a sum far in excess of the wretched thousand pounds which had caused him
so much torment and debasement of spirit, and he had felt not only vexed
at the senseless extravagance, but sick of saying “Thank you”; the
constant repetition of which phrase creates in time a sense of
obligation fatal both in love and friendship. Feeling that if called
upon once more to tell her, upon her daily return from Bond Street, that
she was the most marvellous and the most generous creature in the world,
he should disgrace himself, he had announced with playful decision that
she must waste no more money on him; he could not accustom himself all
at once to such extravagance, had a vague sense of defrauding the
poor—these were the only excuses he could think of. Mabel, who had
heard of his princely expenditures in Paris on an income of £500 a year,
was astonished, but inferred that he still felt the difference in their
fortunes, and had too much humour to return her presents with the money
she had given him. But nothing had been further from Jackie’s mind than
this delicate hair-splitting. The £200,000 he regarded as a right and
proper marriage settlement, not as a present; he had never mentioned the
subject to his wife. And whereas nobody liked making presents better
than himself, he made appropriate ones; and if he gave none to Mabel, it
was because he could think of nothing she did not possess already.
So he avoided her eyes when she flew to his relief, left his seat once
more, and with his back to them ground his teeth. He had himself well in
hand, but he was still too young to have at his absolute command that
gay and impenetrable mask, that perfect suavity of manner, for which he
is celebrated to-day. Nevertheless, he always rallied his unevenly
developed gifts in such crises as these.
“I don’t think it is worth while to discuss the question from an ethical
standpoint,” he said in a moment, turning to his wife with a smile on
his lips and none in his eyes. “Countess Tann, admitting that she ever
dwelt without the pale, will not be driven back by any act of ours. She
has the strongest character of any person I have ever known. The
question is merely this: I feel under certain obligations of hospitality
to her which I should be glad to discharge, and she is a great artist
who gives the world far more than it can ever give her in return.
Granting that she is this Margaret Hill of Levering’s, society is now
too deeply in her debt to consider anything but the interest it must pay
as long as she remains in the position to demand it.”
“I quite agree with you—up to a certain point.” Mrs. Cutting had almost
visibly choked over the largest doses of British insolence she had ever
been called upon to swallow, but she forced her lips to smile. “I am
quite willing to take a box at the opera, show myself often, and lend it
to my friends at other times—there are so many Americans in London just
now. I am not as young and as modern as you are, but at least I should
never dream of boycotting a stage artist in her own sphere; I am as
ready as any one to acknowledge the debt of the ordinary mortal to
genius. And nothing has ever distressed me more than the dreadful tales
of gifted people dying in garrets because a selfish world would not
pause to listen to them. But never, willingly at least, have I received
under my roof a woman of blemished reputation. My mother and my
grandmother were both leaders of society in New York, and that was their
inflexible rule; I was brought up on it. As you English people are so
much more—charitable, let us call it—I have endeavoured to make up my
mind to believe no gossip unproven by the divorce courts; but really,
some things are a bit too flagrant, and one professional beauty, at
least, who was here this afternoon will never come again by invitation.
And if I decline to receive a woman who has fairly blossomed in the
sunshine of royalty, and who is well born and bred, I can hardly be
expected to receive a creature that began life as a social outcast. I do
not assert anything so foolish, of course,” she added hastily, “as that
we have not a certain small percentage of wicked and foolish women in
American society. I am merely emphasizing the standard of the country,
and I for one shall continue to uphold it as a matter both of principle
and inclination.”
“Both are highly commendable, but, it strikes me, a trifle provincial
and inconvenient. In a new country I can understand that you must draw
hard and fast lines, but now that you have come to live among people
that are quite sure of themselves, why not emulate their independence?
It has struck me more than once since I have had the pleasure of knowing
so many Americans, that we have more independence, freedom, under our
old-fashioned monarchy, than you under a form of government where those
words may be worn meaningless with too constant iteration; you seem to
have an idea that their antithesis is aristocratic.”
