BY the first of February Thea had been in Chicago al-
most four months, and she did not know much more
about the city than if she had never quitted Moonstone.
She was, as Harsanyi said, incurious. Her work took most
of her time, and she found that she had to sleep a good
deal. It had never before been so hard to get up in the
morning. She had the bother of caring for her room, and
she had to build her fire and bring up her coal. Her routine
was frequently interrupted by a message from Mr. Larsen
summoning her to sing at a funeral. Every funeral took
half a day, and the time had to be made up. When Mrs.
Harsanyi asked her if it did not depress her to sing at fu-
nerals, she replied that she "had been brought up to go
to funerals and didn't mind."
Thea never went into shops unless she had to, and she
felt no interest in them. Indeed, she shunned them, as
places where one was sure to be parted from one's money
in some way. She was nervous about counting her change,
and she could not accustom herself to having her purchases
sent to her address. She felt much safer with her bundles
under her arm.
During this first winter Thea got no city consciousness.
Chicago was simply a wilderness through which one had to
find one's way. She felt no interest in the general briskness
and zest of the crowds. The crash and scramble of that
big, rich, appetent Western city she did not take in at all,
except to notice that the noise of the drays and street-cars
tired her. The brilliant window displays, the splendid furs
and stuffs, the gorgeous flower-shops, the gay candy-shops,
she scarcely noticed. At Christmas-time she did feel some
curiosity about the toy-stores, and she wished she held
Thor's little mittened fist in her hand as she stood before
the windows. The jewelers' windows, too, had a strong
attraction for her--she had always liked bright stones.
When she went into the city she used to brave the biting
lake winds and stand gazing in at the displays of diamonds
and pearls and emeralds; the tiaras and necklaces and ear-
rings, on white velvet. These seemed very well worth
while to her, things worth coveting.
Mrs. Lorch and Mrs. Andersen often told each other
it was strange that Miss Kronborg had so little initiative
about "visiting points of interest." When Thea came
to live with them she had expressed a wish to see two
places: Montgomery Ward and Company's big mail-order
store, and the packing-houses, to which all the hogs and
cattle that went through Moonstone were bound. One
of Mrs. Lorch's lodgers worked in a packing-house, and
Mrs. Andersen brought Thea word that she had spoken to
Mr. Eckman and he would gladly take her to Packing-
town. Eckman was a toughish young Swede, and he
thought it would be something of a lark to take a pretty
girl through the slaughter-houses. But he was disap-
pointed. Thea neither grew faint nor clung to the arm he
kept offering her. She asked innumerable questions and
was impatient because he knew so little of what was going
on outside of his own department. When they got off the
street-car and walked back to Mrs. Lorch's house in the
dusk, Eckman put her hand in his overcoat pocket--she
had no muff--and kept squeezing it ardently until she
said, "Don't do that; my ring cuts me." That night he
told his roommate that he "could have kissed her as easy
as rolling off a log, but she wasn't worth the trouble." As
for Thea, she had enjoyed the afternoon very much, and
wrote her father a brief but clear account of what she had
seen.
One night at supper Mrs. Andersen was talking about
the exhibit of students' work she had seen at the Art In-
stitute that afternoon. Several of her friends had sketches
in the exhibit. Thea, who always felt that she was be-
hindhand in courtesy to Mrs. Andersen, thought that here
was an opportunity to show interest without committing
herself to anything. "Where is that, the Institute?" she
asked absently.
Mrs. Andersen clasped her napkin in both hands. "The
Art Institute? Our beautiful Art Institute on Michigan
Avenue? Do you mean to say you have never visited it?"
"Oh, is it the place with the big lions out in front? I
remember; I saw it when I went to Montgomery Ward's.
Yes, I thought the lions were beautiful."
"But the pictures! Didn't you visit the galleries?"
"No. The sign outside said it was a pay-day. I've al-
ways meant to go back, but I haven't happened to be
down that way since."
Mrs. Lorch and Mrs. Andersen looked at each other.
The old mother spoke, fixing her shining little eyes upon
Thea across the table. "Ah, but Miss Kronborg, there are
old masters! Oh, many of them, such as you could not see
anywhere out of Europe."
"And Corots," breathed Mrs. Andersen, tilting her
head feelingly. "Such examples of the Barbizon school!"
This was meaningless to Thea, who did not read the art
columns of the Sunday INTER-OCEAN as Mrs. Andersen did.
"Oh, I'm going there some day," she reassured them.
"I like to look at oil paintings."
One bleak day in February, when the wind was blow-
ing clouds of dirt like a Moonstone sandstorm, dirt that
filled your eyes and ears and mouth, Thea fought her way
across the unprotected space in front of the Art Institute
and into the doors of the building. She did not come out
again until the closing hour. In the street-car, on the long
cold ride home, while she sat staring at the waistcoat but-
tons of a fat strap-hanger, she had a serious reckoning with
herself. She seldom thought about her way of life, about
what she ought or ought not to do; usually there was but
one obvious and important thing to be done. But that
afternoon she remonstrated with herself severely. She told
herself that she was missing a great deal; that she ought to
be more willing to take advice and to go to see things. She
was sorry that she had let months pass without going
to the Art Institute. After this she would go once a week.
