atmosphere of intellectual remoteness in which he seemed to dwell, and
which, combined with his dignity and fine manners, made him the most
finished type of the traditional aristocrat she had ever met. It was
when she realized that she might never penetrate those outer envelopes
of gayety and candour with which he concealed the intense reserve of his
nature, that she had fallen genuinely in love with him; and the love of
a woman of that sort is far more dangerous than her mere passion.
To-day, as he had sat in his straight chair, with his hands resting
lightly, yet with a suggestion of weight, on his lap, completely at his
ease in spite of his distress, his watchful brain throwing an almost
visible shadow over his youth, she had become violently conscious that
to possess this man wholly she would see the earth crumble under her
feet. It was the first time in her life that she had considered
sacrificing the world for any man. Whether she loved Ordham more than
she had ever loved before, she could not be sure, for when a woman has
loved many times memory is the last thing she cultivates; but love,
heretofore, had not demanded sacrifice as a part of its programme. Nor
had she ever felt quite so sick of Munich, its passive impregnability,
the eternal weary round of official dinners she was forced, as the wife
of a Geheimrath, to give and attend; the husband, whom she had expected,
when she married him, to leave her a young widow, had never seemed so
hopelessly hale, the future had never looked so short.
She tore and gnawed her handkerchief until her gown was strewn with
lint, but her brain worked clearly. Only a brief while of self-control
and she felt positive that she could reawaken his interest. Then she
would force him to compromise her in such a manner that he could not
desert her when she fled from Munich. Six months at her villa in Italy,
and then a quiet wedding; and in addition to owning the unfortunate
youth, body and soul, she should enjoy a fair prospect of blinding the
world to her indiscretion with the coronet of Bridgminster. So far, she
had had no occasion to appeal to the young Englishman’s honour or
chivalry, but let her be able to demonstrate to him that, through the
mighty passion he had awakened, her life was in ruins, and he would
marry her beyond the shadow of a doubt. The opposition of his family
would merely crystallize that obstinacy that showed its grim face now
and again amidst the vacillations of a character still immature. To the
young man’s ruined career and maimed life, to his possibly broken heart,
she gave not a thought; or had she, it would have made no difference in
her plans. There is no adventuress so utterly unscrupulous as the
society cocotte, with her demands so much more complicated than those of
the women of commerce, particularly when her sated senses are
electrified for the last time. Hélène Wass knew that she should never
love again, and for love and the pleasure of spending money she had
lived since the convent doors had closed behind her. Money of her own
she now had in abundance, for her father had speculated rationally
during the later years of his life and had left her, his sole heir, a
considerable fortune. Once her lips gave a satirical twist as the
question obtruded itself: should she have had the courage to sacrifice
all for love on a younger son’s meagre income? Then she felt something
like a pang of gratitude that there was no obstacle to her headlong
abandonment to a passion, which, whatever suffering and mortification it
entailed, gave her back her youth, awoke once more in her weary brain
the power to dream, to vizualize a future. Years before, it seemed to
her, as she sat there and heard the heavy feet of her old husband in the
hall, she had resigned herself to the interminable blankness of the
present.
VII
THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS
Ordham was unstrung and miserable for quite twelve hours. He went that
night to a rout at one of the embassies, and, dully alive to the
paltriness of life in general, and the absurdities of small courts in
particular, he pushed past a group of astonished royalties with as
little ceremony as had they been hucksters and the occasion Lord Mayor’s
Day in London. He managed to avoid speaking to every one he knew; but at
the end of an hour, realizing that he could no longer ignore Princess
Nachmeister or Frau von Wass, he left the house. In no mood for the
student cafés, with their careless gayety, their atmosphere so dense
with smoke that the clusters of caps on the “trees” were mere blurs of
colour, he strolled into Maximilia, a restaurant fashionable during the
day and early evening on account of its exceptional cooking, but rather
more interesting toward midnight and after. There was little night life
in Munich, outside of the student haunts, but Maximilia was a favourite
resort with the young bloods that had seen enough of other capitals to
scorn the bourgeois hours of the true Münchener. Occasionally there was
a dashing stranger to ogle, but few ladies of the lower ten thousand
found Munich worthy of their enterprise. The pretty waitresses,
actresses, chorus girls, then, as now, had each her patron, for even the
young Bavarian officer is of a domestic turn; and the floating tribe
received such cursory attention that they had been known to cut short
their visits with anathema. But the officers often brought their gaudy
young friends to Maximilia after twelve, and it amused Ordham,
interested in every phase of life, to sit and watch this honest German
attempt to feel as sophisticated as the Parisian.
