 Part 4 Section 8 of the Song of the Lark. On the first day of September, Fred Attenberg and Thea Kronborg left Flagstaff by the eastbound Express. As the bright morning advanced, they sat alone on the rear platform of the observation car, watching the yellow miles unfold and disappear. With complete content, they saw the brilliant empty country flash by. They were tired of the desert and the dead races of a world without change or ideas. Fred said he was glad to sit back and let the Santa Fe do the work for a while. And where are we going anyhow, he added. To Chicago, I suppose. Where else would we be going? Thea hunted for a handkerchief in her handbag. I wasn't sure, so I had the trunks checked to Albuquerque. We can recheck there to Chicago if you like. Why Chicago? You'll never go back to Bowers. Why wouldn't this be a good time to make a run for it? We could take the southern branch at Albuquerque, down to El Paso, and then over into Mexico. We are exceptionally free, nobody waiting for us anywhere. Thea sighted alone the steel rails that quivered in the light behind them. I don't see why I couldn't marry you in Chicago, as well as any place. She brought out with some embarrassment. Fred took the handbag out of her nervous clasp and swung it about on his finger. You've no particular love for that spot, have you? Besides, as I've told you, my family would make a roll. They are an excitable lot. They discuss and argue everlastingly. The only way I can ever put anything through is to go ahead and convince them afterward. Yes, I understand. I don't mind that. I don't want to marry your family. I'm sure you wouldn't want to marry mine, but I don't see why we have to go so far. When we get to Winslow, you look about the freight yards, and you'll probably see several yellow cards with my name on them. That's why, my dear. When your visiting card is on every beer bottle, you can't do things quietly. Things get into the papers. As he watched her troubled expression, he grew anxious. He leaned forward on his camp chair and kept twirling the handbag between his knees. Here's the suggestion, Thea, he said presently. Dismiss it if you don't like it. Suppose we go down to Mexico on the chance. If never seen anything like Mexico City, you will be a lock for you anyhow. If you change your mind and don't want to marry me, you can go back to Chicago and I'll take a steamer from Vera Cruz and go up to New York. When I get to Chicago, you'll be at work, and nobody will ever be the wiser. No reason why we shouldn't both travel in Mexico is there. You'll be traveling alone. I'll merely tell you the right places to stop and come to take you driving. I won't put any pressure on you, have I ever? He swung the bag toward her and looked up under her hat. No, you haven't, she murmured. She was thinking that her own position might be less difficult if he had used what he called pressure. He clearly wished her to take the responsibility. You have your own future in the back of your mind all the time, Fred began, and I have it in mind. I'm not going to try to get you off as I might another girl. If you wanted to quit me, I couldn't hold you no matter how many times you had married me. I don't want to over persuade you, but I'd like mighty well to get you down to that jolly old city where everything would please you and give myself a chance. Listen, if you thought you could have a better time with me than without me, I'd try to grab you before you change your mind. You are not a sentimental person. Thea drew her veil down over her face. I think I am, a little, about you. She said quietly, Fred's irony somehow hurt her. What's at the bottom of your mind, Thea? He asked hurriedly. I can't tell. Why do you consider it at all if you are not sure? Why are you here with me now? Her face was half averted. He was thinking that it looked older and more firm, almost hard, under a veil. Isn't it possible to do things without having any very clear reason? She asked slowly. I have no playing in the back of my mind. Now that I'm with you, I want to be with you, that's all. I can't settle down to being alone again. I'm here today because I want to be with you today, she paused. One thing, though, if I gave you my word, I'd keep it. And you could hold me, though you don't seem to think so. Maybe I'm not sentimental, but I'm not very light, either. If I went off with you like this, it wouldn't be to amuse myself. Attenberg's eyes fell. His lips worked nervously for a moment. Do you mean that you really care for me, fear-chrome-work? He asked, unsteadily. I guess so. It's like anything else. It takes hold of you and you've got to go through with it, even if you are afraid. I was afraid to leave Moonstone and afraid to leave Hassani, but I had to go through with it. And are you afraid now? I asked slowly. Yes, more than I've ever been, but I don't think I could go back. The past closes up behind one, somehow. One would rather have a new kind of misery. The old kind seems like death or unconsciousness. You can't force your life back into that mode again. No, one can't go back. She rose and stood by the back grating of the platform, her hand on the brass rail. Fred went to her side. She pushed up her veil and turned her most glowing face to him. Her eyes were wet and there were tears on her lashes. But she was smiling the rare wholehearted smile he had seen once or twice before. He looked at her shining eyes, her parted lips, her chin a little lifted. It was as if they were colored by a sunrise he could not see. He put his hand over hers and clasped it with a strength she felt. Her eyelashes trembled, her mouth softened, but her eyes were still brilliant. Will you always be like you were down there if I go with you? She asked under her breath. His fingers tightened over hers. By God I will, he muttered. That's the only promise I'll ask you for. Now go away for a while and let me think about it. Come back at lunchtime and I'll tell you. Would that do? Anything will do, Thea. If you'll only let me keep an eye on you. The rest of the world doesn't interest me much. You've got me in deep. Fred dropped her hand and turned away. As he glanced back from the front end of the observation car, he saw that she was still standing there and anyone would have known that she was rooting over something. The earnestness of her head and shoulders had a certain nobility. He stood looking at her for a moment. When he reached the forward smoking car, Fred took a seat at the end where he could shut the other passengers from his sight. He put on his traveling cap and sat down warily, keeping his head near the window. In any case, I shall help her more than I shall hurt her, he kept saying to himself. He admitted that this was not the only motive which impelled him, but it was one of them. I'll make it my business in life to get her own. There's nothing else I care about so much as seeing her have her chance. She hasn't touched her real force yet. She isn't even aware of it. Lord, don't I know something about them? There isn't one of them that has such a depth to draw from. She'll be one of the great artists of our time. Playing accompaniments for that cheese-faced sneak. I'll get her off to Germany this winter or take her. She hasn't got any time to waste now. I'll make it up to her all right. Attenberg certainly meant to make it up to her in so far as he could. His feeling was as generous as strong human feelings are likely to be. The only trouble was that he was married already and had been since he was twenty. His older friends in Chicago, people who had been friends of his family, knew of the unfortunate state of his personal affairs, but there were people whom in a natural course of things Fiat Kronborg would scarcely meet. Mrs. Frederick Attenberg lived in California at Santa Barbara where her health was supposed to be better than elsewhere and her husband lived in Chicago. He visited his wife every winter to reinforce her position and his devoted mother, although her hatred for a daughter-in-law was scarcely approachable in words, went to Santa Barbara every year to make things look better and to relieve her son. When Frederick Attenberg was beginning his junior year at Harvard, he got a letter from Dick Breesbane, a Kansas City boy he knew, telling him that his fiance, Ms. Edith Beers, was going to New York to buy her trousel. She would be at the Holland House with her aunt and a girl from Kansas City who was to be a bridesmaid for two weeks or more. If Attenberg happened to be going down to New York, would he call upon Ms. Beers and show her a good time? Fred did happen to be going to New York. He was going down from New Haven after the Thanksgiving game. He called on Ms. Beers and found her as he that night telegraphed Breesbane, a ripping beauty, no mistake. He took her and her aunt and her uninteresting friend to the theater and to the opera, and he asked them to lunch with him at the Waldorf. He took no little pains in arranging the luncheon with a head waiter. Ms. Beers was the sort of girl with whom a young man liked to seem experienced. She was dark and slender and fiery. She was witty and slangy, said daring things and carried them off with nonchalance. A childish extravagance and contempt for all the serious facts of life could be charged to her father's generosity and his lone packing-house purse. Freaks that would have been vulgar and ostentatious in a more simple-minded girl in Ms. Beers seemed whimsical and picturesque. She darted about in magnificent furs and pumps and clothes-cleaning gowns, though that was the day of full skirts. Her hats were large and floppy. When she wriggled out of her mosquing coat at luncheon, she looked like a slim black weasel. Her satin dress was a mere sheath, so conspicuous by its severity and scantiness that everyone in the dining room stared. She ate nothing but alligator-peer salad and hot-house grapes. Drank a little champagne and took cognac in her coffee. She ridiculed in the raciest slam the singers they had heard at the opera the night before, and when her aunt pretended to reprove her, she murmured indifferently. What's the matter with you, old sport? She rattled on with a subdued loquaciousness, always keeping her voice low and monotonous, always looking out of the corner of her eye and speaking, as it were, in a size, out of the corner of her mouth. She was