Part 20

As Ordham was escorted through the immense entrance hall and up to the reception room at the head of the grand staircase, then left where he could command a long vista, he felt as if he had entered an enchanted palace. He had been in many palaces, many fine mansions, but never before where the wise gift of selection had eliminated the haphazard accumulations of the centuries, and appropriated all that was beautiful and artistic in historic houses whose owners could no longer pay their monthly bills. He knew what this wondrous interior meant to countless impoverished families whose ancestors had dazzled France. It was the most complete demonstration of the power of practically unlimited wealth that he had ever witnessed, and he wondered if rich Americans really appreciated their good fortune, or if they took it as a matter of course from the moment they were laid in their golden cradle; he was sure that American royalties, unlike European, would never condescend to use merely gilded cradles.

Down at one end of the long vista he saw Mabel Cutting approaching. He rose, but stood still for a moment, hoping that she had not yet seen him, and curious to discover what his first impression of her would be after these eventful months of separation. Moreover, he felt suddenly nervous.

His only impression at the moment was that the figure moving toward him down the bright formal French rooms, was the most graceful he had ever seen. Styr walked like a goddess. Mabel Cutting had the exquisite unconscious grace of a highly bred young girl, a grace that suggests a complete independence of the gravity of the earth. She walked as lightly as if she had never thought about walking at all; her slender figure had none of the conscious upstanding dignity of maturity; it was almost somnambulistic, an effect in harmony with her dreamy large eyes. She wore a gown and hat of various shades of green, and looked like spring reappearing for a moment to reproach the excesses of summer. And she was far more beautiful than when he had seen her last. Oh, no doubt of that. Beside her trotted LaLa, looking like a gnome.

Ordham stood spellbound before this vision for a moment; then advanced with even more dignity than usual, that she might not detect his tremors. Miss Cutting smiled pleasantly and offered her hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Ordham?” Her voice was light, sweet, cold, undeveloped. “Mother will be down presently and give you a cup of tea. Shall we sit in here? It is not so formal.”

She preceded him into a large room, which assuredly, thought he, must have been lifted bodily from some unfortunate royal chateau; but he was far more interested in the graceful figure before him, in her cool ease of manner. Where was the chatterbox of six months since? As they seated themselves beside the tea-table she politely but a little absently asked him if he was glad to be in England again after so long a sojourn abroad; then, her curiosity apparently satisfied, left the conversation in his keeping. He was searching his mind for a new subject to avert an awkward pause, wondering if the great absent eyes fixed upon him gave heed to his unprecedented exertions, and growing vaguely angry, when Mrs. Cutting came brightly in. She shook him warmly by the hand, and prepared to pour out tea with a smiling alertness that made her daughter appear the more indifferent by contrast. As Mrs. Cutting ran on, indeed, Mabel seemed to withdraw more and more into herself, and even while drinking her tea gave the impression of performing a polite act in which she took no interest. At all events she made no attempt to enter the conversation, which, for a time, was all of Ordham’s examinations and future. Once or twice he sought her eyes in the suddenly remembered fashion of that fortnight in Munich when they flirted behind “Momma’s” back; but in vain. Mrs. Cutting was no longer Momma and Mabel was no longer Mabel. What was she? Being a mere man, it was incomprehensible to him that even a London season and many admirers, to say nothing of tutors and books, could transform a beautiful but decidedly commonplace child into a wondrous creature with the poise of her mother, the mystery of those maidens the poets invoke from cloudland, and the intellectual abstraction of a budding genius. She was so perfectfully beautiful, so provocative in her abstraction, that he was at first merely interested. But at the end of half an hour, when she had not addressed a remark to him, but had sat as if she were in front of a camera, he began to grow really angry. He was not accustomed to disdain. He was quite aware that if not yet the head of his family, he was more than a match for any American girl, and had received something more than encouragement from the young lady’s mamma. Moreover, and here he sat up suddenly and began talking with animation to Mrs. Cutting, was he not the intimate friend of one of the greatest women in the world? For the first time he felt the flattery of the haughty Styr’s selection, and in the present engagement it gave him a distinct moral advantage that almost visibly uplifted his chest. He had permitted Mrs. Cutting to sustain the conversation before; he now turned to her wholly, and, the talk having drifted to Munich, gave her a brilliant description of Styr’s Isolde, which should at least display to this absurd young person his knowledge of the art which had lured her to London in the heats of August.