And only in Munich, perhaps, a city too artistic to have a moral left,
would army officers and their almost respectable partners rub elbows, in
the best restaurant in the town, with painted young men come on the same
quest as the floating female. There were three of these young men here
to-night, all members of noble families, who had neither the energy nor
the ambition in their worn-out blood to cross the ocean and seek to
replenish their equally exhausted coffers in the manly avocations of
waiter and riding master. Ordham usually watched them with a mild
contempt, for they were of his class and he felt sorry for them. But
to-night, as he saw the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished
houses in Europe, a young man with something of Apollo in his slender
grace, and a face of perfect beauty, despite its signal-flag of paint,
enter, seat himself, and cast about the room a slow, anxious, appraising
glance, Ordham, depressed as he already was, felt the very walls of his
soul shudder. How much better fitted was he to cope with the grim
problem of mere existence than these unfortunates? He had a fine
physique, but his indolent habits, long indulged, had made nearly every
form of exertion distasteful to him. Individual as he was, he yet
belonged to that strictly modern type of English aristocrat impatiently
dubbed “literary” by those that shoot and ride and eat and drink in the
good old fashion of their ancestors. These intellectual young scions,
without any peculiar talent or the obligations of poverty, too modest or
too indolent to dream of enriching the arts they love, give themselves
up more and more to the refined pleasures and sensibilities of the
intellect, less and less to the pursuits that keep the blood swift and
red in the veins. With many this attitude begins in affectation, even
though as often it develops into something like a vocation; but in the
case of Ordham the subtler chords of Life’s big orchestra, forever
inaudible to the swarm, had allured him since he could remember. If
there was one reason more than another why Lord Bridgminster disliked
and disapproved of his heir presumptive, it was because of Ordham’s
candid aversion from “long tiresome meaningless days behind a gun,”
“tearing across country at the tail of a frantic fox,” “wolfing food
that would have stupefied the brain of a day labourer.” But if the life
he led was set to the tune of his temperament, he was forced to admit
that he paid toll in the depletion of his physical vigours, for at this
age, at all events, he should have been developing his muscles and
enriching his blood in the open air.
To-night he felt more tired than usual, and as he stared blankly at the
young nobleman to whom the centuries had given beauty and breeding in
their highest perfection, and a sufficient amount of brain to make him
something of a social star in every capital he visited, Ordham was
driven to review his own resources. His income was inadequate for his
mere needs, much less for his tastes, and some unthinkable reverse of
fortune might deprive him of it altogether. Upon what, then, could he
rely, not only to supply his material wants, but those others, which,
never having been hungry, he believed to be far more indispensable were
life to be tolerated at all. He was a lover of all the arts and a pupil
of none. His reading was wide, he was fastidious in his manner of
expressing himself; but what his fellow-students had learned out of
books or in lecture rooms he had but the vaguest idea. The mere thought
of roughing it in any of the colonies was as repugnant as of marrying a
rich woman devoid of charm. “The City,” into which he knew that many of
his kind disappeared, he visualized as a maelstrom of high hats and
office stools without backs. He had an aristocratic distaste for
business, not out of snobbery, of which he was innocent, but because of
a belief, both hazy and firm, that it commanded the development of the
meaner faculties, that only the cynically dishonest emerged from the
gorged arena with fortune in their disfigured hands. To-night, however,
he recalled, what he had practically forgotten, that the moneyed
foundations of the house of Ordham had been laid anew but four
generations since by the desperate heir of the ancient but impoverished
family: he had built a textile factory on one end of his Yorkshire
property. This enterprise prospering, he had built another, and another,
until he was enabled to buy back twenty thousand of the acres
confiscated during the Civil Wars, restore Ordham Castle, unroofed and
sacked by Cromwell, and furnish it with all the horrors in horsehair,
rep, mahogany, and meaningless bronze which preceded the crusade of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He then found leisure to occupy his seat in
the House of Lords, developed other useful talents, and was raised from
the barony of Ordham to the earldom of Bridgminster. Since then there
had always been an Ordham in Parliament, but the majority of the family
were given over to the enjoyment of sport, and were noted mainly for
their selection of beautiful wives and handsome husbands, rarely
unendowed with the minor blessings of wealth and race. They had
forgotten the origin of the factories still flourishing on the Yorkshire
estate, but now far removed from covers and fields; to-night, however,
Ordham, facing the contingency of Bridgminster’s marriage, or his own
failure to fall in love with a girl whose riches would be a fair
exchange for the position he could give her, bitterly envied his wise
and possibly unscrupulous ancestor, and would have welcomed similar
outcroppings in his own brain.
