While her living arrangements were so casual and fortuitous, Bowers1’s studio was the one fixed2 thing in Thea’s life. She went out from it to uncertainties3, and hastened to it from nebulous confusion. She was more influenced by Bowers than she knew. Unconsciously she began to take on something of his dry contempt, and to share his grudge4 without understanding exactly what it was about. His cynicism seemed to her honest, and the amiability6 of his pupils artificial. She admired his drastic treatment of his dull pupils. The stupid deserved all they got, and more. Bowers knew that she thought him a very clever man.
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 brewer7 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 brewery8 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 positively9.
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 look that over; accompaniment’s a little tricky10. 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 luncheon11 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, robust12 young man with a cane13 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 eyebrows14 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 rhythmically15. He was easily familiar, and frankly16 so. Wherever people met young Ottenburg, in his office, on shipboard, in a foreign hotel or railway compartment17, they always felt (and usually liked) that artless presumption18 which seemed to say, “In this case we may waive19 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 torpor20 or constraint21 or discouragement. It was a marked personal talent, of almost incalculable value in the representative of a great business founded on social amenities22. 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 grouch23? So do I. I’ve come to te............