The Institute proved, indeed, a place of retreat, as the
sand hills or the Kohlers' garden used to be; a place where
she could forget Mrs. Andersen's tiresome overtures of
friendship, the stout contralto in the choir whom she so
unreasonably hated, and even, for a little while, the torment
of her work. That building was a place in which she could
relax and play, and she could hardly ever play now. On
the whole, she spent more time with the casts than with
the pictures. They were at once more simple and more
perplexing; and some way they seemed more important,
harder to overlook. It never occurred to her to buy a
catalogue, so she called most of the casts by names she
made up for them. Some of them she knew; the Dying
Gladiator she had read about in "Childe Harold" almost
as long ago as she could remember; he was strongly as-
sociated with Dr. Archie and childish illnesses. The Venus
di Milo puzzled her; she could not see why people thought
her so beautiful. She told herself over and over that she
did not think the Apollo Belvedere "at all handsome."
Better than anything else she liked a great equestrian
statue of an evil, cruel-looking general with an unpro-
nounceable name. She used to walk round and round this
terrible man and his terrible horse, frowning at him, brood-
ing upon him, as if she had to make some momentous de-
cision about him.
The casts, when she lingered long among them, always
made her gloomy. It was with a lightening of the heart, a
feeling of throwing off the old miseries and old sorrows of
the world, that she ran up the wide staircase to the pic-
tures. There she liked best the ones that told stories.
There was a painting by Gerome called "The Pasha's
Grief" which always made her wish for Gunner and Axel.
The Pasha was seated on a rug, beside a green candle al-
most as big as a telegraph pole, and before him was stretched
his dead tiger, a splendid beast, and there were pink roses
scattered about him. She loved, too, a picture of some
boys bringing in a newborn calf on a litter, the cow walking
beside it and licking it. The Corot which hung next to this
painting she did not like or dislike; she never saw it.
But in that same room there was a picture--oh, that
was the thing she ran upstairs so fast to see! That was
her picture. She imagined that nobody cared for it but
herself, and that it waited for her. That was a picture in-
deed. She liked even the name of it, "The Song of the
Lark." The flat country, the early morning light, the wet
fields, the look in the girl's heavy face--well, they were
all hers, anyhow, whatever was there. She told herself that
that picture was "right." Just what she meant by this, it
would take a clever person to explain. But to her the word
covered the almost boundless satisfaction she felt when she
looked at the picture.
Before Thea had any idea how fast the weeks were fly-
ing, before Mr. Larsen's "permanent" soprano had re-
turned to her duties, spring came; windy, dusty, strident,
shrill; a season almost more violent in Chicago than the
winter from which it releases one, or the heat to which it
eventually delivers one. One sunny morning the apple
trees in Mrs. Lorch's back yard burst into bloom, and for
the first time in months Thea dressed without building a
fire. The morning shone like a holiday, and for her it was
to be a holiday. There was in the air that sudden, treacher-
ous softness which makes the Poles who work in the pack-
ing-houses get drunk. At such times beauty is necessary,
and in Packingtown there is no place to get it except at the
saloons, where one can buy for a few hours the illusion of
comfort, hope, love,--whatever one most longs for.
Harsanyi had given Thea a ticket for the symphony
concert that afternoon, and when she looked out at the
white apple trees her doubts as to whether she ought to go
vanished at once. She would make her work light that
morning, she told herself. She would go to the concert full
of energy. When she set off, after dinner, Mrs. Lorch, who
knew Chicago weather, prevailed upon her to take her
cape. The old lady said that such sudden mildness, so
early in April, presaged a sharp return of winter, and she
was anxious about her apple trees.
The concert began at two-thirty, and Thea was in her
seat in the Auditorium at ten minutes after two--a fine
seat in the first row of the balcony, on the side, where she
could see the house as well as the orchestra. She had been
to so few concerts that the great house, the crowd of
people, and the lights, all had a stimulating effect. She
was surprised to see so many men in the audience, and
wondered how they could leave their business in the after-
noon. During the first number Thea was so much inter-
ested in the orchestra itself, in the men, the instruments,
the volume of sound, that she paid little attention to what
they were playing. Her excitement impaired her power
of listening. She kept saying to herself, "Now I must
stop this foolishness and listen; I may never hear this
again"; but her mind was like a glass that is hard to
focus. She was not ready to listen until the second num-
ber, Dvorak's Symphony in E minor, called on the pro-
gramme, "From the New World." The first theme had
scarcely been given out when her mind became clear; in-
stant composure fell upon her, and with it came the power
of concentration. This was music she could understand,
music from the New World indeed! Strange how, as
the first movement went on, it brought back to her that
high tableland above Laramie; the grass-grown wagon
trails, the far-away peaks of the snowy range, the wind and
the eagles, that old man and the first telegraph message.
