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TOWER OF IVORY
BY MRS. ATHERTON
THE CONQUEROR
A FEW OF HAMILTON’S LETTERS
ANCESTORS
THE GORGEOUS ISLE
RULERS OF KINGS
THE ARISTOCRATS
THE TRAVELLING THIRDS
THE BELL IN THE FOG
PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES
SENATOR NORTH
HIS FORTUNATE GRACE
_CALIFORNIA SERIES_
REZÁNOV
THE DOOMSWOMAN
THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES
A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE
THE CALIFORNIANS
AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS
A WHIRL ASUNDER
THE VALIANT RUNAWAYS (A BOOK FOR BOYS)
TOWER OF IVORY
_A NOVEL_
BY
GERTRUDE ATHERTON
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1910,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. Reprinted
March, twice, July, 1910.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHEN BRIDGMINSTER WAS TWENTY-FOUR 1
II. FLYING ARROWS 5
III. NEUSCHWANSTEIN 12
IV. THE STYR 23
V. ORDHAM AND THE STYR 35
VI. CERTAIN INEVITABLE PHASES 49
VII. THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS 64
VIII. PURPLE LILIES AND BITTER FRUIT 69
IX. EXCELLENZ, THE POTTER 80
X. THE BIRTH OF AN ARTIST 85
XI. THE DIPLOMATIC TEMPERAMENT 92
XII. LA BELLE HÉLÈNE 98
XIII. STYR, THE POTTER 107
XIV. THE SAVING GRACE 121
XV. POTTERS CONFER 125
XVI. THE IVORY TOWER OF STYR 128
XVII. ROMANTIC MUNICH 133
XVIII. THE SYSTEM’S FLOWER 143
XIX. A DIPLOMATIST IN THE MAKING 151
XX. ISOLDE 155
XXI. THE WOMAN BY THE ISAR 164
XXII. PRINCESS NACHMEISTER AS GUARDIAN ANGEL 168
XXIII. ONE OF THE POTTERIES 173
XXIV. THE CRACK IN THE JAR 178
XXV. FRIENDSHIP AT FOUR IN THE MORNING 184
XXVI. FRIENDSHIP IN A BORROWED FRAME 191
XXVII. ADIEU TO THE ISAR 197
XXVIII. A ROSSETTI 200
XXIX. THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS AGAIN 207
XXX. LADY BRIDGMINSTER, POTTER 221
XXXI. ORDHAM ESCAPES A HANSOM IN PICCADILLY 227
XXXII. EVERY MAN HIS OWN PILOT 234
XXXIII. SLOW MAGIC 243
XXXIV. WHERE IS ROSAMOND HAYLE? 248
XXXV. YOUTH 253
XXXVI. THE RACE 260
XXXVII. ORDHAM CEASES TO BE ORIGINAL 268
XXXVIII. ISOLDA FURIOSA 271
XXXIX. PEGGY HILL AND MARGARETHE STYR 276
XL. HAPPY POTTERS 286
XLI. THE PRINCESS PINCHES 293
XLII. HIS HOUSE OF CARDS 300
XLIII. THE WOMAN’S INNINGS 311
XLIV. STARS AND DUST 315
XLV. EUROPE’S BOUQUET 322
XLVI. OUR FIRST GLIMPSE OF BRIDGMINSTER 329
XLVII. A FAIRY COMET 337
XLVIII. THE GREAT PRIZES 342
XLIX. THE SPIRIT OF THE RACE MOVES ON 349
L. THE ROOM IN THE TEMPLE 367
LI. THE ROCKET WITHOUT A STICK 375
LII. MATRIMONY 383
LIII. LOVE 389
LIV. THE CONQUEST OF LONDON 400
LV. THE WORLD AND THE CROSS 410
LVI. A DIPLOMATIST OUT OF THE SADDLE 413
LVII. THE LAST CARD 421
LVIII. THE FOOLISH FATES 440
LIX. WHEN ORDHAM WAS BRIDGMINSTER 445
LX. LIFE, THE POTTER 449
LXI. THEIR MARRIAGE 461
LXII. THE IVORY TOWER OF ORDHAM 465
I
WHEN BRIDGMINSTER WAS TWENTY-FOUR
John Ordham had been in Munich several months before he met Margarethe
Styr. Like all the young men, native and foreign, he chose to fancy
himself in love with her, and although both too dignified and too shy to
applaud with the vehemence of the Germans, he never failed to attend a
performance at the “Hof” when the greatest _hochdramatische_ the new
music had developed sang Iseult or Brynhildr. He was not sure that he
wanted to meet her, for in a languid and somewhat affected manner he
persuaded himself that she existed on the stage alone, and that did he
even permit his imagination to picture her in private life it must be as
a commonplace American woman of German extraction who drank enormously
of beer and ate grossly, like the people in the restaurants. And as at
that time he cultivated the sensuous rather than the stronger elements
of his nature, he avoided what might have attenuated one of the most
exquisite of his pleasures. It was true that in the second and last acts
of _Götterdämmerung_ her tragedy was so stupendous, her grief so
poignant, her despair so fathomless, that he turned cold to his marrow,
and felt as if the sufferings of all humanity were drowning him. But
vicarious woe has all the voluptuousness and none of the hell of Life’s
cruelties at first hand.
