Part 14
Styr’s transitions from wildness to gloom, to bitter wildness again, then to a regal imperiousness, when she ordered Brängane to summon Tristan (which must have made the royal women present envy the majesty of soul that could inform poor commonplace flesh with so dread a mien), were all done with that complete abandonment to her rôle of the great artist who never for a moment addresses her audience. Then, once more, she betrayed in her strained eyes and body her outraged womanhood as Brängane was courteously repulsed by Tristan (alas! very fat), standing with folded arms at the helm, and taunted by Kurwenal and the sailors. Upon the tirewoman’s return, after a moment’s futile attempt at self-control, she broke forth into a furious denunciation of the false lover, mingling it with bitter reminiscences of a time so fatal to herself when he was ill and at her mercy, and she healed and loved him. The anger gradually faded from her voice, which softened into the most exquisite tenderness and sweetness. “His eyes on mine were fastened. . . . the sword dropped from my fingers!” In that brooding moment every woman in the audience recalled the unforgettable, the eyes of the young widened with terror and hope.
But that moment was brief. Her wrongs beat upon her brain again. With their recital to the trembling Brängane she worked herself up to that tremendous climax where, flinging her back against the drawn curtains, with arms outstretched, she screamed out her curses, invoking vengeance and death.
Never theatrical, and conveying the impression throughout the greater part of that act, in which she ran the gamut of the passions, that she let escape but the smoke of the terrible fires below, when she did give way to ungovernable fury, she gashed the hidden rivers of blood before the footlights to such a pitch that it is no wonder the Germans keep on calling for more sensation, more thrill, with an insatiety which will work the ruin of music and drama in their nation unless some genius totally different from Wagner rises and diverts them into safer channels. Beyond Wagner in his own domain there is nothing but sensationalism. Rather, he took all the gold out of the mine he discovered and left but base alloy for the misguided disciple.
Not the least impressive moment in this terrible act was when Styr, after staring at the phials in the casket while the idea of death matured in her desperate brain,—death for herself as well as for the man that betrayed her,—raised her head slowly, her body to its full height. She looked the very genius of death, a malign fate awaiting its moment to settle upon the ripest fruit, the blithest hopes. A subtle gesture of her hand seemed to deprive it of its flesh, leave it a talon which held a scythe; by the same token one saw the skeleton under the blue robe; her mouth twisted into a grin, her eyes sank. It was all over in half a minute, it was but a fleeting suggestion, but it flashed out upon every sensitive soul present a picture of the charnel house, the worm, death robbed of its poetry, stripped to the bones by the hot blasts from that caldron of hate.
When, having compelled Tristan to drink the love potion which Brängane, who has no taste for crime, mixed instead of the draught of death, when, from the dark abysses of suicide and murder, her soul rose slowly and dazedly, but free, to the heights of the mightiest of all the passions, Styr was so superb in her abandonment, so sweet in her surrender, she carried this act of many emotions to a climax so acute and so satisfying, that few in her audience but felt the sequel should be given on the following night.
The curtain went down as Isolde was torn from Tristan’s arms by her tirewomen and old King Mark boarded the ship. Styr appeared again and again in response to loud cries, clapping, and stamping, which lasted for nearly ten minutes. But at last the audience went forth to refresh itself at the buffet. Ordham did not rise at once. He sat next to the central rope and was undisturbed. He was holding fast to that last picture of Isolde with her dazed yet illuminated eyes in which the love allowance of Earth seemed to be concentrated, when his own eyes unwittingly fell upon the woman that occupied the seat in front of him. She had neatly turned back her overskirt and skirt, and from the capacious pocket of her petticoat was extracting two large sandwiches, a slab of chocolate, and an apple. He gave an almost audible groan and went out into the foyer to exchange “_Wunderschöns_” with his friends.
