they
stayed at the house of an old ranchman who told them about a ridge up in the
hills called Laramie Plain, where the wagon-trails of the Forty-niners and the
Mormons were still visible. The old man even volunteered to take Mr. Kronborg
up into the hills to see this place, though it was a very long drive to make in
one day. Thea had begged frantically to go along, and the old rancher,
flattered by her rapt attention to his stories, had interceded for her. They
set out from Laramie before daylight, behind a strong team of mules. All the
way there was much talk of the Forty-niners. The old rancher had been a
teamster in a freight train that used to crawl back and forth across the plains
between Omaha and Cherry Creek, as Denver was then called, and he had met many
a wagon train bound for California. He told of Indians and buffalo, thirst and
slaughter, wanderings in snowstorms, and lonely graves in the desert.
The road they followed
was a wild and beautiful one. It led up and up, by granite rocks and stunted
pines, around deep ravines and echoing gorges. The top of the ridge, when they
reached it, was a great flat plain, strewn with white boulders, with the wind
howling over it. There was not one trail, as Thea had expected; there were a
score; deep furrows, cut in the earth by heavy wagon wheels, and now grown over
with dry, whitish grass. The furrows ran side by side; when one trail had been
worn too deep, the next party had abandoned it and made a new trail to the
right or left. They were, indeed, only old wagon ruts, running east and west,
and grown over with grass. But as Thea ran about among the white stones, her
skirts blowing this way and that, the wind brought to her eyes tears that might
have come anyway. The old rancher picked up an iron ox-shoe from one of the
furrows and gave it to her for a keepsake. To the west one could see range
after range of blue mountains, and at last the snowy range, with its white,
windy peaks, the clouds caught here and there on their spurs. Again and again
Thea had to hide her face from the cold for a moment. The wind never slept on
this plain, the old man said. Every little while eagles flew over.
Coming up from Laramie,
the old man had told them that he was in Brownsville, Nebraska, when the first
telegraph wires were put across the Missouri River, and that the first message
that ever crossed the river was "Westward the course of Empire takes its
way." He had been in the room when the instrument began to click, and all
the men there had, without thinking what they were doing, taken off their hats,
waiting bareheaded to hear the message translated. Thea remembered that message
when she sighted down the wagon tracks toward the blue mountains. She told
herself she would never, never forget it. The spirit of human courage seemed to
live up there with the eagles. For long after, when she was moved by a
Fourth-of-July oration, or a band, or a circus parade, she was apt to remember
that windy ridge.
To-day she went to sleep
while she was thinking about it. When Ray wakened her, the horses were hitched
to the wagon and Gunner and Axel were begging for a place on the front seat.
The air had cooled, the sun was setting, and the desert was on fire. Thea
contentedly took the back seat with Mrs. Tellamantez. As they drove homeward
the stars began to come out, pale yellow in a yellow sky, and Ray and Johnny
began to sing one of those railroad ditties that are usually born on the
Southern Pacific and run the length of the Santa Fe and the "Q"
system before they die to give place to a new one. This was a song about a
Greaser dance, the refrain being something like this:--
Winter was long in
coming that year. Throughout October the days were bathed in sunlight and the
air was clear as crystal. The town kept its cheerful summer aspect, the desert
glistened with light, the sand hills every day went through magical changes of
color. The scarlet sage bloomed late in the front yards, the cottonwood leaves
were bright gold long before they fell, and it was not until November that the
green on the tamarisks began to cloud and fade. There was a flurry of snow
about Thanksgiving, and then December came on warm and clear.
Thea had three music
pupils now, little girls whose mothers declared that Professor Wunsch was
"much too severe." They took their lessons on Saturday, and this, of
course, cut down her time for play. She did not really mind this because she
was allowed to use the money--her pupils paid her twenty-five cents a
lesson--to fit up a little room for herself upstairs in the half-story. It was
the end room of the wing, and was not plastered, but was snugly lined with soft
pine. The ceiling was so low that a grown person could reach it with the palm
of the hand, and it sloped down on either side. There was only one window, but
it was a double one and went to the floor. In October, while the days were
still warm, Thea and Tillie papered the room, walls and ceiling in the same
paper, small red and brown roses on a yellowish ground. Thea bought a brown
cotton carpet, and her big brother, Gus, put it down for her one Sunday. She
made white cheesecloth curtains and hung them on a tape. Her mother gave her an
old walnut dresser with a broken mirror, and she had her own dumpy walnut
single bed, and a blue washbowl and pitcher which she had drawn at a church
fair lottery. At the head of her bed she had a tall round wooden hat-crate,
from the clothing store. This, standing on end and draped with cretonne, made a
fairly steady table for her lantern. She was not allowed to take a lamp
upstairs, so Ray Kennedy gave her a railroad lantern by which she could read at
night.
In winter this loft
room of Thea's was bitterly cold, but against her mother's advice--and
Tillie's--she always left her window open a little way. Mrs. Kronborg declared
that she "had no patience with American physiology," though the
lessons about the injurious effects of alcohol and tobacco were well enough for
the boys. Thea asked Dr. Archie about the window, and he told her that a girl
who sang must always have plenty of fresh air, or her voice would get husky,
and that the cold would harden her throat. The important thing, he said, was to
keep your feet warm. On very cold nights Thea always put a brick in the oven
after supper, and when she went upstairs she wrapped it in an old flannel
petticoat and put it in her bed. The boys, who would never heat bricks for
themselves, sometimes carried off Thea's, and thought it a good joke to get
ahead of her.
When Thea first plunged
in between her red blankets, the cold sometimes kept her awake for a good
while, and she comforted herself by remembering all she could of "Polar
Explorations," a fat, calf-bound volume her father had bought from a
book-agent, and by thinking about the members of Greely's party: how they lay
in their frozen sleeping-bags, each man hoarding the warmth of his own body and
trying to make it last as long as possible against the on-coming cold that
would be everlasting. After half an hour or so, a warm wave crept over her body
and round, sturdy legs; she glowed like a little stove with the warmth of her
own blood, and the heavy quilts and red blankets grew warm wherever they
touched her, though her breath sometimes froze on the coverlid. Before
daylight, her internal fires went down a little, and she often wakened to find
herself drawn up into a tight ball, somewhat stiff in the legs. But that made
it all the easier to get up.
The acquisition of this
room was the beginning of a new era in Thea's life. It was one of the most
important things that ever happened to her. Hitherto, except in summer, when
she could be out of doors, she had lived in constant turmoil; the family, the
day school, the Sunday-School. The clamor about her drowned the voice within
herself. In the end of the wing, separated from the other upstairs
sleeping-rooms by a long, cold, unfinished lumber room, her mind worked better.
She thought things out more clearly. Pleasant plans and ideas occurred to her
which had never come before. She had certain thoughts which were like companions,
ideas which were like older and wiser friends. She left them there in the
morning, when she finished dressing in the cold, and at night, when she came up
with her lantern and shut the door after a busy day, she found them awaiting
her. There was no possible way of heating the room, but that was fortunate, for
otherwise it would have been occupied by one of her older brothers.
From the time when she
moved up into the wing, Thea began to live a double life. During the day, when
the hours were full of tasks, she was one of the Kronborg children, but at
night she was a different person. On Friday and Saturday nights she always read
for a long while after she was in bed. She had no clock, and there was no one
to nag her.
Ray Kennedy, on his way
from the depot to his boarding- house, often looked up and saw Thea's light
burning when the rest of the house was dark, and felt cheered as by a friendly
greeting. He was a faithful soul, and many disappointments had not changed his
nature. He was still, at heart, the same boy who, when he was sixteen, had
settled down to freeze with his sheep in a Wyoming blizzard, and had been
rescued only to play the losing game of fidelity to other charges.
Ray had no very clear
idea of what might be going on in Thea's head, but he knew that something was.
He used to remark to Spanish Johnny, "That girl is developing something
fine." Thea was patient with Ray, even in regard to the liberties he took
with her name. Outside the family, every one in Moonstone, except Wunsch and
Dr. Archie, called her "Thee-a," but this seemed cold and distant to
Ray, so he called her "Thee." Once, in a moment of exasperation, Thea
asked him why he did this, and he explained that he once had a chum, Theodore,
whose name was always abbreviated thus, and that since he was killed down on
the Santa Fe, it seemed natural to call somebody "Thee." Thea sighed
and submitted. She was always helpless before homely sentiment and usually
changed the subject.
It was the custom for
each of the different Sunday- Schools in Moonstone to give a concert on
Christmas Eve. But this year all the churches were to unite and give, as was
announced from the pulpits, "a semi-sacred concert of picked talent"
at the opera house. The Moonstone Orchestra, under the direction of Professor
Wunsch, was to play, and the most talented members of each Sunday- School were
to take part in the programme. Thea was put down by the committee "for
instrumental." This made her indignant, for the vocal numbers were always
more popular. Thea went to the president of the committee and demanded hotly if
her rival, Lily Fisher, were going to sing. The president was a big, florid,
powdered woman, a fierce W.C.T.U. worker, one of Thea's natural enemies. Her
name was Johnson; her husband kept the livery stable, and she was called Mrs.
Livery Johnson, to distinguish her from other families of the same surname.
Mrs. Johnson was a prominent Baptist, and Lily Fisher was the Baptist prodigy.
There was a not very Christian rivalry between the Baptist Church and Mr.
Kronborg's church.
When Thea asked Mrs.
Johnson whether her rival was to be allowed to sing, Mrs. Johnson, with an
eagerness which told how she had waited for this moment, replied that
"Lily was going to recite to be obliging, and to give other children a
chance to sing." As she delivered this thrust, her eyes glittered more
than the Ancient Mariner's, Thea thought. Mrs. Johnson disapproved of the way
in which Thea was being brought up, of a child whose chosen associates were
Mexicans and sinners, and who was, as she pointedly put it, "bold with
men." She so enjoyed an opportunity to rebuke Thea, that, tightly corseted
as she was, she could scarcely control her breathing, and her lace and her gold
watch chain rose and fell "with short, uneasy motion." Frowning, Thea
turned away and walked slowly homeward. She suspected guile. Lily Fisher was
the most stuck-up doll in the world, and it was certainly not like her to
recite to be obliging. Nobody who could sing ever recited, because the warmest
applause always went to the singers.
However, when the
programme was printed in the Moonstone Gleam, there it was: "Instrumental
solo, Thea Kronborg. Recitation, Lily Fisher."
Because his orchestra
was to play for the concert, Mr. Wunsch imagined that he had been put in charge
of the music, and he became arrogant. He insisted that Thea should play a
"Ballade" by Reinecke. When Thea consulted her mother, Mrs. Kronborg
agreed with her that the "Ballade" would "never take" with
a Moonstone audience. She advised Thea to play "something with
variations," or, at least, "The Invitation to the Dance."
"It makes no
matter what they like," Wunsch replied to Thea's entreaties. "It is
time already that they learn something."
Thea's fighting powers
had been impaired by an ulcerated tooth and consequent loss of sleep, so she
gave in. She finally had the molar pulled, though it was a second tooth and
should have been saved. The dentist was a clumsy, ignorant country boy, and Mr.
Kronborg would not hear of Dr. Archie's taking Thea to a dentist in Denver,
though Ray Kennedy said he could get a pass for her. What with the pain of the
tooth, and family discussions about it, with trying to make Christmas presents
and to keep up her school work and practicing, and giving lessons on Saturdays,
Thea was fairly worn out.
On Christmas Eve she
was nervous and excited. It was the first time she had ever played in the opera
house, and she had never before had to face so many people. Wunsch would not
let her play with her notes, and she was afraid of forgetting. Before the
concert began, all the participants had to assemble on the stage and sit there
to be looked at. Thea wore her white summer dress and a blue sash, but Lily
Fisher had a new pink silk, trimmed with white swansdown.
The hall was packed. It
seemed as if every one in Moonstone was there, even Mrs. Kohler, in her hood,
and old Fritz. The seats were wooden kitchen chairs, numbered, and nailed to
long planks which held them together in rows. As the floor was not raised, the
chairs were all on the same level. The more interested persons in the audience
peered over the heads of the people in front of them to get a good view of the
stage. From the platform Thea picked out many friendly faces. There was Dr.
Archie, who never went to church entertainments; there was the friendly jeweler
who ordered her music for her,--he sold accordions and guitars as well as
watches,--and the druggist who often lent her books, and her favorite teacher
from the school. There was Ray Kennedy, with a party of freshly barbered
railroad men he had brought along with him. There was Mrs. Kronborg with all
the children, even Thor, who had been brought out in a new white plush coat. At
the back of the hall sat a little group of Mexicans, and among them Thea caught
the gleam of Spanish Johnny's white teeth, and of Mrs. Tellamantez's lustrous,
smoothly coiled black hair.
After the orchestra
played "Selections from Erminie," and the Baptist preacher made a
long prayer, Tillie Kronborg came on with a highly colored recitation,
"The Polish Boy." When it was over every one breathed more freely. No
committee had the courage to leave Tillie off a programme. She was accepted as
a trying feature of every entertainment. The Progressive Euchre Club was the
only social organization in the town that entirely escaped Tillie. After Tillie
sat down, the Ladies' Quartette sang, "Beloved, it is Night," and
then it was Thea's turn.
The "Ballade"
took ten minutes, which was five minutes too long. The audience grew restive
and fell to whispering. Thea could hear Mrs. Livery Johnson's bracelets
jangling as she fanned herself, and she could hear her father's nervous,
ministerial cough. Thor behaved better than any one else. When Thea bowed and
returned to her seat at the back of the stage there was the usual applause, but
it was vigorous only from the back of the house where the Mexicans sat, and
from Ray Kennedy's claqueurs. Any one could see that a good-natured audience
had been bored.
Because Mr. Kronborg's
sister was on the programme, it had also been necessary to ask the Baptist
preacher's wife's cousin to sing. She was a "deep alto" from McCook,
and she sang, "Thy Sentinel Am I." After her came Lily Fisher. Thea's
rival was also a blonde, but her hair was much heavier than Thea's, and fell in
long round curls over her shoulders. She was the angel-child of the Baptists,
and looked exactly like the beautiful children on soap calendars. Her
pink-and-white face, her set smile of innocence, were surely born of a
color-press. She had long, drooping eyelashes, a little pursed-up mouth, and
narrow, pointed teeth, like a squirrel's.
Lily began:--
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me, carelessly the maiden sang."
Thea drew a long breath. That was the game; it was a recitation and a song in
one. Lily trailed the hymn through half a dozen verses with great effect. The
Baptist preacher had announced at the beginning of the concert that "owing
to the length of the programme, there would be no encores." But the
applause which followed Lily to her seat was such an unmistakable expression of
enthusiasm that Thea had to admit Lily was justified in going back. She was
attended this time by Mrs. Livery Johnson herself, crimson with triumph and
gleaming-eyed, nervously rolling and unrolling a sheet of music. She took off
her bracelets and played Lily's accompaniment. Lily had the effrontery to come
out with, "She sang the song of Home, Sweet Home, the song that touched my
heart." But this did not surprise Thea; as Ray said later in the evening, "the
cards had been stacked against her from the beginning." The next issue of
the Gleam correctly stated that "unquestionably the honors of the evening
must be accorded to Miss Lily Fisher." The Baptists had everything their
own way. After the concert Ray
Kennedy joined the Kronborgs' party and walked home with them. Thea was
grateful for his silent sympathy, even while it irritated her. She inwardly
vowed that she would never take another lesson from old Wunsch. She wished that
her father would not keep cheerfully singing, "When Shepherds
Watched," as he marched ahead, carrying Thor. She felt that silence would
become the Kronborgs for a while. As a family, they somehow seemed a little
ridiculous, trooping along in the starlight. There were so many of them, for
one thing. Then Tillie was so absurd. She was giggling and talking to Anna just
as if she had not made, as even Mrs. Kronborg admitted, an exhibition of
herself.
When they got home, Ray
took a box from his overcoat pocket and slipped it into Thea's hand as he said
good- night. They all hurried in to the glowing stove in the parlor. The sleepy
children were sent to bed. Mrs. Kronborg and Anna stayed up to fill the
stockings. "I guess you're tired, Thea. You needn't stay up." Mrs.
Kronborg's clear and seemingly indifferent eye usually measured Thea pretty
accurately.
Thea hesitated. She
glanced at the presents laid out on the dining-room table, but they looked
unattractive. Even the brown plush monkey she had bought for Thor with such
enthusiasm seemed to have lost his wise and humorous expression. She murmured,
"All right," to her mother, lit her lantern, and went upstairs.
Ray's box contained a
hand-painted white satin fan, with pond lilies--an unfortunate reminder. Thea
smiled grimly and tossed it into her upper drawer. She was not to be consoled
by toys. She undressed quickly and stood for some time in the cold, frowning in
the broken looking- glass at her flaxen pig-tails, at her white neck and arms.
Her own broad, resolute face set its chin at her, her eyes flashed into her own
defiantly. Lily Fisher was pretty, and she was willing to be just as big a fool
as people wanted her to be. Very well; Thea Kronborg wasn't. She would rather
be hated than be stupid, any day. She popped into bed and read stubbornly at a
queer paper book the drug-store man had given her because he couldn't sell it.
She had trained herself to put her mind on what she was doing, otherwise she
would have come to grief with her complicated daily schedule. She read, as
intently as if she had not been flushed with anger, the strange "Musical
Memories" of the Reverend H. R. Haweis. At last she blew out the lantern
and went to sleep. She had many curious dreams that night. In one of them Mrs.
Tellamantez held her shell to Thea's ear, and she heard the roaring, as before,
and distant voices calling, "Lily Fisher! Lily Fisher!"
Mr. Kronborg considered
Thea a remarkable child; but so were all his children remarkable. If one of the
business men downtown remarked to him that he "had a mighty bright little
girl, there," he admitted it, and at once began to explain what a
"long head for business" his son Gus had, or that Charley was "a
natural electrician," and had put in a telephone from the house to the
preacher's study behind the church.
Mrs. Kronborg watched
her daughter thoughtfully. She found her more interesting than her other
children, and she took her more seriously, without thinking much about why she
did so. The other children had to be guided, directed, kept from conflicting
with one another. Charley and Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to
quarrel about it. Anna often demanded unreasonable service from her older
brothers; that they should sit up until after midnight to bring her home from
parties when she did not like the youth who had offered himself as her escort;
or that they should drive twelve miles into the country, on a winter night, to
take her to a ranch dance, after they had been working hard all day. Gunner
often got bored with his own clothes or stilts or sled, and wanted Axel's. But
Thea, from the time she was a little thing, had her own routine. She kept out
of every one's way, and was hard to manage only when the other children
interfered with her. Then there was trouble indeed: bursts of temper which used
to alarm Mrs. Kronborg. "You ought to know enough to let Thea alone. She
lets you alone," she often said to the other children.
One may have staunch
friends in one's own family, but one seldom has admirers. Thea, however, had
one in the person of her addle-pated aunt, Tillie Kronborg. In older countries,
where dress and opinions and manners are not so thoroughly standardized as in
our own West, there is a belief that people who are foolish about the more
obvious things of life are apt to have peculiar insight into what lies beyond
the obvious. The old woman who can never learn not to put the kerosene can on
the stove, may yet be able to tell fortunes, to persuade a backward child to
grow, to cure warts, or to tell people what to do with a young girl who has
gone melancholy. Tillie's mind was a curious machine; when she was awake it
went round like a wheel when the belt has slipped off, and when she was asleep
she dreamed follies. But she had intuitions. She knew, for instance, that Thea
was different from the other Kronborgs, worthy though they all were. Her
romantic imagination found possibilities in her niece. When she was sweeping or
ironing, or turning the ice-cream freezer at a furious rate, she often built up
brilliant futures for Thea, adapting freely the latest novel she had read.
Tillie made enemies for
her niece among the church people because, at sewing societies and church
suppers, she sometimes spoke vauntingly, with a toss of her head, just as if
Thea's "wonderfulness" were an accepted fact in Moonstone, like Mrs.
Archie's stinginess, or Mrs. Livery Johnson's duplicity. People declared that,
on this subject, Tillie made them tired.
Tillie belonged to a
dramatic club that once a year performed in the Moonstone Opera House such
plays as "Among the Breakers," and "The Veteran of 1812."
Tillie played character parts, the flirtatious old maid or the spiteful
intrigante. She used to study her parts up in the attic at home. While she was
committing the lines, she got Gunner or Anna to hold the book for her, but when
she began "to bring out the expression," as she said, she used, very
timorously, to ask Thea to hold the book. Thea was usually--not
always--agreeable about it. Her mother had told her that, since she had some
influence with Tillie, it would be a good thing for them all if she could tone
her down a shade and "keep her from taking on any worse than need
be." Thea would sit on the foot of Tillie's bed, her feet tucked under
her, and stare at the silly text. "I wouldn't make so much fuss, there,
Tillie," she would remark occasionally; "I don't see the point in
it"; or, "What do you pitch your voice so high for? It don't carry
half as well."
"I don't see how
it comes Thea is so patient with Tillie," Mrs. Kronborg more than once
remarked to her husband. "She ain't patient with most people, but it seems
like she's got a peculiar patience for Tillie."
Tillie always coaxed
Thea to go "behind the scenes" with her when the club presented a
play, and help her with her make-up. Thea hated it, but she always went. She
felt as if she had to do it. There was something in Tillie's adoration of her
that compelled her. There was no family impropriety that Thea was so much
ashamed of as Tillie's "acting" and yet she was always being dragged
in to assist her. Tillie simply had her, there. She didn't know why, but it was
so. There was a string in her somewhere that Tillie could pull; a sense of obligation
to Tillie's misguided aspirations. The saloon-keepers had some such feeling of
responsibility toward Spanish Johnny.
The dramatic club was
the pride of Tillie's heart, and her enthusiasm was the principal factor in
keeping it together. Sick or well, Tillie always attended rehearsals, and was
always urging the young people, who took rehearsals lightly, to "stop
fooling and begin now." The young men --bank clerks, grocery clerks,
insurance agents--played tricks, laughed at Tillie, and "put it up on each
other" about seeing her home; but they often went to tiresome rehearsals
just to oblige her. They were good-natured young fellows. Their trainer and
stage-manager was young Upping, the jeweler who ordered Thea's music for her.
Though barely thirty, he had followed half a dozen professions, and had once
been a violinist in the orchestra of the Andrews Opera Company, then well known
in little towns throughout Colorado and Nebraska.
By one amazing
indiscretion Tillie very nearly lost her hold upon the Moonstone Drama Club.
The club had decided to put on "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh," a very
ambitious undertaking because of the many supers needed and the scenic
difficulties of the act which took place in Andersonville Prison. The members
of the club consulted together in Tillie's absence as to who should play the
part of the drummer boy. It must be taken by a very young person, and village
boys of that age are self-conscious and are not apt at memorizing. The part was
a long one, and clearly it must be given to a girl. Some members of the club
suggested Thea Kronborg, others advocated Lily Fisher. Lily's partisans urged
that she was much prettier than Thea, and had a much "sweeter
disposition." Nobody denied these facts. But there was nothing in the
least boyish about Lily, and she sang all songs and played all parts alike.
Lily's simper was popular, but it seemed not quite the right thing for the
heroic drummer boy.
Upping, the trainer,
talked to one and another: "Lily's all right for girl parts," he
insisted, "but you've got to get a girl with some ginger in her for this.
Thea's got the voice, too. When she sings, `Just Before the Battle, Mother,'
she'll bring down the house."
When all the members of
the club had been privately consulted, they announced their decision to Tillie
at the first regular meeting that was called to cast the parts. They expected
Tillie to be overcome with joy, but, on the contrary, she seemed embarrassed.
"I'm afraid Thea hasn't got time for that," she said jerkily.
"She is always so busy with her music. Guess you'll have to get somebody
else."
The club lifted its
eyebrows. Several of Lily Fisher's friends coughed. Mr. Upping flushed. The
stout woman who always played the injured wife called Tillie's attention to the
fact that this would be a fine opportunity for her niece to show what she could
do. Her tone was condescending.
Tillie threw up her
head and laughed; there was something sharp and wild about Tillie's laugh--when
it was not a giggle. "Oh, I guess Thea hasn't got time to do any showing
off. Her time to show off ain't come yet. I expect she'll make us all sit up
when it does. No use asking her to take the part. She'd turn her nose up at it.
I guess they'd be glad to get her in the Denver Dramatics, if they could."
The company broke up
into groups and expressed their amazement. Of course all Swedes were conceited,
but they would never have believed that all the conceit of all the Swedes put
together would reach such a pitch as this. They confided to each other that
Tillie was "just a little off, on the subject of her niece," and
agreed that it would be as well not to excite her further. Tillie got a cold
reception at rehearsals for a long while afterward, and Thea had a crop of new
enemies without even knowing it.
Wunsch and old Fritz
and Spanish Johnny celebrated Christmas together, so riotously that Wunsch was
unable to give Thea her lesson the next day. In the middle of the vacation week
Thea went to the Kohlers' through a soft, beautiful snowstorm. The air was a
tender blue-gray, like the color on the doves that flew in and out of the white
dove-house on the post in the Kohlers' garden. The sand hills looked dim and
sleepy. The tamarisk hedge was full of snow, like a foam of blossoms drifted
over it. When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs. Kohler was just coming in from the
chicken yard, with five fresh eggs in her apron and a pair of old top-boots on
her feet. She called Thea to come and look at a bantam egg, which she held up
proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss in zeal, and she was always delighted when
they accomplished anything. She took Thea into the sitting-room, very warm and
smelling of food, and brought her a plateful of little Christmas cakes, made
according to old and hallowed formulae, and put them before her while she
warmed her feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen stairs and called:
"Herr Wunsch, Herr Wunsch!"
Wunsch came down
wearing an old wadded jacket, with a velvet collar. The brown silk was so worn
that the wadding stuck out almost everywhere. He avoided Thea's eyes when he
came in, nodded without speaking, and pointed directly to the piano stool. He
was not so insistent upon the scales as usual, and throughout the little sonata
of Mozart's she was studying, he remained languid and absent-minded. His eyes
looked very heavy, and he kept wiping them with one of the new silk
handkerchiefs Mrs. Kohler had given him for Christmas. When the lesson was over
he did not seem inclined to talk. Thea, loitering on the stool, reached for a
tattered book she had taken off the music-rest when she sat down. It was a very
old Leipsic edition of the piano score of Gluck's "Orpheus." She
turned over the pages curiously.
"Is it nice?"
she asked.
"It is the most
beautiful opera ever made," Wunsch declared solemnly. "You know the
story, eh? How, when she die, Orpheus went down below for his wife?"
"Oh, yes, I know.
I didn't know there was an opera about it, though. Do people sing this
now?"
"Aber ja! What
else? You like to try? See." He drew her from the stool and sat down at
the piano. Turning over the leaves to the third act, he handed the score to
Thea. "Listen, I play it through and you get the rhythmus. Eins, zwei,
drei, vier." He played through Orpheus' lament, then pushed back his cuffs
with awakening interest and nodded at Thea. "Now, vom blatt, mit
mir."
"Ach, ich habe sie verloren,
All' mein Glück ist nun dahin."
Wunsch sang the aria with much feeling. It was evidently one that was very dear
to him. "Noch einmal, alone,
yourself." He played the introductory measures, then nodded at her
vehemently, and she began:--
"Ach, ich habe sie verloren." When
she finished, Wunsch nodded again. "Schön," he muttered as he
finished the accompaniment softly. He dropped his hands on his knees and looked
up at Thea. "That is very fine, eh? There is no such beautiful melody in
the world. You can take the book for one week and learn something, to pass the
time. It is good to know--always. Euridice, Eu--ri--di--ce, weh dass ich auf
erden bin!" he sang softly, playing the melody with his right hand.
Thea, who was turning
over the pages of the third act, stopped and scowled at a passage. The old
German's blurred eyes watched her curiously.
"For what do you
look so, immer?" puckering up his own face. "You see something a
little difficult, may-be, and you make such a face like it was an enemy."
Thea laughed,
disconcerted. "Well, difficult things are enemies, aren't they? When you
have to get them?"
Wunsch lowered his head
and threw it up as if he were butting something. "Not at all! By no
means." He took the book from her and looked at it. "Yes, that is not
so easy, there. This is an old book. They do not print it so now any more, I
think. They leave it out, may-be. Only one woman could sing that good."
Thea looked at him in perplexity.
Wunsch went on.
"It is written for alto, you see. A woman sings the part, and there was
only one to sing that good in there. You understand? Only one!" He glanced
at her quickly and lifted his red forefinger upright before her eyes.
Thea looked at the
finger as if she were hypnotized. "Only one?" she asked breathlessly;
her hands, hanging at her sides, were opening and shutting rapidly.
Wunsch nodded and still
held up that compelling finger. When he dropped his hands, there was a look of
satisfaction in his face.
"Was she very
great?"
Wunsch nodded.
"Was she
beautiful?"
"Aber gar nicht! Not
at all. She was ugly; big mouth, big teeth, no figure, nothing at all,"
indicating a luxuriant bosom by sweeping his hands over his chest. "A
pole, a post! But for the voice--ach! She have something in there, behind the
eyes," tapping his temples.
Thea followed all his
gesticulations intently. "Was she German?"
"No,
Spanisch." He looked down and frowned for a moment. "Ach, I tell you,
she look like the Frau Tellamantez, some-thing. Long face, long chin, and ugly
al-so."
"Did she die a
long while ago?"
"Die? I think not.
I never hear, anyhow. I guess she is alive somewhere in the world; Paris,
may-be. But old, of course. I hear her when I was a youth. She is too old to
sing now any more."
"Was she the
greatest singer you ever heard?"
Wunsch nodded gravely.
"Quite so. She was the most--" he hunted for an English word, lifted
his hand over his head and snapped his fingers noiselessly in the air,
enunciating fiercely, " künst-ler-isch!" The word seemed to glitter
in his uplifted hand, his voice was so full of emotion.
Wunsch rose from the
stool and began to button his wadded jacket, preparing to return to his
half-heated room in the loft. Thea regretfully put on her cloak and hood and
set out for home.
When Wunsch looked for
his score late that afternoon, he found that Thea had not forgotten to take it
with her. He smiled his loose, sarcastic smile, and thoughtfully rubbed his
stubbly chin with his red fingers. When Fritz came home in the early blue
twilight the snow was flying faster, Mrs. Kohler was cooking Hasenpfeffer in
the kitchen, and the professor was seated at the piano, playing the Gluck,
which he knew by heart. Old Fritz took off his shoes quietly behind the stove
and lay down on the lounge before his masterpiece, where the firelight was
playing over the walls of Moscow. He listened, while the room grew darker and
the windows duller. Wunsch always came back to the same thing:--
"Ach, ich habe sie verloren,"
. . . . .
Euridice, Euridice!" From time to
time Fritz sighed softly. He, too, had lost a Euridice.
One Saturday, late in
June, Thea arrived early for her lesson. As she perched herself upon the piano
stool, --a wobbly, old-fashioned thing that worked on a creaky screw,--she gave
Wunsch a side glance, smiling. "You must not be cross to me to-day. This
is my birthday."
"So?" he
pointed to the keyboard.
After the lesson they
went out to join Mrs. Kohler, who had asked Thea to come early, so that she
could stay and smell the linden bloom. It was one of those still days of intense
light, when every particle of mica in the soil flashed like a little mirror,
and the glare from the plain below seemed more intense than the rays from
above. The sand ridges ran glittering gold out to where the mirage licked them
up, shining and steaming like a lake in the tropics. The sky looked like blue
lava, forever incapable of clouds, --a turquoise bowl that was the lid of the
desert. And yet within Mrs. Kohler's green patch the water dripped, the beds
had all been hosed, and the air was fresh with rapidly evaporating moisture.
The two symmetrical
linden trees were the proudest things in the garden. Their sweetness embalmed
all the air. At every turn of the paths,--whether one went to see the
hollyhocks or the bleeding heart, or to look at the purple morning-glories that
ran over the bean-poles,--wherever one went, the sweetness of the lindens
struck one afresh and one always came back to them. Under the round leaves,
where the waxen yellow blossoms hung, bevies of wild bees were buzzing. The tamarisks
were still pink, and the flower-beds were doing their best in honor of the
linden festival. The white dove-house was shining with a fresh coat of paint,
and the pigeons were crooning contentedly, flying down often to drink at the
drip from the water tank. Mrs. Kohler, who was transplanting pansies, came up
with her trowel and told Thea it was lucky to have your birthday when the
lindens were in bloom, and that she must go and look at the sweet peas. Wunsch
accompanied her, and as they walked between the flower-beds he took Thea's
hand.
"Es flü:stern und sprechen die Blumen,"--
he muttered. "You know that von Heine? Im leuchtenden
sommermorgen?"He looked down at Thea and softly pressed her hand. "No, I don't know it. What does
flü:stern mean?"
"Flü:stern?--to
whisper. You must begin now to know such things. That is necessary. How many
birthdays?"
"Thirteen. I'm in
my 'teens now. But how can I know words like that? I only know what you say at
my lessons. They don't teach German at school. How can I learn?"
"It is always
possible to learn when one likes," said Wunsch. His words were peremptory,
as usual, but his tone was mild, even confidential. "There is always a
way. And if some day you are going to sing, it is necessary to know well the German
language."
Thea stooped over to
pick a leaf of rosemary. How did Wunsch know that, when the very roses on her
wall-paper had never heard it? "But am I going to?" she asked, still
stooping.
"That is for you
to say," returned Wunsch coldly. "You would better marry some Jacob
here and keep the house for him, may-be? That is as one desires."
Thea flashed up at him
a clear, laughing look. "No, I don't want to do that. You know," she
brushed his coat- sleeve quickly with her yellow head. "Only how can I
learn anything here? It's so far from Denver."
Wunsch's loose lower
lip curled in amusement. Then, as if he suddenly remembered something, he spoke
seriously. "Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world
is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big
thing--desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little. It brought
Columbus across the sea in a little boat, und so weiter." Wunsch made a
grimace, took his pupil's hand and drew her toward the grape arbor. "Hereafter
I will more speak to you in German. Now, sit down and I will teach you for your
birthday that little song. Ask me the words you do not know already. Now: Im
leuch-tenden sommermorgen."
Thea memorized quickly
because she had the power of listening intently. In a few moments she could
repeat the eight lines for him. Wunsch nodded encouragingly and they went out
of the arbor into the sunlight again. As they went up and down the gravel paths
between the flower- beds, the white and yellow butterflies kept darting before
them, and the pigeons were washing their pink feet at the drip and crooning in
their husky bass. Over and over again Wunsch made her say the lines to him.
"You see it is nothing. If you learn a great many of the Lieder, you will
know the German language already. Weiter, nun." He would incline his head
gravely and listen.
"Im leuchtenden sommermorgen
Geh' ich im Garten herum;
Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen,
Ich aber, ich wandte stumm. "Ed flustern und sprechen die Blumen
Und schau'n mitleidig mich an: 'Sei unserer schwester nicht böse,
Du trauriger, blasser Mann!'" (In the soft-shining summer morning
I wandered the garden within.
The flowers they whispered and murmured,
But I, I wandered dumb. The flowers they whisper and murmur,
And me with compassion they scan:
"Oh, be not harsh to our sister,
Thou sorrowful, death-pale man!") Wunsch
had noticed before that when his pupil read anything in verse the character of
her voice changed altogether; it was no longer the voice which spoke the speech
of Moonstone. It was a soft, rich contralto, and she read quietly; the feeling
was in the voice itself, not indicated by emphasis or change of pitch. She
repeated the little verses musically, like a song, and the entreaty of the
flowers was even softer than the rest, as the shy speech of flowers might be,
and she ended with the voice suspended, almost with a rising inflection. It was
a nature-voice, Wunsch told himself, breathed from the creature and apart from
language, like the sound of the wind in the trees, or the murmur of water.
"What is it the
flowers mean when they ask him not to be harsh to their sister, eh?" he
asked, looking down at her curiously and wrinkling his dull red forehead.
Thea glanced at him in
surprise. "I suppose he thinks they are asking him not to be harsh to his
sweetheart--or some girl they remind him of."
"And why
trauriger, blasser Mann?"
They had come back to
the grape arbor, and Thea picked out a sunny place on the bench, where a
tortoise-shell cat was stretched at full length. She sat down, bending over the
cat and teasing his whiskers. "Because he had been awake all night,
thinking about her, wasn't it? Maybe that was why he was up so early."
Wunsch shrugged his
shoulders. "If he think about her all night already, why do you say the
flowers remind him?"
Thea looked up at him
in perplexity. A flash of comprehension lit her face and she smiled eagerly.
"Oh, I didn't mean `remind' in that way! I didn't mean they brought her to
his mind! I meant it was only when he came out in the morning, that she seemed
to him like that,--like one of the flowers."
"And before he
came out, how did she seem?"
This time it was Thea
who shrugged her shoulders. The warm smile left her face. She lifted her
eyebrows in annoyance and looked off at the sand hills.
Wunsch persisted.
"Why you not answer me?"
"Because it would
be silly. You are just trying to make me say things. It spoils things to ask
questions."
Wunsch bowed mockingly;
his smile was disagreeable. Suddenly his face grew grave, grew fierce, indeed.
He pulled himself up from his clumsy stoop and folded his arms. "But it is
necessary to know if you know somethings. Somethings cannot be taught. If you
not know in the beginning, you not know in the end. For a singer there must be
something in the inside from the beginning. I shall not be long in this place,
may-be, and I like to know. Yes,"--he ground his heel in the
gravel,--"yes, when you are barely six, you must know that already. That
is the beginning of all things; der Geist, die Phantasie. It must be in the
baby, when it makes its first cry, like der Rhuthmus, or it is not to be. You
have some voice already, and if in the beginning, when you are with things-to-play,
you know that what you will not tell me, then you can learn to sing,
may-be."
Wunsch began to pace
the arbor, rubbing his hands together. The dark flush of his face had spread up
under the iron-gray bristles on his head. He was talking to himself, not to
Thea. Insidious power of the linden bloom! "Oh, much you can learn! Aber
nicht die Americanischen Fräuline. They have nothing inside them,"
striking his chest with both fists. "They are like the ones in the Märchen,
a grinning face and hollow in the insides. Something they can learn, oh, yes,
may-be! But the secret-- what make the rose to red, the sky to blue, the man to
love --in der Brust, in der Brust it is, und ohne dieses giebt es keine Kunst,
giebt es keine Kunst!" He threw up his square hand and shook it, all the
fingers apart and wagging. Purple and breathless he went out of the arbor and
into the house, without saying good-bye. These outbursts frightened Wunsch.
They were always harbingers of ill. Thea got her music-book and stole quietly
out of the garden. She did not go home, but wandered off into the sand dunes,
where the prickly pear was in blossom and the green lizards were racing each
other in the glittering light. She was shaken by a passionate excitement. She
did not altogether understand what Wunsch was talking about; and yet, in a way
she knew. She knew, of course, that there was something about her that was
different. But it was more like a friendly spirit than like anything that was a
part of herself. She thought everything to it, and it answered her; happiness
consisted of that backward and forward movement of herself. The something came
and went, she never knew how. Sometimes she hunted for it and could not find
it; again, she lifted her eyes from a book, or stepped out of doors, or wakened
in the morning, and it was there,-- under her cheek, it usually seemed to be,
or over her breast,--a kind of warm sureness. And when it was there, everything
was more interesting and beautiful, even people. When this companion was with
her, she could get the most wonderful things out of Spanish Johnny, or Wunsch,
or Dr. Archie.
On her thirteenth
birthday she wandered for a long while about the sand ridges, picking up
crystals and looking into the yellow prickly-pear blossoms with their thousand
stamens. She looked at the sand hills until she wished she were a sand hill.
And yet she knew that she was going to leave them all behind some day. They
would be changing all day long, yellow and purple and lavender, and she would
not be there. From that day on, she felt there was a secret between her and
Wunsch. Together they had lifted a lid, pulled out a drawer, and looked at
something. They hid it away and never spoke of what they had seen; but neither
of them forgot it.
One July night, when
the moon was full, Dr. Archie was coming up from the depot, restless and
discontented, wishing there were something to do. He carried his straw hat in
his hand, and kept brushing his hair back from his forehead with a purposeless,
unsatisfied gesture. After he passed Uncle Billy Beemer's cottonwood grove, the
sidewalk ran out of the shadow into the white moonlight and crossed the sand
gully on high posts, like a bridge. As the doctor approached this trestle, he
saw a white figure, and recognized Thea Kronborg. He quickened his pace and she
came to meet him.
"What are you
doing out so late, my girl?" he asked as he took her hand.
"Oh, I don't know.
What do people go to bed so early for? I'd like to run along before the houses
and screech at them. Isn't it glorious out here?"
The young doctor gave a
melancholy laugh and pressed her hand.
"Think of
it," Thea snorted impatiently. "Nobody up but us and the rabbits!
I've started up half a dozen of 'em. Look at that little one down there
now,"--she stooped and pointed. In the gully below them there was, indeed,
a little rabbit with a white spot of a tail, crouching down on the sand, quite
motionless. It seemed to be lapping up the moonlight like cream. On the other
side of the walk, down in the ditch, there was a patch of tall, rank
sunflowers, their shaggy leaves white with dust. The moon stood over the
cottonwood grove. There was no wind, and no sound but the wheezing of an engine
down on the tracks.
"Well, we may as
well watch the rabbits." Dr. Archie sat down on the sidewalk and let his
feet hang over the edge. He pulled out a smooth linen handkerchief that smelled
of German cologne water. "Well, how goes it? Working hard? You must know
about all Wunsch can teach you by this time."
Thea shook her head.
"Oh, no, I don't, Dr. Archie. He's hard to get at, but he's been a real
musician in his time. Mother says she believes he's forgotten more than the
music-teachers down in Denver ever knew."
"I'm afraid he
won't be around here much longer," said Dr. Archie. "He's been making
a tank of himself lately. He'll be pulling his freight one of these days.
That's the way they do, you know. I'll be sorry on your account." He
paused and ran his fresh handkerchief over his face. "What the deuce are
we all here for anyway, Thea?" he said abruptly.
"On earth, you
mean?" Thea asked in a low voice.
"Well, primarily,
yes. But secondarily, why are we in Moonstone? It isn't as if we'd been born
here. You were, but Wunsch wasn't, and I wasn't. I suppose I'm here because I
married as soon as I got out of medical school and had to get a practice quick.
If you hurry things, you always get left in the end. I don't learn anything
here, and as for the people-- In my own town in Michigan, now, there were
people who liked me on my father's account, who had even known my grandfather.
That meant something. But here it's all like the sand: blows north one day and
south the next. We're all a lot of gamblers without much nerve, playing for
small stakes. The railroad is the one real fact in this country. That has to
be; the world has to be got back and forth. But the rest of us are here just
because it's the end of a run and the engine has to have a drink. Some day I'll
get up and find my hair turning gray, and I'll have nothing to show for it."
Thea slid closer to him
and caught his arm. "No, no. I won't let you get gray. You've got to stay
young for me. I'm getting young now, too."
Archie laughed.
"Getting?"
"Yes. People
aren't young when they're children. Look at Thor, now; he's just a little old
man. But Gus has a sweetheart, and he's young!"
"Something in
that!" Dr. Archie patted her head, and then felt the shape of her skull
gently, with the tips of his fingers. "When you were little, Thea, I used
always to be curious about the shape of your head. You seemed to have more inside
it than most youngsters. I haven't examined it for a long time. Seems to be the
usual shape, but uncommonly hard, some how. What are you going to do with
yourself, anyway?"
"I don't
know."
"Honest,
now?" He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes.
Thea laughed and edged
away from him.
"You've got
something up your sleeve, haven't you? Anything you like; only don't marry and
settle down here without giving yourself a chance, will you?"
"Not much. See,
there's another rabbit!"
"That's all right
about the rabbits, but I don't want you to get tied up. Remember that."
Thea nodded. "Be
nice to Wunsch, then. I don't know what I'd do if he went away."
"You've got older
friends than Wunsch here, Thea."
"I know."
Thea spoke seriously and looked up at the moon, propping her chin on her hand.
"But Wunsch is the only one that can teach me what I want to know. I've
got to learn to do something well, and that's the thing I can do best."
"Do you want to be
a music-teacher?"
"Maybe, but I want
to be a good one. I'd like to go to Germany to study, some day. Wunsch says
that's the best place,--the only place you can really learn." Thea
hesitated and then went on nervously, "I've got a book that says so, too.
It's called `My Musical Memories.' It made me want to go to Germany even before
Wunsch said anything. Of course it's a secret. You're the first one I've
told."
Dr. Archie smiled
indulgently. "That's a long way off. Is that what you've got in your hard
noddle?" He put his hand on her hair, but this time she shook him off.
"No, I don't think
much about it. But you talk about going, and a body has to have something to go
to!"
"That's so."
Dr. Archie sighed. "You're lucky if you have. Poor Wunsch, now, he hasn't.
What do such fellows come out here for? He's been asking me about my mining
stock, and about mining towns. What would he do in a mining town? He wouldn't
know a piece of ore if he saw one. He's got nothing to sell that a mining town
wants to buy. Why don't those old fellows stay at home? We won't need them for
another hundred years. An engine wiper can get a job, but a piano player! Such
people can't make good."
"My grandfather
Alstrom was a musician, and he made good."
Dr. Archie chuckled.
"Oh, a Swede can make good anywhere, at anything! You've got that in your
favor, miss. Come, you must be getting home."
Thea rose. "Yes, I
used to be ashamed of being a Swede, but I'm not any more. Swedes are kind of
common, but I think it's better to be something."
"It surely is! How
tall you are getting. You come above my shoulder now."
"I'll keep on
growing, don't you think? I particularly want to be tall. Yes, I guess I must
go home. I wish there'd be a fire."
"A fire?"
"Yes, so the
fire-bell would ring and the roundhouse whistle would blow, and everybody would
come running out. Sometime I'm going to ring the fire-bell myself and stir them
all up."
"You'd be
arrested."
"Well, that would
be better than going to bed."
"I'll have to lend
you some more books."
Thea shook herself
impatiently. "I can't read every night."
Dr. Archie gave one of
his low, sympathetic chuckles as he opened the gate for her. "You're
beginning to grow up, that's what's the matter with you. I'll have to keep an
eye on you. Now you'll have to say good-night to the moon."
"No, I won't. I
sleep on the floor now, right in the moonlight. My window comes down to the
floor, and I can look at the sky all night."
She shot round the
house to the kitchen door, and Dr. Archie watched her disappear with a sigh. He
thought of the hard, mean, frizzy little woman who kept his house for him; once
the belle of a Michigan town, now dry and withered up at thirty. "If I had
a daughter like Thea to watch," he reflected, "I wouldn't mind
anything. I wonder if all of my life's going to be a mistake just because I
made a big one then? Hardly seems fair."
Howard Archie was
"respected" rather than popular in Moonstone. Everyone recognized
that he was a good physician, and a progressive Western town likes to be able
to point to a handsome, well-set-up, well-dressed man among its citizens. But a
great many people thought Archie "distant," and they were right. He
had the uneasy manner of a man who is not among his own kind, and who has not
seen enough of the world to feel that all people are in some sense his own
kind. He knew that every one was curious about his wife, that she played a sort
of character part in Moonstone, and that people made fun of her, not very
delicately. Her own friends--most of them women who were distasteful to
Archie--liked to ask her to contribute to church charities, just to see how mean
she could be. The little, lop-sided cake at the church supper, the cheapest
pincushion, the skimpiest apron at the bazaar, were always Mrs. Archie's
contribution.
All this hurt the
doctor's pride. But if there was one thing he had learned, it was that there
was no changing Belle's nature. He had married a mean woman; and he must accept
the consequences. Even in Colorado he would have had no pretext for divorce,
and, to do him justice, he had never thought of such a thing. The tenets of the
Presbyterian Church in which he had grown up, though he had long ceased to
believe in them, still influenced his conduct and his conception of propriety.
To him there was something vulgar about divorce. A divorced man was a disgraced
man; at least, he had exhibited his hurt, and made it a matter for common
gossip. Respectability was so necessary to Archie that he was willing to pay a
high price for it. As long as he could keep up a decent exterior, he could
manage to get on; and if he could have concealed his wife's littleness from all
his friends, he would scarcely have complained. He was more afraid of pity than
he was of any unhappiness. Had there been another woman for whom he cared
greatly, he might have had plenty of courage; but he was not likely to meet
such a woman in Moonstone.
There was a puzzling
timidity in Archie's make-up. The thing that held his shoulders stiff, that
made him resort to a mirthless little laugh when he was talking to dull people,
that made him sometimes stumble over rugs and carpets, had its counterpart in
his mind. He had not the courage to be an honest thinker. He could comfort
himself by evasions and compromises. He consoled himself for his own marriage
by telling himself that other people's were not much better. In his work he saw
pretty deeply into marital relations in Moonstone, and he could honestly say
that there were not many of his friends whom he envied. Their wives seemed to
suit them well enough, but they would never have suited him.
Although Dr. Archie
could not bring himself to regard marriage merely as a social contract, but
looked upon it as somehow made sacred by a church in which he did not
believe,--as a physician he knew that a young man whose marriage is merely
nominal must yet go on living his life. When he went to Denver or to Chicago,
he drifted about in careless company where gayety and good-humor can be bought,
not because he had any taste for such society, but because he honestly believed
that anything was better than divorce. He often told himself that "hanging
and wiving go by destiny." If wiving went badly with a man, --and it did
oftener than not,--then he must do the best he could to keep up appearances and
help the tradition of domestic happiness along. The Moonstone gossips,
assembled in Mrs. Smiley's millinery and notion store, often discussed Dr.
Archie's politeness to his wife, and his pleasant manner of speaking about her.
"Nobody has ever got a thing out of him yet," they agreed. And it was
certainly not because no one had ever tried.
When he was down in
Denver, feeling a little jolly, Archie could forget how unhappy he was at home,
and could even make himself believe that he missed his wife. He always bought
her presents, and would have liked to send her flowers if she had not
repeatedly told him never to send her anything but bulbs,--which did not appeal
to him in his expansive moments. At the Denver Athletic Club banquets, or at
dinner with his colleagues at the Brown Palace Hotel, he sometimes spoke
sentimentally about "little Mrs. Archie," and he always drank the
toast "to our wives, God bless them!" with gusto.
The determining factor
about Dr. Archie was that he was romantic. He had married Belle White because
he was romantic--too romantic to know anything about women, except what he
wished them to be, or to repulse a pretty girl who had set her cap for him. At
medical school, though he was a rather wild boy in behavior, he had always
disliked coarse jokes and vulgar stories. In his old Flint's Physiology there
was still a poem he had pasted there when he was a student; some verses by Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes about the ideals of the medical profession. After so much
and such disillusioning experience with it, he still had a romantic feeling
about the human body; a sense that finer things dwelt in it than could be
explained by anatomy. He never jested about birth or death or marriage, and did
not like to hear other doctors do it. He was a good nurse, and had a reverence
for the bodies of women and children. When he was tending them, one saw him at
his best. Then his constraint and self-consciousness fell away from him. He was
easy, gentle, competent, master of himself and of other people. Then the
idealist in him was not afraid of being discovered and ridiculed.
In his tastes, too, the
doctor was romantic. Though he read Balzac all the year through, he still
enjoyed the Waverley Novels as much as when he had first come upon them, in
thick leather-bound volumes, in his grandfather's library. He nearly always
read Scott on Christmas and holidays, because it brought back the pleasures of
his boy- hood so vividly. He liked Scott's women. Constance de Beverley and the
minstrel girl in "The Fair Maid of Perth," not the Duchesse de
Langeais, were his heroines. But better than anything that ever got from the
heart of a man into printer's ink, he loved the poetry of Robert Burns.
"Death and Dr. Hornbook" and "The Jolly Beggars," Burns's
"Reply to his Tailor," he often read aloud to himself in his office,
late at night, after a glass of hot toddy. He used to read "Tam
o'Shanter" to Thea Kronborg, and he got her some of the songs, set to the
old airs for which they were written. He loved to hear her sing them. Sometimes
when she sang, "Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast," the doctor and
even Mr. Kronborg joined in. Thea never minded if people could not sing; she
directed them with her head and somehow carried them along. When her father got
off the pitch she let her own voice out and covered him.
At the beginning of
June, when school closed, Thea had told Wunsch that she didn't know how much
practicing she could get in this summer because Thor had his worst teeth still
to cut.
"My God! all last
summer he was doing that!" Wunsch exclaimed furiously.
"I know, but it
takes them two years, and Thor is slow," Thea answered reprovingly.
The summer went well
beyond her hopes, however. She told herself that it was the best summer of her
life, so far. Nobody was sick at home, and her lessons were uninterrupted. Now
that she had four pupils of her own and made a dollar a week, her practicing
was regarded more seriously by the household. Her mother had always arranged
things so that she could have the parlor four hours a day in summer. Thor
proved a friendly ally. He behaved handsomely about his molars, and never objected
to being pulled off into remote places in his cart. When Thea dragged him over
the hill and made a camp under the shade of a bush or a bank, he would waddle
about and play with his blocks, or bury his monkey in the sand and dig him up
again. Sometimes he got into the cactus and set up a howl, but usually he let
his sister read peacefully, while he coated his hands and face, first with an
all-day sucker and then with gravel.
Life was pleasant and
uneventful until the first of September, when Wunsch began to drink so hard
that he was unable to appear when Thea went to take her mid-week lesson, and
Mrs. Kohler had to send her home after a tearful apology. On Saturday morning
she set out for the Kohlers' again, but on her way, when she was crossing the ravine,
she noticed a woman sitting at the bottom of the gulch, under the railroad
trestle. She turned from her path and saw that it was Mrs. Tellamantez, and she
seemed to be doing drawn-work. Then Thea noticed that there was something
beside her, covered up with a purple and yellow Mexican blanket. She ran up the
gulch and called to Mrs. Tellamantez. The Mexican woman held up a warning
finger. Thea glanced at the blanket and recognized a square red hand which
protruded. The middle finger twitched slightly.
"Is he hurt?"
she gasped.
Mrs. Tellamantez shook
her head. "No; very sick. He knows nothing," she said quietly,
folding her hands over her drawn-work.
Thea learned that
Wunsch had been out all night, that this morning Mrs. Kohler had gone to look for
him and found him under the trestle covered with dirt and cinders. Probably he
had been trying to get home and had lost his way. Mrs. Tellamantez was watching
beside the unconscious man while Mrs. Kohler and Johnny went to get help.
"You better go home
now, I think," said Mrs. Tellamantez, in closing her narration.
Thea hung her head and
looked wistfully toward the blanket.
"Couldn't I just
stay till they come?" she asked. "I'd like to know if he's very
bad."
"Bad enough,"
sighed Mrs. Tellamantez, taking up her work again.
Thea sat down under the
narrow shade of one of the trestle posts and listened to the locusts rasping in
the hot sand while she watched Mrs. Tellamantez evenly draw her threads. The
blanket looked as if it were over a heap of bricks.
"I don't see him
breathing any," she said anxiously.
"Yes, he
breathes," said Mrs. Tellamantez, not lifting her eyes.
It seemed to Thea that
they waited for hours. At last they heard voices, and a party of men came down
the hill and up the gulch. Dr. Archie and Fritz Kohler came first; behind were
Johnny and Ray, and several men from the roundhouse. Ray had the canvas litter
that was kept at the depot for accidents on the road. Behind them trailed half
a dozen boys who had been hanging round the depot.
When Ray saw Thea, he
dropped his canvas roll and hurried forward. "Better run along home, Thee.
This is ugly business." Ray was indignant that anybody who gave Thea music
lessons should behave in such a manner.
Thea resented both his
proprietary tone and his superior virtue. "I won't. I want to know how bad
he is. I'm not a baby!" she exclaimed indignantly, stamping her foot into
the sand.
Dr. Archie, who had
been kneeling by the blanket, got up and came toward Thea, dusting his knees.
He smiled and nodded confidentially. "He'll be all right when we get him
home. But he wouldn't want you to see him like this, poor old chap! Understand?
Now, skip!"
Thea ran down the gulch
and looked back only once, to see them lifting the canvas litter with Wunsch
upon it, still covered with the blanket.
The men carried Wunsch
up the hill and down the road to the Kohlers'. Mrs. Kohler had gone home and
made up a bed in the sitting-room, as she knew the litter could not be got
round the turn in the narrow stairway. Wunsch was like a dead man. He lay
unconscious all day. Ray Kennedy stayed with him till two o'clock in the
afternoon, when he had to go out on his run. It was the first time he had ever
been inside the Kohlers' house, and he was so much impressed by Napoleon that
the piece-picture formed a new bond between him and Thea.
Dr. Archie went back at
six o'clock, and found Mrs. Kohler and Spanish Johnny with Wunsch, who was in a
high fever, muttering and groaning.
"There ought to be
some one here to look after him to-night, Mrs. Kohler," he said. "I'm
on a confinement case, and I can't be here, but there ought to be somebody. He
may get violent."
Mrs. Kohler insisted
that she could always do anything with Wunsch, but the doctor shook his head
and Spanish Johnny grinned. He said he would stay. The doctor laughed at him.
"Ten fellows like you couldn't hold him, Spanish, if he got obstreperous;
an Irishman would have his hands full. Guess I'd better put the soft pedal on
him." He pulled out his hypodermic.
Spanish Johnny stayed,
however, and the Kohlers went to bed. At about two o'clock in the morning
Wunsch rose from his ignominious cot. Johnny, who was dozing on the lounge,
awoke to find the German standing in the middle of the room in his undershirt
and drawers, his arms bare, his heavy body seeming twice its natural girth. His
face was snarling and savage, and his eyes were crazy. He had risen to avenge
himself, to wipe out his shame, to destroy his enemy. One look was enough for
Johnny. Wunsch raised a chair threateningly, and Johnny, with the lightness of
a picador, darted under the missile and out of the open window. He shot across
the gully to get help, meanwhile leaving the Kohlers to their fate.
Fritz, upstairs, heard
the chair crash upon the stove. Then he heard doors opening and shutting, and
some one stumbling about in the shrubbery of the garden. He and Paulina sat up
in bed and held a consultation. Fritz slipped from under the covers, and going
cautiously over to the window, poked out his head. Then he rushed to the door
and bolted it.
"Mein Gott,
Paulina," he gasped, "he has the axe, he will kill us!"
"The
dresser," cried Mrs. Kohler; "push the dresser before the door. Ach,
if you had your rabbit gun, now!"
"It is in the
barn," said Fritz sadly. "It would do no good; he would not be afraid
of anything now. Stay you in the bed, Paulina." The dresser had lost its
casters years ago, but he managed to drag it in front of the door. "He is
in the garden. He makes nothing. He will get sick again, may-be."
Fritz went back to bed
and his wife pulled the quilt over him and made him lie down. They heard
stumbling in the garden again, then a smash of glass.
"Ach, das
mistbeet!" gasped Paulina, hearing her hot- bed shivered. "The poor
soul, Fritz, he will cut himself. Ach! what is that?" They both sat up in
bed. "Wieder! Ach, What is he doing?"
The noise came
steadily, a sound of chopping. Paulina tore off her night-cap. Die Bäume, die Bäume!
He is cutting our trees, Fritz!" Before her husband could prevent her, she
had sprung from the bed and rushed to the window. "Der Taubenschlag!
Gerechter Himmel, he is chopping the dove-house down!"
Fritz reached her side
before she had got her breath again, and poked his head out beside hers. There,
in the faint starlight, they saw a bulky man, barefoot, half dressed, chopping
away at the white post that formed the pedestal of the dove-house. The startled
pigeons were croaking and flying about his head, even beating their wings in
his face, so that he struck at them furiously with the axe. In a few seconds
there was a crash, and Wunsch had actually felled the dove-house.
"Oh, if only it is
not the trees next!" prayed Paulina. "The dove-house you can make new
again, but not die Bäume."
They watched
breathlessly. In the garden below Wunsch stood in the attitude of a woodman,
contemplating the fallen cote. Suddenly he threw the axe over his shoulder and
went out of the front gate toward the town.
"The poor soul, he
will meet his death!" Mrs. Kohler wailed. She ran back to her feather bed
and hid her face in the pillow.
Fritz kept watch at the
window. "No, no, Paulina," he called presently; "I see lanterns
coming. Johnny must have gone for somebody. Yes, four lanterns, coming along
the gulch. They stop; they must have seen him already. Now they are under the
hill and I cannot see them, but I think they have him. They will bring him
back. I must dress and go down." He caught his trousers and began pulling
them on by the window. "Yes, here they come, half a dozen men. And they
have tied him with a rope, Paulina!"
"Ach, the poor
man! To be led like a cow," groaned Mrs. Kohler. "Oh, it is good that
he has no wife!" She was reproaching herself for nagging Fritz when he
drank himself into foolish pleasantry or mild sulks, and felt that she had
never before appreciated her blessings.
Wunsch was in bed for
ten days, during which time he was gossiped about and even preached about in
Moonstone. The Baptist preacher took a shot at the fallen man from his pulpit,
Mrs. Livery Johnson nodding approvingly from her pew. The mothers of Wunsch's
pupils sent him notes informing him that their daughters would discontinue
their music-lessons. The old maid who had rented him her piano sent the town
dray for her contaminated instrument, and ever afterward declared that Wunsch
had ruined its tone and scarred its glossy finish. The Kohlers were unremitting
in their kindness to their friend. Mrs. Kohler made him soups and broths
without stint, and Fritz repaired the dove-house and mounted it on a new post,
lest it might be a sad reminder.
As soon as Wunsch was
strong enough to sit about in his slippers and wadded jacket, he told Fritz to
bring him some stout thread from the shop. When Fritz asked what he was going
to sew, he produced the tattered score of "Orpheus" and said he would
like to fix it up for a little present. Fritz carried it over to the shop and
stitched it into pasteboards, covered with dark suiting-cloth. Over the
stitches he glued a strip of thin red leather which he got from his friend, the
harness-maker. After Paulina had cleaned the pages with fresh bread, Wunsch was
amazed to see what a fine book he had. It opened stiffly, but that was no
matter.
Sitting in the arbor
one morning, under the ripe grapes and the brown, curling leaves, with a pen
and ink on the bench beside him and the Gluck score on his knee, Wunsch
pondered for a long while. Several times he dipped the pen in the ink, and then
put it back again in the cigar box in which Mrs. Kohler kept her writing
utensils. His thoughts wandered over a wide territory; over many countries and
many years. There was no order or logical sequence in his ideas. Pictures came
and went without reason. Faces, mountains, rivers, autumn days in other
vineyards far away. He thought of a Fuszreise he had made through the Hartz
Mountains in his student days; of the innkeeper's pretty daughter who had
lighted his pipe for him in the garden one summer evening, of the woods above
Wiesbaden, haymakers on an island in the river. The round- house whistle woke
him from his reveries. Ah, yes, he was in Moonstone, Colorado. He frowned for a
moment and looked at the book on his knee. He had thought of a great many
appropriate things to write in it, but suddenly he rejected all of them, opened
the book, and at the top of the much-engraved title-page he wrote rapidly in
purple ink:--
Einst, O Wunder!--
A. Wunsch. Moonstone,
Colo. September 30, 18--
Nobody in Moonstone
ever found what Wunsch's first name was. That "A" may have stood for
Adam, or August, or even Amadeus; he got very angry if any one asked him. He
remained A. Wunsch to the end of his chapter there. When he presented this score
to Thea, he told her that in ten years she would either know what the
inscription meant, or she would not have the least idea, in which case it would
not matter.
When Wunsch began to
pack his trunk, both the Kohlers were very unhappy. He said he was coming back
some day, but that for the present, since he had lost all his pupils, it would
be better for him to try some "new town." Mrs. Kohler darned and
mended all his clothes, and gave him two new shirts she had made for Fritz.
Fritz made him a new pair of trousers and would have made him an overcoat but
for the fact that overcoats were so easy to pawn.
Wunsch would not go
across the ravine to the town until he went to take the morning train for
Denver. He said that after he got to Denver he would "look around."
He left Moonstone one bright October morning, without telling any one good-bye.
He bought his ticket and went directly into the smoking-car. When the train was
beginning to pull out, he heard his name called frantically, and looking out of
the window he saw Thea Kronborg standing on the siding, bareheaded and panting.
Some boys had brought word to school that they saw Wunsch's trunk going over to
the station, and Thea had run away from school. She was at the end of the
station platform, her hair in two braids, her blue gingham dress wet to the
knees because she had run across lots through the weeds. It had rained during
the night, and the tall sunflowers behind her were fresh and shining.
"Good-bye, Herr
Wunsch, good-bye!" she called waving to him.
He thrust his head out
at the car window and called back, "Leben sie wohl, leben sie wohl, mein
Kind!" He watched her until the train swept around the curve beyond the
roundhouse, and then sank back into his seat, muttering, "She had been running.
Ah, she will run a long way; they cannot stop her!"
What was it about the
child that one believed in? Was it her dogged industry, so unusual in this
free-and-easy country? Was it her imagination? More likely it was because she
had both imagination and a stubborn will, curiously balancing and interpenetrating
each other. There was something unconscious and unawakened about her, that
tempted curiosity. She had a kind of seriousness that he had not met with in a
pupil before. She hated difficult things, and yet she could never pass one by.
They seemed to challenge her; she had no peace until she mastered them. She had
the power to make a great effort, to lift a weight heavier than herself. Wunsch
hoped he would always remember her as she stood by the track, looking up at
him; her broad eager face, so fair in color, with its high cheek-bones, yellow
eyebrows and greenish- hazel eyes. It was a face full of light and energy, of
the unquestioning hopefulness of first youth. Yes, she was like a flower full
of sun, but not the soft German flowers of his childhood. He had it now, the
comparison he had absently reached for before: she was like the yellow prickly-
pear blossoms that open there in the desert; thornier and sturdier than the
maiden flowers he remembered; not so sweet, but wonderful.
That night Mrs. Kohler
brushed away many a tear as she got supper and set the table for two. When they
sat down, Fritz was more silent than usual. People who have lived long together
need a third at table: they know each other's thoughts so well that they have
nothing left to say. Mrs. Kohler stirred and stirred her coffee and clattered
the spoon, but she had no heart for her supper. She felt, for the first time in
years, that she was tired of her own cooking. She looked across the glass lamp
at her husband and asked him if the butcher liked his new overcoat, and whether
he had got the shoulders right in a ready-made suit he was patching over for
Ray Kennedy. After supper Fritz offered to wipe the dishes for her, but she
told him to go about his business, and not to act as if she were sick or
getting helpless.
When her work in the
kitchen was all done, she went out to cover the oleanders against frost, and to
take a last look at her chickens. As she came back from the hen-house she
stopped by one of the linden trees and stood resting her hand on the trunk. He
would never come back, the poor man; she knew that. He would drift on from new
town to new town, from catastrophe to catastrophe. He would hardly find a good
home for himself again. He would die at last in some rough place, and be buried
in the desert or on the wild prairie, far enough from any linden tree!
Fritz, smoking his pipe
on the kitchen doorstep, watched his Paulina and guessed her thoughts. He, too,
was sorry to lose his friend. But Fritz was getting old; he had lived a long
while and had learned to lose without struggle.
"Mother,"
said Peter Kronborg to his wife one morning about two weeks after Wunsch's
departure, "how would you like to drive out to Copper Hole with me
to-day?"
Mrs. Kronborg said she
thought she would enjoy the drive. She put on her gray cashmere dress and gold
watch and chain, as befitted a minister's wife, and while her husband was
dressing she packed a black oilcloth satchel with such clothing as she and Thor
would need overnight.
Copper Hole was a
settlement fifteen miles northwest of Moonstone where Mr. Kronborg preached
every Friday evening. There was a big spring there and a creek and a few
irrigating ditches. It was a community of discouraged agriculturists who had
disastrously experimented with dry farming. Mr. Kronborg always drove out one
day and back the next, spending the night with one of his parishioners. Often,
when the weather was fine, his wife accompanied him. To-day they set out from
home after the midday meal, leaving Tillie in charge of the house. Mrs.
Kronborg's maternal feeling was always garnered up in the baby, whoever the
baby happened to be. If she had the baby with her, the others could look out
for themselves. Thor, of course, was not, accurately speaking, a baby any
longer. In the matter of nourishment he was quite independent of his mother,
though this independence had not been won without a struggle. Thor was
conservative in all things, and the whole family had anguished with him when he
was being weaned. Being the youngest, he was still the baby for Mrs. Kronborg,
though he was nearly four years old and sat up boldly on her lap this
afternoon, holding on to the ends of the lines and shouting "`mup, 'mup,
horsey." His father watched him affectionately and hummed hymn tunes in
the jovial way that was sometimes such a trial to Thea.
Mrs. Kronborg was
enjoying the sunshine and the brilliant sky and all the faintly marked features
of the dazzling, monotonous landscape. She had a rather unusual capacity for
getting the flavor of places and of people. Although she was so enmeshed in
family cares most of the time, she could emerge serene when she was away from
them. For a mother of seven, she had a singularly unprejudiced point of view. She
was, moreover, a fatalist, and as she did not attempt to direct things beyond
her control, she found a good deal of time to enjoy the ways of man and nature.
When they were well
upon their road, out where the first lean pasture lands began and the sand grass
made a faint showing between the sagebushes, Mr. Kronborg dropped his tune and
turned to his wife. "Mother, I've been thinking about something."
"I guessed you
had. What is it?" She shifted Thor to her left knee, where he would be
more out of the way.
"Well, it's about
Thea. Mr. Follansbee came to my study at the church the other day and said they
would like to have their two girls take lessons of Thea. Then I sounded Miss
Meyers" (Miss Meyers was the organist in Mr. Kronborg's church) "and
she said there was a good deal of talk about whether Thea wouldn't take over
Wunsch's pupils. She said if Thea stopped school she wouldn't wonder if she
could get pretty much all Wunsch's class. People think Thea knows about all
Wunsch could teach."
Mrs. Kronborg looked
thoughtful. "Do you think we ought to take her out of school so
young?"
"She is young, but
next year would be her last year anyway. She's far along for her age. And she
can't learn much under the principal we've got now, can she?"
"No, I'm afraid
she can't," his wife admitted. "She frets a good deal and says that
man always has to look in the back of the book for the answers. She hates all
that diagramming they have to do, and I think myself it's a waste of
time."
Mr. Kronborg settled
himself back into the seat and slowed the mare to a walk. "You see, it
occurs to me that we might raise Thea's prices, so it would be worth her while.
Seventy-five cents for hour lessons, fifty cents for half-hour lessons. If she
got, say two thirds of Wunsch's class, that would bring her in upwards of ten
dollars a week. Better pay than teaching a country school, and there would be
more work in vacation than in winter. Steady work twelve months in the year;
that's an advantage. And she'd be living at home, with no expenses."
"There'd be talk
if you raised her prices," said Mrs. Kronborg dubiously.
"At first there
would. But Thea is so much the best musician in town that they'd all come into
line after a while. A good many people in Moonstone have been making money
lately, and have bought new pianos. There were ten new pianos shipped in here
from Denver in the last year. People ain't going to let them stand idle; too
much money invested. I believe Thea can have as many scholars as she can
handle, if we set her up a little."
"How set her up,
do you mean?" Mrs. Kronborg felt a certain reluctance about accepting this
plan, though she had not yet had time to think out her reasons.
"Well, I've been
thinking for some time we could make good use of another room. We couldn't give
up the parlor to her all the time. If we built another room on the ell and put
the piano in there, she could give lessons all day long and it wouldn't bother
us. We could build a clothes-press in it, and put in a bed-lounge and a dresser
and let Anna have it for her sleeping-room. She needs a place of her own, now
that she's beginning to be dressy."
"Seems like Thea
ought to have the choice of the room, herself," said Mrs. Kronborg.
"But, my dear, she
don't want it. Won't have it. I sounded her coming home from church on Sunday;
asked her if she would like to sleep in a new room, if we built on. She fired
up like a little wild-cat and said she'd made her own room all herself, and she
didn't think anybody ought to take it away from her."
"She don't mean to
be impertinent, father. She's made decided that way, like my father." Mrs.
Kronborg spoke warmly. "I never have any trouble with the child. I
remember my father's ways and go at her carefully. Thea's all right."
Mr. Kronborg laughed indulgently
and pinched Thor's full cheek. "Oh, I didn't mean anything against your
girl, mother! She's all right, but she's a little wild-cat, just the same. I
think Ray Kennedy's planning to spoil a born old maid."
"Huh! She'll get
something a good sight better than Ray Kennedy, you see! Thea's an awful smart
girl. I've seen a good many girls take music lessons in my time, but I ain't
seen one that took to it so. Wunsch said so, too. She's got the making of
something in her."
"I don't deny
that, and the sooner she gets at it in a businesslike way, the better. She's
the kind that takes responsibility, and it'll be good for her."
Mrs. Kronborg was
thoughtful. "In some ways it will, maybe. But there's a good deal of
strain about teaching youngsters, and she's always worked so hard with the
scholars she has. I've often listened to her pounding it into 'em. I don't want
to work her too hard. She's so serious that she's never had what you might call
any real childhood. Seems like she ought to have the next few years sort of
free and easy. She'll be tied down with responsibilities soon enough."
Mr. Kronborg patted his
wife's arm. "Don't you believe it, mother. Thea is not the marrying kind.
I've watched 'em. Anna will marry before long and make a good wife, but I don't
see Thea bringing up a family. She's got a good deal of her mother in her, but
she hasn't got all. She's too peppery and too fond of having her own way. Then
she's always got to be ahead in everything. That kind make good church-workers
and missionaries and school teachers, but they don't make good wives. They fret
all their energy away, like colts, and get cut on the wire."
Mrs. Kronborg laughed.
"Give me the graham crackers I put in your pocket for Thor. He's hungry.
You're a funny man, Peter. A body wouldn't think, to hear you, you was talking
about your own daughters. I guess you see through 'em. Still, even if Thea
ain't apt to have children of her own, I don't know as that's a good reason why
she should wear herself out on other people's."
"That's just the
point, mother. A girl with all that energy has got to do something, same as a
boy, to keep her out of mischief. If you don't want her to marry Ray, let her
do something to make herself independent."
"Well, I'm not
against it. It might be the best thing for her. I wish I felt sure she wouldn't
worry. She takes things hard. She nearly cried herself sick about Wunsch's
going away. She's the smartest child of 'em all, Peter, by a long ways."
Peter Kronborg smiled.
"There you go, Anna. That's you all over again. Now, I have no favorites;
they all have their good points. But you," with a twinkle, "always
did go in for brains."
Mrs. Kronborg chuckled
as she wiped the cracker crumbs from Thor's chin and fists. "Well, you're
mighty conceited, Peter! But I don't know as I ever regretted it. I prefer
having a family of my own to fussing with other folks' children, that's the
truth."
Before the Kronborgs
reached Copper Hole, Thea's destiny was pretty well mapped out for her. Mr.
Kronborg was always delighted to have an excuse for enlarging the house.
Mrs. Kronborg was quite
right in her conjecture that there would be unfriendly comment in Moonstone
when Thea raised her prices for music-lessons. People said she was getting too
conceited for anything. Mrs. Livery Johnson put on a new bonnet and paid up all
her back calls to have the pleasure of announcing in each parlor she entered
that her daughters, at least, would "never pay professional prices to Thea
Kronborg."
Thea raised no
objection to quitting school. She was now in the "high room," as it
was called, in next to the highest class, and was studying geometry and
beginning Caesar. She no longer recited her lessons to the teacher she liked,
but to the Principal, a man who belonged, like Mrs. Livery Johnson, to the camp
of Thea's natural enemies. He taught school because he was too lazy to work
among grown-up people, and he made an easy job of it. He got out of real work
by inventing useless activities for his pupils, such as the
"tree-diagramming system." Thea had spent hours making trees out of
"Thanatopsis," Hamlet's soliloquy, Cato on "Immortality."
She agonized under this waste of time, and was only too glad to accept her
father's offer of liberty.
So Thea left school the
first of November. By the first of January she had eight one-hour pupils and
ten half-hour pupils, and there would be more in the summer. She spent her
earnings generously. She bought a new Brussels carpet for the parlor, and a
rifle for Gunner and Axel, and an imitation tiger-skin coat and cap for Thor.
She enjoyed being able to add to the family possessions, and thought Thor
looked quite as handsome in his spots as the rich children she had seen in
Denver. Thor was most complacent in his conspicuous apparel. He could walk
anywhere by this time--though he always preferred to sit, or to be pulled in
his cart. He was a blissfully lazy child, and had a number of long, dull plays,
such as making nests for his china duck and waiting for her to lay him an egg.
