VIII
ON the first day of September Fred Ottenburg and Thea
Kronborg left Flagstaff by the east-bound express.
As the bright morning advanced, they sat alone on the
rear platform of the observation car, watching the yellow
miles unfold and disappear. With complete content they
saw the brilliant, empty country flash by. They were
tired of the desert and the dead races, of a world without
change or ideas. Fred said he was glad to sit back and let
the Santa Fe do the work for a while.
"And where are we going, anyhow?" he added.
"To Chicago, I suppose. Where else would we be
going?" Thea hunted for a handkerchief in her hand-
bag.
"I wasn't sure, so I had the trunks checked to Albu-
querque. We can recheck there to Chicago, if you like.
Why Chicago? You'll never go back to Bowers. Why
wouldn't this be a good time to make a run for it? We
could take the southern branch at Albuquerque, down to
El Paso, and then over into Mexico. We are exceptionally
free. Nobody waiting for us anywhere."
Thea sighted along the steel rails that quivered in the
light behind them. "I don't see why I couldn't marry you
in Chicago, as well as any place," she brought out with
some embarrassment.
Fred took the handbag out of her nervous clasp and
swung it about on his finger. "You've no particular love
for that spot, have you? Besides, as I've told you, my
family would make a row. They are an excitable lot. They
discuss and argue everlastingly. The only way I can ever
put anything through is to go ahead, and convince them
afterward."
"Yes; I understand. I don't mind that. I don't want to
marry your family. I'm sure you wouldn't want to marry
mine. But I don't see why we have to go so far."
"When we get to Winslow, you look about the freight
yards and you'll probably see several yellow cars with
my name on them. That's why, my dear. When your
visiting-card is on every beer bottle, you can't do things
quietly. Things get into the papers." As he watched her
troubled expression, he grew anxious. He leaned forward
on his camp-chair, and kept twirling the handbag between
his knees. "Here's a suggestion, Thea," he said presently.
"Dismiss it if you don't like it: suppose we go down to
Mexico on the chance. You've never seen anything like
Mexico City; it will be a lark for you, anyhow. If you
change your mind, and don't want to marry me, you can
go back to Chicago, and I'll take a steamer from Vera
Cruz and go up to New York. When I get to Chicago,
you'll be at work, and nobody will ever be the wiser. No
reason why we shouldn't both travel in Mexico, is there?
You'll be traveling alone. I'll merely tell you the right
places to stop, and come to take you driving. I won't put
any pressure on you. Have I ever?" He swung the bag
toward her and looked up under her hat.
"No, you haven't," she murmured. She was thinking
that her own position might be less difficult if he had used
what he called pressure. He clearly wished her to take the
responsibility.
"You have your own future in the back of your mind all
the time," Fred began, "and I have it in mine. I'm not
going to try to carry you off, as I might another girl. If you
wanted to quit me, I couldn't hold you, no matter how
many times you had married me. I don't want to over-
persuade you. But I'd like mighty well to get you down to
that jolly old city, where everything would please you, and
give myself a chance. Then, if you thought you could have
a better time with me than without me, I'd try to grab you
before you changed your mind. You are not a sentimental
person."
Thea drew her veil down over her face. "I think I am, a
little; about you," she said quietly. Fred's irony somehow
hurt her.
"What's at the bottom of your mind, Thea?" he asked
hurriedly. "I can't tell. Why do you consider it at all, if
you're not sure? Why are you here with me now?"
Her face was half-averted. He was thinking that it
looked older and more firm--almost hard--under a veil.
"Isn't it possible to do things without having any very
clear reason?" she asked slowly. "I have no plan in the
back of my mind. Now that I'm with you, I want to be
with you; that's all. I can't settle down to being alone
again. I am here to-day because I want to be with you
to-day." She paused. "One thing, though; if I gave you
my word, I'd keep it. And you could hold me, though you
don't seem to think so. Maybe I'm not sentimental, but
I'm not very light, either. If I went off with you like
this, it wouldn't be to amuse myself."
Ottenburg's eyes fell. His lips worked nervously for a
moment. "Do you mean that you really care for me, Thea
Kronborg?" he asked unsteadily.
"I guess so. It's like anything else. It takes hold of you
and you've got to go through with it, even if you're afraid.
I was afraid to leave Moonstone, and afraid to leave
Harsanyi. But I had to go through with it."
"And are you afraid now?" Fred asked slowly.
