 Section 9, Part 1 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 Mary. The Song of the Lark by Willis Cybert Cather. Part 1, Section 15. By the time Thea's 15th birthday came round, she was established as a music teacher in Moonstone. The new room had been added to the house early in the spring, and Thea had been giving her lessons there since the middle of May. She liked the personal independence which was accorded her as a wage earner. The family questioned her comings and goings very little. She could go buggy riding with Ray Kennedy, for instance, without taking Gunner, or Axel. She could go to Spanish Johnny's and sing part songs with the Mexicans, and nobody objected. Thea was still under the first excitement of teaching and was terribly in earnest about it. If a pupil did not get on well, she fumed and fretted. She counted until she was hoarse. She listened to scales in her sleep. Woonch had taught only one pupil seriously, but Thea taught twenty. The duller they were, the more furiously she poked and prodded them. With the little girls, she was nearly always patient, but with pupils older than herself, she sometimes lost her temper. One of her mistakes was to let herself in for a calling down from Mrs. Leverie Johnson. That lady appeared at the Cronborgs one morning and announced that she would allow no girl to stamp her foot at her daughter Grace. She added that Thea's bad manners with the older girls were being talked about all over town, and that if her temper did not speedily improve, she would lose all her advanced pupils. Thea was frightened. She felt she could never bear the disgrace if such a thing happened. Besides, what would her father say after he had gone to the expense of building an addition to the house? Mrs. Johnson demanded an apology to Grace. Thea said she was willing to make it. Mrs. Johnson said that hereafter, since she had taken lessons of the best piano teacher in Grinnell, Iowa, she herself would decide what pieces Grace should study. Thea readily consented to that, and Mrs. Johnson rustled away to tell a neighbor woman that Thea Cronborg could be meek enough when you went at her right. Thea was telling Ray about this unpleasant encounter as they were driving out to the Sandhills the next Sunday. She was stuffing you all right, Thea, Ray assured her. There was no general dissatisfaction among your scholars. She just wanted to get in a knock. I talked to the piano tuner the last time he was here, and he said all the people he tuned for expressed themselves very favorably about your teaching. I wish you didn't take so much pains with them myself. But I have to, Ray. They're all so dumb. They've got no ambition, Thea exclaimed irritably. Jenny Smiley is the only one who isn't stupid. She can read pretty well, and she has such good hands, but she don't care a wrap about it. She has no pride. Ray's face was full of complacent satisfaction as he glanced sidewise at Thea, but she was looking off intently into the mirage at one of those mammoth cattle that are nearly always reflected there. Do you find it easier to teach in your new room? He asked. Yes, I'm not interrupted so much. Of course, if I ever happen to want to practice at night, that's always the night Anna chooses to go to bed early. It's a darn shame, Thea. You didn't cop that room for yourself. I'm sore at the Padre about that. He ought to give you that room. You could fix it up so pretty. I didn't want it. Honest, I didn't. Father would have let me have it. I like my own room better. Somehow I can think better in a little room. Besides, up there I am away from everybody, and I can read as late as I please, and nobody nags me. A growing girl needs lots of sleep, Ray providently remarked. Thea moved restlessly on the buggy cushions. They need other things more, she muttered. Oh, I forgot. I brought something to show you. Look here it came on my birthday. Wasn't it nice of him to remember? She took from her pocket a postcard bent in the middle and folded and handed it to Ray. On it was a white dove perched on a wreath of very blue, forget-me-nots, and birthday greetings in gold letters. Under this was written from A. Wynch. Ray turned the card over, examined the postmark, and then began to laugh. Concord, Kansas. He has my sympathy. Why? Is that a poor town? It's the jumping off place. No town at all. Some houses dump down in the middle of a cornfield. You get lost in the corn. Not even a saloon to keep things going. Sell whiskey without a license at the butcher's shop, beer on ice with a liver and beef steak. I wouldn't stay there over Sunday for a $10 bill. Oh, dear. What do you suppose he's doing there? Maybe he just stopped off there a few days to tune pianos, Thea suggested, hopefully. Ray gave her back the card. He's headed in the wrong direction. What does he want to get back into a grass country for? Now there are lots of good live towns down on the Santa Fe, and everybody down there is musical. He could always get a job playing in saloons if he was dead broke. I figured out that I've got no years of my life to waste in a Methodist country where they raise pork. We must stop on our way back and show this card to Mrs. Kohler. She misses him so. By the way, Thee, I heard the old woman goes to church every Sunday to hear you sing. Fritz tells me he has to wait till 2 o'clock for his Sunday dinner these days. The church people ought to give you credit for that when they go for you. Thea Shooker had, and spoken a tone of resignation. They'll always go for me just as they did for Wynch. It wasn't because he drank they went for him. Not really. It was something else. You want to salt your money down Thee and go to Chicago and take some lessons. Then you come back and wear a long feather and high heels and put on a few airs, and that'll fix him. That's what they like. I'll never have money enough to go to Chicago. Mother meant to lend me some, I think, but now they've got hard times back in Nebraska, and her farm don't bring her in anything. Takes all the tenant can raise to pay the taxes. Don't let's talk about that. You promised to tell me about the play you went to see in Denver. Anyone would have liked to hear Ray's simple and clear account of the performance he had seen at the Tabor Grand Opera House, Maggie Mitchell in Little Barefoot, and anyone would have liked to watch his kind face. Ray looked his best out of doors when his thick red hands were covered by gloves, and the dull red of his sunburned face somehow seemed right in the light and wind. He looked better, too, with his hat on. His hair was thin and dry, with no particular color or character, regular willy-boy hair, as he himself described it. His eyes were pale besides the reddish bronze of his skin. They had the faded look often seen in the eyes of men who have lived much in the sun and wind and who have been accustomed to train their vision upon distant objects. Ray realized that Thea's life was dull and exacting and that she missed Wunch. He knew she worked hard, that she put up with a great many little annoyances, and that her duties as a teacher separated her more than ever from the boys and girls of her own age. He did everything he could to provide recreation for her. He brought her candy and magazines and pineapples, of which she was very fond, from Denver, and kept his eyes and ears open for anything that might interest her. He was, of course, living for Thea. He had thought it all out carefully and had made up his mind just when he would speak to her. When she was seventeen, then he would tell her his plan and ask her to marry him. He would be willing to wait two or even three years until she was twenty, if she thought best. By that time he would surely have got in on something, copper, oil, gold, silver, sheep, something. Meanwhile it was pleasure enough to feel that she depended on him more and more, that she leaned upon his steady kindness. He never broke faith with himself about her. He never hinted to her of his hopes for the future. Never suggested that she might be more intimately confidential with him or talk to her of the thing he thought about so constantly. He had the chivalry which is perhaps the proudest possession of his race. He had never embarrassed her by so much as a glance. Sometimes when they drove out to the sandhills he let his left arm lie along the back of the buggy seat. But it never came any nearer to Thea than that. Never touched her. He often turned to her a face full of pride and frank admiration, but his glance was never so intimate or so penetrating as Dr. Archie's. His blue eyes were clear and shallow, friendly, uninquiring. He rested there because he was so different. Because, though he often told her interesting things, he never set lively fancies going in her head because he never misunderstood her and because he never, by any chance, for a single instant understood her. Yes, with rage she was safe. By him she would never be discovered. End of section 15, Recording by Mary Part 1 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 Mary The Song of the Lark by Willa Siebert Kether Part 1, Section 16 The pleasantess experience they had that summer was a trip that she and her mother made to Denver in Ray Kennedy's caboose. Mrs. Cronborg had been looking forward to this excursion for a long while, but, as Ray never knew at what hour his freight would leave Moonstone, it was difficult to arrange. The callboy was as likely to summon him to start on his run at 12 o'clock midnight as at 12 o'clock noon. The first week in June started out with all the scheduled trains running on time in the light freight train business. Tuesday evening, Ray, after consulting with the dispatcher, stopped at the Cronborg's front gate to tell Mrs. Cronborg who was helping Tilly water the flowers that if she and Thea could be at the depot at 8 o'clock the next morning, he thought he could promise them a pleasant ride and get them into Denver before 9 o'clock in the evening. Mrs. Cronborg told him cheerfully across the fence that she would take him up on it and Ray hurried back to the yards to scrub out his car. The one complaint Ray's breakman had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His former breakman had asked to be transferred because he said Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about her birdcage. Joe Giddy, who is breaking with Ray now, called him The Bride because he kept the caboose in bunks so clean. It was properly the breakman's business to keep the car clean, but when Ray got back to the depot, Giddy was nowhere to be found. Muttering that all his breakman seemed to consider him easy, Ray went down to his car alone. He built a fire in the stove and put water on to heat while he got into his overalls and jumper. Then he set to work with a scrubbing brush and plenty of soap and cleaner. He scrubbed the floor and seats, blacked the stove, put clean sheets on the bunks, and then began to demolish Giddy's picture gallery. Ray found that his breakman were likely to have what he termed a taste for the nude in art, and Giddy was no exception. Ray took down half a dozen girls in tights and ballet skirts, premiums for cigarette coupons, and some racy calendars advertising saloons and sporting clubs, which had cost Giddy both time and trouble. He even removed Giddy's particular pet, a naked girl lying on a couch with her knee carelessly poised in the air. Underneath the picture was printed the title the odalisk. Giddy was under the happy delusion that this title meant something wicked. There was a wicked look about the consonants, but Ray, of course, had looked it up, and Giddy was indebted to the dictionary for the privilege of keeping his lady. If odalisk had been what Ray called an objectionable word, he