a bill of four years’ standing, a letter whose inexorable business
flavour—which seemed to him sheer insolence—left him aghast. It is
true that he had received several reminders from this necessary but
ignominious person during the past six months, and tossed them, half
read, into his waste-basket. It annoyed him to receive a bill at all,
but that the demands of a mere machine might increase in firmness, much
less hint of “summons,” had never crossed his mind. Until his father’s
death four years since, he had rarely read a bill, or even, extravagant
as he was, suffered remonstrance from a parent, who, regretting that his
favourite son should not have been his first, made a point of ignoring
the fact when he could. Every acre of the large estate was entailed,
Lord Bridgminster’s personal property was small, and there were five
sons more to educate and provide for. The oldest son and his father had
not met for years, but while there was antipathy, there was no rancour;
and Lord Bridgminster, never being called upon to meet debts for a man
who lived the year round in his hunting box, contrived to forget him.
Disappointed in his second wife, after the glamour of her peculiar
personality had vanished, he devoted himself to politics and the son
whom he fain would believe must inherit the solid honours as well as the
brains of his house. Whenever the boy came home from Eton, and later,
from Oxford,—where it rarely occurred to him to open a book,—he was
received at Ordham Castle with all the honours and attentions due to the
heir, and, had his father lived a year longer, the celebration of his
twenty-first birthday would have dimmed the memory of the perfunctory
festivities with which the majority of Lord Ordham had been announced to
the county. And as it grew to be an accepted fact that the Timon would
never marry, the oldest of the second family was so generally recognized
as the heir, that, from the servants up, he was visited with no
reminders of the long interval which might elapse before he could spend
the income that went with the titles. Even after his father’s death it
was some time before he began to appreciate the difference in his
fortunes, for he spent the following summer yachting with a friend, and,
a few months later, left Christ Church abruptly and went for a tour
round the world. He finished in Paris, where, through the influence of
his mother, a place had been found for him, unofficially, in the British
Embassy. Moreover, Lord Bridgminster had managed to leave him two
thousand pounds, and, although this ran away quickly, it served to
postpone the day when he must reckon with a younger son’s portion.
And he had been brought up in that criminal ignorance of the value of
money which has compassed the ruin of so many of the younger members of
the British aristocracy. American fathers may live up to the last dollar
of the large income they make by the constant turning over of their
discrepant capital, die bankrupt, or leave nothing but a life insurance
to their women; but the sons, no matter how indulged, grow up in the
electric atmosphere of a business country; the subject of money and its
infinite meanings is never long absent from the conversation about them
nor from their minds; they witness the rise and fall of fortunes, the
fluctuation of incomes, the accidents to which the most cautious are
liable; and they live through those periodical rabies of the money
market known as panics, which focus the attention of the most careless.
Leisure they know to be merely an incident; they realize that, however
wise it may be to enjoy life while conditions are favourable, it is
equally wise to keep one’s energies polished and alert. And these
energies are born in the blood, which perhaps is the whole point.
There is, save for war and sport, little latent energy in the blood of
the young British aristocrat whose ancestors have too long been men of
leisure. He has no acquaintance with business, and as little premonition
of the serious responsibilities of life as of its ugly contacts.
Surrounded, sheltered, reared in an atmosphere of plenty, with expensive
habits, and self-denial no part of his creed (and the sons of peers
comparatively poor are no exceptions), he has during his father’s
lifetime all the advantages and refinements of the concentrated income
of the estates that go to the head of the house. Then comes the
inevitable moment when he is turned adrift, and confronted with the
problem of maintaining his legitimate position in the world upon a
younger son’s pittance. Readjustment taking place in few characters
except at the conclusion of a series of shocks, and as often not then,
he goes on spending mechanically, expecting that a new deus ex machinâ
will as inevitably appear as the regular if sometimes invisible stars.