Or suppose he married for mere love, a folly to which all young men were
liable, and, upon his ridiculous income, found himself with a family
upon his hands? This, however, he felt to be such a violent strain upon
his imagination that he dismissed it, but found no consolation in the
prospect of keeping up appearances, much less enjoying life, on a
diminishing credit. He was too young, and too accustomed to see the
creases of life magically smoothed, to remain dispirited for long, no
matter what the combining causes; but during this hour he sat plunged in
a melancholy so profound that for years after its bare memory appalled
him.
There is a fine line between hypercivilization and degeneracy, too fine
to be a barrier for unwary feet: but the natural nobility and refinement
of Ordham’s mind, combined with its higher activities and poise, had
brought him up short. No matter what his straits, even with his somewhat
cynical attitude that all forms of vice were too inevitable to bother
about, he was incapable of falling to the horrid level of these young
continental nobles. But of what else might he not be capable? As his
imagination, morbidly active, pictured him hopelessly involved, without
a plank to grasp at, he suddenly swore an oath that he would never go
under, no, not if he sacrificed all belonging to him, and every canon
that society had invented for her own defence and deluded man into
believing was handed down from on high. Ordham, fastidiously bred, and
reared above the temptations that men of lower degree must reckon with
in their daily struggle, was one of the most finished results of those
same immemorial laws; but in this sudden vision of the horrors of
poverty, of the terrors and temptations of life, they fell to ashes, and
left him part savage, partly as cool, cynical, and unscrupulous, as only
the supercivilized can be. He would never go under, never come down one
step from the high position to which he had been born. If wishes could
have slain Lord Bridgminster, he would have died that night in his
Spartan bed. Ordham suddenly wondered if he were capable of killing his
brother. He glanced about the restaurant once more, his gaze lingering
on the gloomy face of the last of the line that had been illustrious in
the history of Europe since it had emerged from the yoke of the Huns. He
set his teeth and swore that he could, and without a scruple or a
regret. He would never go under, never, never, never. But it was a
solution by no means to his taste, and he left the restaurant abruptly
and went for a walk of unaccustomed activity in the Englischergarten.
When he reached his bed in the small hours his equilibrium was restored,
and he reflected with amazement and horror upon the vitalities that had
flourished unsuspected in the depths of his being. But his ego was
somewhat excited and fascinated at the discovery, and he fell asleep
wishing that he could talk it all over with Margarethe Styr.
VIII
PURPLE LILIES AND BITTER FRUIT
That night Styr sang _Isolde_. On the morning following, Ordham sent her
a box of purple lilies. He expected no acknowledgment, for he knew that
she ignored all offerings; but in the course of the afternoon he
received a note which banished evil memories, including his struggles
with Fräulein Lutz.
“DEAR MR. ORDHAM: I feel Isolde herself with these purple lilies
in my hands. She was a great woman and no other colour is worthy
of her. I have half promised to sing at Princess Nachmeister’s
concert to-morrow night, and now I have a fancy to cover myself
with these lilies and sing the _Liebestod_. One needs
inspiration of an uncommon sort when, unsupported by orchestra
and footlights, one feels as if one might founder any moment in
a sea of impertinent eyes. Your eyes, at least, are kind and
encouraging. I will sing to you—for once—in memory of a
picturesque hour designed by a king, and one of that unhappy
monarch’s rare triumphs.
