Late March found Thayer just completing a long circle. He had gone to
Chicago by way of Washington; he was coming back by way of Canada and
New England. Oratorio societies were rampant, that Lent, and he had been
the popular baritone of the season, completely ousting from public favor
the bass who had monopolized the applause for six or seven years
previous. He had fainted under Elijah's juniper tree times without
number, until he had learned to watch with cynical interest for the
phrase which never failed to draw forth the tears. He had even taken
part in one grand operatic rendition of the work, when the audience had
been half strangled by the too realistic fumes from the altar, and the
chorus, huddled at the back of the stage, had sung the _Rain Chorus_ off
the key, to the accompaniment of the torrent which poured down in a thin
sheet just back of the curtain, raining neither on the just nor on the
unjust, but falling accurately into the groove for the footlights
between them. He had sung _The Messiah_ and _Arminius_ until they were a
weariness to his flesh, and _Hiawatha's_ call to _Gitche Manito, the
Mighty_ had become second nature to his tongue. He had moments of acute
longing to astound his audience with a German student song, and, upon
his off nights, he fell into the vaudeville habit. Not even his
Puritanism could enjoy an unlimited diet of oratorio.
At first there had been some question of his giving a number of recitals
at different points on his journey; but he had renounced the idea. Arlt
was grinding away at counterpoint under the best master to be found in
New York, and Arlt was the only accompanist with whom Thayer cared to
sing. The boy had no notion that Thayer needed him; neither did he have
any idea of the discrepancy between his own payments and the actual fees
of the great musician with whom Thayer had advised him to study. Week by
week, he brought his few dollars, without once suspecting that Thayer's
monthly checks were really paying for the lessons.
Arlt had fallen to work with the eagerness born of long and enforced
abstinence. Certain musical themes had been haunting him for the past
two years; yet he had known that he lacked the training which should
enable him to develop them properly, and, with rare self-denial, rather
than spoil them he had turned his back upon them and tried to forget
them. Now, however, his work was beginning to tell upon him, and his
teacher was more and more encouraging, while the old themes came back to
him, grown and enriched by their season of lying fallow. Spurred on by
the consciousness of all this, Arlt was hard at work upon an overture
with which he hoped to greet Thayer on his return to the city. Day by
day, the overture was growing. It was boyish; yet it was dignified and
original.
On the last morning of his trip, Thayer came down the steps of his
hotel, halted to stare about him at the streets of the leisurely little
city, and then sauntered away towards the hall where the rehearsal was
to take place. It was still early; nevertheless, as he came within sight
of the building, he found the street filled with the members of the
orchestra who, thriftily refusing cabs, had marched up from the station
in a solid phalanx, laden with all manner of strange-looking bags and
cases. Thayer nodded to them with a certain eagerness. After two months
of wandering, it was good to find himself once more within the New York
radius. He had sung with these men often; they knew every trick of his
voice, and he could count upon them not to break into a galloping rhythm
in the midst of a minor _andante_. His face lighted, and his tongue fell
into his beloved German idioms, as he went up the stairs with a bass
viol and a bassoon on either hand.
The director of the chorus was also a New York man, and Thayer shook
hands with him cordially, wondering, meanwhile, how it chanced that one
short year had made him feel that New York was home to him. The director
knew Arlt's teacher, too. He had heard of the young German's promise,
and it was with some regret that Thayer heard him break off from these
congenial themes, for the sake of introducing him to the officers of the
society who were unduly agitated by the consciousness that they had
captured both Thayer and the latest English tenor who had landed only
the week before and was to make his American debut, that evening.
Meanwhile, the hall was filling fast. The chorus, chattering with the
nervous vivacity which always heralds a concert, were crowding into the
fraction of space allotted to them; and, in the open floor beyond, the
musicians of the orchestra were gathered into little groups, unpacking
their instruments, unfolding their racks and eying the chorus with
metropolitan disdain. Here and there a violinist, his violin at his
shoulder, sauntered up and down the floor, alternately drawing his bow
across the strings and lowering it again, while he tightened them. Then,
in answer to the call from the oboe, the whole place grew filled with
their din, discordant at first, but slowly coming into more and more
perfect harmony, uniting upon the single note, breaking again into
countless changing tones, only to yield once more to the single _A_,
caught, dropped during an instant's pause, then caught again and held in
long-drawn, jubilant sonority.
