FOR the first four years after Thea went to Germany
things went on as usual with the Kronborg family.
Mrs. Kronborg's land in Nebraska increased in value and
brought her in a good rental. The family drifted into an
easier way of living, half without realizing it, as families
will. Then Mr. Kronborg, who had never been ill, died sud-
denly of cancer of the liver, and after his death Mrs.
Kronborg went, as her neighbors said, into a decline.
Hearing discouraging reports of her from the physician
who had taken over his practice, Dr. Archie went up from
Denver to see her. He found her in bed, in the room where
he had more than once attended her, a handsome woman
of sixty with a body still firm and white, her hair, faded
now to a very pale primrose, in two thick braids down her
back, her eyes clear and calm. When the doctor arrived,
she was sitting up in her bed, knitting. He felt at once how
glad she was to see him, but he soon gathered that she had
made no determination to get well. She told him, indeed,
that she could not very well get along without Mr. Kron-
borg. The doctor looked at her with astonishment. Was
it possible that she could miss the foolish old man so much?
He reminded her of her children.
"Yes," she replied; "the children are all very well, but
they are not father. We were married young."
The doctor watched her wonderingly as she went on
knitting, thinking how much she looked like Thea. The
difference was one of degree rather than of kind. The
daughter had a compelling enthusiasm, the mother had
none. But their framework, their foundation, was very
much the same.
In a moment Mrs. Kronborg spoke again. "Have you
heard anything from Thea lately?"
During his talk with her, the doctor gathered that what
Mrs. Kronborg really wanted was to see her daughter Thea.
Lying there day after day, she wanted it calmly and con-
tinuously. He told her that, since she felt so, he thought
they might ask Thea to come home.
"I've thought a good deal about it," said Mrs. Kronborg
slowly. "I hate to interrupt her, now that she's begun to
get advancement. I expect she's seen some pretty hard
times, though she was never one to complain. Perhaps
she'd feel that she would like to come. It would be hard,
losing both of us while she's off there."
When Dr. Archie got back to Denver he wrote a long
letter to Thea, explaining her mother's condition and how
much she wished to see her, and asking Thea to come, if
only for a few weeks. Thea had repaid the money she had
borrowed from him, and he assured her that if she hap-
pened to be short of funds for the journey, she had only to
cable him.
A month later he got a frantic sort of reply from Thea.
Complications in the opera at Dresden had given her an
unhoped-for opportunity to go on in a big part. Before this
letter reached the doctor, she would have made her debut
as ELIZABETH, in "Tannhauser." She wanted to go to her
mother more than she wanted anything else in the world,
but, unless she failed,--which she would not,--she abso-
lutely could not leave Dresden for six months. It was not
that she chose to stay; she had to stay--or lose every-
thing. The next few months would put her five years
ahead, or would put her back so far that it would be of no
use to struggle further. As soon as she was free, she would
go to Moonstone and take her mother back to Germany
with her. Her mother, she was sure, could live for years
yet, and she would like German people and German ways,
and could be hearing music all the time. Thea said she was
writing her mother and begging her to help her one last
time; to get strength and to wait for her six months, and
then she (Thea) would do everything. Her mother would
never have to make an effort again.
Dr. Archie went up to Moonstone at once. He had great
confidence in Mrs. Kronborg's power of will, and if Thea's
appeal took hold of her enough, he believed she might
get better. But when he was shown into the familiar room
off the parlor, his heart sank. Mrs. Kronborg was lying
serene and fateful on her pillows. On the dresser at the
foot of her bed there was a large photograph of Thea in the
character in which she was to make her debut. Mrs.
Kronborg pointed to it.
"Isn't she lovely, doctor? It's nice that she hasn't
changed much. I've seen her look like that many a time."
They talked for a while about Thea's good fortune. Mrs.
Kronborg had had a cablegram saying, "First performance
well received. Great relief." In her letter Thea said; "If
you'll only get better, dear mother, there's nothing I can't
do. I will make a really great success, if you'll try with me.
You shall have everything you want, and we will always be
together. I have a little house all picked out where we are
to live."
"Bringing up a family is not all it's cracked up to be,"
said Mrs. Kronborg with a flicker of irony, as she tucked
the letter back under her pillow. "The children you don't
especially need, you have always with you, like the poor.
But the bright ones get away from you. They have their
own way to make in the world. Seems like the brighter
they are, the farther they go. I used to feel sorry that you
had no family, doctor, but maybe you're as well off."
"Thea's plan seems sound to me, Mrs. Kronborg.
There's no reason I can see why you shouldn't pull up
and live for years yet, under proper care. You'd have the
best doctors in the world over there, and it would be won-
derful to live with anybody who looks like that." He
nodded at the photograph of the young woman who must
have been singing "DICH, THEURE HALLE, GRUSS' ICH WIEDER,"
her eyes looking up, her beautiful hands outspread with
pleasure.
Mrs. Kronborg laughed quite cheerfully. "Yes, would
n't it? If father were here, I might rouse myself. But
sometimes it's hard to come back. Or if she were in
trouble, maybe I could rouse myself."
