Oregon, intending to return in the same leisurely manner by the northern
route from Seattle. We took the steamer from Portland. It is an infamous
piece of coast, called, indeed, the ‘graveyard of the Pacific,’ but the
weather was fair, and as there are only twenty or thirty wrecks a year,
everybody in that optimistic section of the country expects to be among
the favoured. Before night one of those terrible winds of the North
Pacific suddenly descended upon us. I had often crossed the Atlantic,
but I had never heard such a wind, seen such waves. Only the old phrase,
‘mountains high,’ gives any impression the waves made upon me, at least.
Nearly everybody was ill. I remained on deck, enjoying the storm, the
roaring wind, the great green glassy waves with their soft white combs.
There was no rain, and the sky, as we rolled about, seemed to shake out
the folds of a spangled flag. I soon noticed an athletic young fellow
trying to stride up and down the deck. He gave it up after a time, and,
having helped me to my feet, after I had gone for the third time into
the scuppers, we fell into conversation. He was a Harvard man, had been
visiting relatives in San Francisco, and was on his way to British
Columbia for some shooting before returning to his home in Boston. He
confessed that he had cultivated sport to such an extent that he had
neglected his studies, and intended to take a post-graduate course. I do
not recall anything else that he said, but he looked so young, so
strong, so clean and thoroughbred, that I liked him, as I have always
liked the few of his type that I have met. After a time he advised me to
go to my room and get some sleep. I bade him good-night; and although my
small state-room was close and crowded, I soon fell asleep. I knew
nothing more until we were on the rocks.”
She flung out those famous expressive hands of hers. “That awful scene
of confusion! The sharp animal-like cries of the women! The hoarse yells
and curses of the men! The frantic rush! The horrible darkness—for
every light went out. Finally I found myself on deck—swept there, I
suppose, by that fighting mass of people. But it was all unreal at
first, like a scene in the theatre. I remember hearing the leading lady
sob: ‘Oh, Gawd, I’ll never do it no more, I swear I won’t!’ and
laughing.
“Then I saw that the atmosphere was impenetrable. I learned afterward
that the captain had entered those terrible straits in a dense fog. And
then I heard the grinding and pounding of the ship on the rocks, the
roar and hiss of breakers. The signal gun scattered the shrieks that
never stopped for a second. The ship gave a violent lurch. I saw a green
wall rushing through the fog and flung myself face downward, throwing my
arms about a smokestack. When the wave had receded and I recovered my
breath, I found myself alone and saw dark objects tossing on the water.
“There were no more screams, but there were other sounds—I cannot
describe them! Suddenly I felt myself lifted up and a voice said: ‘Come
quickly. There will be another wave. And we are sinking.’ I recognized
the voice of the young Bostonian. He half carried me to the top of the
pilot-house, where a few others were huddled. The fog lifted. I could
see still others clinging to the higher parts of the boat, but nearly
every one had been washed overboard. By this time lights were flashing
all along the shore, and we expected every moment that boats would put
out to our rescue. But the seas were running at a frightful rate. I
heard later that more than one boat was launched, but unable to fight
the energy of those heaving mountains.
“One end of the steamer was below water. The other was pounding
horribly; we merely waited for her to free herself and plunge to the
bottom. More than once she slipped—twisted—When morning came the
pilot-house was but a few feet above water. My young friend lashed me to
a mast. How I climbed it with him I cannot tell you, but I did, and was
firmly tied. He stood on a rung just below me and held my hand. He had
already wrapped his coat about me. There was no more rope, even for him.
I saw the others washed away, one by one. They went in silence. At first
I implored him not to leave me to die alone, and he promised that he
would not. But finally I begged him to try to swim to the shore. He was
so strong, and we now could see people running up and down, a boat
launching, even fancied we heard cries of encouragement. Surely they
would manage to pick him up even although they might not reach the ship.
But he would not. He said that a man could die only once, and that he
should be ashamed to call himself an American if he deserted a woman in
an hour like that.
“It will always be incredible to me that they did not make a more
persistent effort to save us than they did. And his life was worth
saving! The day passed. We saw a steam tug, evidently telegraphed for;
but after hanging about for an hour it went away again without making
any attempt to approach us. Another night passed. The gale did not
diminish for an instant. I was stiff, frozen, hungry, a mere bundle of
automatic nerves. Will, memories, reason, all that make the individual,
might have gone to find a grave for my tortured body. But I was safe so
long as the ship gripped the rock. With him it was a different matter.
