only upon innocent enjoyment, wondered a little that it should
practically be the first to welcome all that was distempered in the arts
of literature, music, painting, and the drama (those temporary but
recurring aberrations, which, in the present instance, were ripening to
produce the gifted but dislocated brains of Richard Strauss, Wedekind,
and the ultra Secessionists). A people that were happy and simple by
nature, yet capable of appreciating Wagner when encouraged by their
King, might be expected to turn from this sufficient intoxication of
their mental senses to the relief of plays and romances that were either
serious in the good old style or merely frolicsome. But the plays
presented in the theatres of Munich were enough to make Paris nervously
try on her bays; and the greater and more accomplished city had never
dreamed of exhibiting in the shop windows of her fashionable streets
covers of books so ingenuously shameless. To shock a Münchener, the most
domesticated, virtuous, bourgeois, must always have been as difficult as
to persuade some Americans that human nature is made up of
inconsistencies; but Ordham, at least, had never been more interested in
watching the stolid children at a Spanish bull-fight, than these good,
homely, soft-waisted people of Bavaria relishing the indecencies of
their stage, their expression much the same as when they sat with their
elbows on a table in a restaurant and devoured a dinner lasting two
hours without raising their eyes. That the lower class of Bavaria was
one of the most unmoral in the world, the percentage of illegitimacy
being inordinately high, was beside the question, as this was not the
class that filled the theatres and bought the paper-covered novels. It
was not even the court society that kept the theatres open, for social
diversions were many, even if no longer as brilliant as formerly: the
theatres then as now were filled night after night with the phlegmatic
exemplary bourgeoisie, all of whom ambled home at the end of a
performance designed to spare what imaginations they possessed, supped
on sausage, black bread, and beer, and snored in stuffy ugly rooms
without a dream.
Perhaps this echo of domestic rhythm explains all.
But Ordham soon dismissed the shortcomings of a city he hoped to revisit
many times in the course of his life. A crowd of peasants trooped
through the Siegesthor, which he was leisurely approaching on his way to
the villa of Countess Tann. They had come down from their village in the
Bavarian Alps to assist in the festivities of Schwabing, and were now
bound for one of the humbler cafés of the city. They were in gala
attire; the women homely, shapeless, sunburnt, their plastered hair
surmounted by a flat round hat that looked like a lid, and probably
represented Fashion making her first essay in headgear; the thick full
skirt swayed as if hooped, its ugliness offset, however, by the
short-waisted white bodice over which was laced a silk or velvet
corselet, much decorated with silver chains, buttons, brooches,
filigree, and seed pearls. The short skirts revealed large flat feet
made conspicuous by their proud owners with white open-work stockings,
and low shoes fitted with tassels, bows, and silver buckles. The men
were straighter, better set up, improved by their coats of tan. They
wore short black leather trousers embroidered with green, lively
waistcoats, white shirts, black velvet jackets embroidered with green,
and almost as much silver as the women. Their thick knitted stockings of
grey and green exposed both knee and ankle, and all wore the little
green Alpine hat with its eagle’s feather, and smoked a pipe a yard long
with a painted bowl. On the whole they were vastly more attractive than
the average young Münchener with his high collar, red face, tight and
ill-cut Sunday clothes.
Suddenly, far down the Leopoldstrasse, which continues the Ludwigstrasse
beyond the arch, appeared a cloud of dust. From it emerged mounted
police. They galloped down the highway, waving the crowds to the
pavements, the vehicles to the very curbs. This could mean but one
phenomenon, and although Ordham coloured with annoyance at being swept
aside with the rabble, he stood up in his cab to obtain a better view. A
moment later, escorted by a cavalry guard in brilliant uniforms, a
carriage became visible, its six horses galloping as if pursued by the
furies of hell. Ordham held his breath, expecting an accident in the
tunnel of the Siegesthor, but the carriage shot through without swerving
a hair’s breadth; and as Ludwig stood suddenly upright, all that vast
concourse, that now so rarely saw their King, set up a shout that made
even the old cab horses start and paw the ground.