“Thank you so much!
“MARGARETHE TANN.”
This note so flattered and delighted him that he went voluntarily to
call on Frau von Wass, and further beatified by finding her surrounded,
made himself so charming to her guests that although, in spite of a
murmured invitation, he would not linger, Hélène was tempted to believe
that he kindled alone in the light of her smiles.
But he had no intention of bestowing a thought upon her except when
circumstances forced him into her society. She had craved no more than
her due, and for a fortnight longer she should have the benefit of all
the courtesy he could summon, but not a shadow of superfluous attention.
Little dreaming of what was pickling for him, he had already consigned
her to the past, and the only wish she inspired was the expiration of
the fortnight. He was too indifferent constitutionally to speculate upon
her sudden change of front, and too inexperienced, despite his
cleverness, to be the match of any adventuress who wore the habit of his
own world. With those profound and haunted abysses of wicked women he
had had as little contact as with that practical side of life which
tapers the wits and sharpens the vision. Ten years hence and the Hélène
Wasses would be read and disposed of in short order; to-day he was but
the good-natured, honourable, gullible young English aristocrat, who has
been taken in time out of mind, and will continue to be until England is
Americanized.
On the following evening he took his chair in the concert room of the
Nachmeister Palast with an inner ferment so successfully concealed that
his face was quite expressionless. For once he did not smile into every
pair of eyes turned upon him. He thought of little but the note of
Margarethe Styr, which he had read several times. Whatever her motive,
he knew that a great compliment had been paid him; and although a too
kindly fate disposed him to take most compliments as a matter of course,
and humility disturbed him at rare intervals, to-night he was inclined
to be not only exultant but grateful.
The immense room, with its old crimson brocades, its heavy dingy rococo
gilding, its cosmopolitan assemblage, was an imposing sight, and Ordham
was still young enough to love society. Parties at Excellenz
Nachmeister’s were seldom dowdy (unless too many royalties were
present), and when, as to-night, the entire diplomatic corps was bidden,
as well as many army officers and high officials, the men, in their
beautiful uniforms, their orders and sashes, made an even more dazzling
impression than the women. Uniforms at least were always new, and gowns
did duty in aristocratic Munich for many seasons, regardless of changes
in style. Waists too were large, and square, and soft; but the materials
that covered them, whether old or new, were very rich, and jewels
conceal many defects. A few besides Hélène Wass could be relied upon to
display the fashions of Paris, and the women of the diplomatic corps
were always resplendent.
When Princess Nachmeister received in this room she wore a powdered wig
and a brocade as stiff as a hoopskirt, consequently was less of an
eyesore than usual. Ordham had murmured his compliments, then after a
hasty glance about—he arrived late—taken an empty chair between two
people he did not know. Frau von Wass, a siren to-night in pale green
tulle, water-lilies, and many pearls, left her seat, took a chair
conspicuously apart, drew her eyelids into bows, and sent him a
quiverful of arrows. All in vain.
A number of distinguished amateurs played and warbled brilliantly; for
in the most musical city of northern Europe no one dared offend the
hypercritical ear with a second-rate performance. Possart recited from
_Manfred_. There was a small orchestra, and a tenor from Paris. At the
end of two hours, when even the most artistic were thinking wistfully of
supper and motion, there was a sharp rustle throughout the _Festsaal_, a
deep intaking of breath: little Baron Walleypeg of the crooked smile had
announced that Countess Tann had arrived at the last moment and would
sing. (But he made the announcement in redundant phrases and tones of
emotion, for he was a German, and he cherished a hopeless passion for
Die Styr.)
She appeared suddenly on the platform at the head of the room and
received a demonstration. Not only was she the artist best beloved in
Munich, but surprise shattered the languor appropriate to so fashionable
an occasion.