would have thrown the picture out in the first place. Ray even took down a picture of Mrs. Langtree in evening dress because it was entitled the Jersey Lily, and because there was a small head of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in one corner. Albert Edward's conduct was a popular subject of discussion among railroadmen in those days, and as Ray pulled the tax out of this lithograph, he felt more indignant with the English than ever. He deposited all these pictures under the mattress of Giddy's bunk and stood admiring his clean car in the lamp light. The walls now exhibited only a wheat field, advertising agricultural implements, a map of Colorado, and some pictures of race horses and hunting dogs. At this moment, Giddy freshly shaved in shampooed, his shirt shining with the highest polish known to Chinese laundrymen, his straw hat tipped over his right eye, thrust his head in at the door. What in hell? He brought out furiously. His good-humored sunburn face seemed fairly to swell with amazement and anger. That's all right, Giddy, Ray called, in a conciliatory tone. Nothing injured. I'll put him all up again as I found him. Going to take some ladies down in the car tomorrow. Giddy scowled. He did not dispute the propriety of Ray's measures if there were to be ladies on board, but he felt injured. I suppose you'll expect me to behave like a YMCA secretary, he growled. I can't do my work and serve tea at the same time. No need to have a tea party, said Ray with determined cheerfulness. Mrs. Cronborg will bring the lunch, and it will be a darn good one. Giddy launched against the car, holding his cigar between two thick fingers. Then I guess she'll get it, he observed knowingly. I don't think your musical friend is much on the grub box. Has to keep her hands white to tickle the ivories. Giddy had nothing against Thea, but he felt contankerous and wanted to get a rise out of Kennedy. Every man to his own job, Ray replied agreeably, pulling his white shirt on over his head. Giddy emitted smoke disdainfully. I suppose so. The man that gets her will have to wear an apron and bake the pancakes. Well, some men like to mess about at the kitchen. He paused, but Ray was intent on getting into his clothes as quickly as possible. Giddy thought he could go a little further. Of course I don't dispute your right to haul women in this car if you want to, but personally, so far as I'm concerned, I'd a good deal rather drink a can of tomatoes and do without the women, and their lunch. I was never much enslaved to hard-boiled eggs anyhow. You'll eat them tomorrow all the same, Ray's tone had a steely glitter as he jumped out of the car, and Giddy stood aside to let him pass. He knew that Kennedy's next reply would be delivered by hand. He had once seen Ray beat up a nasty fellow for insulting a Mexican woman who helped about the grub car in the work train, and his fists had worked like two steel hammers. Giddy wasn't looking for trouble. At eight o'clock the next morning, Ray greeted his ladies and helped them into the car. Giddy had put on a clean shirt and yellow pigskin gloves and was whistling his best. He considered Kennedy a fluke as a lady's man, and if there was to be a party, the honors had to be done by someone who wasn't a blacksmith at small talk. Giddy had, as Ray sarcastically admitted, a local reputation as a jollier, and he was fluent in gallant speeches of a not too veiled nature. He insisted that Thea should take his seat in the cupola opposite Ray's, where she could look out over the country. Thea told him, as she clamored up, that she cared a good deal more about riding in that seat than about going to Denver. Ray was never so companiable and easy as when he sat chatting in the lookout of his little house on wheels. Good stories came to him and interesting recollections. Thea had a great respect for the reports he had to write out and for the telegrams that were handed to him at stations. For all the knowledge and experience it must take to run a freight train. Giddy, down in the car, in the pauses of his work, made himself agreeable to Mrs. Cronboard. It's a great rest to be where my family can't get at me, Mr. Giddy, she told him. I thought you and Ray might have some housework here for me to look after, but I couldn't improve any on this car. Oh, we'd like to keep her knee, returned Giddy glibly, winking up at Ray's expressive back. If you want to see a clean icebox, look at this one. Yes, Kennedy always carries fresh cream to eat on his oatmeal. I'm not particular. The tin cow's good enough for me. Most of you boys smoke so much that all vitals taste alike to you, said Mrs. Cronboard. I've got no religious grouples against smoking, but I couldn't take as much interest cooking for a man that used tobacco. I guess it's all right for bachelors who have to eat round. Mrs. Cronboard took off her hat and veil and made herself comfortable. She seldom had an opportunity to be idle, and she enjoyed it. She could sit for hours and watch the stagehands fly up and the jackrabbits dart away from the track without being bored. She wore a tan, bombazine dress, made very plainly, and carried a roomy, worn mother-of-the-family handbag. Ray Kennedy always insisted that Mrs. Cronboard was a fine-looking lady, but this was not the common opinion in Moonstone. Ray had lived long enough among the Mexicans to dislike fussiness to feel that there was something more attractive in ease of manner in absent-minded concern about hairpins and dabs of lace. He had learned to think that the way a woman stood, moved, sat in her chair, looked at you was more important than the absence of wrinkles from her skirt. Ray had, indeed, such unusual perceptions in some directions that one could not help wondering what he would have been if he ever, as he said, had half a chance. He was right. Mrs. Cronboard was a fine-looking woman. She was short and square, but her head was a real head, not a mere jerky termination of the body. It had some individuality apart from hats and hairpins. Her hair, Moonstone women admitted, would have been very pretty on anybody else. Frizzy bangs were worn then, but Mrs. Cronboard always dressed her hair in the same way, parted in the middle, brushed smoothly back from her low white forehead, pinned loosely on the back of her head in two thick braids. It was growing gray about the temples, but after the manner of yellow hair it seemed only to have grown tailored there, and had taken on a color like that of English primroses. Her eyes were clear and untroubled, her face smooth and calm, and, as Ray said, strong. Théa and Ray, up in the sunny cupola, were laughing and talking. Ray got great pleasure out of seeing her face there in the little box where he so often imagined it. They were crossing a plateau where great red sandstone boulders lay about, most of them much wider at the top than at the base, so they looked like great toadstools. The sand has been blowing against them for a good many hundred years, Ray explained, directing Théa's eyes with his gloved hand. You see the sand blows low, being so heavy, and cuts them out underneath. Wind and sand are pretty high class architects. That's the principle of most of the cliff-weller remains down at Canyon de Chalet. The sandstorms had dug out big depressions in the face of a cliff, and the Indians built their houses back in that depression. You told me that before, Ray, and of course you know. But the geography says their houses were cut out of the face of the living rock, and I like that better. Ray sniffed. What nonsense does get printed? It's enough to give a man disrespect for learning. How could them Indians cut houses out of the living rock when they knew nothing about the art of forging metals? Ray leaned back in his chair, swung his foot, and looked thoughtful and happy. He was in one of his favorite fields of speculation, and nothing gave him more pleasure than talking these things over with Théa Cronboard. I'll tell you, Théa, if those old fellows had learned to work metal once, your ancient Egyptians and Asarians wouldn't have beat them very much. Whatever they did do, they did well. They're masonrys standing there today. The corners as true as the Denver capitol. They were clever at most everything but metals, and that one failure kept them from getting across. It was the quicksand that swallowed them up as a race. I guess civilization proper began when men mastered metals. Ray was not vain about his bookish phrases. He did not use them to show off, but because they seemed to him more adequate than colloquial speech. He felt strongly about these things, and groped for words as he said to express himself. He had the lamentable American belief that expression is obligatory. He still carried in his trunk among the unrelated possessions of a railroad man, a notebook on the title page of which was written, impressions on first viewing the Grand Canyon, Ray H. Kennedy. The pages of that book were like a battlefield. The laboring author had fallen back from metaphor after metaphor, abandoned position after position. He would have admitted that the art of forging metals was nothing to this treacherous business of recording impressions in which the material you were so full of vanished mysteriously under your striving hand. Escaping steam, he had said to himself. The last time he tried to read that notebook. Faya didn't mind Ray's travel lecture expressions. She dodged them unconsciously as she did her father's professional palaver. The light in Ray's pale blue eyes and the feeling in his voice more than made up for the stiffness of his language. Were the cliff dwellers really clever with their hands, Ray? Or do you always have to make allowance and say, that was pretty good for an Indian? She asked. Ray went down into the car to give some instructions to Giddy. Well, he said when he returned. About the Aborigines. Once or twice I'd been with some fellows who were cracking burial mounds. Always felt a little ashamed of it, but we did pull out some remarkable things. We got some pottery out whole. Seemed pretty fine to me. I guess their women were their artists. We found lots of old shoes and sandals made out of yucca fiber, neat and strong. And feather blankets too. Feather blankets? You never told me about them. Didn't I? The old fellows or the squaws wove a close netting of yucca fiber and then tied on little bunches of down feathers overlapping just the way feathers grow on a bird. Some of them were feathered on both sides. You can't get anything warmer than that now, can you? Or prettier? What I like about those old Aborigines is that they got all their ideas from nature. They had laughed. That means you're going to say something about girls wearing corsets. But some of your Indians flattened their baby's heads and that's worse than wearing corsets. Give me an Indian girl's figure for beauty. Ray insisted. And a girl with a voice like yours ought to have plenty of lung action. But you know my sentiments on that subject. I was going to tell you about the handsomest thing we ever looted out of those burial mounds. It was on a woman too, I regret to say. She was preserved as perfect as any mummy that ever came out of the pyramids. There was a big string of turquoise around her neck and she was wrapped in a fox fur cloak lined with little yellow feathers that must have come off wild canaries. Can you beat that now? The fellow that claimed it sold it to a Boston man for a hundred and fifty dollars. They looked at him admiringly. Oh, Ray, and didn't you get anything off her to remember her by even? She must have been a princess. Ray took a wallet from the pocket of the coat that was hanging beside him and drew from it a little lump wrapped in worn tissue paper. In a moment a stone soft and blue as a robin's egg lay in the hard palm of his hand. It was a turquoise rubbed smooth in the Indian finish so much more beautiful than the incongruous high polish the white man gives that tender stone. I got this from her necklace. See the hole where the string went through? You know how the Indians drill them? Work the drill with their teeth. You like it, don't you? They're just right for you. Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors. Ray looked intently at her head bent over his hand and then gave his whole attention to the track. I'll tell you, Thee, he began after applause. I'm going to form a camping party one of these days and persuade your Padre to take you and your mother down to that country and we'll live in the rock houses. They're as comfortable as can be and start the cook fires up in them once again. I'll go into the burial mounds and get you more keepsakes than any girl ever had before. Ray had planned such an expedition for his wedding journey and it made his heart thump to see how Thea's eyes kindled when he talked about it. I've learned more down there about what makes history, he went on, than in all the books I've ever read. When you sit in the sun and let your heels hang out of a doorway that drops a thousand feet, ideas come to you. You begin to feel what the human race has been up against from the beginning. There's something mighty elevating about those old habitations. You feel like it's up to you to do your best on account of those fellows having it so hard. You feel like you owed them something. At Wasawapa, Ray got instructions to sidetrack until 36 went by. After reading the message, he turned to his guests, I'm afraid this will hold us up about two hours, Mrs. Cronboard, and we won't get into Denver till near midnight. That won't trouble me, said Mrs. Cronboard contentedly. They know me at the YWCA and they'll let me in any time of night. I came to see the country, not to make time. I've always wanted to get out at this white place and look around. And now I'll have a chance. What makes it so white? Some kind of chalky rock. Ray sprang to the ground and gave Mrs. Cronboard his hand. You can get soil of any color in Colorado. Match most any ribbon. While Ray was getting his train onto a sidetrack, Mrs. Cronboard strolled off to examine the post office and the station house. These with the water tank made up the town. The station agent batched and raised chickens. He ran out to meet Mrs. Cronboard, clutched at her feverishly, and began telling her at once how lonely he was and what bad luck he was having with his poultry. She went to his chicken yard with him and prescribed for grapes. Wasawapa seemed a dreary place enough to people who looked for verdure, a brilliant place to people who liked color. Beside the station house there was a bluegrass plot protected by a red plank fence and six fly-bitten box elder trees not much larger than bushes were kept alive by frequent hosing from the water plug. Over the windows some dusty morning glory vines were trained on strings. All the country about was broken up into low, chalky hills which were so intensely white and spotted so evenly with sage that they looked like white leopards crouching. White dust powdered everything and the light was so intense that the station agent usually wore blue glasses. Behind the station there was a water course which roared in flood time and a basin in the soft white rock where a pool of alkali water flashed in the sun like a mirror. The agent looked almost as sick as his chickens and Mrs. Cronborg at once invited him to lunch with her party. He had, he confessed, a distaste for his own cooking and lived mainly on soda crackers and canned beef. He laughed apologetically when Mrs. Cronborg said she guessed she'd look about for a shady place to eat lunch. She walked up the track to the water tank and there in the narrow shadows by the uprights on which the tank stood she found two tramps. They sat up and stared at her, heavy with sleep. When she asked them where they were going they told her to the coast. They rested by day and traveled by night. Walked the ties unless they could steal a ride, they said, adding that these western roads were getting strict. Their faces were blistered, their eyes bloodshot and their shoes looked fit only for the trash pile. I suppose you're hungry, Mrs. Cronborg asked. I suppose you both drink. She went on thoughtfully, not sensoriously. The huskier of the two hobos, a bushy bearded fellow rolled his eyes and said, I wonder? But the other who was old and spare with a sharp nose and watery eyes sighed. Some has one affliction, some another, he said. Mrs. Cronborg reflected. Well, she said at last, you can't get liquor here anyway. I am going to ask you to vacate because I want to have a little picnic under this tank for the freight crew that brought me along. I wish I had lunch enough to provide you, but I ain't. The station agent says he gets his provisions over there at the post office store. And if you are hungry, you can get some canned stuff there. She opened her handbag and gave each of the tramps a half dollar. The old man wiped his eyes with his forefinger. Thank you, ma'am. A can of tomatoes would taste pretty good to me. I wasn't always walking ties. I had a good job in Cleveland before the hairy tramp turned on him fiercely. Aw, shut up on that, grandpa. And she got no gratitude. What do you want to hand the lady that fur? The old man hung his head and turned away. As he went off, his comrade looked after him and said to Mrs. Cronborg, it's true what he says. He had a job in the car shops, but he had bad luck. They both limped away toward the store and Mrs. Cronborg sighed. She was not afraid of tramps. She always talked to them and never turned one away. She hated to think how many of them there were crawling along the tracks over that vast country. Her reflections were cut short by Ray and Giddy and Thea, who came bringing the lunchbox and water bottles. Although there was not shadow enough to accommodate all the party at once, the air under the tank was distinctly cooler than the surrounding air, and the drip made a pleasant sound in that breathless noon. The station agent ate as if he had never been fed before, apologizing every time he took another piece of fried chicken. Giddy was unabashed before the doubled eggs of which he had spoken so scornfully last night. After lunch the men lit their pipes and lay back against the uprights that supported the tank. This is the sunny side of railroading all right, Giddy drawled luxuriously. You fellas grumble too much, said Mrs. Cronborg as she quirked the pickle jar. Your job has its drawbacks, but it don't tie you down. Of course there's the risk, but I believe a man's watched over, and he can't be hurt on the railroad or anywhere else if it's intended, he shouldn't be. Giddy laughed. Then the trains must be operated by fellas the Lord has it informed, Mrs. Cronborg. They figure it out that a railroad man's only due to last eleven years then it's his turn to be smashed. That's a dark providence I don't deny, Mrs. Cronborg admitted, but there's lots of things in life that's hard to understand. I guess, murmured Giddy looking off at the spot at White Hills. Ray smoked in silence watching Thea and her mother clear away the lunch. He was thinking that Mrs. Cronborg had in her face the same serious look that Thea had. Only hers was calm and satisfied, and Thea's was intense and questioning, but in both it was a large kind of look that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed by trivial things. They both carried their heads in women with a kind of noble unconsciousness. He got so tired of women who were always nodding and jerking, apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating with their heads. When Ray's party set off again that afternoon, the sun beat fiercely into the cupola, and Thea curled up in one of the bodies at a nap. As the short twilight came on, Giddy took a turn in the cupola, and Ray came down and sat with Thea on the rear platform of the caboose and watched the darkness come in soft waves over the plain. They were now about 30 miles from Denver, and the mountains looked very near. The great toothed wall behind which the sun had gone down now separated in four distinct ranges, one behind the other. They were a very pale blue, a color scarcely stronger than wood smoke, and the sunset had left bright streaks in the snow-filled gorges. In the clear, yellow-streaked sky the stars were coming out, flickering like newly lighted lamps, growing steadier and more golden as the sky darkened and the land beneath them fell into complete shadow. It was a cool, restful darkness that was not black or forbidding, but somehow open and free, the night of high plains where there is no moistness or mistiness in the atmosphere. Ray lit his pipe, I never get tired of them old stars, Thea. I miss him up in Washington and Oregon where it's misty, like him best down in Mother Mexico where they have everything their own way. I'm not for any country where the stars are dim. Ray paused and drew on his pipe. I don't know as I ever really noticed him much till that first year I heard a sheep up in Wyoming. That was the year the blizzard caught me. And you lost all your sheep, didn't you Ray? They spoke sympathetically. Was the man who owned them nice about it? Yes, he was a good loser, but I didn't get over it for a long while. Sheeper so damn resigned, sometimes to this day when I'm dog-tired I try to save them sheep all night long. It comes kind of hard on a boy when he first finds out how little he is like everything else is. They a move restlessly toward him and dropped her chin on her hand looking at a low star that seemed to rest just on the rim of the earth. I don't see how you stood it. I don't believe I could. I don't see how people can stand it to get knocked out anyhow. She spoke with such fierceness that Ray glanced at her in surprise. She was sitting on the floor of the car, crouching like a little animal about to spring. No occasion for you to see, he said warmly, there'll always be plenty of other people to take the knocks for you. That's nonsense, Ray. They spoke impatiently and leaned lower still frowning at the red star. Everybody's up against it for himself. Succeeds or fails himself. In one way, yes, Ray admitted, knocking the sparks from his pipe out into the soft darkness that seemed to flow like a river beside the car. In one way, yes, Ray admitted, knocking the sparks from his pipe out into the soft darkness that seemed to flow like a river beside the car. But when you look at it another way, there are a lot of halfway people in this world who help the winners win and the failures fail. If a man stumbles, there's plenty of people to push him down. But if he's like the youth who bore, those same people are foreordained to help him along. They may hate to worse than blazes and they may do a lot of cussing about it. But they have to help the winners and they can't dodge it. It's a natural law, like what keeps the big clock up there going. Little wheels and big and no mix-up. Ray's hand and his pipe were suddenly outlined against the sky. Ever occur to you, Thee, that they have to be on time close enough to make time? The dispatcher up there must have a long head. Pleased with his similitude, Ray went back to the lookout. Going into Denver he had to keep a sharp watch. Giddy came down cheerful at the prospect of getting into port and singing a new topical diddy that had come up from the Santa Fe by way of La Hanta. Nobody knows who makes these songs. They seem to follow events automatically. Mrs. Crownboard made Giddy sing the whole 12 verses