Chapter XVI: Part VI: Kronborg (1)

Ten Years Later

I

It is a glorious winter day. Denver, standing on her high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is masked in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building is actually in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun until the beholder is dazzled and the outlines of the building are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The stone terrace is a white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the trees and bushes are faithfully repeated in snow—on every black twig a soft, blurred line of white. From the terrace one looks directly over to where the mountains break in their sharp, familiar lines against the sky. Snow fills the gorges, hangs in scarfs on the great slopes, and on the peaks the fiery sunshine is gathered up as by a burning-glass.

Howard Archie is standing at the window of his private room in the offices of the San Felipe Mining Company, on the sixth floor of the Raton Building, looking off at the mountain glories of his State while he gives dictation to his secretary. He is ten years older than when we saw him last, and emphatically ten years more prosperous. A decade of coming into things has not so much aged him as it has fortified, smoothed, and assured him. His sandy hair and imperial conceal whatever gray they harbor. He has not grown heavier, but more flexible, and his massive shoulders carry fifty years and the control of his great mining interests more lightly than they carried forty years and a country practice. In short, he is one of the friends to whom we feel grateful for having got on in the world, for helping to keep up the general temperature and our own confidence in life. He is an acquaintance that one would hurry to overtake and greet among a hundred. In his warm handshake and generous smile there is the stimulating cordiality of good fellows come into good fortune and eager to pass it on; something that makes one think better of the lottery of life and resolve to try again.

When Archie had finished his morning mail, he turned away from the window and faced his secretary. “Did anything come up yesterday afternoon while I was away, T. B.?”

Thomas Burk turned over the leaf of his calendar. “Governor Alden sent down to say that he wanted to see you before he sends his letter to the Board of Pardons. Asked if you could go over to the State House this morning.”

Archie shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll think about it.”

The young man grinned.

“Anything else?” his chief continued.

T. B. swung round in his chair with a look of interest on his shrewd, clean-shaven face. “Old Jasper Flight was in, Dr. Archie. I never expected to see him alive again. Seems he’s tucked away for the winter with a sister who’s a housekeeper at the Oxford. He’s all crippled up with rheumatism, but as fierce after it as ever. Wants to know if you or the company won’t grub-stake him again. Says he’s sure of it this time; had located something when the snow shut down on him in December. He wants to crawl out at the first break in the weather, with that same old burro with the split ear. He got somebody to winter the beast for him. He’s superstitious about that burro, too; thinks it’s divinely guided. You ought to hear the line of talk he put up here yesterday; said when he rode in his carriage, that burro was a-going to ride along with him.”

Archie laughed. “Did he leave you his address?”

“He didn’t neglect anything,” replied the clerk cynically.

“Well, send him a line and tell him to come in again. I like to hear him. Of all the crazy prospectors I’ve ever known, he’s the most interesting, because he’s really crazy. It’s a religious conviction with him, and with most of ’em it’s a gambling fever or pure vagrancy. But Jasper Flight believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of the silver deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving. He’s a downright noble figure. Of course I’ll stake him! As long as he can crawl out in the spring. He and that burro are a sight together. The beast is nearly as white as Jasper; must be twenty years old.”

“If you stake him this time, you won’t have to again,” said T. B. knowingly. “He’ll croak up there, mark my word. Says he never ties the burro at night now, for fear he might be called sudden, and the beast would starve. I guess that animal could eat a lariat rope, all right, and enjoy it.”

“I guess if we knew the things those two have eaten, and haven’t eaten, in their time, T. B., it would make us vegetarians.” The doctor sat down and looked thoughtful. “That’s the way for the old man to go. It would be pretty hard luck if he had to die in a hospital. I wish he could turn up something before he cashes in. But his kind seldom do; they’re bewitched. Still, there was Stratton. I’ve been meeting Jasper Flight, and his side meat and tin pans, up in the mountains for years, and I’d miss him. I always halfway believe the fairy tales he spins me. Old Jasper Flight,” Archie murmured, as if he liked the name or the picture it called up.

