forefront of her mind,—that young friend who would annihilate her
worries, who had unrolled this glorious future. It would be a poor
return to wreck his life. But was she not sure of herself? That, after
all, was the whole point. She had managed him before, she could manage
him again. She must live in a hotel, she would meet many people, five
weeks pass very quickly. She could strengthen the bond, deepen her
influence, even while she avoided the dangers inherent in mending a
broken intimacy. . . .
Yes, she would go. What was more, she would make sure of his career
before she left London, raze forever his wife’s selfish defences. Little
she cared whether the silly child had married him for love or not; her
possible sufferings were of no consequence whatever. She would not break
up his peace in the common fashion; but give him to Europe she would,
and his wife might console herself with her baby and the great position
for which she had schemed quite as much as for the love of this
exceptional creature to whom she had but the flimsiest, the most
transient rights. Not in nine short years could Margarethe Styr swallow
ten whole commandments.
Nevertheless, perhaps unconsciously, she possessed the large vision, the
contempt of petty detail, of obstructing means, when a great end
promised. There were times when she put even herself out of mind, and
saw Ordham, his fine and peculiar abilities in full flower, moving his
sure hand among the destinies of Europe, making as sure a place for
himself in history. Of what earthly importance was the possible
happiness, or the crushing, of one more American girl in the face of a
great and useful career? She was, in truth, a negligible quantity.
XLIX
THE SPIRIT OF THE RACE MOVES ON
Mabel, seated in a high-back Gothic chair, looking, in her ample flowing
gown of white brocade embroidered with gold, her soft mass of
“harvest-yellow hair” caught on either side with a jewel in an antique
setting, like a cross between Rossetti’s Monna Vanna and his Venus
Verticordia, wondered if this mob of people would never go. It seemed to
her that all London, fashionable and artistic, lived in her mother’s
drawing-rooms, and she wished that it had occurred to her to take a
house of her own. True, the suggestion would have precipitated another
discussion about that tiresome diplomatic future to which “Jackie”
alluded now and again as a matter of course (he had returned to the
Foreign Office), and, no doubt, it was as well to be relieved of all
detail and care at this time: she felt well, but tired. Moreover,
confident as she was in herself, normally, she had discovered that it
was no light task to amuse a man who had been born bored, and that if he
were to be kept in England, he must have its cream served up daily.
She congratulated herself, however, that she was growing cleverer every
minute. Her husband had no suspicion that his departure for the
Continent was to be delayed upon one pretext after another until
pretexts were no longer necessary; did he retain his interest in
diplomacy, the time would surely come when the Foreign Office would have
no more of him. His good humour was unruffled. He was more kind, more
captivating, than ever, and so considerate that his delicate young wife
saw little of him. He sent her to bed early, and took himself off to the
theatre, that “he might not keep her awake by roaming round the house;
he had never gone to bed early in his life.” He made her lie down
immediately after luncheon and remain on her couch until it was time to
dress for the afternoon drive. Between half-past five and seven they had
a crowded salon. He never had luncheon or dined away from home, and,
like the courteous soul he was, entertained formally or familiarly those
whose invitations he and his wife were obliged to decline for the
present. It was the dinners that, for the most part, were informal,
consisting of intimate friends of his mother or the Cuttings, whom he
did not feel obliged to follow up to the drawing-room. The luncheons, or
“breakfasts,” as it was the fashion to call them, were often imposing
functions.
