The Song of the Lark

by Willa Sibert Cather

  bought for Thor with such enthusiasm seemed to have lost his wise and

  humorous expression. She murmured, “All right,” to her mother, lit her

  lantern, and went upstairs.

  Ray’s box contained a hand-painted white satin fan, with pond lilies—an

  unfortunate reminder. Thea smiled grimly and tossed it into her upper

  drawer. She was not to be consoled by toys. She undressed quickly and

  stood for some time in the cold, frowning in the broken looking glass at

  her flaxen pig-tails, at her white neck and arms. Her own broad,

  resolute face set its chin at her, her eyes flashed into her own

  defiantly. Lily Fisher was pretty, and she was willing to be just as big

  a fool as people wanted her to be. Very well; Thea Kronborg wasn’t. She

  would rather be hated than be stupid, any day. She popped into bed and

  read stubbornly at a queer paper book the drug-store man had given her

  because he couldn’t sell it. She had trained herself to put her mind on

  what she was doing, otherwise she would have come to grief with her

  complicated daily schedule. She read, as intently as if she had not been

  flushed with anger, the strange “Musical Memories” of the Reverend H. R.

  Haweis. At last she blew out the lantern and went to sleep. She had many

  curious dreams that night. In one of them Mrs. Tellamantez held her

  shell to Thea’s ear, and she heard the roaring, as before, and distant

  voices calling, “Lily Fisher! Lily Fisher!”

  IX

  Mr. Kronborg considered Thea a remarkable child; but so were all his

  children remarkable. If one of the business men downtown remarked to him

  that he “had a mighty bright little girl, there,” he admitted it, and at

  once began to explain what a “long head for business” his son Gus had,

  or that Charley was “a natural electrician,” and had put in a telephone

  from the house to the preacher’s study behind the church.

  Mrs. Kronborg watched her daughter thoughtfully. She found her more

  interesting than her other children, and she took her more seriously,

  without thinking much about why she did so. The other children had to be

  guided, directed, kept from conflicting with one another. Charley and

  Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to quarrel about it. Anna

  often demanded unreasonable service from her older brothers; that they

  should sit up until after midnight to bring her home from parties when

  she did not like the youth who had offered himself as her escort; or

  that they should drive twelve miles into the country, on a winter night,

  to take her to a ranch dance, after they had been working hard all day.

  Gunner often got bored with his own clothes or stilts or sled, and

  wanted Axel’s. But Thea, from the time she was a little thing, had her

  own routine. She kept out of every one’s way, and was hard to manage

  only when the other children interfered with her. Then there was trouble

  indeed: bursts of temper which used to alarm Mrs. Kronborg. “You ought

  to know enough to let Thea alone. She lets you alone,” she often said to

  the other children.

  One may have staunch friends in one’s own family, but one seldom has

  admirers. Thea, however, had one in the person of her addle-pated aunt,

  Tillie Kronborg. In older countries, where dress and opinions and

  manners are not so thoroughly standardized as in our own West, there is

  a belief that people who are foolish about the more obvious things of

  life are apt to have peculiar insight into what lies beyond the obvious.

  The old woman who can never learn not to put the kerosene can on the

  stove, may yet be able to tell fortunes, to persuade a backward child to

  grow, to cure warts, or to tell people what to do with a young girl who

  has gone melancholy. Tillie’s mind was a curious machine; when she was

  awake it went round like a wheel when the belt has slipped off, and when

  she was asleep she dreamed follies. But she had intuitions. She knew,

  for instance, that Thea was different from the other Kronborgs, worthy

  though they all were. Her romantic imagination found possibilities in

  her niece. When she was sweeping or ironing, or turning the ice-cream

  freezer at a furious rate, she often built up brilliant futures for

  Thea, adapting freely the latest novel she had read.

  Tillie made enemies for her niece among the church people because, at

  sewing societies and church suppers, she sometimes spoke vauntingly,

  with a toss of her head, just as if Thea’s “wonderfulness” were an

  accepted fact in Moonstone, like Mrs. Archie’s stinginess, or Mrs.

  Livery Johnson’s duplicity. People declared that, on this subject,

  Tillie made them tired.

  Tillie belonged to a dramatic club that once a year performed in the

  Moonstone Opera House such plays as “Among the Breakers,” and “The

  Veteran of 1812.” Tillie played character parts, the flirtatious old

  maid or the spiteful INTRIGANTE. She used to study her parts up in the

  attic at home. While she was committing the lines, she got Gunner or

  Anna to hold the book for her, but when she began “to bring out the

  expression,” as she said, she used, very timorously, to ask Thea to hold

  the book. Thea was usually—not always—agreeable about it. Her mother

  had told her that, since she had some influence with Tillie, it would be

  a good thing for them all if she could tone her down a shade and “keep

  her from taking on any worse than need be.” Thea would sit on the foot

  of Tillie’s bed, her feet tucked under her, and stare at the silly text.

  “I wouldn’t make so much fuss, there, Tillie,” she would remark

  occasionally; “I don’t see the point in it”; or, “What do you pitch your

  voice so high for? It don’t carry half as well.”