Ordham had imbibed the half-admitted principle that those that toiled
existed merely by virtue of their usefulness to the great. It might be
necessary to throw a bone occasionally to prevent snarling, or even for
mere humanity’s sake; but that these underlings should presume to demand
a settlement of accounts at inconvenient seasons—the liberty would
hardly be greater did they solicit an invitation to dinner! That it was
dishonest to buy when you had no definite prospect of paying, Ordham
would have regarded as a principle of foreign growth, possibly American,
wholly plebeian. It was not a matter upon which he had ever wasted a
moment’s analysis; but possibly, had it been put to him with
uncompromising bluntness, he would have been startled and ashamed, for
he was not only kind and lavish, but without conscious arrogance; as for
the word “dishonesty” it never entered his conversation or head unless
some man of his class committed incomprehensible follies and went to
Wormwood Scrubbs.
But if he had not as yet given the question sufficient thought even to
defend himself on the ground that the tradespeople were more culpable
than the fatuous class whose reckless habits they encouraged that they
might suck their life blood undetected, he had long since begun to
resent his paltry income, and to wonder in what torpors Providence
drowsed when she permitted his useless miserly brother to come into the
world before himself. Still, he had felt the actual pinch very seldom,
for Bridgminster, under strong pressure, had twice paid his debts since
the death of his father, and his temperament and tastes saved him from
certain of the snares that are spread for young and engaging patricians.
But if too fastidious and too indifferent for dissipation, his sensuous
artistic pleasure-loving nature, his extravagant personal habits,—he
was one of the best-dressed young men in Europe,—and his careless
generosity, demanded the income of an heir-apparent, and his brother
incredibly failed to settle it upon him. Of the word “economy” he had
not the vaguest appreciation. He would no more have bought a cheap
edition of a favourite book than he would have worn ready-made clothing;
clear type, hand-made paper, and a chaste binding were as necessary to
his enjoyment as the contents they adorned, and he had already collected
a considerable library in three languages. In Paris he had kept house
with two brother secretaries, and, personally, a brougham and a riding
horse. He by no means despised cards and the turf. He had attended the
opera and theatre every night in the week, if only for an act, and he
had made a notable little collection of etchings, prints, and bibelôts.
Moreover, the three young men had done the Embassy credit by the
elegance and originality of their entertainments. When Lord Bridgminster
paid the last of the bills whose gracefully dissipated substance had
added lustre to his name, he announced in no mistakable terms that his
brother would hereafter live within his income or go to the devil. It is
possible that the reverberations of his wrath reached London, for it was
shortly after Ordham arrived in Munich that his tradespeople, whose
existence he had forgotten, began to send in their accounts. Ordham, of
course, had not taken his brother’s proclamation seriously;
nevertheless, he knew that he would have more trouble extracting money
in the future. He relied upon the blandishments of his mother, the only
member of the family tolerated by its present head.
Lady Bridgminster, still a woman of considerable fashion, was always
hard up, always in debt. She had been a beauty of the early Rossetti
type in her young womanhood; that great painter, indeed, had
immortalized her on canvas; and since her husband’s death what she had
saved in food, avoiding increase, she had spent on rare and lovely
fabrics, stones, and distracted dressmakers, that she might retain her
individual style and with it the illusion of youth. She gave her oldest
son much advice, but never a penny. The advice by no means was to reform
his habits, but to find him a rich wife. She was quite sensible of his
attractions and thought he should have established himself before this.
“Bridg is thirty-eight,” she had written him just as he was leaving
Paris. “As likely as not he will suddenly cease to be a misogynist at
forty, come up to London, and make a fool of himself; he would be putty
in the hands of the first clever mother of portionless daughters that
marked him as her own. Then where would be those golden apples you have
grown accustomed to regard as your own (in pickle)? I have always
believed them to be just a shelf too high, and that is the reason I have
been so firm about the diplomatic career; not only because it suits your
talents, but because it will be the means of dazzling some wealthy
American girl, to whom the prospect of a position in the diplomatic
circles of Europe will prove quite as alluring as a coronet—which, for
that matter, you may win for yourself. I prefer an American, because her
relatives will not be likely to live in England. An alliance with any of
the modern British tribes might prove extremely awkward; and who else
over here has any money—I mean for poor dowagers and younger sons? The
Americans, when well-bred, have such a charming independence, yet know
exactly how far to go. And then they are generous and would pay my
bills. Tradespeople are so tiresome. Don’t ask me, dear Johnny, for
money. As well ask courage of a mouse. If I were young enough, or did
not have six boys inadequately provided for, I might marry again. As it
is, my only present hope is in you. Too bad the other boys are not
girls. I should defy any man in England to escape me if I marked him for
my prey with a pink and white complexion on the hook.