A clerk came in from the outer office and handed Archie a card. He sprang up and exclaimed, “Mr. Ottenburg? Bring him in.”

Fred Ottenburg entered, clad in a long, fur-lined coat, holding a checked-cloth hat in his hand, his cheeks and eyes bright with the outdoor cold. The two men met before Archie’s desk and their handclasp was longer than friendship prompts except in regions where the blood warms and quickens to meet the dry cold. Under the general keyingup of the altitude, manners take on a heartiness, a vivacity, that is one expression of the half-unconscious excitement which Colorado people miss when they drop into lower strata of air. The heart, we are told, wears out early in that high atmosphere, but while it pumps it sends out no sluggish stream. Our two friends stood gripping each other by the hand and smiling.

“When did you get in, Fred? And what have you come for?” Archie gave him a quizzical glance.

“I’ve come to find out what you think you’re doing out here,” the younger man declared emphatically. “I want to get next, I do. When can you see me?”

“Anything on to-night? Then suppose you dine with me. Where can I pick you up at five-thirty?”

“Bixby’s office, general freight agent of the Burlington.” Ottenburg began to button his overcoat and drew on his gloves. “I’ve got to have one shot at you before I go, Archie. Didn’t I tell you Pinky Alden was a cheap squirt?”

Alden’s backer laughed and shook his head. “Oh, he’s worse than that, Fred. It isn’t polite to mention what he is, outside of the Arabian Nights. I guessed you’d come to rub it into me.”

Ottenburg paused, his hand on the doorknob, his high color challenging the doctor’s calm. “I’m disgusted with you, Archie, for training with such a pup. A man of your experience!”

“Well, he’s been an experience,” Archie muttered. “I’m not coy about admitting it, am I?”

Ottenburg flung open the door. “Small credit to you. Even the women are out for capital and corruption, I hear. Your Governor’s done more for the United Breweries in six months than I’ve been able to do in six years. He’s the lily-livered sort we’re looking for. Good-morning.”

That afternoon at five o’clock Dr. Archie emerged from the State House after his talk with Governor Alden, and crossed the terrace under a saffron sky. The snow, beaten hard, was blue in the dusk; a day of blinding sunlight had not even started a thaw. The lights of the city twinkled pale below him in the quivering violet air, and the dome of the State House behind him was still red with the light from the west. Before he got into his car, the doctor paused to look about him at the scene of which he never tired. Archie lived in his own house on Colfax Avenue, where he had roomy grounds and a rose garden and a conservatory. His housekeeping was done by three Japanese boys, devoted and resourceful, who were able to manage Archie’s dinner parties, to see that he kept his engagements, and to make visitors who stayed at the house so comfortable that they were always loath to go away.

Archie had never known what comfort was until he became a widower, though with characteristic delicacy, or dishonesty, he insisted upon accrediting his peace of mind to the San Felipe, to Time, to anything but his release from Mrs. Archie.

Mrs. Archie died just before her husband left Moonstone and came to Denver to live, six years ago. The poor woman’s fight against dust was her undoing at last. One summer day when she was rubbing the parlor upholstery with gasoline,—the doctor had often forbidden her to use it on any account, so that was one of the pleasures she seized upon in his absence,—an explosion occurred. Nobody ever knew exactly how it happened, for Mrs. Archie was dead when the neighbors rushed in to save her from the burning house. She must have inhaled the burning gas and died instantly.

Moonstone severity relented toward her somewhat after her death. But even while her old cronies at Mrs. Smiley’s millinery store said that it was a terrible thing, they added that nothing but a powerful explosive _could_ have killed Mrs. Archie, and that it was only right the doctor should have a chance.