“_Heil! Heil! Unserem König, Heil! Hoch Ludwig! Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!_”
A flush rose to the heavy pallid face of the King, and his beautiful
restless eyes sparkled, he smiled graciously. But he was always the
conscious actor, and as the carriage flew up the street, as if the
horses indeed were winged, he stood with his arms folded, his head high,
as if already on a pedestal instead of in a bounding vehicle. Little
wonder the Bavarians adored a monarch ever able to furnish them with
impromptu theatricals. They cheered and yelled, waved hats, parasols,
and handkerchiefs, until the Englishman felt the blood racing in his own
veins. No doubt it raced in the King’s. The hearts of the Bavarians
never wavered in their loyalty to this romanticist, who to the last had
something of the immortal gods in his make-up. Had he shown himself
spectacularly during those fatal days when arrest impended, but while
escape from Neuschwanstein was still possible, his capital would have
flocked to his standard and intimidated the ministry. But Ludwig had
cultivated the tragic attitude too long.
The King vanished almost as quickly as he had come. Ordham’s cab ambled
on its way: through the Siegesthor, along the still half-rustic
Leopoldstrasse, and into the village of Schwabing. Here the narrow
zigzag streets, the rural lanes, the riverside, the little beer gardens,
were as thronged as the city, while opposite, in the Englischergarten,
there were glimpses of another crowd which completed the impression that
every house in Munich must be deserted.
Few villages in the high Alps are more picturesque than Schwabing, which
still has its old mill, and the tower of whose white church, perched
high, swells into one of those graceful spheres that form links in an
invisible chain through the blue of Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary to the
land of the Turk. About the church were many graves; and a few old women
in black, hatless, bent, were praying there.
XVIII
THE SYSTEM’S FLOWER
Countess Tann’s house faced a street so narrow that had not her walls
been high and her opposite neighbour’s abode humble she would have been
forced to keep her curtains drawn. It was on the very edge of the
village, and her garden extended along the highway beyond. There were
few flowers in the garden, for Bavaria is not the land of flowers, but
there were many trees; and wide gates at the back could be rolled apart
to frame a picture of the Isar and the Englischergarten.
The front gate was of wrought iron and afforded glimpses of the secluded
little park and of the villa’s ornate façade. Ordham rang the bell
several times before the old butler sauntered out, half asleep, and
informed the impatient visitor that the Frau Gräfin was driving, but had
left instructions to admit Mein Herr, should he call and be disposed to
wait.
Ordham sent his _kutscher_ to a near-by beer garden and followed the
servant to the gallery. He declined coffee until the return of the
hostess, and old Kurt opened a box of cigarettes and departed to ponder
upon the marvel of a young man in the house. The maids were gallivanting
or there would have been high discussion.
Ordham realized that he was a little tired, but before making himself
comfortable with a book, strolled into the tower to listen for a moment
to the band playing in the pagoda of the Englischergarten, and picture
the numberless tables, amongst which trudged unceasingly big perspiring
Bavarian maidens, carrying mugs of foaming beer to an ever thirsty
people. But his eye was immediately attracted to the books on the
shelves which covered the walls of the tower, and he scanned them
eagerly. He was astonished to find that the collection was almost wholly
scientific. Bastian, David Strauss, Johannes Müller, Virchow, Descartes,
Goethe, Baer, Lamarck, Paul Holbach, Du Bois-Reymond, Harvey, Heinrich
Hertz, Bacon, Aristotle, Darwin, Spencer, Alexander Humboldt, the Vogts,
Lavoisier, Spinoza, Cuvier, were a few of the names in this catholic
assemblage, which had its representative in every branch of science,
using the word in its broad sense. Ordham ceased to wonder that the
great Styr had been able to extinguish her merely feminine ego. With
such meat for daily sustenance, and the strong wine of art, the wonder
was that she had not developed into a new species. The only works of
fiction were the novels of Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, and _On the
Heights_. Other shelves were filled with volumes devoted to the analysis
of music and the lives and letters of composers.
He returned to the gallery with a volume of _Illusions Perdues_, and
looked longingly at the divan, but compromised upon the deepest of the
chairs. He would have liked to smoke, but he was far too formal both by
nature and training to make himself at home at this early stage of his
acquaintance with Countess Tann. His eyes roved over the gallery with
much curiosity. It was the first time he had known a woman that worked
for her living, and he appreciated that this room, full of beautiful and
interesting objects as it was, had an entirely different atmosphere from
the boudoirs of the fine ladies of the world. There was a certain
austerity about it, rather an absence of the luxury, frivolity, soft
magnificence, of the personal nests of women that neither knew nor cared
how their wants were gratified. Even the carved old chairs looked
comfortable, but it was not the room of a woman who lounged, but who
worked, studied, thought. To Ordham it was more personal than any
woman’s room he had ever seen; then he suddenly realized that it was its
component of masculinity which had enveloped him at once like an
emanation from his own spirit.
