whether your imagination has carried you into all the dark corners, into
every chamber of horrors—I can tell you the story in outline, but the
details are beyond my strength—I do not know. I hope so. I can only
reiterate that I have lived with more men than I pretend to remember,
whose very names would be unfamiliar should I hear them; that for years
I lived this life with my intelligence wide awake,—for I never drank,
never took a drug in my life,—my literary tastes of the best, my
refinement of mind growing daily; that when I finally abandoned this
existence it was from no desire for reform, to be a good woman; it was
without one atom of remorse. It was simply and only because I hated men,
because that wreck gave me the unique opportunity to begin life over
again, and my voice pointed the way. I have squeezed my character dry of
the woman I was in those days—she is like an old book; I have hardly
thought about her until lately. I do not even now, in this minute, think
upon that time with regret. It is simply not in me to worry over what is
past and done; nor could I appreciate the beauty of life as I do: no
good woman has the profound appreciations that I have. But I recognize
the justice of the retribution. The first departure from principles, or
shall I say the social code, that I never had heard of, was inevitable.
So were the next two or three years. Had I then broken away, gone to
some other city before I became conspicuous, and supported myself
respectably, as, with my varied cleverness, I could have done, no doubt
you would forgive me that childish misstep and love me the more. Nor
could that brief past ever be raked up; at all events it would be next
to impossible. But I persisted in that life for thirteen years: until I
was bored and satiated, until something more satisfactory offered. Were
I penitent now, I might inspire your sympathy, be worthy of it; but I
would not give up one of those years of misery, of vice, of horrors, if
I believed that—as I do—they played their part with the coincidently
progressing brain in developing that depth and intensity of genius which
makes me the greatest Isolde the world will ever see. I regret
nothing—nothing! And for that reason I hold myself to be the worst
woman alive, and am prepared to see you turn your back and walk out
without comment. I shall not ask you to stay!”
Her voice had not faltered for a moment; she had spoken with an
increasing rapidity of utterance. But suddenly she broke off short,
looked helplessly at Ordham, her face, which had looked flushed and full
as she spoke, becoming white and pinched once more, the defiant glare
dying out of her eyes. He had stood motionless during the horrid sordid
story, looking straight at her, his face almost vacant, as if his brain
had emptied itself of every thought, that it might receive to the brim
all she chose to pour into it. So she had seen him many times at a new
or absorbing play. He merely looked paler, his eyes darker. She stopped,
held her breath, then:
“Well?” she stammered. “Well?”—
The colour came back to his face, and with it an intense deepening of
expression. He drew out his watch, then took the six telegrams from his
pocket and laid them on the table between them.
“I am sorry you chose to-night to tell me that story,” he said, in his
ordinary tones, “for, as you will see by reading these telegrams, I must
take the eleven o’clock express, and it is now quarter past ten. Hines
is no doubt at the door—”
But she interrupted him with a cry that was almost a scream. “Good God!
Do you mean to say that it makes no difference? What are you made of?”
“It might have made a difference a year ago. Now it makes none
whatever—or—yes—it is odd you should not have guessed that the more
you made me pity you the more I should love you. And then—I had
imagined very much all you have told me, taken it for granted, at least.
Perhaps it is just as well, after all, that you selected to-night for
the tale, if I had to hear it, for although determined to come to an
understanding with you, I was in no humour for love-making. We have now
wiped the thing off the slate, and, if you don’t mind, when I return we
will not refer to it.”
She glanced at the telegrams, dropped into a chair, and covered her face
with her shaking hands. “Your wife will die,” she moaned, “your wife
will die!”
“I have not the least idea she will die. She is as strong as you are. I
dare not assume that these telegrams were sent merely to frighten me and
bring me back; no doubt excitement has made her ill, and in that case
there may be danger. Besides, she has lost her child. I shall go, of
course. But I shall return at the earliest possible moment. We will then
make our plans as deliberately as more fortunate people do when about to
marry. I am capable of being faithful to one woman for a lifetime, and I
shall be faithful to you. We can be unimaginably happy. But I must not
miss the train.”
He went round the table, and she stood up, shaking. “Not to-night!” she
said. “I cannot kiss you so soon after that story. It has brought the
past too close.”
“Very well.” He took both her hands, however, and bending his face
looked close into her eyes.
