Part 32

“But I mean in London, where no one, that is only a few, really likes Wagner. Some one said yesterday that, although Styr’s personal success was beyond dispute, he feared the Wagner season would be a failure as a whole; five weeks of Wagner was more than any one not a German could stand, and if they give the Ring again—”

“They will do nothing so tactless. But _Die Walküre_ is romantic enough to please the silliest and great enough to entrance those that really do know music. No other performance of _Götterdämmerung_ will be given, more’s the pity, for Brünhilde was always one of her two greatest rôles, and her rendering of it has deepened and even changed somewhat since I heard it in Munich. But no doubt it would fill the house only once—with people that want to be able to say they have heard the Ring! Styr has also consented to sing Elizabeth and Elsa; her voice is rather heavy for those rôles, but a hundred people will go to hear _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhäuser_ where one will even show himself at the greater operas a second time. The enterprise is not in the hands of fools—I know several members of the committee—and everything has been thought of to insure the season’s success.”

“How nice! Of course she is quite extraordinary. I am so sorry I could only sit through one act last night. And what a pity I cannot meet her. It is too old-fashioned of mother.”

“You could leave a card on her.”

“But, Jackie dear, she would then feel at liberty to come here, and after all it is mother’s house.”

Ordham turned to her with a rising flush. “Do you mean that you believe Countess Tann would force herself upon any one? I must have given you a strange opinion of her.”

“Good heavens, Jackie dear, I hope you have not told her that we—that mother will not receive her. How dreadful!”

“Certainly I have not. But she does not happen to be a fool. She has now been in London ten days, and as neither my wife nor my mother-in-law has left so much as a card on her, don’t you suppose she understands?”

“But surely you told her that I cannot go about?”

“You drive every day. There is no effort involved in leaving a card.”

“But—how like a man! One can hardly go that far and no farther. If this were only our house!”

Ordham drew his lids together. “If it were, would you receive Countess Tann?”

But Mabel did not flinch. “Of course I would, Jackie darling. I would even defy mother—we could go to a hotel—if only I felt up to it. But I am a wreck and mother takes such care of me.”

Ordham set his teeth and turned away, grimly reflecting that the one mental trait his wife possessed which compelled his admiration was the neatness with which she could deliver a lie. She broke off the heads of several geraniums and then cried out, as if suddenly inspired with a bright idea: “Let us go to the country to-day. It is too utterly heavenly to stay in town. Let us take a long drive through Surrey.”

“It is not good for you to take long drives.”

“Oh, it won’t hurt me a bit. We can rest often in those ducky little inns, and sit in the woods. It would be too delicious.”

“There might be an accident, and I never should forgive myself.”

“Oh! With our horses? One is always thankful when any horses of mother’s will go off a walk. Say that you will!” She spoke with a charming girlish eagerness.

“I am afraid that I cannot. I have half a dozen engagements.”

“But, Jackie darling, you ought not to make engagements for a whole day when you know how lonesome I am without you.” Mabel fell headlong into the domestic snare, heedless of resolutions and advice from her mother-in-law.

He turned to her with the flush gone from his face, and said in the gentlest manner possible: “Should you mind if I asked you not to call me Jackie? I have often intended to do so. I hope you don’t mind.”

It was Mabel’s turn to flush, and although her temper was not quick, her eyes flashed and her lips trembled. “Why?” she demanded. “Do—do you think it a liberty?”

“How can you say such a thing?” But although he spoke promptly, he was surprised to discover that she had put a latent resentment into form.

“Why,” stammered Mabel, “you are _English_. I believe mother is right. But this—this is really too much. I wonder if you could ever understand that we Americans have exactly as good an opinion of ourselves as you English have of yourselves? Perhaps we too look down upon all other nations. We have the right to! United States History is the only history that English people never seem to know anything about.”

“You look too pretty when you flash with patriotism like that.” Ordham smiled and kissed her lightly. “But you flew off at a tangent without giving me time to explain. It merely happens that I have always hated the nickname of Jack. In fact, I don’t like nicknames at all. It seems to me that they deindividualize. Men that permit themselves to be called Bertie and Olly and Sonny might as well shave their heads or wear a beard. I was christened John, and I feel John, not Johnny or Jackie.”

“Your mother calls you Johnny.”

“My mother goes in for fads. Nobody else has ever dared to call me Johnny.”

Mabel, always easily mollified, put her arms about his unresponsive neck. “If you had told me before, I never would have called you Jackie, although I love it, and John is so horridly formal. I shall feel as if I were addressing my husband’s double, or something. Do you really hate it—Jackie?”

“Yes.”

“Well! . . . I won’t any more. But you must do something for me in return. You must take me to the country to-day.”

“I really could not take the risk.”