“I don’t know what your opportunities will be in Munich, but at least
you will be able to live within your income for a bit; you could not
spend money in a dowdy old German town if you tried—at least no one
else could, but I rather fancy you could spend money in the canals of
Mars. If Munich has no magnet for the American heiress, try to pass your
examinations this year, that you may be launched the sooner.” Then
followed several pages of news about his brothers, one of whom was at
Sandhurst, one at Eton, the others with a tutor in the country, all
“growing at a frightful rate,” and costing every penny their father had
been able to set aside for their education. In a postscript she reverted
to the first theme. “Remember that you _must, must_ marry money. You are
the grand seigneur. You will never learn economy. And why should you?”
Ordham recalled this letter as he stared at the epistle of his tailor.
He longed to send the man a check accompanied by a curt withdrawal of
his patronage. This being out of the question, and Bridgminster
untractable for the present, his diplomacy conquered his indignation and
he wrote a polite note, promising to call and settle his account
“immediately upon his arrival in London.” Then, concluding upon further
reflection that the man was indulging in what the Americans called
bluff, he dismissed the matter into one of the water-tight compartments
of his mind, where it rubbed elbows in the dark with other episodes best
forgotten.
But the second evil was more pressing. For two weeks past, having
exhausted even his fertile ingenuity in excuses for not calling upon a
certain Frau von Wass, he had burned her letters unopened. She was a
Bulgarian, married these twenty years to a Bavarian Privy Councillor
(Geheimrath), barely tolerated in Munich society, which has little
hospitality for foreigners, and indulging her amorous propensities at
the constant risk of her position; the Müncheners, lenient to their own,
or to the outsider they embrace voluntarily, circle like lynxes in the
pathway of the intruder. Hélène Wass was both stupid and clever; the
well-trained instincts of the born adventuress taught her how to
entertain as well as to fascinate men; but she bored her own sex with
her egotism, her imaginary complaints, her tirades against her husband,
servants, enemies, and antagonized them by the bewildering variety and
grandeur of her Paris costumes, her ostentation, and her conquests. Of
plebeian origin, but, with the external traits of heredity corrected by
a ten years’ sojourn in a convent in Vienna, determined to have
admiration, excitement, and money at any cost, her father having lost
his little fortune in speculation, it is possible that she would have
drifted into the half-world had not an anxious relative persuaded her to
marry the wealthy and respectable Herr Geheimrath von Wass, although he
was thirty years her senior and already fat. She met him while visiting
a school friend in Hungary, where he owned an estate.
The commonplace deceit of the girl quickly developed into the subtlety
of the woman, and she found no difficulty in managing a husband whose
ruling passion was vanity. She found Munich as dull, narrow, and
provincial as only an exclusive court society can be; but she consoled
herself with the assurance that she extracted more out of it than any
woman who courtesied to the King by divine right. She had loved much,
but had never been tempted to leave her dull important old husband, and
had long since forgotten the dreams of her convent days, when she had
alternately yearned for the honourable proposals of an archduke and the
untrammelled life of a cocotte. In all the eminent women of the
half-world there is something of the grande dame, and doubtless, had
fate, at the critical moment, dealt them a rich and powerful husband,
they would have become equally distinguished members of society. So it
was, at least, with Hélène Wass. Although Munich never ceased to harp
upon the suggestion of the demimondaine in her dress, her beauty, her
very essence,—whatever they may have meant by that,—she was now a very
great little lady, and no inferior ever made a mistake in approaching
her.
