Part 36
“A year passed. I was bursting with life, with the desire to live. I was sick of being hidden away. My intellect forged steadily ahead in its persistent cravings, but other cravings kept pace. I wanted gayety, society, brilliancy. I wanted admiration. This man brought no other men to my apartment, took me nowhere. I fancied him in love with me and asked him to marry me. I shall never forget the expression of his face. I left him for a man who had followed me about for some time. He was what is loosely known as a man about town, with no affiliations, nothing to lose, only too delighted to spend money on a pretty woman and show her off. I drank the cup of pleasure daily. I met other women of the same sort, turned night into day, revelled in gorgeous raiment, choice food, fine wines, and a reasonable number of jewels. The man was coarse, but good-natured and generous.
“Long before this I had begun to read—literature. I now knew exactly what I was about, what I was. But the only effect of thought was to create a disgust for the particular form of vice in which I lived. Its vulgarity, its obviousness, became hateful to me. Meanwhile I had met, now and again, men of a far higher social caste, of education, polish. There was no question in my mind that my preference for men of this sort was pronounced, but to live with any one of them meant being hidden away again, and for this I had no taste. I dreaded the ennui, and I loved excitement, although I wanted it in the society of gentlemen. Suddenly I conceived the idea of going on the stage. This would give me a _raison d’être_, as well as a measure of independence. I did so, and soon transferred myself to a man of fashion and wealth, and a wife who was one of the handsomest, and, to judge by appearances, one of the sweetest women in New York society. I found him rather a brute, selfish, capricious, and extraordinarily mean. But I made a desperate effort to love this man, for by this time my mating instinct had developed and I wanted to love. I might as well have tried to love a brownstone front. I left him for another man of his class, and this man I did love. I tried to kill him. I once told you. For a time I forswore all men. I sold my jewels and went to Europe. But everywhere some man recognized me, and I found that I could make no friends save books, and I was too young for those to suffice. I returned to New York with a friend of the two last men that had protected me. I became quite reckless; and as by this time I was extraordinarily handsome, in a vital splendid way, and with something like genius in the matter of dress, I was more sought after among fast men than any woman of my class. I tormented many men to whom I yielded nothing. That was my revenge.
“Still I read and studied. I had not an illusion about myself. I did not pretend to excuse myself. I made money in stocks. I could have lived alone with my books. But I alternately hated and loved the excitement, the luxury, the senseless extravagance in which I indulged whenever I found a man weak enough to squander his all upon me. At that time I had but a glimmer of a belief in my histrionic talent, and even had I believed in it and been consumed with ambition, I should have met with but one reply from every manager—I was too tall. True, I might have got some man to put up the money for a starring tour and acted Lady Macbeth or some other classic rôle, but I knew that to succeed I must have practice first, and this I could not get. I was condemned to small parts in the background, and often would have lost my position altogether but for influence. Moreover, curiously enough, I avoided the notice of the public as much as possible. I kept out of the newspapers.
“I had no suspicion that anything could be made of my voice until I had lived this sort of life for some ten years. Meanwhile, as I told you, I had fits of horrible disgust, intolerable ennui. All societies save those peopled with the fast and frivolous were closed to me. Such unspeakably frivolous women! Many of them, too, were ladies born, but _déclassée_.
“I shut myself up once or twice again with my books, but I always went back. Life without men was no life at all. My brain seemed to be cut in half with a straight line of cleavage. One-half might contain something like a real intellect, inherited,—well, that is of no consequence,—the other was that of the courtesan pure and simple.
“Sometimes the intellectual side went to sleep altogether, especially when the men I happened to know were more interesting than commonly. Men, as a whole, are not very interesting. In the abstract, perhaps, but not to their wives or mistresses. But I was a woman of splendid lustiness, of insolent determination to cram youth to the lid with all that life offered to outcasts like myself. Circumstances had made me a waif. I would make the best of it. Several times good women came and tried to reclaim me. I argued them out of the house. What had they to offer in exchange? Would they receive me in their set, find me a husband, obliterate my reputation? One, I remember, had a sense of humour, and confessed that plain uncompanioned virtue would seem somewhat barren to herself after the luxury and beauty, the society of clever men, which at that moment I enjoyed: as a rule fast men have no taste for clever men, and they are themselves dull beyond all power of words to describe; but at this time I was protected by and half loved a Western millionnaire with a weakness for the arts and a desire to play the patron; which I encouraged. But he was shot—To return to the lady who would have reclaimed me; she added astutely that I had better take the cue from the wise prime donne and retire of my own accord. And she added, as she left the house, ‘There is always Europe, you know. And you have a brain.’
