The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (best reads .TXT) 📕

more.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “The salt’s all gone out of your hair. It’s full of sun and wind again. I believe it has memories.” Again she heard him take a deep breath. “I could do without you for a lifetime, if that would give you to yourself. A woman like you doesn’t find herself, alone.”

She thrust her free hand up to him. He kissed it softly, as if she were asleep and he were afraid of waking her.

From the door he turned back irrelevantly. “As to your old friend, Thea, if he’s to be here on Friday, why,”⁠—he snatched out his watch and held it down to catch the light from the grate⁠—“he’s on the train now! That ought to cheer you. Good night.” She heard the door close.

III

On Friday afternoon Thea Kronborg was walking excitedly up and down her sitting-room, which at that hour was flooded by thin, clear sunshine. Both windows were open, and the fire in the grate was low, for the day was one of those false springs that sometimes blow into New York from the sea in the middle of winter, soft, warm, with a persuasive salty moisture in the air and a relaxing thaw under foot. Thea was flushed and animated, and she seemed as restless as the sooty sparrows that chirped and cheeped distractingly about the windows. She kept looking at the black clock, and then down into the Square. The room was full of flowers, and she stopped now and then to arrange them or to move them into the sunlight. After the bellboy came to announce a visitor, she took some Roman hyacinths from a glass and stuck them in the front of her dark-blue dress.

When at last Fred Ottenburg appeared in the doorway, she met him with an exclamation of pleasure. “I am glad you’ve come, Fred. I was afraid you might not get my note, and I wanted to see you before you see Dr. Archie. He’s so nice!” She brought her hands together to emphasize her statement.

“Is he? I’m glad. You see I’m quite out of breath. I didn’t wait for the elevator, but ran upstairs. I was so pleased at being sent for.” He dropped his hat and overcoat. “Yes, I should say he is nice! I don’t seem to recognize all of these,” waving his handkerchief about at the flowers.

“Yes, he brought them himself, in a big box. He brought lots with him besides flowers. Oh, lots of things! The old Moonstone feeling,”⁠—Thea moved her hand back and forth in the air, fluttering her fingers⁠—“the feeling of starting out, early in the morning, to take my lesson.”

“And you’ve had everything out with him?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Haven’t?” He looked up in consternation.

“No, I haven’t!” Thea spoke excitedly, moving about over the sunny patches on the grimy carpet. “I’ve lied to him, just as you said I had always lied to him, and that’s why I’m so happy. I’ve let him think what he likes to think. Oh, I couldn’t do anything else, Fred,”⁠—she shook her head emphatically. “If you’d seen him when he came in, so pleased and excited! You see this is a great adventure for him. From the moment I began to talk to him, he entreated me not to say too much, not to spoil his notion of me. Not in so many words, of course. But if you’d seen his eyes, his face, his kind hands! Oh, no! I couldn’t.” She took a deep breath, as if with a renewed sense of her narrow escape.

“Then, what did you tell him?” Fred demanded.

Thea sat down on the edge of the sofa and began shutting and opening her hands nervously. “Well, I told him enough, and not too much. I told him all about how good you were to me last winter, getting me engagements and things, and how you had helped me with my work more than anybody. Then I told him about how you sent me down to the ranch when I had no money or anything.” She paused and wrinkled her forehead. “And I told him that I wanted to marry you and ran away to Mexico with you, and that I was awfully happy until you told me that you couldn’t marry me because⁠—well, I told him why.” Thea dropped her eyes and moved the toe of her shoe about restlessly on the carpet.

“And he took it from you, like that?” Fred asked, almost with awe.

“Yes, just like that, and asked no questions. He was hurt; he had some wretched moments. I could see him squirming and squirming and trying to get past it. He kept shutting his eyes and rubbing his forehead. But when I told him that I absolutely knew you wanted to marry me, that you would whenever you could, that seemed to help him a good deal.”

“And that satisfied him?” Fred asked wonderingly. He could not quite imagine what kind of person Dr. Archie might be.

“He took me by the shoulders once and asked, oh, in such a frightened way, ‘Thea, was he good to you, this young man?’ When I told him you were, he looked at me again: ‘And you care for him a great deal, you believe in him?’ Then he seemed satisfied.” Thea paused. “You see, he’s just tremendously good, and tremendously afraid of things⁠—of some things. Otherwise he would have got rid of Mrs. Archie.” She looked up suddenly: “You were right, though; one can’t tell people about things they don’t know already.”

Fred stood in the window, his back to the sunlight, fingering the jonquils. “Yes, you can, my dear. But you must tell it in such a way that they don’t know you’re telling it, and that they don’t know they’re hearing it.”

Thea smiled past him, out into the air. “I see. It’s a secret. Like the sound in the shell.”

“What’s that?” Fred was watching her and thinking how moving that faraway expression, in her, happened to