Thayer

“ While I live, my house will hold a welcome to you. Auf wiedersehen!"
As Thayer went out into the sunshine, the glitter and the brightness of it all, of the day and of the future, dazzled him and made him afraid. Then of a sudden the blood of the Thayers, in abeyance during those mad, sad, glad years of study and of striving, asserted itself again. Obeying its behest, he turned abruptly from the street where he was seeking the impresario to whom his master had sent him. In that instant, he turned his back for many a long month upon opera and upon all that followed in its train. ”

“ Clear lay the pebbles and roots at the bottom; clear was the reflection of the feathering trees about it; clear shone the eyes of William Thayer as he joyously swam for sticks across it. Great patches of sun warmed the grass and cheered the hearts of two happy wanderers, who fortified themselves from a lunch-basket padded with a red-fringed napkin. Happy yellow dandelions were spotted about, and the birds chirped unceasingly; the wind puffed the whole spring into their eager nostrils. ”

“ After the shabby room with its half-light, after the intent earnestness of Arlt, Thayer felt a passing dislike of the gorgeousness and glare and frivolity of the dinner. He was the last man to assert that good art can only associate itself with homely origins, that prosperity is a deadly foe to its growth. Nevertheless, he was fully conscious that Arlt in his meagre surroundings was much nearer to his own ideals than were the immaculate guests of the evening. Thayer loved luxury ”

“ Music ought to be taken with fasting and prayer. Quiet nerves and a full stomach are deaf to its deepest meaning. To most of the audience, Honor and Arms stood as a superb piece of vocal gymnastics; to Beatrix, Thayer was like a live wire, pulsing with a virile scorn of any but uneven contests, defiant only of those mightier than himself. To her mind, he was ready to court heavy odds, bound to conquer them, one and all; and her own pulses beat faster in time to the half-barbarous outburst which ends the great aria. ”

“ 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 interrupted him impatiently.
"How much does my singing amount to me in comparison with my love for Beatrix? I would cancel my engagements, to-morrow, if she would say the word."
"But, thank the Lord, she won't," Bobby replied placidly. "Don't be an ass, Thayer. It is a popular fiction that an artist is expected to give up his work for the sake of matrimony; but it's an immoral fable. The gods have endowed you with a voice, and you have no business to fling away the gift, when your keeping it can do so much good in the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As he drew the shades, from sheer force of habit he glanced across at the cottage. Its lights were burning brightly, their quiet steadiness giving no hint of the hideous carnival within.
No healthy man can go to bed, two hours before his usual time, and expect to sleep peacefully till dawn. At four o'clock, Thayer waked suddenly, with the firm belief that his slumber must have reached quite around the clock. He struck a match and looked at his watch.
Restlessly he rose and began to walk up and down the room. The storm had increased during the night. ”

“ Arlt looked up, and even Thayer, well as he knew him, was surprised at the sudden concentration of character in the boy's face.
"One will be helped in the small things, never in accomplishing the real purpose of his life. Each one of us must work that out for himself. Then, if he succeeds or fails, at least the result is of his own making."
Dismissing four or five importunate cab drivers with a brief shake of his head, Thayer went striding away up the Avenue towards Miss Gannion's house. As he went, he was half-consciously applying Arlt's words to the question of his own future. ”

“ Thayer. The boy is getting ready to carry it to the cottage."
Thayer tore open the envelope indifferently. Exhausted by the struggle and the shock through which he had been passing, for the time being he felt little interest in any word which could come to him from the outside world. His entire life seemed to him limited to one short hour in one small room, apart from the world and its concerns. That brief episode was too recent and too personal to allow him at once to cast off its impression. ”

“ The silence was short; then Thayer mastered himself again. "Lorimer," he said quietly; "I certainly do congratulate you, for you have been able to gain one of the noblest women in the world. Your happiness ought to be great; but you have taken a fearful responsibility along with it. At your best you can be worthy of her; but, if you fall one inch below your best level, you will deserve to be flayed alive. You have gone into this with your eyes open. You know that you can make Beatrix Dane's life a heaven or a hell. ”

“ All I need is a reasonable time for my wound to mend. A man with a part of his head shot away can't be expected to be fit for duty a month after. If I shirked battle, I suppose Thayer would extend my sick leave! That's the way such things usually go! Merit don't count though, with testy doctors if approached too soon after breakfast. If I were a toady in manner or reality, I suppose I could get anything, but I'm only a plain, presentable, unassuming country lad while Thayer impresses me as an aristocrat. Ed. Russell has taken me to ride about Burlington, a very pretty little city ”

“ Arlt?"
Thayer's face darkened.
"Mrs. Lloyd Avalons neglected to invite him," he replied quietly.
Lorimer's lip curled.
"If that isn't beyond the dreams of snobbishness, Thayer! Why did you come to her old party, then?"
"Because I thought it would be too petty to stay away."
"I would be petty, then. But, as far as that goes, Arlt's ancestors were gentlemen, when hers were shovelling gravel for a dollar a day. American democracy runs in strange grooves. Thayer, I am going to leave Beatrix in your care for a few minutes. ”

“ Danny and Arlt's failure had led inevitably up to the finale when Thayer's eyes, burning with that new, strange light, had held her own eyes captive while he had sounded the tragic note which dominates all human love. ”

“ George Thayer said, two hours afterward, in recounting his share of the adventure, "I tell ye, boys, when she said that ye might ha' knocked me down with a feather. I hain't never heard no other woman's voice that's got jest the sound to't hern has; an' what with that, an' thinkin' how beat the Elder'd be, an' wonderin' who in thunder she was anyhow, I don't believe I opened my dum lips for a full minute; but she kind o' smiled, and sez she, 'Do you know Mr. Kinney?' and that brought me to, and jest then the Elder he come along, and so I introduced 'em." ”

