Old Kurt answered his ring and kissed his hand effusively. When told
that the Frau Gräfin was in the gallery, Ordham motioned the man aside
and went rapidly down the hall and opened the door. As he saw the
familiar room in the lamplight, with Styr seated at the farther end
before a table, writing, his head swam, and he hardly noticed that she
almost stumbled to her feet and stood staring at him.
But all she said was, “Oh!”
He cast his hat on one chair, his gloves on another, almost revolved on
his heel, and then went slowly forward. But she held a cold hand across
the table and motioned him to a chair. “Sit down—please. You might have
telegraphed.”
She almost fell into her own chair, and he saw that her face was thin,
her skin dull, her eyes in dark orbits. He had never seen her look less
handsome or more alluring. But he took the chair, as she desired it. He
had known that many things must be said before the last barrier went
down, that she would never rush into his arms even if taken by surprise.
But he was far from guessing the new barrier she had been educating her
courage to erect in case he came, although she had no mind for it save
as a last resource.
She realized, however, that it would be a waste of time to beat about
the bush, and said, “I fancied that you would either come within a month
or two or not at all.” She spoke coldly, while they eyed each other like
enemies, but he observed that her breath was short.
“I came on a sudden impulse, having quite made up my mind to wait until
Mabel was well again. I must return—very shortly. I arranged matters so
that she would think I had gone north with my mother. But although I
mechanically took every precaution to spare her, no doubt I should have
come if I had been obliged to walk over her dead body.”
“What have you come for?”
“To claim you. To bind you to me forever. I have no longer the least
intention of attempting to live without you. Some way it must be
arranged.”
“It cannot be arranged.”
“It shall be.”
“Do you remember the promise you made me on Stanmore Heath?”
“I remember every word that has passed between us.”
“You cannot have me and your career too.”
“I shall make the attempt. If I fail, the career will have to go.”
“Do you hope for satiety before the end of the period during which a
love affair may, with due precautions, be kept secret—”
“No!” he said violently. “I neither hope nor wish for anything of the
sort. If I could have put you out of my mind, as I have always been able
to banish other memories, I am free to confess that I should have done
so. But I could as easily cease to breathe, and live. I refuse to
contemplate life without you, and have come here sooner than I intended,
because I cannot—will not—wait any longer to enter upon a complete
understanding with you. It took me a long time to wake up; I hesitated
longer than many men would have done. I am almost ashamed that I
hesitated at all. It makes me seem to myself a monster of calculation.
But you stood me off in the first place, and in the second,—well, aside
from my career, I recognized that I had voluntarily assumed
responsibilities that must bind me to a certain extent. With those I
shall compromise as far as possible, but my career, I fancy, will take
care of itself. If you have useful gifts and are willing to exercise
them, life is only too ready to wring the last drop of blood out of your
brain.”
“And do you fancy,” she cried harshly, “that I shall renounce my own
career in order to follow you about and hide in back streets to be
always at your beck and call? The egoism of man passes comprehension!”
But he neither coloured nor turned pale. He looked at her steadily. “Of
course I expect you to do nothing of the sort. As I am not, thanks to my
stupidity, in a position to marry you, as we are both too proud and
ambitious deliberately to renounce the world after the fashion of those
that have nothing worth speaking of to sacrifice, and as a possibly long
life on this planet apart is unthinkable, we must resort to compromise.
Europe is a small place and I shall see that I am not sent out of it. We
can meet constantly. An attaché has little to do—it will be several
years before I shall be anything more. I have much influence, I can
obtain many leaves of absence. You can _gast_ where I am accredited. I
understand that I am to go to Paris. It is not a day’s journey from
Munich. You could spend at least one week in every month there, and no
one would think of asking what took a prima donna to Paris—any woman,
for that matter!”
“And my New York season?”
“I hope you will go to New York only once. Three months will be an
eternity, but I should be the last to deprive you of that supreme
triumph. I wish it were over—but—well, there will be the long summers
which we shall manage to spend together somewhere.”
“We should be the scandal of Europe in six months. Lord Bridgminster
will not live long. Your inheritance will make you more conspicuous than
ever. All the bishops in England would be writing to the _Times_
protesting against your employment by a virtuous government. A love
affair here, and every servant in Munich would know it. In great cities
I should be watched by more than servants. American correspondents would
sit on my doorstep. Your wife—”
“My wife, when she is well, will, in any case, learn that I shall never
live with her again. She will also learn that to criticise any act of
mine would be as great an impertinence as if she were one of my
relations. She will have everything else that she married me for. In
time she must cease to care for a man that will have none of her.”
“Poor thing!” The pity was involuntary and sincere. “How she will
suffer!”