Styr’s methods were as likely to inthral the fastidious Englishman as
the more artistic German. In a day when Sarah Bernhardt was the fashion
in tragediennes, she had a still method all her own, a manner of
appearing quietly on the stage, seemingly as impersonal as a part of its
setting; then gradually dominating it, not only by the magic of her
great golden voice and imposing height and presence, but by a force,
which the critics, after long and acrimonious controversy, agreed to be
an emanation from the brain. Whether she possessed also that physical
magnetism, commonly indispensable to stage people, was a question still
agitated when Ordham arrived in Munich, although she had then been
“Royal Bavarian Court Singer” for six years; but that she had cultivated
a mental power which above all else made her the great artist she was,
the most violent partisans of other prime donne, lyric and dramatic,
frankly conceded. Her associates at the Hof told that at rehearsals she
merely walked through her part; and Princess Nachmeister, boasting
private acquaintance with her since her elevation to the Bavarian
aristocracy as Countess Tann, confided to the world that she never
practised even those slow, grand, graceful, and infinitely varied
gestures of hands and arms which were as expressive as her voice, but
directed them from her brain as she did her acting; that she sat for
hours thinking out the minutest details, but without moving a muscle
until the night of public performance. All facial expression was
concentrated in her eyes. She could express more with those features for
which Nature had failed to invoke her conventions, than any living
actress with physical writhings and distorted visage. Therefore, when
she gave way to momentary violence, as, when at Siegfried’s repudiation
she looked to be tearing her heart out, she created so profound an
impression that more than Ordham rose breathless from their seats. Her
desolation, her incredulous horror, the alternate pride of the goddess
and agony of the woman, the dark and remorseless vengeance of the
daughter of Wotan, not only induced a nervous shudder in Ordham but
plunged his imagination down the past of this great but forbidding
creature, who seemed to unlock her own heart for the moment with the
reckless indifference of the supreme artist. He was but twenty-four at
this time, but he had seen a good deal of the world, and its
inheritances had composed many of his brain cells; he was, moreover, a
very clever young man, as all admitted. Nevertheless, when he stared at
Brynhildr in her agony and wrath, or dreamed through the second act of
_Tristan und Isolde_, he had vague prickings in the depths of his soul
that tragedy was not confined to the gods, and uneasy forebodings that
life even for such as he was not all roses and cream.
But at this time, although had Styr ever been photographed, he would
have framed and enthroned her, he rarely thought of her when not in his
seat in the Hof, or listening to the comments of his friends. He was
fluttering from flower to flower with the impatience and curiosity of
his years, fearful of missing the least the gods provided for fortunate
youth; drawn intensely for a day or a week by a beautiful face or an odd
personality, but not daring to dally too long lest something more
charming escape him. He had passing episodes of a semi-serious nature in
that gay scampish underworld of Munich (that world of soubrettes,
waitresses, young officers, students of both sexes), as well as in the
sphere that revolved about the Queen-mother, but they were by no means
ardent or sustained. He had not yet begun to cultivate that outdoor life
which makes Englishmen so virile, and in extenuation of his fickleness
he reminded himself of the penetrating observation of Marguerite de
Valois, that the passions of young men are apt to be wavering and cold.
The truth was that he was influenced by what appealed to his mind and
taste rather than to his passions, although being sensitive and eager,
these could momentarily be aroused by a charming woman who chose to take
the initiative. The serious side of his nature had hardly begun its
development; youth, bubbling youth, was uppermost; unconsciously
(sometimes!) he smiled into any pair of pretty eyes that met and held
his rather absent gaze, flirted desperately for an evening with a
delightful creature whom he quite forgot to call upon next day. He found
life very satisfactory and his studies not too arduous: persuaded by his
family to enter diplomacy, and taking to it as naturally as he turned
from the more dubious work of politics, he had spent a year in Paris
unofficially attached to the British Embassy; then, a relative being
appointed Minister Resident to the Court of Bavaria, he had come to him
for another year in order to perfect himself in the German language
before attempting his examinations.
It was some time before Munich found him out. For a while he was too
much interested in the cafés, the ale-halls, the student life, the opera
and theatre, to go about in society, even had it not been away. But soon
after the return of the fashionable world to the capital, it became
known that visiting at the British Legation was a young Englishman of
fine appearance, distinguished family, and excellent prospects: his
half-brother, Lord Bridgminster, although still a young man and quite
healthy, was, owing to an early disappointment and an accident which
marred his features, a misanthropist and misogynist. Almost
simultaneously Ordham began to go about with Mr. Trowbridge, the
minister; and, to do himself as well as society justice, he was
immediately and enthusiastically liked for himself. The glamour of long
descent and a possible coronet can never wholly be forgotten, but they
carry a man so far and no farther. John Ordham’s worldly advantages no
doubt were among the earliest of the factors that made him the fashion
in Munich, so slow to accept strangers; but, later they were but the
final excuse to shower attentions upon a young man who, under a shy and
languid exterior, possessed an independent and audacious mind, who
breathed refinement, and whose gentle and courteous manner charmed even
the morose Ludwig to invite him to a private concert at Neuschwanstein,
where he and Princess Nachmeister were the only guests. It was there
that he met Margarethe Styr.