Thea thought him very intelligent, and she was proud that he was so big and
burly. She found him restful, loved to hear him call her "sitter,"
and really liked his companionship, especially when she was tired. On Saturday,
for instance, when she taught from nine in the morning until five in the
afternoon, she liked to get off in a corner with Thor after supper, away from
all the bathing and dressing and joking and talking that went on in the house,
and ask him about his duck, or hear him tell one of his rambling stories.
By the time Thea's
fifteenth birthday came round, she was established as a music teacher in
Moonstone. The new room had been added to the house early in the spring, and
Thea had been giving her lessons there since the middle of May. She liked the
personal independence which was accorded her as a wage-earner. The family
questioned her comings and goings very little. She could go buggy-riding with
Ray Kennedy, for instance, without taking Gunner or Axel. She could go to
Spanish Johnny's and sing part songs with the Mexicans, and nobody objected.
Thea was still under
the first excitement of teaching, and was terribly in earnest about it. If a
pupil did not get on well, she fumed and fretted. She counted until she was
hoarse. She listened to scales in her sleep. Wunsch had taught only one pupil
seriously, but Thea taught twenty. The duller they were, the more furiously she
poked and prodded them. With the little girls she was nearly always patient,
but with pupils older than herself, she sometimes lost her temper. One of her
mistakes was to let herself in for a calling-down from Mrs. Livery Johnson.
That lady appeared at the Kronborgs' one morning and announced that she would
allow no girl to stamp her foot at her daughter Grace. She added that Thea's
bad manners with the older girls were being talked about all over town, and
that if her temper did not speedily improve she would lose all her advanced
pupils. Thea was frightened. She felt she could never bear the disgrace, if
such a thing happened. Besides, what would her father say, after he had gone to
the expense of building an addition to the house? Mrs. Johnson demanded an
apology to Grace. Thea said she was willing to make it. Mrs. Johnson said that
hereafter, since she had taken lessons of the best piano teacher in Grinnell,
Iowa, she herself would decide what pieces Grace should study. Thea readily
consented to that, and Mrs. Johnson rustled away to tell a neighbor woman that
Thea Kronborg could be meek enough when you went at her right.
Thea was telling Ray
about this unpleasant encounter as they were driving out to the sand hills the
next Sunday.
"She was stuffing
you, all right, Thee," Ray reassured her. "There's no general
dissatisfaction among your scholars. She just wanted to get in a knock. I
talked to the piano tuner the last time he was here, and he said all the people
he tuned for expressed themselves very favorably about your teaching. I wish
you didn't take so much pains with them, myself."
"But I have to,
Ray. They're all so dumb. They've got no ambition," Thea exclaimed
irritably. "Jenny Smiley is the only one who isn't stupid. She can read
pretty well, and she has such good hands. But she don't care a rap about it.
She has no pride."
Ray's face was full of
complacent satisfaction as he glanced sidewise at Thea, but she was looking off
intently into the mirage, at one of those mammoth cattle that are nearly always
reflected there. "Do you find it easier to teach in your new room?"
he asked.
"Yes; I'm not
interrupted so much. Of course, if I ever happen to want to practice at night,
that's always the night Anna chooses to go to bed early."
"It's a darned
shame, Thee, you didn't cop that room for yourself. I'm sore at the padre about
that. He ought to give you that room. You could fix it up so pretty."
"I didn't want it,
honest I didn't. Father would have let me have it. I like my own room better.
Somehow I can think better in a little room. Besides, up there I am away from
everybody, and I can read as late as I please and nobody nags me."
"A growing girl
needs lots of sleep," Ray providently remarked.
Thea moved restlessly
on the buggy cushions. "They need other things more," she muttered.
"Oh, I forgot. I brought something to show you. Look here, it came on my
birthday. Wasn't it nice of him to remember?" She took from her pocket a
postcard, bent in the middle and folded, and handed it to Ray. On it was a
white dove, perched on a wreath of very blue forget-me-nots, and "Birthday
Greetings" in gold letters. Under this was written, "From A.
Wunsch."
Ray turned the card
over, examined the postmark, and then began to laugh.
"Concord, Kansas.
He has my sympathy!"
"Why, is that a
poor town?"
"It's the
jumping-off place, no town at all. Some houses dumped down in the middle of a
cornfield. You get lost in the corn. Not even a saloon to keep things going;
sell whiskey without a license at the butcher shop, beer on ice with the liver
and beefsteak. I wouldn't stay there over Sunday for a ten-dollar bill."
"Oh, dear! What do
you suppose he's doing there? Maybe he just stopped off there a few days to
tune pianos," Thea suggested hopefully.
Ray gave her back the
card. "He's headed in the wrong direction. What does he want to get back
into a grass country for? Now, there are lots of good live towns down on the
Santa Fe, and everybody down there is musical. He could always get a job
playing in saloons if he was dead- broke. I've figured out that I've got no
years of my life to waste in a Methodist country where they raise pork."
"We must stop on
our way back and show this card to Mrs. Kohler. She misses him so."
"By the way, Thee,
I hear the old woman goes to church every Sunday to hear you sing. Fritz tells
me he has to wait till two o'clock for his Sunday dinner these days. The church
people ought to give you credit for that, when they go for you."
Thea shook her head and
spoke in a tone of resignation. "They'll always go for me, just as they
did for Wunsch. It wasn't because he drank they went for him; not really. It
was something else."
"You want to salt
your money down, Thee, and go to Chicago and take some lessons. Then you come
back, and wear a long feather and high heels and put on a few airs, and that'll
fix 'em. That's what they like."
"I'll never have
money enough to go to Chicago. Mother meant to lend me some, I think, but now
they've got hard times back in Nebraska, and her farm don't bring her in
anything. Takes all the tenant can raise to pay the taxes. Don't let's talk
about that. You promised to tell me about the play you went to see in
Denver."
Any one would have
liked to hear Ray's simple and clear account of the performance he had seen at
the Tabor Grand Opera House--Maggie Mitchell in Little Barefoot --and any one
would have liked to watch his kind face. Ray looked his best out of doors, when
his thick red hands were covered by gloves, and the dull red of his sunburned
face somehow seemed right in the light and wind. He looked better, too, with
his hat on; his hair was thin and dry, with no particular color or character,
"regular Willy-boy hair," as he himself described it. His eyes were
pale beside the reddish bronze of his skin. They had the faded look often seen
in the eyes of men who have lived much in the sun and wind and who have been
accustomed to train their vision upon distant objects.
Ray realized that
Thea's life was dull and exacting, and that she missed Wunsch. He knew she
worked hard, that she put up with a great many little annoyances, and that her
duties as a teacher separated her more than ever from the boys and girls of her
own age. He did everything he could to provide recreation for her. He brought
her candy and magazines and pineapples--of which she was very fond --from
Denver, and kept his eyes and ears open for anything that might interest her.
He was, of course, living for Thea. He had thought it all out carefully and had
made up his mind just when he would speak to her. When she was seventeen, then
he would tell her his plan and ask her to marry him. He would be willing to
wait two, or even three years, until she was twenty, if she thought best. By
that time he would surely have got in on something: copper, oil, gold, silver,
sheep,--something.
Meanwhile, it was
pleasure enough to feel that she depended on him more and more, that she leaned
upon his steady kindness. He never broke faith with himself about her; he never
hinted to her of his hopes for the future, never suggested that she might be
more intimately confidential with him, or talked to her of the thing he thought
about so constantly. He had the chivalry which is perhaps the proudest
possession of his race. He had never embarrassed her by so much as a glance.
Sometimes, when they drove out to the sand hills, he let his left arm lie along
the back of the buggy seat, but it never came any nearer to Thea than that,
never touched her. He often turned to her a face full of pride, and frank
admiration, but his glance was never so intimate or so penetrating as Dr.
Archie's. His blue eyes were clear and shallow, friendly, uninquiring. He
rested Thea because he was so different; because, though he often told her
interesting things, he never set lively fancies going in her head; because he
never misunderstood her, and because he never, by any chance, for a single
instant, understood her! Yes, with Ray she was safe; by him she would never be
discovered!
The pleasantest
experience Thea had that summer was a trip that she and her mother made to
Denver in Ray Kennedy's caboose. Mrs. Kronborg had been looking forward to this
excursion for a long while, but as Ray never knew at what hour his freight
would leave Moonstone, it was difficult to arrange. The call-boy was as likely
to summon him to start on his run at twelve o'clock midnight as at twelve o'clock
noon. The first week in June started out with all the scheduled trains running
on time, and a light freight business. Tuesday evening Ray, after consulting
with the dispatcher, stopped at the Kronborgs' front gate to tell Mrs.
Kronborg--who was helping Tillie water the flowers--that if she and Thea could
be at the depot at eight o'clock the next morning, he thought he could promise
them a pleasant ride and get them into Denver before nine o'clock in the
evening. Mrs. Kronborg told him cheerfully, across the fence, that she would
"take him up on it," and Ray hurried back to the yards to scrub out
his car.
The one complaint Ray's
brakemen had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His
former brakeman had asked to be transferred because, he said, "Kennedy was
as fussy about his car as an old maid about her bird-cage." Joe Giddy, who
was braking with Ray now, called him "the bride," because he kept the
caboose and bunks so clean.
It was properly the
brakeman's business to keep the car clean, but when Ray got back to the depot,
Giddy was nowhere to be found. Muttering that all his brakemen seemed to
consider him "easy," Ray went down to his car alone. He built a fire
in the stove and put water on to heat while he got into his overalls and
jumper. Then he set to work with a scrubbing-brush and plenty of soap and
"cleaner." He scrubbed the floor and seats, blacked the stove, put
clean sheets on the bunks, and then began to demolish Giddy's picture gallery.
Ray found that his brakemen were likely to have what he termed "a taste
for the nude in art," and Giddy was no exception. Ray took down half a
dozen girls in tights and ballet skirts,-- premiums for cigarette coupons,--and
some racy calendars advertising saloons and sporting clubs, which had cost
Giddy both time and trouble; he even removed Giddy's particular pet, a naked
girl lying on a couch with her knee carelessly poised in the air. Underneath
the picture was printed the title, "The Odalisque." Giddy was under
the happy delusion that this title meant something wicked,-- there was a wicked
look about the consonants,--but Ray, of course, had looked it up, and Giddy was
indebted to the dictionary for the privilege of keeping his lady. If
"odalisque" had been what Ray called an objectionable word, he would
have thrown the picture out in the first place. Ray even took down a picture of
Mrs. Langtry in evening dress, because it was entitled the "Jersey
Lily," and because there was a small head of Edward VII, then Prince of
Wales, in one corner. Albert Edward's conduct was a popular subject of
discussion among railroad men in those days, and as Ray pulled the tacks out of
this lithograph he felt more indignant with the English than ever. He deposited
all these pictures under the mattress of Giddy's bunk, and stood admiring his
clean car in the lamplight; the walls now exhibited only a wheatfield,
advertising agricultural implements, a map of Colorado, and some pictures of
race-horses and hunting-dogs. At this moment Giddy, freshly shaved and shampooed,
his shirt shining with the highest polish known to Chinese laundrymen, his
straw hat tipped over his right eye, thrust his head in at the door.
"What in
hell--" he brought out furiously. His good- humored, sunburned face seemed
fairly to swell with amazement and anger.
"That's all right,
Giddy," Ray called in a conciliatory tone. "Nothing injured. I'll put
'em all up again as I found 'em. Going to take some ladies down in the car
to-morrow."
Giddy scowled. He did
not dispute the propriety of Ray's measures, if there were to be ladies on
board, but he felt injured. "I suppose you'll expect me to behave like a
Y.M.C.A. secretary," he growled. "I can't do my work and serve tea at
the same time."
"No need to have a
tea-party," said Ray with determined cheerfulness. "Mrs. Kronborg
will bring the lunch, and it will be a darned good one."
Giddy lounged against
the car, holding his cigar between two thick fingers. "Then I guess she'll
get it," he observed knowingly. "I don't think your musical friend is
much on the grub-box. Has to keep her hands white to tickle the ivories."
Giddy had nothing against Thea, but he felt cantankerous and wanted to get a
rise out of Kennedy.
"Every man to his
own job," Ray replied agreeably, pulling his white shirt on over his head.
Giddy emitted smoke
disdainfully. "I suppose so. The man that gets her will have to wear an
apron and bake the pancakes. Well, some men like to mess about the
kitchen." He paused, but Ray was intent on getting into his clothes as
quickly as possible. Giddy thought he could go a little further. "Of
course, I don't dispute your right to haul women in this car if you want to;
but personally, so far as I'm concerned, I'd a good deal rather drink a can of
tomatoes and do without the women and their lunch. I was never much enslaved to
hard-boiled eggs, anyhow."
"You'll eat 'em
to-morrow, all the same." Ray's tone had a steely glitter as he jumped out
of the car, and Giddy stood aside to let him pass. He knew that Kennedy's next
reply would be delivered by hand. He had once seen Ray beat up a nasty fellow
for insulting a Mexican woman who helped about the grub-car in the work train,
and his fists had worked like two steel hammers. Giddy wasn't looking for
trouble.
At eight o'clock the
next morning Ray greeted his ladies and helped them into the car. Giddy had put
on a clean shirt and yellow pig-skin gloves and was whistling his best. He
considered Kennedy a fluke as a ladies' man, and if there was to be a party,
the honors had to be done by some one who wasn't a blacksmith at small-talk.
Giddy had, as Ray sarcastically admitted, "a local reputation as a
jollier," and he was fluent in gallant speeches of a not too-veiled
nature. He insisted that Thea should take his seat in the cupola, opposite
Ray's, where she could look out over the country. Thea told him, as she
clambered up, that she cared a good deal more about riding in that seat than
about going to Denver. Ray was never so companionable and easy as when he sat
chatting in the lookout of his little house on wheels. Good stories came to
him, and interesting recollections. Thea had a great respect for the reports he
had to write out, and for the telegrams that were handed to him at stations;
for all the knowledge and experience it must take to run a freight train.
Giddy, down in the car,
in the pauses of his work, made himself agreeable to Mrs. Kronborg.
"It's a great rest
to be where my family can't get at me, Mr. Giddy," she told him. "I
thought you and Ray might have some housework here for me to look after, but I
couldn't improve any on this car."
"Oh, we like to
keep her neat," returned Giddy glibly, winking up at Ray's expressive
back. "If you want to see a clean ice-box, look at this one. Yes, Kennedy
always carries fresh cream to eat on his oatmeal. I'm not particular. The tin
cow's good enough for me."
"Most of you boys
smoke so much that all victuals taste alike to you," said Mrs. Kronborg.
"I've got no religious scruples against smoking, but I couldn't take as
much interest cooking for a man that used tobacco. I guess it's all right for
bachelors who have to eat round."
Mrs. Kronborg took off
her hat and veil and made herself comfortable. She seldom had an opportunity to
be idle, and she enjoyed it. She could sit for hours and watch the sage-hens
fly up and the jack-rabbits dart away from the track, without being bored. She
wore a tan bombazine dress, made very plainly, and carried a roomy, worn,
mother-of-the-family handbag.
Ray Kennedy always
insisted that Mrs. Kronborg was "a fine-looking lady," but this was
not the common opinion in Moonstone. Ray had lived long enough among the
Mexicans to dislike fussiness, to feel that there was something more attractive
in ease of manner than in absentminded concern about hairpins and dabs of lace.
He had learned to think that the way a woman stood, moved, sat in her chair,
looked at you, was more important than the absence of wrinkles from her skirt.
Ray had, indeed, such unusual perceptions in some directions, that one could
not help wondering what he would have been if he had ever, as he said, had
"half a chance."
He was right; Mrs.
Kronborg was a fine-looking woman. She was short and square, but her head was a
real head, not a mere jerky termination of the body. It had some individuality
apart from hats and hairpins. Her hair, Moonstone women admitted, would have
been very pretty "on anybody else." Frizzy bangs were worn then, but
Mrs. Kronborg always dressed her hair in the same way, parted in the middle,
brushed smoothly back from her low, white forehead, pinned loosely on the back
of her head in two thick braids. It was growing gray about the temples, but
after the manner of yellow hair it seemed only to have grown paler there, and
had taken on a color like that of English primroses. Her eyes were clear and
untroubled; her face smooth and calm, and, as Ray said, "strong."
Thea and Ray, up in the
sunny cupola, were laughing and talking. Ray got great pleasure out of seeing
her face there in the little box where he so often imagined it. They were
crossing a plateau where great red sandstone boulders lay about, most of them
much wider at the top than at the base, so that they looked like great
toadstools.
"The sand has been
blowing against them for a good many hundred years," Ray explained,
directing Thea's eyes with his gloved hand. "You see the sand blows low,
being so heavy, and cuts them out underneath. Wind and sand are pretty
high-class architects. That's the principle of most of the Cliff-Dweller
remains down at Canyon de Chelly. The sandstorms had dug out big depressions in
the face of a cliff, and the Indians built their houses back in that
depression."
"You told me that
before, Ray, and of course you know. But the geography says their houses were
cut out of the face of the living rock, and I like that better."
Ray sniffed. "What
nonsense does get printed! It's enough to give a man disrespect for learning.
How could them Indians cut houses out of the living rock, when they knew
nothing about the art of forging metals?" Ray leaned back in his chair,
swung his foot, and looked thoughtful and happy. He was in one of his favorite
fields of speculation, and nothing gave him more pleasure than talking these
things over with Thea Kronborg. "I'll tell you, Thee, if those old fellows
had learned to work metals once, your ancient Egyptians and Assyrians wouldn't
have beat them very much. Whatever they did do, they did well. Their masonry's
standing there to-day, the corners as true as the Denver Capitol. They were
clever at most every- thing but metals; and that one failure kept them from
getting across. It was the quicksand that swallowed 'em up, as a race. I guess
civilization proper began when men mastered metals."
Ray was not vain about
his bookish phrases. He did not use them to show off, but because they seemed
to him more adequate than colloquial speech. He felt strongly about these
things, and groped for words, as he said, "to express himself." He
had the lamentable American belief that "expression" is obligatory.
He still carried in his trunk, among the unrelated possessions of a railroad
man, a note- book on the title-page of which was written "Impressions on
First Viewing the Grand Canyon, Ray H. Kennedy." The pages of that book
were like a battlefield; the laboring author had fallen back from metaphor
after metaphor, abandoned position after position. He would have admitted that
the art of forging metals was nothing to this treacherous business of recording
impressions, in which the material you were so full of vanished mysteriously
under your striving hand. "Escaping steam!" he had said to himself,
the last time he tried to read that notebook.
Thea didn't mind Ray's
travel-lecture expressions. She dodged them, unconsciously, as she did her
father's professional palaver. The light in Ray's pale-blue eyes and the
feeling in his voice more than made up for the stiffness of his language.
"Were the
Cliff-Dwellers really clever with their hands, Ray, or do you always have to make
allowance and say, 'That was pretty good for an Indian'?" she asked.
Ray went down into the
car to give some instructions to Giddy. "Well," he said when he
returned, "about the aborigines: once or twice I've been with some fellows
who were cracking burial mounds. Always felt a little ashamed of it, but we did
pull out some remarkable things. We got some pottery out whole; seemed pretty
fine to me. I guess their women were their artists. We found lots of old shoes
and sandals made out of yucca fiber, neat and strong; and feather blankets,
too."
"Feather blankets?
You never told me about them."
"Didn't I? The old
fellows--or the squaws--wove a close netting of yucca fiber, and then tied on
little bunches of down feathers, overlapping, just the way feathers grow on a
bird. Some of them were feathered on both sides. You can't get anything warmer
than that, now, can you? --or prettier. What I like about those old aborigines
is, that they got all their ideas from nature."
Thea laughed.
"That means you're going to say something about girls' wearing corsets.
But some of your Indians flattened their babies' heads, and that's worse than
wearing corsets."
"Give me an Indian
girl's figure for beauty," Ray insisted. "And a girl with a voice
like yours ought to have plenty of lung-action. But you know my sentiments on
that subject. I was going to tell you about the handsomest thing we ever looted
out of those burial mounds. It was on a woman, too, I regret to say. She was
preserved as perfect as any mummy that ever came out of the pyramids. She had a
big string of turquoises around her neck, and she was wrapped in a fox-fur
cloak, lined with little yellow feathers that must have come off wild canaries.
Can you beat that, now? The fellow that claimed it sold it to a Boston man for
a hundred and fifty dollars."
Thea looked at him
admiringly. "Oh, Ray, and didn't you get anything off her, to remember her
by, even? She must have been a princess."
Ray took a wallet from
the pocket of the coat that was hanging beside him, and drew from it a little
lump wrapped in worn tissue paper. In a moment a stone, soft and blue as a
robin's egg, lay in the hard palm of his hand. It was a turquoise, rubbed
smooth in the Indian finish, which is so much more beautiful than the incongruous
high polish the white man gives that tender stone. "I got this from her
necklace. See the hole where the string went through? You know how the Indians
drill them? Work the drill with their teeth. You like it, don't you? They're
just right for you. Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors." Ray looked
intently at her head, bent over his hand, and then gave his whole attention to
the track.
"I'll tell you,
Thee," he began after a pause, "I'm going to form a camping party one
of these days and persuade your padre to take you and your mother down to that
country, and we'll live in the rock houses--they're as comfortable as can
be--and start the cook fires up in 'em once again. I'll go into the burial
mounds and get you more keepsakes than any girl ever had before." Ray had
planned such an expedition for his wedding journey, and it made his heart thump
to see how Thea's eyes kindled when he talked about it. "I've learned more
down there about what makes history," he went on, "than in all the
books I've ever read. When you sit in the sun and let your heels hang out of a
doorway that drops a thousand feet, ideas come to you. You begin to feel what
the human race has been up against from the beginning. There's something mighty
elevating about those old habitations. You feel like it's up to you to do your
best, on account of those fellows having it so hard. You feel like you owed
them something."
At Wassiwappa, Ray got
instructions to sidetrack until Thirty-six went by. After reading the message,
he turned to his guests. "I'm afraid this will hold us up about two hours,
Mrs. Kronborg, and we won't get into Denver till near midnight."
"That won't
trouble me," said Mrs. Kronborg contentedly. "They know me at the
Y.W.C.A., and they'll let me in any time of night. I came to see the country,
not to make time. I've always wanted to get out at this white place and look
around, and now I'll have a chance. What makes it so white?"
"Some kind of
chalky rock." Ray sprang to the ground and gave Mrs. Kronborg his hand.
"You can get soil of any color in Colorado; match most any ribbon."
While Ray was getting
his train on to a side track, Mrs. Kronborg strolled off to examine the
post-office and station house; these, with the water tank, made up the town.
The station agent "batched" and raised chickens. He ran out to meet
Mrs. Kronborg, clutched at her feverishly, and began telling her at once how
lonely he was and what bad luck he was having with his poultry. She went to his
chicken yard with him, and prescribed for gapes.
Wassiwappa seemed a
dreary place enough to people who looked for verdure, a brilliant place to
people who liked color. Beside the station house there was a blue-grass plot,
protected by a red plank fence, and six fly-bitten box-elder trees, not much larger
than bushes, were kept alive by frequent hosings from the water plug. Over the
windows some dusty morning-glory vines were trained on strings. All the country
about was broken up into low chalky hills, which were so intensely white, and
spotted so evenly with sage, that they looked like white leopards crouching.
White dust powdered everything, and the light was so intense that the station
agent usually wore blue glasses. Behind the station there was a water course,
which roared in flood time, and a basin in the soft white rock where a pool of
alkali water flashed in the sun like a mirror. The agent looked almost as sick
as his chickens, and Mrs. Kronborg at once invited him to lunch with her party.
He had, he confessed, a distaste for his own cooking, and lived mainly on soda
crackers and canned beef. He laughed apologetically when Mrs. Kronborg said she
guessed she'd look about for a shady place to eat lunch.
She walked up the track
to the water tank, and there, in the narrow shadows cast by the uprights on
which the tank stood, she found two tramps. They sat up and stared at her,
heavy with sleep. When she asked them where they were going, they told her
"to the coast." They rested by day and traveled by night; walked the
ties unless they could steal a ride, they said; adding that "these Western
roads were getting strict." Their faces were blistered, their eyes
blood-shot, and their shoes looked fit only for the trash pile.
"I suppose you're
hungry?" Mrs. Kronborg asked. "I suppose you both drink?" she
went on thoughtfully, not censoriously.
The huskier of the two
hoboes, a bushy, bearded fellow, rolled his eyes and said, "I
wonder?" But the other, who was old and spare, with a sharp nose and
watery eyes, sighed. "Some has one affliction, some another," he
said.
Mrs. Kronborg
reflected. "Well," she said at last, "you can't get liquor here,
anyway. I am going to ask you to vacate, because I want to have a little picnic
under this tank for the freight crew that brought me along. I wish I had lunch
enough to provide you, but I ain't. The station agent says he gets his
provisions over there at the post- office store, and if you are hungry you can
get some canned stuff there." She opened her handbag and gave each of the
tramps a half-dollar.
The old man wiped his
eyes with his forefinger. "Thank 'ee, ma'am. A can of tomatters will taste
pretty good to me. I wasn't always walkin' ties; I had a good job in Cleveland
before--"
The hairy tramp turned
on him fiercely. "Aw, shut up on that, grandpaw! Ain't you got no
gratitude? What do you want to hand the lady that fur?"
The old man hung his
head and turned away. As he went off, his comrade looked after him and said to
Mrs. Kronborg: "It's true, what he says. He had a job in the car shops;
but he had bad luck." They both limped away toward the store, and Mrs.
Kronborg sighed. She was not afraid of tramps. She always talked to them, and
never turned one away. She hated to think how many of them there were, crawling
along the tracks over that vast country.
Her reflections were
cut short by Ray and Giddy and Thea, who came bringing the lunch box and water
bottles. Although there was not shadow enough to accommodate all the party at
once, the air under the tank was distinctly cooler than the surrounding air, and
the drip made a pleasant sound in that breathless noon. The station agent ate
as if he had never been fed before, apologizing every time he took another
piece of fried chicken. Giddy was unabashed before the devilled eggs of which
he had spoken so scornfully last night. After lunch the men lit their pipes and
lay back against the uprights that supported the tank.
"This is the sunny
side of railroading, all right," Giddy drawled luxuriously.
"You fellows
grumble too much," said Mrs. Kronborg as she corked the pickle jar.
"Your job has its drawbacks, but it don't tie you down. Of course there's
the risk; but I believe a man's watched over, and he can't be hurt on the
railroad or anywhere else if it's intended he shouldn't be."
Giddy laughed.
"Then the trains must be operated by fellows the Lord has it in for, Mrs.
Kronborg. They figure it out that a railroad man's only due to last eleven
years; then it's his turn to be smashed."
"That's a dark
Providence, I don't deny," Mrs. Kronborg admitted. "But there's lots
of things in life that's hard to understand."
"I guess!"
murmured Giddy, looking off at the spotted white hills.
Ray smoked in silence,
watching Thea and her mother clear away the lunch. He was thinking that Mrs.
Kronborg had in her face the same serious look that Thea had; only hers was
calm and satisfied, and Thea's was intense and questioning. But in both it was
a large kind of look, that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed
by trivial things. They both carried their heads like Indian women, with a kind
of noble unconsciousness. He got so tired of women who were always nodding and
jerking; apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating with their heads.
When Ray's party set
off again that afternoon the sun beat fiercely into the cupola, and Thea curled
up in one of the seats at the back of the car and had a nap.
As the short twilight
came on, Giddy took a turn in the cupola, and Ray came down and sat with Thea
on the rear platform of the caboose and watched the darkness come in soft waves
over the plain. They were now about thirty miles from Denver, and the mountains
looked very near. The great toothed wall behind which the sun had gone down now
separated into four distinct ranges, one behind the other. They were a very pale
blue, a color scarcely stronger than wood smoke, and the sunset had left bright
streaks in the snow-filled gorges. In the clear, yellow- streaked sky the stars
were coming out, flickering like newly lighted lamps, growing steadier and more
golden as the sky darkened and the land beneath them fell into complete shadow.
It was a cool, restful darkness that was not black or forbidding, but somehow
open and free; the night of high plains where there is no moistness or
mistiness in the atmosphere.
Ray lit his pipe.
"I never get tired of them old stars, Thee. I miss 'em up in Washington
and Oregon where it's misty. Like 'em best down in Mother Mexico, where they
have everything their own way. I'm not for any country where the stars are
dim." Ray paused and drew on his pipe. "I don't know as I ever really
noticed 'em much till that first year I herded sheep up in Wyoming. That was
the year the blizzard caught me."
"And you lost all
your sheep, didn't you, Ray?" Thea spoke sympathetically. "Was the
man who owned them nice about it?"
"Yes, he was a
good loser. But I didn't get over it for a long while. Sheep are so damned
resigned. Sometimes, to this day, when I'm dog-tired, I try to save them sheep
all night long. It comes kind of hard on a boy when he first finds out how
little he is, and how big everything else is."
Thea moved restlessly
toward him and dropped her chin on her hand, looking at a low star that seemed
to rest just on the rim of the earth. "I don't see how you stood it. I
don't believe I could. I don't see how people can stand it to get knocked out,
anyhow!" She spoke with such fierceness that Ray glanced at her in
surprise. She was sitting on the floor of the car, crouching like a little
animal about to spring.
"No occasion for
you to see," he said warmly. "There'll always be plenty of other
people to take the knocks for you."
"That's nonsense,
Ray." Thea spoke impatiently and leaned lower still, frowning at the red
star. "Everybody's up against it for himself, succeeds or
fails--himself."
"In one way,
yes," Ray admitted, knocking the sparks from his pipe out into the soft
darkness that seemed to flow like a river beside the car. "But when you
look at it another way, there are a lot of halfway people in this world who
help the winners win, and the failers fail. If a man stumbles, there's plenty
of people to push him down. But if he's like `the youth who bore,' those same
people are foreordained to help him along. They may hate to, worse than blazes,
and they may do a lot of cussin' about it, but they have to help the winners
and they can't dodge it. It's a natural law, like what keeps the big clock up
there going, little wheels and big, and no mix-up." Ray's hand and his
pipe were suddenly outlined against the sky. "Ever occur to you, Thee, that
they have to be on time close enough to make time? The Dispatcher up there must
have a long head." Pleased with his similitude, Ray went back to the
lookout. Going into Denver, he had to keep a sharp watch.
Giddy came down,
cheerful at the prospect of getting into port, and singing a new topical ditty
that had come up from the Santa Fe by way of La Junta. Nobody knows who makes
these songs; they seem to follow events automatically. Mrs. Kronborg made Giddy
sing the whole twelve verses of this one, and laughed until she wiped her eyes.
The story was that of Katie Casey, head dining- room girl at Winslow, Arizona,
who was unjustly discharged by the Harvey House manager. Her suitor, the
yardmaster, took the switchmen out on a strike until she was reinstated.
Freight trains from the east and the west piled up at Winslow until the yards
looked like a log-jam. The division superintendent, who was in California, had
to wire instructions for Katie Casey's restoration before he could get his
trains running. Giddy's song told all this with much detail, both tender and
technical, and after each of the dozen verses came the refrain:--
"Oh, who would think that Katie Casey owned the Santa Fe?
But it really looks that way,
The dispatcher's turnin' gray,
All the crews is off their pay;
She can hold the freight from Albuquerq' to Needles any day;
The division superintendent, he come home from Monterey,
Just to see if things was pleasin' Katie Ca--a--a--sey." Thea laughed with her mother and
applauded Giddy. Everything was so kindly and comfortable; Giddy and Ray, and
their hospitable little house, and the easy-going country, and the stars. She
curled up on the seat again with that warm, sleepy feeling of the friendliness
of the world--which nobody keeps very long, and which she was to lose early and
irrevocably.
The summer flew by.
Thea was glad when Ray Kennedy had a Sunday in town and could take her driving.
Out among the sand hills she could forget the "new room" which was
the scene of wearing and fruitless labor. Dr. Archie was away from home a good
deal that year. He had put all his money into mines above Colorado Springs, and
he hoped for great returns from them.
In the fall of that
year, Mr. Kronborg decided that Thea ought to show more interest in church
work. He put it to her frankly, one night at supper, before the whole family.
"How can I insist on the other girls in the congregation being active in
the work, when one of my own daughters manifests so little interest?"
"But I sing every
Sunday morning, and I have to give up one night a week to choir practice,"
Thea declared rebelliously, pushing back her plate with an angry determination
to eat nothing more.
"One night a week
is not enough for the pastor's daughter," her father replied. "You
won't do anything in the sewing society, and you won't take part in the
Christian Endeavor or the Band of Hope. Very well, you must make it up in other
ways. I want some one to play the organ and lead the singing at prayer-meeting
this winter. Deacon Potter told me some time ago that he thought there would be
more interest in our prayer-meetings if we had the organ. Miss Meyers don't
feel that she can play on Wednesday nights. And there ought to be somebody to
start the hymns. Mrs. Potter is getting old, and she always starts them too
high. It won't take much of your time, and it will keep people from
talking."
This argument conquered
Thea, though she left the table sullenly. The fear of the tongue, that terror
of little towns, is usually felt more keenly by the minister's family than by
other households. Whenever the Kronborgs wanted to do anything, even to buy a
new carpet, they had to take counsel together as to whether people would talk.
Mrs. Kronborg had her own conviction that people talked when they felt like it,
and said what they chose, no matter how the minister's family conducted
themselves. But she did not impart these dangerous ideas to her children. Thea
was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you
clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.
Mrs. Kronborg did not
have any particular zest for prayer-meetings, and she stayed at home whenever
she had a valid excuse. Thor was too old to furnish such an excuse now, so
every Wednesday night, unless one of the children was sick, she trudged off
with Thea, behind Mr. Kronborg. At first Thea was terribly bored. But she got
used to prayer- meeting, got even to feel a mournful interest in it.
The exercises were
always pretty much the same. After the first hymn her father read a passage
from the Bible, usually a Psalm. Then there was another hymn, and then her
father commented upon the passage he had read and, as he said, "applied
the Word to our necessities." After a third hymn, the meeting was declared
open, and the old men and women took turns at praying and talking. Mrs.
Kronborg never spoke in meeting. She told people firmly that she had been
brought up to keep silent and let the men talk, but she gave respectful
attention to the others, sitting with her hands folded in her lap.
The prayer-meeting
audience was always small. The young and energetic members of the congregation
came only once or twice a year, "to keep people from talking." The
usual Wednesday night gathering was made up of old women, with perhaps six or
eight old men, and a few sickly girls who had not much interest in life; two of
them, indeed, were already preparing to die. Thea accepted the mournfulness of
the prayer-meetings as a kind of spiritual discipline, like funerals. She always
read late after she went home and felt a stronger wish than usual to live and
to be happy.
The meetings were
conducted in the Sunday-School room, where there were wooden chairs instead of
pews; an old map of Palestine hung on the wall, and the bracket lamps gave out
only a dim light. The old women sat motionless as Indians in their shawls and
bonnets; some of them wore long black mourning veils. The old men drooped in
their chairs. Every back, every face, every head said "resignation."
Often there were long silences, when you could hear nothing but the crackling
of the soft coal in the stove and the muffled cough of one of the sick girls.
There was one nice old
lady,--tall, erect, self-respecting, with a delicate white face and a soft
voice. She never whined, and what she said was always cheerful, though she
spoke so nervously that Thea knew she dreaded getting up, and that she made a
real sacrifice to, as she said, "testify to the goodness of her
Saviour." She was the mother of the girl who coughed, and Thea used to
wonder how she explained things to herself. There was, indeed, only one woman
who talked because she was, as Mr. Kronborg said, "tonguey." The
others were somehow impressive. They told about the sweet thoughts that came to
them while they were at their work; how, amid their household tasks, they were
suddenly lifted by the sense of a divine Presence. Sometimes they told of their
first conversion, of how in their youth that higher Power had made itself known
to them. Old Mr. Carsen, the carpenter, who gave his services as janitor to the
church, used often to tell how, when he was a young man and a scoffer, bent on
the destruction of both body and soul, his Saviour had come to him in the
Michigan woods and had stood, it seemed to him, beside the tree he was felling;
and how he dropped his axe and knelt in prayer "to Him who died for us
upon the tree." Thea always wanted to ask him more about it; about his
mysterious wickedness, and about the vision.
Sometimes the old
people would ask for prayers for their absent children. Sometimes they asked
their brothers and sisters in Christ to pray that they might be stronger
against temptations. One of the sick girls used to ask them to pray that she
might have more faith in the times of depression that came to her, "when
all the way before seemed dark." She repeated that husky phrase so often,
that Thea always remembered it.
One old woman, who never
missed a Wednesday night, and who nearly always took part in the meeting, came
all the way up from the depot settlement. She always wore a black crocheted
"fascinator" over her thin white hair, and she made long, tremulous
prayers, full of railroad terminology. She had six sons in the service of
different railroads, and she always prayed "for the boys on the road, who
know not at what moment they may be cut off. When, in Thy divine wisdom, their
hour is upon them, may they, O our Heavenly Father, see only white lights along
the road to Eternity." She used to speak, too, of "the engines that
race with death"; and though she looked so old and little when she was on
her knees, and her voice was so shaky, her prayers had a thrill of speed and
danger in them; they made one think of the deep black canyons, the slender
trestles, the pounding trains. Thea liked to look at her sunken eyes that
seemed full of wisdom, at her black thread gloves, much too long in the fingers
and so meekly folded one over the other. Her face was brown, and worn away as
rocks are worn by water. There are many ways of describing that color of age,
but in reality it is not like parchment, or like any of the things it is said
to be like. That brownness and that texture of skin are found only in the faces
of old human creatures, who have worked hard and who have always been poor.
One bitterly cold night
in December the prayer-meeting seemed to Thea longer than usual. The prayers
and the talks went on and on. It was as if the old people were afraid to go out
into the cold, or were stupefied by the hot air of the room. She had left a
book at home that she was impatient to get back to. At last the Doxology was
sung, but the old people lingered about the stove to greet each other, and Thea
took her mother's arm and hurried out to the frozen sidewalk, before her father
could get away. The wind was whistling up the street and whipping the naked
cottonwood trees against the telegraph poles and the sides of the houses. Thin
snow clouds were flying overhead, so that the sky looked gray, with a dull
phosphorescence. The icy streets and the shingle roofs of the houses were gray,
too. All along the street, shutters banged or windows rattled, or gates
wobbled, held by their latch but shaking on loose hinges. There was not a cat
or a dog in Moonstone that night that was not given a warm shelter; the cats
under the kitchen stove, the dogs in barns or coal-sheds. When Thea and her
mother reached home, their mufflers were covered with ice, where their breath had
frozen. They hurried into the house and made a dash for the parlor and the
hard-coal burner, behind which Gunner was sitting on a stool, reading his Jules
Verne book. The door stood open into the dining-room, which was heated from the
parlor. Mr. Kronborg always had a lunch when he came home from prayer-meeting,
and his pumpkin pie and milk were set out on the dining-table. Mrs. Kronborg
said she thought she felt hungry, too, and asked Thea if she didn't want
something to eat.
"No, I'm not
hungry, mother. I guess I'll go upstairs."
"I expect you've
got some book up there," said Mrs. Kronborg, bringing out another pie.
"You'd better bring it down here and read. Nobody'll disturb you, and it's
terrible cold up in that loft."
Thea was always assured
that no one would disturb her if she read downstairs, but the boys talked when
they came in, and her father fairly delivered discourses after he had been
renewed by half a pie and a pitcher of milk.
"I don't mind the
cold. I'll take a hot brick up for my feet. I put one in the stove before I
left, if one of the boys hasn't stolen it. Good-night, mother." Thea got
her brick and lantern, and dashed upstairs through the windy loft. She
undressed at top speed and got into bed with her brick. She put a pair of white
knitted gloves on her hands, and pinned over her head a piece of soft flannel
that had been one of Thor's long petticoats when he was a baby. Thus equipped,
she was ready for business. She took from her table a thick paper-backed
volume, one of the "line" of paper novels the druggist kept to sell
to traveling men. She had bought it, only yesterday, because the first sentence
interested her very much, and because she saw, as she glanced over the pages,
the magical names of two Russian cities. The book was a poor translation of
"Anna Karenina." Thea opened it at a mark, and fixed her eyes
intently upon the small print. The hymns, the sick girl, the resigned black
figures were forgotten. It was the night of the ball in Moscow.
Thea would have been
astonished if she could have known how, years afterward, when she had need of
them, those old faces were to come back to her, long after they were hidden
away under the earth; that they would seem to her then as full of meaning, as
mysteriously marked by Destiny, as the people who danced the mazurka under the
elegant Korsunsky.
Mr. Kronborg was too
fond of his ease and too sensible to worry his children much about religion. He
was more sincere than many preachers, but when he spoke to his family about matters
of conduct it was usually with a regard for keeping up appearances. The church
and church work were discussed in the family like the routine of any other
business. Sunday was the hard day of the week with them, just as Saturday was
the busy day with the merchants on Main Street. Revivals were seasons of extra
work and pressure, just as threshing-time was on the farms. Visiting elders had
to be lodged and cooked for, the folding-bed in the parlor was let down, and
Mrs. Kronborg had to work in the kitchen all day long and attend the night
meetings.
During one of these
revivals Thea's sister Anna professed religion with, as Mrs. Kronborg said,
"a good deal of fluster." While Anna was going up to the mourners'
bench nightly and asking for the prayers of the congregation, she disseminated
general gloom throughout the household, and after she joined the church she
took on an air of "set-apartness" that was extremely trying to her
brothers and her sister, though they realized that Anna's sanctimoniousness was
perhaps a good thing for their father. A preacher ought to have one child who
did more than merely acquiesce in religious observances, and Thea and the boys
were glad enough that it was Anna and not one of themselves who assumed this
obligation.
"Anna, she's
American," Mrs. Kronborg used to say. The Scandinavian mould of
countenance, more or less marked in each of the other children, was scarcely
discernible in her, and she looked enough like other Moonstone girls to be
thought pretty. Anna's nature was conventional, like her face. Her position as
the minister's eldest daughter was important to her, and she tried to live up
to it. She read sentimental religious story-books and emulated the spiritual
struggles and magnanimous behavior of their persecuted heroines. Everything had
to be interpreted for Anna. Her opinions about the smallest and most
commonplace things were gleaned from the Denver papers, the church weeklies,
from sermons and Sunday-School addresses. Scarcely anything was attractive to
her in its natural state--indeed, scarcely anything was decent until it was
clothed by the opinion of some authority. Her ideas about habit, character,
duty, love, marriage, were grouped under heads, like a book of popular
quotations, and were totally unrelated to the emergencies of human living. She
discussed all these subjects with other Methodist girls of her age. They would
spend hours, for instance, in deciding what they would or would not tolerate in
a suitor or a husband, and the frailties of masculine nature were too often a
subject of discussion among them. In her behavior Anna was a harmless girl,
mild except where her prejudices were concerned, neat and industrious, with no
graver fault than priggishness; but her mind had really shocking habits of classification.
The wickedness of Denver and of Chicago, and even of Moonstone, occupied her
thoughts too much. She had none of the delicacy that goes with a nature of warm
impulses, but the kind of fishy curiosity which justifies itself by an
expression of horror.
Thea, and all Thea's
ways and friends, seemed indecorous to Anna. She not only felt a grave social
discrimination against the Mexicans; she could not forget that Spanish Johnny
was a drunkard and that "nobody knew what he did when he ran away from home."
Thea pretended, of course, that she liked the Mexicans because they were fond
of music; but every one knew that music was nothing very real, and that it did
not matter in a girl's relations with people. What was real, then, and what did
matter? Poor Anna!
Anna approved of Ray
Kennedy as a young man of steady habits and blameless life, but she regretted
that he was an atheist, and that he was not a passenger conductor with brass
buttons on his coat. On the whole, she wondered what such an exemplary young
man found to like in Thea. Dr. Archie she treated respectfully because of his
position in Moonstone, but she knew he had kissed the Mexican barytone's pretty
daughter, and she had a whole dossier of evidence about his behavior in his
hours of relaxation in Denver. He was "fast," and it was because he
was "fast" that Thea liked him. Thea always liked that kind of
people. Dr. Archie's whole manner with Thea, Anna often told her mother, was
too free. He was always putting his hand on Thea's head, or holding her hand
while he laughed and looked down at her. The kindlier manifestation of human
nature (about which Anna sang and talked, in the interests of which she went to
conventions and wore white ribbons) were never realities to her after all. She
did not believe in them. It was only in attitudes of protest or reproof,
clinging to the cross, that human beings could be even temporarily decent.
Preacher Kronborg's
secret convictions were very much like Anna's. He believed that his wife was
absolutely good, but there was not a man or woman in his congregation whom he
trusted all the way.
Mrs. Kronborg, on the
other hand, was likely to find something to admire in almost any human conduct
that was positive and energetic. She could always be taken in by the stories of
tramps and runaway boys. She went to the circus and admired the bareback
riders, who were "likely good enough women in their way." She admired
Dr. Archie's fine physique and well-cut clothes as much as Thea did, and said
she "felt it was a privilege to be handled by such a gentleman when she
was sick."
Soon after Anna became
a church member she began to remonstrate with Thea about practicing--playing
"secular music"--on Sunday. One Sunday the dispute in the parlor grew
warm and was carried to Mrs. Kronborg in the kitchen. She listened judicially
and told Anna to read the chapter about how Naaman the leper was permitted to
bow down in the house of Rimmon. Thea went back to the piano, and Anna lingered
to say that, since she was in the right, her mother should have supported her.
"No," said
Mrs. Kronborg, rather indifferently, "I can't see it that way, Anna. I
never forced you to practice, and I don't see as I should keep Thea from it. I
like to hear her, and I guess your father does. You and Thea will likely follow
different lines, and I don't see as I'm called upon to bring you up
alike."
Anna looked meek and
abused. "Of course all the church people must hear her. Ours is the only
noisy house on this street. You hear what she's playing now, don't you?"
Mrs. Kronborg rose from
browning her coffee. "Yes; it's the Blue Danube waltzes. I'm familiar with
'em. If any of the church people come at you, you just send 'em to me. I ain't
afraid to speak out on occasion, and I wouldn't mind one bit telling the
Ladies' Aid a few things about standard composers." Mrs. Kronborg smiled,
and added thoughtfully, "No, I wouldn't mind that one bit."
Anna went about with a
reserved and distant air for a week, and Mrs. Kronborg suspected that she held
a larger place than usual in her daughter's prayers; but that was another thing
she didn't mind.
Although revivals were
merely a part of the year's work, like examination week at school, and although
Anna's piety impressed her very little, a time came when Thea was perplexed
about religion. A scourge of typhoid broke out in Moonstone and several of
Thea's schoolmates died of it. She went to their funerals, saw them put into
the ground, and wondered a good deal about them. But a certain grim incident,
which caused the epidemic, troubled her even more than the death of her
friends.
Early in July, soon
after Thea's fifteenth birthday, a particularly disgusting sort of tramp came
into Moonstone in an empty box car. Thea was sitting in the hammock in the
front yard when he first crawled up to the town from the depot, carrying a
bundle wrapped in dirty ticking under one arm, and under the other a wooden box
with rusty screening nailed over one end. He had a thin, hungry face covered
with black hair. It was just before supper- time when he came along, and the
street smelled of fried potatoes and fried onions and coffee. Thea saw him
sniffing the air greedily and walking slower and slower. He looked over the
fence. She hoped he would not stop at their gate, for her mother never turned
any one away, and this was the dirtiest and most utterly wretched-looking tramp
she had ever seen. There was a terrible odor about him, too. She caught it even
at that distance, and put her handkerchief to her nose. A moment later she was
sorry, for she knew that he had noticed it. He looked away and shuffled a
little faster.
A few days later Thea
heard that the tramp had camped in an empty shack over on the east edge of
town, beside the ravine, and was trying to give a miserable sort of show there.
He told the boys who went to see what he was doing, that he had traveled with a
circus. His bundle contained a filthy clown's suit, and his box held half a
dozen rattle- snakes.
Saturday night, when
Thea went to the butcher shop to get the chickens for Sunday, she heard the
whine of an accordion and saw a crowd before one of the saloons. There she
found the tramp, his bony body grotesquely attired in the clown's suit, his
face shaved and painted white,--the sweat trickling through the paint and washing
it away,-- and his eyes wild and feverish. Pulling the accordion in and out
seemed to be almost too great an effort for him, and he panted to the tune of
"Marching through Georgia." After a considerable crowd had gathered,
the tramp exhibited his box of snakes, announced that he would now pass the
hat, and that when the onlookers had contributed the sum of one dollar, he
would eat "one of these living reptiles." The crowd began to cough
and murmur, and the saloon keeper rushed off for the marshal, who arrested the
wretch for giving a show without a license and hurried him away to the
calaboose.
The calaboose stood in
a sunflower patch,--an old hut with a barred window and a padlock on the door.
The tramp was utterly filthy and there was no way to give him a bath. The law
made no provision to grub-stake vagrants, so after the constable had detained
the tramp for twenty- four hours, he released him and told him to "get out
of town, and get quick." The fellow's rattlesnakes had been killed by the
saloon keeper. He hid in a box car in the freight yard, probably hoping to get
a ride to the next station, but he was found and put out. After that he was
seen no more. He had disappeared and left no trace except an ugly, stupid word,
chalked on the black paint of the seventy-five-foot standpipe which was the
reservoir for the Moonstone water-supply; the same word, in another tongue,
that the French soldier shouted at Waterloo to the English officer who bade the
Old Guard surrender; a comment on life which the defeated, along the hard roads
of the world, sometimes bawl at the victorious.
A week after the tramp
excitement had passed over, the city water began to smell and to taste. The
Kronborgs had a well in their back yard and did not use city water, but they
heard the complaints of their neighbors. At first people said that the town
well was full of rotting cottonwood roots, but the engineer at the pumping-
station convinced the mayor that the water left the well untainted. Mayors
reason slowly, but, the well being eliminated, the official mind had to travel
toward the standpipe--there was no other track for it to go in. The standpipe
amply rewarded investigation. The tramp had got even with Moonstone. He had
climbed the standpipe by the handholds and let himself down into seventy-five
feet of cold water, with his shoes and hat and roll of ticking. The city council
had a mild panic and passed a new ordinance about tramps. But the fever had
already broken out, and several adults and half a dozen children died of it.
Thea had always found
everything that happened in Moonstone exciting, disasters particularly so. It
was gratifying to read sensational Moonstone items in the Denver paper. But she
wished she had not chanced to see the tramp as he came into town that evening,
sniffing the supper-laden air. His face remained unpleasantly clear in her
memory, and her mind struggled with the problem of his behavior as if it were a
hard page in arithmetic. Even when she was practicing, the drama of the tramp
kept going on in the back of her head, and she was constantly trying to make
herself realize what pitch of hatred or despair could drive a man to do such a
hideous thing. She kept seeing him in his bedraggled clown suit, the white
paint on his roughly shaven face, playing his accordion before the saloon. She
had noticed his lean body, his high, bald forehead that sloped back like a
curved metal lid. How could people fall so far out of fortune? She tried to
talk to Ray Kennedy about her perplexity, but Ray would not discuss things of
that sort with her. It was in his sentimental conception of women that they
should be deeply religious, though men were at liberty to doubt and finally to
deny. A picture called "The Soul Awakened," popular in Moonstone
parlors, pretty well interpreted Ray's idea of woman's spiritual nature.
One evening when she
was haunted by the figure of the tramp, Thea went up to Dr. Archie's office.
She found him sewing up two bad gashes in the face of a little boy who had been
kicked by a mule. After the boy had been bandaged and sent away with his
father, Thea helped the doctor wash and put away the surgical instruments. Then
she dropped into her accustomed seat beside his desk and began to talk about
the tramp. Her eyes were hard and green with excitement, the doctor noticed.
"It seems to me,
Dr. Archie, that the whole town's to blame. I'm to blame, myself. I know he saw
me hold my nose when he went by. Father's to blame. If he believes the Bible,
he ought to have gone to the calaboose and cleaned that man up and taken care
of him. That's what I can't understand; do people believe the Bible, or don't
they? If the next life is all that matters, and we're put here to get ready for
it, then why do we try to make money, or learn things, or have a good time?
There's not one person in Moonstone that really lives the way the New Testament
says. Does it matter, or don't it?"
Dr. Archie swung round
in his chair and looked at her, honestly and leniently. "Well, Thea, it
seems to me like this. Every people has had its religion. All religions are
good, and all are pretty much alike. But I don't see how we could live up to
them in the sense you mean. I've thought about it a good deal, and I can't help
feeling that while we are in this world we have to live for the best things of
this world, and those things are material and positive. Now, most religions are
passive, and they tell us chiefly what we should not do." The doctor moved
restlessly, and his eyes hunted for something along the opposite wall:
"See here, my girl, take out the years of early childhood and the time we
spend in sleep and dull old age, and we only have about twenty able, waking
years. That's not long enough to get acquainted with half the fine things that
have been done in the world, much less to do anything ourselves. I think we
ought to keep the Commandments and help other people all we can; but the main
thing is to live those twenty splendid years; to do all we can and enjoy all we
can."
Dr. Archie met his
little friend's searching gaze, the look of acute inquiry which always touched
him.
"But poor fellows
like that tramp--" she hesitated and wrinkled her forehead.
The doctor leaned
forward and put his hand protectingly over hers, which lay clenched on the
green felt desk- top. "Ugly accidents happen, Thea; always have and always
will. But the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten. They don't
leave any lasting scar in the world, and they don't affect the future. The
things that last are the good things. The people who forge ahead and do
something, they really count." He saw tears on her cheeks, and he
remembered that he had never seen her cry before, not even when she crushed her
finger when she was little. He rose and walked to the window, came back and sat
down on the edge of his chair.
"Forget the tramp,
Thea. This is a great big world, and I want you to get about and see it all.
You're going to Chicago some day, and do something with that fine voice of
yours. You're going to be a number one musician and make us proud of you. Take
Mary Anderson, now; even the tramps are proud of her. There isn't a tramp along
the `Q' system who hasn't heard of her. We all like people who do things, even
if we only see their faces on a cigar-box lid."
They had a long talk.
Thea felt that Dr. Archie had never let himself out to her so much before. It
was the most grown-up conversation she had ever had with him. She left his
office happy, flattered and stimulated. She ran for a long while about the
white, moonlit streets, looking up at the stars and the bluish night, at the
quiet houses sunk in black shade, the glittering sand hills. She loved the
familiar trees, and the people in those little houses, and she loved the
unknown world beyond Denver. She felt as if she were being pulled in two,
between the desire to go away forever and the desire to stay forever. She had
only twenty years--no time to lose.
Many a night that
summer she left Dr. Archie's office with a desire to run and run about those
quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or wore out the streets themselves;
when her chest ached and it seemed as if her heart were spreading all over the
desert. When she went home, it was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her
mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with
excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through
that window--or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within,
not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was
not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the
floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. It was on such
nights that Thea Kronborg learned the thing that old Dumas meant when he told
the Romanticists that to make a drama he needed but one passion and four walls.
It is well for its
peace of mind that the traveling public takes railroads so much for granted.
The only men who are incurably nervous about railway travel are the railroad
operatives. A railroad man never forgets that the next run may be his turn.
On a single-track road,
like that upon which Ray Kennedy worked, the freight trains make their way as
best they can between passenger trains. Even when there is such a thing as a
freight time-schedule, it is merely a form. Along the one track dozens of fast
and slow trains dash in both directions, kept from collision only by the brains
in the dispatcher's office. If one passenger train is late, the whole schedule
must be revised in an instant; the trains following must be warned, and those
moving toward the belated train must be assigned new meeting-places.
Between the shifts and
modifications of the passenger schedule, the freight trains play a game of
their own. They have no right to the track at any given time, but are supposed
to be on it when it is free, and to make the best time they can between
passenger trains. A freight train, on a single-track road, gets anywhere at all
only by stealing bases.
Ray Kennedy had stuck
to the freight service, although he had had opportunities to go into the
passenger service at higher pay. He always regarded railroading as a temporary
makeshift, until he "got into something," and he disliked the
passenger service. No brass buttons for him, he said; too much like a livery.
While he was railroading he would wear a jumper, thank you!
The wreck that
"caught" Ray was a very commonplace one; nothing thrilling about it,
and it got only six lines in the Denver papers. It happened about daybreak one
morning, only thirty-two miles from home.
At four o'clock in the
morning Ray's train had stopped to take water at Saxony, having just rounded
the long curve which lies south of that station. It was Joe Giddy's business to
walk back along the curve about three hundred yards and put out torpedoes to
warn any train which might be coming up from behind--a freight crew is not
notified of trains following, and the brakeman is supposed to protect his
train. Ray was so fussy about the punctilious observance of orders that almost
any brakeman would take a chance once in a while, from natural perversity.
When the train stopped
for water that morning, Ray was at the desk in his caboose, making out his
report. Giddy took his torpedoes, swung off the rear platform, and glanced back
at the curve. He decided that he would not go back to flag this time. If
anything was coming up behind, he could hear it in plenty of time. So he ran
forward to look after a hot journal that had been bothering him. In a general
way, Giddy's reasoning was sound. If a freight train, or even a passenger
train, had been coming up behind them, he could have heard it in time. But as
it happened, a light engine, which made no noise at all, was coming,-- ordered
out to help with the freight that was piling up at the other end of the
division. This engine got no warning, came round the curve, struck the caboose,
went straight through it, and crashed into the heavy lumber car ahead.
The Kronborgs were just
sitting down to breakfast, when the night telegraph operator dashed into the
yard at a run and hammered on the front door. Gunner answered the knock, and
the telegraph operator told him he wanted to see his father a minute, quick.
Mr. Kronborg appeared at the door, napkin in hand. The operator was pale and
panting.
"Fourteen was
wrecked down at Saxony this morning," he shouted, "and Kennedy's all
broke up. We're sending an engine down with the doctor, and the operator at
Saxony says Kennedy wants you to come along with us and bring your girl."
He stopped for breath.
Mr. Kronborg took off
his glasses and began rubbing them with his napkin.
"Bring--I don't
understand," he muttered. "How did this happen?"
"No time for that,
sir. Getting the engine out now. Your girl, Thea. You'll surely do that for the
poor chap. Everybody knows he thinks the world of her." Seeing that Mr.
Kronborg showed no indication of having made up his mind, the operator turned
to Gunner. "Call your sister, kid. I'm going to ask the girl
herself," he blurted out.
"Yes, yes,
certainly. Daughter," Mr. Kronborg called. He had somewhat recovered
himself and reached to the hall hatrack for his hat.
Just as Thea came out
on the front porch, before the operator had had time to explain to her, Dr.
Archie's ponies came up to the gate at a brisk trot. Archie jumped out the
moment his driver stopped the team and came up to the bewildered girl without
so much as saying good-morning to any one. He took her hand with the
sympathetic, reassuring graveness which had helped her at more than one hard
time in her life. "Get your hat, my girl. Kennedy's hurt down the road,
and he wants you to run down with me. They'll have a car for us. Get into my
buggy, Mr. Kronborg. I'll drive you down, and Larry can come for the
team."
The driver jumped out
of the buggy and Mr. Kronborg and the doctor got in. Thea, still bewildered,
sat on her father's knee. Dr. Archie gave his ponies a smart cut with the whip.
When they reached the
depot, the engine, with one car attached, was standing on the main track. The
engineer had got his steam up, and was leaning out of the cab impatiently. In a
moment they were off. The run to Saxony took forty minutes. Thea sat still in
her seat while Dr. Archie and her father talked about the wreck. She took no
part in the conversation and asked no questions, but occasionally she looked at
Dr. Archie with a frightened, inquiring glance, which he answered by an
encouraging nod. Neither he nor her father said anything about how badly Ray
was hurt. When the engine stopped near Saxony, the main track was already
cleared. As they got out of the car, Dr. Archie pointed to a pile of ties.
"Thea, you'd
better sit down here and watch the wreck crew while your father and I go up and
look Kennedy over. I'll come back for you when I get him fixed up."
The two men went off up
the sand gulch, and Thea sat down and looked at the pile of splintered wood and
twisted iron that had lately been Ray's caboose. She was frightened and
absent-minded. She felt that she ought to be thinking about Ray, but her mind
kept racing off to all sorts of trivial and irrelevant things. She wondered
whether Grace Johnson would be furious when she came to take her music lesson
and found nobody there to give it to her; whether she had forgotten to close
the piano last night and whether Thor would get into the new room and mess the
keys all up with his sticky fingers; whether Tillie would go upstairs and make
her bed for her. Her mind worked fast, but she could fix it upon nothing. The
grasshoppers, the lizards, distracted her attention and seemed more real to her
than poor Ray.
On their way to the
sand bank where Ray had been carried, Dr. Archie and Mr. Kronborg met the
Saxony doctor. He shook hands with them.
"Nothing you can
do, doctor. I couldn't count the fractures. His back's broken, too. He wouldn't
be alive now if he weren't so confoundedly strong, poor chap. No use bothering
him. I've given him morphia, one and a half, in eighths."
Dr. Archie hurried on.
Ray was lying on a flat canvas litter, under the shelter of a shelving bank,
lightly shaded by a slender cottonwood tree. When the doctor and the preacher
approached, he looked at them intently.
"Didn't--" he
closed his eyes to hide his bitter disappointment.
Dr. Archie knew what was
the matter. "Thea's back there, Ray. I'll bring her as soon as I've had a
look at you."
Ray looked up.
"You might clean me up a trifle, doc. Won't need you for anything else,
thank you all the same."
However little there
was left of him, that little was certainly Ray Kennedy. His personality was as
positive as ever, and the blood and dirt on his face seemed merely accidental,
to have nothing to do with the man himself. Dr. Archie told Mr. Kronborg to
bring a pail of water, and he began to sponge Ray's face and neck. Mr. Kronborg
stood by, nervously rubbing his hands together and trying to think of something
to say. Serious situations always embarrassed him and made him formal, even
when he felt real sympathy.
"In times like
this, Ray," he brought out at last, crumpling up his handkerchief in his
long fingers,--"in times like this, we don't want to forget the Friend
that sticketh closer than a brother."
Ray looked up at him; a
lonely, disconsolate smile played over his mouth and his square cheeks. "Never
mind about all that, padre," he said quietly. "Christ and me fell out
long ago."
There was a moment of
silence. Then Ray took pity on Mr. Kronborg's embarrassment. "You go back
for the little girl, padre. I want a word with the doc in private."
Ray talked to Dr.
Archie for a few moments, then stopped suddenly, with a broad smile. Over the
doctor's shoulder he saw Thea coming up the gulch, in her pink chambray dress,
carrying her sun-hat by the strings. Such a yellow head! He often told himself
that he "was perfectly foolish about her hair." The sight of her,
coming, went through him softly, like the morphia. "There she is," he
whispered. "Get the old preacher out of the way, doc. I want to have a
little talk with her."
Dr. Archie looked up.
Thea was hurrying and yet hanging back. She was more frightened than he had
thought she would be. She had gone with him to see very sick people and had
always been steady and calm. As she came up, she looked at the ground, and he
could see that she had been crying.
Ray Kennedy made an
unsuccessful effort to put out his hand. "Hello, little kid, nothing to be
afraid of. Darned if I don't believe they've gone and scared you! Nothing to
cry about. I'm the same old goods, only a little dented. Sit down on my coat there,
and keep me company. I've got to lay still a bit."
Dr. Archie and Mr.
Kronborg disappeared. Thea cast a timid glance after them, but she sat down
resolutely and took Ray's hand.
"You ain't scared
now, are you?" he asked affectionately. "You were a regular brick to
come, Thee. Did you get any breakfast?"
"No, Ray, I'm not
scared. Only I'm dreadful sorry you're hurt, and I can't help crying."
His broad, earnest
face, languid from the opium and smiling with such simple happiness, reassured
her. She drew nearer to him and lifted his hand to her knee. He looked at her
with his clear, shallow blue eyes. How he loved everything about that face and
head! How many nights in his cupola, looking up the track, he had seen that
face in the darkness; through the sleet and snow, or in the soft blue air when
the moonlight slept on the desert.
"You needn't
bother to talk, Thee. The doctor's medicine makes me sort of dopey. But it's
nice to have company. Kind of cozy, don't you think? Pull my coat under you more.
It's a darned shame I can't wait on you."
"No, no, Ray. I'm
all right. Yes, I like it here. And I guess you ought not to talk much, ought
you? If you can sleep, I'll stay right here, and be awful quiet. I feel just as
much at home with you as ever, now."
That simple, humble,
faithful something in Ray's eyes went straight to Thea's heart. She did feel
comfortable with him, and happy to give him so much happiness. It was the first
time she had ever been conscious of that power to bestow intense happiness by
simply being near any one. She always remembered this day as the beginning of
that knowledge. She bent over him and put her lips softly to his cheek.
Ray's eyes filled with
light. "Oh, do that again, kid!" he said impulsively. Thea kissed him
on the forehead, blushing faintly. Ray held her hand fast and closed his eyes
with a deep sigh of happiness. The morphia and the sense of her nearness filled
him with content. The gold mine, the oil well, the copper ledge--all pipe
dreams, he mused, and this was a dream, too. He might have known it before. It
had always been like that; the things he admired had always been away out of
his reach: a college education, a gentleman's manner, an Englishman's
accent--things over his head. And Thea was farther out of his reach than all
the rest put together. He had been a fool to imagine it, but he was glad he had
been a fool. She had given him one grand dream. Every mile of his run, from
Moonstone to Denver, was painted with the colors of that hope. Every cactus
knew about it. But now that it was not to be, he knew the truth. Thea was never
meant for any rough fellow like him--hadn't he really known that all along, he
asked himself? She wasn't meant for common men. She was like wedding cake, a
thing to dream on. He raised his eyelids a little. She was stroking his hand
and looking off into the distance. He felt in her face that look of unconscious
power that Wunsch had seen there. Yes, she was bound for the big terminals of
the world; no way stations for her. His lids drooped. In the dark he could see
her as she would be after a while; in a box at the Tabor Grand in Denver, with
diamonds on her neck and a tiara in her yellow hair, with all the people
looking at her through their opera-glasses, and a United States Senator, maybe,
talking to her. "Then you'll remember me!" He opened his eyes, and
they were full of tears.
Thea leaned closer.
"What did you say, Ray? I couldn't hear."
"Then you'll
remember me," he whispered.
The spark in his eye,
which is one's very self, caught the spark in hers that was herself, and for a
moment they looked into each other's natures. Thea realized how good and how
great-hearted he was, and he realized about her many things. When that elusive
spark of personality retreated in each of them, Thea still saw in his wet eyes
her own face, very small, but much prettier than the cracked glass at home had
ever shown it. It was the first time she had seen her face in that kindest
mirror a woman can ever find.
Ray had felt things in
that moment when he seemed to be looking into the very soul of Thea Kronborg.
Yes, the gold mine, the oil well, the copper ledge, they'd all got away from
him, as things will; but he'd backed a winner once in his life! With all his
might he gave his faith to the broad little hand he held. He wished he could
leave her the rugged strength of his body to help her through with it all. He
would have liked to tell her a little about his old dream,--there seemed long
years between him and it already,--but to tell her now would somehow be unfair;
wouldn't be quite the straightest thing in the world. Probably she knew,
anyway. He looked up quickly. "You know, don't you, Thee, that I think you
are just the finest thing I've struck in this world?"
The tears ran down
Thea's cheeks. "You're too good to me, Ray. You're a lot too good to
me," she faltered.
"Why, kid,"
he murmured, "everybody in this world's going to be good to you!"
Dr. Archie came to the
gulch and stood over his patient. "How's it going?"
"Can't you give me
another punch with your pacifier, doc? The little girl had better run along
now." Ray released Thea's hand. "See you later, Thee."
She got up and moved
away aimlessly, carrying her hat by the strings. Ray looked after her with the
exaltation born of bodily pain and said between his teeth, "Always look
after that girl, doc. She's a queen!"
Thea and her father
went back to Moonstone on the one-o'clock passenger. Dr. Archie stayed with Ray
Kennedy until he died, late in the afternoon.
On Monday morning, the
day after Ray Kennedy's funeral, Dr. Archie called at Mr. Kronborg's study, a
little room behind the church. Mr. Kronborg did not write out his sermons, but
spoke from notes jotted upon small pieces of cardboard in a kind of shorthand
of his own. As sermons go, they were not worse than most. His conventional
rhetoric pleased the majority of his congregation, and Mr. Kronborg was
generally regarded as a model preacher. He did not smoke, he never touched
spirits. His indulgence in the pleasures of the table was an endearing bond
between him and the women of his congregation. He ate enormously, with a zest
which seemed incongruous with his spare frame.
This morning the doctor
found him opening his mail and reading a pile of advertising circulars with
deep attention.
"Good-morning, Mr.
Kronborg," said Dr. Archie, sitting down. "I came to see you on
business. Poor Kennedy asked me to look after his affairs for him. Like most
railroad men he spent his wages, except for a few investments in mines which
don't look to me very promising. But his life was insured for six hundred
dollars in Thea's favor."
Mr. Kronborg wound his
feet about the standard of his desk-chair. "I assure you, doctor, this is
a complete surprise to me."
"Well, it's not
very surprising to me," Dr. Archie went on. "He talked to me about it
the day he was hurt. He said he wanted the money to be used in a particular
way, and in no other." Dr. Archie paused meaningly.
Mr. Kronborg fidgeted.
"I am sure Thea would observe his wishes in every respect."
"No doubt; but he
wanted me to see that you agreed to his plan. It seems that for some time Thea
has wanted to go away to study music. It was Kennedy's wish that she should
take this money and go to Chicago this winter. He felt that it would be an
advantage to her in a business way: that even if she came back here to teach,
it would give her more authority and make her position here more
comfortable."
Mr. Kronborg looked a
little startled. "She is very young," he hesitated; "she is
barely seventeen. Chicago is a long way from home. We would have to consider. I
think, Dr. Archie, we had better consult Mrs. Kronborg."
"I think I can
bring Mrs. Kronborg around, if I have your consent. I've always found her pretty
level-headed. I have several old classmates practicing in Chicago. One is a
throat specialist. He has a good deal to do with singers. He probably knows the
best piano teachers and could recommend a boarding-house where music students
stay. I think Thea needs to get among a lot of young people who are clever like
herself. Here she has no companions but old fellows like me. It's not a natural
life for a young girl. She'll either get warped, or wither up before her time.
If it will make you and Mrs. Kronborg feel any easier, I'll be glad to take
Thea to Chicago and see that she gets started right. This throat man I speak of
is a big fellow in his line, and if I can get him interested, he may be able to
put her in the way of a good many things. At any rate, he'll know the right
teachers. Of course, six hundred dollars won't take her very far, but even half
the winter there would be a great advantage. I think Kennedy sized the
situation up exactly."
"Perhaps; I don't
doubt it. You are very kind, Dr. Archie." Mr. Kronborg was ornamenting his
desk-blotter with hieroglyphics. "I should think Denver might be better.
There we could watch over her. She is very young."
Dr. Archie rose.
"Kennedy didn't mention Denver. He said Chicago, repeatedly. Under the
circumstances, it seems to me we ought to try to carry out his wishes exactly,
if Thea is willing."
"Certainly,
certainly. Thea is conscientious. She would not waste her opportunities."
Mr. Kronborg paused. "If Thea were your own daughter, doctor, would you
consent to such a plan, at her present age?"
"I most certainly
should. In fact, if she were my daughter, I'd have sent her away before this.
She's a most unusual child, and she's only wasting herself here. At her age she
ought to be learning, not teaching. She'll never learn so quickly and easily as
she will right now."
"Well, doctor, you
had better talk it over with Mrs. Kronborg. I make it a point to defer to her
wishes in such matters. She understands all her children perfectly. I may say
that she has all a mother's insight, and more."
Dr. Archie smiled.
"Yes, and then some. I feel quite confident about Mrs. Kronborg. We
usually agree. Good- morning."
Dr. Archie stepped out
into the hot sunshine and walked rapidly toward his office, with a determined
look on his face. He found his waiting-room full of patients, and it was one
o'clock before he had dismissed the last one. Then he shut his door and took a
drink before going over to the hotel for his lunch. He smiled as he locked his
cupboard. "I feel almost as gay as if I were going to get away for a
winter myself," he thought.
Afterward Thea could
never remember much about that summer, or how she lived through her impatience.
She was to set off with Dr. Archie on the fifteenth of October, and she gave lessons
until the first of September. Then she began to get her clothes ready, and
spent whole after- noons in the village dressmaker's stuffy, littered little
sewing-room. Thea and her mother made a trip to Denver to buy the materials for
her dresses. Ready-made clothes for girls were not to be had in those days.
Miss Spencer, the dressmaker, declared that she could do handsomely by Thea if
they would only let her carry out her own ideas. But Mrs. Kronborg and Thea
felt that Miss Spencer's most daring productions might seem out of place in
Chicago, so they restrained her with a firm hand. Tillie, who always helped
Mrs. Kronborg with the family sewing, was for letting Miss Spencer challenge
Chicago on Thea's person. Since Ray Kennedy's death, Thea had become more than
ever one of Tillie's heroines. Tillie swore each of her friends to secrecy,
and, coming home from church or leaning over the fence, told them the most
touching stories about Ray's devotion, and how Thea would "never get over
it."
Tillie's confidences
stimulated the general discussion of Thea's venture. This discussion went on,
upon front porches and in back yards, pretty much all summer. Some people
approved of Thea's going to Chicago, but most people did not. There were others
who changed their minds about it every day.
Tillie said she wanted
Thea to have a ball dress "above all things." She bought a fashion
book especially devoted to evening clothes and looked hungrily over the colored
plates, picking out costumes that would be becoming to "a blonde."
She wanted Thea to have all the gay clothes she herself had always longed for;
clothes she often told herself she needed "to recite in."
"Tillie,"
Thea used to cry impatiently, "can't you see that if Miss Spencer tried to
make one of those things, she'd make me look like a circus girl? Anyhow, I
don't know anybody in Chicago. I won't be going to parties."
Tillie always replied
with a knowing toss of her head, "You see! You'll be in society before you
know it. There ain't many girls as accomplished as you."
On the morning of the
fifteenth of October the Kronborg family, all of them but Gus, who couldn't leave
the store, started for the station an hour before train time. Charley had taken
Thea's trunk and telescope to the depot in his delivery wagon early that
morning. Thea wore her new blue serge traveling-dress, chosen for its
serviceable qualities. She had done her hair up carefully, and had put a
pale-blue ribbon around her throat, under a little lace collar that Mrs. Kohler
had crocheted for her. As they went out of the gate, Mrs. Kronborg looked her
over thoughtfully. Yes, that blue ribbon went very well with the dress, and
with Thea's eyes. Thea had a rather unusual touch about such things, she
reflected comfortably. Tillie always said that Thea was "so indifferent to
dress," but her mother noticed that she usually put her clothes on well. She
felt the more at ease about letting Thea go away from home, because she had
good sense about her clothes and never tried to dress up too much. Her coloring
was so individual, she was so unusually fair, that in the wrong clothes she
might easily have been "conspicuous."
It was a fine morning,
and the family set out from the house in good spirits. Thea was quiet and calm.
She had forgotten nothing, and she clung tightly to her handbag, which held her
trunk-key and all of her money that was not in an envelope pinned to her
chemise. Thea walked behind the others, holding Thor by the hand, and this time
she did not feel that the procession was too long. Thor was uncommunicative
that morning, and would only talk about how he would rather get a sand bur in
his toe every day than wear shoes and stockings. As they passed the cottonwood
grove where Thea often used to bring him in his cart, she asked him who would
take him for nice long walks after sister went away.
"Oh, I can walk in
our yard," he replied unappreciatively. "I guess I can make a pond
for my duck."
Thea leaned down and
looked into his face. "But you won't forget about sister, will you?"
Thor shook his head. "And won't you be glad when sister comes back and can
take you over to Mrs. Kohler's to see the pigeons?"
"Yes, I'll be
glad. But I'm going to have a pigeon my own self."
"But you haven't
got any little house for one. Maybe Axel would make you a little house."
"Oh, her can live
in the barn, her can," Thor drawled indifferently.
Thea laughed and squeezed
his hand. She always liked his sturdy matter-of-factness. Boys ought to be like
that, she thought.