"But, dear Mrs. Kronborg, she is in trouble," her old
friend expostulated. "As she says, she's never needed you
as she needs you now. I make my guess that she's never
begged anybody to help her before."
Mrs. Kronborg smiled. "Yes, it's pretty of her. But
that will pass. When these things happen far away they
don't make such a mark; especially if your hands are full
and you've duties of your own to think about. My own
father died in Nebraska when Gunner was born,--we
were living in Iowa then,--and I was sorry, but the baby
made it up to me. I was father's favorite, too. That's the
way it goes, you see."
The doctor took out Thea's letter to him, and read it over
to Mrs. Kronborg. She seemed to listen, and not to listen.
When he finished, she said thoughtfully: "I'd counted
on hearing her sing again. But I always took my pleasures
as they come. I always enjoyed her singing when she was
here about the house. While she was practicing I often
used to leave my work and sit down in a rocker and give
myself up to it, the same as if I'd been at an entertainment.
I was never one of these housekeepers that let their work
drive them to death. And when she had the Mexicans over
here, I always took it in. First and last,"--she glanced
judicially at the photograph,--"I guess I got about as
much out of Thea's voice as anybody will ever get."
"I guess you did!" the doctor assented heartily; "and I
got a good deal myself. You remember how she used to sing
those Scotch songs for me, and lead us with her head, her
hair bobbing?"
"`Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,'--I can hear it now,"
said Mrs. Kronborg; "and poor father never knew when
he sang sharp! He used to say, `Mother, how do you always
know when they make mistakes practicing?'" Mrs. Kron-
borg chuckled.
Dr. Archie took her hand, still firm like the hand of a
young woman. "It was lucky for her that you did know.
I always thought she got more from you than from any
of her teachers."
"Except Wunsch; he was a real musician," said Mrs.
Kronborg respectfully. "I gave her what chance I could,
in a crowded house. I kept the other children out of the
parlor for her. That was about all I could do. If she wasn't
disturbed, she needed no watching. She went after it like a
terrier after rats from the first, poor child. She was down-
right afraid of it. That's why I always encouraged her
taking Thor off to outlandish places. When she was out of
the house, then she was rid of it."
After they had recalled many pleasant memories to-
gether, Mrs. Kronborg said suddenly: "I always under-
stood about her going off without coming to see us that
time. Oh, I know! You had to keep your own counsel.
You were a good friend to her. I've never forgot that."
She patted the doctor's sleeve and went on absently.
"There was something she didn't want to tell me, and
that's why she didn't come. Something happened when
she was with those people in Mexico. I worried for a good
while, but I guess she's come out of it all right. She'd
had a pretty hard time, scratching along alone like that
when she was so young, and my farms in Nebraska were
down so low that I couldn't help her none. That's no way
to send a girl out. But I guess, whatever there was, she
wouldn't be afraid to tell me now." Mrs. Kronborg
looked up at the photograph with a smile. "She doesn't
look like she was beholding to anybody, does she?"
"She isn't, Mrs. Kronborg. She never has been. That
was why she borrowed the money from me."
"Oh, I knew she'd never have sent for you if she'd done
anything to shame us. She was always proud." Mrs.
Kronborg paused and turned a little on her side. "It's
been quite a satisfaction to you and me, doctor, having
her voice turn out so fine. The things you hope for don't
always turn out like that, by a long sight. As long as old
Mrs. Kohler lived, she used always to translate what it
said about Thea in the German papers she sent. I could
make some of it out myself,--it's not very different from
Swedish,--but it pleased the old lady. She left Thea her
piece-picture of the burning of Moscow. I've got it put
away in moth-balls for her, along with the oboe her grand-
father brought from Sweden. I want her to take father's
oboe back there some day." Mrs. Kronborg paused a
moment and compressed her lips. "But I guess she'll take
a finer instrument than that with her, back to Sweden!"
she added.
Her tone fairly startled the doctor, it was so vibrating
with a fierce, defiant kind of pride he had heard often in
Thea's voice. He looked down wonderingly at his old friend
and patient. After all, one never knew people to the core.
Did she, within her, hide some of that still passion of
which her daughter was all-compact?
"That last summer at home wasn't very nice for her,"
Mrs. Kronborg began as placidly as if the fire had never
leaped up in her. "The other children were acting-up
because they thought I might make a fuss over her and
give her the big-head. We gave her the dare, somehow,
the lot of us, because we couldn't understand her changing
teachers and all that. That's the trouble about giving the
dare to them quiet, unboastful children; you never know
how far it'll take 'em. Well, we ought not to complain,
doctor; she's given us a good deal to think about."
The next time Dr. Archie came to Moonstone, he came
to be a pall-bearer at Mrs. Kronborg's funeral. When he
last looked at her, she was so serene and queenly that he
went back to Denver feeling almost as if he had helped
to bury Thea Kronborg herself. The handsome head in
the coffin seemed to him much more really Thea than did
the radiant young woman in the picture, looking about
at the Gothic vaultings and greeting the Hall of Song.
Read next: PART VI. KRONBORG#Chapter 4
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