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 jus
t 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 GLUCK 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. ”SCHON,” 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, “KUNST-LER-ISCH!” The word
seemed to glitter in his uplifted hand, his voice was so full of
The Song of the Lark Page 8