“I don’t think you see my point.” Mrs. Cutting’s tones were so even that
they were monotonous, and she fixed her eyes on her fan. “You English
aristocrats indulge in the fiction that you are above all laws, are a
law unto yourselves. You are mental and moral anarchists. With us it is
quite different. It may be because we are new, but one thing is quite
positive: our standards are higher than yours, and they are fixed. We
are as free of mind as you are, but we don’t choose to use our freedom
in the same way. We reverence the laws we have accepted from the highest
authority, because they are right and proper laws, because they conduce
to purity of conduct and true happiness. But you—you English might
exist on a planet of your own. And yet you are a mass of contradictions.
Mr. Wilde was lamenting to-day, for the fortieth time, of British
provincialism, respectability, philistinism. Others make the same
lament. I have seen little of it myself. You—I am talking of your
class, of course,—use those characteristics as an excuse when it
happens to be convenient. To be just, I have not the slightest doubt
that most of the women I meet are faithful wives, but it is only because
the reverse does not appeal to them; they would admit, if pushed to the
wall, that the laws made to govern the conduct of common mortals do not
apply to them—certainly not! But if their anarchy—or, shall we say,
their insolence?—does not take that form, it does some other. The only
absolutely well-regulated women, according to the American standard,
that I have met in England, are, it would seem, survivals from your
middle class.”
“It is irresistible, dear Mrs. Cutting, to ask why, since you admire
your own country and despise ours, you have come to live among us?”
Mrs. Cutting raised her cold angry eyes and met the cold impassive eyes
opposite. Even had she been less fond of him, the utter absence of
insolence in his voice and face, the repose and detachment of his
manner, would have compelled her admiration. He continued with a smile:
“It would be a genuine deprivation were you to leave us in a fit of
disgust, but I am afraid you will, one of these days, unless you make up
your mind to take us as we are, swallow us whole.”
“It has occurred to me once or twice of late that I may return to New
York.” She paused a moment and then continued deliberately: “It is an
intensely disagreeable and humiliating conclusion to have come to, but I
believe that I am a snob. It annoys me the more as I have no
justification, like so many of these Americans at present going the pace
in London, wild with delight at being able to address peers of the realm
as ‘Bertie’ and ‘Billy.’ Even the founder of my family in America helped
to model its social structure. What is the secret of this fascination of
England for the well-born of the United States? Perhaps its mere
picturesque contrast to our republican institutions, architecture,
customs. Perhaps some harking back of the blood. Perhaps it is an
unconscious attempt to live the literature of our childhood, where all
the fascinating characters were kings and queens, lords and ladies.
Perhaps the sleepless American instinct to go straight to the top, that
‘the best is none too good for us,’ as our slang so patly expresses it.
Perhaps because you have reached the superlative, while we are still in
the comparative degree. No doubt, however, the reason, or all the
reasons, are given the complete and final expression in that one hideous
little word, ‘snob.’”
Ordham had never felt so much respect and liking for his mother-in-law.
His eyes softened and he said solicitously: “I hope you are not unhappy
here. Surely no American has ever been so well treated.”
“Ah! There is another point. One must live in, not merely visit,
England, to discover that its reasoning runs something like this: ‘We do
not say, of course, that you are not as good as we are—pray, what does
that matter? But you are different, and being different, of course you
are not quite as good.’”
Ordham laughed heartily. “I never heard it so cleverly put!” The warmth
in his voice and eyes brought the colour back to Mrs. Cutting’s face,
the animation to her glance. “Indeed, you must never leave us! We should
miss you too dreadfully. And you are one of us—really!—however some
stupid people may regard the majority of Americans. Is not my mother
devoted to you?”
“How devoted do you think Lady Bridgminster could be to any one?”
“Oh, I was not thinking of affection. She never pretends to much of
that. But with whom else is she so intimate?—and at least you have
never found her rude.”
“Bad manners are not one of her fads, as they are with a good many I
could mention; and, beyond all question, I like her better than any
woman in London, for, in her way, she is genuine; she is, in fact, too
arrogant to be anything else. But that she regards me wholly as her
equal—not for a moment do I believe anything of the sort. And the
position is beginning to gall me.”
“Momma!” Mabel had listened to this conversation appalled, almost
breathless. “Surely, you would not go away and leave me?”
