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still there. She began to feel the same restlessness that
had tortured her the last spring when she was teaching in
Moonstone. Suppose she never got away again, after all?
Suppose one broke a leg and had to lie in bed at home for
weeks, or had pneumonia and died there. The desert was
so big and thirsty; if one's foot slipped, it could drink
one up like a drop of water.
This time, when Thea left Moonstone to go back to
Chicago, she went alone. As the train pulled out, she
looked back at her mother and father and Thor. They were
calm and cheerful; they did not know, they did not un-
derstand. Something pulled in her--and broke. She
cried all the way to Denver, and that night, in her berth,
she kept sobbing and waking herself. But when the sun
rose in the morning, she was far away. It was all behind
her, and she knew that she would never cry like that again.
People live through such pain only once; pain comes again,
but it finds a tougher surface. Thea remembered how she
had gone away the first time, with what confidence in
everything, and what pitiful ignorance. Such a silly! She
felt resentful toward that stupid, good-natured child. How
much older she was now, and how much harder! She
was going away to fight, and she was going away forever.
PART III
STUPID FACES
I
So many grinning, stupid faces! Thea was sitting by the
window in Bowers's studio, waiting for him to come
back from lunch. On her knee was the latest number of an
illustrated musical journal in which musicians great and
little stridently advertised their wares. Every afternoon
she played accompaniments for people who looked and
smiled like these. She was getting tired of the human
countenance.
Thea had been in Chicago for two months. She had a
small church position which partly paid her living ex-
penses, and she paid for her singing lessons by playing
Bowers's accompaniments every afternoon from two until
six. She had been compelled to leave her old friends Mrs.
Lorch and Mrs. Andersen, because the long ride from North
Chicago to Bowers's studio on Michigan Avenue took too
much time--an hour in the morning, and at night, when
the cars were crowded, an hour and a half. For the first
month she had clung to her old room, but the bad air in
the cars, at the end of a long day's work, fatigued her
greatly and was bad for her voice. Since she left Mrs.
Lorch, she had been staying at a students' club to which
she was introduced by Miss Adler, Bowers's morning ac-
companist, an intelligent Jewish girl from Evanston.
Thea took her lesson from Bowers every day from
eleven-thirty until twelve. Then she went out to lunch
with an Italian grammar under her arm, and came back
to the studio to begin her work at two. In the afternoon
Bowers coached professionals and taught his advanced
pupils. It was his theory that Thea ought to be able to
learn a great deal by keeping her ears open while she
played for him.
The concert-going public of Chicago still remembers the
long, sallow, discontented face of Madison Bowers. He
seldom missed an evening concert, and was usually to be
seen lounging somewhere at the back of the concert hall,
reading a newspaper or review, and conspicuously ignoring
the efforts of the performers. At the end of a number he
looked up from his paper long enough to sweep the ap-
plauding audience with a contemptuous eye. His face was
intelligent, with a narrow lower jaw, a thin nose, faded
gray eyes, and a close-cut brown mustache. His hair was
iron-gray, thin and dead-looking. He went to concerts
chiefly to satisfy himself as to how badly things were done
and how gullible the public was. He hated the whole race
of artists; the work they did, the wages they got, and the
way they spent their money. His father, old Hiram Bowers,
was still alive and at work, a genial old choirmaster in Bos-
ton, full of enthusiasm at seventy. But Madison was of the
colder stuff of his grandfathers, a long line of New Hamp-
shire farmers; hard workers, close traders, with good minds,
mean natures, and flinty eyes. As a boy Madison had a
fine barytone voice, and his father made great sacrifices
for him, sending him to Germany at an early age and keep-
ing him abroad at his studies for years. Madison worked
under the best teachers, and afterward sang in England in
oratorio. His cold nature and academic methods were
against him. His audiences were always aware of the
contempt he felt for them. A dozen poorer singers suc-
ceeded, but Bowers did not.
Bowers had all the qualities which go to make a good
teacher--except generosity and warmth. His intelligence
was of a high order, his taste never at fault. He seldom
worked with a voice without improving it, and in teach-
ing the delivery of oratorio he was without a rival. Sing-
ers came from far and near to study Bach and Handel
with him. Even the fashionable sopranos and contraltos
of Chicago, St. Paul, and St. Louis (they were usually
ladies with very rich husbands, and Bowers called them the
"pampered jades of Asia") humbly endured his sardonic
humor for the sake of what he could do for them. He was
not at all above helping a very lame singer across, if her
husband's check-book warranted it. He had a whole bag
of tricks for stupid people, "life-preservers," he called
them. "Cheap repairs for a cheap 'un," he used to say,
but the husbands never found the repairs very cheap.