II
FLYING ARROWS
Princess Nachmeister was the most disagreeable old woman in Munich and
quite the most powerful. Herself a Prussian, she was a lifelong friend
of the Queen-mother, and one of the few women ever admitted to the
presence of the King; her genius for social leadership had been
cultivated for forty years, and she had a “palace” in the
Königenstrasse, whose high-walled garden extended through to the
Kaulbachstrasse. Ordham, in his rather listless walks, had often glanced
longingly over the flat coping at the grounds, half formal, half wild,
crowded with trees and set with Italian seats and fountains, noseless
satyrs and empty urns. The princess boasted that she was the first to
“discover” him, and after the season opened he found himself dining or
attending parties at her house several times a week. At the moment, so
great was the depression, owing to the persistent seclusion of the King,
that few besides Excellenz Nachmeister had the spirit to entertain on
the grand scale. Luncheons, kettle-drums, diplomatic dinners, were not
infrequent, and occasionally one of the minor royal palaces opened its
doors for a rout; but had it not been for the old lady whom all vilified
and courted, society would have been moribund. No one was more aware of
this than Excellenz herself, for one secret of her uninterrupted success
in a city that still hated Prussia was her genius for seizing and
holding the strategic position.
She took Ordham to the routs that were given, to private tea-parties at
the Residenz, where frequently the only other guests of the Queen-mother
were her ancient ladies-in-waiting, and, in time, invited him alone of
all the unofficial young men to her dinners given in honour of the
diplomatic corps. She knew that he barely tolerated her, that he came to
her house so often, not only because he found much to amuse him there,
but because he was far too good-natured to refuse any one that pressed
hospitality upon him; but she would have forgiven more to his manners,
which she pronounced the finest in the world; and the old court
intriguer honestly admired the diplomatic talents which inspired him to
express the proper amount of deference and polite gratitude without
sacrificing his dignity in the fashion of many that craved something
more than a mere entrée to the Palast Nachmeister; then, later, when to
be the enfant gâté and the formal man-of-the-world.
Ordham, indeed, began by disliking her intensely. Her thin dispraising
nose, which, he reflected, looked as if it had a pin in it; her narrow
mouth, whose corners seemed to drip poison; her hard, round, brilliant
eyes; her red wig and emaciated figure,—all offended him; but her
manifest and disinterested friendship (she had not a young relative in
the world), her many favours, and the more subtle influence of Time, to
say nothing of her discretion in not inviting him to make love to her,
inclined him to indulgence, and he even began to find good points in
her,—after his habit with people whom he tolerated at all.
And he was never bored in her house, for he met in it a far more
cosmopolitan society than he had been accustomed to in England or even
in Paris. The United States had not yet discovered Munich, but it was
always refreshed, this beautiful art city of mid-Europe, by Russians,
Hungarians, Austrians, Italians, and odd and interesting people from the
Balkans and the Porte. Moreover, he loved beautiful things, and the
Nachmeister’s house was an essential reincarnation of the rococo, even
to the dinginess of the gilt, so fatally neglected by Ludwig in his
brand-new palaces, Linderhof and Herrenchimsee. Her rooms and her
grounds satisfied him so completely that he could not go to them often
enough, and he was able to exclude their owner from his memory unless
she stood in front of him.
Nor did she deny him anything he craved. When the rather nervous young
man, who blushed so often, and yet was as automatically sure of himself
as only an Englishman of his class can be, told her flatly that he
wanted to meet the King, whom no stranger met, the audacity of the
request took her breath away, but she managed the interview through the
Queen-mother; and Ludwig, who happened to be in one of those intensely
lucid tempers when he was sick unto death of shams and hypocrisies, and
the vileness he found in the men that cringed at his wavering feet,
fancied that he saw in the clean high-bred young Englishman something of
the nobility and beauty of his own untainted youth, and impulsively
invited him to Neuschwanstein for the following evening.
It was quite in keeping with the curious complications which at this
period began to deflect John Ordham’s feet from the sunny highway into
dim by-paths ending in the mazes of life, that he should have met Mabel
Cutting before he made even the bare acquaintance of Margarethe Styr.
She was just eighteen, and her mother had brought her to Munich for a
few weeks of German and music before launching her into London society.
Princess Nachmeister, giving a garden party soon after the squares and
gardens of Munich had burst into the vivid young greens of spring,
begged Mrs. Cutting, whom she had known for many years, to bring the new
American beauty to decorate her “gloomy old park.” This with her
romantic loveliness—she was tall and slim, her hair was golden, her big
eyes were brown, sad, remote, her little nose and mouth cut with the
sharpest and most rapid of chisels—Mabel accomplished with much
complacency; she was not only quite aware of her charms, but that her
smart Parisian gown made the greater number of the Bavarian aristocracy
look like housemaids. But she was bored by the strange babel of tongues
about her, and, unable to interest herself in the stiff young officers
that clicked their heels together in front of her, permitted them to be
captured by ladies with whose methods they were more familiar. She was
sitting alone,—save for her pug-dog, LaLa,—on one of the curved marble
seats under a large tree, flanked by a pink hawthorn on one side and a
white lilac bush on the other, when Ordham, who had arrived late, as
usual, caught sight of her. A few moments later, his hostess,
congratulating herself upon her subtlety, had steered him to the
maiden’s side and casually presented him.
Mabel enlivened immediately when the tall “boy,” as she defined him,
very dignified and very diffident, stood blushing before her, and talked
so fast that Ordham subsided into a chair with the welcome sensation of
being spared all trouble. He was fascinated not more by the sparkling
flow of empty words than by the play of dimples in the pink and white
cheeks, and the flecks of golden light which the large pathetic brown
eyes seemed to intercept from the aureole of her hair. She talked of
England and Paris, which she knew far better than New York, “adoring”
both, delivered her soul of her hatred of all things German, from the
music to the shops, spoke with admiration of his mother who was a great
friend of “Momma’s,” and admitted that she was simply dying to see the
inside of Ordham Castle and its romantic recluse, Lord Bridgminster.