The second act, greatest of all love scenes as it is, is far less of a strain on the audience than the first. When Tristan and Isolde, having expressed their joy in meeting in that succession of ecstatic love cries which makes the words feeble and superfluous, sank down upon the bench (that astigmatic couch!) and the love duet began, Ordham once more closed his eyes and listened, with his soul detached from his body, to that voice of fluid gold, melting, fainting, fiery, dreaming, despairing, expressing every phase of the phenomenon of love. Never has the ecstasy and the futility of love been expressed as here, and when Styr, her voice returning from those starry voids where Isolde’s soul had borne Tristan’s, passionately demanded death as the only relief for the insupportable tension of body and spirit, although she did not move, she conveyed the impression of a still more complete abandon. The tenor, being of immense proportions, and with his eyes seldom roving from the baton of the conductor, conveyed no such impression, or the scene might have been unbearably descriptive. But in Germany either the tenor or the soprano, by the entire respectability of their earthly mediums, can be relied upon to modify the most licentious opera ever written.
As Ordham did not like this particular tenor, he remained in the foyer until Tristan had finished his bleating and ranting in the last act—that vicious test of a tenor’s histrionic powers, as of his vocal endurance—and bribed the doorkeeper to let him enter later and stand while Styr sang the _Liebestod_. Sometimes she rose to her feet as if impelled upward by the intensity of her vision; but to-night she chose to exhibit the physical weakness of delirium as the soul struggled free of the relaxing flesh, the ecstasy of death. Styr always triumphed anew in that supreme effort of Wagner, and on this night when the curtain fell the audience “went quite mad.” While the house was ringing with “Styr!” “Styr!” “Styr!” Ordham conceived a sudden resolution. He had invited Princess Nachmeister, Mr. Trowbridge, and several other friends to sup with him at Maximilia; and although nothing was better known in Munich than that Styr never accepted invitations to supper after one of her performances, was never to be seen, for that matter, he determined to persuade her to join his party. It would gratify his vanity hugely to succeed where all had failed, and he craved the new experience of talking with her immediately after she had created the greatest of her illusions.
He had been behind the scenes with Kilchberg, who loved a maiden in the chorus, and he knew the location of Styr’s dressing room, although he had never caught a glimpse of her in or near it. He was determined to see her to-night; and he did!
He had made his way across the back of the stage, passed open doors of supers who were frankly disrobing, too hungry to observe the minor formalities, and was approaching the room of the prima donna, when its door was suddenly flung open, a little man was rushed out by the collar, twirled round, and hurled almost at his feet. The Styr, her own hair down, her face livid, her eyes blazing, shouted hoarsely at the object of her wrath, who took to his heels. The _intendant_ rushed upon the scene. Styr screamed out that the minor official had dared to come to her dressing-room with a criticism upon the set of her wig, and that if ever she were spoken to again at the close of a performance by any member of the staff, from the _intendant_ down, she would leave Munich the same night. The great functionary fled, for she threatened to box his own ears unless he took himself out of her sight, and the Styr stormed up and down, beat the scenery with her hands, stamped, hissed, her pallor deepening every second, until it was like white fire. Ordham, half fascinated, half convulsed, at this glimpse of the artistic temperament in full blast, stared at her with his mouth open. She looked like some fury of the coal-pit, flying up from the sooty galleries on the wings of her voice. Her words had been delivered with a strange broad burring accent, which Ordham found more puzzling than her tantrum.
Suddenly she caught sight of him. If possible her fury waxed.
