THE SONG OF THE LARK

PART I.
FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD

I

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 breastworks. 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 flaxseed
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.”

II

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; goodhumored, 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 sunlight.

“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.

III

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.

IV

“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
Fé, 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 slowly, 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.

V

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 doorbells, 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 gateposts. 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.

VI

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 Serreños, came to work in the brickyard; then
Serreños’ 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 Serreños—singing “La
Golandrina.” All the Mexican houses had neat little yards, with tamarisk
hedges and flowers, and walks bordered with shells or whitewashed 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 moon flowers 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 moon flowers 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.

VII

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 Southwest, 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 pocketknife 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 Fé, 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 stepchildren 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 Señor
Ken-áy-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 church steps,
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 Fé 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:—

“Pedró, Pedró, swing high, swing low,
And it’s allamand left again;
For there’s boys that’s bold and there’s some that’s
cold,
But the góld boys come from Spain,
Oh, the góld boys come from Spain!”

VIII

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 boardinghouse, 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 Fé, 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 goodnight. 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!”

IX

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.

X

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.

XI

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 flüstern 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 flüstern mean?”

“Flüstern?—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 leuchtenden
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 flowerbeds, 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.

“Es flüstern 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 some things.
Some things 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 Rhythmus, 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 Fräulein. 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.

XII

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 boyhood 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.

XIII

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 hotbed
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 roundhouse
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 greenishhazel 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.

XIV

“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 sagebrushes, 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.

XV

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 Fé, 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!

XVI

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
everything 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 notebook 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 Fé 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 diningroom 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 Fé?
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.

XVII

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.

XVIII

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 suppertime 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 rattlesnakes.

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 twentyfour 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 desktop. “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.

XIX

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.

XX

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 afternoons 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.

PART II.
THE SONG OF THE LARK

I

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 boardinghouses 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.

II

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 bedroom set, which now furnished her own room at
Mrs. Lorch’s. There she spent most of her time, doing fancywork 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.

III

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 businesslike. 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
diningroom 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!”

IV

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 weiss 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 nutcrackers 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.

V

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 Packingtown. 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 Gérôme
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.

VI

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 highway 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.

VII

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.

VIII

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 lunchbasket. 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.

IX

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
leuchtenden 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.

X

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 justa 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 whitewashed 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, semjante 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,
maybee?”

Silvo, overhearing, gave his brother a contemptuous glance. “Plenty more
a Paraíso 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’ icecream 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, “Hace
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, wunderschön!”

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!”

XI

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 accountbooks 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 streetlamp 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 lampshade used to fall full upon her broad face and yellow
pigtails. 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 footstep 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.

PART III.
STUPID FACES

I

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 halfsoled 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 goodnatured 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.

II

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 forefinger 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.

III

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 Råd.
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.

IV

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
portières, 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 Råd,” 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 Christmastime, 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 agreeable. “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 carriage, 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 Fürst, the daughter and heiress of a brewing business older and
richer than Otto Ottenburg’s. As a young woman she had been a conspicuous
figure in German-American society in New York, and not untouched by scandal.
She was a handsome, headstrong girl, a rebellious and violent force in a
provincial society. She was brutally sentimental and heavily romantic. 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 intellectual affinities, and was one of
the group of young women who followed Wagner about in his old age, keeping at a
respectful distance, but receiving now and then a gracious acknowledgment that
he appreciated their homage. When the composer died, Katarina, then a matron
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, Fräulein Fürst 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 generally disturbing influence. In his third year
Fred left the university because of a serious escapade which had somewhat
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 ballgames, 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 drinking. When he was in Germany, he scarcely
knew where the soup ended and the symphony began.

V

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 student 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 landlady stuck her head
in once a day, but Thea did not encourage 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 creature 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 messages, books, even a miserable
flower or two. Thea knew that their sympathy was an expression of
self-righteousness, 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 breathing, 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.”

VI

“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?”