“Swear to me that you will be here when I return,” he said.
“Yes, I shall be here.”
His eyes contracted at some hint of irony in her voice, and his grip on
her hands intensified.
“If I thought that you would make way with yourself, I should not leave
you. Unless you swear that you will do nothing so foolish and so cruel,
I shall not return to England, and in that case I may have my wife’s
death on my head.”
She returned his intense gaze for a moment, then, wrenching her hands
away, pushed him from her violently. “Do not worry!” she cried harshly.
“If I kill myself, I’ll take you with me. I am not Isolde for nothing.
But now, for God’s sake, go! I want to be alone.”
LVIII
THE FOOLISH FATES
If Ordham could be very hard, he could also be very soft. When he
received a telegram at Flushing stating that Mabel was still alive, but
that her condition was hopeless, he was moved deeply, the more so,
perhaps, because his sympathies had been so profoundly stirred a few
hours before. At the same time he wished to heaven he were on the other
side of the world. When he reached London, he went hastily to the sick
room, fearing that if he stopped to think his courage might desert him,
for it was his first personal encounter with death. There was a strange
moaning sound from the bed, such as he had heard animals utter in their
last extremity, and he stumbled over a pail of ice. The darkened room
seemed to him full of people and in an indescribable confusion, but he
had barely caught a glimpse of Mrs. Cutting, dishevelled, haggard, when
everybody seemed to disappear simultaneously, leaving him and the dying
creature in the bed alone.
He made his way across the big room and saw Mabel, who looked like
waxwork with enormous glass eyes. He shuddered, but bent over and would
have kissed her had she not pushed him feebly away. He sat down, and his
nervousness, even his horror, fled. He looked at the shrunken pallid
remnant of the beautiful girl he had married and was filled with an
immense pity, which induced one of those rare moments in life, like tiny
islands, that have no space for self. He was also awed, as one must ever
be in the presence of death, but those little green isles in the ocean
of egoism have their atmosphere of unreality; and he felt throughout
this interview, which he has never tried to forget, like a man who
dreams yet believes himself to be awake.
Mabel spoke in a small distant voice. “I am dying and you have killed
me.”
“I am afraid I have.”
“That is all I have left—that you should know that. Had I been happy I
might have pulled through, although I had a horrible time, a horrible
time! But my brain, all my blood, was on fire. I don’t know—the doctor
will explain—but I do know that my only chance was mental peace, and I
was like a mad creature from the moment I learned you had gone to that
woman. O God! I am only nineteen. What was I born for?”
She paused a moment and he stared at her with blanched face and mouth
slightly open. His expression was almost vacant, his remarkably
receptive faculty exercising itself unconsciously. To Mabel he looked as
young as when she had first known him, and her expression softened, but
only for a moment. Her face set again, and she went on:
“I don’t mind dying so much, for I am so tired I don’t care, and there
is nothing left to live for. Even the baby deserted me. But I have
lost—lost! And I was so sure I should win! Why should I not have been
confident? I had had everything—always—it is so strange that I should
be ground to powder! I feel as if the huge wheels of one of those old
Roman chariots—conquerors’ chariots!—had crushed me. I was a real
little queen, and now I am nothing! nothing! And only nineteen! Why was
I born?”
She raised herself on her hands; her immense hollow eyes, which had
wandered during her last words, focussed, were piercing for the first
time, probably, since they had met the light. “I think I should not mind
even that—anything—” she was whispering, her voice almost dead—“if I
could only have understood you. But to have been your wife, to have
loved you so, and to die knowing that not for one minute, not for one
second—and even death gives me no insight—”
He fled from the room as she fell back. The doctor, a nurse, and Mrs.