“You! You!” she screamed. “Go! Get out of here! How dare you come near me? I hate you! I hate the whole world when I have finished an opera! They ought to give me somebody to kill! Go! I don’t care whether you ever speak to me again or not—”
Ordham, not knowing whether he should feel insulted or philosophical, beat a hasty retreat; and, remaining late at Maximilia, had no time to ponder upon the matter that night. He had barely awakened in the morning when he received the following note:
“DEAR MR. ORDHAM: You will recall that I told you it would be better to think of me as a stage woman only?—although at that time I did not include the greenroom among your possible experiences. If I cannot make you understand the fearful state of excitement which an opera like _Isolde_ induces, then indeed I hope you will not forgive me, never come near me again. But I fancy that you have already forgiven me. I was a wild beast. The actress born with the power to portray Isolde has it in her to be the worst woman in the world—much simpler than to reach those heights (her heights) toward which, alas! there is little pulsion. It is all over a few hours later, after I have taken a long walk in the Englischergarten, then eaten a prosaic supper of cold ham and fowl, eggs perchance, and salad! But for an hour after those triumphs I pay! I pay!
“Do not reply to this, but come on Thursday to supper or not, as you will.
“MARGARETHE STYR.”
XXI THE WOMAN BY THE ISAR
Ordham had no intention of ignoring the impromptu to which he had been treated, whether she expected it of him or not, and on the following Thursday evening, as they were drinking coffee in the garden after supper, he said abruptly:
“I should not have recognized your voice the other night if I had not seen you—ah—when you demolished that poor little man. Is—is it the native American?”
“One variety.” Her present tones were dry, but without displeasure. “It was the voice of the Middle West. When I was Peggy Hill, working in the coal-mines—and for several years after—the burrs on my voice were as thick as a chestnut tree’s. Insensibly, in New York, they began to peel off, and soon after I went on the stage I fell in love with purity of diction and studied with an English teacher of elocution until I retained not a trace of even the generic American. But when I lose my temper it bursts out of its little dungeon exactly as other bad characteristics do when we are off guard. I used to flatter myself that I had uprooted certain qualities I resented having been born with, but I have discovered that they occupy remote chambers of my brain, biding their time. Perhaps I was one of the viragoes of the French Revolution!”
“Did you—once let it go rather often? Somehow you seemed so wonderfully natural.”
“I let it go pretty often down in that opera house. Men have such tact! Fancy telling a singer at the end of a performance, when every nerve in her body is a red-hot humming wire, that her wig was not on straight! The _intendant_ came to me one night after the first act of _Isolde_ and presumed to criticise my tempo. I threw a hand mirror at him, and he has never visited my dressing-room since. I would have treated the King in the same fashion, but he is the one man that would never make such a mistake. Wagner has a good deal to answer for! The lyrics are excitable enough, but the music of The Master creates a madness; it sets up a vibration in the nervous system, which, added to the obsession of the characters, lifts us bodily from the plane of the normal, and no doubt works permanent changes. I am talking, of course, of singers that have temperament as well as voice.” She lit a cigarette and leaned back in her rustic chair. “Before?—Oh, yes. But less and less as time went on. Tantrums do not hurt a prima donna; in fact they are of use in inspiring the authorities with awe. But in the private life—well, the price I sometimes had to pay was too high. I soon stopped throwing things about like a fishwife; and all the rest of it.”
Ordham studied her face attentively in the pause that followed. Apparently she had forgotten him, and was staring into the deep arbours beyond the river. Her profile looked hard and cruel, sharpened against the black shadow of the trees, like the fine edge of an axe. He held his breath as the expression deepened into sullen ferocity, then stood up, overturning his chair.
“I should like to know every bit of your history,” he said, “every detail.”
“How you would hate me!”
“I think not. Some people might have hated you the other night when you looked like all the furies, but I was the more interested. The usual does not appeal to me particularly.”
“But there is a limit! If ever I want you to hate me, I will tell you the story of my life, as they say in New York.”
“Why in New York?”
“It is a bit of slang, and New York is the factory of much of the American slang and a sort of clearing-house for the rest. Does not our slang appeal to you?”
“I find it utterly meaningless,” he said candidly. “Ours is bad enough, but at least it has some point.”
“That ours has none is the whole point. It takes the sharp American wits to understand a new bit of slang or a new joke; the cryptic quality of both, indeed, has played its part in sharpening those same wits. If you are not ever on the alert over there, you go under.”