Those were the days when lumbermen's daughters and
brewers' wives contended in song; studied in Germany and
then floated from SANGERFEST to SANGERFEST. Choral so-
cieties flourished in all the rich lake cities and river cities.
The soloists came to Chicago to coach with Bowers, and
he often took long journeys to hear and instruct a chorus.
He was intensely avaricious, and from these semi-profes-
sionals he reaped a golden harvest. They fed his pockets
and they fed his ever-hungry contempt, his scorn of him-
self and his accomplices. The more money he made, the
more parsimonious he became. His wife was so shabby
that she never went anywhere with him, which suited him
exactly. Because his clients were luxurious and extrava-
gant, he took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes half-
soled a second time, and in getting the last wear out of a
broken collar. He had first been interested in Thea Kron-
borg because of her bluntness, her country roughness, and
her manifest carefulness about money. The mention of
Harsanyi's name always made him pull a wry face. For
the first time Thea had a friend who, in his own cool and
guarded way, liked her for whatever was least admirable in
her.
Thea was still looking at the musical paper, her grammar
unopened on the window-sill, when Bowers sauntered in
a little before two o'clock. He was smoking a cheap cigar-
ette and wore the same soft felt hat he had worn all last
winter. He never carried a cane or wore gloves.
Thea followed him from the reception-room into the
studio. "I may cut my lesson out to-morrow, Mr. Bowers.
I have to hunt a new boarding-place."
Bowers looked up languidly from his desk where he had
begun to go over a pile of letters. "What's the matter
with the Studio Club? Been fighting with them again?"
"The Club's all right for people who like to live that
way. I don't."
Bowers lifted his eyebrows. "Why so tempery?" he
asked as he drew a check from an envelope postmarked
"Minneapolis."
"I can't work with a lot of girls around. They're
too familiar. I never could get along with girls of my
own age. It's all too chummy. Gets on my nerves. I
didn't come here to play kindergarten games." Thea
began energetically to arrange the scattered music on the
piano.
Bowers grimaced good-humoredly at her over the three
checks he was pinning together. He liked to play at a
rough game of banter with her. He flattered himself that
he had made her harsher than she was when she first came
to him; that he had got off a little of the sugar-coating
Harsanyi always put on his pupils.
"The art of making yourself agreeable never comes
amiss, Miss Kronborg. I should say you rather need a
little practice along that line. When you come to market-
ing your wares in the world, a little smoothness goes
farther than a great deal of talent sometimes. If you hap-
pen to be cursed with a real talent, then you've got to be
very smooth indeed, or you'll never get your money back."
Bowers snapped the elastic band around his bank-book.
Thea gave him a sharp, recognizing glance. "Well,
that's the money I'll have to go without," she replied.
"Just what do you mean?"
"I mean the money people have to grin for. I used to
know a railroad man who said there was money in every
profession that you couldn't take. He'd tried a good
many jobs," Thea added musingly; "perhaps he was too
particular about the kind he could take, for he never
picked up much. He was proud, but I liked him for that."
Bowers rose and closed his desk. "Mrs. Priest is late
again. By the way, Miss Kronborg, remember not to frown
when you are playing for Mrs. Priest. You did not re-
member yesterday."
"You mean when she hits a tone with her breath like
that? Why do you let her? You wouldn't let me."
"I certainly would not. But that is a mannerism of
Mrs. Priest's. The public like it, and they pay a great deal
of money for the pleasure of hearing her do it. There she
is. Remember!"
Bowers opened the door of the reception-room and a
tall, imposing woman rustled in, bringing with her a glow
of animation which pervaded the room as if half a dozen
persons, all talking gayly, had come in instead of one. She
was large, handsome, expansive, uncontrolled; one felt this
the moment she crossed the threshold. She shone with care
and cleanliness, mature vigor, unchallenged authority,
gracious good-humor, and absolute confidence in her per-
son, her powers, her position, and her way of life; a glowing,
overwhelming self-satisfaction, only to be found where
human society is young and strong and without yesterdays.
Her face had a kind of heavy, thoughtless beauty, like a
pink peony just at the point of beginning to fade. Her
brown hair was waved in front and done up behind in a
great twist, held by a tortoiseshell comb with gold fili-
gree. She wore a beautiful little green hat with three long
green feathers sticking straight up in front, a little cape
made of...
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