Archie’s past was literally destroyed when his wife died. The house burned to the ground, and all those material reminders which have such power over people disappeared in an hour. His mining interests now took him to Denver so often that it seemed better to make his headquarters there. He gave up his practice and left Moonstone for good. Six months afterward, while Dr. Archie was living at the Brown Palace Hotel, the San Felipe mine began to give up that silver hoard which old Captain Harris had always accused it of concealing, and San Felipe headed the list of mining quotations in every daily paper, East and West. In a few years Dr. Archie was a very rich man. His mine was such an important item in the mineral output of the State, and Archie had a hand in so many of the new industries of Colorado and New Mexico, that his political influence was considerable. He had thrown it all, two years ago, to the new reform party, and had brought about the election of a governor of whose conduct he was now heartily ashamed. His friends believed that Archie himself had ambitious political plans.

II

When Ottenburg and his host reached the house on Colfax Avenue, they went directly to the library, a long double room on the second floor which Archie had arranged exactly to his own taste. It was full of books and mounted specimens of wild game, with a big writing-table at either end, stiff, old-fashioned engravings, heavy hangings and deep upholstery.

When one of the Japanese boys brought the cocktails, Fred turned from the fine specimen of peccoray he had been examining and said, “A man is an owl to live in such a place alone, Archie. Why don’t you marry? As for me, just because I can’t marry, I find the world full of charming, unattached women, any one of whom I could fit up a house for with alacrity.”

“You’re more knowing than I.” Archie spoke politely. “I’m not very wide awake about women. I’d be likely to pick out one of the uncomfortable ones—and there are a few of them, you know.” He drank his cocktail and rubbed his hands together in a friendly way. “My friends here have charming wives, and they don’t give me a chance to get lonely. They are very kind to me, and I have a great many pleasant friendships.”

Fred put down his glass. “Yes, I’ve always noticed that women have confidence in you. You have the doctor’s way of getting next. And you enjoy that kind of thing?”

“The friendship of attractive women? Oh, dear, yes! I depend upon it a great deal.”

The butler announced dinner, and the two men went downstairs to the dining-room. Dr. Archie’s dinners were always good and well served, and his wines were excellent.

“I saw the Fuel and Iron people to-day,” Ottenburg said, looking up from his soup. “Their heart is in the right place. I can’t see why in the mischief you ever got mixed up with that reform gang, Archie. You’ve got nothing to reform out here. The situation has always been as simple as two and two in Colorado; mostly a matter of a friendly understanding.”

“Well,”—Archie spoke tolerantly,—“some of the young fellows seemed to have red-hot convictions, and I thought it was better to let them try their ideas out.”

Ottenburg shrugged his shoulders. “A few dull young men who haven’t ability enough to play the old game the old way, so they want to put on a new game which doesn’t take so much brains and gives away more advertising that’s what your anti-saloon league and vice commission amounts to. They provide notoriety for the fellows who can’t distinguish themselves at running a business or practicing law or developing an industry. Here you have a mediocre lawyer with no brains and no practice, trying to get a look-in on something. He comes up with the novel proposition that the prostitute has a hard time of it, puts his picture in the paper, and the first thing you know, he’s a celebrity. He gets the rake-off and she’s just where she was before. How could you fall for a mouse-trap like Pink Alden, Archie?”

Dr. Archie laughed as he began to carve. “Pink seems to get under your skin. He’s not worth talking about. He’s gone his limit. People won’t read about his blameless life any more. I knew those interviews he gave out would cook him. They were a last resort. I could have stopped him, but by that time I’d come to the conclusion that I’d let the reformers down. I’m not against a general shaking-up, but the trouble with Pinky’s crowd is they never get beyond a general writing-up. We gave them a chance to do something, and they just kept on writing about each other and what temptations they had overcome.”

While Archie and his friend were busy with Colorado politics, the impeccable Japanese attended swiftly and intelligently to his duties, and the dinner, as Ottenburg at last remarked, was worthy of more profitable conversation.