When they reached the
depot, Mr. Kronborg paced the platform somewhat ceremoniously with his
daughter. Any member of his flock would have gathered that he was giving her
good counsel about meeting the temptations of the world. He did, indeed, begin
to admonish her not to forget that talents come from our Heavenly Father and
are to be used for his glory, but he cut his remarks short and looked at his watch.
He believed that Thea was a religious girl, but when she looked at him with
that intent, that passionately inquiring gaze which used to move even Wunsch,
Mr. Kronborg suddenly felt his eloquence fail. Thea was like her mother, he
reflected; you couldn't put much sentiment across with her. As a usual thing,
he liked girls to be a little more responsive. He liked them to blush at his
compliments; as Mrs. Kronborg candidly said, "Father could be very soft
with the girls." But this morning he was thinking that hard-headedness was
a reassuring quality in a daughter who was going to Chicago alone.
Mr. Kronborg believed
that big cities were places where people went to lose their identity and to be
wicked. He himself, when he was a student at the Seminary--he coughed and
opened his watch again. He knew, of course, that a great deal of business went
on in Chicago, that there was an active Board of Trade, and that hogs and
cattle were slaughtered there. But when, as a young man, he had stopped over in
Chicago, he had not interested himself in the commercial activities of the
city. He remembered it as a place full of cheap shows and dance halls and boys
from the country who were behaving disgustingly.
Dr. Archie drove up to
the station about ten minutes before the train was due. His man tied the ponies
and stood holding the doctor's alligator-skin bag--very elegant, Thea thought
it. Mrs. Kronborg did not burden the doctor with warnings and cautions. She
said again that she hoped he could get Thea a comfortable place to stay, where
they had good beds, and she hoped the landlady would be a woman who'd had
children of her own. "I don't go much on old maids looking after
girls," she remarked as she took a pin out of her own hat and thrust it
into Thea's blue turban. "You'll be sure to lose your hatpins on the
train, Thea. It's better to have an extra one in case." She tucked in a
little curl that had escaped from Thea's careful twist. "Don't forget to
brush your dress often, and pin it up to the curtains of your berth to-night,
so it won't wrinkle. If you get it wet, have a tailor press it before it
draws."
She turned Thea about
by the shoulders and looked her over a last time. Yes, she looked very well.
She wasn't pretty, exactly,--her face was too broad and her nose was too big.
But she had that lovely skin, and she looked fresh and sweet. She had always
been a sweet-smelling child. Her mother had always liked to kiss her, when she
happened to think of it.
The train whistled in,
and Mr. Kronborg carried the canvas "telescope" into the car. Thea
kissed them all good-bye. Tillie cried, but she was the only one who did. They
all shouted things up at the closed window of the Pullman car, from which Thea
looked down at them as from a frame, her face glowing with excitement, her
turban a little tilted in spite of three hatpins. She had already taken off her
new gloves to save them. Mrs. Kronborg reflected that she would never see just
that same picture again, and as Thea's car slid off along the rails, she wiped
a tear from her eye. "She won't come back a little girl," Mrs.
Kronborg said to her husband as they turned to go home. "Anyhow, she's
been a sweet one."
While the Kronborg
family were trooping slowly homeward, Thea was sitting in the Pullman, her
telescope in the seat beside her, her handbag tightly gripped in her fingers.
Dr. Archie had gone into the smoker. He thought she might be a little tearful,
and that it would be kinder to leave her alone for a while. Her eyes did fill
once, when she saw the last of the sand hills and realized that she was going
to leave them behind for a long while. They always made her think of Ray, too.
She had had such good times with him out there.
But, of course, it was
herself and her own adventure that mattered to her. If youth did not matter so
much to itself, it would never have the heart to go on. Thea was surprised that
she did not feel a deeper sense of loss at leaving her old life behind her. It
seemed, on the contrary, as she looked out at the yellow desert speeding by,
that she had left very little. Everything that was essential seemed to be right
there in the car with her. She lacked nothing. She even felt more compact and
confident than usual. She was all there, and something else was there, too,--in
her heart, was it, or under her cheek? Anyhow, it was about her somewhere, that
warm sureness, that sturdy little companion with whom she shared a secret.
When Dr. Archie came in
from the smoker, she was sitting still, looking intently out of the window and
smiling, her lips a little parted, her hair in a blaze of sunshine. The doctor
thought she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, and very funny, with her
telescope and big handbag. She made him feel jolly, and a little mournful, too.
He knew that the splendid things of life are few, after all, and so very easy
to miss.
THEA and Dr. Archie had
been gone from Moonstone four days. On the afternoon of the nineteenth of
October they were in a street-car, riding through the depressing, unkept wastes
of North Chicago, on their way to call upon the Reverend Lars Larsen, a friend
to whom Mr. Kronborg had written. Thea was still staying at the rooms of the
Young Women's Christian Association, and was miserable and homesick there. The
housekeeper watched her in a way that made her uncomfortable. Things had not
gone very well, so far. The noise and confusion of a big city tired and
disheartened her. She had not had her trunk sent to the Christian Association
rooms because she did not want to double cartage charges, and now she was
running up a bill for storage on it. The contents of her gray telescope were
becoming untidy, and it seemed impossible to keep one's face and hands clean in
Chicago. She felt as if she were still on the train, traveling without enough
clothes to keep clean. She wanted another nightgown, and it did not occur to
her that she could buy one. There were other clothes in her trunk that she
needed very much, and she seemed no nearer a place to stay than when she
arrived in the rain, on that first disillusioning morning.
Dr. Archie had gone at
once to his friend Hartley Evans, the throat specialist, and had asked him to
tell him of a good piano teacher and direct him to a good boarding-house. Dr.
Evans said he could easily tell him who was the best piano teacher in Chicago,
but that most students' boarding- houses were "abominable places, where
girls got poor food for body and mind." He gave Dr. Archie several
addresses, however, and the doctor went to look the places over. He left Thea
in her room, for she seemed tired and was not at all like herself. His
inspection of boarding- houses was not encouraging. The only place that seemed
to him at all desirable was full, and the mistress of the house could not give
Thea a room in which she could have a piano. She said Thea might use the piano
in her parlor; but when Dr. Archie went to look at the parlor he found a girl
talking to a young man on one of the corner sofas. Learning that the boarders
received all their callers there, he gave up that house, too, as hopeless.
So when they set out to
make the acquaintance of Mr. Larsen on the afternoon he had appointed, the
question of a lodging was still undecided. The Swedish Reform Church was in a
sloughy, weedy district, near a group of factories. The church itself was a
very neat little building. The parsonage, next door, looked clean and
comfortable, and there was a well-kept yard about it, with a picket fence. Thea
saw several little children playing under a swing, and wondered why ministers
always had so many. When they rang at the parsonage door, a capable-looking
Swedish servant girl answered the bell and told them that Mr. Larsen's study
was in the church, and that he was waiting for them there.
Mr. Larsen received
them very cordially. The furniture in his study was so new and the pictures
were so heavily framed, that Thea thought it looked more like the waiting-room
of the fashionable Denver dentist to whom Dr. Archie had taken her that summer,
than like a preacher's study. There were even flowers in a glass vase on the
desk. Mr. Larsen was a small, plump man, with a short, yellow beard, very white
teeth, and a little turned-up nose on which he wore gold-rimmed eye-glasses. He
looked about thirty-five, but he was growing bald, and his thin, hair was
parted above his left ear and brought up over the bare spot on the top of his
head. He looked cheerful and agreeable. He wore a blue coat and no cuffs.
After Dr. Archie and
Thea sat down on a slippery leather couch, the minister asked for an outline of
Thea's plans. Dr. Archie explained that she meant to study piano with Andor
Harsanyi; that they had already seen him, that Thea had played for him and he
said he would be glad to teach her.
Mr. Larsen lifted his
pale eyebrows and rubbed his plump white hands together. "But he is a
concert pianist already. He will be very expensive."
"That's why Miss
Kronborg wants to get a church position if possible. She has not money enough
to see her through the winter. There's no use her coming all the way from
Colorado and studying with a second-rate teacher. My friends here tell me
Harsanyi is the best."
"Oh, very likely!
I have heard him play with Thomas. You Western people do things on a big scale.
There are half a dozen teachers that I should think-- However, you know what
you want." Mr. Larsen showed his contempt for such extravagant standards
by a shrug. He felt that Dr. Archie was trying to impress him. He had
succeeded, indeed, in bringing out the doctor's stiffest manner. Mr. Larsen went
on to explain that he managed the music in his church himself, and drilled his
choir, though the tenor was the official choirmaster. Unfortunately there were
no vacancies in his choir just now. He had his four voices, very good ones. He
looked away from Dr. Archie and glanced at Thea. She looked troubled, even a
little frightened when he said this, and drew in her lower lip. She, certainly,
was not pretentious, if her protector was. He continued to study her. She was
sitting on the lounge, her knees far apart, her gloved hands lying stiffly in
her lap, like a country girl. Her turban, which seemed a little too big for
her, had got tilted in the wind,--it was always windy in that part of
Chicago,--and she looked tired. She wore no veil, and her hair, too, was the
worse for the wind and dust. When he said he had all the voices he required, he
noticed that her gloved hands shut tightly. Mr. Larsen reflected that she was
not, after all, responsible for the lofty manner of her father's physician;
that she was not even responsible for her father, whom he remembered as a
tiresome fellow. As he watched her tired, worried face, he felt sorry for her.
"All the same, I
would like to try your voice," he said, turning pointedly away from her
companion. "I am interested in voices. Can you sing to the violin?"
"I guess so,"
Thea replied dully. "I don't know. I never tried."
Mr. Larsen took his
violin out of the case and began to tighten the keys. "We might go into
the lecture-room and see how it goes. I can't tell much about a voice by the
organ. The violin is really the proper instrument to try a voice." He
opened a door at the back of his study, pushed Thea gently through it, and
looking over his shoulder to Dr. Archie said, "Excuse us, sir. We will be
back soon."
Dr. Archie chuckled.
All preachers were alike, officious and on their dignity; liked to deal with
women and girls, but not with men. He took up a thin volume from the minister's
desk. To his amusement it proved to be a book of "Devotional and Kindred
Poems; by Mrs. Aurelia S. Larsen." He looked them over, thinking that the
world changed very little. He could remember when the wife of his father's
minister had published a volume of verses, which all the church members had to
buy and all the children were encouraged to read. His grandfather had made a
face at the book and said, "Puir body!" Both ladies seemed to have
chosen the same subjects, too: Jephthah's Daughter, Rizpah, David's Lament for
Absalom, etc. The doctor found the book very amusing.
The Reverend Lars
Larsen was a reactionary Swede. His father came to Iowa in the sixties, married
a Swedish girl who was ambitious, like himself, and they moved to Kansas and
took up land under the Homestead Act. After that, they bought land and leased
it from the Government, acquired land in every possible way. They worked like
horses, both of them; indeed, they would never have used any horse-flesh they
owned as they used themselves. They reared a large family and worked their sons
and daughters as mercilessly as they worked themselves; all of them but Lars.
Lars was the fourth son, and he was born lazy. He seemed to bear the mark of
overstrain on the part of his parents. Even in his cradle he was an example of
physical inertia; anything to lie still. When he was a growing boy his mother
had to drag him out of bed every morning, and he had to be driven to his
chores. At school he had a model "attendance record," because he
found getting his lessons easier than farm work. He was the only one of the
family who went through the high school, and by the time he graduated he had
already made up his mind to study for the ministry, because it seemed to him
the least laborious of all callings. In so far as he could see, it was the only
business in which there was practically no competition, in which a man was not
all the time pitted against other men who were willing to work themselves to
death. His father stubbornly opposed Lars's plan, but after keeping the boy at
home for a year and finding how useless he was on the farm, he sent him to a
theological seminary--as much to conceal his laziness from the neighbors as
because he did not know what else to do with him.
Larsen, like Peter
Kronborg, got on well in the ministry, because he got on well with the women.
His English was no worse than that of most young preachers of American
parentage, and he made the most of his skill with the violin. He was supposed
to exert a very desirable influence over young people and to stimulate their
interest in church work. He married an American girl, and when his father died
he got his share of the property--which was very considerable. He invested his
money carefully and was that rare thing, a preacher of independent means. His
white, well-kept hands were his result,--the evidence that he had worked out
his life successfully in the way that pleased him. His Kansas brothers hated
the sight of his hands.
Larsen liked all the
softer things of life,--in so far as he knew about them. He slept late in the
morning, was fussy about his food, and read a great many novels, preferring
sentimental ones. He did not smoke, but he ate a great deal of candy "for
his throat," and always kept a box of chocolate drops in the upper
right-hand drawer of his desk. He always bought season tickets for the symphony
concerts, and he played his violin for women's culture clubs. He did not wear
cuffs, except on Sunday, because he believed that a free wrist facilitated his
violin practice. When he drilled his choir he always held his hand with the
little and index fingers curved higher than the other two, like a noted German
conductor he had seen. On the whole, the Reverend Larsen was not an insincere
man; he merely spent his life resting and playing, to make up for the time his
forebears had wasted grubbing in the earth. He was simple-hearted and kind; he
enjoyed his candy and his children and his sacred cantatas. He could work
energetically at almost any form of play.
Dr. Archie was deep in
"The Lament of Mary Magdalen," when Mr. Larsen and Thea came back to
the study. From the minister's expression he judged that Thea had succeeded in
interesting him.
Mr. Larsen seemed to
have forgotten his hostility toward him, and addressed him frankly as soon as
he entered. He stood holding his violin, and as Thea sat down he pointed to her
with his bow:--
"I have just been
telling Miss Kronborg that though I cannot promise her anything permanent, I
might give her something for the next few months. My soprano is a young married
woman and is temporarily indisposed. She would be glad to be excused from her
duties for a while. I like Miss Kronborg's singing very much, and I think she
would benefit by the instruction in my choir. Singing here might very well lead
to something else. We pay our soprano only eight dollars a Sunday, but she
always gets ten dollars for singing at funerals. Miss Kronborg has a
sympathetic voice, and I think there would be a good deal of demand for her at
funerals. Several American churches apply to me for a soloist on such
occasions, and I could help her to pick up quite a little money that way."
This sounded lugubrious
to Dr. Archie, who had a physician's dislike of funerals, but he tried to
accept the suggestion cordially.
"Miss Kronborg
tells me she is having some trouble getting located," Mr. Larsen went on
with animation, still holding his violin. "I would advise her to keep away
from boarding-houses altogether. Among my parishioners there are two German
women, a mother and daughter. The daughter is a Swede by marriage, and clings
to the Swedish Church. They live near here, and they rent some of their rooms.
They have now a large room vacant, and have asked me to recommend some one.
They have never taken boarders, but Mrs. Lorch, the mother, is a good cook,--at
least, I am always glad to take supper with her,--and I think I could persuade
her to let this young woman partake of the family table. The daughter, Mrs.
Andersen, is musical, too, and sings in the Mozart Society. I think they might
like to have a music student in the house. You speak German, I suppose?"
he turned to Thea.
"Oh, no; a few
words. I don't know the grammar," she murmured.
Dr. Archie noticed that
her eyes looked alive again, not frozen as they had looked all morning.
"If this fellow can help her, it's not for me to be stand-offish," he
said to himself.
"Do you think you
would like to stay in such a quiet place, with old-fashioned people?" Mr.
Larsen asked. "I shouldn't think you could find a better place to work, if
that's what you want."
"I think mother
would like to have me with people like that," Thea replied. "And I'd
be glad to settle down most anywhere. I'm losing time."
"Very well,
there's no time like the present. Let us go to see Mrs. Lorch and Mrs.
Andersen."
The minister put his
violin in its case and caught up a black-and-white checked traveling-cap that
he wore when he rode his high Columbia wheel. The three left the church
together.
SO Thea did not go to a
boarding-house after all. When Dr. Archie left Chicago she was comfortably
settled with Mrs. Lorch, and her happy reunion with her trunk somewhat consoled
her for his departure.
Mrs. Lorch and her
daughter lived half a mile from the Swedish Reform Church, in an old square
frame house, with a porch supported by frail pillars, set in a damp yard full
of big lilac bushes. The house, which had been left over from country times,
needed paint badly, and looked gloomy and despondent among its smart Queen Anne
neighbors. There was a big back yard with two rows of apple trees and a grape
arbor, and a warped walk, two planks wide, which led to the coal bins at the
back of the lot. Thea's room was on the second floor, overlooking this back
yard, and she understood that in the winter she must carry up her own coal and
kindling from the bin. There was no furnace in the house, no running water
except in the kitchen, and that was why the room rent was small. All the rooms
were heated by stoves, and the lodgers pumped the water they needed from the
cistern under the porch, or from the well at the entrance of the grape arbor.
Old Mrs. Lorch could never bring herself to have costly improvements made in
her house; indeed she had very little money. She preferred to keep the house
just as her husband built it, and she thought her way of living good enough for
plain people.
Thea's room was large
enough to admit a rented upright piano without crowding. It was, the widowed
daughter said, "a double room that had always before been occupied by two
gentlemen"; the piano now took the place of a second occupant. There was an
ingrain carpet on the floor, green ivy leaves on a red ground, and clumsy,
old-fashioned walnut furniture. The bed was very wide, and the mattress thin
and hard. Over the fat pillows were "shams" embroidered in Turkey
red, each with a flowering scroll--one with "Gute' Nacht," the other
with "Guten Morgen." The dresser was so big that Thea wondered how it
had ever been got into the house and up the narrow stairs. Besides an old
horsehair armchair, there were two low plush "spring-rockers," against
the massive pedestals of which one was always stumbling in the dark. Thea sat
in the dark a good deal those first weeks, and sometimes a painful bump against
one of those brutally immovable pedestals roused her temper and pulled her out
of a heavy hour. The wall-paper was brownish yellow, with blue flowers. When it
was put on, the carpet, certainly, had not been consulted. There was only one
picture on the wall when Thea moved in: a large colored print of a brightly
lighted church in a snow-storm, on Christmas Eve, with greens hanging about the
stone doorway and arched windows. There was something warm and home, like about
this picture, and Thea grew fond of it. One day, on her way into town to take
her lesson, she stopped at a bookstore and bought a photograph of the Naples bust
of Julius Caesar. This she had framed, and hung it on the big bare wall behind
her stove. It was a curious choice, but she was at the age when people do
inexplicable things. She had been interested in Caesar's
"Commentaries" when she left school to begin teaching, and she loved
to read about great generals; but these facts would scarcely explain her
wanting that grim bald head to share her daily existence. It seemed a strange
freak, when she bought so few things, and when she had, as Mrs. Andersen said to
Mrs. Lorch, "no pictures of the composers at all."
Both the widows were
kind to her, but Thea liked the mother better. Old Mrs. Lorch was fat and
jolly, with a red face, always shining as if she had just come from the stove,
bright little eyes, and hair of several colors. Her own hair was one cast of
iron-gray, her switch another, and her false front still another. Her clothes
always smelled of savory cooking, except when she was dressed for church or
Kaffeeklatsch, and then she smelled of bay rum or of the lemon-verbena sprig
which she tucked inside her puffy black kid glove. Her cooking justified all
that Mr. Larsen had said of it, and Thea had never been so well nourished
before.
The daughter, Mrs.
Andersen,--Irene, her mother called her,--was a different sort of woman
altogether. She was perhaps forty years old, angular, big-boned, with large,
thin features, light-blue eyes, and dry, yellow hair, the bang tightly frizzed.
She was pale, anaemic, and sentimental. She had married the youngest son of a rich,
arrogant Swedish family who were lumber merchants in St. Paul. There she dwelt
during her married life. Oscar Andersen was a strong, full-blooded fellow who
had counted on a long life and had been rather careless about his business
affairs. He was killed by the explosion of a steam boiler in the mills, and his
brothers managed to prove that he had very little stock in the big business.
They had strongly disapproved of his marriage and they agreed among themselves
that they were entirely justified in defrauding his widow, who, they said,
"would only marry again and give some fellow a good thing of it."
Mrs. Andersen would not go to law with the family that had always snubbed and
wounded her--she felt the humiliation of being thrust out more than she felt
her impoverishment; so she went back to Chicago to live with her widowed mother
on an income of five hundred a year. This experience had given her sentimental
nature an incurable hurt. Something withered away in her. Her head had a
downward droop; her step was soft and apologetic, even in her mother's house,
and her smile had the sickly, uncertain flicker that so often comes from a
secret humiliation. She was affable and yet shrinking, like one who has come
down in the world, who has known better clothes, better carpets, better people,
brighter hopes. Her husband was buried in the Andersen lot in St. Paul, with a
locked iron fence around it. She had to go to his eldest brother for the key
when she went to say good-bye to his grave. She clung to the Swedish Church
because it had been her husband's church.
As her mother had no
room for her household belongings, Mrs. Andersen had brought home with her only
her bed- room set, which now furnished her own room at Mrs. Lorch's. There she
spent most of her time, doing fancy- work or writing letters to sympathizing
German friends in St. Paul, surrounded by keepsakes and photographs of the
burly Oscar Andersen. Thea, when she was admitted to this room, and shown these
photographs, found herself wondering, like the Andersen family, why such a
lusty, gay-looking fellow ever thought he wanted this pallid, long-cheeked
woman, whose manner was always that of withdrawing, and who must have been
rather thin-blooded even as a girl.
Mrs. Andersen was
certainly a depressing person. It sometimes annoyed Thea very much to hear her
insinuating knock on the door, her flurried explanation of why she had come, as
she backed toward the stairs. Mrs. Andersen admired Thea greatly. She thought it
a distinction to be even a "temporary soprano"--Thea called herself
so quite seriously--in the Swedish Church. She also thought it distinguished to
be a pupil of Harsanyi's. She considered Thea very handsome, very Swedish, very
talented. She fluttered about the upper floor when Thea was practicing. In
short, she tried to make a heroine of her, just as Tillie Kronborg had always
done, and Thea was conscious of something of the sort. When she was working and
heard Mrs. Andersen tip-toeing past her door, she used to shrug her shoulders
and wonder whether she was always to have a Tillie diving furtively about her
in some disguise or other.
At the dressmaker's
Mrs. Andersen recalled Tillie even more painfully. After her first Sunday in
Mr. Larsen's choir, Thea saw that she must have a proper dress for morning
service. Her Moonstone party dress might do to wear in the evening, but she
must have one frock that could stand the light of day. She, of course, knew
nothing about Chicago dressmakers, so she let Mrs. Andersen take her to a
German woman whom she recommended warmly. The German dressmaker was excitable
and dramatic. Concert dresses, she said, were her specialty. In her
fitting-room there were photographs of singers in the dresses she had made them
for this or that Sängerfest. She and Mrs. Andersen together achieved a costume
which would have warmed Tillie Kronborg's heart. It was clearly intended for a
woman of forty, with violent tastes. There seemed to be a piece of every known
fabric in it somewhere. When it came home, and was spread out on her huge bed,
Thea looked it over and told herself candidly that it was "a horror."
However, her money was gone, and there was nothing to do but make the best of
the dress. She never wore it except, as she said, "to sing in," as if
it were an unbecoming uniform. When Mrs. Lorch and Irene told her that she
"looked like a little bird-of-Paradise in it," Thea shut her teeth
and repeated to herself words she had learned from Joe Giddy and Spanish
Johnny.
In these two good women
Thea found faithful friends, and in their house she found the quiet and peace
which helped her to support the great experiences of that winter.
ANDOR HARSANYI had
never had a pupil in the least like Thea Kronborg. He had never had one more intelligent,
and he had never had one so ignorant. When Thea sat down to take her first
lesson from him, she had never heard a work by Beethoven or a composition by
Chopin. She knew their names vaguely. Wunsch had been a musician once, long
before he wandered into Moonstone, but when Thea awoke his interest there was
not much left of him. From him Thea had learned something about the works of
Gluck and Bach, and he used to play her some of the compositions of Schumann.
In his trunk he had a mutilated score of the F sharp minor sonata, which he had
heard Clara Schumann play at a festival in Leipsic. Though his powers of
execution were at such a low ebb, he used to play at this sonata for his pupil
and managed to give her some idea of its beauty. When Wunsch was a young man,
it was still daring to like Schumann; enthusiasm for his work was considered an
expression of youthful waywardness. Perhaps that was why Wunsch remembered him
best. Thea studied some of the Kinderszenen with him, as well as some little
sonatas by Mozart and Clementi. But for the most part Wunsch stuck to Czerny
and Hummel.
Harsanyi found in Thea
a pupil with sure, strong hands, one who read rapidly and intelligently, who
had, he felt, a richly gifted nature. But she had been given no direction, and
her ardor was unawakened. She had never heard a symphony orchestra. The
literature of the piano was an undiscovered world to her. He wondered how she
had been able to work so hard when she knew so little of what she was working
toward. She had been taught according to the old Stuttgart method; stiff back,
stiff elbows, a very formal position of the hands. The best thing about her
preparation was that she had developed an unusual power of work. He noticed at
once her way of charging at difficulties. She ran to meet them as if they were
foes she had long been seeking, seized them as if they were destined for her
and she for them. Whatever she did well, she took for granted. Her eagerness
aroused all the young Hungarian's chivalry. Instinctively one went to the
rescue of a creature who had so much to overcome and who struggled so hard. He
used to tell his wife that Miss Kronborg's hour took more out of him than half
a dozen other lessons. He usually kept her long over time; he changed her
lessons about so that he could do so, and often gave her time at the end of the
day, when he could talk to her afterward and play for her a little from what he
happened to be studying. It was always interesting to play for her. Sometimes
she was so silent that he wondered, when she left him, whether she had got
anything out of it. But a week later, two weeks later, she would give back his
idea again in a way that set him vibrating.
All this was very well
for Harsanyi; an interesting variation in the routine of teaching. But for Thea
Kronborg, that winter was almost beyond enduring. She always remembered it as
the happiest and wildest and saddest of her life. Things came too fast for her;
she had not had enough preparation. There were times when she came home from
her lesson and lay upon her bed hating Wunsch and her family, hating a world
that had let her grow up so ignorant; when she wished that she could die then
and there, and be born over again to begin anew. She said something of this
kind once to her teacher, in the midst of a bitter struggle. Harsanyi turned
the light of his wonderful eye upon her-- poor fellow, he had but one, though
that was set in such a handsome head--and said slowly: "Every artist makes
himself born. It is very much harder than the other time, and longer. Your
mother did not bring anything into the world to play piano. That you must bring
into the world yourself."
This comforted Thea
temporarily, for it seemed to give her a chance. But a great deal of the time
she was comfortless. Her letters to Dr. Archie were brief and business- like.
She was not apt to chatter much, even in the stimulating company of people she
liked, and to chatter on paper was simply impossible for her. If she tried to
write him anything definite about her work, she immediately scratched it out as
being only partially true, or not true at all. Nothing that she could say about
her studies seemed unqualifiedly true, once she put it down on paper.
Late one afternoon,
when she was thoroughly tired and wanted to struggle on into the dusk,
Harsanyi, tired too, threw up his hands and laughed at her. "Not to-day,
Miss Kronborg. That sonata will keep; it won't run away. Even if you and I
should not waken up to-morrow, it will be there."
Thea turned to him
fiercely. "No, it isn't here unless I have it--not for me," she cried
passionately. "Only what I hold in my two hands is there for me!"
Harsanyi made no reply.
He took a deep breath and sat down again. "The second movement now,
quietly, with the shoulders relaxed."
There were hours, too,
of great exaltation; when she was at her best and became a part of what she was
doing and ceased to exist in any other sense. There were other times when she
was so shattered by ideas that she could do nothing worth while; when they
trampled over her like an army and she felt as if she were bleeding to death
under them. She sometimes came home from a late lesson so exhausted that she
could eat no supper. If she tried to eat, she was ill afterward. She used to
throw herself upon the bed and lie there in the dark, not thinking, not
feeling, but evaporating. That same night, perhaps, she would waken up rested
and calm, and as she went over her work in her mind, the passages seemed to
become something of themselves, to take a sort of pattern in the darkness. She
had never learned to work away from the piano until she came to Harsanyi, and
it helped her more than anything had ever helped her before.
She almost never worked
now with the sunny, happy contentment that had filled the hours when she worked
with Wunsch--"like a fat horse turning a sorgum mill," she said
bitterly to herself. Then, by sticking to it, she could always do what she set
out to do. Now, everything that she really wanted was impossible; a cantabile
like Harsanyi's, for instance, instead of her own cloudy tone. No use telling
her she might have it in ten years. She wanted it now. She wondered how she had
ever found other things interesting: books, "Anna Karenina"--all that
seemed so unreal and on the outside of things. She was not born a musician, she
decided; there was no other way of explaining it.
Sometimes she got so
nervous at the piano that she left it, and snatching up her hat and cape went
out and walked, hurrying through the streets like Christian fleeing from the
City of Destruction. And while she walked she cried. There was scarcely a
street in the neighborhood that she had not cried up and down before that
winter was over. The thing that used to lie under her cheek, that sat so warmly
over her heart when she glided away from the sand hills that autumn morning,
was far from her. She had come to Chicago to be with it, and it had deserted
her, leaving in its place a painful longing, an unresigned despair.
Harsanyi knew that his
interesting pupil--"the savage blonde," one of his male students
called her--was sometimes very unhappy. He saw in her discontent a curious
definition of character. He would have said that a girl with so much musical
feeling, so intelligent, with good training of eye and hand, would, when thus
suddenly introduced to the great literature of the piano, have found boundless
happiness. But he soon learned that she was not able to forget her own poverty
in the richness of the world he opened to her. Often when he played to her, her
face was the picture of restless misery. She would sit crouching forward, her
elbows on her knees, her brows drawn together and her gray-green eyes smaller
than ever, reduced to mere pin-points of cold, piercing light. Sometimes, while
she listened, she would swallow hard, two or three times, and look nervously
from left to right, drawing her shoulders together. "Exactly," he
thought, "as if she were being watched, or as if she were naked and heard
some one coming."
On the other hand, when
she came several times to see Mrs. Harsanyi and the two babies, she was like a
little girl, jolly and gay and eager to play with the children, who loved her.
The little daughter, Tanya, liked to touch Miss Kronborg's yellow hair and pat
it, saying, "Dolly, dolly," because it was of a color much oftener
seen on dolls than on people. But if Harsanyi opened the piano and sat down to
play, Miss Kronborg gradually drew away from the children, retreated to a
corner and became sullen or troubled. Mrs. Harsanyi noticed this, also, and
thought it very strange behavior.
Another thing that
puzzled Harsanyi was Thea's apparent lack of curiosity. Several times he
offered to give her tickets to concerts, but she said she was too tired or that
it "knocked her out to be up late." Harsanyi did not know that she
was singing in a choir, and had often to sing at funerals, neither did he
realize how much her work with him stirred her and exhausted her. Once, just as
she was leaving his studio, he called her back and told her he could give her
some tickets that had been sent him for Emma Juch that evening. Thea fingered
the black wool on the edge of her plush cape and replied, "Oh, thank you,
Mr. Harsanyi, but I have to wash my hair to-night."
Mrs. Harsanyi liked
Miss Kronborg thoroughly. She saw in her the making of a pupil who would
reflect credit upon Harsanyi. She felt that the girl could be made to look
strikingly handsome, and that she had the kind of personality which takes hold
of audiences. Moreover, Miss Kronborg was not in the least sentimental about
her husband. Sometimes from the show pupils one had to endure a good deal.
"I like that girl," she used to say, when Harsanyi told her of one of
Thea's gaucheries. "She doesn't sigh every time the wind blows. With her
one swallow doesn't make a summer."
Thea told them very
little about herself. She was not naturally communicative, and she found it
hard to feel confidence in new people. She did not know why, but she could not
talk to Harsanyi as she could to Dr. Archie, or to Johnny and Mrs. Tellamantez.
With Mr. Larsen she felt more at home, and when she was walking she sometimes
stopped at his study to eat candy with him or to hear the plot of the novel he
happened to be reading.
One evening toward the
middle of December Thea was to dine with the Harsanyis. She arrived early, to
have time to play with the children before they went to bed. Mrs. Harsanyi took
her into her own room and helped her take off her country
"fascinator" and her clumsy plush cape. Thea had bought this cape at
a big department store and had paid $16.50 for it. As she had never paid more
than ten dollars for a coat before, that seemed to her a large price. It was
very heavy and not very warm, ornamented with a showy pattern in black disks,
and trimmed around the collar and the edges with some kind of black wool that
"crocked" badly in snow or rain. It was lined with a cotton stuff
called "farmer's satin." Mrs. Harsanyi was one woman in a thousand.
As she lifted this cape from Thea's shoulders and laid it on her white bed, she
wished that her husband did not have to charge pupils like this one for their
lessons. Thea wore her Moonstone party dress, white organdie, made with a
"V" neck and elbow sleeves, and a blue sash. She looked very pretty
in it, and around her throat she had a string of pink coral and tiny white
shells that Ray once brought her from Los Angeles. Mrs. Harsanyi noticed that
she wore high heavy shoes which needed blacking. The choir in Mr. Larsen's
church stood behind a railing, so Thea did not pay much attention to her shoes.
"You have nothing
to do to your hair," Mrs. Harsanyi said kindly, as Thea turned to the
mirror. "However it happens to lie, it's always pretty. I admire it as
much as Tanya does."
Thea glanced awkwardly
away from her and looked stern, but Mrs. Harsanyi knew that she was pleased.
They went into the living-room, behind the studio, where the two children were
playing on the big rug before the coal grate. Andor, the boy, was six, a
sturdy, handsome child, and the little girl was four. She came tripping to meet
Thea, looking like a little doll in her white net dress--her mother made all
her clothes. Thea picked her up and hugged her. Mrs. Harsanyi excused herself
and went to the dining-room. She kept only one maid and did a good deal of the
housework herself, besides cooking her husband's favorite dishes for him. She
was still under thirty, a slender, graceful woman, gracious, intelligent, and
capable. She adapted herself to circumstances with a well-bred ease which
solved many of her husband's difficulties, and kept him, as he said, from
feeling cheap and down at the heel. No musician ever had a better wife.
Unfortunately her beauty was of a very frail and impressionable kind, and she
was beginning to lose it. Her face was too thin now, and there were often dark
circles under her eyes.
Left alone with the
children, Thea sat down on Tanya's little chair--she would rather have sat on
the floor, but was afraid of rumpling her dress--and helped them play
"cars" with Andor's iron railway set. She showed him new ways to lay
his tracks and how to make switches, set up his Noah's ark village for stations
and packed the animals in the open coal cars to send them to the stockyards.
They worked out their shipment so realistically that when Andor put the two
little reindeer into the stock car, Tanya snatched them out and began to cry,
saying she wasn't going to have all their animals killed.
Harsanyi came in, jaded
and tired, and asked Thea to go on with her game, as he was not equal to
talking much before dinner. He sat down and made pretense of glancing at the
evening paper, but he soon dropped it. After the railroad began to grow
tiresome, Thea went with the children to the lounge in the corner, and played
for them the game with which she used to amuse Thor for hours together behind
the parlor stove at home, making shadow pictures against the wall with her
hands. Her fingers were very supple, and she could make a duck and a cow and a
sheep and a fox and a rabbit and even an elephant. Harsanyi, from his low
chair, watched them, smiling. The boy was on his knees, jumping up and down
with the excitement of guessing the beasts, and Tanya sat with her feet tucked
under her and clapped her frail little hands. Thea's profile, in the lamplight,
teased his fancy. Where had he seen a head like it before?
When dinner was
announced, little Andor took Thea's hand and walked to the dining-room with
her. The children always had dinner with their parents and behaved very nicely
at table. "Mamma," said Andor seriously as he climbed into his chair
and tucked his napkin into the collar of his blouse, "Miss Kronborg's
hands are every kind of animal there is."
His father laughed.
"I wish somebody would say that about my hands, Andor."
When Thea dined at the
Harsanyis before, she noticed that there was an intense suspense from the
moment they took their places at the table until the master of the house had
tasted the soup. He had a theory that if the soup went well, the dinner would
go well; but if the soup was poor, all was lost. To-night he tasted his soup
and smiled, and Mrs. Harsanyi sat more easily in her chair and turned her
attention to Thea. Thea loved their dinner table, because it was lighted by
candles in silver candle-sticks, and she had never seen a table so lighted
anywhere else. There were always flowers, too. To-night there was a little
orange tree, with oranges on it, that one of Harsanyi's pupils had sent him at
Thanksgiving time. After Harsanyi had finished his soup and a glass of red
Hungarian wine, he lost his fagged look and became cordial and witty. He
persuaded Thea to drink a little wine to-night. The first time she dined with
them, when he urged her to taste the glass of sherry beside her plate, she
astonished them by telling them that she "never drank."
Harsanyi was then a man
of thirty-two. He was to have a very brilliant career, but he did not know it
then. Theodore Thomas was perhaps the only man in Chicago who felt that
Harsanyi might have a great future. Harsanyi belonged to the softer Slavic
type, and was more like a Pole than a Hungarian. He was tall, slender, active,
with sloping, graceful shoulders and long arms. His head was very fine,
strongly and delicately modelled, and, as Thea put it, "so
independent." A lock of his thick brown hair usually hung over his
forehead. His eye was wonderful; full of light and fire when he was interested,
soft and thoughtful when he was tired or melancholy. The meaning and power of
two very fine eyes must all have gone into this one--the right one,
fortunately, the one next his audience when he played. He believed that the
glass eye which gave one side of his face such a dull, blind look, had ruined
his career, or rather had made a career impossible for him. Harsanyi lost his
eye when he was twelve years old, in a Pennsylvania mining town where
explosives happened to be kept too near the frame shanties in which the company
packed newly arrived Hungarian families.
His father was a
musician and a good one, but he had cruelly over-worked the boy; keeping him at
the piano for six hours a day and making him play in cafes and dance halls for
half the night. Andor ran away and crossed the ocean with an uncle, who
smuggled him through the port as one of his own many children. The explosion in
which Andor was hurt killed a score of people, and he was thought lucky to get
off with an eye. He still had a clipping from a Pittsburg paper, giving a list
of the dead and injured. He appeared as "Harsanyi, Andor, left eye and
slight injuries about the head." That was his first American
"notice"; and he kept it. He held no grudge against the coal company;
he understood that the accident was merely one of the things that are bound to
happen in the general scramble of American life, where every one comes to grab
and takes his chance.
While they were eating
dessert, Thea asked Harsanyi if she could change her Tuesday lesson from
afternoon to morning. "I have to be at a choir rehearsal in the afternoon,
to get ready for the Christmas music, and I expect it will last until late."
Harsanyi put down his
fork and looked up. "A choir rehearsal? You sing in a church?"
"Yes. A little
Swedish church, over on the North side."
"Why did you not
tell us?"
"Oh, I'm only a
temporary. The regular soprano is not well."
"How long have you
been singing there?"
"Ever since I
came. I had to get a position of some kind," Thea explained, flushing,
"and the preacher took me on. He runs the choir himself. He knew my
father, and I guess he took me to oblige."
Harsanyi tapped the
tablecloth with the ends of his fingers. "But why did you never tell us?
Why are you so reticent with us?"
Thea looked shyly at
him from under her brows. "Well, it's certainly not very interesting. It's
only a little church. I only do it for business reasons."
"What do you mean?
Don't you like to sing? Don't you sing well?"
"I like it well
enough, but, of course, I don't know anything about singing. I guess that's why
I never said anything about it. Anybody that's got a voice can sing in a little
church like that."
Harsanyi laughed
softly--a little scornfully, Thea thought. "So you have a voice, have
you?"
Thea hesitated, looked
intently at the candles and then at Harsanyi. "Yes," she said firmly;
"I have got some, anyway."
"Good girl,"
said Mrs. Harsanyi, nodding and smiling at Thea. "You must let us hear you
sing after dinner."
This remark seemingly
closed the subject, and when the coffee was brought they began to talk of other
things. Harsanyi asked Thea how she happened to know so much about the way in
which freight trains are operated, and she tried to give him some idea of how
the people in little desert towns live by the railway and order their lives by
the coming and going of the trains. When they left the dining- room the
children were sent to bed and Mrs. Harsanyi took Thea into the studio. She and
her husband usually sat there in the evening.
Although their
apartment seemed so elegant to Thea, it was small and cramped. The studio was
the only spacious room. The Harsanyis were poor, and it was due to Mrs. Harsanyi's
good management that their lives, even in hard times, moved along with dignity
and order. She had long ago found out that bills or debts of any kind
frightened her husband and crippled his working power. He said they were like
bars on the windows, and shut out the future; they meant that just so many
hundred dollars' worth of his life was debilitated and exhausted before he got
to it. So Mrs. Harsanyi saw to it that they never owed anything. Harsanyi was
not extravagant, though he was sometimes careless about money. Quiet and order
and his wife's good taste were the things that meant most to him. After these,
good food, good cigars, a little good wine. He wore his clothes until they were
shabby, until his wife had to ask the tailor to come to the house and measure
him for new ones. His neckties she usually made herself, and when she was in
shops she always kept her eye open for silks in very dull or pale shades, grays
and olives, warm blacks and browns.
When they went into the
studio Mrs. Harsanyi took up her embroidery and Thea sat down beside her on a
low stool, her hands clasped about her knees. While his wife and his pupil
talked, Harsanyi sank into a chaise longue in which he sometimes snatched a few
moments' rest between his lessons, and smoked. He sat well out of the circle of
the lamplight, his feet to the fire. His feet were slender and well shaped,
always elegantly shod. Much of the grace of his movements was due to the fact
that his feet were almost as sure and flexible as his hands. He listened to the
conversation with amusement. He admired his wife's tact and kindness with crude
young people; she taught them so much without seeming to be instructing. When
the clock struck nine, Thea said she must be going home.
Harsanyi rose and flung
away his cigarette. "Not yet. We have just begun the evening. Now you are
going to sing for us. I have been waiting for you to recover from dinner. Come,
what shall it be?" he crossed to the piano.
Thea laughed and shook
her head, locking her elbows still tighter about her knees. "Thank you,
Mr. Harsanyi, but if you really make me sing, I'll accompany myself. You
couldn't stand it to play the sort of things I have to sing."
As Harsanyi still
pointed to the chair at the piano, she left her stool and went to it, while he
returned to his chaise longue. Thea looked at the keyboard uneasily for a
moment, then she began "Come, ye Disconsolate," the hymn Wunsch had
always liked to hear her sing. Mrs. Harsanyi glanced questioningly at her
husband, but he was looking intently at the toes of his boots, shading his
forehead with his long white hand. When Thea finished the hymn she did not turn
around, but immediately began "The Ninety and Nine." Mrs. Harsanyi
kept trying to catch her husband's eye; but his chin only sank lower on his
collar.
"There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold." Harsanyi
looked at her, then back at the fire.
"Rejoice, for the Shepherd has found his sheep." Thea turned on the chair and grinned.
"That's about enough, isn't it? That song got me my job. The preacher said
it was sympathetic," she minced the word, remembering Mr. Larsen's manner.
Harsanyi drew himself
up in his chair, resting his elbows on the low arms. "Yes? That is better
suited to your voice. Your upper tones are good, above G. I must teach you some
songs. Don't you know anything--pleasant?"
Thea shook her head
ruefully. "I'm afraid I don't. Let me see-- Perhaps," she turned to
the piano and put her hands on the keys. "I used to sing this for Mr.
Wunsch a long while ago. It's for contralto, but I'll try it." She frowned
at the keyboard a moment, played the few introductory measures, and began
"Ach, ich habe sie verloren," She
had not sung it for a long time, and it came back like an old friendship. When
she finished, Harsanyi sprang from his chair and dropped lightly upon his toes,
a kind of entre-chat that he sometimes executed when he formed a sudden
resolution, or when he was about to follow a pure intuition, against reason.
His wife said that when he gave that spring he was shot from the bow of his
ancestors, and now when he left his chair in that manner she knew he was
intensely interested. He went quickly to the piano.
"Sing that again.
There is nothing the matter with your low voice, my girl. I will play for you.
Let your voice out." Without looking at her he began the accompaniment.
Thea drew back her shoulders, relaxed them instinctively, and sang.
When she finished the aria,
Harsanyi beckoned her nearer. "Sing ah--ah for me, as I indicate." He
kept his right hand on the keyboard and put his left to her throat, placing the
tips of his delicate fingers over her larynx. "Again,--until your breath
is gone.-- Trill between the two tones, always; good! Again; excellent!-- Now
up,--stay there. E and F. Not so good, is it? F is always a hard one.-- Now,
try the half-tone.-- That's right, nothing difficult about it.-- Now,
pianissimo, ah--ah. Now, swell it, ah--ah.-- Again, follow my hand.-- Now,
carry it down.-- Anybody ever tell you anything about your breathing?"
"Mr. Larsen says I
have an unusually long breath," Thea replied with spirit.
Harsanyi smiled.
"So you have, so you have. That was what I meant. Now, once more; carry it
up and then down, ah--ah." He put his hand back to her throat and sat with
his head bent, his one eye closed. He loved to hear a big voice throb in a relaxed,
natural throat, and he was thinking that no one had ever felt this voice
vibrate before. It was like a wild bird that had flown into his studio on
Middleton Street from goodness knew how far! No one knew that it had come, or
even that it existed; least of all the strange, crude girl in whose throat it
beat its passionate wings. What a simple thing it was, he reflected; why had he
never guessed it before? Everything about her indicated it,--the big mouth, the
wide jaw and chin, the strong white teeth, the deep laugh. The machine was so
simple and strong, seemed to be so easily operated. She sang from the bottom of
herself. Her breath came from down where her laugh came from, the deep laugh
which Mrs. Harsanyi had once called "the laugh of the people." A
relaxed throat, a voice that lay on the breath, that had never been forced off
the breath; it rose and fell in the air-column like the little balls which are
put to shine in the jet of a fountain. The voice did not thin as it went up;
the upper tones were as full and rich as the lower, produced in the same way
and as unconsciously, only with deeper breath.
At last Harsanyi threw
back his head and rose. "You must be tired, Miss Kronborg."
When she replied, she
startled him; he had forgotten how hard and full of burs her speaking voice
was. "No," she said, "singing never tires me."
Harsanyi pushed back
his hair with a nervous hand. "I don't know much about the voice, but I
shall take liberties and teach you some good songs. I think you have a very
interesting voice."
"I'm glad if you
like it. Good-night, Mr. Harsanyi." Thea went with Mrs. Harsanyi to get
her wraps.
When Mrs. Harsanyi came
back to her husband, she found him walking restlessly up and down the room.
"Don't you think
her voice wonderful, dear?" she asked.
"I scarcely know
what to think. All I really know about that girl is that she tires me to death.
We must not have her often. If I did not have my living to make, then--"
he dropped into a chair and closed his eyes. "How tired I am. What a voice!"
AFTER that evening
Thea's work with Harsanyi changed somewhat. He insisted that she should study
some songs with him, and after almost every lesson he gave up half an hour of
his own time to practicing them with her. He did not pretend to know much about
voice production, but so far, he thought, she had acquired no really injurious
habits. A healthy and powerful organ had found its own method, which was not a
bad one. He wished to find out a good deal before he recommended a vocal
teacher. He never told Thea what he thought about her voice, and made her
general ignorance of anything worth singing his pretext for the trouble he
took. That was in the beginning. After the first few lessons his own pleasure
and hers were pretext enough. The singing came at the end of the lesson hour,
and they both treated it as a form of relaxation.
Harsanyi did not say
much even to his wife about his discovery. He brooded upon it in a curious way.
He found that these unscientific singing lessons stimulated him in his own
study. After Miss Kronborg left him he often lay down in his studio for an hour
before dinner, with his head full of musical ideas, with an effervescence in
his brain which he had sometimes lost for weeks together under the grind of
teaching. He had never got so much back for himself from any pupil as he did
from Miss Kronborg. From the first she had stimulated him; something in her
personality invariably affected him. Now that he was feeling his way toward her
voice, he found her more interesting than ever before. She lifted the tedium of
the winter for him, gave him curious fancies and reveries. Musically, she was
sympathetic to him. Why all this was true, he never asked himself. He had
learned that one must take where and when one can the mysterious mental
irritant that rouses one's imagination; that it is not to be had by order. She
often wearied him, but she never bored him. Under her crudeness and brusque
hardness, he felt there was a nature quite different, of which he never got so
much as a hint except when she was at the piano, or when she sang. It was
toward this hidden creature that he was trying, for his own pleasure, to find
his way. In short, Harsanyi looked forward to his hour with Thea for the same
reason that poor Wunsch had sometimes dreaded his; because she stirred him more
than anything she did could adequately explain.
One afternoon Harsanyi,
after the lesson, was standing by the window putting some collodion on a
cracked finger, and Thea was at the piano trying over "Die Lorelei"
which he had given her last week to practice. It was scarcely a song which a
singing master would have given her, but he had his own reasons. How she sang
it mattered only to him and to her. He was playing his own game now, without
interference; he suspected that he could not do so always.
When she finished the
song, she looked back over her shoulder at him and spoke thoughtfully.
"That wasn't right, at the end, was it?"
"No, that should
be an open, flowing tone, something like this,"--he waved his fingers
rapidly in the air. "You get the idea?"
"No, I don't.
Seems a queer ending, after the rest."
Harsanyi corked his
little bottle and dropped it into the pocket of his velvet coat. "Why so?
Shipwrecks come and go, Märchen come and go, but the river keeps right on.
There you have your open, flowing tone."
Thea looked intently at
the music. "I see," she said dully. "Oh, I see!" she
repeated quickly and turned to him a glowing countenance. "It is the
river.-- Oh, yes, I get it now!" She looked at him but long enough to
catch his glance, then turned to the piano again. Harsanyi was never quite sure
where the light came from when her face suddenly flashed out at him in that
way. Her eyes were too small to account for it, though they glittered like
green ice in the sun. At such moments her hair was yellower, her skin whiter,
her cheeks pinker, as if a lamp had suddenly been turned up inside of her. She
went at the song again:
"Ich weill nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Das ich so traurig bin." A
kind of happiness vibrated in her voice. Harsanyi noticed how much and how
unhesitatingly she changed her delivery of the whole song, the first part as
well as the last. He had often noticed that she could not think a thing out in
passages. Until she saw it as a whole, she wandered like a blind man surrounded
by torments. After she once had her "revelation," after she got the
idea that to her--not always to him--explained everything, then she went
forward rapidly. But she was not always easy to help. She was sometimes impervious
to suggestion; she would stare at him as if she were deaf and ignore everything
he told her to do. Then, all at once, something would happen in her brain and
she would begin to do all that he had been for weeks telling her to do, without
realizing that he had ever told her.
To-night Thea forgot
Harsanyi and his finger. She finished the song only to begin it with fresh
enthusiasm.
"Und das hat mit ihrem singen
Die Lorelei gethan." She sat there
singing it until the darkening room was so flooded with it that Harsanyi threw
open a window.
"You really must
stop it, Miss Kronborg. I shan't be able to get it out of my head
to-night."
Thea laughed tolerantly
as she began to gather up her music. "Why, I thought you had gone, Mr.
Harsanyi. I like that song."
That evening at dinner
Harsanyi sat looking intently into a glass of heavy yellow wine; boring into
it, indeed, with his one eye, when his face suddenly broke into a smile.
"What is it,
Andor?" his wife asked.
He smiled again, this
time at her, and took up the nut- crackers and a Brazil nut. "Do you
know," he said in a tone so intimate and confidential that he might have
been speaking to himself,--"do you know, I like to see Miss Kronborg get
hold of an idea. In spite of being so talented, she's not quick. But when she
does get an idea, it fills her up to the eyes. She had my room so reeking of a
song this afternoon that I couldn't stay there."
Mrs. Harsanyi looked up
quickly, "`Die Lorelei,' you mean? One couldn't think of anything else
anywhere in the house. I thought she was possessed. But don't you think her
voice is wonderful sometimes?"
Harsanyi tasted his
wine slowly. "My dear, I've told you before that I don't know what I think
about Miss Kronborg, except that I'm glad there are not two of her. I sometimes
wonder whether she is not glad. Fresh as she is at it all, I've occasionally
fancied that, if she knew how, she would like to--diminish." He moved his
left hand out into the air as if he were suggesting a diminuendo to an orchestra.
BY the first of
February Thea had been in Chicago almost four months, and she did not know much
more about the city than if she had never quitted Moonstone. She was, as
Harsanyi said, incurious. Her work took most of her time, and she found that
she had to sleep a good deal. It had never before been so hard to get up in the
morning. She had the bother of caring for her room, and she had to build her
fire and bring up her coal. Her routine was frequently interrupted by a message
from Mr. Larsen summoning her to sing at a funeral. Every funeral took half a
day, and the time had to be made up. When Mrs. Harsanyi asked her if it did not
depress her to sing at funerals, she replied that she "had been brought up
to go to funerals and didn't mind."
Thea never went into
shops unless she had to, and she felt no interest in them. Indeed, she shunned
them, as places where one was sure to be parted from one's money in some way.
She was nervous about counting her change, and she could not accustom herself to
having her purchases sent to her address. She felt much safer with her bundles
under her arm.
During this first
winter Thea got no city consciousness. Chicago was simply a wilderness through
which one had to find one's way. She felt no interest in the general briskness
and zest of the crowds. The crash and scramble of that big, rich, appetent
Western city she did not take in at all, except to notice that the noise of the
drays and street-cars tired her. The brilliant window displays, the splendid
furs and stuffs, the gorgeous flower-shops, the gay candy-shops, she scarcely
noticed. At Christmas-time she did feel some curiosity about the toy-stores,
and she wished she held Thor's little mittened fist in her hand as she stood
before the windows. The jewelers' windows, too, had a strong attraction for
her--she had always liked bright stones. When she went into the city she used
to brave the biting lake winds and stand gazing in at the displays of diamonds
and pearls and emeralds; the tiaras and necklaces and earrings, on white
velvet. These seemed very well worth while to her, things worth coveting.
Mrs. Lorch and Mrs.
Andersen often told each other it was strange that Miss Kronborg had so little
initiative about "visiting points of interest." When Thea came to
live with them she had expressed a wish to see two places: Montgomery Ward and
Company's big mail-order store, and the packing-houses, to which all the hogs
and cattle that went through Moonstone were bound. One of Mrs. Lorch's lodgers
worked in a packing-house, and Mrs. Andersen brought Thea word that she had
spoken to Mr. Eckman and he would gladly take her to Packing- town. Eckman was
a toughish young Swede, and he thought it would be something of a lark to take
a pretty girl through the slaughter-houses. But he was disappointed. Thea
neither grew faint nor clung to the arm he kept offering her. She asked
innumerable questions and was impatient because he knew so little of what was
going on outside of his own department. When they got off the street-car and
walked back to Mrs. Lorch's house in the dusk, Eckman put her hand in his
overcoat pocket--she had no muff--and kept squeezing it ardently until she
said, "Don't do that; my ring cuts me." That night he told his
roommate that he "could have kissed her as easy as rolling off a log, but
she wasn't worth the trouble." As for Thea, she had enjoyed the afternoon
very much, and wrote her father a brief but clear account of what she had seen.
One night at supper
Mrs. Andersen was talking about the exhibit of students' work she had seen at
the Art Institute that afternoon. Several of her friends had sketches in the
exhibit. Thea, who always felt that she was behindhand in courtesy to Mrs.
Andersen, thought that here was an opportunity to show interest without
committing herself to anything. "Where is that, the Institute?" she
asked absently.
Mrs. Andersen clasped
her napkin in both hands. "The Art Institute? Our beautiful Art Institute
on Michigan Avenue? Do you mean to say you have never visited it?"
"Oh, is it the
place with the big lions out in front? I remember; I saw it when I went to
Montgomery Ward's. Yes, I thought the lions were beautiful."
"But the pictures!
Didn't you visit the galleries?"
"No. The sign
outside said it was a pay-day. I've always meant to go back, but I haven't
happened to be down that way since."
Mrs. Lorch and Mrs.
Andersen looked at each other. The old mother spoke, fixing her shining little
eyes upon Thea across the table. "Ah, but Miss Kronborg, there are old
masters! Oh, many of them, such as you could not see anywhere out of
Europe."
"And Corots,"
breathed Mrs. Andersen, tilting her head feelingly. "Such examples of the
Barbizon school!" This was meaningless to Thea, who did not read the art
columns of the Sunday Inter-Ocean as Mrs. Andersen did.
"Oh, I'm going
there some day," she reassured them. "I like to look at oil
paintings."
One bleak day in
February, when the wind was blowing clouds of dirt like a Moonstone sandstorm,
dirt that filled your eyes and ears and mouth, Thea fought her way across the
unprotected space in front of the Art Institute and into the doors of the
building. She did not come out again until the closing hour. In the street-car,
on the long cold ride home, while she sat staring at the waistcoat buttons of a
fat strap-hanger, she had a serious reckoning with herself. She seldom thought
about her way of life, about what she ought or ought not to do; usually there
was but one obvious and important thing to be done. But that afternoon she remonstrated
with herself severely. She told herself that she was missing a great deal; that
she ought to be more willing to take advice and to go to see things. She was
sorry that she had let months pass without going to the Art Institute. After
this she would go once a week.
The Institute proved,
indeed, a place of retreat, as the sand hills or the Kohlers' garden used to
be; a place where she could forget Mrs. Andersen's tiresome overtures of
friendship, the stout contralto in the choir whom she so unreasonably hated,
and even, for a little while, the torment of her work. That building was a
place in which she could relax and play, and she could hardly ever play now. On
the whole, she spent more time with the casts than with the pictures. They were
at once more simple and more perplexing; and some way they seemed more
important, harder to overlook. It never occurred to her to buy a catalogue, so
she called most of the casts by names she made up for them. Some of them she
knew; the Dying Gladiator she had read about in "Childe Harold"
almost as long ago as she could remember; he was strongly associated with Dr.
Archie and childish illnesses. The Venus di Milo puzzled her; she could not see
why people thought her so beautiful. She told herself over and over that she
did not think the Apollo Belvedere "at all handsome." Better than
anything else she liked a great equestrian statue of an evil, cruel-looking
general with an unpronounceable name. She used to walk round and round this
terrible man and his terrible horse, frowning at him, brooding upon him, as if
she had to make some momentous decision about him.
The casts, when she
lingered long among them, always made her gloomy. It was with a lightening of
the heart, a feeling of throwing off the old miseries and old sorrows of the
world, that she ran up the wide staircase to the pictures. There she liked best
the ones that told stories. There was a painting by Gerome called "The
Pasha's Grief" which always made her wish for Gunner and Axel. The Pasha
was seated on a rug, beside a green candle almost as big as a telegraph pole,
and before him was stretched his dead tiger, a splendid beast, and there were
pink roses scattered about him. She loved, too, a picture of some boys bringing
in a newborn calf on a litter, the cow walking beside it and licking it. The
Corot which hung next to this painting she did not like or dislike; she never
saw it.
But in that same room
there was a picture--oh, that was the thing she ran upstairs so fast to see!
That was her picture. She imagined that nobody cared for it but herself, and
that it waited for her. That was a picture indeed. She liked even the name of
it, "The Song of the Lark." The flat country, the early morning
light, the wet fields, the look in the girl's heavy face--well, they were all
hers, anyhow, whatever was there. She told herself that that picture was
"right." Just what she meant by this, it would take a clever person
to explain. But to her the word covered the almost boundless satisfaction she
felt when she looked at the picture.
Before Thea had any
idea how fast the weeks were flying, before Mr. Larsen's "permanent"
soprano had returned to her duties, spring came; windy, dusty, strident,
shrill; a season almost more violent in Chicago than the winter from which it releases
one, or the heat to which it eventually delivers one. One sunny morning the
apple trees in Mrs. Lorch's back yard burst into bloom, and for the first time
in months Thea dressed without building a fire. The morning shone like a
holiday, and for her it was to be a holiday. There was in the air that sudden,
treacherous softness which makes the Poles who work in the packing-houses get
drunk. At such times beauty is necessary, and in Packingtown there is no place
to get it except at the saloons, where one can buy for a few hours the illusion
of comfort, hope, love,--whatever one most longs for.
Harsanyi had given Thea
a ticket for the symphony concert that afternoon, and when she looked out at
the white apple trees her doubts as to whether she ought to go vanished at
once. She would make her work light that morning, she told herself. She would
go to the concert full of energy. When she set off, after dinner, Mrs. Lorch,
who knew Chicago weather, prevailed upon her to take her cape. The old lady
said that such sudden mildness, so early in April, presaged a sharp return of
winter, and she was anxious about her apple trees.
The concert began at
two-thirty, and Thea was in her seat in the Auditorium at ten minutes after
two--a fine seat in the first row of the balcony, on the side, where she could
see the house as well as the orchestra. She had been to so few concerts that
the great house, the crowd of people, and the lights, all had a stimulating
effect. She was surprised to see so many men in the audience, and wondered how
they could leave their business in the afternoon. During the first number Thea
was so much interested in the orchestra itself, in the men, the instruments,
the volume of sound, that she paid little attention to what they were playing.
Her excitement impaired her power of listening. She kept saying to herself,
"Now I must stop this foolishness and listen; I may never hear this
again"; but her mind was like a glass that is hard to focus. She was not
ready to listen until the second number, Dvorak's Symphony in E minor, called
on the programme, "From the New World." The first theme had scarcely
been given out when her mind became clear; instant composure fell upon her, and
with it came the power of concentration. This was music she could understand,
music from the New World indeed! Strange how, as the first movement went on, it
brought back to her that high tableland above Laramie; the grass-grown wagon
trails, the far-away peaks of the snowy range, the wind and the eagles, that
old man and the first telegraph message.
When the first movement
ended, Thea's hands and feet were cold as ice. She was too much excited to know
anything except that she wanted something desperately, and when the English
horns gave out the theme of the Largo, she knew that what she wanted was
exactly that. Here were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the
things that wakened and chirped in the early morning; the reaching and reaching
of high plains, the immeasurable yearning of all flat lands. There was home in
it, too; first memories, first mornings long ago; the amazement of a new soul
in a new world; a soul new and yet old, that had dreamed something despairing,
something glorious, in the dark before it was born; a soul obsessed by what it
did not know, under the cloud of a past it could not recall.
If Thea had had much
experience in concert-going, and had known her own capacity, she would have
left the hall when the symphony was over. But she sat still, scarcely knowing
where she was, because her mind had been far away and had not yet come back to
her. She was startled when the orchestra began to play again--the entry of the
gods into Walhalla. She heard it as people hear things in their sleep. She knew
scarcely anything about the Wagner operas. She had a vague idea that
"Rhinegold" was about the strife between gods and men; she had read
something about it in Mr. Haweis's book long ago. Too tired to follow the
orchestra with much understanding, she crouched down in her seat and closed her
eyes. The cold, stately measures of the Walhalla music rang out, far away; the
rainbow bridge throbbed out into the air, under it the wailing of the Rhine
daughters and the singing of the Rhine. But Thea was sunk in twilight; it was
all going on in another world. So it happened that with a dull, almost listless
ear she heard for the first time that troubled music, ever-darkening,
ever-brightening, which was to flow through so many years of her life.
When Thea emerged from
the concert hall, Mrs. Lorch's predictions had been fulfilled. A furious gale
was beating over the city from Lake Michigan. The streets were full of cold,
hurrying, angry people, running for street-cars and barking at each other. The
sun was setting in a clear, windy sky, that flamed with red as if there were a
great fire somewhere on the edge of the city. For almost the first time Thea
was conscious of the city itself, of the congestion of life all about her, of
the brutality and power of those streams that flowed in the streets,
threatening to drive one under. People jostled her, ran into her, poked her
aside with their elbows, uttering angry exclamations. She got on the wrong car
and was roughly ejected by the conductor at a windy corner, in front of a
saloon. She stood there dazed and shivering. The cars passed, screaming as they
rounded curves, but either they were full to the doors, or were bound for
places where she did not want to go. Her hands were so cold that she took off
her tight kid gloves. The street lights began to gleam in the dusk. A young man
came out of the saloon and stood eyeing her questioningly while he lit a
cigarette. "Looking for a friend to-night?" he asked. Thea drew up
the collar of her cape and walked on a few paces. The young man shrugged his
shoulders and drifted away.
Thea came back to the
corner and stood there irresolutely. An old man approached her. He, too, seemed
to be waiting for a car. He wore an overcoat with a black fur collar, his gray
mustache was waxed into little points, and his eyes were watery. He kept thrusting
his face up near hers. Her hat blew off and he ran after it--a stiff, pitiful
skip he had--and brought it back to her. Then, while she was pinning her hat
on, her cape blew up, and he held it down for her, looking at her intently. His
face worked as if he were going to cry or were frightened. He leaned over and
whispered something to her. It struck her as curious that he was really quite
timid, like an old beggar. "Oh, let me alone!" she cried miserably
between her teeth. He vanished, disappeared like the Devil in a play. But in
the mean time something had got away from her; she could not remember how the
violins came in after the horns, just there. When her cape blew up, perhaps--
Why did these men torment her? A cloud of dust blew in her face and blinded
her. There was some power abroad in the world bent upon taking away from her
that feeling with which she had come out of the concert hall. Everything seemed
to sweep down on her to tear it out from under her cape. If one had that, the
world became one's enemy; people, buildings, wagons, cars, rushed at one to
crush it under, to make one let go of it. Thea glared round her at the crowds,
the ugly, sprawling streets, the long lines of lights, and she was not crying
now. Her eyes were brighter than even Harsanyi had ever seen them. All these
things and people were no longer remote and negligible; they had to be met,
they were lined up against her, they were there to take something from her.
Very well; they should never have it. They might trample her to death, but they
should never have it. As long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers.
She would live for it, work for it, die for it; but she was going to have it,
time after time, height after height. She could hear the crash of the orchestra
again, and she rose on the brasses. She would have it, what the trumpets were
singing! She would have it, have it,--it! Under the old cape she pressed her
hands upon her heaving bosom, that was a little girl's no longer.
ONE afternoon in April,
Theodore Thomas, the conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, had turned
out his desk light and was about to leave his office in the Auditorium
Building, when Harsanyi appeared in the doorway. The conductor welcomed him
with a hearty hand-grip and threw off the overcoat he had just put on. He
pushed Harsanyi into a chair and sat down at his burdened desk, pointing to the
piles of papers and railway folders upon it.
"Another tour,
clear to the coast. This traveling is the part of my work that grinds me,
Andor. You know what it means: bad food, dirt, noise, exhaustion for the men
and for me. I'm not so young as I once was. It's time I quit the highway. This
is the last tour, I swear!"
"Then I'm sorry
for the `highway.' I remember when I first heard you in Pittsburg, long ago. It
was a life-line you threw me. It's about one of the people along your high- way
that I've come to see you. Whom do you consider the best teacher for voice in
Chicago?"
Mr. Thomas frowned and
pulled his heavy mustache. "Let me see; I suppose on the whole Madison
Bowers is the best. He's intelligent, and he had good training. I don't like
him."
Harsanyi nodded.
"I thought there was no one else. I don't like him, either, so I
hesitated. But I suppose he must do, for the present."
"Have you found
anything promising? One of your own students?"
"Yes, sir. A young
Swedish girl from somewhere in Colorado. She is very talented, and she seems to
me to have a remarkable voice."
"High voice?"
"I think it will
be; though her low voice has a beautiful quality, very individual. She has had
no instruction in voice at all, and I shrink from handing her over to anybody;
her own instinct about it has been so good. It is one of those voices that
manages itself easily, without thinning as it goes up; good breathing and
perfect relaxation. But she must have a teacher, of course. There is a break in
the middle voice, so that the voice does not all work together; an
unevenness."
Thomas looked up.
"So? Curious; that cleft often happens with the Swedes. Some of their best
singers have had it. It always reminds me of the space you so often see between
their front teeth. Is she strong physically?"
Harsanyi's eye flashed.
He lifted his hand before him and clenched it. "Like a horse, like a tree!
Every time I give her a lesson, I lose a pound. She goes after what she
wants."
"Intelligent, you
say? Musically intelligent?"
"Yes; but no
cultivation whatever. She came to me like a fine young savage, a book with
nothing written in it. That is why I feel the responsibility of directing
her." Harsanyi paused and crushed his soft gray hat over his knee.
"She would interest you, Mr. Thomas," he added slowly. "She has
a quality--very individual."
"Yes; the
Scandinavians are apt to have that, too. She can't go to Germany, I
suppose?"
"Not now, at any
rate. She is poor."
Thomas frowned again
"I don't think Bowers a really first-rate man. He's too petty to be really
first-rate; in his nature, I mean. But I dare say he's the best you can do, if
you can't give her time enough yourself."
Harsanyi waved his
hand. "Oh, the time is nothing--she may have all she wants. But I cannot
teach her to sing."
"Might not come
amiss if you made a musician of her, however," said Mr. Thomas dryly.
"I have done my
best. But I can only play with a voice, and this is not a voice to be played
with. I think she will be a musician, whatever happens. She is not quick, but
she is solid, real; not like these others. My wife says that with that girl one
swallow does not make a summer."
Mr. Thomas laughed.
"Tell Mrs. Harsanyi that her remark conveys something to me. Don't let
yourself get too much interested. Voices are so often disappointing; especially
women's voices. So much chance about it, so many factors."
"Perhaps that is
why they interest one. All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make
a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a
sport, like the silver fox. It happens."
Mr. Thomas smiled into
Harsanyi's gleaming eye. "Why haven't you brought her to sing for
me?"
"I've been tempted
to, but I knew you were driven to death, with this tour confronting you."
"Oh, I can always
find time to listen to a girl who has a voice, if she means business. I'm sorry
I'm leaving so soon. I could advise you better if I had heard her. I can
sometimes give a singer suggestions. I've worked so much with them."
"You're the only
conductor I know who is not snobbish about singers." Harsanyi spoke
warmly.
"Dear me, why should
I be? They've learned from me, and I've learned from them." As they rose,
Thomas took the younger man affectionately by the arm. "Tell me about that
wife of yours. Is she well, and as lovely as ever? And such fine children! Come
to see me oftener, when I get back. I miss it when you don't."
The two men left the
Auditorium Building together. Harsanyi walked home. Even a short talk with
Thomas always stimulated him. As he walked he was recalling an evening they
once spent together in Cincinnati.
Harsanyi was the
soloist at one of Thomas's concerts there, and after the performance the
conductor had taken him off to a rathskeller where there was excellent German
cooking, and where the proprietor saw to it that Thomas had the best wines
procurable. Thomas had been working with the great chorus of the Festival
Association and was speaking of it with enthusiasm when Harsanyi asked him how
it was that he was able to feel such an interest in choral directing and in
voices generally. Thomas seldom spoke of his youth or his early struggles, but
that night he turned back the pages and told Harsanyi a long story.
He said he had spent
the summer of his fifteenth year wandering about alone in the South, giving
violin concerts in little towns. He traveled on horseback. When he came into a
town, he went about all day tacking up posters announcing his concert in the
evening. Before the concert, he stood at the door taking in the admission money
until his audience had arrived, and then he went on the platform and played. It
was a lazy, hand-to-mouth existence, and Thomas said he must have got to like
that easy way of living and the relaxing Southern atmosphere. At any rate, when
he got back to New York in the fall, he was rather torpid; perhaps he had been
growing too fast. From this adolescent drowsiness the lad was awakened by two
voices, by two women who sang in New York in 1851, --Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag.
They were the first great artists he had ever heard, and he never forgot his
debt to them.
As he said, "It
was not voice and execution alone. There was a greatness about them. They were
great women, great artists. They opened a new world to me." Night after
night he went to hear them, striving to reproduce the quality of their tone
upon his violin. From that time his idea about strings was completely changed,
and on his violin he tried always for the singing, vibrating tone, instead of
the loud and somewhat harsh tone then prevalent among even the best German
violinists. In later years he often advised violinists to study singing, and
singers to study violin. He told Harsanyi that he got his first conception of
tone quality from Jenny Lind.
"But, of
course," he added, "the great thing I got from Lind and Sontag was
the indefinite, not the definite, thing. For an impressionable boy, their
inspiration was incalculable. They gave me my first feeling for the Italian
style --but I could never say how much they gave me. At that age, such
influences are actually creative. I always think of my artistic consciousness
as beginning then."
All his life Thomas did
his best to repay what he felt he owed to the singer's art. No man could get
such singing from choruses, and no man worked harder to raise the standard of
singing in schools and churches and choral societies.
All through the lesson
Thea had felt that Harsanyi was restless and abstracted. Before the hour was
over, he pushed back his chair and said resolutely, "I am not in the mood,
Miss Kronborg. I have something on my mind, and I must talk to you. When do you
intend to go home?"
Thea turned to him in
surprise. "The first of June, about. Mr. Larsen will not need me after
that, and I have not much money ahead. I shall work hard this summer,
though."
"And to-day is the
first of May; May-day." Harsanyi leaned forward, his elbows on his knees,
his hands locked between them. "Yes, I must talk to you about something. I
have asked Madison Bowers to let me bring you to him on Thursday, at your usual
lesson-time. He is the best vocal teacher in Chicago, and it is time you began
to work seriously with your voice."
Thea's brow wrinkled.
"You mean take lessons of Bowers?"
Harsanyi nodded,
without lifting his head.
"But I can't, Mr.
Harsanyi. I haven't got the time, and, besides--" she blushed and drew her
shoulders up stiffly--"besides, I can't afford to pay two teachers."
Thea felt that she had blurted this out in the worst possible way, and she turned
back to the keyboard to hide her chagrin.
"I know that. I
don't mean that you shall pay two teachers. After you go to Bowers you will not
need me. I need scarcely tell you that I shan't be happy at losing you."
Thea turned to him,
hurt and angry. "But I don't want to go to Bowers. I don't want to leave
you. What's the matter? Don't I work hard enough? I'm sure you teach people
that don't try half as hard."
Harsanyi rose to his
feet. "Don't misunderstand me, Miss Kronborg. You interest me more than any
pupil I have. I have been thinking for months about what you ought to do, since
that night when you first sang for me." He walked over to the window,
turned, and came toward her again. "I believe that your voice is worth all
that you can put into it. I have not come to this decision rashly. I have
studied you, and I have become more and more convinced, against my own desires.
I cannot make a singer of you, so it was my business to find a man who could. I
have even consulted Theodore Thomas about it."
"But suppose I
don't want to be a singer? I want to study with you. What's the matter? Do you
really think I've no talent? Can't I be a pianist?"
Harsanyi paced up and
down the long rug in front of her. "My girl, you are very talented. You
could be a pianist, a good one. But the early training of a pianist, such a
pianist as you would want to be, must be something tremendous. He must have had
no other life than music. At your age he must be the master of his instrument.
Nothing can ever take the place of that first training. You know very well that
your technique is good, but it is not remarkable. It will never overtake your
intelligence. You have a fine power of work, but you are not by nature a
student. You are not by nature, I think, a pianist. You would never find
yourself. In the effort to do so, I'm afraid your playing would become warped,
eccentric." He threw back his head and looked at his pupil intently with
that one eye which sometimes seemed to see deeper than any two eyes, as if its
singleness gave it privileges. "Oh, I have watched you very carefully,
Miss Kronborg. Because you had had so little and had yet done so much for
yourself, I had a great wish to help you. I believe that the strongest need of
your nature is to find yourself, to emerge as yourself. Until I heard you sing
I wondered how you were to do this, but it has grown clearer to me every
day."
Thea looked away toward
the window with hard, narrow eyes. "You mean I can be a singer because I
haven't brains enough to be a pianist."
"You have brains
enough and talent enough. But to do what you will want to do, it takes more
than these--it takes vocation. Now, I think you have vocation, but for the
voice, not for the piano. If you knew,"--he stopped and sighed,--"if
you knew how fortunate I sometimes think you. With the voice the way is so much
shorter, the rewards are more easily won. In your voice I think Nature herself
did for you what it would take you many years to do at the piano. Perhaps you
were not born in the wrong place after all. Let us talk frankly now. We have
never done so before, and I have respected your reticence. What you want more
than anything else in the world is to be an artist; is that true?"
She turned her face
away from him and looked down at the keyboard. Her answer came in a thickened
voice. "Yes, I suppose so."
"When did you
first feel that you wanted to be an artist?"
"I don't know.
There was always--something."
"Did you never
think that you were going to sing?"
"Yes."
"How long ago was
that?"
"Always, until I
came to you. It was you who made me want to play piano." Her voice
trembled. "Before, I tried to think I did, but I was pretending."