"Yes; more than I've ever been. But I don't think I
could go back. The past closes up behind one, somehow.
One would rather have a new kind of misery. The old
kind seems like death or unconsciousness. You can't force
your life back into that mould again. No, one can't go
back." She rose and stood by the back grating of the
platform, her hand on the brass rail.
Fred went to her side. She pushed up her veil and turned
her most glowing face to him. Her eyes were wet and
there were tears on her lashes, but she was smiling the
rare, whole-hearted smile he had seen once or twice be-
fore. He looked at her shining eyes, her parted lips, her
chin a little lifted. It was as if they were colored by a sun-
rise he could not see. He put his hand over hers and clasped
it with a strength she felt. Her eyelashes trembled, her
mouth softened, but her eyes were still brilliant.
"Will you always be like you were down there, if I go
with you?" she asked under her breath.
His fingers tightened on hers. "By God, I will!" he
muttered.
"That's the only promise I'll ask you for. Now go away
for a while and let me think about it. Come back at lunch-
time and I'll tell you. Will that do?"
"Anything will do, Thea, if you'll only let me keep
an eye on you. The rest of the world doesn't interest me
much. You've got me in deep."
Fred dropped her hand and turned away. As he glanced
back from the front end of the observation car, he saw that
she was still standing there, and any one would have known
that she was brooding over something. The earnestness of
her head and shoulders had a certain nobility. He stood
looking at her for a moment.
When he reached the forward smoking-car, Fred took a
seat at the end, where he could shut the other passengers
from his sight. He put on his traveling-cap and sat down
wearily, keeping his head near the window. "In any case,
I shall help her more than I shall hurt her," he kept saying
to himself. He admitted that this was not the only motive
which impelled him, but it was one of them. "I'll make it
my business in life to get her on. There's nothing else I
care about so much as seeing her have her chance. She
hasn't touched her real force yet. She isn't even aware of
it. Lord, don't I know something about them? There isn't
one of them that has such a depth to draw from. She'll be
one of the great artists of our time. Playing accompani-
ments for that cheese-faced sneak! I'll get her off to Ger-
many this winter, or take her. She hasn't got any time to
waste now. I'll make it up to her, all right."
Ottenburg certainly meant to make it up to her, in so
far as he could. His feeling was as generous as strong human
feelings are likely to be. The only trouble was, that he was
married already, and had been since he was twenty.
His older friends in Chicago, people who had been friends
of his family, knew of the unfortunate state of his personal
affairs; but they were people whom in the natural course
of things Thea Kronborg would scarcely meet. Mrs.
Frederick Ottenburg lived in California, at Santa Bar-
bara, where her health was supposed to be better than
elsewhere, and her husband lived in Chicago. He visited
his wife every winter to reinforce her position, and his
devoted mother, although her hatred for her daughter-in-
law was scarcely approachable in words, went to Santa
Barbara every year to make things look better and to
relieve her son.
When Frederick Ottenburg was beginning his junior year
at Harvard, he got a letter from Dick Brisbane, a Kansas
City boy he knew, telling him that his FIANCEE, Miss Edith
Beers, was going to New York to buy her trousseau. She
would be at the Holland House, with her aunt and a girl
from Kansas City who was to be a bridesmaid, for two
weeks or more. If Ottenburg happened to be going down
to New York, would he call upon Miss Beers and "show
her a good time"?
Fred did happen to be going to New York. He was going
down from New Haven, after the Thanksgiving game. He
called on Miss Beers and found her, as he that night tele-
graphed Brisbane, a "ripping beauty, no mistake." He
took her and her aunt and her uninteresting friend to the
theater and to the opera, and he asked them to lunch with
him at the Waldorf. He took no little pains in arranging
the luncheon with the head waiter. Miss Beers was the
sort of girl with whom a young man liked to seem experi-
enced. She was dark and slender and fiery. She was witty
and slangy; said daring things and carried them off with
NONCHALANCE. Her childish extravagance and contempt for
all the serious facts of life could be charged to her father's
generosity and his long packing-house purse. Freaks that
would have been vulgar and ostentatious in a more simple-
minded girl, in Miss Beers seemed whimsical and pictur-
esque. She darted about in magnificent furs and pumps
and close-clinging gowns, though that was the day of full
skirts. Her hats were large and floppy. When she wrig-
gled out of her moleskin coat at luncheon, she looked like
a slim black weasel. Her satin dress was a mere sheath, so
conspicuous by its severity and scantness that every one in
the dining-room stared. She ate nothing but alligator-pear
salad and hothouse grapes, drank a little champagne, and
took cognac in her coffee. She ridiculed, in the raciest
slang, the singers they had heard at the opera the night
before, and when her aunt pretended to reprove her, she
murmured indifferently, "What's the matter with you,
old sport?" She rattled on with a subdued loquacious-
ness, always keeping her voice low and monotonous,
always looking out of the corner of her eye and speaking,
as it were, in asides, out of the corner of her mouth. She
was scornful of everything,--which became her eyebrows.