“Then take me to Kensington Gardens.”

“I am so sorry—I think I told you I had several engagements. You see—you are generally occupied all day, with one thing or another. I have been thrown on my own resources, and now I cannot get out of these engagements I have made.”

“But you always used to come home to luncheon.”

“Now that you have so many American friends in London I did not fancy you would miss me; and as several of my own old friends are in town, I thought it a good opportunity to show them some attentions.”

“Why don’t you bring them to the house?”

“I could not think of fatiguing you, and men prefer to dine at a club, anyway.”

The words “Margarethe Styr” were shrieking in Mabel’s brain, but she was very proud, and rarely impolitic in any but small matters. Her mother had soothed her growing jealousy by assuring her that the great singer was far too occupied, now that all artistic London was running after her, to spare time for any man. Mabel could not crush her natural suspicions, particularly as she had discovered that he had once more thrown over the much-enduring Foreign Office, but she was determined not to alienate this puzzling young Englishman, whom she understood less every day, by “making scenes.” “Don’t bore him!” Lady Pat had warned her before leaving for France. “Give him his head and don’t ask him questions. He would not confide in himself if he could help it. He worships you and is far too lazy to pursue any woman, or even to respond to her advances. But don’t bore him.”

Mabel, with all the American girl’s independence of spirit, and firm belief in the inferiority of man, found such advice little to her taste, but, loving as she did, was willing to accept any that would help her to enchain her husband’s languid affections. But more than once of late she had turned cold as she asked herself if ever she could understand him, become really intimate with him. And now, kind and thoughtful as he still was, another fear was whispering. It seemed to her confirmed by his refusal of her simple request. While she might control the more direct expressions of her jealousy, the temptation was irresistible to indulge in the ancient formulæ. She dropped her arms and turned away with a quivering lip.

“I don’t believe you love me any longer!”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Do you?”

“Of course.”

She wheeled about and regarded him steadily. It occurred to him that she looked less vapidly pretty than usual.

“If you ceased to care for me,” she said stammeringly, her eyes widening with fear, “you would kill me. I never could stand it—never—I think that is all there is to me.”

“What a dear little thing you are. As if any man could help caring for the most charming wife in England. But you should have married Stanley, who is always exactly the same. I am afraid I am not. But as for the rest—do not be silly. Now I must run. Take care of yourself and don’t think of going for a drive of more than an hour.”

He tapped her on the cheek, dropped a kiss on her forehead, and departed in haste lest she think of a new argument. Mabel ran into her own room and fell on her divan, weeping wildly. But although she luxuriously let nature have her way for ten minutes or more, she finally drank a sedative, and then set her childish mouth in a straight hard line. There were several American women in England that had acquired conspicuous influence over their husbands—whom, no doubt, they had once had found as incomprehensible as her wonderful Jackie. If they had succeeded, so could she. It only required time and patience; and the return of her old buoyant health, which would enable her to companion him once more. If necessary, she would study politics and talk to old statesmen. But at this prospect she shuddered, and at the same moment her eye fell upon a shelf containing the works of Balzac, Maupassant, Bourget, and several other French authors, which one of her young married friends of their race had sent her, bound in white vellum, as a wedding present. They had been accompanied by a recommendation to read them and soon. She had never taken one from the shelf upon which her servant had arranged them.

LIII LOVE

“Ketch ’em alive! Ketch ’em alive!” The fly-paper vender had the note of spring in his voice, and other and more distant street cries betrayed the same almost plaintive quickening under the influence of the warmth and light so long withdrawn. Ordham let himself out of the house looking as hard as he felt, but in a few moments the pagan beauty of the morning and the gay face of London in her springtime laughed his ill humor away and banished the memory of his wife. No city is more beautiful than London during her brief season of sunshine, with the flower boxes set like little Italian balconies on her grim old houses, the vivid close green of parks and squares, the endless processions of open carriages filled with smartly dressed folk from all parts of the world; some in the native finery of countries so far from occidental that they give the scene a touch of opera bouffe. As Ordham walked toward Dover Street he fancied he could hear the birds singing in Hyde Park—a colony that dwelt in a tree beside his bedroom window had awakened him early with their chattering—see the swans sailing on the lake in the park of St. James. It was good to be alive, good to belong by divine right to the one really great city in the world, and as he presented six-pence to several of his friends the crossing sweepers—more for the pleasure of receiving their blessing than because he had the least idea they needed it—he smiled at them so radiantly that more than ever they were convinced he was the sweetest young gentleman that ever gave siller, and ‘oped he would be ‘appy for ever and ever.