Harsanyi reached out
and caught the hand that was hanging at her side. He pressed it as if to give
her something. "Can't you see, my dear girl, that was only because I
happened to be the first artist you have ever known? If I had been a trombone
player, it would have been the same; you would have wanted to play trombone.
But all the while you have been working with such good-will, something has been
struggling against me. See, here we were, you and I and this
instrument,"--he tapped the piano,--"three good friends, working so
hard. But all the while there was something fighting us: your gift, and the
woman you were meant to be. When you find your way to that gift and to that
woman, you will be at peace. In the beginning it was an artist that you wanted
to be; well, you may be an artist, always."
Thea drew a long
breath. Her hands fell in her lap. "So I'm just where I began. No teacher,
nothing done. No money."
Harsanyi turned away.
"Feel no apprehension about the money, Miss Kronborg. Come back in the
fall and we shall manage that. I shall even go to Mr. Thomas if necessary. This
year will not be lost. If you but knew what an advantage this winter's study, all
your study of the piano, will give you over most singers. Perhaps things have
come out better for you than if we had planned them knowingly."
"You mean they
have if I can sing."
Thea spoke with a heavy
irony, so heavy, indeed, that it was coarse. It grated upon Harsanyi because he
felt that it was not sincere, an awkward affectation.
He wheeled toward her.
"Miss Kronborg, answer me this. You know that you can sing, do you not?
You have always known it. While we worked here together you sometimes said to yourself,
`I have something you know nothing about; I could surprise you.' Is that also
true?"
Thea nodded and hung
her head.
"Why were you not
frank with me? Did I not deserve it?"
She shuddered. Her bent
shoulders trembled. "I don't know," she muttered. "I didn't mean
to be like that. I couldn't. I can't. It's different."
"You mean it is
very personal?" he asked kindly.
She nodded. "Not
at church or funerals, or with people like Mr. Larsen. But with you it
was--personal. I'm not like you and Mrs. Harsanyi. I come of rough people. I'm
rough. But I'm independent, too. It was--all I had. There is no use my talking,
Mr. Harsanyi. I can't tell you."
"You needn't tell
me. I know. Every artist knows." Harsanyi stood looking at his pupil's
back, bent as if she were pushing something, at her lowered head. "You can
sing for those people because with them you do not commit yourself. But the
reality, one cannot uncover that until one is sure. One can fail one's self,
but one must not live to see that fail; better never reveal it. Let me help you
to make yourself sure of it. That I can do better than Bowers."
Thea lifted her face
and threw out her hands.
Harsanyi shook his head
and smiled. "Oh, promise nothing! You will have much to do. There will not
be voice only, but French, German, Italian. You will have work enough. But
sometimes you will need to be understood; what you never show to any one will
need companionship. And then you must come to me." He peered into her face
with that searching, intimate glance. "You know what I mean, the thing in
you that has no business with what is little, that will have to do only with
beauty and power."
Thea threw out her
hands fiercely, as if to push him away. She made a sound in her throat, but it
was not articulate. Harsanyi took one of her hands and kissed it lightly upon
the back. His salute was one of greeting, not of farewell, and it was for some
one he had never seen.
When Mrs. Harsanyi came
in at six o'clock, she found her husband sitting listlessly by the window.
"Tired?" she asked.
"A little. I've
just got through a difficulty. I've sent Miss Kronborg away; turned her over to
Bowers, for voice."
"Sent Miss
Kronborg away? Andor, what is the matter with you?"
"It's nothing
rash. I've known for a long while I ought to do it. She is made for a singer,
not a pianist."
Mrs. Harsanyi sat down
on the piano chair. She spoke a little bitterly: "How can you be sure of
that? She was, at least, the best you had. I thought you meant to have her play
at your students' recital next fall. I am sure she would have made an
impression. I could have dressed her so that she would have been very striking.
She had so much individuality."
Harsanyi bent forward,
looking at the floor. "Yes, I know. I shall miss her, of course."
Mrs. Harsanyi looked at
her husband's fine head against the gray window. She had never felt deeper
tenderness for him than she did at that moment. Her heart ached for him.
"You will never get on, Andor," she said mournfully.
Harsanyi sat motionless.
"No, I shall never get on," he repeated quietly. Suddenly he sprang
up with that light movement she knew so well, and stood in the window, with
folded arms. "But some day I shall be able to look her in the face and
laugh because I did what I could for her. I believe in her. She will do nothing
common. She is uncommon, in a common, common world. That is what I get out of
it. It means more to me than if she played at my concert and brought me a dozen
pupils. All this drudgery will kill me if once in a while I cannot hope
something, for somebody! If I cannot sometimes see a bird fly and wave my hand
to it."
His tone was angry and
injured. Mrs. Harsanyi understood that this was one of the times when his wife
was a part of the drudgery, of the "common, common world." He had let
something he cared for go, and he felt bitterly about whatever was left. The
mood would pass, and he would be sorry. She knew him. It wounded her, of
course, but that hurt was not new. It was as old as her love for him. She went out
and left him alone.
ONE warm damp June
night the Denver Express was speeding westward across the earthy-smelling
plains of Iowa. The lights in the day-coach were turned low and the ventilators
were open, admitting showers of soot and dust upon the occupants of the narrow
green plush chairs which were tilted at various angles of discomfort. In each
of these chairs some uncomfortable human being lay drawn up, or stretched out,
or writhing from one position to another. There were tired men in rumpled shirts,
their necks bare and their suspenders down; old women with their heads tied up
in black handkerchiefs; bedraggled young women who went to sleep while they
were nursing their babies and forgot to button up their dresses; dirty boys who
added to the general discomfort by taking off their boots. The brakeman, when
he came through at midnight, sniffed the heavy air disdainfully and looked up
at the ventilators. As he glanced down the double rows of contorted figures, he
saw one pair of eyes that were wide open and bright, a yellow head that was not
overcome by the stupefying heat and smell in the car. "There's a girl for
you," he thought as he stopped by Thea's chair.
"Like to have the
window up a little?" he asked.
Thea smiled up at him,
not misunderstanding his friendliness. "The girl behind me is sick; she
can't stand a draft. What time is it, please?"
He took out his
open-faced watch and held it before her eyes with a knowing look. "In a
hurry?" he asked. "I'll leave the end door open and air you out.
Catch a wink; the time'll go faster."
Thea nodded good-night
to him and settled her head back on her pillow, looking up at the oil lamps.
She was going back to Moonstone for her summer vacation, and she was sitting up
all night in a day-coach because that seemed such an easy way to save money. At
her age discomfort was a small matter, when one made five dollars a day by it.
She had confidently expected to sleep after the car got quiet, but in the two
chairs behind her were a sick girl and her mother, and the girl had been
coughing steadily since ten o'clock. They had come from somewhere in
Pennsylvania, and this was their second night on the road. The mother said they
were going to Colorado "for her daughter's lungs." The daughter was a
little older than Thea, perhaps nineteen, with patient dark eyes and curly
brown hair. She was pretty in spite of being so sooty and travel-stained. She
had put on an ugly figured satine kimono over her loosened clothes. Thea, when
she boarded the train in Chicago, happened to stop and plant her heavy
telescope on this seat. She had not intended to remain there, but the sick girl
had looked up at her with an eager smile and said, "Do sit there, miss.
I'd so much rather not have a gentleman in front of me."
After the girl began to
cough there were no empty seats left, and if there had been Thea could scarcely
have changed without hurting her feelings. The mother turned on her side and
went to sleep; she was used to the cough. But the girl lay wide awake, her eyes
fixed on the roof of the car, as Thea's were. The two girls must have seen very
different things there.
Thea fell to going over
her winter in Chicago. It was only under unusual or uncomfortable conditions
like these that she could keep her mind fixed upon herself or her own affairs
for any length of time. The rapid motion and the vibration of the wheels under
her seemed to give her thoughts rapidity and clearness. She had taken twenty
very expensive lessons from Madison Bowers, but she did not yet know what he
thought of her or of her ability. He was different from any man with whom she
had ever had to do. With her other teachers she had felt a personal relation;
but with him she did not. Bowers was a cold, bitter, avaricious man, but he
knew a great deal about voices. He worked with a voice as if he were in a
laboratory, conducting a series of experiments. He was conscientious and
industrious, even capable of a certain cold fury when he was working with an
interesting voice, but Harsanyi declared that he had the soul of a shrimp, and
could no more make an artist than a throat specialist could. Thea realized that
he had taught her a great deal in twenty lessons.
Although she cared so
much less for Bowers than for Harsanyi, Thea was, on the whole, happier since
she had been studying with him than she had been before. She had always told
herself that she studied piano to fit herself to be a music teacher. But she
never asked herself why she was studying voice. Her voice, more than any other
part of her, had to do with that confidence, that sense of wholeness and inner
well-being that she had felt at moments ever since she could remember.
Of this feeling Thea
had never spoken to any human being until that day when she told Harsanyi that
"there had always been--something." Hitherto she had felt but one
obligation toward it--secrecy; to protect it even from herself. She had always
believed that by doing all that was required of her by her family, her
teachers, her pupils, she kept that part of herself from being caught up in the
meshes of common things. She took it for granted that some day, when she was
older, she would know a great deal more about it. It was as if she had an
appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere. It was moving to
meet her and she was moving to meet it. That meeting awaited her, just as surely
as, for the poor girl in the seat behind her, there awaited a hole in the
earth, already dug.
For Thea, so much had
begun with a hole in the earth. Yes, she reflected, this new part of her life
had all begun that morning when she sat on the clay bank beside Ray Kennedy,
under the flickering shade of the cottonwood tree. She remembered the way Ray
had looked at her that morning. Why had he cared so much? And Wunsch, and Dr.
Archie, and Spanish Johnny, why had they? It was something that had to do with
her that made them care, but it was not she. It was something they believed in,
but it was not she. Perhaps each of them concealed another person in himself,
just as she did. Why was it that they seemed to feel and to hunt for a second
person in her and not in each other? Thea frowned up at the dull lamp in the
roof of the car. What if one's second self could somehow speak to all these
second selves? What if one could bring them out, as whiskey did Spanish
Johnny's? How deep they lay, these second persons, and how little one knew
about them, except to guard them fiercely. It was to music, more than to
anything else, that these hidden things in people responded. Her mother--even
her mother had something of that sort which replied to music.
Thea found herself
listening for the coughing behind her and not hearing it. She turned cautiously
and looked back over the head-rest of her chair. The poor girl had fallen
asleep. Thea looked at her intently. Why was she so afraid of men? Why did she
shrink into herself and avert her face whenever a man passed her chair? Thea
thought she knew; of course, she knew. How horrible to waste away like that, in
the time when one ought to be growing fuller and stronger and rounder every
day. Suppose there were such a dark hole open for her, between to-night and
that place where she was to meet herself? Her eyes narrowed. She put her hand
on her breast and felt how warm it was; and within it there was a full,
powerful pulsation. She smiled--though she was ashamed of it --with the natural
contempt of strength for weakness, with the sense of physical security which
makes the savage merciless. Nobody could die while they felt like that inside.
The springs there were wound so tight that it would be a long while before
there was any slack in them. The life in there was rooted deep. She was going
to have a few things before she died. She realized that there were a great many
trains dashing east and west on the face of the continent that night, and that
they all carried young people who meant to have things. But the difference was
that she was going to get them! That was all. Let people try to stop her! She
glowered at the rows of feckless bodies that lay sprawled in the chairs. Let
them try it once! Along with the yearning that came from some deep part of her,
that was selfless and exalted, Thea had a hard kind of cockiness, a
determination to get ahead. Well, there are passages in life when that fierce,
stubborn self-assertion will stand its ground after the nobler feeling is
overwhelmed and beaten under.
Having told herself
once more that she meant to grab a few things, Thea went to sleep.
She was wakened in the
morning by the sunlight, which beat fiercely through the glass of the car
window upon her face. She made herself as clean as she could, and while the
people all about her were getting cold food out of their lunch-baskets she
escaped into the dining-car. Her thrift did not go to the point of enabling her
to carry a lunch- basket. At that early hour there were few people in the dining-car.
The linen was white and fresh, the darkies were trim and smiling, and the
sunlight gleamed pleasantly upon the silver and the glass water-bottles. On
each table there was a slender vase with a single pink rose in it. When Thea
sat down she looked into her rose and thought it the most beautiful thing in
the world; it was wide open, recklessly offering its yellow heart, and there
were drops of water on the petals. All the future was in that rose, all that
one would like to be. The flower put her in an absolutely regal mood. She had a
whole pot of coffee, and scrambled eggs with chopped ham, utterly disregarding
the astonishing price they cost. She had faith enough in what she could do, she
told herself, to have eggs if she wanted them. At the table opposite her sat a
man and his wife and little boy --Thea classified them as being "from the
East." They spoke in that quick, sure staccato, which Thea, like Ray
Kennedy, pretended to scorn and secretly admired. People who could use words in
that confident way, and who spoke them elegantly, had a great advantage in
life, she reflected. There were so many words which she could not pronounce in
speech as she had to do in singing. Language was like clothes; it could be a
help to one, or it could give one away. But the most important thing was that
one should not pretend to be what one was not.
When she paid her check
she consulted the waiter. "Waiter, do you suppose I could buy one of those
roses? I'm out of the day-coach, and there is a sick girl in there. I'd like to
take her a cup of coffee and one of those flowers."
The waiter liked
nothing better than advising travelers less sophisticated than himself. He told
Thea there were a few roses left in the icebox and he would get one. He took
the flower and the coffee into the day-coach. Thea pointed out the girl, but
she did not accompany him. She hated thanks and never received them gracefully.
She stood outside on the platform to get some fresh air into her lungs. The
train was crossing the Platte River now, and the sunlight was so intense that
it seemed to quiver in little flames on the glittering sandbars, the scrub
willows, and the curling, fretted shallows.
Thea felt that she was
coming back to her own land. She had often heard Mrs. Kronborg say that she
"believed in immigration," and so did Thea believe in it. This earth
seemed to her young and fresh and kindly, a place where refugees from old, sad
countries were given another chance. The mere absence of rocks gave the soil a
kind of amiability and generosity, and the absence of natural boundaries gave
the spirit a wider range. Wire fences might mark the end of a man's pasture,
but they could not shut in his thoughts as mountains and forests can. It was
over flat lands like this, stretching out to drink the sun, that the larks
sang--and one's heart sang there, too. Thea was glad that this was her country,
even if one did not learn to speak elegantly there. It was, somehow, an honest
country, and there was a new song in that blue air which had never been sung in
the world before. It was hard to tell about it, for it had nothing to do with
words; it was like the light of the desert at noon, or the smell of the
sagebrush after rain; intangible but powerful. She had the sense of going back
to a friendly soil, whose friendship was somehow going to strengthen her; a
naive, generous country that gave one its joyous force, its large-hearted,
childlike power to love, just as it gave one its coarse, brilliant flowers.
As she drew in that
glorious air Thea's mind went back to Ray Kennedy. He, too, had that feeling of
empire; as if all the Southwest really belonged to him because he had knocked
about over it so much, and knew it, as he said, "like the blisters on his
own hands." That feeling, she reflected, was the real element of
companionship between her and Ray. Now that she was going back to Colorado, she
realized this as she had not done before.
THEA reached Moonstone
in the late afternoon, and all the Kronborgs were there to meet her except her
two older brothers. Gus and Charley were young men now, and they had declared
at noon that it would "look silly if the whole bunch went down to the
train." "There's no use making a fuss over Thea just because she's
been to Chicago," Charley warned his mother. "She's inclined to think
pretty well of herself, anyhow, and if you go treating her like company,
there'll be no living in the house with her." Mrs. Kronborg simply leveled
her eyes at Charley, and he faded away, muttering. She had, as Mr. Kronborg
always said with an inclination of his head, good control over her children.
Anna, too, wished to absent herself from the party, but in the end her
curiosity got the better of her. So when Thea stepped down from the porter's
stool, a very creditable Kronborg representation was grouped on the platform to
greet her. After they had all kissed her (Gunner and Axel shyly), Mr. Kronborg
hurried his flock into the hotel omnibus, in which they were to be driven
ceremoniously home, with the neighbors looking out of their windows to see them
go by.
All the family talked
to her at once, except Thor,-- impressive in new trousers,-- who was gravely
silent and who refused to sit on Thea's lap. One of the first things Anna told
her was that Maggie Evans, the girl who used to cough in prayer meeting, died
yesterday, and had made a request that Thea sing at her funeral.
Thea's smile froze.
"I'm not going to sing at all this summer, except my exercises. Bowers
says I taxed my voice last winter, singing at funerals so much. If I begin the
first day after I get home, there'll be no end to it. You can tell them I
caught cold on the train, or something."
Thea saw Anna glance at
their mother. Thea remembered having seen that look on Anna's face often
before, but she had never thought anything about it because she was used to it.
Now she realized that the look was distinctly spiteful, even vindictive. She
suddenly realized that Anna had always disliked her.
Mrs. Kronborg seemed to
notice nothing, and changed the trend of the conversation, telling Thea that
Dr. Archie and Mr. Upping, the jeweler, were both coming in to see her that
evening, and that she had asked Spanish Johnny to come, because he had behaved
well all winter and ought to be encouraged.
The next morning Thea
wakened early in her own room up under the eaves and lay watching the sunlight
shine on the roses of her wall-paper. She wondered whether she would ever like
a plastered room as well as this one lined with scantlings. It was snug and
tight, like the cabin of a little boat. Her bed faced the window and stood
against the wall, under the slant of the ceiling. When she went away she could
just touch the ceiling with the tips of her fingers; now she could touch it
with the palm of her hand. It was so little that it was like a sunny cave, with
roses running all over the roof. Through the low window, as she lay there, she
could watch people going by on the farther side of the street; men, going
downtown to open their stores. Thor was over there, rattling his express wagon
along the sidewalk. Tillie had put a bunch of French pinks in a tumbler of
water on her dresser, and they gave out a pleasant perfume. The blue jays were
fighting and screeching in the cottonwood tree outside her window, as they
always did, and she could hear the old Baptist deacon across the street calling
his chickens, as she had heard him do every summer morning since she could
remember. It was pleasant to waken up in that bed, in that room, and to feel
the brightness of the morning, while light quivered about the low, papered
ceiling in golden spots, refracted by the broken mirror and the glass of water
that held the pinks. "Im leuchtended Sommermorgen"; those lines, and
the face of her old teacher, came back to Thea, floated to her out of sleep,
perhaps. She had been dreaming something pleasant, but she could not remember
what. She would go to call upon Mrs. Kohler to-day, and see the pigeons washing
their pink feet in the drip under the water tank, and flying about their house
that was sure to have a fresh coat of white paint on it for summer. On the way
home she would stop to see Mrs. Tellamantez. On Sunday she would coax Gunner to
take her out to the sand hills. She had missed them in Chicago; had been
homesick for their brilliant morning gold and for their soft colors at evening.
The Lake, somehow, had never taken their place.
While she lay planning,
relaxed in warm drowsiness, she heard a knock at her door. She supposed it was
Tillie, who sometimes fluttered in on her before she was out of bed to offer
some service which the family would have ridiculed. But instead, Mrs. Kronborg
herself came in, carrying a tray with Thea's breakfast set out on one of the
best white napkins. Thea sat up with some embarrassment and pulled her
nightgown together across her chest. Mrs. Kronborg was always busy downstairs
in the morning, and Thea could not remember when her mother had come to her
room before.
"I thought you'd
be tired, after traveling, and might like to take it easy for once." Mrs.
Kronborg put the tray on the edge of the bed. "I took some thick cream for
you before the boys got at it. They raised a howl." She chuckled and sat
down in the big wooden rocking chair. Her visit made Thea feel grown-up, and,
somehow, important.
Mrs. Kronborg asked her
about Bowers and the Harsanyis. She felt a great change in Thea, in her face
and in her manner. Mr. Kronborg had noticed it, too, and had spoken of it to
his wife with great satisfaction while they were undressing last night. Mrs.
Kronborg sat looking at her daughter, who lay on her side, supporting herself
on her elbow and lazily drinking her coffee from the tray before her. Her
short-sleeved nightgown had come open at the throat again, and Mrs. Kronborg
noticed how white her arms and shoulders were, as if they had been dipped in
new milk. Her chest was fuller than when she went away, her breasts rounder and
firmer, and though she was so white where she was uncovered, they looked rosy
through the thin muslin. Her body had the elasticity that comes of being highly
charged with the desire to live. Her hair, hanging in two loose braids, one by
either cheek, was just enough disordered to catch the light in all its curly
ends.
Thea always woke with a
pink flush on her cheeks, and this morning her mother thought she had never
seen her eyes so wide-open and bright; like clear green springs in the wood,
when the early sunlight sparkles in them. She would make a very handsome woman,
Mrs. Kronborg said to herself, if she would only get rid of that fierce look
she had sometimes. Mrs. Kronborg took great pleasure in good looks, wherever
she found them. She still remembered that, as a baby, Thea had been the
"best-formed" of any of her children.
"I'll have to get
you a longer bed," she remarked, as she put the tray on the table.
"You're getting too long for that one."
Thea looked up at her
mother and laughed, dropping back on her pillow with a magnificent stretch of
her whole body. Mrs. Kronborg sat down again.
"I don't like to
press you, Thea, but I think you'd better sing at that funeral to-morrow. I'm
afraid you'll always be sorry if you don't. Sometimes a little thing like that,
that seems nothing at the time, comes back on one afterward and troubles one a
good deal. I don't mean the church shall run you to death this summer, like
they used to. I've spoken my mind to your father about that, and he's very
reasonable. But Maggie talked a good deal about you to people this winter;
always asked what word we'd had, and said how she missed your singing and all.
I guess you ought to do that much for her."
"All right,
mother, if you think so." Thea lay looking at her mother with intensely
bright eyes.
"That's right,
daughter." Mrs. Kronborg rose and went over to get the tray, stopping to
put her hand on Thea's chest. "You're filling out nice," she said,
feeling about. "No, I wouldn't bother about the buttons. Leave 'em stay off.
This is a good time to harden your chest."
Thea lay still and
heard her mother's firm step receding along the bare floor of the trunk loft.
There was no sham about her mother, she reflected. Her mother knew a great many
things of which she never talked, and all the church people were forever
chattering about things of which they knew nothing. She liked her mother.
Now for Mexican Town
and the Kohlers! She meant to run in on the old woman without warning, and hug
her.
SPANISH JOHNNY had no
shop of his own, but he kept a table and an order-book in one corner of the
drug store where paints and wall-paper were sold, and he was sometimes to be
found there for an hour or so about noon. Thea had gone into the drug store to
have a friendly chat with the proprietor, who used to lend her books from his
shelves. She found Johnny there, trimming rolls of wall-paper for the parlor of
Banker Smith's new house. She sat down on the top of his table and watched him.
"Johnny," she
said suddenly, "I want you to write down the words of that Mexican
serenade you used to sing; you know, `Rosa de Noche.' It's an unusual song. I'm
going to study it. I know enough Spanish for that."
Johnny looked up from
his roller with his bright, affable smile. "Si, but it is low for you, I
think; voz contralto. It is low for me."
"Nonsense. I can
do more with my low voice than I used to. I'll show you. Sit down and write it
out for me, please." Thea beckoned him with the short yellow pencil tied
to his order-book.
Johnny ran his fingers
through his curly black hair. "If you wish. I do not know if that serenata
all right for young ladies. Down there it is more for married ladies. They sing
it for husbands--or somebody else, may-bee." Johnny's eyes twinkled and he
apologized gracefully with his shoulders. He sat down at the table, and while
Thea looked over his arm, began to write the song down in a long, slanting
script, with highly ornamental capitals. Presently he looked up. "This-a
song not exactly Mexican," he said thoughtfully. "It come from
farther down; Brazil, Venezuela, may-bee. I learn it from some fellow down
there, and he learn it from another fellow. It is-a most like Mexican, but not
quite." Thea did not release him, but pointed to the paper. There were
three verses of the song in all, and when Johnny had written them down, he sat
looking at them meditatively, his head on one side. "I don' think for a
high voice, señorita," he objected with polite persistence. "How you
accompany with piano?"
"Oh, that will be
easy enough."
"For you,
may-bee!" Johnny smiled and drummed on the table with the tips of his
agile brown fingers. "You know something? Listen, I tell you." He
rose and sat down on the table beside her, putting his foot on the chair. He
loved to talk at the hour of noon. "When you was a little girl, no bigger
than that, you come to my house one day 'bout noon, like this, and I was in the
door, playing guitar. You was barehead, barefoot; you run away from home. You
stand there and make a frown at me an' listen. By 'n by you say for me to sing.
I sing some lil' ting, and then I say for you to sing with me. You don' know no
words, of course, but you take the air and you sing it just-a beauti-ful! I
never see a child do that, outside Mexico. You was, oh, I do' know--seven year,
may-bee. By 'n by the preacher come look for you and begin for scold. I say,
`Don' scold, Meester Kronborg. She come for hear guitar. She gotta some music
in her, that child. Where she get?' Then he tell me 'bout your gran'papa play
oboe in the old country. I never forgetta that time." Johnny chuckled
softly.
Thea nodded. "I
remember that day, too. I liked your music better than the church music. When
are you going to have a dance over there, Johnny?"
Johnny tilted his head.
"Well, Saturday night the Spanish boys have a lil' party, some danza. You
know Miguel Ramas? He have some young cousins, two boys, very nice-a, come from
Torreon. They going to Salt Lake for some job-a, and stay off with him
two-three days, and he mus' have a party. You like to come?"
That was how Thea came
to go to the Mexican ball. Mexican Town had been increased by half a dozen new
families during the last few years, and the Mexicans had put up an adobe
dance-hall, that looked exactly like one of their own dwellings, except that it
was a little longer, and was so unpretentious that nobody in Moonstone knew of
its existence. The "Spanish boys" are reticent about their own
affairs. Ray Kennedy used to know about all their little doings, but since his
death there was no one whom the Mexicans considered simpatico.
On Saturday evening
after supper Thea told her mother that she was going over to Mrs. Tellamantez's
to watch the Mexicans dance for a while, and that Johnny would bring her home.
Mrs. Kronborg smiled.
She noticed that Thea had put on a white dress and had done her hair up with
unusual care, and that she carried her best blue scarf. "Maybe you'll take
a turn yourself, eh? I wouldn't mind watching them Mexicans. They're lovely
dancers."
Thea made a feeble
suggestion that her mother might go with her, but Mrs. Kronborg was too wise
for that. She knew that Thea would have a better time if she went alone, and
she watched her daughter go out of the gate and down the sidewalk that led to
the depot.
Thea walked slowly. It
was a soft, rosy evening. The sand hills were lavender. The sun had gone down a
glowing copper disk, and the fleecy clouds in the east were a burning
rose-color, flecked with gold. Thea passed the cottonwood grove and then the
depot, where she left the sidewalk and took the sandy path toward Mexican Town.
She could hear the scraping of violins being tuned, the tinkle of mandolins,
and the growl of a double bass. Where had they got a double bass? She did not
know there was one in Moonstone. She found later that it was the property of
one of Ramas's young cousins, who was taking it to Utah with him to cheer him
at his "job-a."
The Mexicans never wait
until it is dark to begin to dance, and Thea had no difficulty in finding the
new hall, because every other house in the town was deserted. Even the babies
had gone to the ball; a neighbor was always willing to hold the baby while the
mother danced. Mrs. Tellamantez came out to meet Thea and led her in. Johnny
bowed to her from the platform at the end of the room, where he was playing the
mandolin along with two fiddles and the bass. The hall was a long low room,
with white- washed walls, a fairly tight plank floor, wooden benches along the
sides, and a few bracket lamps screwed to the frame timbers. There must have
been fifty people there, counting the children. The Mexican dances were very
much family affairs. The fathers always danced again and again with their
little daughters, as well as with their wives. One of the girls came up to
greet Thea, her dark cheeks glowing with pleasure and cordiality, and
introduced her brother, with whom she had just been dancing. "You better
take him every time he asks you," she whispered. "He's the best
dancer here, except Johnny."
Thea soon decided that
the poorest dancer was herself. Even Mrs. Tellamantez, who always held her
shoulders so stiffly, danced better than she did. The musicians did not remain
long at their post. When one of them felt like dancing, he called some other
boy to take his instrument, put on his coat, and went down on the floor.
Johnny, who wore a blousy white silk shirt, did not even put on his coat.
The dances the railroad
men gave in Firemen's Hall were the only dances Thea had ever been allowed to
go to, and they were very different from this. The boys played rough jokes and
thought it smart to be clumsy and to run into each other on the floor. For the
square dances there was always the bawling voice of the caller, who was also
the county auctioneer.
This Mexican dance was
soft and quiet. There was no calling, the conversation was very low, the rhythm
of the music was smooth and engaging, the men were graceful and courteous. Some
of them Thea had never before seen out of their working clothes, smeared with
grease from the round-house or clay from the brickyard. Sometimes, when the
music happened to be a popular Mexican waltz song, the dancers sang it softly
as they moved. There were three little girls under twelve, in their first
communion dresses, and one of them had an orange marigold in her black hair,
just over her ear. They danced with the men and with each other. There was an
atmosphere of ease and friendly pleasure in the low, dimly lit room, and Thea
could not help wondering whether the Mexicans had no jealousies or neighborly
grudges as the people in Moonstone had. There was no constraint of any kind
there to-night, but a kind of natural harmony about their movements, their
greetings, their low conversation, their smiles.
Ramas brought up his
two young cousins, Silvo and Felipe, and presented them. They were handsome,
smiling youths, of eighteen and twenty, with pale-gold skins, smooth cheeks,
aquiline features, and wavy black hair, like Johnny's. They were dressed alike,
in black velvet jackets and soft silk shirts, with opal shirt-buttons and
flowing black ties looped through gold rings. They had charming manners, and
low, guitar-like voices. They knew almost no English, but a Mexican boy can pay
a great many compliments with a very limited vocabulary. The Ramas boys thought
Thea dazzlingly beautiful. They had never seen a Scandinavian girl before, and
her hair and fair skin bewitched them. "Blanco y oro, semejante la
Pascua!" (White and gold, like Easter!) they exclaimed to each other.
Silvo, the younger, declared that he could never go on to Utah; that he and his
double bass had reached their ultimate destination. The elder was more crafty;
he asked Miguel Ramas whether there would be "plenty more girls like that
a Salt Lake, may- bee?"
Silvo, overhearing,
gave his brother a contemptuous glance. "Plenty more a paraiso
may-bee!" he retorted. When they were not dancing with her, their eyes
followed her, over the coiffures of their other partners. That was not
difficult; one blonde head moving among so many dark ones.
Thea had not meant to
dance much, but the Ramas boys danced so well and were so handsome and adoring
that she yielded to their entreaties. When she sat out a dance with them, they
talked to her about their family at home, and told her how their mother had
once punned upon their name. Rama, in Spanish, meant a branch, they explained.
Once when they were little lads their mother took them along when she went to
help the women decorate the church for Easter. Some one asked her whether she
had brought any flowers, and she replied that she had brought her "ramas."
This was evidently a cherished family story.
When it was nearly
midnight, Johnny announced that every one was going to his house to have
"some lil' ice- cream and some lil' musica." He began to put out the
lights and Mrs. Tellamantez led the way across the square to her casa. The
Ramas brothers escorted Thea, and as they stepped out of the door, Silvo
exclaimed, "hase frio!" and threw his velvet coat about her
shoulders.
Most of the company
followed Mrs. Tellamantez, and they sat about on the gravel in her little yard
while she and Johnny and Mrs. Miguel Ramas served the ice-cream. Thea sat on
Felipe's coat, since Silvo's was already about her shoulders. The youths lay
down on the shining gravel beside her, one on her right and one on her left.
Johnny already called them "los acolitos," the altar-boys. The talk
all about them was low, and indolent. One of the girls was playing on Johnny's
guitar, another was picking lightly at a mandolin. The moonlight was so bright
that one could see every glance and smile, and the flash of their teeth. The
moonflowers over Mrs. Tellamantez's door were wide open and of an unearthly
white. The moon itself looked like a great pale flower in the sky.
After all the ice-cream
was gone, Johnny approached Thea, his guitar under his arm, and the elder Ramas
boy politely gave up his place. Johnny sat down, took a long breath, struck a
fierce chord, and then hushed it with his other hand. "Now we have some
lil' serenata, eh? You wan' a try?"
When Thea began to
sing, instant silence fell upon the company. She felt all those dark eyes fix
themselves upon her intently. She could see them shine. The faces came out of
the shadow like the white flowers over the door. Felipe leaned his head upon
his hand. Silvo dropped on his back and lay looking at the moon, under the
impression that he was still looking at Thea. When she finished the first
verse, Thea whispered to Johnny, "Again, I can do it better than
that."
She had sung for
churches and funerals and teachers, but she had never before sung for a really
musical people, and this was the first time she had ever felt the response that
such a people can give. They turned themselves and all they had over to her.
For the moment they cared about nothing in the world but what she was doing.
Their faces confronted her, open, eager, unprotected. She felt as if all these
warm-blooded people debouched into her. Mrs. Tellamantez's fateful resignation,
Johnny's madness, the adoration of the boy who lay still in the sand; in an
instant these things seemed to be within her instead of without, as if they had
come from her in the first place.
When she finished, her
listeners broke into excited murmur. The men began hunting feverishly for
cigarettes. Famos Serranos the barytone bricklayer, touched Johnny's arm, gave
him a questioning look, then heaved a deep sigh. Johnny dropped on his elbow,
wiping his face and neck and hands with his handkerchief. "señorita,"
he panted, "if you sing like that once in the City of Mexico, they just-a
go crazy. In the City of Mexico they ain't-a sit like stumps when they hear
that, not-a much! When they like, they just-a give you the town."
Thea laughed. She, too,
was excited. "Think so, Johnny? Come, sing something with me. El Parreño;
I haven't sung that for a long time."
Johnny laughed and
hugged his guitar. "You not-a forget him?" He began teasing his
strings. "Come!" He threw back his head, "Anoche-e-e--"
"Anoche me confesse
Con un padre carmelite,
Y me dio penitencia
Que besaras tu boquita." (Last night I made confession
With a Carmelite father,
And he gave me absolution
For the kisses you imprinted.) Johnny
had almost every fault that a tenor can have. His voice was thin, unsteady,
husky in the middle tones. But it was distinctly a voice, and sometimes he
managed to get something very sweet out of it. Certainly it made him happy to
sing. Thea kept glancing down at him as he lay there on his elbow. His eyes
seemed twice as large as usual and had lights in them like those the moonlight
makes on black, running water. Thea remembered the old stories about his
"spells." She had never seen him when his madness was on him, but she
felt something tonight at her elbow that gave her an idea of what it might be
like. For the first time she fully understood the cryptic explanation that Mrs.
Tellamantez had made to Dr. Archie, long ago. There were the same shells along
the walk; she believed she could pick out the very one. There was the same moon
up yonder, and panting at her elbow was the same Johnny--fooled by the same old
things!
When they had finished,
Famos, the barytone, murmured something to Johnny; who replied, "Sure we
can sing `Trovatore.' We have no alto, but all the girls can sing alto and make
some noise."
The women laughed.
Mexican women of the poorer class do not sing like the men. Perhaps they are
too indolent. In the evening, when the men are singing their throats dry on the
doorstep, or around the camp-fire beside the work-train, the women usually sit
and comb their hair.
While Johnny was
gesticulating and telling everybody what to sing and how to sing it, Thea put
out her foot and touched the corpse of Silvo with the toe of her slipper.
"Aren't you going to sing, Silvo?" she asked teasingly.
The boy turned on his
side and raised himself on his elbow for a moment. "Not this night, señorita,"
he pleaded softly, "not this night!" He dropped back again, and lay
with his cheek on his right arm, the hand lying passive on the sand above his
head.
"How does he
flatten himself into the ground like that?" Thea asked herself. "I
wish I knew. It's very effective, somehow."
Across the gulch the
Kohlers' little house slept among its trees, a dark spot on the white face of
the desert. The windows of their upstairs bedroom were open, and Paulina had
listened to the dance music for a long while before she drowsed off. She was a
light sleeper, and when she woke again, after midnight, Johnny's concert was at
its height. She lay still until she could bear it no longer. Then she wakened
Fritz and they went over to the window and leaned out. They could hear clearly
there.
"Die Thea,"
whispered Mrs. Kohler; "it must be. Ach, wunderschon!"
Fritz was not so wide
awake as his wife. He grunted and scratched on the floor with his bare foot.
They were listening to a Mexican part-song; the tenor, then the soprano, then
both together; the barytone joins them, rages, is extinguished; the tenor
expires in sobs, and the soprano finishes alone. When the soprano's last note
died away, Fritz nodded to his wife. "Ja," he said; " Schön."
There was silence for a
few moments. Then the guitar sounded fiercely, and several male voices began
the sextette from "Lucia." Johnny's reedy tenor they knew well, and
the bricklayer's big, opaque barytone; the others might be anybody over
there--just Mexican voices. Then at the appointed, at the acute, moment, the
soprano voice, like a fountain jet, shot up into the light. "Horch!
Horch!" the old people whispered, both at once. How it leaped from among
those dusky male voices! How it played in and about and around and over them,
like a goldfish darting among creek minnows, like a yellow butterfly soaring
above a swarm of dark ones. "Ah," said Mrs. Kohler softly, "the
dear man; if he could hear her now!"
MRS. KRONBORG had said
that Thea was not to be disturbed on Sunday morning, and she slept until noon.
When she came downstairs the family were just sitting down to dinner, Mr.
Kronborg at one end of the long table, Mrs. Kronborg at the other. Anna, stiff
and ceremonious, in her summer silk, sat at her father's right, and the boys
were strung along on either side of the table. There was a place left for Thea
between her mother and Thor. During the silence which preceded the blessing,
Thea felt something uncomfortable in the air. Anna and her older brothers had
lowered their eyes when she came in. Mrs. Kronborg nodded cheerfully, and after
the blessing, as she began to pour the coffee, turned to her.
"I expect you had
a good time at that dance, Thea. I hope you got your sleep out."
"High society,
that," remarked Charley, giving the mashed potatoes a vicious swat. Anna's
mouth and eyebrows became half-moons.
Thea looked across the
table at the uncompromising countenances of her older brothers. "Why,
what's the matter with the Mexicans?" she asked, flushing. "They
don't trouble anybody, and they are kind to their families and have good
manners."
"Nice clean
people; got some style about them. Do you really like that kind, Thea, or do
you just pretend to? That's what I'd like to know." Gus looked at her with
pained inquiry. But he at least looked at her.
"They're just as
clean as white people, and they have a perfect right to their own ways. Of
course I like 'em. I don't pretend things."
"Everybody
according to their own taste," remarked Charley bitterly. "Quit
crumbing your bread up, Thor. Ain't you learned how to eat yet?"
"Children,
children!" said Mr. Kronborg nervously, looking up from the chicken he was
dismembering. He glanced at his wife, whom he expected to maintain harmony in
the family.
"That's all right,
Charley. Drop it there," said Mrs. Kronborg. "No use spoiling your
Sunday dinner with race prejudices. The Mexicans suit me and Thea very well.
They are a useful people. Now you can just talk about something else."
Conversation, however,
did not flourish at that dinner. Everybody ate as fast as possible. Charley and
Gus said they had engagements and left the table as soon as they finished their
apple pie. Anna sat primly and ate with great elegance. When she spoke at all
she spoke to her father, about church matters, and always in a commiserating
tone, as if he had met with some misfortune. Mr. Kronborg, quite innocent of
her intentions, replied kindly and absent-mindedly. After the dessert he went
to take his usual Sunday afternoon nap, and Mrs. Kronborg carried some dinner
to a sick neighbor. Thea and Anna began to clear the table.
"I should think
you would show more consideration for father's position, Thea," Anna began
as soon as she and her sister were alone.
Thea gave her a
sidelong glance. "Why, what have I done to father?"
"Everybody at
Sunday-School was talking about you going over there and singing with the
Mexicans all night, when you won't sing for the church. Somebody heard you, and
told it all over town. Of course, we all get the blame for it."
"Anything
disgraceful about singing?" Thea asked with a provoking yawn.
"I must say you
choose your company! You always had that streak in you, Thea. We all hoped that
going away would improve you. Of course, it reflects on father when you are
scarcely polite to the nice people here and make up to the rowdies."
"Oh, it's my
singing with the Mexicans you object to?" Thea put down a tray full of
dishes. "Well, I like to sing over there, and I don't like to over here.
I'll sing for them any time they ask me to. They know something about what I'm
doing. They're a talented people."
"Talented!"
Anna made the word sound like escaping steam. "I suppose you think it's
smart to come home and throw that at your family!"
Thea picked up the
tray. By this time she was as white as the Sunday tablecloth. "Well,"
she replied in a cold, even tone, "I'll have to throw it at them sooner or
later. It's just a question of when, and it might as well be now as any time."
She carried the tray blindly into the kitchen.
Tillie, who was always
listening and looking out for her, took the dishes from her with a furtive,
frightened glance at her stony face. Thea went slowly up the back stairs to her
loft. Her legs seemed as heavy as lead as she climbed the stairs, and she felt
as if everything inside her had solidified and grown hard.
After shutting her door
and locking it, she sat down on the edge of her bed. This place had always been
her refuge, but there was a hostility in the house now which this door could
not shut out. This would be her last summer in that room. Its services were
over; its time was done. She rose and put her hand on the low ceiling. Two
tears ran down her cheeks, as if they came from ice that melted slowly. She was
not ready to leave her little shell. She was being pulled out too soon. She
would never be able to think anywhere else as well as here. She would never
sleep so well or have such dreams in any other bed; even last night, such
sweet, breathless dreams-- Thea hid her face in the pillow. Wherever she went
she would like to take that little bed with her. When she went away from it for
good, she would leave something that she could never recover; memories of
pleasant excitement, of happy adventures in her mind; of warm sleep on howling
winter nights, and joyous awakenings on summer mornings. There were certain
dreams that might refuse to come to her at all except in a little morning cave,
facing the sun--where they came to her so powerfully, where they beat a triumph
in her!
The room was hot as an
oven. The sun was beating fiercely on the shingles behind the board ceiling.
She undressed, and before she threw herself upon her bed in her chemise, she
frowned at herself for a long while in her looking-glass. Yes, she and It must
fight it out together. The thing that looked at her out of her own eyes was the
only friend she could count on. Oh, she would make these people sorry enough!
There would come a time when they would want to make it up with her. But, never
again! She had no little vanities, only one big one, and she would never
forgive.
Her mother was all
right, but her mother was a part of the family, and she was not. In the nature
of things, her mother had to be on both sides. Thea felt that she had been
betrayed. A truce had been broken behind her back. She had never had much
individual affection for any of her brothers except Thor, but she had never
been disloyal, never felt scorn or held grudges. As a little girl she had
always been good friends with Gunner and Axel, whenever she had time to play.
Even before she got her own room, when they were all sleeping and dressing
together, like little cubs, and breakfasting in the kitchen, she had led an
absorbing personal life of her own. But she had a cub loyalty to the other
cubs. She thought them nice boys and tried to make them get their lessons. She
once fought a bully who "picked on" Axel at school. She never made
fun of Anna's crimpings and curlings and beauty-rites.
Thea had always taken
it for granted that her sister and brothers recognized that she had special
abilities, and that they were proud of it. She had done them the honor, she
told herself bitterly, to believe that though they had no particular
endowments, they were of her kind , and not of the Moonstone kind. Now they had
all grown up and become persons. They faced each other as individuals, and she
saw that Anna and Gus and Charley were among the people whom she had always
recognized as her natural enemies. Their ambitions and sacred proprieties were
meaningless to her. She had neglected to congratulate Charley upon having been
promoted from the grocery department of Commings's store to the drygoods
department. Her mother had reproved her for this omission. And how was she to
know, Thea asked herself, that Anna expected to be teased because Bert Rice now
came and sat in the hammock with her every night? No, it was all clear enough.
Nothing that she would ever do in the world would seem important to them, and
nothing they would ever do would seem important to her.
Thea lay thinking
intently all through the stifling afternoon. Tillie whispered something outside
her door once, but she did not answer. She lay on her bed until the second
church bell rang, and she saw the family go trooping up the sidewalk on the
opposite side of the street, Anna and her father in the lead. Anna seemed to
have taken on a very story-book attitude toward her father; patronizing and
condescending, it seemed to Thea. The older boys were not in the family band.
They now took their girls to church. Tillie had stayed at home to get supper.
Thea got up, washed her hot face and arms, and put on the white organdie dress
she had worn last night; it was getting too small for her, and she might as
well wear it out. After she was dressed she unlocked her door and went
cautiously downstairs. She felt as if chilling hostilities might be awaiting
her in the trunk loft, on the stairway, almost anywhere. In the dining-room she
found Tillie, sitting by the open window, reading the dramatic news in a Denver
Sunday paper. Tillie kept a scrapbook in which she pasted clippings about
actors and actresses.
"Come look at this
picture of Pauline Hall in tights, Thea," she called. "Ain't she
cute? It's too bad you didn't go to the theater more when you was in Chicago;
such a good chance! Didn't you even get to see Clara Morris or Modjeska?"
"No; I didn't have
time. Besides, it costs money, Tillie," Thea replied wearily, glancing at
the paper Tillie held out to her.
Tillie looked up at her
niece. "Don't you go and be upset about any of Anna's notions. She's one
of these narrow kind. Your father and mother don't pay any attention to what
she says. Anna's fussy; she is with me, but I don't mind her."
"Oh, I don't mind
her. That's all right, Tillie. I guess I'll take a walk."
Thea knew that Tillie
hoped she would stay and talk to her for a while, and she would have liked to
please her. But in a house as small as that one, everything was too intimate
and mixed up together. The family was the family, an integral thing. One
couldn't discuss Anna there. She felt differently toward the house and
everything in it, as if the battered old furniture that seemed so kindly, and
the old carpets on which she had played, had been nourishing a secret grudge against
her and were not to be trusted any more.
She went aimlessly out
of the front gate, not knowing what to do with herself. Mexican Town, somehow,
was spoiled for her just then, and she felt that she would hide if she saw
Silvo or Felipe coming toward her. She walked down through the empty main
street. All the stores were closed, their blinds down. On the steps of the bank
some idle boys were sitting, telling disgusting stories because there was
nothing else to do. Several of them had gone to school with Thea, but when she
nodded to them they hung their heads and did not speak. Thea's body was often
curiously expressive of what was going on in her mind, and to-night there was
something in her walk and carriage that made these boys feel that she was "stuck
up." If she had stopped and talked to them, they would have thawed out on
the instant and would have been friendly and grateful. But Thea was hurt
afresh, and walked on, holding her chin higher than ever. As she passed the
Duke Block, she saw a light in Dr. Archie's office, and she went up the stairs
and opened the door into his study. She found him with a pile of papers and
account- books before him. He pointed her to her old chair at the end of his
desk and leaned back in his own, looking at her with satisfaction. How handsome
she was growing!
"I'm still chasing
the elusive metal, Thea,"--he pointed to the papers before him,--"I'm
up to my neck in mines, and I'm going to be a rich man some day."
"I hope you will;
awfully rich. That's the only thing that counts." She looked restlessly
about the consulting- room. "To do any of the things one wants to do, one
has to have lots and lots of money."
Dr. Archie was direct.
"What's the matter? Do you need some?"
Thea shrugged.
"Oh, I can get along, in a little way." She looked intently out of
the window at the arc street- lamp that was just beginning to sputter.
"But it's silly to live at all for little things," she added quietly.
"Living's too much trouble unless one can get something big out of
it."
Dr. Archie rested his
elbows on the arms of his chair, dropped his chin on his clasped hands and
looked at her. "Living is no trouble for little people, believe me!"
he exclaimed. "What do you want to get out of it?"
"Oh--so many
things!" Thea shivered.
"But what? Money?
You mentioned that. Well, you can make money, if you care about that more than
anything else." He nodded prophetically above his interlacing fingers.
"But I don't.
That's only one thing. Anyhow, I couldn't if I did." She pulled her dress
lower at the neck as if she were suffocating. "I only want impossible
things," she said roughly. "The others don't interest me."
Dr. Archie watched her
contemplatively, as if she were a beaker full of chemicals working. A few years
ago, when she used to sit there, the light from under his green lamp- shade
used to fall full upon her broad face and yellow pig- tails. Now her face was
in the shadow and the line of light fell below her bare throat, directly across
her bosom. The shrunken white organdie rose and fell as if she were struggling
to be free and to break out of it altogether. He felt that her heart must be
laboring heavily in there, but he was afraid to touch her; he was, indeed. He
had never seen her like this before. Her hair, piled high on her head, gave her
a commanding look, and her eyes, that used to be so inquisitive, were stormy.
"Thea," he
said slowly, "I won't say that you can have everything you want--that
means having nothing, in reality. But if you decide what it is you want most,
you can get it." His eye caught hers for a moment. "Not everybody
can, but you can. Only, if you want a big thing, you've got to have nerve
enough to cut out all that's easy, everything that's to be had cheap." Dr.
Archie paused. He picked up a paper-cutter and, feeling the edge of it softly
with his fingers, he added slowly, as if to himself:--
"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win . . . or lose it all." Thea's
lips parted; she looked at him from under a frown, searching his face. "Do
you mean to break loose, too, and --do something?" she asked in a low
voice.
"I mean to get
rich, if you call that doing anything. I've found what I can do without. You
make such bargains in your mind, first."
Thea sprang up and took
the paper-cutter he had put down, twisting it in her hands. "A long while
first, sometimes," she said with a short laugh. "But suppose one can
never get out what they've got in them? Suppose they make a mess of it in the
end; then what?" She threw the paper-cutter on the desk and took a step
toward the doctor, until her dress touched him. She stood looking down at him.
"Oh, it's easy to fail!" She was breathing through her mouth and her
throat was throbbing with excitement.
As he looked up at her,
Dr. Archie's hands tightened on the arms of his chair. He had thought he knew
Thea Kronborg pretty well, but he did not know the girl who was standing there.
She was beautiful, as his little Swede had never been, but she frightened him.
Her pale cheeks, her parted lips, her flashing eyes, seemed suddenly to mean
one thing--he did not know what. A light seemed to break upon her from far
away--or perhaps from far within. She seemed to grow taller, like a scarf drawn
out long; looked as if she were pursued and fleeing, and--yes, she looked
tormented. "It's easy to fail," he heard her say again, "and if
I fail, you'd better forget about me, for I'll be one of the worst women that
ever lived. I'll be an awful woman!"
In the shadowy light
above the lampshade he caught her glance again and held it for a moment. Wild
as her eyes were, that yellow gleam at the back of them was as hard as a
diamond drill-point. He rose with a nervous laugh and dropped his hand lightly
on her shoulder. "No, you won't. You'll be a splendid one!"
She shook him off
before he could say anything more, and went out of his door with a kind of
bound. She left so quickly and so lightly that he could not even hear her foot-
step in the hallway outside. Archie dropped back into his chair and sat
motionless for a long while.
So it went; one loved a
quaint little girl, cheerful, industrious, always on the run and hustling
through her tasks; and suddenly one lost her. He had thought he knew that child
like the glove on his hand. But about this tall girl who threw up her head and
glittered like that all over, he knew nothing. She was goaded by desires, ambitions,
revulsions that were dark to him. One thing he knew: the old highroad of life,
worn safe and easy, hugging the sunny slopes, would scarcely hold her again.
After that night Thea
could have asked pretty much anything of him. He could have refused her
nothing. Years ago a crafty little bunch of hair and smiles had shown him what
she wanted, and he had promptly married her. To-night a very different sort of
girl--driven wild by doubts and youth, by poverty and riches--had let him see
the fierceness of her nature. She went out still distraught, not knowing or
caring what she had shown him. But to Archie knowledge of that sort was
obligation. Oh, he was the same old Howard Archie!
That Sunday in July was
the turning-point; Thea's peace of mind did not come back. She found it hard
even to practice at home. There was something in the air there that froze her
throat. In the morning, she walked as far as she could walk. In the hot
afternoons she lay on her bed in her nightgown, planning fiercely. She haunted
the post-office. She must have worn a path in the sidewalk that led to the
post-office, that summer. She was there the moment the mail-sacks came up from
the depot, morning and evening, and while the letters were being sorted and
distributed she paced up and down outside, under the cottonwood trees,
listening to the thump, thump, thump of Mr. Thompson's stamp. She hung upon any
sort of word from Chicago; a card from Bowers, a letter from Mrs. Harsanyi,
from Mr. Larsen, from her landlady,--anything to reassure her that Chicago was
still there. She began to feel the same restlessness that had tortured her the
last spring when she was teaching in Moonstone. Suppose she never got away
again, after all? Suppose one broke a leg and had to lie in bed at home for weeks,
or had pneumonia and died there. The desert was so big and thirsty; if one's
foot slipped, it could drink one up like a drop of water.
This time, when Thea
left Moonstone to go back to Chicago, she went alone. As the train pulled out,
she looked back at her mother and father and Thor. They were calm and cheerful;
they did not know, they did not understand. Something pulled in her--and broke.
She cried all the way to Denver, and that night, in her berth, she kept sobbing
and waking herself. But when the sun rose in the morning, she was far away. It
was all behind her, and she knew that she would never cry like that again.
People live through such pain only once; pain comes again, but it finds a
tougher surface. Thea remembered how she had gone away the first time, with
what confidence in everything, and what pitiful ignorance. Such a silly! She
felt resentful toward that stupid, good-natured child. How much older she was
now, and how much harder! She was going away to fight, and she was going away
forever.
So many grinning,
stupid faces! Thea was sitting by the window in Bowers's studio, waiting for
him to come back from lunch. On her knee was the latest number of an
illustrated musical journal in which musicians great and little stridently
advertised their wares. Every afternoon she played accompaniments for people
who looked and smiled like these. She was getting tired of the human
countenance.
Thea had been in
Chicago for two months. She had a small church position which partly paid her
living expenses, and she paid for her singing lessons by playing Bowers's
accompaniments every afternoon from two until six. She had been compelled to
leave her old friends Mrs. Lorch and Mrs. Andersen, because the long ride from
North Chicago to Bowers's studio on Michigan Avenue took too much time--an hour
in the morning, and at night, when the cars were crowded, an hour and a half.
For the first month she had clung to her old room, but the bad air in the cars,
at the end of a long day's work, fatigued her greatly and was bad for her
voice. Since she left Mrs. Lorch, she had been staying at a students' club to
which she was introduced by Miss Adler, Bowers's morning accompanist, an
intelligent Jewish girl from Evanston.
Thea took her lesson
from Bowers every day from eleven-thirty until twelve. Then she went out to
lunch with an Italian grammar under her arm, and came back to the studio to
begin her work at two. In the afternoon Bowers coached professionals and taught
his advanced pupils. It was his theory that Thea ought to be able to learn a
great deal by keeping her ears open while she played for him.
The concert-going
public of Chicago still remembers the long, sallow, discontented face of
Madison Bowers. He seldom missed an evening concert, and was usually to be seen
lounging somewhere at the back of the concert hall, reading a newspaper or
review, and conspicuously ignoring the efforts of the performers. At the end of
a number he looked up from his paper long enough to sweep the applauding
audience with a contemptuous eye. His face was intelligent, with a narrow lower
jaw, a thin nose, faded gray eyes, and a close-cut brown mustache. His hair was
iron-gray, thin and dead-looking. He went to concerts chiefly to satisfy
himself as to how badly things were done and how gullible the public was. He
hated the whole race of artists; the work they did, the wages they got, and the
way they spent their money. His father, old Hiram Bowers, was still alive and
at work, a genial old choirmaster in Boston, full of enthusiasm at seventy. But
Madison was of the colder stuff of his grandfathers, a long line of New
Hampshire farmers; hard workers, close traders, with good minds, mean natures,
and flinty eyes. As a boy Madison had a fine barytone voice, and his father
made great sacrifices for him, sending him to Germany at an early age and
keeping him abroad at his studies for years. Madison worked under the best
teachers, and afterward sang in England in oratorio. His cold nature and
academic methods were against him. His audiences were always aware of the
contempt he felt for them. A dozen poorer singers succeeded, but Bowers did
not.
Bowers had all the
qualities which go to make a good teacher--except generosity and warmth. His
intelligence was of a high order, his taste never at fault. He seldom worked
with a voice without improving it, and in teaching the delivery of oratorio he
was without a rival. Singers came from far and near to study Bach and Handel
with him. Even the fashionable sopranos and contraltos of Chicago, St. Paul,
and St. Louis (they were usually ladies with very rich husbands, and Bowers
called them the "pampered jades of Asia") humbly endured his sardonic
humor for the sake of what he could do for them. He was not at all above helping
a very lame singer across, if her husband's check-book warranted it. He had a
whole bag of tricks for stupid people, "life-preservers," he called
them. "Cheap repairs for a cheap 'un," he used to say, but the
husbands never found the repairs very cheap. Those were the days when
lumbermen's daughters and brewers' wives contended in song; studied in Germany
and then floated from Sängerfest to Sängerfest. Choral societies flourished in
all the rich lake cities and river cities. The soloists came to Chicago to
coach with Bowers, and he often took long journeys to hear and instruct a
chorus. He was intensely avaricious, and from these semi-professionals he
reaped a golden harvest. They fed his pockets and they fed his ever-hungry
contempt, his scorn of himself and his accomplices. The more money he made, the
more parsimonious he became. His wife was so shabby that she never went
anywhere with him, which suited him exactly. Because his clients were luxurious
and extravagant, he took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes half- soled
a second time, and in getting the last wear out of a broken collar. He had
first been interested in Thea Kronborg because of her bluntness, her country
roughness, and her manifest carefulness about money. The mention of Harsanyi's
name always made him pull a wry face. For the first time Thea had a friend who,
in his own cool and guarded way, liked her for whatever was least admirable in
her.
Thea was still looking
at the musical paper, her grammar unopened on the window-sill, when Bowers
sauntered in a little before two o'clock. He was smoking a cheap cigarette and
wore the same soft felt hat he had worn all last winter. He never carried a
cane or wore gloves.
Thea followed him from
the reception-room into the studio. "I may cut my lesson out to-morrow,
Mr. Bowers. I have to hunt a new boarding-place."
Bowers looked up
languidly from his desk where he had begun to go over a pile of letters.
"What's the matter with the Studio Club? Been fighting with them
again?"
"The Club's all
right for people who like to live that way. I don't."
Bowers lifted his
eyebrows. "Why so tempery?" he asked as he drew a check from an
envelope postmarked "Minneapolis."
"I can't work with
a lot of girls around. They're too familiar. I never could get along with girls
of my own age. It's all too chummy. Gets on my nerves. I didn't come here to
play kindergarten games." Thea began energetically to arrange the
scattered music on the piano.
Bowers grimaced
good-humoredly at her over the three checks he was pinning together. He liked
to play at a rough game of banter with her. He flattered himself that he had
made her harsher than she was when she first came to him; that he had got off a
little of the sugar-coating Harsanyi always put on his pupils.
"The art of making
yourself agreeable never comes amiss, Miss Kronborg. I should say you rather
need a little practice along that line. When you come to marketing your wares
in the world, a little smoothness goes farther than a great deal of talent
sometimes. If you happen to be cursed with a real talent, then you've got to be
very smooth indeed, or you'll never get your money back." Bowers snapped
the elastic band around his bank-book.
Thea gave him a sharp,
recognizing glance. "Well, that's the money I'll have to go without,"
she replied.
"Just what do you
mean?"
"I mean the money
people have to grin for. I used to know a railroad man who said there was money
in every profession that you couldn't take. He'd tried a good many jobs,"
Thea added musingly; "perhaps he was too particular about the kind he
could take, for he never picked up much. He was proud, but I liked him for
that."
Bowers rose and closed
his desk. "Mrs. Priest is late again. By the way, Miss Kronborg, remember
not to frown when you are playing for Mrs. Priest. You did not remember
yesterday."
"You mean when she
hits a tone with her breath like that? Why do you let her? You wouldn't let
me."
"I certainly would
not. But that is a mannerism of Mrs. Priest's. The public like it, and they pay
a great deal of money for the pleasure of hearing her do it. There she is.
Remember!"
Bowers opened the door
of the reception-room and a tall, imposing woman rustled in, bringing with her
a glow of animation which pervaded the room as if half a dozen persons, all
talking gayly, had come in instead of one. She was large, handsome, expansive,
uncontrolled; one felt this the moment she crossed the threshold. She shone
with care and cleanliness, mature vigor, unchallenged authority, gracious
good-humor, and absolute confidence in her person, her powers, her position,
and her way of life; a glowing, overwhelming self-satisfaction, only to be
found where human society is young and strong and without yesterdays. Her face
had a kind of heavy, thoughtless beauty, like a pink peony just at the point of
beginning to fade. Her brown hair was waved in front and done up behind in a
great twist, held by a tortoiseshell comb with gold filigree. She wore a beautiful
little green hat with three long green feathers sticking straight up in front,
a little cape made of velvet and fur with a yellow satin rose on it. Her
gloves, her shoes, her veil, somehow made themselves felt. She gave the
impression of wearing a cargo of splendid merchandise.
Mrs. Priest nodded
graciously to Thea, coquettishly to Bowers, and asked him to untie her veil for
her. She threw her splendid wrap on a chair, the yellow lining out. Thea was
already at the piano. Mrs. Priest stood behind her.
"`Rejoice Greatly'
first, please. And please don't hurry it in there," she put her arm over
Thea's shoulder, and indicated the passage by a sweep of her white glove. She
threw out her chest, clasped her hands over her abdomen, lifted her chin, worked
the muscles of her cheeks back and forth for a moment, and then began with
conviction, "Re-jo-oice! Re-jo-oice!"
Bowers paced the room
with his catlike tread. When he checked Mrs. Priest's vehemence at all, he
handled her roughly; poked and hammered her massive person with cold
satisfaction, almost as if he were taking out a grudge on this splendid
creation. Such treatment the imposing lady did not at all resent. She tried
harder and harder, her eyes growing all the while more lustrous and her lips redder.
Thea played on as she was told, ignoring the singer's struggles.
When she first heard
Mrs. Priest sing in church, Thea admired her. Since she had found out how dull
the good- natured soprano really was, she felt a deep contempt for her. She
felt that Mrs. Priest ought to be reproved and even punished for her
shortcomings; that she ought to be exposed,--at least to herself,--and not be
permitted to live and shine in happy ignorance of what a poor thing it was she
brought across so radiantly. Thea's cold looks of reproof were lost upon Mrs.
Priest; although the lady did murmur one day when she took Bowers home in her
carriage, "How handsome your afternoon girl would be if she did not have
that unfortunate squint; it gives her that vacant Swede look, like an
animal." That amused Bowers. He liked to watch the germination and growth
of antipathies.
One of the first
disappointments Thea had to face when she returned to Chicago that fall, was
the news that the Harsanyis were not coming back. They had spent the summer in
a camp in the Adirondacks and were moving to New York. An old teacher and
friend of Harsanyi's, one of the best-known piano teachers in New York, was
about to retire because of failing health and had arranged to turn his pupils
over to Harsanyi. Andor was to give two recitals in New York in November, to
devote himself to his new students until spring, and then to go on a short
concert tour. The Harsanyis had taken a furnished apartment in New York, as
they would not attempt to settle a place of their own until Andor's recitals
were over. The first of December, however, Thea received a note from Mrs.
Harsanyi, asking her to call at the old studio, where she was packing their
goods for shipment.
The morning after this
invitation reached her, Thea climbed the stairs and knocked at the familiar
door. Mrs. Harsanyi herself opened it, and embraced her visitor warmly. Taking
Thea into the studio, which was littered with excelsior and packing-cases, she
stood holding her hand and looking at her in the strong light from the big
window before she allowed her to sit down. Her quick eye saw many changes. The
girl was taller, her figure had become definite, her carriage positive. She had
got used to living in the body of a young woman, and she no longer tried to
ignore it and behave as if she were a little girl. With that increased
independence of body there had come a change in her face; an indifference,
something hard and skeptical. Her clothes, too, were different, like the attire
of a shopgirl who tries to follow the fashions; a purple suit, a piece of cheap
fur, a three-cornered purple hat with a pompon sticking up in front. The queer
country clothes she used to wear suited her much better, Mrs. Harsanyi thought.
But such trifles, after all, were accidental and remediable. She put her hand
on the girl's strong shoulder.
"How much the
summer has done for you! Yes, you are a young lady at last. Andor will be so
glad to hear about you."
Thea looked about at
the disorder of the familiar room. The pictures were piled in a corner, the
piano and the chaise longue were gone. "I suppose I ought to be glad you
have gone away," she said, "but I'm not. It's a fine thing for Mr.
Harsanyi, I suppose."
Mrs. Harsanyi gave her
a quick glance that said more than words. "If you knew how long I have
wanted to get him away from here, Miss Kronborg! He is never tired, never
discouraged, now."
Thea sighed. "I'm
glad for that, then." Her eyes traveled over the faint discolorations on
the walls where the pictures had hung. "I may run away myself. I don't
know whether I can stand it here without you."
"We hope that you
can come to New York to study before very long. We have thought of that. And
you must tell me how you are getting on with Bowers. Andor will want to know all
about it."
"I guess I get on
more or less. But I don't like my work very well. It never seems serious as my
work with Mr. Harsanyi did. I play Bowers's accompaniments in the afternoons,
you know. I thought I would learn a good deal from the people who work with
him, but I don't think I get much."
Mrs. Harsanyi looked at
her inquiringly. Thea took out a carefully folded handkerchief from the bosom
of her dress and began to draw the corners apart. "Singing doesn't seem to
be a very brainy profession, Mrs. Harsanyi," she said slowly. "The
people I see now are not a bit like the ones I used to meet here. Mr.
Harsanyi's pupils, even the dumb ones, had more--well, more of everything, it
seems to me. The people I have to play accompaniments for are discouraging. The
professionals, like Katharine Priest and Miles Murdstone, are worst of all. If
I have to play `The Messiah' much longer for Mrs. Priest, I'll go out of my
mind!" Thea brought her foot down sharply on the bare floor.
Mrs. Harsanyi looked
down at the foot in perplexity. "You mustn't wear such high heels, my
dear. They will spoil your walk and make you mince along. Can't you at least
learn to avoid what you dislike in these singers? I was never able to care for
Mrs. Priest's singing."
Thea was sitting with
her chin lowered. Without moving her head she looked up at Mrs. Harsanyi and
smiled; a smile much too cold and desperate to be seen on a young face, Mrs.
Harsanyi felt. "Mrs. Harsanyi, it seems to me that what I learn is just to
dislike. I dislike so much and so hard that it tires me out. I've got no heart
for anything." She threw up her head suddenly and sat in defiance, her
hand clenched on the arm of the chair. "Mr. Harsanyi couldn't stand these
people an hour, I know he couldn't. He'd put them right out of the window
there, frizzes and feathers and all. Now, take that new soprano they're all
making such a fuss about, Jessie Darcey. She's going on tour with a symphony
orchestra and she's working up her repertory with Bowers. She's singing some Schumann
songs Mr. Harsanyi used to go over with me. Well, I don't know what he would do
if he heard her."
"But if your own
work goes well, and you know these people are wrong, why do you let them
discourage you?"
Thea shook her head.
"That's just what I don't understand myself. Only, after I've heard them
all afternoon, I come out frozen up. Somehow it takes the shine off of
everything. People want Jessie Darcey and the kind of thing she does; so what's
the use?"
Mrs. Harsanyi smiled.
"That stile you must simply vault over. You must not begin to fret about
the successes of cheap people. After all, what have they to do with you?"
"Well, if I had
somebody like Mr. Harsanyi, perhaps I wouldn't fret about them. He was the
teacher for me. Please tell him so."
Thea rose and Mrs.
Harsanyi took her hand again. "I am sorry you have to go through this time
of discouragement. I wish Andor could talk to you, he would understand it so
well. But I feel like urging you to keep clear of Mrs. Priest and Jessie Darcey
and all their works."
Thea laughed
discordantly. "No use urging me. I don't get on with them at all. My spine
gets like a steel rail when they come near me. I liked them at first, you know.
Their clothes and their manners were so fine, and Mrs. Priest is handsome. But
now I keep wanting to tell them how stupid they are. Seems like they ought to
be informed, don't you think so?" There was a flash of the shrewd grin
that Mrs. Harsanyi remembered. Thea pressed her hand. "I must go now. I had
to give my lesson hour this morning to a Duluth woman who has come on to coach,
and I must go and play `On Mighty Pens' for her. Please tell Mr. Harsanyi that
I think oratorio is a great chance for bluffers."
Mrs. Harsanyi detained
her. "But he will want to know much more than that about you. You are free
at seven? Come back this evening, then, and we will go to dinner somewhere, to
some cheerful place. I think you need a party."
Thea brightened.
"Oh, I do! I'll love to come; that will be like old times. You see,"
she lingered a moment, softening, "I wouldn't mind if there were only one
of them I could really admire."
"How about
Bowers?" Mrs. Harsanyi asked as they were approaching the stairway.
"Well, there's
nothing he loves like a good fakir, and nothing he hates like a good artist. I
always remember something Mr. Harsanyi said about him. He said Bowers was the
cold muffin that had been left on the plate."
Mrs. Harsanyi stopped
short at the head of the stairs and said decidedly: "I think Andor made a
mistake. I can't believe that is the right atmosphere for you. It would hurt
you more than most people. It's all wrong."
"Something's
wrong," Thea called back as she clattered down the stairs in her high
heels.
DURING that winter Thea
lived in so many places that sometimes at night when she left Bowers's studio
and emerged into the street she had to stop and think for a moment to remember
where she was living now and what was the best way to get there.
When she moved into a
new place her eyes challenged the beds, the carpets, the food, the mistress of
the house. The boarding-houses were wretchedly conducted and Thea's complaints
sometimes took an insulting form. She quarreled with one landlady after another
and moved on. When she moved into a new room, she was almost sure to hate it on
sight and to begin planning to hunt another place before she unpacked her
trunk. She was moody and contemptuous toward her fellow boarders, except toward
the young men, whom she treated with a careless familiarity which they usually
misunderstood. They liked her, however, and when she left the house after a
storm, they helped her to move her things and came to see her after she got
settled in a new place. But she moved so often that they soon ceased to follow
her. They could see no reason for keeping up with a girl who, under her
jocularity, was cold, self-centered, and unimpressionable. They soon felt that
she did not admire them.
Thea used to waken up
in the night and wonder why she was so unhappy. She would have been amazed if
she had known how much the people whom she met in Bowers's studio had to do
with her low spirits. She had never been conscious of those instinctive
standards which are called ideals, and she did not know that she was suffering
for them. She often found herself sneering when she was on a street-car, or
when she was brushing out her hair before her mirror, as some inane remark or
too familiar mannerism flitted across her mind.
She felt no creature
kindness, no tolerant good-will for Mrs. Priest or Jessie Darcey. After one of
Jessie Darcey's concerts the glowing press notices, and the admiring comments
that floated about Bowers's studio, caused Thea bitter unhappiness. It was not
the torment of personal jealousy. She had never thought of herself as even a
possible rival of Miss Darcey. She was a poor music student, and Jessie Darcey
was a popular and petted professional. Mrs. Priest, whatever one held against
her, had a fine, big, showy voice and an impressive presence. She read
indifferently, was inaccurate, and was always putting other people wrong, but
she at least had the material out of which singers can be made. But people
seemed to like Jessie Darcey exactly because she could not sing; because, as
they put it, she was "so natural and unprofessional." Her singing was
pronounced "artless," her voice "birdlike." Miss Darcey was
thin and awkward in person, with a sharp, sallow face. Thea noticed that her
plainness was accounted to her credit, and that people spoke of it affectionately.
Miss Darcey was singing everywhere just then; one could not help hearing about
her. She was backed by some of the packing-house people and by the Chicago
Northwestern Railroad. Only one critic raised his voice against her. Thea went
to several of Jessie Darcey's concerts. It was the first time she had had an
opportunity to observe the whims of the public which singers live by
interesting. She saw that people liked in Miss Darcey every quality a singer
ought not to have, and especially the nervous complacency that stamped her as a
commonplace young woman. They seemed to have a warmer feeling for Jessie than
for Mrs. Priest, an affectionate and cherishing regard. Chicago was not so very
different from Moonstone, after all, and Jessie Darcey was only Lily Fisher
under another name.
Thea particularly hated
to accompany for Miss Darcey because she sang off pitch and didn't mind it in
the least. It was excruciating to sit there day after day and hear her; there
was something shameless and indecent about not singing true.
One morning Miss Darcey
came by appointment to go over the programme for her Peoria concert. She was
such a frail-looking girl that Thea ought to have felt sorry for her. True, she
had an arch, sprightly little manner, and a flash of salmon-pink on either brown
cheek. But a narrow upper jaw gave her face a pinched look, and her eyelids
were heavy and relaxed. By the morning light, the purplish brown circles under
her eyes were pathetic enough, and foretold no long or brilliant future. A
singer with a poor digestion and low vitality; she needed no seer to cast her
horoscope. If Thea had ever taken the pains to study her, she would have seen
that, under all her smiles and archness, poor Miss Darcey was really frightened
to death. She could not understand her success any more than Thea could; she
kept catching her breath and lifting her eyebrows and trying to believe that it
was true. Her loquacity was not natural, she forced herself to it, and when she
confided to you how many defects she could overcome by her unusual command of
head resonance, she was not so much trying to persuade you as to persuade
herself.
When she took a note
that was high for her, Miss Darcey always put her right hand out into the air,
as if she were indicating height, or giving an exact measurement. Some early
teacher had told her that she could "place" a tone more surely by the
help of such a gesture, and she firmly believed that it was of great assistance
to her. (Even when she was singing in public, she kept her right hand down with
difficulty, nervously clasping her white kid fingers together when she took a
high note. Thea could always see her elbows stiffen.) She unvaryingly executed
this gesture with a smile of gracious confidence, as if she were actually
putting her finger on the tone: "There it is, friends!"
This morning, in
Gounod's "Ave Maria," as Miss Darcey approached her B natural,--
Dans---nos a--lár-- -- --mes!
out went the hand, with the sure airy gesture, though it was little above A she
got with her voice, whatever she touched with her finger. Often Bowers let such
things pass--with the right people--but this morning he snapped his jaws
together and muttered, "God!" Miss Darcey tried again, with the same
gesture as of putting the crowning touch, tilting her head and smiling
radiantly at Bowers, as if to say, "It is for you I do all this!"
Dans---nos a--lár-- -- --mes!
This time she made B flat, and went on in the happy belief that she had done
well enough, when she suddenly found that her accompanist was not going on with
her, and this put her out completely. She
turned to Thea, whose hands had fallen in her lap. "Oh why did you stop
just there! It is too trying! Now we'd better go back to that other crescendo
and try it from there."
"I beg your
pardon," Thea muttered. "I thought you wanted to get that B
natural." She began again, as Miss Darcey indicated.
After the singer was
gone, Bowers walked up to Thea and asked languidly, "Why do you hate
Jessie so? Her little variations from pitch are between her and her public;
they don't hurt you. Has she ever done anything to you except be very
agreeable?"
"Yes, she has done
things to me," Thea retorted hotly.
Bowers looked
interested. "What, for example?"
"I can't explain,
but I've got it in for her."
Bowers laughed.
"No doubt about that. I'll have to suggest that you conceal it a little
more effectually. That is--necessary, Miss Kronborg," he added, looking
back over the shoulder of the overcoat he was putting on.
He went out to lunch
and Thea thought the subject closed. But late in the afternoon, when he was
taking his dyspepsia tablet and a glass of water between lessons, he looked up
and said in a voice ironically coaxing:--
"Miss Kronborg, I
wish you would tell me why you hate Jessie."
Taken by surprise Thea
put down the score she was reading and answered before she knew what she was
saying, "I hate her for the sake of what I used to think a singer might
be."
Bowers balanced the
tablet on the end of his long fore- finger and whistled softly. "And how
did you form your conception of what a singer ought to be?" he asked.
"I don't
know." Thea flushed and spoke under her breath; "but I suppose I got
most of it from Harsanyi."
Bowers made no comment
upon this reply, but opened the door for the next pupil, who was waiting in the
reception-room.