of this one and laughed until she wiped her eyes. The story was that of Cady Casey. Head dining room girl at Winslow, Arizona who was unjustly discharged by the Harvey House manager. Her suitor, the Yardmaster took the switch men out on a strike until she was reinstated. Freight trains from the east to the west piled up at Winslow until the yards looked like a log jam. The division superintendent who was in California had to wire instructions for Cady Casey's restoration before he could get his trains running. Giddy's song told all this with much detail both tender and technical and after each of the dozen verses came the refrain. Who would think that Cady Casey owned the Santa Fe? But it really looks that way. The dispatchers turn in gray. All the crews is off their pay. She can hold the freight from Albuquerque to Needles any day. The division superintendent he come home from Monterey just to see if things was pleasing Cady Casey. Thea laughed with her mother and applauded Giddy. Everything was so kindly and comfortable. Giddy and Ray and their hospitable little house and the easygoing country and the stars. She curled up on the seat again with that warm sleepy feeling of the friendliness of the world which nobody keeps very long and which she was to lose early and irrevocably. End of Part 1 Section 16 Recording by Mary. Recording by Jackie Drowne. The Song of the Lark by Willa. Cybert. Part 1. Chapter 17 and 18. The summer flew by. Thea was glad when Ray Kennedy had a Sunday in town and could take her driving. Out among the sandhills she could forget the new room which was the scene of wearing and fruitless labor. He had put all his money into mines above Colorado Springs and he hoped for great returns from them. In the fall of that year Mr. Cronborg decided that Thea ought to show more interest in church work. He put it to her frankly one night at supper before the whole family. How can I insist on the other girls in the congregation being active in the work when one of my own daughters manifests so little interest? But I sing every Sunday morning and I have to give up one night a week to choir practice. Thea declared rebelliously, pushing back her plate with an angry determination to eat nothing more. One night a week is not enough for the pastor's daughter, her father replied. You won't do anything in the sowing society and you won't take part in the Christian endeavor or the band of hope. Very well, you must make it up in other ways. I want someone to play the organ and lead the singing at prayer meeting this winter. Deacon Potter told me some time ago that he thought there would be more interest in our prayer meetings if we had the organ. Miss Myers don't feel that she can play on Wednesday nights and there ought to be somebody to start the hymns. Mrs. Potter is getting old and she always starts them too high. It won't take much of your time and it will keep people from talking. This argument conquered Thea though she left the table sullenly. The fear of the tongue, the terror of little towns is usually felt more keenly by the minister's family than by other households. Whenever the Kronborgs wanted to do anything even to buy a new carpet they had to take counsel together as to whether people would talk. Mrs. Kronborg had her own conviction that people talked when they felt like it and said what they chose no matter how the minister's family conducted themselves. But she did not impart these dangerous ideas to her children. Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated that if you clucked often enough the hymns would mistake you for one of themselves. Mrs. Kronborg did not have any particular zest for prayer meetings and she stayed at home whenever she had a valid excuse. Thor was too old to furnish such an excuse now so every Wednesday night unless one of the children was sick she trudged off with Thea to Kronborg. At first Thea was terribly bored but she got used to prayer meeting got even to feel a mournful interest in it. The exercises were always pretty much the same. After the first hymn her father read a passage from the Bible, usually a psalm then there was another hymn and then her father commented upon the passage he had read and, as he said, applied the word to our necessities. After a third hymn the meeting was declared open and the old men and women took turns at praying and talking. Mrs. Kronborg never spoke in the meeting. She told people firmly that she had been brought up to keep silent and let the men talk but she gave respectful attention to the others sitting with her hands folded in her lap. The prayer meeting audience was always small the young and energetic members of the congregation came only once or twice a year to keep people from talking. The usual Wednesday night gathering was made up of old women with perhaps six or eight old men and a few sickly girls who had not much interest in life. Two of them, indeed, were already preparing to die. Thea accepted the mournfulness of the prayer meetings as a kind of spiritual discipline like funerals. She always read late after she went home with a stronger wish than usual to live and to be happy. The meetings were conducted in the Sunday school room where there were wooden chairs instead of pews an old map of Palestine hung on the wall and the bracket lamps gave out only a dim light. The old women sat motionless as Indians in their shawls and bonnets some of them wore long black morning veils the old men drooped in their chairs face every head said resignation. Often there were long silences when you could hear nothing but the crackling of the soft coal in the stove and the muffled cough of one of the sick girls. There was one nice old lady tall, erect, self-respecting with a delicate white face and a soft voice. She never whined and what she said was always cheerful though she spoke so nervously that Thea knew she dreaded getting up and that she made a real sacrifice to, as she said, testify to the goodness of her saviour. She was the mother of the girl who coughed and Thea used to wonder how she explained things to herself. There was indeed only one woman who talked because she was, as Mr. Kroenborg said, tonguey. The others were somehow impressive. They told about the sweet thoughts that came to them while they were at their work, how amid their household tasks they were suddenly lifted by the sense of a divine presence. Sometimes they told of their first conversion of how in their youth that a higher power had made itself known to them. Old Mr. Carson, the carpenter who gave his services as janitor to the church, used often to tell how when he was a young man and a scoffer bent on the distraction of both body and soul, his saviour had come to him in the Michigan woods and had stood, it seemed, to him beside the tree he was felling and how he dropped his axe and knelt in prayer to him who died for us upon the tree. Thea always wanted to ask him more about it about his mysterious wickedness and about the vision. Sometimes the old people would ask for prayers for their absent children. Sometimes they asked their brothers and sisters in Christ to pray that they might be stronger against temptations. One of the sick girls used to ask them to pray that she might have more faith in the times of depression that came to her when all the way before seemed dark. She repeated that husky phrase so often that Thea always remembered it. One old woman who never missed a Wednesday night and who nearly always took part in the meeting came all the way up from the depot settlement. She always wore a black crocheted fascinator over her thin white hair and she made long, tremulous prayers full of railroad terminology. She had six sons in the service of different railroads and she always prayed for the boys on the road who know not at what moment they may be cut off when in thy divine wisdom their hour is upon them may they owe our heavenly Father see only white lights along the road to eternity. She used to have the engines that race with death and though she looked so old and little when she was on her knees and her voice was so shaky her prayers had a thrill of speed and danger in them. They made one think of the deep black canyons, the slender trestles the pounding trains. Thea liked to look at her sunken eyes that seemed full of wisdom at her black thread gloves much too long in the fingers her face was brown and worn away as rocks or worn by water. There are many ways of describing that color of age but in reality it is not like parchment or like any of the things it is said to be like. That brownness and that texture of skin are found only in the faces of old human creatures who have worked hard and who have always been poor. One bitterly cold night in December the prayer meeting seemed to Thea longer than usual the prayers and the talks went on and on. It was as if the old people were afraid to go out into the cold or were stupefied by the hot air of the room. She had left a book at home that she was impatient to get back to. At last the doxology was sung but the old people lingered about the stove to greet each other and Thea took her mother's arm and hurried out to the frozen sidewalk before her father could get away. The wind was whistling up the street and whipped the naked cottonwood trees with graph poles in the sides of the houses. Then snow clouds were flying overhead so that the sky looked gray with a dull phosphorescence. The icy streets and the shingle roofs of the houses were gray too. All along the street shutters banged or windows rattled or gates wobbled held by their latch but shaking on loose hinges. There was not a cat or a dog in Moonstown that night that was not given a warm shelter. The cats under the kitchen stove, saw dogs and barns or coal sheds. When Thea and her mother reached home their mufflers were covered with ice where their breath had frozen. They hurried into the house and made a dash for the parlor and the hard coal burner behind which Gunner was sitting on a stool reading his Jules Verne book. The door stood open into the dining room which was heated from the parlor. Mr. Kromborg always had a lunch when he came home from prayer meeting and his pumpkin pie and milk said she thought she felt hungry too and asked Thea if she didn't want something to eat. No, I'm not hungry mother I guess I'll go upstairs. I expect you've got some book up there said Mrs. Kromborg bringing out another pie. You'd better bring it down here and read nobody will disturb you and it's terrible cold up in that loft. Thea was always assured that no one would disturb her if she read downstairs but the boys talked when they came in and her father fairly delivered discourses after he had been renewed by a half pie and a pitcher of milk. I don't mind the cold I'll take a hot brick up from my feet I put one in the stove before I left if one of the boys hasn't stolen it Good night mother. Thea got her brick and lantern and dashed upstairs through the windy loft She undressed at top speed and got into bed with her brick She put a pair of white knitted gloves on her hands and pinned over her head a piece of soft flannel and a coat when he was a baby. Thus equipped, she was ready for business. She took from her table a thick paper-backed volume one of the line of paper novels the druggists kept to sell to traveling men She had bought it only yesterday because the first sentence interested her very much and because she saw as she glanced over the pages the magical names of two Russian cities The book was a poor translation of Anna Carnina Thea opened it at a mark and placed her eyes intently upon the small print The hymns, the sick girl the resigned black figures were forgotten It was the night of the ball in Moscow Thea would have been