Ordham felt that he had every reason to be happy. Were not he and Margarethe Styr going for a long day in the country, a long unbroken day? Although they had carried out their programme and visited many sights, still was it their first whole day together. Rehearsals demanded by the heterogeneous mass of singers they had been able to borrow from German cities had stolen many of her free days; she had felt obliged to attend three receptions arranged in her honour and receive once; and during the coming week practically all her spare time would be occupied with rehearsals for _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_, for she had not sung the rôles of Elizabeth and Elsa for several years. But these hours they had snatched together had been wholly delightful, their spirits had been high to the edge of excitement; both took a nervous delight in playing with a danger that would soon finish, leave them face to face either with tragedy or a vast and cynical philosophy. It was tacitly understood that this was to be their last period of companionship, and although Ordham alternated between the pit of melancholy when alone and an almost fierce sensation of happiness while with this woman, whom he found more surely his than in the old days when his eyes were closed, he refused at any time to ask more of fate or to dwell upon the future. But that he was no longer the languid manageable youth of less than a year ago he knew as well as she. If he too put ambition before love, accepted the consequences of his marrying, it was because he chose to do so, not because of the woman’s subtle manipulation. Ordham sometimes found an added food for sadness in the knowledge that he had left the best of his youth behind him, but was wise enough to congratulate himself that his acute attack of racial industry had cleared his blood of blinding humours.

But only to Styr was there any change in his appearance, and as he entered her sitting room this morning he looked the archetype of conquering youth, of splendid young English manhood. His mouth, which of late had often been consciously firm, was as soft and boyish as when they had met at Neuschwanstein, and his eyes, always luminous, were sparkling with anticipation. Not the least of his attractions to Styr was his perfect grooming, for being artist as well as woman, she hated the sight of “artistic” men. She herself looked very smart, as he immediately told her, in an entire costume of tan-coloured cloth. As the day was warm and she could not wear a wrap, and as her tailor was the best in Paris, her frock followed every line and curve of her perfect figure. But as she had concluded to ignore the fact that Ordham was man as well as soul, and circumstances protected them both, she saw no reason for making herself clumsy and uncomfortable, as if he were a boy and she his guardian! Moreover, she was not averse from leaving in his memory as many charming pictures of herself as might be composed.

“How delicious it is merely to be alive!” she exclaimed with that enthusiasm which, when the sullenness of her face was routed by the mere pagan joy of living, was not the least of her fascinations. “Where are we going?” she added, as they entered a hansom.

“I have not the least idea.” But in a moment he lifted the trap and directed the cabby to drive to Euston Station.

They alighted at Bushey, and, hiring a carriage for the day, drove or strolled through the old English lanes, with their high scented hedges, past houses built for subjects of Elizabeth, visited the tomb of Bacon at St. Albans, and even stared at the splendours of Hatfield House like veritable tourists, Ordham characteristically neglecting to mention that he had dined and slept there more than once. They idled on commons and in woods almost as full of light, lunched at the famous inn of Harrow, sat on the tomb favoured by Byron in the old town’s churchyard, hung over high-walled fences to inhale the perfume of flowers that the island’s moisture makes so rich, and to stare at the immense masses of pink and white hawthorn; bought fruit of a farmer (grown under glass, of course!) and sat on his wall to eat it. Few counties in England have more charms than Hertfordshire, and not its least is that it is practically undiscovered by the tourist.

They dined in the inn at Stanmore, dismissing their carriage, as they could take the train at this beautiful old town, which invited them to linger as long as it was light. They soon forsook the enormous joints, the mess of greens, the peas as round and hard as marbles, and an apple dumpling like a tunnel filled with the débris of many wrecks, and wandered forth once more. The streets were very narrow, the houses, of a dozen centuries, covered with ivy close cut; the church looked as old as England. At this hour the little town was silent and outwardly deserted, but one expected every moment to hear the sound of a horn, to see the London coach dash round a corner, a post-chaise with a lady in powder and patches at the window. Stanmore is so close to London that it was the first town reached by the mounted courier galloping through the dawn to tell the country that Victoria was queen, but it is as old and quiet and forgotten as if it were lost in one of the great counties of the north.

Gypsy wagons were halted on one corner of the heath, and the women cooked supper in the early twilight while the men lay on the ground and smoked their pipes. Their children, catching sight of two prosperous strangers, ran without prompting to beg. Ordham and Margarethe gave them silver, then, declining to have their fortunes told, in other words getting rid of them, strolled out over the heath. This large piece of waste land is as wild as anything in America, broken and rough of surface and covered with tangled grasses and shrubs. Beyond was what looked to be a black mass of woods, but the glimpse of a gateway suggested that they might be but the generously planted trees of a park. A grey church spire of some distant hamlet stood out sharply against a red band of afterglow. There was an intermittent tinkle of cow-bells, but no other sound.

