"Even bravest heart may swellIn the moment of farewell—"
"Even bravest heart may swellIn the moment of farewell—"
Little by little, the humming rose and filled the room, at first the one phrase repeated over and over again; then all at once, deep and resonant, Thayer's full voice came leaping out in the rich Italian words,—
"Là sul campo nel dì della pugna,Ah! si, Fra le file primiero saro."
"Là sul campo nel dì della pugna,Ah! si, Fra le file primiero saro."
The past was already the past. "Blithe as a knight in his bridal array," Thayer was echoing the call of his future destiny. Because he had won a single battle, there was no reason he should lay down his arms.
"Careless what fate may befall me,When Glory shall call me."
"Careless what fate may befall me,When Glory shall call me."
He sang it boldly, joyously. He was not forgetful, only hopeful. He would leave to the choice of fate the field in which his mastery should lie. Master he would be at any cost.
"Careless what fate may befall me,When Glory shall call me."
"Careless what fate may befall me,When Glory shall call me."
For the last time, that little room was echoing with his voice.
His own rooms in New York were echoing with the same song, when Bobby Dane entered them, the next Saturday night.
"Well, at least, you don't sound broken-hearted," he observed, as he took off his coat.
"The sight of you would go far to cure me, if I were," Thayer retorted. His words were light; but his face and his grip on Bobby's two hands contradicted his tone.
"Glad of it," Bobby said flatly. "But tell me about Beatrix. How did the poor girl stand it?"
"Like herself," Thayer answered. "It was enough to shake the nerves of the Winged Victory; but Mrs. Lorimer went through it like a heroine."
"It was D.T.?"
"Yes."
"It was better that you kept the secret," Bobby said thoughtfully, as he dropped into a chair by the piano. He sat silent for a moment while, bending forward, he idly picked out the first few notes of the cavatina on the lowest octave of the bass. Then he added, "I don't see how you managed it, Thayer; but it is a good deed done. Was there any trouble about the certificate?"
"No. It was heart failure, true enough, and there was no need to go into secondary causes."
"I am glad the doctor was a man of sense. If he had been a martinet, it would have been worse for us all. Of course, there is no telling how far people will accept the story; but we may as well try to act as if it were true." There was a pause. Then Bobby inquired, "Well, and now what are you going to do next?"
"ValentineinFaust," Thayer replied briefly.
"The deuce you are! When?"
"Next Wednesday."
Bobby's face fell.
"Oh, I wanted you, myself, for that day. Isn't it rather sudden?"
"So sudden that I didn't half realize it, till I found myself at rehearsal, this morning. It is to be announced in to-morrow's papers, I suppose. Not even Arlt knows it yet."
Bobby meditated for the space of several seconds.
"Thayer, I am delighted," he said then. "I was so afraid your stopping now might mean a permanent break-up in your work. Now you are going into your right field at last. You've been too large for oratorio; you fill altogether too much space, and crowd out the chorus. You needa whole stage to ramp around in. Moreover, if I have any idea what Gounod meant, he had your voice in mind, when he created the part. Go in, and you are sure to win; and not a soul in the city will be gladder of it than I."
Thayers face softened. His life, successful as it was, had been singularly barren of endearments, and Bobby's words touched him keenly. Heretofore, only Arlt had manifested any personal interest in his successes, and Arlt was a true German, chary of his words. Thayer held out his hand to Bobby.
"Thank you, Dane. I believe you," he said.
There was a short silence. Then Thayer added suddenly,—
"What did you want of me for Wednesday?"
Again Bobby's face clouded, and he laughed uneasily.
"Something you can't and must not do, Thayer. I oughtn't to have spoken of it."
"What was it?" Then a new idea crossed Thayer's mind. "Something about Lorimer?"
"Yes, I may as well tell you. We have been telephoning back and forth, all day. They'll be down, Monday night, and the funeral is to be on Wednesday afternoon. Beatrix is leaving all the plans to my uncle; and my aunt, who is a sentimental soul and has no idea of the real state of the case, is insisting that the poor old chap shall be buried with all manner of social honors. It is to be a real function, and she thought it would be the most suitable thing in the world, if you were to sing at the funeral. I knew you wouldn't enjoy doing it, all things considered; but I couldn't say so to my uncle. All in all, it is a relief to have this other affair knock it in the head."
To Bobby, the pause was scarcely perceptible. To Thayer, it sufficed to review the years between his meeting Lorimer in Göttingen and that last gray dawn in the cottage.
"But it doesn't," Thayer said then.
"You don't mean—?"
"I will sing. We rehearse in the morning, and I have nothing afterwards until evening. What time is the service?"
Bobby Dane's call left Thayer feeling once more at war with himself. Worn out with the long strain of watching over Lorimer, exhausted with the agony of that hour in the cottage, it had been a relief to him, now that his work was ended, to throw himself wholly into the preparations forFaust. The needed rehearsals and the inevitable details of costuming had been sufficient to occupy his tired mind completely, and he had held firmlyto his resolve to forget the past two months. He had been able to accomplish this only by getting a strong grip upon his own mind and holding on tightly and steadily; but he had accomplished it. Bobby left him with it all to do over again. In spite of himself, Beatrix's desperate question for "the black, blank years," drowned the familiar words of his cavatina and set themselves in their place,—
"Even black, blank years shall pass."
"Even black, blank years shall pass."
Impatiently he shut the piano and, sitting down at his desk, began studying aloud the list of stage directions which outlined his acting; but, in the intervals of turning a page, he asked himself over and over again whether any other life could hold a grimmer contrast than the one confronting him, that coming Wednesday afternoon and evening.
Wednesday came at last. Thayer had left his card at the Lorimers' house, the day before; but he had felt no surprise that Beatrix had refused to see him. He caught no glimpse of her until the hour for the funeral, and he felt that it was better so. For the present, their lives must lie in different paths.
