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

it has been long,” she said in the same husky voice, “and so much has happened.”

“And you are so tired, and I am a clumsy old fellow to break in on you tonight,” the doctor added sympathetically. “Forgive me, this time.” He bent over and put his hand soothingly on her shoulder. He felt a strong shudder run through her from head to foot.

Still bundled in her fur coat as she was, she threw both arms about him and hugged him. “Oh, Dr. Archie, Dr. Archie,”⁠—she shook him⁠—“don’t let me go. Hold on, now you’re here,” she laughed, breaking away from him at the same moment and sliding out of her fur coat. She left it for the maid to pick up and pushed the doctor into the sitting-room, where she turned on the lights. “Let me look at you. Yes; hands, feet, head, shoulders⁠—just the same. You’ve grown no older. You can’t say as much for me, can you?”

She was standing in the middle of the room, in a white silk shirtwaist and a short black velvet skirt, which somehow suggested that they had “cut off her petticoats all round about.” She looked distinctly clipped and plucked. Her hair was parted in the middle and done very close to her head, as she had worn it under the wig. She looked like a fugitive, who had escaped from something in clothes caught up at hazard. It flashed across Dr. Archie that she was running away from the other woman down at the opera house, who had used her hardly.

He took a step toward her. “I can’t tell a thing in the world about you, Thea⁠—if I may still call you that.”

She took hold of the collar of his overcoat. “Yes, call me that. Do: I like to hear it. You frighten me a little, but I expect I frighten you more. I’m always a scarecrow after I sing a long part like that⁠—so high, too.” She absently pulled out the handkerchief that protruded from his breast pocket and began to wipe the black paint off her eyebrows and lashes. “I can’t take you in much tonight, but I must see you for a little while.” She pushed him to a chair. “I shall be more recognizable tomorrow. You mustn’t think of me as you see me tonight. Come at four tomorrow afternoon and have tea with me. Can you? That’s good.”

She sat down in a low chair beside him and leaned forward, drawing her shoulders together. She seemed to him inappropriately young and inappropriately old, shorn of her long tresses at one end and of her long robes at the other.

“How do you happen to be here?” she asked abruptly. “How can you leave a silver mine? I couldn’t! Sure nobody’ll cheat you? But you can explain everything tomorrow.” She paused. “You remember how you sewed me up in a poultice, once? I wish you could tonight. I need a poultice, from top to toe. Something very disagreeable happened down there. You said you were out front? Oh, don’t say anything about it. I always know exactly how it goes, unfortunately. I was rotten in the balcony. I never get that. You didn’t notice it? Probably not, but I did.”

Here the maid appeared at the door and her mistress rose. “My supper? Very well, I’ll come. I’d ask you to stay, doctor, but there wouldn’t be enough for two. They seldom send up enough for one,”⁠—she spoke bitterly. “I haven’t got a sense of you yet,”⁠—turning directly to Archie again. “You haven’t been here. You’ve only announced yourself, and told me you are coming tomorrow. You haven’t seen me, either. This is not I. But I’ll be here waiting for you tomorrow, my whole works! Goodnight, till then.” She patted him absently on the sleeve and gave him a little shove toward the door.

V

When Archie got back to his hotel at two o’clock in the morning, he found Fred Ottenburg’s card under his door, with a message scribbled across the top: “When you come in, please call up room 811, this hotel.” A moment later Fred’s voice reached him over the telephone.

“That you, Archie? Won’t you come up? I’m having some supper and I’d like company. Late? What does that matter? I won’t keep you long.”

Archie dropped his overcoat and set out for room 811. He found Ottenburg in the act of touching a match to a chafing-dish, at a table laid for two in his sitting-room. “I’m catering here,” he announced cheerfully. “I let the waiter off at midnight, after he’d set me up. You’ll have to account for yourself, Archie.”

The doctor laughed, pointing to three wine-coolers under the table. “Are you expecting guests?”

“Yes, two.” Ottenburg held up two fingers⁠—“you, and my higher self. He’s a thirsty boy, and I don’t invite him often. He has been known to give me a headache. Now, where have you been, Archie, until this shocking hour?”

“Bah, you’ve been banting!” the doctor exclaimed, pulling out his white gloves as he searched for his handkerchief and throwing them into a chair. Ottenburg was in evening clothes and very pointed dress shoes. His white waistcoat, upon which the doctor had fixed a challenging eye, went down straight from the top button, and he wore a camelia. He was conspicuously brushed and trimmed and polished. His smoothly controlled excitement was wholly different from his usual easy cordiality, though he had his face, as well as his figure, well in hand. On the serving-table there was an empty champagne pint and a glass. He had been having a little starter, the doctor told himself, and would probably be running on high gear before he got through. There was even now an air of speed about him.

“Been, Freddy?”⁠—the doctor at last took up his question. “I expect I’ve been exactly where you have. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming on?”

“I wasn’t, Archie.” Fred lifted the cover of the chafing-dish and stirred the contents. He