"Ask the chambermaids along the route. I don't mean to be unappreciative; but not even the most trusting of publics could expect me to bear my trophies away in my arms, next morning. I came to wish I could ship them back to the florist, to be presented to some other baritone, the next night."
"But you enjoyed the trip?"
"After a fashion. I enjoyed the summer more, though."
"There is a certain satisfaction in dropping off the social harness now and then, and we were comparatively primitive at Monomoy," she assented. "The whole summer would have been worth while, just for the sake of seeing Mr. Arlt enjoy it. Has he come back yet?"
"Yes, two days ago. The trip has meant a good deal to him, and already he is engaged for two festivals in the spring. I am hoping that a taste of success will give him more self-reliance. He needs it, if ever he is to impose himself upon the dear public. Even the critics are prone to take a man at his own valuation, and one of the best American musicians is working in a corner, to-day, because he finds it a good deal more interesting to work towards future successes than to exploit his past ones in the eyes of the world."
Beatrix smiled, half in assent, half in amusement at his sudden energy.
"Mr. Arlt will succeed in time; he is only a boy yet. But, with genius and energy and his real love for his art, there can be no doubt of his future."
"That is as fate may decree," Thayer answered.
"Or Providence," she corrected him.
He shook his head.
"Miss Dane, the more I know of life, I am learning to write fate in capitals, and to spellProvidence with a littlep. Things are pretty well cut out for us."
She glanced at him with sudden intentness.
"Then I hope the scissors are sharp, and that Moira carries a steady hand. We have to put up with our own indecisions; those of other people are maddening."
"Doesn't that depend upon what the decision finally proves to be?" he asked.
Her eyes had gone back to the fire, and her face was very grave.
"No; I would rather know where I am going. Anything is better than drifting; it is a comfort to look steadily forward to the best or to the worst." Suddenly she roused herself. "Mr. Thayer, do you realize that it is two months since I have heard you sing?"
He roused himself quite as suddenly. In the slight pause which had broken her speech, he had been making a swift, but futile effort to chart the future. He knew that Lorimer was drifting carelessly, thoughtlessly; he also knew that Beatrix was allowing herself to drift idly in his wake. And how about himself? And would they all make the same port in the end? If not, where would the diverging currents be waiting for them?
His brain was working intently; but his voice was quite conventional, as he rose.
"I hoped you would ask me. After a month or two of singing to strangers, I begin to feel the need of something a little more personal. Will you have the new songs, or the old?"
"The old, of course," she answered unhesitatingly.
He improvised for a moment; then he began to sing,—
"The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,Are as a string of pearls to me.I count them over one by—"
"The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,Are as a string of pearls to me.I count them over one by—"
Abruptly he stopped singing and struck a dozen resonant major chords.
"What a disgustingly sentimental thing that is!" he said sharply. "After our summer at Monomoy in the sea air, we need an atmosphere of ozone, not of laughing gas."
And he played the prelude ofDie Beiden Grenadieren.
Arlt dropped in at Thayer's rooms, the next afternoon, and sat looking on while his friend put himself into his evening clothes, preparatory to dining with Miss Gannion.
"I walked up here with Mr. Dane," he observed, after a thoughtful interval. "What an American he is!"
"American?"
"Yes. No other country but yours can produce such people. France tries it, and fails. A Frenchman takes his frivolity in earnest. Mr. Dane is like that littleScherzoby Faulkes, the one that frisks on and on, and all of a sudden comes to an end with a loudHa haover its own absurdity. Mr. Dane delights in his own talk, just as you delight in your singing."
"He is not self-conscious," Thayer objected quickly.
"Neither are you. Each of you has a gift, and you each delight in using it. That is not saying that you either of you regard it as the only gift in the world. Instead, having it, you make the mostof it, to let it grow and to put it in the way of giving pleasure to other people."
Thayer smiled, in spite of himself.
"To paraphrase you, Arlt, what a German you are! Nobody else would attempt to philosophize concerning Bobby Dane."
"Why not? He is worth it, for he has other gifts than his wit."
"Did he say anything about Lorimer?" Thayer asked abruptly.
"He spoke of him once or twice."
"Anything especial?"
"N-o."
There had been a slight hesitation. The next instant, Arlt felt Thayer's keen eyes upon him.
"Is anything wrong with Lorimer?"
"What should there be?"
"Nothing should be. I asked if anything is."
"Mr. Dane would hardly discuss his friends with me." Arlt's tone was noncommittal.
"Now, see here, Arlt, don't get obstinate. We both know Lorimer's failing. Have you heard anything new about him?"
Arlt stared hard at the carpet.
"Mr. Lorimer was very good to the mother and Katarina," he said, in his slow, deliberate English.
"That may be. Mr. Lorimer has been good to a great many people, and we aren't going to forget it. That doesn't keep us from knowing his weakness."
"No," Arlt said simply; "but it might keep us from discussing it."
Thayer's lips shut closely for an instant. He felt a rebuke which Arlt would never have dared to intend.
"It might; but it does not. We both know it, and there is no harm in our talking it over. Lorimer is weak and foolish; he isn't nearly so bad as many men we know. The taint is in his blood, and he is too easy-going to fight it out."
"But he did fight, last summer," Arlt urged.