“It is the disappointment of my life that I have not seen Styr,” said Mrs. Cutting. “She did not sing while I was in Munich, and I have never been to Bayreuth. To be frank, I care little for Wagner. When one has been brought up on Patti and Nilsson, so to speak,—”

“Mother!”

Ordham turned with a start. Miss Cutting was regarding her mother with eyes sparkling disapproval. She moved them to Ordham, and the access of interest in those profound orbs was unmistakable. “Thank heaven I am not old-fashioned!” Her voice was so sweet, almost plaintive, that even an American mother could not feel snubbed. “What little I have heard of Wagner—almost wholly at orchestral concerts here—makes me long to hear more—all. Perhaps my English teacher infected me with his own enthusiasm. And he, too, has heard the great Styr. Is it true, Mr. Ordham, that you have heard her in all her rôles?”

“Oh, many times.”

“And is she really so great?”

“She is quite the greatest singer and actress in the world.”

“Ah!” Miss Cutting looked him full in the eyes. Her own seemed to say: “How wonderful you are to love and understand such great things, when most men at your age prefer the Halls!” Mrs. Cutting interposed in her cool, smooth, almost aggressively cultivated voice:

“But she, too, has limitations. She could not sing any of the old rôles. I may be old-fashioned, darling, but I assuredly do prefer Lucia, Leonora, Violetta, with their marvellous vocalization, to those declaiming and unmelodious rôles. I sat through _Die Walküre_ once, and it seemed to me that they merely talked interminably in the singing register. It was quite a week before I felt rested.”

“But _Die Walküre_ is full of drama!” Miss Cutting looked at her parent with a soft steadiness of reproach. Ordham had never seen eyes that revealed and concealed so much. Her small curved mouth, pink and half parted over the little white teeth, was as innocent as a baby’s, yet withal had a delightfully sarcastic uplift at the corners. “Dear mother! There is not a moment when one must not be thrilled by the happenings of very strange things indeed, and it was Wagner’s object to ennoble speech; he thought the old trills and roulades—and all—debased it.”

“Yes, darling, but the speeches need not be so long. Think of Fricka scolding Wotan throughout half of an interminable act; and as for that duologue in the last act between Wotan and Brünhilde—well, its mere memory threatens to deprive me of all the patience I possess. But I foresee my fate. I shall have to take you to Munich next winter.”

“A month at least. I must have that before we go to the Riviera. Oh, there is so much in the world to see, to learn! I wish I were thirty, so that I could feel that I had accomplished a little.”

“You have begun,” said Ordham, smiling. His anger and pique had vanished. “But I hope you like England.”

“It is my second home, of course. Mother has brought me here during most of my vacations.” But there was no enthusiasm in her tones, and she added: “I don’t fancy I shall care deeply for any one place until I have seen a great deal of life. My head feels like an empty house full of tiny rooms, all vacant behind staring windows. Well, one grows older every day.”

Ordham looked at that lovely head, with its mass of shining yellow hair, the full luminous brow, the deep dark eyes, the pure polished whiteness of the skin. He could imagine no more delightful task than furnishing those clean empty little rooms. He suddenly felt that he had accumulated a vast amount in his twenty-four years, and that perhaps it was his duty to decorate the interior of that shapely skull. But her eyes wandered from him again as Mrs. Cutting asked him abruptly what he knew of Styr.

“One hears more and more of her every day, over here,” she added. “So many English people have become convinced that it is their duty to admire Wagner, and are making conscientious efforts. They not only go to Bayreuth, but these last two or three years they have taken in Munich on their way to the Riviera or Italy. Some of the artists, too, come back raving over her. No doubt they really understand Wagner. Do you meet her off the stage?”

