"I don't expect to be consistent," Sally retorted. "I'm only an
ill-assorted 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 assented 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 asserted.
"So glad for your sake!" Bobby returned quickly.
Thayer looked up inquiringly.
"Because consistent people are such bores, Miss Van Osdel?"
"So you are a heretic, too? And then they are so smug."
"But there's consistency and consistency," Bobby argued. "There's mashed
potato and frappe, for instance, equally hard, equally homogeneous, yet
totally different. To my mind, there is a distinct choice between them,
and I prefer--"
"Cherries in your frappe." Sally capped his sentence for him. "In other
words, we all like a consistent person with lumps of inconsistency.
That's myself, and one of my lumps is a dislike of having Mrs. Lloyd
Avalons on our tenement committee."
"But, if you are slumming--"
"That is ignoble of you, Beatrix. The committee doesn't slum within its
own confines."
"Oh, I didn't mean that at all," Beatrix protested hastily. "Really,
though. I can't see why you and Mrs. Lloyd Avalons can't unite in
working for somebody quite outside either of your worlds."
Sally raised her brows in saucy imitation of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons's pet
expression. Then she pushed Beatrix's words aside with daintily
outstretched fingers.
"Can't you?" she said coolly, as she ended her little pantomime. "Well,
I can. To adopt Bobby's choice illustration, it would be like mixing
potato and frappe. The potato would melt the frappe, and then the frappe
would--well, would render the potato unpalatable. In other words, if we
work together, I shall pulverize Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, and then the dust
of her individuality will get in among my nerves and clog them."
"If you can't be consistent, Miss Van Osdel, please do try to be
concrete," Thayer urged. "I confess that I find it a little difficult to
follow you."
"Not at all," Bobby interposed. "She isn't going anywhere. Sally's
mental processes always remind me of the way we used to play cars in a
row of easy chairs. We were extremely energetic, and we pretended that
we were going somewhere; but in reality we didn't budge an inch. Sally,
what is the reason you don't like Mrs. Lloyd Avalons?"
"Because she is utterly preposterous," Sally replied concisely.
"And yet, she is bound to arrive, some day," Lorimer said thoughtfully.
"Then I hope it may not be until after I have left," Sally retorted. "I
don't care to have her making connections with me."
"Sally, you are uncharitable," Beatrix said rebukingly; but Bobby
interrupted,--
"That's more than you can say of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. She is on half the
charity committees in town."
"How did she get there?" Thayer asked, with unfeigned curiosity.
"By toiling upward, day and night. That's where she scores ahead of the
great men. According to the poet, they only belonged to the night
shift. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons sleeps with the Blue Book under her pillow and
dreams social combinations."
"She probably has a chess board always at her elbow," Sally suggested.
"I can fancy the game, the white queen and her pawn against the whole
black force, each man neatly tagged with his name and social status."
"She is marching straight into the king-row, though," Bobby added.
Beatrix called them to order.
"Does it strike you that this is perilously near to being gossip?" she
inquired.
But Sally had the last word.
"It's not gossip to talk over the possibilities of the lower classes,"
she remarked imperturbably. "It is social science."
Lorimer went back to the original question which had started the
discussion.
"As I said before, there is a certain inconsistency in the idea of a
given number of women setting themselves to work to better the condition
of the masses, and then coming to wreck and ruin because one of their
number is of a slightly different set."
"Slightly inferior," Sally corrected him.
Lorimer accepted the amendment.
"Inferior, then, if you choose. But we are talking of the theory in the
abstract, not of any particular case. One hardly expects to find
snobbishness in slumming."
"Then that's where one gets left," Bobby commented, by way of
parenthesis.
"But if you are all stooping?"
"Yes; but the alignment is better, if we all stoop at the same angle,"
Sally protested.
"What I wish to know," Thayer said thoughtfully; "is where the deadline
of propriety exists. Take the case of Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, for instance.
Why does she take Patsey Keefe to her heart and home, and snub Arlt upon
all occasions?"
"Because she wishes to maintain a proper perspective," Sally replied.
"Everyone knows that Patsey and she are chums from choice; with Mr.
