II
WHEN Ottenburg and his host reached the house on
Colfax Avenue, they went directly to the library,
a long double room on the second floor which Archie had
arranged exactly to his own taste. It was full of books and
mounted specimens of wild game, with a big writing-table
at either end, stiff, old-fashioned engravings, heavy hang-
ings and deep upholstery.
When one of the Japanese boys brought the cocktails,
Fred turned from the fine specimen of peccoray he had
been examining and said, "A man is an owl to live in such
a place alone, Archie. Why don't you marry? As for me,
just because I can't marry, I find the world full of charm-
ing, unattached women, any one of whom I could fit up a
house for with alacrity."
"You're more knowing than I." Archie spoke politely.
"I'm not very wide awake about women. I'd be likely to
pick out one of the uncomfortable ones--and there are a
few of them, you know." He drank his cocktail and rubbed
his hands together in a friendly way. "My friends here
have charming wives, and they don't give me a chance
to get lonely. They are very kind to me, and I have a
great many pleasant friendships."
Fred put down his glass. "Yes, I've always noticed that
women have confidence in you. You have the doctor's way
of getting next. And you enjoy that kind of thing?"
"The friendship of attractive women? Oh, dear, yes!
I depend upon it a great deal."
The butler announced dinner, and the two men went
downstairs to the dining-room. Dr. Archie's dinners were
always good and well served, and his wines were excellent.
"I saw the Fuel and Iron people to-day," Ottenburg said,
looking up from his soup. "Their heart is in the right place.
I can't see why in the mischief you ever got mixed up with
that reform gang, Archie. You've got nothing to reform
out here. The situation has always been as simple as two
and two in Colorado; mostly a matter of a friendly under-
standing."
"Well,"--Archie spoke tolerantly,--"some of the
young fellows seemed to have red-hot convictions, and I
thought it was better to let them try their ideas out."
Ottenburg shrugged his shoulders. "A few dull young
men who haven't ability enough to play the old game the
old way, so they want to put on a new game which doesn't
take so much brains and gives away more advertising
that's what your anti-saloon league and vice commission
amounts to. They provide notoriety for the fellows who
can't distinguish themselves at running a business or prac-
ticing law or developing an industry. Here you have a
mediocre lawyer with no brains and no practice, trying to
get a look-in on something. He comes up with the novel
proposition that the prostitute has a hard time of it, puts
his picture in the paper, and the first thing you know, he's
a celebrity. He gets the rake-off and she's just where she
was before. How could you fall for a mouse-trap like
Pink Alden, Archie?"
Dr. Archie laughed as he began to carve. "Pink seems
to get under your skin. He's not worth talking about.
He's gone his limit. People won't read about his blame-
less life any more. I knew those interviews he gave out
would cook him. They were a last resort. I could have
stopped him, but by that time I'd come to the conclusion
that I'd let the reformers down. I'm not against a general
shaking-up, but the trouble with Pinky's crowd is they
never get beyond a general writing-up. We gave them a
chance to do something, and they just kept on writing
about each other and what temptations they had over-
come."
While Archie and his friend were busy with Colorado
politics, the impeccable Japanese attended swiftly and
intelligently to his duties, and the dinner, as Ottenburg at
last remarked, was worthy of more profitable conversation.
"So it is," the doctor admitted. "Well, we'll go up-
stairs for our coffee and cut this out. Bring up some cognac
and arak, Tai," he added as he rose from the table.
They stopped to examine a moose's head on the stair-
way, and when they reached the library the pine logs in
the fireplace had been lighted, and the coffee was bubbling
before the hearth. Tai placed two chairs before the fire
and brought a tray of cigarettes.
"Bring the cigars in my lower desk drawer, boy," the
doctor directed. "Too much light in here, isn't there,
Fred? Light the lamp there on my desk, Tai." He turned
off the electric glare and settled himself deep into the chair
opposite Ottenburg's.
"To go back to our conversation, doctor," Fred began
while he waited for the first steam to blow off his coffee;
"why don't you make up your mind to go to Washington?
