did he owe to her all he was or ever should be, not only was he
philosophical by habit and temper, but he should exult in the memory of
her to the end of his days. He strongly doubted, however, if he wanted
to add to those memories, in other words enter upon a different phase.
Had it not been for the great advantages she must reap from this London
season, he could have wished that he had left England to educate itself.
He longed above all things to meet her again, and there was nothing
which he would not have done to avoid it. Could they get through these
thirty-five days in safety? They would be crowded with work and social
engagements; possibly he should see little of her, and prosaic London
was not romantic Bavaria. Did he emerge from this coming ordeal with
that spiritual bond between them still unvitalized, he vowed that he
never would see her again. The moment they ceased to play with love
would be the first real moment of his life, and he had but a confused
idea of what must come after; nor was it comfortable to speculate. It
was not so much that he dreaded the energies of a real passion, as the
recklessness they might breed. He had no wish to sacrifice his career,
to be haled into the divorce courts, to be relegated to that half world
which exists for men as well as for women, particularly for young fools,
there to be known as “Styr’s lover.”
And a career he was determined to have. He was become fully conscious of
his abilities, his gift for leadership, his enjoyment of power. And if
he had thought little or not at all of serving his country when
preparing for the diplomatic career, he thought of it a great deal now.
If much of his careless insolent youth had been buried under
disillusions and ennui these last months, he found himself and life
twice as interesting. Not lightly would he imperil that future which for
the first time seemed vital and full. . . .
But _Styr? Styr? Styr?_ He recalled the young heroes of Balzac and other
veracious French realists, who wept as freely as women when a cruel
destiny dammed up their love secretions. He envied them, but remembered
also that one secret of the supremacy of the British race was that it
used its emotions to feed its energies, and began to act while its more
brilliant but less practical neighbours were spending half their forces
in grief or rage. But this reflection did not abate one whit of his
desire to be alone with this woman once more—he suddenly realized that
it was growing from moment to moment, that his cold analytical temper
had been displaced by throbbing pulses. He rose hastily, walked the
room, lit another cigar, spent an hour reading her letters. They always
translated him from the present, soothed as well as stimulated him,
banished his melancholy, leaving only a pleasant sadness in its wake. He
walked home toward dawn almost happy. Thirty-five days! At least they
would have many talks. Thank God that “dark threshold,” as she once had
phrased it, had never been crossed, would hardly obtrude itself during
this the last of their intimacies. And the antechamber was very large
and of an inexpressible beauty. Not to compare with it were the
commonplace mansions whose every corner was free to so many men, and for
life. He was an ingrate. He would accept the good the gods brought him
and take devilish good care not to cry for more.
When he reached home, he found Mabel asleep on a sofa in his room, with
the stains of tears on her face. He carried her into her own room and
put her to bed. Then, as she inevitably awakened and wanted to talk, he
considerately mixed her a sleeping draught, and saw no more of her until
the luncheon hour.
LI
THE ROCKET WITHOUT A STICK
When a great audience assembles with an amiable desire to be pleased,
agreeably titillated with the thought of a new interest in the wide and
often barren ranges of the impersonal life, and with their vanity
pluming itself upon inaugurating a new era, the object of their
distinguished regard must fail ignominiously to convince them that they
have made a mistake.
Covent Garden was filled from stalls to roof on the night of Styr’s
London débût, and the pit and the galleries were crowded with the true
music lovers, who were mainly Germans. Princess Nachmeister, as well as
Ordham and the enthusiasts he had enlisted, both in the fashionable and
artistic world, had pulled the wires so subtly that practically
everybody present fancied himself the discoverer of Styr, and hardly a
person in the stalls and boxes but bore a distinguished name, either
inherited or made. Ordham sat in his box alone. Mabel was ailing and her
mother remained with her. He looked as impassive as he was nervous and
angry; Styr had stolen into London, no one knew when, and he had not had
a glimpse of her in private, although a few moments before he left
Grosvenor Square he had received an invitation to lunch with her on the
following day.