“So it is,” the doctor admitted. “Well, we’ll go upstairs for our coffee and cut this out. Bring up some cognac and arak, Tai,” he added as he rose from the table.

They stopped to examine a moose’s head on the stairway, and when they reached the library the pine logs in the fireplace had been lighted, and the coffee was bubbling before the hearth. Tai placed two chairs before the fire and brought a tray of cigarettes.

“Bring the cigars in my lower desk drawer, boy,” the doctor directed. “Too much light in here, isn’t there, Fred? Light the lamp there on my desk, Tai.” He turned off the electric glare and settled himself deep into the chair opposite Ottenburg’s.

“To go back to our conversation, doctor,” Fred began while he waited for the first steam to blow off his 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 lamp-post 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, was fresh to me, vocalized for the first time. You realized that she was beginning that long story, adequately, with the end in view. Every phrase she sang was basic. She simply _was_ the idea of the Rhine music.” Ottenburg rose and stood with his back to the fire. “And at the end, where you don’t see the maidens at all, the same thing again: two pretty voices _and_ the Rhine voice.” Fred snapped his fingers and dropped his hand.

The doctor looked up at him enviously. “You see, all that would be lost on me,” he said modestly. “I don’t know the dream nor the interpretation thereof. I’m out of it. It’s too bad that so few of her old friends can appreciate her.”

“Take a try at it,” Fred encouraged him. “You’ll get in deeper than you can explain to yourself. People with no personal interest do that.”

“I suppose,” said Archie diffidently, “that college German, gone to seed, wouldn’t help me out much. I used to be able to make my German patients understand me.”

“Sure it would!” cried Ottenburg heartily. “Don’t be above knowing your libretto. That’s all very well for musicians, but common mortals like you and me have got to know what she’s singing about. Get out your dictionary and go at it as you would at any other proposition. Her diction is beautiful, and if you know the text you’ll get a great deal. So long as you’re going to hear her, get all that’s coming to you. You bet in Germany people know their librettos by heart! You Americans are so afraid of stooping to learn anything.”

“I _am_ a little ashamed,” Archie admitted. “I guess that’s the way we mask our general ignorance. However, I’ll stoop this time; I’m more ashamed not to be able to follow her. The papers always say she’s such a fine actress.” He took up the tongs and began to rearrange the logs that had burned through and fallen apart. “I suppose she has changed a great deal?” he asked absently.

“We’ve all changed, my dear Archie,—she more than most of us. Yes, and no. She’s all there, only there’s a great deal more of her. I’ve had only a few words with her in several years. It’s better not, when I’m tied up this way. The laws are barbarous, Archie.”

“Your wife is—still the same?” the doctor asked sympathetically.

“Absolutely. Hasn’t been out of a sanitarium for seven years now. No prospect of her ever being out, and as long as she’s there I’m tied hand and foot. What does society get out of such a state of things, I’d like to know, except a tangle of irregularities? If you want to reform, there’s an opening for you!”

“It’s bad, oh, very bad; I agree with you!” Dr. Archie shook his head. “But there would be complications under another system, too. The whole question of a young man’s marrying has looked pretty grave to me for a long while. How have they the courage to keep on doing it? It depresses me now to buy wedding presents.” For some time the doctor watched his guest, who was sunk in bitter reflections. “Such things used to go better than they do now, I believe. Seems to me all the married people I knew when I was a boy were happy enough.” He paused again and bit the end off a fresh cigar. “You never saw Thea’s mother, did you, Ottenburg? That’s a pity. Mrs. Kronborg was a fine woman. I’ve always been afraid Thea made a mistake, not coming home when Mrs. Kronborg was ill, no matter what it cost her.”