astonished if she could have known how years afterward when she had need of them those old faces were to come back to her long after they were hidden away under the earth that they would seem to her then as full of meaning as mysteriously marked by destiny she glanced by Mazurka under the elegant Korsansky Chapter 18 Mr. Kronborg was too fond of his ease and too sensible to worry his children much about religion He was more sincere than many preachers but when he spoke to his family about matters of conduct it was usually with regard for keeping up appearances The church and church work were discussed in the family like the routine of any other business Sunday was the hard day of the week with them just as Saturday was the busy day with the merchants on Main Street Revivals were seasons of extra work and pressure just as threshing time was on the farms Visiting elders had to be lodged and cooked for The folding bed in the parlor was let down and Mrs. Kronborg had to work in the kitchen all day long and attend the night meetings During one of these revivals Thea's sister Anna professed religion with as Mrs. Kronborg said a good deal of cluster Anna was going up to the mourners bench nightly and asking for the prayers of the congregation She disseminated general gloom throughout the household and after she joined the church she took on an air of set apartness that was extremely trying to her brothers and her sister though they realized that Anna's sanctimoniousness was perhaps a good thing for their father A preacher ought to have one child who did more than merely acquiesce in religious observances and Thea and the boys glad enough that it was Anna and not one of themselves who assumed this obligation Anna, she's American Mrs. Kronborg used to say the Scandinavian mold of countenance more or less marked in each of the other children was scarcely discernible in her and she looked enough like other moonstone girls to be thought pretty Anna's nature was conventional like her face Her position as the minister's eldest daughter was important to her and she tried to live up to it Her fundamental religious story books and emulated the spiritual struggles and magnanimous behavior of their persecuted heroines Everything had to be interpreted for Anna Her opinions about the smallest and most commonplace things were gleaned from the Denver papers the church weeklies from sermons and Sunday school addresses Scarcely anything was attractive to her in its natural state Indeed, scarcely anything was decent until it was clothed by the opinion of her authority Her ideas about habit, character, duty, love, marriage were grouped under heads like a book of popular quotations and were totally unrelated to the emergencies of human living She discussed all these subjects with other Methodist girls of her age They would spend hours, for instance in deciding what they would or would not tolerate in a suitor or a husband and the frailties of masculine nature were too often a subject of discussion among them Anna was a harmless girl mild except where her prejudices were concerned neat and industrious with no graveer fault than priggishness But her mind had really shocking habits of classification The wickedness of Denver and Chicago and even of Moonstone occupied her thoughts too much She had none of the delicacy that goes with the nature of warm impulses but the kind of fishy curiosity which justifies itself by an expression of horror Thea and all Thea's ways and friends seemed in decorous to Anna She not only felt a grave social discrimination against the Mexicans She could not forget that Spanish Johnny was a drunkard and that nobody knew what he did when he ran away from home Thea pretended of course that she liked the Mexicans because they were fond of music but everyone knew that music was nothing very real and that it did not matter in a girl's relations with people then and what did matter? Poor Anna Anna approved of Ray Kennedy as a young man of steady habits and blameless life but she regretted that he was an atheist and that he was not a passenger conductor with brass buttons on his coat On the whole she wondered what such an exemplary young man found to like in Thea Dr. Archie she treated respectfully because of his position in Moonstone but she knew he had kissed her daughter and she had a whole dossier of evidence about his behavior in his hours of relaxation in Denver He was fast and it was because he was fast that Thea liked him Thea always liked that kind of people Dr. Archie's whole manner with Thea Anna often told her mother was too free He was always putting his hand on Thea's head or holding her hand while he laughed and looked down at her The kindlier manifestation of human nature about which Anna sang and talked in the interest of which she went to conventions and wore white ribbons were never realities to her after all She did not believe in them it was only in attitudes of protest or reproof clinging to the cross that human beings could be even temporarily decent Preacher Kroenborg's secret convictions were very much like Anna's He believed that his wife was absolutely good but there was not a man or woman in his congregation whom he trusted all the way Mrs. Kroenborg, on the other hand was likely to find something to admire in almost any human conduct that was positive and energetic She could always be taken in by the stories of tramps and runaway boys She went to the circus and admired the bareback writers who were likely good enough women in their way She admired Dr. Archie's fine physique and well cut clothes as much as Thea did and said she felt it was a privilege to be held by such a gentleman when she was sick Soon after Anna became a church member she began to remonstrate with Thea about practicing playing secular music on Sunday One Sunday the dispute and the parlor grew warm and was carried to Mrs. Kroenborg in the kitchen She listened, judicially and told Anna to read the chapter about how Naaman, the leper was permitted to bow down in the house of Raman Thea went back to the piano and Anna lingered to say that since she was in the right her mother should have supported her No, said Mrs. Kroenborg rather indifferently I can't see it that way Anna I never forced you to practice and I don't see as I should keep Thea from it I like to hear her and I guess your father does You and Thea will likely follow different lines and I don't see as I'm called upon to bring you up alike Anna looked meek and abused Of course all the church people must hear her You hear what she's playing now, don't you? Mrs. Kroenborg rose from browning her coffee Yes, it's the blue Danube waltzes I'm familiar with them If any other church people come at you you just send them to me I ain't afraid to speak out on occasion and I wouldn't mind one bit telling the ladies aid a few things about standard composers Mrs. Kroenborg smiled and added thoughtfully No, I wouldn't mind that one bit Anna went about with a reserved and distant air for a week and Mrs. Kroenborg suspected that she held a larger place than usual in her daughter's prayers but that was another thing she didn't mind Although revivals were merely a part of the year's work like examination week at school and although Anna's piety impressed her very little a time came when Thea was perplexed about religion a scourge of typhoid broke out in Moonstone and several of Thea's schoolmates died of it Thea went to their funerals, saw them put into the ground and wondered a good deal about them but a certain grim incident which caused the epidemic troubled her even more than the death of her friends Early in July soon after Thea's 15th birthday a particularly disgusting sort of tramp came into Moonstone in an empty boxcar Thea was sitting in the hammock in the front yard when he first crawled up to the town from the depot a bundle wrapped in dirty ticking under one arm and under the other a wooden box with rusty screening nailed over one end He had a thin, hungry face covered with black hair It was just before supper time when he came along and the streets smelled of fried potatoes and fried onions and coffee Thea saw him sniffing the air greedily and walking slower and slower He looked over the fence She hoped he would not stop at their gate for her mother never turned anyone away and this was the dirtiest and most utterly wretched looking tramp she had ever seen There was a terrible odor about him too She caught it even at that distance and put her handkerchief to her nose A moment later she was sorry for she knew he had noticed it He looked away and shuffled a little faster A few days later Thea heard that the tramp had camped in an empty shack over on the fast edge of town beside the ravine He was trying to give a miserable sort of show there He told the boys who went to see what he was doing that he had traveled with a circus His bundle contained a filthy clown suit and his box held half a dozen rattlesnakes Saturday night when Thea went to the butcher shop to get the chickens for Sunday she heard the whine of an accordion and saw a crowd before one of the saloons There she found the tramp his bony body grotesquely attired in the clown suit his face shaved and painted white the sweat trickling through the paint and washing it away and his eyes wild and feverish Pulling the accordion in and out seemed to be almost too great an effort for him and he panted to the tune of marching through Georgia After a considerable crowd had gathered the tramp exhibited his box of snakes announced that he would now pass the hat and that when the onlookers had contributed the sum of one dollar he would eat one of these living reptiles The crowd began to cough and murmur and the saloon keeper rushed off for the marshal who arrested the wretch for giving a show without a license and hurried him away to the Calaboos The Calaboos stood in a sunflower patch an old hut with a barred window and a padlock on the door The tramp was utterly filthy and there was no way to give him a bath The law made no provision to grub steak vagrants so after the constable had detained the tramp for 24 hours he released him and told him to get out of town and get quick The fellow's rattlesnakes had been killed by the saloon keeper He hid in a boxcar in the freight yard probably hoping to get a ride to the next station but he was found and put out After that, he was seen no more He had disappeared and left no trace except an ugly stupid word chalked on the black paint of the 75 foot standpipe which was the reservoir for the moonstone water supply The same word in another tongue that the French soldier shouted at Waterloo to the English officer who bade the old guard's surrender a comment on life which the defeated along the hard roads of the world sometimes ball at the victorious A week after the tramp excitement had passed over the city water began to smell and to taste The Chromeborgs had a well in their backyard and did not use city water but they heard the complaints of their neighbors that the town well was full of rotting cottonwood roots but the engineer at the pumping station convinced the mayor that the water left the well untainted Mayor's reason slowly but the well being eliminated the official mind had to travel towards the standpipe There was no other track for it to go in The standpipe amply rewarded investigation The tramp had got even with moonstone He had climbed the standpipe by the handholds and moved down into 75 feet of cold water with his shoes and hat and roll of ticking The city council had a mild panic and passed a new ordinance about tramps but the fever had already broken out and several adults and half a dozen children died of it Thea had always found everything that happened in moonstone exciting disasters