BY MRS. ATHERTON THE CONQUEROR A FEW OF HAMILTON’S LETTERS ANCESTORS THE GORGEOUS ISLE RULERS OF KINGS THE ARISTOCRATS THE TRAVELLING THIRDS THE BELL IN THE FOG PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES SENATOR NORTH HIS FORTUNATE GRACE CALIFORNIA SERIES REZÁNOV THE DOOMSWOMAN THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE THE CALIFORNIANS AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS A WHIRL ASUNDER THE VALIANT RUNAWAYS (A BOOK FOR BOYS) TOWER OF IVORY
A NOVEL
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 All rights reserved Copyright, 1910,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. Reprinted March, twice, July, 1910.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
John Ordham had been in Munich several months before he met Margarethe Styr. Like all the young men, native and foreign, he chose to fancy himself in love with her, and although both too dignified and too shy to applaud with the vehemence of the Germans, he never failed to attend a performance at the “Hof” when the greatest hochdramatische the new music had developed sang Iseult or Brynhildr. He was not sure that he wanted to meet her, for in a languid and somewhat affected manner he persuaded himself that she existed on the stage alone, and that did he even permit his imagination to picture her in private life it must be as a commonplace American woman of German extraction who drank enormously of beer and ate grossly, like the people in the restaurants. And as at that time he cultivated the sensuous rather than the stronger elements of his nature, he avoided what might have attenuated one of the most exquisite of his pleasures. It was true that in the second and last acts of GÖtterdÄmmerung her tragedy was so stupendous, her grief so poignant, her despair so fathomless, that he turned cold to his marrow, and felt as if the sufferings of all humanity were drowning him. But vicarious woe has all the voluptuousness and none of the hell of Life’s cruelties at first hand. Styr’s methods were as likely to inthral the fastidious Englishman as the more artistic German. In a day when Sarah Bernhardt was the fashion in tragediennes, she had a still method all her own, a manner of appearing quietly on the stage, seemingly as impersonal as a part of its setting; then gradually dominating it, not only by the magic of her great golden voice and imposing height and presence, but by a force, which the critics, after long and acrimonious controversy, agreed to be an emanation from the brain. Whether she possessed also that physical magnetism, commonly indispensable to stage people, was a question still agitated when Ordham arrived in Munich, although she had then been “Royal Bavarian Court Singer” for six years; but that she had cultivated a mental power which above all else made her the great artist she was, the most violent partisans of other prime donne, lyric and dramatic, frankly conceded. Her associates at the Hof told that at rehearsals she merely walked through her part; and Princess Nachmeister, boasting private acquaintance with her since her elevation to the Bavarian aristocracy as Countess Tann, confided to the world that she never practised even those slow, grand, graceful, and infinitely varied gestures of hands and arms which were as expressive as her voice, but directed them from her brain as she did her acting; that she sat for hours thinking out the minutest details, but without moving a muscle until the night of public performance. All facial expression was concentrated in her eyes. She could express more with those features for which Nature had failed to invoke her conventions, than any living actress with physical writhings and distorted visage. Therefore, when she gave way to momentary violence, as, when at Siegfried’s repudiation she looked to be tearing her heart out, she created so profound an impression that more than Ordham rose breathless from their seats. Her desolation, her incredulous horror, the alternate pride of the goddess and agony of the woman, the dark and remorseless vengeance of the daughter of Wotan, not only induced a nervous shudder in Ordham but plunged his imagination down the past of this great but forbidding creature, who seemed to unlock her own heart for the moment with the reckless indifference of the supreme artist. He was but twenty-four at this time, but he had seen a good deal of the world, and its inheritances had composed many of his brain cells; he was, moreover, a very clever young man, as all admitted. Nevertheless, when he stared at Brynhildr in her agony and wrath, or dreamed through the second act of Tristan und Isolde, he had vague prickings in the depths of his soul that tragedy was not confined to the gods, and uneasy forebodings that life even for such as he was not all roses and cream. But at this time, although had Styr ever been photographed, he would have framed and enthroned her, he rarely thought of her when not in his seat in the Hof, or listening to the comments of his friends. He was fluttering from flower to flower with the impatience and curiosity of his years, fearful of missing the least the gods provided for fortunate youth; drawn intensely for a day or a week by a beautiful face or an odd personality, but not daring to dally too long lest something more charming escape him. He had passing episodes of a semi-serious nature in that gay scampish underworld of Munich (that world of soubrettes, waitresses, young officers, students of both sexes), as well as in the sphere that revolved about the Queen-mother, but they were by no means ardent or sustained. He had not yet begun to cultivate that outdoor life which makes Englishmen so virile, and in extenuation of his fickleness he reminded himself of the penetrating observation of Marguerite de Valois, that the passions of young men are apt to be wavering and cold. The truth was that he was influenced by what appealed to his mind and taste rather than to his passions, although being sensitive and eager, these could momentarily be aroused by a charming woman who chose to take the initiative. The serious side of his nature had hardly begun its development; youth, bubbling youth, was uppermost; unconsciously (sometimes!) he smiled into any pair of pretty eyes that met and held his rather absent gaze, flirted desperately for an evening with a delightful creature whom he quite forgot to call upon next day. He found life very satisfactory and his studies not too arduous: persuaded by his family to enter diplomacy, and taking to it as naturally as he turned from the more dubious work of politics, he had spent a year in Paris unofficially attached to the British Embassy; then, a relative being appointed Minister Resident to the Court of Bavaria, he had come to him for another year in order to perfect himself in the German language before attempting his examinations. It was some time before Munich found him out. For a while he was too much interested in the cafÉs, the ale-halls, the