As Bobby had predicted, Sidney Lorimer's funeral was a function. Everything about it wasabove criticism, with the minor exception of the manner in which Lorimer had met his end. Society, black-clothed and sombre-faced, was present, partly from respect to the Danes, partly from a real liking for Lorimer as they had known him at first, partly from curiosity to see whether there were any foundation for the rumors which already were flying abroad. The rumors embraced everything from meningitis to suicide, everything except the truth. And meanwhile, the Lorimers' rooms were transformed into a species of flower show, and, in the midst of the flowers, Lorimer lay asleep, his cheek resting on his hand, his lips curving into the old winning smile they knew so well. For him, as for Thayer, the past was passed and done. For him, too, the future might still be full of promise. Thayer, as he stood beside the man who had been his old-time friend, admitted as much to himself, and all at once the intoning of the solemn ritual ceased to jar upon his ears. For Lorimer, as for himself, the fight was still on. The arena had changed; that was all. Perhaps in the new battle, Lorimer would arm himself with stronger weapons.
Then the intoning stopped, and some one made a signal to Thayer. Simply as a boy, and with a boyish tenderness, he sang the little hymn they hadchosen for him. Each man and woman who listened, felt gentler and nobler for his song; but only Beatrix, shut decorously in the room upstairs, away from her dead, realized that, for the passing hour, Thayer had annulled the passion and the pain of those last weeks, and had gone back again to the old, pitiful, protecting love which for years had marked his attitude towards Lorimer.
From Lorimer's funeral, society went home to rest and gossip and exchange its sombre clothing for its most brilliant plumage. Nearly two years before, society had taken Cotton Mather Thayer to its bosom. Now it was making ready to burn much incense in his honor, and its first step in the process was to make his opening night of opera one of the most brilliant events of the winter. With this laudable end in view, the house was packed, and the women present had drawn heavily upon their reserve fund of brand-new gowns which they had been hoarding for the final gayeties of the season.
Thayer, with Arlt at his side, lingered idly in the wings, while the audience listened with ill-concealed impatience to the melodious bargaining betweenFaustandMephistopheles. Then the attention quickened, as every bar of the Kermesschorus brought them nearer to the moment forValentine'scoming.
Charm in hand, he came at last, and the applause, caught up to the galleries and tossed back to the floor, echoed again and again through the great opera house. He accepted it quietly, almost indifferently, and stood waiting for the storm to die away, while his keen eyes, sweeping the house, recognized here and there among the jewelled, bare-shouldered women before him the faces of the black-gowned mourners to whom he had sung in the afternoon. The sight brought Beatrix to his mind. He wondered how she was passing the evening, whether, from under the benumbing effects of the blow she had suffered, she were still sending a thought, a hope for success in his direction. Unconsciously to himself, his pulses were tingling and throbbing with the music, and the throb and tingle brought back to him the memory of the pounding of his pulses, that morning in the cottage, only a week before. He had almost yielded to their sway; then he had rallied. He had gone through the shock of Lorimer's death, through the hasty discussion of arrangements which had followed, through the saying good-by, with a calmness that had steadied Beatrix and had been a surprise, even to himself.It was more—He roused himself abruptly to the consciousness that mechanically he had been going through the scene withWagner, and that the moment for his cavatina had come.
Instinctively he squared his shoulders and raised his eyes. As he did so, he caught sight of Bobby Dane, and the sight recalled to him the half-dismissed thought of Beatrix. During the one measure of introduction, Beatrix andMarguerite, the cottage and the Kermess went whirling together through Thayer's brain, turning and twisting, intermingling and separating again like the visions of delirium. For that one measure, his operatic fate was trembling in the balance. Then the artist triumphed. Steady and clear, yet burdened with infinite sadness, his voice rang out, filling the wide spaces of the great house, filling the smallest heart within it with its throbbing, passionate power.
"Yet the bravest heart may swellIn the moment of farewell."
"Yet the bravest heart may swellIn the moment of farewell."
The house was rocking and ringing with applause, as the song died away; but Thayer heard it with unheeding ears. His old destiny had fulfilled itself. The chord which closed his cavatina had sealed his fame in opera; but his fame was tohim as ashes in his mouth. With that same chord, he had wilfully bidden farewell, not toMarguerite, his sister, but to Beatrix, the wife of his friend, Sidney Lorimer. And, as the chord died away, with its death there also died his passionate love. Who could foretell what its resurrection would be? Or when? Or where?
"Otto, how does it feel to be a celebrity?" Miss Gannion asked abruptly, one afternoon in late May.
The young German smiled.
"How should I know?"
"From experience, of course. Your artistic probation appears to be over. Your winning the prize for the suite has settled it for all time, and now I am doing my best to readjust myself to the idea that my boy friend Otto is the new composer Arlt about whom the critics are waging inky war."
"What is the use?" he inquired, as he crossed the room and sat down at the piano.
"Because I really must begin to face the fact that you are destined to be one of the immortals, and treat you with proper respect." Her tone was full of lazy amusement and content. "Hereafter, I shall never dare tell you when your necktie is askew, and as for training you in the management of your cuffs!" She paused expressively, and they both laughed.
"It was a blow to me to find that reputation depends upon such things," Arlt said, after a thoughtful pause.
"Not reputation; success. The two things don't necessarily touch each other. One is a matter of brains, the other of fashion." Her accent was almost bitter. "You have deserved one; you are beginning to have the other thrust upon you. How does it make you feel?"
"As if I owed a great deal to you."
The girlish pink flush rose in Miss Gannion's cheeks.
"Thank you, dear boy. But really I have done nothing."
Arlt turned his back to the piano and, clasping his hands over his knees, spoke with simple gravity.