Thayer's thoughts flew backwards to one night, in Lorimer's room at the hotel. It seemed to him he could still see Lorimer's flushed face, still hear against the background of noises that marred the stillness of the August moonlight outside the window, the high-pitched, insistent voice of the man who sat on the edge of the bed, arguing about the necessity of unlacing his shoes before taking them off. The next morning, Beatrix had received a note from Thayer, apologizing for carrying Lorimer off for a day's fishing. CottonMather himself might well have envied the grim fervor of the sermon preached by his namesake, that sunshiny summer day. The old-time hell gave place to a more modern theory of retribution; but the terrors were painted with a black-tipped brush, and Lorimer had shuddered, as he listened. For the once, Thayer had made no effort to avoid rousing his antagonism. Lorimer had been more angry than ever before in his life; then the inevitable reaction had come, and it had been a penitent, hopeful sinner who had walked up the pier at Thayer's side, late in the afternoon. But Arlt, who had been playing Chopin at Monomoy, all the previous evening, was quite at a loss to understand how a single day's fishing could so completely exhaust a strong man like Thayer.
Arlt changed his phrase to the direct question.
"Don't you think he fought with the best that was in him?"
And Thayer assented with perfect truthfulness,—
"I do."
"Then we ought to ask for nothing more."
"If he stood alone. Unfortunately he doesn't."
Arlt raised his brows.
"But the risk is hers."
Thayer untied his necktie with a long, deliberate pull, and made a second attempt to arrange it to his liking. At length he turned from the mirror and faced Arlt.
"Would you be willing to allow Katarina to take such a risk?"
"No," Arlt answered honestly, after an interval.
Neither man spoke for some time. Arlt was unwilling to continue the subject, and Thayer knew from experience the uselessness of trying to force him to talk when he was minded to keep silence. It was Arlt, however, who finally broke the silence, and his subject was one utterly remote from Lorimer.
"I have heard from the mother, to-day," he said suddenly.
"Good news, I hope." Thayer's tone was as hearty as if he had felt no passing annoyance at the boy's stubborn reticence.
"The best that can be for them. An old cousin has died, and they are his heirs."
"Good! Is it much?"
"Enough so they can live in comfort, whatever happens to me."
"And enough so that you can live in comfort, without anxiety for them," Thayer supplemented kindly.
"Without anxiety; I can do without the comfort," Arlt replied. "I have worried sometimes."
Crossing the room, Thayer laid his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"And you have borne the worry very pluckily, too, Arlt. It has been hard for you, this first year in America, with the double care for them and for yourself. I hope things are going to be easier now."
"It will be a help in my work," he assented. Then he added, with a sudden effort which showed how dear the subject was to his heart, "I think I shall now have a few more lessons in counterpoint."
"More?" Thayer said interrogatively.
"Yes; I had already studied for two years."
"And you want to compose?"
"When I know enough. Not till then."
"It takes something besides the knowing, to make a composer, Arlt," Thayer said warningly.
"I know. But I think I have something to say, when I am ready," the boy answered, with simple directness.
"But, if you wanted to study counterpoint, why didn't you say so? You knew I would lend you the money."
"Yes, you would give me everything; but I could never accept this."
"Why not?"
Arlt looked up, and even Thayer, well as he knew him, was surprised at the sudden concentration of character in the boy's face.
"One will be helped in the small things, never in accomplishing the real purpose of his life. Each one of us must work that out for himself. Then, if he succeeds or fails, at least the result is of his own making."
Dismissing four or five importunate cab drivers with a brief shake of his head, Thayer went striding away up the Avenue towards Miss Gannion's house. As he went, he was half-consciously applying Arlt's words to the question of his own future. It was true enough that he must work out his own real purpose for himself; and, in one sense the unsuccessful boy was happier by far than the successful man. Arlt's purpose was single. Thayer's was two-fold, and as yet he could not determine which of them would prove to be the dominant impulse of his life.
"Really, it does seem very good to drop back into the old ways," Miss Gannion said contentedly, two hours later.
The loitering, lingering dinner was over; the servants had been instructed to admit no other guests, and Miss Gannion was snuggled back inher deep chair, gazing up at Thayer who stood on the rug with his hands idly locked behind his back. In this room which showed so plainly its feminine occupancy, he seemed uncommonly virile, and Miss Gannion, watching him, felt a momentary exultation in his virility. Most of the men whom she knew, put on a feminine languor as an adjunct to their evening clothes. Thayer looked down upon her with manifest approval. After months of separation, it was good to find himself in the presence of this woman to whom he was allowed to speak freely his real opinion. Miss Gannion by no means always agreed with him; but she usually understood his point of view and was willing to admit its weight. Moreover, she was able to discuss without losing her temper, and she belonged to that species of good listener who understands that an occasional word of comprehension is worth more than hours of mere silent attention.
"It is refreshing to get back to a place where my personality counts for something," Thayer assured her. "The past two months have left me feeling as if I had not a friend in the world, nothing but audiences."
"What an ingrate you are! Most of us would be willing to have that kind of impersonality."
"Would you?"
"No," she said candidly. "I'm not large enough for that."
"It wouldn't have occurred to me that it was any indication of largeness."
"To be able to resign your own individuality, for the sake of the pleasure you can give other people? That seems to me rather large."
"It depends. I think I would rather concentrate my efforts, person on person, instead of spreading myself out like a vast impersonal plaster."
She laughed a little, though her eyes were very grave.
"You might apply your theory here and now. Go and sing to me, not a new song, but one of the old favorites."
Obediently he crossed the room to the piano where he sat for an hour, now singing, now stopping to comment on a song or to relate some of his experiences of the past two months. Later that night, when Miss Gannion was thinking over the talk of the evening, it suddenly occurred to her that he had made no reference at all to the summer. At length he rose to return to the fire.