The opera was _Tristan und Isolde_, and Styr, delighted to sing it again
after her long abstinence, gave the great rendering to which Ordham was
accustomed. Although the fashionable part of the audience was reduced
almost to idiocy before the end of the evening, particularly during the
long innings of the tenor—second-rate, of course, on such short notice,
and at this season—in the last act, there was no question of Styr’s
personal triumph. The most bored remained until the end, and then gave
“The Great German Prima Donna” an ovation. She had been called out
repeatedly after the two preceding acts, but only twenty appearances
after the final curtain satisfied an audience proud of its perspicacity,
and generously happy in paying tribute to genius. The Germans shouted
themselves hoarse, particularly when she dragged Richter out with her.
All admired Styr’s manner of receiving homage almost as much as her
voice and acting. It was neither effusive like that of the Latin song
birds to whom they were accustomed; she kissed no bouquets and baskets
of orchids, although these tributes were many: nor was she the haughty
gracious queen of fiction, after the fashion of certain actresses and
prime donne, thoroughly spoilt or qualifying for social incursions. She
merely walked out and showed herself, seeming to tower above them all,
with the cold, calm, grave majesty of the Sphinx. She was Styr. She was
theirs until the opera lights went out. They might look their full. She
bent her head to the royal box only because custom demanded it;
nevertheless, she throbbed with exultation, for she knew that the wires
would carry her triumph that night to every capital in the world. Her
fortune was made. Once she sought Ordham’s eyes, and her own flashed out
the gratitude she felt, then lingered for fully half a minute. When the
ovation subsided, she obeyed a summons to the royal box, repaid
compliments with the suave phrases of long experience, then, ignoring
the crowd gathered about her dressing room, and numerous invitations to
supper, went home to her frugal meal and bed.
* * * * *
Ordham walked restlessly up and down the large private sitting room in
one of the Dover Street hotels where a table was laid for two. The
Countess Tann, he had been informed, was dressing, begged him to accept
her apologies; she would join him in ten minutes.
He roamed about for half an hour, so torn with annoyance, doubt, and
mortification, as well as resentment against the great and capricious
Styr herself, that he was far from that mood of tremulous happiness,
stung with fear, which he had achieved in imagination many times. It was
abominable of Styr to steal into London when he had made up his mind to
rise at four of the clock and meet her at the station. With this heroic
act he had hoped to atone for certain unavoidable derelictions. It was
the bitterest mortification of his life that he was unable to introduce
his friend to London society under his own roof. His mother-in-law had
deftly avoided a renewal of the subject. Mabel had sweetly vowed to
break through that Puritan casing in which her mother dwelt like an
antediluvian mammal (this was Ordham’s image, not Mabel’s); but he had
chanced to overhear a scrap of conversation between the pair which
convinced him that not only did she meditate nothing of the sort, but
had joined forces with her mother and old Levering in acquainting London
society with the variegated, manifold, and heinous iniquities of Styr’s
past. The favourite story, Ordham discovered soon after, was that “Peggy
Hill” had deserted her starving and consumptive mother in the native
mining town to become the squaw of an Indian chieftain, and had worn
paint and feathers and carried pappooses on her back until a Western
millionnaire had chanced along, offered her sealskin and diamonds,
fought a duel unto death with the chieftain—who, wearing only feathers,
had many vulnerable points—and carried the heartless mother to New
York. There she promptly deserted him for a horse jockey, and after
having figured as co-respondent in innumerable divorce suits, had opened
a disreputable resort, over which she had presided affluently (when not
in jail) until ordered once for all out of New York by the police. Then
she had cultivated her voice, and, finding it a gold mine, conserved it
with a fairly consistent exercise of virtue. This richly picturesque
past, in which any prima donna might rejoice, delighted London, but it
was hardly one to open the portals of society. London could stand a good
deal—but really! There are lines! They would applaud her in Covent
Garden, talk about her over every tea cup; but extend to her the
greatest of the world’s hospitalities—hardly! The information that
Munich society was at her feet they treated with the contempt it
deserved. _Munich!_
Ordham had discovered with astonishment and no little humiliation, that
although with money, energy, and finesse, he might import German opera
to London and induce people to hear it, although he was popular,
admired, and wealthy, he had practically no power socially. He reflected
bitterly that this was not to be accounted for only by his youth, his
brother’s durability, the fact that he was not established under an
imposing roof of his own, but that, much as he was liked, he stood for
nothing, would be forgotten before he had lived out of London a month.