On the heels of the other soloists, Thayer picked his way up the narrow
aisle at the right of the tenors, and took his seat upon the little
stage. As he did so, he discovered a diminutive gallery directly over
the main entrance to the hall. Side by side in the gallery sat two men,
the president of the chorus and Bobby Dane.
Bobby was beaming down at him placidly, and Thayer's face lighted at the
unexpected sight of his friend. Bobby nodded occasionally, to mark his
approval of the music; then, at the end of Thayer's first solo, he laid
his score on the gallery rail and led off a volley of applause which,
echoing back from the chorus, roused Bobby to such a pitch of
enthusiasm that he knocked the score off the rail and sent it tumbling
down among the rear ranks of the altos.
"Why the unmentionable mischief do you waste your energies, singing like
that at a rehearsal?" he demanded abruptly of Thayer, as he joined him
on the stairs.
"Where the unmentionable mischief did you come from?" Thayer responded,
seizing Bobby's hand in his own firm clasp.
"New York. Just came up, this morning. I'm doing the concert, to-night."
"Oh! I was under the impression that I was going to do a part of it,
myself."
"Musically. I represent the power of the Press."
"As critic?"
"Certainly."
"How long since?"
"To-day. The regular critic is busy with a domestic funeral, his
grandmother, or step-mother, or something, and it lay between the devil
and me to take his place. Strange to say, the Chief chose me; but he was
morose enough to say the old lady shouldn't have died, just when all the
other papers in town were sending up their best critics."
"But how do you expect to get up a criticism?"
Bobby smiled up at him in smug satisfaction over his own wiliness.
"By caressing the mammon of unrighteousness. I know you; likewise the
president of this chorus was in my prep. school. I happened to hear of
him, last week, and I am banking on the fact for all it is worth.
Therefore I have two strings to my bow. That's more than one of your
second violins did. To my certain knowledge, he wrecked two strings in
the overture and one in the prelude of your first solo. After that, I
got interested and lost count."
"Do you expect us to dictate our own praises?"
"Not much. I am too canny for that. Besides, don't be too sure they will
be praises. No; I have asked the president, in strict confidence, just
what he thinks of you, and his answer was properly garrulous. His
originality was startling, too. He observed that you have temperament.
Now I am proceeding to ask you, also in strict confidence, what you
think of the chorus."
"That it has intemperament," Thayer responded promptly. "Dane, I abhor
that word."
"Is that the reason you coined its negative?"
"No; but it gets on my nerves. When it started out into service, it
meant something; but now it is used to express everything, from real
artistic feeling down to the way a man rolls up his eyes when he sings
love songs. I wish you newspaper men would bring out something new to
take its place. You can do it; you generally set the fashion in words."
"I'll ask Lee, when he gets over his funeral," Bobby suggested. "It is
out of my line. I am a greater artist than he is, a typographical song
without words. I do scareheads, and buffet the devil. Thayer?"
"Yes?"
"Do you honestly enjoy this sort of thing?"
Thayer glanced down at the muddy crossing where they stood waiting for a
car to pass.
"No. I prefer an occasional street-cleaning episode; but what can you
expect in a March thaw?"
"I don't mean that," Bobby said impatiently. "I'm not joking now."
"Beg pardon," Thayer returned briefly. "What do you mean, Dane?"
"I mean all this tramping round the country, singing to strange people,
getting applause at night and reading about yourself, next day. Doesn't
it get a frightful bore, after the dozenth time you've been through
it?"
"The applause and the audience and the criticisms, yes. The singing,
no," Thayer said, after an interval.
"And you're willing to put up with one for the sake of the other?"
"Yes."
Bobby dodged a shower of mud from a passing cab.
"Well, tastes differ, then. In New York, we've been going on the same
old routine, and yet no two days have been alike, except in the minor
detail of missing you at places. You have been in twenty different
cities, and I'd be willing to bet that your routine hasn't varied:
sleeper, hotel, rehearsal, concert, applause, wreath, supper, hotel,
bed, and so on around the circuit again and again. And you say the
singing pays for it. It does pay us; but you can't hear yourself,
Thayer, not to get any good of it. If it isn't the applause and such
stuff, what do you do it for?"