It was dark when Thea
left the studio that night. She knew she had offended Bowers. Somehow she had
hurt herself, too. She felt unequal to the boarding-house table, the sneaking
divinity student who sat next her and had tried to kiss her on the stairs last
night. She went over to the waterside of Michigan Avenue and walked along
beside the lake. It was a clear, frosty winter night. The great empty space
over the water was restful and spoke of freedom. If she had any money at all,
she would go away. The stars glittered over the wide black water. She looked up
at them wearily and shook her head. She believed that what she felt was
despair, but it was only one of the forms of hope. She felt, indeed, as if she
were bidding the stars good-bye; but she was renewing a promise. Though their
challenge is universal and eternal, the stars get no answer but that,--the
brief light flashed back to them from the eyes of the young who unaccountably
aspire.
The rich, noisy, city,
fat with food and drink, is a spent thing; its chief concern is its digestion
and its little game of hide-and-seek with the undertaker. Money and office and
success are the consolations of impotence. Fortune turns kind to such solid
people and lets them suck their bone in peace. She flecks her whip upon flesh
that is more alive, upon that stream of hungry boys and girls who tramp the
streets of every city, recognizable by their pride and discontent, who are the
Future, and who possess the treasure of creative power.
WHILE her living
arrangements were so casual and fortuitous, Bowers's studio was the one fixed
thing in Thea's life. She went out from it to uncertainties, and hastened to it
from nebulous confusion. She was more influenced by Bowers than she knew.
Unconsciously she began to take on something of his dry contempt, and to share
his grudge without understanding exactly what it was about. His cynicism seemed
to her honest, and the amiability of his pupils artificial. She admired his
drastic treatment of his dull pupils. The stupid deserved all they got, and
more. Bowers knew that she thought him a very clever man.
One afternoon when
Bowers came in from lunch Thea handed him a card on which he read the name,
"Mr. Philip Frederick Ottenburg."
"He said he would
be in again to-morrow and that he wanted some time. Who is he? I like him
better than the others."
Bowers nodded. "So
do I. He's not a singer. He's a beer prince: son of the big brewer in St.
Louis. He's been in Germany with his mother. I didn't know he was back."
"Does he take
lessons?"
"Now and again. He
sings rather well. He's at the head of the Chicago branch of the Ottenburg
business, but he can't stick to work and is always running away. He has great
ideas in beer, people tell me. He's what they call an imaginative business man;
goes over to Bayreuth and seems to do nothing but give parties and spend money,
and brings back more good notions for the brewery than the fellows who sit
tight dig out in five years. I was born too long ago to be much taken in by
these chesty boys with flowered vests, but I like Fred, all the same."
"So do I,"
said Thea positively.
Bowers made a sound
between a cough and a laugh. "Oh, he's a lady-killer, all right! The girls
in here are always making eyes at him. You won't be the first." He threw
some sheets of music on the piano. "Better look that over; accompaniment's
a little tricky. It's for that new woman from Detroit. And Mrs. Priest will be
in this afternoon."
Thea sighed. "`I
Know that my Redeemer Liveth'?"
"The same. She
starts on her concert tour next week, and we'll have a rest. Until then, I
suppose we'll have to be going over her programme."
The next day Thea
hurried through her luncheon at a German bakery and got back to the studio at
ten minutes past one. She felt sure that the young brewer would come early,
before it was time for Bowers to arrive. He had not said he would, but
yesterday, when he opened the door to go, he had glanced about the room and at
her, and something in his eye had conveyed that suggestion.
Sure enough, at twenty
minutes past one the door of the reception-room opened, and a tall, robust
young man with a cane and an English hat and ulster looked in expectantly.
"Ah--ha!" he exclaimed, "I thought if I came early I might have
good luck. And how are you to-day, Miss Kronborg?"
Thea was sitting in the
window chair. At her left elbow there was a table, and upon this table the
young man sat down, holding his hat and cane in his hand, loosening his long
coat so that it fell back from his shoulders. He was a gleaming, florid young
fellow. His hair, thick and yellow, was cut very short, and he wore a closely
trimmed beard, long enough on the chin to curl a little. Even his eyebrows were
thick and yellow, like fleece. He had lively blue eyes--Thea looked up at them
with great interest as he sat chatting and swinging his foot rhythmically. He
was easily familiar, and frankly so. Wherever people met young Ottenburg, in
his office, on shipboard, in a foreign hotel or railway compartment, they
always felt (and usually liked) that artless presumption which seemed to say,
"In this case we may waive formalities. We really haven't time. This is to-day,
but it will soon be to-morrow, and then we may be very different people, and in
some other country." He had a way of floating people out of dull or
awkward situations, out of their own torpor or constraint or discouragement. It
was a marked personal talent, of almost incalculable value in the
representative of a great business founded on social amenities. Thea had liked
him yesterday for the way in which he had picked her up out of herself and her
German grammar for a few exciting moments.
"By the way, will
you tell me your first name, please? Thea? Oh, then you are a Swede, sure
enough! I thought so. Let me call you Miss Thea, after the German fashion. You
won't mind? Of course not!" He usually made his assumption of a special
understanding seem a tribute to the other person and not to himself.
"How long have you
been with Bowers here? Do you like the old grouch? So do I. I've come to tell
him about a new soprano I heard at Bayreuth. He'll pretend not to care, but he
does. Do you warble with him? Have you anything of a voice? Honest? You look
it, you know. What are you going in for, something big? Opera?"
Thea blushed crimson.
"Oh, I'm not going in for anything. I'm trying to learn to sing at
funerals."
Ottenburg leaned
forward. His eyes twinkled. "I'll engage you to sing at mine. You can't
fool me, Miss Thea. May I hear you take your lesson this afternoon?"
"No, you may not.
I took it this morning."
He picked up a roll of
music that lay behind him on the table. "Is this yours? Let me see what
you are doing." He snapped back the clasp and began turning over the
songs. "All very fine, but tame. What's he got you at this Mozart stuff
for? I shouldn't think it would suit your voice. Oh, I can make a pretty good
guess at what will suit you! This from `Gioconda' is more in your line. What's
this Grieg? It looks interesting. Tak for Ditt Rod. What does that mean?"
"`Thanks for your
Advice.' Don't you know it?"
"No; not at all.
Let's try it." He rose, pushed open the door into the music-room, and
motioned Thea to enter before him. She hung back.
"I couldn't give
you much of an idea of it. It's a big song."
Ottenburg took her
gently by the elbow and pushed her into the other room. He sat down carelessly
at the piano and looked over the music for a moment. "I think I can get
you through it. But how stupid not to have the German words. Can you really sing
the Norwegian? What an infernal language to sing. Translate the text for
me." He handed her the music.
Thea looked at it, then
at him, and shook her head. "I can't. The truth is I don't know either
English or Swedish very well, and Norwegian's still worse," she said
confidentially. She not infrequently refused to do what she was asked to do,
but it was not like her to explain her refusal, even when she had a good
reason.
"I understand. We
immigrants never speak any language well. But you know what it means, don't
you?"
"Of course I
do!"
"Then don't frown
at me like that, but tell me."
Thea continued to
frown, but she also smiled. She was confused, but not embarrassed. She was not
afraid of Ottenburg. He was not one of those people who made her spine like a
steel rail. On the contrary, he made one venturesome.
"Well, it goes
something like this: Thanks for your advice! But I prefer to steer my boat into
the din of roaring breakers. Even if the journey is my last, I may find what I
have never found before. Onward must I go, for I yearn for the wild sea. I long
to fight my way through the angry waves, and to see how far, and how long I can
make them carry me."*
Ottenburg took the
music and began: "Wait a moment. Is that too fast? How do you take it?
That right?" He pulled up his cuffs and began the accompaniment again. He
had become entirely serious, and he played with fine enthusiasm and with
understanding.
Fred's talent was worth
almost as much to old Otto Ottenburg as the steady industry of his older sons.
When Fred sang the Prize Song at an interstate meet of the Turnverein, ten
thousand Turners went forth pledged to Ottenburg beer.
As Thea finished the
song Fred turned back to the first page, without looking up from the music.
"Now, once more," he called. They began again, and did not hear
Bowers when he came in and stood in the doorway. He stood still, blinking like
an owl at their two heads shining in the sun. He could not see their faces, but
there was something about his girl's back that he had not noticed before: a
very slight and yet very free motion, from the toes up. Her whole back seemed
plastic, seemed to be moulding itself to the galloping rhythm of the song.
Bowers perceived such things sometimes--unwillingly. He had known to-day that there
was something afoot. The river of sound which had its source in his pupil had
caught him two flights down. He had stopped and listened with a kind of
sneering admiration. From the door he watched her with a half-incredulous,
half-malicious smile.
When he had struck the
keys for the last time, Ottenburg dropped his hands on his knees and looked up
with a quick breath. "I got you through. What a stunning song! Did I play
it right?"
Thea studied his
excited face. There was a good deal of meaning in it, and there was a good deal
in her own as she answered him. "You suited me," she said
ungrudgingly.
After Ottenburg was
gone, Thea noticed that Bowers was more agreeable than usual. She had heard the
young brewer ask Bowers to dine with him at his club that evening, and she saw
that he looked forward to the dinner with pleasure. He dropped a remark to the
effect that Fred knew as much about food and wines as any man in Chicago. He
said this boastfully.
"If he's such a
grand business man, how does he have time to run around listening to
singing-lessons?" Thea asked suspiciously.
As she went home to her
boarding-house through the February slush, she wished she were going to dine
with them. At nine o'clock she looked up from her grammar to wonder what Bowers
and Ottenburg were having to eat. At that moment they were talking of her.
THEA noticed that
Bowers took rather more pains with her now that Fred Ottenburg often dropped in
at eleven-thirty to hear her lesson. After the lesson the young man took Bowers
off to lunch with him, and Bowers liked good food when another man paid for it.
He encouraged Fred's visits, and Thea soon saw that Fred knew exactly why.
One morning, after her
lesson, Ottenburg turned to Bowers. "If you'll lend me Miss Thea, I think
I have an engagement for her. Mrs. Henry Nathanmeyer is going to give three
musical evenings in April, first three Saturdays, and she has consulted me
about soloists. For the first evening she has a young violinist, and she would
be charmed to have Miss Kronborg. She will pay fifty dollars. Not much, but
Miss Thea would meet some people there who might be useful. What do you
say?"
Bowers passed the
question on to Thea. "I guess you could use the fifty, couldn't you, Miss
Kronborg? You can easily work up some songs."
Thea was perplexed.
"I need the money awfully," she said frankly; "but I haven't got
the right clothes for that sort of thing. I suppose I'd better try to get
some."
Ottenburg spoke up
quickly, "Oh, you'd make nothing out of it if you went to buying evening
clothes. I've thought of that. Mrs. Nathanmeyer has a troop of daughters, a
perfect seraglio, all ages and sizes. She'll be glad to fit you out, if you
aren't sensitive about wearing kosher clothes. Let me take you to see her, and
you'll find that she'll arrange that easily enough. I told her she must produce
something nice, blue or yellow, and properly cut. I brought half a dozen Worth
gowns through the customs for her two weeks ago, and she's not ungrateful. When
can we go to see her?"
"I haven't any
time free, except at night," Thea replied in some confusion.
"To-morrow
evening, then? I shall call for you at eight. Bring all your songs along; she
will want us to give her a little rehearsal, perhaps. I'll play your
accompaniments, if you've no objection. That will save money for you and for
Mrs. Nathanmeyer. She needs it." Ottenburg chuckled as he took down the
number of Thea's boarding-house.
The Nathanmeyers were
so rich and great that even Thea had heard of them, and this seemed a very
remarkable opportunity. Ottenburg had brought it about by merely lifting a
finger, apparently. He was a beer prince sure enough, as Bowers had said.
The next evening at a
quarter to eight Thea was dressed and waiting in the boarding-house parlor. She
was nervous and fidgety and found it difficult to sit still on the hard, convex
upholstery of the chairs. She tried them one after another, moving about the
dimly lighted, musty room, where the gas always leaked gently and sang in the
burners. There was no one in the parlor but the medical student, who was
playing one of Sousa's marches so vigorously that the china ornaments on the
top of the piano rattled. In a few moments some of the pension-office girls
would come in and begin to two-step. Thea wished that Ottenburg would come and
let her escape. She glanced at herself in the long, somber mirror. She was
wearing her pale-blue broadcloth church dress, which was not unbecoming but was
certainly too heavy to wear to anybody's house in the evening. Her slippers
were run over at the heel and she had not had time to have them mended, and her
white gloves were not so clean as they should be. However, she knew that she
would forget these annoying things as soon as Ottenburg came.
Mary, the Hungarian
chambermaid, came to the door, stood between the plush portieres, beckoned to
Thea, and made an inarticulate sound in her throat. Thea jumped up and ran into
the hall, where Ottenburg stood smiling, his caped cloak open, his silk hat in
his white-kid hand. The Hungarian girl stood like a monument on her flat heels,
staring at the pink carnation in Ottenburg's coat. Her broad, pockmarked face
wore the only expression of which it was capable, a kind of animal wonder. As
the young man followed Thea out, he glanced back over his shoulder through the
crack of the door; the Hun clapped her hands over her stomach, opened her
mouth, and made another raucous sound in her throat.
"Isn't she
awful?" Thea exclaimed. "I think she's half-witted. Can you
understand her?"
Ottenburg laughed as he
helped her into the carriage. "Oh, yes; I can understand her!" He
settled himself on the front seat opposite Thea. "Now, I want to tell you
about the people we are going to see. We may have a musical public in this country
some day, but as yet there are only the Germans and the Jews. All the other
people go to hear Jessie Darcey sing, `O, Promise Me!' The Nathanmeyers are the
finest kind of Jews. If you do anything for Mrs. Henry Nathanmeyer, you must
put yourself into her hands. Whatever she says about music, about clothes,
about life, will be correct. And you may feel at ease with her. She expects
nothing of people; she has lived in Chicago twenty years. If you were to behave
like the Magyar who was so interested in my buttonhole, she would not be
surprised. If you were to sing like Jessie Darcey, she would not be surprised;
but she would manage not to hear you again."
"Would she? Well,
that's the kind of people I want to find." Thea felt herself growing
bolder.
"You will be all right
with her so long as you do not try to be anything that you are not. Her
standards have nothing to do with Chicago. Her perceptions--or her
grandmother's, which is the same thing--were keen when all this was an Indian
village. So merely be yourself, and you will like her. She will like you
because the Jews always sense talent, and," he added ironically,
"they admire certain qualities of feeling that are found only in the
white- skinned races."
Thea looked into the
young man's face as the light of a street lamp flashed into the carriage. His
somewhat academic manner amused her.
"What makes you
take such an interest in singers?" she asked curiously. "You seem to
have a perfect passion for hearing music-lessons. I wish I could trade jobs
with you!"
"I'm not
interested in singers." His tone was offended. "I am interested in
talent. There are only two interesting things in the world, anyhow; and talent
is one of them."
"What's the
other?" The question came meekly from the figure opposite him. Another arc-light
flashed in at the window.
Fred saw her face and
broke into a laugh. "Why, you're guying me, you little wretch! You won't
let me behave properly." He dropped his gloved hand lightly on her knee,
took it away and let it hang between his own. "Do you know," he said
confidentially, "I believe I'm more in earnest about all this than you
are."
"About all
what?"
"All you've got in
your throat there."
"Oh! I'm in
earnest all right; only I never was much good at talking. Jessie Darcey is the
smooth talker. `You notice the effect I get there--' If she only got 'em, she'd
be a wonder, you know!"
Mr. and Mrs.
Nathanmeyer were alone in their great library. Their three unmarried daughters
had departed in successive carriages, one to a dinner, one to a Nietszche club,
one to a ball given for the girls employed in the big department stores. When
Ottenburg and Thea entered, Henry Nathanmeyer and his wife were sitting at a
table at the farther end of the long room, with a reading-lamp and a tray of
cigarettes and cordial-glasses between them. The overhead lights were too soft
to bring out the colors of the big rugs, and none of the picture lights were
on. One could merely see that there were pictures there. Fred whispered that
they were Rousseaus and Corots, very fine ones which the old banker had bought
long ago for next to nothing. In the hall Ottenburg had stopped Thea before a
painting of a woman eating grapes out of a paper bag, and had told her gravely
that there was the most beautiful Manet in the world. He made her take off her
hat and gloves in the hall, and looked her over a little before he took her in.
But once they were in the library he seemed perfectly satisfied with her and
led her down the long room to their hostess.
Mrs. Nathanmeyer was a
heavy, powerful old Jewess, with a great pompadour of white hair, a swarthy
complexion, an eagle nose, and sharp, glittering eyes. She wore a black velvet
dress with a long train, and a diamond necklace and earrings. She took Thea to
the other side of the table and presented her to Mr. Nathanmeyer, who
apologized for not rising, pointing to a slippered foot on a cushion; he said
that he suffered from gout. He had a very soft voice and spoke with an accent
which would have been heavy if it had not been so caressing. He kept Thea
standing beside him for some time. He noticed that she stood easily, looked
straight down into his face, and was not embarrassed. Even when Mrs.
Nathanmeyer told Ottenburg to bring a chair for Thea, the old man did not
release her hand, and she did not sit down. He admired her just as she was, as
she happened to be standing, and she felt it. He was much handsomer than his
wife, Thea thought. His forehead was high, his hair soft and white, his skin
pink, a little puffy under his clear blue eyes. She noticed how warm and
delicate his hands were, pleasant to touch and beautiful to look at. Ottenburg
had told her that Mr. Nathanmeyer had a very fine collection of medals and
cameos, and his fingers looked as if they had never touched anything but
delicately cut surfaces.
He asked Thea where
Moonstone was; how many inhabitants it had; what her father's business was;
from what part of Sweden her grandfather came; and whether she spoke Swedish as
a child. He was interested to hear that her mother's mother was still living,
and that her grandfather had played the oboe. Thea felt at home standing there
beside him; she felt that he was very wise, and that he some way took one's
life up and looked it over kindly, as if it were a story. She was sorry when
they left him to go into the music-room.
As they reached the
door of the music-room, Mrs. Nathanmeyer turned a switch that threw on many
lights. The room was even larger than the library, all glittering surfaces,
with two Steinway pianos.
Mrs. Nathanmeyer rang
for her own maid. "Selma will take you upstairs, Miss Kronborg, and you
will find some dresses on the bed. Try several of them, and take the one you
like best. Selma will help you. She has a great deal of taste. When you are
dressed, come down and let us go over some of your songs with Mr.
Ottenburg."
After Thea went away
with the maid, Ottenburg came up to Mrs. Nathanmeyer and stood beside her,
resting his hand on the high back of her chair.
"Well, gnädige
Frau, do you like her?"
"I think so. I
liked her when she talked to father. She will always get on better with
men."
Ottenburg leaned over
her chair. "Prophetess! Do you see what I meant?"
"About her beauty?
She has great possibilities, but you can never tell about those Northern women.
They look so strong, but they are easily battered. The face falls so early
under those wide cheek-bones. A single idea--hate or greed, or even love--can
tear them to shreds. She is nineteen? Well, in ten years she may have quite a
regal beauty, or she may have a heavy, discontented face, all dug out in
channels. That will depend upon the kind of ideas she lives with."
"Or the kind of
people?" Ottenburg suggested.
The old Jewess folded
her arms over her massive chest, drew back her shoulders, and looked up at the
young man. "With that hard glint in her eye? The people won't matter much,
I fancy. They will come and go. She is very much interested in herself--as she
should be."
Ottenburg frowned.
"Wait until you hear her sing. Her eyes are different then. That gleam
that comes in them is curious, isn't it? As you say, it's impersonal."
The object of this
discussion came in, smiling. She had chosen neither the blue nor the yellow
gown, but a pale rose-color, with silver butterflies. Mrs. Nathanmeyer lifted
her lorgnette and studied her as she approached. She caught the characteristic
things at once: the free, strong walk, the calm carriage of the head, the milky
whiteness of the girl's arms and shoulders.
"Yes, that color
is good for you," she said approvingly. "The yellow one probably
killed your hair? Yes; this does very well indeed, so we need think no more
about it."
Thea glanced
questioningly at Ottenburg. He smiled and bowed, seemed perfectly satisfied. He
asked her to stand in the elbow of the piano, in front of him, instead of
behind him as she had been taught to do.
"Yes," said
the hostess with feeling. "That other position is barbarous."
Thea sang an aria from
`Gioconda,' some songs by Schumann which she had studied with Harsanyi, and the
" Tak for Dit Rod," which Ottenburg liked.
"That you must do
again," he declared when they finished this song. "You did it much
better the other day. You accented it more, like a dance or a galop. How did
you do it?"
Thea laughed, glancing
sidewise at Mrs. Nathanmeyer. "You want it rough-house, do you? Bowers
likes me to sing it more seriously, but it always makes me think about a story
my grandmother used to tell."
Fred pointed to the
chair behind her. "Won't you rest a moment and tell us about it? I thought
you had some notion about it when you first sang it for me."
Thea sat down. "In
Norway my grandmother knew a girl who was awfully in love with a young fellow.
She went into service on a big dairy farm to make enough money for her outfit.
They were married at Christmas- time, and everybody was glad, because they'd
been sighing around about each other for so long. That very summer, the day
before St. John's Day, her husband caught her carrying on with another farm-hand.
The next night all the farm people had a bonfire and a big dance up on the
mountain, and everybody was dancing and singing. I guess they were all a little
drunk, for they got to seeing how near they could make the girls dance to the
edge of the cliff. Ole--he was the girl's husband--seemed the jolliest and the
drunkest of anybody. He danced his wife nearer and nearer the edge of the rock,
and his wife began to scream so that the others stopped dancing and the music
stopped; but Ole went right on singing, and he danced her over the edge of the
cliff and they fell hundreds of feet and were all smashed to pieces."
Ottenburg turned back
to the piano. "That's the idea! Now, come Miss Thea. Let it go!"
Thea took her place.
She laughed and drew herself up out of her corsets, threw her shoulders high
and let them drop again. She had never sung in a low dress before, and she
found it comfortable. Ottenburg jerked his head and they began the song. The
accompaniment sounded more than ever like the thumping and scraping of heavy
feet.
When they stopped, they
heard a sympathetic tapping at the end of the room. Old Mr. Nathanmeyer had
come to the door and was sitting back in the shadow, just inside the library,
applauding with his cane. Thea threw him a bright smile. He continued to sit
there, his slippered foot on a low chair, his cane between his fingers, and she
glanced at him from time to time. The doorway made a frame for him, and he
looked like a man in a picture, with the long, shadowy room behind him.
Mrs. Nathanmeyer
summoned the maid again. "Selma will pack that gown in a box for you, and
you can take it home in Mr. Ottenburg's carriage."
Thea turned to follow
the maid, but hesitated. "Shall I wear gloves?" she asked, turning
again to Mrs. Nathanmeyer.
"No, I think not.
Your arms are good, and you will feel freer without. You will need light
slippers, pink--or white, if you have them, will do quite as well."
Thea went upstairs with
the maid and Mrs. Nathanmeyer rose, took Ottenburg's arm, and walked toward her
husband. "That's the first real voice I have heard in Chicago," she
said decidedly. "I don't count that stupid Priest woman. What do you say,
father?"
Mr. Nathanmeyer shook
his white head and smiled softly, as if he were thinking about something very
agree- able. "Svensk sommar," he murmured. "She is like a
Swedish summer. I spent nearly a year there when I was a young man," he
explained to Ottenburg.
When Ottenburg got Thea
and her big box into the car- riage, it occurred to him that she must be
hungry, after singing so much. When he asked her, she admitted that she was
very hungry, indeed.
He took out his watch.
"Would you mind stopping somewhere with me? It's only eleven."
"Mind? Of course,
I wouldn't mind. I wasn't brought up like that. I can take care of
myself."
Ottenburg laughed.
"And I can take care of myself, so we can do lots of jolly things
together." He opened the carriage door and spoke to the driver. "I'm
stuck on the way you sing that Grieg song," he declared.
When Thea got into bed
that night she told herself that this was the happiest evening she had had in
Chicago. She had enjoyed the Nathanmeyers and their grand house, her new dress,
and Ottenburg, her first real carriage ride, and the good supper when she was
so hungry. And Ottenburg was jolly! He made you want to come back at him. You
weren't always being caught up and mystified. When you started in with him, you
went; you cut the breeze, as Ray used to say. He had some go in him.
Philip Frederick
Ottenburg was the third son of the great brewer. His mother was Katarina Furst,
the daughter and heiress of a brewing business older and richer than Otto
Ottenburg's. As a young woman she had been a con- spicuous figure in
German-American society in New York, and not untouched by scandal. She was a
handsome, head- strong girl, a rebellious and violent force in a provincial
society. She was brutally sentimental and heavily ro- mantic. Her free speech,
her Continental ideas, and her proclivity for championing new causes, even when
she did not know much about them, made her an object of suspicion. She was
always going abroad to seek out in- tellectual affinities, and was one of the
group of young women who followed Wagner about in his old age, keep- ing at a
respectful distance, but receiving now and then a gracious acknowledgment that
he appreciated their homage. When the composer died, Katarina, then a ma- tron
with a family, took to her bed and saw no one for a week.
After having been
engaged to an American actor, a Welsh socialist agitator, and a German army
officer, Fraulein Furst at last placed herself and her great brewery interests
into the trustworthy hands of Otto Ottenburg, who had been her suitor ever
since he was a clerk, learning his business in her father's office.
Her first two sons were
exactly like their father. Even as children they were industrious, earnest
little tradesmen. As Frau Ottenburg said, "she had to wait for her Fred,
but she got him at last," the first man who had altogether pleased her. Frederick
entered Harvard when he was eighteen. When his mother went to Boston to visit
him, she not only got him everything he wished for, but she made handsome and
often embarrassing presents to all his friends. She gave dinners and supper
parties for the Glee Club, made the crew break training, and was a gen- erally
disturbing influence. In his third year Fred left the university because of a
serious escapade which had some- what hampered his life ever since. He went at
once into his father's business, where, in his own way, he had made himself
very useful.
Fred Ottenburg was now
twenty-eight, and people could only say of him that he had been less hurt by
his mother's indulgence than most boys would have been. He had never wanted
anything that he could not have it, and he might have had a great many things
that he had never wanted. He was extravagant, but not prodigal. He turned most
of the money his mother gave him into the business, and lived on his generous
salary.
Fred had never been
bored for a whole day in his life. When he was in Chicago or St. Louis, he went
to ball- games, prize-fights, and horse-races. When he was in Germany, he went
to concerts and to the opera. He belonged to a long list of sporting-clubs and
hunting- clubs, and was a good boxer. He had so many natural interests that he
had no affectations. At Harvard he kept away from the aesthetic circle that had
already discovered Francis Thompson. He liked no poetry but German poetry.
Physical energy was the thing he was full to the brim of, and music was one of
its natural forms of expression. He had a healthy love of sport and art, of
eating and drink- ing. When he was in Germany, he scarcely knew where the soup
ended and the symphony began.
MARCH began badly for
Thea. She had a cold during the first week, and after she got through her
church duties on Sunday she had to go to bed with tonsilitis. She was still in
the boarding-house at which young Ottenburg had called when he took her to see
Mrs. Nathanmeyer. She had stayed on there because her room, although it was
inconvenient and very small, was at the corner of the house and got the
sunlight.
Since she left Mrs.
Lorch, this was the first place where she had got away from a north light. Her
rooms had all been as damp and mouldy as they were dark, with deep foundations
of dirt under the carpets, and dirty walls. In her present room there was no
running water and no clothes closet, and she had to have the dresser moved out
to make room for her piano. But there were two windows, one on the south and
one on the west, a light wall-paper with morning-glory vines, and on the floor
a clean matting. The landlady had tried to make the room look cheerful, because
it was hard to let. It was so small that Thea could keep it clean herself,
after the Hun had done her worst. She hung her dresses on the door under a
sheet, used the washstand for a dresser, slept on a cot, and opened both the
windows when she practiced. She felt less walled in than she had in the other
houses.
Wednesday was her third
day in bed. The medical stu- dent who lived in the house had been in to see
her, had left some tablets and a foamy gargle, and told her that she could
probably go back to work on Monday. The land- lady stuck her head in once a
day, but Thea did not en- courage her visits. The Hungarian chambermaid brought
her soup and toast. She made a sloppy pretense of putting the room in order,
but she was such a dirty crea- ture that Thea would not let her touch her cot;
she got up every morning and turned the mattress and made the bed herself. The
exertion made her feel miserably ill, but at least she could lie still
contentedly for a long while afterward. She hated the poisoned feeling in her
throat, and no matter how often she gargled she felt unclean and disgusting. Still,
if she had to be ill, she was almost glad that she had a contagious illness.
Otherwise she would have been at the mercy of the people in the house. She knew
that they disliked her, yet now that she was ill, they took it upon themselves
to tap at her door, send her mes- sages, books, even a miserable flower or two.
Thea knew that their sympathy was an expression of self-righteous- ness, and
she hated them for it. The divinity student, who was always whispering soft
things to her, sent her "The Kreutzer Sonata."
The medical student had
been kind to her: he knew that she did not want to pay a doctor. His gargle had
helped her, and he gave her things to make her sleep at night. But he had been
a cheat, too. He had exceeded his rights. She had no soreness in her chest, and
had told him so clearly. All this thumping of her back, and listening to her
breath- ing, was done to satisfy personal curiosity. She had watched him with a
contemptuous smile. She was too sick to care; if it amused him-- She made him wash
his hands before he touched her; he was never very clean. All the same, it
wounded her and made her feel that the world was a pretty disgusting place.
"The Kreutzer Sonata" did not make her feel any more cheerful. She
threw it aside with hatred. She could not believe it was written by the same
man who wrote the novel that had thrilled her.
Her cot was beside the
south window, and on Wednesday afternoon she lay thinking about the Harsanyis,
about old Mr. Nathanmeyer, and about how she was missing Fred Ottenburg's
visits to the studio. That was much the worst thing about being sick. If she were
going to the studio every day, she might be having pleasant encounters with
Fred. He was always running away, Bowers said, and he might be planning to go
away as soon as Mrs. Nathanmeyer's evenings were over. And here she was losing
all this time!
After a while she heard
the Hun's clumsy trot in the hall, and then a pound on the door. Mary came in,
making her usual uncouth sounds, carrying a long box and a big basket. Thea sat
up in bed and tore off the strings and paper. The basket was full of fruit, with
a big Hawaiian pineapple in the middle, and in the box there were layers of
pink roses with long, woody stems and dark-green leaves. They filled the room
with a cool smell that made another air to breathe. Mary stood with her apron
full of paper and cardboard. When she saw Thea take an envelope out from under
the flowers, she uttered an exclamation, pointed to the roses, and then to the
bosom of her own dress, on the left side. Thea laughed and nodded. She
understood that Mary associated the color with Ottenburg's boutonnière. She
pointed to the water pitcher,--she had nothing else big enough to hold the
flowers,--and made Mary put it on the window sill beside her.
After Mary was gone
Thea locked the door. When the landlady knocked, she pretended that she was
asleep. She lay still all afternoon and with drowsy eyes watched the roses
open. They were the first hothouse flowers she had ever had. The cool fragrance
they released was soothing, and as the pink petals curled back, they were the
only things between her and the gray sky. She lay on her side, putting the room
and the boarding-house behind her. Fred knew where all the pleasant things in
the world were, she reflected, and knew the road to them. He had keys to all
the nice places in his pocket, and seemed to jingle them from time to time. And
then, he was young; and her friends had always been old. Her mind went back
over them. They had all been teachers; wonderfully kind, but still teachers.
Ray Kennedy, she knew, had wanted to marry her, but he was the most protecting
and teacher-like of them all. She moved impatiently in her cot and threw her
braids away from her hot neck, over her pillow. "I don't want him for a
teacher," she thought, frowning petulantly out of the window. "I've
had such a string of them. I want him for a sweetheart."
"THEA," said
Fred Ottenburg one drizzly afternoon in April, while they sat waiting for their
tea at a restaurant in the Pullman Building, overlooking the lake, "what
are you going to do this summer?"
"I don't know.
Work, I suppose."
"With Bowers, you
mean? Even Bowers goes fishing for a month. Chicago's no place to work, in the
summer. Haven't you made any plans?"
Thea shrugged her
shoulders. "No use having any plans when you haven't any money. They are
unbecoming."
"Aren't you going
home?"
She shook her head.
"No. It won't be comfortable there till I've got something to show for
myself. I'm not getting on at all, you know. This year has been mostly
wasted."
"You're stale;
that's what's the matter with you. And just now you're dead tired. You'll talk
more rationally after you've had some tea. Rest your throat until it
comes." They were sitting by a window. As Ottenburg looked at her in the
gray light, he remembered what Mrs. Nathanmeyer had said about the Swedish face
"breaking early." Thea was as gray as the weather. Her skin looked
sick. Her hair, too, though on a damp day it curled charmingly about her face,
looked pale.
Fred beckoned the
waiter and increased his order for food. Thea did not hear him. She was staring
out of the window, down at the roof of the Art Institute and the green lions,
dripping in the rain. The lake was all rolling mist, with a soft shimmer of
robin's-egg blue in the gray. A lumber boat, with two very tall masts, was
emerging gaunt and black out of the fog. When the tea came Thea ate hungrily,
and Fred watched her. He thought her eyes became a little less bleak. The
kettle sang cheerfully over the spirit lamp, and she seemed to concentrate her
attention upon that pleasant sound. She kept looking toward it listlessly and
indulgently, in a way that gave him a realization of her loneliness. Fred lit a
cigarette and smoked thoughtfully. He and Thea were alone in the quiet, dusky
room full of white tables. In those days Chicago people never stopped for tea.
"Come," he said at last, "what would you do this summer, if you
could do whatever you wished?"
"I'd go a long way
from here! West, I think. Maybe I could get some of my spring back. All this
cold, cloudy weather,"--she looked out at the lake and shivered,-- "I
don't know, it does things to me," she ended abruptly.
Fred nodded. "I
know. You've been going down ever since you had tonsilitis. I've seen it. What
you need is to sit in the sun and bake for three months. You've got the right
idea. I remember once when we were having dinner somewhere you kept asking me
about the Cliff-Dweller ruins. Do they still interest you?"
"Of course they
do. I've always wanted to go down there--long before I ever got in for
this."
"I don't think I
told you, but my father owns a whole canyon full of Cliff-Dweller ruins. He has
a big worthless ranch down in Arizona, near a Navajo reservation, and there's a
canyon on the place they call Panther Canyon, chock full of that sort of thing.
I often go down there to hunt. Henry Biltmer and his wife live there and keep a
tidy place. He's an old German who worked in the brewery until he lost his
health. Now he runs a few cattle. Henry likes to do me a favor. I've done a few
for him." Fred drowned his cigarette in his saucer and studied Thea's
expression, which was wistful and intent, envious and admiring. He continued
with satisfaction: "If you went down there and stayed with them for two or
three months, they wouldn't let you pay anything. I might send Henry a new gun,
but even I couldn't offer him money for putting up a friend of mine. I'll get
you transportation. It would make a new girl of you. Let me write to Henry, and
you pack your trunk. That's all that's necessary. No red tape about it. What do
you say, Thea?"
She bit her lip, and
sighed as if she were waking up.
Fred crumpled his
napkin impatiently. "Well, isn't it easy enough?"
"That's the
trouble; it's too easy. Doesn't sound probable. I'm not used to getting things
for nothing."
Ottenburg laughed.
"Oh, if that's all, I'll show you how to begin. You won't get this for
nothing, quite. I'll ask you to let me stop off and see you on my way to
California. Perhaps by that time you will be glad to see me. Better let me
break the news to Bowers. I can manage him. He needs a little transportation
himself now and then. You must get corduroy riding-things and leather leggings.
There are a few snakes about. Why do you keep frowning?"
"Well, I don't
exactly see why you take the trouble. What do you get out of it? You haven't
liked me so well the last two or three weeks."
Fred dropped his third
cigarette and looked at his watch. "If you don't see that, it's because
you need a tonic. I'll show you what I'll get out of it. Now I'm going to get a
cab and take you home. You are too tired to walk a step. You'd better get to
bed as soon as you get there. Of course, I don't like you so well when you're
half anaesthetized all the time. What have you been doing to yourself?"
Thea rose. "I
don't know. Being bored eats the heart out of me, I guess." She walked
meekly in front of him to the elevator. Fred noticed for the hundredth time how
vehemently her body proclaimed her state of feeling. He remembered how
remarkably brilliant and beautiful she had been when she sang at Mrs.
Nathanmeyer's: flushed and gleaming, round and supple, something that couldn't
be dimmed or downed. And now she seemed a moving figure of discouragement. The
very waiters glanced at her apprehensively. It was not that she made a fuss,
but her back was most extraordinarily vocal. One never needed to see her face
to know what she was full of that day. Yet she was certainly not mercurial. Her
flesh seemed to take a mood and to "set," like plaster. As he put her
into the cab, Fred reflected once more that he "gave her up." He
would attack her when his lance was brighter.
THE San Francisco
Mountain lies in Northern Arizona, above Flagstaff, and its blue slopes and
snowy summit entice the eye for a hundred miles across the desert. About its
base lie the pine forests of the Navajos, where the great red-trunked trees
live out their peaceful centuries in that sparkling air. The piñions and scrub
begin only where the forest ends, where the country breaks into open, stony
clearings and the surface of the earth cracks into deep canyons. The great
pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone,
murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos
are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a
communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in
speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has
its exalted power to bear.
That was the first
thing Thea Kronborg felt about the forest, as she drove through it one May
morning in Henry Biltmer's democrat wagon--and it was the first great forest
she had ever seen. She had got off the train at Flag- staff that morning,
rolled off into the high, chill air when all the pines on the mountain were
fired by sunrise, so that she seemed to fall from sleep directly into the
forest.
Old Biltmer followed a
faint wagon trail which ran south- east, and which, as they traveled,
continually dipped lower, falling away from the high plateau on the slope of
which Flagstaff sits. The white peak of the mountain, the snow gorges above the
timber, now disappeared from time to time as the road dropped and dropped, and
the forest closed behind the wagon. More than the mountain disappeared as the
forest closed thus. Thea seemed to be taking very little through the wood with
her. The personality of which she was so tired seemed to let go of her. The
high, sparkling air drank it up like blotting-paper. It was lost in the
thrilling blue of the new sky and the song of the thin wind in the piñions. The
old, fretted lines which marked one off, which defined her,--made her Thea
Kronborg, Bowers's accompanist, a soprano with a faulty middle voice,--were all
erased.
So far she had failed.
Her two years in Chicago had not resulted in anything. She had failed with
Harsanyi, and she had made no great progress with her voice. She had come to
believe that whatever Bowers had taught her was of secondary importance, and
that in the essential things she had made no advance. Her student life closed
behind her, like the forest, and she doubted whether she could go back to it if
she tried. Probably she would teach music in little country towns all her life.
Failure was not so tragic as she would have supposed; she was tired enough not
to care.
She was getting back to
the earliest sources of gladness that she could remember. She had loved the
sun, and the brilliant solitudes of sand and sun, long before these other
things had come along to fasten themselves upon her and torment her. That
night, when she clambered into her big German feather bed, she felt completely
released from the enslaving desire to get on in the world. Darkness had once
again the sweet wonder that it had in childhood.
THEA'S life at the
Ottenburg ranch was simple and full of light, like the days themselves. She
awoke every morning when the first fierce shafts of sunlight darted through the
curtainless windows of her room at the ranch house. After breakfast she took
her lunch-basket and went down to the canyon. Usually she did not return until
sunset.
Panther Canyon was like
a thousand others--one of those abrupt fissures with which the earth in the
Southwest is riddled; so abrupt that you might walk over the edge of any one of
them on a dark night and never know what had happened to you. This canyon
headed on the Ottenburg ranch, about a mile from the ranch house, and it was
accessible only at its head. The canyon walls, for the first two hundred feet
below the surface, were perpendicular cliffs, striped with even-running strata
of rock. From there on to the bottom the sides were less abrupt, were shelving,
and lightly fringed with piñons and dwarf cedars. The effect was that of a
gentler canyon within a wilder one. The dead city lay at the point where the
perpendicular outer wall ceased and the V-shaped inner gorge began. There a
stratum of rock, softer than those above, had been hollowed out by the action
of time until it was like a deep groove running along the sides of the canyon.
In this hollow (like a great fold in the rock) the Ancient People had built
their houses of yellowish stone and mortar. The over-hanging cliff above made a
roof two hundred feet thick. The hard stratum below was an everlasting floor.
The houses stood along in a row, like the buildings in a city block, or like a
barracks.
In both walls of the
canyon the same streak of soft rock had been washed out, and the long
horizontal groove had been built up with houses. The dead city had thus two
streets, one set in either cliff, facing each other across the ravine, with a
river of blue air between them.
The canyon twisted and
wound like a snake, and these two streets went on for four miles or more,
interrupted by the abrupt turnings of the gorge, but beginning again within
each turn. The canyon had a dozen of these false endings near its head. Beyond,
the windings were larger and less perceptible, and it went on for a hundred
miles, too narrow, precipitous, and terrible for man to follow it. The Cliff
Dwellers liked wide canyons, where the great cliffs caught the sun. Panther
Canyon had been deserted for hundreds of years when the first Spanish
missionaries came into Arizona, but the masonry of the houses was still
wonderfully firm; had crumbled only where a landslide or a rolling boulder had
torn it.
All the houses in the
canyon were clean with the cleanness of sun-baked, wind-swept places, and they
all smelled of the tough little cedars that twisted themselves into the very
doorways. One of these rock-rooms Thea took for her own. Fred had told her how
to make it comfortable. The day after she came old Henry brought over on one of
the pack-ponies a roll of Navajo blankets that belonged to Fred, and Thea lined
her cave with them. The room was not more than eight by ten feet, and she could
touch the stone roof with her finger-tips. This was her old idea: a nest in a
high cliff, full of sun. All morning long the sun beat upon her cliff, while
the ruins on the opposite side of the canyon were in shadow. In the afternoon,
when she had the shade of two hundred feet of rock wall, the ruins on the other
side of the gulf stood out in the blazing sun- light. Before her door ran the
narrow, winding path that had been the street of the Ancient People. The yucca
and niggerhead cactus grew everywhere. From her doorstep she looked out on the
ocher-colored slope that ran down several hundred feet to the stream, and this
hot rock was sparsely grown with dwarf trees. Their colors were so pale that
the shadows of the little trees on the rock stood out sharper than the trees
themselves. When Thea first came, the chokecherry bushes were in blossom, and
the scent of them was almost sickeningly sweet after a shower. At the very
bottom of the canyon, along the stream, there was a thread of bright,
flickering, golden-green,--cottonwood seedlings. They made a living, chattering
screen behind which she took her bath every morning.
Thea went down to the
stream by the Indian water trail. She had found a bathing-pool with a sand
bottom, where the creek was damned by fallen trees. The climb back was long and
steep, and when she reached her little house in the cliff she always felt fresh
delight in its comfort and inaccessibility. By the time she got there, the
woolly red-and-gray blankets were saturated with sun- light, and she sometimes
fell asleep as soon as she stretched her body on their warm surfaces. She used
to wonder at her own inactivity. She could lie there hour after hour in the sun
and listen to the strident whir of the big locusts, and to the light, ironical
laughter of the quaking asps. All her life she had been hurrying and sputtering,
as if she had been born behind time and had been trying to catch up. Now, she
reflected, as she drew herself out long upon the rugs, it was as if she were
waiting for something to catch up with her. She had got to a place where she
was out of the stream of meaningless activity and undirected effort.
Here she could lie for
half a day undistracted, holding pleasant and incomplete conceptions in her
mind--almost in her hands. They were scarcely clear enough to be called ideas.
They had something to do with fragrance and color and sound, but almost nothing
to do with words. She was singing very little now, but a song would go through
her head all morning, as a spring keeps welling up, and it was like a pleasant
sensation indefinitely prolonged. It was much more like a sensation than like
an idea, or an act of remembering. Music had never come to her in that sensuous
form before. It had always been a thing to be struggled with, had always
brought anxiety and exaltation and chagrin-- never content and indolence. Thea
began to wonder whether people could not utterly lose the power to work, as
they can lose their voice or their memory. She had always been a little drudge,
hurrying from one task to another--as if it mattered! And now her power to
think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation. She could become a
mere receptacle for heat, or become a color, like the bright lizards that
darted about on the hot stones outside her door; or she could become a
continuous repetition of sound, like the cicadas.
THE faculty of
observation was never highly developed in Thea Kronborg. A great deal escaped
her eye as she passed through the world. But the things which were for her, she
saw; she experienced them physically and remembered them as if they had once
been a part of herself. The roses she used to see in the florists' shops in
Chicago were merely roses. But when she thought of the moon- flowers that grew
over Mrs. Tellamantez's door, it was as if she had been that vine and had
opened up in white flowers every night. There were memories of light on the
sand hills, of masses of prickly-pear blossoms she had found in the desert in
early childhood, of the late afternoon sun pouring through the grape leaves and
the mint bed in Mrs. Kohler's garden, which she would never lose. These
recollections were a part of her mind and personality. In Chicago she had got
almost nothing that went into her subconscious self and took root there. But
here, in Panther Canyon, there were again things which seemed destined for her.
Panther Canyon was the
home of innumerable swallows. They built nests in the wall far above the hollow
groove in which Thea's own rock chamber lay. They seldom ventured above the rim
of the canyon, to the flat, wind-swept tableland. Their world was the blue
air-river between the canyon walls. In that blue gulf the arrow-shaped birds
swam all day long, with only an occasional movement of the wings. The only sad
thing about them was their timidity; the way in which they lived their lives
between the echoing cliffs and never dared to rise out of the shadow of the
canyon walls. As they swam past her door, Thea often felt how easy it would be
to dream one's life out in some cleft in the world.
From the ancient
dwelling there came always a dignified, unobtrusive sadness; now stronger, now
fainter,--like the aromatic smell which the dwarf cedars gave out in the
sun,--but always present, a part of the air one breathed. At night, when Thea
dreamed about the canyon,--or in the early morning when she hurried toward it,
anticipating it,--her conception of it was of yellow rocks baking in sunlight,
the swallows, the cedar smell, and that peculiar sadness--a voice out of the
past, not very loud, that went on saying a few simple things to the solitude
eternally.
Standing up in her
lodge, Thea could with her thumb nail dislodge flakes of carbon from the rock
roof--the cooking-smoke of the Ancient People. They were that near! A timid,
nest-building folk, like the swallows. How often Thea remembered Ray Kennedy's
moralizing about the cliff cities. He used to say that he never felt the
hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among
those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do
one's best. On the first day that Thea climbed the water trail she began to
have intuitions about the women who had worn the path, and who had spent so
great a part of their lives going up and down it. She found herself trying to
walk as they must have walked, with a feeling in her feet and knees and loins
which she had never known before,--which must have come up to her out of the
accustomed dust of that rocky trail. She could feel the weight of an Indian
baby hanging to her back as she climbed.
The empty houses, among
which she wandered in the afternoon, the blanketed one in which she lay all
morning, were haunted by certain fears and desires; feelings about warmth and
cold and water and physical strength. It seemed to Thea that a certain
understanding of those old people came up to her out of the rock shelf on which
she lay; that certain feelings were transmitted to her, suggestions that were
simple, insistent, and monotonous, like the beating of Indian drums. They were
not expressible in words, but seemed rather to translate themselves into
attitudes of body, into degrees of muscular tension or relaxation; the naked
strength of youth, sharp as the sun- shafts; the crouching timorousness of age,
the sullenness of women who waited for their captors. At the first turning of
the canyon there was a half-ruined tower of yellow masonry, a watch-tower upon
which the young men used to entice eagles and snare them with nets. Sometimes
for a whole morning Thea could see the coppery breast and shoulders of an
Indian youth there against the sky; see him throw the net, and watch the
struggle with the eagle.
Old Henry Biltmer, at
the ranch, had been a great deal among the Pueblo Indians who are the
descendants of the Cliff-Dwellers. After supper he used to sit and smoke his
pipe by the kitchen stove and talk to Thea about them. He had never found any
one before who was interested in his ruins. Every Sunday the old man prowled
about in the canyon, and he had come to know a good deal more about it than he
could account for. He had gathered up a whole chestful of Cliff-Dweller relics
which he meant to take back to Germany with him some day. He taught Thea how to
find things among the ruins: grinding-stones, and drills and needles made of
turkey-bones. There were fragments of pottery everywhere. Old Henry explained
to her that the Ancient People had developed masonry and pottery far beyond any
other crafts. After they had made houses for themselves, the next thing was to
house the precious water. He explained to her how all their customs and
ceremonies and their religion went back to water. The men provided the food,
but water was the care of the women. The stupid women carried water for most of
their lives; the cleverer ones made the vessels to hold it. Their pottery was
their most direct appeal to water, the envelope and sheath of the precious
element itself. The strongest Indian need was expressed in those graceful jars,
fashioned slowly by hand, without the aid of a wheel.
When Thea took her bath
at the bottom of the canyon, in the sunny pool behind the screen of
cottonwoods, she sometimes felt as if the water must have sovereign qualities,
from having been the object of so much service and desire. That stream was the
only living thing left of the drama that had been played out in the canyon
centuries ago. In the rapid, restless heart of it, flowing swifter than the
rest, there was a continuity of life that reached back into the old time. The
glittering thread of current had a kind of lightly worn, loosely knit
personality, graceful and laughing. Thea's bath came to have a ceremonial
gravity. The atmosphere of the canyon was ritualistic.
One morning, as she was
standing upright in the pool, splashing water between her shoulder-blades with
a big sponge, something flashed through her mind that made her draw herself up
and stand still until the water had quite dried upon her flushed skin. The
stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath,
a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is
life itself,--life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too
sweet to lose? The Indian women had held it in their jars. In the sculpture she
had seen in the Art Institute, it had been caught in a flash of arrested
motion. In singing, one made a vessel of one's throat and nostrils and held it
on one's breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals.
THEA had a
superstitious feeling about the potsherds, and liked better to leave them in
the dwellings where she found them. If she took a few bits back to her own
lodge and hid them under the blankets, she did it guiltily, as if she were
being watched. She was a guest in these houses, and ought to behave as such.
Nearly every afternoon she went to the chambers which contained the most interesting
fragments of pottery, sat and looked at them for a while. Some of them were
beautifully decorated. This care, expended upon vessels that could not hold
food or water any better for the additional labor put upon them, made her heart
go out to those ancient potters. They had not only expressed their desire, but
they had expressed it as beautifully as they could. Food, fire, water, and
something else--even here, in this crack in the world, so far back in the night
of the past! Down here at the beginning that painful thing was already
stirring; the seed of sorrow, and of so much delight.
There were jars done in
a delicate overlay, like pine cones; and there were many patterns in a low
relief, like basket-work. Some of the pottery was decorated in color, red and
brown, black and white, in graceful geometrical patterns. One day, on a fragment
of a shallow bowl, she found a crested serpent's head, painted in red on
terra-cotta. Again she found half a bowl with a broad band of white
cliff-houses painted on a black ground. They were scarcely conventionalized at
all; there they were in the black border, just as they stood in the rock before
her. It brought her centuries nearer to these people to find that they saw
their houses exactly as she saw them.
Yes, Ray Kennedy was
right. All these things made one feel that one ought to do one's best, and help
to fulfill some desire of the dust that slept there. A dream had been dreamed
there long ago, in the night of ages, and the wind had whispered some promise
to the sadness of the savage. In their own way, those people had felt the
beginnings of what was to come. These potsherds were like fetters that bound
one to a long chain of human endeavor.
Not only did the world
seem older and richer to Thea now, but she herself seemed older. She had never
been alone for so long before, or thought so much. Nothing had ever engrossed
her so deeply as the daily contemplation of that line of pale-yellow houses
tucked into the wrinkle of the cliff. Moonstone and Chicago had become vague.
Here everything was simple and definite, as things had been in childhood. Her mind
was like a ragbag into which she had been frantically thrusting whatever she
could grab. And here she must throw this lumber away. The things that were
really hers separated themselves from the rest. Her ideas were simplified,
became sharper and clearer. She felt united and strong.
When Thea had been at
the Ottenburg ranch for two months, she got a letter from Fred announcing that
he "might be along at almost any time now." The letter came at night,
and the next morning she took it down into the canyon with her. She was
delighted that he was coming soon. She had never felt so grateful to any one,
and she wanted to tell him everything that had happened to her since she had
been there--more than had happened in all her life before. Certainly she liked
Fred better than any one else in the world. There was Harsanyi, of course--but
Harsanyi was always tired. Just now, and here, she wanted some one who had
never been tired, who could catch an idea and run with it.
She was ashamed to
think what an apprehensive drudge she must always have seemed to Fred, and she
wondered why he had concerned himself about her at all. Perhaps she would never
be so happy or so good-looking again, and she would like Fred to see her, for
once, at her best. She had not been singing much, but she knew that her voice
was more interesting than it had ever been before. She had begun to understand
that--with her, at least-- voice was, first of all, vitality; a lightness in
the body and a driving power in the blood. If she had that, she could sing.
When she felt so keenly alive, lying on that insensible shelf of stone, when
her body bounded like a rubber ball away from its hardness, then she could
sing. This, too, she could explain to Fred. He would know what she meant.
Another week passed.
Thea did the same things as before, felt the same influences, went over the
same ideas; but there was a livelier movement in her thoughts, and a freshening
of sensation, like the brightness which came over the underbrush after a
shower. A persistent affirmation-- or denial--was going on in her, like the
tapping of the woodpecker in the one tall pine tree across the chasm. Musical
phrases drove each other rapidly through her mind, and the song of the cicada
was now too long and too sharp. Everything seemed suddenly to take the form of
a desire for action.
It was while she was in
this abstracted state, waiting for the clock to strike, that Thea at last made
up her mind what she was going to try to do in the world, and that she was
going to Germany to study without further loss of time. Only by the merest
chance had she ever got to Panther Canyon. There was certainly no kindly
Providence that directed one's life; and one's parents did not in the least
care what became of one, so long as one did not misbehave and endanger their
comfort. One's life was at the mercy of blind chance. She had better take it in
her own hands and lose everything than meekly draw the plough under the rod of
parental guidance. She had seen it when she was at home last summer,--the hostility
of comfortable, self- satisfied people toward any serious effort. Even to her
father it seemed indecorous. Whenever she spoke seriously, he looked
apologetic. Yet she had clung fast to whatever was left of Moonstone in her
mind. No more of that! The Cliff-Dwellers had lengthened her past. She had
older and higher obligations.
ONE Sunday afternoon
late in July old Henry Biltmer was rheumatically descending into the head of
the canyon. The Sunday before had been one of those cloudy days--fortunately
rare--when the life goes out of that country and it becomes a gray ghost, an
empty, shivering uncertainty. Henry had spent the day in the barn; his canyon
was a reality only when it was flooded with the light of its great lamp, when
the yellow rocks cast purple shadows, and the resin was fairly cooking in the
corkscrew cedars. The yuccas were in blossom now. Out of each clump of sharp
bayonet leaves rose a tall stalk hung with greenish-white bells with thick,
fleshy petals. The nigger- head cactus was thrusting its crimson blooms up out
of every crevice in the rocks.
Henry had come out on
the pretext of hunting a spade and pick-axe that young Ottenburg had borrowed,
but he was keeping his eyes open. He was really very curious about the new
occupants of the canyon, and what they found to do there all day long. He let
his eye travel along the gulf for a mile or so to the first turning, where the
fissure zigzagged out and then receded behind a stone promontory on which stood
the yellowish, crumbling ruin of the old watch-tower.
From the base of this
tower, which now threw its shadow forward, bits of rock kept flying out into
the open gulf--skating upon the air until they lost their momentum, then
falling like chips until they rang upon the ledges at the bottom of the gorge
or splashed into the stream. Biltmer shaded his eyes with his hand. There on
the promontory, against the cream-colored cliff, were two figures nimbly moving
in the light, both slender and agile, entirely absorbed in their game. They looked
like two boys. Both were hatless and both wore white shirts.
Henry forgot his
pick-axe and followed the trail before the cliff-houses toward the tower.
Behind the tower, as he well knew, were heaps of stones, large and small, piled
against the face of the cliff. He had always believed that the Indian watchmen
piled them there for ammunition. Thea and Fred had come upon these missiles and
were throwing them for distance. As Biltmer approached he could hear them
laughing, and he caught Thea's voice, high and excited, with a ring of vexation
in it. Fred was teaching her to throw a heavy stone like a discus. When it was
Fred's turn, he sent a triangular-shaped stone out into the air with
considerable skill. Thea watched it enviously, standing in a half-defiant
posture, her sleeves rolled above her elbows and her face flushed with heat and
excitement. After Fred's third missile had rung upon the rocks below, she
snatched up a stone and stepped impatiently out on the ledge in front of him.
He caught her by the elbows and pulled her back.
"Not so close, you
silly! You'll spin yourself off in a minute."
"You went that
close. There's your heel-mark," she retorted.
"Well, I know how.
That makes a difference." He drew a mark in the dust with his toe.
"There, that's right. Don't step over that. Pivot yourself on your spine,
and make a half turn. When you've swung your length, let it go."
Thea settled the flat
piece of rock between her wrist and fingers, faced the cliff wall, stretched
her arm in position, whirled round on her left foot to the full stretch of her
body, and let the missile spin out over the gulf. She hung expectantly in the
air, forgetting to draw back her arm, her eyes following the stone as if it
carried her fortunes with it. Her comrade watched her; there weren't many girls
who could show a line like that from the toe to the thigh, from the shoulder to
the tip of the outstretched hand. The stone spent itself and began to fall.
Thea drew back and struck her knee furiously with her palm.
"There it goes
again! Not nearly so far as yours. What is the matter with me? Give me
another." She faced the cliff and whirled again. The stone spun out, not
quite so far as before.
Ottenburg laughed.
"Why do you keep on working after you've thrown it? You can't help it
along then."
Without replying, Thea
stooped and selected another stone, took a deep breath and made another turn.
Fred watched the disk, exclaiming, "Good girl! You got past the pine that
time. That's a good throw."
She took out her
handkerchief and wiped her glowing face and throat, pausing to feel her right
shoulder with her left hand.
"Ah--ha, you've
made yourself sore, haven't you? What did I tell you? You go at things too
hard. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Thea," Fred dusted his hands and
began tucking in the blouse of his shirt, "I'm going to make some
single-sticks and teach you to fence. You'd be all right there. You're light
and quick and you've got lots of drive in you. I'd like to have you come at me
with foils; you'd look so fierce," he chuckled.
She turned away from
him and stubbornly sent out another stone, hanging in the air after its flight.
Her fury amused Fred, who took all games lightly and played them well. She was
breathing hard, and little beads of moisture had gathered on her upper lip. He
slipped his arm about her. "If you will look as pretty as that--" he
bent his head and kissed her. Thea was startled, gave him an angry push, drove
at him with her free hand in a manner quite hostile. Fred was on his mettle in
an instant. He pinned both her arms down and kissed her resolutely.
When he released her,
she turned away and spoke over her shoulder. "That was mean of you, but I
suppose I deserved what I got."
"I should say you
did deserve it," Fred panted, "turning savage on me like that! I
should say you did deserve it!"
He saw her shoulders
harden. "Well, I just said I deserved it, didn't I? What more do you
want?"
"I want you to
tell me why you flew at me like that! You weren't playing; you looked as if you'd
like to murder me."
She brushed back her
hair impatiently. "I didn't mean anything, really. You interrupted me when
I was watching the stone. I can't jump from one thing to another. I pushed you
without thinking."
Fred thought her back
expressed contrition. He went up to her, stood behind her with his chin above
her shoulder, and said something in her ear. Thea laughed and turned toward
him. They left the stone-pile carelessly, as if they had never been interested
in it, rounded the yellow tower, and disappeared into the second turn of the
canyon, where the dead city, interrupted by the jutting promontory, began
again.
Old Biltmer had been
somewhat embarrassed by the turn the game had taken. He had not heard their conversation,
but the pantomime against the rocks was clear enough. When the two young people
disappeared, their host retreated rapidly toward the head of the canyon.
"I guess that
young lady can take care of herself," he chuckled. "Young Fred,
though, he has quite a way with them."
DAY was breaking over
Panther Canyon. The gulf was cold and full of heavy, purplish twilight. The
wood smoke which drifted from one of the cliff-houses hung in a blue scarf
across the chasm, until the draft caught it and whirled it away. Thea was
crouching in the doorway of her rock house, while Ottenburg looked after the
crackling fire in the next cave. He was waiting for it to burn down to coals
before he put the coffee on to boil.
They had left the ranch
house that morning a little after three o'clock, having packed their camp
equipment the day before, and had crossed the open pasture land with their
lantern while the stars were still bright. During the descent into the canyon
by lantern-light, they were chilled through their coats and sweaters. The
lantern crept slowly along the rock trail, where the heavy air seemed to offer
resistance. The voice of the stream at the bottom of the gorge was hollow and
threatening, much louder and deeper than it ever was by day--another voice
altogether. The sullenness of the place seemed to say that the world could get
on very well without people, red or white; that under the human world there was
a geological world, conducting its silent, immense operations which were
indifferent to man. Thea had often seen the desert sunrise,--a light- hearted
affair, where the sun springs out of bed and the world is golden in an instant.
But this canyon seemed to waken like an old man, with rheum and stiffness of
the joints, with heaviness, and a dull, malignant mind. She crouched against
the wall while the stars faded, and thought what courage the early races must
have had to endure so much for the little they got out of life.
At last a kind of
hopefulness broke in the air. In a moment the pine trees up on the edge of the
rim were flashing with coppery fire. The thin red clouds which hung above their
pointed tops began to boil and move rapidly, weaving in and out like smoke. The
swallows darted out of their rock houses as at a signal, and flew upward,
toward the rim. Little brown birds began to chirp in the bushes along the
watercourse down at the bottom of the ravine, where everything was still dusky
and pale. At first the golden light seemed to hang like a wave upon the rim of
the canyon; the trees and bushes up there, which one scarcely noticed at noon,
stood out magnified by the slanting rays. Long, thin streaks of light began to
reach quiveringly down into the canyon. The red sun rose rapidly above the tops
of the blazing pines, and its glow burst into the gulf, about the very doorstep
on which Thea sat. It bored into the wet, dark underbrush. The dripping cherry
bushes, the pale aspens, and the frosty piñons were glittering and trembling,
swimming in the liquid gold. All the pale, dusty little herbs of the bean
family, never seen by any one but a botanist, became for a moment individual
and important, their silky leaves quite beautiful with dew and light. The arch
of sky overhead, heavy as lead a little while before, lifted, became more and
more transparent, and one could look up into depths of pearly blue.
The savor of coffee and
bacon mingled with the smell of wet cedars drying, and Fred called to Thea that
he was ready for her. They sat down in the doorway of his kitchen, with the
warmth of the live coals behind them and the sunlight on their faces, and began
their breakfast, Mrs. Biltmer's thick coffee cups and the cream bottle between
them, the coffee-pot and frying-pan conveniently keeping hot among the embers.
"I thought you
were going back on the whole proposition, Thea, when you were crawling along
with that lantern. I couldn't get a word out of you."
"I know. I was
cold and hungry, and I didn't believe there was going to be any morning,
anyway. Didn't you feel queer, at all?"
Fred squinted above his
smoking cup. "Well, I am never strong for getting up before the sun. The
world looks unfurnished. When I first lit the fire and had a square look at
you, I thought I'd got the wrong girl. Pale, grim-- you were a sight!"
Thea leaned back into
the shadow of the rock room and warmed her hands over the coals. "It was
dismal enough. How warm these walls are, all the way round; and your breakfast
is so good. I'm all right now, Fred."
"Yes, you're all
right now." Fred lit a cigarette and looked at her critically as her head
emerged into the sun again. "You get up every morning just a little bit
handsomer than you were the day before. I'd love you just as much if you were
not turning into one of the loveliest women I've ever seen; but you are, and
that's a fact to be reckoned with." He watched her across the thin line of
smoke he blew from his lips. "What are you going to do with all that
beauty and all that talent, Miss Kronborg?"
She turned away to the
fire again. "I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered
with an awkwardness which did not conceal her pleasure.
Ottenburg laughed
softly. "Oh, yes, you do! Nobody better! You're a close one, but you give
yourself away sometimes, like everybody else. Do you know, I've decided that you
never do a single thing without an ulterior motive." He threw away his
cigarette, took out his tobacco-pouch and began to fill his pipe. "You
ride and fence and walk and climb, but I know that all the while you're getting
somewhere in your mind. All these things are instruments; and I, too, am an
instrument." He looked up in time to intercept a quick, startled glance
from Thea. "Oh, I don't mind," he chuckled; "not a bit. Every
woman, every interesting woman, has ulterior motives, many of 'em less creditable
than yours. It's your constancy that amuses me. You must have been doing it
ever since you were two feet high."
Thea looked slowly up
at her companion's good-humored face. His eyes, sometimes too restless and
sympathetic in town, had grown steadier and clearer in the open air. His short
curly beard and yellow hair had reddened in the sun and wind. The pleasant
vigor of his person was always delightful to her, something to signal to and
laugh with in a world of negative people. With Fred she was never becalmed.
There was always life in the air, always something coming and going, a rhythm
of feeling and action,-- stronger than the natural accord of youth. As she
looked at him, leaning against the sunny wall, she felt a desire to be frank
with him. She was not willfully holding anything back. But, on the other hand,
she could not force things that held themselves back. "Yes, it was like
that when I was little," she said at last. "I had to be close, as you
call it, or go under. But I didn't know I had been like that since you came.
I've had nothing to be close about. I haven't thought about anything but having
a good time with you. I've just drifted."
Fred blew a trail of
smoke out into the breeze and looked knowing. "Yes, you drift like a rifle
ball, my dear. It's your--your direction that I like best of all. Most fellows
wouldn't, you know. I'm unusual."
They both laughed, but
Thea frowned questioningly. "Why wouldn't most fellows? Other fellows have
liked me."
"Yes, serious
fellows. You told me yourself they were all old, or solemn. But jolly fellows
want to be the whole target. They would say you were all brain and muscle; that
you have no feeling."
She glanced at him
sidewise. "Oh, they would, would they?"
"Of course they
would," Fred continued blandly. "Jolly fellows have no imagination.
They want to be the animating force. When they are not around, they want a girl
to be--extinct," he waved his hand. "Old fellows like Mr. Nathanmeyer
understand your kind; but among the young ones, you are rather lucky to have
found me. Even I wasn't always so wise. I've had my time of thinking it would
not bore me to be the Apollo of a homey flat, and I've paid out a trifle to
learn better. All those things get very tedious unless they are hooked up with
an idea of some sort. It's because we don't come out here only to look at each
other and drink coffee that it's so pleasant to --look at each other."
Fred drew on his pipe for a while, studying Thea's abstraction. She was staring
up at the far wall of the canyon with a troubled expression that drew her eyes
narrow and her mouth hard. Her hands lay in her lap, one over the other, the
fingers interlacing. "Suppose," Fred came out at
length,--"suppose I were to offer you what most of the young men I know
would offer a girl they'd been sitting up nights about: a comfortable flat in
Chicago, a summer camp up in the woods, musical evenings, and a family to bring
up. Would it look attractive to you?"
Thea sat up straight
and stared at him in alarm, glared into his eyes. "Perfectly
hideous!" she exclaimed.
Fred dropped back
against the old stonework and laughed deep in his chest. "Well, don't be
frightened. I won't offer them. You're not a nest-building bird. You know I
always liked your song, `Me for the jolt of the breakers!' I understand."
She rose impatiently
and walked to the edge of the cliff. "It's not that so much. It's waking
up every morning with the feeling that your life is your own, and your strength
is your own, and your talent is your own; that you're all there, and there's no
sag in you." She stood for a moment as if she were tortured by
uncertainty, then turned suddenly back to him. "Don't talk about these
things any more now," she entreated. "It isn't that I want to keep
anything from you. The trouble is that I've got nothing to keep--except (you
know as well as I) that feeling. I told you about it in Chicago once. But it
always makes me unhappy to talk about it. It will spoil the day. Will you go
for a climb with me?" She held out her hands with a smile so eager that it
made Ottenburg feel how much she needed to get away from herself.
He sprang up and caught
the hands she put out so cordially, and stood swinging them back and forth.
"I won't tease you. A word's enough to me. But I love it, all the same.
Understand?" He pressed her hands and dropped them. "Now, where are
you going to drag me?"
"I want you to
drag me. Over there, to the other houses. They are more interesting than
these." She pointed across the gorge to the row of white houses in the
other cliff. "The trail is broken away, but I got up there once. It's
possible. You have to go to the bottom of the canyon, cross the creek, and then
go up hand-over-hand."
Ottenburg, lounging
against the sunny wall, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, looked across
at the distant dwellings. "It's an awful climb," he sighed,
"when I could be perfectly happy here with my pipe. However--" He
took up his stick and hat and followed Thea down the water trail. "Do you
climb this path every day? You surely earn your bath. I went down and had a
look at your pool the other afternoon. Neat place, with all those little
cottonwoods. Must be very becoming."
"Think so?"
Thea said over her shoulder, as she swung round a turn.
"Yes, and so do
you, evidently. I'm becoming expert at reading your meaning in your back. I'm
behind you so much on these single-foot trails. You don't wear stays, do
you?"
"Not here."
"I wouldn't,
anywhere, if I were you. They will make you less elastic. The side muscles get
flabby. If you go in for opera, there's a fortune in a flexible body. Most of
the German singers are clumsy, even when they're well set up."
Thea switched a piñion
branch back at him. "Oh, I'll never get fat! That I can promise you."
Fred smiled, looking
after her. "Keep that promise, no matter how many others you break,"
he drawled.
The upward climb, after
they had crossed the stream, was at first a breathless scramble through
underbrush. When they reached the big boulders, Ottenburg went first because he
had the longer leg-reach, and gave Thea a hand when the step was quite beyond
her, swinging her up until she could get a foothold. At last they reached a
little platform among the rocks, with only a hundred feet of jagged, sloping
wall between them and the cliff-houses.
Ottenburg lay down
under a pine tree and declared that he was going to have a pipe before he went
any farther. "It's a good thing to know when to stop, Thea," he said
meaningly.
"I'm not going to
stop now until I get there," Thea insisted. "I'll go on alone."
Fred settled his
shoulder against the tree-trunk. "Go on if you like, but I'm here to enjoy
myself. If you meet a rattler on the way, have it out with him."
She hesitated, fanning
herself with her felt hat. "I never have met one."
"There's reasoning
for you," Fred murmured languidly.
Thea turned away
resolutely and began to go up the wall, using an irregular cleft in the rock
for a path. The cliff, which looked almost perpendicular from the bottom, was
really made up of ledges and boulders, and behind these she soon disappeared.
For a long while Fred smoked with half-closed eyes, smiling to himself now and
again. Occasionally he lifted an eyebrow as he heard the rattle of small stones
among the rocks above. "In a temper," he concluded; "do her
good." Then he subsided into warm drowsiness and listened to the locusts
in the yuccas, and the tap-tap of the old woodpecker that was never weary of
assaulting the big pine.
Fred had finished his
pipe and was wondering whether he wanted another, when he heard a call from the
cliff far above him. Looking up, he saw Thea standing on the edge of a
projecting crag. She waved to him and threw her arm over her head, as if she
were snapping her fingers in the air.
As he saw her there
between the sky and the gulf, with that great wash of air and the morning light
about her, Fred recalled the brilliant figure at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's. Thea was
one of those people who emerge, unexpectedly, larger than we are accustomed to
see them. Even at this distance one got the impression of muscular energy and
audacity,--a kind of brilliancy of motion,--of a personality that carried
across big spaces and expanded among big things. Lying still, with his hands
under his head, Ottenburg rhetorically addressed the figure in the air.
"You are the sort that used to run wild in Germany, dressed in their hair
and a piece of skin. Soldiers caught 'em in nets. Old Nathanmeyer," he
mused, "would like a peep at her now. Knowing old fellow. Always buying
those Zorn etchings of peasant girls bathing. No sag in them either. Must be
the cold climate." He sat up. "She'll begin to pitch rocks on me if I
don't move." In response to another impatient gesture from the crag, he
rose and began swinging slowly up the trail.
It was the afternoon of
that long day. Thea was lying on a blanket in the door of her rock house. She
and Ottenburg had come back from their climb and had lunch, and he had gone off
for a nap in one of the cliff-houses farther down the path. He was sleeping
peacefully, his coat under his head and his face turned toward the wall.
Thea, too, was drowsy,
and lay looking through halfclosed eyes up at the blazing blue arch over the
rim of the canyon. She was thinking of nothing at all. Her mind, like her body,
was full of warmth, lassitude, physical content. Suddenly an eagle, tawny and
of great size, sailed over the cleft in which she lay, across the arch of sky.
He dropped for a moment into the gulf between the walls, then wheeled, and mounted
until his plumage was so steeped in light that he looked like a golden bird. He
swept on, following the course of the canyon a little way and then disappearing
beyond the rim. Thea sprang to her feet as if she had been thrown up from the
rock by volcanic action. She stood rigid on the edge of the stone shelf,
straining her eyes after that strong, tawny flight. O eagle of eagles!
Endeavor, achievement, desire, glorious striving of human art! From a cleft in
the heart of the world she saluted it. . . . It had come all the way; when men
lived in caves, it was there. A vanished race; but along the trails, in the
stream, under the spreading cactus, there still glittered in the sun the bits
of their frail clay vessels, fragments of their desire.
FROM the day of Fred's
arrival, he and Thea were unceasingly active. They took long rides into the
Navajo pine forests, bought turquoises and silver bracelets from the wandering
Indian herdsmen, and rode twenty miles to Flagstaff upon the slightest pretext.
Thea had never felt this pleasant excitement about any man before, and she
found herself trying very hard to please young Ottenburg. She was never tired,
never dull. There was a zest about waking up in the morning and dressing, about
walking, riding, even about sleep.
One morning when Thea
came out from her room at seven o'clock, she found Henry and Fred on the porch,
looking up at the sky. The day was already hot and there was no breeze. The sun
was shining, but heavy brown clouds were hanging in the west, like the smoke of
a forest fire. She and Fred had meant to ride to Flagstaff that morning, but
Biltmer advised against it, foretelling a storm. After breakfast they lingered
about the house, waiting for the weather to make up its mind. Fred had brought
his guitar, and as they had the dining-room to themselves, he made Thea go over
some songs with him. They got interested and kept it up until Mrs. Biltmer came
to set the table for dinner. Ottenburg knew some of the Mexican things Spanish
Johnny used to sing. Thea had never before happened to tell him about Spanish
Johnny, and he seemed more interested in Johnny than in Dr. Archie or Wunsch.
After dinner they were
too restless to endure the ranch house any longer, and ran away to the canyon
to practice with single-sticks. Fred carried a slicker and a sweater, and he
made Thea wear one of the rubber hats that hung in Biltmer's gun-room. As they
crossed the pasture land the clumsy slicker kept catching in the lacings of his
leggings.
"Why don't you
drop that thing?" Thea asked. "I won't mind a shower. I've been wet
before."
"No use taking
chances."
From the canyon they
were unable to watch the sky, since only a strip of the zenith was visible. The
flat ledge about the watch-tower was the only level spot large enough for
single-stick exercise, and they were still practicing there when, at about four
o'clock, a tremendous roll of thunder echoed between the cliffs and the
atmosphere suddenly became thick.
Fred thrust the sticks
in a cleft in the rock. "We're in for it, Thea. Better make for your cave
where there are blankets." He caught her elbow and hurried her along the
path before the cliff-houses. They made the half-mile at a quick trot, and as
they ran the rocks and the sky and the air between the cliffs turned a turbid
green, like the color in a moss agate. When they reached the blanketed rock
room, they looked at each other and laughed. Their faces had taken on a
greenish pallor. Thea's hair, even, was green.
"Dark as pitch in
here," Fred exclaimed as they hurried over the old rock doorstep.
"But it's warm. The rocks hold the heat. It's going to be terribly cold
outside, all right." He was interrupted by a deafening peal of thunder.
"Lord, what an echo! Lucky you don't mind. It's worth watching out there.
We needn't come in yet."
The green light grew
murkier and murkier. The smaller vegetation was blotted out. The yuccas, the
cedars, and piñions stood dark and rigid, like bronze. The swallows flew up
with sharp, terrified twitterings. Even the quaking asps were still. While Fred
and Thea watched from the doorway, the light changed to purple. Clouds of dark
vapor, like chlorine gas, began to float down from the head of the canyon and
hung between them and the cliff-houses in the opposite wall. Before they knew
it, the wall itself had disappeared. The air was positively venomous-looking,
and grew colder every minute. The thunder seemed to crash against one cliff,
then against the other, and to go shrieking off into the inner canyon.