Occasionally she dammed the stream of her eloquence with a question,
answered by a glance from Ordham’s smiling eyes. Then Mrs. Cutting, who
had been detained within, bore down upon them, and Mabel rose to her
feet like a willow branch slowly released from the water.
“Momma!” she cried, “this is Mr. Ordham, Lady Bridgminster’s son. I have
asked him to call. Do invite him for dinner to-night. He is the very
nicest boy I ever met. You are sure to like him, for he talks so
splendidly, and says such amusing things.”
Ordham had much ado to refrain from laughing outright, and Mrs. Cutting
caught the flash in his eyes which made him suddenly look older. He
cultivated—or perhaps, in his conventional hours, it was quite natural
to him—a somewhat infantile expression, and Mrs. Cutting, observing him
from the window, had concluded that he was a mere boy, and quite safe to
sit alone with her little daughter at a formal German party. But as she
stood talking to him,—he was now quite at his ease,—this woman whose
keen American brain had never for a moment been clouded by passion,
whose nerves were mere magnetic needles for the thousand complexities of
the world she lived in, experienced a subtle response to something hard
under the plastic surface of this charming young man. It was remote, a
whisper from the unknown, as evanescent as a quiver along the branches
of the tree that cast its shadow on the young pink of the hawthorn; and
in a moment she forgot the impression in her general approval. But she
recalled it long after, that fleeting response in herself to the germ of
ruthlessness under that sincere and boyish desire to please her.
Then and there she made up her mind that he should marry Mabel. The
serious quest of her life was the son-in-law who should make her one
with the aristocracy she had selected as the best this world had
precipitated. She was a woman as fastidious as she was ambitious, for
she belonged to the aristocracy of her own country, and there was still
much of the Puritan in her, albeit none of the provincial. She would
give her immaculate daughter to no man whom she knew to be unworthy, no
matter what his rank; and, unsuspected, she had examined and rejected
all the young unmarried noblemen she had met during her last two seasons
in England. As it happened, she had never met Ordham, although she
enjoyed something more than a passing acquaintance with Lady
Bridgminster. Always a favourite of fortune, she realized at once that
this garden party had been arranged by the august recipient of the
prayers she never omitted to offer up when the exigencies of fashion
took her to church.
“Certainly you must dine with us to-night, if you are not ‘invited,’ as
they say over here,” she exclaimed in her bright cordial voice which
retained not a taint of the national crudity. “Mabel is a chatterbox and
I shall send her to bed; but you and I will have a delightful gossip
about London, from which I have been banished so often these last three
years—since my husband’s death there has been so much tiresome
litigation in New York. It is a delight even to look at an Englishman
once more, especially here in Germany, which—let me whisper it—I hate
as much as I love Paris. I am still a good American, you see, even if I
did migrate long since to England. And you will come at eight?”
Ordham murmured his thanks, almost as much fascinated by the mother as
by the daughter. Mrs. Cutting was not yet forty, very slim, Parisian,
high-bred, not in the least faded, and her grey eyes, if cold, were very
bright; her small mouth could accomplish smiles dazzling, arch,
sympathetic, merely sweet, and she held her head higher than any lady of
the court of Queen Marie. Ordham had met Americans of all sorts, but
never any that attracted him as strongly as this distinguished couple
that said nothing so charmingly and liked him so spontaneously. He felt
the utter passionlessness of the older woman’s nature, but after the
tempestuousness of certain of his foreign acquaintance this but added to
her charm. As for the exquisite Mabel, she suggested all enchanting
possibilities, although perhaps more than aught else the divine white
flame of Wagner’s Elizabeth; that is to say (he was dreaming over a
midnight cigarette at his window in the Legation when these reflections
took shape), she would resemble that exalted ideal when she passed the
chatterbox stage, that inevitable phase of the young American female.
But, barring the fact that she talked too much and really knew nothing
at all, she was quite flawless.
He dined, lunched, drove constantly with the Cuttings during the ensuing
fortnight, writing pathetic notes of apology to those that had booked
him long since; and as Mrs. Cutting dined in her private suite, his many
good friends almost wept as they thought on his sufferings. He answered
their notes of sympathy in terms of passionate gratitude and regret
(which made him more popular than ever) and gave not a second thought to
the writers save when endeavouring to fix each particular excuse in his
memory. He was enchanted with his new friends. Mrs. Cutting talked
smartly, and on all subjects which she discovered appealed to him. Mabel
was not sent to bed, and a great deal of quiet flirting went on under
Momma’s discreetly averted eye. Frequently Mrs. Cutting was summoned
into an adjoining room by her “dressmaker” (she would not have worn a
German gown into her coffin), but certainly Ordham never felt so much as
a passing suspicion that the girl was being thrown at his head, nor that
his ideals, peculiarities, vague desires, were being carefully sounded
and analyzed. When they departed he missed them so acutely for a few
days that he was almost melancholy; then, by rapid gradations, forgot
them. Mabel bedewed her pillow for many nights, and Mrs. Cutting, as
soon as she had opened her house in London, and presented Mabel at
Buckingham Palace, devoted herself to ripening her pleasant acquaintance
with Lady Bridgminster into friendship. It was not long before those two
astute dames understood one another, and the pliant Mabel, by no means
without the craft of her sex, was put into training.