Arlt, there might be a question. Legitimate slumming presupposes two
willing parties, the slummer and the slummed."
"In other words," Bobby added; "it is socially possible to foregather
with the slum in the next ward; it is death to speak to the undesirable
neighbor in the back alley. The fact is ordained; but it will take
several generations of social scientists to ferret out the cause."
Sally addressed the table at large.
"For my part, I like Mr. Arlt," she said flatly. "What's more, I am
going with him to the Kneisel concert, to-morrow night; and, if any of
you are there and choose to eye me askance, you are welcome."
Later, that evening, Thayer found himself with Beatrix and a little
apart from the others. The dinner had been utterly informal, and it had
been tacitly understood that the guests should linger afterwards. It was
only ten days since the Lorimers had landed from their European
honeymoon, and as yet they felt themselves privileged to hold themselves
a little aloof from the social treadmill. Though the breakfast table,
each morning, was littered with cards and notes of invitation, yet the
season was in their favor. Lent had entered upon its last week, and even
the largest functions clothed themselves in penitential and becoming
shades of violet. Accordingly, it had been a source of little
self-denial for Bobby and Sally to give up their other engagements for
the evening. As for Thayer, he invariably went his own way, invited
everywhere and appearing only in the places which suited his mood of the
hour. It was the one professional luxury that he allowed himself.
To his keen eye, Beatrix looked as if she were carrying a heavy burden
of care. She was as alert as ever; her social training was bound to
ensure that. But between her conversational sallies, her face settled
into certain fixed lines that were new to Thayer. Even during the past
two months, her lips had grown firmer; but her lids drooped more often,
as if to hide some secret which otherwise might be betrayed by her eyes.
Up to this time, Thayer had never called her especially pretty. She was
handsome, perhaps; but her face was too cold, too austere. Now, however,
it seemed to him full of possibilities for beauty, softer, infinitely
more loving. In the old days, the curve of her lips had been haughty;
to-night, their firmer lines appeared to him like a mask worn to conceal
the gentler womanhood within. She was thinner, too; but browned by her
sea voyage, and she carried herself with the nameless dignity which
comes to a woman upon her bridal day.
Lorimer appeared to be in the pink of condition. He was more handsome
than ever, more graciously winning. His voice had all the old caressing
intonations which Thayer recalled so well, together with many new ones
that crept into his tone whenever he addressed his wife. By look and
word and gesture, he referred and deferred to her constantly; and his
eyes never failed to light, when they rested upon her own. No man could
have been more frankly and openly in love with his own wife.
"Then I take it for granted that the trip has been a success," Thayer
said, as he joined her.
"Indeed it has. Mr. Lorimer took me to all his old haunts and, in
Berlin, to all of yours that he could find. We went to your old
lodgings, and we heard a concert in the hall where you made your debut
and, the last day we were there, Sidney insisted upon hunting up your
old master."
Thayer looked up suddenly.
"The dear old _Maestro_! Did he remember me?" he asked, with a boyish
enthusiasm which sat well upon him.
"Certainly he did, if _remember_ is the right word, for his knowledge of
you was not all in the past tense. He has followed you closely, and he
knows just what you have done. Mr. Thayer," she added abruptly; "why
have you never sung in opera?"
"Why should I?"
"Because he said that there was your especial talent, only he called it
by a stronger name. He jeers at the work you are doing."
Thayer smiled.
"I am sorry. I thought it was good work."
"So it is, as far as it goes. But the other goes farther."
"Perhaps," he assented. "But do you think it is as--as--"
"Good form?" she queried, laughing. "Yes, if you choose to have it so.
It depends something upon the individual. With your training and
traditions, you would scarcely elect to sing comic opera in English."
"Heaven forbid!" he said hastily. "But there are grades and grades, even
of the other. Not many mortals reach the top round of the ladder."
"No; and, even if they did, they would be a good deal in your way, for
the space up there is limited. It will be merely a question of your own
will whether or not you occupy a part of it."
