Part 6 (1/2)
”That you hope he isn't very tired with singing so much,” Bobby and Sally suggested in the same breath.
Beatrix made a little gesture of scorn.
”It is your turn, Mr. Lorimer. You know him better than the rest of us.
What shall you say to him?”
”I know him so well that I rarely talk to him about his singing,”
Lorimer replied, with sudden gravity. ”Thayer is too large a man to smack his lips over sugar-plums. He knows exactly what I think of his voice, that it is one of the best baritone voices I have ever heard. He also knows that I am perfectly aware of the fact when he sings unusually badly or unusually well. Under those conditions, there is no especial need of our discussing the matter. One can have reservations with one's friends, you know.” As he spoke, his eyes met those of Beatrix, and a smile lighted his gravity.
At a first glance, Sidney Lorimer produced the impression of being a remarkably handsome man. The second glance, while it strengthened the impression, nevertheless set one wondering what had created it. His figure, his features, his coloring were all good, yet they were in no way remarkable. A wiry, nervous, clean-cut man, with brown hair and eyes, a slim, straight nose, and a well-set head, he would have commanded little attention had it not been for the nameless stamp set upon him by his training at an English public-school. It is impossible to a.n.a.lyze this stamp, yet it exists and insists upon recognition.
Political life had called the elder Lorimer to England, and he had judged it better to take his only child with him and drop him into Eton than to leave him in America and send him to St. Paul's. He did it as a matter of convenience, not of theory; but when his boy was ready for a Yale diploma, the father confessed to himself that he was pleased with the result of the experiment. Young Lorimer would never be an important factor in the world's development; but he was an uncommonly attractive fellow, and could hold his own in any position where chance would be likely to place him. Only his lower lip betrayed the fact that his mother had been a woman of uncurbed nerves.
It was the evening of the twentieth, and Lorimer was distinctly nervous.
He liked Arlt and was anxious for his success; but his anxiety for Arlt was as nothing in comparison with that which he felt for Thayer, to whom he gave the adoration that a weak man sometimes offers to one immeasurably his superior. Probably Lorimer's whole life would contain no better year than the one he had spent with Thayer in Berlin. Thayer's influence was strongly good, and Lorimer was of plastic material. It is doubtful whether Lorimer realized this influence; yet he was genuinely delighted to have Thayer within easy reach once more, genuinely wishful to have Thayer's American debut such an unqualified success that hereafter he would regard New York as his professional home.
Lorimer rarely was garrulous; he was unusually silent during the long drive to the Lloyd Avalons's. It was his first introduction to the pseudo-fas.h.i.+onable world, for his own family had been of conservative stock, and Beatrix and Bobby had been the first of the Danes to break down the barriers of their own exclusive set. To be sure, he realized that in a city like New York it was quite possible for circles of equal choiceness to exist tangent to each other, yet in mutual ignorance of one another; but his years abroad in slower-moving countries had not prepared him for the countless agile performers clambering up and down over the social trapeze. In his father's day, society had stood on an elevated platform and watched the performers as they played leap-frog on the ground. The performers had been as agile then as now; but their agility had been free from any danger of a tumble. Between the ground and the platform, there is no place of permanent rest. One must keep moving, or else be pushed to the ground.
As a rule, people forgot that there was a Mr. Lloyd Avalons. He was a little man with an imperial, and a total incapacity for telling the truth. In that, he was inferior to his wife in point of social evolution, for she had learned, from certain episodes which still filled her with mortification, that fibbing was bad form. To Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, her husband was a mere cipher. Placed before her, he added nothing to her value; placed after and in the background, he multiplied her importance tenfold. There were certain privileges accruing to a woman with a husband, certain immunities that followed in the train of matrimony. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons was quite willing to include the word _obey_ in the marriage service; she had a distinct choice in regard to whom it should refer.
To-night, Lloyd Avalons stood slightly in the rear of the elbow of his wife who, resplendent in pale gray velvet and emeralds, was welcoming her guests on the threshold of the music-room. Her gray eyes were s.h.i.+ning with a greenish light that matched the emeralds, for her lips were set in a conventional smile, and there must be some escape for her delight, as she counted over the tale of guests and recognized individuals of many a named species from the garden of society. All in all, this was the best success she had as yet attained.
She greeted Beatrix effusively, and cast a coy glance at Lorimer while she murmured a few words of congratulation. Then she fell a victim to one of Bobby's quibbles, and while she was struggling to see the point of his joke, the others made their escape.
”At least, the architect knew what he was about,” Lorimer remarked to Beatrix, as they took their seats. ”Thayer can't complain of the acoustic effects of the place.”
”When have you seen him?”
”Just before dinner. He was in superb voice then, and a fairly good mood.”
”Isn't he always?” she questioned idly, as she nodded to an acquaintance in the next row of chairs.
”Not always. As a rule, he is the best-tempered fellow in the world.
Once in a while, though, he wraps himself up in his dignity and stalks about like an Indian brave in his best Navajo blanket. n.o.body ever knows what is the reason, nor when he will go off into a Mood. It makes him an uncertain quant.i.ty. For my part, I would rather a man would swear and get it over with.” Lorimer spoke easily. Unlike Thayer, he never collided with the angles of his own temperament.
”What does it do to his singing?”
”Depends on one's taste. I like it, myself, as I like a high-flavored cheese. People who pin their faith to Mendelssohn might be a little over-powered. Fact is, there is a strange streak in Thayer's make-up. I can't account for him at all.”
”What is the use of trying? Aren't one's friends immune from a.n.a.lysis?”
”I don't care to try. I don't want to account for him; he is too large for that. I wish you might know him; but you never will. He's not a woman's man in the least.”
Beatrix was silent for a moment. Involuntarily she was making a swift comparison of the way in which the two men spoke of each other.
Lorimer's praise had been full of half-suppressed reservations. Thayer had made no reservations, he had scarcely uttered a word of praise, yet his hastily-drawn picture of Lorimer's connection with the Arlts had proved a determining factor in her life. It had been a new phase of Lorimer's character which Thayer had presented. It had revealed him in a new light and one infinitely more likable than any she had yet known.
The Lorimer she had met, had been fascinating and a bit sn.o.bbish. The friend of the Arlts was altogether lovable. It takes greater tact and staying power to make friends outside one's social grade than in it.
People suspect the motives of those who are crossing the boundaries between caste and caste; yet the Arlts had trusted Lorimer completely.