scornful of everything which became her eyebrows. Her face was mobile and discontented, her eyes quick and black. There was a sort of smothering fire about her young Attenberg thought. She entertained him prodigiously. After luncheon, Miss Beers said she was going uptown to be fitted, and that she would go alone because her aunt made her nervous. When Fred held her coat for her, she murmured, thank you, Alfonso, as if she were addressing the waiter. As she stepped into a handsome, with a long stretch of thin silk stocking, she said negligently over her fur collar, better let me take you alone and drop you somewhere. He sprang in after her, and she told the driver to go to the park. It was a bright winter day and bitterly cold. Miss Beers asked Fred to tell her about the game at New Haven, and when he did so, paid no attention to what he said. She sank back into the handsome and held her muff before her face, lowering it occasionally to utter the conic remarks about the people in the carriage they passed, interrupting Fred's narrative in a disconcerting manner. As they entered the park, he happened to glance under her white black hat and her black eyes and hair. The muff hit everything else and discovered that she was crying. To his solicitous inquiry, she replied that it was enough to make you down to go and try on dresses to marry a man you weren't keen about. Further explanations followed. She had thought she was perfectly cracked about Breezebane until she met Fred at the Holland House three days ago. Then she knew she would scratch Breezebane's eyes out if she married him. What was she going to do? Fred told the driver to keep going. What did she want to do? Well, she didn't know. One had to marry somebody after all the machinery had been put in motion. Perhaps she might as well scratch Breezebane as anybody else. For scratch she would if she didn't get what she wanted. Of course Fred agreed. One had to marry somebody. And certainly this girl beat anything he had ever been up against before. Again he told the driver to go ahead. Did she mean that she would think of marrying him by any chance? Of course she did, Alfonso. Hadn't he seen that all over her face three days ago? If he hadn't, he was a snowball. By this time Fred was beginning to feel sorry for the driver. Miss Beards, however, was compassionless. After a few more turns Fred suggested tea at a casino. He was very cold himself and remembering the shining silk hose and pumps. He wondered that the girl was not frozen. As they got out of the handsome he slipped the driver a bill and told him to have something hot while he waited. At the tea table in a snug glass enclosure with the steam sputtering in the pipes beside them and a brilliant winter sunset without, they developed their plan. Miss Beards had with her plenty of money destined for tradesmen, which she was quite willing to divert into other channels. The first excitement of buying a trowel soul had warned off anyway. It was very much like any other shopping. Fred had his allowance and a few hundred he had warned on the game. She would meet him tomorrow morning at the Jersey Ferry. They could take one of the westbound Pennsylvania trains and go anywhere someplace where the laws weren't too fussy. Fred had not even thought about the laws. It would be all right with her father. He knew Fred's family. Now that they were engaged she thought she would like to drive a little more. They were jerked about in the cab for another hour through the deserted park. Miss Beards having removed her hat reclined upon Fred's shoulder. The next morning they left Jersey City by the latest fast train out. They had some misadventures across several states before they found a justice obliging enough to marry two persons whose names automatically instigated inquiry. The Brides' family were rather pleased with her originality. Besides, any one of the Attenberg boys was clearly a better match than Jan Britsbein. With Otto Attenberg, however, the affair went down hard and to his wife, the once-proud Katarina Fürst, such a disappointment was almost unbearable. Her sons had always been clay in her hands and now the Galipte Zoom had escaped her. Beards the Packer gave his daughter a house in St. Louis and Fred went into his father's business. At the end of the year he was mutely appealing to his mother for sympathy. At the end of two he was drinking and in open rebellion. He had learned to detest his wife. Her wastefulness and cruelty revolted him. The ignorance and the fatuous conceit which laid behind her grimacing mask of sland and ridicule humiliated him so deeply that he became absolutely reckless. Her grace was only an uneasy wriggle. Her audacity was the result of insolence and envy and her wit was restless spite. As her personal mannerisms grew more and more odious to him he began to dull his perceptions with champagne. He headed for tea, he drank it with dinner and during the evening he took enough to ensure that he would be well insulated when he got home. This behavior spread alarm among his friends. It was scandalous and it did not occur among brewers. He was violating the noblest oblige of his guilt. His father and his father's partners looked alarmed. When Fred's mother went to him and with clasped hands and treated an explanation he told her that the only trouble was that he couldn't hold enough wine to make life indurable. So he was going to get out from under and enlist in the Navy. He didn't want anything but a shirt on his back and clean salt air. His mother could look out. He was going to make a scandal. Mrs. Ottenberg went to Kansas City to see Mr. Beers and had the satisfaction of telling him that he had brought up his daughter like a savage. Eine ungebildete. All the Ottenbergs and all the Beers and many of their friends were drawn into the quarrel. It was to public opinion, however, and not to his mother's activities that Fred owed his partial escape from bondage. The cosmopolitan brewing world of St. Louis had conservative standards. The Ottenbergs' friends were not predisposed in favor of the plunging Kansas City set and they disliked young Fred's wife from the day that she was brought among them. They found her ignorant and ill-bred and insufferably impertinent. When they became aware of how matters were going between her and Fred, they omitted no opportunity to snub her. Young Fred had always been popular and St. Louis people took up his cause with warmth. Even the younger man among whom Mrs. Fred tried to draft a following at first avoided and then ignored her. Her defeat was so conspicuous. Her life became such a desert that she alas consented to accept the house in Santa Barbara which Mrs. Otto Ottenberg had long owned and cherished. This villa with its luxuriant gardens was the price of Fred's furlough. His mother was only too glad to offer it in his behalf. As soon as his wife was established in California, Fred was transferred from St. Louis to Chicago. The divorce was the one thing Edith would never, never give him. She told him so and she told his family so and her father stood behind her. She would enter into no arrangement that might eventually lead to divorce. She had insulted her husband before guests and servants, had scratched his face, thrown hand mirrors and hairbrushes and nail scissors at him often enough. But she knew that Fred was hardly the fellow who would go into court and offer that sort of evidence. In her behavior with other men, she was discreet. After Fred went to Chicago, his mother visited him often and dropped a word to her old friends there who were already kindly disposed toward the young men. They gossiped a little as was compatible with the interests they felt, undertook to make life agreeable for Fred and told his story only where they felt it would do good. To girls who seemed to find the young broor attractive, so far he had behaved well and had kept out of entanglements. Since he was transferred to Chicago, Fred had been abroad several times and had fallen more and more into the weight of going about among young artists, people with whom personal relations were incidental. With women and even girls who had careers to follow, a young man might have pleasant friendships without being regarded as a prospective suitor or lover. Among artists, his position was not irregular because with them his marriage bonus was not an issue. His tastes, his enthusiasm and his agreeable personality made him welcome. With Theo Kronborg, he had allowed himself more liberty than he usually did in his friendships or gallantries with young artists because she seemed to him distinctly not the marrying kind. She impressed him as equipped to be an artist and to be nothing else, already directed, concentrated, formed as to mental habit. He was generous and sympathetic and she was lonely and needed friendship, needed cheerfulness. She had not much power of reaching out toward useful people or useful experiences, did not see opportunities. She had no tact about going after good positions or enlisting the interests of inferential persons. She antagonized people rather than conciliated them. He discovered at once that she had a merry side, a robust humor that was deep and hearty, like her laugh, but it slapped most of the time under her own doubts and the dullness of her life. She had not what is called a sense of humor, that is she had no intellectual humor, no power to enjoy the absurdities of people, no relish of their pretentiousness and inconsistencies which only depressed her. By her joviality, Fred felt was an asset and ought to be developed. He discovered that she was more receptive and more effective under a pleasant stimulus than she was under the gray grind which she considered her salvation. She was still methodous enough to believe that if a thing were hard and irksome, it must be good for her. And yet whatever she did well was spontaneous. Under the least glow of excitement, as at Mrs. Nathan Mayers, he had seen the apprehensive frowning drudge of Bowers' studio flash into a resourceful and consciously beautiful woman. His interest in Thea was serious, almost from the first, and so sincere that he felt no distress of himself. He believed that he knew a great deal more about her possibilities than Bowers knew and he liked to think that he had given her a stronger hold on life. She had never seen herself or known herself as