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

thumb. Now walk, sleep, play with Archie, keep your tiger hungry, and she’ll spring all right on Friday. I’ll be there to see her, and there’ll be more than I, I suspect. Harsanyi’s on the Wilhelm der Grosse; gets in on Thursday.”

“Harsanyi?” Thea’s eye lighted. “I haven’t seen him for years. We always miss each other.” She paused, hesitating. “Yes, I should like that. But he’ll be busy, maybe?”

“He gives his first concert at Carnegie Hall, week after next. Better send him a box if you can.”

“Yes, I’ll manage it.” Thea took his hand again. “Oh, I should like that, Fred!” she added impulsively. “Even if I were put out, he’d get the idea,”⁠—she threw back her head⁠—“for there is an idea!”

“Which won’t penetrate here,” he tapped his brow and began to laugh. “You are an ungrateful hussy, comme les autres!”

Thea detained him as he turned away. She pulled a flower out of a bouquet on the piano and absently drew the stem through the lapel of his coat. “I shall be walking in the Park tomorrow afternoon, on the reservoir path, between four and five, if you care to join me. You know that after Harsanyi I’d rather please you than anyone else. You know a lot, but he knows even more than you.”

“Thank you. Don’t try to analyze it. Schlafen Sie wohl!” he kissed her fingers and waved from the door, closing it behind him.

“He’s the right sort, Thea.” Dr. Archie looked warmly after his disappearing friend. “I’ve always hoped you’d make it up with Fred.”

“Well, haven’t I? Oh, marry him, you mean! Perhaps it may come about, some day. Just at present he’s not in the marriage market any more than I am, is he?”

“No, I suppose not. It’s a damned shame that a man like Ottenburg should be tied up as he is, wasting all the best years of his life. A woman with general paresis ought to be legally dead.”

“Don’t let us talk about Fred’s wife, please. He had no business to get into such a mess, and he had no business to stay in it. He’s always been a softy where women were concerned.”

“Most of us are, I’m afraid,” Dr. Archie admitted meekly.

“Too much light in here, isn’t there? Tires one’s eyes. The stage lights are hard on mine.” Thea began turning them out. “We’ll leave the little one, over the piano.” She sank down by Archie on the deep sofa. “We two have so much to talk about that we keep away from it altogether; have you noticed? We don’t even nibble the edges. I wish we had Landry here tonight to play for us. He’s very comforting.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have enough personal life, outside your work, Thea.” The doctor looked at her anxiously.

She smiled at him with her eyes half closed. “My dear doctor, I don’t have any. Your work becomes your personal life. You are not much good until it does. It’s like being woven into a big web. You can’t pull away, because all your little tendrils are woven into the picture. It takes you up, and uses you, and spins you out; and that is your life. Not much else can happen to you.”

“Didn’t you think of marrying, several years ago?”

“You mean Nordquist? Yes; but I changed my mind. We had been singing a good deal together. He’s a splendid creature.”

“Were you much in love with him, Thea?” the doctor asked hopefully.

She smiled again. “I don’t think I know just what that expression means. I’ve never been able to find out. I think I was in love with you when I was little, but not with anyone since then. There are a great many ways of caring for people. It’s not, after all, a simple state, like measles or tonsilitis. Nordquist is a taking sort of man. He and I were out in a rowboat once in a terrible storm. The lake was fed by glaciers⁠—ice water⁠—and we couldn’t have swum a stroke if the boat had filled. If we hadn’t both been strong and kept our heads, we’d have gone down. We pulled for every ounce there was in us, and we just got off with our lives. We were always being thrown together like that, under some kind of pressure. Yes, for a while I thought he would make everything right.” She paused and sank back, resting her head on a cushion, pressing her eyelids down with her fingers. “You see,” she went on abruptly, “he had a wife and two children. He hadn’t lived with her for several years, but when she heard that he wanted to marry again, she began to make trouble. He earned a good deal of money, but he was careless and always wretchedly in debt. He came to me one day and told me he thought his wife would settle for a hundred thousand marks and consent to a divorce. I got very angry and sent him away. Next day he came back and said he thought she’d take fifty thousand.”

Dr. Archie drew away from her, to the end of the sofa.

“Good God, Thea,”⁠—He ran his handkerchief over his forehead. “What sort of people⁠—” He stopped and shook his head.

Thea rose and stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. “That’s exactly how it struck me,” she said quietly. “Oh, we have things in common, things that go away back, under everything. You understand, of course. Nordquist didn’t. He thought I wasn’t willing to part with the money. I couldn’t let myself buy him from Fru Nordquist, and he couldn’t see why. He had always thought I was close about money, so he attributed it to that. I am careful,”⁠—she ran her arm through Archie’s and when he rose began to walk about the room with him. “I can’t be careless with money. I began the world on six hundred dollars, and it was the price of a man’s life. Ray Kennedy had worked hard and