"No," she objected. "There is one song still lacking. You've not sungThe Rosaryyet."
His stride across the room never hesitated, although duller ears than his own could not have mistaken the wish in her voice.
"I have worn outThe Rosary," he said briefly. "I shall have to let it rest for a while."
"I am sorry. I loved it."
He laughed mirthlessly.
"It is the weakest kind of sentimentality, Miss Gannion. The song itself amounts to very little; it is merely a question of the key."
"I am sorry," she repeated, still a little sadly. "I have cared a good deal for the song."
Thayer made no answer, and she sat looking up at him with a steady wishfulness which made him uneasy. Her next words, though chosen by chance, increased his uneasiness.
"Have you seen Miss Dane, since you came back?"
"I was there, yesterday."
"How did she seem to you?"
His steady eyes met hers without wavering.
"I don't quite understand what you mean by the question."
Miss Gannion varied the form of her words.
"Did you think she looked well?"
"Very."
"And yet, I don't think Beatrix is happy," Miss Gannion said, half to herself.
"Why not?"
"How can she be? Beatrix is not dense. She thinks things, and she must know the uncertainty of the future."
"But I thought it was quite certain." There was a level monotony in Thayer's accent.
"You think Mr. Lorimer has really reformed and is out of danger?" Miss Gannion asked quickly.
"I wish he had," Thayer answered half involuntarily.
"Then there is still trouble?"
But already Thayer was once more upon his guard.
"I have heard of nothing since I came home."
"Have you seen Mr. Lorimer?"
"No."
There was a curt brevity in his manner which was new to Miss Gannion. In spite of herself, it set her to wondering whether prosperity had been good for her friend, whether the consciousness of his own importance were making him indifferent to the interests of others. Perhaps, after all, it was true that he was becoming impersonal. He might be growing larger; he was certainly growing more remote from her life. Miss Gannion cared for Thayer. Now, while she watched him, her eyes were lighted with an almost fierce affection, even though her disappointment made her voice take on a hard, metallic ring, as she asked,—
"Are you turning your back upon the problem of your old friend, Mr. Thayer?"
"No," he answered; "but I thought we had solved it, in this very room."
She raised her brows interrogatively.
"'To say our prayers, and wait,'" he quoted.
Her momentary distrust of him weakened, and her face lighted, as she heard him quoting her own words, spoken so long ago.
"Yes; but I—we all—think it is time—think it may be a mistake."
He lifted his eyes from the fire, looked at her steadily for a minute, and then stared into the fire again. She grew restless with the stillness.
"And we thought perhaps you could say something."
"To—?" he asked, without raising his eyes.
"To Mr. Lorimer."
"What could I say?"
"Something to break it off."
In spite of himself, he laughed outright.
"Would you advise threats or bribery, MissGannion? I really can't imagine any argument that would lead Lorimer to give up Miss Dane of his own accord."
"Couldn't you put it to him strongly that he has no moral right to hold her to her promise?"
"I could; but he would probably put it to me just as strongly that I have no moral right to interfere in his concerns."
Miss Gannion sat up straight, bracing her elbows against the sides of her chair.
"Mr. Thayer, have you any idea that Mr. Lorimer will ever give up drinking, drinking more than is good for him?"
"I have not."
"Have you any idea that Beatrix, if she marries him, can escape years of anxiety and wretchedness?"
"I have not," he answered again.
"Oh, how cold you are!" she cried, in passionate revolt against his even tone. "Don't you care anything at all for Beatrix?"
If he flinched at her question, he rallied again too quickly for her to discover it. Then he looked her squarely in the eye.
"I would do anything in my power to protect Miss Dane; but this is a case where I have no right to speak to her. I have spoken to Lorimeragain and again, urging him to control himself for her sake. Beyond that, I have no right to go."
"But you said once that you thought she ought to be told."
"That was months ago. She found out, without being told."
"Not all."
"Enough."
"But, if she knew all about it, all that you know, Beatrix Dane would never marry Sidney Lorimer."
"Very likely not."
"Then you ought to tell her. What right have you to suppress facts that would change her whole point of view? You have it in your power to save Beatrix Dane. Once you were willing to do it." She had risen and stood on the rug, facing him. Stung by his coldness and by her disappointment in him, she allowed a sudden note of hostility to creep into her voice, and it cut Thayer like the edge of a steel knife.
"I am sorry," he said, after a pause; "but it is too late for that now, Miss Gannion."
His words were more true than he realized. When, after a half-hour of uncomfortable, disjointed talk, he said good-night and went away, he found Lorimer waiting for him in his ownrooms. Thayer's greeting was curt, for he was still smarting from the memory of his talk with Miss Gannion. He had been impenetrable to her questions, but not to her sharpness, and he was hurt by the disapproval she had shown. It was the first time he had heard the curious icy tone in her voice; it had struck a jarring note in their friendship. For the time being, Miss Gannion had distrusted him; but at least she had gained no idea of the cause of his changed attitude. For so much, he was thankful. He had saved his own respect at the risk of forfeiting that of Miss Gannion.
Lorimer met him excitedly; but Thayer's experienced eye saw that the excitement had no alcoholic basis.
"Congratulations, old fellow! Everything is settled at last, and we are to be married, early in January. I came straight to you, for I knew you would be delighted. Of course, I shall count on you as best man."
