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?”
“Well, I don’t exactly see why you take the trouble. What do you get
out of it? You haven’t liked me so well the last two or three weeks.”
Fred dropped his third cigarette and looked at his watch. “If you don’t
see that, it’s because you need a tonic. I’ll show you what I’ll get
out of it. Now I’m going to get a cab and take you home. You are too
tired to walk a step. You’d better get to bed as soon as you get there.
Of course, I don’t like you so well when you’re half anaesthetized all
the time. What have you been doing to yourself?”
Thea rose. “I don’t know. Being bored eats the heart out of me, I
guess.” She walked meekly in front of him to the elevator. Fred noticed
for the hundredth time how vehemently her body proclaimed her state of
feeling. He remembered how remarkably brilliant and beautiful she had
been when she sang at Mrs. Nathanmeyer’s: flushed and gleaming, round
and supple, something that couldn’t be dimmed or downed. And now she
seemed a moving figure of discouragement. The very waiters glanced at
her apprehensively. It was not that she made a fuss, but her back was
most extraordinarily vocal. One never needed to see her face to know
what she was full of that day. Yet she was certainly not mercurial. Her
flesh seemed to take a mood and to “set,” like plaster. As he put her
into the cab, Fred reflected once more that he “gave her up.” He would
attack her when his lance was brighter.