strolled down into St. James’s Park, that the idea of marrying
Margarethe Styr had postulated itself. It had not even occurred to him
before. He had looked forward to seeing her as often as he could manage,
to keeping her in his life, but not even to being her lover. Did he love
her? Had he loved her during those enchanting months, and been too
contented, too occupied, to understand? Had she purposely refrained from
exercising those seductions of which she must be passed mistress,
because she knew that love would devastate the lives of both? For a
moment he seemed to be peering over the edge of a round wall into the
great wells of human nature. He had a passing impression that Margarethe
Styr was Nature herself, that in her bosom were all the mysteries, the
secrets, the treasures of life, and that they were his, whether he could
ever take them or not.
Did he love her? He drew his brows together in the deepest perplexity he
had ever experienced. There was no turbulence of emotion in him, no
madness of passion, no desire. It was a mental longing—that and
something deeper, which he did not pretend to define, but which, so far
at least, did not affect his senses. Were they on fire, with the
instinct of man for his mate, he knew that he should take the next train
for the Continent. But they were not, and the idea suddenly entered his
cool wise young brain that he had better stay away from the Continent
altogether. It was quite possible that a multiplicity of causes, her own
subtle manipulation among them, had delayed his loving this most
complete of all women, and it was on the cards that they both would lose
their heads the moment they met again. Well! They had got through a
dangerous summer safely, and its memory was wholly delightful. He, at
least, would not defy the gods, but steer clear of the siren’s rock.
Aside from motives of prudence, he was by no means sure that he wanted
to experience a tremendous passion; the indolence, the
super-civilization in him shrank from elemental tumults. He had locked
up the memory of the scene with his brother, but he heard the key rattle
for a moment, and his distaste for the primitive increased.
He jerked up the thought of his career and forced his mind to dwell upon
it, succeeding so thoroughly that he felt ambition incarnate as he
headed for home. He would begin his duties in the Foreign Office on the
morrow instead of demanding a leave of absence; that would keep him in
England for six months to come. Then he would manage to be sent to St.
Petersburg or Madrid, instead of to Berlin, as he had contemplated.
At luncheon he was forced to listen to eulogies of a woman he would not
have married had she presented him with a million in the funds, and
revenged himself by talking about Mabel Cutting. But deep down in his
being went on that same mysterious protest, mutter, demand for the
supreme rights of mortal on this imperfect plane called life.
XXXII
EVERY MAN HIS OWN PILOT
Mrs. Cutting had bought, several years since, the lease of one of the
great houses in Grosvenor Square from a bachelor who, late in life, had
inherited it among other properties, and had lived comfortably at his
club too long to move or to think favorably of matrimony. At his
tenant’s tactful suggestion he reserved the ancestral furniture and
pictures, sending them to one of his country houses, and Mrs. Cutting,
in refurnishing, had wisely gone to Paris. Knowing the importance of the
least of individualizations in a city which resents the unorthodox and
is correspondingly fascinated by it, she had, instead of making her
mansion the replica of a thousand other fine houses or even of
permitting herself to be seduced by æstheticism, that bastard of the
Brotherhood, re-created the big heavy rooms into a setting appropriate
for a marquise of the eighteenth century. But too wise, or too
indifferent, to become the slave of any period, her house was merely
light, gay, brilliant, not too full of exquisite furniture gilded and
brocaded; there were pastels in very old frames, costly trifles, the
whole effect infinitely _French_. Everybody pronounced the word vaguely
upon entering the series of reception rooms, drawing-rooms, and
boudoirs, barely noting if the effect were produced by the pale brocades
set in the white and gold of the panelled walls, the polished floors,
the old but beautiful rugs, or by the numberless details, such as the
bluish grey inner blinds, drawn up on either side and in the middle,
that one sees in any modern French house. But the effect was there, that
bright delicate luxurious setting for two beautiful women as dainty and
splendid as ever the aristocracy of France achieved before her people
found themselves; and all London approved and went there to be
refreshed. Although it was now quite three years since the house had
been remodelled and thrown open, the illness and death of her husband,
followed by litigation, had called Mrs. Cutting so often from the city
of her heart that the season just past was the first she had spent
uninterruptedly in London since she had been able to equip herself for
conquest. An outsider, lacking the halo of fame, no matter how wealthy,
cannot impress herself deeply upon a vast and busy society with no more
obvious setting than a house hired from some economical noble. But this
past season was a very pleasant memory to Mrs. Cutting, not only on
account of her daughter’s unqualified success, but because no American
in London could dispute the fact that her house had been the scene of
the most superb and perfectly appointed entertainments with which
dollars had ever defied sovereigns.