She was thirty-nine, and, without artifice, looked quite ten years
younger. Her light blue eyes, sometimes insolently bright, often soft
and languid, so thickly lashed that they looked made up; her abundant
hair, of a rich hot brown, arranged with apparent carelessness about her
pale eager often excited, little face; her slender, tiny, stately, and
always smartly attired figure—composed a magnet for the eyes of men
wherever she appeared. She had fascinated Ordham, always on the lookout
for the uncommon, not only by her odd beauty, her sprightliness, her
wild morbid moods, but by her subtle appeal to his sympathies. Far too
clever to practise upon men’s senses alone, she had quickly discovered
that the young Englishman was chivalrous, possibly sentimental, and, in
the outer wrappings of his heart, indubiously soft. Unlike Mrs. Cutting,
she did not divine the hardness at the core, that hardness which is the
inevitable result of waiting for dead men’s shoes, of resentment against
fate for putting the shoes on the wrong feet, of belonging to a class
which secretly believes itself to be above all laws.
But she quickened his sympathies so effectually that he had suddenly
found her in his arms, gasping out her hatred of life, her frantic
desire to die at once. He had been stirred, flattered, delighted; but
all these emotions lasted little over a fortnight. He soon chafed at the
halter round his neck, and endeavoured to escape from it without
wounding the susceptibilities of a lady to whom he was still young
enough to be grateful. To escape, however, he was determined; not only
did he shrink from her tropical storms, but—and for once her astuteness
had failed her—he had no mind to be at any woman’s beck and call. She
had sent him summonses at all hours of the day and night, and forced him
to break more than one engagement he would have preferred to keep.
Courteous diplomacy failing, he had been driven to ignore her existence.
Her present command, however, he could not afford to disregard, for it
arrived in a telegram, and announced that if he did not call upon her at
three o’clock she would call upon him at the Legation at four.
He had a bad two hours with Fräulein Lutz, and was so dull and absent at
luncheon that although there were guests he had no difficulty in making
his escape. But he lingered in his own room, cursing his folly, for half
an hour longer; then, offering a cab driver double fare to hasten,
managed to arrive at the “palace” of the eminent Geheimrath at a quarter
to four.
Frau Hélène, familiar with his habits, had not expected him earlier, and
had preserved the equanimity necessary to the rôle she was determined to
play. Instead of being conducted to the Pompadour boudoir, where he
expected to find her in negligée and tears, he was ushered into the
great Empire drawing-room, where she stood severely attired in a black
velvet gown, whose train gave her fictitious inches and accented the
proud mask into which she had set her mobile little face. She saw at a
glance that he was very white and nervous, but more dignified, more
remote, than ever, and only long experience, and the cool brain of the
born huntress, enabled her to restrain her passion. She completely
disconcerted him by putting out her hand and smiling brightly.
“That was a wild telegram,” she said, in her soft, somewhat thick voice.
“But—let us sit quite in the middle of the room where we cannot be
overheard—I felt that I must see you before I go away.”
“You are going away?” Ordham felt like a prisoner reprieved, but
employed the tone of polite regret.
“My husband is so ill (this, of course, is a profound secret) that I
have persuaded him to go to his estate in Hungary and die in peace. Not
that he has the least idea he must die, poor old dear; we call it
resting for a time. As you may fancy, dear Mr. Ordham, I have few
regrets in leaving a city whose insults and slights I have been forced
to endure for fifteen years—I was married on my sixteenth birthday”
(Ordham had looked her up also in the _Graf Buch_), “and now—well—”
He drew a long breath and clenched his hands. She continued:
“I felt that I _must_ see you before I left. I telegraphed because I
felt sure that you had ceased to open my notes—”
“Oh! How can you say such a thing?”