particularly so It was gratifying to read sensational moonstone items in the Denver paper but she wished she had not chance to see the tramp as he came into town that evening sniffing the supper laden air His face remained unpleasantly clear in her memory and her mind struggled with the problem of his behavior as if it were a hard page in arithmetic Even when she was practicing the drama of the tramp kept going on in the back of her head and she was constantly trying to make herself realize what pitch of hatred or despair could drive a man to do such a hideous thing She kept seeing him in his bedraggled clown suit the white paint on his roughly shaven face playing his accordion before the saloon She had noticed his lean body his high bald forehead that sloped back like a curved metal lid How could people fall so far out of fortune She tried to talk to Ray Kennedy about her perplexity but Ray would not discuss things of that sort with her It was in his sentimental conception of women that they should be deeply religious though men were at liberty to doubt and finally to deny A picture called The Soul Awakened popular in Moonstone parlors pretty well interpreted Ray's idea of woman's spiritual nature One evening when she was haunted by the figure of the tramp Thea went up to Dr. Archie's office She found him sewing up two bad gashes in the face of a little boy and kicked by a mule After the boy had been bandaged and sent away with his father Thea helped the doctor wash and put away the surgical instruments Then she dropped into her accustomed seat beside his desk and began to talk about the tramp Her eyes were hard and green with excitement the doctor noticed It seems to me Dr. Archie that the whole town's to blame I'm to blame myself I know he saw me hold my nose He believes the Bible He ought to have gone to the Cala Beluce and cleaned that man up and taken care of him That's what I can't understand Do people believe the Bible or don't they? If the next life is all that matters and we're put here to get ready for it then why do we try to make money or learn things or have a good time There's not one person in Moonstone that really lives the way the New Testament says Does it matter or don't it? Dr. Archie swung around in his chair and looked at her honestly and leniently Well see, it seems to me like this Every people has had its religion All religions are good and all are pretty much alike but I don't see how we could live up to them in the sense you mean I've thought about it a good deal and I can't help feeling that while we are in this world we have to live for the best things of this world and those things are material and positive Now most religions are passive and they tell us chiefly what we should not do The doctor moved restlessly and his eyes hunted for something along the opposite wall See here my girl take out the years of early childhood and the time we spend in sleep and dull old age and we only have about 20 able waking years That's not long enough to get acquainted with half the fine things that have been done in the world much less to do anything ourselves I think we ought to keep the commandments and help other people all we can but the main thing is to live those 20 splendid years to do all we can and enjoy all we can Dr. Archie met his little friends searching gaze the look of acute inquiry which always touched him but poor fellows like that tramp she hesitated and wrinkled her forehead the doctor leaned forward and put his hand protectingly over hers which lay clenched on the green felt desktop ugly accidents happen Thea always have and always will but the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten they don't leave any lasting scar in the world and they don't affect the future the things that last are the good things the people who forge ahead and do something they really count he saw tears on her cheeks and he remembered that he had never seen her cry before not even when she crushed her finger when she was little he rose and walked to the window came back and sat down on the edge of his chair forget the tramp Thea this is a great big world and I want you to get about and see it all you're going to Chicago someday and do something with that fine voice of yours you're going to be a number one musician and make us proud of you take Mary Anderson now even the tramps are proud of her there isn't a tramp along the queue system who hasn't heard of her we all like people who do things even if we only see their faces they had a cigar box lid they had a long talk Thea felt that Dr. Archie had never let himself out to her so much before it was the most grown up conversation she had ever had with him she left his office happy flattered and stimulated she ran for a long while about the white moonlit streets looking up at the stars and the bluish night at the quiet houses sunk in black shade the glittering sandhills she loved the familiar trees she loved the people in those little houses and she loved the unknown world beyond Denver she felt as if she were being pulled in two between the desire to go away forever and the desire to stay forever she had only 20 years no time to lose many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie's office with a desire to run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes or wore out the streets themselves when her chest ached and it seemed spreading all over the desert when she went home it was not to go to sleep she used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while vibrating with excitement as a machine vibrates from speed life rushed in upon her through that window or so it seemed in reality of course life rushes from within not from without there is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained a beautiful body like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight pulsing with ardor and anticipation it was on such nights that Thea Cromborg learned the thing that Old Dumas meant when he told the romanticists that to make a drama he needed but one passion and four walls End of chapter 17 and 18 Recording by Jackie Drown Part 1, chapters 19 and 20 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 Jackie Drown The Song of the Lark by Willa Cybert Cather Part 1, chapters 19 and 20 It is well for its peace of mind that the traveling public takes railroad so much for granted The only men who are incurably nervous about railway travel are the railroad operatives A railroad man never forgets that the next run may be his turn On a single track road like that upon which Ray Kennedy worked the freight trains make their way as best they can between passenger trains Even when there is such a thing as a freight time schedule it is merely a form along with the one track dozens of fast and slow trains dash in both directions kept from collision only by the brains in the dispatcher's office If one passenger train is late the whole schedule must be revised in an instant The trains following must be warned and those moving toward the belated train must be assigned new meeting places Between the shifts and modifications of the passengers schedule the freight trains play a game of their own They have no right to the track at any given time but are supposed to be on it when it is free It is the best time they can between passenger trains A freight train on a single track road gets anywhere at all only by stealing bases Ray Kennedy had stuck to the freight service although he had had opportunities to go into the passenger service at higher pay He always regarded railroading as a temporary makeshift until he got into something and he disliked the passenger service No brass buttons for him he said too much like a livery he would wear a jumper, thank you The wreck that caught Ray was a very commonplace one nothing thrilling about it and it got only six lines in the Denver papers It happened about daybreak one morning only 32 miles from home At 4 o'clock in the morning Ray's train had stopped to take water at Saxony having just rounded the long curve which lies south of that station It was Joe Giddy's business to walk back along the curve about 300 yards and he put out torpedoes to warn any train which might be coming up from behind A freight crew is not notified of trains following and the breakman is supposed to protect his train Ray was so fussy about the punctilious observance of orders that almost any breakman would take a chance once in a while from natural perversity When the train stopped for water that morning Ray was at the desk in his caboose making out his report Giddy took his torpedoes to the rear platform and glanced back at the curve He decided that he would not go back to flag this time if anything was coming up behind he could hear it in plenty of time so he ran forward to look after a hot journal that had been bothering him In a general way Giddy's reasoning was sound If a freight train or even a passenger train had been coming up behind them he could have heard it in time but as it happened a light engine which made no noise at all was coming ordered out to help with the freight that was piling up at the other end of the division This engine got no warning came round the curve struck the caboose went straight through it and crashed into the heavy lumber car ahead The Kroenborgs were just sitting down to breakfast when the night telegraph operator dashed into the yard at a run and hammered on the front door Gunner answered the knock and needed to see his father a minute quick Mr. Kroenborg appeared at the door napkin in hand the operator was pale and panting 14 was wrecked down at Saxony this morning he shouted and Kennedy's all broke up we're sending an engine down with the doctor and the operator at Saxony says Kennedy wants you to come along with us and bring your girl he stopped for breath Mr. Kroenborg took off his glasses and began rubbing them with his napkin stand he muttered how did this happen no time for that sir get in the engine out now your girl Thea you'll surely do that for the poor chap everybody knows he thinks the world of her seeing that Mr. Kroenborg showed no indication of having made up his mind the operator turned to Gunner call your sister kid I'm going to ask the girl herself he blurted out yes yes certainly daughter Mr. Kroenborg called he had somewhat recovered himself and reached to the hall hat rack for his hat Justice Thea came out on the front porch before the operator had had time to explain to her Dr. Archie's ponies came up to the gate at a brisk trot Archie jumped out the moment his driver stopped the team and came up to the bewildered girl without so much as saying good morning to anyone he took her hand with the sympathetic reassuring graveness which had helped her at more than one hard time in her life get your hat my girl Kennedy's hurt down the road and he wants you to run down with me they'll have a car for us get into my buggy Mr. Kroenborg I'll drive you down and Larry can come for the team the driver jumped out of the buggy and Mr. Kroenborg and the doctor got in Thea still bewildered sat on her father's knee Dr. Archie gave his ponies a smart cut with the whip when they reached the depot the engine with one car attached was standing on the main track the engineer had got his steam up and was leaning out of the cab impatiently in a moment they were off the run to Saxony took 40 minutes Thea sat still in her seat while Dr. Archie and her father talked about the wreck she took no part in the conversation and asked no questions but occasionally she looked at Dr. Archie with a frightened inquiring glance which he answered by an encouraging nod neither he nor her father said anything about how badly Ray was hurt when the engine stopped near Saxony the main track was