He was strong and young, but he was not a god, and he was not lashed to
the mast. He spoke to me from time to time, but his hold on my hand
relaxed more than once, and I knew that he was in agony.
“I fell asleep. When I awakened, in a moment or two, no doubt, I called
to him in terror, for, had he too slept, he must have fallen and been
washed away. He answered me in a moment, and then I roused myself from
my lethargy and talked constantly. He held out till morning. Almost with
the dawn I saw a glittering green mountain, that seemed to smoke like a
volcano, rise above the ship, bend down, slip under my friend, roar
again and recede, holding triumphantly aloft that straight young figure.
For the first time in my life I forgot myself and wept for the fate of
another. Then I set my teeth in the face of that demoniacal storm and
swore that I would not be conquered. I had survived Life. I would defy
the mere elements. I thought of my voice, the voice my master had begged
me, literally on his knees, to consecrate to the greatest rôles ever
written. Sometimes he had thrilled me with an appetite for fame,
independence, but intermittently; perhaps because, although I had read
those rôles again and again, I had never heard them, above all never
known the ecstasy of singing them (he made me grind at tone production,
scales, difficult exercises); perhaps because I was by no means giving
my life to music alone. But now, abruptly, the artist awoke to life.
Alone in that raging waste of water, with death tugging at my very feet
and screaming in my ears, I was born into the religion of art, received
the sign that I had been chosen to worship at that shrine, to be blest,
to be lifted to its highest places—I—I—of all women! I saw far beyond
those hungry waters. I no longer regretted my friend. What mattered
it—the death of one mere mortal? I heard the cries of the Valkyrs as
they rode across the sky on their winged horses. The black clouds rolled
apart and I saw Wotan on his throne in Walhalla, the daughters of Erda,
my sisters, about him . . . they besought him. . . . I could see the
streaming of their hair, the flashing of their helmets and shields, as
they ran back and forth, leaned over the ramparts to encourage me with
their cries: ‘Hi—ya—ha! Ho—yo—to—ho!’ I was Brünhilde on her rock.
The waves were fire. Ah!” Styr flung her arms upward, her body backward,
swaying from side to side. “I shall never have such exquisite delusions
again. Never! Never! For one hour—or was it one moment?—I was a
goddess. It was no delusion! I was Brünhilde, awaking from a sleep, not
of a generation, but of the centuries that had gone since she rode into
the funeral pyre. I try to recall that ecstasy on the stage. Some of it
comes back, but not all! Not all! I have a fancy that Death will bring
it in his hand when he comes again.”
She dropped her arms, and her groping hand closed over the back of a
chair. “I remember nothing of the rescue. I awoke in bed. They told me
that I had slept for two days and nights, that I had been lashed to the
mast for forty hours, alone for ten. They asked my name. I gave the
first insignificant combination that entered my head. Charitable people
advanced the money for my return to New York. I had money of my own
there, for I had made profitable investments, when the whim for playing
with gold instead of spending it had seized me. I revealed myself to no
one but my banker and my singing teacher, and lived in obscure lodgings
until I was pronounced fit to go to Bayreuth and ask The Master to
listen to my voice. So far as any one else that had ever heard of me
knew, I was dead, dead with the rest of that miserable company. And I
was dead—for must not one die to be born again?”
XI
THE DIPLOMATIC TEMPERAMENT
Ordham had been leaning against the wall, staring at her, carried out of
himself. He had heard the roar of the waters, the fragment of ship
pounding on the rocks, seen the solitary woman lashed to the mast for an
eternity, witnessed the tragedy of the gallant youth in whose death he
felt a poignant sense of loss. Once or twice he shivered, as when Styr
screamed on the stage, or her voice seemed to come from some far hidden
bower, dying of languor, in the love duet of _Tristan und Isolde_.
She passed through an archway and lit a lamp. As she turned and motioned
him to a chair she thought she had never seen any one look so young.
Every memory in his brain but this last might have withered and floated
away. He recovered himself and followed her into what appeared to be a
long gallery used as a living room.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I think he deserved that one man
should honour his memory. Why don’t you sit on this comfortable divan?”