“You were quite right. I have done the same thing myself. But many, many
times! When a woman of my age makes a fool of herself, she does not
deserve half the consideration which you have shown to me. Seven years
may be very few as time goes, but they are an eternity when a woman
commits the folly of loving a man younger than herself—”
“Oh! How can you say such things? How can you—” Ordham, who had been
prepared for worse, felt as if his brain were being flicked with red-hot
whips. He sprang to his feet and strode up and down the room, longing to
tear his hair, to bolt from the house. Frau von Wass continued:
“Allow me to see myself as I should see another woman in the same
circumstances. And while it has not been a happy experience, it has been
salutary. Of course, I knew, when you turned as sulky as Adonis and as
polite as an unfaithful husband, that it was all over. But—being a
woman—”
“I am so sorry!”
“You say that in precisely the same tone when you forget an appointment
or are late for dinner.” She spoke with soft humour. “But I did not send
for you to reproach you, but for two reasons: to express my regret that
I was so short-sighted as to sacrifice friendship to love, and to ask
you to renew the first delightful relationship during the short time I
shall remain in Munich.”
“Why not?” he asked eagerly, in his immense relief. He had found her
wholly charming during their earlier acquaintance; and was quite willing
to obliterate the entr’acte, were only she. He took a straight chair
opposite her, and did not even look at the little white hands lying so
helplessly on the black velvet lap. He shrank from her, and she guessed
this, and for the moment was filled with such a rage of hatred that she
would have stuck a knife into him had one been at hand. As it was she
dropped her eyelashes, and permitted her red lips to quiver. Then she
looked him full in the face and said quietly:
“It is too kind of you to believe that you can stand me for a fortnight
longer. You are safe. You gave me a blow on the heart that has paralyzed
it—no! do not get up again. I am not reproaching you, merely stating
the case, quite dispassionately, as you can see. Love is a sealed book
to me from this time forth, and, far from feeling reproachful,—ah! dear
Mr. Ordham,—I am grateful. Just so often as a woman loves does she die.
She comes to life again in the course of time, but with less and less of
energy, illusion, her original power to love and be happy. I sometimes
think that love is a congestion of a spot in the brain round the image
of the man, which stares at her waking and sleeping, never to be
banished from the tortured consciousness till Time has drained the blood
from that little spot. And then it withers! And the best man on earth
could never give life to that dead spot again. I am telling all this to
your curious analytical mind, knowing of old how such things interest
you, and being quite beyond all sensation myself. Now,” she concluded,
rising like royalty and holding out her hand, which he took limply, “I
shall let you go—how cold your hand is!”
“I am congealed! You have made me utterly miserable.”
“Not utterly, but a little. You deserve that much. Poor boy!” Her accent
was that of the indulgent woman of the world. “Your education has begun
too early. Nature did you an ill turn in giving you a brain and a charm
out of all proportion to your years. You ought to be amusing yourself
with nice English girls” (she knew that he hated English girls), “not
playing up to a lot of European flirts a dozen years older than
yourself. Be thankful that you fell into my hands. You are now as free
as air once more—only—you will come here often this last fortnight?”
“Of course.” He shook hands with her once more and escaped from the
house. As he opened the gate, absorbed in his miserable reflections, and
quite unaware of his white dejected face, he did not notice a carriage
that passed, nor that the occupant leaned forward suddenly; but a moment
later he vaguely recognized the brougham and liveries of Countess Tann.
Within the magnificent Empire salon, which had tempted more than one
member of the royal family, upon whom restrictions as to quarterings did
not sit as heavily as upon the anointed, Hélène Wass sat with clenched
hands and contorted face. She had fought down her passion at the risk of
a fainting fit, but, well as she thought she knew herself, she had not
guessed how difficult it would be, hardly what proportions her passion
had assumed. She had not had the faintest intention of leaving Munich;
her object had been to disarm her episodical lover, as cold and restive
as a young girl, and with other methods and other arts win him again.
Failing that, she would indulge in the doubtful joy of his mere
friendship. But now she discarded not only the last alternative, but the
waiting policy.