He was a second son married to a rich American girl and living in the
house of his mother-in-law. Who was he to presume to dictate to London
society? Had he attempted it, he would have been put in his place as
summarily as had he been an American himself.
And his mother had basely deserted him. Invited to join a driving party
to the châteaux of northern France, she had left London with a hurried
note of explanation to her son, feigning to forget the coming of his
friend, but devoutly thankful for any escape from what was assuming the
contours of a problem. She might rank among the independent women of
London, rather weak on the subject of celebrities; but really! His
grandmother doted on him, and he had approached her in the hope that she
in her great rank and cynical indifference to a criticism that never
could affect her, would help him out of his difficulty, enable him to
return some of those hospitalities now bulking in his tormented
imagination. But he had merely received a reminder of the duke’s
aversion from foreigners and disbursements, and much sound advice
against making mistakes in his youth; society had cast out its own
before. But he had no intention of insulting Styr by entertaining her
without the countenance of his family.
His only success had been among certain personages in the world of art,
letters, and music, who, indeed, did not wait for his gentle
manipulation; they were thankful for the opportunity to do homage to one
of the world’s great artists. Whether the ridiculous stories current
were true or not hardly concerned them, but they assumed as a matter of
course that they were incidental, having suffered more or less
themselves. Styr was certain to receive a social ovation from the sets
that Ordham privately thought the best worth while in London, but that
by no means satisfied him; after all, they were not of his own class,
and it was this class—in the eyes of the world, representative
England—that he had set his heart upon honouring his friend.
As he wandered about, glaring at the walls and furniture, far too
exclusive to be artistic (it was, indeed, early Victorian), he felt his
temper rising every moment; he hated Life, that gave with one hand only
to take with the other, that had contracted the habit of late of balking
his royal pleasure. Nevertheless, he was able to reflect that it was as
well many circumstances had combined to stifle the lover in him for the
moment. This first interview was the only one he had dreaded. Could they
but shoot those breakers even plain speech between them would not be
fraught with danger. He did not need experience to assure him that when
lovers, long inarticulate, meet after a separation not too long, those
brain centres that check and regulate human actions are liable to
suffocation by fire and flood. But, were all barriers razed, he was in
too bad a humour to-day (he had also been forced to swallow effusive
regrets from Mabel before leaving home) to find a corner in him for
ardours. At the same time he sighed at this new evidence of the eternal
contrast between the anticipated and the real; his tremours over this
first meeting had been very sweet.
Nothing perhaps is so eloquent of the artless respectability of the
British race as the composition of its older hotels: drawing-rooms and
bedrooms rarely connect. (And yet an Englishwoman, visiting the United
States for the first time, innocently remarked that she could see the
Americans were a virtuous race, as they used portières instead of
doors!) The only door of Styr’s sitting room in this expensive hostelry
gave entrance to the public corridor. Ordham heard the hissing of
under-flounces for a full minute before the door opened and Styr
entered. Her cheeks were flushed. She wore a Fedora gown of white
camel’s-hair and silk, with a yellow flower in her hair and another in
her girdle. He had never seen her look so lovely off the stage.
“It is too delightful to see you once more!” she cried with the warm
hypocrisy of a woman who longs to fling herself into a man’s arms and
say nothing. “I know I am unforgiven for not letting you come to the
station. But did you really think I should let you see me after
twenty-four hours in train and boat? That was like a man! And now I have
kept you waiting. But of course I expected that you would be late.”
“How can you say such a thing? I wanted above all things to go to that
train. I shall never forgive you.”
“Ah! but had I let you meet me, I never should have forgiven myself.
Shall we sit beside these delightful window boxes? I changed the
luncheon hour to two o’clock—I woke up so late. Oh, tell me that I was
quite wonderful last night. It seemed to me that I never had made a real
effort before. I know that I triumphed, but I want to hear that you were
satisfied.”