Lady Bridgminster, at once the most exclusive and the most independent
of women (her Bohemian protégés belonged to the aristocracies of the art
world), had been her sponsor, and she had met at once many great people,
ordinarily indifferent to or disapproving of rich Americans, whom she
might not have met for years, if ever. She was booked for certain
country houses in the autumn and early winter which she had long felt
she owed it to her American pride to visit, but, even with her already
select acquaintance and social tact, hitherto inaccessible. In
consequence, never had two women been such devoted friends from the
middle of April until the middle of July as “Lady Pat” and Mrs. Cutting,
and society had been considerably amused.
As Ordham was escorted through the immense entrance hall and up to the
reception room at the head of the grand staircase, then left where he
could command a long vista, he felt as if he had entered an enchanted
palace. He had been in many palaces, many fine mansions, but never
before where the wise gift of selection had eliminated the haphazard
accumulations of the centuries, and appropriated all that was beautiful
and artistic in historic houses whose owners could no longer pay their
monthly bills. He knew what this wondrous interior meant to countless
impoverished families whose ancestors had dazzled France. It was the
most complete demonstration of the power of practically unlimited wealth
that he had ever witnessed, and he wondered if rich Americans really
appreciated their good fortune, or if they took it as a matter of course
from the moment they were laid in their golden cradle; he was sure that
American royalties, unlike European, would never condescend to use
merely gilded cradles.
Down at one end of the long vista he saw Mabel Cutting approaching. He
rose, but stood still for a moment, hoping that she had not yet seen
him, and curious to discover what his first impression of her would be
after these eventful months of separation. Moreover, he felt suddenly
nervous.
His only impression at the moment was that the figure moving toward him
down the bright formal French rooms, was the most graceful he had ever
seen. Styr walked like a goddess. Mabel Cutting had the exquisite
unconscious grace of a highly bred young girl, a grace that suggests a
complete independence of the gravity of the earth. She walked as lightly
as if she had never thought about walking at all; her slender figure had
none of the conscious upstanding dignity of maturity; it was almost
somnambulistic, an effect in harmony with her dreamy large eyes. She
wore a gown and hat of various shades of green, and looked like spring
reappearing for a moment to reproach the excesses of summer. And she was
far more beautiful than when he had seen her last. Oh, no doubt of that.
Beside her trotted LaLa, looking like a gnome.
Ordham stood spellbound before this vision for a moment; then advanced
with even more dignity than usual, that she might not detect his
tremors. Miss Cutting smiled pleasantly and offered her hand.
“How do you do, Mr. Ordham?” Her voice was light, sweet, cold,
undeveloped. “Mother will be down presently and give you a cup of tea.
Shall we sit in here? It is not so formal.”
She preceded him into a large room, which assuredly, thought he, must
have been lifted bodily from some unfortunate royal chateau; but he was
far more interested in the graceful figure before him, in her cool ease
of manner. Where was the chatterbox of six months since? As they seated
themselves beside the tea-table she politely but a little absently asked
him if he was glad to be in England again after so long a sojourn
abroad; then, her curiosity apparently satisfied, left the conversation
in his keeping. He was searching his mind for a new subject to avert an
awkward pause, wondering if the great absent eyes fixed upon him gave
heed to his unprecedented exertions, and growing vaguely angry, when
Mrs. Cutting came brightly in. She shook him warmly by the hand, and
prepared to pour out tea with a smiling alertness that made her daughter
appear the more indifferent by contrast. As Mrs. Cutting ran on, indeed,
Mabel seemed to withdraw more and more into herself, and even while
drinking her tea gave the impression of performing a polite act in which
she took no interest. At all events she made no attempt to enter the
conversation, which, for a time, was all of Ordham’s examinations and
future. Once or twice he sought her eyes in the suddenly remembered
fashion of that fortnight in Munich when they flirted behind “Momma’s”
back; but in vain. Mrs. Cutting was no longer Momma and Mabel was no
longer Mabel. What was she? Being a mere man, it was incomprehensible to
him that even a London season and many admirers, to say nothing of
tutors and books, could transform a beautiful but decidedly commonplace
child into a wondrous creature with the poise of her mother, the mystery
of those maidens the poets invoke from cloudland, and the intellectual
abstraction of a budding genius. She was so perfectfully beautiful, so
provocative in her abstraction, that he was at first merely interested.