“Rarely.”

“Is she supposed to be educated?”

“Educated? She is a highly accomplished woman—has furnished all her little rooms, I should think.” He smiled and turned to Mabel, who was feeding the pug.

“Ah! you know her?” Mrs. Cutting’s voice was very smooth. “She is not received?”

“Rather!”

“How interesting! And how odd—that she should be—well, like that—and received. There are stories.” She glanced significantly at the averted head of her young daughter. It was patent that Mabel was not to be permitted to furnish any of her vacant cells in the primal colours.

Ordham lifted his shoulders. “She is a great artist. In Munich that suffices. And now, at least, I fancy that little but her art interests her. Her life is one long act of devotion and sacrifice.”

“Nevertheless,” said Mrs. Cutting, as Mabel, having boxed the ears of LaLa for spilling his cream, was escorting him to the door, “she had better not return to New York.”

Ordham’s eyes, suddenly large and cold, interrogated her.

“It seems that one of the old gossips of the Union Club spent a few days not long since in Munich and recognized Styr as a woman—well, whom every New York man once knew by sight, at least. He always spends the season in London, and now that Styr is becoming famous, it gives him great satisfaction to add his little quota of scandal.”

“It is quite possible that he mistook her for some one else. She looks like one woman off the stage, and another on.” Ordham felt an uncontrollable nervousness in his knees and moved about the room, staring at the soft pastels.

“He saw her both on and off. There is no doubt, I fancy. She was supposed to be dead, lost with a cheap company of players on the Pacific Coast. But he says that no one that had ever seen her could possibly mistake her for any one else, greatly as she has gone off—he says that she was a beautiful tigress when she squandered fortunes in New York. But, as you say, it does not matter in Munich, where, dear souls, they would worship the devil himself if he could sing. And, of course, she meditates no social conquest of London or New York. Levering says that she is very clever!”

“She is quite above thinking of such things.” Then, not wishing to hurt this charming woman’s feelings, he added hastily: “Art is a very exalting as well as exacting mistress. Nothing else seems worth while to so ardent a votary as Frau von Tann. If ever she comes here to sing, I fancy she will be the one to raise the social defences. You know that we too can be indifferent to pasts when they are walled off by fame. If Countess Tann created a furore at Covent Garden, she would be run after by every lion hunter in London. Remember Bernhardt.”

The colour left Mrs. Cutting’s cheek, and an angry light sprang to her eyes. But if prompted to deliver her mind of its disgust for the complaisance of a society in which she found no other fault, she thought better of it and replied calmly:

“Well—Bernhardt is French. One never expects much of people that have not had the advantages of the strict tenets of the Anglo-Saxon race; and when a transgressor is the most famous actress in the world, and has lived her life in Paris, the most feverish of all lives in the most feverish of all cities—well, of course, one not only makes allowances, but looks upon her as such a sheer outsider that one feels justified in paying tribute to her genius—or further satisfying one’s curiosity, whichever it may be. But this Styr—ah! here is the carriage. You will drive with us for an hour in the Park? Of course there will be nobody to look at, but the air will be delightful.”

He sat opposite the graceful voluble mother and the silent beautiful daughter with her eyes full of dreams and the hideous pug on her lap; and not only in the park, but during the drive down to Richmond, where he persuaded them to go for dinner. Once only, as they drove home through the twilight, he held Mabel’s eyes for a full minute. There was none of the old innocent coquetry in them, but they looked as if they were taking his measure and pronouncing him worth while if not heroic.

Styr’s name was not mentioned again, nor for many a day after.

XXXIII SLOW MAGIC

Lady Bridgminster paid her son a visit next morning while he was still in bed and drinking his tea. He was but half awake and pretended to no enthusiasm. But his mother pushed a chair to the bedside and tapped the coverlet with her long fingers. It was patent that for once in her life she was nervous.

“I must speak, Johnny,” she exclaimed. “And as I have several engagements to-day, this is my only opportunity.”

