Part 13

Styr had made up her mind: having delivered him from wreck, she would lead him to the threshold of his future, then return to her solitudes, pluming herself upon her successful rôle of a kindly fate in the life of a fellow-mortal so much more interesting than the musical fledglings that came to her for advice and help. For a few months she would indulge herself in the luxury and novelty of a friendship, give her mind a companion; later on, vary her isolation with a permanent interest in the career of another. She made no doubt that were Ordham carried safely over this critical interval there was a reasonable chance of his attaining a high and useful eminence. It was a strange rôle for her to be contemplating, that of becoming a deliberate factor in the life of a man with no thought save his own good; but the more she had meditated upon it the more irresistibly had it appealed to her. She was honest enough, however, to admit that had she not liked him so thoroughly her philanthropic tendencies might have slept on undiscovered.

“I will strike a bargain with you,” she said. “If you will promise not to leave town except from Saturday noon until Sunday night, and take a daily lesson with Lutz until you are obliged to leave for England, you may come and go here as you please.”

“That will be every day, and I shall not go to country houses at all. The more I think of it the more I feel convinced that I should pass this August. My brother has never believed in me,—for good reasons, wise man,—but I have an idea that if I astonish him by passing a year sooner than any one expects, he will be so gratified that he will pay my debts. After all, he stands in the place of my father.”

“Are you deeply in debt?” All women sympathize with a man in debt except his wife, who must economize to get him out.

“Horribly!” Ordham buttered a scone and looked as blithe and greedy as a schoolboy on his first day at home.

“You always use such strong expressions!”

“O—h! Re—ally?” Ordham drawled this as only an Englishman can. “Well—perhaps you would not think close upon a thousand pounds a great amount, and I confess I find it disgusting to be unable to pay a sum which if I had in hand would not last me a month. And to Bridgminster it is nothing. I find that more disgusting still.”

“I suggested an American girl the other night—but I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see you married.”

“I should hate to marry. My mother is always urging it—so are all my friends, and I suppose that between extravagant habits and the diplomatic career, I shall be driven into matrimony. But I wish to heaven Bridgminster would divide his income with me. He spends next to nothing. I hear he doesn’t even keep up Ordham.”

“Do you want money so much?”

“I need it.” He spoke with deep intensity.

“And you can think of no other resource but your brother or a rich girl?”

“No, alas!” He began to butter another scone. “All my relations are either poor or stingy.”

“But I had an idea that all dukes were rich and superb—your mother’s father—”

“He quarrels with his steward every quarter day over the accounts, the very household bills. I hate him, and so did my father. He cannot endure me because I don’t pot birds from the 12th of August until the hunting season begins and then ride to hounds every day. I have an idea he is afraid I will write poetry and disgrace the family. The metre would, no doubt.”

Margarethe looked at him curiously. According to American canons she ought to despise him, but he was so inevitably a part of a system, and so replete with all the delightful qualities for which that system was responsible, besides having an accent all his own, that she could but accept him as a matter of course. Nevertheless, more to draw him out than with motive, she asked: “I suppose it has never occurred to you to work?”

“Work?” He barely saved his knife from dropping to the little Sèvres plate. His eyes grew round and his mouth fell slightly apart.

Styr almost laughed outright, but she dropped her eyes to her cup and said: “Well, I am an American, you know. A young man over there, born in a position corresponding to your own—well, if he found himself in debt or wanted money badly, and there was no immediate prospect of inheritance, he would go to work and make it.”

“How odd! No, I don’t mean that. Of course I know those things do happen, but it must be when they feel fitted, have been prepared—for some of those things that make money. The only time I ever thought about it—one night not long ago,” he paled at the memory, “I could not think of any means by which I could support myself did I lose the little I have. But in America I suppose the business instinct is in every man’s brain—naturally. Why shouldn’t they be able to make fortunes if they must? Some of our chaps have to go to work also, but I never heard of any of them making a fortune—not even in the colonies. Only people you never heard of before do that. I suppose our brains are too old, they are no longer capable of that amount of concentration and energy. For generations we have had so many interests. To let a fixed idea like money-making control you, I fancy you must have, and inherit, little intellectual development. Nevertheless, I should think that those same indulgences and developments must be among the incentives.”