Of the impromptu afternoon salon he was even more the gay and
fascinating host than at Ordham. No longer were Mrs. Cutting’s
drawing-rooms the studiously select assemblies of the
ante-Ordham-Bridgminster régime. True, there were many of greater social
importance than she had mustered unaided, as well as that bevy of smart
young American wives of English husbands so famous during the eighties,
but in addition she found herself receiving all the prominent artists,
authors, actors, poets, æsthetes, musicians, and many—discoveries of
her son-in-law—not yet famous but indisputably endowed. It was Ordham’s
grief that Rossetti had died before he was able to do him honour, but he
consoled himself by buying every picture of this consummate painter that
found its way to the market. As they did not harmonize with the light,
almost frivolous, effect of the drawing-rooms, he had them hung in the
stately entrance hall downstairs, which Mrs. Cutting had left untouched
that the effect of the French rooms above might seem the more brilliant
by contrast. They lit up those dim spaces with their living colours, and
Ordham often sat there alone. As available Rossettis were few, and he
had an almost equal admiration for Burne-Jones, several fine paintings
of this artist shared honours with the master. They would accompany him
to the Continent.
Mabel, although at first delighted to be admired by artists, especially
when they told her that she looked like The Blessed Damozel, to deck
herself in Pre-Raphaelite gowns designed by her mother-in-law, and sit
in a Gothic chair, was grown, in this month of March, heartily tired of
it all, and confided to her maid that as soon as she was well again she
should send æsthetic duds to the old-clothes man, order a trousseau from
Paris, such as even she had never possessed before, and become the
smartest woman in London. Her husband might continue to have his artists
if he wanted them, and they would cut their hair, but she had been born
to grace another sphere.
Moreover, she was irritably tired of all this talk about Wagner and that
Munich prima donna; London, always on the alert for a new fad, seemed to
be obsessed. Five weeks of Wagner at Covent Garden! She devoutly hoped
her Jackie would not demand that she sit in the back of his box and
share his raptures. With all her little barrel-organ soul she hated
Wagner; but she had not forgotten those carefully prepared appreciations
of the courtship, and dared not retract them so soon after that first
misguided confession she had worked so hard to obliterate.
At the end of five months she had progressed far in matrimonial tactics.
But what a protracted mental campaign it was! And she had pictured a
rose garden for two light-hearted lovers! Well, there was compensation
in all things; she had become clever, at least. She might have married
some nice, simple, unexacting person like poppa,—a gentleman who had
attended strictly to his own affairs,—and become one of those
undeveloped little American matrons who brought letters to them, and
whose husbands talked of nothing but business or football. She felt her
infinite superiority to all of them, happy and bright as they were;
although there were times when she longed for the mental rest which one
of these fine busy young fellows, whose brains were not crowded with
their ancestors, would have afforded her. And how often she longed to be
natural and free. But she was a true female; she adapted herself readily
enough to her lot, at times thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of
intrigue in which she felt herself moving, sure that in the long silent
tussle of wills, she, with the superior tact and finesse of woman, must
conquer. If Ordham had been a bold masterful person, such as his brother
Stanley would be one of these days when his shyness had worn off, she
would have knuckled under as a matter of course, enjoyed with all her
feminine soul the battles royal which preceded each sure defeat, while
remaining “good,” and “natural,” and “above board.” But the Machiavelli
in Ordham had pumped to the surface all those obscure currents of
intrigue and deceit which track through every woman’s nature. It was a
strange circumstance, this secret pursuit of John Ordham’s ego, in the
mysterious regions of the spirit, by two women at the same time; but
they hunted on different planes and never met.
The last caller drifted out and down the stair. Ordham returned, and
bending over his wife, asked her solicitously if she was tired.
“Not in the least!” said Mabel, brightly. All the married women she knew
told her that men hated tired women. “How interesting you have made our
salon, darling. Mother, can you imagine how we were ever satisfied with
just smart people before?”
Mrs. Cutting shrugged her shoulders, but smiled indulgently. “We never
receive those people in New York, but no doubt we make a great mistake.
Genius ought to be recognized, and when artists and others are quite
convenable, I certainly think they should be encouraged to remain so.
Besides, it helps them to meet patrons.”
Ordham concealed a smile and replied gently, “I feel greatly honoured
that they should come to my house.” Mrs. Cutting noted with some
amusement that he characteristically assumed that this splendid mansion,
leased, furnished, and supported by the Cutting millions, was his own.
