The Dominant Strain Part 38

"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 rehea.r.s.e the songs he is to sing, next Sat.u.r.day."

"What is Sat.u.r.day? 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, Sat.u.r.day, and Mr. Thayer is 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 prompt.i.tude, 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 s.h.i.+rk, 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 fas.h.i.+on in peignoirs, if you wish. I don't know what they are; but I did a scarehead about them for the Sunday fas.h.i.+on page, last week. The woman who generally sees to it had mumps, and I subst.i.tuted. I thought I did it superbly: _Death to Decollete: 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 the _Concertmeister_ of 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 matter to 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 cla.s.ses 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. _Faust_ had 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 old _maestro_, and in his operatic roles 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 a contact 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 att.i.tude to each other would not pa.s.s unchallenged. They were 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 plat.i.tudes, 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 of _Valentine_ with 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 sing _Valentine_. 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude of pa.s.sive 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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

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 rea.s.serted 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.