The moment the rain
broke, it beat the vapors down. In the gulf before them the water fell in
spouts, and dashed from the high cliffs overhead. It tore aspens and
chokecherry bushes out of the ground and left the yuccas hanging by their tough
roots. Only the little cedars stood black and unmoved in the torrents that fell
from so far above. The rock chamber was full of fine spray from the streams of
water that shot over the doorway. Thea crept to the back wall and rolled
herself in a blanket, and Fred threw the heavier blankets over her. The wool of
the Navajo sheep was soon kindled by the warmth of her body, and was
impenetrable to dampness. Her hair, where it hung below the rubber hat,
gathered the moisture like a sponge. Fred put on the slicker, tied the sweater
about his neck, and settled himself cross-legged beside her. The chamber was so
dark that, although he could see the outline of her head and shoulders, he
could not see her face. He struck a wax match to light his pipe. As he
sheltered it between his hands, it sizzled and sputtered, throwing a yellow
flicker over Thea and her blankets.
"You look like a
gypsy," he said as he dropped the match. "Any one you'd rather be
shut up with than me? No? Sure about that?"
"I think I am.
Aren't you cold?"
"Not
especially." Fred smoked in silence, listening to the roar of the water
outside. "We may not get away from here right away," he remarked.
"I shan't mind.
Shall you?"
He laughed grimly and
pulled on his pipe. "Do you know where you're at, Miss Thea Kronborg?"
he said at last. "You've got me going pretty hard, I suppose you know.
I've had a lot of sweethearts, but I've never been so much--engrossed before.
What are you going to do about it?" He heard nothing from the blankets.
"Are you going to play fair, or is it about my cue to cut away?"
"I'll play fair. I
don't see why you want to go."
"What do you want
me around for?--to play with?"
Thea struggled up among
the blankets. "I want you for everything. I don't know whether I'm what
people call in love with you or not. In Moonstone that meant sitting in a
hammock with somebody. I don't want to sit in a hammock with you, but I want to
do almost everything else. Oh, hundreds of things!"
"If I run away,
will you go with me?"
"I don't know.
I'll have to think about that. Maybe I would." She freed herself from her
wrappings and stood up. "It's not raining so hard now. Hadn't we better
start this minute? It will be night before we get to Biltmer's."
Fred struck another
match. "It's seven. I don't know how much of the path may be washed away.
I don't even know whether I ought to let you try it without a lantern."
Thea went to the
doorway and looked out. "There's nothing else to do. The sweater and the
slicker will keep me dry, and this will be my chance to find out whether these
shoes are really water-tight. They cost a week's salary." She retreated to
the back of the cave. "It's getting blacker every minute."
Ottenburg took a brandy
flask from his coat pocket. "Better have some of this before we start. Can
you take it without water?"
Thea lifted it
obediently to her lips. She put on the sweater and Fred helped her to get the
clumsy slicker on over it. He buttoned it and fastened the high collar. She
could feel that his hands were hurried and clumsy. The coat was too big, and he
took off his necktie and belted it in at the waist. While she tucked her hair
more securely under the rubber hat he stood in front of her, between her and
the gray doorway, without moving.
"Are you ready to
go?" she asked carelessly.
"If you are,"
he spoke quietly, without moving, except to bend his head forward a little.
Thea laughed and put
her hands on his shoulders. "You know how to handle me, don't you?"
she whispered. For the first time, she kissed him without constraint or
embarrassment.
"Thea, Thea,
Thea!" Fred whispered her name three times, shaking her a little as if to
waken her. It was too dark to see, but he could feel that she was smiling.
When she kissed him she
had not hidden her face on his shoulder,--she had risen a little on her toes,
and stood straight and free. In that moment when he came close to her actual
personality, he felt in her the same expansion that he had noticed at Mrs.
Nathanmeyer's. She became freer and stronger under impulses. When she rose to
meet him like that, he felt her flash into everything that she had ever
suggested to him, as if she filled out her own shadow.
She pushed him away and
shot past him out into the rain. "Now for it, Fred," she called back
exultantly. The rain was pouring steadily down through the dying gray twilight,
and muddy streams were spouting and foaming over the cliff.
Fred caught her and
held her back. "Keep behind me, Thea. I don't know about the path. It may
be gone altogether. Can't tell what there is under this water."
But the path was older
than the white man's Arizona. The rush of water had washed away the dust and
stones that lay on the surface, but the rock skeleton of the Indian trail was
there, ready for the foot. Where the streams poured down through gullies, there
was always a cedar or a piñion to cling to. By wading and slipping and
climbing, they got along. As they neared the head of the canyon, where the path
lifted and rose in steep loops to the surface of the plateau, the climb was more
difficult. The earth above had broken away and washed down over the trail,
bringing rocks and bushes and even young trees with it. The last ghost of
daylight was dying and there was no time to lose. The canyon behind them was
already black.
"We've got to go
right through the top of this pine tree, Thea. No time to hunt a way around.
Give me your hand." After they had crashed through the mass of branches,
Fred stopped abruptly. "Gosh, what a hole! Can you jump it? Wait a
minute."
He cleared the washout,
slipped on the wet rock at the farther side, and caught himself just in time to
escape a tumble. "If I could only find something to hold to, I could give
you a hand. It's so cursed dark, and there are no trees here where they're
needed. Here's something; it's a root. It will hold all right." He braced
himself on the rock, gripped the crooked root with one hand and swung himself
across toward Thea, holding out his arm. "Good jump! I must say you don't
lose your nerve in a tight place. Can you keep at it a little longer? We're
almost out. Have to make that next ledge. Put your foot on my knee and catch
something to pull by."
Thea went up over his
shoulder. "It's hard ground up here," she panted. "Did I wrench
your arm when I slipped then? It was a cactus I grabbed, and it startled
me."
"Now, one more
pull and we're on the level."
They emerged gasping
upon the black plateau. In the last five minutes the darkness had solidified
and it seemed as if the skies were pouring black water. They could not see where
the sky ended or the plain began. The light at the ranch house burned a steady
spark through the rain. Fred drew Thea's arm through his and they struck off
toward the light. They could not see each other, and the rain at their backs
seemed to drive them along. They kept laughing as they stumbled over tufts of
grass or stepped into slippery pools. They were delighted with each other and
with the adventure which lay behind them.
"I can't even see
the whites of your eyes, Thea. But I'd know who was here stepping out with me,
anywhere. Part coyote you are, by the feel of you. When you make up your mind
to jump, you jump! My gracious, what's the matter with your hand?"
"Cactus spines.
Didn't I tell you when I grabbed the cactus? I thought it was a root. Are we
going straight?"
"I don't know.
Somewhere near it, I think. I'm very comfortable, aren't you? You're warm,
except your cheeks. How funny they are when they're wet. Still, you always feel
like you. I like this. I could walk to Flagstaff. It's fun, not being able to
see anything. I feel surer of you when I can't see you. Will you run away with
me?"
Thea laughed. "I
won't run far to-night. I'll think about it. Look, Fred, there's somebody
coming."
"Henry, with his
lantern. Good enough! Halloo! Hallo --o--o!" Fred shouted.
The moving light bobbed
toward them. In half an hour Thea was in her big feather bed, drinking hot
lentil soup, and almost before the soup was swallowed she was asleep.
ON the first day of
September Fred Ottenburg and Thea Kronborg left Flagstaff by the east-bound
express. As the bright morning advanced, they sat alone on the rear platform of
the observation car, watching the yellow miles unfold and disappear. With
complete content they saw the brilliant, empty country flash by. They were
tired of the desert and the dead races, of a world without change or ideas.
Fred said he was glad to sit back and let the Santa Fe do the work for a while.
"And where are we
going, anyhow?" he added.
"To Chicago, I
suppose. Where else would we be going?" Thea hunted for a handkerchief in
her handbag.
"I wasn't sure, so
I had the trunks checked to Albuquerque. We can recheck there to Chicago, if
you like. Why Chicago? You'll never go back to Bowers. Why wouldn't this be a
good time to make a run for it? We could take the southern branch at
Albuquerque, down to El Paso, and then over into Mexico. We are exceptionally
free. Nobody waiting for us anywhere."
Thea sighted along the
steel rails that quivered in the light behind them. "I don't see why I
couldn't marry you in Chicago, as well as any place," she brought out with
some embarrassment.
Fred took the handbag
out of her nervous clasp and swung it about on his finger. "You've no
particular love for that spot, have you? Besides, as I've told you, my family
would make a row. They are an excitable lot. They discuss and argue
everlastingly. The only way I can ever put anything through is to go ahead, and
convince them afterward."
"Yes; I
understand. I don't mind that. I don't want to marry your family. I'm sure you
wouldn't want to marry mine. But I don't see why we have to go so far."
"When we get to
Winslow, you look about the freight yards and you'll probably see several
yellow cars with my name on them. That's why, my dear. When your visiting-card
is on every beer bottle, you can't do things quietly. Things get into the
papers." As he watched her troubled expression, he grew anxious. He leaned
forward on his camp-chair, and kept twirling the handbag between his knees.
"Here's a suggestion, Thea," he said presently. "Dismiss it if
you don't like it: suppose we go down to Mexico on the chance. You've never
seen anything like Mexico City; it will be a lark for you, anyhow. If you
change your mind, and don't want to marry me, you can go back to Chicago, and
I'll take a steamer from Vera Cruz and go up to New York. When I get to
Chicago, you'll be at work, and nobody will ever be the wiser. No reason why we
shouldn't both travel in Mexico, is there? You'll be traveling alone. I'll
merely tell you the right places to stop, and come to take you driving. I won't
put any pressure on you. Have I ever?" He swung the bag toward her and
looked up under her hat.
"No, you
haven't," she murmured. She was thinking that her own position might be
less difficult if he had used what he called pressure. He clearly wished her to
take the responsibility.
"You have your own
future in the back of your mind all the time," Fred began, "and I
have it in mine. I'm not going to try to carry you off, as I might another
girl. If you wanted to quit me, I couldn't hold you, no matter how many times
you had married me. I don't want to over- persuade you. But I'd like mighty well
to get you down to that jolly old city, where everything would please you, and
give myself a chance. Then, if you thought you could have a better time with me
than without me, I'd try to grab you before you changed your mind. You are not
a sentimental person."
Thea drew her veil down
over her face. "I think I am, a little; about you," she said quietly.
Fred's irony somehow hurt her.
"What's at the
bottom of your mind, Thea?" he asked hurriedly. "I can't tell. Why do
you consider it at all, if you're not sure? Why are you here with me now?"
Her face was
half-averted. He was thinking that it looked older and more firm--almost
hard--under a veil.
"Isn't it possible
to do things without having any very clear reason?" she asked slowly.
"I have no plan in the back of my mind. Now that I'm with you, I want to
be with you; that's all. I can't settle down to being alone again. I am here
to-day because I want to be with you to-day." She paused. "One thing,
though; if I gave you my word, I'd keep it. And you could hold me, though you
don't seem to think so. Maybe I'm not sentimental, but I'm not very light,
either. If I went off with you like this, it wouldn't be to amuse myself."
Ottenburg's eyes fell.
His lips worked nervously for a moment. "Do you mean that you really care
for me, Thea Kronborg?" he asked unsteadily.
"I guess so. It's
like anything else. It takes hold of you and you've got to go through with it,
even if you're afraid. I was afraid to leave Moonstone, and afraid to leave
Harsanyi. But I had to go through with it."
"And are you
afraid now?" Fred asked slowly.
"Yes; more than
I've ever been. But I don't think I could go back. The past closes up behind
one, somehow. One would rather have a new kind of misery. The old kind seems
like death or unconsciousness. You can't force your life back into that mould
again. No, one can't go back." She rose and stood by the back grating of
the platform, her hand on the brass rail.
Fred went to her side.
She pushed up her veil and turned her most glowing face to him. Her eyes were
wet and there were tears on her lashes, but she was smiling the rare,
whole-hearted smile he had seen once or twice before. He looked at her shining
eyes, her parted lips, her chin a little lifted. It was as if they were colored
by a sunrise he could not see. He put his hand over hers and clasped it with a
strength she felt. Her eyelashes trembled, her mouth softened, but her eyes
were still brilliant.
"Will you always
be like you were down there, if I go with you?" she asked under her
breath.
His fingers tightened
on hers. "By God, I will!" he muttered.
"That's the only
promise I'll ask you for. Now go away for a while and let me think about it.
Come back at lunch- time and I'll tell you. Will that do?"
"Anything will do,
Thea, if you'll only let me keep an eye on you. The rest of the world doesn't
interest me much. You've got me in deep."
Fred dropped her hand
and turned away. As he glanced back from the front end of the observation car,
he saw that she was still standing there, and any one would have known that she
was brooding over something. The earnestness of her head and shoulders had a
certain nobility. He stood looking at her for a moment.
When he reached the
forward smoking-car, Fred took a seat at the end, where he could shut the other
passengers from his sight. He put on his traveling-cap and sat down wearily,
keeping his head near the window. "In any case, I shall help her more than
I shall hurt her," he kept saying to himself. He admitted that this was
not the only motive which impelled him, but it was one of them. "I'll make
it my business in life to get her on. There's nothing else I care about so much
as seeing her have her chance. She hasn't touched her real force yet. She isn't
even aware of it. Lord, don't I know something about them? There isn't one of
them that has such a depth to draw from. She'll be one of the great artists of
our time. Playing accompaniments for that cheese-faced sneak! I'll get her off
to Germany this winter, or take her. She hasn't got any time to waste now. I'll
make it up to her, all right."
Ottenburg certainly
meant to make it up to her, in so far as he could. His feeling was as generous
as strong human feelings are likely to be. The only trouble was, that he was
married already, and had been since he was twenty.
His older friends in
Chicago, people who had been friends of his family, knew of the unfortunate
state of his personal affairs; but they were people whom in the natural course
of things Thea Kronborg would scarcely meet. Mrs. Frederick Ottenburg lived in
California, at Santa Barbara, where her health was supposed to be better than
elsewhere, and her husband lived in Chicago. He visited his wife every winter
to reinforce her position, and his devoted mother, although her hatred for her
daughter-in-law was scarcely approachable in words, went to Santa Barbara every
year to make things look better and to relieve her son.
When Frederick
Ottenburg was beginning his junior year at Harvard, he got a letter from Dick
Brisbane, a Kansas City boy he knew, telling him that his fiancée, Miss Edith
Beers, was going to New York to buy her trousseau. She would be at the Holland
House, with her aunt and a girl from Kansas City who was to be a bridesmaid,
for two weeks or more. If Ottenburg happened to be going down to New York,
would he call upon Miss Beers and "show her a good time"?
Fred did happen to be
going to New York. He was going down from New Haven, after the Thanksgiving
game. He called on Miss Beers and found her, as he that night telegraphed
Brisbane, a "ripping beauty, no mistake." He took her and her aunt
and her uninteresting friend to the theater and to the opera, and he asked them
to lunch with him at the Waldorf. He took no little pains in arranging the
luncheon with the head waiter. Miss Beers was the sort of girl with whom a
young man liked to seem experienced. She was dark and slender and fiery. She
was witty and slangy; said daring things and carried them off with nonchalance.
Her childish extravagance and contempt for all the serious facts of life could
be charged to her father's generosity and his long packing-house purse. Freaks
that would have been vulgar and ostentatious in a more simple- minded girl, in
Miss Beers seemed whimsical and picturesque. She darted about in magnificent
furs and pumps and close-clinging gowns, though that was the day of full
skirts. Her hats were large and floppy. When she wriggled out of her moleskin
coat at luncheon, she looked like a slim black weasel. Her satin dress was a
mere sheath, so conspicuous by its severity and scantness that every one in the
dining-room stared. She ate nothing but alligator-pear salad and hothouse
grapes, drank a little champagne, and took cognac in her coffee. She ridiculed,
in the raciest slang, the singers they had heard at the opera the night before,
and when her aunt pretended to reprove her, she murmured indifferently,
"What's the matter with you, old sport?" She rattled on with a
subdued loquaciousness, always keeping her voice low and monotonous, always
looking out of the corner of her eye and speaking, as it were, in asides, out
of the corner of her mouth. She was scornful of everything,--which became her
eyebrows. Her face was mobile and discontented, her eyes quick and black. There
was a sort of smouldering fire about her, young Ottenburg thought. She
entertained him prodigiously.
After luncheon Miss
Beers said she was going uptown to be fitted, and that she would go alone
because her aunt made her nervous. When Fred held her coat for her, she
murmured, "Thank you, Alphonse," as if she were addressing the
waiter. As she stepped into a hansom, with a long stretch of thin silk
stocking, she said negligently, over her fur collar, "Better let me take
you along and drop you somewhere." He sprang in after her, and she told
the driver to go to the Park.
It was a bright winter
day, and bitterly cold. Miss Beers asked Fred to tell her about the game at New
Haven, and when he did so paid no attention to what he said. She sank back into
the hansom and held her muff before her face, lowering it occasionally to utter
laconic remarks about the people in the carriages they passed, interrupting
Fred's narrative in a disconcerting manner. As they entered the Park he
happened to glance under her wide black hat at her black eyes and hair--the
muff hid everything else--and discovered that she was crying. To his solicitous
inquiry she replied that it "was enough to make you damp, to go and try on
dresses to marry a man you weren't keen about."
Further explanations
followed. She had thought she was "perfectly cracked" about Brisbane,
until she met Fred at the Holland House three days ago. Then she knew she would
scratch Brisbane's eyes out if she married him. What was she going to do?
Fred told the driver to
keep going. What did she want to do? Well, she didn't know. One had to marry
somebody, after all the machinery had been put in motion. Perhaps she might as
well scratch Brisbane as anybody else; for scratch she would, if she didn't get
what she wanted.
Of course, Fred agreed,
one had to marry somebody. And certainly this girl beat anything he had ever
been up against before. Again he told the driver to go ahead. Did she mean that
she would think of marrying him, by any chance? Of course she did, Alphonse.
Hadn't he seen that all over her face three days ago? If he hadn't, he was a
snowball.
By this time Fred was
beginning to feel sorry for the driver. Miss Beers, however, was
compassionless. After a few more turns, Fred suggested tea at the Casino. He
was very cold himself, and remembering the shining silk hose and pumps, he
wondered that the girl was not frozen. As they got out of the hansom, he
slipped the driver a bill and told him to have something hot while he waited.
At the tea-table, in a
snug glass enclosure, with the steam sputtering in the pipes beside them and a
brilliant winter sunset without, they developed their plan. Miss Beers had with
her plenty of money, destined for tradesmen, which she was quite willing to
divert into other channels--the first excitement of buying a trousseau had worn
off, anyway. It was very much like any other shopping. Fred had his allowance
and a few hundred he had won on the game. She would meet him to-morrow morning
at the Jersey ferry. They could take one of the west-bound Pennsylvania trains
and go--anywhere, some place where the laws weren't too fussy.-- Fred had not
even thought about the laws!-- It would be all right with her father; he knew
Fred's family.
Now that they were
engaged, she thought she would like to drive a little more. They were jerked
about in the cab for another hour through the deserted Park. Miss Beers, having
removed her hat, reclined upon Fred's shoulder.
The next morning they
left Jersey City by the latest fast train out. They had some misadventures,
crossed several States before they found a justice obliging enough to marry two
persons whose names automatically instigated inquiry. The bride's family were
rather pleased with her originality; besides, any one of the Ottenburg boys was
clearly a better match than young Brisbane. With Otto Ottenburg, however, the
affair went down hard, and to his wife, the once proud Katarina Furst, such a
disappointment was almost unbearable. Her sons had always been clay in her
hands, and now the geliebter Sohn had escaped her.
Beers, the packer, gave
his daughter a house in St. Louis, and Fred went into his father's business. At
the end of a year, he was mutely appealing to his mother for sympathy. At the
end of two, he was drinking and in open rebellion. He had learned to detest his
wife. Her wastefulness and cruelty revolted him. The ignorance and the fatuous
conceit which lay behind her grimacing mask of slang and ridicule humiliated
him so deeply that he became absolutely reckless. Her grace was only an uneasy
wriggle, her audacity was the result of insolence and envy, and her wit was
restless spite. As her personal mannerisms grew more and more odious to him, he
began to dull his perceptions with champagne. He had it for tea, he drank it
with dinner, and during the evening he took enough to insure that he would be
well insulated when he got home. This behavior spread alarm among his friends.
It was scandalous, and it did not occur among brewers. He was violating the
noblesse oblige of his guild. His father and his father's partners looked
alarmed.
When Fred's mother went
to him and with clasped hands entreated an explanation, he told her that the
only trouble was that he couldn't hold enough wine to make life endurable, so
he was going to get out from under and enlist in the navy. He didn't want
anything but the shirt on his back and clean salt air. His mother could look
out; he was going to make a scandal.
Mrs. Otto Ottenburg
went to Kansas City to see Mr. Beers, and had the satisfaction of telling him
that he had brought up his daughter like a savage, eine Ungebildete. All the
Ottenburgs and all the Beers, and many of their friends, were drawn into the
quarrel. It was to public opinion, however and not to his mother's activities,
that Fred owed his partial escape from bondage. The cosmopolitan brewing world
of St. Louis had conservative standards. The Ottenburgs' friends were not
predisposed in favor of the plunging Kansas City set, and they disliked young
Fred's wife from the day that she was brought among them. They found her
ignorant and ill-bred and insufferably impertinent. When they became aware of
how matters were going between her and Fred, they omitted no opportunity to
snub her. Young Fred had always been popular, and St. Louis people took up his
cause with warmth. Even the younger men, among whom Mrs. Fred tried to draft a
following, at first avoided and then ignored her. Her defeat was so
conspicuous, her life became such a desert, that she at last consented to
accept the house in Santa Barbara which Mrs. Otto Ottenburg had long owned and
cherished. This villa, with its luxuriant gardens, was the price of Fred's
furlough. His mother was only too glad to offer it in his behalf. As soon as
his wife was established in California, Fred was transferred from St. Louis to
Chicago.
A divorce was the one
thing Edith would never, never, give him. She told him so, and she told his
family so, and her father stood behind her. She would enter into no arrangement
that might eventually lead to divorce. She had insulted her husband before
guests and servants, had scratched his face, thrown hand-mirrors and
hairbrushes and nail-scissors at him often enough, but she knew that Fred was
hardly the fellow who would go into court and offer that sort of evidence. In
her behavior with other men she was discreet.
After Fred went to
Chicago, his mother visited him often, and dropped a word to her old friends
there, who were already kindly disposed toward the young man. They gossiped as
little as was compatible with the interest they felt, undertook to make life
agreeable for Fred, and told his story only where they felt it would do good:
to girls who seemed to find the young brewer attractive. So far, he had behaved
well, and had kept out of entanglements.
Since he was
transferred to Chicago, Fred had been abroad several times, and had fallen more
and more into the way of going about among young artists,--people with whom
personal relations were incidental. With women, and even girls, who had careers
to follow, a young man might have pleasant friendships without being regarded
as a prospective suitor or lover. Among artists his position was not irregular,
because with them his marriageableness was not an issue. His tastes, his
enthusiasm, and his agreeable personality made him welcome.
With Thea Kronborg he
had allowed himself more liberty than he usually did in his friendships or
gallantries with young artists, because she seemed to him distinctly not the
marrying kind. She impressed him as equipped to be an artist, and to be nothing
else; already directed, concentrated, formed as to mental habit. He was
generous and sympathetic, and she was lonely and needed friendship; needed
cheerfulness. She had not much power of reaching out toward useful people or
useful experiences, did not see opportunities. She had no tact about going
after good positions or enlisting the interest of influential persons. She
antagonized people rather than conciliated them. He discovered at once that she
had a merry side, a robust humor that was deep and hearty, like her laugh, but
it slept most of the time under her own doubts and the dullness of her life.
She had not what is called a "sense of humor." That is, she had no
intellectual humor; no power to enjoy the absurdities of people, no relish of
their pretentiousness and inconsistencies--which only depressed her. But her
joviality, Fred felt, was an asset, and ought to be developed. He discovered
that she was more receptive and more effective under a pleasant stimulus than
she was under the gray grind which she considered her salvation. She was still
Methodist enough to believe that if a thing were hard and irksome, it must be
good for her. And yet, whatever she did well was spontaneous. Under the least
glow of excitement, as at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's, he had seen the apprehensive,
frowning drudge of Bowers's studio flash into a resourceful and consciously
beautiful woman.
His interest in Thea
was serious, almost from the first, and so sincere that he felt no distrust of
himself. He believed that he knew a great deal more about her possibilities
than Bowers knew, and he liked to think that he had given her a stronger hold
on life. She had never seen herself or known herself as she did at Mrs.
Nathanmeyer's musical evenings. She had been a different girl ever since. He
had not anticipated that she would grow more fond of him than his immediate
usefulness warranted. He thought he knew the ways of artists, and, as he said,
she must have been "at it from her cradle." He had imagined, perhaps,
but never really believed, that he would find her waiting for him sometime as
he found her waiting on the day he reached the Biltmer ranch. Once he found her
so-- well, he did not pretend to be anything more or less than a reasonably
well-intentioned young man. A lovesick girl or a flirtatious woman he could
have handled easily enough. But a personality like that, unconsciously
revealing itself for the first time under the exaltation of a personal
feeling,--what could one do but watch it? As he used to say to himself, in
reckless moments back there in the canyon, "You can't put out a
sunrise." He had to watch it, and then he had to share it.
Besides, was he really
going to do her any harm? The Lord knew he would marry her if he could!
Marriage would be an incident, not an end with her; he was sure of that. If it
were not he, it would be some one else; some one who would be a weight about
her neck, probably; who would hold her back and beat her down and divert her
from the first plunge for which he felt she was gathering all her energies. He
meant to help her, and he could not think of another man who would. He went
over his unmarried friends, East and West, and he could not think of one who
would know what she was driving at--or care. The clever ones were selfish, the
kindly ones were stupid.
"Damn it, if she's
going to fall in love with somebody, it had better be me than any of the
others--of the sort she'd find. Get her tied up with some conceited ass who'd
try to make her over, train her like a puppy! Give one of 'em a big nature like
that, and he'd be horrified. He wouldn't show his face in the clubs until he'd
gone after her and combed her down to conform to some fool idea in his own
head--put there by some other woman, too, his first sweetheart or his
grandmother or a maiden aunt. At least, I understand her. I know what she needs
and where she's bound, and I mean to see that she has a fighting chance."
His own conduct looked
crooked, he admitted; but he asked himself whether, between men and women, all
ways were not more or less crooked. He believed those which are called straight
were the most dangerous of all. They seemed to him, for the most part, to lie
between windowless stone walls, and their rectitude had been achieved at the
expense of light and air. In their unquestioned regularity lurked every sort of
human cruelty and meanness, and every kind of humiliation and suffering. He
would rather have any woman he cared for wounded than crushed. He would deceive
her not once, he told himself fiercely, but a hundred times, to keep her free.
When Fred went back to
the observation car at one o'clock, after the luncheon call, it was empty, and
he found Thea alone on the platform. She put out her hand, and met his eyes.
"It's as I said.
Things have closed behind me. I can't go back, so I am going on--to
Mexico?" She lifted her face with an eager, questioning smile.
Fred met it with a
sinking heart. Had he really hoped she would give him another answer? He would
have given pretty much anything-- But there, that did no good. He could give
only what he had. Things were never complete in this world; you had to snatch
at them as they came or go without. Nobody could look into her face and draw
back, nobody who had any courage. She had courage enough for anything--look at
her mouth and chin and eyes! Where did it come from, that light? How could a
face, a familiar face, become so the picture of hope, be painted with the very
colors of youth's exaltation? She was right; she was not one of those who draw
back. Some people get on by avoiding dangers, others by riding through them.
They stood by the
railing looking back at the sand levels, both feeling that the train was
steaming ahead very fast. Fred's mind was a confusion of images and ideas. Only
two things were clear to him: the force of her determination, and the belief
that, handicapped as he was, he could do better by her than another man would
do. He knew he would always remember her, standing there with that expectant, forward-looking
smile, enough to turn the future into summer.
DR. HOWARD ARCHIE had
come down to Denver for a meeting of the stockholders in the San Felipe silver
mine. It was not absolutely necessary for him to come, but he had no very
pressing cases at home. Winter was closing down in Moonstone, and he dreaded
the dullness of it. On the 10th day of January, therefore, he was registered at
the Brown Palace Hotel. On the morning of the 11th he came down to breakfast to
find the streets white and the air thick with snow. A wild northwester was
blowing down from the mountains, one of those beautiful storms that wrap Denver
in dry, furry snow, and make the city a loadstone to thousands of men in the
mountains and on the plains. The brakemen out on their box-cars, the miners up
in their diggings, the lonely homesteaders in the sand hills of Yucca and Kit
Carson Counties, begin to think of Denver, muffled in snow, full of food and
drink and good cheer, and to yearn for her with that admiration which makes
her, more than other American cities, an object of sentiment.
Howard Archie was glad
he had got in before the storm came. He felt as cheerful as if he had received
a legacy that morning, and he greeted the clerk with even greater friendliness
than usual when he stopped at the desk for his mail. In the dining-room he
found several old friends seated here and there before substantial breakfasts:
cattle- men and mining engineers from odd corners of the State, all looking
fresh and well pleased with themselves. He had a word with one and another
before he sat down at the little table by a window, where the Austrian head
waiter stood attentively behind a chair. After his breakfast was put before
him, the doctor began to run over his letters. There was one directed in Thea
Kronborg's handwriting, forwarded from Moonstone. He saw with astonishment, as
he put another lump of sugar into his cup, that this letter bore a New York
postmark. He had known that Thea was in Mexico, traveling with some Chicago
people, but New York, to a Denver man, seems much farther away than Mexico
City. He put the letter behind his plate, upright against the stem of his water
goblet, and looked at it thoughtfully while he drank his second cup of coffee.
He had been a little anxious about Thea; she had not written to him for a long
while.
As he never got good
coffee at home, the doctor always drank three cups for breakfast when he was in
Denver. Oscar knew just when to bring him a second pot, fresh and smoking.
"And more cream, Oscar, please. You know I like lots of cream," the
doctor murmured, as he opened the square envelope, marked in the upper
right-hand corner, "Everett House, Union Square." The text of the
letter was as follows:--
Dear Doctor Archie:-- I have not written to you for a long time, but it
has not been unintentional. I could not write you frankly, and so I would not
write at all. I can be frank with you now, but not by letter. It is a great
deal to ask, but I wonder if you could come to New York to help me out? I have
got into difficulties, and I need your advice. I need your friendship. I am
afraid I must even ask you to lend me money, if you can without serious
inconvenience. I have to go to Germany to study, and it can't be put off any
longer. My voice is ready. Needless to say, I don't want any word of this to
reach my family. They are the last people I would turn to, though I love my
mother dearly. If you can come, please telegraph me at this hotel. Don't
despair of me. I'll make it up to you yet. Your old friend, Thea Kronborg. This in a bold, jagged handwriting
with a Gothic turn to the letters,--something between a highly sophisticated
hand and a very unsophisticated one,--not in the least smooth or flowing.
The doctor bit off the
end of a cigar nervously and read the letter through again, fumbling
distractedly in his pockets for matches, while the waiter kept trying to call
his attention to the box he had just placed before him. At last Oscar came out,
as if the idea had just struck him, "Matches, sir?"
"Yes, thank
you." The doctor slipped a coin into his palm and rose, crumpling Thea's
letter in his hand and thrusting the others into his pocket unopened. He went
back to the desk in the lobby and beckoned to the clerk, upon whose kindness he
threw himself apologetically.
"Harry, I've got
to pull out unexpectedly. Call up the Burlington, will you, and ask them to
route me to New York the quickest way, and to let us know. Ask for the hour
I'll get in. I have to wire."
"Certainly, Dr.
Archie. Have it for you in a minute." The young man's pallid,
clean-scraped face was all sympathetic interest as he reached for the
telephone. Dr. Archie put out his hand and stopped him.
"Wait a minute.
Tell me, first, is Captain Harris down yet?"
"No, sir. The
Captain hasn't come down yet this morning."
"I'll wait here
for him. If I don't happen to catch him, nail him and get me. Thank you,
Harry."
The doctor spoke
gratefully and turned away. He began to pace the lobby, his hands behind him,
watching the bronze elevator doors like a hawk. At last Captain Harris issued
from one of them, tall and imposing, wearing a Stetson and fierce mustaches, a
fur coat on his arm, a solitaire glittering upon his little finger and another
in his black satin ascot. He was one of the grand old bluffers of those good
old days. As gullible as a schoolboy, he had managed, with his sharp eye and
knowing air and twisted blond mustaches, to pass himself off for an astute
financier, and the Denver papers respectfully referred to him as the Rothschild
of Cripple Creek.
Dr. Archie stopped the
Captain on his way to breakfast. "Must see you a minute, Captain. Can't
wait. Want to sell you some shares in the San Felipe. Got to raise money."
The Captain grandly
bestowed his hat upon an eager porter who had already lifted his fur coat
tenderly from his arm and stood nursing it. In removing his hat, the Captain
exposed a bald, flushed dome, thatched about the ears with yellowish gray hair.
"Bad time to sell, doctor. You want to hold on to San Felipe, and buy
more. What have you got to raise?"
"Oh, not a great
sum. Five or six thousand. I've been buying up close and have run short."
"I see, I see.
Well, doctor, you'll have to let me get through that door. I was out last
night, and I'm going to get my bacon, if you lose your mine." He clapped
Archie on the shoulder and pushed him along in front of him. "Come ahead
with me, and we'll talk business."
Dr. Archie attended the
Captain and waited while he gave his order, taking the seat the old promoter
indicated.
"Now, sir,"
the Captain turned to him, "you don't want to sell anything. You must be
under the impression that I'm one of these damned New England sharks that get
their pound of flesh off the widow and orphan. If you're a little short, sign a
note and I'll write a check. That's the way gentlemen do business. If you want
to put up some San Felipe as collateral, let her go, but I shan't touch a share
of it. Pens and ink, please, Oscar,"--he lifted a large forefinger to the
Austrian.
The Captain took out
his checkbook and a book of blank notes, and adjusted his nose-nippers. He
wrote a few words in one book and Archie wrote a few in the other. Then they
each tore across perforations and exchanged slips of paper.
"That's the way.
Saves office rent," the Captain commented with satisfaction, returning the
books to his pocket. "And now, Archie, where are you off to?"
"Got to go East
to-night. A deal waiting for me in New York." Dr. Archie rose.
The Captain's face brightened
as he saw Oscar approaching with a tray, and he began tucking the corner of his
napkin inside his collar, over his ascot. "Don't let them unload anything
on you back there, doctor," he said genially, "and don't let them
relieve you of anything, either. Don't let them get any Cripple stuff off you.
We can manage our own silver out here, and we're going to take it out by the
ton, sir!"
The doctor left the
dining-room, and after another consultation with the clerk, he wrote his first
telegram to Thea:--
Miss Thea Kronborg,
Everett House, New
York.
Will call at your hotel
eleven o'clock Friday morning. Glad to come. Thank you.
ARCHIE
He stood and heard the
message actually clicked off on the wire, with the feeling that she was hearing
the click at the other end. Then he sat down in the lobby and wrote a note to
his wife and one to the other doctor in Moonstone. When he at last issued out
into the storm, it was with a feeling of elation rather than of anxiety.
Whatever was wrong, he could make it right. Her letter had practically said so.
He tramped about the
snowy streets, from the bank to the Union Station, where he shoved his money
under the grating of the ticket window as if he could not get rid of it fast
enough. He had never been in New York, never been farther east than Buffalo.
"That's rather a shame," he reflected boyishly as he put the long
tickets in his pocket, "for a man nearly forty years old." However,
he thought as he walked up toward the club, he was on the whole glad that his
first trip had a human interest, that he was going for something, and because
he was wanted. He loved holidays. He felt as if he were going to Germany
himself. "Queer,"--he went over it with the snow blowing in his
face,--"but that sort of thing is more interesting than mines and making
your daily bread. It's worth paying out to be in on it,--for a fellow like me.
And when it's Thea -- Oh, I back her!" he laughed aloud as he burst in at
the door of the Athletic Club, powdered with snow.
Archie sat down before
the New York papers and ran over the advertisements of hotels, but he was too
restless to read. Probably he had better get a new overcoat, and he was not
sure about the shape of his collars. "I don't want to look different to
her from everybody else there," he mused. "I guess I'll go down and
have Van look me over. He'll put me right."
So he plunged out into
the snow again and started for his tailor's. When he passed a florist's shop he
stopped and looked in at the window, smiling; how naturally pleasant things
recalled one another. At the tailor's he kept whistling, "Flow gently,
Sweet Afton," while Van Dusen advised him, until that resourceful tailor
and haberdasher exclaimed, "You must have a date back there, doctor; you
behave like a bridegroom," and made him remember that he wasn't one.
Before he let him go,
Van put his finger on the Masonic pin in his client's lapel. "Mustn't wear
that, doctor. Very bad form back there."
FRED OTTENBURG, smartly
dressed for the after- noon, with a long black coat and gaiters was sitting in
the dusty parlor of the Everett House. His manner was not in accord with his
personal freshness, the good lines of his clothes, and the shining smoothness
of his hair. His attitude was one of deep dejection, and his face, though it
had the cool, unimpeachable fairness possible only to a very blond young man,
was by no means happy. A page shuffled into the room and looked about. When he
made out the dark figure in a shadowy corner, tracing over the carpet pattern
with a cane, he droned, "The lady says you can come up, sir."
Fred picked up his hat
and gloves and followed the creature, who seemed an aged boy in uniform,
through dark corridors that smelled of old carpets. The page knocked at the
door of Thea's sitting-room, and then wandered away. Thea came to the door with
a telegram in her hand. She asked Ottenburg to come in and pointed to one of
the clumsy, sullen-looking chairs that were as thick as they were high. The
room was brown with time, dark in spite of two windows that opened on Union
Square, with dull curtains and carpet, and heavy, respectable-looking furniture
in somber colors. The place was saved from utter dismalness by a coal fire
under the black marble mantelpiece, --brilliantly reflected in a long mirror
that hung between the two windows. This was the first time Fred had seen the
room, and he took it in quickly, as he put down his hat and gloves.
Thea seated herself at
the walnut writing-desk, still holding the slip of yellow paper. "Dr.
Archie is coming," she said. "He will be here Friday morning."
"Well, that's
good, at any rate," her visitor replied with a determined effort at
cheerfulness. Then, turning to the fire, he added blankly, "If you want
him."
"Of course I want
him. I would never have asked such a thing of him if I hadn't wanted him a
great deal. It's a very expensive trip." Thea spoke severely. Then she
went on, in a milder tone. "He doesn't say anything about the money, but I
think his coming means that he can let me have it."
Fred was standing
before the mantel, rubbing his hands together nervously. "Probably. You
are still determined to call on him?" He sat down tentatively in the chair
Thea had indicated. "I don't see why you won't borrow from me, and let him
sign with you, for instance. That would constitute a perfectly regular business
transaction. I could bring suit against either of you for my money."
Thea turned toward him
from the desk. "We won't take that up again, Fred. I should have a
different feeling about it if I went on your money. In a way I shall feel freer
on Dr. Archie's, and in another way I shall feel more bound. I shall try even
harder." She paused. "He is almost like my father," she added
irrelevantly.
"Still, he isn't,
you know," Fred persisted. "It would n't be anything new. I've loaned
money to students before, and got it back, too."
"Yes; I know
you're generous," Thea hurried over it, "but this will be the best
way. He will be here on Friday did I tell you?"
"I think you
mentioned it. That's rather soon. May I smoke?" he took out a small
cigarette case. "I suppose you'll be off next week?" he asked as he
struck a match.
"Just as soon as I
can," she replied with a restless movement of her arms, as if her
dark-blue dress were too tight for her. "It seems as if I'd been here
forever."
"And yet,"
the young man mused, "we got in only four days ago. Facts really don't
count for much, do they? It's all in the way people feel: even in little
things."
Thea winced, but she
did not answer him. She put the telegram back in its envelope and placed it
carefully in one of the pigeonholes of the desk.
"I suppose,"
Fred brought out with effort, "that your friend is in your
confidence?"
"He always has
been. I shall have to tell him about myself. I wish I could without dragging
you in."
Fred shook himself.
"Don't bother about where you drag me, please," he put in, flushing.
"I don't give--" he subsided suddenly.
"I'm afraid,"
Thea went on gravely, "that he won't understand. He'll be hard on
you."
Fred studied the white
ash of his cigarette before he flicked it off. "You mean he'll see me as
even worse than I am. Yes, I suppose I shall look very low to him: a fifth-
rate scoundrel. But that only matters in so far as it hurts his feelings."
Thea sighed.
"We'll both look pretty low. And after all, we must really be just about
as we shall look to him."
Ottenburg started up
and threw his cigarette into the grate. "That I deny. Have you ever been
really frank with this preceptor of your childhood, even when you were a child?
Think a minute, have you? Of course not! From your cradle, as I once told you,
you've been `doing it' on the side, living your own life, admitting to yourself
things that would horrify him. You've always deceived him to the extent of
letting him think you different from what you are. He couldn't understand then,
he can't understand now. So why not spare yourself and him?"
She shook her head.
"Of course, I've had my own thoughts. Maybe he has had his, too. But I've
never done anything before that he would much mind. I must put myself right
with him,--as right as I can,--to begin over. He'll make allowances for me. He
always has. But I'm afraid he won't for you."
"Leave that to him
and me. I take it you want me to see him?" Fred sat down again and began
absently to trace the carpet pattern with his cane. "At the worst,"
he spoke wanderingly, "I thought you'd perhaps let me go in on the
business end of it and invest along with you. You'd put in your talent and
ambition and hard work, and I'd put in the money and--well, nobody's good
wishes are to be scorned, not even mine. Then, when the thing panned out big,
we could share together. Your doctor friend hasn't cared half so much about
your future as I have."
"He's cared a good
deal. He doesn't know as much about such things as you do. Of course you've
been a great deal more help to me than any one else ever has," Thea said
quietly. The black clock on the mantel began to strike. She listened to the
five strokes and then said, "I'd have liked your helping me eight months
ago. But now, you'd simply be keeping me."
"You weren't ready
for it eight months ago." Fred leaned back at last in his chair. "You
simply weren't ready for it. You were too tired. You were too timid. Your whole
tone was too low. You couldn't rise from a chair like that,"--she had
started up apprehensively and gone toward the window.-- "You were fumbling
and awkward. Since then you've come into your personality. You were always
locking horns with it before. You were a sullen little drudge eight months ago,
afraid of being caught at either looking or moving like yourself. Nobody could
tell anything about you. A voice is not an instrument that's found ready-made.
A voice is personality. It can be as big as a circus and as common as dirt.--
There's good money in that kind, too, but I don't happen to be interested in
them.-- Nobody could tell much about what you might be able to do, last winter.
I divined more than anybody else."
"Yes, I know you
did." Thea walked over to the old- fashioned mantel and held her hands
down to the glow of the fire. "I owe so much to you, and that's what makes
things hard. That's why I have to get away from you altogether. I depend on you
for so many things. Oh, I did even last winter, in Chicago!" She knelt
down by the grate and held her hands closer to the coals. "And one thing
leads to another."
Ottenburg watched her
as she bent toward the fire. His glance brightened a little. "Anyhow, you
couldn't look as you do now, before you knew me. You were clumsy. And whatever
you do now, you do splendidly. And you can't cry enough to spoil your face for
more than ten minutes. It comes right back, in spite of you. It's only since you've
known me that you've let yourself be beautiful."
Without rising she
turned her face away. Fred went on impetuously. "Oh, you can turn it away
from me, Thea; you can take it away from me! All the same--" his spurt
died and he fell back. "How can you turn on me so, after all!" he
sighed.
"I haven't. But
when you arranged with yourself to take me in like that, you couldn't have been
thinking very kindly of me. I can't understand how you carried it through, when
I was so easy, and all the circumstances were so easy."
Her crouching position
by the fire became threatening. Fred got up, and Thea also rose.
"No," he
said, "I can't make you see that now. Some time later, perhaps, you will
understand better. For one thing, I honestly could not imagine that words,
names, meant so much to you." Fred was talking with the desperation of a
man who has put himself in the wrong and who yet feels that there was an idea
of truth in his conduct. "Suppose that you had married your brakeman and
lived with him year after year, caring for him even less than you do for your
doctor, or for Harsanyi. I suppose you would have felt quite all right about
it, because that relation has a name in good standing. To me, that
seems--sickening!" He took a rapid turn about the room and then as Thea
remained standing, he rolled one of the elephantine chairs up to the hearth for
her.
"Sit down and
listen to me for a moment, Thea." He began pacing from the hearthrug to
the window and back again, while she sat down compliantly. "Don't you know
most of the people in the world are not individuals at all? They never have an
individual idea or experience. A lot of girls go to boarding-school together,
come out the same season, dance at the same parties, are married off in groups,
have their babies at about the same time, send their children to school
together, and so the human crop renews itself. Such women know as much about
the reality of the forms they go through as they know about the wars they learn
the dates of. They get their most personal experiences out of novels and plays.
Everything is second-hand with them. Why, you couldn't live like that."
Thea sat looking toward
the mantel, her eyes half closed, her chin level, her head set as if she were
enduring something. Her hands, very white, lay passive on her dark gown. From
the window corner Fred looked at them and at her. He shook his head and flashed
an angry, tormented look out into the blue twilight over the Square, through
which muffled cries and calls and the clang of car bells came up from the
street. He turned again and began to pace the floor, his hands in his pockets.
"Say what you
will, Thea Kronborg, you are not that sort of person. You will never sit alone
with a pacifier and a novel. You won't subsist on what the old ladies have put
into the bottle for you. You will always break through into the realities. That
was the first thing Harsanyi found out about you; that you couldn't be kept on
the outside. If you'd lived in Moonstone all your life and got on with the
discreet brakeman, you'd have had just the same nature. Your children would
have been the realities then, probably. If they'd been commonplace, you'd have
killed them with driving. You'd have managed some way to live twenty times as
much as the people around you."
Fred paused. He sought
along the shadowy ceiling and heavy mouldings for words. When he began again,
his voice was lower, and at first he spoke with less conviction, though again
it grew on him. "Now I knew all this--oh, knew it better than I can ever
make you understand! You've been running a handicap. You had no time to lose. I
wanted you to have what you need and to get on fast-- get through with me, if
need be; I counted on that. You've no time to sit round and analyze your
conduct or your feelings. Other women give their whole lives to it. They've
nothing else to do. Helping a man to get his divorce is a career for them; just
the sort of intellectual exercise they like."
Fred dived fiercely
into his pockets as if he would rip them out and scatter their contents to the
winds. Stopping before her, he took a deep breath and went on again, this time
slowly. "All that sort of thing is foreign to you. You'd be nowhere at it.
You haven't that kind of mind. The grammatical niceties of conduct are dark to
you. You're simple--and poetic." Fred's voice seemed to be wandering about
in the thickening dusk. "You won't play much. You won't, perhaps, love
many times." He paused. "And you did love me, you know. Your railroad
friend would have understood me. I could have thrown you back. The reverse was
there,--it stared me in the face,-- but I couldn't pull it. I let you drive
ahead." He threw out his hands. What Thea noticed, oddly enough, was the
flash of the firelight on his cuff link. He turned again. "And you'll
always drive ahead," he muttered. "It's your way."
There was a long
silence. Fred had dropped into a chair. He seemed, after such an explosion, not
to have a word left in him. Thea put her hand to the back of her neck and
pressed it, as if the muscles there were aching.
"Well," she
said at last, "I at least overlook more in you than I do in myself. I am
always excusing you to myself. I don't do much else."
"Then why, in
Heaven's name, won't you let me be your friend? You make a scoundrel of me,
borrowing money from another man to get out of my clutches."
"If I borrow from
him, it's to study. Anything I took from you would be different. As I said
before, you'd be keeping me."
"Keeping! I like
your language. It's pure Moonstone, Thea,--like your point of view. I wonder
how long you'll be a Methodist." He turned away bitterly.
"Well, I've never
said I wasn't Moonstone, have I? I am, and that's why I want Dr. Archie. I
can't see anything so funny about Moonstone, you know." She pushed her
chair back a little from the hearth and clasped her hands over her knee, still
looking thoughtfully into the red coals. "We always come back to the same
thing, Fred. The name, as you call it, makes a difference to me how I feel
about myself. You would have acted very differently with a girl of your own
kind, and that's why I can't take anything from you now. You've made everything
impossible. Being married is one thing and not being married is the other
thing, and that's all there is to it. I can't see how you reasoned with yourself,
if you took the trouble to reason. You say I was too much alone, and yet what
you did was to cut me off more than I ever had been. Now I'm going to try to
make good to my friends out there. That's all there is left for me."
"Make good to your
friends!" Fred burst out. "What one of them cares as I care, or
believes as I believe? I've told you I'll never ask a gracious word from you
until I can ask it with all the churches in Christendom at my back."
Thea looked up, and
when she saw Fred's face, she thought sadly that he, too, looked as if things
were spoiled for him. "If you know me as well as you say you do,
Fred," she said slowly, "then you are not being honest with yourself.
You know that I can't do things halfway. If you kept me at all--you'd keep
me." She dropped her head wearily on her hand and sat with her forehead
resting on her fingers.
Fred leaned over her
and said just above his breath, "Then, when I get that divorce, you'll
take it up with me again? You'll at least let me know, warn me, before there is
a serious question of anybody else?"
Without lifting her
head, Thea answered him. "Oh, I don't think there will ever be a question
of anybody else. Not if I can help it. I suppose I've given you every reason to
think there will be,--at once, on shipboard, any time."
Ottenburg drew himself
up like a shot. "Stop it, Thea!" he said sharply. "That's one
thing you've never done. That's like any common woman." He saw her
shoulders lift a little and grow calm. Then he went to the other side of the
room and took up his hat and gloves from the sofa. He came back cheerfully.
"I didn't drop in to bully you this afternoon. I came to coax you to go
out for tea with me somewhere." He waited, but she did not look up or lift
her head, still sunk on her hand.
Her handkerchief had
fallen. Fred picked it up and put it on her knee, pressing her fingers over it.
"Good-night, dear and wonderful," he whispered,--"wonderful and
dear! How can you ever get away from me when I will always follow you, through
every wall, through every door, wherever you go." He looked down at her
bent head, and the curve of her neck that was so sad. He stooped, and with his
lips just touched her hair where the firelight made it ruddiest. "I didn't
know I had it in me, Thea. I thought it was all a fairy tale. I don't know
myself any more." He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "The salt's
all gone out of your hair. It's full of sun and wind again. I believe it has memories."
Again she heard him take a deep breath. "I could do without you for a
lifetime, if that would give you to yourself. A woman like you doesn't find
herself, alone."
She thrust her free
hand up to him. He kissed it softly, as if she were asleep and he were afraid of
waking her.
From the door he turned
back irrelevantly. "As to your old friend, Thea, if he's to be here on
Friday, why,"--he snatched out his watch and held it down to catch the
light from the grate,--"he's on the train now! That ought to cheer you. Good-night."
She heard the door close.
ON Friday afternoon
Thea Kronborg was walking excitedly up and down her sitting-room, which at that
hour was flooded by thin, clear sunshine. Both windows were open, and the fire
in the grate was low, for the day was one of those false springs that sometimes
blow into New York from the sea in the middle of winter, soft, warm, with a
persuasive salty moisture in the air and a relaxing thaw under foot. Thea was
flushed and animated, and she seemed as restless as the sooty sparrows that
chirped and cheeped distractingly about the windows. She kept looking at the
black clock, and then down into the Square. The room was full of flowers, and
she stopped now and then to arrange them or to move them into the sunlight. After
the bellboy came to announce a visitor, she took some Roman hyacinths from a
glass and stuck them in the front of her dark-blue dress.
When at last Fred
Ottenburg appeared in the doorway, she met him with an exclamation of pleasure.
"I am glad you've come, Fred. I was afraid you might not get my note, and
I wanted to see you before you see Dr. Archie. He's so nice!" She brought
her hands together to emphasize her statement.
"Is he? I'm glad.
You see I'm quite out of breath. I didn't wait for the elevator, but ran
upstairs. I was so pleased at being sent for." He dropped his hat and
over- coat. "Yes, I should say he is nice! I don't seem to recognize all
of these," waving his handkerchief about at the flowers.
"Yes, he brought
them himself, in a big box. He brought lots with him besides flowers. Oh, lots
of things! The old Moonstone feeling,"--Thea moved her hand back and forth
in the air, fluttering her fingers,--"the feeling of starting out, early
in the morning, to take my lesson."
"And you've had
everything out with him?"
"No, I
haven't."
"Haven't?" He
looked up in consternation.
"No, I
haven't!" Thea spoke excitedly, moving about over the sunny patches on the
grimy carpet. "I've lied to him, just as you said I had always lied to
him, and that's why I'm so happy. I've let him think what he likes to think.
Oh, I couldn't do anything else, Fred,"-- she shook her head emphatically.
"If you'd seen him when he came in, so pleased and excited! You see this
is a great adventure for him. From the moment I began to talk to him, he
entreated me not to say too much, not to spoil his notion of me. Not in so many
words, of course. But if you'd seen his eyes, his face, his kind hands! Oh, no!
I couldn't." She took a deep breath, as if with a renewed sense of her
narrow escape.
"Then, what did
you tell him?" Fred demanded.
Thea sat down on the
edge of the sofa and began shutting and opening her hands nervously.
"Well, I told him enough, and not too much. I told him all about how good
you were to me last winter, getting me engagements and things, and how you had
helped me with my work more than anybody. Then I told him about how you sent me
down to the ranch when I had no money or anything." She paused and
wrinkled her forehead. "And I told him that I wanted to marry you and ran
away to Mexico with you, and that I was awfully happy until you told me that
you couldn't marry me because--well, I told him why." Thea dropped her
eyes and moved the toe of her shoe about restlessly on the carpet.
"And he took it from
you, like that?" Fred asked, almost with awe.
"Yes, just like
that, and asked no questions. He was hurt; he had some wretched moments. I
could see him squirming and squirming and trying to get past it. He kept
shutting his eyes and rubbing his forehead. But when I told him that I
absolutely knew you wanted to marry me, that you would whenever you could, that
seemed to help him a good deal."
"And that
satisfied him?" Fred asked wonderingly. He could not quite imagine what
kind of person Dr. Archie might be.
"He took me by the
shoulders once and asked, oh, in such a frightened way, `Thea, was he good to
you, this young man?' When I told him you were, he looked at me again: `And you
care for him a great deal, you believe in him?' Then he seemed satisfied."
Thea paused. "You see, he's just tremendously good, and tremendously
afraid of things--of some things. Otherwise he would have got rid of Mrs.
Archie." She looked up suddenly: "You were right, though; one can't
tell people about things they don't know already."
Fred stood in the
window, his back to the sunlight, fingering the jonquils. "Yes, you can,
my dear. But you must tell it in such a way that they don't know you're telling
it, and that they don't know they're hearing it."
Thea smiled past him,
out into the air. "I see. It's a secret. Like the sound in the
shell."
"What's
that?" Fred was watching her and thinking how moving that faraway
expression, in her, happened to be. "What did you say?"
She came back.
"Oh, something old and Moonstony! I have almost forgotten it myself. But I
feel better than I thought I ever could again. I can't wait to be off. Oh,
Fred," she sprang up, "I want to get at it!"
As she broke out with
this, she threw up her head and lifted herself a little on her toes. Fred
colored and looked at her fearfully, hesitatingly. Her eyes, which looked out
through the window, were bright--they had no memories. No, she did not
remember. That momentary elevation had no associations for her. It was
unconscious.
He looked her up and
down and laughed and shook his head. "You are just all I want you to
be--and that is,-- not for me! Don't worry, you'll get at it. You are at it. My
God! have you ever, for one moment, been at anything else?"
Thea did not answer
him, and clearly she had not heard him. She was watching something out in the
thin light of the false spring and its treacherously soft air.
Fred waited a moment.
"Are you going to dine with your friend to-night?"
"Yes. He has never
been in New York before. He wants to go about. Where shall I tell him to
go?"
"Wouldn't it be a
better plan, since you wish me to meet him, for you both to dine with me? It
would seem only natural and friendly. You'll have to live up a little to his
notion of us." Thea seemed to consider the suggestion favorably. "If
you wish him to be easy in his mind," Fred went on, "that would help.
I think, myself, that we are rather nice together. Put on one of the new
dresses you got down there, and let him see how lovely you can be. You owe him
some pleasure, after all the trouble he has taken."
Thea laughed, and
seemed to find the idea exciting and pleasant. "Oh, very well! I'll do my
best. Only don't wear a dress coat, please. He hasn't one, and he's nervous
about it."
Fred looked at his
watch. "Your monument up there is fast. I'll be here with a cab at eight.
I'm anxious to meet him. You've given me the strangest idea of his callow
innocence and aged indifference."
She shook her head.
"No, he's none of that. He's very good, and he won't admit things. I love
him for it. Now, as I look back on it, I see that I've always, even when I was
little, shielded him."
As she laughed, Fred
caught the bright spark in her eye that he knew so well, and held it for a
happy instant. Then he blew her a kiss with his finger-tips and fled.
AT nine o'clock that
evening our three friends were seated in the balcony of a French restaurant,
much gayer and more intimate than any that exists in New York to-day. This old
restaurant was built by a lover of pleasure, who knew that to dine gayly human
beings must have the reassurance of certain limitations of space and of a
certain definite style; that the walls must be near enough to suggest shelter,
the ceiling high enough to give the chandeliers a setting. The place was
crowded with the kind of people who dine late and well, and Dr. Archie, as he
watched the animated groups in the long room below the balcony, found this much
the most festive scene he had ever looked out upon. He said to himself, in a jovial
mood somewhat sustained by the cheer of the board, that this evening alone was
worth his long journey. He followed attentively the orchestra, ensconced at the
farther end of the balcony, and told Thea it made him feel "quite
musical" to recognize "The Invitation to the Dance" or "The
Blue Danube," and that he could remember just what kind of day it was when
he heard her practicing them at home, and lingered at the gate to listen.
For the first few
moments, when he was introduced to young Ottenburg in the parlor of the Everett
House, the doctor had been awkward and unbending. But Fred, as his father had
often observed, "was not a good mixer for nothing." He had brought
Dr. Archie around during the short cab ride, and in an hour they had become old
friends.
From the moment when
the doctor lifted his glass and, looking consciously at Thea, said, "To
your success," Fred liked him. He felt his quality; understood his courage
in some directions and what Thea called his timidity in others, his unspent and
miraculously preserved youthfulness. Men could never impose upon the doctor, he
guessed, but women always could. Fred liked, too, the doctor's manner with
Thea, his bashful admiration and the little hesitancy by which he betrayed his
consciousness of the change in her. It was just this change that, at present,
interested Fred more than anything else. That, he felt, was his "created
value," and it was his best chance for any peace of mind. If that were not
real, obvious to an old friend like Archie, then he cut a very poor figure,
indeed.
Fred got a good deal,
too, out of their talk about Moonstone. From her questions and the doctor's
answers he was able to form some conception of the little world that was almost
the measure of Thea's experience, the one bit of the human drama that she had
followed with sympathy and understanding. As the two ran over the list of their
friends, the mere sound of a name seemed to recall volumes to each of them, to
indicate mines of knowledge and observation they had in common. At some names
they laughed delightedly, at some indulgently and even tenderly.
"You two young
people must come out to Moonstone when Thea gets back," the doctor said
hospitably.
"Oh, we
shall!" Fred caught it up. "I'm keen to know all these people. It is
very tantalizing to hear only their names."
"Would they
interest an outsider very much, do you think, Dr. Archie?" Thea leaned
toward him. "Isn't it only because we've known them since I was
little?"
The doctor glanced at
her deferentially. Fred had noticed that he seemed a little afraid to look at
her squarely--perhaps a trifle embarrassed by a mode of dress to which he was
unaccustomed. "Well, you are practically an outsider yourself, Thea,
now," he observed smiling. "Oh, I know," he went on quickly in
response to her gesture of protest,-- "I know you don't change toward your
old friends, but you can see us all from a distance now. It's all to your
advantage that you can still take your old interest, isn't it, Mr.
Ottenburg?"
"That's exactly
one of her advantages, Dr. Archie. Nobody can ever take that away from her, and
none of us who came later can ever hope to rival Moonstone in the impression we
make. Her scale of values will always be the Moonstone scale. And, with an
artist, that is an advantage." Fred nodded.
Dr. Archie looked at
him seriously. "You mean it keeps them from getting affected?"
"Yes; keeps them
from getting off the track generally."
While the waiter filled
the glasses, Fred pointed out to Thea a big black French barytone who was
eating anchovies by their tails at one of the tables below, and the doctor
looked about and studied his fellow diners.
"Do you know, Mr.
Ottenburg," he said deeply, "these people all look happier to me than
our Western people do. Is it simply good manners on their part, or do they get
more out of life?"
Fred laughed to Thea
above the glass he had just lifted. "Some of them are getting a good deal
out of it now, doctor. This is the hour when bench-joy brightens."
Thea chuckled and
darted him a quick glance. "Bench- joy! Where did you get that
slang?"
"That happens to
be very old slang, my dear. Older than Moonstone or the sovereign State of
Colorado. Our old friend Mr. Nathanmeyer could tell us why it happens to hit
you." He leaned forward and touched Thea's wrist, "See that fur coat
just coming in, Thea. It's D'Albert. He's just back from his Western tour. Fine
head, hasn't he?"
"To go back,"
said Dr. Archie; "I insist that people do look happier here. I've noticed
it even on the street, and especially in the hotels."
Fred turned to him
cheerfully. "New York people live a good deal in the fourth dimension, Dr.
Archie. It's that you notice in their faces."
The doctor was
interested. "The fourth dimension," he repeated slowly; "and is
that slang, too?"
"No,"--Fred
shook his head,--"that's merely a figure. I mean that life is not quite so
personal here as it is in your part of the world. People are more taken up by
hobbies, interests that are less subject to reverses than their personal
affairs. If you're interested in Thea's voice, for instance, or in voices in
general, that interest is just the same, even if your mining stocks go
down."
The doctor looked at
him narrowly. "You think that's about the principal difference between
country people and city people, don't you?"
Fred was a little
disconcerted at being followed up so resolutely, and he attempted to dismiss it
with a pleasantry. "I've never thought much about it, doctor. But I should
say, on the spur of the moment, that that is one of the principal differences
between people anywhere. It's the consolation of fellows like me who don't
accomplish much. The fourth dimension is not good for business, but we think we
have a better time."
Dr. Archie leaned back
in his chair. His heavy shoulders were contemplative. "And she," he
said slowly; "should you say that she is one of the kind you refer
to?" He inclined his head toward the shimmer of the pale-green dress
beside him. Thea was leaning, just then, over the balcony rail, her head in the
light from the chandeliers below.
"Never,
never!" Fred protested. "She's as hard-headed as the worst of
you--with a difference."
The doctor sighed.
"Yes, with a difference; something that makes a good many revolutions to
the second. When she was little I used to feel her head to try to locate
it."
Fred laughed. "Did
you, though? So you were on the track of it? Oh, it's there! We can't get round
it, miss," as Thea looked back inquiringly. "Dr. Archie, there's a
fellow townsman of yours I feel a real kinship for." He pressed a cigar
upon Dr. Archie and struck a match for him. "Tell me about Spanish
Johnny."
The doctor smiled
benignantly through the first waves of smoke. "Well, Johnny's an old
patient of mine, and he's an old admirer of Thea's. She was born a
cosmopolitan, and I expect she learned a good deal from Johnny when she used to
run away and go to Mexican Town. We thought it a queer freak then."
The doctor launched
into a long story, in which he was often eagerly interrupted or joyously
confirmed by Thea, who was drinking her coffee and forcing open the petals of
the roses with an ardent and rather rude hand. Fred settled down into enjoying
his comprehension of his guests. Thea, watching Dr. Archie and interested in
his presentation, was unconsciously impersonating her suave, gold- tinted
friend. It was delightful to see her so radiant and responsive again. She had
kept her promise about looking her best; when one could so easily get together
the colors of an apple branch in early spring, that was not hard to do. Even
Dr. Archie felt, each time he looked at her, a fresh consciousness. He
recognized the fine texture of her mother's skin, with the difference that,
when she reached across the table to give him a bunch of grapes, her arm was
not only white, but somehow a little dazzling. She seemed to him taller, and
freer in all her movements. She had now a way of taking a deep breath when she
was interested, that made her seem very strong, somehow, and brought her at one
quite overpoweringly. If he seemed shy, it was not that he was intimidated by
her worldly clothes, but that her greater positiveness, her whole augmented
self, made him feel that his accustomed manner toward her was inadequate.
Fred, on his part, was
reflecting that the awkward position in which he had placed her would not
confine or chafe her long. She looked about at other people, at other women,
curiously. She was not quite sure of herself, but she was not in the least
afraid or apologetic. She seemed to sit there on the edge, emerging from one
world into another, taking her bearings, getting an idea of the concerted
movement about her, but with absolute self-confidence. So far from shrinking, she
expanded. The mere kindly effort to please Dr. Archie was enough to bring her
out.
There was much talk of
aurae at that time, and Fred mused that every beautiful, every compellingly
beautiful woman, had an aura, whether other people did or no. There was,
certainly, about the woman he had brought up from Mexico, such an emanation.
She existed in more space than she occupied by measurement. The enveloping air
about her head and shoulders was subsidized--was more moving than she herself,
for in it lived the awakenings, all the first sweetness that life kills in
people. One felt in her such a wealth of Jugendzeit, all those flowers of the
mind and the blood that bloom and perish by the myriad in the few exhaustless
years when the imagination first kindles. It was in watching her as she emerged
like this, in being near and not too near, that one got, for a moment, so much
that one had lost; among other legendary things the legendary theme of the
absolutely magical power of a beautiful woman.
After they had left
Thea at her hotel, Dr. Archie admitted to Fred, as they walked up Broadway
through the rapidly chilling air, that once before he had seen their young
friend flash up into a more potent self, but in a darker mood. It was in his
office one night, when she was at home the summer before last. "And then I
got the idea," he added simply, "that she would not live like other
people: that, for better or worse, she had uncommon gifts."
"Oh, we'll see
that it's for better, you and I," Fred reassured him. "Won't you come
up to my hotel with me? I think we ought to have a long talk."
"Yes,
indeed," said Dr. Archie gratefully; "I think we ought."
THEA was to sail on
Tuesday, at noon, and on Saturday Fred Ottenburg arranged for her passage,
while she and Dr. Archie went shopping. With rugs and sea-clothes she was
already provided; Fred had got everything of that sort she needed for the
voyage up from Vera Cruz. On Sunday afternoon Thea went to see the Harsanyis.
When she returned to her hotel, she found a note from Ottenburg, saying that he
had called and would come again to-morrow.
On Monday morning,
while she was at breakfast, Fred came in. She knew by his hurried, distracted
air as he entered the dining-room that something had gone wrong. He had just
got a telegram from home. His mother had been thrown from her carriage and
hurt; a concussion of some sort, and she was unconscious. He was leaving for
St. Louis that night on the eleven o'clock train. He had a great deal to attend
to during the day. He would come that evening, if he might, and stay with her
until train time, while she was doing her packing. Scarcely waiting for her
consent, he hurried away.
All day Thea was
somewhat cast down. She was sorry for Fred, and she missed the feeling that she
was the one person in his mind. He had scarcely looked at her when they
exchanged words at the breakfast-table. She felt as if she were set aside, and
she did not seem so important even to herself as she had yesterday. Certainly,
she reflected, it was high time that she began to take care of herself again.
Dr. Archie came for dinner, but she sent him away early, telling him that she
would be ready to go to the boat with him at half-past ten the next morning.
When she went upstairs, she looked gloomily at the open trunk in her
sitting-room, and at the trays piled on the sofa. She stood at the window and
watched a quiet snowstorm spending itself over the city. More than anything
else, falling snow always made her think of Moonstone; of the Kohlers' garden,
of Thor's sled, of dressing by lamplight and starting off to school before the
paths were broken.
When Fred came, he
looked tired, and he took her hand almost without seeing her.
"I'm so sorry,
Fred. Have you had any more word?"
"She was still
unconscious at four this afternoon. It doesn't look very encouraging." He
approached the fire and warmed his hands. He seemed to have contracted, and he
had not at all his habitual ease of manner. "Poor mother!" he
exclaimed; "nothing like this should have happened to her. She has so much
pride of person. She's not at all an old woman, you know. She's never got
beyond vigorous and rather dashing middle age." He turned abruptly to Thea
and for the first time really looked at her. "How badly things come out!
She'd have liked you for a daughter-in-law. Oh, you'd have fought like the
devil, but you'd have respected each other." He sank into a chair and
thrust his feet out to the fire. "Still," he went on thoughtfully,
seeming to address the ceiling, "it might have been bad for you. Our big
German houses, our good German cooking--you might have got lost in the
upholstery. That substantial comfort might take the temper out of you, dull
your edge. Yes," he sighed, "I guess you were meant for the jolt of
the breakers."
"I guess I'll get
plenty of jolt," Thea murmured, turning to her trunk.
"I'm rather glad
I'm not staying over until to-morrow," Fred reflected. "I think it's
easier for me to glide out like this. I feel now as if everything were rather
casual, anyhow. A thing like that dulls one's feelings."
Thea, standing by her
trunk, made no reply. Presently he shook himself and rose. "Want me to put
those trays in for you?"
"No, thank you.
I'm not ready for them yet."
Fred strolled over to
the sofa, lifted a scarf from one of the trays and stood abstractedly drawing
it through his fingers. "You've been so kind these last few days, Thea,
that I began to hope you might soften a little; that you might ask me to come
over and see you this summer."
"If you thought
that, you were mistaken," she said slowly. "I've hardened, if
anything. But I shan't carry any grudge away with me, if you mean that."
He dropped the scarf.
"And there's nothing--nothing at all you'll let me do?"
"Yes, there is one
thing, and it's a good deal to ask. If I get knocked out, or never get on, I'd
like you to see that Dr. Archie gets his money back. I'm taking three thousand
dollars of his."
"Why, of course I
shall. You may dismiss that from your mind. How fussy you are about money,
Thea. You make such a point of it." He turned sharply and walked to the
windows.
Thea sat down in the
chair he had quitted. "It's only poor people who feel that way about
money, and who are really honest," she said gravely. "Sometimes I
think that to be really honest, you must have been so poor that you've been
tempted to steal."
"To what?"
"To steal. I used
to be, when I first went to Chicago and saw all the things in the big stores
there. Never anything big, but little things, the kind I'd never seen before
and could never afford. I did take something once, before I knew it."
Fred came toward her.
For the first time she had his whole attention, in the degree to which she was
accustomed to having it. "Did you? What was it?" he asked with
interest.
"A sachet. A
little blue silk bag of orris-root powder. There was a whole counterful of
them, marked down to fifty cents. I'd never seen any before, and they seemed
irresistible. I took one up and wandered about the store with it. Nobody seemed
to notice, so I carried it off."
Fred laughed.
"Crazy child! Why, your things always smell of orris; is it a
penance?"
"No, I love it.
But I saw that the firm didn't lose anything by me. I went back and bought it
there whenever I had a quarter to spend. I got a lot to take to Arizona. I made
it up to them."
"I'll bet you
did!" Fred took her hand. "Why didn't I find you that first winter?
I'd have loved you just as you came!"
Thea shook her head.
"No, you wouldn't, but you might have found me amusing. The Harsanyis said
yesterday afternoon that I wore such a funny cape and that my shoes always
squeaked. They think I've improved. I told them it was your doing if I had, and
then they looked scared."
"Did you sing for
Harsanyi?"
"Yes. He thinks
I've improved there, too. He said nice things to me. Oh, he was very nice! He
agrees with you about my going to Lehmann, if she'll take me. He came out to
the elevator with me, after we had said good-bye. He said something nice out there,
too, but he seemed sad."
"What was it that
he said?"
"He said, `When
people, serious people, believe in you, they give you some of their best,
so--take care of it, Miss Kronborg.' Then he waved his hands and went
back."
"If you sang, I
wish you had taken me along. Did you sing well?" Fred turned from her and
went back to the window. "I wonder when I shall hear you sing again."
He picked up a bunch of violets and smelled them. "You know, your leaving
me like this--well, it's almost inhuman to be able to do it so kindly and
unconditionally."
"I suppose it is.
It was almost inhuman to be able to leave home, too,--the last time, when I
knew it was for good. But all the same, I cared a great deal more than anybody
else did. I lived through it. I have no choice now. No matter how much it
breaks me up, I have to go. Do I seem to enjoy it?"
Fred bent over her
trunk and picked up something which proved to be a score, clumsily bound.
"What's this? Did you ever try to sing this?" He opened it and on the
engraved title-page read Wunsch's inscription, "Einst, O Wunder!" He
looked up sharply at Thea.
"Wunsch gave me
that when he went away. I've told you about him, my old teacher in Moonstone.
He loved that opera."
Fred went toward the
fireplace, the book under his arm, singing softly:--
"Einst, O Wunder, entbluht auf meinem Garbe,
Eine Blume der Asche meines Herzens;
"You have no idea at all where he is, Thea?" He leaned against the
mantel and looked down at her. "No,
I wish I had. He may be dead by this time. That was five years ago, and he used
himself hard. Mrs. Kohler was always afraid he would die off alone somewhere
and be stuck under the prairie. When we last heard of him, he was in
Kansas."
"If he were to be
found, I'd like to do something for him. I seem to get a good deal of him from
this." He opened the book again, where he kept the place with his finger,
and scrutinized the purple ink. "How like a German! Had he ever sung the
song for you?"
"No. I didn't know
where the words were from until once, when Harsanyi sang it for me, I
recognized them."
Fred closed the book.
"Let me see, what was your noble brakeman's name?"
Thea looked up with
surprise. "Ray, Ray Kennedy."
"Ray
Kennedy!" he laughed. "It couldn't well have been better! Wunsch and
Dr. Archie, and Ray, and I,"-- he told them off on his
fingers,--"your whistling-posts! You haven't done so badly. We've backed
you as we could, some in our weakness and some in our might. In your dark
hours--and you'll have them--you may like to remember us." He smiled
whimsically and dropped the score into the trunk. "You are taking that
with you?"
"Surely I am. I
haven't so many keepsakes that I can afford to leave that. I haven't got many
that I value so highly."
"That you value so
highly?" Fred echoed her gravity playfully. "You are delicious when
you fall into your vernacular." He laughed half to himself.
"What's the matter
with that? Isn't it perfectly good English?"
"Perfectly good
Moonstone, my dear. Like the ready- made clothes that hang in the windows, made
to fit everybody and fit nobody, a phrase that can be used on all occasions.
Oh,"--he started across the room again,--"that's one of the fine
things about your going! You'll be with the right sort of people and you'll
learn a good, live, warm German, that will be like yourself. You'll get a new
speech full of shades and color like your voice; alive, like your mind. It will
be almost like being born again, Thea."
She was not offended.
Fred had said such things to her before, and she wanted to learn. In the
natural course of things she would never have loved a man from whom she could
not learn a great deal.
"Harsanyi said
once," she remarked thoughtfully, "that if one became an artist one
had to be born again, and that one owed nothing to anybody."
"Exactly. And when
I see you again I shall not see you, but your daughter. May I?" He held up
his cigarette case questioningly and then began to smoke, taking up again the
song which ran in his head:--
"Deutlich schimmert auf jedem, Purpurblättchen, Adelaide!"
"I have half an hour with you yet, and then, exit Fred." He walked
about the room, smoking and singing the words under his breath. "You'll
like the voyage," he said abruptly. "That first approach to a foreign
shore, stealing up on it and finding it--there's nothing like it. It wakes up
everything that's asleep in you. You won't mind my writing to some people in
Berlin? They'll be nice to you." "I
wish you would." Thea gave a deep sigh. "I wish one could look ahead
and see what is coming to one."
"Oh, no!"
Fred was smoking nervously; "that would never do. It's the uncertainty
that makes one try. You've never had any sort of chance, and now I fancy you'll
make it up to yourself. You'll find the way to let yourself out in one long
flight."
Thea put her hand on
her heart. "And then drop like the rocks we used to throw--anywhere."
She left the chair and went over to the sofa, hunting for something in the
trunk trays. When she came back she found Fred sitting in her place. "Here
are some handkerchiefs of yours. I've kept one or two. They're larger than mine
and useful if one has a headache."