III
NEUSCHWANSTEIN
Ordham journeyed down to Neuschwanstein full of pleasant anticipations,
which for several hours after his arrival seemed unlikely to be
fulfilled. Although he and Princess Nachmeister, with whom he travelled,
were received at Füssen by a royal coach, which bounded at the heels of
four galloping steeds through the grey mediæval town crowded on the
banks of the river, then up through the woods to the white castle on its
lofty rock, in a fashion that exhilarated his blood, and although they
were received at Neuschwanstein with vast ceremony, he learned
immediately that the King found himself too unwell to see his guests,
and that the Gräfin von Tann would dine in her own apartments over in
the Kemenate, where rooms had been put in order for herself and the
Princess Nachmeister. In the main body of the castle no woman had ever
slept, and few men. Ordham, after ascending to the third story, was
conducted through endless suites of rooms, very new, very gaudy, painted
with the legends of the sagas and furnished with blue, purple, red, or
green satin heavily incrusted with gold. In his own imposing chamber,
finding nothing comfortable but the bed—after turning up a corner of
the quilt—to sit on (the gold embroideries of the chairs being at least
four inches thick), he made his way out of the castle and determined to
explore while it was still daylight, half hoping to meet the King or the
Styr.
He forgot both for a time while he roamed about what is probably the
most beautiful spot on earth. In an undulating valley surrounded by an
irregular chain of Alps, the two castles were set on their heights about
a mile apart: Hohenschwangau, feudal in appearance if not in fact, old
and brown, with citadel, wall, and bastions; Neuschwanstein, a white
mass of towers on a mighty rock springing abruptly from the deep gorge
of the river Pöllat. Between the castles and on all sides was the dark
green forest, separating only for those two jewels of the Bavarian
Highlands, the lakes, Alp and Schwan. Down in the lower valley were the
old grey towers of Füssen; beyond Hohenschwangau and facing
Neuschwanstein, three sharp peaks of the higher Alps glittered with
snow. Behind the newer castle a green mountain rose almost as straight
as a rampart, throwing the romantic white pile into such bold relief
that it attracted the eye from every point of the valleys.
As Ordham wandered about, staring at the castles from all sides, or
lying on the turf under the trees of the forest, his solitude broken
only by a passing peasant in the picturesque grey and green costume of
the Highlands, or the sudden appearance of a chamois at the end of a
vista, he understood something of Ludwig’s contempt for mere mortals. He
loitered on in the groves sacred to the unhappiest man the modern world
has seen, many moods sweeping over him, but finally he lay dreaming
idly; and, feeling that such romantic solitudes demanded a mate in
fancy, since fate was obdurate, he evoked the image of the prettiest
girl he knew, Mabel Cutting, and persuaded himself for a few moments
that his happiness depended upon seeing her again and at once. He had
just resolved to overcome his hatred for letter writing and indite her
an epistle on the morrow, when a footman came to remind him that dinner
was at seven. Mabel vanished with the chamois, although he made a wry
face as he reflected that he was to dine alone in this enchanted vale
with Princess Nachmeister.
The same lackey stood outside his door while he dressed, evidently under
the impression that he must not be lost sight of again, and this time
conducted him to the story above. He had expected as a matter of course
that the dinner would be served in one of the smaller rooms, perhaps
over in the Kemenate, where Excellenz might have inveigled the Styr to
join their little party. But he was shown into a vast room, which was in
such a glitter of light that for a moment he was half blinded. Few
surprises ruffled his imperturbability, however; and although he
appeared barely to glance about him, he observed with much pleasure the
immense vaulted room, which was nearly a hundred feet long and almost
half as wide, supported on carved columns and decorated with the legend
of Parsifal. The ten chandeliers were blazing suns.
At the upper end of the hall a small square table looked like an oasis
in a painted desert, with its service of crystal and gold, its candles
shaded with pink—no doubt a satiric attention on the part of the King.
Princess Nachmeister, very magnificent in pale blue brocade embroidered
with silver (which, Ordham reflected, became her hideously), stood by
the window and watched the young man with sharp interest as he advanced
down the long apartment between the rows of gorgeous lackeys that seemed
to await a concourse of kings. She despised the Anglo-Saxon race with
all her German soul, believing them to be moderns without subtlety, and
never forgetting that they were savages when the Italy of her ancestors
was the crown of civilization; but if she had a soft spot in her fibrous
old heart, it was for this protégé of hers, and it delighted her to
observe that, far from being disconcerted, he had never looked more at
his ease. Always, even in his boyish moments, he had the quiet aloofness
of those born to the unpurchasable prizes and responsibilities of life,
and although he was often nervous and shy in petty ordeals, the
centuries that had made him invariably came to his rescue when suddenly
placed in positions that shift the ballast of older men of less
persistent breeding. Moreover, it is doubtful if the English aristocrat
has deference in him for even the royal families of the minor states. He
is democratic in manner, partly because it has become the fashion,
partly through discretion, partly from sheer careless sense of
superiority; but let no one mistake that attitude for humility of spirit
or a sense of the universal brotherhood of man.
