Part 38 (2/2)

”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.

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