Ottenburg moved about restlessly. “She couldn’t, Archie, she positively couldn’t. I felt you never understood that, but I was in Dresden at the time, and though I wasn’t seeing much of her, I could size up the situation for myself. It was by just a lucky chance that she got to sing _Elizabeth_ that time at the Dresden Opera, a complication of circumstances. If she’d run away, for any reason, she might have waited years for such a chance to come again. She gave a wonderful performance and made a great impression. They offered her certain terms; she had to take them and follow it up then and there. In that game you can’t lose a single trick. She was ill herself, but she sang. Her mother was ill, and she sang. No, you mustn’t hold that against her, Archie. She did the right thing there.” Ottenburg drew out his watch. “Hello! I must be traveling. You hear from her regularly?”

“More or less regularly. She was never much of a letter-writer. She tells me about her engagements and contracts, but I know so little about that business that it doesn’t mean much to me beyond the figures, which seem very impressive. We’ve had a good deal of business correspondence, about putting up a stone to her father and mother, and, lately, about her youngest brother, Thor. He is with me now; he drives my car. To-day he’s up at the mine.”

Ottenburg, who had picked up his overcoat, dropped it. “Drives your car?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes. Thea and I have had a good deal of bother about Thor. We tried a business college, and an engineering school, but it was no good. Thor was born a chauffeur before there were cars to drive. He was never good for anything else; lay around home and collected postage stamps and took bicycles to pieces, waiting for the automobile to be invented. He’s just as much a part of a car as the steering-gear. I can’t find out whether he likes his job with me or not, or whether he feels any curiosity about his sister. You can’t find anything out from a Kronborg nowadays. The mother was different.”

Fred plunged into his coat. “Well, it’s a queer world, Archie. But you’ll think better of it, if you go to New York. Wish I were going with you. I’ll drop in on you in the morning at about eleven. I want a word with you about this Interstate Commerce Bill. Good-night.”

Dr. Archie saw his guest to the motor which was waiting below, and then went back to his library, where he replenished the fire and sat down for a long smoke. A man of Archie’s modest and rather credulous nature develops late, and makes his largest gain between forty and fifty. At thirty, indeed, as we have seen, Archie was a soft-hearted boy under a manly exterior, still whistling to keep up his courage. Prosperity and large responsibilities—above all, getting free of poor Mrs. Archie—had brought out a good deal more than he knew was in him. He was thinking tonight as he sat before the fire, in the comfort he liked so well, that but for lucky chances, and lucky holes in the ground, he would still be a country practitioner, reading his old books by his office lamp. And yet, he was not so fresh and energetic as he ought to be. He was tired of business and of politics. Worse than that, he was tired of the men with whom he had to do and of the women who, as he said, had been kind to him. He felt as if he were still hunting for something, like old Jasper Flight. He knew that this was an unbecoming and ungrateful state of mind, and he reproached himself for it. But he could not help wondering why it was that life, even when it gave so much, after all gave so little. What was it that he had expected and missed? Why was he, more than he was anything else, disappointed?

He fell to looking back over his life and asking himself which years of it he would like to live over again,—just as they had been,—and they were not many. His college years he would live again, gladly. After them there was nothing he would care to repeat until he came to Thea Kronborg. There had been something stirring about those years in Moonstone, when he was a restless young man on the verge of breaking into larger enterprises, and when she was a restless child on the verge of growing up into something unknown. He realized now that she had counted for a great deal more to him than he knew at the time. It was a continuous sort of relationship. He was always on the lookout for her as he went about the town, always vaguely expecting her as he sat in his office at night. He had never asked himself then if it was strange that he should find a child of twelve the most interesting and companionable person in Moonstone. It had seemed a pleasant, natural kind of solicitude. He explained it then by the fact that he had no children of his own. But now, as he looked back at those years, the other interests were faded and inanimate. The thought of them was heavy. But wherever his life had touched Thea Kronborg’s, there was still a little warmth left, a little sparkle. Their friendship seemed to run over those discontented years like a leafy pattern, still bright and fresh when the other patterns had faded into the dull background. Their walks and drives and confidences, the night they watched the rabbit in the moonlight,—why were these things stirring to remember? Whenever he thought of them, they were distinctly different from the other memories of his life; always seemed humorous, gay, with a little thrill of anticipation and mystery about them. They came nearer to being tender secrets than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else they corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the world, and had not found. It came over him now that the unexpected favors of fortune, no matter how dazzling, do not mean very much to us. They may excite or divert us for a time, but when we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.