“Where can you have engagements in London at this time of year?”

“I am lunching with Rosamond, and then we visit a flower show, and afterwards attend a committee meeting—one of her charities—”

“So she is in town?”

“It is no more remarkable that she should come to town in this stifling weather for the sake of doing good than that little American should suddenly discover that she must come up for second-rate concerts. It does not strike you as odd, I suppose?”

“If I for a moment believed that Miss Cutting came up to London in August on my account, I should be flattered to death; but as a matter of fact, she quite snubbed me.”

“Fiddlesticks!”

“But she did. I can assure you I have felt a walking tragedy ever since.”

“She was probably in a bad temper about something.”

“She looked precisely like an angel.”

“Well, no doubt angels have their moods, and she is a spoilt child of fortune. Two millions sterling, and I cannot pay my dressmaker!”

“You wrote me once that an American daughter-in-law would be sure to pay your bills.”

“So would Rosamond. I do not want American dollars.”

“Am I to understand that Rosamond Hayle has also come up to London in August—”

“She does not know that you are back from the north, poor dear. I lured her up, pretending interest in her charity.” She leaned forward and took her son’s hands in the close grasp of her own. “Johnny,” she said intensely, “promise me that you will not marry this Cutting girl—at least that you will not propose to her until you have tried to like Rosamond. That dear English girl has vastly improved. And perhaps I have done wrong to hurry you. There are other girls growing up that will have a good bit of their own. I can think of three. If you will not consider poor Rosamond, at least promise me that you will not fall headlong into the net of these Americans.”

“Of course.”

“Do you forget that I brought you up?” His mother’s voice rose with her indignation. “At least pay me the compliment of frankness. And you will say ‘Of course’ at the altar instead of ‘I will,’ if you are not on your guard.”

“Well, then, I won’t. Eliminate Rosamond Hayle at once and forever. I am not at all sure that I wish to marry Miss Cutting. Before I met her again yesterday I knew that I should be hard driven indeed to make up my mind to marry a chatterbox. Now, although she has astonishingly improved, I do not know that I even like her. But she fascinates and interests me. I shall certainly see more of her. If I can like her well enough, and she will look at me—of which I am by no means sure—I fancy—I don’t know—it may be that I shall marry her. At least she would do me credit and assist me in my career. She is ideally beautiful, uncommonly clever, she has the grand air, and she has millions. You are asking me to marry a woman with less than half her fortune, whom smart Continental women would laugh at. I’d starve before I married a woman I should have to apologize for. No doubt I shall end by worrying along until Bridg drinks himself to death.”

“I don’t believe he is in any immediate danger—with that physique. And I had a remarkably lucid letter from him this morning. He wants me to try to persuade you to assist him in breaking the entail of Ordham—some rich brewer wants to buy it. Of course you will not?”

“I shan’t even discuss the question.”

Lady Bridgminster rose with an impatient jerk of her shoulders. As she stood there in the dim light, so long and narrow, draped, rather than dressed like ordinary women, she looked extraordinarily distinguished and handsome. Ordham’s æsthetic sense stirred, and he put out his hand and took hers.

“We will pay those bills, somehow,” he said. “I got a thousand from Bridg, and Hines, who has been adding up, finds that I overestimated my indebtedness. I will bring you two hundred this afternoon, and if ever I do marry riches, be sure that you and the boys shall have all you want.”

A dark red tide rose to Lady Bridgminster’s hair. She stooped impulsively and kissed her son. “You are a dear generous boy!” she exclaimed. “And we are all cats! cats! Every one of us.”

And leaving her son puzzled as much by her unusual demonstration as by that cryptic arraignment of her sex, she swept her long draperies out of the room.

Ordham dined that evening in the beautiful house, which, under artificial light, looked more than ever a palace evoked by the stroke of a wand for a fairy princess to dwell in. The princess wore misty robes of white, with green leaves in her hair, her ethereal loveliness rendered almost nebulous by her mother’s substantial gown of black jet, and the five big footmen in dark green plush. The dinner might have been sent over from Bignon’s. Certainly these Americans knew how to spend their money. Their very newness inspired them to aim at effects that never would enter the old indifferent heads of the homogeneous races.