“But I had been to Europe; alone and companioned. It was soon after this that I ceased to blow hot and cold. By imperceptible degrees I came wholly to hate my life, to loathe it, to grow sick, sick, sick of men. Compositely they were brutes, the best of them. Life with such women, no doubt, brings out the worst in them. Perhaps their wives should thank us. Man in mental and spiritual undress are as disillusionizing as a certain President of the United States must have been to his household when hanging over the banisters of the White House in his red flannels and shouting for hot water.
“But I had lost the money I had made, for I had the stock-gambling fever. I thought of suicide more than once, for I not only knew of no way in which I could support myself decently, but I dreaded solitude, ennui. Suddenly I discovered my voice. That interested me for a time, although I had no idea it would ever be of any use to me. But my old teacher was enthusiastic and often inspired me with ambitious dreams, for he dangled Bayreuth before me, and at times I believed that he knew what he was talking about; at others it seemed too much like a fairy story, and I despaired.
“I made money again, this time a considerable sum, and I determined to gamble no more. I had a good friend in a banker whom I could trust, and he invested my money. I went West with that travelling company in order to break with my old connection. In time I should return and devote myself to music, even if I never went on the operatic stage. My musical tastes had been developed for several years, and at least I could live in some German or Italian city and study and enjoy music, no doubt find companionship in the society of artists.
“Then came the wreck. You know the rest. Whether you now know all, whether your imagination has carried you into all the dark corners, into every chamber of horrors—I can tell you the story in outline, but the details are beyond my strength—I do not know. I hope so. I can only reiterate that I have lived with more men than I pretend to remember, whose very names would be unfamiliar should I hear them; that for years I lived this life with my intelligence wide awake,—for I never drank, never took a drug in my life,—my literary tastes of the best, my refinement of mind growing daily; that when I finally abandoned this existence it was from no desire for reform, to be a good woman; it was without one atom of remorse. It was simply and only because I hated men, because that wreck gave me the unique opportunity to begin life over again, and my voice pointed the way. I have squeezed my character dry of the woman I was in those days—she is like an old book; I have hardly thought about her until lately. I do not even now, in this minute, think upon that time with regret. It is simply not in me to worry over what is past and done; nor could I appreciate the beauty of life as I do: no good woman has the profound appreciations that I have. But I recognize the justice of the retribution. The first departure from principles, or shall I say the social code, that I never had heard of, was inevitable. So were the next two or three years. Had I then broken away, gone to some other city before I became conspicuous, and supported myself respectably, as, with my varied cleverness, I could have done, no doubt you would forgive me that childish misstep and love me the more. Nor could that brief past ever be raked up; at all events it would be next to impossible. But I persisted in that life for thirteen years: until I was bored and satiated, until something more satisfactory offered. Were I penitent now, I might inspire your sympathy, be worthy of it; but I would not give up one of those years of misery, of vice, of horrors, if I believed that—as I do—they played their part with the coincidently progressing brain in developing that depth and intensity of genius which makes me the greatest Isolde the world will ever see. I regret nothing—nothing! And for that reason I hold myself to be the worst woman alive, and am prepared to see you turn your back and walk out without comment. I shall not ask you to stay!”
Her voice had not faltered for a moment; she had spoken with an increasing rapidity of utterance. But suddenly she broke off short, looked helplessly at Ordham, her face, which had looked flushed and full as she spoke, becoming white and pinched once more, the defiant glare dying out of her eyes. He had stood motionless during the horrid sordid story, looking straight at her, his face almost vacant, as if his brain had emptied itself of every thought, that it might receive to the brim all she chose to pour into it. So she had seen him many times at a new or absorbing play. He merely looked paler, his eyes darker. She stopped, held her breath, then:
“Well?” she stammered. “Well?”—
The colour came back to his face, and with it an intense deepening of expression. He drew out his watch, then took the six telegrams from his pocket and laid them on the table between them.
“I am sorry you chose to-night to tell me that story,” he said, in his ordinary tones, “for, as you will see by reading these telegrams, I must take the eleven o’clock express, and it is now quarter past ten. Hines is no doubt at the door—”
But she interrupted him with a cry that was almost a scream. “Good God! Do you mean to say that it makes no difference? What are you made of?”
“It might have made a difference a year ago. Now it makes none whatever—or—yes—it is odd you should not have guessed that the more you made me pity you the more I should love you. And then—I had imagined very much all you have told me, taken it for granted, at least. Perhaps it is just as well, after all, that you selected to-night for the tale, if I had to hear it, for although determined to come to an understanding with you, I was in no humour for love-making. We have now wiped the thing off the slate, and, if you don’t mind, when I return we will not refer to it.”