It would never have occurred to Thayer that there was need to brace himself against any possible shock. For a minute, the droplight on the table seemed to be dancing a Russiantrépac. Then, just as it was ready to fall, he heard his own voice saying, with exactly the proper degree of cordiality,—
"I do congratulate you, Lorimer, and I am delighted that it is settled."
Later on, he knew that he had spoken the truth.
"And you will be best man?" Lorimer questioned eagerly.
"Yes. Who else has better claim?" The conventional note was still there; Thayer felt its aloofness far more than Lorimer, absorbed in his own joy, was able to do. The silence was short; then Thayer mastered himself again. "Lorimer," he said quietly; "I certainly do congratulate you, for you have been able to gain one of the noblest women in the world. Your happiness ought to be great; but you have taken a fearful responsibility along with it. At your best you can be worthy of her; but, if you fall one inch below your best level, you will deserve to be flayed alive. You have gone into this with your eyes open. You know that you can make Beatrix Dane's life a heaven or a hell. You and I both know the danger; we know that she is running a terrible risk in marrying you, and that you yourself are the only person who can save her from shame and sorrow. For God's sake, Lorimer, do all you can to make yourself live up to the best that is in you."
Late March found Thayer just completing a long circle. He had gone to Chicago by way of Washington; he was coming back by way of Canada and New England. Oratorio societies were rampant, that Lent, and he had been the popular baritone of the season, completely ousting from public favor the bass who had monopolized the applause for six or seven years previous. He had fainted under Elijah's juniper tree times without number, until he had learned to watch with cynical interest for the phrase which never failed to draw forth the tears. He had even taken part in one grand operatic rendition of the work, when the audience had been half strangled by the too realistic fumes from the altar, and the chorus, huddled at the back of the stage, had sung theRain Chorusoff the key, to the accompaniment of the torrent which poured down in a thin sheet just back of the curtain, raining neither on the just nor on the unjust, but falling accurately into the groove forthe footlights between them. He had sungThe MessiahandArminiusuntil they were a weariness to his flesh, andHiawatha'scall toGitche Manito, the Mightyhad become second nature to his tongue. He had moments of acute longing to astound his audience with a German student song, and, upon his off nights, he fell into the vaudeville habit. Not even his Puritanism could enjoy an unlimited diet of oratorio.
At first there had been some question of his giving a number of recitals at different points on his journey; but he had renounced the idea. Arlt was grinding away at counterpoint under the best master to be found in New York, and Arlt was the only accompanist with whom Thayer cared to sing. The boy had no notion that Thayer needed him; neither did he have any idea of the discrepancy between his own payments and the actual fees of the great musician with whom Thayer had advised him to study. Week by week, he brought his few dollars, without once suspecting that Thayer's monthly checks were really paying for the lessons.
Arlt had fallen to work with the eagerness born of long and enforced abstinence. Certain musical themes had been haunting him for the past two years; yet he had known that he lacked the training which should enable him to develop them properly, and, with rare self-denial, rather than spoil them he had turned his back upon them and tried to forget them. Now, however, his work was beginning to tell upon him, and his teacher was more and more encouraging, while the old themes came back to him, grown and enriched by their season of lying fallow. Spurred on by the consciousness of all this, Arlt was hard at work upon an overture with which he hoped to greet Thayer on his return to the city. Day by day, the overture was growing. It was boyish; yet it was dignified and original.
On the last morning of his trip, Thayer came down the steps of his hotel, halted to stare about him at the streets of the leisurely little city, and then sauntered away towards the hall where the rehearsal was to take place. It was still early; nevertheless, as he came within sight of the building, he found the street filled with the members of the orchestra who, thriftily refusing cabs, had marched up from the station in a solid phalanx, laden with all manner of strange-looking bags and cases. Thayer nodded to them with a certain eagerness. After two months of wandering, it was good to find himself once more within the New York radius. He had sung with these menoften; they knew every trick of his voice, and he could count upon them not to break into a galloping rhythm in the midst of a minorandante. His face lighted, and his tongue fell into his beloved German idioms, as he went up the stairs with a bass viol and a bassoon on either hand.
The director of the chorus was also a New York man, and Thayer shook hands with him cordially, wondering, meanwhile, how it chanced that one short year had made him feel that New York was home to him. The director knew Arlt's teacher, too. He had heard of the young German's promise, and it was with some regret that Thayer heard him break off from these congenial themes, for the sake of introducing him to the officers of the society who were unduly agitated by the consciousness that they had captured both Thayer and the latest English tenor who had landed only the week before and was to make his American début, that evening.
Meanwhile, the hall was filling fast. The chorus, chattering with the nervous vivacity which always heralds a concert, were crowding into the fraction of space allotted to them; and, in the open floor beyond, the musicians of the orchestra were gathered into little groups, unpacking their instruments, unfolding their racks andeying the chorus with metropolitan disdain. Here and there a violinist, his violin at his shoulder, sauntered up and down the floor, alternately drawing his bow across the strings and lowering it again, while he tightened them. Then, in answer to the call from the oboe, the whole place grew filled with their din, discordant at first, but slowly coming into more and more perfect harmony, uniting upon the single note, breaking again into countless changing tones, only to yield once more to the singleA, caught, dropped during an instant's pause, then caught again and held in long-drawn, jubilant sonority.
On the heels of the other soloists, Thayer picked his way up the narrow aisle at the right of the tenors, and took his seat upon the little stage. As he did so, he discovered a diminutive gallery directly over the main entrance to the hall. Side by side in the gallery sat two men, the president of the chorus and Bobby Dane.
