The Dominant Strain Part 7

She glanced around with a carelessness which ignored the hand that the boy shyly extended towards her.

"Oh, yes, very pleased," she said vaguely. Then, with a resumption of her former manner, she turned back to Thayer. "And I thought you promised to drop in for a cup of tea, some Thursday, Mr. Thayer."

Beatrix was deaf to his answer. She had turned to Arlt who, scarlet with hurt and anger, stood alone in his corner by the piano.

"Mr. Arlt," she said gayly; "it is very warm here, and I know where they keep the frappe. Shall we leave my father here, and run off in search of some goodies? You ought to be hungry, after playing for two hours.

Come!"

And Arlt, surprised at the sudden winning intonations which had crept into her voice, dodged around the portly back of Mrs. Stanley and followed Beatrix out of the room. For the moment, the haughty woman had changed to a jovial, friendly girl, no more awe-inspiring than Katarina, in spite of her wonderful gown and the fluffy white thing in her hair; and the artist, in his turn, changed into a normal hungry boy, as he followed her away.

So absorbed were they in each other that they failed to see Bobby Dane who met them upon the threshold, on his way to join the group they had just left.

"Beg pardon, Thayer; but can I speak to you for a moment?" he said abruptly.

His uncle turned to Mrs. Stanley with old-fas.h.i.+oned pomposity.

"May I have the pleasure of taking you to the dining-room?" he asked.

"What is it, Dane?" Thayer asked, as soon as they were alone, for Bobby's face showed that something was amiss.

"It's Lorimer in the smoking-room. That beast of a Lloyd Avalons has opened a perfect bar in there, and--and Lorimer is making a bit of a cad of himself," Bobby confessed reluctantly. "I tried to get him away; but he wouldn't come, and I thought perhaps you could start him. It's not that he is drunk, only he is talking rather too much, and I want to get him off before Beatrix gets wind of it. You know girls--"

"I know," Thayer a.s.sented gravely. "I'll see what I can do with him."

CHAPTER FIVE

"You musicians make me deadly weary," Bobby proclaimed, from his favorite rostrum of the hearthrug.

"Is that the reason you are trying to sit on them, Bobby?" his cousin asked. "You'll find an easy chair just as restful to you and a good deal more so to the musician."

Bobby waved her remark aside.

"Don't interrupt me, Beatrix. I have things I wish to say."

"Very likely; but it is barely possible that somebody else also may have things he wishes to say, and can't, because you talk so much."

"Sally is busy eating bonbons, and Thayer would much better wait till I get through his indictment. He'll need all his voice to defend himself."

Sally glanced up.

"Go on, Bobby," she said encouragingly. "The sooner it is over, the better."

"Thank you. Then I have the floor. Thayer, I never believe in talking about people behind their backs, so I look you squarely in the eye and ask you if you ever realize that you don't amount to much, after all."

"Who told you?"

"n.o.body. I evolved it."

"I didn't know you were a critic."

"I'm not, nor yet an interpreting artist. I create."

"What, I should like to know!" This was from Sally.

"Scareheads. I do them. If that's not creating, I should like to know what is. They never have any connection with facts."

"What is your grievance?" Thayer asked languidly.

"I was just getting to that. As I say, I create. You only interpret. I don't know as it counts that you don't try to interpret my scareheads, though some of them would make stunning fugues. Take the last one, for instance: _Billions at Stake: Potato Corner in Prospect_. You could work up something fine from that, Thayer. Think of the chest tones you could throw into the single word _Potato_!"

"Bobby, you are growing discursive," his cousin reminded him.

"No; it is only my rhetorical method. I shall bring you up with a round turn, before you know it. Well, granted that we represent the two cla.s.ses, the creative and the interpretive, which is the greater?"

"How can we tell, unless you stand back to back?" Sally inquired.

But by this time, Bobby was fairly launched.

"The fact is, you singers and players have a smug little fas.h.i.+on of forgetting that there is a composer back of you. You don't sing extempore, Thayer, make up the song as you go along. You're nothing more than a species of elocutionist, you know, trying to show the people who weren't on the spot what the composer really did when he created the thing."

"Animated phonograph records, in short?" Thayer suggested.

"Yes, if you choose to call it that. Of course you count for something, else every composer could make a set of records and dispense with his interpreting artist once for all. But you fellows honestly do make an awful fuss about yourselves; now don't you?"

"Bobby!" Beatrix protested.

"Oh, yes; but I'm not meaning anything personal," Bobby responded amicably. "We know that Thayer's voice is beyond all odds the best we have heard for a three years. How do you do it, Thayer? You look as calm as a Dutch dolly; but you manage to tear us all to bits. Even I felt sanctified at your recital, and Miss Van Osdel's lashes were freighted with unshed tears."

"That must be one of your next week's scareheads," she objected. "I never cry in public where there are electric lights, Mr. Thayer; it's horribly unbecoming to most women. But I did have to say a nonsense rhyme over to myself, to keep steady."

"Yes, I taught you that trick," Beatrix a.s.serted suddenly. "Lear is very soothing in an emotional crisis. _The Rubaiyat_ for gooseflesh and Lear for tears is my rule. _The Jumblies_ carried me safely through the fifth act of _Cyrano_. But go on, Bobby. We are nearly ready to change the subject."

"Now take that recital of yours," Bobby pursued meditatively. "You were there to interpret Schubert and Franz and those fellows; but n.o.body is talking about Schubert and Franz, to-day. It is all Thayer, Cotton Mather Thayer, Baritone. It's all right enough. You did them awfully well; but there's the Them in the background, and it's not decent to forget Them."

Thayer laughed good-naturedly. It was impossible to take offence at the mock seriousness of Bobby's harangue. Furthermore, it held its own grain of truth, even though the grain was buried in an infinite amount of chaff.

"I do occasionally remember that there was a composer," he suggested; "and, in case of the dead ones, you need somebody to sing them."

"Ye-es," Bobby replied grudgingly; "and in case of the live ones, too, sometimes. I have an idea that you make a good deal better noise out of it than most of these old duffers would do. It is only that you take all the glory for the whole business. The newsboys on the street corners have no right to take the credit for my scareheads."

"They are a self-respecting race, Bobby; they don't want to."

"How unkind of you, Sally! But the cases are a.n.a.logous. And my final point, aside from professional jealousy, is the economy of time. You grub longer over learning to sing a song than it takes the composer to write it, and, when you're through, you've only reproduced somebody else's ideas. Why can't you be original? Next time you feel musically inclined, just say to yourself, 'Go to, now! Let us create!' It won't take a bit longer, and really it's not hard to do. I know, because, you see, I do it."

"Bravo, Bobby! I am delighted to hear that you ever do anything."