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He had let something he cared for go, and he felt bitterly
about whatever was left. The mood would pass, and he
would be sorry. She knew him. It wounded her, of course,
but that hurt was not new. It was as old as her love for
him. She went out and left him alone.
VIII
ONE warm damp June night the Denver Express was
speeding westward across the earthy-smelling plains
of Iowa. The lights in the day-coach were turned low and
the ventilators were open, admitting showers of soot and
dust upon the occupants of the narrow green plush chairs
which were tilted at various angles of discomfort. In each
of these chairs some uncomfortable human being lay drawn
up, or stretched out, or writhing from one position to an-
other. There were tired men in rumpled shirts, their necks
bare and their suspenders down; old women with their
heads tied up in black handkerchiefs; bedraggled young
women who went to sleep while they were nursing their
babies and forgot to button up their dresses; dirty boys
who added to the general discomfort by taking off their
boots. The brakeman, when he came through at midnight,
sniffed the heavy air disdainfully and looked up at the
ventilators. As he glanced down the double rows of con-
torted figures, he saw one pair of eyes that were wide open
and bright, a yellow head that was not overcome by the
stupefying heat and smell in the car. "There's a girl for
you," he thought as he stopped by Thea's chair.
"Like to have the window up a little?" he asked.
Thea smiled up at him, not misunderstanding his friend-
liness. "The girl behind me is sick; she can't stand a draft.
What time is it, please?"
He took out his open-faced watch and held it before her
eyes with a knowing look. "In a hurry?" he asked. "I'll
leave the end door open and air you out. Catch a wink;
the time'll go faster."
Thea nodded good-night to him and settled her head
back on her pillow, looking up at the oil lamps. She was
going back to Moonstone for her summer vacation, and
she was sitting up all night in a day-coach because that
seemed such an easy way to save money. At her age dis-
comfort was a small matter, when one made five dollars a
day by it. She had confidently expected to sleep after the
car got quiet, but in the two chairs behind her were a sick
girl and her mother, and the girl had been coughing steadily
since ten o'clock. They had come from somewhere in
Pennsylvania, and this was their second night on the road.
The mother said they were going to Colorado "for her
daughter's lungs." The daughter was a little older than
Thea, perhaps nineteen, with patient dark eyes and curly
brown hair. She was pretty in spite of being so sooty and
travel-stained. She had put on an ugly figured satine
kimono over her loosened clothes. Thea, when she boarded
the train in Chicago, happened to stop and plant her
heavy telescope on this seat. She had not intended to
remain there, but the sick girl had looked up at her with
an eager smile and said, "Do sit there, miss. I'd so much
rather not have a gentleman in front of me."
After the girl began to cough there were no empty seats
left, and if there had been Thea could scarcely have changed
without hurting her feelings. The mother turned on her
side and went to sleep; she was used to the cough. But the
girl lay wide awake, her eyes fixed on the roof of the car, as
Thea's were. The two girls must have seen very different
things there.
Thea fell to going over her winter in Chicago. It was
only under unusual or uncomfortable conditions like these
that she could keep her mind fixed upon herself or her own
affairs for any length of time. The rapid motion and the
vibration of the wheels under her seemed to give her
thoughts rapidity and clearness. She had taken twenty
very expensive lessons from Madison Bowers, but she did
not yet know what he thought of her or of her ability. He
was different from any man with whom she had ever had
to do. With her other teachers she had felt a personal
relation; but with him she did not. Bowers was a cold,
bitter, avaricious man, but he knew a great deal about
voices. He worked with a voice as if he were in a labora-
tory, conducting a series of experiments. He was conscien-
tious and industrious, even capable of a certain cold fury
when he was working with an interesting voice, but Har-
sanyi declared that he had the soul of a shrimp, and could
no more make an artist than a throat specialist could.
Thea realized that he had taught her a great deal in twenty
lessons.
Although she cared so much less for Bowers than for
Harsanyi, Thea was, on the whole, happier since she had
been studying with him than she had been before. She
had always told herself that she studied piano to fit her-
self to be a music teacher. But she never asked herself
why she was studying voice. Her voice, more than any
other part of her, had to do with that confidence, that sense
of wholeness and inner well-being that she had felt at mo-
ments ever since she could remember.