Bobby was beaming down at him placidly, and Thayer's face lighted at the unexpected sight of his friend. Bobby nodded occasionally, to mark his approval of the music; then, at the end of Thayer's first solo, he laid his score on the gallery rail and led off a volley of applause which, echoing back from the chorus, roused Bobby to such apitch of enthusiasm that he knocked the score off the rail and sent it tumbling down among the rear ranks of the altos.
"Why the unmentionable mischief do you waste your energies, singing like that at a rehearsal?" he demanded abruptly of Thayer, as he joined him on the stairs.
"Where the unmentionable mischief did you come from?" Thayer responded, seizing Bobby's hand in his own firm clasp.
"New York. Just came up, this morning. I'm doing the concert, to-night."
"Oh! I was under the impression that I was going to do a part of it, myself."
"Musically. I represent the power of the Press."
"As critic?"
"Certainly."
"How long since?"
"To-day. The regular critic is busy with a domestic funeral, his grandmother, or step-mother, or something, and it lay between the devil and me to take his place. Strange to say, the Chief chose me; but he was morose enough to say the old lady shouldn't have died, just when all the other papers in town were sending up their best critics."
"But how do you expect to get up a criticism?"
Bobby smiled up at him in smug satisfaction over his own wiliness.
"By caressing the mammon of unrighteousness. I know you; likewise the president of this chorus was in my prep. school. I happened to hear of him, last week, and I am banking on the fact for all it is worth. Therefore I have two strings to my bow. That's more than one of your second violins did. To my certain knowledge, he wrecked two strings in the overture and one in the prelude of your first solo. After that, I got interested and lost count."
"Do you expect us to dictate our own praises?"
"Not much. I am too canny for that. Besides, don't be too sure they will be praises. No; I have asked the president, in strict confidence, just what he thinks of you, and his answer was properly garrulous. His originality was startling, too. He observed that you have temperament. Now I am proceeding to ask you, also in strict confidence, what you think of the chorus."
"That it has intemperament," Thayer responded promptly. "Dane, I abhor that word."
"Is that the reason you coined its negative?"
"No; but it gets on my nerves. When it started out into service, it meant something; butnow it is used to express everything, from real artistic feeling down to the way a man rolls up his eyes when he sings love songs. I wish you newspaper men would bring out something new to take its place. You can do it; you generally set the fashion in words."
"I'll ask Lee, when he gets over his funeral," Bobby suggested. "It is out of my line. I am a greater artist than he is, a typographical song without words. I do scareheads, and buffet the devil. Thayer?"
"Yes?"
"Do you honestly enjoy this sort of thing?"
Thayer glanced down at the muddy crossing where they stood waiting for a car to pass.
"No. I prefer an occasional street-cleaning episode; but what can you expect in a March thaw?"
"I don't mean that," Bobby said impatiently. "I'm not joking now."
"Beg pardon," Thayer returned briefly. "What do you mean, Dane?"
"I mean all this tramping round the country, singing to strange people, getting applause at night and reading about yourself, next day. Doesn't it get a frightful bore, after the dozenth time you've been through it?"
"The applause and the audience and the criticisms, yes. The singing, no," Thayer said, after an interval.
"And you're willing to put up with one for the sake of the other?"
"Yes."
Bobby dodged a shower of mud from a passing cab.
"Well, tastes differ, then. In New York, we've been going on the same old routine, and yet no two days have been alike, except in the minor detail of missing you at places. You have been in twenty different cities, and I'd be willing to bet that your routine hasn't varied: sleeper, hotel, rehearsal, concert, applause, wreath, supper, hotel, bed, and so on around the circuit again and again. And you say the singing pays for it. It does pay us; but you can't hear yourself, Thayer, not to get any good of it. If it isn't the applause and such stuff, what do you do it for?"
Thayer glanced down at the man beside him. He liked Bobby Dane, and, for the moment, he felt moved to discard his customary reticence in regard to his art.
"For the sake of feeling myself picked up and carried along by something quite outside myself, something I am powerless to analyze, or tomaster; yet something that I can help to express," he answered.
Bobby accepted the lesson in silence. Then of a sudden his whimsical fun reasserted itself.
"Must feel a good deal like getting drunk," he commented gravely. "Andà propos des bottes, Beatrix is at home again."
Thayer's shoulders straightened, his step grew rhythmic once more.
"When did she come?"
"She landed, ten days ago, and they went right to the new house. She is going to send out cards for Mondays in May; but, meanwhile, we are coming in for an earlier event. There's a note at your rooms now, asking you to dine with them, next Monday."
"How do you know?"
"Because, like a coy maiden, I named the day. It is a sort of post-nuptial event, the maid of honor, the best man, and the master of ceremonies, meaning myself. She wasn't going to ask me, because it would spoil the number; but I told her I would make a point of being there, and that Monday was my most convenient day. It will give us our first chance to talk over the wedding."
"How does she—Mrs. Lorimer look?"
"She Mrs. Lorimer looks very natural," Bobbyreplied gravely. "As a rule, we only say a person looks natural after his demise; but I assure you that Beatrix is very much alive."
"And happy?" Thayer asked involuntarily.
Bobby gave him a swift, sharp glance. Then he resumed his former nonchalant air.
