Mrs. Kronborg had said that Thea was not to be disturbed on Sunday morning, and she slept until noon. When she came downstairs the family were just sitting down to dinner, Mr. Kronborg at one end of the long table, Mrs. Kronborg at the other. Anna, stiff and ceremonious, in her summer silk, sat at her father’s right, and the boys were strung along on either side of the table. There was a place left for Thea between her mother and Thor. During the silence which preceded the blessing1, Thea felt something uncomfortable in the air. Anna and her older brothers had lowered their eyes when she came in. Mrs. Kronborg nodded cheerfully, and after the blessing, as she began to pour the coffee, turned to her.
“I expect you had a good time at that dance, Thea. I hope you got your sleep out.”
“High society, that,” remarked Charley, giving the mashed2 potatoes a vicious swat. Anna’s mouth and eyebrows3 became half-moons.
Thea looked across the table at the uncompromising countenances4 of her older brothers. “Why, what’s the matter with the Mexicans?” she asked, flushing. “They don’t trouble anybody, and they are kind to their families and have good manners.”
“Nice clean people; got some style about them. Do you really like that kind, Thea, or do you just pretend to? That’s what I’d like to know.” Gus looked at her with pained inquiry5. But he at least looked at her.
“They’re just as clean as white people, and they have a perfect right to their own ways. Of course I like ’em. I don’t pretend things.”
“Everybody according to their own taste,” remarked Charley bitterly. “Quit crumbing6 your bread up, Thor. Ain’t you learned how to eat yet?”
“Children, children!” said Mr. Kronborg nervously7, looking up from the chicken he was dismembering. He glanced at his wife, whom he expected to maintain harmony in the family.
“That’s all right, Charley. drop it there,” said Mrs. Kronborg. “No use spoiling your Sunday dinner with race prejudices. The Mexicans suit me and Thea very well. They are a useful people. Now you can just talk about something else.”
Conversation, however, did not flourish at that dinner. Everybody ate as fast as possible. Charley and Gus said they had engagements and left the table as soon as they finished their apple pie. Anna sat primly8 and ate with great elegance9. When she spoke10 at all she spoke to her father, about church matters, and always in a commiserating11 tone, as if he had met with some misfortune. Mr. Kronborg, quite innocent of her intentions, replied kindly12 and absent-mindedly. After the dessert he went to take his usual Sunday afternoon nap, and Mrs. Kronborg carried some dinner to a sick neighbor. Thea and Anna began to clear the table.
“I should think you would show more consideration for father’s position, Thea,” Anna began as soon as she and her sister were alone.
Thea gave her a sidelong glance. “Why, what have I done to father?”
“Everybody at Sunday-School was talking about you going over there and singing with the Mexicans all night, when you won’t sing for the church. Somebody heard you, and told it all over town. Of course, we all get the blame for it.”
“Anything disgraceful about singing?” Thea asked with a provoking yawn.
“I must say you choose your company! You always had that streak13 in you, Thea. We all hoped that going away would improve you. Of course, it reflects on father when you are scarcely polite to the nice people here and make up to the rowdies.”
“Oh, it’s my singing with the Mexicans you object to?” Thea put down a tray full of dishes. “Well, I like to sing over there, and I don’t like to over here. I’ll sing for them any time they ask me to. They know something about what I’m doing. They’re a talented people.”
“Talented!” Anna made the word sound like escaping steam. “I suppose you think it’s smart to come home and throw that at your family!”
Thea picked up the tray. By this time she was as white as the Sunday tablecloth14. “Well,” she replied in a cold, even tone, “I’ll have to throw it at them sooner or later. It’s just a question of when, and it might as well be now as any time.” She carried the tray blindly into the kitchen.
Tillie, who was always listening and looking out for her, took the dishes from her with a furtive15, frightened glance at her stony16 face. Thea went slowly up the back stairs to her loft17. Her legs seemed as heavy as lead as she climbed the stairs, and she felt as if everything inside her had solidified18 and grown hard.