But at the end of half an hour, when she had not addressed a remark to
him, but had sat as if she were in front of a camera, he began to grow
really angry. He was not accustomed to disdain. He was quite aware that
if not yet the head of his family, he was more than a match for any
American girl, and had received something more than encouragement from
the young lady’s mamma. Moreover, and here he sat up suddenly and began
talking with animation to Mrs. Cutting, was he not the intimate friend
of one of the greatest women in the world? For the first time he felt
the flattery of the haughty Styr’s selection, and in the present
engagement it gave him a distinct moral advantage that almost visibly
uplifted his chest. He had permitted Mrs. Cutting to sustain the
conversation before; he now turned to her wholly, and, the talk having
drifted to Munich, gave her a brilliant description of Styr’s Isolde,
which should at least display to this absurd young person his knowledge
of the art which had lured her to London in the heats of August.
“It is the disappointment of my life that I have not seen Styr,” said
Mrs. Cutting. “She did not sing while I was in Munich, and I have never
been to Bayreuth. To be frank, I care little for Wagner. When one has
been brought up on Patti and Nilsson, so to speak,—”
“Mother!”
Ordham turned with a start. Miss Cutting was regarding her mother with
eyes sparkling disapproval. She moved them to Ordham, and the access of
interest in those profound orbs was unmistakable. “Thank heaven I am not
old-fashioned!” Her voice was so sweet, almost plaintive, that even an
American mother could not feel snubbed. “What little I have heard of
Wagner—almost wholly at orchestral concerts here—makes me long to hear
more—all. Perhaps my English teacher infected me with his own
enthusiasm. And he, too, has heard the great Styr. Is it true, Mr.
Ordham, that you have heard her in all her rôles?”
“Oh, many times.”
“And is she really so great?”
“She is quite the greatest singer and actress in the world.”
“Ah!” Miss Cutting looked him full in the eyes. Her own seemed to say:
“How wonderful you are to love and understand such great things, when
most men at your age prefer the Halls!” Mrs. Cutting interposed in her
cool, smooth, almost aggressively cultivated voice:
“But she, too, has limitations. She could not sing any of the old rôles.
I may be old-fashioned, darling, but I assuredly do prefer Lucia,
Leonora, Violetta, with their marvellous vocalization, to those
declaiming and unmelodious rôles. I sat through _Die Walküre_ once, and
it seemed to me that they merely talked interminably in the singing
register. It was quite a week before I felt rested.”
“But _Die Walküre_ is full of drama!” Miss Cutting looked at her parent
with a soft steadiness of reproach. Ordham had never seen eyes that
revealed and concealed so much. Her small curved mouth, pink and half
parted over the little white teeth, was as innocent as a baby’s, yet
withal had a delightfully sarcastic uplift at the corners. “Dear mother!
There is not a moment when one must not be thrilled by the happenings of
very strange things indeed, and it was Wagner’s object to ennoble
speech; he thought the old trills and roulades—and all—debased it.”
“Yes, darling, but the speeches need not be so long. Think of Fricka
scolding Wotan throughout half of an interminable act; and as for that
duologue in the last act between Wotan and Brünhilde—well, its mere
memory threatens to deprive me of all the patience I possess. But I
foresee my fate. I shall have to take you to Munich next winter.”
“A month at least. I must have that before we go to the Riviera. Oh,
there is so much in the world to see, to learn! I wish I were thirty, so
that I could feel that I had accomplished a little.”
“You have begun,” said Ordham, smiling. His anger and pique had
vanished. “But I hope you like England.”