III

For the first four years after Thea went to Germany things went on as usual with the Kronborg family. Mrs. Kronborg’s land in Nebraska increased in value and brought her in a good rental. The family drifted into an easier way of living, half without realizing it, as families will. Then Mr. Kronborg, who had never been ill, died suddenly of cancer of the liver, and after his death Mrs. Kronborg went, as her neighbors said, into a decline. Hearing discouraging reports of her from the physician who had taken over his practice, Dr. Archie went up from Denver to see her. He found her in bed, in the room where he had more than once attended her, a handsome woman of sixty with a body still firm and white, her hair, faded now to a very pale primrose, in two thick braids down her back, her eyes clear and calm. When the doctor arrived, she was sitting up in her bed, knitting. He felt at once how glad she was to see him, but he soon gathered that she had made no determination to get well. She told him, indeed, that she could not very well get along without Mr. Kronborg. The doctor looked at her with astonishment. Was it possible that she could miss the foolish old man so much? He reminded her of her children.

“Yes,” she replied; “the children are all very well, but they are not father. We were married young.”

The doctor watched her wonderingly as she went on knitting, thinking how much she looked like Thea. The difference was one of degree rather than of kind. The daughter had a compelling enthusiasm, the mother had none. But their framework, their foundation, was very much the same.

In a moment Mrs. Kronborg spoke again. “Have you heard anything from Thea lately?”

During his talk with her, the doctor gathered that what Mrs. Kronborg really wanted was to see her daughter Thea. Lying there day after day, she wanted it calmly and continuously. He told her that, since she felt so, he thought they might ask Thea to come home.

“I’ve thought a good deal about it,” said Mrs. Kronborg slowly. “I hate to interrupt her, now that she’s begun to get advancement. I expect she’s seen some pretty hard times, though she was never one to complain. Perhaps she’d feel that she would like to come. It would be hard, losing both of us while she’s off there.”

When Dr. Archie got back to Denver he wrote a long letter to Thea, explaining her mother’s condition and how much she wished to see her, and asking Thea to come, if only for a few weeks. Thea had repaid the money she had borrowed from him, and he assured her that if she happened to be short of funds for the journey, she had only to cable him.

A month later he got a frantic sort of reply from Thea. Complications in the opera at Dresden had given her an unhoped-for opportunity to go on in a big part. Before this letter reached the doctor, she would have made her debut as _Elizabeth_, in “Tannhäuser.” She wanted to go to her mother more than she wanted anything else in the world, but, unless she failed,—which she would not,—she absolutely could not leave Dresden for six months. It was not that she chose to stay; she had to stay—or lose everything. The next few months would put her five years ahead, or would put her back so far that it would be of no use to struggle further. As soon as she was free, she would go to Moonstone and take her mother back to Germany with her. Her mother, she was sure, could live for years yet, and she would like German people and German ways, and could be hearing music all the time. Thea said she was writing her mother and begging her to help her one last time; to get strength and to wait for her six months, and then she (Thea) would do everything. Her mother would never have to make an effort again.

Dr. Archie went up to Moonstone at once. He had great confidence in Mrs. Kronborg’s power of will, and if Thea’s appeal took hold of her enough, he believed she might get better. But when he was shown into the familiar room off the parlor, his heart sank. Mrs. Kronborg was lying serene and fateful on her pillows. On the dresser at the foot of her bed there was a large photograph of Thea in the character in which she was to make her debut. Mrs. Kronborg pointed to it.

“Isn’t she lovely, doctor? It’s nice that she hasn’t changed much. I’ve seen her look like that many a time.”