“Not for a while yet, darling—certainly not! But I feel that the time
will come when we shall have to satisfy ourselves with a yearly
interchange of visits.” She looked at Ordham as if bracing herself
again. “Let us have it out. We like each other too well to quarrel, and
it is better to come to a complete understanding now than to be
continually bringing up unpleasant subjects. Nothing disgusts me more
than this English worship of what you call personality. To receive
people that have forfeited their social rights merely because they have
some remarkable personal charm, have painted a picture, or written a
book, is putting a premium upon libertinage, swells the ‘artistic’
hordes that hardly dare be virtuous lest they be thought second-rate.
Nor do I in the least believe in the sincerity of all this kow-towing to
talent. You are a great and bored people, you must have fads; that is
all there is to it!”
“Does all that mean you will not receive Countess Tann?” He stood up,
looking appealingly at his mother-in-law, whom he liked better for
sticking to her little guns, inconvenient as they were to himself. He
drew his arms together, after his fashion when nervous. “Are you really
unrelenting? Will you not call on Countess Tann, and ask her to come
here? I shall feel very awkward if you do not. My mother has promised to
be nice to her, but I am not living in her house.”
“Do, mother,” whispered Mabel.
But on this point Mrs. Cutting was pure steel, although she found it no
easy matter to resist Ordham when he deigned to coax. “No—I am
desperately sorry, but I cannot. You must not ask it of me. If I forced
myself to take that woman by the hand, I should lose my self-control and
be rude to her. But, indeed, to touch her would be a physical as well as
a moral impossibility. I am very sorry. I hate to deny you anything.”
She swept out of the room hastily, and Mabel looked apprehensively at
her husband, who, for the fourth time, was striking a match with his
back to her.
“Jackie!”
Jackie gritted his teeth, but answered politely, “Well, Mabel?”
“Are you angry with me? It is too severe of mother.”
“Of course not. How can you say such a thing?”
“Well, you have a right to be. But perhaps I can talk mother over.”
“I am sure you cannot. But it doesn’t matter. I fancy Countess Tann will
understand—she is an American! Besides, no doubt we have wasted a lot
of talk and temper over nothing. She will be much too busy for society.
Your mother might have sacrificed her principles by leaving a card. A
Wagner prima donna who is to sing eighteen times in five weeks, besides
rehearsing with a scratch company, would no doubt herself spare you the
indignity of meeting a woman who not only has been as much gossiped
about as some eight or ten that were here to-day, but who hails from the
ranks—”
“Jackie! Please don’t talk as if we were dreadful snobs.”
“On the contrary, I think your mother did herself an injustice. What
more natural than to prefer England to America? Besides, she has the
courage of her opinions—I think nobody, certainly not Americans,
appreciates that sort of courage as much as the English. By the way, you
will not mind if I dine with my mother to-night? I have rather neglected
her.”
“Your mother dines out every night of her life! Do you really mean that
you will leave me if I beg you not to?”
“Oh, I am sure you will not do that—you are quite the most charmingly
unselfish person in the world.”
Once more he watched those great crystal tears well up and over. The
sight fascinated him as a phenomenon, but he too was pure steel. Mabel
saw the long line of his jaw grow longer and harder under the fine firm
flesh, stared into the eyes that were veiled to conceal their glitter.
He felt immeasurably older than this poor silly child to whom, under God
knew what delusion, he had fastened himself for life, and he was still
determined to treat her with what kindness and consideration he could
command. He took out his handkerchief and dried her eyes. “I am so
sorry! But you must let me play the dutiful son once in a while. Suppose
you take your dinner in bed. You will feel that much more refreshed
to-morrow.”
“Will you come home early?” sobbed Mabel.
“Of course!”
L
THE ROOM IN THE TEMPLE
Ordham did dine with his mother, whom he knew to be alone, but he left
her after coffee, and drove to the Temple. He roamed about the gardens
for a time, watching the ghost shadows of the ancient buildings, the
blue-black mystery of the river that it took an American artist to
interpret; then made his way to the Inner Temple and ascended to an
upper floor, opening a door with a latch-key. The gas he lit revealed,
not an office, but a comfortably furnished den, the walls covered with
the red paper dear to the heart of even the exceptional man. There were
several boxes of cigars and cigarettes on a buffet, a tea service, a
roller desk, manifestly locked, and on the walls all the photographs he
had taken of Styr during their summer. They were really creditable
performances, and he had put them under glass, not only for personal
reasons, but because he fully appreciated their unique value, even
though he had no mind that any eyes but his should behold them. The
collection represented Styr in every costume familiar to opera goers: in
her Fedora gowns, in other home toilettes, and in Alpine costume leaning
on her staff against a background of rocks, the cross on Kochel, and the
glacier above Berchtesgaden. Several times Fräulein Lutz had been
induced to snap the camera and take them together.