“Who does not suffer? Let her be thankful that she is made of
thistle-down that any strong wind may blow about, but only from one
pleasant place to another.”
“Thistle-down has been known to scatter in winds too strong. You might
kill her.”
“The fit survive.”
“Oh, you are hard! You are man epitomized.”
“I have put a temporary lid on a devil’s brew. Who has not iron and
steel in his nature if he amounts to anything? It comes out in one
fashion and another. I am showing you my naked soul. I shall never do
that to the child I married—to any one else on earth, for that matter.
Mabel will be let down as easily as possible. I have every wish to spare
her, and she gains in acuteness. Possibly she will let me alone at first
in the hope of slowly winning me back, and meanwhile learn to do without
me.”
“You should not have left her now. There is always the possibility of
death in childbirth.”
She saw him turn a shade paler and stir uneasily, but his gaze did not
soften nor waver. She said abruptly:
“How can you tell that were you suddenly free, I should not expect you
to marry me?”
“I should certainly marry you.”
“And what compromise then? Not a woman in diplomatic society would
receive me. I can see them! To shake hands with a famous artist at a
reception and go away and talk about it is one thing; to receive her as
an equal, to forget her scandalous history as well as her public
career—why discuss the obvious? Even were I willing to renounce my
career, you never could stand the position. Loyalty to me and your own
pride would force you to give up the service.”
“Not now. You forget your conquest of London; its conclusion to believe
none of those stories.”
“London felt quite safe in permitting itself to be captivated by the
celebrity of the moment; I asked nothing further of it, encouraged none
of its marriageable men, my stay was brief. If I invaded one of those
Londons _in petto_, a British embassy, demanding to be received as an
equal, do you believe that they would guilelessly accept me? They would
immediately investigate and learn the truth.”
“Anything can be lived down—”
“Not a past like mine.”
“I don’t believe that there would be any investigation, if only because
London first believed those outrageous stories of Levering’s, and then
reacted from them. He overreached himself—”
“Levering was extraordinarily moderate. No doubt it would be as you say,
as long as I remained a mere prima donna, for people are only too
anxious there should be no obstacle between their conscience and the
pleasure of lionizing: but the moment I gave up the stage, married one
of their own—I should be stoned out of the gates and you with me.”
Ordham sprang to his feet, overturning his chair. “Enough of
improbabilities. Mabel has no intention of dying. We have only the
present to consider and we have wasted too many words already. You and I
exist in a void. We have been driven straight toward each other for the
last fourteen months. As well try to escape the morrow’s sun—”
She too had risen and pushed back her chair, but she kept the table
between them. Her face flushed almost black, then turned so white that
he thought her about to faint. But something in her eyes arrested him.
He held his breath. Once more he almost turned on his heel.
“Then listen to the whole story,” she cried, with that hoarse muddle of
accents that banished the very memory of her gift of song. “God! how am
I to say it all? And is it for your sake alone? I wonder? I have vowed
to save you from yourself, give you to public life; but I doubt if I
could bring myself to rip the grave-clothes and show the corpse, if my
own career were not so dear to me, the delight in song, in art, in
holding great publics spellbound, in reigning a queen of sorts—and a
singer’s time is brief enough! I have asked—oh, many times—whether I
loved you or my art most, and the answer has not always been the same,
not by any means. I don’t know! I don’t know!
“But not for a moment do I believe that we could compromise with the
world as you have arranged in your royal manner. It would mean that one
of us would have to go into obscurity, be forgotten by the world, and
that would be my part. You would never give way, and I should hate you
if you did. Good God! Do you think I have thought of anything else since
my return to Munich? I have been tempted to scald my flesh to relieve
the torments of my mind. And I tell you there is no way out, there is
nothing for us in this life but what we have had already, nothing! We
must part, and part to-night, before it is too late, and as there is no
other way to bring you to your senses, I shall tell you that hideous
history, not only to blast your love out of existence, but to inspire
you with a vision of the enthusiasm with which London would receive me
as a peeress, should you ever be free.”
She hurried on as if she feared he might protest, or her own courage
ebb. “I have told you that I was bred in a coal-mining district, where I
never saw a clean face, where I do not recall a fugitive instinct for
cleanliness in myself, where human beings were merely brutes that walked
on two legs instead of four. We threw our dead out into the snow to lie
there until the ground thawed—until a reporter chanced along, wrote a
sensational story for his newspaper, and put our overseer to shame. I
did not know the alphabet; perhaps I did not know there was such a
thing—I forget.