Ordham was not a little assisted in his present ordeal by his slight
erect graceful figure, and he always carried his arms better than any
man Excellenz had ever seen. She almost blushed with pleasure (poor
lady, she could no longer blush) as she noted the respectful wonder on
the faces of the lackeys. No doubt they had hoped to enjoy the
embarrassment of so young a guest; and a rare entertainment it would
have been to them, for the greatest nobles in Germany seldom found
access to a castle where the solitary King forgot the world when he
could.
Ordham seated himself with a grumble at the short time he had been given
to dress. “And my servant is lost somewhere in this barrack,” he added
(and this was a genuine grievance). “I could not find anything!”
“Tiens! Tiens!” (Excellenz relieved her English with French or German
according to the specific gravity of her mood.) “You would have been
late if I had sent for you an hour earlier. You were roaming all over
the place hoping to meet Die Styr—don’t deny it!”
“Why couldn’t she dine with us? She is not going to sing an opera.”
“But she is going to sing out of doors, and her temper is worse than
your own. I had a few words with her, and I never saw even a prima donna
in such a state of suppressed fury. Of course she expected to sing in
this room, but it seems the King has taken a vow that he will honour the
memory of The Master by permitting no more music inside his castles,
so—enfin!—he gets round his vow by commanding the great Styr to sing
in the open—which, of course, is bad for the voice.”
“Why doesn’t she refuse—fall ill? I thought that prime donne were never
without corns on their vocal chords when determined to have their own
way, and that even a King must be prepared for caprice.”
“Not this King. Styr did not bring her doctor with her, and she loves
but two things on earth, her art and Munich. When his Majesty commands,
no excuse will serve. He alone in this realm is permitted to indulge
caprice.”
“The Styr looks much too imperious to submit to such
slavery—disgusting! She could sing anywhere.”
“Could she? Richard Wagner has no foothold as yet in either England or
America—hardly outside of Germany. Styr’s voice would tear the old
lyric rôles to tatters—divinely lyric as she makes her Isolde. It is
Germany or nothing. And in Germany it is Munich or nothing—for she goes
no more to Bayreuth.”
“Yes, Munich!—I too love Munich—Bavaria,” Ordham said softly, his eyes
straying to the mountains beyond the narrow gorge. The windows were open
and he could hear the low roar of the Pöllat waterfall.
“Now don’t fall into a dream,” said Excellenz, tartly. “It isn’t often
that I have you alone. What a situation—what surroundings! It makes me
feel almost young again.”
“Then tell me something about the Styr.” Ordham sometimes amused himself
playing on the strings of the old coquette’s remnant of sex. But he
always smiled so charmingly that she really did feel younger for the
moment. The Nachmeister was never able to decide whether it was his
manners or his smile that enabled her to understand the relations
between Elizabeth and Essex.
Her fine little nose seemed to rise and point further downward as her
round brilliant eyes, whose expression never changed, returned his
steady ingenuous gaze. In a moment the corners of her protesting mouth
moved upward and she shrugged her shoulders.
“Enfin, mon enfant gâté! What do you want to know? Surely you hear the
gossip of the town.”
“All gossip is more or less alike. Is she the King’s mistress?”
“That I am sure you have never heard. His worst enemy would not raise
the point. I do not know but that I had better carry you over into the
Kemenate to-night.”
“Great heaven!” Ordham upset his champagne. “Why then does he show her
more favour than the other singers—why has he given her a title and a
house?”
“Her voice. Her art. Are not those enough—for this King? He is quite
mad over both. One might have hoped for the supreme Isolde, Kundry,
Brünhilde, in the course of another ten or twenty years—for has not
Wagner revolutionized voices as well as music?—but she burst upon the
world full blown. One day she appeared in Bayreuth and demanded audience
of The Master. He taught her the great rôles himself; her voice was
ready for them—perfectly placed and trained, flexible, sweet, resonant,
noble, enormous, three perfect octaves. Wonderful! No doubt he and the
King put their heads together and determined that she should leave
Bavaria for short _gastspiels_ only. But where did she come from? Who is
she? Why has she no credentials? Even if lowly born, which would seem
incredible did not the most queenly creatures appear now and again among
the peasantry,—while as for queens—do not they often look as if
Nature, worn out, had peevishly sent her highest back to the soil to
begin over again?—Tiens! Genius is no respecter of quarterings—but,
even so, why such reticence? Beyond the bare assertion that she is an
American she has barely alluded to her impossible country. Why doesn’t
she invent a plausible story that would put people’s imaginations to
sleep? Has it occurred to you as odd that she never will be
photographed?” she concluded abruptly.
“How fatiguing to think about anything that matters so little!” He had
fumed more than once because he could not obtain even a magazine sketch
of her. “The ordinary prima donna caprice, no doubt. Or réclame. Such
self-abnegation is enough to make any ‘artist’ notorious.”
Excellenz shook her befeathered head. Ordham, fascinated, as he often
was by the intensifying of her wicked old face, wondered if visible
poison were about to drop from her lips.
“She dare not. Photographs travel. Did hers reach America—and those
vaudeville newspapers—cannot you fancy whole pages devoted to her past?
They would rake it up in a week. Fortunate for her that America comes
not to Munich and she goes no more to Bayreuth.”
“If she is too haughty to silence slander by an ingenious lie, why
should she not be too haughty—too much the artist—to care? She must
know that Munich has settled down into the belief that her past will not
bear inspection. I have heard that much.”