“That is the most ingenious defence I ever heard a lazy man put up! But I am not sure there is not a good deal in it. The fact remains, however, that you want money and do not want to marry. Suppose I send you to my banker in New York? He is a good friend of mine and would give you a chance of some sort. Would you concentrate your very superior faculties upon the making of money?”

“Good heavens, no! I should hate it. To spend one’s life trying to be more dishonest than the next man—I had rather live on a younger son’s portion all my life.” And he elevated his nose in aristocratic disgust.

“It is not quite as bad as that, although I do not pretend that great fortunes are made with gloves on.”

“I should hate the people I should be compelled to associate with. As I said just now, it requires enormous concentration to be a successful man of business; and fancy hearing no other topic of conversation day in and out, to see, to feel, nothing else in the men by whom one was surrounded!”

“You might be a cow-boy. That has appealed to other Englishmen, and is more picturesque—quite honest, also, I should think.”

“But so dirty, and such a hard life physically. They get up at four and go to bed with their boots on. Then, after they are quite demoralized, all their finer tastes hopelessly blunted, they come home without a penny. Heaven only knows into what limbo they disappear then. Don’t think I am really lazy.” (There was a genuine anxiety in his tones!) “What you said at Neuschwanstein about the possibility of finishing as a society drone has got me up every morning in time for Fräulein Lutz. I mean to pass my examinations and enter diplomacy. But I am afraid I am fitted for nothing else. I haven’t stumbled into it blindly. It is that or nothing, and although the suggestion was my mother’s, my father quite agreed with her.”

“It all comes back to this,—you must marry money.”

“Alas, yes! But four or five years hence. I will pay these bills somehow, and then I can run up others. They will always wait a few years.”

“But suppose you could meet some girl of great wealth whom you could love? That would be the ideal solution, and there are many rich and lovely girls. Should not you like peace of mind and happiness?”

“Happiness?” He stared at her in a fashion he had dropped into before, as if she were a mirror in which the future might take form. “I fancy that no matter whom I married . . . even if persuaded that I was in love with her . . . I should no sooner be settled down than I should begin to invent some one I might have loved better.” He came to himself with a smile. “Will you let me smoke? And tell you what a delight it is to see you again? And this room! To think that I may sit in it often! That we are to be friends for a whole summer! Nothing in life can ever be as wonderful as that.”

XIX A DIPLOMATIST IN THE MAKING

The Queen-mother lingered on in Munich, and society with her. Excellenz Nachmeister and the diplomatic corps entertained constantly, and if the rest of the fashionable world took little initiative, it was always ready to lend the light of its countenance. Ordham, with the most enthusiastic intentions, saw little of Countess Tann, but at least he broke no engagements with her; and this, to those that knew him, would have appeared more significant than had he sought her daily. That pleasure awaited the empty summer months, and meanwhile, conformably with his half-admitted creed, he missed nothing that promised enjoyment. Nevertheless, true to his promise to Margarethe Styr, he took his daily lesson with Fräulein Lutz; and this recalls a story which became current in Munich at the time and entertained his friends not a little. Lutz related it with a mixture of tartness and triumph to Styr, who told it to Nachmeister, who——