“I was not fifteen when a drummer came to the hamlet, an alert flashy
young man. I think I told you that I wore hopsacking—if your
imagination can picture that material. But in spite of hopsacking, in
spite of a dirty face, the man saw the promise of beauty, and to do the
creature justice he thought me several years older than I was, for I was
already very tall. He made no impression upon me whatever during that
visit, but on his return some months later he brought me candy, ribbons,
many small trinkets which I could hide, and promised me unlimited silk
and diamonds if I would go with him. The men of the district had not
been unkind to me, except that I was made to do double the usual woman’s
work on account of my physique and strength; the father of the family I
lived with had no doubt given me the benefit of his protection, as I was
able to earn almost as much as a boy. As for myself, I was always too
busy or too tired to get into mischief. I do not fancy that the silks
and jewels would have tempted me particularly, for I had never seen any,
and he had some trouble making his meaning clear. But when he promised
me a life of ease, a comfortable home, and a servant, I did not hesitate
a moment. I stole off one night and met him at a flag station where he
gave me a suit of decent clothes to put on, and the train came along
half an hour later. He took me to New York. I ran away from him three
times in the first month. I not only hated him, but I was made to do all
the work in his dingy little flat. But the streets terrified me and I
went back to him. I lived with him a year, and he was often away. During
that year I learned many things. I saw children going to school and knew
what it meant, for he had amused himself teaching me to read and write.
I saw the outside of luxury and pleasure. He gave me good sensible
clothes and took me to the theatre, where we sat in the gallery and
gazed down upon a bewildering world of wealth and fashion. All the women
looked to me like goddesses or angels. So did the actresses!
“The days were very long. No one in the big cheap apartment house ever
spoke to me, and one day the janitress slapped me for spilling milk in
the entrance and called me a name one does not forget. My man was coarse
and violent. I hated him increasingly. There was but one way of escape.
I had often been out with him late at night. I went out one night alone.
By this time I was conscious of my looks, and from some remote recess in
my slowly awakening brain the instinct for dress had crept forth. I did
not return to the flat. I lived the life of the streets with complete
unconcern until I finally picked up an easy-going man of middle age with
a leaning toward benevolence, whom I asked to educate me, and who
consented, much pleased with the element of variety thus introduced into
a somewhat humdrum existence. He put me in a little flat not far from
his own modest brownstone mansion, found me a respectable-looking
harridan to act as chaperon and sent me to a school as his ward. I
disliked him as much as my original protector, but I tolerated him until
I was eighteen, and as well educated as the ordinary girl of a year or
two younger. By this time he had fallen into the habit of bringing men
to the flat to dinner. He was proud of his discovery, I was pert and
sharp and bad-tempered, and amused him and his friends. These evenings
were not very hilarious, but they must have been an immense relief to
the respectable man with a sneaking blackguard in him—a common enough
type—after the dull order of his family circle. They were not even
fashionable; he was a merchant of some standing and a fair income, but
far from being a high liver in any way.
“He looked upon me as a child, a bright waif who naturally desired to
educate herself against the time when beauty should have fled, and she
might aspire to some means of support above service. I made my
deliberate choice of the youngest and least ill-favoured of his friends,
a bachelor with a gay temper and good manners. That was my first
exercise of the art of fascination. Heretofore, hardly dreaming of
anything higher, I had been a mere creature of commerce. I vanquished
him in a week, and transferred my belongings to another retreat. I liked
this man well enough. He surrounded me with luxuries, provided me with
private teachers, and gave me a liberal allowance.
“A year passed. I was bursting with life, with the desire to live. I was
sick of being hidden away. My intellect forged steadily ahead in its
persistent cravings, but other cravings kept pace. I wanted gayety,
society, brilliancy. I wanted admiration. This man brought no other men
to my apartment, took me nowhere. I fancied him in love with me and
asked him to marry me. I shall never forget the expression of his face.
I left him for a man who had followed me about for some time. He was
what is loosely known as a man about town, with no affiliations, nothing
to lose, only too delighted to spend money on a pretty woman and show
her off. I drank the cup of pleasure daily. I met other women of the
same sort, turned night into day, revelled in gorgeous raiment, choice
food, fine wines, and a reasonable number of jewels. The man was coarse,
but good-natured and generous.
“Long before this I had begun to read—literature. I now knew exactly
what I was about, what I was. But the only effect of thought was to
create a disgust for the particular form of vice in which I lived. Its
vulgarity, its obviousness, became hateful to me. Meanwhile I had met,
now and again, men of a far higher social caste, of education, polish.