she did at Mrs. Nathan Mayers' musical evenings. She had been a different girl ever since. He had not anticipated that she would grow more fond of him than his immediate usefulness warranted. He thought he knew the ways of artists and as he said, she must have been added from her cradle. He had imagined, perhaps, but never really believed that he would find her waiting for him sometime as he found her waiting on the day he reached the built married range. Once he found her so well, he did not pretend to be anything more or less than a reasonably well-intentioned young man. A lovesick girl or a flirtatious woman, he could have handled easily enough, but a personality like that unconsciously revealing itself for the first time under the exaltation of a personal feeling, what could one do but watch it. As he used to say to himself in reckless moments back there in the canyon, you can't put out a sunrise. He had to watch it and then he had to share it. Besides, was he really going to do her any harm? The Lord knew he would marry her if he could. Marriage would be an incident, not an end with her. He was short of that. If it were not he, it would be someone else, someone who would be a weight about her neck, probably, who would hold her back and be her down and divert her from the first plunge for which he felt she was gathering all her energies. He meant to help her and he could not think of another man who would. He went over his unmarried friends, east and west, and he could not think of one who would know what she was driving at or care. The clever ones were selfish, the kindly ones were stupid. Damn it, if she's going to fall in love with somebody, it had better be me than any of the others of the sort she'd find. Get her tied up with some conceited ass who'd try to make her over, train her like a puppy. Give one of them a big nature like that and he'll be horrified. He wouldn't show his face in the clubs until he'd gone after her and calmed her down to conform to some full ideas in his own head, put there by some other woman, too, his first sweetheart or his grandmother or a maiden aunt. At least I understand her. I know what she needs and where she's bound and I mean to see that she has a fighting chance. His own conduct looked crooked, he admitted, but he asked himself whether between men and women all ways were not more or less crooked. He believed those which are called straight were the most dangerous of all. They seemed to him for the most part to lie between windowless stone walls and their rectitude had been achieved at the expense of light and air. In their unquestioned regularity lurked every sort of human cruelty and meanness and every kind of humiliation and suffering. He would rather have any woman he cared for wounded than crushed. He would deceive her not once, he told himself fiercely, but a hundred times to keep her free. When Fred went back to the observation card at one o'clock, after the luncheon call, it was empty and he found Thea alone on the platform. She put out her hand and met his eyes. It's as I said, things have closed behind me. I can't go back, so I'm going on to Mexico. She lifted her face with an eager, questioning smile. Fred met it with a sinking heart. Had he really hoped she would give him another answer? He would have given pretty much anything, but there, that did no good. He could give only what he had. Things were never complete in this world. You had to snatch at them as they came or go without. Nobody could look into her face and draw back. Nobody who had any courage. She had courage enough for anything. Look at her mouth and chin and eyes. Where did it come from, that light? How could a face, a familiar face, become so the picture of hope, be painted with the very colors of youth's exaltation? She was right. She was not one of those who draw back. Some people get on by avoiding dangers. Others by riding through them. They stood by the railing, looking back at the sand levels, both feeling that the train was steaming ahead very fast. Fred's mind was a confusion of images and ideas. Only two things were clear to him. The force of her determination and the belief that handicapped as he was, he could do better by her than another man would do. He knew he would always remember her, standing there with that expectant, forward-looking smile, enough to turn the future into summer. End of part four, section eight, recording by Shi Pingning. Part five of The Song of the Lark. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dionne Jines. The Song of the Lark by Willa, Cybert, Cather. Part five, sections one and two. Part five, Dr. Archie's venture. One, Dr. Howard Archie had come down to Denver for a meeting of the stockholders in the San Felipe Silver Mine. It was not absolutely necessary for him to come, but he had no very pressing cases at home. Winter was closing down in Moonstone and he dreaded the dullness of it. On the 10th day of January, therefore, he was registered at the Brown Palace Hotel. On the morning of the 11th, he came down to breakfast to find the streets white and the air thick with snow. A wild Northwestern was blowing down from the mountains, one of those beautiful storms that wrap Denver in dry, furry snow and make the city a lodestone to thousands of men in the mountains and on the plains. The break men out on their boxcars, the miners up in their diggings, the lonely homesteaders in the sandhills of Yucca and Kit Carson counties begin to think of Denver, muffled in snow, full of food and drink and good cheer and to yearn for her with that admiration, which makes her more than other American cities an object of sentiment. Howard Archie was glad he had got in before the storm came. He felt as cheerful as if he had received a legacy that morning and he greeted the clerk with even greater friendliness than usual when he stopped at the desk for his mail. In the dining room, he found several old friends seated here and there before substantial breakfast. Cattlemen and mining engineers from odd corners of the state, all looking fresh and well pleased with themselves. He had a word with one and another before he sat down at a little table by a window where the Austrian head waiter stood attentively behind a chair. After his breakfast was put before him, the doctor began to run over his letters. There was one directed in the Kronbergs handwriting forwarded from Moonstone. He saw with astonishment as he put another lump of sugar into his cup that this letter bore a New York postmark. He had known that the was in Mexico, traveling with some Chicago people, but New York to a Denver man seems much further away than Mexico city. He put the letter behind his plate upright against the stem of his water goblet and looked at it thoughtfully while he drank his second cup of coffee. He had been a little anxious about the she had not written to him for a long while. As he never got good coffee at home, the doctor always drank three cups for breakfast when he was in Denver. Oscar knew just when to bring him a second pot, fresh and smoking. And more cream, Oscar, please. You know I like lots of cream, the doctor murmured, as he opened the square envelope, marked in the upper right hand corner, ever at house, Union Square. The text of the letter was as follows, Dear Dr. Archie, I have not written to you for a long time, but it has not been unintentional. I could not write you frankly, and so I could not write at all. I can be frank with you now, but not by letter. It is a good deal to ask, but I wonder if you could come to New York to help me out. I have gotten into difficulties and I need your advice. I need your friendship. I am afraid I must even ask you to lend me money, if you can, without serious inconvenience. I have to go to Germany to study and it can't be put off any longer. My voice is ready. Needless to say, I don't want any word of this to reach my family. They are the last people I would turn to, though I love my mother dearly. If you can come, please telegraph me at this hotel. Don't despair of me. I'll make it up to you yet. I'm a very, very old friend, the Cronberg. This in a bold, jagged handwriting with a gothic turn to the letters. Something between a highly sophisticated hand and a very unsophisticated one. Not in the least smooth or flowing. The doctor bit off the end of his cigar nervously and read the letter through again, fumbling distractedly in his pockets for matches. While the waiter kept trying to call his attention to the box he had just placed before him. The last Oscar came out, as if the idea had just struck him. Matches, sir? Yes, thank you. The doctor slipped a coin into his palm and rose crumpling these letter in his hand and thrusting the others into his pocket unopened. He went back to the desk in the lobby and back into the clerk. Upon whose kindness he threw himself apologetically. Hurry, I've got to pull out unexpectedly. Call up the Burlington, will you, and ask them to route me to New York the quickest way and to let us know. Ask for the hour I'll get in, I have the wire. Certainly Dr. Archie have it for you in a minute. The young man's hallowed, clean, scraped face was all sympathetic interest as he reached for the telephone. Dr. Archie put out his hand and stopped him. Wait a minute, tell me first, is Captain Harris down yet? No, sir, the captain hasn't come down yet this morning. I'll wait here for him. If I don't happen to catch him, now him and get me. Thank you, Harry. The doctor spoke gratefully and turned away. He began to paste the lobby, his hands behind him, watching the bronze elevator doors like a hawk. At last Captain Harris issued from one of them, tall and imposing, wearing a Stetson and fierce mustaches, a fur coat on his arm, a solid tear glittering upon his little finger, and another in the black satin ascot. He was one of the grand old fluffers of those good old days. As gullible as a schoolboy, he had managed with his sharp eye and knowing air and twisted blonde mustaches to pass himself off for an astute financier. And the Denver papers respectfully referred to him as the Rothchild of Cripple Creek. Dr. Archie stopped the captain on his way to breakfast. Must see you a minute, Captain. Can't wait. I want to sell you some shares in the San Felipe. Got to raise money. The captain grandly bestowed his hat upon an eager porter who had already lifted his