His Grenadier, as he called her, arrived at the Legation every morning at five minutes before ten. He received her in an upper sitting room, and had made more progress in four weeks than during the six preceding months of his sojourn in Munich. As a rule he appeared at the rendezvous not more than five or six minutes later than Lutz, but one morning he arose with the greatest reluctance. He had taken a party of English friends to the monastic cellar of the Hofbräu the night before, and sat up until late listening to the students singing, and drinking beer in an atmosphere as thick as a London fog. He wanted to lie in bed until noon, but dared not run the risk of the loss of his Lutz. He arose when called, but entered the frigid presence quite twelve minutes late. Being greeted with a withering outburst, he was suddenly inspired to torment this iron-clad female, for whom he appeared to have no more magnetism than had he been a wooden dummy into which she was employed to drill holes and instil so much German per day. He sank into the deepest chair in the room, and drawled:

“I am _so_ sorry—”

“That is the one thing you can say fluently in German! At least one thousand times have I heard you say it.”

“Oh—but I am—really. Not to be late, but to be obliged to come at all. I was so deliciously comfortable.”

“Deliciously—in bed—at this hour! What an admission for a man to make!”

“But to you I am only a boy,” murmured Ordham.

“Ach ja! But you would like to be thought a man. Nicht? When you have succeeded in raising a mustache you will want to be thought young again. I have taught hundreds of your sex, and not one has more sense than the other. But not one!”

“Is that the reason you have never married?”

Her mottled complexion turned a uniform purple, and she investigated his innocent orbs with her bright little black eyes. Then she demanded haughtily: “What is that to you? Am I here to answer personal questions?”

“But this is the morning for conversation, Fräulein. We had those hideous verbs yesterday. And I am so tired! That was so easy, so natural to say, for I know that at least one Herr Professor carries an arrow in his heart.”

The personage in question had eluded Fräulein Lutz with such conspicuous adroitness some years before that the affair had become historical. She felt a natural gratification that the story had altered its front with the lapse of time, but replied severely: “Enough! We will ask and answer questions of a less personal nature. Also! How many neckties do you possess? I have now taught you for four weeks and I have seen a new one every day.”

“And she calls that an impersonal question! But I am quite ready to answer, liebes Fräulein, for my man informed me yesterday. I possess exactly two hundred and eighty-four.”

“Two hundred and eighty-four neckties!” shrieked Fräulein Lutz. “It is impossible! But impossible!”

“Only until this afternoon. Then I shall possess two hundred and eighty-six. And next week I expect a box from London—”

“But it is incredible. Why, I have taught counts, barons, _princes_ for thirty years, and I do not believe that one of them possessed more than ten or twelve neckties at a time.”

“O—h—h—h—”

“Don’t dare to turn up your English nose at counts and princes—princes of the blood, let me explain. Ach Gott! Act Gott!” She looked him over. “And socks, handkerchiefs—all match! Do you assert that you have two hundred and eighty-four handkerchiefs, shirts, pairs of socks? Answer in idiomatic German or I shall make you write it.”

She did make him write it. Once more he lay back exhausted. Taking out a handkerchief, he sniffed at it, then waved it gently.

“And scent!” She almost choked. “I have noticed it before, but was too polite to make remarks. To-day I relieve my mind. Scent is obnoxious, demoralizing, intended only for idle fine ladies and those others whom we never mention. Why do you use scent? Mind your idiom.”

He sank into a posture almost reclining; he half closed his eyes and half opened his mouth. He looked very naughty indeed. “Why?” he murmured dreamily. “Because I find in perfumes one of the exquisite sensations of life. I should like to lie in bed all day while some one sprinkled the crude air with distilled odours—and dream—ah!”

“I’ve a mind to box your ears!” she cried furiously and with a very red face. “And your German is as execrable as your sentiments.”

“Dictate it to me in pure German and I will learn it.”

“I would not pollute my lips. Sit up and say after me: ‘I am a silly young English puppy, who should be striding through the Englischergarten reciting German verbs aloud when I am dawdling in bed like a scented harlot—’”

“Oh! oh! I shall not. How shocking of you! Mein liebes Fräulein!” And he stared at her so incredulously that she felt uncomfortable.