Ordham had now revelled in this unsuspected refuge for something over
two months. At the castle Mabel had been too much occupied to enter his
rooms save now and then on a sentimental excursion; but in the
comparative seclusion of town and increasing ennui, she not only
wandered in and out of his rooms perpetually, whether he were there or
not, but took an inexplicable pleasure in upsetting and rearranging his
things. This was a phase of matrimony for which Ordham was wholly
unprepared, although he recalled an amusing picture Styr had drawn of
one phase of the American household: the front bedroom the common
sitting room; formality, much less exclusiveness, practically unknown.
He had assumed that among the wealthy classes, accustomed to large
houses, life would be planned on the European scale; but while he was
given his own suite as a matter of course in Grosvenor Square, the
ancient instinct was planted in Mabel, whose ancestors had been simple
democratic folk to whom the traditions of their new country were dear,
despite their social eminence. It never occurred to her that what was
her Jackie’s was not her own, nor was it in her to suspect that she
could fail to be welcome at all hours and seasons.
Ordham had been amused at first, but not for long. When only his
opportune return diverted her from a cabinet which contained Styr’s
letters and photographs, he was so incensed that he nearly ordered her
out instead of gently conducting her forth to admire a new picture.
After a day of black, albeit invisible, sulks, that gift for compromise
which seldom failed him came to his rescue; and a week later found him
installed in The Temple, with solitude within and beauty without, and
only the roar of the Strand in his ears. Here he wrote his letters to
Styr, read and reread hers, smoked, and dwelt upon the happiness of the
past summer, as his eyes travelled from presentment to presentment of
its heroine. He also enjoyed the sensation of deceiving his wife, for he
felt that it was even a duty to balk a gregarious nature like that, and
this secret life that he shared with Styr alone was eminently agreeable
to the future master of the diplomatic art. Too proud to write of his
disappointment to his friend, however her presence might have tempted
confession, the very fact that he had taken this room as a solitary
retreat would have told the whole story to his acute correspondent, even
had not that atmosphere of melancholy superseded the subtle exaltation
of those letters written from Ordham when his energies were humming and
he was excited with a foretaste of power.
He lit the fire and a cigar, and settled himself into the ample Morris
chair, but not with his usual sense of unqualified delight. Heretofore,
when he had entered this room, it was to banish all unpleasant thought,
all haunting doubt; but to-night he intended to open certain water-tight
compartments and look squarely on their contents. He fancied that this
unusual disposition to confront and probe must be inspired by the woman
who had pricked his energies in so many other ways. Certainly, had he
never known her, he would, after some such crisis as this evening’s
understanding with his mother-in-law, have gone at once to the theatre,
postponed indefinitely the admission that his marriage was a mistake.
No man could be more direct, more outspoken, than Ordham when it suited
him, and this was his chief charm for people thrown much in his
society,—betraying, as it did, the cool courage under his listless
habit, furnishing the high lights, as it were, for that formal
indubitably diplomatic nature. To-night he put several facts into the
plainest possible English. He was mortally tired of his wife, hopelessly
disappointed in her. He could have resigned himself to her intellectual
lacks, trusting to time and his own assiduous tutoring to furnish her
skull respectably; but her character was so utterly without variety,
depth, mystery, interest of any sort, that the task of stuffing the
brain was not worth while. Neither time nor determination can create a
personality, and to Ordham’s mind people without strong individual
characteristics were hardly worthy of visibility, no matter how
admirable the shell. He had caught himself staring at Mabel in
wonderment, half fancying he saw behind her that stately romantic
elusive figure of his wooing, suggesting infinite possibilities. Had he
been hypnotized, and where had she gone? True, Mabel was as beautiful as
ever, as tall, her manners retained their grace, her head its lofty
poise; but her features lost their dignity, her eyes their dreams, the
moment she began to chatter; and heavens, how she did chatter!