When the first movement ended, Thea's hands and feet
were cold as ice. She was too much excited to know any-
thing except that she wanted something desperately, and
when the English horns gave out the theme of the Largo,
she knew that what she wanted was exactly that. Here
were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the
things that wakened and chirped in the early morning;
the reaching and reaching of high plains, the immeas-
urable yearning of all flat lands. There was home in it,
too; first memories, first mornings long ago; the amaze-
ment of a new soul in a new world; a soul new and yet old,
that had dreamed something despairing, something glori-
ous, in the dark before it was born; a soul obsessed by what
it did not know, under the cloud of a past it could not re-
call.
If Thea had had much experience in concert-going, and
had known her own capacity, she would have left the
hall when the symphony was over. But she sat still,
scarcely knowing where she was, because her mind had
been far away and had not yet come back to her. She was
startled when the orchestra began to play again--the
entry of the gods into Walhalla. She heard it as people
hear things in their sleep. She knew scarcely anything
about the Wagner operas. She had a vague idea that
"Rhinegold" was about the strife between gods and men;
she had read something about it in Mr. Haweis's book long
ago. Too tired to follow the orchestra with much under-
standing, she crouched down in her seat and closed her
eyes. The cold, stately measures of the Walhalla music
rang out, far away; the rainbow bridge throbbed out into
the air, under it the wailing of the Rhine daughters and
the singing of the Rhine. But Thea was sunk in twilight;
it was all going on in another world. So it happened that
with a dull, almost listless ear she heard for the first time
that troubled music, ever-darkening, ever-brightening,
which was to flow through so many years of her life.
When Thea emerged from the concert hall, Mrs. Lorch's
predictions had been fulfilled. A furious gale was beating
over the city from Lake Michigan. The streets were full of
cold, hurrying, angry people, running for street-cars and
barking at each other. The sun was setting in a clear,
windy sky, that flamed with red as if there were a great
fire somewhere on the edge of the city. For almost the
first time Thea was conscious of the city itself, of the con-
gestion of life all about her, of the brutality and power of
those streams that flowed in the streets, threatening to
drive one under. People jostled her, ran into her, poked
her aside with their elbows, uttering angry exclamations.
She got on the wrong car and was roughly ejected by the
conductor at a windy corner, in front of a saloon. She stood
there dazed and shivering. The cars passed, screaming as
they rounded curves, but either they were full to the doors,
or were bound for places where she did not want to go.
Her hands were so cold that she took off her tight kid
gloves. The street lights began to gleam in the dusk. A
young man came out of the saloon and stood eyeing her
questioningly while he lit a cigarette. "Looking for a
friend to-night?" he asked. Thea drew up the collar of her
cape and walked on a few paces. The young man shrugged
his shoulders and drifted away.
Thea came back to the corner and stood there irreso-
lutely. An old man approached her. He, too, seemed to be
waiting for a car. He wore an overcoat with a black fur
collar, his gray mustache was waxed into little points, and
his eyes were watery. He kept thrusting his face up near
hers. Her hat blew off and he ran after it--a stiff, pitiful
skip he had--and brought it back to her. Then, while
she was pinning her hat on, her cape blew up, and he held
it down for her, looking at her intently. His face worked
as if he were going to cry or were frightened. He leaned
over and whispered something to her. It struck her as
curious that he was really quite timid, like an old beggar.
"Oh, let me ALONE!" she cried miserably between her teeth.
He vanished, disappeared like the Devil in a play. But
in the mean time something had got away from her; she
could not remember how the violins came in after the
horns, just there. When her cape blew up, perhaps-- Why
did these men torment her? A cloud of dust blew in her
face and blinded her. There was some power abroad in the
world bent upon taking away from her that feeling with
which she had come out of the concert hall. Everything
seemed to sweep down on her to tear it out from under
her cape. If one had that, the world became one's enemy;
people, buildings, wagons, cars, rushed at one to crush it
under, to make one let go of it. Thea glared round her
at the crowds, the ugly, sprawling streets, the long lines
of lights, and she was not crying now. Her eyes were
brighter than even Harsanyi had ever seen them. All
these things and people were no longer remote and negli-
gible; they had to be met, they were lined up against her,
they were there to take something from her. Very well;
they should never have it. They might trample her to
death, but they should never have it. As long as she lived
that ecstasy was going to be hers. She would live for it,
work for it, die for it; but she was going to have it, time
after time, height after height. She could hear the crash
of the orchestra again, and she rose on the brasses. She
would have it, what the trumpets were singing! She
would have it, have it,--it! Under the old cape she
pressed her hands upon her heaving bosom, that was a
little girl's no longer.
Read next: PART II. THE SONG OF THE LARK#Chapter 6
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