"Miss Gannion, here in America, I have had three good friends, Mr. Thayer, you, and Miss Van Osdel. Everybody knows what Mr. Thayer has done to help me; I am the only one who knows about you and Miss Van Osdel, and I know it better and better, the more I learn to understand your American ways. It was not always easy for a woman in society to accept as her friend a stranger musician without reputation and without social backing, to acknowledge him in public and to insist that her friends should acknowledgehim. At first I took it as a matter of course. I know better now, and I know that you and Miss Van Osdel must have given up some things for the sake of helping me along."
Miss Gannion paused, before she answered.
"Otto," she said at length; "I am a lonely woman, and my life has been broader for knowing you. I mean thatyouin the plural, for there have been a good many of you. Some have been successful, some have not; a few have become famous, just as you are doing. Some of them have been sent to me; some have come of their own accord. We have been close friends for a while, and then they have gone on their ways. Every going has left its scar. I was a woman, sitting still in my place by the fire; they were marching with the procession, stopping only for a little while and then going on out of my sight. It has made me feel so futile. But, of them all, you are the only one who has suggested that thevivandièremay be a useful element on the march. It was all I could do, and I did it. I am glad if it counted for anything."
"Everything in this world counts but cipher, naught, or zero," Bobby observed suddenly, as he came strolling into the room at Sally's side. "You aren't a cipher, Miss Gannion. They'reeither evanescent or tubby, according to whether you look at their moral or their physical proportions. You don't fit either measurement. Therefore you aren't a cipher. Therefore you count. How do, Arlt? No; don't get up from the piano. You owe me a sonata, at least, to pay for the stunning headlines I gave you, yesterday."
"Was that your work, Bobby?" Sally asked, while she shook hands with Arlt. "I thought it must have come from the bake-shop where they do all the other pi. Did you see it, Miss Gannion? It reminded me ofA was an Apple Pie: Arlt's Art Analyzed. Properly, the second line should have been:By Bobby Bunkum; but I suppose his ideas ran low, when he reached that point."
"I say, Arlt," Bobby suggested; "why don't you write a series of articles on How to Get on in the World?"
"They would only take one line: Know Miss Gannion and Miss Van Osdel," Arlt retorted, with unwonted quickness.
Bobby shook his head.
"No go, Arlt. I've known them for years, known them intimately; and look at me! I haven't budged an inch in the upward march. The fact is, I have just budged downward. My new underling is a boy of seventy and afraid ofa draught, so in common humanity I have had to make over to him my warm corner at the editorial board, and remove myself to the chilly places below the salt. To be sure, it gives me extra good purchase on the devil, as my present desk is just in his pathway to the Chief, and I can smite him as he goes by."
"Does he turn the other cheek?" Sally queried. "One lump, Miss Gannion. I am still keeping up my Lenten penance, for I acquired the taste for it, and I can't bring myself back to the old extravagant ways. Next Lent, probably I shall mortify the flesh by taking two lumps."
Bobby handed her the cup.
"The other cheek," he answered. "Which do you mean? He's all cheek, all over himself, and it offers itself, whichever way he turns. Have you seen Thayer lately, Arlt?"
"Yesterday afternoon. He came down to my room to rehearse the songs he is to sing, next Saturday."
"What is Saturday? You fellows are going ahead at such a rate that I can't keep track of you, unless I have an engagement book for your especial benefit."
"Bobby!" Sally expostulated. "Mr. Arlt's suite is to be played, Saturday, and Mr. Thayeris to be the soloist for the concert. You oughtn't to have forgotten that, especially when you asked me to go with you."
"Oh, yes; I do remember now," Bobby replied serenely. "I knew I had some duty on hand for Saturday, just when I wanted to run up to Englewood for a little golf. What makes you do music in pleasant weather, Arlt? It's mean to keep a fellow in-doors at this season."
"It is our last appearance," Arlt answered.
Bobby raised his brows in feigned terror.
"Nothing mortal, I hope."
"No. We are going abroad, early in June."
"Just the other fellow's luck! I wish I were a genius, to go frisking about Europe instead of inking my fingers at home."
Arlt shook his head.
"No frisking for us. We are going to study."
With characteristic promptitude, Bobby dragged out his hobby, mounted it and was off at a gallop.
"That's always the way with you musicians! You work till you are tired of it; then you go off and shirk, and call it studying. I used to think you were the elect of the earth. Now I doubt it."
"Have some more tea, Bobby," Miss Gannion suggested.
Bobby waved her aside.
"Am I a child, to be diverted with soothing drinks? Never! I must have my cry out, Miss Gannion. You and Sally can be talking about the last fashion in peignoirs, if you wish. I don't know what they are; but I did a scarehead about them for the Sunday fashion page, last week. The woman who generally sees to it had mumps, and I substituted. I thought I did it superbly:Death to Décolleté: Peignoirs Popular for Suburban Suppers. That was the way I did it, and I was sure she would be pleased; but she cut me dead on the stairs, the first day she convalesced enough to be out. Arlt, musicians are second-rate beings, at best."
"I am sorry. Perhaps you can suggest a remedy," Arlt replied literally.
"Cast off your leading strings, and work out your own theories to suit yourselves," Bobby answered unhesitatingly. "Now look here, I used to think that it was greater to create music than to evolve literature; now I know more, I know it isn't. When a man writes a book, he goes ahead and does it according to the light of nature and the sense that is in him. Sometimes it is good; mostly it isn't, but at least he has done it out of himself and by himself. When you write a symphony, you do it out of yourself, but not by yourself. You do it by the exact rules that somebody else before you has laid down. You can have just so many themes and so many episodes, though it would puzzle theConcertmeisterof the heavenly choir to tell where the themes leave off and the episodes begin. You know you have got those rules to hang on to, and they are a great support in seasons of mental famine. Two themes and a subsidiary, and a lot of episodes for padding: that's all you need, and they are bound to come on in just a given order. Can you imagine a novelist sitting down and fitting his work neatly into a box measured off into compartments: one hero, one heroine, one extra, plus episodic sunsets and moonbeams galore? Not much! He makes his rules as he goes along. Sally, which is greater, to create a gown, or to cut it out by a paper pattern?"