already cleared as they got out of the car Dr. Archie pointed to a pile of ties Thea, you'd better sit down here and watch the wreck crew while your father and I go up and look Kennedy over I'll come back for you when I get him fixed up the two men went off up the sand gulch and Thea sat down and looked at the pile of splintered wood twisted iron that had lately been Ray's caboose she was frightened and absent minded she felt that she ought to be thinking about Ray but her mind kept racing off to all sorts of trivial and irrelevant things she wondered whether Grace Johnson would be furious when she came to take her music lesson and found nobody there to give it to her whether she had forgotten to close the piano last night and whether Thor would get into the new room and mess the keys all up with his sticky fingers until he would go upstairs and make her bed for her her mind worked fast but she could fix it upon nothing the grasshoppers, the lizards distracted her attention and seemed more real to her than poor Ray on their way to the sand bank where Ray had been carried Dr. Archie and Mr. Cromborg met the Saxony Doctor he shook hands with them nothing you can do doctor I couldn't count the fractures his back's broken too if he weren't so confoundedly strong poor chap no use bothering him I've given him morphia one and a half and eights Dr. Archie hurried on Ray was lying on a flat canvas litter under the shelter of a shelving bank lightly shaded by a slender cottonwood tree when the doctor and the preacher approached he looked at them intently didn't he closed his eyes to hide his bitter disappointment Dr. Archie knew what was the matter Thea's back there Ray I'll bring her as soon as I've had a look at ya Ray looked up you might clean me up at trifle dock won't need you for anything else thank you all the same however little there was left of him that little was certainly Ray Kennedy his personality was as positive as ever and the blood and dirt on his face seemed merely accidental to have nothing to do with the man himself Dr. Archie told Mr. Cromborg to bring a pail of water and he began to sponge Ray's face and neck Mr. Cromborg stood by nervously rubbing his hands together and trying to think of something to say serious situations always embarrassed him and made him formal even when he felt real sympathy in times like this Ray he brought out at last crumpling up his handkerchief and long fingers in times like this we don't want to forget the friend that sticketh closer than a brother Ray looked up at him a lonely, disconsolate smile played over his mouth and his square cheeks never mind about all that Padre he said quietly Christ in me fell out long ago there was a moment of silence then Ray took pity on Mr. Cromborg's embarrassment you go back for the little girl Padre I want a word with the doc in private Ray talked to Dr. Archie for a few moments then stopped suddenly with a broad smile over the doctor's shoulder he saw Thea coming up the gulch in her pink chambray dress carrying her sun hat by the strings such a yellow head he often told himself that he was perfectly foolish about her hair the sight of her coming went through him softly like the Morphea there she is he whispered get the old preacher out of the way doc I want to have a little talk with her Dr. Archie looked up Thea was hurrying and yet hanging back she was more frightened than he had thought she would be she had gone with him to see very sick people and had always been steady and calm as she came up she looked at the ground and he could see that she had been crying Ray Kennedy made an unsuccessful effort to put out his hand hello little kid nothing to be afraid of darned if I don't believe they've gone and scared you nothing to cry about I'm the same old goods only a little dented sit down on my coat there and keep me company I've got to lay still a bit Dr. Archie and Mr. Cromborg disappeared Thea cast a timid glance after them but she sat down resolutely and took Ray's hand you ain't scared now are you he asked affectionately you were a regular brick to come thee did you get any breakfast no Ray I'm not scared I'm only dreadful sorry you're hurt and I can't help crying his broad earnest face languid from the opium and smiling with such simple happiness reassured her she drew nearer to him and lifted his hand to her knee he looked at her with his clear shallow blue eyes how he loved everything about that face and head how many nights in his cupula looking up the track he had seen that face in the darkness through the sleet and snow or in the soft blue air when the moonlight slept on the desert I didn't bother to talk thee the doctor's medicine makes me sort of dopey but it's nice to have company kind of cozy don't you think pull my coat under you more it's a darn shame I can't wait on you no no Ray I'm alright yes I like it here and I guess you ought not to talk much ought you if you can sleep I'll stay right here and be awful quiet I feel just as much at home with you as ever now simple humble faithful something and Ray's eyes went straight to Thea's heart she did feel comfortable with him and happy to give him so much happiness it was the first time she had ever been conscious of that power to bestow intense happiness by simply being near anyone she always remembered this day as the beginning of that knowledge she bent over him and put her lips softly to his cheek Ray's eyes filled with light oh do that again kid he said impulsively Thea kissed him on the forehead blushing faintly Ray held her hand fast and closed his eyes with the deep sigh of happiness the morphia and the sense of her nearness filled him with content the gold mine the oil well the copper ledge all pipe dreams he mused and this was a dream too he might have known it before it had always been like that the things he admired had always been away out of his reach a college education a gentleman's manner an Englishman's accent things over his head and Thea was farther out of his reach than all the rest put together he had been a fool to imagine it but he was glad he had been a fool she had given him one grand dream every mile of his run from moonstone to Denver was painted with the colors of that hope every cactus knew about it but now that it was not to be he knew the truth Thea was never meant for any rough fellow like him hadn't he really known that all along he asked himself she wasn't meant for common men she was like wedding cake a thing to dream on he raised his eyelids a little she was stroking his hand and looking off in the distance he felt in her face that look of unconscious power that Wunch had seen there yes, she was bound for the big terminals of the world no way stations for her his lids drooped in the dark he could see her as she would be after a while in a box at the Tabor Grand in Denver with diamonds on her neck and a tiara in her yellow hair with all the people looking at her through their opera glasses in the United States senator maybe talking to her then you'll remember me he opened his eyes and they were full of tears Thea leaned closer what did you say Ray I couldn't hear then you'll remember me he whispered the spark in his eye which is Wunch's very self caught the spark in hers that was herself and for a moment they looked into each other's natures Thea realized how good and how great-hearted he was and he realized about her many things when that elusive spark of personality retreated in each of them Thea still saw in his wet eyes her own face very small but much prettier than the cracked glass at home had ever shown it it was the first time she had seen her face in that kindest mirror a woman can ever find Ray had felt things in that moment when he seemed to be looking into the very soul of Thea Kromborg yes the goldmine, the oil well, the copper ledge they'd all got away from him as things will but he'd backed a winner once in his life with all of his might he gave his faith to the broad little hand he held he wished he could leave her the rugged strength of his body to help her through with it all he would have liked to tell her about his old dream there seemed long years between him and it already but to tell her now would somehow be unfair wouldn't be quite the straightest thing in the world probably she knew anyway he looked up quickly you know, don't you Thea that I think you are just the finest thing I've struck in this world the tears ran down Thea's cheeks you're too good to me Ray you're a lot too good to me she faltered why kid? he murmured everybody in this world's going to be good to you Dr. Archie came to the Gulch and stood over his patient how's it going? can't you give me another punch with your pacifier doc? the little girl had better run along now Ray released Thea's hand see you later Thea she got up and moved away aimlessly carrying her hat by the strings Ray looked after her with the exaltation born of bodily pain and said between his teeth always look after that girl doc she's a queen Thea and her father went back to Moonstone on the one o'clock passenger Dr. Archie stayed with Ray Kennedy until he died late in the afternoon on Monday morning the day after Ray Kennedy's funeral Dr. Archie called at Mr. Kroenborg's study a little room behind the church Mr. Kroenborg did not write out his sermons but spoke from notes jotted upon small pieces of cardboard in a kind of shorthand of his own as sermons go they were not worse than most his conventional rhetoric pleased the majority of his congregation and Mr. Kroenborg was generally regarded as a model preacher he did not smoke he never touched spirits his indulgence in the pleasures of the table was an endearing bond between him and the women of his congregation he ate enormously with a zest which seemed incongruous with his spare frame this morning the doctor found him opening his mail and reading a pile of advertising circulars with deep attention Good morning Mr. Kroenborg said Dr. Archie sitting down I came to see you on business poor Kennedy asked me to look after his affairs for him like most railroad men he spent his wages except for a few investments in mines which don't look to me very promising but his life was insured for six hundred dollars in Thea's favor Mr. Kroenborg wound his feet about the standard of his desk chair I assure you doctor this is a complete surprise to me well it's not very surprising to me Dr. Archie went on he talked to me about it the day he was hurt he said he wanted the money to be used in a particular way and in no other Dr. Archie paused meaningly Mr. Kroenborg fidgeted I'm sure Thea would observe his wishes in every respect no doubt but he wanted me to see that you agreed to his plan it seems that for some time Thea has wanted to go away to study music it was Kennedy's wish that she should take this money and go to Chicago this winter he felt that it would be an advantage to her in a business way that even if she came back here to teach it would give her more authority and make her position here more comfortable Mr. Kroenborg looked a little startled she's very young he hesitated she's barely seventeen Chicago is a long way from home we would have to consider I think Dr. Archie we had better consult Mrs. Kroenborg I think I can bring Mrs. Kroenborg around if I have your consent I've always found her to be pretty level headed I have several old classmates practicing in Chicago one is a throat specialist he has a good deal to do with singers he probably knows the best piano teachers one could recommend a boarding house where music students stay I think Thea needs to get among a lot of young people who are clever like herself here she has no companions but old fellows like me it's not a natural life for a young girl she'll either get warped