They talked for a while about Thea’s good fortune. Mrs. Kronborg had had a cablegram saying, “First performance well received. Great relief.” In her letter Thea said; “If you’ll only get better, dear mother, there’s nothing I can’t do. I will make a really great success, if you’ll try with me. You shall have everything you want, and we will always be together. I have a little house all picked out where we are to live.”

“Bringing up a family is not all it’s cracked up to be,” said Mrs. Kronborg with a flicker of irony, as she tucked the letter back under her pillow. “The children you don’t especially need, you have always with you, like the poor. But the bright ones get away from you. They have their own way to make in the world. Seems like the brighter they are, the farther they go. I used to feel sorry that you had no family, doctor, but maybe you’re as well off.”

“Thea’s plan seems sound to me, Mrs. Kronborg. There’s no reason I can see why you shouldn’t pull up and live for years yet, under proper care. You’d have the best doctors in the world over there, and it would be wonderful to live with anybody who looks like that.” He nodded at the photograph of the young woman who must have been singing “_Dich, theure Halle, grüss’ ich wieder_,” her eyes looking up, her beautiful hands outspread with pleasure.

Mrs. Kronborg laughed quite cheerfully. “Yes, wouldn’t it? If father were here, I might rouse myself. But sometimes it’s hard to come back. Or if she were in trouble, maybe I could rouse myself.”

“But, dear Mrs. Kronborg, she is in trouble,” her old friend expostulated. “As she says, she’s never needed you as she needs you now. I make my guess that she’s never begged anybody to help her before.”

Mrs. Kronborg smiled. “Yes, it’s pretty of her. But that will pass. When these things happen far away they don’t make such a mark; especially if your hands are full and you’ve duties of your own to think about. My own father died in Nebraska when Gunner was born,—we were living in Iowa then,—and I was sorry, but the baby made it up to me. I was father’s favorite, too. That’s the way it goes, you see.”

The doctor took out Thea’s letter to him, and read it over to Mrs. Kronborg. She seemed to listen, and not to listen.

When he finished, she said thoughtfully: “I’d counted on hearing her sing again. But I always took my pleasures as they come. I always enjoyed her singing when she was here about the house. While she was practicing I often used to leave my work and sit down in a rocker and give myself up to it, the same as if I’d been at an entertainment. I was never one of these housekeepers that let their work drive them to death. And when she had the Mexicans over here, I always took it in. First and last,”—she glanced judicially at the photograph,—“I guess I got about as much out of Thea’s voice as anybody will ever get.”

“I guess you did!” the doctor 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 moth-balls 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 big-head. 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 pall-bearer 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 be 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 not, of course, be the right thing to call upon Thea when she was going to sing in the evening. He knew that much, thank goodness! Fred Ottenburg had hinted to him that, more than almost anything else, that would put one in wrong.

When he reached the number to which he directed his letters, he dismissed the cab and got out for a walk. The house in which Thea lived was as impersonal as the Waldorf, and quite as large. It was above 116th Street, where the Drive narrows, and in front of it the shelving bank dropped to the North River. As Archie strolled about the paths which traversed this slope, below the street level, the fourteen stories of the apartment hotel rose above him like a perpendicular cliff. He had no idea on which floor Thea lived, but he reflected, as his eye ran over the many windows, that the outlook would be fine from any floor. The forbidding hugeness of the house made him feel as if he had expected to meet Thea in a crowd and had missed her. He did not really believe that she was hidden away behind any of those glittering windows, or that he was to hear her this evening. His walk was curiously uninspiring and unsuggestive. Presently remembering that Ottenburg had encouraged him to study his lesson, he went down to the opera house and bought a libretto. He had even brought his old “Adler’s German and English” in his trunk, and after luncheon he settled down in his gilded suite at the Waldorf with a big cigar and the text of “Lohengrin.”