fur coat tenderly from his arm and stood nursing it. In removing his hat, the captain exposed a bald, flushed dome, thatched about the ears with yellowish gray hair. Bad time to sell, doctor. You want to hold on to San Felipe and buy more. What have you got to raise? Oh, not a great sum, five or 6,000. I've been buying up close and have run short. I see, I see. Well, doctor, you'll have to let me get through that door. I was out last night and I'm going to get my bacon if you lose your mind. He clapped Archie on the shoulder and pushed him along in front of him. Come ahead with me and we'll talk business. Dr. Archie attended the captain and waited while he gave his order, taking the seat the old promoter indicated. Now, sir, the captain turned to him. You don't want to sell anything. You must be under the impression that I'm one of these damned New England sharks that get their pound of flesh off the widow and orphan. If you're a little short, sign a note and I'll write a check. That's the way gentlemen do business. If you want to put up some San Felipe as collateral, let her go. But I shan't touch a share of it. Hens and ink, please, Oscar. He lifted a large forefinger to the Austrian. The captain took out his checkbook and a book of blank notes and adjusted his nose nippers. He wrote a few words in one book and Archie wrote a few in the other. Then they each tore across perforations and exchanged slips of paper. That's the way saves office rent. The captain commented with satisfaction, returning the books to his pocket. And now Archie, where are you off to? Got to go east tonight. A deal waiting for me in New York. Dr. Archie rose. The captain's face brightened as he saw Oscar approaching with a tray and he began tucking the corner of his napkin inside his collar over his ascot. Don't let them unload anything on you back there, doctor. He said, genially. And don't let them relieve you of anything either. Don't let them get any crippled stuff off you. We can manage our own silver out here and we're going to take it out by the ton, sir. The doctor left the dining room and after another consultation with the clerk he wrote his first telegram to the Miss B. Kronberg ever at house New York. We'll call at your hotel 11 o'clock Friday morning. Glad to come. Thank you, Archie. He stood and heard the message actually clicked off on the wire with the feeling that she was hearing the click at the other end. Then he sat down in the lobby and wrote a note to his wife and one to the other doctor in Moonstone. When he at last issued out into the storm it was with a feeling of elation rather than of anxiety. Whatever was wrong, he could make it right. Her letter had practically said so. He tramped about the snowy streets from the bank to the union station where he shoved his money under the grading of the ticket window as if he could not get rid of it fast enough. He had never been in New York, never been farther east than Buffalo. That's rather a shame, he reflected boyishly as he put the long tickets in his pocket for a man nearly 40 years old. However, he thought as he walked up toward the club he was on the whole glad that his first trip had a human interest, that he was going for something and because he was wanted. He loved holidays. He felt as if he were going to Germany himself, where he went over it with the snow blowing in his face. But that sort of thing is more interesting than mines and making your daily bread. It's worth paying out to be in on it for a fellow like me. And when it's the, oh, I back her. He laughed aloud as he burst in at the door of the athletic club, powdered with snow. Archie sat down before the New York papers and ran over the advertisements of hotels, but he was too restless to read. Probably he had better get a new overcoat and he was not sure about the shape of his collars. I don't want to look different to her from everybody else there, he mused. I guess I'll go down and have Van look me over. He'll put me right. So he plunged out into the snow again and started for his tailors. When he passed a florist shop, he stopped and looked in the window, smiling. How naturally pleasant things were called one another. At the tailors, he kept whistling, flow gently, sweet afton. Well, Van Duzan advised him until that resourceful tailor and haberdasher exclaimed, you must have a date back there, doctor. He behaved like a bridegroom and made him remember that he wasn't one. Before he let him go, Van put his finger on the Masonic pan in his client's lapel. Mustn't wear that doctor, very bad for him back there. Fred Ottenberg, smartly dressed for the afternoon with a long black coat and gaiters, was sitting in the dusty parlour of the Everett house. His manner was not in accord with his personal freshness, the good line of his clothes and the shining smoothness of his hair. His attitude was one of deep dejection and his face, though it had the cool, unimpeachable fairness possible only to a very blonde young man, was by no means happy. A page shuffled into the room and looked about. When he made out the dark figure in a shadowy corner, tracing over the carpet pattern with a cane, he droned. The lady says, you can come up, sir. Fred picked up his hat and gloves and followed the creature, who seemed an aged boy in uniform through dark corridors that smelled of old carpets. The page knocked at the door of the sitting room and then wandered away. Thee came to the door with a telegram in her hand. She asked Ottenberg to come in and pointed to one of the clumsy, sullen-looking chairs that were as thick as they were high. The room was brown with time, dark in spite of two windows that opened on Union Square with dull curtains and carpet and heavy, respectable-looking furniture and somber colors. The place was saved from utter dismalness by a cold fire under the black marble mantelpiece, brilliantly reflected in a long mirror that hung between the two windows. This was the first time Fred had seen the room and he took it in quickly as he put down his hat and gloves. Thee seated herself at the walnut writing desk, still holding a slip of yellow paper. Dr. Archie is coming, she said. He will be here Friday morning. Well, that's good at any rate, her visitor replied with a determined effort at surefulness. Then, turning to the fire, he added blankly, if you want him. Of course I want him. I would never have asked such a thing of him if I hadn't wanted him a great deal. It's a very expensive trip. Thee spoke severely. Then she went on in a milder tone. He doesn't say anything about the money, but I think his coming means that he can let me have it. Fred was standing before the mantel, rubbing his hands together nervously. Probably, you are still determined to call on him. He sat down tentatively in the chair Thee had indicated, I don't see why you won't borrow from me and let him sign with you, for instance. That would constitute a perfectly regular business transaction. I could bring suit against either of you for my money. Thee turned toward him from the desk. We won't take that up again, Fred. I should have a different feeling about it if I went on your money. In a way, I shall feel freer on Dr. Archie's. And in another way, I shall feel more bound. I shall try even harder. She paused. He is almost like my father. She added, irrelevantly. Still, he isn't, you know, Fred persisted. It wouldn't be anything new. I've loaned money to students before and got it back too. Yes, I know you're generous. Be hurried over it. But this will be the best way. He will be here on Friday, did I tell you? I think you mentioned it. That's rather soon. May I smoke? He took out a small cigarette case. I suppose you'll be off next week. He asked as he struck a match. Just as soon as I can, she replied with a restless movement of her arms as if her dark blue dress were too tight for her. It seems as if I'd been here forever. And yet, the young man mused. We got in only four days ago. Facts don't really count for much, do they? It's all in the way people feel, even in the little things. Thee went, but she did not answer him. She put the telegram back in its envelope and placed it carefully in one of the pigeonholes of the desk. I suppose, Fred brought out with effort, that your friend is in your confidence. He always has been. I shall have to tell him about myself. I wish I could without dragging you in. Fred shook himself. Don't bother about where you dragged me, please, he put in flushing. I don't give. He subsided suddenly. I'm afraid, Thee went on gravely, that he won't understand. He'll be hard on you. Fred studied the white ash of his cigarette before he put it off. You mean he'll see me as even worse than I am? Yes, I suppose I shall look very low to him. A fifth rate scoundrel. But that only matters insofar as it hurts his feelings. Thee side will both look pretty low, and after all, we must really be just about as we shall look to him. And after all, we must really be just about as we shall look to him. Atenberg started up and threw his cigarette into the grate. That, I deny, have you ever been really frank with this preceptor of your childhood, even when you were a child? Think a minute, have you? Of course not. From your cradle, as I once told you, you've been doing it on the side, living your own life, admitting to yourself things that would horrify him. You've always deceived him to the extent of letting him think you different from what you are. He couldn't understand them. He can't understand now. So why not spare yourself and him? She shook her head. Of course I've had my own thoughts. Maybe he has had his too, but I've never done anything before that he would much mine. I must put myself right with him as right as I can to begin over. He'll make allowances for me. He always has, but I'm afraid he won't for you. Leave that to him and me. I take it you want me to see him? Fred sat down again and began absently to trace the carpet pattern with his cane. At the worst, he spoke wonderingly. I thought you'd perhaps let me go in on the business end of it and invest along with you. You'd put in your talent and ambition and hard work and I'd put in the money and, well, nobody's good wishes are to be scorned, not even mine. Then when the thing panned out big, we could share together. Your doctor friend hasn't cared half as much about your future as I have. He's cared a good