“Well, you deserve to have harsh things said to you,” she growled, “and you would demoralize the vocabulary of a saint. Also! I shall converse with you no more. Conjugate the verb ‘_arbeiten_,’ and then read aloud three pages of _Wallenstein_. If you mispronounce a word, it shall be four, and there will be two more verbs. Sit up!”

He meekly obeyed her; and when she had stalked out he hastened to the tennis court and played until luncheon.

That evening Fräulein Lutz, sitting alone in her musty little flat, her spectacles astride her nose, muttering aloud over the notes she had graciously been permitted to cull from the royal archives, became the astounded recipient of an immense bunch of violets. They were royal purple in colour and wet with what might have been the dew of the Riviera, whence they came. But they were quite scentless. If she suspected the donor she made no sign, and on the following morning was more than commonly snappish. But the wide streamers of purple satin ribbon which held the violets together decorated her best bonnet till the last of her days.

XX ISOLDE

The opera house, notwithstanding its great parquet and five tiers almost encircling the auditorium, holding some twenty-two hundred people, was always well filled; but Ordham had never seen it as crowded as to-night. There had been an official announcement that the King would honour the season’s last performance of _Tristan und Isolde_, and the blue lights were burning all over the house, softening its classic severity into the mysterious twilight of some vast sea grotto whose surges held captive and coloured the rays of the moon. Of course, at the last moment the King would change his royal mind; everybody felt sure of that; yet, so obstinate is hope, even society had turned out, satisfied to honour Styr, at least, before departing for the country. The boxes beside the stage, and at the back, flanking the King’s (which rose from the _balkon_ to the last of the galleries), always reserved for royalties, their households and guests, were generally empty. To-night they were filled, and, with the front row of the fashionable _balkon_, gave the house a smarter appearance than usual; the good hausfrau, genuine lover of all the arts as she was, never thought of wearing anything but her street frock, consisting at this time of a skirt, overskirt, and basque—whose points stood upright, back and front. Her daughter, perchance, enlivened the useful shade of her costume by a bit of pink or blue tulle about the turned-in neck of her basque. The good man was shabby and comfortable in his business suit. Had it not been for the liberal patronage of officers, the _parkett_ would have presented a dreary expanse, and even the fashionable women, unless the court was to be present, seldom thought the opera worthy of full dress. To-night, however, there were many bare necks and fine gowns, jewels and feathers, in the _balkon_ and loges, and even in the front rows of the _parkett_, which many, Ordham among them, preferred as affording a better view of the performers. The orchestra, under its great conductor, Lévy, never fretted the most sensitive eardrum.

Few sit until the last bell has rung, and Ordham stood with the rest, his back to the stage, viewing what to him was always an interesting sight, and feeling so blithe and happy in his regained freedom, his mother’s promise, received that morning, to persuade his creditors to hold their peace until after his examinations, the flutter of anticipation which he always enjoyed when about to hear Styr sing one of her great rôles, that long after, when he sat in this opera house for the last time in his life, he recalled that night and his boyish spirits, and wondered if the world had remodelled itself meanwhile.

He saw many that he knew, and bowed in his formal way, lit now and again by his quick smile, so full of youthful brilliancy and sweetness that tired befeathered old women shook their heads and doubted if a young man of so many attractions would ever amount to anything. But when Nachmeister was favoured with that smile to-night, she nodded her head sagely and felt that she could depart for her spa in peace on the morrow. No man in love, or nearing the border-land of tumult, could smile like that. She was a guest in a box beside the King’s, the one allotted to Lola Montez during her brief reign in Bavaria, when Ludwig I was king. She too had been elevated to the Bavarian aristocracy, and no royalty won more than a passing glance when Countess Landsfeldt sat magnificently in this box, flashing her bold black eyes at the patricians that feared and snubbed her; far less clever than Styr, few doors had opened to her. Princess Nachmeister was surrounded by a bevy of young princesses, pretty with youth, but insipid, as most young royalties are. The Queen-mother sat alone in the great box, looking old and sad, not a vestige of her beauty surviving, nor even of that air which is supposed to distinguish a queen from a hausfrau. She was dowdy and unattractive, but she cared not; to-morrow she would be in her humble retreat, Elbingen-Alp, alone with her memories and the new consolation she had found in the Church of Rome. She, too, hoped for the presence of her son to-night, but she, too, knew that he would not come.