The opera was announced for seven-forty-five, but at half-past seven Archie took his seat in the right front of the orchestra circle. He had never been inside the Metropolitan Opera House before, and the height of the audience room, the rich color, and the sweep of the balconies were not without their effect upon him. He watched the house fill with a growing feeling of expectation. When the steel curtain rose and the men of the orchestra took their places, he felt distinctly nervous. The burst of applause which greeted the conductor keyed him still higher. He found that he had taken off his gloves and twisted them to a string. When the lights went down and the violins began the overture, the place looked larger than ever; a great pit, shadowy and solemn. The whole atmosphere, he reflected, was somehow more serious than he had anticipated.

After the curtains were drawn back upon the scene beside the Scheldt, he got readily into the swing of the story. He was so much interested in the bass who sang _King Henry_ that he had almost forgotten for what he was waiting so nervously, when the _Herald_ began in stentorian tones to summon _Elsa Von Brabant_. Then he began to realize that he was rather frightened. There was a flutter of white at the back of the stage, and women began to come in: two, four, six, eight, but not the right one. It flashed across him that this was something like buck-fever, the paralyzing moment that comes upon a man when his first elk looks at him through the bushes, under its great antlers; the moment when a man’s mind is so full of shooting that he forgets the gun in his hand until the buck nods adieu to him from a distant hill.

All at once, before the buck had left him, she was there. Yes, unquestionably it was she. Her eyes were downcast, but the head, the cheeks, the chin—there could be no mistake; she advanced slowly, as if she were walking in her sleep. Some one spoke to her; she only inclined her head. He spoke again, and she bowed her head still lower. Archie had forgotten his libretto, and he had not counted upon these long pauses. He had expected her to appear and sing and reassure him. They seemed to be waiting for her. Did she ever forget? Why in thunder didn’t she—She made a sound, a faint one. The people on the stage whispered together and seemed confounded. His nervousness was absurd. She must have done this often before; she knew her bearings. She made another sound, but he could make nothing of it. Then the King sang to her, and Archie began to remember where they were in the story. She came to the front of the stage, lifted her eyes for the first time, clasped her hands and began, “_Einsam in trüben Tagen._”

Yes, it was exactly like buck-fever. Her face was there, toward the house now, before his eyes, and he positively could not see it. She was singing, at last, and he positively could not hear her. He was conscious of nothing but an uncomfortable dread and a sense of crushing disappointment. He had, after all, missed her. Whatever was there, she was not there—for him.

The King interrupted her. She began again, “_In lichter Waffen Scheine._” Archie did not know when his buckfever passed, but presently he found that he was sitting quietly in a darkened house, not listening to but dreaming upon a river of silver sound. He felt apart from the others, drifting alone on the melody, as if he had been alone with it for a long while and had known it all before. His power of attention was not great just then, but in so far as it went he seemed to be looking through an exalted calmness at a beautiful woman from far away, from another sort of life and feeling and understanding than his own, who had in her face something he had known long ago, much brightened and beautified. As a lad he used to believe that the faces of people who died were like that in the next world; the same faces, but shining with the light of a new understanding. No, Ottenburg had not prepared him!

What he felt was admiration and estrangement. The homely reunion, that he had somehow expected, now seemed foolish. Instead of feeling proud that he knew her better than all these people about him, he felt chagrined at his own ingenuousness. For he did not know her better. This woman he had never known; she had somehow devoured his little friend, as the wolf ate up Red Ridinghood. Beautiful, radiant, tender as she was, she chilled his old affection; that sort of feeling was not appropriate. She seemed much, much farther away from him than she had seemed all those years when she was in Germany. The ocean he could cross, but there was something here he could not cross. There was a moment, when she turned to the King and smiled that rare, sunrise smile of her childhood, when he thought she was coming back to him. After the _Herald’s_ second call for her champion, when she knelt in her impassioned prayer, there was again something familiar, a kind of wild wonder that she had had the power to call up long ago. But she merely reminded him of Thea; this was not the girl herself.