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

assented heartily; “and I got a good deal myself. You remember how she used to sing those Scotch songs for me, and lead us with her head, her hair bobbing?”

“ ’Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,’⁠—I can hear it now,” said Mrs. Kronborg; “and poor father never knew when he sang sharp! He used to say, ‘Mother, how do you always know when they make mistakes practicing?’ ” Mrs. Kronborg chuckled.

Dr. Archie took her hand, still firm like the hand of a young woman. “It was lucky for her that you did know. I always thought she got more from you than from any of her teachers.”

“Except Wunsch; he was a real musician,” said Mrs. Kronborg respectfully. “I gave her what chance I could, in a crowded house. I kept the other children out of the parlor for her. That was about all I could do. If she wasn’t disturbed, she needed no watching. She went after it like a terrier after rats from the first, poor child. She was downright afraid of it. That’s why I always encouraged her taking Thor off to outlandish places. When she was out of the house, then she was rid of it.”

After they had recalled many pleasant memories together, Mrs. Kronborg said suddenly: “I always understood about her going off without coming to see us that time. Oh, I know! You had to keep your own counsel. You were a good friend to her. I’ve never forgot that.” She patted the doctor’s sleeve and went on absently. “There was something she didn’t want to tell me, and that’s why she didn’t come. Something happened when she was with those people in Mexico. I worried for a good while, but I guess she’s come out of it all right. She’d had a pretty hard time, scratching along alone like that when she was so young, and my farms in Nebraska were down so low that I couldn’t help her none. That’s no way to send a girl out. But I guess, whatever there was, she wouldn’t be afraid to tell me now.” Mrs. Kronborg looked up at the photograph with a smile. “She doesn’t look like she was beholding to anybody, does she?”

“She isn’t, Mrs. Kronborg. She never has been. That was why she borrowed the money from me.”

“Oh, I knew she’d never have sent for you if she’d done anything to shame us. She was always proud.” Mrs. Kronborg paused and turned a little on her side. “It’s been quite a satisfaction to you and me, doctor, having her voice turn out so fine. The things you hope for don’t always turn out like that, by a long sight. As long as old Mrs. Kohler lived, she used always to translate what it said about Thea in the German papers she sent. I could make some of it out myself⁠—it’s not very different from Swedish⁠—but it pleased the old lady. She left Thea her piece-picture of the burning of Moscow. I’ve got it put away in mothballs for her, along with the oboe her grandfather brought from Sweden. I want her to take father’s oboe back there some day.” Mrs. Kronborg paused a moment and compressed her lips. “But I guess she’ll take a finer instrument than that with her, back to Sweden!” she added.

Her tone fairly startled the doctor, it was so vibrating with a fierce, defiant kind of pride he had heard often in Thea’s voice. He looked down wonderingly at his old friend and patient. After all, one never knew people to the core. Did she, within her, hide some of that still passion of which her daughter was all-compact?

“That last summer at home wasn’t very nice for her,” Mrs. Kronborg began as placidly as if the fire had never leaped up in her. “The other children were acting-up because they thought I might make a fuss over her and give her the bighead. We gave her the dare, somehow, the lot of us, because we couldn’t understand her changing teachers and all that. That’s the trouble about giving the dare to them quiet, unboastful children; you never know how far it’ll take ’em. Well, we ought not to complain, doctor; she’s given us a good deal to think about.”

The next time Dr. Archie came to Moonstone, he came to be a pallbearer at Mrs. Kronborg’s funeral. When he last looked at her, she was so serene and queenly that he went back to Denver feeling almost as if he had helped to bury Thea Kronborg herself. The handsome head in the coffin seemed to him much more really Thea than did the radiant young woman in the picture, looking about at the Gothic vaultings and greeting the Hall of Song.

IV

One bright morning late in February Dr. Archie was breakfasting comfortably at the Waldorf. He had got into Jersey City on an early train, and a red, windy sunrise over the North River had given him a good appetite. He consulted the morning paper while he drank his coffee and saw that Lohengrin was to sbe sung at the opera that evening. In the list of the artists who would appear was the name “Kronborg.” Such abruptness rather startled him. “Kronborg”: it was impressive and yet, somehow, disrespectful; somewhat rude and brazen, on the back page of the morning paper. After breakfast he went to the hotel ticket office and asked the girl if she could give him something for Lohengrin, “near the front.” His manner was a trifle awkward and he wondered whether the girl noticed it. Even if she did, of course, she could scarcely suspect. Before the ticket stand he saw a bunch of blue posters announcing the opera casts for the week. There was Lohengrin, and under it he saw:⁠—

Elsa von Brabant⁠ ⁠… Thea Kronborg.

That looked better. The girl gave him a ticket for a seat which she said was excellent. He paid for it and went out to the cabstand. He mentioned to the driver a number on Riverside Drive and got into a taxi. It would