Cutting, were waiting on the threshold. He went hastily to his own room,
and as he closed the door he felt something at his heels. It was LaLa,
and he took him in his arms and sat without moving, almost without
thought, for an hour. At the end of that time there was a tap and he
admitted Mrs. Cutting. As he saw her face he braced himself and all
sense of unreality left him. Her cherished but never harnessed youth had
deserted her. Her face was pinched and yellow and old. Her hair was
streaked with white. Her lips were gray and shaking. But even in her
deep maternal grief, in the one violent blow that life had dealt her,
even in her new hatred of this royal child of fortune, she was unable to
undam her soul and overwhelm him with a fury of scorn and hatred, as she
had dimly imagined she should do when she left Mabel’s room for his. She
could suffer, but not for her were the great tragic emotions, the
splendours, the lightning blasts of expression. As she disciplined her
relaxed mouth and pressed her hand hard against her bosom, Ordham’s mind
vagrantly recalled an observation of Styr’s regarding the best of the
American actors: that they managed to convey the impression of deep
intense emotion, artistically repressed; when as a matter of fact they
had nothing to repress. But that the poor woman suffered to the full
capacity of her meagre nature he could not doubt, and he tried to take
her hand and lead her to a chair. But she, like her daughter, thrust him
away.
“Mabel is dead,” she said.
As his brain whirled it almost cast out the collocations: “Of course!”
“I am so sorry!” and the bathos of it twisted his features into a grin
that was as like a smile as a mask is like the human face; but Mrs.
Cutting fell back in horror.
“You—you—was it not enough to kill her, without laughing—”
“Good God, how can you say such a thing? I feel as hysterical as a
woman. How else could I feel? I am distracted, half out of my mind with
horror and remorse. Give me credit for that much at least.”
“You are still young enough to feel excited at being in the midst of a
tragedy!” Mrs. Cutting spoke almost dryly. “But I doubt if you will long
convince yourself that it is anything more. I hope this may be the last
time I shall ever be obliged to speak to you, and therefore I will say
at once that I wish to take my child and her child to New York for
interment. I don’t think it necessary to give my reasons.”
“You will do everything you wish, of course. I should not think of
opposing you.”
She stared at him in unwilling admiration in spite of her suffering, her
indignation. He had mastered his excitement, and were he a kindly
relative he could not be more courteous, more full of solicitude. She
turned her back on him, thinking of nothing to say but “Thank you,” and
she left the room feeling like an honoured guest reluctantly dismissed.
But the next three days were a nightmare to Ordham. He was determined to
pay all respect to Mabel dead, which, to do him justice, he had, with
brief lapses, managed to pay her living. He even sat beside the bed for
a few moments after they had dressed her and folded her hands, and
filled her arms with lilies. She was less pinched, less shrunken, in
death. A little of her beauty had returned to her, and she looked no
more than sixteen. Again pity possessed him, and he left the room
abruptly and wandered about the darkened house. For three days he barely
went out, and as he could not settle himself to read, and as every
blind, according to that depressing old provincial custom, was down, as
the house seemed to grow more and more silent, darker and darker, until
he thought he should go mad, he took refuge in the attic, where in an
unused room he opened a back window, and, companioned by LaLa, who clung
to him, sat gazing by the hour over the roofs, trying not to think of
the future, but making no bones about wishing the present were over.
Then came the ordeal at which he had to appear as chief mourner; but he
girded up his loins, and, as a matter of fact, very nearly wept as he
followed the long narrow casket out of the house. It was to remain in
the mortuary chapel in Brompton Cemetery until Mrs. Cutting could close
her house and start for New York. There was another short service out
there, and as he was as white as death, and his shoulders sagged, the
distinguished gathering, among whom were many Americans, pitied him
intensely.
LIX
WHEN ORDHAM WAS BRIDGMINSTER
Bridgminster was also dead; and on the day following Mabel’s funeral,
Ordham, in company with his mother and two of his brothers, started for
Scotland to escort the body of the late head of their house to Ordham
Castle and bury him in the vault beneath the village church with his
fathers.
Ordham had endeavoured to forget Margarethe Styr until the last rites
had been paid to his wife, but he sent her a telegram as he was leaving
London, several from Scotland, and another as soon as he arrived at the
castle. When his brother’s funeral was over, his relatives departed, and
he was quite alone—certain matters necessary of adjustment detained him
at Ordham for a few days—he sat down to write a long impassioned letter
to her. But his pen fell from his hand. For the first time in his life
he could have written a great love-letter, abandoned himself recklessly
in words; but he knew that if he made no mention of marriage, Styr, even
if she received the letter in a state of mind absolutely responsive—by
no means certain!—would notice the omission. She loved him as
profoundly as a woman is capable of loving; the terrible confession by
which she purposed to save him was proof enough of that; but she was
also clear-sighted and practical. No subtlety of omission would ever
deceive her, and all arguments against the public relation should come
from her; that was her right. It was not that he had the least doubt she
would continue to make these protests that held his pen, but the doubt
of his own sincerity did he protest in black and white that he intended
to marry her. Not only did this woman still magnetize all the truth that
was in him, but he knew that he could not make that particular protest
as strong as the rest of his letter; she would detect the difference,
and, with feminine inconsistency, be wounded to the quick.