Her face was mobile and discontented, her eyes quick
and black. There was a sort of smouldering fire about
her, young Ottenburg thought. She entertained him pro-
digiously.
After luncheon Miss Beers said she was going uptown to
be fitted, and that she would go alone because her aunt
made her nervous. When Fred held her coat for her, she
murmured, "Thank you, Alphonse," as if she were address-
ing the waiter. As she stepped into a hansom, with a long
stretch of thin silk stocking, she said negligently, over her
fur collar, "Better let me take you along and drop you
somewhere." He sprang in after her, and she told the driver
to go to the Park.
It was a bright winter day, and bitterly cold. Miss Beers
asked Fred to tell her about the game at New Haven, and
when he did so paid no attention to what he said. She
sank back into the hansom and held her muff before her
face, lowering it occasionally to utter laconic remarks
about the people in the carriages they passed, interrupt-
ing Fred's narrative in a disconcerting manner. As they
entered the Park he happened to glance under her wide
black hat at her black eyes and hair--the muff hid every-
thing else--and discovered that she was crying. To his
solicitous inquiry she replied that it "was enough to make
you damp, to go and try on dresses to marry a man you
weren't keen about."
Further explanations followed. She had thought she
was "perfectly cracked" about Brisbane, until she met
Fred at the Holland House three days ago. Then she
knew she would scratch Brisbane's eyes out if she married
him. What was she going to do?
Fred told the driver to keep going. What did she want
to do? Well, she didn't know. One had to marry some-
body, after all the machinery had been put in motion.
Perhaps she might as well scratch Brisbane as anybody
else; for scratch she would, if she didn't get what she
wanted.
Of course, Fred agreed, one had to marry somebody.
And certainly this girl beat anything he had ever been up
against before. Again he told the driver to go ahead. Did
she mean that she would think of marrying him, by any
chance? Of course she did, Alphonse. Hadn't he seen that
all over her face three days ago? If he hadn't, he was a
snowball.
By this time Fred was beginning to feel sorry for the
driver. Miss Beers, however, was compassionless. After
a few more turns, Fred suggested tea at the Casino. He
was very cold himself, and remembering the shining silk
hose and pumps, he wondered that the girl was not frozen.
As they got out of the hansom, he slipped the driver a bill
and told him to have something hot while he waited.
At the tea-table, in a snug glass enclosure, with the steam
sputtering in the pipes beside them and a brilliant winter
sunset without, they developed their plan. Miss Beers had
with her plenty of money, destined for tradesmen, which
she was quite willing to divert into other channels--the
first excitement of buying a trousseau had worn off, any-
way. It was very much like any other shopping. Fred
had his allowance and a few hundred he had won on the
game. She would meet him to-morrow morning at the
Jersey ferry. They could take one of the west-bound
Pennsylvania trains and go--anywhere, some place
where the laws weren't too fussy.-- Fred had not even
thought about the laws!-- It would be all right with
her father; he knew Fred's family.
Now that they were engaged, she thought she would
like to drive a little more. They were jerked about in the
cab for another hour through the deserted Park. Miss
Beers, having removed her hat, reclined upon Fred's
shoulder.
The next morning they left Jersey City by the latest fast
train out. They had some misadventures, crossed several
States before they found a justice obliging enough to marry
two persons whose names automatically instigated inquiry.
The bride's family were rather pleased with her originality;
besides, any one of the Ottenburg boys was clearly a better
match than young Brisbane. With Otto Ottenburg, how-
ever, the affair went down hard, and to his wife, the once
proud Katarina Furst, such a disappointment was almost
unbearable. Her sons had always been clay in her hands,
and now the GELIEBTER SOHN had escaped her.
Beers, the packer, gave his daughter a house in St. Louis,
and Fred went into his father's business. At the end of a
year, he was mutely appealing to his mother for sympathy.
