The Project Gutenberg EBook of Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather
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Title: Song of the Lark
Author: Willa Cather
Posting Date: June 25, 2008 [EBook #44]
Release Date: 1992
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONG OF THE LARK ***
Produced by Judith Boss and Marvin Peterson
SONG OF THE LARK
By Willa Cather
(1915 edition)
CONTENTS:
PART
I.
FRIENDS
OF
CHILDHOOD
II.
THE
SONG
OF
THE
LARK
III
.
STUPID
FACES
IV.
THE
ANCIENT
PEOPLE
V.
DOCTOR
ARCHIE’S
VENTURE
VI.
KRONBORG
EPILOGUE
PART I. FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD
I
Dr. Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish
clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in
Moonstone. His offices were in the Duke Block, over the drug store.
Larry, the doctor’s man, had lit the overhead light in the waiting-room
and the double student’s lamp on the desk in the study. The isinglass
sides of the hard-coal burner were aglow, and the air in the study was
so hot that as he came in the doctor opened the door into his little
operating-room, where there was no stove. The waiting room was carpeted
and stiffly furnished, something like a country parlor. The study had
worn, unpainted floors, but there was a look of winter comfort about it.
The doctor’s flat-top desk was large and well made; the papers were in
orderly piles, under glass weights. Behind the stove a wide bookcase,
with double glass doors, reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was
filled with medical books of every thickness and color. On the top shelf
stood a long row of thirty or forty volumes, bound all alike in dark
mottled board covers, with imitation leather backs.
As the doctor in New England villages is proverbially old, so the doctor
in small Colorado towns twenty-five years ago was generally young.
Dr. Archie was barely thirty. He was tall, with massive shoulders
which he held stiffly, and a large, well-shaped head. He was a
distinguished-looking man, for that part of the world, at least.
There was something individual in the way in which his reddish-brown
hair, parted cleanly at the side, bushed over his high forehead. His
nose was straight and thick, and his eyes were intelligent. He wore a
curly, reddish mustache and an imperial, cut trimly, which made him look
a little like the pictures of Napoleon III. His hands were large and
well kept, but ruggedly formed, and the backs were shaded with crinkly
reddish hair. He wore a blue suit of woolly, wide-waled serge; the
traveling men had known at a glance that it was made by a Denver tailor.
The doctor was always well dressed.
Dr. Archie turned up the student’s lamp and sat down in the swivel chair
before his desk. He sat uneasily, beating a tattoo on his knees with his
fingers, and looked about him as if he were bored. He glanced at his
watch, then absently took from his pocket a bunch of small keys,
selected one and looked at it. A contemptuous smile, barely perceptible,
played on his lips, but his eyes remained meditative. Behind the door
that led into the hall, under his buffalo-skin driving-coat, was a locked
cupboard. This the doctor opened mechanically, kicking aside a pile of
muddy overshoes. Inside, on the shelves, were whiskey glasses and
decanters, lemons, sugar, and bitters. Hearing a step in the empty,
echoing hall without, the doctor closed the cupboard again, snapping the
Yale lock. The door of the waiting-room opened, a man entered and came
on into the consulting-room.
“Good-evening, Mr. Kronborg,” said the doctor carelessly. “Sit down.”
His visitor was a tall, loosely built man, with a thin brown beard,
streaked with gray. He wore a frock coat, a broad-brimmed black hat, a
white lawn necktie, and steel rimmed spectacles. Altogether there was a
pretentious and important air about him, as he lifted the skirts of his
coat and sat down.
“Good-evening, doctor. Can you step around to the house with me? I think
Mrs. Kronborg will need you this evening.” This was said with profound
gravity and, curiously enough, with a slight embarrassment.
“Any hurry?” the doctor asked over his shoulder as he went into his
operating-room.
Mr. Kronborg coughed behind his hand, and contracted his brows. His face
threatened at every moment to break into a smile of foolish excitement.
He controlled it only by calling upon his habitual pulpit manner. “Well,
I think it would be as well to go immediately. Mrs. Kronborg will be
more comfortable if you are there. She has been suffering for some
time.”
The doctor came back and threw a black bag upon his desk. He wrote some
instructions for his man on a prescription pad and then drew on his
overcoat. “All ready,” he announced, putting out his lamp. Mr. Kronborg
rose and they tramped through the empty hall and down the stairway to
the street. The drug store below was dark, and the saloon next door was
just closing. Every other light on Main Street was out.
On either side of the road and at the outer edge of the board sidewalk,
the snow had been shoveled into breastworks. The town looked small and
black, flattened down in the snow, muffled and all but extinguished.
Overhead the stars shone gloriously. It was impossible not to notice
them. The air was so clear that the white sand hills to the east of
Moonstone gleamed softly. Following the Reverend Mr. Kronborg along the
narrow walk, past the little dark, sleeping houses, the doctor looked up
at the flashing night and whistled softly. It did seem that people were
stupider than they need be; as if on a night like this there ought to be
something better to do than to sleep nine hours, or to assist Mrs.
Kronborg in functions which she could have performed so admirably
unaided. He wished he had gone down to Denver to hear Fay Templeton sing
“See-Saw.” Then he remembered that he had a personal interest in this
family, after all. They turned into another street and saw before them
lighted windows; a low story-and-a-half house, with a wing built on at
the right and a kitchen addition at the back, everything a little on the
slant—roofs, windows, and doors. As they approached the gate, Peter
Kronborg’s pace grew brisker. His nervous, ministerial cough annoyed the
doctor. “Exactly as if he were going to give out a text,” he thought. He
drew off his glove and felt in his vest pocket. “Have a troche,
Kronborg,” he said, producing some. “Sent me for samples. Very good for
a rough throat.”
“Ah, thank you, thank you. I was in something of a hurry. I neglected to
put on my overshoes. Here we are, doctor.” Kronborg opened his front
door—seemed delighted to be at home again.
The front hall was dark and cold; the hatrack was hung with an
astonishing number of children’s hats and caps and cloaks. They were
even piled on the table beneath the hatrack. Under the table was a heap
of rubbers and overshoes. While the doctor hung up his coat and hat,
Peter Kronborg opened the door into the living-room. A glare of light