"To cut it out, of course," Sally answered unexpectedly. "The patterns never fit, and it is more work to bring them into the shape of any human being than it is to start out with a free hand, in the first place."
But Miss Gannion challenged her.
"Sally, did you ever make a gown?"
"Never; but that doesn't prevent my having theories," Sally replied airily.
"And I have had practice. I attempted once, when my years were less and my zeal more, to clothe an orphan with the work of my own hands. I thought I would operate free hand, as you call it, and I wish you could have beheld the result. The orphan's own mother would never have recognized her babe in the midst of the strange, polyangular bundle of cloth. I suspect that the same might be said of a good many novelists, and that a judicious trimming of the seams according to some established pattern might improve their work."
Arlt nodded approvingly.
"As usual, Miss Gannion has spoken wisely," he remarked.
"Miss Gannion has only echoed my words," Sally objected.
"Not at all. You said it was harder to work from a pattern; I merely suggested that the results were more satisfactory."
"Well, never mind," Sally returned promptly. "I don't care about that, so long as the vote goes against Bobby."
"And then, this matter of studying," Bobby went on, disdaining her interruption. "Now, when you get hard up for ideas, Arlt, when you actually can't get enough out of your gray matterto fill up your pattern, you go off somewhere and study something. Now, if I—"
"What have you to do with it, Bobby?" Miss Gannion queried.
"I represent literature, of course, just as Arlt represents music. If I were to go off and study something, what would you all think?"
"That it was the best possible thing you could possibly do," Sally retorted.
Bobby frowned.
"You are so feminine and subjective, Sally. I suppose you can't help it, though. But really—Arlt, for instance, has produced a prize composition, while he is still studying. That's exactly what we used to do in prep. school. Fancy a school for novelists, with night classes for indigent poets! It would be a parallel case; but what would be the effect upon literature?"
Arlt rose deliberately and crossed the room to the empty chair at Miss Gannion's side.
"All in all," he answered quietly; "from my slight knowledge of the teeming millions who are standing in line before the portals of American literature, I think the establishment of such a school ought to be the first duty of a self-respecting American government."
Thayer, meanwhile, was preparing for a longer absence from America than even Arlt was aware. The late winter and early spring had been for him a season of perfect professional success.Fausthad been the first of many operas, for the illness of the regular baritone had taken a sudden turn for the worse and had ended his work for the season, and the manager had insisted that Thayer should fill his place. The event had fully justified the prediction of the oldmaestro, and in his operatic rôles Thayer was finding out where his real greatness lay. His mental personality, as well as his huge figure, demanded room to manifest itself. His acting was dramatic, yet full of control and reserve power, and his voice, fresh from its weeks of rest, richer and stronger than ever, was endowed with a new note of pathos, of longing for something quite beyond his power of attainment. Measured by the eye, Thayer held the world in the hollow of his hand. The ear alone betrayed the fact that he found the world as hollow as the curve of his encircling fingers. But when Thayer squared his jaw and threw back his shoulders before one of his great arias, eye and ear united in saying that the time would come when, by sheer might of his will, he would fill up that world until the weight of its fulness should fit his encircling hand with acontact as absolute as it would be lasting. Meanwhile, he was biding his time.
Nominally, he was going to Germany for a little study and much rest. In reality, he was considering an invitation to sing at Bayreuth, that summer; and among his papers was an unsigned contract which would keep him in European cities during the whole of the following winter. He was leaving his plans undecided, until he could hear definite news from Beatrix.
Living within a block of her house, he had nevertheless seen her but once since Lorimer's death. Once only, less than a week after the funeral, she had received him when he called. The call had been an uncomfortable one for them both. Neither had been able to forget that morning together in the cottage. It had been impossible for them to meet as if that hour had never been; neither could they accept the truth which had revealed itself at that time, and face its consequences. As yet, the time for that had not come. Nevertheless, they both felt relieved when the call was ended. Living side by side in the same social circle, they could not fail to meet, as time went on and Beatrix resumed her old place in the world. Any change in their attitude to each other would not pass unchallenged. Theywere bound to meet; it was imperative that they should meet in precisely the old way. They both were wise enough to feel that the sooner they met, the better. Unbroken ice thickens most quickly. However, when Thayer, after a half-hour of platitudes, went down the steps, Beatrix, locked into her own room, paced the floor, to and fro, to and fro again, like a caged panther, while Thayer walked the streets until time to dress for the stage, and then sang the part ofValentinewith a furious madness of despair which merely added another stiff little leaf to his garland of fame. The next day, the papers waxed enthusiastic over Thayer's temperament, and Beatrix, alone in her room, read the papers and smiled sadly to herself as she read. Thayer's fate was, in a sense, less hard to bear than her own. He could find outlet for his sorrow. She, perforce, was dumb.
Since that day, Thayer had caught no glimpse of Beatrix. She had seen him repeatedly, however, when she had been driving; and once, at Bobby's urgent pleading, hidden from view in the back of a box, she had heard him singValentine. On the way home, she had decided that, after all, perhaps his fate was no easier than hers to bear. His sorrow had measured itself by the greatness of his personality.
As the May days passed by, rumors reached the ears of Thayer that all was not well with Beatrix. In her strict retirement, he could get no word from her; but at length, as the rumors increased, he sought out Bobby Dane. When he came away from Bobby, his face was stern and seamed with deep lines around his rigid lips, and he vouchsafed to Arlt no reason for his sudden postponement of the date for their sailing.
"The first of July will bring us there in season," he explained briefly. "I find I can't leave New York until after the twentieth."