“ George Thayer turned upon him like a blazing sword.
"Hev ye got any nateral feelin' yourself, Eben Hill, to say that, standin' here an' lookin' at that woman's white hair an' cheeks, 'n' only last Sunday she was 's handsome a pictur's ye ever see, her hair a twinklin' in the sun like a brown beech-tree, an' her cheeks jest like roses? Nateral feelin's! ”

“ Two vagabonds from every law of home and duty, they were as peaceful and unthoughtful of yesterday's bed and to-morrow's meal as William Thayer, who slept in the sun at their feet.
For long they did not talk. An unspoken comprehension, an essential comradeship, filled the deep spaces of silence that frighten and irritate those whom only custom has associated; and Caroline, flat on her filled stomach, her nose in the grass, was close in thought and vague well-being to the boy who puffed blue rings toward the little river, his head on his arms. ”

“ As Arlt's fingers dropped from the keys at the close of Valentine's song of farewell, Thayer laughed suddenly.
"It is rather contrary to custom to be accompanied by the star of the evening, Arlt. I suppose I ought to have hunted up somebody else; but these other fellows make frightful work of my accompaniments. They hurry till they get me out of breath, and then they take advantage of the moment to drown me out. I'd like a baton, only I should beat the accompanist with it, before I was half through a programme." ”

“ Thayer, in a half audible voice; "but he went away several years ago, and I heard that he was dead. I had fallen in love with the other man, and, on hearing of my husband's death, I married the man I loved. It can't be possible that Henry is alive."
"Yes, he is," replied Lucille; "and I think he is about to return to seek for you; but the horoscope again becomes obscure. It is as I feared; the only means of learning the truth will be through the aid of the dread Hermes, whose power no demon can resist. To-morrow you shall learn all that my art can discover about your past and your future." ”

“ A master of English fiction, who has won fame abroad, and who dwelt for some little time in this country, has given a most vivid and accurate description of Judge Thayer, his speech and his style and eloquence and sense in a novel lately published. ”

“ Still on and on went Right Tackle Thayer. Friend and enemy were far behind. Victory stretched eager arms toward him. With a last, gallant effort he plunged across the goal line and fell unconscious beneath the cross-bar. At a given signal a wreath of laurel descended from above and fitted about his noble brow. The score: Thayer, 98; Claflin, 0!'"
"Just the same," muttered Clint, when he had stopped laughing, "I'm scared. And I do wish Robey had let me alone."
"Coward!" taunted Amy. "Quitter! Youth of chilly extremities!"
"I'll have to learn new signals, too. And that's a beast of a job, Amy." ”

“ Beneath the perfect poise [Pg 239] of her manner, he could see an increasing gentleness, a sadness which was under absolute control. She was as strong as ever, but less self-reliant. Experience had taught her that she was powerless to fight alone. In her worst battles, she had learned that she must rely upon another; and Thayer, as he watched her, rejoiced that that other was himself. ”

“ Thayer's history; she would be required to learn enough of astrology, clairvoyance and mesmerism, to pass for one of the genuine tribe; the plan would be so arranged that Mrs. Thayer would voluntarily consult this fortune-teller, who would soon gain a complete ascendency over her superstitious nature by revealing to her all her past life; finally Mrs. Thayer could be brought to tell all she knew of Pattmore as a means of aiding the sibyl to read her future. ”

“ Thayer whip that boy?” the doctor had questioned, sharply, before all the women, and Caleb had sobbed back, hoarsely, “She was jest a-whippin' of him; I told her she hadn't ought to.”
That had been enough. “She whipped him,” the women repeated to each other in shocked pantomime. They all knew how corporal punishment had been tabooed for Ephraim.
The Thayer house was crowded the afternoon of the funeral. The decent black-clad village people, with reddening eyes and mouths drooping with melancholy, came in throngs into the snowy yard. ”

“ 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 début at the Lloyd Avalons's on the twentieth. Don't you want to meet him?"
"N—no. I am afraid it would be anticlimax." [Pg 9]
"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." ”

“ Amy, tell me it isn't true!"
"Shut up! I want to interdoodle my most bosom friend, Mr. Clinton Thayer, of Vay-gin-yah, sah! Clint, take off your hat."
The merriment ceased and the occupants of the room got to their feet as best they might and those within reach shook hands.
"That large lump over there," indicated Amy, "is Innes. He's one of your hosts. The other one is Mr. Still; in the corner of the bed; the intelligent-looking youth. The others don't matter."
"Glad to know you, Thayer," said Jack Innes in a deep, jovial voice. "Hope you can find a place to sit down. ”

“ He met them rarely. Society had not yet organized its winter campaign, and it was [Pg 228] still possible for a man to go his own individual way. Just now, Thayer's own individual way led him almost daily in the direction of Washington Square.
He was in Arlt's room, one evening, less than a week before the concert. He had been dining with Miss Gannion; but he had left her early, in order to impress upon Arlt that he must accept his bidding to the supper which the Lorimers were to give after the concert. ”

“ But the rest of Clint's remark was drowned by the cheer that went up as the Maroon-and-Grey trotted back around the corner of the grand-stand. A moment later Chambers returned from her seclusion and her warriors dropped their grey-blue blankets and began to run up and down to stretch their muscles. Chase watched approvingly.
"An awfully fit-looking lot," he said. "I like them rangey, don't you, Thayer?"
"Yes, I think so. They do look good, don't they? They must average older than our fellows." ”