There was no question in my mind that my preference for men of this sort
was pronounced, but to live with any one of them meant being hidden away
again, and for this I had no taste. I dreaded the ennui, and I loved
excitement, although I wanted it in the society of gentlemen. Suddenly I
conceived the idea of going on the stage. This would give me a _raison
d’être_, as well as a measure of independence. I did so, and soon
transferred myself to a man of fashion and wealth, and a wife who was
one of the handsomest, and, to judge by appearances, one of the sweetest
women in New York society. I found him rather a brute, selfish,
capricious, and extraordinarily mean. But I made a desperate effort to
love this man, for by this time my mating instinct had developed and I
wanted to love. I might as well have tried to love a brownstone front. I
left him for another man of his class, and this man I did love. I tried
to kill him. I once told you. For a time I forswore all men. I sold my
jewels and went to Europe. But everywhere some man recognized me, and I
found that I could make no friends save books, and I was too young for
those to suffice. I returned to New York with a friend of the two last
men that had protected me. I became quite reckless; and as by this time
I was extraordinarily handsome, in a vital splendid way, and with
something like genius in the matter of dress, I was more sought after
among fast men than any woman of my class. I tormented many men to whom
I yielded nothing. That was my revenge.
“Still I read and studied. I had not an illusion about myself. I did not
pretend to excuse myself. I made money in stocks. I could have lived
alone with my books. But I alternately hated and loved the excitement,
the luxury, the senseless extravagance in which I indulged whenever I
found a man weak enough to squander his all upon me. At that time I had
but a glimmer of a belief in my histrionic talent, and even had I
believed in it and been consumed with ambition, I should have met with
but one reply from every manager—I was too tall. True, I might have got
some man to put up the money for a starring tour and acted Lady Macbeth
or some other classic rôle, but I knew that to succeed I must have
practice first, and this I could not get. I was condemned to small parts
in the background, and often would have lost my position altogether but
for influence. Moreover, curiously enough, I avoided the notice of the
public as much as possible. I kept out of the newspapers.
“I had no suspicion that anything could be made of my voice until I had
lived this sort of life for some ten years. Meanwhile, as I told you, I
had fits of horrible disgust, intolerable ennui. All societies save
those peopled with the fast and frivolous were closed to me. Such
unspeakably frivolous women! Many of them, too, were ladies born, but
_déclassée_.
“I shut myself up once or twice again with my books, but I always went
back. Life without men was no life at all. My brain seemed to be cut in
half with a straight line of cleavage. One-half might contain something
like a real intellect, inherited,—well, that is of no consequence,—the
other was that of the courtesan pure and simple.
“Sometimes the intellectual side went to sleep altogether, especially
when the men I happened to know were more interesting than commonly.
Men, as a whole, are not very interesting. In the abstract, perhaps, but
not to their wives or mistresses. But I was a woman of splendid
lustiness, of insolent determination to cram youth to the lid with all
that life offered to outcasts like myself. Circumstances had made me a
waif. I would make the best of it. Several times good women came and
tried to reclaim me. I argued them out of the house. What had they to
offer in exchange? Would they receive me in their set, find me a
husband, obliterate my reputation? One, I remember, had a sense of
humour, and confessed that plain uncompanioned virtue would seem
somewhat barren to herself after the luxury and beauty, the society of
clever men, which at that moment I enjoyed: as a rule fast men have no
taste for clever men, and they are themselves dull beyond all power of
words to describe; but at this time I was protected by and half loved a
Western millionnaire with a weakness for the arts and a desire to play
the patron; which I encouraged. But he was shot—To return to the lady
who would have reclaimed me; she added astutely that I had better take
the cue from the wise prime donne and retire of my own accord. And she
added, as she left the house, ‘There is always Europe, you know. And you
have a brain.’
“But I had been to Europe; alone and companioned. It was soon after this
that I ceased to blow hot and cold. By imperceptible degrees I came
wholly to hate my life, to loathe it, to grow sick, sick, sick of men.
Compositely they were brutes, the best of them. Life with such women, no
doubt, brings out the worst in them. Perhaps their wives should thank
us. Man in mental and spiritual undress are as disillusionizing as a
certain President of the United States must have been to his household
when hanging over the banisters of the White House in his red flannels
and shouting for hot water.
“But I had lost the money I had made, for I had the stock-gambling
fever. I thought of suicide more than once, for I not only knew of no
way in which I could support myself decently, but I dreaded solitude,
ennui. Suddenly I discovered my voice. That interested me for a time,
although I had no idea it would ever be of any use to me. But my old
teacher was enthusiastic and often inspired me with ambitious dreams,
for he dangled Bayreuth before me, and at times I believed that he knew
what he was talking about; at others it seemed too much like a fairy
story, and I despaired.
“I made money again, this time a considerable sum, and I determined to
gamble no more. I had a good friend in a banker whom I could trust, and
he invested my money. I went West with that travelling company in order
to break with my old connection. In time I should return and devote
myself to music, even if I never went on the operatic stage. My musical
tastes had been developed for several years, and at least I could live
in some German or Italian city and study and enjoy music, no doubt find
companionship in the society of artists.