After shutting her door and locking it, she sat down on the edge of her bed. This place had always been her refuge, but there was a hostility19 in the house now which this door could not shut out. This would be her last summer in that room. Its services were over; its time was done. She rose and put her hand on the low ceiling. Two tears ran down her cheeks, as if they came from ice that melted slowly. She was not ready to leave her little shell. She was being pulled out too soon. She would never be able to think anywhere else as well as here. She would never sleep so well or have such dreams in any other bed; even last night, such sweet, breathless dreams—Thea hid her face in the pillow. Wherever she went she would like to take that little bed with her. When she went away from it for good, she would leave something that she could never recover; memories of pleasant excitement, of happy adventures in her mind; of warm sleep on howling winter nights, and joyous20 awakenings on summer mornings. There were certain dreams that might refuse to come to her at all except in a little morning cave, facing the sun—where they came to her so powerfully, where they beat a triumph in her!
The room was hot as an oven. The sun was beating fiercely on the shingles21 behind the board ceiling. She undressed, and before she threw herself upon her bed in her chemise, she frowned at herself for a long while in her looking-glass. Yes, she and It must fight it out together. The thing that looked at her out of her own eyes was the only friend she could count on. Oh, she would make these people sorry enough! There would come a time when they would want to make it up with her. But, never again! She had no little vanities, only one big one, and she would never forgive.
Her mother was all right, but her mother was a part of the family, and she was not. In the nature of things, her mother had to be on both sides. Thea felt that she had been betrayed. A truce22 had been broken behind her back. She had never had much individual affection for any of her brothers except Thor, but she had never been disloyal, never felt scorn or held grudges23. As a little girl she had always been good friends with Gunner and Axel, whenever she had time to play. Even before she got her own room, when they were all sleeping and dressing25 together, like little cubs27, and breakfasting in the kitchen, she had led an absorbing personal life of her own. But she had a cub26 loyalty28 to the other cubs. She thought them nice boys and tried to make them get their lessons. She once fought a bully29 who “picked on” Axel at school. She never made fun of Anna’s crimpings and curlings and beauty-rites.
Thea had always taken it for granted that her sister and brothers recognized that she had special abilities, and that they were proud of it. She had done them the honor, she told herself bitterly, to believe that though they had no particular endowments, they were of her kind, and not of the Moonstone kind. Now they had all grown up and become persons. They faced each other as individuals, and she saw that Anna and Gus and Charley were among the people whom she had always recognized as her natural enemies. Their ambitions and sacred proprieties30 were meaningless to her. She had neglected to congratulate Charley upon having been promoted from the grocery department of Commings’s store to the drygoods department. Her mother had reproved her for this omission31. And how was she to know, Thea asked herself, that Anna expected to be teased because Bert Rice now came and sat in the hammock with her every night? No, it was all clear enough. Nothing that she would ever do in the world would seem important to them, and nothing they would ever do would seem important to her.
Thea lay thinking intently all through the stifling32 afternoon. Tillie whispered something outside her door once, but she did not answer. She lay on her bed until the second church bell rang, and she saw the family go trooping up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, Anna and her father in the lead. Anna seemed to have taken on a very story-book attitude toward her father; patronizing and condescending33, it seemed to Thea. The older boys were not in the family band. They now took their girls to church. Tillie had stayed at home to get supper. Thea got up, washed her hot face and arms, and put on the white organdie dress she had worn last night; it was getting too small for her, and she might as well wear it out. After she was dressed she unlocked her door and went cautiously downstairs. She felt as if chilling hostilities34 might be awaiting her in the trunk loft, on the stairway, almost anywhere. In the dining-room she found Tillie, sitting by the open window, reading the dramatic news in a Denver Sunday paper. Tillie kept a scrapbook in which she pasted clippings about actors and actresses.
“Come look at this picture of Pauline Hall in tights, Thea,” she called. “Ain’t she cute? It’s too bad you didn’t go to the theater more when you was in Chicago; such a good chance! Didn’t you even get to see Clara Morris or Modjeska?”
“No; I didn’t have time. Besides, it costs money, Tillie,” Thea replied wearily, glancing at the paper Tillie held out to her.
Tillie looked up at her niece. “Don’t you go and be upset about any of Anna’s notions. She’s one of these narrow kind. Your father and mother don’t pay any attention to what she says. Anna’s fussy35<............