deal. He doesn't know as much about such things as you do. Of course, you've been a great deal more helped to me than anyone else ever has, he said quietly. The black clock on the mantle began to strike. She listened to the five strokes and then said, I'd have liked your helping me eight months ago, but now you'd simply be keeping me. You weren't ready for it eight months ago. Fred leaned back at last in his chair. You simply weren't ready for it. You were too tired. You were too timid. Your whole tone was too low. You couldn't rise from a chair like that. She had started up apprehensively and gone toward the window. You were fumbling and awkward. Since then, you've come into your own personality. You were always locking horns with it before. You were a sullen little drudge eight months ago, afraid of being caught at either looking or moving like yourself. Nobody could tell anything about you. A voice is not an instrument that's found ready-made. A voice is a personality. It can be as big as a circus and as common as dirt. There's good money in that kind too, but I don't happen to be interested in them. Nobody could tell much about what you might be able to do last winter. I divined more than anybody else. Yes, I know you did. They walked over to the old fashioned mantle and held her hands down to the glow of the fire. I owe so much to you and that's what makes things hard. That's why I have to get away from you all together. I depend on you for so many things. Oh, I did even last winter in Chicago. She knelt down by the grate and held her hands closer to the coals. And one thing leads to another. Atenberg watched her as she bent toward the fire. His glance brightened a little. Anyhow, you couldn't look as you do now before you knew me. You were clumsy. And whatever you do now, you do splendidly. And you can't cry enough to spoil your face for more than 10 minutes. It comes right back in spite of you. It's only since you've known me that you've let yourself be beautiful. Without rising, she turned her face away. Fred went on impetuously. Oh, you can turn it away from me, Phee. You can take it away from me. All the same, his spurt died and he fell back. How can you turn on me so after all, you sighed. I haven't, but when you arranged with yourself to take me in like that, you couldn't have been thinking very kindly of me. I can't understand how you carried it through when I was so easy and all the circumstances were so easy. Her crouching position by the fire became threatening. Fred got up and Phee also rose. No, he said, I can't make you see that now. Sometime later, perhaps you will understand better. For one thing, I honestly could not imagine that words, names meant so much to you. Fred was talking with the desperation of a man who has put himself in the wrong and who yet feels that there was an idea of truth in his conduct. Suppose that you had married your breakman and lived with him year after year, caring for him even less than you do for your doctor or for her or for Harasani. I suppose you would have felt quite all right about it because that relation has a name in good standing. To me, that seems sickening. He took a rapid turn about the room and then as Phee remained standing, he rolled one of the elephant teen chairs up to the hearth for her. Sit down and listen to me for a moment, Phee. He began pacing from the hearth rug to the window and back again while she sat down compliantly. Don't you know most of the people in the world are not individuals at all? They never have an individual idea or experience. A lot of girls go to boarding school together, come out the same season, dance at the same parties, are married off in groups, have their babies at about the same time, send their children to school together, and so the human crop renews itself. Such women know as much about the reality of the forms they go through as they know about the wars they learn the dates of. They get their most personal experiences out of novels and plays. Everything is second hand with them. Why, you couldn't live like that. Phee sat looking toward the mantle, her eyes half closed, her chin level, her head set as if she were enduring something. Her hands, very white, lay passive on her dark gown. From the corner window, Fred looked at them and at her. He shook his head and flashed an angry tormented look out into the blue twilight over the square, through which muffled cries and calls and the clang of car bells came up from the street. He turned again and began to paste the floor, his hands in his pockets. Safe what you will, Phee Kromberg. You are not that sort of person. You will never sit alone with a pacifier and a novel. You won't subsist on what the old ladies have put into the bottle for you. You will always break through into the realities. That was the first thing Harsani found out about you, that you couldn't be kept on the outside. If you'd lived in Moonstone all your life and got on with a discreet breakman, you'd have had just the same nature. Your children would have been the realities then probably. If they'd been commonplace, you'd have killed them with driving. You'd have managed some way to live 20 times as much as the people around you. Fred paused. He sawed along the shadowy ceiling and heavy moldings for words. When he began again, his voice was lower and at first he spoke with less conviction. Though again it grew on him. Now I knew all this. Oh, knew it better than I can ever make you understand. You've been running a handicap. You've had no time to lose. I wanted you to have what you need and to get on fast. Get through with me, if need be. I counted on that. You've no time to sit around and analyze your conduct or your feelings. Other women give their whole lives to it. They've nothing else to do. Helping a man to get his divorce is a career for them. Just the sort of intellectual exercise they like. Fred dived fiercely into his pockets as if he could rip them out and scatter their contents to the winds. Stopping before her, he took a deep breath and went on again, this turn slowly. All that sort of thing is foreign to you. You'd be nowhere at it. You haven't that kind of mind. The grammatical niceties of conduct are dark to you. You're simple and poetic. Fred's voice seemed to be wandering about in the thickening dusk. You won't play much. You won't perhaps love many times, he paused. And you did love me, you know. Your railroad friend would have understood me. I could have thrown you back. The reverse was there. It stared me in the face, but I couldn't pull it. I let you drive ahead. He threw out his hands. What they noticed oddly enough was the flash of the firelight on his cufflink. He turned again. And you'll always drive ahead, he muttered. It's your way. There was a long silence. Fred had dropped into a chair. He seemed after such an explosion not to have a word left in him. They put her hand to the back of her neck and pressed it as if the muscles there were aching. Well, she said at last, I at least overlook more in you than I do in myself. I am always excusing you to myself. I don't do much else. Then why in heaven's name won't you let me be your friend? You make a scoundrel of me, borrowing money from another man to get out of my clutches. If I borrow from him, it's to study. Anything I took from you would be different. As I said before, you'd be keeping me. Keeping? I like your language. It's pure, Moonstone, be like your point of view. I wonder how long you'll be a Methodist. He turned away bitterly. Well, I've never said I wasn't Moonstone, have I? I am, and that's why I want Dr. Archie. I can't see anything so funny about Moonstone, you know. She pushed her chair back a little from the heart and clasped her hands over her knee, still looking thoughtfully into the red coals. We always come back to the same thing, Fred. The name, as you call it, makes a difference to me how I feel about myself. You would have acted very differently with a girl of your own kind, and that's why I can't take anything from you now. You've made everything impossible. Being married is one thing, and not being married is the other thing, and that's all there is to it. I can't see how you reasoned with yourself if you took the trouble to reason. You say I was too much alone, and yet what you did was to cut me off more than I ever had been. Now I'm going to try to make good to my friends out there. That's all there is left for me. Make good to your friends, Fred burst out. What one of them cares as I care, or believes as I believe. I've told you I'll never ask a gracious word from you until I can ask it with all the churches and christen them at my back. Be looked up, and when she saw Fred's face, she thought sadly that he too, looked as if things were spoiled for him. If you know me as well as you say you do, Fred, she said slowly, then you are not being honest with yourself. You know that I can't do things halfway. If you kept me at all, you'd keep me. She dropped her head wearily on her head and sat with her forehead resting on her fingers. Fred leaned over her and said just above his breath, then when I get that divorce, you'll take it up with me again. You'll at least let me know, warn me before there is a serious question of anybody else without lifting her head, B answered him, oh, I don't think there will ever be a question of anybody else, not if I can help it. I suppose I've given you every reason to think there will be at once on shipboard, anytime. Ottenberg drew himself up like a shot. Stop it, B, he said sharply. That's one thing you've never done. That's like any common woman. He saw her shoulders lift a little and grow calm. Then he went to the other side of the room and took up his hat and gloves from the sofa. He came back cheerfully. I didn't drop in to bully you this afternoon. I came to coax you to go out for tea with me somewhere. He waited, but she did not look up or lift her head, still sunk on her hand. Her handkerchief had fallen. Fred picked it up and put it on her knee, pressing her fingers over it. Good night, dear and wonderful, he whispered. Wonderful and dear, how can you ever get away from me when I will always follow you through every wall, through every door, wherever you go. He looked down at her bent head and the curve of her neck. That was so sad. He stooped and with his lips just touched her hair where the firelight made it ruddiest. I didn't know I had it in me, B. I thought it was all a fairytale. I don't know myself anymore. 