The Song of the Lark, Willa Cather [rosie project .txt] 📗

was fresh to me, vocalized for the first time. You realized that she was beginning that long story, adequately, with the end in view. Every phrase she sang was basic. She simply was the idea of the Rhine music.” Ottenburg rose and stood with his back to the fire. “And at the end, where you don’t see the maidens at all, the same thing again: two pretty voices and the Rhine voice.” Fred snapped his fingers and dropped his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fred plunged into his coat. “Well, it’s a queer world, Archie. But you’ll think better of it, if you go to New York. Wish I were going with you. I’ll drop in on you