"As happy as one always is at landing after five days of acute sea-sickness. They pursued a storm, all the way home. They didn't catch it, though, except in the figurative sense of our remote childhood. I never saw Beatrix look so happy in her life as when she planted her second foot safely on the pier."
"What about Lorimer?"
Bobby shook his broad shoulders, with the air of a man shaking off a disagreeable subject.
"Oh, he's all right," he said shortly.
Together the two men idled away the afternoon. Bobby would fain have introduced Thayer to his own brother craftsmen who infested the hotel in the hope of getting speech with the artists; but Thayer had little liking for being interviewed, and preferred to divide his time between his own room and the streets. He and Bobby had an apparently limitless fund of talk, and their conversation wandered at will over the events of the past two months. However, as allroads lead to Rome, so all subjects led to Beatrix. When they came around to her in their discussion, Thayer invariably changed the subject; yet even a few words on a constantly recurring theme can end by illuminating that theme perfectly, provided only that it recurs often enough. By the time Thayer was dressing for the concert, that night, he was in full possession of all Bobby Dane's facts concerning his cousin, and he was convinced that all was not well with Lorimer.
With a commendable spirit of originality, the officers of the chorus had broken away from the established rule which proclaimed it anElijahseason, and had chosen to giveSt. Paul, that night. Thayer liked the oratorio. It seemed to him more original, more inspired, infinitely more human than the other. Moreover, it would be restful to keep silent and let the tenor warble himself to a lingering death. Even fiery chariots become monotonous in time, and an indignant mob affords a welcome variety. He had not heard the tenor since they had sung together in Berlin, two years before, and he was looking forward to the evening with a good deal of pleasure.
To his surprise and annoyance, he found the music stopping short at his tympani, powerless to enter his brain. When he jolted himself out of histrain of subconscious thought, he was aware that the orchestra was superb, that his old friend, the tenor, had added many cubits to his artistic stature, during the past two years, that he himself, Cotton Mather Thayer, would have to use his best efforts if he did not wish to occupy an entirely subordinate place upon the programme. Then he recurred to his thought of Beatrix and Lorimer. If Lorimer had not kept a straight course during his honeymoon, what hope was there for either himself or Beatrix in the many, many moons to come?
The strings and the wind took up theAllegro, and Thayer rose. Lorimer, if he had been present, would have known what to expect from the straightening of his shoulders and the sudden squaring of his jaw; but Bobby Dane, who had been watching the apathy in which his friend was buried, was distinctly nervous. Then, at the first note, his nervousness vanished, leaving in its place only wondering admiration. Bobby had supposed he knew what Thayer could do; but he was totally unprepared for the furious dignity with which the singer rendered his aria,—
"Consume them all,Pour out Thine indignation, and let them feel Thy power."
"Consume them all,Pour out Thine indignation, and let them feel Thy power."
The applause did not wait for the orchestra to slide comfortably back to the tonic. It broke out promptly upon the final note, and it satisfied even Bobby. Thayer bowed his acknowledgments, and then returned to his reverie; but he roused himself again at theAdagiowhich announced his second aria.
Then it was, in Paul's outcry for mercy, for the blotting out of his transgressions, that Bobby Dane understood what Thayer had meant, that noon, when he had spoken of being carried along by something outside of himself. Bobby knew Thayer as a quiet, self-contained man of the world; the Thayer who was singing that great aria was on fire with a passionate madness, tingling with unfulfilled longing, striving against his whole temperament for peace and for pardon. Bobby knew all this; he dimly realized, moreover, that the singer was fired by love for the wife of his friend, burning with the surety that his friend was unworthy of her, and struggling with all the manhood there was in him to face that love and that surety with the stoic calm of one of his Puritan ancestors, to quench the fire and to cover the ashes.
Bobby joined him in the wings, at the close of the concert. Even in the dim light, he couldsee that Thayer looked whiter than his wont, and that the veins in his temples stood out like knotted cords.
"What business have you to be doing oratorio?" Bobby demanded, as soon as they could struggle a little apart from the gossiping, gushing ranks of the chorus which surrounded them, pulling surreptitious bits from Thayer's mammoth wreath of laurel.
"Why not?" Thayer asked calmly.
"Because you are throwing away the best of yourself. Putting you into oratorio is like icing tea. You belong in grand opera."
Thayer raised his brows dissentingly.
"I wish I could think so, Dane; but I am afraid I should only disappoint you," he answered, and his tone was not altogether jovial, as he said it.
"I don't expect to be consistent," Sally retorted. "I'm only an ill-assorted snarl of threads ravelled out from my different ancestors."
"That's dodging the responsibility, Miss Van Osdel."
Bobby lifted an oyster and held it up to view.
"I never did approve of shunting off our sins on the shoulders of our ancestors," he observed. "They sin; we get the come-uppance. You might as well say that the grandfather of this oyster is directly responsible for his being eaten alive."
"No man's sin is wholly his own doing," Lorimer said half bitterly.
There was a sudden pause, as they all came to a realizing sense that Sally's idle words had sent them sliding out upon thin ice. Bobby was the first to rally.
"True for you, Lorimer!" he assented cheerily. "That is one of the doctrines I have spent mylife trying to impress on the governor. I wish he felt it more borne in upon him. But, as you were saying, Sally, you're not expecting to become consistent. I'm glad, for you won't be disappointed. The brightest jewel in your crown will have to be of another color."
"What color is consistency, Bobby?" his cousin asked.
"Green, of course, reflected from the jealous eyes of the ninety and nine sinners who haven't the virtue."