So, in the first fierce heat of early June, the days dragged slowly along. Day after day, Thayer sat long at his desk in the attitude of passive waiting. Now and then he read over his unsigned contracts, wondering, meanwhile, whether he would ever sign them. If Beatrix lived, he had determined to spend the next year abroad. In the other event—He shook his head.
Nothing then could make much difference in his future.
During the second week in June, Beatrix's baby was born, and for days afterward, the mother's life, so long in danger, now hung by a thread. Then the good old fibre of the Danes reasserted itself, and Beatrix came slowly upward from the verge of the River of Death. Bobby's face cleared itself of its shadows, Thayer signed his contracts and, the next week, he and Arlt finally sailed for Europe.
In the long days of her convalescence, Beatrix manifested an utter indifference to the tidings from the outer world. She lay by the hour, her baby on her arm, looking down at the fuzzy little head and the red little face whose indeterminate features were fast taking the stamp of those of their father. Strange to say, the fact caused Beatrix no repulsion. The fires of her being seemed to have burned themselves out, and even her feeling to Lorimer shared in her general apathy. In the weeks which had followed his death, she had madeup her mind that the baby would be fashioned in his image; and she accepted the fact philosophically, as a part of her life from which there was no appeal.
From the first, the baby was a quiet child. Apparently he shared his mother's apathy towards all things, and he lay by the hour in a sluggish drowse, leaving his mother free to allow her thoughts to wander at will. They did wander, too. Lying there, passive, in her luxurious room, Beatrix's mind scaled the heights of heaven, sounded the depths of hell. The one had lain within her reach; but she had never known it until too late. The other had crossed her path in the past; it was opening before her future. Her baby boy, so plainly created in the physical likeness of his father, could not have failed to receive something of his moral nature. She quailed before the grim promise of the future and, drawing the blanket over her face, she tried to shut out the sight and the thought of her child. And, in the first weeks of her wedded life, she had so longed for the time when a baby head should cuddle into the curve of her arm! At the thought, she pulled the blanket away again impetuously and, of its own accord, her arm tightened around the little bundle of flannels. He was not entirelyLorimer's child; he was her own, her very own. He must have inherited something of the sturdy constitution, the steady nerves of the Danes. The stronger, better blood was bound to triumph; and she would work unceasingly to oust that other taint from his nature. He was her child; she loved him, and she would give her life to the training which should make him able to wipe out the stain upon his father's record.
July was burning the white asphalt streets, before Beatrix was strong enough to be moved to Monomoy. Bobby dropped in to see her, the afternoon before she left town.
"Funny little beggar!" he observed, as he sat down opposite Beatrix and gravely inspected the baby in her arms.
"What do you think of him?" Beatrix asked, while she smoothed down the wholly superfluous skirt and then, tilting the baby forward, straightened the frills on the back of his little yoke.
"Oh, he's not so bad as he might be," Bobby responded encouragingly, as he snapped his fingers in the face of the child who stared back at him impassively.
The mother's face flushed.
"What do you mean, Bobby?" she asked a little sharply.
Too late, Bobby saw his blunder. In his consternation, he blundered yet more.
"I had no idea he would be half so presentable a boy. Just the living image of Lorimer; isn't he?"
"You see it, too?"
Bobby was at a loss to interpret the sudden incisive note in her voice. No one had warned him that the baby's likeness to his father had been a forbidden subject, and he could not know that Beatrix, in brooding over the matter, had reached a point where she questioned whether the resemblance might not exist solely in her own imagination. Bobby's next words annulled that hope and confirmed her fears.
"He's as like him as two peas, cunning as he can be. There, boy, look at your Uncle Bobby!" Bobby bent forward and with his forefinger gently tilted the little face upward. "Lorimer's eyes to perfection," he observed. Then, as he met Beatrix's eyes, he suddenly understood their wild appeal. Dropping the baby's chin, he laid his hand on his cousin's shoulder. "I wouldn't worry about that, Beatrix," he added reassuringly. "He probably will take it out in looking, and, for his character, hark back to some remote Dane or other. Lorimer was a handsome fellow, and the baby mightdo worse than look like him. Otherwise, he may go off on a tangent. Suppose he should take after me, for instance!"
Bobby spoke cheerily, hoping that Beatrix's laugh would follow his words. Instead, she caught his hand with her disengaged one and pressed it fiercely to her cheek.
"Oh, Bobby, I wish he would!" she cried.
Bobby looked rather abashed. He and Beatrix had been intimate from their babyhood; yet neither one of them was prone to self-betrayal, and this was the most demonstrative scene which had ever taken place between the cousins. As a rule, they were too sure of each other to feel the need for expressions of affection. For a minute, Bobby patted Beatrix's cheek with clumsy gentleness. Then he returned to the baby.
"Come here, old man! Come to your Uncle Bobby!" he urged, holding out his hands invitingly. "Come along here." And before Beatrix could utter a word of protesting caution, the baby was lying in the hollow of Bobby's elbow and blinking up at his new nurse with round brown eyes.
Bobby stared down at him benignly.
"Feels cunning; doesn't he, Beatrix? He seems to fit into one's grip rather well. Onecan't help liking the little beggar. By the way, what's his name?"
"Sidney," Beatrix responded quietly.
"The deuce!" In his surprise, Bobby almost dropped the baby.
Beatrix answered his unspoken thought.
"Yes, I have decided that it is best. I must meet fate anyway, and I may as well do it boldly, with a direct challenge. The name won't make any difference to the baby, and it may help to make me more patient and forgiving."
Gently Bobby laid the baby back into Beatrix's arms. Then he rose.
"No," he said slowly; "it won't make any difference, and it gives the chance of bringing the name back to its old standing. You may take lots of comfort with the boy, Beatrix. I hope so with all my heart, for I know how you need it. Things have gone rather against you, these last months; but perhaps the bad times are all over now." At the door, he lingered and looked back. "If you need me at Monomoy, Beatrix, don't hesitate to send for me. Sometimes it is a comfort to have somebody of one's own generation within hail."