Half an hour later he opened his eyes to behold a tall figure in a long
grey cloak smiling before him. He rose with a deep blush and stammered
apologies. “Is it possible—will you ever forgive me?”
“Why not, Herr Invalide? I will go and change my frock, and then we will
have coffee. Just a moment.”
She reached the door, then, as if suddenly assailed by an anxious
memory, turned and said hesitatingly: “I have felt so worried—it was
such a relief to hear that you were really ill—and to-day you look so
much less careworn, almost happy—”
“I am quite happy—thanks so much. Please don’t bother—how good of you!
The lady thought better of it, as I might have known she would,—has
thrown me over, in fact.”
“Delightful! I was at my wit’s end. Now we shall keep you in Munich. Do
sit down again.”
She returned dressed in a white organdie frock sprigged with violets. It
was flounced and full, the bodice crossed by a Marie Antoinette fichu
tied loosely at the back, and in her hair she had twisted a lavender
ribbon. She looked as if she had merely adapted herself to the warm
afternoon, not in the least coquettish or alluring. How could she,
thought Ordham, with that library behind her?
“Such a drive as I have taken!” she exclaimed as she seated herself
before the coffee service old Kurt had brought in. “Down into the
Isarthal and far beyond Castle Grünwald. It was delightful in the woods,
or would have been without the crowds. You will go there with me some
day, I hope?”
“I will go with you anywhere.”
“That would mean long walks instead of sleeping until nine
o’clock—eleven, I am told, it used to be.”
“But everybody will be leaving Munich soon and I shall not be sitting up
so late. Do take me with you—at any hour.”
“But you will be following—not? They will all ask you to visit them.
Poor German!”
He hesitated. “Shall you stay here?”
“I seldom go away except for a few days at a time, for I no longer sing
in Bayreuth; Frau Cosima and I do not agree on the subject of Brünhilde,
whom I interpret for myself. Moreover the King has often private
representations in the Hof. It is as well, for I am never so happy as in
Munich, and Bayreuth is not the same to me now that The Master is gone.
Late in August and in September I must go on my _Gastspiel_—concert
engagements in several German cities and in Vienna—but that is all; I
never visit.”
“I think I should remain here all summer and study with Fräulein Lutz. I
should like to pass my examinations this year. But perhaps Fräulein Lutz
takes a vacation?”
“I will see that she does not. Yes—stay and study. It is so fatally
easy when one is young and heedless to be caught in the maelstrom of
insignificance; and two years—what are they? You have the rest of your
life to visit country houses.”
“You have a way of phrasing truths that makes it quite impossible to
forget them.” He spoke dryly, but his face had flushed. “‘Caught in the
maelstrom of insignificance.’ I shall stay here and alternate the
delights of Adam Smith with Fräulein Lutz, burn my candle over
Blackstone and Hallam, when I might be sneezing in some draughty castle
or accumulating typhoid germs. That is to say, if you will let me walk
with you—and come here often. My virtues, at least, need admiration and
encouragement. May I?”
Styr had made up her mind: having delivered him from wreck, she would
lead him to the threshold of his future, then return to her solitudes,
pluming herself upon her successful rôle of a kindly fate in the life of
a fellow-mortal so much more interesting than the musical fledglings
that came to her for advice and help. For a few months she would indulge
herself in the luxury and novelty of a friendship, give her mind a
companion; later on, vary her isolation with a permanent interest in the
career of another. She made no doubt that were Ordham carried safely
over this critical interval there was a reasonable chance of his
attaining a high and useful eminence. It was a strange rôle for her to
be contemplating, that of becoming a deliberate factor in the life of a
man with no thought save his own good; but the more she had meditated
upon it the more irresistibly had it appealed to her. She was honest
enough, however, to admit that had she not liked him so thoroughly her
philanthropic tendencies might have slept on undiscovered.
“I will strike a bargain with you,” she said. “If you will promise not
to leave town except from Saturday noon until Sunday night, and take a
daily lesson with Lutz until you are obliged to leave for England, you
may come and go here as you please.”
“That will be every day, and I shall not go to country houses at all.
The more I think of it the more I feel convinced that I should pass this
August. My brother has never believed in me,—for good reasons, wise
man,—but I have an idea that if I astonish him by passing a year sooner
than any one expects, he will be so gratified that he will pay my debts.
After all, he stands in the place of my father.”