Mabel had almost nothing to say. She made no effort whatever, but Mrs. Cutting, accustomed all her life to lead in conversation, as well as to keep it from flagging, entertained the guest so conscientiously that he hardly had time to feel snubbed by the young beauty. Mrs. Cutting’s talk rarely bored him, for she had a wide range of subjects and never clung too long to any one of them, after the fashion of some Americans, and he at least found time to realize that he could not have stood the same amount of chatter from a miss of one season. Mabel’s new reticence became her, the more particularly as when she did speak it was to the point; and it was more and more apparent that she was not the charming little goose he had thought her in Munich. But he was taken aback, as they left the dining room, to receive a polite good night from the young lady, who floated down the long line of rooms and disappeared.

Mrs. Cutting bit her lip and tapped her fan in manifest annoyance as she led the way to the front drawing-room. “Mabel has a slight headache,” she said apologetically. “She always droops a little in warm weather. She wants to return to the country; but I shall continue to be very frank with you, Mr. Ordham—I am most anxious that you should know one another.”

“It looks as if the less she knows me the better she may like me.” Ordham spoke with some humour; he was piqued but not angry. “However, I shall always be grateful to you for letting me look at her.”

“Ah! You do think my chick a beauty?” There was a little break in Mrs. Cutting’s cultivated voice, but she did not lift her eyes to Ordham’s.

“I have never seen a girl half as beautiful.”

Mrs. Cutting rose and moved about with uncommon restlessness. “Oh, if it could only be!” she cried. “Why not? Why not? I cannot live forever. The few relatives I have live in New York, and Mabel is so thoroughly Europeanized. She must marry. There is no other solution for a dainty helpless creature like that. Some man must take care of her as well as of her fortune. I have set my heart upon it, and I have had very few disappointments in life. I really could not endure the failure of this darling project. And you two should be as mutually attracted as the first man and the first woman. I cannot understand it!”

“I can fancy myself feeling the full force of the attraction if encouraged a bit. But if Miss Cutting will not speak to or look at me—”

“Girls are the eternal enigmas—and the most provoking little beasts that nature ever invented. She was quite mad about you when we left Munich. Now she fancies that no man will ever come up to her ideal—whatever it may be! She has no inordinate social ambitions; titles here and in France have been offered to her. But let us not talk about it. Come and see me. I positively refuse to return to the country and the society of tutors. They can come here. If Mabel droops, she can take a tonic. I could remain in this London I adore, winter and summer, autumn and spring. . . . And who knows? All this indifference, this nonchalance, may be but a ruse to draw you on. No one knows a girl less than her mother. And as to girls in general—there is no end to their nonsense and affectations. Fortunately they outgrow them, or what would become of the race? Do light another cigarette and let us sit on the balcony. I am too old for moonlight and balconies, and shall only inspire you with vain regrets—but never mind. At least it will be pleasant for me, and unselfishness is good for the soul!”

XXXIV WHERE IS ROSAMOND HAYLE?

Ordham was somewhat surprised that his mother did not inflict him with Rosamond Hayle at luncheon or dinner, and wondered if she had accepted the two hundred pounds in the nature of a bribe. He was more than grateful to be spared the sight of that high-born heiress’s prominent teeth and leaden hair; but beyond forbearing to thrust the young woman upon him in person, Lady Bridgminster made no effort at self-abnegation. She talked of her Rosamond’s virtues constantly and even hinted that hair could be “touched up.” Bony structure was hopeless, but by an elaborate arrangement of red-brown tresses and large hats, front teeth could be thrown into the background, particularly when assisted by a pink and white complexion; and this, she pledged her word, the healthy English girl now possessed. Nor were her eyes at all bad, and she had eyebrows, which were a distinct advantage when fixing up a plain girl. As for figure—what were dressmakers for? Besides, these lovely æsthetic gowns were invented to make skeletons the fashion.