Six weeks later, she realized the truth of his words when Bobby came striding into the room,with the family doctor at his heels. For the past forty-eight hours, Beatrix had watched convulsion after convulsion rack the tiny frame, wear itself out and die away, only to be followed by another and yet another. Under this new sorrow, the grandparents had given way entirely. They were powerless to help, and Beatrix, pitying their misery which she knew was more than half for her sake, had sent them away from the room. For forty-eight hours, she and the nurse had kept an unbroken vigil; and Beatrix had held herself steady until she had caught sight of Bobby's strong, happy, pitiful face in the doorway.
When she came to herself once more, she was lying on the couch in the hall, with Bobby beside her and Bobby's protecting arm around her shoulders.
"It may not be so bad, dear," he was saying soothingly. "Schirmer will pull him through, if anybody can, and he says it isn't at all hopeless. Lots of youngsters have convulsions and come out of them, jolly as grigs."
Beatrix saw no need for telling him the new fear which had tortured her, during those endless hours of waiting after she had sent off her telegram. Instead, she took his sympathy as it was given, with loving optimism; but she nestled evenmore closely against her cousin's side, as if for the hour she gained strength from the touch of his protecting arm. It was her one spot of perfect restfulness.
Late that night, Bobby had a talk with the doctor. It left him glad that already he had spoken with encouragement to Beatrix. The next two days, he gave his time to her absolutely. Then his official summons came, and reluctantly he returned to his desk.
By the time Beatrix was in town again, she was ready to admit to herself that hopelessness might mean something worse than death. By the end of the winter, themighthad ceased to be potential and had become actual. Since those August days at Monomoy, the convulsions had recurred at irregular intervals. The physical constitution of the Danes had refused to give way to them; the nervous instability of the Lorimers had yielded to them utterly. Unless some miracle intervened, the child must face a future of vigorous body and enfeebled brain; and Beatrix, as she watched him, told herself the melancholy truth that the day of miracles was irrevocably dead. It seemed to her that the years were stretching out before her in an empty, unending trail, that she must follow it alone,hand in hand with her child, bound forever to watch for the signs of an intellect which never, never should appear. And she was the one to blame. It was no less her own fault, because she had assumed the responsibility in arrogant ignoring of its true import.
One afternoon in late May found her sitting by the open window with the child in her arms, when Thayer was announced. She greeted him with something of her old cordiality. Then she rang for the nurse to take away the baby.
"When did you get home again?" she asked, when they were seated alone together.
"This morning. I landed at ten, and I came directly to you."
She ignored the eagerness of his tone.
"You have been wonderfully successful, I am told."
"Well enough. It was nothing wonderful, though."
"Bobby has kept me informed of your glories," she insisted, with a slight smile; "and Mr. Arlt has really enjoyed them as well as if they had been his own."
"That is characteristic of Arlt. His letters were noncommittal; but Bobby says he has had his own fair share of honors. I am glad, for he deserves them."
"Indeed he does," she assented heartily. "We all are so glad for him; and it is a delight to watch the odd, boyish modesty with which he accepts his own fame. He is the most unspoiled genius I have ever known."
There was a short silence. Thayer grew restless under it. He had not hurried his return, left his luncheon untasted and escaped from a dozen reporters, in order to sit and discuss Arlt with that black-gowned woman the tip of whose finger outweighed for him the clumsy honors of the earth. All the way over, he had paced the steamer's deck by the hour, planning what words he should say to Beatrix when at last they stood face to face, with only the long-buried dead between them. He had supposed that lie had learned his lesson by heart. Nevertheless, now that he was at last in her presence, his words fled from his mind. Beatrix broke the silence.
"You have seen Bobby, then?"
"He met me at the steamer."
She raised her eyes to his, half-appealingly, half-defiantly.
"And he told you—"
"He has told me everything," Thayer interrupted her. He rose restlessly, crossed the room to the mantel and examined a vase with unseeingeyes. Then, returning, he halted directly before her, straightened his shoulders and drew a deep, full breath. "Beatrix?" he said unsteadily.
She shrank from before the words she had been dreading for so long.
"Don't!" she begged him.
"But I must." His voice was steady now. "We both of us know the truth, and the time has come when we can acknowledge it. I have waited long, dear, long and patiently. For fifteen months, I have left you to yourself and to the past. Now it is time for the future. I have come home, Beatrix, to marry you at last."
Before the glad tenderness that thrilled in his tone, she sank back in her deep chair and buried her face in her hands. Thayer waited quietly, patiently. He had told his story; he could afford to wait for her answer, since he never doubted what it was to be. The silence between them lasted for moments. From upstairs in another part of the house, there came a fretful childish cry. Then the stillness dropped again. At length, Beatrix let her hands fall into her lap. There was an instant of utter listlessness; then quietly she rose and stood facing him, drawn to her full height. Her cheeks were white, her eyes unstained by any tears, her voice quite level.
"I am sorry," she said slowly; "but what you ask is impossible."
He started, as if struck with a lash.
"What do you mean?"
"That I cannot marry you."
He stared at her in amazement, while the color left his cheeks and then rushed again to his temples where the veins stood out like knotted cords. For the moment, he was angry, baffled by the shock of her unexpected answer. Then he mastered himself.
"Do you not love me any longer?" he asked.
"Any longer?" Her tone sought to express haughty disdain; but her eyes drooped before the fire in his own.
"Never mind the words," he said sharply. "In times like this, one can't stop to pick for rhetorical effects. It is enough that I love you with all the manhood there is in me, and that for months I have counted upon winning your love in return. And now—"
She interrupted him.
"And now you have found out your mistake," she said sadly.