Of this feeling Thea had never spoken to any human
being until that day when she told Harsanyi that "there
had always been--something." Hitherto she had felt
but one obligation toward it--secrecy; to protect it even
from herself. She had always believed that by doing all
that was required of her by her family, her teachers, her
pupils, she kept that part of herself from being caught up
in the meshes of common things. She took it for granted
that some day, when she was older, she would know a
great deal more about it. It was as if she had an appoint-
ment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere.
It was moving to meet her and she was moving to meet
it. That meeting awaited her, just as surely as, for the
poor girl in the seat behind her, there awaited a hole in
the earth, already dug.
For Thea, so much had begun with a hole in the earth.
Yes, she reflected, this new part of her life had all begun that
morning when she sat on the clay bank beside Ray Ken-
nedy, under the flickering shade of the cottonwood tree.
She remembered the way Ray had looked at her that
morning. Why had he cared so much? And Wunsch, and
Dr. Archie, and Spanish Johnny, why had they? It was
something that had to do with her that made them care,
but it was not she. It was something they believed in, but
it was not she. Perhaps each of them concealed another
person in himself, just as she did. Why was it that they
seemed to feel and to hunt for a second person in her and
not in each other? Thea frowned up at the dull lamp in
the roof of the car. What if one's second self could some-
how speak to all these second selves? What if one could
bring them out, as whiskey did Spanish Johnny's? How
deep they lay, these second persons, and how little one
knew about them, except to guard them fiercely. It was
to music, more than to anything else, that these hidden
things in people responded. Her mother--even her mo-
ther had something of that sort which replied to music.
Thea found herself listening for the coughing behind
her and not hearing it. She turned cautiously and looked
back over the head-rest of her chair. The poor girl had
fallen asleep. Thea looked at her intently. Why was she so
afraid of men? Why did she shrink into herself and avert
her face whenever a man passed her chair? Thea thought
she knew; of course, she knew. How horrible to waste
away like that, in the time when one ought to be growing
fuller and stronger and rounder every day. Suppose there
were such a dark hole open for her, between to-night and
that place where she was to meet herself? Her eyes nar-
rowed. She put her hand on her breast and felt how
warm it was; and within it there was a full, powerful
pulsation. She smiled--though she was ashamed of it
--with the natural contempt of strength for weakness,
with the sense of physical security which makes the savage
merciless. Nobody could die while they felt like that in-
side. The springs there were wound so tight that it would
be a long while before there was any slack in them. The
life in there was rooted deep. She was going to have a few
things before she died. She realized that there were a great
many trains dashing east and west on the face of the con-
tinent that night, and that they all carried young people
who meant to have things. But the difference was that
SHE WAS GOING TO GET THEM! That was all. Let people try to
stop her! She glowered at the rows of feckless bodies that
lay sprawled in the chairs. Let them try it once! Along
with the yearning that came from some deep part of her,
that was selfless and exalted, Thea had a hard kind of
cockiness, a determination to get ahead. Well, there are
passages in life when that fierce, stubborn self-assertion
will stand its ground after the nobler feeling is over-
whelmed and beaten under.
Having told herself once more that she meant to grab a
few things, Thea went to sleep.
She was wakened in the morning by the sunlight, which
beat fiercely through the glass of the car window upon her
face. She made herself as clean as she could, and while the
people all about her were getting cold food out of their
lunch-baskets she escaped into the dining-car. Her thrift
did not go to the point of enabling her to carry a lunch-
basket. At that early hour there were few people in the
dining-car. The linen was white and fresh, the darkies were
trim and smiling, and the sunlight gleamed pleasantly upon
the silver and the glass water-bottles. On each table there
was a slender vase with a single pink rose in it. When Thea
sat down she looked into her rose and thought it the most
beautiful thing in the world; it was wide open, recklessly
offering its yellow heart, and there were drops of water on
the petals. All the future was in that rose, all that one
would like to be. The flower put her in an absolutely regal
mood. She had a whole pot of coffee, and scrambled eggs
with chopped ham, utterly disregarding the astonishing
price they cost. She had faith enough in what she could
do, she told herself, to have eggs if she wanted them. At
the table opposite her sat a man and his wife and little boy
--Thea classified them as being "from the East." They
spoke in that quick, sure staccato, which Thea, like Ray
Kennedy, pretended to scorn and secretly admired. Peo-
ple who could use wor...
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