He arranged the pillows about her, took a chair close by, and accepted a
cigarette; which, he felt, he had never needed more. She did not smoke,
but sat staring straight before her. Her eyes seemed to burn her white
face, but her repose was absolute. In a few moments she spoke abruptly.
“Twice I have lifted the curtain for you. I hope I never may again. It
is not good for me and can be of no use to you. All that know me here
are concerned only with my present—”
“Yes, with Die Styr, not Margarethe Styr.”
“I have little private life, but you seem to have been projected into
it, and you may remain if you think it would interest you to come here
and talk to me occasionally.”
He did not answer her, for he was wondering again if he wanted to know
her or not. Was not his personal experience of this famous woman already
romantic and adventurous enough to satisfy any man not in love? Whatever
it may have amused him to fancy before they met, that night at
Neuschwanstein had convinced him that he never should love her. The
woman was too wholly suffocated by the artist. Even now he hardly
realized that he was not in the presence of Brynhildr or Iseult,
summoned to earth by the necromancy of the mad King. Certainly he had
shared her delusion for a moment to-night. But he was a modern of the
moderns. There was nothing of the old gods in him. It was only when Styr
sang that the dead men in his soul awoke and surrendered. Contact with
herself did not stir his senses in the least, although it agitated his
mind.
If there be such a thing as the diplomatic temperament, John Ordham may
be said to have possessed it. Side by side with the recklessness of
youth and a sensitive nature, marched already a tendency to regard life
as a sort of musical instrument whose keys were to be touched
delicately, warily; crashing chords to be struck at precisely the right
moment or not at all—whatever the temptation. It was hardly more than
an instinct as yet, but he had made surprisingly few mistakes for a man
of his years. In spite of his British reserve he had little of the
narrow conservatism of his race; his tastes, his sympathies, his points
of view, were catholic. Nevertheless, even the acquaintances made
outside of his own world were never of a character to cause him future
annoyance; and when he tired of them, they experienced pangs of
self-reproach, or chafed at relentless fate. As the natural grace of his
body saved him in difficult social moments, its mental partner gently
extricated him from the most delicate situations. In spite of that
stratum of iron in his nature, he would never be brutal, but he might be
more ruthless and inflexible where his interests, or perhaps his
desires, were concerned, than the more primitive being who sticks a
knife into a rival or beats his woman.
But if insensible to the sex in this woman whom so many men had loved,
still loved, his mind was on the brink of an irresistible attraction. It
was not so much that her secrets and her depths tormented his curiosity,
as that her intellect called to his with that vague seductive promise of
completion which is usually confined to the whispers of sex.
He turned his head and looked at her. Her eyes were staring far beyond
him again, and his slight motion did not attract her attention. Her hair
was half down, but her skin, although white and clear, had none of the
freshness of youth. Her figure, in its loose white gown, looked massive,
immobile. He had a sudden conviction that she would never receive him in
a revealing gown, that he could not be more determined than she to keep
their intercourse on the rational plane. In a flash he comprehended her
intense loathing of his sex. She had demolished a barrier for his sake,
either because she had decided that fate was too strong or because their
chance intimacy had forced her to appreciate the loneliness of her life.
Down in the depths of his being he fancied that he heard a sharply
struck note of warning, but it was stifled under a rush of sympathy and
mental avidity.
He felt an intense desire to relieve the tension of the moment and
uttered the first commonplace that came to his mind:
“Should I not go? You look pale. Your skin has lost its wonderful
luminousness—”
She replied indifferently, “I did not put it on,” then laughed. “Are you
horrified?”
“Not in the least. Why should not a complexion be as fine a work of art
as a canvas that hangs on the line? As for nature—I have seen nothing
so exquisite in Venice as the pictures of Turner.”
“I have worked out a make-up which enables me to delude the world into
the belief that I am a beauty. But it is not merely these minor arts
that disguise me; I _am_ transfigured, even when I merely sing Venus or
Senta; and that is the reason I have never been recognized in Bayreuth,
where the elect of America are beginning to flock.”
“You change your eyes in both size and expression, but I should know
you.”