or wither up before her time if it will make you and Mrs. Kroenborg feel any easier I'll be glad to take Thea to Chicago and see that she gets started right this throat man I speak of is a big fellow in his line and if I can get him interested he may be able to put her in the way of a good many things at any rate he'll know the right teachers of course six hundred dollars won't take her very far but even half the winter there would be a great advantage I think Kennedy sized the situation up exactly perhaps I don't doubt it you are very kind Dr. Archie Mr. Kroenborg was ornamenting his desk blotter with hieroglyphics I should think Denver might be better there we could watch over her she is very young Dr. Archie Rose Kennedy didn't mention Denver he said Chicago repeatedly under the circumstances seems to me we ought to try to carry out his wishes exactly if Thea is willing certainly certainly Thea is conscientious she would not waste her opportunities Mr. Kroenborg paused if Thea were your own daughter doctor would you consent to such a plan at her present age I most certainly should in fact if she were my daughter I'd have sent her away before this she's a most unusual child and she's only wasting herself here at her age she ought to be learning not teaching she'll never learn so quickly and easily as she will right now well doctor you had better talk it over with Mrs. Kroenborg I make it a point to defer to her wishes in such matters she understands all her children perfectly I may say that she has all the mother's insight and more Dr. Archie smiled yes and then some I feel quite confident about Mrs. Kroenborg we usually agree good morning Dr. Archie stepped out into the hot sunshine and walked rapidly toward his office with a determined look on his face he found his waiting room full of patience and it was one o'clock before he had dismissed the last one then he shut his door and took a drink before going over to the hotel for his lunch he smiled as he locked his cupboard I feel almost as gay as if I were going to get away for a winter myself he thought afterward Thea could never remember much about that summer or how she lived through her impatience she was to set off with Dr. Archie on the 15th of October and she gave lessons until the 1st of September then she began to get her clothes ready and spent whole afternoons in the village dressmaker's stuffy, littered, little sewing room Thea and her mother made a trip to Denver to buy the materials for her dresses ready-made clothes for girls were not to be had in those days Miss Spencer, the dressmaker, declared that she could do handsomely by Thea if they would only let her carry out her own ideas but Mrs. Kroenborg and Thea felt that Miss Spencer's most daring productions might seem out of place in Chicago so they restrained her with a firm hand Tilly, who always helped Mrs. Kroenborg with the family sewing was for letting Miss Spencer challenge Chicago on Thea's person since Ray Kennedy's death Thea had become more than ever one of Tilly's heroines Tilly swore each of her friends to secrecy and coming home from church or leaning over the fence told them the most touching stories about Ray's devotion and how Thea would never get over it Tilly's confidence has stimulated the general discussion of Thea's venture This discussion went on, up on front porches and in backyards pretty much all summer Some people approved of Thea's going to Chicago but most people did not There were others who changed their minds about it every day Tilly said she wanted Thea to have a ball dress above all things She bought a fashion book especially devoted to evening clothes and looked hungrily over the colored plates picking out costumes that would be becoming too abland She wanted Thea to have all the gay clothes she herself had always longed for clothes she often told herself she needed to recite in Tilly, Thea used to cry impatiently Can't you see that if Miss Spencer tried to make one of those things she'd make me look like a circus girl Anyhow, I don't know anybody in Chicago I won't be going to parties Tilly always replied with a knowing toss of her head You see, you'll be in society before you know it There ain't many girls as accomplished as you On the morning of the 15th of October the Kronborg family, all of them but Gus who couldn't leave the store for the station an hour before train time Charlie had taken Thea's trunk and telescope to the depot in his delivery wagon early that morning Thea wore her new blue surge traveling dress chosen for its serviceable qualities She had done her hair up carefully and put a pale blue ribbon around her throat under a little lace collar that Mrs. Kohler had crocheted for her As they went out of the gate Mrs. Kronborg looked her over thoughtfully Yes, that blue ribbon went very well with the dress and with Thea's eyes Thea had a rather unusual touch about such things she reflected comfortably Tilly always said that Thea was so indifferent to dress but her mother noticed that she usually put her clothes on well She felt the more at ease about letting Thea go away because she had good sense about her clothes and never tried to dress up too much Her coloring was so individual she was so unusually fair that in the wrong clothes she might easily have been conspicuous It was a fine morning and the family set out from the house in good spirits Thea was quiet and calm She had forgotten nothing and she clung tightly to her handbag which held her trunk key and all of her money that was not in an envelope pinned to her chemise Thea walked behind the others, holding Thor by the hand and this time she did not feel that the procession was too long Thor was uncommunicative that morning and would only talk about how he would rather get a sand burn his toe every day than wear shoes and stockings As they passed the cottonwood grove where Thea often used to bring him in his cart she asked him who would take him for nice long walks after Sister went away Oh, I can walk in our yard he replied unappreciatively I guess I can make a pond for my duck Thea leaned down and looked into his face But you won't forget about Sister, will you? Thor shook his head And won't you be glad when Sister comes back and can take you over to Mrs. Kohler's to see the pigeons? Yes, I'll be glad but I'm going to have a pigeon my own self But you haven't got any little house for one Maybe Axel would make you a little house Oh, her can live in the barn, her can Thor drawled in differently Thea laughed and squeezed his hand She always liked his sturdy matter of factness Boys ought to be like that, she thought When they reached the depot Mr. Kromborg paced the platform somewhat ceremoniously with his daughter Any member of his flock would have gathered that he was giving her good counsel about meeting the temptations of the world He did indeed begin to admonish her not to forget that talents come from our heavenly Father and are to be used for his glory But he cut his remarks short and looked at his watch He believed that Thea was a religious girl But when she looked at him with that intent that passionately inquiring gaze which used to move even much Mr. Kromborg suddenly felt his eloquence fail Thea was like her mother, he reflected You couldn't put much sentiment across with her As a usual thing, he liked girls to be a little more responsive He liked them to blush at his compliments as Mrs. Kromborg candidly said Father could be very soft with the girls But this morning he was thinking that a hard-headedness was a reassuring quality in a daughter who was going to Chicago alone Mr. Kromborg believed that big cities were places where people went to lose their identity and to be wicked He himself, when he was a student at the seminary he coughed and opened his watch again He knew, of course, that a great deal of business went on in Chicago that there was an active board of trade and that hogs and cattle were slaughtered there But when, as a young man, he had stopped over in Chicago he had not interested himself in the commercial activities of the city He remembered it as a place full of cheap shows and dance halls and boys from the country who were behaving disgustingly Dr. Archie drove up to the station about ten minutes before the train was due His man tied the ponies and stood holding the doctor's alligator skin bag Very elegant, Thea thought it Mrs. Kromborg did not burden the doctor with warnings and cautions She said again that she hoped he could get Thea a comfortable place to stay where they had good beds and she hoped the landlady would be a woman who'd had children of her own I don't go much on old maids looking after girls She remarked as she took a pin out of her own hat and thrust it into Thea's blue turban You'll be sure to lose your hat pins on the train, Thea It's better to have an extra one just in case She tucked in a little curl that had escaped from Thea's careful twist Don't forget to brush your dress often and pin it up to the curtains of your birth tonight so it won't wrinkle If you get it wet, have a tailor press it before it draws She turned Thea about by the shoulders and looked her over a last time Yes, she looked very well She wasn't pretty exactly Her face was too broad and her nose was too big but she had that lovely skin and she looked fresh and sweet She had always been a sweet smelling child Her mother had always liked to kiss her when she happened to think of it The train whistled in and Mr. Kromborg carried the canvas telescope into the car Thea kissed them all goodbye Tilly cried but she was the only one who did They all shouted things up at the closed window of the Pullman car from which Thea looked down at them as from a frame Her face glowing with excitement Her turban a little tilted in spite of three hat pins She had already taken off her new gloves to save them Mrs. Kromborg reflected that she would never see just that same picture again and as Thea's car slid off along the rails she wiped a tear from her eye She won't come back a little girl Mrs. Kromborg said to her husband as they turned to go home Anyhow, she's been a sweet one While the Kromborg family were trooping slowly homeward Thea was sitting in the Pullman her telescope in the seat beside her her handbag tightly gripped in her fingers Dr. Archie had gone into the smoker He thought she might be a little tearful and that it would be kinder to leave her alone for a while Her eyes did fill once when she saw the last of the sandhills and realized that she was going to leave them behind for a long while They always made her think of Ray too She had had such good times with him out there But of course it was herself and her own adventure that mattered to her If youth did not matter so much itself it would never have the heart to go on Thea was surprised that she did not feel a deeper sense of loss at leaving her old life behind her It seemed on the contrary as she looked out at the yellow desert speeding by that she had left very little Everything that was essential seemed to be right there The car with her, she lacked nothing She even felt more compact and confident than usual She was all there and something else was there too In her heart was it or under her cheek Anyhow it was about her somewhere that warm sureness that sturdy little companion with whom she shared a secret When Dr. Archie came in from the smoker she was sitting still looking intently out of the window and smiling her lips a little parted her hair in a blaze of sunshine The doctor thought she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen and very funny with her telescope and big handbag She made him feel jolly and a little mournful too He knew that the splendid things of life are few after all so very easy to miss