There'd be no fight made against you. I needn't say the
United Breweries would back you. There'd be some KUDOS
coming to us, too; backing a reform candidate."
Dr. Archie measured his length in his chair and thrust
his large boots toward the crackling pitch-pine. He drank
his coffee and lit a big black cigar while his guest looked
over the assortment of cigarettes on the tray. "You say
why don't I," the doctor spoke with the deliberation of a
man in the position of having several courses to choose
from, "but, on the other hand, why should I?" He puffed
away and seemed, through his half-closed eyes, to look
down several long roads with the intention of luxuriously
rejecting all of them and remaining where he was. "I'm
sick of politics. I'm disillusioned about serving my crowd,
and I don't particularly want to serve yours. Nothing in it
that I particularly want; and a man's not effective in poli-
tics unless he wants something for himself, and wants it
hard. I can reach my ends by straighter roads. There are
plenty of things to keep me busy. We haven't begun to
develop our resources in this State; we haven't had a look
in on them yet. That's the only thing that isn't fake--
making men and machines go, and actually turning out a
product."
The doctor poured himself some white cordial and looked
over the little glass into the fire with an expression which
led Ottenburg to believe that he was getting at something
in his own mind. Fred lit a cigarette and let his friend
grope for his idea.
"My boys, here," Archie went on, "have got me rather
interested in Japan. Think I'll go out there in the spring,
and come back the other way, through Siberia. I've always
wanted to go to Russia." His eyes still hunted for some-
thing in his big fireplace. With a slow turn of his head he
brought them back to his guest and fixed them upon him.
"Just now, I'm thinking of running on to New York for
a few weeks," he ended abruptly.
Ottenburg lifted his chin. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as if he
began to see Archie's drift. "Shall you see Thea?"
"Yes." The doctor replenished his cordial glass. "In
fact, I suspect I am going exactly TO see her. I'm getting
stale on things here, Fred. Best people in the world and
always doing things for me. I'm fond of them, too, but
I've been with them too much. I'm getting ill-tempered,
and the first thing I know I'll be hurting people's feelings.
I snapped Mrs. Dandridge up over the telephone this
afternoon when she asked me to go out to Colorado Springs
on Sunday to meet some English people who are staying
at the Antlers. Very nice of her to want me, and I was as
sour as if she'd been trying to work me for something.
I've got to get out for a while, to save my reputation."
To this explanation Ottenburg had not paid much atten-
tion. He seemed to be looking at a fixed point: the yellow
glass eyes of a fine wildcat over one of the bookcases.
"You've never heard her at all, have you?" he asked
reflectively. "Curious, when this is her second season in
New York."
"I was going on last March. Had everything arranged.
And then old Cap Harris thought he could drive his car
and me through a lamp-post and I was laid up with a com-
pound fracture for two months. So I didn't get to see
Thea."
Ottenburg studied the red end of his cigarette attentively.
"She might have come out to see you. I remember you
covered the distance like a streak when she wanted you."
Archie moved uneasily. "Oh, she couldn't do that. She
had to get back to Vienna to work on some new parts for
this year. She sailed two days after the New York season
closed."
"Well, then she couldn't, of course." Fred smoked his
cigarette close and tossed the end into the fire. "I'm tre-
mendously glad you're going now. If you're stale, she'll
jack you up. That's one of her specialties. She got a rise
out of me last December that lasted me all winter."
"Of course," the doctor apologized, "you know so much
more about such things. I'm afraid it will be rather wasted
on me. I'm no judge of music."
"Never mind that." The younger man pulled himself
up in his chair. "She gets it across to people who aren't
judges. That's just what she does." He relapsed into his
former lassitude. "If you were stone deaf, it wouldn't all
be wasted. It's a great deal to watch her. Incidentally,
you know, she is very beautiful. Photographs give you no
idea."
Dr. Archie clasped his large hands under his chin. "Oh,
I'm counting on that. I don't suppose her voice will sound
natural to me. Probably I wouldn't know it."
Ottenburg smiled. "You'll know it, if you ever knew it.
It's the same voice, only more so. You'll know it."