“Really? What a bore!”
She laughed as naturally as a child, but even in her mirth she no longer betrayed the nurture of the West.
“You are so delightfully genuine! The American imitation of the British aristocrat is the funniest thing in the world. You are not unhumorous from our crude point of view, but I doubt if you could really be affected if you tried, and you never would try. And yet over there you would be thought a mass of affectations.”
“I hope I’ll never go ‘over there.’ I’ve scarcely ever met an American that I liked. The women want too much waiting on, and I always have a feeling that the men despise me.”
“Perhaps they do, understanding no type but their own; few have had the opportunity to study the men of other races. To an American the man with no capacity for work, to ‘hustle,’ no desire to fight his way to the top, simply encumbers the earth. I hope you never will go over. No matter how good an Englishman’s manners may be at home, they become abominable the moment he sets foot in the United States. Even yours might not stand the test—whatever that test is.”
“I am sure they are merely terrified. We are not accustomed to reporters, interviewers, to an avalanche of invitations from people we don’t know. It is enough to terrify any one; and being a shy race—not having had your liberal education!—we shrink into a sort of panoply of war. We don’t go over meaning to be rude, but we are driven to appear so rather than show our fright and look ridiculous. One of my cousins visited the United States a year or two ago, just after he came into his title, and he was so hounded by reporters and lion hunters, that after doubling and dodging until he was worn out, he gave himself the airs of a stage lord and succeeded in freezing them off. Then the journalists wrote vicious articles calling him a snob—It would seem that like a good many others, they do not know exactly what that word means. And Jim is as decent a little chap as you could find in England.”
“Well, you misjudge us too. You are always commiserating the American husbands left at home to coin dollars while their wives swarm over Europe. If you only knew how delighted the American husband is to get rid of his wife for a few months out of the year! But come, let us go in. I know that you long for an easy chair and to see your cigarette smoke, while I dare not sit out too late. Who is not a slave of some sort?”
XXII PRINCESS NACHMEISTER AS GUARDIAN ANGEL
He graduated from the easy chair to the divan by imperceptible degrees, for he had arts of his own; and in the course of a month of well-nigh daily intercourse he was almost as much at home in the villa by the Isar as Styr herself. Insensibly he began to assume airs of ownership, which made Margarethe wonder how her sense of humour had hitherto survived with so little to feed upon. He never gave her a sentimental glance, nor, not even when they talked till two in the morning and he left by the tower window in Kilchberg’s boat, did he in any way manifest a desire to make love to her. Nevertheless, it was quite evident that he had drifted into the assumption that the great prima donna, from whom no other man in Europe could claim more than a bow, or a few meaningless phrases at a rout, existed for him alone; that her time, her mind, her affections, were his; that, putting the attitude into the American nutshell, he owned her. And yet, while his bearing was a mixture of the husband, the friend, the lover, and the spoilt child, it was all on the mental plane; nor did he ever lose a certain formality, which indeed was so integral a part of his birthright that no intimacy of his would ever descend into the too dangerous places of familiarity.
If, as time went on, Styr was at some pains to analyze a relationship so foreign to the usual, no such fatiguing process had ever occurred to him. He accepted it all as a matter of course, as he did whatever good things came his way; it was only the rare scowl of fortune that gave him astonished pause. He sometimes threw a passing smile to an intimacy which had all the surface appearance of so much more, and appreciated the piquancy of this secret and unique experience. Now and again, too, he threw a bone of gratitude to Frau von Wass for curing him of whatever hankering for intrigue he may once have cherished, however languidly; although he was under no delusion in regard to Styr, knowing well that did he drop into even the usual gallantries he would be snubbed for his pains. Commonly, however, he wasted no time on thought, not even upon that inevitable future in which this rare and delightful companion could have no part. But when was he inclined to invoke the future unless his creditors were impertinent, or he dreamed vaguely of some strange exalted happiness for which he saw no parallel in life? At present his hopeful debtors were awaiting the sure enthusiasm of Lord Bridgminster when his brilliant heir had passed triumphantly into the diplomatic service; and if he sometimes dreamed, it was not of the woman he liked best on earth: she, being always at hand, why, in heaven’s name, should he dream of her?