Ordham muttered what banalities he could summon. It was evident that her
spirits were high, whether artificial or not. She ran on: “Never, never
can I express to you what this sudden and splendid opportunity to sing
in London means to me. You are my good angel. What had I ever done that
you should take so much trouble for me? Those examinations? Yes, for
that I shall take credit till the last of my days. But even so—”
“There was no question of paying any debt.” Ordham was scowling at the
roses in the carpet. “I could not if I would repay you for many things.
I have not the least desire to do so. I wanted you to come here and
force London to accept Wagner. Of course you have become the rage in a
night. You will reconquer some seventeen times during this too brief
visit. It is hardly worth talking about. I wonder if you will like
London. Have you ever been here before? I forget.”
“Never. Think of it! I had often visited the Continent before going
there to live, but for one reason or another I never got to London. I am
as excited at the idea of seeing as of singing to it.”
He had recklessly brought up the subject, but he suddenly felt the
meanness of every excuse he had concocted. Should he tell her the truth?
Why not first as last? She would not be long discovering it. While he
hesitated, she came to his rescue. Before leaving Munich Princess
Nachmeister had casually remarked that she feared dear Adela was too
puritanical to receive a stage artist under her roof; for the matter of
that, the Anglo-Saxon races, compared with the continent of Europe, were
so provincial on many subjects that she never met an English or American
woman who did not make her feel as if she were the mistress of every man
in Europe. But as regarded stage folk, it must be remembered that Munich
was almost exceptional in its catholicity. In Paris, in Rome, in many
other capitals, they were anathema outside their proper spheres.
Therefore was Styr prepared for the dark brow and nervous manner of her
friend. She knew that as he had not written her before this of
receptions arranged in her honour and begging her to reserve certain
dates, his family must have refused point-blank to receive her. She was
hardly disappointed, for she had little of the American’s romantic
weakness for the social citadels of the old world, and she knew Ordham
so well that her sympathy in any case would have been for him, not for
herself. She leaned forward and said impulsively:
“Do promise me one thing! This is not only my first visit to England,
but it may be a long time before I can come again. I want to be a
tourist. I want to see all the sights. And to see them with you! Ah,
fancy! Don’t be haughty and tell me that you scorn sight-seeing. Don’t
tell me that you want me to meet a lot of tiresome people. I have not
time for both. Do you hate the idea?”
“Hate it?” He seized her hand and kissed it in his immense relief. “I
should love it. I have never been inside the Tower, nor the British
Museum, and only once to the Abbey—to a wedding. It will be too
enchanting to have all those hours alone with you. We will go to Windsor
and Hampton Court, Madame Tussaud’s and the National Gallery, exactly
like two American tourists. Promise that you will not go to a single
place with any one else.”
“I do not expect to see any one else except the opera house people.”
“But—of course!—attentions will be showered upon you. It is most
unfortunate that my wife—”
“Oh, do let me forget that you are married. We shall wander about just
as we did in Bavaria, and in this crowded city no one will be the wiser.
Will you take me to the Tower this afternoon?”
“Will I? Rather!”
His good humour was quite restored, and he spent an entirely happy
afternoon, even condescending to share her interest in that mighty
volume of tragic drama, the Tower of London.
LII
MATRIMONY
Mabel rustled into her husband’s dressing room as he was giving the last
careful strokes to his front locks, which he arranged in a manner
peculiar to himself. He nodded to her absently, longing for the time
when he could ask her bluntly to respect his privacy, since she was
impervious to hints, and she wandered to the window and fingered the
bright flowers in the boxes.
“It is such a heavenly day,” she sighed. “Somehow, I never can grow
accustomed to spending summer in the city. How—how—does Countess Tann
like London?”
“She loves it, of course. Who does not love London at this season?”
“Well, it is certainly much nicer than to sing here in winter. I suppose
she is perfectly wild over her success.”
“She has never had anything else.”