But, although she too had some time since discovered that she knew him
very little, she liked him too well to feel more than a passing
irritation. In her own way she was in love with him, as mothers often
are with a charming young man come suddenly into the family as the
husband of an idolized child. It is the only opportunity a woman has to
love a man with a passion that is not legitimately sexual or maternal,
but a little of both, boned of both danger and responsibilities.
“I might point out,” continued Ordham, “that we are not the first to
receive the great in art, although, naturally, they prefer their own
circles. But even this absurd æsthetic movement has been of service to
London society, for it has popularized art, at least, and permanently
banished antimacassars. It only remains for some culinary genius to
follow in their track to make England almost as inhabitable as Paris or
Italy.”
“Don’t you love your country, Jackie darling?” asked Mabel, wistfully.
“Of course. But I was born, remember, when the Brotherhood, unknown to
the herd, was commanding the attention of the elect, and of these my
mother aspired to be. Naturally I became imbued with a love of change as
well as of beauty; quite as naturally I find it necessary to gratify
both out of England.”
“It is odd that you should be so different from your brothers,”
interposed Mrs. Cutting, hastily.
“Oh, they are all reversions to the ancestral type, Ordhams from marrow
to skin. My father did not like artists, and in time, my mother, being a
dutiful wife, got her gowns from Worth until he died, although permitted
to invite Rossetti and a few others to her big parties. And she had much
political entertaining, political work generally, to do; she had little
leisure to cultivate that side of London.”
“Well, I am rather glad she has followed her natural bent since,” said
Mrs. Cutting, pleasantly. “Those nice Burne-Jones gowns she wears—or
are they Rossettis? Frankly, I can’t tell the pictures of one from the
other, except that Burne-Jones’s women seem to be longer and thinner,
particularly as to neck. I wonder what beauty Rossetti could have found
in incipient goitres.”
Ordham got up suddenly and lit a cigarette some distance away. Less than
a week since he had received a letter from Count Kilchberg, in which
that gentleman, innocently regaling him with the gossip of Munich,
mentioned that Frau von Wass had no goitre, had been shut up by her
husband, suddenly jealous of somebody, no one could discover whom. The
story ran that the Nachmeister had opened the eyes of the Herr
Geheimrath in order to save some friend of her own from the clutches of
the fair Hélène. No key was necessary for Ordham, and his conscience had
given him a bad hour, although it was with a pleasant sense of relief
that he realized he could do nothing. He had accordingly locked up the
memory again, and was irritated with his mother-in-law for liberating
it. But when he turned, he said carelessly:
“That was Rossetti’s chief fault in his last years, and due, no doubt,
to failing eyesight and too much chloral. Talking of throats always
brings to my mind the great Styr’s. That is one of her assets. It really
is as like a column of ivory as mere flesh can be. I have taken a box
for the Wagner season, and hope that both of you will go with me to
every performance.”
He hoped nothing of the sort, but he knew he was quite safe in
expressing himself with propriety, and words never cost him anything.
“How wonderful five whole weeks of Wagner will be!” cried Mabel, with
glittering eyes.
But Mrs. Cutting felt herself at liberty to be quite frank. “The first
night; thank you very much. No doubt it will be a great sight. I
understand the Prince has promised your mother to go, and of course that
means the world. But I have no hesitation in admitting that Wagner bores
me to extinction, no doubt because I cannot appreciate him. But I was
raised on composers whose characters do not talk interminably in a sort
of singing register, and I am too old to be converted. You do not mind
my frankness, I hope?”
“Of course not. But Mabel must come, as she loves all music, and has
heard nothing but _The Mikado_ for months.”
“Occasionally,” said Mrs. Cutting, playfully. “But for a while yet we
must be inflexible guardians.”