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. She kissed it softly as if she were asleep and he were afraid of waking her. From the door, he turned back, irrelevant way as to your old friend, B. 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. End of part five, sections one and two, recording by Dion John's Salt Lake City, Utah. Part five of the Song of the Lark. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dion John's. The Song of the Lark by Willis Cybert Cather. Part five, sections three and four, three. On Friday afternoon, three Cronberg 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 underfoot. V was flush and animated and she seemed as restless as the sooty sparrows that chirped and sheaped 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 billboy 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 Ottenberg 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. V 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. V spoke excitedly, moving about over the sunny patches on the grimy carpet. I bled 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? These 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 about how good you were to me last winter, getting me engagements and things and how you would help 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. He 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, B, 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, B 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 donkeys. 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. B 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 far away expression in her happened to be. What did you say? She came back. Oh, something old and moonstoney. I have almost forgotten it myself, but I feel better than I thought I ever could again. I can't wait to be off. Oh, Fred, she sprang up. I want to get at it. As she broke out with this, she threw up her head and lifted herself a little on her toes. Fred colored and looked at her fearfully, hesitatingly. Her eyes, which looked out through the window, were bright. They had no memories. No, she did not remember. That momentary elevation had no associations for her. It was unconscious. He looked her up and down and laughed and shook his head. You are just all I want you to be. And that is not for me. Don't worry, you'll get at it. You are at it. My God, have you ever for one moment been at anything else? B did not answer him. And clearly she had not heard him. She was watching something out in the thin light of the false spring and its treacherously soft air. Fred, wait a moment. Are you going to dine with your friend tonight? Yes, he has never been in New York before. He wants to go about. Where shall I tell him to go? Wouldn't it be a better plan since you wish me to meet him for you both to dine with me? It would seem only natural and friendly. You'll have to live up a little to his notion of us. These seem to consider this suggestion favorably. If you wish him to be easy in his mind, Fred went on, that would help. I think myself that we are rather nice together. Put on one of the new dresses you got down there and let him see how lovely you can be. You owe him some pleasure after all the trouble he has taken. They laughed and seemed to find the idea exciting and pleasant. Oh, very well, I'll do my best. Only don't wear a dress coat, please. He hasn't won and he's nervous about it. Fred looked at his watch. Your monument up there is fast. I'll be here with a cab at eight. I'm anxious to meet him. You've given me the strangest idea of his callow innocence and aged indifference. She shook her head. No, he's none of that. He's very good and he won't admit things. I love him for it. Now, as I look back on it, I see that I've always, even when I was little, shielded him. As she laughed, Fred caught the bright spark in her eye that he knew so well and held it for a happy instant. Then he blew her a kiss with his fingertips and fled. Four. At nine o'clock that evening, our three friends were seated in the balcony of a French restaurant, much gayer and more intimate than any that exists in New York today. This old restaurant was built by a lover of pleasure who knew that to dine gaily human beings must have the reassurance of certain limitations of space and of a certain definite style that the walls must be near enough to suggest shelter, the ceiling high enough to give the chandeliers a setting. The place was crowded with the kind of people who dine late and well. And Dr. Archie, as he watched the animated groups in the long room below the balcony, found this much the most festive scene he had ever looked out upon. He said to himself in a jovial mood, somewhat sustained by the cheer of the board, that this evening alone was worth his long journey. He followed attentively the orchestra and scorned at the farther end of the balcony and told Thee it made him feel quite musical to recognize the invitation to the dance or the Blue Danube. And that he could remember just what kind of day it was when he heard her practicing them at home and lingered at the gate to listen. For the first few moments when he was introduced to young Ottenberg in the parlor of the Everett House, the doctor had been awkward and unbending. But Fred, as his father had often observed, was not a good mixer for nothing. He had brought Dr. Archie around during the short cab ride and in an hour they had become old friends. From the moment when the doctor lifted his glass and looking consciously at Thee said, to your success, Fred liked him, he felt his quality understood his courage in some directions and what Thee called his timidity in others. His unspent and miraculously preserved youthfulness, men could never impose upon the doctor, he guessed, but women always could. Fred liked too the doctor's manner with Thee, his bashful admiration and the little hesitancy by which he betrayed his consciousness of the change in her. It was just this change that at present interested Fred more than anything else that he felt was his created value and it was his best chance for any peace of mind. If that were not real, obvious to an old friend like Archie, then he cut a very poor figure indeed. Fred got a good deal too out of their talk about Moonstone. From her questions and the doctor's answers, he was able to form some conception of the little world that was almost the measure of these experience, the one bit of the human drama that she had followed with sympathy and understanding. As the two ran over the list of their friends, the mere sound of a name seemed to recall volumes to each of them to indicate minds of knowledge and observation they had in common. At some names they laughed delightedly, at some indulgently and even tenderly. You too young people must come out to Moonstone when Thee gets back, the doctor said hospitably. Oh, we shall, Fred caught it up. I'm keen to know all these people. It is very tantalizing to hear only their names. Would they interest an outsider very much? Do you think Dr. Archie beading toward him? Isn't it only because we've known them since I was little? The doctor glanced at her deferentially. Fred had noticed that he seemed a little afraid to look at her squarely, perhaps a trifle embarrassed by a mode of dress to which he was unaccustomed. Well, you are practically an outsider yourself, Thee, and now he observed smiling. Oh, I know he went on quickly in response to her gesture of protest. I know you don't change towards your old friends, but you can see us all from a distance now. It's all to your advantage that you can still take your old interest, isn't it, Mr. Ottenberg? That's exactly one of her advantages, Dr. Archie. Nobody can ever take that away from her and none of us who came later ever hoped to rival Moonstone in the impression we make. Her scale of values will always be the Moonstone scale. And with an artist, that is an advantage, Fred nodded. Dr. Archie looked at him seriously. You mean it keeps them from getting affected? Yes, keeps them from getting off the track generally. While the waiter filled the glasses, Fred pointed out to Thee, a big black French baritone who was eating anchovies by their tails at one of the tables below. And the doctor looked about and studied his fellow diners. Do you know, Mr. Ottenberg, he said deeply, these people all look happier to me than our Western people do. Is it simply good manners on their part or do they get more out of life? Fred laughed at Thee above the glass he had just lifted. Some of them are getting a good deal out of it now, doctor. This is the hour when Benchjoy brightens. Thee chuckled and darted him a quick glance. Benchjoy, where did you get that slang? That happens to be very old slang, my dear. Older than Moonstone or the sovereign state of Colorado. Our old friend, Mr. Nathan Meyer, could tell us why it happens to hit you. He leaned forward and touched Thee's wrist. See that fur coat just coming in Thee? It's DeAlbert. He just got back from his Western tour. Fine head, hasn't he? To go back, said Dr. Archie. I insist that people do look happier here. I've noticed it even on the street and especially in the hotels. Fred turned to him cheerfully. New York people live a good deal in the fourth dimension, Dr. Archie. It's that, you notice in their faces. The doctor was interested. The fourth dimension, he repeated slowly. And is that slang too? No, Fred shook his head. That's merely a figure. I mean, that life is not quite so personal here as it is in your part of the world. People are more taken up by hobbies, interests that are less subject to reverses than their personal affairs. If you're interested in Thee's voice, for instance, or in voices in general, that interest is just the same even if your mining stocks go down. The doctor looked at him narrowly. You think that's about the principal difference between country people and city people, don't you? Fred was a little disconcerted at being followed up so resolutely and he attempted to dismiss it with a pleasantry. I've never thought about it much, Dr. But I should say on the spur of the moment that that is one of the principal differences between people anywhere. It's the consolation of fellows like me who don't accomplish much. The fourth