“Are you deeply in debt?” All women sympathize with a man in debt except
his wife, who must economize to get him out.
“Horribly!” Ordham buttered a scone and looked as blithe and greedy as a
schoolboy on his first day at home.
“You always use such strong expressions!”
“O—h! Re—ally?” Ordham drawled this as only an Englishman can.
“Well—perhaps you would not think close upon a thousand pounds a great
amount, and I confess I find it disgusting to be unable to pay a sum
which if I had in hand would not last me a month. And to Bridgminster it
is nothing. I find that more disgusting still.”
“I suggested an American girl the other night—but I don’t know.
Somehow, I don’t see you married.”
“I should hate to marry. My mother is always urging it—so are all my
friends, and I suppose that between extravagant habits and the
diplomatic career, I shall be driven into matrimony. But I wish to
heaven Bridgminster would divide his income with me. He spends next to
nothing. I hear he doesn’t even keep up Ordham.”
“Do you want money so much?”
“I need it.” He spoke with deep intensity.
“And you can think of no other resource but your brother or a rich
girl?”
“No, alas!” He began to butter another scone. “All my relations are
either poor or stingy.”
“But I had an idea that all dukes were rich and superb—your mother’s
father—”
“He quarrels with his steward every quarter day over the accounts, the
very household bills. I hate him, and so did my father. He cannot endure
me because I don’t pot birds from the 12th of August until the hunting
season begins and then ride to hounds every day. I have an idea he is
afraid I will write poetry and disgrace the family. The metre would, no
doubt.”
Margarethe looked at him curiously. According to American canons she
ought to despise him, but he was so inevitably a part of a system, and
so replete with all the delightful qualities for which that system was
responsible, besides having an accent all his own, that she could but
accept him as a matter of course. Nevertheless, more to draw him out
than with motive, she asked: “I suppose it has never occurred to you to
work?”
“Work?” He barely saved his knife from dropping to the little Sèvres
plate. His eyes grew round and his mouth fell slightly apart.
Styr almost laughed outright, but she dropped her eyes to her cup and
said: “Well, I am an American, you know. A young man over there, born in
a position corresponding to your own—well, if he found himself in debt
or wanted money badly, and there was no immediate prospect of
inheritance, he would go to work and make it.”
“How odd! No, I don’t mean that. Of course I know those things do
happen, but it must be when they feel fitted, have been prepared—for
some of those things that make money. The only time I ever thought about
it—one night not long ago,” he paled at the memory, “I could not think
of any means by which I could support myself did I lose the little I
have. But in America I suppose the business instinct is in every man’s
brain—naturally. Why shouldn’t they be able to make fortunes if they
must? Some of our chaps have to go to work also, but I never heard of
any of them making a fortune—not even in the colonies. Only people you
never heard of before do that. I suppose our brains are too old, they
are no longer capable of that amount of concentration and energy. For
generations we have had so many interests. To let a fixed idea like
money-making control you, I fancy you must have, and inherit, little
intellectual development. Nevertheless, I should think that those same
indulgences and developments must be among the incentives.”
“That is the most ingenious defence I ever heard a lazy man put up! But
I am not sure there is not a good deal in it. The fact remains, however,
that you want money and do not want to marry. Suppose I send you to my
banker in New York? He is a good friend of mine and would give you a
chance of some sort. Would you concentrate your very superior faculties
upon the making of money?”
“Good heavens, no! I should hate it. To spend one’s life trying to be
more dishonest than the next man—I had rather live on a younger son’s
portion all my life.” And he elevated his nose in aristocratic disgust.
“It is not quite as bad as that, although I do not pretend that great
fortunes are made with gloves on.”
“I should hate the people I should be compelled to associate with. As I
said just now, it requires enormous concentration to be a successful man
of business; and fancy hearing no other topic of conversation day in and
out, to see, to feel, nothing else in the men by whom one was
surrounded!”
“You might be a cow-boy. That has appealed to other Englishmen, and is
more picturesque—quite honest, also, I should think.”
“But so dirty, and such a hard life physically. They get up at four and
go to bed with their boots on. Then, after they are quite demoralized,
all their finer tastes hopelessly blunted, they come home without a
penny. Heaven only knows into what limbo they disappear then. Don’t
think I am really lazy.” (There was a genuine anxiety in his tones!)
“What you said at Neuschwanstein about the possibility of finishing as a
society drone has got me up every morning in time for Fräulein Lutz. I
mean to pass my examinations and enter diplomacy. But I am afraid I am
fitted for nothing else. I haven’t stumbled into it blindly. It is that
or nothing, and although the suggestion was my mother’s, my father quite
agreed with her.”