“Of course!” Ordham smiled into his wife’s eyes, but in truth was ill at
ease and screwing up his courage. After all, this was not his house, and
there was a point to be settled before Margarethe Styr arrived in
London. He had delayed the inevitable discussion as long as possible,
but now seemed as propitious a time as any; and although he did not
suspect the cause, it had by no means escaped his attention that these
people were at all times anxious to please him. He attributed it to the
fact that he was English and they Americans, but thought it very nice of
them.
He strolled over to the table again and lit another cigarette, came back
to his deep chair, and turned his charming smile and large ingenuous
eyes upon his mother-in-law.
“Did I ever mention that Countess Tann is quite a friend of mine?”
Mrs. Cutting also braced herself. She, too, had anticipated this crisis.
“I think we spoke of her the first time we met again in London,” she
answered vaguely. “But you are such a diplomat! I should hardly know the
name of a single one of your London acquaintance if they did not come to
the house. I don’t think you have ever mentioned any of your Continental
friends. I doubt”—with a brilliant smile—“if your left hand is on
bowing terms with your right.”
“How can you say such a thing? How very odd! It seems to me that I must
often have spoken of Countess Tann—she was so very hospitable to me in
Munich. I met her at Neuschwanstein, where we both were guests of that
strangest of all strange mortals, Ludwig of Bavaria. Otherwise, I might
not have met her at all, for although Munich society is at her feet, she
goes about very little. No doubt she opened her doors to me because we
are both such good friends of your own good friend, Princess
Nachmeister, but she certainly showed me marked hospitality, and I shall
be glad to return it here in London.”
There was an ominous silence. Mrs. Cutting fanned herself vehemently, a
bright spot in either cheek. Ordham, his nervousness conquered, looked
at her steadily. Mabel twisted the ears of LaLa until he squealed and
ran off in dudgeon.
Mrs. Cutting spoke at last. “Do you recall any of our conversation on
the subject of—a—Countess Tann?”
“Was anything in particular said? I recall the fact of a conversation,
nothing more.”
“I think I expressed my disapproval of that sort of people. On the
stage, of course, it doesn’t matter; but to ask them under one’s
roof—that is quite another question. Of course, no one knows better
than yourself, dear John, that a man has many acquaintances his family
cannot receive.”
“I don’t think I follow you,” he said wonderingly. “You spoke just now
of feeling it a duty to encourage artists by social recognition. You
surely have no objection to the stage—above all, to the operatic
stage?”
“Oh, not at all! But I have to this Countess Tann.” Mrs. Cutting, driven
to a defence of her principles, was the woman to fling social
diplomatics to the winds.
“What objections have you to Countess Tann?”
“It is not possible that you have not heard all the—gossip about that
woman?”
“I have heard gossip of every woman I have ever heard discussed at all.
Gossip is the relaxation of overburdened minds, and most minds are
burdened one way or another. I cannot understand your attitude to
Countess Tann, when you receive—” and he mentioned the names of several
women notorious for more than beauty and fashion.
Mrs. Cutting flushed. “They go everywhere,” she said tartly.
“Nevertheless, I have received them only to please your mother; it has
been under protest, even although nothing against them is proved. In
time I shall tactfully weed them out.”
“There are no proofs against Countess Tann.”
“I am afraid proofs could easily be had. You were in the next room only
this afternoon when Mr. Levering entertained a group of us, not for the
first time, with reminiscences of Margaret Hill. That, he asserts, is
her real name, and he not only saw her year in and out in New York, but
knew her personally.”
“Levering is one of those rheumatic old beaux that sit in club windows
and manufacture scandal. There is no wheat in his chaff. And what a cur
to run about prejudicing people against a woman who has no man to defend
her, a woman so great, for that matter, that it is a presumption to
gossip about her at all! I shall cut him.”
“Dear me, I had no idea you could bring yourself to do anything so
direct and undiplomatic!” Mrs. Cutting laughed, but she was growing
angry. “And do remember that he is not only a very old friend of mine,
but a power even here in London, where he has come every season for
twenty years.”
