Beatrix smiled a little wearily. Intimate friends are sometimes cloying,
and she felt a certain irritation rising within her, as she watched
Sally's bright face under her French toque, and listened to the easy
stream of chatter which issued from Sally's lips. Sally had never faced
such a crisis as the one confronting Beatrix, that day. Moreover, she
had dimples, and it was impossible to believe in the sympathy of a
person whose dimples insisted upon coming into sight, even in the midst
of serious discussion.
"If he hasn't already," Sally persisted; "he is bound to do it before
the season is over. Then what shall you tell him?"
"Aren't you rushing things a little?" Beatrix inquired languidly.
"Please do remember that I only met Mr. Lorimer at the Horse Show, and
that it is three weeks to Lent."
"That's nothing," Sally replied flatly, but flippantly. "You subjugated
Eric Stanford in half that time, and his gray matter has been in a
pulpy condition ever since."
"I didn't know it."
"About his gray matter?"
"Oh, that is congenital trouble. I mean I didn't know that I had
subjugated him. Besides, that is different. He was Bobby Dane's chum,
and we took him into the family."
"Took him in all over," Sally drawled.
Beatrix's eyes flashed. There were things she would not say to Sally;
there were also things which Sally could not say to her.
"I am so sorry," she said, as she rose; "but I must get ready for Mrs.
Stanley's recital. How does it happen you aren't going?"
"For the most ignominious of reasons. I'm not bidden. Mrs. Stanley and I
were on a committee together, once upon a time. We squabbled over some
amateur theatricals, and she has cut my acquaintance ever since. I
always did say that there is nothing like amateur theatricals for
bringing out all the worst vices of humanity. If a Shakespearian revival
ever reaches the heavenly host, Gabriel and Michael will have to play
Othello and Iago turn and turn about, to prevent ill-feeling. Beatrix?"
"Well?"
"What do you honestly think of Mr. Lorimer?"
Beatrix hesitated. Then she faced her friend.
"That he is the most interesting man we have met, this season."
"That's not saying any too much. Still, it is an admission. Are you
going to marry him?"
"He hasn't asked me."
"But he will."
"How do you know?"
"I do know."
"I'm not so sure of it." Beatrix laughed nervously.
"But if he does?"
"I--I'm not so sure of that, either."
"Beatrix! Why not?"
Beatrix untied the long ribbons which belted her gown, and stood drawing
them slowly through and through her fingers. Sally leaned back in her
deep chair and watched her friend keenly, mercilessly. She and Beatrix
had fenced long enough; it was time for the direct thrust. Sidney
Lorimer was the most available man on that winter's carpet. Moreover,
for weeks he had been a patient follower in the wake of Beatrix Dane.
Beatrix might be as impenetrable as she chose; but Sally knew that,
during the past week, she had been reading the headings of certain
suppressed chapters in Lorimer's history, and that they had changed her
whole attitude towards the man. The signs were slight, too slight for
him to have recognized them as yet; but Sally's curious, pitiless eyes
had discerned them. She had discerned and disapproved, and she had
resolved that no squeamish delicacy should keep her from preventing
Beatrix's playing the part of a prude.
"He is the best-looking man of the season, and the best dancer. He took
honors at Goettingen. He has any quantity of money." Sally ticked off the
points on the tips of her gray glove. "And most of all," she tapped her
thumb conclusively, "he is very much in love with Miss Beatrix Dane, and
I want him to marry her."
"Oh, Sally, do be sensible!" Beatrix burst out impatiently. Then she
pulled herself up sharply and turned to bay. "What about the Forbes
supper?" she demanded.
Sally shrugged her shoulders, as she fastened her fur collar.
"Oh, Beatrix, you prig! Are there any men of our set who haven't been a
little frisky?"
"Frisky! That is a milder word than I should use, Sally. The Forbes
affair transcends friskiness and becomes the beginning of the pace that
kills. It was intolerable; I can't forgive it."
Her face flushed; then it paled and hardened with the rigidity of
self-control. Sally peered out at her through lowered lashes, and judged
that it was time for her to remove herself. She had known Beatrix from
their childhood, and this was the first time she had seen her jarred
from her self-possession. She fastened the last hook with a jerk. Then
she rose and went to her friend's side.
"I didn't mean to tease you, dear," she said penitently. "I know this
has been worrying you; but don't let it get on your nerves and influence
you too much. All men make slips at times. Mr. Lorimer is a good fellow,
even if he has been a little fast. He would drop all that as soon as he
was--settled. Besides, this isn't nearly as bad as ever so many of the
stories we hear."