“Now, perhaps, that my characters have become a part of myself.” She
added abruptly, “I believe you know nothing in England of Ibsen, but he
is the only dramatist who, in some moods, makes me wish that I were on
the other stage.”
“I made my first teacher in Munich translate several of his plays:
first, because it was a straight path away from declensions, then
because I became interested. I never miss an Ibsen night, unless it
happens to be one of yours. I hardly know whether I like him or
not—yes, I suppose I do; that is to say, he fascinates my mind, while I
resent him with all my inherited particles, that cry out in favour of
illusions and lies.”
“Ah!” She looked at him with keen interest. “It may be those
uncompromising pictures of middle-class life, mean, sordid, bare, that
excite your mere curiosity—you are a pampered baby yourself. But you
are too young to hate shams.”
“I am sure that I love them. Perhaps he merely induces an irritability
of mind, which is a novel sensation. I shouldn’t wonder if I really
hated him. I cannot imagine you in any of these rôles. You do not
suggest his heroines—you whose mission it is to give intense reality to
impossible romance.”
“In other words you deny my right to be called an actress?”
“Oh! oh! How can you say such a thing? I have a theory that Wagner’s
music changed the character of the void itself. The souls floating
downward vibrated to the new harmonies, the least of them; and now and
again a great one was saturated, absorbed, imperiously impelled—”
“I never heard a more ingenious theory, but considering that _Tristan_
was written in ’57-’59, and _Götterdämmerung_ nearly fifteen years
later—”
“Souls sometimes sleep a long while,” he said softly.
For the first time he saw her flush. Then she sat erect suddenly.
“I won’t permit you to question my right to be called an actress! You
remember the scene in _Ghosts_ in which Mrs. Alving listens to Oswald’s
terrible revelation?”
He nodded, holding his breath. She did not rise, nor repeat a word of
the play, but he watched her skin turn grey, her muscles bag, the
withering cracking soul stare through her eyes. Every part of her face
expressed a separate horror, and he could have sworn that her hair
turned white. He shivered as if he had fallen into the snow water
beneath the tower, and stood up.
“It is too horrible! I am glad there is no such part in opera.”
She smiled triumphantly and Mrs. Alving vanished. But she turned pale
again as he asked abruptly:
“Was it of Mrs. Alving you were thinking?”
“Yes and no. It was Mrs. Alving on a superstructure. For the moment I
was that tormented mother, but were I merely a clever actress that had
left a pleasant home for the stage, I might make myself
feel—well—half, perhaps, of what I expressed for your benefit just
now.”
He asked irresistibly, “Are you glad or sorry?”
“Glad.” And neither had the vaguest premonition of when and where she
would answer that question at length.
“I think I shall go now. It is late and I have kept you up long enough.
Thank you so much.”
“What are you thanking me for?”
“Everything. When may I come again?”
“Tuesday evening for supper, if you are not invited.”
“Of course I shall come.”
They shook hands and Ordham left as he had entered. As he rowed up the
Isar and heard the iron shutters slam, he felt some exultation in the
thought that no longer were they closed to him. And he knew that an
atmosphere both bracing and quickening was his to command. There was the
scent of neither violets nor patchouli in it, in other words, neither
bland conservatism nor commonplace outlawry. He was too modern for the
one and too fastidious for the other. He could not identify scent at all
with Margarethe Styr, not even those rare and subtle perfumes fabricated
for the elect, among whom was himself; and this a little disappointed
him.
