The Dominant Strain Part 37

"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 Gottingen and that last gray dawn in the cottage.

"But it doesn't," Thayer said then.

"You don't mean--?"

"I will sing. We rehea.r.s.e 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 for _Faust_. The needed rehearsals and the inevitable details of costuming had been sufficient to occupy his tired mind completely, and he had held firmly to 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 pa.s.s."_

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 was above 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 pa.s.sed 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 had chosen for him. Each man and woman who listened, felt gentler and n.o.bler for his song; but only Beatrix, shut decorously in the room upstairs, away from her dead, realized that, for the pa.s.sing hour, Thayer had annulled the pa.s.sion and the pain of those last weeks, and had gone back again to the old, pitiful, protecting love which for years had marked his att.i.tude 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 h.o.a.rding 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 between _Faust_ and _Mephistopheles_. Then the attention quickened, as every bar of the Kermess chorus brought them nearer to the moment for _Valentine's_ coming.

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 pa.s.sing 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 with _Wagner_, 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 and _Marguerite_, 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 s.p.a.ces of the great house, filling the smallest heart within it with its throbbing, pa.s.sionate power.

_"Yet the bravest heart may swell In 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 to him as ashes in his mouth. With that same chord, he had wilfully bidden farewell, not to _Marguerite_, 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 pa.s.sionate love. Who could foretell what its resurrection would be? Or when? Or where?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 fas.h.i.+on." 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 acknowledge him. 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 that _you_ in 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 the _vivandiere_ may 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're either 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 of _A was an Apple Pie: Arlt's Art a.n.a.lyzed_. Properly, the second line should have been: _By Bobby Bunk.u.m_; 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 of a 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.