And although he loved her the more for the pity that melted him every
time he thought of that past she was forced to crowd out of her memory
would she live at all, and admired her increasingly that she had risen
to such triumphant heights of character and fortune above that Paphian
ruin, he was appalled at the thought of introducing her into the line of
mothers of the house of Ordham. If Mabel’s boy had only lived! Or if he
could be sure that Styr would have no children. But to have his possible
sons and daughters cower from their fellows under the knowledge that
their mother had been a woman of the streets—he was no longer young and
indolent enough, careless and arrogant enough, to quaff his goblet to
the dregs with no thought of the morrow.
If Styr had been one of the world’s great singers for twenty years, that
would be quite another matter. Ugly facts disappear into the alembic of
Fame to emerge picturesque fiction. In course of time history would
relate that one of the Countesses of Bridgminster had been a famous
prima donna, her descendants would point with pride to her pictures by
Lenbach and Sargent in the gallery of Ordham. But Munich was not the
world, and although Styr had triumphed briefly in London, it was as a
“discovery,” not as a prima donna of established fame. Nor had she more
than a year left in which to make a world-wide reputation, for she must
leave the stage if she married him. He knew that he should win on this
point, if he was able to overcome her scruples and marry her at all; but
the result would be, as she well knew, an immediate—and fatally
easy—disinterring of her past, a past which her brief and narrow career
would by no means annul. And neither wealth nor abilities nor the great
name he now bore would enable him to force his wife upon those circles
which, representing their countries abroad, are compelled to exercise,
or simulate, a rigidity of convention which London and other great
capitals can afford to disdain.
He tortured his mind for a restless day, roaming over the castle and the
moors, but could think of no way out of the difficulty save to leave the
problem to time. In any case, they could not marry for a year; two years
would be more decent still. They might mutually agree to leave the
question unopened for that length of time. During that period many
things might happen; she might become so famous in the Anglo-Saxon world
that, as is often the case, mere time would be annihilated by the dazzle
of her reputation,—people would talk of her as if “they had known her
always”; an experience which has its annoyances for those that resent
having ten or twenty years added to their age, but not without its
compensations. He, also, should be on his way toward establishment; for
although it was not likely that any influence he could bring to bear
would lessen the prescribed term of probation, those two years would
give him opportunities to show his mettle, and he could rise rapidly
enough thereafter. Yes, by degrees, the marriage might be accomplished,
or it was possible they both might fear to disturb a relation in which
they had found happiness; although it was his disposition to do all
honour to the woman he loved, compensate her to the fullest degree for
all she had been made to endure by malignant circumstances; and at the
base of his nature was a love of order, of regularity. Like many another
man, he might enter lightly enough into a liaison; but deliberately to
contemplate one that should last the lifetime of himself and the woman
for whom he felt all the refinements as well as the passions of love
which a man generally reserves for his wife—it seemed to him an ugly
and a grotesque jumble of contradictions. Better renounce diplomacy at
once and seek usefulness in other ways. Moreover, he wanted her constant
companionship.
But all this could not be written. It would look cold-blooded and
calculating in black and white, a ridiculous postscript to a
love-letter. When they were together once more the subject would
naturally be forgotten for a while; he could assume, without discussion,
the future legalizing of their union, or profess that it was not worth
talking about until the end of his period of public deference to the
memory of his wife. He certainly would marry her if he discovered that
she really wished it—but he trusted to time. Therefore he did not
write, but telegraphed daily, intimating that the attempt to talk to her
on paper made him sick and that he was bending all his energies toward
hastening his departure. He did leave for London in less than a week,
and there he found a long letter from Styr. She made no reference to her
confession, nor to the death of his wife; but it was probably as
passionate a love-letter as man ever received from woman, and it caused
Ordham (as we may as well continue to call him during these remaining
pages devoted to his youth) to ignore both the Foreign Office and his
solicitors, and take the next train for the Continent.