“But I mean in London, where no one, that is only a few, really likes
Wagner. Some one said yesterday that, although Styr’s personal success
was beyond dispute, he feared the Wagner season would be a failure as a
whole; five weeks of Wagner was more than any one not a German could
stand, and if they give the Ring again—”
“They will do nothing so tactless. But _Die Walküre_ is romantic enough
to please the silliest and great enough to entrance those that really do
know music. No other performance of _Götterdämmerung_ will be given,
more’s the pity, for Brünhilde was always one of her two greatest rôles,
and her rendering of it has deepened and even changed somewhat since I
heard it in Munich. But no doubt it would fill the house only once—with
people that want to be able to say they have heard the Ring! Styr has
also consented to sing Elizabeth and Elsa; her voice is rather heavy for
those rôles, but a hundred people will go to hear _Lohengrin_ and
_Tannhäuser_ where one will even show himself at the greater operas a
second time. The enterprise is not in the hands of fools—I know several
members of the committee—and everything has been thought of to insure
the season’s success.”
“How nice! Of course she is quite extraordinary. I am so sorry I could
only sit through one act last night. And what a pity I cannot meet her.
It is too old-fashioned of mother.”
“You could leave a card on her.”
“But, Jackie dear, she would then feel at liberty to come here, and
after all it is mother’s house.”
Ordham turned to her with a rising flush. “Do you mean that you believe
Countess Tann would force herself upon any one? I must have given you a
strange opinion of her.”
“Good heavens, Jackie dear, I hope you have not told her that we—that
mother will not receive her. How dreadful!”
“Certainly I have not. But she does not happen to be a fool. She has now
been in London ten days, and as neither my wife nor my mother-in-law has
left so much as a card on her, don’t you suppose she understands?”
“But surely you told her that I cannot go about?”
“You drive every day. There is no effort involved in leaving a card.”
“But—how like a man! One can hardly go that far and no farther. If this
were only our house!”
Ordham drew his lids together. “If it were, would you receive Countess
Tann?”
But Mabel did not flinch. “Of course I would, Jackie darling. I would
even defy mother—we could go to a hotel—if only I felt up to it. But I
am a wreck and mother takes such care of me.”
Ordham set his teeth and turned away, grimly reflecting that the one
mental trait his wife possessed which compelled his admiration was the
neatness with which she could deliver a lie. She broke off the heads of
several geraniums and then cried out, as if suddenly inspired with a
bright idea: “Let us go to the country to-day. It is too utterly
heavenly to stay in town. Let us take a long drive through Surrey.”
“It is not good for you to take long drives.”
“Oh, it won’t hurt me a bit. We can rest often in those ducky little
inns, and sit in the woods. It would be too delicious.”
“There might be an accident, and I never should forgive myself.”
“Oh! With our horses? One is always thankful when any horses of mother’s
will go off a walk. Say that you will!” She spoke with a charming
girlish eagerness.
“I am afraid that I cannot. I have half a dozen engagements.”
“But, Jackie darling, you ought not to make engagements for a whole day
when you know how lonesome I am without you.” Mabel fell headlong into
the domestic snare, heedless of resolutions and advice from her
mother-in-law.
He turned to her with the flush gone from his face, and said in the
gentlest manner possible: “Should you mind if I asked you not to call me
Jackie? I have often intended to do so. I hope you don’t mind.”
It was Mabel’s turn to flush, and although her temper was not quick, her
eyes flashed and her lips trembled. “Why?” she demanded. “Do—do you
think it a liberty?”
“How can you say such a thing?” But although he spoke promptly, he was
surprised to discover that she had put a latent resentment into form.
“Why,” stammered Mabel, “you are _English_. I believe mother is right.
But this—this is really too much. I wonder if you could ever understand
that we Americans have exactly as good an opinion of ourselves as you
English have of yourselves? Perhaps we too look down upon all other
nations. We have the right to! United States History is the only history
that English people never seem to know anything about.”
“You look too pretty when you flash with patriotism like that.” Ordham
smiled and kissed her lightly. “But you flew off at a tangent without
giving me time to explain. It merely happens that I have always hated
the nickname of Jack. In fact, I don’t like nicknames at all. It seems
to me that they deindividualize. Men that permit themselves to be called
Bertie and Olly and Sonny might as well shave their heads or wear a
beard. I was christened John, and I feel John, not Johnny or Jackie.”
“Your mother calls you Johnny.”
“My mother goes in for fads. Nobody else has ever dared to call me
Johnny.”