Part 25 (2/2)
Lorimer, if he had been present, would have known what to expect from the straightening of his shoulders and the sudden squaring of his jaw; but Bobby Dane, who had been watching the apathy in which his friend was buried, was distinctly nervous. Then, at the first note, his nervousness vanished, leaving in its place only wondering admiration. Bobby had supposed he knew what Thayer could do; but he was totally unprepared for the furious dignity with which the singer rendered his aria,--
”_Consume them all, Pour out Thine indignation, and let them feel Thy power._”
The applause did not wait for the orchestra to slide comfortably back to the tonic. It broke out promptly upon the final note, and it satisfied even Bobby. Thayer bowed his acknowledgments, and then returned to his reverie; but he roused himself again at the _Adagio_ which announced his second aria.
Then it was, in Paul's outcry for mercy, for the blotting out of his transgressions, that Bobby Dane understood what Thayer had meant, that noon, when he had spoken of being carried along by something outside of himself. Bobby knew Thayer as a quiet, self-contained man of the world; the Thayer who was singing that great aria was on fire with a pa.s.sionate madness, tingling with unfulfilled longing, striving against his whole temperament for peace and for pardon. Bobby knew all this; he dimly realized, moreover, that the singer was fired by love for the wife of his friend, burning with the surety that his friend was unworthy of her, and struggling with all the manhood there was in him to face that love and that surety with the stoic calm of one of his Puritan ancestors, to quench the fire and to cover the ashes.
Bobby joined him in the wings, at the close of the concert. Even in the dim light, he could see that Thayer looked whiter than his wont, and that the veins in his temples stood out like knotted cords.
”What business have you to be doing oratorio?” Bobby demanded, as soon as they could struggle a little apart from the gossiping, gus.h.i.+ng ranks of the chorus which surrounded them, pulling surrept.i.tious bits from Thayer's mammoth wreath of laurel.
”Why not?” Thayer asked calmly.
”Because you are throwing away the best of yourself. Putting you into oratorio is like icing tea. You belong in grand opera.”
Thayer raised his brows dissentingly.
”I wish I could think so, Dane; but I am afraid I should only disappoint you,” he answered, and his tone was not altogether jovial, as he said it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
”I don't expect to be consistent,” Sally retorted. ”I'm only an ill-a.s.sorted snarl of threads ravelled out from my different ancestors.”
”That's dodging the responsibility, Miss Van Osdel.”
Bobby lifted an oyster and held it up to view.
”I never did approve of shunting off our sins on the shoulders of our ancestors,” he observed. ”They sin; we get the come-uppance. You might as well say that the grandfather of this oyster is directly responsible for his being eaten alive.”
”No man's sin is wholly his own doing,” Lorimer said half bitterly.
There was a sudden pause, as they all came to a realizing sense that Sally's idle words had sent them sliding out upon thin ice. Bobby was the first to rally.
”True for you, Lorimer!” he a.s.sented cheerily. ”That is one of the doctrines I have spent my life trying to impress on the governor. I wish he felt it more borne in upon him. But, as you were saying, Sally, you're not expecting to become consistent. I'm glad, for you won't be disappointed. The brightest jewel in your crown will have to be of another color.”
”What color is consistency, Bobby?” his cousin asked.
”Green, of course, reflected from the jealous eyes of the ninety and nine sinners who haven't the virtue.”
”I'm not at all certain that I wish to be consistent,” Sally a.s.serted.
”So glad for your sake!” Bobby returned quickly.
Thayer looked up inquiringly.
”Because consistent people are such bores, Miss Van Osdel?”
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