"Thank you. How
nicely they smell of your things!" He looked at the white squares for a
moment and then put them in his pocket. He kept the low chair, and as she stood
beside him he took her hands and sat looking intently at them, as if he were
examining them for some special purpose, tracing the long round fingers with
the tips of his own. "Ordinarily, you know, there are reefs that a man
catches to and keeps his nose above water. But this is a case by itself. There
seems to be no limit as to how much I can be in love with you. I keep
going." He did not lift his eyes from her fingers, which he continued to
study with the same fervor. "Every kind of stringed instrument there is
plays in your hands, Thea," he whispered, pressing them to his face.
She dropped beside him
and slipped into his arms, shutting her eyes and lifting her cheek to his.
"Tell me one thing," Fred whispered. "You said that night on the
boat, when I first told you, that if you could you would crush it all up in
your hands and throw it into the sea. Would you, all those weeks?"
She shook her head.
"Answer me, would
you?"
"No, I was angry
then. I'm not now. I'd never give them up. Don't make me pay too much." In
that embrace they lived over again all the others. When Thea drew away from
him, she dropped her face in her hands. "You are good to me," she
breathed, "you are!"
Rising to his feet, he
put his hands under her elbows and lifted her gently. He drew her toward the
door with him. "Get all you can. Be generous with yourself. Don't stop
short of splendid things. I want them for you more than I want anything else,
more than I want one splendid thing for myself. I can't help feeling that
you'll gain, somehow, by my losing so much. That you'll gain the very thing I
lose. Take care of her, as Harsanyi said. She's wonderful!" He kissed her
and went out of the door without looking back, just as if he were coming again
to-morrow.
Thea went quickly into
her bedroom. She brought out an armful of muslin things, knelt down, and began
to lay them in the trays. Suddenly she stopped, dropped forward and leaned
against the open trunk, her head on her arms. The tears fell down on the dark
old carpet. It came over her how many people must have said good-bye and been
unhappy in that room. Other people, before her time, had hired this room to cry
in. Strange rooms and strange streets and faces, how sick at heart they made
one! Why was she going so far, when what she wanted was some familiar place to
hide in?--the rock house, her little room in Moonstone, her own bed. Oh, how
good it would be to lie down in that little bed, to cut the nerve that kept one
struggling, that pulled one on and on, to sink into peace there, with all the
family safe and happy downstairs. After all, she was a Moonstone girl, one of
the preacher's children. Everything else was in Fred's imagination. Why was she
called upon to take such chances? Any safe, humdrum work that did not
compromise her would be better. But if she failed now, she would lose her soul.
There was nowhere to fall, after one took that step, except into abysses of
wretchedness. She knew what abysses, for she could still hear the old man
playing in the snowstorm, "Ach, ich habe sie verloren!" That melody
was released in her like a passion of longing. Every nerve in her body thrilled
to it. It brought her to her feet, carried her somehow to bed and into troubled
sleep.
That night she taught
in Moonstone again: she beat her pupils in hideous rages, she kept on beating
them. She sang at funerals, and struggled at the piano with Harsanyi. In one
dream she was looking into a hand-glass and thinking that she was getting
better-looking, when the glass began to grow smaller and smaller and her own
reflection to shrink, until she realized that she was looking into Ray
Kennedy's eyes, seeing her face in that look of his which she could never
forget. All at once the eyes were Fred Ottenburg's, and not Ray's. All night
she heard the shrieking of trains, whistling in and out of Moonstone, as she
used to hear them in her sleep when they blew shrill in the winter air. But
to-night they were terrifying,--the spectral, fated trains that "raced
with death," about which the old woman from the depot used to pray.
In the morning she
wakened breathless after a struggle with Mrs. Livery Johnson's daughter. She
started up with a bound, threw the blankets back and sat on the edge of the
bed, her night-dress open, her long braids hanging over her bosom, blinking at
the daylight. After all, it was not too late. She was only twenty years old,
and the boat sailed at noon. There was still time!
It is a glorious winter
day. Denver, standing on her high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is
masked in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building is actually
in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun until the beholder is dazzled
and the outlines of the building are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The
stone terrace is a white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the
trees and bushes are faithfully repeated in snow--on every black twig a soft,
blurred line of white. From the terrace one looks directly over to where the
mountains break in their sharp, familiar lines against the sky. Snow fills the
gorges, hangs in scarfs on the great slopes, and on the peaks the fiery
sunshine is gathered up as by a burning-glass.
Howard Archie is
standing at the window of his private room in the offices of the San Felipe
Mining Company, on the sixth floor of the Raton Building, looking off at the
mountain glories of his State while he gives dictation to his secretary. He is
ten years older than when we saw him last, and emphatically ten years more
prosperous. A decade of coming into things has not so much aged him as it has
fortified, smoothed, and assured him. His sandy hair and imperial conceal
whatever gray they harbor. He has not grown heavier, but more flexible, and his
massive shoulders carry fifty years and the control of his great mining
interests more lightly than they carried forty years and a country practice. In
short, he is one of the friends to whom we feel grateful for having got on in
the world, for helping to keep up the general temperature and our own
confidence in life. He is an acquaintance that one would hurry to overtake and
greet among a hundred. In his warm handshake and generous smile there is the
stimulating cordiality of good fellows come into good fortune and eager to pass
it on; something that makes one think better of the lottery of life and resolve
to try again.
When Archie had
finished his morning mail, he turned away from the window and faced his
secretary. "Did anything come up yesterday afternoon while I was away, T.
B.?"
Thomas Burk turned over
the leaf of his calendar. "Governor Alden sent down to say that he wanted
to see you before he sends his letter to the Board of Pardons. Asked if you
could go over to the State House this morning."
Archie shrugged his
shoulders. "I'll think about it."
The young man grinned.
"Anything
else?" his chief continued.
T. B. swung round in
his chair with a look of interest on his shrewd, clean-shaven face. "Old
Jasper Flight was in, Dr. Archie. I never expected to see him alive again.
Seems he's tucked away for the winter with a sister who's a housekeeper at the
Oxford. He's all crippled up with rheumatism, but as fierce after it as ever.
Wants to know if you or the company won't grub-stake him again. Says he's sure
of it this time; had located something when the snow shut down on him in
December. He wants to crawl out at the first break in the weather, with that
same old burro with the split ear. He got somebody to winter the beast for him.
He's superstitious about that burro, too; thinks it's divinely guided. You
ought to hear the line of talk he put up here yesterday; said when he rode in
his carriage, that burro was a-going to ride along with him."
Archie laughed.
"Did he leave you his address?"
"He didn't neglect
anything," replied the clerk cynically. "Well, send him a line and
tell him to come in again. I like to hear him. Of all the crazy prospectors
I've ever known, he's the most interesting, because he's really crazy. It's a
religious conviction with him, and with most of 'em it's a gambling fever or
pure vagrancy. But Jasper Flight believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of
the silver deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving. He's a
downright noble figure. Of course I'll stake him! As long as he can crawl out
in the spring. He and that burro are a sight together. The beast is nearly as white
as Jasper; must be twenty years old."
"If you stake him
this time, you won't have to again," said T. B. knowingly. "He'll
croak up there, mark my word. Says he never ties the burro at night now, for
fear he might be called sudden, and the beast would starve. I guess that animal
could eat a lariat rope, all right, and enjoy it."
"I guess if we
knew the things those two have eaten, and haven't eaten, in their time, T. B.,
it would make us vegetarians." The doctor sat down and looked thoughtful.
"That's the way for the old man to go. It would be pretty hard luck if he
had to die in a hospital. I wish he could turn up something before he cashes
in. But his kind seldom do; they're bewitched. Still, there was Stratton. I've
been meeting Jasper Flight, and his side meat and tin pans, up in the mountains
for years, and I'd miss him. I always halfway believe the fairy tales he spins
me. Old Jasper Flight," Archie murmured, as if he liked the name or the
picture it called up.
A clerk came in from
the outer office and handed Archie a card. He sprang up and exclaimed,
"Mr. Ottenburg? Bring him in."
Fred Ottenburg entered,
clad in a long, fur-lined coat, holding a checked-cloth hat in his hand, his
cheeks and eyes bright with the outdoor cold. The two men met before Archie's
desk and their handclasp was longer than friendship prompts except in regions
where the blood warms and quickens to meet the dry cold. Under the general
keying- up of the altitude, manners take on a heartiness, a vivacity, that is
one expression of the half-unconscious excitement which Colorado people miss
when they drop into lower strata of air. The heart, we are told, wears out
early in that high atmosphere, but while it pumps it sends out no sluggish
stream. Our two friends stood gripping each other by the hand and smiling.
"When did you get
in, Fred? And what have you come for?" Archie gave him a quizzical glance.
"I've come to find
out what you think you're doing out here," the younger man declared
emphatically. "I want to get next, I do. When can you see me?"
"Anything on
to-night? Then suppose you dine with me. Where can I pick you up at
five-thirty?"
"Bixby's office,
general freight agent of the Burlington." Ottenburg began to button his
overcoat and drew on his gloves. "I've got to have one shot at you before
I go, Archie. Didn't I tell you Pinky Alden was a cheap squirt?"
Alden's backer laughed
and shook his head. "Oh, he's worse than that, Fred. It isn't polite to
mention what he is, outside of the Arabian Nights. I guessed you'd come to rub
it into me."
Ottenburg paused, his
hand on the doorknob, his high color challenging the doctor's calm. "I'm
disgusted with you, Archie, for training with such a pup. A man of your
experience!"
"Well, he's been
an experience," Archie muttered. "I'm not coy about admitting it, am
I?"
Ottenburg flung open
the door. "Small credit to you. Even the women are out for capital and
corruption, I hear. Your Governor's done more for the United Breweries in six
months than I've been able to do in six years. He's the lily-livered sort we're
looking for. Good-morning."
That afternoon at five
o'clock Dr. Archie emerged from the State House after his talk with Governor
Alden, and crossed the terrace under a saffron sky. The snow, beaten hard, was
blue in the dusk; a day of blinding sunlight had not even started a thaw. The
lights of the city twinkled pale below him in the quivering violet air, and the
dome of the State House behind him was still red with the light from the west.
Before he got into his car, the doctor paused to look about him at the scene of
which he never tired. Archie lived in his own house on Colfax Avenue, where he
had roomy grounds and a rose garden and a conservatory. His housekeeping was
done by three Japanese boys, devoted and resourceful, who were able to manage
Archie's dinner parties, to see that he kept his engagements, and to make
visitors who stayed at the house so comfortable that they were always loath to
go away.
Archie had never known
what comfort was until he became a widower, though with characteristic
delicacy, or dishonesty, he insisted upon accrediting his peace of mind to the
San Felipe, to Time, to anything but his release from Mrs. Archie.
Mrs. Archie died just
before her husband left Moonstone and came to Denver to live, six years ago.
The poor woman's fight against dust was her undoing at last. One summer day
when she was rubbing the parlor upholstery with gasoline,--the doctor had often
forbidden her to use it on any account, so that was one of the pleasures she
seized upon in his absence,--an explosion occurred. Nobody ever knew exactly
how it happened, for Mrs. Archie was dead when the neighbors rushed in to save
her from the burning house. She must have inhaled the burning gas and died
instantly.
Moonstone severity
relented toward her somewhat after her death. But even while her old cronies at
Mrs. Smiley's millinery store said that it was a terrible thing, they added
that nothing but a powerful explosive could have killed Mrs. Archie, and that
it was only right the doctor should have a chance.
Archie's past was
literally destroyed when his wife died. The house burned to the ground, and all
those material reminders which have such power over people disappeared in an
hour. His mining interests now took him to Denver so often that it seemed
better to make his headquarters there. He gave up his practice and left
Moonstone for good. Six months afterward, while Dr. Archie was living at the
Brown Palace Hotel, the San Felipe mine began to give up that silver hoard
which old Captain Harris had always accused it of concealing, and San Felipe
headed the list of mining quotations in every daily paper, East and West. In a
few years Dr. Archie was a very rich man. His mine was such an important item
in the mineral out- put of the State, and Archie had a hand in so many of the
new industries of Colorado and New Mexico, that his political influence was
considerable. He had thrown it all, two years ago, to the new reform party, and
had brought about the election of a governor of whose conduct he was now
heartily ashamed. His friends believed that Archie himself had ambitious
political plans.
WHEN Ottenburg and his
host reached the house on Colfax Avenue, they went directly to the library, a
long double room on the second floor which Archie had arranged exactly to his
own taste. It was full of books and mounted specimens of wild game, with a big
writing-table at either end, stiff, old-fashioned engravings, heavy hangings
and deep upholstery.
When one of the Japanese
boys brought the cocktails, Fred turned from the fine specimen of peccoray he
had been examining and said, "A man is an owl to live in such a place
alone, Archie. Why don't you marry? As for me, just because I can't marry, I
find the world full of charming, unattached women, any one of whom I could fit
up a house for with alacrity."
"You're more
knowing than I." Archie spoke politely. "I'm not very wide awake
about women. I'd be likely to pick out one of the uncomfortable ones--and there
are a few of them, you know." He drank his cocktail and rubbed his hands
together in a friendly way. "My friends here have charming wives, and they
don't give me a chance to get lonely. They are very kind to me, and I have a
great many pleasant friendships."
Fred put down his
glass. "Yes, I've always noticed that women have confidence in you. You
have the doctor's way of getting next. And you enjoy that kind of thing?"
"The friendship of
attractive women? Oh, dear, yes! I depend upon it a great deal."
The butler announced
dinner, and the two men went downstairs to the dining-room. Dr. Archie's
dinners were always good and well served, and his wines were excellent.
"I saw the Fuel
and Iron people to-day," Ottenburg said, looking up from his soup.
"Their heart is in the right place. I can't see why in the mischief you
ever got mixed up with that reform gang, Archie. You've got nothing to reform
out here. The situation has always been as simple as two and two in Colorado;
mostly a matter of a friendly understanding."
"Well,"--Archie
spoke tolerantly,--"some of the young fellows seemed to have red-hot
convictions, and I thought it was better to let them try their ideas out."
Ottenburg shrugged his
shoulders. "A few dull young men who haven't ability enough to play the
old game the old way, so they want to put on a new game which doesn't take so
much brains and gives away more advertising that's what your anti-saloon league
and vice commission amounts to. They provide notoriety for the fellows who
can't distinguish themselves at running a business or practicing law or
developing an industry. Here you have a mediocre lawyer with no brains and no
practice, trying to get a look-in on something. He comes up with the novel
proposition that the prostitute has a hard time of it, puts his picture in the
paper, and the first thing you know, he's a celebrity. He gets the rake-off and
she's just where she was before. How could you fall for a mouse-trap like Pink
Alden, Archie?"
Dr. Archie laughed as
he began to carve. "Pink seems to get under your skin. He's not worth
talking about. He's gone his limit. People won't read about his blameless life
any more. I knew those interviews he gave out would cook him. They were a last
resort. I could have stopped him, but by that time I'd come to the conclusion
that I'd let the reformers down. I'm not against a general shaking-up, but the
trouble with Pinky's crowd is they never get beyond a general writing-up. We
gave them a chance to do something, and they just kept on writing about each
other and what temptations they had overcome."
While Archie and his
friend were busy with Colorado politics, the impeccable Japanese attended
swiftly and intelligently to his duties, and the dinner, as Ottenburg at last
remarked, was worthy of more profitable conversation.
"So it is,"
the doctor admitted. "Well, we'll go upstairs for our coffee and cut this
out. Bring up some cognac and arak, Tai," he added as he rose from the
table.
They stopped to examine
a moose's head on the stairway, and when they reached the library the pine logs
in the fireplace had been lighted, and the coffee was bubbling before the
hearth. Tai placed two chairs before the fire and brought a tray of cigarettes.
"Bring the cigars
in my lower desk drawer, boy," the doctor directed. "Too much light
in here, isn't there, Fred? Light the lamp there on my desk, Tai." He
turned off the electric glare and settled himself deep into the chair opposite
Ottenburg's.
"To go back to our
conversation, doctor," Fred began while he waited for the first steam to
blow off his coffee; "why don't you make up your mind to go to Washington?
There'd be no fight made against you. I needn't say the United Breweries would
back you. There'd be some kudos coming to us, too; backing a reform candidate."
Dr. Archie measured his
length in his chair and thrust his large boots toward the crackling pitch-pine.
He drank his coffee and lit a big black cigar while his guest looked over the
assortment of cigarettes on the tray. "You say why don't I," the doctor
spoke with the deliberation of a man in the position of having several courses
to choose from, "but, on the other hand, why should I?" He puffed
away and seemed, through his half-closed eyes, to look down several long roads
with the intention of luxuriously rejecting all of them and remaining where he
was. "I'm sick of politics. I'm disillusioned about serving my crowd, and
I don't particularly want to serve yours. Nothing in it that I particularly
want; and a man's not effective in politics unless he wants something for
himself, and wants it hard. I can reach my ends by straighter roads. There are
plenty of things to keep me busy. We haven't begun to develop our resources in
this State; we haven't had a look in on them yet. That's the only thing that
isn't fake-- making men and machines go, and actually turning out a
product."
The doctor poured
himself some white cordial and looked over the little glass into the fire with
an expression which led Ottenburg to believe that he was getting at something in
his own mind. Fred lit a cigarette and let his friend grope for his idea.
"My boys,
here," Archie went on, "have got me rather interested in Japan. Think
I'll go out there in the spring, and come back the other way, through Siberia.
I've always wanted to go to Russia." His eyes still hunted for something
in his big fireplace. With a slow turn of his head he brought them back to his
guest and fixed them upon him. "Just now, I'm thinking of running on to
New York for a few weeks," he ended abruptly.
Ottenburg lifted his
chin. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as if he began to see Archie's drift.
"Shall you see Thea?"
"Yes." The
doctor replenished his cordial glass. "In fact, I suspect I am going
exactly to see her. I'm getting stale on things here, Fred. Best people in the
world and always doing things for me. I'm fond of them, too, but I've been with
them too much. I'm getting ill-tempered, and the first thing I know I'll be
hurting people's feelings. I snapped Mrs. Dandridge up over the telephone this
afternoon when she asked me to go out to Colorado Springs on Sunday to meet
some English people who are staying at the Antlers. Very nice of her to want
me, and I was as sour as if she'd been trying to work me for something. I've
got to get out for a while, to save my reputation."
To this explanation
Ottenburg had not paid much attention. He seemed to be looking at a fixed
point: the yellow glass eyes of a fine wildcat over one of the bookcases.
"You've never heard her at all, have you?" he asked reflectively.
"Curious, when this is her second season in New York."
"I was going on
last March. Had everything arranged. And then old Cap Harris thought he could
drive his car and me through a lamp-post and I was laid up with a compound
fracture for two months. So I didn't get to see Thea."
Ottenburg studied the
red end of his cigarette attentively. "She might have come out to see you.
I remember you covered the distance like a streak when she wanted you."
Archie moved uneasily.
"Oh, she couldn't do that. She had to get back to Vienna to work on some
new parts for this year. She sailed two days after the New York season
closed."
"Well, then she
couldn't, of course." Fred smoked his cigarette close and tossed the end
into the fire. "I'm tremendously glad you're going now. If you're stale,
she'll jack you up. That's one of her specialties. She got a rise out of me
last December that lasted me all winter."
"Of course,"
the doctor apologized, "you know so much more about such things. I'm
afraid it will be rather wasted on me. I'm no judge of music."
"Never mind
that." The younger man pulled himself up in his chair. "She gets it
across to people who aren't judges. That's just what she does." He
relapsed into his former lassitude. "If you were stone deaf, it wouldn't
all be wasted. It's a great deal to watch her. Incidentally, you know, she is
very beautiful. Photographs give you no idea."
Dr. Archie clasped his
large hands under his chin. "Oh, I'm counting on that. I don't suppose her
voice will sound natural to me. Probably I wouldn't know it."
Ottenburg smiled.
"You'll know it, if you ever knew it. It's the same voice, only more so.
You'll know it."
"Did you, in
Germany that time, when you wrote me? Seven years ago, now. That must have been
at the very beginning."
"Yes, somewhere
near the beginning. She sang one of the Rhine daughters." Fred paused and
drew himself up again. "Sure, I knew it from the first note. I'd heard a
good many young voices come up out of the Rhine, but, by gracious, I hadn't heard
one like that!" He fumbled for another cigarette. "Mahler was
conducting that night. I met him as he was leaving the house and had a word
with him. `Interesting voice you tried out this evening,' I said. He stopped
and smiled. `Miss Kronborg, you mean? Yes, very. She seems to sing for the
idea. Unusual in a young singer.' I'd never heard him admit before that a
singer could have an idea. She not only had it, but she got it across. The
Rhine music, that I'd known since I was a boy, was fresh to me, vocalized for
the first time. You realized that she was beginning that long story,
adequately, with the end in view. Every phrase she sang was basic. She simply
was the idea of the Rhine music." Ottenburg rose and stood with his back
to the fire. "And at the end, where you don't see the maidens at all, the
same thing again: two pretty voices and the Rhine voice." Fred snapped his
fingers and dropped his hand.
The doctor looked up at
him enviously. "You see, all that would be lost on me," he said
modestly. "I don't know the dream nor the interpretation thereof. I'm out
of it. It's too bad that so few of her old friends can appreciate her."
"Take a try at
it," Fred encouraged him. "You'll get in deeper than you can explain
to yourself. People with no personal interest do that."
"I suppose,"
said Archie diffidently, "that college German, gone to seed, wouldn't help
me out much. I used to be able to make my German patients understand me."
"Sure it
would!" cried Ottenburg heartily. "Don't be above knowing your
libretto. That's all very well for musicians, but common mortals like you and
me have got to know what she's singing about. Get out your dictionary and go at
it as you would at any other proposition. Her diction is beautiful, and if you
know the text you'll get a great deal. So long as you're going to hear her, get
all that's coming to you. You bet in Germany people know their librettos by
heart! You Americans are so afraid of stooping to learn anything."
"I am a little
ashamed," Archie admitted. "I guess that's the way we mask our
general ignorance. However, I'll stoop this time; I'm more ashamed not to be
able to follow her. The papers always say she's such a fine actress." He
took up the tongs and began to rearrange the logs that had burned through and
fallen apart. "I suppose she has changed a great deal?" he asked
absently.
"We've all
changed, my dear Archie,--she more than most of us. Yes, and no. She's all
there, only there's a great deal more of her. I've had only a few words with
her in several years. It's better not, when I'm tied up this way. The laws are
barbarous, Archie."
"Your wife
is--still the same?" the doctor asked sympathetically.
"Absolutely.
Hasn't been out of a sanitarium for seven years now. No prospect of her ever
being out, and as long as she's there I'm tied hand and foot. What does society
get out of such a state of things, I'd like to know, except a tangle of
irregularities? If you want to reform, there's an opening for you!"
"It's bad, oh,
very bad; I agree with you!" Dr. Archie shook his head. "But there
would be complications under another system, too. The whole question of a young
man's marrying has looked pretty grave to me for a long while. How have they
the courage to keep on doing it? It depresses me now to buy wedding
presents." For some time the doctor watched his guest, who was sunk in
bitter reflections "Such things used to go better than they do now, I
believe. Seems to me all the married people I knew when I was a boy were happy
enough." He paused again and bit the end off a fresh cigar. "You
never saw Thea's mother, did you, Ottenburg? That's a pity. Mrs. Kronborg was a
fine woman. I've always been afraid Thea made a mistake, not coming home when
Mrs. Kronborg was ill, no matter what it cost her."
Ottenburg moved about
restlessly. "She couldn't, Archie, she positively couldn't. I felt you
never understood that, but I was in Dresden at the time, and though I wasn't
seeing much of her, I could size up the situation for myself. It was by just a
lucky chance that she got to sing Elizabeth that time at the Dresden Opera, a
complication of circumstances. If she'd run away, for any reason, she might
have waited years for such a chance to come again. She gave a wonderful
performance and made a great impression. They offered her certain terms; she
had to take them and follow it up then and there. In that game you can't lose a
single trick. She was ill herself, but she sang. Her mother was ill, and she
sang. No, you mustn't hold that against her, Archie. She did the right thing
there." Ottenburg drew out his watch. "Hello! I must be traveling.
You hear from her regularly?"
"More or less
regularly. She was never much of a letter- writer. She tells me about her
engagements and contracts, but I know so little about that business that it
doesn't mean much to me beyond the figures, which seem very impressive. We've
had a good deal of business correspondence, about putting up a stone to her
father and mother, and, lately, about her youngest brother, Thor. He is with me
now; he drives my car. To-day he's up at the mine."
Ottenburg, who had
picked up his overcoat, dropped it. "Drives your car?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes. Thea and I
have had a good deal of bother about Thor. We tried a business college, and an
engineering school, but it was no good. Thor was born a chauffeur before there
were cars to drive. He was never good for anything else; lay around home and
collected postage stamps and took bicycles to pieces, waiting for the
automobile to be invented. He's just as much a part of a car as the steering-
gear. I can't find out whether he likes his job with me or not, or whether he
feels any curiosity about his sister. You can't find anything out from a
Kronborg nowadays. The mother was different."
Fred plunged into his
coat. "Well, it's a queer world, Archie. But you'll think better of it, if
you go to New York. Wish I were going with you. I'll drop in on you in the
morning at about eleven. I want a word with you about this Interstate Commerce
Bill. Good-night."
Dr. Archie saw his
guest to the motor which was waiting below, and then went back to his library,
where he replenished the fire and sat down for a long smoke. A man of Archie's
modest and rather credulous nature develops late, and makes his largest gain
between forty and fifty. At thirty, indeed, as we have seen, Archie was a
soft-hearted boy under a manly exterior, still whistling to keep up his
courage. Prosperity and large responsibilities--above all, getting free of poor
Mrs. Archie--had brought out a good deal more than he knew was in him. He was
thinking tonight as he sat before the fire, in the comfort he liked so well,
that but for lucky chances, and lucky holes in the ground, he would still be a
country practitioner, reading his old books by his office lamp. And yet, he was
not so fresh and energetic as he ought to be. He was tired of business and of
politics. Worse than that, he was tired of the men with whom he had to do and
of the women who, as he said, had been kind to him. He felt as if he were still
hunting for something, like old Jasper Flight. He knew that this was an
unbecoming and ungrateful state of mind, and he reproached himself for it. But
he could not help wondering why it was that life, even when it gave so much,
after all gave so little. What was it that he had expected and missed? Why was
he, more than he was anything else, disappointed?
He fell to looking back
over his life and asking himself which years of it he would like to live over
again,--just as they had been,--and they were not many. His college years he
would live again, gladly. After them there was nothing he would care to repeat
until he came to Thea Kronborg. There had been something stirring about those
years in Moonstone, when he was a restless young man on the verge of breaking
into larger enterprises, and when she was a restless child on the verge of
growing up into something unknown. He realized now that she had counted for a
great deal more to him than he knew at the time. It was a continuous sort of
relationship. He was always on the lookout for her as he went about the town,
always vaguely expecting her as he sat in his office at night. He had never asked
himself then if it was strange that he should find a child of twelve the most
interesting and companionable person in Moonstone. It had seemed a pleasant,
natural kind of solicitude. He explained it then by the fact that he had no
children of his own. But now, as he looked back at those years, the other
interests were faded and inanimate. The thought of them was heavy. But wherever
his life had touched Thea Kronborg's, there was still a little warmth left, a
little sparkle. Their friendship seemed to run over those discontented years
like a leafy pattern, still bright and fresh when the other patterns had faded
into the dull background. Their walks and drives and confidences, the night
they watched the rabbit in the moonlight,-- why were these things stirring to
remember? Whenever he thought of them, they were distinctly different from the
other memories of his life; always seemed humorous, gay, with a little thrill
of anticipation and mystery about them. They came nearer to being tender
secrets than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else they
corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the world, and had not found. It
came over him now that the unexpected favors of fortune, no matter how
dazzling, do not mean very much to us. They may excite or divert us for a time,
but when we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way
met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth,
undirected, and of its own accord.
FOR the first four
years after Thea went to Germany things went on as usual with the Kronborg
family. Mrs. Kronborg's land in Nebraska increased in value and brought her in
a good rental. The family drifted into an easier way of living, half without
realizing it, as families will. Then Mr. Kronborg, who had never been ill, died
suddenly of cancer of the liver, and after his death Mrs. Kronborg went, as her
neighbors said, into a decline. Hearing discouraging reports of her from the
physician who had taken over his practice, Dr. Archie went up from Denver to
see her. He found her in bed, in the room where he had more than once attended
her, a handsome woman of sixty with a body still firm and white, her hair,
faded now to a very pale primrose, in two thick braids down her back, her eyes
clear and calm. When the doctor arrived, she was sitting up in her bed,
knitting. He felt at once how glad she was to see him, but he soon gathered
that she had made no determination to get well. She told him, indeed, that she
could not very well get along without Mr. Kronborg. The doctor looked at her
with astonishment. Was it possible that she could miss the foolish old man so
much? He reminded her of her children.
"Yes," she
replied; "the children are all very well, but they are not father. We were
married young."
The doctor watched her
wonderingly as she went on knitting, thinking how much she looked like Thea.
The difference was one of degree rather than of kind. The daughter had a
compelling enthusiasm, the mother had none. But their framework, their
foundation, was very much the same.
In a moment Mrs.
Kronborg spoke again. "Have you heard anything from Thea lately?"
During his talk with
her, the doctor gathered that what Mrs. Kronborg really wanted was to see her
daughter Thea. Lying there day after day, she wanted it calmly and
continuously. He told her that, since she felt so, he thought they might ask
Thea to come home.
"I've thought a
good deal about it," said Mrs. Kronborg slowly. "I hate to interrupt
her, now that she's begun to get advancement. I expect she's seen some pretty
hard times, though she was never one to complain. Perhaps she'd feel that she
would like to come. It would be hard, losing both of us while she's off
there."
When Dr. Archie got
back to Denver he wrote a long letter to Thea, explaining her mother's
condition and how much she wished to see her, and asking Thea to come, if only
for a few weeks. Thea had repaid the money she had borrowed from him, and he
assured her that if she happened to be short of funds for the journey, she had
only to cable him.
A month later he got a
frantic sort of reply from Thea. Complications in the opera at Dresden had
given her an unhoped-for opportunity to go on in a big part. Before this letter
reached the doctor, she would have made her debut as Elizabeth, in
"Tannhauser." She wanted to go to her mother more than she wanted
anything else in the world, but, unless she failed,--which she would not,--she
absolutely could not leave Dresden for six months. It was not that she chose to
stay; she had to stay--or lose everything. The next few months would put her
five years ahead, or would put her back so far that it would be of no use to
struggle further. As soon as she was free, she would go to Moonstone and take
her mother back to Germany with her. Her mother, she was sure, could live for
years yet, and she would like German people and German ways, and could be
hearing music all the time. Thea said she was writing her mother and begging
her to help her one last time; to get strength and to wait for her six months,
and then she (Thea) would do everything. Her mother would never have to make an
effort again.
Dr. Archie went up to
Moonstone at once. He had great confidence in Mrs. Kronborg's power of will,
and if Thea's appeal took hold of her enough, he believed she might get better.
But when he was shown into the familiar room off the parlor, his heart sank.
Mrs. Kronborg was lying serene and fateful on her pillows. On the dresser at
the foot of her bed there was a large photograph of Thea in the character in
which she was to make her debut. Mrs. Kronborg pointed to it.
"Isn't she lovely,
doctor? It's nice that she hasn't changed much. I've seen her look like that
many a time."
They talked for a while
about Thea's good fortune. Mrs. Kronborg had had a cablegram saying,
"First performance well received. Great relief." In her letter Thea
said; "If you'll only get better, dear mother, there's nothing I can't do.
I will make a really great success, if you'll try with me. You shall have
everything you want, and we will always be together. I have a little house all
picked out where we are to live."
"Bringing up a
family is not all it's cracked up to be," said Mrs. Kronborg with a
flicker of irony, as she tucked the letter back under her pillow. "The
children you don't especially need, you have always with you, like the poor.
But the bright ones get away from you. They have their own way to make in the
world. Seems like the brighter they are, the farther they go. I used to feel
sorry that you had no family, doctor, but maybe you're as well off."
"Thea's plan seems
sound to me, Mrs. Kronborg. There's no reason I can see why you shouldn't pull
up and live for years yet, under proper care. You'd have the best doctors in
the world over there, and it would be wonderful to live with anybody who looks
like that." He nodded at the photograph of the young woman who must have
been singing "Dich, theure Halle, grüss' ich wieder," her eyes
looking up, her beautiful hands outspread with pleasure.
Mrs. Kronborg laughed
quite cheerfully. "Yes, would n't it? If father were here, I might rouse
myself. But sometimes it's hard to come back. Or if she were in trouble, maybe
I could rouse myself."
"But, dear Mrs.
Kronborg, she is in trouble," her old friend expostulated. "As she
says, she's never needed you as she needs you now. I make my guess that she's
never begged anybody to help her before."
Mrs. Kronborg smiled.
"Yes, it's pretty of her. But that will pass. When these things happen far
away they don't make such a mark; especially if your hands are full and you've
duties of your own to think about. My own father died in Nebraska when Gunner
was born,--we were living in Iowa then,--and I was sorry, but the baby made it
up to me. I was father's favorite, too. That's the way it goes, you see."
The doctor took out
Thea's letter to him, and read it over to Mrs. Kronborg. She seemed to listen,
and not to listen.
When he finished, she
said thoughtfully: "I'd counted on hearing her sing again. But I always
took my pleasures as they come. I always enjoyed her singing when she was here
about the house. While she was practicing I often used to leave my work and sit
down in a rocker and give myself up to it, the same as if I'd been at an
entertainment. I was never one of these housekeepers that let their work drive
them to death. And when she had the Mexicans over here, I always took it in.
First and last,"--she glanced judicially at the photograph,--"I guess
I got about as much out of Thea's voice as anybody will ever get."
"I guess you
did!" the doctor assented heartily; "and I got a good deal myself.
You remember how she used to sing those Scotch songs for me, and lead us with
her head, her hair bobbing?"
"`Flow Gently,
Sweet Afton,'--I can hear it now," said Mrs. Kronborg; "and poor
father never knew when he sang sharp! He used to say, `Mother, how do you
always know when they make mistakes practicing?'" Mrs. Kronborg chuckled.
Dr. Archie took her
hand, still firm like the hand of a young woman. "It was lucky for her
that you did know. I always thought she got more from you than from any of her
teachers."
"Except Wunsch; he
was a real musician," said Mrs. Kronborg respectfully. "I gave her
what chance I could, in a crowded house. I kept the other children out of the
parlor for her. That was about all I could do. If she wasn't disturbed, she
needed no watching. She went after it like a terrier after rats from the first,
poor child. She was down- right afraid of it. That's why I always encouraged
her taking Thor off to outlandish places. When she was out of the house, then
she was rid of it."
After they had recalled
many pleasant memories together, Mrs. Kronborg said suddenly: "I always
understood about her going off without coming to see us that time. Oh, I know!
You had to keep your own counsel. You were a good friend to her. I've never
forgot that." She patted the doctor's sleeve and went on absently.
"There was something she didn't want to tell me, and that's why she didn't
come. Something happened when she was with those people in Mexico. I worried
for a good while, but I guess she's come out of it all right. She'd had a
pretty hard time, scratching along alone like that when she was so young, and
my farms in Nebraska were down so low that I couldn't help her none. That's no
way to send a girl out. But I guess, whatever there was, she wouldn't be afraid
to tell me now." Mrs. Kronborg looked up at the photograph with a smile.
"She doesn't look like she was beholding to anybody, does she?"
"She isn't, Mrs.
Kronborg. She never has been. That was why she borrowed the money from
me."
"Oh, I knew she'd
never have sent for you if she'd done anything to shame us. She was always
proud." Mrs. Kronborg paused and turned a little on her side. "It's
been quite a satisfaction to you and me, doctor, having her voice turn out so
fine. The things you hope for don't always turn out like that, by a long sight.
As long as old Mrs. Kohler lived, she used always to translate what it said
about Thea in the German papers she sent. I could make some of it out
myself,--it's not very different from Swedish,--but it pleased the old lady. She
left Thea her piece-picture of the burning of Moscow. I've got it put away in
moth-balls for her, along with the oboe her grand- father brought from Sweden.
I want her to take father's oboe back there some day." Mrs. Kronborg
paused a moment and compressed her lips. "But I guess she'll take a finer
instrument than that with her, back to Sweden!" she added.
Her tone fairly
startled the doctor, it was so vibrating with a fierce, defiant kind of pride
he had heard often in Thea's voice. He looked down wonderingly at his old
friend and patient. After all, one never knew people to the core. Did she,
within her, hide some of that still passion of which her daughter was
all-compact?
"That last summer
at home wasn't very nice for her," Mrs. Kronborg began as placidly as if
the fire had never leaped up in her. "The other children were acting-up
because they thought I might make a fuss over her and give her the big-head. We
gave her the dare, somehow, the lot of us, because we couldn't understand her
changing teachers and all that. That's the trouble about giving the dare to
them quiet, unboastful children; you never know how far it'll take 'em. Well,
we ought not to complain, doctor; she's given us a good deal to think
about."
The next time Dr.
Archie came to Moonstone, he came to be a pall-bearer at Mrs. Kronborg's
funeral. When he last looked at her, she was so serene and queenly that he went
back to Denver feeling almost as if he had helped to bury Thea Kronborg
herself. The handsome head in the coffin seemed to him much more really Thea
than did the radiant young woman in the picture, looking about at the Gothic
vaultings and greeting the Hall of Song.
ONE bright morning late
in February Dr. Archie was breakfasting comfortably at the Waldorf. He had got
into Jersey City on an early train, and a red, windy sunrise over the North
River had given him a good appetite. He consulted the morning paper while he
drank his coffee and saw that "Lohengrin" was to be sung at the opera
that evening. In the list of the artists who would appear was the name
"Kronborg." Such abruptness rather startled him.
"Kronborg": it was impressive and yet, somehow, disrespectful;
somewhat rude and brazen, on the back page of the morning paper. After
breakfast he went to the hotel ticket office and asked the girl if she could
give him something for "Lohengrin," "near the front." His
manner was a trifle awkward and he wondered whether the girl noticed it. Even
if she did, of course, she could scarcely suspect. Before the ticket stand he saw
a bunch of blue posters announcing the opera casts for the week. There was
"Lohengrin," and under it he saw:--
Elsa von Brabant . . . . Thea Kronborg. That
looked better. The girl gave him a ticket for a seat which she said was
excellent. He paid for it and went out to the cabstand. He mentioned to the
driver a number on Riverside Drive and got into a taxi. It would not, of
course, be the right thing to call upon Thea when she was going to sing in the
evening. He knew that much, thank goodness! Fred Ottenburg had hinted to him
that, more than almost anything else, that would put one in wrong.
When he reached the
number to which he directed his letters, he dismissed the cab and got out for a
walk. The house in which Thea lived was as impersonal as the Waldorf, and quite
as large. It was above 116th Street, where the Drive narrows, and in front of
it the shelving bank dropped to the North River. As Archie strolled about the
paths which traversed this slope, below the street level, the fourteen stories of
the apartment hotel rose above him like a perpendicular cliff. He had no idea
on which floor Thea lived, but he reflected, as his eye ran over the many
windows, that the outlook would be fine from any floor. The forbidding hugeness
of the house made him feel as if he had expected to meet Thea in a crowd and
had missed her. He did not really believe that she was hidden away behind any
of those glittering windows, or that he was to hear her this evening. His walk
was curiously uninspiring and unsuggestive. Presently remembering that
Ottenburg had encouraged him to study his lesson, he went down to the opera
house and bought a libretto. He had even brought his old "Adler's German
and English" in his trunk, and after luncheon he settled down in his gilded
suite at the Waldorf with a big cigar and the text of "Lohengrin."
The opera was announced
for seven-forty-five, but at half-past seven Archie took his seat in the right
front of the orchestra circle. He had never been inside the Metropolitan Opera
House before, and the height of the audience room, the rich color, and the
sweep of the balconies were not without their effect upon him. He watched the
house fill with a growing feeling of expectation. When the steel curtain rose
and the men of the orchestra took their places, he felt distinctly nervous. The
burst of applause which greeted the conductor keyed him still higher. He found
that he had taken off his gloves and twisted them to a string. When the lights
went down and the violins began the overture, the place looked larger than
ever; a great pit, shadowy and solemn. The whole atmosphere, he reflected, was
somehow more serious than he had anticipated.
After the curtains were
drawn back upon the scene beside the Scheldt, he got readily into the swing of
the story. He was so much interested in the bass who sang King Henry that he
had almost forgotten for what he was waiting so nervously, when the Herald
began in stentorian tones to summon Elsa Von Brabant. Then he began to realize
that he was rather frightened. There was a flutter of white at the back of the
stage, and women began to come in: two, four, six, eight, but not the right
one. It flashed across him that this was something like buck-fever, the
paralyzing moment that comes upon a man when his first elk looks at him through
the bushes, under its great antlers; the moment when a man's mind is so full of
shooting that he forgets the gun in his hand until the buck nods adieu to him
from a distant hill.
All at once, before the
buck had left him, she was there. Yes, unquestionably it was she. Her eyes were
downcast, but the head, the cheeks, the chin--there could be no mistake; she
advanced slowly, as if she were walking in her sleep. Some one spoke to her;
she only inclined her head. He spoke again, and she bowed her head still lower.
Archie had forgotten his libretto, and he had not counted upon these long
pauses. He had expected her to appear and sing and reassure him. They seemed to
be waiting for her. Did she ever forget? Why in thunder didn't she-- She made a
sound, a faint one. The people on the stage whispered together and seemed
confounded. His nervousness was absurd. She must have done this often before;
she knew her bearings. She made another sound, but he could make nothing of it.
Then the King sang to her, and Archie began to remember where they were in the
story. She came to the front of the stage, lifted her eyes for the first time,
clasped her hands and began, "Einsam in truben Tagen.
Yes, it was exactly
like buck-fever. Her face was there, toward the house now, before his eyes, and
he positively could not see it. She was singing, at last, and he positively
could not hear her. He was conscious of nothing but an uncomfortable dread and
a sense of crushing disappointment. He had, after all, missed her. Whatever was
there, she was not there--for him.
The King interrupted
her. She began again, "In lichter Waffen Scheine." Archie did not
know when his buck- fever passed, but presently he found that he was sitting
quietly in a darkened house, not listening to but dreaming upon a river of
silver sound. He felt apart from the others, drifting alone on the melody, as
if he had been alone with it for a long while and had known it all before. His
power of attention was not great just then, but in so far as it went he seemed
to be looking through an exalted calmness at a beautiful woman from far away,
from another sort of life and feeling and understanding than his own, who had
in her face something he had known long ago, much brightened and beautified. As
a lad he used to believe that the faces of people who died were like that in
the next world; the same faces, but shining with the light of a new
understanding. No, Ottenburg had not prepared him!
What he felt was
admiration and estrangement. The homely reunion, that he had somehow expected,
now seemed foolish. Instead of feeling proud that he knew her better than all
these people about him, he felt chagrined at his own ingenuousness. For he did
not know her better. This woman he had never known; she had somehow devoured
his little friend, as the wolf ate up Red Ridinghood. Beautiful, radiant,
tender as she was, she chilled his old affection; that sort of feeling was not
appropriate. She seemed much, much farther away from him than she had seemed
all those years when she was in Germany. The ocean he could cross, but there
was something here he could not cross. There was a moment, when she turned to
the King and smiled that rare, sunrise smile of her child- hood, when he
thought she was coming back to him. After the Herald's second call for her
champion, when she knelt in her impassioned prayer, there was again something
familiar, a kind of wild wonder that she had had the power to call up long ago.
But she merely reminded him of Thea; this was not the girl herself.
After the tenor came on,
the doctor ceased trying to make the woman before him fit into any of his
cherished recollections. He took her, in so far as he could, for what she was
then and there. When the knight raised the kneeling girl and put his mailed
hand on her hair, when she lifted to him a face full of worship and passionate
humility, Archie gave up his last reservation. He knew no more about her than
did the hundreds around him, who sat in the shadow and looked on, as he looked,
some with more understanding, some with less. He knew as much about Ortrude or
Lohengrin as he knew about Elsa--more, because he went further than they, she
sustained the legendary beauty of her conception more consistently. Even he
could see that. Attitudes, movements, her face, her white arms and fingers,
everything was suffused with a rosy tenderness, a warm humility, a gracious and
yet-- to him--wholly estranging beauty.
During the balcony
singing in the second act the doctor's thoughts were as far away from Moonstone
as the singer's doubtless were. He had begun, indeed, to feel the exhilaration
of getting free from personalities, of being released from his own past as well
as from Thea Kronborg's. It was very much, he told himself, like a military
funeral, exalting and impersonal. Something old died in one, and out of it
something new was born. During the duet with Ortrude, and the splendors of the
wedding processional, this new feeling grew and grew. At the end of the act
there were many curtain calls and Elsa acknowledged them, brilliant, gracious,
spirited, with her far-breaking smile; but on the whole she was harder and more
self-contained before the curtain than she was in the scene behind it. Archie
did his part in the applause that greeted her, but it was the new and wonderful
he applauded, not the old and dear. His personal, proprietary pride in her was
frozen out.
He walked about the
house during the entr'acte, and here and there among the people in the foyer he
caught the name "Kronborg." On the staircase, in front of the coffee-
room, a long-haired youth with a fat face was discoursing to a group of old
women about "die Kronborg." Dr. Archie gathered that he had crossed
on the boat with her.
After the performance
was over, Archie took a taxi and started for Riverside Drive. He meant to see
it through to-night. When he entered the reception hall of the hotel before
which he had strolled that morning, the hall porter challenged him. He said he
was waiting for Miss Kronborg. The porter looked at him suspiciously and asked
whether he had an appointment. He answered brazenly that he had. He was not
used to being questioned by hall boys. Archie sat first in one tapestry chair
and then in another, keeping a sharp eye on the people who came in and went up
in the elevators. He walked about and looked at his watch. An hour dragged by.
No one had come in from the street now for about twenty minutes, when two women
entered, carrying a great many flowers and followed by a tall young man in
chauffeur's uniform. Archie advanced toward the taller of the two women, who
was veiled and carried her head very firmly. He confronted her just as she
reached the elevator. Although he did not stand directly in her way, something
in his attitude compelled her to stop. She gave him a piercing, defiant glance
through the white scarf that covered her face. Then she lifted her hand and
brushed the scarf back from her head. There was still black on her brows and
lashes. She was very pale and her face was drawn and deeply lined. She looked,
the doctor told himself with a sinking heart, forty years old. Her suspicious,
mystified stare cleared slowly.
"Pardon me,"
the doctor murmured, not knowing just how to address her here before the
porters, "I came up from the opera. I merely wanted to say good-night to
you."
Without speaking, still
looking incredulous, she pushed him into the elevator. She kept her hand on his
arm while the cage shot up, and she looked away from him, frowning, as if she
were trying to remember or realize something. When the cage stopped, she pushed
him out of the elevator through another door, which a maid opened, into a
square hall. There she sank down on a chair and looked up at him.
"Why didn't you
let me know?" she asked in a hoarse voice.
Archie heard himself
laughing the old, embarrassed laugh that seldom happened to him now. "Oh,
I wanted to take my chance with you, like anybody else. It's been so long,
now!"
She took his hand
through her thick glove and her head dropped forward. "Yes, it has been
long," she said in the same husky voice, "and so much has
happened."
"And you are so
tired, and I am a clumsy old fellow to break in on you to-night," the
doctor added sympathetically. "Forgive me, this time." He bent over
and put his hand soothingly on her shoulder. He felt a strong shudder run
through her from head to foot.
Still bundled in her
fur coat as she was, she threw both arms about him and hugged him. "Oh,
Dr. Archie, Dr. Archie,"--she shook him,--"don't let me go. Hold on,
now you're here," she laughed, breaking away from him at the same moment
and sliding out of her fur coat. She left it for the maid to pick up and pushed
the doctor into the sitting-room, where she turned on the lights. "Let me
look at you. Yes; hands, feet, head, shoulders--just the same. You've grown no
older. You can't say as much for me, can you?"
She was standing in the
middle of the room, in a white silk shirtwaist and a short black velvet skirt,
which somehow suggested that they had `cut off her petticoats all round about.'
She looked distinctly clipped and plucked. Her hair was parted in the middle
and done very close to her head, as she had worn it under the wig. She looked
like a fugitive, who had escaped from something in clothes caught up at hazard.
It flashed across Dr. Archie that she was running away from the other woman
down at the opera house, who had used her hardly.
He took a step toward
her. "I can't tell a thing in the world about you, Thea--if I may still
call you that."
She took hold of the
collar of his overcoat. "Yes, call me that. Do: I like to hear it. You
frighten me a little, but I expect I frighten you more. I'm always a scarecrow
after I sing a long part like that--so high, too." She absently pulled out
the handkerchief that protruded from his breast pocket and began to wipe the
black paint off her eyebrows and lashes. "I can't take you in much
to-night, but I must see you for a little while." She pushed him to a
chair. "I shall be more recognizable to-morrow. You mustn't think of me as
you see me to-night. Come at four to-morrow afternoon and have tea with me. Can
you? That's good."
She sat down in a low
chair beside him and leaned forward, drawing her shoulders together. She seemed
to him inappropriately young and inappropriately old, shorn of her long tresses
at one end and of her long robes at the other.
"How do you happen
to be here?" she asked abruptly. "How can you leave a silver mine? I
couldn't! Sure nobody'll cheat you? But you can explain everything
tomorrow." She paused. "You remember how you sewed me up in a
poultice, once? I wish you could to-night. I need a poultice, from top to toe.
Something very disagreeable happened down there. You said you were out front?
Oh, don't say anything about it. I always know exactly how it goes,
unfortunately. I was rotten in the balcony. I never get that. You didn't notice
it? Probably not, but I did."
Here the maid appeared
at the door and her mistress rose. "My supper? Very well, I'll come. I'd
ask you to stay, doctor, but there wouldn't be enough for two. They seldom send
up enough for one,"--she spoke bitterly. "I haven't got a sense of
you yet,"--turning directly to Archie again. "You haven't been here.
You've only announced yourself, and told me you are coming to-morrow. You
haven't seen me, either. This is not I. But I'll be here waiting for you
to-morrow, my whole works! Goodnight, till then." She patted him absently
on the sleeve and gave him a little shove toward the door.
WHEN Archie got back to
his hotel at two o'clock in the morning, he found Fred Ottenburg's card under
his door, with a message scribbled across the top: "When you come in,
please call up room 811, this hotel." A moment later Fred's voice reached
him over the telephone.
"That you, Archie?
Won't you come up? I'm having some supper and I'd like company. Late? What does
that matter? I won't keep you long."
Archie dropped his
overcoat and set out for room 811. He found Ottenburg in the act of touching a
match to a chafing-dish, at a table laid for two in his sitting-room. "I'm
catering here," he announced cheerfully. "I let the waiter off at
midnight, after he'd set me up. You'll have to account for yourself,
Archie."
The doctor laughed,
pointing to three wine-coolers under the table. "Are you expecting
guests?"
"Yes, two."
Ottenburg held up two fingers,--"you, and my higher self. He's a thirsty
boy, and I don't invite him often. He has been known to give me a headache.
Now, where have you been, Archie, until this shocking hour?"
"Bah, you've been
banting!" the doctor exclaimed, pulling out his white gloves as he
searched for his handkerchief and throwing them into a chair. Ottenburg was in
evening clothes and very pointed dress shoes. His white waistcoat, upon which
the doctor had fixed a challenging eye, went down straight from the top button,
and he wore a camelia. He was conspicuously brushed and trimmed and polished.
His smoothly controlled excitement was wholly different from his usual easy
cordiality, though he had his face, as well as his figure, well in hand. On the
serving-table there was an empty champagne pint and a glass. He had been having
a little starter, the doctor told himself, and would probably be running on
high gear before he got through. There was even now an air of speed about him.
"Been,
Freddy?"--the doctor at last took up his question. "I expect I've
been exactly where you have. Why didn't you tell me you were coming on?"
"I wasn't,
Archie." Fred lifted the cover of the chafing- dish and stirred the
contents. He stood behind the table, holding the lid with his handkerchief.
"I had never thought of such a thing. But Landry, a young chap who plays
her accompaniments and who keeps an eye out for me, telegraphed me that Madame
Rheinecker had gone to Atlantic City with a bad throat, and Thea might have a
chance to sing Elsa. She has sung it only twice here before, and I missed it in
Dresden. So I came on. I got in at four this afternoon and saw you registered,
but I thought I would n't butt in. How lucky you got here just when she was
coming on for this. You couldn't have hit a better time." Ottenburg
stirred the contents of the dish faster and put in more sherry. "And where
have you been since twelve o'clock, may I ask?"
Archie looked rather
self-conscious, as he sat down on a fragile gilt chair that rocked under him,
and stretched out his long legs. "Well, if you'll believe me, I had the
brutality to go to see her. I wanted to identify her. Couldn't wait."
Ottenburg placed the
cover quickly on the chafing-dish and took a step backward. "You did, old
sport? My word! None but the brave deserve the fair. Well,"--he stooped to
turn the wine,--"and how was she?"
"She seemed rather
dazed, and pretty well used up. She seemed disappointed in herself, and said
she hadn't done herself justice in the balcony scene."
"Well, if she
didn't, she's not the first. Beastly stuff to sing right in there; lies just on
the `break' in the voice." Fred pulled a bottle out of the ice and drew
the cork. Lifting his glass he looked meaningly at Archie. "You know who,
doctor. Here goes!" He drank off his glass with a sigh of satisfaction.
After he had turned the lamp low under the chafing-dish, he remained standing,
looking pensively down at the food on the table. "Well, she rather pulled
it off! As a backer, you're a winner, Archie. I congratulate you." Fred
poured himself another glass. "Now you must eat something, and so must I.
Here, get off that bird cage and find a steady chair. This stuff ought to be
rather good; head waiter's suggestion. Smells all right." He bent over the
chafing-dish and began to serve the contents. "Perfectly innocuous:
mushrooms and truffles and a little crab-meat. And now, on the level, Archie,
how did it hit you?"
Archie turned a frank
smile to his friend and shook his head. "It was all miles beyond me, of
course, but it gave me a pulse. The general excitement got hold of me, I
suppose. I like your wine, Freddy." He put down his glass. "It goes
to the spot to-night. She was all right, then? You weren't disappointed?"
"Disappointed? My
dear Archie, that's the high voice we dream of; so pure and yet so virile and
human. That combination hardly ever happens with sopranos." Ottenburg sat
down and turned to the doctor, speaking calmly and trying to dispel his
friend's manifest bewilderment. "You see, Archie, there's the voice
itself, so beautiful and individual, and then there's something else; the thing
in it which responds to every shade of thought and feeling, spontaneously,
almost unconsciously. That color has to be born in a singer, it can't be
acquired; lots of beautiful voices haven't a vestige of it. It's almost like
another gift--the rarest of all. The voice simply is the mind and is the heart.
It can't go wrong in interpretation, because it has in it the thing that makes
all interpretation. That's why you feel so sure of her. After you've listened
to her for an hour or so, you aren't afraid of anything. All the little dreads
you have with other artists vanish. You lean back and you say to yourself, `No,
that voice will never betray.' Treulich geführt, treulich bewacht."
Archie looked envyingly
at Fred's excited, triumphant face. How satisfactory it must be, he thought, to
really know what she was doing and not to have to take it on hearsay. He took
up his glass with a sigh. "I seem to need a good deal of cooling off
to-night. I'd just as lief forget the Reform Party for once.
"Yes, Fred,"
he went on seriously; "I thought it sounded very beautiful, and I thought
she was very beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be as beautiful as
that."
"Wasn't she? Every
attitude a picture, and always the right kind of picture, full of that
legendary, supernatural thing she gets into it. I never heard the prayer sung
like that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right out through
the back of the roof. Of course, you get an Elsa who can look through walls
like that, and visions and Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an
abbess, that girl, after Lohengrin leaves her. She's made to live with ideas
and enthusiasms, not with a husband." Fred folded his arms, leaned back in
his chair, and began to sing softly:--
"In lichter Waffen Scheine,
Ein Ritter nahte da." "Doesn't
she die, then, at the end?" the doctor asked guardedly.
Fred smiled, reaching
under the table. "Some Elsas do; she didn't. She left me with the distinct
impression that she was just beginning. Now, doctor, here's a cold one."
He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green glass, the cork gave and slipped
out with a soft explosion. "And now we must have another toast. It's up to
you, this time."
The doctor watched the
agitation in his glass. "The same," he said without lifting his eyes.
"That's good enough. I can't raise you."
Fred leaned forward,
and looked sharply into his face. "That's the point; how could you raise
me? Once again!"
"Once again, and
always the same!" The doctor put down his glass. "This doesn't seem
to produce any symptoms in me to-night." He lit a cigar. "Seriously,
Freddy, I wish I knew more about what she's driving at. It makes me jealous,
when you are so in it and I'm not."
"In it?" Fred
started up. "My God, haven't you seen her this blessed night?--when she'd
have kicked any other man down the elevator shaft, if I know her. Leave me
something; at least what I can pay my five bucks for."
"Seems to me you
get a good deal for your five bucks," said Archie ruefully. "And
that, after all, is what she cares about,--what people get."
Fred lit a cigarette,
took a puff or two, and then threw it away. He was lounging back in his chair,
and his face was pale and drawn hard by that mood of intense concentration
which lurks under the sunny shallows of the vineyard. In his voice there was a
longer perspective than usual, a slight remoteness. "You see, Archie, it's
all very simple, a natural development. It's exactly what Mahler said back
there in the beginning, when she sang Woglinde. It's the idea, the basic idea,
pulsing behind every bar she sings. She simplifies a character down to the
musical idea it's built on, and makes everything conform to that. The people
who chatter about her being a great actress don't seem to get the notion of
where she gets the notion. It all goes back to her original endowment, her tremendous
musical talent. Instead of inventing a lot of business and expedients to
suggest character, she knows the thing at the root, and lets the musical
pattern take care of her. The score pours her into all those lovely postures,
makes the light and shadow go over her face, lifts her and drops her. She lies
on it, the way she used to lie on the Rhine music. Talk about rhythm!"
The doctor frowned
dubiously as a third bottle made its appearance above the cloth. "Aren't
you going in rather strong?"
Fred laughed. "No,
I'm becoming too sober. You see this is breakfast now; kind of wedding
breakfast. I feel rather weddingish. I don't mind. You know," he went on
as the wine gurgled out, "I was thinking to-night when they sprung the
wedding music, how any fool can have that stuff played over him when he walks
up the aisle with some dough-faced little hussy who's hooked him. But it isn't
every fellow who can see--well, what we saw tonight. There are compensations in
life, Dr. Howard Archie, though they come in disguise. Did you notice her when
she came down the stairs? Wonder where she gets that bright- and-morning star
look? Carries to the last row of the family circle. I moved about all over the
house. I'll tell you a secret, Archie: that carrying power was one of the first
things that put me wise. Noticed it down there in Arizona, in the open. That, I
said, belongs only to the big ones." Fred got up and began to move
rhythmically about the room, his hands in his pockets. The doctor was
astonished at his ease and steadiness, for there were slight lapses in his
speech. "You see, Archie, Elsa isn't a part that's particularly suited to
Thea's voice at all, as I see her voice. It's over-lyrical for her. She makes
it, but there's nothing in it that fits her like a glove, except, maybe, that
long duet in the third act. There, of course,"--he held out his hands as
if he were measuring something,--"we know exactly where we are. But wait
until they give her a chance at something that lies properly in her voice, and
you'll see me rosier than I am to-night."
Archie smoothed the
tablecloth with his hand. "I am sure I don't want to see you any rosier,
Fred."
Ottenburg threw back
his head and laughed. "It's enthusiasm, doctor. It's not the wine. I've
got as much inflated as this for a dozen trashy things: brewers' dinners and
political orgies. You, too, have your extravagances, Archie. And what I like
best in you is this particular enthusiasm, which is not at all practical or
sensible, which is downright Quixotic. You are not altogether what you seem,
and you have your reservations. Living among the wolves, you have not become
one. Lupibus vivendi non lupus sum."
The doctor seemed
embarrassed. "I was just thinking how tired she looked, plucked of all her
fine feathers, while we get all the fun. Instead of sitting here carousing, we
ought to go solemnly to bed."
"I get your
idea." Ottenburg crossed to the window and threw it open. "Fine night
outside; a hag of a moon just setting. It begins to smell like morning. After
all, Archie, think of the lonely and rather solemn hours we've spent waiting
for all this, while she's been--reveling."
Archie lifted his
brows. "I somehow didn't get the idea to-night that she revels much."
"I don't mean this
sort of thing." Fred turned toward the light and stood with his back to
the window. "That," with a nod toward the wine-cooler, "is only
a cheap imitation, that any poor stiff-fingered fool can buy and feel his shell
grow thinner. But take it from me, no matter what she pays, or how much she may
see fit to lie about it, the real, the master revel is hers." He leaned
back against the window sill and crossed his arms. "Anybody with all that
voice and all that talent and all that beauty, has her hour. Her hour," he
went on deliberately, "when she can say, 'there it is, at last, wei im
Traum ich--
"`As in my dream I dreamed it,
As in my will it was.'" He
stood silent a moment, twisting the flower from his coat by the stem and
staring at the blank wall with haggard abstraction. "Even I can say
to-night, Archie," he brought out slowly,
"`As in my dream I dreamed it,
As in my will it was.'
Now, doctor, you may leave me. I'm beautifully drunk, but not with anything
that ever grew in France." The
doctor rose. Fred tossed his flower out of the window behind him and came
toward the door. "I say," he called, "have you a date with
anybody?"
The doctor paused, his
hand on the knob. "With Thea, you mean? Yes. I'm to go to her at four this
afternoon-- if you haven't paralyzed me."
"Well, you won't
eat me, will you, if I break in and send up my card? She'll probably turn me
down cold, but that won't hurt my feelings. If she ducks me, you tell her for
me, that to spite me now she'd have to cut off more than she can spare.
Good-night, Archie."
IT was late on the
morning after the night she sang Elsa, when Thea Kronborg stirred uneasily in
her bed. The room was darkened by two sets of window shades, and the day
outside was thick and cloudy. She turned and tried to recapture
unconsciousness, knowing that she would not be able to do so. She dreaded
waking stale and disappointed after a great effort. The first thing that came
was always the sense of the futility of such endeavor, and of the absurdity of
trying too hard. Up to a certain point, say eighty degrees, artistic endeavor
could be fat and comfortable, methodical and prudent. But if you went further
than that, if you drew yourself up toward ninety degrees, you parted with your
defenses and left yourself exposed to mischance. The legend was that in those
upper reaches you might be divine; but you were much likelier to be ridiculous.
Your public wanted just about eighty degrees; if you gave it more it blew its
nose and put a crimp in you. In the morning, especially, it seemed to her very
probable that whatever struggled above the good average was not quite sound.
Certainly very little of that superfluous ardor, which cost so dear, ever got
across the footlights. These misgivings waited to pounce upon her when she
wakened. They hovered about her bed like vultures.
She reached under her
pillow for her handkerchief, without opening her eyes. She had a shadowy memory
that there was to be something unusual, that this day held more disquieting
possibilities than days commonly held. There was something she dreaded; what
was it? Oh, yes, Dr. Archie was to come at four.
A reality like Dr.
Archie, poking up out of the past, reminded one of disappointments and losses,
of a freedom that was no more: reminded her of blue, golden mornings long ago,
when she used to waken with a burst of joy at recovering her precious self and
her precious world; when she never lay on her pillows at eleven o'clock like
something the waves had washed up. After all, why had he come? It had been so
long, and so much had happened. The things she had lost, he would miss readily
enough. What she had gained, he would scarcely perceive. He, and all that he
recalled, lived for her as memories. In sleep, and in hours of illness or
exhaustion, she went back to them and held them to her heart. But they were
better as memories. They had nothing to do with the struggle that made up her
actual life. She felt drearily that she was not flexible enough to be the
person her old friend expected her to be, the person she herself wished to be
with him.
Thea reached for the
bell and rang twice,--a signal to her maid to order her breakfast. She rose and
ran up the window shades and turned on the water in her bathroom, glancing into
the mirror apprehensively as she passed it. Her bath usually cheered her, even
on low mornings like this. Her white bathroom, almost as large as her sleeping-
room, she regarded as a refuge. When she turned the key behind her, she left
care and vexation on the other side of the door. Neither her maid nor the
management nor her letters nor her accompanist could get at her now.
When she pinned her
braids about her head, dropped her nightgown and stepped out to begin her
Swedish movements, she was a natural creature again, and it was so that she
liked herself best. She slid into the tub with anticipation and splashed and
tumbled about a good deal. Whatever else she hurried, she never hurried her
bath. She used her brushes and sponges and soaps like toys, fairly playing in
the water. Her own body was always a cheering sight to her. When she was
careworn, when her mind felt old and tired, the freshness of her physical self,
her long, firm lines, the smoothness of her skin, reassured her. This morning,
because of awakened memories, she looked at herself more carefully than usual,
and was not discouraged. While she was in the tub she began to whistle softly
the tenor aria, "Ah! Fuyez, douce image," somehow appropriate to the
bath. After a noisy moment under the cold shower, she stepped out on the rug
flushed and glowing, threw her arms above her head, and rose on her toes,
keeping the elevation as long as she could. When she dropped back on her heels
and began to rub herself with the towels, she took up the aria again, and felt
quite in the humor for seeing Dr. Archie. After she had returned to her bed,
the maid brought her letters and the morning papers with her breakfast.
"Telephone Mr.
Landry and ask him if he can come at half-past three, Theresa, and order tea to
be brought up at five."
When Howard Archie was
admitted to Thea's apartment that afternoon, he was shown into the music-room
back of the little reception room. Thea was sitting in a davenport behind the
piano, talking to a young man whom she later introduced as her friend Mr.
Landry. As she rose, and came to meet him, Archie felt a deep relief, a sudden
thankfulness. She no longer looked clipped and plucked, or dazed and fleeing.
Dr. Archie neglected to
take account of the young man to whom he was presented. He kept Thea's hands
and held her where he met her, taking in the light, lively sweep of her hair,
her clear green eyes and her throat that came up strong and dazzlingly white
from her green velvet gown. The chin was as lovely as ever, the cheeks as
smooth. All the lines of last night had disappeared. Only at the outer corners
of her eyes, between the eye and the temple, were the faintest indications of a
future attack--mere kitten scratches that playfully hinted where one day the
cat would claw her. He studied her without any embarrassment. Last night
everything had been awkward; but now, as he held her hands, a kind of harmony
came between them, a reestablishment of confidence.
"After all,
Thea,--in spite of all, I still know you," he murmured.
She took his arm and
led him up to the young man who was standing beside the piano. "Mr. Landry
knows all about you, Dr. Archie. He has known about you for many years."
While the two men shook hands she stood between them, drawing them together by
her presence and her glances. "When I first went to Germany, Landry was
studying there. He used to be good enough to work with me when I could not
afford to have an accompanist for more than two hours a day. We got into the
way of working together. He is a singer, too, and has his own career to look
after, but he still manages to give me some time. I want you to be
friends." She smiled from one to the other.
The rooms, Archie
noticed, full of last night's flowers, were furnished in light colors, the
hotel bleakness of them a little softened by a magnificent Steinway piano,
white bookshelves full of books and scores, some drawings of ballet dancers,
and the very deep sofa behind the piano.
"Of course,"
Archie asked apologetically, "you have seen the papers?"
"Very cordial,
aren't they? They evidently did not expect as much as I did. Elsa is not really
in my voice. I can sing the music, but I have to go after it."
"That is
exactly," the doctor came out boldly, "what Fred Ottenburg said this
morning."
They had remained
standing, the three of them, by the piano, where the gray afternoon light was
strongest. Thea turned to the doctor with interest. "Is Fred in town? They
were from him, then--some flowers that came last night without a card."
She indicated the white lilacs on the window sill. "Yes, he would know, certainly,"
she said thoughtfully. "Why don't we sit down? There will be some tea for
you in a minute, Landry. He's very dependent upon it," disapprovingly to
Archie. "Now tell me, Doctor, did you really have a good time last night,
or were you uncomfortable? Did you feel as if I were trying to hold my hat on
by my eyebrows?"
He smiled. "I had
all kinds of a time. But I had no feeling of that sort. I couldn't be quite
sure that it was you at all. That was why I came up here last night. I felt as
if I'd lost you."
She leaned toward him
and brushed his sleeve reassuringly. "Then I didn't give you an impression
of painful struggle? Landry was singing at Weber and Fields' last night. He
didn't get in until the performance was half over. But I see the Tribune man
felt that I was working pretty hard. Did you see that notice, Oliver?"
Dr. Archie looked
closely at the red-headed young man for the first time, and met his lively
brown eyes, full of a droll, confiding sort of humor. Mr. Landry was not
prepossessing. He was undersized and clumsily made, with a red, shiny face and
a sharp little nose that looked as if it had been whittled out of wood and was
always in the air, on the scent of something. Yet it was this queer little
beak, with his eyes, that made his countenance anything of a face at all. From
a distance he looked like the grocery- man's delivery boy in a small town. His
dress seemed an acknowledgment of his grotesqueness: a short coat, like a
little boys' roundabout, and a vest fantastically sprigged and dotted, over a lavender
shirt.
At the sound of a
muffled buzz, Mr. Landry sprang up.
"May I answer the
telephone for you?" He went to the writing-table and took up the receiver.
"Mr. Ottenburg is downstairs," he said, turning to Thea and holding
the mouthpiece against his coat.
"Tell him to come
up," she replied without hesitation. "How long are you going to be in
town, Dr. Archie?"
"Oh, several
weeks, if you'll let me stay. I won't hang around and be a burden to you, but I
want to try to get educated up to you, though I expect it's late to
begin."
Thea rose and touched
him lightly on the shoulder. "Well, you'll never be any younger, will
you?"
"I'm not so sure
about that," the doctor replied gallantly.
The maid appeared at
the door and announced Mr. Frederick Ottenburg. Fred came in, very much got up,
the doctor reflected, as he watched him bending over Thea's hand. He was still
pale and looked somewhat chastened, and the lock of hair that hung down over
his forehead was distinctly moist. But his black afternoon coat, his gray tie
and gaiters were of a correctness that Dr. Archie could never attain for all
the efforts of his faithful slave, Van Deusen, the Denver haberdasher. To be
properly up to those tricks, the doctor supposed, you had to learn them young. If
he were to buy a silk hat that was the twin of Ottenburg's, it would be shaggy
in a week, and he could never carry it as Fred held his.
Ottenburg had greeted
Thea in German, and as she replied in the same language, Archie joined Mr.
Landry at the window. "You know Mr. Ottenburg, he tells me?"
Mr. Landry's eyes
twinkled. "Yes, I regularly follow him about, when he's in town. I would,
even if he didn't send me such wonderful Christmas presents: Russian vodka by
the half-dozen!"
Thea called to them,
"Come, Mr. Ottenburg is calling on all of us. Here's the tea."
The maid opened the
door and two waiters from down- stairs appeared with covered trays. The
tea-table was in the parlor. Thea drew Ottenburg with her and went to inspect it.
"Where's the rum? Oh, yes, in that thing! Everything seems to be here, but
send up some currant preserves and cream cheese for Mr. Ottenburg. And in about
fifteen minutes, bring some fresh toast. That's all, thank you."
For the next few
minutes there was a clatter of teacups and responses about sugar. "Landry
always takes rum. I'm glad the rest of you don't. I'm sure it's bad." Thea
poured the tea standing and got through with it as quickly as possible, as if
it were a refreshment snatched between trains. The tea-table and the little
room in which it stood seemed to be out of scale with her long step, her long
reach, and the energy of her movements. Dr. Archie, standing near her, was
pleasantly aware of the animation of her figure. Under the clinging velvet, her
body seemed independent and unsubdued.
They drifted, with
their plates and cups, back to the music-room. When Thea followed them,
Ottenburg put down his tea suddenly. "Aren't you taking anything? Please
let me." He started back to the table.
"No, thank you,
nothing. I'm going to run over that aria for you presently, to convince you
that I can do it. How did the duet go, with Schlag?"
She was standing in the
doorway and Fred came up to her: "That you'll never do any better. You've
worked your voice into it perfectly. Every nuance--wonderful!"
"Think so?"
She gave him a sidelong glance and spoke with a certain gruff shyness which did
not deceive anybody, and was not meant to deceive. The tone was equivalent to
"Keep it up. I like it, but I'm awkward with it."
Fred held her by the
door and did keep it up, furiously, for full five minutes. She took it with
some confusion, seeming all the while to be hesitating, to be arrested in her
course and trying to pass him. But she did not really try to pass, and her
color deepened. Fred spoke in German, and Archie caught from her an occasional
Ja? So? muttered rather than spoken.
When they rejoined
Landry and Dr. Archie, Fred took up his tea again. "I see you're singing
Venus Saturday night. Will they never let you have a chance at Elizabeth?"
She shrugged her
shoulders. "Not here. There are so many singers here, and they try us out
in such a stingy way. Think of it, last year I came over in October, and it was
the first of December before I went on at all! I'm often sorry I left
Dresden."
"Still," Fred
argued, "Dresden is limited."
"Just so, and I've
begun to sigh for those very limitations. In New York everything is impersonal.
Your audience never knows its own mind, and its mind is never twice the same.
I'd rather sing where the people are pig-headed and throw carrots at you if you
don't do it the way they like it. The house here is splendid, and the night
audiences are exciting. I hate the matinees; like singing at a
Kaffeklatsch." She rose and turned on the lights.
"Ah!" Fred
exclaimed, "why do you do that? That is a signal that tea is over."
He got up and drew out his gloves.
"Not at all. Shall
you be here Saturday night?" She sat down on the piano bench and leaned
her elbow back on the keyboard. "Necker sings Elizabeth. Make Dr. Archie
go. Everything she sings is worth hearing."
"But she's failing
so. The last time I heard her she had no voice at all. She is a poor
vocalist!"
Thea cut him off.
"She's a great artist, whether she's in voice or not, and she's the only
one here. If you want a big voice, you can take my Ortrude of last night;
that's big enough, and vulgar enough."
Fred laughed and turned
away, this time with decision. "I don't want her!" he protested
energetically. "I only wanted to get a rise out of you. I like Necker's
Elizabeth well enough. I like your Venus well enough, too."
"It's a beautiful
part, and it's often dreadfully sung. It's very hard to sing, of course."
Ottenburg bent over the
hand she held out to him. "For an uninvited guest, I've fared very well.
You were nice to let me come up. I'd have been terribly cut up if you'd sent me
away. May I?" He kissed her hand lightly and backed toward the door, still
smiling, and promising to keep an eye on Archie. "He can't be trusted at
all, Thea. One of the waiters at Martin's worked a Tourainian hare off on him
at luncheon yesterday, for seven twenty-five."
Thea broke into a
laugh, the deep one he recognized. "Did he have a ribbon on, this hare?
Did they bring him in a gilt cage?"
"No,"--Archie
spoke up for himself,--"they brought him in a brown sauce, which was very
good. He didn't taste very different from any rabbit."
"Probably came
from a push-cart on the East Side." Thea looked at her old friend
commiseratingly. "Yes, do keep an eye on him, Fred. I had no idea,"
shaking her head. "Yes, I'll be obliged to you."
"Count on
me!" Their eyes met in a gay smile, and Fred bowed himself out.
ON Saturday night Dr.
Archie went with Fred Ottenburg to hear "Tannhauser." Thea had a
rehearsal on Sunday afternoon, but as she was not on the bill again until
Wednesday, she promised to dine with Archie and Ottenburg on Monday, if they
could make the dinner early.
At a little after eight
on Monday evening, the three friends returned to Thea's apartment and seated
themselves for an hour of quiet talk.
"I'm sorry we
couldn't have had Landry with us tonight," Thea said, "but he's on at
Weber and Fields' every night now. You ought to hear him, Dr. Archie. He often
sings the old Scotch airs you used to love."
"Why not go down
this evening?" Fred suggested hopefully, glancing at his watch. "That
is, if you'd like to go. I can telephone and find what time he comes on."
Thea hesitated.
"No, I think not. I took a long walk this afternoon and I'm rather tired.