“I have nothing to fear from Levering,” replied Ordham, coldly. “He is
not even a second-rate Englishman, and these transplanted American men
that have nothing better to do than invent or peddle racy gossip in
order to make sure of being asked every night to meet a title or two at
dinner are not taken very seriously by us.”
Mrs. Cutting made no reply for a moment. She realized that her
son-in-law rude must be very much in earnest. Her American soul rose in
wrath, but she kept Mabel’s happiness steadily before her, and finally
said, in her usual calm even tones: “I am afraid it is all true. We
won’t discuss poor old Levering. I have heard of Styr from other
sources, and although it distresses me greatly to refuse you anything
you wish, I fear I cannot receive her under my roof.”
“Granting that these stories are true, what difference does it make?” No
tones could be more even, more mellifluous, than Ordham’s. “She is a
great artist, many hold the greatest living. Shall we be more provincial
than Munich, which receives the artist with no reference to what she may
have been ten years ago, on the other side of the globe?”
“Why should artists be treated as if they were different from ordinary
mortals?”
“Because they are.”
Mrs. Cutting set her lips in a straight white line. “I recognize only
one code of morals. We Americans are brought up on splendid
old-fashioned principles. Nor do I recall anything in the Bible that
might be construed as exempting genius from the code that is necessary
to preserve society from anarchy.”
Mabel interposed hurriedly. She knew that on certain points her mother
was rigid, and she, too, regarded people that misbehaved themselves with
shocked disapproval. But it was too soon to put her husband on the
defensive. “Mother dear,” she said, in her clear little voice, “don’t
you think you might relax your rule for once, as Countess Tann is a
friend of Jackie’s? Besides, perhaps it is our duty to encourage these
people when they are trying to do right. Both Princess Nachmeister and
Mr. Levering say that her life has been exemplary in Munich. If we
snubbed her, we might drive her to the bad again.”
As she concluded her little effort she looked eagerly at her husband,
expecting a flash of gratitude from his expressive eyes, and not only
for coming to his rescue, but for refraining from the common jealousy of
wives. But Ordham averted his gaze, conscious of a still more intense
irritation. Mabel was not clever enough to play her part in daily
intercourse, little as she suspected it; and there were times when she
quite forgot the rôle she now knew it was necessary to act in order to
reinspire her husband with the belief that he had married the ideal
woman. Few women can spend their lives in full dress. In humbler walks
of life than Mabel’s, the wife exhibits herself to her husband in curl
papers and untidy wrappers. Mabel’s toilettes would have been perfect on
a desert island had her trunks been washed ashore, but to let her mind
run down at the heels was a temptation not to be resisted, now and
again, for had she not bagged her quarry? And although she schemed to
please her husband, adopted all the wise advice of Lady Pat, crossing
him in nothing and surrounding him with diversions, still would she read
no more books, still would she chatter; and she avoided “clever” men and
women as she would the plague. To know how to manage a man was
cleverness enough; what she did not know was that deft management, while
it may achieve certain results, is not always redolent of charm. Ordham
avoided her by the aid of every device his fertile brain could suggest,
for he dreaded the moment when self-restraint would snap and betray him
into wounding the poor little thing. She might be a silly child, but he
appreciated that she loved him devotedly. This uxorious affection,
however, was irritating him in more ways than one. Since their return to
town hardly a day had passed that she had not given him a present.
Extravagant and wealthy, it delighted her to shower costly “trifles” on
her husband; his rooms were littered with superb and superfluous
baubles. The new cigarette case in his pocket was of gold incrusted with
jewels, the old silver necessaries of his dressing-table had been
replaced with gold; he had now five watches, eight cigarette cases and
match boxes, fourteen ash trays, three sets of white pearls of the first
water and one of black, more cuff links than he pretended to count, four
sets of furnishings for his writing table, one of gold, one of Russian
enamel, one of Dresden china, and one of antique silver; and so on, ad
infinitum. Many of these precious objects were inscribed “Jackie.”