"I'm not at all certain that I wish to be consistent," Sally asserted.
"So glad for your sake!" Bobby returned quickly.
Thayer looked up inquiringly.
"Because consistent people are such bores, Miss Van Osdel?"
"So you are a heretic, too? And then they are so smug."
"But there's consistency and consistency," Bobby argued. "There's mashed potato and frappé, for instance, equally hard, equally homogeneous, yet totally different. To my mind, there is a distinct choice between them, and I prefer—"
"Cherries in your frappé." Sally capped hissentence for him. "In other words, we all like a consistent person with lumps of inconsistency. That's myself, and one of my lumps is a dislike of having Mrs. Lloyd Avalons on our tenement committee."
"But, if you are slumming—"
"That is ignoble of you, Beatrix. The committee doesn't slum within its own confines."
"Oh, I didn't mean that at all," Beatrix protested hastily. "Really, though. I can't see why you and Mrs. Lloyd Avalons can't unite in working for somebody quite outside either of your worlds."
Sally raised her brows in saucy imitation of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons's pet expression. Then she pushed Beatrix's words aside with daintily outstretched fingers.
"Can't you?" she said coolly, as she ended her little pantomime. "Well, I can. To adopt Bobby's choice illustration, it would be like mixing potato and frappé. The potato would melt the frappé, and then the frappé would—well, would render the potato unpalatable. In other words, if we work together, I shall pulverize Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, and then the dust of her individuality will get in among my nerves and clog them."
"If you can't be consistent, Miss Van Osdel,please do try to be concrete," Thayer urged. "I confess that I find it a little difficult to follow you."
"Not at all," Bobby interposed. "She isn't going anywhere. Sally's mental processes always remind me of the way we used to play cars in a row of easy chairs. We were extremely energetic, and we pretended that we were going somewhere; but in reality we didn't budge an inch. Sally, what is the reason you don't like Mrs. Lloyd Avalons?"
"Because she is utterly preposterous," Sally replied concisely.
"And yet, she is bound to arrive, some day," Lorimer said thoughtfully.
"Then I hope it may not be until after I have left," Sally retorted. "I don't care to have her making connections with me."
"Sally, you are uncharitable," Beatrix said rebukingly; but Bobby interrupted,—
"That's more than you can say of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. She is on half the charity committees in town."
"How did she get there?" Thayer asked, with unfeigned curiosity.
"By toiling upward, day and night. That's where she scores ahead of the great men. According to the poet, they only belonged to the night shift. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons sleeps with the Blue Book under her pillow and dreams social combinations."
"She probably has a chess board always at her elbow," Sally suggested. "I can fancy the game, the white queen and her pawn against the whole black force, each man neatly tagged with his name and social status."
"She is marching straight into the king-row, though," Bobby added.
Beatrix called them to order.
"Does it strike you that this is perilously near to being gossip?" she inquired.
But Sally had the last word.
"It's not gossip to talk over the possibilities of the lower classes," she remarked imperturbably. "It is social science."
Lorimer went back to the original question which had started the discussion.
"As I said before, there is a certain inconsistency in the idea of a given number of women setting themselves to work to better the condition of the masses, and then coming to wreck and ruin because one of their number is of a slightly different set."
"Slightly inferior," Sally corrected him.
Lorimer accepted the amendment.
"Inferior, then, if you choose. But we are talking of the theory in the abstract, not of any particular case. One hardly expects to find snobbishness in slumming."
"Then that's where one gets left," Bobby commented, by way of parenthesis.
"But if you are all stooping?"
"Yes; but the alignment is better, if we all stoop at the same angle," Sally protested.
"What I wish to know," Thayer said thoughtfully; "is where the deadline of propriety exists. Take the case of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, for instance. Why does she take Patsey Keefe to her heart and home, and snub Arlt upon all occasions?"
"Because she wishes to maintain a proper perspective," Sally replied. "Everyone knows that Patsey and she are chums from choice; with Mr. Arlt, there might be a question. Legitimate slumming presupposes two willing parties, the slummer and the slummed."
"In other words," Bobby added; "it is socially possible to foregather with the slum in the next ward; it is death to speak to the undesirable neighbor in the back alley. The fact is ordained; but it will take several generations of social scientists to ferret out the cause."
Sally addressed the table at large.
"For my part, I like Mr. Arlt," she said flatly. "What's more, I am going with him to the Kneisel concert, to-morrow night; and, if any of you are there and choose to eye me askance, you are welcome."
Later, that evening, Thayer found himself with Beatrix and a little apart from the others. The dinner had been utterly informal, and it had been tacitly understood that the guests should linger afterwards. It was only ten days since the Lorimers had landed from their European honeymoon, and as yet they felt themselves privileged to hold themselves a little aloof from the social treadmill. Though the breakfast table, each morning, was littered with cards and notes of invitation, yet the season was in their favor. Lent had entered upon its last week, and even the largest functions clothed themselves in penitential and becoming shades of violet. Accordingly, it had been a source of little self-denial for Bobby and Sally to give up their other engagements for the evening. As for Thayer, he invariably went his own way, invited everywhere and appearing only in the places which suited his mood of the hour. It was the one professional luxury that he allowed himself.