At the end of two, he was drinking and in open rebellion.
He had learned to detest his wife. Her wastefulness and
cruelty revolted him. The ignorance and the fatuous con-
ceit which lay behind her grimacing mask of slang and
ridicule humiliated him so deeply that he became absolutely
reckless. Her grace was only an uneasy wriggle, her auda-
city was the result of insolence and envy, and her wit was
restless spite. As her personal mannerisms grew more and
more odious to him, he began to dull his perceptions with
champagne. He had it for tea, he drank it with dinner, and
during the evening he took enough to insure that he would
be well insulated when he got home. This behavior spread
alarm among his friends. It was scandalous, and it did not
occur among brewers. He was violating the NOBLESSE OBLIGE
of his guild. His father and his father's partners looked
alarmed.
When Fred's mother went to him and with clasped hands
entreated an explanation, he told her that the only trouble
was that he couldn't hold enough wine to make life endur-
able, so he was going to get out from under and enlist in
the navy. He didn't want anything but the shirt on his
back and clean salt air. His mother could look out; he was
going to make a scandal.
Mrs. Otto Ottenburg went to Kansas City to see Mr.
Beers, and had the satisfaction of telling him that he had
brought up his daughter like a savage, EINE UNGEBILDETE. All
the Ottenburgs and all the Beers, and many of their friends,
were drawn into the quarrel. It was to public opinion, how-
ever and not to his mother's activities, that Fred owed his
partial escape from bondage. The cosmopolitan brewing
world of St. Louis had conservative standards. The Otten-
burgs' friends were not predisposed in favor of the plunging
Kansas City set, and they disliked young Fred's wife from
the day that she was brought among them. They found her
ignorant and ill-bred and insufferably impertinent. When
they became aware of how matters were going between her
and Fred, they omitted no opportunity to snub her. Young
Fred had always been popular, and St. Louis people took
up his cause with warmth. Even the younger men, among
whom Mrs. Fred tried to draft a following, at first avoided
and then ignored her. Her defeat was so conspicuous, her
life became such a desert, that she at last consented to
accept the house in Santa Barbara which Mrs. Otto Otten-
burg had long owned and cherished. This villa, with its
luxuriant gardens, was the price of Fred's furlough. His
mother was only too glad to offer it in his behalf. As soon
as his wife was established in California, Fred was trans-
ferred from St. Louis to Chicago.
A divorce was the one thing Edith would never, never,
give him. She told him so, and she told his family so, and
her father stood behind her. She would enter into no
arrangement that might eventually lead to divorce. She
had insulted her husband before guests and servants, had
scratched his face, thrown hand-mirrors and hairbrushes
and nail-scissors at him often enough, but she knew that
Fred was hardly the fellow who would go into court and
offer that sort of evidence. In her behavior with other men
she was discreet.
After Fred went to Chicago, his mother visited him often,
and dropped a word to her old friends there, who were
already kindly disposed toward the young man. They
gossiped as little as was compatible with the interest they
felt, undertook to make life agreeable for Fred, and told his
story only where they felt it would do good: to girls who
seemed to find the young brewer attractive. So far, he had
behaved well, and had kept out of entanglements.
Since he was transferred to Chicago, Fred had been
abroad several times, and had fallen more and more into
the way of going about among young artists,--people with
whom personal relations were incidental. With women, and
even girls, who had careers to follow, a young man might
have pleasant friendships without being regarded as a pro-
spective suitor or lover. Among artists his position was not
irregular, because with them his marriageableness was not
an issue. His tastes, his enthusiasm, and his agreeable
personality made him welcome.
With Thea Kronborg he had allowed himself more lib-
erty than he usually did in his friendships or gallantries
with young artists, because she seemed to him distinctly
not the marrying kind. She impressed him as equipped to
be an artist, and to be nothing else; already directed, con-
centrated, formed as to mental habit. He was generous
and sympathetic, and she was lonely and needed friendship;
needed cheerfulness. She had not much power of reaching
out toward useful people or useful experiences, did not see
opportunities. She had no tact about going after good
positions or enlisting the interest of influential persons.
She antagonized people rather than conciliated them. He
discovered at once that she had a merry side, a robust
humor that was deep and hearty, like her laugh, but it
slept most of the time under her own doubts and the dull-
ness of her life. She had not what is called a "sense of
humor." That is, she had no intellectual humor; no power
to enjoy the absurdities of people, no relish of their preten-
tiousness and inconsistencies--which only depressed her.