"No," Beatrix assented drearily; "but it is bad enough."
"Then you do care?"
"Care!" She laughed a little harshly. "Sally, truly I must send you off.
It is time I was dressing, for I promised to go. I am sorry, but--"
"I am used to being dismissed; I shall come again." There was no hint of
rancor in Sally's tone, yet she went away fully convinced that her own
system of measurement could never reach the heights and the depths of
her friend's mood.
Left to herself, Beatrix forgot her need for haste. She dropped down
into a chair, and sat for many moments brooding over the fire. Her hand
shielded her face; yet it could not conceal the anxious lines above her
eyes nor the drooping lips. Lorimer had asked permission to call upon
her, that evening, and she knew by instinct what the evening was holding
in store for her. Confronted with the final decision, she was at a loss
which course to take. Should she close her eyes to the plague-spot which
might one day spread and spread until it tainted her whole life? The
present was very tempting. Why not take it, and ignore the future? Most
girls would wink at the suspicion which, during the past week, had been
clouding her dream of perfect content. How far was she accountable for
the future?
She dressed hurriedly; but when she reached Mrs. Stanley's house, the
recital had already begun, and she dropped into a seat outside the
music-room door. The artist was a new star upon the horizon. She had
supposed him to be only one of the vast milky way which helped to shed a
dim light upon Mrs. Stanley, as that good lady clambered slowly up the
social ladder. Instead of that, Beatrix entirely forgot Mrs. Stanley's
antics, in watching for the star itself. She even dismissed Lorimer from
her mind, as she bent forward in eager listening to the invisible
singer.
"Great fellow, Schubert!" her cousin observed, sauntering up to her side
as soon as the recital was ended. "They say that this Thayer is daft
upon the subject of him. Anyway, he manages to interpret him fairly
well. What did you think?"
She pulled herself out of her absorption and laughed.
"Don't expect me to analyze him, Bobby. He is past that."
"Bad or good?"
"Good, if making havoc of my nerve centres is any test."
"Then you really liked him? I thought you didn't want to come."
"I didn't. Nothing but a stern sense of duty brought me; but it also
brought its own reward. One hears such a voice only once a decade."
Bobby Dane eyed her askance.
"Sure this is yourself, Beatrix? I thought you scoffed at all baritones,
and only delighted in maudlin tenors and anticking sopranos. I have
hopes of you yet; but whence comes your conversion?"
"From this man, Mr. ----." She referred to the programme in her hand.
"Thayer," her cousin prompted. "Cotton Mather Thayer."
Beatrix gasped.
"Bobby! What a name for an artist!"
"For a punster, you'd better say; but at least one can't doubt its
genuineness. If he had been going to assume a stage name, he would have
chosen something more romantic."
"Who is he, and where did Mrs. Stanley accumulate him?"
Bobby rolled his eyes expressively towards the portly, satin-clad figure
of his hostess.
"Mrs. Stanley hunts every lion that comes to Manhattan Island. As a
rule, she catches only cubs; this is the exception which proves the
rule."
"I haven't heard the name before."
"No; Thayer is a brand-new lion, but fully grown. Of course, with that
name, his family tree sprouted in Massachusetts; but he has been in
Germany and Italy for years. He only landed, the third, and is to make
his formal debut at the Lloyd Avalons's on the twentieth. Don't you want
to meet him?"
"N--no. I am afraid it would be anticlimax."
"Not a bit of it. He doesn't indulge in speckled neckties and an
imperial. He is a man, as well as a singer."
"You know him, then?"
"Yes, as one knows any number of people. Lorimer has had him at the club
occasionally, and I have met him there."
"Mr. Lorimer?"
"Lorimer knew him well in Germany. Come and help burn incense before
him, and do try to say something rational. Those fellows must get deadly
sick of the inanities people talk when they are being introduced. If you
make a good impression, perhaps I'll bring him around, some Monday."
"Wait till you see what impression he makes, Bobby. I'm not Mrs.
Stanley, you know, and I'm not stalking any lions."
Even while he laughed at the sudden hauteur of her tone, he allowed his
glance to wander over her with manifest approval.
"Good for you, Beatrix! But Thayer is a gentleman first of all, then an
artist. A cad always shows himself at a strange club; but Thayer passed
muster at The Critic, where even Lorimer isn't altogether popular."