dimension is not good for business, but we think we have a better time. Dr. Archie leaned back in his chair. His heavy shoulders were contemplative. And she, he said slowly, should you say that she is one of the kind you refer to? He inclined his head toward the shimmer of the pale green dress beside him. Thee was leaning just then over the balcony rail, her head in the light from the chandeliers below. Never, never, Fred protested. She's as hard-headed as the worst of you with a difference. The doctor sighed, yes, with a difference, something that makes a good many revolutions to the second. When she was little, I used to feel her head to try to locate it. Fred laughed, did you though? So you were on the track of it. Oh, it's there. We can't get round it, mess, as Thee looked back inquiringly. Dr. Archie, there's a fellow townsman of yours. I feel a real kinship for. He pressed a cigar upon Dr. Archie and struck a match for him. Tell me about Spanish Johnny. The doctor smiled benignantly through the first waves of smoke. Well, Johnny's an old patient of mine and he's an old admirer of these. She was born a cosmopolitan and I expect she learned a good deal from Johnny when she used to run away and go to Mexican town. We thought it a queer freak then. The doctor launched into a long story in which he was often eagerly interrupted or joyously confirmed by Thee, who was drinking her coffee and forcing open the petals of the roses with an ardent and rather rude hand. Fred settled down into enjoying his comprehension of his guests. Thee, watching Dr. Archie and interested in his presentation was unconsciously impersonating her suave, gold-tinted friend. It was delightful to see her so radiant and responsive again. She had kept her promise about looking her best when one could so easily get together the colors of an apple branch early spring. That was not hard to do. Even Dr. Archie felt each time he looked at her, a fresh consciousness. He recognized the fine texture of her mother's skin with the difference that when she reached across the table to give him a bunch of graves her arm was not only white but somehow a little dazzling. She seemed him taller and freer in all her movements. She had now a way of taking a deep breath when she was interested. That made her seem very strong somehow and brought her at one quite overpoweringly. If he seemed shy, it was not that he was intimidated by her worldly clothes but that her greater positiveness, her whole augmented self, made him feel that his accustomed manner toward her was inadequate. Fred, on his part, was reflecting that the awkward position in which he had placed her would not confine or chafe her long. She looked about her at other people, at other women curiously. She was not quite sure of herself but she was not in the least afraid or apologetic. She seemed to sit there on the edge emerging from one world into another taking her bearings, getting an idea of the concerted movement about her but with absolute self-confidence. So far from shrinking, she expanded the mere kindly effort to please Dr. Archie was enough to bring her out. There was much talk of Ara at that time and Fred mused that every beautiful, every compellingly beautiful woman had an Ara, whether other people did or no. There was certainly about the woman he had brought up from Mexico such an emanation. She existed in more space than she occupied by measurement. The enveloping air about her head and shoulders was subsidized, was more moving than she herself for in it lived the awakenings, all the first sweetness that life kills in people. One felt in her such a wealth of yuganzi, all those flowers of the mind and the blood that bloom and perish by the myriad in the few exhaustive years when the imagination first kindles. It was in watching her as she emerged like this in being near and not too near that one got for a moment so much that one had lost. Among other legendary things, the legendary theme of the absolutely magical power of a beautiful woman. After they had left the at her hotel, Dr. Archie admitted to Fred as they walked up Broadway through the rapidly chilling air that once before he had seen their young friend flash up into a more potent self, but in a darker mood. It was in his office one night when she was at home the summer before last. And then I got the idea he added simply that she would not live like other people and that for better or worse she had uncommon gifts. Oh, we'll see that it's for better. You and I, Fred assured him. Well, you come up to my hotel with me. I think we ought to have a long talk. Yes, indeed, said Dr. Archie gratefully. I think we ought. And if part five sections three and four recording by Dionne Chines, Salt Lake City, Utah. Part five of the Song of the Lark. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dionne Chines. The Song of the Lark by Willa, Cybert Tather. Part five, section five. Thea was to sail on Tuesday at noon and on Saturday, Fred Ottenberg arranged for her passage while she and Dr. Archie went shopping. With rugs and sea clothes she was already provided. Fred had got everything of that sort she needed for the voyage up from Bear Cruise. On Sunday afternoon, they went to see the Hassanis. When she returned to her hotel, she found a note from Ottenberg, saying that he had called and would come again tomorrow. On Monday morning, while she was at breakfast, Fred came in. She knew by his hurried distracted air as he entered the dining room that something had gone wrong. He had just got a telegram from home. His mother had been thrown from her carriage and hurt a concussion of some sort and she was unconscious. He was leaving for St. Louis that night on the 11 o'clock train. He had a great deal to attend to during the day. He would come that evening if he might and stay with her until train time while she was doing her packing. Gareously waiting for her consent, he hurried away. All day, he was somewhat cast down. She was sorry for Fred and she missed the feeling that she was the one person in his mind. He had scarcely looked at her when they exchanged words at the breakfast table. She felt as if she were set aside and she did not seem so important even to herself as she had yesterday. Certainly she reflected it was high time that she began to take care of herself again. Dr. Archie came for dinner but she sent him away early telling him that she would be ready to go to the boat with him at half past 10 the next morning. When she went upstairs, she looked gloomily at the open trunk in her sitting room and at the trays piled on the sofa. She stood at the window and watched a quiet snowstorm spending itself over the city. More than anything else, falling snow always made her think of Moonstone, of the Kohler's Garden, of Thor's sled, of dressing by lamp light and starting off to school before the paths were broken. When Fred came, he looked tired and he took her hand almost without seeing her. I'm so sorry, Fred. Have you had any more word? She was still unconscious at four this afternoon. It doesn't look very encouraging. He approached the fire and warmed his hands. He seemed to have contracted and he had not at all his habitual ease of manner. Poor mother, he exclaimed. Nothing like this should have happened to her. She has so much pride of person. She's not at all an old woman, you know. She's never got beyond vigorous and rather dashing middle age. He turned abruptly to be and for the first time really looked at her. How badly things come out. She'd have liked you for a daughter-in-law. Oh, you'd have fought like the devil, but you'd have respected each other. He sank into a chair and thrust his feet out to the fire. Still he went on thoughtfully, seeming to address the ceiling. It might have been bad for you. Our big German houses are good German cooking. You might have got lost in the upholstery. That substantial comfort might take the temper out of you. Dell, your edge. Yes, he sighed. I guess you were meant for the jolt of the breakers. I guess I'll get plenty of jolts, be murmured, returning to her trunk. I'm rather glad I'm not staying over until tomorrow, friend reflected. I think it's easier for me to glide out like this. I feel now as if everything were rather casual anyhow. A thing like that dulls one's feelings. He, standing by her trunk, made no reply. Presently he shook himself and rose. Want me to put those trays in for you? No, thank you. I'm not ready for them yet. Fred strolled over to the sofa, lifted a scarf from one of the trays, and stood abstractedly, drying it through his fingers. You've been so kind these last few days, B, that I began to hope you might soften a little. That you might ask me to come over and see you this summer. If you thought that, you were mistaken, she said slowly. I've hardened, if anything. But I shan't carry any grudge away with me, if you mean that. He dropped the scarf. And there's nothing? Nothing at all, you'll let me do? Yes, there is one thing, and it's a good deal to ask. If I get knocked out or never get on, I'd like you to see that Dr. Archie gets his money back. I'm taking $3,000 of his. Why, of course I shall. You may dismiss that from your mind. How fussy you are about money, B. You make such a point of it. He turned sharply and walked to the windows. B sat down in the chair he had quitted. It's only poor people who feel that way about money and who are really honest, she said gravely. Sometimes I think that to be really honest, you must have been so poor that you've been tempted to steal. To what? To steal. I used to be when I first went to Chicago and saw all the things in the big stores there. Never anything big, but little things, the kind I'd never seen before and could never afford. I did take something once before I knew it. Fred came toward her for the first time she had his whole attention in the degree to which she was accustomed to having it. Did you? What was it? He asked with interest. A sachet, a little blue silk bag of Oris root powder. There was a whole counter full of them, marked down to 50 cents. I'd never seen any before and they seemed irresistible. I took one up and wandered about the store with it. Nobody seemed to notice, so I carried it off. Fred laughed, crazy child. Why, your things always smell of Oris. Is it a penance? No, I love it. But I saw that the firm didn't lose anything by me. I