“Ah, but it is all vague rumour now. Never was the woman, not publicly
in the half-world, who did not congratulate herself that many people
gave her the benefit of the doubt. And whatever Styr was in America,
here in Germany she is a goddess walking on clouds. Her voice, her
method, her acting, her superb appearance, which yet is not commonplace
beauty, above all, her divine artist soul, have made her the idol of the
public. In the Hof there are the usual jealousies and intrigues that
have driven so many fine artists from Munich never to return, but the
influence of the King, to say nothing of her own wit, tact, and will of
cast iron, blunt every shaft. She is cleverer than all the good people
in the world put together, and I, Olivia Nachmeister, who have seen so
many great gifts disintegrate for want of that virile brain-mortar of
many ingredients that compels success, greatly respect her.”
“And in private life?”
“An ivory statue waiting for the night of a public performance to come
to life at the bidding of The Master. When she first appeared in Munich
our men shook out all their battered flags of a thousand sieges. They
bombarded that ivory fortress with notes, flowers, jewels, even with
proposals of marriage after she had demonstrated her imperviousness to
the more regular sort. The jewels she sent publicly to charities; of the
other attentions she made no acknowledgment whatever. Not a man, barring
the officials of the Hof, or perhaps a new composer, can boast that he
has been received by her alone. She opens her doors once a month, she
goes to routs, sometimes to dinners—at first she went a good deal into
society, and, I fancy, was fascinated by it; but no man got a word alone
with her. I believe she hates men—but mortally! If this be true, it is
significant enough. It may be, however, that the monotonies of society
merely bore her. She is the most intellectual woman I know.”
“Intellectual?” She had succeeded in surprising his interest to the
surface.
“She has a fine library of her own, and her footman may be seen any day
striding between her villa and the royal library—looking very cross.
She often attends lectures at the University, and when at home always is
either reading or buried in her rôles—when she does not walk. Gott!
what a life for a woman under forty! And no one would care if she had a
lover. She is a great artist. Does not that give her the liberty of a
goddess? What futile regrets when she is my age—sixty!” (Ordham amused
himself on rainy days looking up the ages of his friends in the _Graf
Buch_, and knew that Princess Nachmeister was seventy; but she was not
too old to retain delusions, and fancied that young men were above such
curiosities, or that their memories at least were unfeminine.)
“Where does she walk?”
“That no one discovers. I have an idea that she rises at four in the
morning, when, of a certainty, she will not meet the gallants of Munich.
She is always in fine physical condition, and one would know that she
took much exercise—and baths—not too favourite a pastime in
Germany!—even did she not allude once in a while to her ‘tramps.’ But
don’t lie in wait for her. You would only get a snub for your pains.”
Ordham coloured haughtily. He did not like the word. “I never lie in
wait for any one,” he replied coldly. “Besides, no doubt, she is stalked
by a footman.”
“None of her servants speak English.”
“How is it that her German is so faultless? I am told that before any
stories got about she was taken for a German as a matter of course.”
“Her parents were Hungarian. Her singing teacher in America was a
Hanoverian.”
“Has she told you that much?”
“Now and again I get something out of her—but nothing that really
counts. To judge from her manner, her carriage, her breeding, she might
be a Karoly or a Festetics, but one day when I told her bluntly there
was a rumour to the effect that her parents were emigrants,—steerage
emigrants,—she replied coolly that she should be delighted if the story
put an end to romantic nonsense.”
“I should like to believe that she was a runaway—or an
abducted—princess.”
“So would all the other romantic babies. Unfortunately, we have her word
for it that she is an American born—and reared. Of course her policy in
admitting that much is to stifle curiosity in her origin—origin in
America not counting with Europeans in the least—as well as to
discourage curiosity. The place is so vast—ten thousand miles across, I
am told—or is it in diameter?—that one might as well look for a lost
soul in Hades. She has even admitted that she was on the stage in
America. But under what name? That I cannot surprise out of her, and the
few Americans I know never saw nor heard of her. They all live in
Europe. Of course she never sang over there. She need not tell us that,
for if they were still red and wore feathers, they would have made that
voice famous in a day.”
“What makes you so sure that Margarethe Styr is not her name?”
“Am I a Frau Professor or an old woman of the world? When the King
decided that bracelets, rings, even necklaces were inadequate
acknowledgment from the first living royal patron of art to the greatest
interpreter of the new music, and that she must be raised to the
Bavarian aristocracy—Gott!—I was commanded to be her social sponsor.
Naturally, with the utmost delicacy, I endeavoured to extract such
information as would satisfy the curiosity of her future compatriots. I
distilled a little and inferred more. Enfin! I am convinced that the
story, whatever it may be, is hideous—but hideous! Who minds a lover or
two?—and an artist, as I have said. I know women—ach Gott, ja! and I
have studied the Styr far more deeply than she knows. There are certain
signs—”
Excellenz lifted her shoulders and curved the corners of her mouth
almost to her chin.
“I wonder!” Again Ordham’s glance strayed into the dusk beyond the
glare. He recalled the curses and the ecstasies of Isolde. A footman
changed his plate, and he asked, “How is it that I have never met her,
even at a rout?”
“She has gone into society very little this year. I fancy she is now
quite tired of it, and that only a royal command could draw her forth.
And”—with a sigh—“there is no court, as you know.”
“Do the men still pursue her?”
“Not the older men; there are always recruits among the fledglings, but
men soon learn the difference between ice and ivory, and life is short.”
“I should like to meet her.”
“No doubt. But she is more difficult to meet than the King.”