  “I don’t see how it comes Thea is so patient with Tillie,” Mrs. Kronborg

  more than once remarked to her husband. “She ain’t patient with most

  people, but it seems like she’s got a peculiar patience for Tillie.”

  Tillie always coaxed Thea to go “behind the scenes” with her when the

  club presented a play, and help her with her make-up. Thea hated it, but

  she always went. She felt as if she had to do it. There was something in

  Tillie’s adoration of her that compelled her. There was no family

  impropriety that Thea was so much ashamed of as Tillie’s “acting” and

  yet she was always being dragged in to assist her. Tillie simply had

  her, there. She didn’t know why, but it was so. There was a string in

  her somewhere that Tillie could pull; a sense of obligation to Tillie’s

  misguided aspirations. The saloon-keepers had some such feeling of

  responsibility toward Spanish Johnny.

  The dramatic club was the pride of Tillie’s heart, and her enthusiasm

  was the principal factor in keeping it together. Sick or well, Tillie

  always attended rehearsals, and was always urging the young people, who

  took rehearsals lightly, to “stop fooling and begin now.” The young

  men—bank clerks, grocery clerks, insurance agents—played tricks,

  laughed at Tillie, and “put it up on each other” about seeing her home;

  but they often went to tiresome rehearsals jus
t to oblige her. They were

  good-natured young fellows. Their trainer and stage-manager was young

  Upping, the jeweler who ordered Thea’s music for her.

  Though barely thirty, he had followed half a dozen professions, and had

  once been a violinist in the orchestra of the Andrews Opera Company,

  then well known in little towns throughout Colorado and Nebraska.

  By one amazing indiscretion Tillie very nearly lost her hold upon the

  Moonstone Drama Club. The club had decided to put on “The Drummer Boy of

  Shiloh,” a very ambitious undertaking because of the many supers needed

  and the scenic difficulties of the act which took place in Andersonville

  Prison. The members of the club consulted together in Tillie’s absence

  as to who should play the part of the drummer boy. It must be taken by a

  very young person, and village boys of that age are self-conscious and

  are not apt at memorizing. The part was a long one, and clearly it must

  be given to a girl. Some members of the club suggested Thea Kronborg,

  others advocated Lily Fisher. Lily’s partisans urged that she was much

  prettier than Thea, and had a much “sweeter disposition.” Nobody denied

  these facts. But there was nothing in the least boyish about Lily, and

  she sang all songs and played all parts alike. Lily’s simper was

  popular, but it seemed not quite the right thing for the heroic drummer

  boy.

  Upping, the trainer, talked to one and another: “Lily’s all right for

  girl parts,” he insisted, “but you’ve got to get a girl with some ginger

  in her for this. Thea’s got the voice, too. When she sings, ‘Just Before

  the Battle, Mother,’ she’ll bring down the house.”

  When all the members of the club had been privately consulted, they

  announced their decision to Tillie at the first regular meeting that was

  called to cast the parts. They expected Tillie to be overcome with joy,

  but, on the contrary, she seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid Thea hasn’t

  got time for that,” she said jerkily. “She is always so busy with her

  music. Guess you’ll have to get somebody else.”

  The club lifted its eyebrows. Several of Lily Fisher’s friends coughed.

  Mr. Upping flushed. The stout woman who always played the injured wife

  called Tillie’s attention to the fact that this would be a fine

  opportunity for her niece to show what she could do. Her tone was

  condescending.

  Tillie threw up her head and laughed; there was something sharp and wild

  about Tillie’s laugh—when it was not a giggle. “Oh, I guess Thea hasn’t

  got time to do any showing off. Her time to show off ain’t come yet. I

  expect she’ll make us all sit up when it does. No use asking her to take

  the part. She’d turn her nose up at it. I guess they’d be glad to get

  her in the Denver Dramatics, if they could.”

  The company broke up into groups and expressed their amazement. Of

  course all Swedes were conceited, but they would never have believed

  that all the conceit of all the Swedes put together would reach such a

  pitch as this. They confided to each other that Tillie was “just a

  little off, on the subject of her niece,” and agreed that it would be as

  well not to excite her further. Tillie got a cold reception at

  rehearsals for a long while afterward, and Thea had a crop of new

  enemies without even knowing it.

  X

  Wunsch and old Fritz and Spanish Johnny celebrated Christmas together,

  so riotously that Wunsch was unable to give Thea her lesson the next

  day. In the middle of the vacation week Thea went to the Kohlers’

  through a soft, beautiful snowstorm. The air was a tender blue-gray,

  like the color on the doves that flew in and out of the white dove-house

  on the post in the Kohlers’ garden. The sand hills looked dim and

  sleepy. The tamarisk hedge was full of snow, like a foam of blossoms

  drifted over it. When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs. Kohler was just

  coming in from the chicken yard, with five fresh eggs in her apron and a

  pair of old top-boots on her feet. She called Thea to come and look at a

  bantam egg, which she held up proudly. Her bantam hens were remiss in

  zeal, and she was always delighted when they accomplished anything. She

  took Thea into the sitting-room, very warm and smelling of food, and

  brought her a plateful of little Christmas cakes, made according to old

  and hallowed formulae, and put them before her while she warmed her

  feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen stairs and called: “Herr

  Wunsch, Herr Wunsch!”

