Part 37 (2/2)
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.
<script>