It was half-past six when word came from the palace that his Majesty, indisposed, had left for Linderhof; the last bell rang, darkness descended upon the house, the overture began. As Ordham sat with his eyes closed lest they be diverted by the fat red necks and plastered heads, which shone in the dusk, mayhap by hungry jaws munching chocolate or peppermint, his high spirits slid down into a fathomless abyss; that tide of sweet despair swirled round and over him, driving repose, content, gayety from every chamber of his soul, and filling it with unrest, vague delicious terrors, that made him move his arms restlessly until he succumbed utterly.

Never had been and never will be so full an expression of unsatisfied longing. Surge upon surge from the opening phrase, presaging a yearning that is not all bliss and a torment that is not all pain, so long as mortals may die; surge upon surge of aching passion, sweet oblivion, mortal disappointment, infinite desire, a love that only the immortals could satisfy and only death can quench. The imagination reels along with this appalling betrayal of mortal love. The curse and the boon of imagination, the indomitable pursuit of happiness, even while the mind holds its sides like a chuckling monk, the inevitable awaking, the cry for death, annihilation, Nirvana,—all and far more are in this mighty tonal dirge of the human heart to lift Wagner’s masterpiece to the apex of all the masterpieces the world has preserved.

Unsatisfied longing! Ordham never listened to this music-drama that he did not wonder its keynote should possess him irresistibly throughout the performance and desert him when it was over. Even in the foyer, during the pauses, he was the cool young modern with inherited experiences in his brain that pushed him far from the sources of nature; but when the surges beat on his spirit once more he was the immemorial lover.

On the stage Styr was always beautiful and never more so than as Isolde, with her soft golden wig, her dark eyes enlarged, their natural mobility enhanced by subtle arts which other stage women secretly studied in vain, her ivory-white luminous skin. In the first act she wore a flowing gown of an imperial blue shade, the perfect lines of her long arms enticing under floating gauze, her long throat rising bare with the plastic firmness which she might have inherited from the women that inspired the dreams of Solomon.

When Isolde raised herself slowly from the cushions of the couch in the pavilion of the ship which was bearing her to the old king of Cornwall she had consented to marry, abandoning something of her first attitude of utter despair, and lifting her head toward the joyous singing of the sailors, her eyes in one long look expressed everything. The dullest could not entertain the delusion that here was merely an unhappy young princess of “Irenland,” speeding against her will to fulfil a detestable marriage, but a woman of the maturest passions, who had already drunk deep of the cup of love, scornful of every law that might exist for princess or peasant, and who had watched and waited, and accepted the fact of betrayal.

And the audience felt itself, not in the presence merely of a woman eaten with hatred, fury, desire for vengeance, but of a primeval force, passion incarnate, such as Earth unlooses in convulsions that have annihilated millions and buried continents. No other Isolde has ever been as great as Styr, for no other has been able to suggest this ferocious approach of a devastating force, this hurricane sweeping across the mind’s invisible plain, tearing at the very foundations of life. And all this she expressed before singing a note, with her staring moving eyes, her eloquent body, still and concealed as it was, a gesture of the hand. It was a concentration of the mental faculties, such as gives weak women superhuman physical strength in moments of terror or anger; in her own case they were whipped up like a whirlwind by the released horrors in her soul, and used with a supreme exercise of art that made her the risen Isolde.

When she started up, crying out to the wind and waves to shatter the ship, the passion in her voice hardly expressed the rage consuming her in plainer terms than that first long silent moment had done.