He was surprised at the turn the conversation had taken. No woman, not
even Miss Gannion, had ever dared question to him the wisdom of his
choice, or imply to him that there were laurels which he had not yet
plucked. Strange to say, he rather enjoyed the frank fashion in which
Beatrix was taking him to task. Nevertheless, he fenced a little.
"I have always preferred a moderate success to an immoderate failure,"
he answered her.
She shook her head.
"That sounds specious; but you know it is a quibble. I had never
supposed that your ambition was so limited."
"But it is not the mark of limitation to know where my success lies."
"Perhaps not. For my part, though, I don't want to rest on any success.
If I succeed in one thing, that is over and done with, and I want to try
for something else."
"And if you fail?"
"Then, as soon as I am quite sure it is a failure and that no power of
mine can beat it into a success, I try to turn my back upon it, and face
another problem," she replied, with a quiet dignity which ignored the
flush that rose in both their faces at the careless question.
Thayer, too, had seen the flush in her cheeks which had answered to his
own rising color. For an instant, he questioned whether it were an
unwitting acknowledgment that her power over Lorimer was more limited
than she had supposed. Then he dismissed the suspicion. Her poise was
too perfect to make such a supposition possible. It was only that he,
knowing the truth, sought for confirmation upon all sides.
"You are a good fighter," he responded quietly. "What would be the
concrete application of your theory to my practice?"
"That you should try to fulfil the ambition your old master has for
you," she returned. "Why don't you try it? You can't gain any more glory
in your present field; you stand at the head of concert and oratorio
singers in America. You have nothing to lose; and, over there in Berlin,
there is an old man who boasts that he made your voice, and says that he
can never sing his _Nunc Dimittis_ until you have entered upon your
right path."
Thayer's face softened.
"Did he say that?"
"Yes, and he extorted a promise from me that I would tell you his very
words. That is the reason I have made bold to speak about the matter."
"What do you think about it, yourself, Mrs. Lorimer?"
"That he knows your possibilities much better than I," she answered
evasively.
"But you have an opinion," he urged.
"Yes, I have," she replied frankly. "From what he told me, and from what
I have heard of your singing, I know that you can do broader work than
any you have attempted. Your voice will do for either thing, opera or
oratorio; but on a few times--" she hesitated; then she went on without
flinching; "on the night of the Fresh Air Fund concert, for instance,
you showed a dramatic power that is wasted in your present work."
Suddenly she laughed at her own earnestness. "What am I, that I should
advise the star of the season? Do excuse my frankness, Mr. Thayer."
"I asked you."
"That's no reason I should bore you with all my theories upon a subject
of which I know practically nothing. And, meanwhile, I am forgetting to
tell you that we went to see Frau Arlt."
His face showed his pleasure and his approval, his pleasure that he had
found something in Lorimer to which he could give his unreserved
approval.
"I am glad you saw her. It was like Lorimer to hunt her up. Does Otto
know about it?"
"He came to dinner, a day or two after we landed. Mr. Lorimer had
written him a note to tell him we were at home, and you should have seen
the boy's delight over the box of funny little odds and ends his mother
had sent him. Sidney is always so thoughtful, and he suggested to the
old lady that we had room in our trunks for a package. I really think
that the boy was happier with his home-made gifts than I was with the
things Mr. Lorimer gave me in Paris."
[Illustration: "It was so that Thayer liked best to think of her"]
"He has been a very brave, but a very homesick little German," Thayer
answered, while his eyes rested thoughtfully on her face. It brightened
now, as she spoke of Lorimer, and a half-tender, half-amused smile was
playing around her lips. All in all, Thayer was broad enough to like it
better so.
Suddenly she rose, as if to end their conversation; but she turned back
again to add,--
"Of all my wedding gifts, Mr. Thayer, the sweetest was the blessing of
good old Frau Arlt. She will never forget Mr. Lorimer, and her story of
his kindness in their darkest days, her good wishes to me, and her
happiness in seeing us will always stand out as an unforgettable
picture. You knew all about it, of course; but I had no idea how good to
them Sidney had been, nor how full of tact."
The smile still lingered about her lips, and her cheeks were flushed a
little, as she turned away in answer to her husband's call. For long
months to come, it was so that Thayer liked best to think of her.