“It is my second home, of course. Mother has brought me here during most
of my vacations.” But there was no enthusiasm in her tones, and she
added: “I don’t fancy I shall care deeply for any one place until I have
seen a great deal of life. My head feels like an empty house full of
tiny rooms, all vacant behind staring windows. Well, one grows older
every day.”
Ordham looked at that lovely head, with its mass of shining yellow hair,
the full luminous brow, the deep dark eyes, the pure polished whiteness
of the skin. He could imagine no more delightful task than furnishing
those clean empty little rooms. He suddenly felt that he had accumulated
a vast amount in his twenty-four years, and that perhaps it was his duty
to decorate the interior of that shapely skull. But her eyes wandered
from him again as Mrs. Cutting asked him abruptly what he knew of Styr.
“One hears more and more of her every day, over here,” she added. “So
many English people have become convinced that it is their duty to
admire Wagner, and are making conscientious efforts. They not only go to
Bayreuth, but these last two or three years they have taken in Munich on
their way to the Riviera or Italy. Some of the artists, too, come back
raving over her. No doubt they really understand Wagner. Do you meet her
off the stage?”
“Rarely.”
“Is she supposed to be educated?”
“Educated? She is a highly accomplished woman—has furnished all her
little rooms, I should think.” He smiled and turned to Mabel, who was
feeding the pug.
“Ah! you know her?” Mrs. Cutting’s voice was very smooth. “She is not
received?”
“Rather!”
“How interesting! And how odd—that she should be—well, like that—and
received. There are stories.” She glanced significantly at the averted
head of her young daughter. It was patent that Mabel was not to be
permitted to furnish any of her vacant cells in the primal colours.
Ordham lifted his shoulders. “She is a great artist. In Munich that
suffices. And now, at least, I fancy that little but her art interests
her. Her life is one long act of devotion and sacrifice.”
“Nevertheless,” said Mrs. Cutting, as Mabel, having boxed the ears of
LaLa for spilling his cream, was escorting him to the door, “she had
better not return to New York.”
Ordham’s eyes, suddenly large and cold, interrogated her.
“It seems that one of the old gossips of the Union Club spent a few days
not long since in Munich and recognized Styr as a woman—well, whom
every New York man once knew by sight, at least. He always spends the
season in London, and now that Styr is becoming famous, it gives him
great satisfaction to add his little quota of scandal.”
“It is quite possible that he mistook her for some one else. She looks
like one woman off the stage, and another on.” Ordham felt an
uncontrollable nervousness in his knees and moved about the room,
staring at the soft pastels.
“He saw her both on and off. There is no doubt, I fancy. She was
supposed to be dead, lost with a cheap company of players on the Pacific
Coast. But he says that no one that had ever seen her could possibly
mistake her for any one else, greatly as she has gone off—he says that
she was a beautiful tigress when she squandered fortunes in New York.
But, as you say, it does not matter in Munich, where, dear souls, they
would worship the devil himself if he could sing. And, of course, she
meditates no social conquest of London or New York. Levering says that
she is very clever!”
“She is quite above thinking of such things.” Then, not wishing to hurt
this charming woman’s feelings, he added hastily: “Art is a very
exalting as well as exacting mistress. Nothing else seems worth while to
so ardent a votary as Frau von Tann. If ever she comes here to sing, I
fancy she will be the one to raise the social defences. You know that we
too can be indifferent to pasts when they are walled off by fame. If
Countess Tann created a furore at Covent Garden, she would be run after
by every lion hunter in London. Remember Bernhardt.”
The colour left Mrs. Cutting’s cheek, and an angry light sprang to her
eyes. But if prompted to deliver her mind of its disgust for the
complaisance of a society in which she found no other fault, she thought
better of it and replied calmly:
“Well—Bernhardt is French. One never expects much of people that have
not had the advantages of the strict tenets of the Anglo-Saxon race; and
when a transgressor is the most famous actress in the world, and has
lived her life in Paris, the most feverish of all lives in the most
feverish of all cities—well, of course, one not only makes allowances,
but looks upon her as such a sheer outsider that one feels justified in
paying tribute to her genius—or further satisfying one’s curiosity,
whichever it may be. But this Styr—ah! here is the carriage. You will
drive with us for an hour in the Park? Of course there will be nobody to
look at, but the air will be delightful.”