She glanced at the telegrams, dropped into a chair, and covered her face with her shaking hands. “Your wife will die,” she moaned, “your wife will die!”
“I have not the least idea she will die. She is as strong as you are. I dare not assume that these telegrams were sent merely to frighten me and bring me back; no doubt excitement has made her ill, and in that case there may be danger. Besides, she has lost her child. I shall go, of course. But I shall return at the earliest possible moment. We will then make our plans as deliberately as more fortunate people do when about to marry. I am capable of being faithful to one woman for a lifetime, and I shall be faithful to you. We can be unimaginably happy. But I must not miss the train.”
He went round the table, and she stood up, shaking. “Not to-night!” she said. “I cannot kiss you so soon after that story. It has brought the past too close.”
“Very well.” He took both her hands, however, and bending his face looked close into her eyes.
“Swear to me that you will be here when I return,” he said.
“Yes, I shall be here.”
His eyes contracted at some hint of irony in her voice, and his grip on her hands intensified.
“If I thought that you would make way with yourself, I should not leave you. Unless you swear that you will do nothing so foolish and so cruel, I shall not return to England, and in that case I may have my wife’s death on my head.”
She returned his intense gaze for a moment, then, wrenching her hands away, pushed him from her violently. “Do not worry!” she cried harshly. “If I kill myself, I’ll take you with me. I am not Isolde for nothing. But now, for God’s sake, go! I want to be alone.”
LVIII THE FOOLISH FATES
If Ordham could be very hard, he could also be very soft. When he received a telegram at Flushing stating that Mabel was still alive, but that her condition was hopeless, he was moved deeply, the more so, perhaps, because his sympathies had been so profoundly stirred a few hours before. At the same time he wished to heaven he were on the other side of the world. When he reached London, he went hastily to the sick room, fearing that if he stopped to think his courage might desert him, for it was his first personal encounter with death. There was a strange moaning sound from the bed, such as he had heard animals utter in their last extremity, and he stumbled over a pail of ice. The darkened room seemed to him full of people and in an indescribable confusion, but he had barely caught a glimpse of Mrs. Cutting, dishevelled, haggard, when everybody seemed to disappear simultaneously, leaving him and the dying creature in the bed alone.
He made his way across the big room and saw Mabel, who looked like waxwork with enormous glass eyes. He shuddered, but bent over and would have kissed her had she not pushed him feebly away. He sat down, and his nervousness, even his horror, fled. He looked at the shrunken pallid remnant of the beautiful girl he had married and was filled with an immense pity, which induced one of those rare moments in life, like tiny islands, that have no space for self. He was also awed, as one must ever be in the presence of death, but those little green isles in the ocean of egoism have their atmosphere of unreality; and he felt throughout this interview, which he has never tried to forget, like a man who dreams yet believes himself to be awake.
Mabel spoke in a small distant voice. “I am dying and you have killed me.”
“I am afraid I have.”
“That is all I have left—that you should know that. Had I been happy I might have pulled through, although I had a horrible time, a horrible time! But my brain, all my blood, was on fire. I don’t know—the doctor will explain—but I do know that my only chance was mental peace, and I was like a mad creature from the moment I learned you had gone to that woman. O God! I am only nineteen. What was I born for?”
She paused a moment and he stared at her with blanched face and mouth slightly open. His expression was almost vacant, his remarkably receptive faculty exercising itself unconsciously. To Mabel he looked as young as when she had first known him, and her expression softened, but only for a moment. Her face set again, and she went on:
“I don’t mind dying so much, for I am so tired I don’t care, and there is nothing left to live for. Even the baby deserted me. But I have lost—lost! And I was so sure I should win! Why should I not have been confident? I had had everything—always—it is so strange that I should be ground to powder! I feel as if the huge wheels of one of those old Roman chariots—conquerors’ chariots!—had crushed me. I was a real little queen, and now I am nothing! nothing! And only nineteen! Why was I born?”