"Did you, in Germany that time, when you wrote me?
Seven years ago, now. That must have been at the very
beginning."
"Yes, somewhere near the beginning. She sang one of
the Rhine daughters." Fred paused and drew himself up
again. "Sure, I knew it from the first note. I'd heard a
good many young voices come up out of the Rhine, but,
by gracious, I hadn't heard one like that!" He fumbled
for another cigarette. "Mahler was conducting that night.
I met him as he was leaving the house and had a word with
him. `Interesting voice you tried out this evening,' I
said. He stopped and smiled. `Miss Kronborg, you mean?
Yes, very. She seems to sing for the idea. Unusual in a
young singer.' I'd never heard him admit before that a
singer could have an idea. She not only had it, but she got
it across. The Rhine music, that I'd known since I was a
boy, 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 Ger-
man, 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 ac-
tress." 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 de-
presses me now to buy wedding presents." For some time
the doctor watched his guest, who was sunk in bitter reflec-
tions. "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 under-
stood 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 complica-
tion 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 correspond-
ence, 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. To-day 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 any-
thing 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 steer-
ing-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
in the morning at about eleven. I want a word with you
about this Interstate Commerce Bill. Good-night."
Dr. Archie saw his guest to the motor which was waiting
below, and then went back to his library, where he replen-
ished the fire and sat down for a long smoke. A man of
Archie's modest and rather credulous nature develops late,
and makes his largest gain between forty and fifty. At
thirty, indeed, as we have seen, Archie was a soft-hearted
boy under a manly exterior, still whistling to keep up his
courage. Prosperity and large responsibilities--above all,
getting free of poor Mrs. Archie--had brought out a good
deal more than he knew was in him. He was thinking to-
night as he sat before the fire, in the comfort he liked so
well, that but for lucky chances, and lucky holes in the
ground, he would still be a country practitioner, reading
his old books by his office lamp. And yet, he was not so
fresh and energetic as he ought to be. He was tired of
business and of politics. Worse than that, he was tired of
the men with whom he had to do and of the women who,
as he said, had been kind to him. He felt as if he were still
hunting for something, like old Jasper Flight. He knew
that this was an unbecoming and ungrateful state of mind,
and he reproached himself for it. But he could not help
wondering why it was that life, even when it gave so much,
after all gave so little. What was it that he had expected
and missed? Why was he, more than he was anything else,
disappointed?
He fell to looking back over his life and asking himself
which years of it he would like to live over again,--just
as they had been,--and they were not many. His college
years he would live again, gladly. After them there was
nothing he would care to repeat until he came to Thea
Kronborg. There had been something stirring about those
years in Moonstone, when he was a restless young man on
the verge of breaking into larger enterprises, and when she
was a restless child on the verge of growing up into some-
thing unknown. He realized now that she had counted for
a great deal more to him than he knew at the time. It was
a continuous sort of relationship. He was always on the
lookout for her as he went about the town, always vaguely
expecting her as he sat in his office at night. He had never
asked himself then if it was strange that he should find a
child of twelve the most interesting and companionable
person in Moonstone. It had seemed a pleasant, natural
kind of solicitude. He explained it then by the fact that
he had no children of his own. But now, as he looked back
at those years, the other interests were faded and inani-
mate. The thought of them was heavy. But wherever his
life had touched Thea Kronborg's, there was still a little
warmth left, a little sparkle. Their friendship seemed to
run over those discontented years like a leafy pattern, still
bright and fresh when the other patterns had faded into
the dull background. Their walks and drives and confi-
dences, the night they watched the rabbit in the moon-
light,--why were these things stirring to remember?
Whenever he thought of them, they were distinctly dif-
ferent from the other memories of his life; always seemed
humorous, gay, with a little thrill of anticipation and mys-
tery about them. They came nearer to being tender secrets
than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else
they corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the
world, and had not found. It came over him now that the
unexpected favors of fortune, no matter how dazzling, do
not mean very much to us. They may excite or divert us
for a time, but when we look back, the only things we cher-
ish are those which in some way met our original want; the
desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and
of its own accord.