went back and bought it there whenever I had a quarter to spend. I've got a lot to take to Arizona. I made it up to them. I'll bet you did, Fred took her hand. Why didn't I find you that first winter? I'd have loved you just as you came. These shook her head. No, you wouldn't, but you might have found me amusing. The Harsanis said yesterday afternoon that I wore such a funny cape and that my shoes always squeaked. They think I've improved. I told them it was your doing if I had and then they looked scared. Did you sing for Harsanis? Yes, he thinks I've improved there too. He said nice things to me. Oh, he was very nice. He agrees with you about my going to layman if she'll take me. He came out to the elevator with me after we had said goodbye. He said something nice out there too that seemed sad. What was it that he said? He said, when people, serious people, believe in you, they give you some of their best. So take care of it, Ms. Kronberg. Then he waved his hands and went back. If you sang, I wish you had taken me along. Did you sing well? Fred turned from her and went back to the window. I wonder when I shall hear you sing again. You picked up a bunch of violets and smelled them. You know, you're leaving me like this. Well, it's almost inhuman to be able to do it so kindly and unconditionally. I suppose it is. It was almost inhuman to be able to leave home to the last time when I knew it was for good. But all the same, I cared a great deal more than anybody else did. I lived through it. I have no choice now. No matter how much it breaks me up, I have to go. Do I seem to enjoy it? Fred bent over her trunk and picked up something which proved to be a score, clumsily bound. What's this? Did you ever try to sing this? He opened it and on the engraved title page, he read, Wunch's inscription, Einstein, oh wonder, he looked up sharply at me. Wunch gave me that when he went away. I've told you about him. My old teacher in Moonstone, he loved that opera. Fred went to the fireplace, the book under his arm, singing softly. Einstein, oh wonder, and blend, mine, drade, ayana, bloom, ashoo, mine, air, sun. You have no idea at all where he is, thee. He leaned against the mantle and looked down at her. No, I wish I had. He may be dead by this time. That was five years ago and he used himself hard. Miss Kohler was always afraid he would die off alone somewhere and be stuck under the prairie. When we last heard of him, he was in Kansas. If he were to be found, I'd like to do something for him. I seem to get a good deal of him from this. He opened the book again, where he kept the place with his finger and scrutinized the purple ink. How like a German. Had he ever sung a song for you? No, I didn't know where the words were from until once when Harzani sang it for me, I recognized them. Fred closed the book. Let me see, what was your noble breakman's name? He looked up with surprise. Ray, Ray Kennedy, Ray Kennedy, he laughed. It couldn't well have been better. Lunge and Dr. Archie and Ray and I, he told them off on his fingers, you're a whistling post. You haven't done so badly. We've backed you as we could. Summon our weakness and summon our might in your dark hours and you'll have them. You may like to remember us. You smiled whimsically and dropped the score into the trunk. You are taking that with you? Surely I am. I haven't so many keepsakes that I can afford to leave that. I haven't got many that I value so highly that you value so highly. Fred echoed her gravity playfully. You are delicious when you fall into your vernacular. He laughed half to himself. What's the matter with that? Isn't it perfectly good English? Perfectly good Moonstone, my dear. Like the ready-made clothes that hang in the windows made to fit everybody and fit nobody. A phrase that can be used on all occasions. Oh, he started across the room again. That's one of the fine things about your going. You'll be with the right sort of people and you'll learn a good, live, warm German that will be like yourself. You'll get a new speech full of shades and color like your voice, alive like your mind. It will be almost like being born again, Bea. She was not offended. Fred had said such things to her before and she wanted to learn. In the natural course of things she would never have loved a man from whom she could not learn a great deal. Har Sanye said once, she remarked thoughtfully that if one became an artist one had to be born again and that one owed nothing to anybody. Exactly, and when I see you again I shall not see you but your daughter. May I? He held up his cigarette case questioningly and then began to smoke, taking up again the song which ran in his head. Deutschland, Schumar, Offschädelm, Per Perplatschen, Adelaide. I have half an hour with you yet and then exit, Fred. He walked about the room smoking and singing the words under his breath. You'll like the voyage, he said abruptly. That first approach to a foreign shore. Stealing up on it and finding it there's nothing like it. It wakes up everything that's asleep in you. You won't mind my writing to some people in Berlin. They'll be nice to you. I wish you would. He gave a deep sigh. I wish one could look ahead and see what is coming to one. Oh no, Fred was smoking nervously. That would never do. It's the uncertainty that makes one try. You've never had any sort of chance and now I fancy you'll make it up to yourself. You'll find the way to let yourself out in one long flight. He put her hand on her heart and then dropped like the rocks we used to throw anywhere. She left the chair and went over to the sofa hunting for something in the trunk trays. When she came back, she found Fred sitting in her place. Here are some handkerchiefs of yours. I've kept one or two. They're larger than mine and useful if one has a headache. Thank you. How nicely they smell of your things. He looked at the white squares for a moment and then put them in his pocket. He kept the low chair and as she stood beside him, he took her hands and sat looking intently at them as if he were examining them for some special purpose, tracing the long-round fingers with the tips of his own. Ordinarily, you know, there are weaves that a man catches to and keeps his nose above water, but this is a case by itself. There seems to be no limit as to how much I can be in love with you. I keep going. He did not lift his eyes from her fingers, which he continued to study with the same fervor. Every kind of stringed instrument there is plays in your hands. The he whispered, pressing them to his face. She dropped beside him and slipped into his arms, shutting her eyes and lifting her cheek to his. Tell me one thing, Fred whispered. You said that night on the boat when I first told you that if you could, you would crush it all up in your hands and throw it into the sea. Would you, all those weeps? She shook her head. Answer me, would you? No, I was angry then. I'm not now. I'd never give them up. Don't make me pay too much. In that embrace, they lived over again, all the others. When Thie drew away from him, she dropped her face in her hands. You are good to me, she breathed. You are. Rising to his feet, he put his hands under her elbows and lifted her gently. He drew her toward the door with him. Get all you can. Be generous with yourself. Don't stop short of splendid things. I want them for you more than I want anything else, more than I want one splendid thing for myself. I can't help feeling that you'll gain somehow by my losing so much that you'll gain the very thing I lose. Take care of her, as Har San-Yi said. She's wonderful. He kissed her and went out of the door without looking back, just as if he were coming again tomorrow. Thie went quickly into her bedroom. She brought out an armful of muslin things melt down and began to lay them in the trays. Suddenly she stopped, dropped forward and leaned against the open trunk, her head on her arms. The tears fell on the dark old carpet. It came over her how many people must have said goodbye and then unhappy in that room. Other people before her time had hired this room to cry in. Strange rooms and strange streets and faces. How sick at heart they made one. Why was she going so far? When what she wanted was some familiar place to hide in. The rock house, her little room in Moonstone, her own bed. Oh, how good it would be to lie down in that little bed to cut the nerve that kept one struggling and pulled one on and on to sink into peace there with all the family safe and happy downstairs. After all, she was a Moonstone girl, one of the preacher's children. Everything else was in Fred's imagination. Why was she called upon to take such chances? Any safe, humdrum work that did not compromise her would be better. But if she failed now, she would lose her soul. There was nowhere to fall after one took that step except into abysses of wretchedness. She knew what abysses or she could still hear the old man playing in the snowstorm. It was released in her like a passion of longing. Every nerve in her body thrilled to it. It brought her to her feet, carried her somehow to bed and into troubled sleep. That night she taught in Moonstone again. She beat her pupils in hideous rages. She kept on beating them. She sang at funerals and struggled at the piano with harceny. In one dream, she was looking into a hand glass and thinking that she was getting better looking. When the glass began to grow smaller and smaller and her own reflection to shrink until she realized that she was looking into Ray Kennedy's eyes, seeing her face in that look of his which she could never forget. All at once the eyes were Fred Ottenberg's and not Ray's. All night she heard the shrieking of trains whistling in and out of Moonstone as she used to hear them in her sleep when they blew shrill in the winter air. But tonight they were terrifying. The spectral faded trains that raced with death about which the old woman from the depot used to pray. In the morning she wakened breathless after a struggle with Mrs. Liberty Johnson's daughter. She started out with a bound through the blankets pack and sat on the edge of the bed. Her night dress open. Her long braids hanging over her bosom, blinking in the daylight. After all, it was not too late. She was only 20 years old and the boat sailed at noon. There was still time. End of part five, recording by Deontra's Salt Lake City, Utah.