I think I can get to sleep early and be so much ahead. I don't mean at once,
however," seeing Dr. Archie's disappointed look. "I always like to
hear Landry," she added. "He never had much voice, and it's worn, but
there's a sweetness about it, and he sings with such taste."
"Yes, doesn't he?
May I?" Fred took out his cigarette case. "It really doesn't bother
your throat?"
"A little doesn't.
But cigar smoke does. Poor Dr. Archie! Can you do with one of those?"
"I'm learning to
like them," the doctor declared, taking one from the case Fred proffered him.
"Landry's the only
fellow I know in this country who can do that sort of thing," Fred went
on. "Like the best English ballad singers. He can sing even popular stuff
by higher lights, as it were."
Thea nodded. "Yes;
sometimes I make him sing his most foolish things for me. It's restful, as he
does it. That's when I'm homesick, Dr. Archie."
"You knew him in
Germany, Thea?" Dr. Archie had quietly abandoned his cigarette as a
comfortless article. "When you first went over?"
"Yes. He was a
good friend to a green girl. He helped me with my German and my music and my
general discouragement. Seemed to care more about my getting on than about
himself. He had no money, either. An old aunt had loaned him a little to study
on.-- Will you answer that, Fred?"
Fred caught up the
telephone and stopped the buzz while Thea went on talking to Dr. Archie about
Landry. Telling some one to hold the wire, he presently put down the instrument
and approached Thea with a startled expression on his face.
"It's the management,"
he said quietly. "Gloeckler has broken down: fainting fits. Madame
Rheinecker is in Atlantic City and Schramm is singing in Philadelphia tonight.
They want to know whether you can come down and finish Sieglinde."
"What time is
it?"
"Eight fifty-five.
The first act is just over. They can hold the curtain twenty-five
minutes."
Thea did not move.
"Twenty-five and thirty-five makes sixty," she muttered. "Tell
them I'll come if they hold the curtain till I am in the dressing-room. Say
I'll have to wear her costumes, and the dresser must have everything ready.
Then call a taxi, please."
Thea had not changed
her position since he first interrupted her, but she had grown pale and was
opening and shutting her hands rapidly. She looked, Fred thought, terrified. He
half turned toward the telephone, but hung on one foot. "Have you ever
sung the part?" he asked.
"No, but I've
rehearsed it. That's all right. Get the cab." Still she made no move. She
merely turned perfectly blank eyes to Dr. Archie and said absently, "It's
curious, but just at this minute I can't remember a bar of 'Walkure' after the
first act. And I let my maid go out." She sprang up and beckoned Archie
without so much, he felt sure, as knowing who he was. "Come with me."
She went quickly into her sleeping-chamber and threw open a door into a
trunk-room. "See that white trunk? It's not locked. It's full of wigs, in
boxes. Look until you find one marked `Ring 2.' Bring it quick!" While she
directed him, she threw open a square trunk and began tossing out shoes of
every shape and color.
Ottenburg appeared at
the door. "Can I help you?"
She threw him some
white sandals with long laces and silk stockings pinned to them. "Put
those in something, and then go to the piano and give me a few measures in
there--you know." She was behaving somewhat like a cyclone now, and while
she wrenched open drawers and closet doors, Ottenburg got to the piano as
quickly as possible and began to herald the reappearance of the Volsung pair,
trusting to memory.
In a few moments Thea
came out enveloped in her long fur coat with a scarf over her head and knitted
woolen gloves on her hands. Her glassy eye took in the fact that Fred was
playing from memory, and even in her distracted state, a faint smile flickered over
her colorless lips. She stretched out a woolly hand, "The score, please.
Behind you, there."
Dr. Archie followed
with a canvas box and a satchel. As they went through the hall, the men caught
up their hats and coats. They left the music-room, Fred noticed, just seven
minutes after he got the telephone message. In the elevator Thea said in that
husky whisper which had so perplexed Dr. Archie when he first heard it,
"Tell the driver he must do it in twenty minutes, less if he can. He must
leave the light on in the cab. I can do a good deal in twenty minutes. If only
you hadn't made me eat-- Damn that duck!" she broke out bitterly;
"why did you?"
"Wish I had it
back! But it won't bother you, to-night. You need strength," he pleaded
consolingly.
But she only muttered
angrily under her breath, "Idiot, idiot!"
Ottenburg shot ahead
and instructed the driver, while the doctor put Thea into the cab and shut the
door. She did not speak to either of them again. As the driver scrambled into
his seat she opened the score and fixed her eyes upon it. Her face, in the
white light, looked as bleak as a stone quarry.
As her cab slid away,
Ottenburg shoved Archie into a second taxi that waited by the curb. "We'd
better trail her," he explained. "There might be a hold-up of some
kind." As the cab whizzed off he broke into an eruption of profanity.
"What's the
matter, Fred?" the doctor asked. He was a good deal dazed by the rapid
evolutions of the last ten minutes.
"Matter
enough!" Fred growled, buttoning his over- coat with a shiver. "What
a way to sing a part for the first time! That duck really is on my conscience.
It will be a wonder if she can do anything but quack! Scrambling on in the
middle of a performance like this, with no rehearsal! The stuff she has to sing
in there is a fright--rhythm, pitch,--and terribly difficult intervals."
"She looked
frightened," Dr. Archie said thoughtfully, "but I thought she
looked--determined."
Fred sniffed. "Oh,
determined! That's the kind of rough deal that makes savages of singers. Here's
a part she's worked on and got ready for for years, and now they give her a
chance to go on and butcher it. Goodness knows when she's looked at the score
last, or whether she can use the business she's studied with this cast.
Necker's singing Brünnhilde; she may help her, if it's not one of her sore
nights."
"Is she sore at
Thea?" Dr. Archie asked wonderingly.
"My dear man,
Necker's sore at everything. She's breaking up; too early; just when she ought
to be at her best. There's one story that she is struggling under some serious
malady, another that she learned a bad method at the Prague Conservatory and
has ruined her organ. She's the sorest thing in the world. If she weathers this
winter through, it'll be her last. She's paying for it with the last rags of
her voice. And then--" Fred whistled softly.
"Well, what
then?"
"Then our girl may
come in for some of it. It's dog eat dog, in this game as in every other."
The cab stopped and
Fred and Dr. Archie hurried to the box office. The Monday-night house was sold
out. They bought standing room and entered the auditorium just as the press
representative of the house was thanking the audience for their patience and
telling them that although Madame Gloeckler was too ill to sing, Miss Kronborg
had kindly consented to finish her part. This announcement was met with
vehement applause from the upper circles of the house.
"She has
her--constituents," Dr. Archie murmured.
"Yes, up there,
where they're young and hungry. These people down here have dined too well.
They won't mind, however. They like fires and accidents and divertissements.
Two Sieglindes are more unusual than one, so they'll be satisfied."
After the final
disappearance of the mother of Siegfried, Ottenburg and the doctor slipped out
through the crowd and left the house. Near the stage entrance Fred found the
driver who had brought Thea down. He dismissed him and got a larger car. He and
Archie waited on the sidewalk, and when Kronborg came out alone they gathered
her into the cab and sprang in after her.
Thea sank back into a
corner of the back seat and yawned. "Well, I got through, eh?" Her
tone was reassuring. "On the whole, I think I've given you gentlemen a
pretty lively evening, for one who has no social accomplishments."
"Rather! There was
something like a popular uprising at the end of the second act. Archie and I
couldn't keep it up as long as the rest of them did. A howl like that ought to
show the management which way the wind is blowing. You probably know you were
magnificent."
"I thought it went
pretty well," she spoke impartially. "I was rather smart to catch his
tempo there, at the beginning of the first recitative, when he came in too
soon, don't you think? It's tricky in there, without a rehearsal. Oh, I was all
right! He took that syncopation too fast in the beginning. Some singers take it
fast there--think it sounds more impassioned. That's one way!" She
sniffed, and Fred shot a mirthful glance at Archie. Her boastfulness would have
been childish in a schoolboy. In the light of what she had done, of the strain
they had lived through during the last two hours, it made one laugh,--almost
cry. She went on, robustly: "And I didn't feel my dinner, really, Fred. I
am hungry again, I'm ashamed to say, --and I forgot to order anything at my
hotel."
Fred put his hand on
the door. "Where to? You must have food."
"Do you know any
quiet place, where I won't be stared at? I've still got make-up on."
"I do. Nice
English chop-house on Forty-fourth Street. Nobody there at night but theater
people after the show, and a few bachelors." He opened the door and spoke
to the driver.
As the car turned, Thea
reached across to the front seat and drew Dr. Archie's handkerchief out of his
breast pocket. "This comes to me naturally," she said, rubbing her
cheeks and eyebrows. "When I was little I always loved your handkerchiefs
because they were silk and smelled of Cologne water. I think they must have
been the only really clean handkerchiefs in Moonstone. You were always wiping
my face with them, when you met me out in the dust, I remember. Did I never
have any?"
"I think you'd
nearly always used yours up on your baby brother."
Thea sighed. "Yes,
Thor had such a way of getting messy. You say he's a good chauffeur?" She
closed her eyes for a moment as if they were tired. Suddenly she looked up.
"Isn't it funny, how we travel in circles? Here you are, still getting me
clean, and Fred is still feeding me. I would have died of starvation at that
boarding-house on Indiana Avenue if he hadn't taken me out to the Buckingham
and filled me up once in a while. What a cavern I was to fill, too. The waiters
used to look astonished. I'm still singing on that food."
Fred alighted and gave
Thea his arm as they crossed the icy sidewalk. They were taken upstairs in an
antiquated lift and found the cheerful chop-room half full of supper parties.
An English company playing at the Empire had just come in. The waiters, in red
waistcoats, were hurrying about. Fred got a table at the back of the room, in a
corner, and urged his waiter to get the oysters on at once.
"Takes a few
minutes to open them, sir," the man expostulated.
"Yes, but make it
as few as possible, and bring the lady's first. Then grilled chops with
kidneys, and salad."
Thea began eating
celery stalks at once, from the base to the foliage. "Necker said
something nice to me tonight. You might have thought the management would say
something, but not they." She looked at Fred from under her blackened
lashes. "It was a stunt, to jump in and sing that second act without
rehearsal. It doesn't sing itself."
Ottenburg was watching
her brilliant eyes and her face. She was much handsomer than she had been early
in the evening. Excitement of this sort enriched her. It was only under such
excitement, he reflected, that she was entirely illuminated, or wholly present.
At other times there was something a little cold and empty, like a big room
with no people in it. Even in her most genial moods there was a shadow of
restlessness, as if she were waiting for something and were exercising the
virtue of patience. During dinner she had been as kind as she knew how to be,
to him and to Archie, and had given them as much of herself as she could. But,
clearly, she knew only one way of being really kind, from the core of her heart
out; and there was but one way in which she could give herself to people
largely and gladly, spontaneously. Even as a girl she had been at her best in
vigorous effort, he remembered; physical effort, when there was no other kind
at hand. She could be expansive only in explosions. Old Nathanmeyer had seen
it. In the very first song Fred had ever heard her sing, she had unconsciously
declared it.
Thea Kronborg turned
suddenly from her talk with Archie and peered suspiciously into the corner
where Ottenburg sat with folded arms, observing her. "What's the matter
with you, Fred? I'm afraid of you when you're quiet,--fortunately you almost
never are. What are you thinking about?"
"I was wondering
how you got right with the orchestra so quickly, there at first. I had a flash
of terror," he replied easily.
She bolted her last
oyster and ducked her head. "So had I! I don't know how I did catch it.
Desperation, I suppose; same way the Indian babies swim when they're thrown
into the river. I had to. Now it's over, I'm glad I had to. I learned a whole
lot to-night."
Archie, who usually
felt that it behooved him to be silent during such discussions, was encouraged
by her geniality to venture, "I don't see how you can learn anything in
such a turmoil; or how you can keep your mind on it, for that matter."
Thea glanced about the
room and suddenly put her hand up to her hair. "Mercy, I've no hat on! Why
didn't you tell me? And I seem to be wearing a rumpled dinner dress, with all
this paint on my face! I must look like something you picked up on Second
Avenue. I hope there are no Colorado reformers about, Dr. Archie. What a
dreadful old pair these people must be thinking you! Well, I had to eat."
She sniffed the savor of the grill as the waiter uncovered it. "Yes,
draught beer, please. No, thank you, Fred, no champagne.-- To go back to your
question, Dr. Archie, you can believe I keep my mind on it. That's the whole
trick, in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there every second. If
I think of anything else for a flash, I'm gone, done for. But at the same time,
one can take things in--with another part of your brain, maybe. It's different
from what you get in study, more practical and conclusive. There are some
things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. You learn the delivery of a
part only before an audience."
"Heaven help
us," gasped Ottenburg. "Weren't you hungry, though! It's beautiful to
see you eat."
"Glad you like it.
Of course I'm hungry. Are you staying over for `Rheingold' Friday
afternoon?"
"My dear
Thea,"--Fred lit a cigarette,--"I'm a serious business man now. I
have to sell beer. I'm due in Chicago on Wednesday. I'd come back to hear you,
but Fricka is not an alluring part."
"Then you've never
heard it well done." She spoke up hotly. "Fat German woman scolding
her husband, eh? That's not my idea. Wait till you hear my Fricka. It's a
beautiful part." Thea leaned forward on the table and touched Archie's
arm. "You remember, Dr. Archie, how my mother always wore her hair, parted
in the middle and done low on her neck behind, so you got the shape of her head
and such a calm, white forehead? I wear mine like that for Fricka. A little
more coronet effect, built up a little higher at the sides, but the idea's the
same. I think you'll notice it." She turned to Ottenburg reproachfully:
"It's noble music, Fred, from the first measure. There's nothing lovelier
than the wonniger Hausrath. It's all such comprehensive sort of music--fateful.
Of course, Fricka knows," Thea ended quietly.
Fred sighed. "There,
you've spoiled my itinerary. Now I'll have to come back, of course. Archie,
you'd better get busy about seats to-morrow."
"I can get you box
seats, somewhere. I know nobody here, and I never ask for any." Thea began
hunting among her wraps. "Oh, how funny! I've only these short woolen
gloves, and no sleeves. Put on my coat first. Those English people can't make
out where you got your lady, she's so made up of contradictions." She rose
laughing and plunged her arms into the coat Dr. Archie held for her. As she
settled herself into it and buttoned it under her chin, she gave him an old
signal with her eyelid. "I'd like to sing another part to-night. This is
the sort of evening I fancy, when there's something to do. Let me see: I have
to sing in `Trovatore' Wednesday night, and there are rehearsals for the `Ring'
every day this week. Consider me dead until Saturday, Dr. Archie. I invite you
both to dine with me on Saturday night, the day after `Rheingold.' And Fred
must leave early, for I want to talk to you alone. You've been here nearly a
week, and I haven't had a serious word with you. Tak fom mad, Fred, as the
Norwegians say."
THE "Ring of the
Niebelungs" was to be given at the Metropolitan on four successive Friday
afternoons. After the first of these performances, Fred Ottenburg went home
with Landry for tea. Landry was one of the few public entertainers who own real
estate in New York. He lived in a little three-story brick house on Jane
Street, in Greenwich Village, which had been left to him by the same aunt who
paid for his musical education.
Landry was born, and
spent the first fifteen years of his life, on a rocky Connecticut farm not far
from Cos Cob. His father was an ignorant, violent man, a bungling farmer and a
brutal husband. The farmhouse, dilapidated and damp, stood in a hollow beside a
marshy pond. Oliver had worked hard while he lived at home, although he was
never clean or warm in winter and had wretched food all the year round. His
spare, dry figure, his prominent larynx, and the peculiar red of his face and
hands belonged to the chore- boy he had never outgrown. It was as if the farm,
knowing he would escape from it as early as he could, had ground its mark on
him deep. When he was fifteen Oliver ran away and went to live with his
Catholic aunt, on Jane Street, whom his mother was never allowed to visit. The
priest of St. Joseph's Parish discovered that he had a voice.
Landry had an affection
for the house on Jane Street, where he had first learned what cleanliness and
order and courtesy were. When his aunt died he had the place done over, got an
Irish housekeeper, and lived there with a great many beautiful things he had
collected. His living expenses were never large, but he could not restrain
himself from buying graceful and useless objects. He was a collector for much
the same reason that he was a Catholic, and he was a Catholic chiefly because
his father used to sit in the kitchen and read aloud to his hired men
disgusting "exposures" of the Roman Church, enjoying equally the
hideous stories and the outrage to his wife's feelings.
At first Landry bought
books; then rugs, drawings, china. He had a beautiful collection of old French
and Spanish fans. He kept them in an escritoire he had brought from Spain, but
there were always a few of them lying about in his sitting-room.
While Landry and his
guest were waiting for the tea to be brought, Ottenburg took up one of these
fans from the low marble mantel-shelf and opened it in the firelight. One side
was painted with a pearly sky and floating clouds. On the other was a formal
garden where an elegant shepherdess with a mask and crook was fleeing on high
heels from a satin-coated shepherd.
"You ought not to
keep these things about, like this, Oliver. The dust from your grate must get
at them."
"It does, but I
get them to enjoy them, not to have them. They're pleasant to glance at and to
play with at odd times like this, when one is waiting for tea or
something."
Fred smiled. The idea
of Landry stretched out before his fire playing with his fans, amused him. Mrs.
McGinnis brought the tea and put it before the hearth: old teacups that were
velvety to the touch and a pot-bellied silver cream pitcher of an Early
Georgian pattern, which was always brought, though Landry took rum.
Fred drank his tea
walking about, examining Landry's sumptuous writing-table in the alcove and the
Boucher drawing in red chalk over the mantel. "I don't see how you can
stand this place without a heroine. It would give me a raging thirst for gallantries."
Landry was helping
himself to a second cup of tea. "Works quite the other way with me. It
consoles me for the lack of her. It's just feminine enough to be pleasant to
return to. Not any more tea? Then sit down and play for me. I'm always playing
for other people, and I never have a chance to sit here quietly and
listen."
Ottenburg opened the
piano and began softly to boom forth the shadowy introduction to the opera they
had just heard. "Will that do?" he asked jokingly. "I can't seem
to get it out of my head."
"Oh, excellently!
Thea told me it was quite wonderful, the way you can do Wagner scores on the
piano. So few people can give one any idea of the music. Go ahead, as long as
you like. I can smoke, too." Landry flattened himself out on his cushions
and abandoned himself to ease with the circumstance of one who has never grown
quite accustomed to ease.
Ottenburg played on, as
he happened to remember. He understood now why Thea wished him to hear her in
"Rheingold." It had been clear to him as soon as Fricka rose from
sleep and looked out over the young world, stretching one white arm toward the
new Gotterburg shining on the heights. "Wotan! Gemahl! erwache!" She
was pure Scandinavian, this Fricka: "Swedish summer"! he remembered
old Mr. Nathanmeyer's phrase. She had wished him to see her because she had a
distinct kind of loveliness for this part, a shining beauty like the light of
sunset on distant sails. She seemed to take on the look of immortal loveliness,
the youth of the golden apples, the shining body and the shining mind. Fricka
had been a jealous spouse to him for so long that he had forgot she meant
wisdom before she meant domestic order, and that, in any event, she was always
a goddess. The Fricka of that afternoon was so clear and sunny, so nobly
conceived, that she made a whole atmosphere about herself and quite redeemed
from shabbiness the helplessness and unscrupulousness of the gods. Her
reproaches to Wotan were the pleadings of a tempered mind, a consistent sense
of beauty. In the long silences of her part, her shining presence was a visible
complement to the discussion of the orchestra. As the themes which were to help
in weaving the drama to its end first came vaguely upon the ear, one saw their
import and tendency in the face of this clearest-visioned of the gods.
In the scene between
Fricka and Wotan, Ottenburg stopped. "I can't seem to get the voices, in
there."
Landry chuckled.
"Don't try. I know it well enough. I expect I've been over that with her a
thousand times. I was playing for her almost every day when she was first
working on it. When she begins with a part she's hard to work with: so slow
you'd think she was stupid if you didn't know her. Of course she blames it all
on her accompanist. It goes on like that for weeks sometimes. This did. She
kept shaking her head and staring and looking gloomy. All at once, she got her
line--it usually comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at
all--and after that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice into
it, it got more and more of that `gold' quality that makes her Fricka so
different."
Fred began Fricka's
first aria again. "It's certainly different. Curious how she does it. Such
a beautiful idea, out of a part that's always been so ungrateful. She's a
lovely thing, but she was never so beautiful as that, really. Nobody is."
He repeated the loveliest phrase. "How does she manage it, Landry? You've
worked with her."
Landry drew
cherishingly on the last cigarette he meant to permit himself before singing.
"Oh, it's a question of a big personality--and all that goes with it.
Brains, of course. Imagination, of course. But the important thing is that she
was born full of color, with a rich personality. That's a gift of the gods,
like a fine nose. You have it, or you haven't. Against it, intelligence and
musicianship and habits of industry don't count at all. Singers are a
conventional race. When Thea was studying in Berlin the other girls were
mortally afraid of her. She has a pretty rough hand with women, dull ones, and
she could be rude, too! The girls used to call her die Wölfen."
Fred thrust his hands
into his pockets and leaned back against the piano. "Of course, even a
stupid woman could get effects with such machinery: such a voice and body and
face. But they couldn't possibly belong to a stupid woman, could they?"
Landry shook his head.
"It's personality; that's as near as you can come to it. That's what
constitutes real equipment. What she does is interesting because she does it.
Even the things she discards are suggestive. I regret some of them. Her
conceptions are colored in so many different ways. You've heard her Elizabeth?
Wonderful, isn't it? She was working on that part years ago when her mother was
ill. I could see her anxiety and grief getting more and more into the part. The
last act is heart-breaking. It's as homely as a country prayer meeting: might
be any lonely woman getting ready to die. It's full of the thing every plain
creature finds out for himself, but that never gets written down. It's
unconscious memory, maybe; inherited memory, like folk-music. I call it
personality."
Fred laughed, and
turning to the piano began coaxing the Fricka music again. "Call it
anything you like, my boy. I have a name for it myself, but I shan't tell
you." He looked over his shoulder at Landry, stretched out by the fire.
"You have a great time watching her, don't you?"
"Oh, yes!"
replied Landry simply. "I'm not interested in much that goes on in New
York. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll have to dress." He rose with a
reluctant sigh. "Can I get you anything? Some whiskey?"
"Thank you, no.
I'll amuse myself here. I don't often get a chance at a good piano when I'm
away from home. You haven't had this one long, have you? Action's a bit stiff.
I say," he stopped Landry in the doorway, "has Thea ever been down
here?"
Landry turned back.
"Yes. She came several times when I had erysipelas. I was a nice mess,
with two nurses. She brought down some inside window-boxes, planted with
crocuses and things. Very cheering, only I couldn't see them or her."
"Didn't she like
your place?"
"She thought she
did, but I fancy it was a good deal cluttered up for her taste. I could hear
her pacing about like something in a cage. She pushed the piano back against
the wall and the chairs into corners, and she broke my amber elephant." Landry
took a yellow object some four inches high from one of his low bookcases.
"You can see where his leg is glued on,--a souvenir. Yes, he's lemon
amber, very fine."
Landry disappeared
behind the curtains and in a moment Fred heard the wheeze of an atomizer. He
put the amber elephant on the piano beside him and seemed to get a great deal
of amusement out of the beast.
WHEN Archie and
Ottenburg dined with Thea on Saturday evening, they were served downstairs in
the hotel dining-room, but they were to have their coffee in her own apartment.
As they were going up in the elevator after dinner, Fred turned suddenly to
Thea. "And why, please, did you break Landry's amber elephant?"
She looked guilty and
began to laugh. "Hasn't he got over that yet? I didn't really mean to
break it. I was perhaps careless. His things are so over-petted that I was
tempted to be careless with a lot of them."
"How can you be so
heartless, when they're all he has in the world?"
"He has me. I'm a
great deal of diversion for him; all he needs. There," she said as she
opened the door into her own hall, "I shouldn't have said that before the
elevator boy."
"Even an elevator
boy couldn't make a scandal about Oliver. He's such a catnip man."
Dr. Archie laughed, but
Thea, who seemed suddenly to have thought of something annoying, repeated
blankly, "Catnip man?"
"Yes, he lives on
catnip, and rum tea. But he's not the only one. You are like an eccentric old
woman I know in Boston, who goes about in the spring feeding catnip to street
cats. You dispense it to a lot of fellows. Your pull seems to be more with men
than with women, you know; with seasoned men, about my age, or older. Even on
Friday afternoon I kept running into them, old boys I hadn't seen for years,
thin at the part and thick at the girth, until I stood still in the draft and
held my hair on. They're always there; I hear them talking about you in the
smoking- room. Probably we don't get to the point of apprehending anything good
until we're about forty. Then, in the light of what is going, and of what, God
help us! is coming, we arrive at understanding."
"I don't see why
people go to the opera, anyway,--serious people." She spoke
discontentedly. "I suppose they get something, or think they do. Here's
the coffee. There, please," she directed the waiter. Going to the table
she began to pour the coffee, standing. She wore a white dress trimmed with
crystals which had rattled a good deal during dinner, as all her movements had
been impatient and nervous, and she had twisted the dark velvet rose at her
girdle until it looked rumpled and weary. She poured the coffee as if it were a
ceremony in which she did not believe. "Can you make anything of Fred's
nonsense, Dr. Archie?" she asked, as he came to take his cup.
Fred approached her.
"My nonsense is all right. The same brand has gone with you before. It's
you who won't be jollied. What's the matter? You have something on your
mind."
"I've a good deal.
Too much to be an agreeable hostess." She turned quickly away from the
coffee and sat down on the piano bench, facing the two men. "For one
thing, there's a change in the cast for Friday afternoon. They're going to let
me sing Sieglinde." Her frown did not conceal the pleasure with which she
made this announcement.
"Are you going to
keep us dangling about here forever, Thea? Archie and I are supposed to have
other things to do." Fred looked at her with an excitement quite as
apparent as her own.
"Here I've been
ready to sing Sieglinde for two years, kept in torment, and now it comes off
within two weeks, just when I want to be seeing something of Dr. Archie. I
don't know what their plans are down there. After Friday they may let me cool
for several weeks, and they may rush me. I suppose it depends somewhat on how
things go Friday afternoon."
"Oh, they'll go
fast enough! That's better suited to your voice than anything you've sung here.
That gives you every opportunity I've waited for." Ottenburg crossed the
room and standing beside her began to play "Du bist der Lenz."
With a violent movement
Thea caught his wrists and pushed his hands away from the keys.
"Fred, can't you
be serious? A thousand things may happen between this and Friday to put me out.
Something will happen. If that part were sung well, as well as it ought to be,
it would be one of the most beautiful things in the world. That's why it never
is sung right, and never will be." She clenched her hands and opened them
despairingly, looking out of the open window. "It's inaccessibly
beautiful!" she brought out sharply.
Fred and Dr. Archie
watched her. In a moment she turned back to them. "It's impossible to sing
a part like that well for the first time, except for the sort who will never
sing it any better. Everything hangs on that first night, and that's bound to
be bad. There you are," she shrugged impatiently. "For one thing,
they change the cast at the eleventh hour and then rehearse the life out of
me."
Ottenburg put down his
cup with exaggerated care. "Still, you really want to do it, you
know."
"Want to?"
she repeated indignantly; "of course I want to! If this were only next
Thursday night-- But between now and Friday I'll do nothing but fret away my
strength. Oh, I'm not saying I don't need the rehearsals! But I don't need them
strung out through a week. That system's well enough for phlegmatic singers; it
only drains me. Every single feature of operatic routine is detrimental to me.
I usually go on like a horse that's been fixed to lose a race. I have to work
hard to do my worst, let alone my best. I wish you could hear me sing well,
once," she turned to Fred defiantly; "I have, a few times in my life,
when there was nothing to gain by it."
Fred approached her
again and held out his hand. "I recall my instructions, and now I'll leave
you to fight it out with Archie. He can't possibly represent managerial
stupidity to you as I seem to have a gift for doing."
As he smiled down at
her, his good humor, his good wishes, his understanding, embarrassed her and
recalled her to herself. She kept her seat, still holding his hand. "All
the same, Fred, isn't it too bad, that there are so many things--" She
broke off with a shake of the head.
"My dear girl, if
I could bridge over the agony between now and Friday for you-- But you know the
rules of the game; why torment yourself? You saw the other night that you had
the part under your thumb. Now walk, sleep, play with Archie, keep your tiger
hungry, and she'll spring all right on Friday. I'll be there to see her, and
there'll be more than I, I suspect. Harsanyi's on the Wilhelm der Grosse; gets
in on Thursday."
"Harsanyi?"
Thea's eye lighted. "I haven't seen him for years. We always miss each
other." She paused, hesitating. "Yes, I should like that. But he'll
be busy, maybe?"
"He gives his
first concert at Carnegie Hall, week after next. Better send him a box if you
can."
"Yes, I'll manage
it." Thea took his hand again. "Oh, I should like that, Fred!"
she added impulsively. "Even if I were put out, he'd get the
idea,"--she threw back her head,--"for there is an idea!"
"Which won't
penetrate here," he tapped his brow and began to laugh. "You are an
ungrateful huzzy, comme les autres!"
Thea detained him as he
turned away. She pulled a flower out of a bouquet on the piano and absently
drew the stem through the lapel of his coat. "I shall be walking in the
Park to-morrow afternoon, on the reservoir path, between four and five, if you
care to join me. You know that after Harsanyi I'd rather please you than anyone
else. You know a lot, but he knows even more than you."
"Thank you. Don't
try to analyze it. Schlafen Sie wohl!" he kissed her fingers and waved
from the door, closing it behind him.
"He's the right
sort, Thea." Dr. Archie looked warmly after his disappearing friend.
"I've always hoped you'd make it up with Fred."
"Well, haven't I?
Oh, marry him, you mean! Perhaps it may come about, some day. Just at present
he's not in the marriage market any more than I am, is he?"
"No, I suppose
not. It's a damned shame that a man like Ottenburg should be tied up as he is,
wasting all the best years of his life. A woman with general paresis ought to
be legally dead."
"Don't let us talk
about Fred's wife, please. He had no business to get into such a mess, and he
had no business to stay in it. He's always been a softy where women were
concerned."
"Most of us are,
I'm afraid," Dr. Archie admitted meekly.
"Too much light in
here, isn't there? Tires one's eyes. The stage lights are hard on mine."
Thea began turning them out. "We'll leave the little one, over the
piano." She sank down by Archie on the deep sofa. "We two have so
much to talk about that we keep away from it altogether; have you noticed? We
don't even nibble the edges. I wish we had Landry here to-night to play for us.
He's very comforting."
"I'm afraid you
don't have enough personal life, outside your work, Thea." The doctor
looked at her anxiously.
She smiled at him with
her eyes half closed. "My dear doctor, I don't have any. Your work becomes
your personal life. You are not much good until it does. It's like being woven
into a big web. You can't pull away, because all your little tendrils are woven
into the picture. It takes you up, and uses you, and spins you out; and that is
your life. Not much else can happen to you."
"Didn't you think
of marrying, several years ago?"
"You mean
Nordquist? Yes; but I changed my mind. We had been singing a good deal
together. He's a splendid creature."
"Were you much in
love with him, Thea?" the doctor asked hopefully.
She smiled again.
"I don't think I know just what that expression means. I've never been
able to find out. I think I was in love with you when I was little, but not
with any one since then. There are a great many ways of caring for people. It's
not, after all, a simple state, like measles or tonsilitis. Nordquist is a
taking sort of man. He and I were out in a rowboat once in a terrible storm.
The lake was fed by glaciers,--ice water,--and we couldn't have swum a stroke
if the boat had filled. If we hadn't both been strong and kept our heads, we'd
have gone down. We pulled for every ounce there was in us, and we just got off
with our lives. We were always being thrown together like that, under some kind
of pressure. Yes, for a while I thought he would make everything right."
She paused and sank back, resting her head on a cushion, pressing her eyelids
down with her fingers. "You see," she went on abruptly, "he had
a wife and two children. He hadn't lived with her for several years, but when
she heard that he wanted to marry again, she began to make trouble. He earned a
good deal of money, but he was careless and always wretchedly in debt. He came
to me one day and told me he thought his wife would settle for a hundred
thousand marks and consent to a divorce. I got very angry and sent him away.
Next day he came back and said he thought she'd take fifty thousand."
Dr. Archie drew away
from her, to the end of the sofa. "Good God, Thea,"-- He ran his
handkerchief over his forehead. "What sort of people--" He stopped
and shook his head.
Thea rose and stood
beside him, her hand on his shoulder. "That's exactly how it struck
me," she said quietly. "Oh, we have things in common, things that go
away back, under everything. You understand, of course. Nordquist didn't. He
thought I wasn't willing to part with the money. I couldn't let myself buy him
from Fru Nordquist, and he couldn't see why. He had always thought I was close
about money, so he attributed it to that. I am careful,"--she ran her arm
through Archie's and when he rose began to walk about the room with him.
"I can't be careless with money. I began the world on six hundred dollars,
and it was the price of a man's life. Ray Kennedy had worked hard and been
sober and denied himself, and when he died he had six hundred dollars to show
for it. I always measure things by that six hundred dollars, just as I measure
high buildings by the Moonstone standpipe. There are standards we can't get
away from."
Dr. Archie took her
hand. "I don't believe we should be any happier if we did get away from
them. I think it gives you some of your poise, having that anchor. You
look," glancing down at her head and shoulders, "sometimes so like
your mother."
"Thank you. You
couldn't say anything nicer to me than that. On Friday afternoon, didn't you
think?"
"Yes, but at other
times, too. I love to see it. Do you know what I thought about that first night
when I heard you sing? I kept remembering the night I took care of you when you
had pneumonia, when you were ten years old. You were a terribly sick child, and
I was a country doctor without much experience. There were no oxygen tanks
about then. You pretty nearly slipped away from me. If you had--"
Thea dropped her head
on his shoulder. "I'd have saved myself and you a lot of trouble, wouldn't
I? Dear Dr. Archie!" she murmured.
"As for me, life
would have been a pretty bleak stretch, with you left out." The doctor
took one of the crystal pendants that hung from her shoulder and looked into it
thoughtfully. "I guess I'm a romantic old fellow, underneath. And you've
always been my romance. Those years when you were growing up were my happiest.
When I dream about you, I always see you as a little girl."
They paused by the open
window. "Do you? Nearly all my dreams, except those about breaking down on
the stage or missing trains, are about Moonstone. You tell me the old house has
been pulled down, but it stands in my mind, every stick and timber. In my sleep
I go all about it, and look in the right drawers and cupboards for everything.
I often dream that I'm hunting for my rubbers in that pile of overshoes that
was always under the hatrack in the hall. I pick up every overshoe and know
whose it is, but I can't find my own. Then the school bell begins to ring and I
begin to cry. That's the house I rest in when I'm tired. All the old furniture
and the worn spots in the carpet--it rests my mind to go over them."
They were looking out
of the window. Thea kept his arm. Down on the river four battleships were
anchored in line, brilliantly lighted, and launches were coming and going,
bringing the men ashore. A searchlight from one of the ironclads was playing on
the great headland up the river, where it makes its first resolute turn.
Overhead the night-blue sky was intense and clear.
"There's so much
that I want to tell you," she said at last, "and it's hard to
explain. My life is full of jealousies and disappointments, you know. You get
to hating people who do contemptible work and who get on just as well as you
do. There are many disappointments in my profession, and bitter, bitter
contempts!" Her face hardened, and looked much older. "If you love
the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for
it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such
a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you
risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you
ever knew you could be." As she glanced at Dr. Archie's face, Thea stopped
short and turned her own face away. Her eyes followed the path of the
searchlight up the river and rested upon the illumined headland.
"You see,"
she went on more calmly, "voices are accidental things. You find plenty of
good voices in common women, with common minds and common hearts. Look at that
woman who sang Ortrude with me last week. She's new here and the people are
wild about her. `Such a beautiful volume of tone!' they say. I give you my word
she's as stupid as an owl and as coarse as a pig, and any one who knows
anything about singing would see that in an instant. Yet she's quite as popular
as Necker, who's a great artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the
enthusiasm of a house that likes her atrociously bad performance at the same
time that it pretends to like mine? If they like her, then they ought to hiss
me off the stage. We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely. You
can't try to do things right and not despise the people who do them wrong. How
can I be indifferent? If that doesn't matter, then nothing matters. Well,
sometimes I've come home as I did the other night when you first saw me, so
full of bitterness that it was as if my mind were full of daggers. And I've
gone to sleep and wakened up in the Kohlers' garden, with the pigeons and the
white rabbits, so happy! And that saves me." She sat down on the piano
bench. Archie thought she had forgotten all about him, until she called his
name. Her voice was soft now, and wonderfully sweet. It seemed to come from
somewhere deep within her, there were such strong vibrations in it. "You
see, Dr. Archie, what one really strives for in art is not the sort of thing
you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance at the opera. What
one strives for is so far away, so deep, so beautiful"--she lifted her
shoulders with a long breath, folded her hands in her lap and sat looking at
him with a resignation that made her face noble,--"that there's nothing
one can say about it, Dr. Archie."
Without knowing very
well what it was all about, Archie was passionately stirred for her. "I've
always believed in you, Thea; always believed," he muttered.
She smiled and closed
her eyes. "They save me: the old things, things like the Kohlers' garden.
They are in everything I do."
"In what you sing,
you mean?"
"Yes. Not in any
direct way,"--she spoke hurriedly, --"the light, the color, the
feeling. Most of all the feeling. It comes in when I'm working on a part, like
the smell of a garden coming in at the window. I try all the new things, and
then go back to the old. Perhaps my feelings were stronger then. A child's
attitude toward everything is an artist's attitude. I am more or less of an
artist now, but then I was nothing else. When I went with you to Chicago that
first time, I carried with me the essentials, the foundation of all I do now.
The point to which I could go was scratched in me then. I haven't reached it
yet, by a long way."
Archie had a swift
flash of memory. Pictures passed before him. "You mean," he asked
wonderingly, "that you knew then that you were so gifted?"
Thea looked up at him
and smiled. "Oh, I didn't know anything! Not enough to ask you for my
trunk when I needed it. But you see, when I set out from Moonstone with you, I
had had a rich, romantic past. I had lived a long, eventful life, and an
artist's life, every hour of it. Wagner says, in his most beautiful opera, that
art is only a way of remembering youth. And the older we grow the more precious
it seems to us, and the more richly we can present that memory. When we've got
it all out,--the last, the finest thrill of it, the brightest hope of
it,"--she lifted her hand above her head and dropped it,--"then we
stop. We do nothing but repeat after that. The stream has reached the level of
its source. That's our measure."
There was a long, warm
silence. Thea was looking hard at the floor, as if she were seeing down through
years and years, and her old friend stood watching her bent head. His look was
one with which he used to watch her long ago, and which, even in thinking about
her, had become a habit of his face. It was full of solicitude, and a kind of
secret gratitude, as if to thank her for some inexpressible pleasure of the
heart. Thea turned presently toward the piano and began softly to waken an old
air:--
"Ca' the yowes to the knowes,
Ca' them where the heather grows,
Ca' them where the burnie rowes,
My bonnie dear-ie." Archie sat
down and shaded his eyes with his hand. She turned her head and spoke to him
over her shoulder. "Come on, you know the words better than I. That's
right."
"We'll gae down by Clouden's side,
Through the hazels spreading wide,
O'er the waves that sweetly glide,
To the moon sae clearly.
Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,
Thou'rt to love and Heav'n sae dear,
Nocht of ill may come thee near,
My bonnie dear-ie!" "We can
get on without Landry. Let's try it again, I have all the words now. Then we'll
have `Sweet Afton.' Come: `Ca' the yowes to the knowes'--"
OTTENBURG dismissed his
taxicab at the 91st Street entrance of the Park and floundered across the drive
through a wild spring snowstorm. When he reached the reservoir path he saw Thea
ahead of him, walking rapidly against the wind. Except for that one figure, the
path was deserted. A flock of gulls were hovering over the reservoir, seeming
bewildered by the driving currents of snow that whirled above the black water
and then disappeared within it. When he had almost overtaken Thea, Fred called
to her, and she turned and waited for him with her back to the wind. Her hair
and furs were powdered with snow- flakes, and she looked like some rich-pelted
animal, with warm blood, that had run in out of the woods. Fred laughed as he
took her hand.
"No use asking how
you do. You surely needn't feel much anxiety about Friday, when you can look
like this."
She moved close to the
iron fence to make room for him beside her, and faced the wind again. "Oh,
I'm well enough, in so far as that goes. But I'm not lucky about stage
appearances. I'm easily upset, and the most perverse things happen."
"What's the
matter? Do you still get nervous?"
"Of course I do. I
don't mind nerves so much as getting numbed," Thea muttered, sheltering
her face for a moment with her muff. "I'm under a spell, you know,
hoodooed. It's the thing I want to do that I can never do. Any other effects I
can get easily enough."
"Yes, you get
effects, and not only with your voice. That's where you have it over all the
rest of them; you're as much at home on the stage as you were down in Panther
Canyon--as if you'd just been let out of a cage. Didn't you get some of your
ideas down there?"
Thea nodded. "Oh,
yes! For heroic parts, at least. Out of the rocks, out of the dead people. You
mean the idea of standing up under things, don't you, meeting catastrophe? No
fussiness. Seems to me they must have been a reserved, somber people, with only
a muscular language, all their movements for a purpose; simple, strong, as if
they were dealing with fate bare-handed." She put her gloved fingers on
Fred's arm. "I don't know how I can ever thank you enough. I don't know if
I'd ever have got anywhere without Panther Canyon. How did you know that was
the one thing to do for me? It's the sort of thing nobody ever helps one to, in
this world. One can learn how to sing, but no singing teacher can give anybody
what I got down there. How did you know?"
"I didn't know.
Anything else would have done as well. It was your creative hour. I knew you
were getting a lot, but I didn't realize how much."
Thea walked on in
silence. She seemed to be thinking.
"Do you know what
they really taught me?" she came out suddenly. "They taught me the
inevitable hardness of human life. No artist gets far who doesn't know that.
And you can't know it with your mind. You have to realize it in your body,
somehow; deep. It's an animal sort of feeling. I sometimes think it's the
strongest of all. Do you know what I'm driving at?"
"I think so. Even
your audiences feel it, vaguely: that you've sometime or other faced things
that make you different."
Thea turned her back to
the wind, wiping away the snow that clung to her brows and lashes.
"Ugh!" she exclaimed; "no matter how long a breath you have, the
storm has a longer. I haven't signed for next season, yet, Fred. I'm holding
out for a big contract: forty performances. Necker won't be able to do much
next winter. It's going to be one of those between seasons; the old singers are
too old, and the new ones are too new. They might as well risk me as anybody.
So I want good terms. The next five or six years are going to be my best."
"You'll get what
you demand, if you are uncompromising. I'm safe in congratulating you
now."
Thea laughed.
"It's a little early. I may not get it at all. They don't seem to be
breaking their necks to meet me. I can go back to Dresden."
As they turned the
curve and walked westward they got the wind from the side, and talking was
easier.
Fred lowered his collar
and shook the snow from his shoulders. "Oh, I don't mean on the contract
particularly. I congratulate you on what you can do, Thea, and on all that lies
behind what you do. On the life that's led up to it, and on being able to care
so much. That, after all, is the unusual thing."
She looked at him
sharply, with a certain apprehension. "Care? Why shouldn't I care? If I
didn't, I'd be in a bad way. What else have I got?" She stopped with a
challenging interrogation, but Ottenburg did not reply. "You mean,"
she persisted, "that you don't care as much as you used to?"
"I care about your
success, of course." Fred fell into a slower pace. Thea felt at once that
he was talking seriously and had dropped the tone of half-ironical exaggeration
he had used with her of late years. "And I'm grateful to you for what you demand
from yourself, when you might get off so easily. You demand more and more all
the time, and you'll do more and more. One is grateful to anybody for that; it
makes life in general a little less sordid. But as a matter of fact, I'm not
much interested in how anybody sings anything."
"That's too bad of
you, when I'm just beginning to see what is worth doing, and how I want to do
it!" Thea spoke in an injured tone.
"That's what I
congratulate you on. That's the great difference between your kind and the rest
of us. It's how long you're able to keep it up that tells the story. When you
needed enthusiasm from the outside, I was able to give it to you. Now you must
let me withdraw."
"I'm not tying
you, am I?" she flashed out. "But withdraw to what? What do you
want?"
Fred shrugged. "I
might ask you, What have I got? I want things that wouldn't interest you; that
you probably wouldn't understand. For one thing, I want a son to bring
up."
"I can understand
that. It seems to me reasonable. Have you also found somebody you want to
marry?"
"Not
particularly." They turned another curve, which brought the wind to their
backs, and they walked on in comparative calm, with the snow blowing past them.
"It's not your fault, Thea, but I've had you too much in my mind. I've not
given myself a fair chance in other directions. I was in Rome when you and
Nordquist were there. If that had kept up, it might have cured me."
"It might have
cured a good many things," remarked Thea grimly.
Fred nodded
sympathetically and went on. "In my library in St. Louis, over the
fireplace, I have a property spear I had copied from one in Venice,--oh, years
ago, after you first went abroad, while you were studying. You'll probably be
singing Brünnhilde pretty soon now, and I'll send it on to you, if I may. You
can take it and its history for what they're worth. But I'm nearly forty years
old, and I've served my turn. You've done what I hoped for you, what I was
honestly willing to lose you for--then. I'm older now, and I think I was an
ass. I wouldn't do it again if I had the chance, not much! But I'm not sorry.
It takes a great many people to make one--Brünnhilde."
Thea stopped by the
fence and looked over into the black choppiness on which the snowflakes fell
and disappeared with magical rapidity. Her face was both angry and troubled.
"So you really feel I've been ungrateful. I thought you sent me out to get
something. I didn't know you wanted me to bring in something easy. I thought
you wanted something--" She took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders.
"But there! nobody on God's earth wants it, really! If one other person
wanted it,"--she thrust her hand out before him and clenched it,--"my
God, what I could do!"
Fred laughed dismally.
"Even in my ashes I feel myself pushing you! How can anybody help it? My
dear girl, can't you see that anybody else who wanted it as you do would be
your rival, your deadliest danger? Can't you see that it's your great good
fortune that other people can't care about it so much?"
But Thea seemed not to
take in his protest at all. She went on vindicating herself. "It's taken
me a long while to do anything, of course, and I've only begun to see day-
light. But anything good is--expensive. It hasn't seemed long. I've always felt
responsible to you."
Fred looked at her face
intently, through the veil of snowflakes, and shook his head. "To me? You
are a truthful woman, and you don't mean to lie to me. But after the one
responsibility you do feel, I doubt if you've enough left to feel responsible
to God! Still, if you've ever in an idle hour fooled yourself with thinking I
had anything to do with it, Heaven knows I'm grateful."
"Even if I'd
married Nordquist," Thea went on, turning down the path again, "there
would have been something left out. There always is. In a way, I've always been
married to you. I'm not very flexible; never was and never shall be. You caught
me young. I could never have that over again. One can't, after one begins to
know anything. But I look back on it. My life hasn't been a gay one, any more
than yours. If I shut things out from you, you shut them out from me. We've
been a help and a hindrance to each other. I guess it's always that way, the
good and the bad all mixed up. There's only one thing that's all beautiful--
and always beautiful! That's why my interest keeps up."
"Yes, I
know." Fred looked sidewise at the outline of her head against the
thickening atmosphere. "And you give one the impression that that is
enough. I've gradually, gradually given you up."
"See, the lights
are coming out." Thea pointed to where they flickered, flashes of violet
through the gray tree-tops. Lower down the globes along the drives were
becoming a pale lemon color. "Yes, I don't see why anybody wants to marry
an artist, anyhow. I remember Ray Kennedy used to say he didn't see how any
woman could marry a gambler, for she would only be marrying what the game
left." She shook her shoulders impatiently. "Who marries who is a
small matter, after all. But I hope I can bring back your interest in my work.
You've cared longer and more than anybody else, and I'd like to have somebody
human to make a report to once in a while. You can send me your spear. I'll do my
best. If you're not interested, I'll do my best anyhow. I've only a few
friends, but I can lose every one of them, if it has to be. I learned how to
lose when my mother died.-- We must hurry now. My taxi must be waiting."
The blue light about
them was growing deeper and darker, and the falling snow and the faint trees
had become violet. To the south, over Broadway, there was an orange reflection
in the clouds. Motors and carriage lights flashed by on the drive below the
reservoir path, and the air was strident with horns and shrieks from the
whistles of the mounted policemen.
Fred gave Thea his arm
as they descended from the embankment. "I guess you'll never manage to
lose me or Archie, Thea. You do pick up queer ones. But loving you is a heroic
discipline. It wears a man out. Tell me one thing: could I have kept you, once,
if I'd put on every screw?"
Thea hurried him along,
talking rapidly, as if to get it over. "You might have kept me in misery
for a while, perhaps. I don't know. I have to think well of myself, to work.
You could have made it hard. I'm not ungrateful. I was a difficult proposition
to deal with. I understand now, of course. Since you didn't tell me the truth
in the beginning, you couldn't very well turn back after I'd set my head. At least,
if you'd been the sort who could, you wouldn't have had to,--for I'd not have
cared a button for that sort, even then." She stopped beside a car that
waited at the curb and gave him her hand. "There. We part friends?"
Fred looked at her.
"You know. Ten years."
"I'm not
ungrateful," Thea repeated as she got into her cab.
"Yes," she
reflected, as the taxi cut into the Park carriage road, "we don't get
fairy tales in this world, and he has, after all, cared more and longer than
anybody else." It was dark outside now, and the light from the lamps along
the drive flashed into the cab. The snowflakes hovered like swarms of white
bees about the globes.
Thea sat motionless in
one corner staring out of the window at the cab lights that wove in and out among
the trees, all seeming to be bent upon joyous courses. Taxicabs were still new
in New York, and the theme of popular minstrelsy. Landry had sung her a ditty
he heard in some theater on Third Avenue, about
"But there passed
him a bright-eyed taxi
With the girl of his
heart inside."
Almost inaudibly Thea
began to hum the air, though she was thinking of something serious, something
that had touched her deeply. At the beginning of the season, when she was not
singing often, she had gone one afternoon to hear Paderewski's recital. In
front of her sat an old German couple, evidently poor people who had made
sacrifices o pay for their excellent seats. Their intelligent enjoyment of the
music, and their friendliness with each other, had interested her more than
anything on the programme. When the pianist began a lovely melody in the first
movement of the Beethoven D minor sonata, the old lady put out her plump hand
and touched her husband's sleeve and they looked at each other in recognition.
They both wore glasses, but such a look! Like forget-me- nots, and so full of
happy recollections. Thea wanted to put her arms around them and ask them how
they had been able to keep a feeling like that, like a nosegay in a glass of
water.
DR. ARCHIE saw nothing of
Thea during the following week. After several fruitless efforts, he succeeded
in getting a word with her over the telephone, but she sounded so distracted
and driven that he was glad to say good-night and hang up the instrument. There
were, she told him, rehearsals not only for "Walkure," but also for
"Gotterdammerung," in which she was to sing Waltraute two weeks
later.
On Thursday afternoon
Thea got home late, after an exhausting rehearsal. She was in no happy frame of
mind. Madame Necker, who had been very gracious to her that night when she went
on to complete Gloeckler's performance of Sieglinde, had, since Thea was cast
to sing the part instead of Gloeckler in the production of the
"Ring," been chilly and disapproving, distinctly hostile. Thea had
always felt that she and Necker stood for the same sort of endeavor, and that
Necker recognized it and had a cordial feeling for her. In Germany she had
several times sung Brangaena to Necker's Isolde, and the older artist had let
her know that she thought she sang it beautifully. It was a bitter
disappointment to find that the approval of so honest an artist as Necker could
not stand the test of any significant recognition by the management. Madame
Necker was forty, and her voice was failing just when her powers were at their
height. Every fresh young voice was an enemy, and this one was accompanied by
gifts which she could not fail to recognize.
Thea had her dinner
sent up to her apartment, and it was a very poor one. She tasted the soup and
then indignantly put on her wraps to go out and hunt a dinner. As she was going
to the elevator, she had to admit that she was behaving foolishly. She took off
her hat and coat and ordered another dinner. When it arrived, it was no better
than the first. There was even a burnt match under the milk toast. She had a
sore throat, which made swallowing painful and boded ill for the morrow.
Although she had been speaking in whispers all day to save her throat, she now
perversely summoned the housekeeper and demanded an account of some laundry
that had been lost. The housekeeper was indifferent and impertinent, and Thea
got angry and scolded violently. She knew it was very bad for her to get into a
rage just before bedtime, and after the housekeeper left she realized that for
ten dollars' worth of underclothing she had been unfitting herself for a
performance which might eventually mean many thousands. The best thing now was
to stop reproaching herself for her lack of sense, but she was too tired to
control her thoughts.
While she was
undressing--Therese was brushing out her Sieglinde wig in the trunk-room--she
went on chiding herself bitterly. "And how am I ever going to get to sleep
in this state?" she kept asking herself. "If I don't sleep, I'll be
perfectly worthless to-morrow. I'll go down there to-morrow and make a fool of
myself. If I'd let that laundry alone with whatever nigger has stolen it-- why
did I undertake to reform the management of this hotel to-night? After
to-morrow I could pack up and leave the place. There's the Phillamon--I liked
the rooms there better, anyhow--and the Umberto--" She began going over
the advantages and disadvantages of different apartment hotels. Suddenly she
checked herself. "What am I doing this for? I can't move into another
hotel to-night. I'll keep this up till morning. I shan't sleep a wink."
Should she take a hot
bath, or shouldn't she? Sometimes it relaxed her, and sometimes it roused her
and fairly put her beside herself. Between the conviction that she must sleep
and the fear that she couldn't, she hung paralyzed. When she looked at her bed,
she shrank from it in every nerve. She was much more afraid of it than she had
ever been of the stage of any opera house. It yawned before her like the sunken
road at Waterloo.
She rushed into her
bathroom and locked the door. She would risk the bath, and defer the encounter
with the bed a little longer. She lay in the bath half an hour. The warmth of
the water penetrated to her bones, induced pleasant reflections and a feeling
of well-being. It was very nice to have Dr. Archie in New York, after all, and
to see him get so much satisfaction out of the little companionship she was
able to give him. She liked people who got on, and who became more interesting
as they grew older. There was Fred; he was much more interesting now than he
had been at thirty. He was intelligent about music, and he must be very
intelligent in his business, or he would not be at the head of the Brewers'
Trust. She respected that kind of intelligence and success. Any success was
good. She herself had made a good start, at any rate, and now, if she could get
to sleep-- Yes, they were all more interesting than they used to be. Look at
Harsanyi, who had been so long retarded; what a place he had made for himself
in Vienna. If she could get to sleep, she would show him something to-morrow
that he would understand.
She got quickly into
bed and moved about freely between the sheets. Yes, she was warm all over. A
cold, dry breeze was coming in from the river, thank goodness! She tried to
think about her little rock house and the Arizona sun and the blue sky. But
that led to memories which were still too disturbing. She turned on her side,
closed her eyes, and tried an old device.
She entered her
father's front door, hung her hat and coat on the rack, and stopped in the
parlor to warm her hands at the stove. Then she went out through the dining-
room, where the boys were getting their lessons at the long table; through the
sitting-room, where Thor was asleep in his cot bed, his dress and stocking
hanging on a chair. In the kitchen she stopped for her lantern and her hot
brick. She hurried up the back stairs and through the windy loft to her own
glacial room. The illusion was marred only by the consciousness that she ought
to brush her teeth before she went to bed, and that she never used to do it.
Why--? The water was frozen solid in the pitcher, so she got over that. Once
between the red blankets there was a short, fierce battle with the cold; then,
warmer--warmer. She could hear her father shaking down the hard-coal burner for
the night, and the wind rushing and banging down the village street. The boughs
of the cottonwood, hard as bone, rattled against her gable. The bed grew softer
and warmer. Everybody was warm and well downstairs. The sprawling old house had
gathered them all in, like a hen, and had settled down over its brood. They
were all warm in her father's house. Softer and softer. She was asleep. She
slept ten hours without turning over. From sleep like that, one awakes in
shining armor.
On Friday afternoon
there was an inspiring audience; there was not an empty chair in the house.
Ottenburg and Dr. Archie had seats in the orchestra circle, got from a ticket
broker. Landry had not been able to get a seat, so he roamed about in the back
of the house, where he usually stood when he dropped in after his own turn in
vaudeville was over. He was there so often and at such irregular hours that the
ushers thought he was a singer's husband, or had something to do with the electrical
plant.
Harsanyi and his wife
were in a box, near the stage, in the second circle. Mrs. Harsanyi's hair was
noticeably gray, but her face was fuller and handsomer than in those early
years of struggle, and she was beautifully dressed. Harsanyi himself had
changed very little. He had put on his best afternoon coat in honor of his
pupil, and wore a 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:--
"Walse! Walse!
Wo ist dein Schwert?"
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 she always sang so nobly, and the entrance of the one- eyed
stranger:--
"Mir allein
Weckte das Auge."
Mrs. Harsanyi glanced at her husband, wondering whether the singer on the stage
could not feel his commanding glance. On came the crescendo:--
"Was he ich verlor
Was je ich beweint
Wär' mir gowonnen. (All that I have lost,
All that I have mourned,
Would I then have won.)
Harsanyi touched his wife's arm softly. Seated
in the moonlight, the Volsung pair began their loving inspection of each
other's beauties, and the music born of murmuring sound passed into her face,
as the old poet said,--and into her body as well. Into one lovely attitude
after another the music swept her, love impelled her. And the voice gave out
all that was best in it. Like the spring, indeed, it blossomed into memories
and prophecies, it recounted and it foretold, as she sang the story of her
friendless life, and of how the thing which was truly herself, "bright as
the day, rose to the surface" when in the hostile world she for the first
time beheld her Friend. Fervently she rose into the hardier feeling of action
and daring, the pride in hero-strength and hero-blood, until in a splendid
burst, tall and shining like a Victory, she christened him:--
"Siegmund--
So nenn ich diech!"
Her impatience for the sword
swelled with her anticipation of his act, and throwing her arms above her head,
she fairly tore a sword out of the empty air for him, before Nothung had left
the tree. In höchster Trunkenheit, indeed, she burst out with the flaming cry
of their kinship: "If you are Siegmund, I am Sieglinde!" Laughing,
singing, bounding, exulting,--with their passion and their sword,--the Volsungs
ran out into the spring night.
As the curtain fell,
Harsanyi turned to his wife. "At last," he sighed, "somebody
with enough! Enough voice and talent and beauty, enough physical power. And
such a noble, noble style!"
"I can scarcely
believe it, Andor. I can see her now, that clumsy girl, hunched up over your
piano. I can see her shoulders. She always seemed to labor so with her back.
And I shall never forget that night when you found her voice."
The audience kept up
its clamor until, after many reappearances with the tenor, Kronborg came before
the curtain alone. The house met her with a roar, a greeting that was almost
savage in its fierceness. The singer's eyes, sweeping the house, rested for a
moment on Harsanyi, and she waved her long sleeve toward his box.
"She ought to be
pleased that you are here," said Mrs. Harsanyi. "I wonder if she
knows how much she owes to you."
"She owes me
nothing," replied her husband quickly. "She paid her way. She always
gave something back, even then."
"I remember you
said once that she would do nothing common," said Mrs. Harsanyi
thoughtfully.
"Just so. She
might fail, die, get lost in the pack. But if she achieved, it would be nothing
common. There are people whom one can trust for that. There is one way in which
they will never fail." Harsanyi retired into his own reflections.
After the second act
Fred Ottenburg brought Archie to the Harsanyis' box and introduced him as an
old friend of Miss Kronborg. The head of a musical publishing house joined
them, bringing with him a journalist and the president of a German singing
society. The conversation was chiefly about the new Sieglinde. Mrs. Harsanyi
was gracious and enthusiastic, her husband nervous and uncommunicative. He
smiled mechanically, and politely answered questions addressed to him.
"Yes, quite so." "Oh, certainly." Every one, of course,
said very usual things with great conviction. Mrs. Harsanyi was used to hearing
and uttering the commonplaces which such occasions demanded. When her husband
withdrew into the shadow, she covered his retreat by her sympathy and
cordiality. In reply to a direct question from Ottenburg, Harsanyi said,
flinching, "Isolade? Yes, why not? She will sing all the great roles, I
should think."
The chorus director
said something about "dramatic temperament." The journalist insisted
that it was "explosive force," "projecting power."
Ottenburg turned to
Harsanyi. "What is it, Mr. Harsanyi? Miss Kronborg says if there is
anything in her, you are the man who can say what it is."
The journalist scented
copy and was eager. "Yes, Harsanyi. You know all about her. What's her
secret?"
Harsanyi rumpled his
hair irritably and shrugged his shoulders. "Her secret? It is every
artist's secret,"--he waved his hand,--"passion. That is all. It is
an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable in cheap
materials."
The lights went out.
Fred and Archie left the box as the second act came on.
Artistic growth is,
more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The
stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist,
knows how difficult it is. That afternoon nothing new came to Thea Kronborg, no
enlightenment, no inspiration. She merely came into full possession of things
she had been refining and perfecting for so long. Her inhibitions chanced to be
fewer than usual, and, within herself, she entered into the inheritance that
she herself had laid up, into the fullness of the faith she had kept before she
knew its name or its meaning.
Often when she sang,
the best she had was unavailable; she could not break through to it, and every
sort of distraction and mischance came between it and her. But this afternoon
the closed roads opened, the gates dropped. What she had so often tried to
reach, lay under her hand. She had only to touch an idea to make it live.
While she was on the
stage she was conscious that every movement was the right movement, that her
body was absolutely the instrument of her idea. Not for nothing had she kept it
so severely, kept it filled with such energy and fire. All that deep-rooted
vitality flowered in her voice, her face, in her very finger-tips. She felt
like a tree bursting into bloom. And her voice was as flexible as her body;
equal to any demand, capable of every nuance. With the sense of its perfect
companionship, its entire trustworthiness, she had been able to throw herself
into the dramatic exigencies of the part, everything in her at its best and
everything working together.
The third act came on,
and the afternoon slipped by. Thea Kronborg's friends, old and new, seated
about the house on different floors and levels, enjoyed her triumph according
to their natures. There was one there, whom nobody knew, who perhaps got
greater pleasure out of that afternoon than Harsanyi himself. Up in the top
gallery a gray-haired little Mexican, withered and bright as a string of
peppers beside a'dobe door, kept praying and cursing under his breath, beating
on the brass railing and shouting "Bravo! Bravo!" until he was
repressed by his neighbors.
He happened to be there
because a Mexican band was to be a feature of Barnum and Bailey's circus that
year. One of the managers of the show had traveled about the Southwest, signing
up a lot of Mexican musicians at low wages, and had brought them to New York.
Among them was Spanish Johnny. After Mrs. Tellamantez died, Johnny abandoned
his trade and went out with his mandolin to pick up a living for one. His
irregularities had become his regular mode of life.
When Thea Kronborg came
out of the stage entrance on Fortieth Street, the sky was still flaming with
the last rays of the sun that was sinking off behind the North River. A little
crowd of people was lingering about the door--musicians from the orchestra who
were waiting for their comrades, curious young men, and some poorly dressed
girls who were hoping to get a glimpse of the singer. She bowed graciously to
the group, through her veil, but she did not look to the right or left as she
crossed the sidewalk to her cab. Had she lifted her eyes an instant and glanced
out through her white scarf, she must have seen the only man in the crowd who
had removed his hat when she emerged, and who stood with it crushed up in his
hand. And she would have known him, changed as he was. His lustrous black hair
was full of gray, and his face was a good deal worn by the extasi, so that it
seemed to have shrunk away from his shining eyes and teeth and left them too
prominent. But she would have known him. She passed so near that he could have
touched her, and he did not put on his hat until her taxi had snorted away.
Then he walked down Broadway with his hands in his overcoat pockets, wearing a
smile which embraced all the stream of life that passed him and the lighted
towers that rose into the limpid blue of the evening sky. If the singer, going
home exhausted in her cab, was wondering what was the good of it all, that
smile, could she have seen it, would have answered her. It is the only
commensurate answer.
Here we must leave Thea
Kronborg. From this time on the story of her life is the story of her
achievement. The growth of an artist is an intellectual and spiritual
development which can scarcely be followed in a personal narrative. This story
attempts to deal only with the simple and concrete beginnings which color and
accent an artist's work, and to give some account of how a Moonstone girl found
her way out of a vague, easy-going world into a life of disciplined endeavor.
Any account of the loyalty of young hearts to some exalted ideal, and the
passion with which they strive, will always, in some of us, rekindle generous
emotions.
MOONSTONE again, in the
year 1909. The Methodists are giving an ice-cream sociable in the grove about
the new court-house. It is a warm summer night of full moon. The paper lanterns
which hang among the trees are foolish toys, only dimming, in little lurid
circles, the great softness of the lunar light that floods the blue heavens and
the high plateau. To the east the sand hills shine white as of old, but the
empire of the sand is gradually diminishing. The grass grows thicker over the
dunes than it used to, and the streets of the town are harder and firmer than
they were twenty-five years ago. The old inhabitants will tell you that
sandstorms are infrequent now, that the wind blows less persistently in the
spring and plays a milder tune. Cultivation has modified the soil and the
climate, as it modifies human life.
The people seated about
under the cottonwoods are much smarter than the Methodists we used to know. The
interior of the new Methodist Church looks like a theater, with a sloping
floor, and as the congregation proudly say, "opera chairs." The
matrons who attend to serving the refreshments to-night look younger for their
years than did the women of Mrs. Kronborg's time, and the children all look
like city children. The little boys wear "Buster Browns" and the
little girls Russian blouses. The country child, in made-overs and cut-downs,
seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.
At one of the tables,
with her Dutch-cut twin boys, sits a fair-haired, dimpled matron who was once
Lily Fisher. Her husband is president of the new bank, and she "goes East
for her summers," a practice which causes envy and discontent among her
neighbors. The twins are well-behaved children, biddable, meek, neat about
their clothes, and always mindful of the proprieties they have learned at
summer hotels. While they are eating their ice- cream and trying not to twist
the spoon in their mouths, a little shriek of laughter breaks from an adjacent
table. The twins look up. There sits a spry little old spinster whom they know
well. She has a long chin, a long nose, and she is dressed like a young girl,
with a pink sash and a lace garden hat with pink rosebuds. She is surrounded by
a crowd of boys,--loose and lanky, short and thick,-- who are joking with her
roughly, but not unkindly.
"Mamma," one
of the twins comes out in a shrill treble, "why is Tillie Kronborg always
talking about a thousand dollars?"
The boys, hearing this
question, break into a roar of laughter, the women titter behind their paper
napkins, and even from Tillie there is a little shriek of appreciation. The
observing child's remark had made every one suddenly realize that Tillie never
stopped talking about that particular sum of money. In the spring, when she
went to buy early strawberries, and was told that they were thirty cents a box,
she was sure to remind the grocer that though her name was Kronborg she didn't
get a thousand dollars a night. In the autumn, when she went to buy her coal
for the winter, she expressed amazement at the price quoted her, and told the
dealer he must have got her mixed up with her niece to think she could pay such
a sum. When she was making her Christmas presents, she never failed to ask the
women who came into her shop what you could make for anybody who got a thousand
dollars a night. When the Denver papers announced that Thea Kronborg had
married Frederick Ottenburg, the head of the Brewers' Trust, Moonstone people
expected that Tillie's vain-gloriousness would take another form. But Tillie
had hoped that Thea would marry a title, and she did not boast much about
Ottenburg,-- at least not until after her memorable trip to Kansas City to hear
Thea sing.
Tillie is the last
Kronborg left in Moonstone. She lives alone in a little house with a green
yard, and keeps a fancy- work and millinery store. Her business methods are
informal, and she would never come out even at the end of the year, if she did
not receive a draft for a good round sum from her niece at Christmas time. The
arrival of this draft always renews the discussion as to what Thea would do for
her aunt if she really did the right thing. Most of the Moonstone people think
Thea ought to take Tillie to New York and keep her as a companion. While they
are feeling sorry for Tillie because she does not live at the Plaza, Tillie is
trying not to hurt their feelings by showing too plainly how much she realizes
the superiority of her position. She tries to be modest when she complains to
the postmaster that her New York paper is more than three days late. It means
enough, surely, on the face of it, that she is the only person in Moonstone who
takes a New York paper or who has any reason for taking one. A foolish young
girl, Tillie lived in the splendid sorrows of "Wanda" and
"Strathmore"; a foolish old girl, she lives in her niece's triumphs.
As she often says, she just missed going on the stage herself.
That night after the
sociable, as Tillie tripped home with a crowd of noisy boys and girls, she was
perhaps a shade troubled. The twin's question rather lingered in her ears. Did
she, perhaps, insist too much on that thousand dollars? Surely, people didn't
for a minute think it was the money she cared about? As for that, Tillie tossed
her head, she didn't care a rap. They must understand that this money was
different.
When the laughing
little group that brought her home had gone weaving down the sidewalk through
the leafy shadows and had disappeared, Tillie brought out a rocking chair and
sat down on her porch. On glorious, soft summer nights like this, when the moon
is opulent and full, the day submerged and forgotten, she loves to sit there
behind her rose-vine and let her fancy wander where it will. If you chanced to
be passing down that Moonstone street and saw that alert white figure rocking
there behind the screen of roses and lingering late into the night, you might
feel sorry for her, and how mistaken you would be! Tillie lives in a little
magic world, full of secret satisfactions. Thea Kronborg has given much noble
pleasure to a world that needs all it can get, but to no individual has she
given more than to her queer old aunt in Moonstone. The legend of Kronborg, the
artist, fills Tillie's life; she feels rich and exalted in it. What delightful
things happen in her mind as she sits there rocking! She goes back to those
early days of sand and sun, when Thea was a child and Tillie was herself, so it
seems to her, "young." When she used to hurry to church to hear Mr.
Kronborg's wonderful sermons, and when Thea used to stand up by the organ of a
bright Sunday morning and sing "Come, Ye Disconsolate." Or she thinks
about that wonderful time when the Metropolitan Opera Company sang a week's
engagement in Kansas City, and Thea sent for her and had her stay with her at
the Coates House and go to every performance at Convention Hall. Thea let
Tillie go through her costume trunks and try on her wigs and jewels. And the
kindness of Mr. Ottenburg! When Thea dined in her own room, he went down to
dinner with Tillie, and never looked bored or absent-minded when she chattered.
He took her to the hall the first time Thea sang there, and sat in the box with
her and helped her through "Lohengrin." After the first act, when
Tillie turned tearful eyes to him and burst out, "I don't care, she always
seemed grand like that, even when she was a girl. I expect I'm crazy, but she
just seems to me full of all them old times!"--Ottenburg was so
sympathetic and patted her hand and said, "But that's just what she is,
full of the old times, and you are a wise woman to see it." Yes, he said
that to her. Tillie often wondered how she had been able to bear it when Thea
came down the stairs in the wedding robe embroidered in silver, with a train so
long it took six women to carry it.
Tillie had lived
fifty-odd years for that week, but she got it, and no miracle was ever more
miraculous than that. When she used to be working in the fields on her father's
Minnesota farm, she couldn't help believing that she would some day have to do
with the "wonderful," though her chances for it had then looked so
slender.
The morning after the
sociable, Tillie, curled up in bed, was roused by the rattle of the milk cart
down the street. Then a neighbor boy came down the sidewalk outside her window,
singing "Casey Jones" as if he hadn't a care in the world. By this
time Tillie was wide awake. The twin's question, and the subsequent laughter,
came back with a faint twinge. Tillie knew she was short-sighted about facts,
but this time-- Why, there were her scrapbooks, full of newspaper and magazine
articles about Thea, and half-tone cuts, snap-shots of her on land and sea, and
photographs of her in all her parts. There, in her parlor, was the phonograph
that had come from Mr. Ottenburg last June, on Thea's birthday; she had only to
go in there and turn it on, and let Thea speak for herself. Tillie finished
brushing her white hair and laughed as she gave it a smart turn and brought it
into her usual French twist. If Moonstone doubted, she had evidence enough: in
black and white, in figures and photographs, evidence in hair lines on metal
disks. For one who had so often seen two and two as making six, who had so
often stretched a point, added a touch, in the good game of trying to make the
world brighter than it is, there was positive bliss in having such deep
foundations of support. She need never tremble in secret lest she might
sometime stretch a point in Thea's favor.-- Oh, the comfort, to a soul too
zealous, of having at last a rose so red it could not be further painted, a
lily so truly auriferous that no amount of gilding could exceed the fact!
Tillie hurried from her
bedroom, threw open the doors and windows, and let the morning breeze blow
through her little house.
In two minutes a cob
fire was roaring in her kitchen stove, in five she had set the table. At her
household work Tillie was always bursting out with shrill snatches of song, and
as suddenly stopping, right in the middle of a phrase, as if she had been
struck dumb. She emerged upon the back porch with one of these bursts, and bent
down to get her butter and cream out of the ice-box. The cat was purring on the
bench and the morning-glories were thrusting their purple trumpets in through
the lattice-work in a friendly way. They reminded Tillie that while she was
waiting for the coffee to boil she could get some flowers for her breakfast
table. She looked out uncertainly at a bush of sweet-briar that grew at the
edge of her yard, off across the long grass and the tomato vines. The front porch,
to be sure, was dripping with crimson ramblers that ought to be cut for the
good of the vines; but never the rose in the hand for Tillie! She caught up the
kitchen shears and off she dashed through grass and drenching dew. Snip, snip;
the short-stemmed sweet-briars, salmon-pink and golden-hearted, with their
unique and inimitable woody perfume, fell into her apron.
After she put the eggs
and toast on the table, Tillie took last Sunday's New York paper from the rack
beside the cupboard and sat down, with it for company. In the Sunday paper
there was always a page about singers, even in summer, and that week the
musical page began with a sympathetic account of Madame Kronborg's first
performance of Isolde in London. At the end of the notice, there was a short
paragraph about her having sung for the King at Buckingham Palace and having
been presented with a jewel by His Majesty.
Singing for the King;
but Goodness! she was always doing things like that! Tillie tossed her head.
All through breakfast she kept sticking her sharp nose down into the glass of
sweet-briar, with the old incredible lightness of heart, like a child's balloon
tugging at its string. She had always insisted, against all evidence, that life
was full of fairy tales, and it was! She had been feeling a little down,
perhaps, and Thea had answered her, from so far. From a common person, now, if
you were troubled, you might get a letter. But Thea almost never wrote letters.
She answered every one, friends and foes alike, in one way, her own way, her
only way. Once more Tillie has to remind herself that it is all true, and is
not something she has "made up." Like all romancers, she is a little
terrified at seeing one of her wildest conceits admitted by the hard- headed
world. If our dream comes true, we are almost afraid to believe it; for that is
the best of all good fortune, and nothing better can happen to any of us.
When the people on
Sylvester Street tire of Tillie's stories, she goes over to the east part of
town, where her legends are always welcome. The humbler people of Moonstone
still live there. The same little houses sit under the cottonwoods; the men
smoke their pipes in the front doorways, and the women do their washing in the
back yard. The older women remember Thea, and how she used to come kicking her
express wagon along the sidewalk, steering by the tongue and holding Thor in
her lap. Not much happens in that part of town, and the people have long
memories. A boy grew up on one of those streets who went to Omaha and built up a
great business, and is now very rich. Moonstone people always speak of him and
Thea together, as examples of Moonstone enterprise. They do, however, talk
oftener of Thea. A voice has even a wider appeal than a fortune. It is the one
gift that
all creatures would
possess if they could. Dreary Maggie Evans, dead nearly twenty years, is still
remembered because Thea sang at her funeral "after she had studied in
Chicago."
However much they may
smile at her, the old inhabitants would miss Tillie. Her stories give them
something to talk about and to conjecture about, cut off as they are from the
restless currents of the world. The many naked little sandbars which lie
between Venice and the main- land, in the seemingly stagnant water of the
lagoons, are made habitable and wholesome only because, every night, a foot and
a half of tide creeps in from the sea and winds its fresh brine up through all
that network of shining water- ways. So, into all the little settlements of
quiet people, tidings of what their boys and girls are doing in the world bring
real refreshment; bring to the old, memories, and to the young, dreams.
THE END
The Riverside Press
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