Ordham saw his lilies. They were in her hair, on her breast, on the
front of her skirt. But what diverted his attention from this expected
compliment was the surprise afforded by her evening gown. He had seen
her only in the heavy white draperies affected by the heroines of
Wagnerian romance, and in the still more classic costume she had worn at
Neuschwanstein; he had supposed her to be a massive woman built for such
rôles, and the more untuned to private life. To-night she wore a closely
fitting modish gown of maize-coloured tulle, in which the purple lilies
seemed to grow. Her neck and arms were uncovered, every line of her
figure was salient. She was almost slender, clean-limbed, with a low
small bust, and hips barely accentuated. Her shoulders sloped
gracefully, her waist was so round that it looked small if it was not.
Ordham was familiar, of course, with her long round throat, the famous
arms and hands, and he marvelled that he had not taken for granted that
the rest of her figure was built in harmony. Then he wondered what part
that incomparable form, which might have risen from the mould of
Messalina, had played in her unhappy past; and fancied he understood why
she veiled it from the public eye with so complete an indifference.
Again he felt sorry for her, and more determined than ever to know her.
She wore her heavy dark hair in a low knot. Her skin, ivory-white, had
the luminous effect he had often noted on the stage and missed at
Neuschwanstein; her eyes were sullen and heavy, she held her head very
high. To the surprise of her audience she sang them several folk-songs.
When she paused, there was a spontaneous outburst of approval, then a
vocal demand for more. The applause subsided, and as she smiled and
bowed, they took for granted that their desire for these old songs of
their hearts was about to be gratified.
She burst softly into the _Liebestod_. Her face remained as immobile as
ivory, but she threw the soul of Isolde into her voice. It floated
upward in the first rapture of delirium, and few but saw the wild face
of the dying queen rise above the body of Tristan, the castle towers,
the dead Kurwenal, the weeping figures of King Mark and Brängane, the
army of retainers in the background. Ordham, at least, shared Isolde’s
vision of the valiant soul that had replaced the clay, as she sang, in
tones heart-breaking in their sweet frenzy:
“Seht ihr’s Freunde?
Säh’t ihr’s nicht?”
As her voice, rising on a higher and higher note, clear and sustained in
the triumph of the seer, the heaven-given vision of the woman to whom
her lost has been restored, it seemed the golden pathway upon which her
own soul mounted to disappear among the stars. When she opened the
flood-gates many gasped and wept; and Ordham, petrified, wondered if all
the passion of the world were being swept out into eternity by that soul
of Isolde, whom nothing but the passion of death could satisfy.
The voice, remote, dying, drawn to a mere crystal thread, sank away on
the last lines:
“ertrinken,
versinken,
unbewusst—
höchste Lust!”
A great woman and her passion were dead and the world was poorer.
The applause was long and Styr was forced to return and bow many times;
but when Baron Walleypeg announced that she would not sing again, the
audience rose, and Ordham went in search of her. She had not glanced in
his direction, but he chose to believe that she had kept her word and
sung to him. He found her near the door of the supper room, surrounded
by so dense a crowd of men and women that he could not approach within
two feet of her. But she smiled at him, and a few moments later, when
there was a break in the ranks, extended her hand. When he would have
lifted it to his lips in the German fashion, which he privately thought
beneath his dignity unless the hand were young and shapely, she shook
his warmly, as if to remind him that she was an American. It was
pleasant to feel a hearty clasp again, and he smiled with quick
response, but asked her formally if it did not tire her to sing so
often. She replied that nothing tired her; and then her ear was claimed
by a personage in a light blue uniform embellished with many orders,
whom she addressed as “Königliche Hoheit.” It was impossible to
interrupt her conversation with a prince of the blood, but Ordham stood
his ground and glanced about idly. Nothing could be more formal than
Princess Nachmeister’s dinners, and nothing less so than her suppers,
when her guests, presumably, had had enough of the straight and narrow
chairs of Louis XIV. Only the unfortunate royalties were marshalled to
an alcove and seated about a table on a dais; the other guests stood,
sat on little sofas, grouped about small tables, as they listed; the
women waited upon, not only by the lackeys, but by the young officers
and diplomatic attachés. Now and again the imposing and portly, who no
doubt commanded the incessant service of their hausfraus at home, were
moved to demonstrate their youthful agility.