“It all comes back to this,—you must marry money.”
“Alas, yes! But four or five years hence. I will pay these bills
somehow, and then I can run up others. They will always wait a few
years.”
“But suppose you could meet some girl of great wealth whom you could
love? That would be the ideal solution, and there are many rich and
lovely girls. Should not you like peace of mind and happiness?”
“Happiness?” He stared at her in a fashion he had dropped into before,
as if she were a mirror in which the future might take form. “I fancy
that no matter whom I married . . . even if persuaded that I was in love
with her . . . I should no sooner be settled down than I should begin to
invent some one I might have loved better.” He came to himself with a
smile. “Will you let me smoke? And tell you what a delight it is to see
you again? And this room! To think that I may sit in it often! That we
are to be friends for a whole summer! Nothing in life can ever be as
wonderful as that.”
XIX
A DIPLOMATIST IN THE MAKING
The Queen-mother lingered on in Munich, and society with her. Excellenz
Nachmeister and the diplomatic corps entertained constantly, and if the
rest of the fashionable world took little initiative, it was always
ready to lend the light of its countenance. Ordham, with the most
enthusiastic intentions, saw little of Countess Tann, but at least he
broke no engagements with her; and this, to those that knew him, would
have appeared more significant than had he sought her daily. That
pleasure awaited the empty summer months, and meanwhile, conformably
with his half-admitted creed, he missed nothing that promised enjoyment.
Nevertheless, true to his promise to Margarethe Styr, he took his daily
lesson with Fräulein Lutz; and this recalls a story which became current
in Munich at the time and entertained his friends not a little. Lutz
related it with a mixture of tartness and triumph to Styr, who told it
to Nachmeister, who——
His Grenadier, as he called her, arrived at the Legation every morning
at five minutes before ten. He received her in an upper sitting room,
and had made more progress in four weeks than during the six preceding
months of his sojourn in Munich. As a rule he appeared at the rendezvous
not more than five or six minutes later than Lutz, but one morning he
arose with the greatest reluctance. He had taken a party of English
friends to the monastic cellar of the Hofbräu the night before, and sat
up until late listening to the students singing, and drinking beer in an
atmosphere as thick as a London fog. He wanted to lie in bed until noon,
but dared not run the risk of the loss of his Lutz. He arose when
called, but entered the frigid presence quite twelve minutes late. Being
greeted with a withering outburst, he was suddenly inspired to torment
this iron-clad female, for whom he appeared to have no more magnetism
than had he been a wooden dummy into which she was employed to drill
holes and instil so much German per day. He sank into the deepest chair
in the room, and drawled:
“I am _so_ sorry—”
“That is the one thing you can say fluently in German! At least one
thousand times have I heard you say it.”
“Oh—but I am—really. Not to be late, but to be obliged to come at all.
I was so deliciously comfortable.”
“Deliciously—in bed—at this hour! What an admission for a man to
make!”
“But to you I am only a boy,” murmured Ordham.
“Ach ja! But you would like to be thought a man. Nicht? When you have
succeeded in raising a mustache you will want to be thought young again.
I have taught hundreds of your sex, and not one has more sense than the
other. But not one!”
“Is that the reason you have never married?”
Her mottled complexion turned a uniform purple, and she investigated his
innocent orbs with her bright little black eyes. Then she demanded
haughtily: “What is that to you? Am I here to answer personal
questions?”
“But this is the morning for conversation, Fräulein. We had those
hideous verbs yesterday. And I am so tired! That was so easy, so natural
to say, for I know that at least one Herr Professor carries an arrow in
his heart.”
The personage in question had eluded Fräulein Lutz with such conspicuous
adroitness some years before that the affair had become historical. She
felt a natural gratification that the story had altered its front with
the lapse of time, but replied severely: “Enough! We will ask and answer
questions of a less personal nature. Also! How many neckties do you
possess? I have now taught you for four weeks and I have seen a new one
every day.”
“And she calls that an impersonal question! But I am quite ready to
answer, liebes Fräulein, for my man informed me yesterday. I possess
exactly two hundred and eighty-four.”
“Two hundred and eighty-four neckties!” shrieked Fräulein Lutz. “It is
impossible! But impossible!”
“Only until this afternoon. Then I shall possess two hundred and
eighty-six. And next week I expect a box from London—”