  Wunsch came down wearing an old wadded jacket, with a velvet collar. The

  brown silk was so worn that the wadding stuck out almost everywhere. He

  avoided Thea’s eyes when he came in, nodded without speaking, and

  pointed directly to the piano stool. He was not so insistent upon the

  scales as usual, and throughout the little sonata of Mozart’s she was

  studying, he remained languid and absent-minded. His eyes looked very

  heavy, and he kept wiping them with one of the new silk handkerchiefs

  Mrs. Kohler had given him for Christmas. When the lesson was over he did

  not seem inclined to talk. Thea, loitering on the stool, reached for a

  tattered book she had taken off the music-rest when she sat down. It was

  a very old Leipsic edition of the piano score of Gluck’s “Orpheus.” She

  turned over the pages curiously.

  “Is it nice?” she asked.

  “It is the most beautiful opera ever made,” Wunsch declared solemnly.

  “You know the story, eh? How, when she die, Orpheus went down below for

  his wife?”

  “Oh, yes, I know. I didn’t know there was an opera about it, though. Do

  people sing this now?”

  “ABER JA! What else? You like to try? See.” He drew her from the stool

  and sat down at the piano. Turning over the leaves to the third act, he

  handed the score to Thea. “Listen, I play it through and you get the

  RHYTHMUS. EINS, ZWEI, DREI, VIER.” He played through Orpheus’ lament,

  then pushed back his cuffs with awakening interest and nodded at Thea.

  “Now, VOM BLATT, MIT MIR.”

  “ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN, ALL’ MEIN GLUCK IST NUN DAHIN.”

  Wunsch sang the aria with much feeling. It was evidently one that was

  very dear to him.

  “NOCH EINMAL, alone, yourself.” He played the introductory measures,

  then nodded at her vehemently, and she began:—

  “ACH, ICH HABE SIE VERLOREN.”

  When she finished, Wunsch nodded again. ”SCHON,” he muttered as he

  finished the accompaniment softly. He dropped his hands on his knees and

  looked up at Thea. “That is very fine, eh? There is no such beautiful

  melody in the world. You can take the book for one week and learn

  something, to pass the time. It is good to know—always. EURIDICE,

  EU—RI—DI—CE, WEH DASS ICH AUF ERDEN BIN!” he sang softly, playing the

  melody with his right hand.

  Thea, who was turning over the pages of the third act, stopped and

  scowled at a passage. The old German’s blurred eyes watched her

  curiously.

  “For what do you look so, IMMER?” puckering up his own face. “You
see

  something a little difficult, may-be, and you make such a face like it

  was an enemy.”

  Thea laughed, disconcerted. “Well, difficult things are enemies, aren’t

  they? When you have to get them?”

  Wunsch lowered his head and threw it up as if he were butting something.

  “Not at all! By no means.” He took the book from her and looked at it.

  “Yes, that is not so easy, there. This is an old book. They do not print

  it so now any more, I think. They leave it out, may-be. Only one woman

  could sing that good.”

  Thea looked at him in perplexity.

  Wunsch went on. “It is written for alto, you see. A woman sings the

  part, and there was only one to sing that good in there. You understand?

  Only one!” He glanced at her quickly and lifted his red forefinger

  upright before her eyes.

  Thea looked at the finger as if she were hypnotized. “Only one?” she

  asked breathlessly; her hands, hanging at her sides, were opening and

  shutting rapidly.

  Wunsch nodded and still held up that compelling finger. When he dropped

  his hands, there was a look of satisfaction in his face.

  “Was she very great?”

  Wunsch nodded.

  “Was she beautiful?”

  “ABER GAR NICHT! Not at all. She was ugly; big mouth, big teeth, no

  figure, nothing at all,” indicating a luxuriant bosom by sweeping his

  hands over his chest. “A pole, a post! But for the voice—ACH! She have

  something in there, behind the eyes,” tapping his temples.

  Thea followed all his gesticulations intently. “Was she German?”

  “No, SPANISCH.” He looked down and frowned for a moment. ”ACH, I tell

  you, she look like the Frau Tellamantez, some-thing. Long face, long

  chin, and ugly al-so.”

  “Did she die a long while ago?”

  “Die? I think not. I never hear, anyhow. I guess she is alive somewhere

  in the world; Paris, may-be. But old, of course. I hear her when I was a

  youth. She is too old to sing now any more.”

  “Was she the greatest singer you ever heard?”

  Wunsch nodded gravely. “Quite so. She was the most—” he hunted for an

  English word, lifted his hand over his head and snapped his fingers

  noiselessly in the air, enunciating fiercely, “KUNST-LER-ISCH!” The word

  seemed to glitter in his uplifted hand, his voice was so full of