One afternoon when Bowers came in from lunch Thea handed him a card on which he read the name, "Mr. Philip Frederick
Ottenburg." "He said he would be in again to-morrow and that he wanted some time. Who is he? I like him better than the others."
Bowers nodded. "So do I.
He's not a singer. He's a beer prince: son of the big brewer in St. Louis. He's been in Germany with his mother. I didn't know he was back."
"Does he take lessons?"
"Now and again. He sings rather well. He's at the head of the Chicago branch of the Ottenburg business, but he can't stick to work and is always running away. He has great ideas in beer, people
tell me. He's what they call an imaginative business man; goes over to Bayreuth and seems to do nothing but give parties and spend money, and brings back more good notions for the brewery than the fellows who sit
tight dig out in five years. I was born too long ago to be much taken in by these chesty boys with flowered vests, but I like Fred, all the same."
"So do I," said Thea positively.
Bowers made a sound between a cough and a laugh. "Oh, he's a lady-killer, all right! The girls in here are always making eyes at him. You won't be the
first." He threw some sheets of music on the piano. "Better lookthat over; accompaniment's a little tricky. It's for that new woman from Detroit. And Mrs. Priest will be in this
afternoon."
Thea sighed. "`I Know that my Redeemer Liveth'?"
"The same. She starts on her concert tour next week, and we'll have a rest. Until then, I suppose
we'll have to be going over her programme."
The next day Thea hurried through her luncheon at a German bakery and got back to the studio at ten minutes past one. She felt sure that the young brewer
would come early, before it was time for Bowers to arrive. He had not said he would, but yesterday, when he opened the door to go, he had glanced about the room and at her, and something in his eye had conveyed
that suggestion.
Sure enough, at twenty minutes past one the door of the reception-room opened, and a tall, robust young man with a cane and an English hat and ulster looked in expectantly.
"Ah--ha!" he exclaimed, "I thought if I came early I might have good luck. And how are you to-day, Miss Kronborg?"
Thea was sitting in the window chair. At her left elbow there
was a table, and upon this table the young man sat down, holding his hat and cane in his hand, loosening his long coat so that it fell back from his shoulders. He was a gleaming, florid young fellow. His
hair, thick and yellow, was cut very short, and he wore a closely trimmed beard, long enough on the chin to curl a little. Even his eyebrows were thick and yellow, like fleece. He had lively blue eyes--Thea
looked up at them with great interest as he sat chatting and swinging his foot rhythmically. He was easily familiar, and frankly so. Wherever people met young Ottenburg, in his office, on
shipboard, in a foreign hotel or railway compartment, they always felt (and usually liked) that artless presumption which seemed to say, "In this case we may waive formalities. We really haven't time.
This is to-day, but it will soon be to-morrow, and then we may be very different people,and in some other country." He had a way of floating people out of dull or awkward situations, out of their own torpor
or constraint or discouragement. It was a marked personal talent, of almost incalculable value in the representative of a great business founded on social amenities. Thea had liked him yesterday for the way
in which he had picked her up out of herself and her German grammar for a few exciting moments.
"By the way, will you tell me your first name, please? Thea? Oh, then you ARE a Swede, sure
enough! I thought so. Let me call you Miss Thea, after the German fashion. You won't mind? Of course not!" He usually made his assumption of a special understanding seem a tribute to the
other person and not to himself.
"How long have you been with Bowers here? Do you like the old grouch? So do I. I've come to tell him about a new soprano I heard at Bayreuth. He'll
pretend not to care, but he does. Do you warble with him? Have you anything of a voice? Honest? You look it, you know. What are you going in for, something big? Opera?"
Thea blushed crimson. "Oh, I'm not going in for anything. I'm trying to learn to sing at funerals."
Ottenburg leaned forward. His eyes twinkled. "I'll engage you to sing
at mine. You can't fool me, Miss Thea. May I hear you take your lesson this afternoon?"
"No, you may not. I took it this morning."