He was still annoyed and embarrassed at this prospect of early
paternity, still felt that this projection of himself would appropriate
what was left of his youth; but at least it had the merit of causing a
certain tenderness to linger. Not for the world would he have given
Mabel a hint of his present evolution; he had only to remind himself of
her pathetic condition to be delivered of the temptation. But later,
when she was well again, strong, more tactless than ever in her renewed
beauty and social successes, should he hate her? This was the ghost that
had been tapping at his brain for weeks. He had no desire to hate his
wife. It would be demoralizing, inconvenient, a constant source of
irritation. Could he but crowd the world between them, wean her until
she shared his own indifference, he fancied he could accept his lot
philosophically; a well-bred ornamental wife was not to be despised. But
inflict himself with her society and pertinacious affections he would
not.
He realized now why his spirits had gradually sunk below their normal
level, save only when the drawing-rooms were full of kaleidoscopic
guests; moreover, that resentment had steadily grown at the trickery
which had brought him to his present pass, anger at his own unthinkable
stupidity. True, he was now immensely wealthy, but a young Briton’s only
appreciation of money is in the incessant want of it, and, this passed,
Ordham had almost forgotten that checkered interval between his father’s
death and his present affluence. Besides, it was now positive that his
brother had a mortal, if leisurely, disease; his inheritance was but a
matter of time. If these women had not made a fool of him, he should
still be free—young.
But he was not the man to arrest his vision on the surface of his
mistakes. He stared appalled at the sudden and vivid realization of all
that true marriage meant. Mere mating, respectable or otherwise, that
automatic opening of the door to a waiting generation always squatting
on the threshold, was not for men like himself; the world swarmed with
those that asked for nothing better, and cared little whether nature
blindfolded them or not; why could not he have been spared? Marriage—it
was a portentous thing; no mere similarity of tastes due to breeding and
experience, but, for highly organized beings, a thousand points of
contact, mental, physical, spiritual, which compassed an unimaginable
union; mystery and discovery; the quick response to half utterances, the
same enthusiasms in beauties and pleasures forever hidden from the mass
upon whose fertile surfaces grew the exotics of life; passions of soul
and body such as only Styr could suggest when the music of Wagner set
her free; immortality this side of the grave,—that was union in love as
Ordham conceived it. And consciously or not, upon at least half a
thousand points had he met and mingled with Margarethe Styr. The other
half, of course, were not to be commanded in a mere romantic friendship,
wandering silently with the woman in scenes made up of ice and stars,
floating on sinister lakes between Plutonian walls, sitting in a dimly
lit room above the murmuring Isar till dawn—but how wonderful it all
had been! Had he really appreciated it?
When he left her, he had refused to ask himself if she loved him, but he
knew that she did. It breathed in her letters, floated from them in an
almost visible aura. From the faithful Kilchberg he had heard in due
course of her stupendous performance of _Isolde_, knew that she must
have received his letter immediately before it.
Did he love her? It was significant that he did not reply even to
himself, “Of course!” But although he admitted it as frankly as he had
disposed of his sentiments toward his wife, he was as yet conscious of
nothing beyond a vast immaterial longing for that other part of himself,
so full of splendour and terrible mystery. After some dodging he
analyzed this paradox also: he was sitting in the forbidding wreckage of
early matrimonial disillusions, his passions lay so deep under the
torpors he had cultivated that they had been but superficially
disturbed, and he was still very shy. But between himself and Margarethe
Styr there could be every response, every correlation, every analogue.
It only depended upon circumstance or their own wills when that chemical
affinity developed which sooner or later drives all lovers into each
other’s arms. In this hour of cold reasoning, of almost vicious hatred
of all things pertaining to his condition, he hoped it would be late, or
never. He had not the least idea whether he lived for that moment or
wished that Styr had never crossed his orbit. It was his disposition to
live on the surface—there was so much on the surface! A man might
occupy himself with it for a lifetime, and far better than plunging down
to eternal fires. He believed that the wise men of life were its
dilettantes, and to be prince of the dilettantes had nature eminently
equipped him. But alas! . . .