"Otto, how does it feel to be a celebrity?" Miss Gannion asked abruptly,
one afternoon in late May.
The young German smiled.
"How should I know?"
"From experience, of course. Your artistic probation appears to be over.
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 amusement 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 fashion." 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 Analyzed_. Properly, the second line should have
been: _By Bobby Bunkum_; 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.
"The other cheek," he answered. "Which do you mean? He's all cheek, all
over himself, and it offers itself, whichever way he turns. Have you
seen Thayer lately, Arlt?"
"Yesterday afternoon. He came down to my room to rehearse the songs he
is to sing, next Saturday."
"What is Saturday? You fellows are going ahead at such a rate that I
can't keep track of you, unless I have an engagement book for your
especial benefit."
"Bobby!" Sally expostulated. "Mr. Arlt's suite is to be played,
Saturday, and Mr. Thayer is to be the soloist for the concert. You
oughtn't to have forgotten that, especially when you asked me to go with
you."
"Oh, yes; I do remember now," Bobby replied serenely. "I knew I had some
duty on hand for Saturday, just when I wanted to run up to Englewood for
a little golf. What makes you do music in pleasant weather, Arlt? It's
mean to keep a fellow in-doors at this season."
"It is our last appearance," Arlt answered.
Bobby raised his brows in feigned terror.
"Nothing mortal, I hope."
"No. We are going abroad, early in June."
"Just the other fellow's luck! I wish I were a genius, to go frisking
about Europe instead of inking my fingers at home."
Arlt shook his head.
"No frisking for us. We are going to study."
With characteristic promptitude, Bobby dragged out his hobby, mounted it
and was off at a gallop.
"That's always the way with you musicians! You work till you are tired
of it; then you go off and shirk, and call it studying. I used to think
you were the elect of the earth. Now I doubt it."
"Have some more tea, Bobby," Miss Gannion suggested.
Bobby waved her aside.
"Am I a child, to be diverted with soothing drinks? Never! I must have
my cry out, Miss Gannion. You and Sally can be talking about the last
fashion in peignoirs, if you wish. I don't know what they are; but I did
a scarehead about them for the Sunday fashion page, last week. The woman
who generally sees to it had mumps, and I substituted. I thought I did
it superbly: _Death to Decollete: Peignoirs Popular for Suburban
Suppers_. That was the way I did it, and I was sure she would be
pleased; but she cut me dead on the stairs, the first day she
convalesced enough to be out. Arlt, musicians are second-rate beings, at
best."
"I am sorry. Perhaps you can suggest a remedy," Arlt replied literally.
"Cast off your leading strings, and work out your own theories to suit
yourselves," Bobby answered unhesitatingly. "Now look here, I used to
think that it was greater to create music than to evolve literature; now
I know more, I know it isn't. When a man writes a book, he goes ahead
and does it according to the light of nature and the sense that is in
him. Sometimes it is good; mostly it isn't, but at least he has done it
out of himself and by himself. When you write a symphony, you do it out
of yourself, but not by yourself. You do it by the exact rules that
somebody else before you has laid down. You can have just so many themes
and so many episodes, though it would puzzle the _Concertmeister_ of the
heavenly choir to tell where the themes leave off and the episodes
begin. You know you have got those rules to hang on to, and they are a
great support in seasons of mental famine. Two themes and a subsidiary,
and a lot of episodes for padding: that's all you need, and they are
bound to come on in just a given order. Can you imagine a novelist
sitting down and fitting his work neatly into a box measured off into
compartments: one hero, one heroine, one extra, plus episodic sunsets
and moonbeams galore? Not much! He makes his rules as he goes along.
Sally, which is greater, to create a gown, or to cut it out by a paper
pattern?"
"To cut it out, of course," Sally answered unexpectedly. "The patterns
never fit, and it is more work to bring them into the shape of any human
being than it is to start out with a free hand, in the first place."
But Miss Gannion challenged her.
"Sally, did you ever make a gown?"
"Never; but that doesn't prevent my having theories," Sally replied
airily.
"And I have had practice. I attempted once, when my years were less and
my zeal more, to clothe an orphan with the work of my own hands. I
thought I would operate free hand, as you call it, and I wish you could
have beheld the result. The orphan's own mother would never have
recognized her babe in the midst of the strange, polyangular bundle of
cloth. I suspect that the same might be said of a good many novelists,
and that a judicious trimming of the seams according to some established
pattern might improve their work."
Arlt nodded approvingly.
"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 classes 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 attitude to each other
would not pass 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
platitudes, 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 passed 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 attitude of
passive 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.