XII
LA BELLE HÉLÈNE
On strange and brittle threads hang the apples of fate. Hélène Wass had
matured her plan for the following Wednesday night. Like all plans
promising success, it was very simple. She divined Ordham’s nervous
dread of finding himself alone with her, but parties at her house were
always gay, and he was ever more than willing to be amused. She invited
him to dinner “to meet a party of friends from Vienna who were giving
her a night on their way to Paris.” Upon arrival he would discover that
the party had disappointed her, but he could not well refuse to eat her
dinner; nor could he run away immediately after. The Herr Geheimrath
never graced these late dinners of his wife, adhering stoutly to the
heavy midday meal of his ancestors, and partaking of a Spartan supper of
eggs, cold ham, sausage, tongue, salad, and compôte at six o’clock. At
eight he was slumbering peacefully. The dainty French repast finished,
Hélène would sing in her boudoir,—all the newest, gayest songs,—until
Ordham’s apprehensions, if he cherished any, were lulled, and he had
made himself too comfortable to think of moving before eleven o’clock,
at least. Then she would confide to him a long list of new indignities,
visited upon her by Munich society and her old husband, gradually
working herself up into a mighty passion—no difficult matter at any
time—and when, in a climax of uncontrollable excitement, she had flung
herself into his arms, her faithful maid, having awakened the virtuous
Geheimrath, would usher him in at precisely the right moment and exhibit
the scandalous tableau. She would shriek and sob and plead for
forgiveness, which, she well knew, would never kindle in that flabby
mass of vanity, shocked out of the fatuousness of a lifetime. Ordham, of
course, would not plead his innocence, and when she cowered to the
floor, wailing that now indeed all the world was against her, he would
walk over and take his place at her side. There would be no duel, for
the Herr Geheimrath had chronic rheumatism in his right shoulder, and
she would leave Munich with the young Englishman at eight o’clock on the
following morning.
She had not the least doubt that, given conditions as she planned them,
Ordham would go with her, and that between sympathy and Italy—her villa
was romantically situated in the Alban Hills—she could persuade him
that he loved the dainty versatile charming creature who had sacrificed
the world for his sake. And, it may be, the vanity of youth being very
great indeed, she would continue to win in the uneven game.
Hélène Wass was as clever as only a subtle unscrupulous highly seasoned
European can be. She belonged to a class that responds automatically to
the intrigues hatched under thrones and disseminated to the outposts of
society; in whose brains are dark and tortuous recesses furrowed by
generations of ancestors that have lied and schemed for royal favour;
and what birth had not given her, she had industriously colonized in the
rich soil of her brain for twenty years.
But the cleverest of mere mortals, even the wise old statesman at the
helm, is unable to see far into that dense belt just beyond his horizon,
can but guess at the forces generating there. Hélène Wass’s inimical
forces were trivial, almost ridiculous, but less have wrecked life and
reputation.
She had written a month since to her Parisian milliners to set to work
on her summer trousseau at once, for even then she had contemplated a
house party in her Italian villa, where Ordham would find it difficult
to dodge her. On the day of their apparent reconciliation she
telegraphed orders that it be sent at once. If delivered to her in
Munich, her husband must pay the bill, to say nothing of the duties.
Munich had denounced her extravagance as regularly as the seasons called
their attention to it; but she was, in truth, a thrifty creature, and
had kept her own inheritance, capital and income, intact. The Italian
villa was her only personal extravagance, and Wass supported that. This
trousseau, in spite of letters and telegrams, was unaccountably delayed.
Go without it she would not, and not only for economical reasons, but
because it was already hot in Italy, and she depended in no small
measure upon these exquisite diaphanous garments for the ultimate
conquest of her observing young lover.
It had been a mere chance that had taken Ordham on the Isar that night,
or, to speak by the book, an undetected chain of circumstances. Paddling
on the river in the city limits was a privilege granted to few, but a
friend of Ordham, Count Kilchberg, whose garden sloped to the banks, had
long since invited him to use a boat whenever he chose; and on the night
when he had so unpremeditatedly won the friendship of Margarethe Styr,
he had, after excusing himself from a dinner where he was likely to meet
Frau von Wass, suddenly bethought himself of this novel and congenial
way of passing the evening.
The trousseau arrived on Monday, and, still unpacked, was ready to be
spirited out of the house by the annoyed but acquisitive Lotte, who, as
a guardian of secrets and a surgeon of obstacles, received a salary
rather than a wage, and was meditating respectable matrimony at no
distant date. Lotte, although profoundly indifferent to moral lapses,
did not like Italy and was in love with a valet de chambre in the
Residenz. She was in a bad humour at the proposed flight, but dared not
forsake her mistress, who, beyond question, would give her a wedding
present. On Tuesday morning the Herr Geheimrath suddenly took it into
his fussy old head to go to Berlin and attend a scientific conference.
He invited Hélène to accompany him, and she screamed her refusal, almost
beside herself. Assuming that she was merely more nervous than usual, he
departed in haste, promising to bring her a present, and to return in
the course of ten days; he needed a little vacation and should see many
of his old friends.