He picked up a roll of music that lay
behind him on the table. "Is this yours? Let me see what you are doing." He snapped back the clasp and began turning over the songs. "All very fine, but
tame. What's he got you at this Mozart stuff for? I shouldn't think it would suit your voice. Oh, I can make a pretty good guess at what will suit you! This from `Gioconda' is more in your line.
What's this Grieg? It looks interesting. TAK FOR DITT ROD. What does that mean?"
"`Thanks for your Advice.' Don't you know it?"
"No; not at all. Let's try
it." He rose, pushed open thedoor into the music-room, and motioned Thea to enter before him. She hung back.
"I couldn't give you much of an idea of it. It's a big song."
Ottenburg took her gently by the elbow and pushed her into the other room. He sat down carelessly at the piano and looked over the music for a moment. "I think I can get you through it. But how
stupid not to have the German words. Can you really sing the Norwegian? What an infernal language to sing. Translate the text for me." He handed her the music.
Thea looked at it, then at
him, and shook her head. "I can't. The truth is I don't know either English or Swedish very well, and Norwegian's still worse," she said confidentially. She not infrequently refused to do
what she was asked to do, but it was not like her to explain her refusal, even when she had a good reason.
"I understand. We immigrants never speak any language well. But you know what it
means, don't you?"
"Of course I do!"
"Then don't frown at me like that, but tell me."
Thea continued to frown, but she also smiled. She was confused, but not
embarrassed. She was not afraid of Ottenburg. He was not one of those people who made her spine like a steel rail. On the contrary, he made one venturesome.
"Well, it goes something like
this: Thanks for your ad vice! But I prefer to steer my boat into the din of roaring breakers. Even if the journey is my last, I may find what I have never found before. Onward must I
go, for I yearn for the wild sea. I long to fight my way through the angry waves, and to see how far, and how long I can make them carry me."*
Ottenburg took the music and began: "Wait a moment.
Is that too fast? How do you take it? That right?" He pulled up his cuffs and began the accompaniment again. He had become entirely serious, and he played with fine enthusiasm and with
understanding.
Fred's talent was worth almost as much to old Otto Ottenburg as the steady industry of his older sons. WhenFred sang the Prize Song at an interstate meet of the TURNVEREIN, ten thousand
TURNERS went forth pledged to Ottenburg beer.
As Thea finished the song Fred turned back to the first page, without looking up from the music. "Now, once more," he called. They began
again, and did not hear Bowers when he came in and stood in the doorway. He stood still, blinking like an owl at their two heads shining in the sun. He could not see their faces, but there was something
about his girl's back that he had not noticed before: a very slight and yet very free motion, from the toes up. Her whole back seemed plastic, seemed to be moulding itself to the galloping rhythm of the
song. Bowers perceived such things sometimes--unwillingly. He had known to-day that there was something afoot. The river of sound which had its source in his pupil had caught him two flights
down. He had stopped and listened with a kind of sneering admiration. From the door he watched her with a half-incredulous, half-malicious smile.
When he had struck the keys for the last time,
Ottenburg dropped his hands on his knees and looked up with a quick breath. "I got you through. What a stunning song! Did I play it right?"
Thea studied his excited face. There was a
good deal of meaning in it, and there was a good deal in her own as she answered him. "You suited me," she said ungrudgingly.
After Ottenburg was gone, Thea noticed that
Bowers was more agreeable than usual. She had heard the young brewer ask Bowers to dine with him at his club that evening, and she saw that he looked forward to the dinner with pleasure. He dropped a remark
to the effect that Fred knew as much about food and wines as any man in Chicago. He said this boastfully.
"If he's such a grand business man, how does he have time to run around listening to
singing-lessons?" Thea asked suspiciously.
As she went home to her boarding-house through the February slush, she wished she were going to dine withthem. At nine o'clock she looked up from her
grammar to wonder what Bowers and Ottenburg were having to eat. At that moment they were talking of her.