"Yes." There was a long interval of silence, before he added, "And is this final?"
"It is." Her stiffened lips could scarcely form the words.
He turned to go away. All the alertness which had marked his coming had dropped away from him. He moved slowly and with drooping shoulders. Already his face had grown haggard underneath the bronzing of his sea voyage. Beatrix stood motionless, watching him, struggling to master herself, to hold herself firmly to her resolve which had been taking shape within her, during all that past winter and spring.
Halfway across the room, Thayer hesitated, turned and came back to her side.
"Beatrix," he said impetuously; "we may as well face this thing squarely. It won't be the first time. We didn't wreck the future then; we mustn't do it now. The cases are different, though. This time, the danger lies in half-truths. We must speak plainly."
She attempted to check him; but, for the once, she was powerless to stem the tide of his words, and he hurried on,—
"We loved each other. There is no disloyalty to Lorimer in admitting it now. He belonged to the past, and, in that past, you belonged to him. The past is over and ended now, and, for thefuture, we must belong to each other. It is for that that I am here."
She tried in vain to control her voice. Then she shook her head.
"What has come between us?" he demanded. "You did love me. Look up, Beatrix! Yes, your eyes tell the truth about it. You love me now; I am here to prove it, and to marry you in spite of yourself."
Gently she put away his arms and faced him.
"No. It is impossible."
He wavered before the finality of her tone.
"But you love me," he urged.
She was silent, and stood with her eyes fixed on the floor at his feet. Then, of a sudden, she raised her eyes to his, and Thayer was dazzled by the light that was shining in them.
"Yes," she answered, with a quiet dignity which he could not gainsay. "And that is the very reason that I will not marry you. I love you too well—so well that I can never allow you to become the father of Sidney Lorimer's child."
"I believe my world is overcrowded," Sally said, one January afternoon, two years later.
"Arlt, why don't you take the hint?" Bobby asked languidly. "I am too comfortable to stir, and she evidently wishes to get rid of somebody."
"Possibly she means me; but I was the last to come, so I shall outstay you both," Miss Gannion said, laughing. "At least, Sally, your hospitality does you credit."
With leisurely fingers, Sally was opening her teaball; but Bobby interposed.
"I wouldn't make any tea for us, Sally. I know you are afraid it may not hold out for your crowded universe, and we three have been here often enough to have dispelled any illusions about the quality of your cups. Two are cracked, and one has a nick exactly in the spot where we drink. I suspect Arlt of having cut his wisdom teeth on it."
"Only women cut their wisdom teeth on a teacup," Miss Gannion observed. "But really,Sally, I would save my tea until the crowd shows itself."
Sally shook her head.
"You interrupted me in the midst of my thesis."
Bobby interrupted again.
"It is our only chance to get in a word. We have to insert its thin edge at a comma, or else keep still. You never have any conversational semicolons, to say nothing of periods."
"As I was saying," Sally repeated pertinaciously; "my world is overcrowded. I have so many acquaintances that I never get time to enjoy my friends."
"What about now?" Bobby queried. "Here are we, and here is time. Which is lacking: enjoyment, or friendship?"
"Oh, this is an interlude, and doesn't count. We shall just get into the midst of a little rational conversation, though, and two or three stupid people will come in and reduce us to talking about the weather."
"You might send out cards," Arlt suggested, with the hesitating accent which was so characteristic of him. "Why not announce that on Tuesdays you are at home to clever people and friends only?"
"Yes; but it is no subject for joking," Sally persisted. "Last Tuesday in all that storm, for the first time this winter, Mr. Thayer came to see me. I know how busy he is, and I was just preparing to make the most of his call, when Mrs. Stanley came swishing and creaking into the room, and she babbled about her servants and her lumbago until Mr. Thayer took his departure. I wanted to administer poison."
"Try an anodyne," Bobby advised her. "They say that stout people yield easily to their influence. By the way, why is it polite to call a woman stout, but rude in the extreme to dub her fat? That is one of the problems I have never been able to solve. I used the wrong word in regard to Mrs. Stanley, one night, and she overheard me. Since then, she hauls in her latch-string hand over hand, whenever I turn the corner."
"Do you mind, Bobby?" Sally inquired. "The two most peaceful years of my social life were the years immediately following the day I advised Mrs. Stanley not to attemptJulietin public. Lately, I have wished that her memory were just a bit more retentive. Tell me, has anybody seen Beatrix, this week?"
"She was at Carnegie Hall, last night."
Arlt's face brightened.
"Really?"
"Yes, I coaxed her into going. You ought to feel honored, Arlt; it is the first music she has heard, this season."
"Hasn't she been to hear Mr. Thayer?"
"No; she hasn't heard him since his first season. I tell her she has no idea how he has developed, nor how much she is losing; but she seems to have lost her love for music."
"Poor, dear girl! I don't wonder," Sally said impetuously.
But Arlt interposed.
"Isn't there a certain comfort to be gained from it?" he asked. "I hoped—I had thought music was to inspire and help people, not to amuse them."
"It does in theory," Bobby returned; "only now and then it reminds one of things, and upsets the whole scheme of inspiration. But I was surprised that Beatrix went, last night."
"What did she say?" Arlt inquired, with a frankness which yet bore no taint of egotism.
"Not very much; but her face at the close of yourAndantetold the story. You touched her on the raw, Arlt; but you roused her pluck to bear it. I think she will send you a note, to-day."
"I wonder if you realize what an event for your friends this symphony was," Sally broke in.
Arlt smiled. With growing manhood, his gravity also had grown; but his slow little smile caused his face to light wonderfully. Denied all claim to beauty, there was a great charm in the simple, modest dignity with which he bore himself. He answered Sally's last words with an earnestness that became him well.
"Without my friends, my symphony would have been left unwritten."
"And it was a perfect success," Sally added.