LX
LIFE, THE POTTER
Ordham sat alone in the vast black auditorium of the Hof. Old Kurt had
met him at the station with a note from Countess Tann which informed him
briefly that the King had commanded a midnight performance of
_Götterdämmerung_, and that she had without difficulty bribed the
doorkeeper to smuggle in the Englishman so favourably remembered; in
these days there was little awe of the King’s displeasure, but he must
be careful to make no sound. “I shall sing to you, not to the King,” the
note concluded. “Do not forget that, but make no attempt to see me until
to-morrow afternoon at one. It will be dawn before the performance
finishes, and I shall be nothing but a worn-out prima donna with not a
wish on earth but for supper and sleep. I shall hide in one of the
hotels this evening and console myself by writing you a letter, which
you will find at your hotel upon your return. Mind you tell Kurt where
you are stopping.”
Ordham raged at the further delay. But when he had worn his temper down
with a long walk and a German supper, he began to feel agreeably alive
to the adventure. At a quarter before midnight he presented himself at
the side entrance of the Hof. The door was slightly ajar and opened upon
his approach. Reënforcing the hand held out to him in the darkness, he
tiptoed through the vestibule and foyer, then, left inside a door near
the middle of the _parkett_, he fumbled unaided to a seat.
The orchestra was tuning and covered what sound he made. The jets of
light above the scores of its musicians, and the solitary globe in the
box of the King were all that relieved the black vacuum in which he
found himself. He could not make out a feature of the familiar tiers
which always formed a part of the mental picture of this graceful opera
house when he fell to dreaming of it. Dowdy as many of the women might
be, they made a brilliant scene in totality, and there were always
familiar faces, particularly in the _balkon_. And all were music lovers,
come to hear, not to be seen, hardly daring to breathe audibly until the
curtain went down. To-night, Ordham could have sworn the galleries were
full of ghosts, so difficult was it to believe that he was to hear a
performance of _Götterdämmerung_ in an empty house. He turned his head,
whimsically expectant of seeing the space behind the _parkettsitz_
crowded with shadowy forms: the students, men and women, who felt
themselves fortunate in being able to pay for standing room, and to
stand for five hours!
And since he was forced to put an extinguisher on the lover in him until
the morrow and had finished cursing the King, he gave his fancy rein and
found it no effort to imagine himself in some vast underground cavern
watching restless spirits bearing each a tiny torch at the entrance, and
a throne cut in the rock behind him high up toward the dome. In truth
the air in which he sat was damp and cold, although the month was
August; the opera house had been closed since the first of July.
His mind indulged in fantasies but for a few moments however, presently
returning to Styr’s note. He had read it twice and wished he might
strike a match and read it again. Something in it had induced a vague
sensation of uneasiness, of doubt. In spite of her assurance that she
should sing to him alone, it had been abrupt, almost cold. She might be
wise in refusing to see him before the performance; but at least she
could have written something of the regret she might reasonably be
expected to feel; but this omission, no doubt, was due to the ill temper
generally induced by these commands to sing at midnight. Then fear
assailed him. Did she mean to convey some message of renunciation
to-night? Prepare him for her decision in favour of art? He had never
questioned that for this great artist to renounce the stage at the
height of her powers and in the dawn of a world-wide fame would be no
light matter. In his breast pocket were the fiery vows he had received a
few hours before his departure from London. There were no half measures
about Styr; this letter had enveloped him in an electric mist. But her
last note might have been written the summer before. Had she faltered
when she received his last telegram from Cologne?—sternly admonished,
perhaps, by that twin sister of hers in Valhalla, Brynhildr, whose
temporary reincarnations, mayhap, it was that made Ludwig despise the
women of Earth? . . .
Ordham felt his long jaw grow prognathic. Munich was not England. He
forgot the death of his brother. He was in a romantic city, in a
romantic adventure, he was youth on fire, man balked once more in his
desire for the woman he loved with the strength of both youth and
maturity. He vowed to own her in the uninterrupted possession of
marriage if he had to blast the voice in her throat. He felt as
primitive as the characters in the drama about to be presented, as he
sat there, frowning, dogged, almost growling, in the cavernous darkness
of that opera house which he has never set foot in since, nor ever will
again.