They sat down in the very centre of the heath and watched the twilight gather, that long English twilight without chill or dew which brings with it something of the mystery of night while still holding in a loose embrace the safeguards of day. At that hour the flowers smell more sweetly, the night moths flutter among them, and man feels that his day’s work is done. A pungent scent rose from the gorse of Stanmore Heath, but Margarethe, who had felt as exhilarated all day as if she were a girl unexpectedly alone with a man secretly loved, felt her spirits drop. She remembered who she was and one of her objects in coming to London. So far not a word had passed between them concerning his married life. They had renewed the old intimate friendship in snatches that made them eager for more, but had found much to talk about in the monuments they visited, the most tactful programme for Covent Garden, in many subjects of common impersonal interest. But Margarethe had determined upon at least one crossed and dotted conversation with Ordham, and she believed this to be the time.

Ordham, too, was silent, staring straight before him with an expression which Styr had seen before when words lagged, an expression of mingled abstraction, astonishment, and apprehension.

“I want the whole story,” she said abruptly.

He turned to her with a start and flush. “The whole story?”

“Yes. All that has happened since we parted in Munich.”

“I thought we were to ignore the subject of my marriage.”

“To ignore is not to forget. I have tormented myself with so many versions—possibilities—how shall I call it? I want the truth. It will lay the ghost.”

“I am afraid you will hate me. I was an inconceivable ass.”

“No—it is wonderful that the story should be always the same and always different! But I hate generalities. I cannot go on confounding you with millions of other men. I want the specific incidents, your own version. A man’s viewpoint is always his best excuse.”

“Very well.” And as his love for her had always appealed to the carefully secluded fount of truth in his nature, for love would be wholly truth were it not for life, he told the story from beginning to end, omitting neither the skilful plot he had since unravelled, nor his own abject surrender.

“I loved Mabel; there can be no doubt of that. I suppose that the long root of such love is the axis of life. It permits millions to marry every day that have little or no prospect of educating or even supporting possible offspring; but if they paused to forecast, in other words, if their brains were not in a state of toxic poisoning from this love secretion, whatever it may be, the race would soon put an end to itself. Perhaps in time the law will step in and forbid marriages before the man is thirty and the woman twenty-five. As for the turbulence of desire and suffering—after one has endured the acute stage for a certain length of time, there is bound to be a decline and reaction. Man simply cannot suffer and desire at concert pitch forever. Moreover, did the law forbid the banns, a man would take jolly good care to keep out of harm’s way. But I know now that even had Mabel been all they made me believe, all that she looked, I should have ceased to care tuppence for her, although no doubt rather later. It is not necessary to explain the reason to you. A man may love many times in his life, but only one woman takes full and complete possession of his inner kingdom, as you have called it. Man is a sultan. One woman is his sultana; the others, absorbing enough during their little hour, are the caprices of his desultory harem. It is odd that his legal wife should so often be but one of these casual minor passions, and the woman he may never possess the one to persuade him of the immortality of love. It is a nice comment upon the makeshifts of civilization.”

Styr stirred uneasily. She was white, for the story had cut her even more deeply than she had anticipated. It is not pleasant to hear your chosen idol draw a picture of his youthful passion, his first abandon for another woman. She had clenched her long hands, and a blast from the furnace of her soul sped in the direction of Grosvenor Square. But she answered judicially: “The first study of civilized nations is every possible precaution against anarchy. They are doing their little best; we can only wait until the world grows wiser.” Then she laughed with a fair assumption of gayety. “It is something more than humorous that I should be the one to say that, not you: I, Margarethe Styr, and you, John Ordham, so soon to be a hereditary legislator of the most wisely governed country on earth. Well! Never mind! I have played many rôles in my life.”

“Will you not tell me that story now?” he asked eagerly. “You have half promised, more than once. And I am sick of outrageous concoctions. The truth could not be worse.”

“The truth is always worse, when there is any foundation for gossip at all. No!” she said violently, her voice harsh with the revolt let loose by his own story. “I will never tell you. It is only because I have lived so much, suffered so much, weathered a thousand storms, that I have been able to listen to all you have told me to-night without hating you. Were it otherwise, were I ten years younger, it would be months before I should want even to look at you again. You could never stand a similar—a far worse test. This life may not be for us, but at all events you shall never hear from my lips what would make you—Ah! Bah!”

“Do you believe in another life?” he asked, tactfully ignoring this outburst, in which he secretly exulted.

“This inner life of ours does not undergo death and resurrection for nothing,” she replied sullenly. “Nor is imagination a mere offshoot of the active mind. If it means anything, it means that somewhere, in some future incarnation, or on some more satisfactory planet, its supernormal efforts will become the facts of existence. And what then? Still subtler and more imperative wants that can only be realized in a higher state still? It makes one incline to Buddhism and Nirvana.”