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

coffee; “why don’t you make up your mind to go to Washington? There’d be no fight made against you. I needn’t say the United Breweries would back you. There’d be some kudos coming to us, too; backing a reform candidate.”

Dr. Archie measured his length in his chair and thrust his large boots toward the crackling pitch-pine. He drank his coffee and lit a big black cigar while his guest looked over the assortment of cigarettes on the tray. “You say why don’t I,” the doctor spoke with the deliberation of a man in the position of having several courses to choose from, “but, on the other hand, why should I?” He puffed away and seemed, through his half-closed eyes, to look down several long roads with the intention of luxuriously rejecting all of them and remaining where he was. “I’m sick of politics. I’m disillusioned about serving my crowd, and I don’t particularly want to serve yours. Nothing in it that I particularly want; and a man’s not effective in politics unless he wants something for himself, and wants it hard. I can reach my ends by straighter roads. There are plenty of things to keep me busy. We haven’t begun to develop our resources in this State; we haven’t had a look in on them yet. That’s the only thing that isn’t fake⁠—making men and machines go, and actually turning out a product.”

The doctor poured himself some white cordial and looked over the little glass into the fire with an expression which led Ottenburg to believe that he was getting at something in his own mind. Fred lit a cigarette and let his friend grope for his idea.

“My boys, here,” Archie went on, “have got me rather interested in Japan. Think I’ll go out there in the spring, and come back the other way, through Siberia. I’ve always wanted to go to Russia.” His eyes still hunted for something in his big fireplace. With a slow turn of his head he brought them back to his guest and fixed them upon him. “Just now, I’m thinking of running on to New York for a few weeks,” he ended abruptly.

Ottenburg lifted his chin. “Ah!” he exclaimed, as if he began to see Archie’s drift. “Shall you see Thea?”

“Yes.” The doctor replenished his cordial glass. “In fact, I suspect I am going exactly to see her. I’m getting stale on things here, Fred. Best people in the world and always doing things for me. I’m fond of them, too, but I’ve been with them too much. I’m getting ill-tempered, and the first thing I know I’ll be hurting people’s feelings. I snapped Mrs. Dandridge up over the telephone this afternoon when she asked me to go out to Colorado Springs on Sunday to meet some English people who are staying at the Antlers. Very nice of her to want me, and I was as sour as if she’d been trying to work me for something. I’ve got to get out for a while, to save my reputation.”

To this explanation Ottenburg had not paid much attention. He seemed to be looking at a fixed point: the yellow glass eyes of a fine wildcat over one of the bookcases. “You’ve never heard her at all, have you?” he asked reflectively. “Curious, when this is her second season in New York.”

“I was going on last March. Had everything arranged. And then old Cap Harris thought he could drive his car and me through a lamppost and I was laid up with a compound fracture for two months. So I didn’t get to see Thea.”

Ottenburg studied the red end of his cigarette attentively. “She might have come out to see you. I remember you covered the distance like a streak when she wanted you.”

Archie moved uneasily. “Oh, she couldn’t do that. She had to get back to Vienna to work on some new parts for this year. She sailed two days after the New York season closed.”

“Well, then she couldn’t, of course.” Fred smoked his cigarette close and tossed the end into the fire. “I’m tremendously glad you’re going now. If you’re stale, she’ll jack you up. That’s one of her specialties. She got a rise out of me last December that lasted me all winter.”

“Of course,” the doctor apologized, “you know so much more about such things. I’m afraid it will be rather wasted on me. I’m no judge of music.”

“Never mind that.” The younger man pulled himself up in his chair. “She gets it across to people who aren’t judges. That’s just what she does.” He relapsed into his former lassitude. “If you were stone deaf, it wouldn’t all be wasted. It’s a great deal to watch her. Incidentally, you know, she is very beautiful. Photographs give you no idea.”

Dr. Archie clasped his large hands under his chin. “Oh, I’m counting on that. I don’t suppose her voice will sound natural to me. Probably I wouldn’t know it.”

Ottenburg smiled. “You’ll know it, if you ever knew it. It’s the same voice, only more so. You’ll know it.”

“Did you, in Germany that time, when you wrote me? Seven years ago, now. That must have been at the very beginning.”

“Yes, somewhere near the beginning. She sang one of the Rhine daughters.” Fred paused and drew himself up again. “Sure, I knew it from the first note. I’d heard a good many young voices come up out of the Rhine, but, by gracious, I hadn’t heard one like that!” He fumbled for another cigarette. “Mahler was conducting that night. I met him as he was leaving the house and had a word with him. ‘Interesting voice you tried out this evening,’ I said. He stopped and smiled. ‘Miss Kronborg, you mean? Yes, very. She seems to sing for the idea. Unusual in a young singer.’ I’d never heard him admit before that a singer could have an idea. She not only had it, but she got it across. The Rhine music, that I’d known since I was a boy,