She raised herself on her hands; her immense hollow eyes, which had wandered during her last words, focussed, were piercing for the first time, probably, since they had met the light. “I think I should not mind even that—anything—” she was whispering, her voice almost dead—“if I could only have understood you. But to have been your wife, to have loved you so, and to die knowing that not for one minute, not for one second—and even death gives me no insight—”
He fled from the room as she fell back. The doctor, a nurse, and Mrs. Cutting, were waiting on the threshold. He went hastily to his own room, and as he closed the door he felt something at his heels. It was LaLa, and he took him in his arms and sat without moving, almost without thought, for an hour. At the end of that time there was a tap and he admitted Mrs. Cutting. As he saw her face he braced himself and all sense of unreality left him. Her cherished but never harnessed youth had deserted her. Her face was pinched and yellow and old. Her hair was streaked with white. Her lips were gray and shaking. But even in her deep maternal grief, in the one violent blow that life had dealt her, even in her new hatred of this royal child of fortune, she was unable to undam her soul and overwhelm him with a fury of scorn and hatred, as she had dimly imagined she should do when she left Mabel’s room for his. She could suffer, but not for her were the great tragic emotions, the splendours, the lightning blasts of expression. As she disciplined her relaxed mouth and pressed her hand hard against her bosom, Ordham’s mind vagrantly recalled an observation of Styr’s regarding the best of the American actors: that they managed to convey the impression of deep intense emotion, artistically repressed; when as a matter of fact they had nothing to repress. But that the poor woman suffered to the full capacity of her meagre nature he could not doubt, and he tried to take her hand and lead her to a chair. But she, like her daughter, thrust him away.
“Mabel is dead,” she said.
As his brain whirled it almost cast out the collocations: “Of course!” “I am so sorry!” and the bathos of it twisted his features into a grin that was as like a smile as a mask is like the human face; but Mrs. Cutting fell back in horror.
“You—you—was it not enough to kill her, without laughing—”
“Good God, how can you say such a thing? I feel as hysterical as a woman. How else could I feel? I am distracted, half out of my mind with horror and remorse. Give me credit for that much at least.”
“You are still young enough to feel excited at being in the midst of a tragedy!” Mrs. Cutting spoke almost dryly. “But I doubt if you will long convince yourself that it is anything more. I hope this may be the last time I shall ever be obliged to speak to you, and therefore I will say at once that I wish to take my child and her child to New York for interment. I don’t think it necessary to give my reasons.”
“You will do everything you wish, of course. I should not think of opposing you.”
She stared at him in unwilling admiration in spite of her suffering, her indignation. He had mastered his excitement, and were he a kindly relative he could not be more courteous, more full of solicitude. She turned her back on him, thinking of nothing to say but “Thank you,” and she left the room feeling like an honoured guest reluctantly dismissed.
But the next three days were a nightmare to Ordham. He was determined to pay all respect to Mabel dead, which, to do him justice, he had, with brief lapses, managed to pay her living. He even sat beside the bed for a few moments after they had dressed her and folded her hands, and filled her arms with lilies. She was less pinched, less shrunken, in death. A little of her beauty had returned to her, and she looked no more than sixteen. Again pity possessed him, and he left the room abruptly and wandered about the darkened house. For three days he barely went out, and as he could not settle himself to read, and as every blind, according to that depressing old provincial custom, was down, as the house seemed to grow more and more silent, darker and darker, until he thought he should go mad, he took refuge in the attic, where in an unused room he opened a back window, and, companioned by LaLa, who clung to him, sat gazing by the hour over the roofs, trying not to think of the future, but making no bones about wishing the present were over.
Then came the ordeal at which he had to appear as chief mourner; but he girded up his loins, and, as a matter of fact, very nearly wept as he followed the long narrow casket out of the house. It was to remain in the mortuary chapel in Brompton Cemetery until Mrs. Cutting could close her house and start for New York. There was another short service out there, and as he was as white as death, and his shoulders sagged, the distinguished gathering, among whom were many Americans, pitied him intensely.
LIX WHEN ORDHAM WAS BRIDGMINSTER
Bridgminster was also dead; and on the day following Mabel’s funeral, Ordham, in company with his mother and two of his brothers, started for Scotland to escort the body of the late head of their house to Ordham Castle and bury him in the vault beneath the village church with his fathers.
Ordham had endeavoured to forget Margarethe Styr until the last rites had been paid to his wife, but he sent her a telegram as he was leaving London, several from Scotland, and another as soon as he arrived at the castle. When his brother’s funeral was over, his relatives departed, and he was quite alone—certain matters necessary of adjustment detained him at Ordham for a few days—he sat down to write a long impassioned letter to her. But his pen fell from his hand. For the first time in his life he could have written a great love-letter, abandoned himself recklessly in words; but he knew that if he made no mention of marriage, Styr, even if she received the letter in a state of mind absolutely responsive—by no means certain!—would notice the omission. She loved him as profoundly as a woman is capable of loving; the terrible confession by which she purposed to save him was proof enough of that; but she was also clear-sighted and practical. No subtlety of omission would ever deceive her, and all arguments against the public relation should come from her; that was her right. It was not that he had the least doubt she would continue to make these protests that held his pen, but the doubt of his own sincerity did he protest in black and white that he intended to marry her. Not only did this woman still magnetize all the truth that was in him, but he knew that he could not make that particular protest as strong as the rest of his letter; she would detect the difference, and, with feminine inconsistency, be wounded to the quick.