But her joviality, Fred felt, was an asset, and ought to be
developed. He discovered that she was more receptive and
more effective under a pleasant stimulus than she was
under the gray grind which she considered her salvation.
She was still Methodist enough to believe that if a thing
were hard and irksome, it must be good for her. And yet,
whatever she did well was spontaneous. Under the least
glow of excitement, as at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's, he had seen
the apprehensive, frowning drudge of Bowers's studio flash
into a resourceful and consciously beautiful woman.
His interest in Thea was serious, almost from the first,
and so sincere that he felt no distrust of himself. He be-
lieved that he knew a great deal more about her possibili-
ties than Bowers knew, and he liked to think that he had
given her a stronger hold on life. She had never seen her-
self or known herself as she did at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's
musical evenings. She had been a different girl ever since.
He had not anticipated that she would grow more fond of
him than his immediate usefulness warranted. He thought
he knew the ways of artists, and, as he said, she must have
been "at it from her cradle." He had imagined, perhaps,
but never really believed, that he would find her waiting
for him sometime as he found her waiting on the day
he reached the Biltmer ranch. Once he found her so--
well, he did not pretend to be anything more or less
than a reasonably well-intentioned young man. A lovesick
girl or a flirtatious woman he could have handled easily
enough. But a personality like that, unconsciously reveal-
ing itself for the first time under the exaltation of a per-
sonal feeling,--what could one do but watch it? As he
used to say to himself, in reckless moments back there in
the canyon, "You can't put out a sunrise." He had to
watch it, and then he had to share it.
Besides, was he really going to do her any harm? The
Lord knew he would marry her if he could! Marriage would
be an incident, not an end with her; he was sure of that.
If it were not he, it would be some one else; some one who
would be a weight about her neck, probably; who would
hold her back and beat her down and divert her from the
first plunge for which he felt she was gathering all her ener-
gies. He meant to help her, and he could not think of
another man who would. He went over his unmarried
friends, East and West, and he could not think of one who
would know what she was driving at--or care. The clever
ones were selfish, the kindly ones were stupid.
"Damn it, if she's going to fall in love with somebody, it
had better be me than any of the others--of the sort
she'd find. Get her tied up with some conceited ass who'd
try to make her over, train her like a puppy! Give one of
'em a big nature like that, and he'd be horrified. He
wouldn't show his face in the clubs until he'd gone after
her and combed her down to conform to some fool idea in
his own head--put there by some other woman, too, his
first sweetheart or his grandmother or a maiden aunt. At
least, I understand her. I know what she needs and where
she's bound, and I mean to see that she has a fighting
chance."
His own conduct looked crooked, he admitted; but he
asked himself whether, between men and women, all ways
were not more or less crooked. He believed those which are
called straight were the most dangerous of all. They
seemed to him, for the most part, to lie between windowless
stone walls, and their rectitude had been achieved at the
expense of light and air. In their unquestioned regularity
lurked every sort of human cruelty and meanness, and
every kind of humiliation and suffering. He would rather
have any woman he cared for wounded than crushed. He
would deceive her not once, he told himself fiercely, but a
hundred times, to keep her free.
When Fred went back to the observation car at one
o'clock, after the luncheon call, it was empty, and he found
Thea alone on the platform. She put out her hand, and
met his eyes.
"It's as I said. Things have closed behind me. I can't
go back, so I am going on--to Mexico?" She lifted her
face with an eager, questioning smile.
Fred met it with a sinking heart. Had he really hoped
she would give him another answer? He would have given
pretty much anything-- But there, that did no good. He
could give only what he had. Things were never complete
in this world; you had to snatch at them as they came or go
without. Nobody could look into her face and draw back,
nobody who had any courage. She had courage enough for
anything--look at her mouth and chin and eyes! Where
did it come from, that light? How could a face, a familiar
face, become so the picture of hope, be painted with the
very colors of youth's exaltation? She was right; she was
not one of those who draw back. Some people get on by
avoiding dangers, others by riding through them.
They stood by the railing looking back at the sand levels,
both feeling that the train was steaming ahead very fast.
Fred's mind was a confusion of images and ideas. Only
two things were clear to him: the force of her determination,
and the belief that, handicapped as he was, he could do
better by her than another man would do. He knew he
would always remember her, standing there with that ex-
pectant, forward-looking smile, enough to turn the future
into summer.