Before leaving Munich, Princess Nachmeister had resolved upon a bold move. Too astute to mention the name of Mabel Cutting, she yet confided to the woman who, it was patent, alone possessed any real influence over her favourite, that his mother and friends were arranging a wholly desirable alliance for him, and only delayed bringing the two young people together until the girl should have gained the poise and experience of a London season, and he should have assimilated, undistracted, the knowledge of German necessary for his examinational ordeal.
“You are the subtlest of women,” continued the old diplomat. “Instil the expedience of an early and wealthy marriage into the mind of this most extravagant of princelings. Gott! One would think that my lord of Bridgminster was eighty and living on pap, not a red-faced sportsman of less than forty. That dear little boy! I fairly shudder when I imagine his future without an income practically unlimited.” She pressed her mummified old hand close upon Styr’s, a rare amenity in one that never permitted Munich to forget that she was its social dictator and the intimate friend of the Queen-mother. “Yes, that dear little boy! Cannot you conjure up his unhappy fate if he flings away this great opportunity and goes on at this pace for five years longer on the income of a younger son?”
“I think the dear little boy will always fall on his feet, whether he marry this particular heiress or not. It seems to be the mission of certain of our sex to take care of him, extricate, engineer him. I have had this greatness thrust upon me, and I seem humbly to accept it. No doubt it is as much a part of my destiny as to cheer up the King at midnight with that black auditorium between us!”
“Well, it is our duty to help others,” said the Nachmeister piously. “And particularly these young things that think the world is their footstool, and go on thinking so until too late. Two things our _jüngling_ must do during the next two years: pass his examinations and marry. You will not deny that he has the making of a remarkable man in him?”
“He is astonishingly developed mentally, but a more lazy, lymphatic, self-indulgent, supine creature I never met in my life. If he were an American, that brain of his would be supplemented by the ‘git-up-and-git’ that would enable him to make a great man of himself unassisted. Now, it will be others that will lead him, drive him, to the goal. He’ll never lift a finger for himself.”
“Well, what matter?” asked the European. “I am sure he would not be half so delicious did he have that dreadful—how do you call it?—No! He would not be himself at all. If he becomes a great man, if his brain and talents find their opportunity, what difference whether he or others clear the way? And while I could wish myself thirty years younger, I am quite resigned to accomplish my humble part behind the scenes and leave to you the great work of giving our young friend to Europe. Will you, dear Gräfin?”
“I have quite made up my mind to keep his lofty nose to the grindstone until the last of August—if his mother sends in his name on the first of June as she proposes, he must take his examinations within three months. I do not leave Munich myself until the last week in August, and I can make him work by threatening to get a leave of absence from the King on the plea of ill health and to go yachting with some acquaintances that invite me every year. Lutz promises to remain in Munich if he will study faithfully.”
“What original phrases you have! Why did not we ever talk in English before? Ah, yes! That will be a great work, but you will also help me in the other matter?”
“Yes, I think he should marry, since he will not work.”
“Work?”
“The only fault I find with our charming youth is that he expects the world to support him, and could not make ten dollars a month if he tried. Nor would he try.”
“Gott! He cannot go out into the market-place like your Americans. He is destined for the high places of the world. Surely you know our points of view by this time, dear Gräfin. For portionless young men of our aristocracies must rich young women be found, who thus buy a better position than the one to which they were born. That is right and just. And when a young man has the talents and prospects of our friend—Gott! but he gives far more than he expects, even if he takes possession of the entire fortune. And in any case, must not girls have husbands?”
“Who is the girl in question?”