"Why not?" she demanded sharply.
"Difference in taste in jokes," her cousin replied evasively. "I only
spoke of it to show you that you were safe enough in knowing Thayer.
Lorimer is a good fellow; even good fellows have their foes."
"But if Mr. Thayer hasn't--"
"Thayer hasn't been here long enough to get them. Give him time,
Beatrix. Inside of six weeks, he will have every singer in New York
slandering him. There's nothing more lovable than the way musicians
stand by one another, when it's a case of fighting a successful rival."
She laughed suddenly.
"How do you know, Bobby? You're not a musician."
"Heaven forfend! If I were, I should spend half my time on The Island,
doing sentence for battery and breach of the peace. I have known a few
musicians in my time, Beatrix, and I know their pleasant little ways."
They had joined the large group gathered at the head of the music-room,
and were slowly working their way from the outer fringe to the focal
point. As they waited, now advancing a step, then halting again, Beatrix
listened in some scorn to the fugue of praise which rose about her, a
fugue composed chiefly of adjectives heaped in confusion about the
single, magical noun _temperament_. She shot a mischievous glance up at
her tall cousin.
"Fancy any man having to live up to this sort of thing, Bobby! _Divine_
and _perfectly elegant_ do not suggest the same set of attributes, and I
don't see how he can strike the golden mean between them. Somebody
really ought to coin a new word for such emergencies as this."
Before her cousin could answer, the woman just ahead of them had buried
the singer's hand in her own pudgy clasp.
"Oh, Mr. Thayer, that was such a pretty piece you sang last! It was a
German piece; wasn't it? It was just sweet!"
And it was after such a prelude that Beatrix bowed in recognition of her
cousin's introduction. Even as she bowed, there came a swift realization
that she was facing no anticlimax. And yet the man before her was in no
wise the typical musician. Tall, so tall that Bobby Dane, five feet ten
in his stockings, seemed short beside him, well-dressed, well-groomed,
he looked far more like a prosperous, alert man of affairs than an
artist or a dreamer. Moreover, in spite of certain lines in his face, he
was absurdly boyish to have sung those great songs. He could know
nothing of the real issues of fate with which he had been juggling,
could have no real conception of either hope or disappointment.
Doubtless he had developed his _Weltschmerz_ mechanically, imitatively,
at so many marks or _lire_ an hour.
Beatrix had always been distressed by the flatness of her one-syllabled
name. It gained a new roundness now; and she raised her eyes, as Thayer
spoke it, to meet the gray ones above her. They were clear and steady
eyes, smiling, yet with a look in their depths which to her mind
accounted for the insistent, troubled note in his singing. The lines
about his shaven lips were firm, but mobile.
Bobby eyed the two of them quizzically. Then he broke in upon the
tentative conversation which follows an introduction.
"Pass, Beatrix! That's quite original. I told my cousin, Thayer, that if
she could hail you with a new adjective, I should present you as a
candidate for a dish of tea, some Monday."
As usually happened with Bobby Dane's remarks, this proved the end of
any serious talk, and Beatrix laughed, as she responded,--
"Please come alone, Mr. Thayer. My cousin monopolizes all the
conversation, when he is present."
"And Miss Dane always demands a good listener. Like a conspirator, she
relies upon your silence, Thayer."
"What a restful hostess!" Thayer answered lightly. Then, turning, he
laid a kindly hand on the arm of his accompanist. "Otto, I wish you to
meet Mr. Dane. Miss Dane, may I introduce my friend, Mr. Arlt?"
It was done simply; but the boy blushed with sudden shyness before the
stately girl, whose fur collar alone had cost far more than his whole
year's expenses. Beatrix met him cordially, for she had seen him
standing ignored in his corner by the piano, and she liked the friendly
way in which the singer had included him in the trivial talk. It was not
until afterwards that she suddenly recalled the fact that she herself
and her cousin were apparently the only ones to whom Thayer had
introduced his companion. She pondered over the reason for this until,
as she slowly mounted the steps to her own door, she abruptly recurred
to the unanswered question which had been driven from her mind by the
afternoon's events.
The old butler met her in the hall.
"Mr. Lorimer has just telephoned to you, Miss Beatrix. He can't come,
to-night, he says. His horse stumbled and threw him just now, and his
ankle is sprained. It will be a few days before he can go out."
And with utter thankfulness Beatrix accepted even this brief reprieve.