"Success is never perfect," he returned a little sadly. "Its merit must lie in its incompleteness, for that just urges us on to something beyond. The success on which we rest, is no better than a failure. Some day, I shall begin my ideal symphony; but, by the time I have reached my finalMaestoso, I shall have learned that my ideal has moved on again beyond my reach."
"In other words, a real genius is nothing but an artistic butter-fingers," Bobby commented irreverently. "Stop your German philosophizing, Arlt, and help us enjoy the present by playing yourScherzo. Thayer says it is by far the best thing you have ever done."
Obediently Arlt crossed to the piano. In his absorption in his symphony, he had by no means allowed his skill as a pianist to rust for want of use, and a little sigh of utter content went around the group, as they heard the dainty, clashing notes answer to the touch of his fingers. He was in the full rhythm of hisScherzo, playing, humming, or whistling, according to his whim and to the demands of the orchestral score, when Sally gave a sudden exclamation of warning.
"Behold the crowd! Here endeth the interlude! Enter Mrs. Lloyd Avalons!"
"What in thunder is that woman doing here, Sally?" Bobby demanded, as Arlt's fingers dropped from the keys in the very midst of a phrase.
Sally shrugged her shoulders with the petulant gesture of a naughty child.
"How in thunder should I know, Bobby? I wish you'd ask her."
"No use. She never takes a hint."
A sudden change came over the group, as Mrs. Lloyd Avalons tripped daintily into the room. Miss Gannion straightened herself in her chair and took refuge in her lorgnette; Arlt's artistic fire extinguished itself, and he once more became the taciturn young German, while Sally assumed certain of the characteristics of a frozen olive.Bobby, however, continued to smile upon the room with unabated serenity.
"What a delight to find you here!" Mrs. Lloyd Avalons exclaimed, as she took Sally's hand.
"Miss Van Osdel has unsuspected depths to her nature," Bobby observed gravely. "Long as I have known her, Mrs. Avalons, I assure you I have never succeeded in finding her out."
"Oh—yes. How like you that is, Mr. Dane! But I was including you all."
"Taking us all in?" Bobby queried.
"Taking us just as you find us," Sally added. "You also take tea, I think, Mrs. Avalons?"
"You'd better," Bobby urged, with inadvertent pointedness. "We were just saying that Miss Van Osdel brews wisdom mingled with her tea."
"Bobby!" Sally adjured him, in a horrified whisper; but Mrs. Lloyd Avalons had already turned to Arlt.
"I am so glad to meet you here, Mr. Arlt. All your friends, to-day, are eager to congratulate you on your wonderful symphony."
"Yes." Arlt's tone was scarcely ingratiating, as he stirred his tea violently.
"Yes, it was beautiful, so sweet and harmonious. Really, you are quite taking the city bystorm. You must be very busy to do so much writing. Don't you get very tired?"
"Sometimes." Arlt emptied his cup at a gulp.
"Oh, you must! But it is worth tiring one's poor head, to achieve such splendid results. But don't you ever rest? All winter long, I have been hoping you would find time to drop in on me, some Thursday."
"Thank you." Arlt attacked his extra lump of sugar with his spoon. Eluding his touch, it flew across the room and landed at Bobby's feet. Stooping down, Bobby rescued it and gravely handed it back to Arlt.
"Try it again, old man," he said encouragingly. "You'll get the proper range in time."
But Mrs. Lloyd Avalons returned to the charge.
"Well, as long as you won't come to me, I must seize my chance here, if Miss Van Osdel will excuse me. We are getting up a concert for the benefit of the Allied Day Nurseries, Mr. Arlt. It is to be very select indeed, only artists of established reputation are to be invited to take part, and we shall keep the price of the tickets up high enough to shut out any undesirable people who might otherwise come. We are counting on you for two numbers."
"But I cannot play."
"In other words, Mrs. Avalons," Bobby remarked: "you'll have to discount Arlt."
"But we must have him," Mrs. Lloyd Avalons said, in real dismay. "We never thought of his refusing."
Arlt shook his head in grim silence.
Mrs. Lloyd Avalons took refuge in cajolery.
"Oh, but you must! We can't spare you, Mr. Arlt. If you don't care for the charity, you'll do it for me; won't you?"
Deliberately Arlt packed the sugar and the spoon into his cup, and set the cup down on the table. Then he turned to face Mrs. Lloyd Avalons squarely.
"On the contrary, that is the very reason I cannot do it, Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. When Miss Gannion introduced me to you as Mr. Thayer's accompanist and a pianist who needed engagements, you wished to refuse me a place on your programme. Now that others have been good enough to listen to me, you can make room for two numbers by me. I am very sorry; but I shall be unable to accept your invitation."
There was no underlying rancor in the slow, deliberate syllables; they were merely the statement of an indisputable fact. Most women wouldhave accepted them in silence. Not so with Mrs. Lloyd Avalons.
"But you played for Miss Van Osdel, last week," she persisted.
Arlt rose to his feet.
"Yes, I played for Miss Van Osdel, last week, just as I hope to have the pleasure of playing for her many times more in the future. However, that is quite a different matter. Miss Van Osdel and I are very old friends, and it will always be one of my very greatest pleasures to be entirely at her service." He made a quaint little bow in Sally's direction, and his face lighted with the friendly, humorous smile she knew so well. Then he added, "And now I must bid you all a very good afternoon."
He bowed again and walked away, with his simple dignity unruffled to the last. Society might bless him, or society might ban. Nevertheless, it was by no means Arlt's intention to turn his art into a species of lap-dog, to come trotting in at society's call, and then be dismissed to the outer darkness again, so soon as the round of its tricks was accomplished. Egotism Arlt had not; but his independence shrank at no one of the corollaries of his creed of art.
Bobby lingered after the others had gone away.
"I say, Sally," he remarked at length, apparently apropos of nothing in particular; "how does it happen that you have never married me?"