To his keen eye, Beatrix looked as if she werecarrying a heavy burden of care. She was as alert as ever; her social training was bound to ensure that. But between her conversational sallies, her face settled into certain fixed lines that were new to Thayer. Even during the past two months, her lips had grown firmer; but her lids drooped more often, as if to hide some secret which otherwise might be betrayed by her eyes. Up to this time, Thayer had never called her especially pretty. She was handsome, perhaps; but her face was too cold, too austere. Now, however, it seemed to him full of possibilities for beauty, softer, infinitely more loving. In the old days, the curve of her lips had been haughty; to-night, their firmer lines appeared to him like a mask worn to conceal the gentler womanhood within. She was thinner, too; but browned by her sea voyage, and she carried herself with the nameless dignity which comes to a woman upon her bridal day.
Lorimer appeared to be in the pink of condition. He was more handsome than ever, more graciously winning. His voice had all the old caressing intonations which Thayer recalled so well, together with many new ones that crept into his tone whenever he addressed his wife. By look and word and gesture, he referred and deferred toher constantly; and his eyes never failed to light, when they rested upon her own. No man could have been more frankly and openly in love with his own wife.
"Then I take it for granted that the trip has been a success," Thayer said, as he joined her.
"Indeed it has. Mr. Lorimer took me to all his old haunts and, in Berlin, to all of yours that he could find. We went to your old lodgings, and we heard a concert in the hall where you made your début and, the last day we were there, Sidney insisted upon hunting up your old master."
Thayer looked up suddenly.
"The dear oldMaestro! Did he remember me?" he asked, with a boyish enthusiasm which sat well upon him.
"Certainly he did, ifrememberis the right word, for his knowledge of you was not all in the past tense. He has followed you closely, and he knows just what you have done. Mr. Thayer," she added abruptly; "why have you never sung in opera?"
"Why should I?"
"Because he said that there was your especial talent, only he called it by a stronger name. He jeers at the work you are doing."
Thayer smiled.
"I am sorry. I thought it was good work."
"So it is, as far as it goes. But the other goes farther."
"Perhaps," he assented. "But do you think it is as—as—"
"Good form?" she queried, laughing. "Yes, if you choose to have it so. It depends something upon the individual. With your training and traditions, you would scarcely elect to sing comic opera in English."
"Heaven forbid!" he said hastily. "But there are grades and grades, even of the other. Not many mortals reach the top round of the ladder."
"No; and, even if they did, they would be a good deal in your way, for the space up there is limited. It will be merely a question of your own will whether or not you occupy a part of it."
He was surprised at the turn the conversation had taken. No woman, not even Miss Gannion, had ever dared question to him the wisdom of his choice, or imply to him that there were laurels which he had not yet plucked. Strange to say, he rather enjoyed the frank fashion in which Beatrix was taking him to task. Nevertheless, he fenced a little.
"I have always preferred a moderate success to an immoderate failure," he answered her.
She shook her head.
"That sounds specious; but you know it is a quibble. I had never supposed that your ambition was so limited."
"But it is not the mark of limitation to know where my success lies."
"Perhaps not. For my part, though, I don't want to rest on any success. If I succeed in one thing, that is over and done with, and I want to try for something else."
"And if you fail?"
"Then, as soon as I am quite sure it is a failure and that no power of mine can beat it into a success, I try to turn my back upon it, and face another problem," she replied, with a quiet dignity which ignored the flush that rose in both their faces at the careless question.
Thayer, too, had seen the flush in her cheeks which had answered to his own rising color. For an instant, he questioned whether it were an unwitting acknowledgment that her power over Lorimer was more limited than she had supposed. Then he dismissed the suspicion. Her poise was too perfect to make such a supposition possible. It was only that he, knowing the truth, sought for confirmation upon all sides.
"You are a good fighter," he responded quietly."What would be the concrete application of your theory to my practice?"
"That you should try to fulfil the ambition your old master has for you," she returned. "Why don't you try it? You can't gain any more glory in your present field; you stand at the head of concert and oratorio singers in America. You have nothing to lose; and, over there in Berlin, there is an old man who boasts that he made your voice, and says that he can never sing hisNunc Dimittisuntil you have entered upon your right path."
Thayer's face softened.
"Did he say that?"
"Yes, and he extorted a promise from me that I would tell you his very words. That is the reason I have made bold to speak about the matter."
"What do you think about it, yourself, Mrs. Lorimer?"
"That he knows your possibilities much better than I," she answered evasively.
"But you have an opinion," he urged.
"Yes, I have," she replied frankly. "From what he told me, and from what I have heard of your singing, I know that you can do broader work than any you have attempted. Your voicewill do for either thing, opera or oratorio; but on a few times—" she hesitated; then she went on without flinching; "on the night of the Fresh Air Fund concert, for instance, you showed a dramatic power that is wasted in your present work." Suddenly she laughed at her own earnestness. "What am I, that I should advise the star of the season? Do excuse my frankness, Mr. Thayer."
"I asked you."
"That's no reason I should bore you with all my theories upon a subject of which I know practically nothing. And, meanwhile, I am forgetting to tell you that we went to see Frau Arlt."
His face showed his pleasure and his approval, his pleasure that he had found something in Lorimer to which he could give his unreserved approval.
"I am glad you saw her. It was like Lorimer to hunt her up. Does Otto know about it?"
"He came to dinner, a day or two after we landed. Mr. Lorimer had written him a note to tell him we were at home, and you should have seen the boy's delight over the box of funny little odds and ends his mother had sent him. Sidney is always so thoughtful, and he suggested to the old lady that we had room in our trunks for apackage. I really think that the boy was happier with his home-made gifts than I was with the things Mr. Lorimer gave me in Paris."