Thayer glanced down at the man beside him. He liked Bobby Dane, and, for
the moment, he felt moved to discard his customary reticence in regard
to his art.
"For the sake of feeling myself picked up and carried along by something
quite outside myself, something I am powerless to analyze, or to
master; yet something that I can help to express," he answered.
Bobby accepted the lesson in silence. Then of a sudden his whimsical fun
reasserted itself.
"Must feel a good deal like getting drunk," he commented gravely. "And
_a propos des bottes_, Beatrix is at home again."
Thayer's shoulders straightened, his step grew rhythmic once more.
"When did she come?"
"She landed, ten days ago, and they went right to the new house. She is
going to send out cards for Mondays in May; but, meanwhile, we are
coming in for an earlier event. There's a note at your rooms now, asking
you to dine with them, next Monday."
"How do you know?"
"Because, like a coy maiden, I named the day. It is a sort of
post-nuptial event, the maid of honor, the best man, and the master of
ceremonies, meaning myself. She wasn't going to ask me, because it would
spoil the number; but I told her I would make a point of being there,
and that Monday was my most convenient day. It will give us our first
chance to talk over the wedding."
"How does she--Mrs. Lorimer look?"
"She Mrs. Lorimer looks very natural," Bobby replied gravely. "As a
rule, we only say a person looks natural after his demise; but I assure
you that Beatrix is very much alive."
"And happy?" Thayer asked involuntarily.
Bobby gave him a swift, sharp glance. Then he resumed his former
nonchalant air.
"As happy as one always is at landing after five days of acute
sea-sickness. They pursued a storm, all the way home. They didn't catch
it, though, except in the figurative sense of our remote childhood. I
never saw Beatrix look so happy in her life as when she planted her
second foot safely on the pier."
"What about Lorimer?"
Bobby shook his broad shoulders, with the air of a man shaking off a
disagreeable subject.
"Oh, he's all right," he said shortly.
Together the two men idled away the afternoon. Bobby would fain have
introduced Thayer to his own brother craftsmen who infested the hotel in
the hope of getting speech with the artists; but Thayer had little
liking for being interviewed, and preferred to divide his time between
his own room and the streets. He and Bobby had an apparently limitless
fund of talk, and their conversation wandered at will over the events of
the past two months. However, as all roads lead to Rome, so all
subjects led to Beatrix. When they came around to her in their
discussion, Thayer invariably changed the subject; yet even a few words
on a constantly recurring theme can end by illuminating that theme
perfectly, provided only that it recurs often enough. By the time Thayer
was dressing for the concert, that night, he was in full possession of
all Bobby Dane's facts concerning his cousin, and he was convinced that
all was not well with Lorimer.
With a commendable spirit of originality, the officers of the chorus had
broken away from the established rule which proclaimed it an _Elijah_
season, and had chosen to give _St. Paul_, that night. Thayer liked the
oratorio. It seemed to him more original, more inspired, infinitely more
human than the other. Moreover, it would be restful to keep silent and
let the tenor warble himself to a lingering death. Even fiery chariots
become monotonous in time, and an indignant mob affords a welcome
variety. He had not heard the tenor since they had sung together in
Berlin, two years before, and he was looking forward to the evening with
a good deal of pleasure.
To his surprise and annoyance, he found the music stopping short at his
tympani, powerless to enter his brain. When he jolted himself out of
his train of subconscious thought, he was aware that the orchestra was
superb, that his old friend, the tenor, had added many cubits to his
artistic stature, during the past two years, that he himself, Cotton
Mather Thayer, would have to use his best efforts if he did not wish to
occupy an entirely subordinate place upon the programme. Then he
recurred to his thought of Beatrix and Lorimer. If Lorimer had not kept
a straight course during his honeymoon, what hope was there for either
himself or Beatrix in the many, many moons to come?
The strings and the wind took up the _Allegro_, and Thayer rose.
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 passionate
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, gushing ranks
of the chorus which surrounded them, pulling surreptitious 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.