“You seem to know her very well.”
“Comparatively. But she happens to be the only genius of my
acquaintance—of my own sex—and I am never quite at ease with her. I
should far more aptly take a liberty with the Queen, to whom, indeed, I
am privileged to say _du_; but I have never ventured into that zone of
liberty with Die Styr. She is the most majestic, or shall I say, the
most frozen, creature I have ever met. Where did she get it? Her origin!
Her past! She upsets every theory.”
“There are no theories where genius is concerned. And if, in addition,
she has an intellect—naturally she dominates. There are so few
intellects. D’you see?”
“I do, you impertinent boy! And I shall not even try to present you to
her.”
“According to all accounts, dear Princess, you should be the last to
fear her, for in your society alone does she appear to find any
pleasure. Who else can claim to know her? I have heard of no one.”
“Again I am assured of your fitness for the diplomatic career! As I told
you, she was placed in my hands. I found her little in need of
instruction. She seems to have been born with a sort of royal tact—this
makes me believe that her parents were political refugees, at least.
Perhaps they had disgraced themselves in other ways. Or it is possible
that she is the illegitimate offspring of a prince and some pretty
little actress who was bundled out of the country. Austrian archdukes
have a mania for romantic marriages. N’importe! We have always remained
friends of a sort. I rarely let a week pass without going to see her,
and once in a while she comes to me alone and sits in my garden—and
expresses her scorn of Sardou and her admiration of Ibsen! When I would
give two or three of my best memories to hear how many lovers she has
had, and what they were like. A woman can always be read through her
lovers. Whatever Styr’s may have been, her one desire now is to be
impersonal. I might as well invoke Brynhildr or Iseult. Perhaps nothing
personal remains in that charming casket. Off the stage ivory, on the
stage fire. It is all very odd. I have never been so intriguée in my
life. Don’t try to know her. She might find you worth talking to—and
then—who knows?”
Ordham flushed at the bare suggestion. “I am quite determined to know
her.”
Excellenz noted that his eyes were less infantile than usual. “Well,
later—I will take you to one of her routs,” she remarked indifferently,
determined to do nothing of the sort. “I wonder where this remarkable
concert is to take place.” She beckoned to the master of ceremonies, and
was informed that the prima donna would stand on the Marienbrücke, the
narrow bridge that spans the Pöllat at a dizzy height, and that the
guests would listen from the windows of the _Festsaal_, or from the
balcony of the throne room below, as suited their pleasure. His Majesty
would occupy the balcony before his bedroom windows.
Ordham’s eyes flashed. “When?” he demanded.
“When the moon rises, sir. In less than an hour.”
IV
THE STYR
John Ordham stood alone on the balcony before the throne room. Princess
Nachmeister, shivering and twinging, had gone over to her own
comfortable apartment, where, wrapped in a wadded dressing-gown, she
could sit at her window and lose nothing of the concert. Ordham, for
some time, was sensitively conscious of an unquiet spirit just round the
corner of the castle. He could not hear a footfall, a sigh, but he knew
that the lonely King was trying to surrender his tormented soul to the
golden flood pouring upward from the white figure on the Marienbrücke,
perhaps to the unearthly beauty of the night.
The full moon mounted slowly above the three snow peaks of the distant
Alps. It turned even the lakes to sheets of silver, threw forest and
unpowdered mountain tops into hard black outline against the deep blue
of a sky that seemed to throb with a thousand responsive notes: the
golden notes of every human song-bird that Earth had lost. The wind was
still. Save for the roar of the waterfall, there was not a sound in the
world but that great voice that seemed to fill it.
Ordham had waited breathlessly during the few moments that preceded her
appearance, the intense stillness pounding in his ears. Then, by what
sleight of body he could not guess, she seemed to dart suddenly up from
the gorge below the bridge as she uttered the terrible shriek of Kundry
when summoned by Klingsor from her enchanted sleep.
“Ach! Ach! Tiefe Nacht—Wahnsinn!—Oh!—Wuth!—”
Ordham fancied he recognized a note of genuine anger in her wild
remonstrance, a bitter personal reproach. But she was artist before all,
and when she passed on to her scene with Parsifal, her dulcet
reminiscences of his infancy when she herself seemed to brood above him,
the helpless anguish of the desolate wife and adoring mother, the
maternal agony when the boy ran from her out into the world, the
waiting, the savage cries of despair, the “dulling of the smart,” the
ebbing of life—the strain of exquisite pity in which she told the youth
that he was alone on Earth—Ordham shivered more than once, staring back
into a brief past where he could recall little of maternal love,
wondering how much he would care if he never saw his mother nor any
member of his distinguished selfish family again.
The echoes gave back Parsifal’s brief lament; then the tall white figure
on the bridge, although she did not move, seemed to bend her voice above
the kneeling boy, summoning him to consolation. As it rose in seduction,
in the insolent triumph of the passionate woman who knows that not for
her is the balking of desire, it was so warm, so rich, so vast in its
compass, that Ordham felt as if the golden waters were rising to
suffocate him. When she paused so lingeringly on the final note of
seduction, “_Ersten kuss_,” that the words seemed to live on and gather
volume in the thrilling rebellious ear, and an angry cry burst from the
balcony of the King:—
“Amfortas!—
Die wunde! Die wunde!—
Sie brent in meinen Herzen—
Oh, Klage! Klage!
Furchtbare, Klage!—”