He sat opposite the graceful voluble mother and the silent beautiful
daughter with her eyes full of dreams and the hideous pug on her lap;
and not only in the park, but during the drive down to Richmond, where
he persuaded them to go for dinner. Once only, as they drove home
through the twilight, he held Mabel’s eyes for a full minute. There was
none of the old innocent coquetry in them, but they looked as if they
were taking his measure and pronouncing him worth while if not heroic.
Styr’s name was not mentioned again, nor for many a day after.
XXXIII
SLOW MAGIC
Lady Bridgminster paid her son a visit next morning while he was still
in bed and drinking his tea. He was but half awake and pretended to no
enthusiasm. But his mother pushed a chair to the bedside and tapped the
coverlet with her long fingers. It was patent that for once in her life
she was nervous.
“I must speak, Johnny,” she exclaimed. “And as I have several
engagements to-day, this is my only opportunity.”
“Where can you have engagements in London at this time of year?”
“I am lunching with Rosamond, and then we visit a flower show, and
afterwards attend a committee meeting—one of her charities—”
“So she is in town?”
“It is no more remarkable that she should come to town in this stifling
weather for the sake of doing good than that little American should
suddenly discover that she must come up for second-rate concerts. It
does not strike you as odd, I suppose?”
“If I for a moment believed that Miss Cutting came up to London in
August on my account, I should be flattered to death; but as a matter of
fact, she quite snubbed me.”
“Fiddlesticks!”
“But she did. I can assure you I have felt a walking tragedy ever
since.”
“She was probably in a bad temper about something.”
“She looked precisely like an angel.”
“Well, no doubt angels have their moods, and she is a spoilt child of
fortune. Two millions sterling, and I cannot pay my dressmaker!”
“You wrote me once that an American daughter-in-law would be sure to pay
your bills.”
“So would Rosamond. I do not want American dollars.”
“Am I to understand that Rosamond Hayle has also come up to London in
August—”
“She does not know that you are back from the north, poor dear. I lured
her up, pretending interest in her charity.” She leaned forward and took
her son’s hands in the close grasp of her own. “Johnny,” she said
intensely, “promise me that you will not marry this Cutting girl—at
least that you will not propose to her until you have tried to like
Rosamond. That dear English girl has vastly improved. And perhaps I have
done wrong to hurry you. There are other girls growing up that will have
a good bit of their own. I can think of three. If you will not consider
poor Rosamond, at least promise me that you will not fall headlong into
the net of these Americans.”
“Of course.”
“Do you forget that I brought you up?” His mother’s voice rose with her
indignation. “At least pay me the compliment of frankness. And you will
say ‘Of course’ at the altar instead of ‘I will,’ if you are not on your
guard.”
“Well, then, I won’t. Eliminate Rosamond Hayle at once and forever. I am
not at all sure that I wish to marry Miss Cutting. Before I met her
again yesterday I knew that I should be hard driven indeed to make up my
mind to marry a chatterbox. Now, although she has astonishingly
improved, I do not know that I even like her. But she fascinates and
interests me. I shall certainly see more of her. If I can like her well
enough, and she will look at me—of which I am by no means sure—I
fancy—I don’t know—it may be that I shall marry her. At least she
would do me credit and assist me in my career. She is ideally beautiful,
uncommonly clever, she has the grand air, and she has millions. You are
asking me to marry a woman with less than half her fortune, whom smart
Continental women would laugh at. I’d starve before I married a woman I
should have to apologize for. No doubt I shall end by worrying along
until Bridg drinks himself to death.”
“I don’t believe he is in any immediate danger—with that physique. And
I had a remarkably lucid letter from him this morning. He wants me to
try to persuade you to assist him in breaking the entail of Ordham—some
rich brewer wants to buy it. Of course you will not?”
“I shan’t even discuss the question.”
Lady Bridgminster rose with an impatient jerk of her shoulders. As she
stood there in the dim light, so long and narrow, draped, rather than
dressed like ordinary women, she looked extraordinarily distinguished
and handsome. Ordham’s æsthetic sense stirred, and he put out his hand
and took hers.