student life, the opera and theatre, to go about in society, even had it not been away. But soon after the return of the fashionable world to the capital, it became known that visiting at the British Legation was a young Englishman of fine appearance, distinguished family, and excellent prospects: his half-brother, Lord Bridgminster, although still a young man and quite healthy, was, owing to an early disappointment and an accident which marred his features, a misanthropist and misogynist. Almost simultaneously Ordham began to go about with Mr. Trowbridge, the minister; and, to do himself as well as society justice, he was immediately and enthusiastically liked for himself. The glamour of long descent and a possible coronet can never wholly be forgotten, but they carry a man so far and no farther. John Ordham’s worldly advantages no doubt were among the earliest of the factors that made him the fashion in Munich, so slow to accept strangers; but, later they were but the final excuse to shower attentions upon a young man who, under a shy and languid exterior, possessed an independent and audacious mind, who breathed refinement, and whose gentle and courteous manner charmed even the morose Ludwig to invite him to a private concert at Neuschwanstein, where he and Princess Nachmeister were the only guests. It was there that he met Margarethe Styr. Princess Nachmeister was the most disagreeable old woman in Munich and quite the most powerful. Herself a Prussian, she was a lifelong friend of the Queen-mother, and one of the few women ever admitted to the presence of the King; her genius for social leadership had been cultivated for forty years, and she had a “palace” in the KÖnigenstrasse, whose high-walled garden extended through to the Kaulbachstrasse. Ordham, in his rather listless walks, had often glanced longingly over the flat coping at the grounds, half formal, half wild, crowded with trees and set with Italian seats and fountains, noseless satyrs and empty urns. The princess boasted that she was the first to “discover” him, and after the season opened he found himself dining or attending parties at her house several times a week. At the moment, so great was the depression, owing to the persistent seclusion of the King, that few besides Excellenz Nachmeister had the spirit to entertain on the grand scale. Luncheons, kettle-drums, diplomatic dinners, were not infrequent, and occasionally one of the minor royal palaces opened its doors for a rout; but had it not been for the old lady whom all vilified and courted, society would have been moribund. No one was more aware of this than Excellenz herself, for one secret of her uninterrupted success in a city that still hated Prussia was her genius for seizing and holding the strategic position. She took Ordham to the routs that were given, to private tea-parties at the Residenz, where frequently the only other guests of the Queen-mother were her ancient ladies-in-waiting, and, in time, invited him alone of all the unofficial young men to her dinners given in honour of the diplomatic corps. She knew that he barely tolerated her, that he came to her house so often, not only because he found much to amuse him there, but because he was far too good-natured to refuse any one that pressed hospitality upon him; but she would have forgiven more to his manners, which she pronounced the finest in the world; and the old court intriguer honestly admired the diplomatic talents which inspired him to express the proper amount of deference and polite gratitude without sacrificing his dignity in the fashion of many that craved something more than a mere entrÉe to the Palast Nachmeister; then, later, when to be the enfant gÂtÉ and the formal man-of-the-world. Ordham, indeed, began by disliking her intensely. Her thin dispraising nose, which, he reflected, looked as if it had a pin in it; her narrow mouth, whose corners seemed to drip poison; her hard, round, brilliant eyes; her red wig and emaciated figure,—all offended him; but her manifest and disinterested friendship (she had not a young relative in the world), her many favours, and the more subtle influence of Time, to say nothing of her discretion in not inviting him to make love to her, inclined him to indulgence, and he even began to find good points in her,—after his habit with people whom he tolerated at all. And he was never bored in her house, for he met in it a far more cosmopolitan society than he had been accustomed to in England or even in Paris. The United States had not yet discovered Munich, but it was always refreshed, this beautiful art city of mid-Europe, by Russians, Hungarians, Austrians, Italians, and odd and interesting people from the Balkans and the Porte. Moreover, he loved beautiful things, and the Nachmeister’s house was an essential reincarnation of the rococo, even to the dinginess of the gilt, so fatally neglected by Ludwig in his brand-new palaces, Linderhof and Herrenchimsee. Her rooms and her grounds satisfied him so completely that he could not go to them often enough, and he was able to exclude their owner from his memory unless she stood in front of him. Nor did she deny him anything he craved. When the rather nervous young man, who blushed so often, and yet was as automatically sure of himself as only an Englishman of his class can be, told her flatly that he wanted to meet the King, whom no stranger met, the audacity of the request took her breath away, but she managed the interview through the Queen-mother; and Ludwig, who happened to be in one of those intensely lucid tempers when he was sick unto death of shams and hypocrisies, and the vileness he found in the men that cringed at his wavering feet, fancied that he saw in the clean high-bred young Englishman something of the nobility and beauty of his own untainted youth, and impulsively invited him to Neuschwanstein for the following evening. It was quite in keeping with the curious complications which at this period began to deflect John Ordham’s feet from the sunny highway into dim by-paths ending in the mazes of life, that he should have met Mabel Cutting before he made even the bare acquaintance of Margarethe Styr. She was just eighteen, and her mother had brought her to Munich for a few weeks of German and music before launching her into London society. Princess Nachmeister, giving a garden party soon after the squares and gardens of Munich had burst into the vivid young greens of spring, begged Mrs. Cutting, whom she had known for many years, to bring the new American beauty to decorate her “gloomy old park.” This with her romantic loveliness—she was tall and slim, her hair was golden, her big eyes were brown, sad, remote, her little nose and mouth cut with the sharpest and most rapid of chisels—Mabel accomplished with much complacency; she was not only quite aware of her charms, but that her smart Parisian gown made the greater number of the Bavarian aristocracy look like housemaids. But she was bored by the strange babel of tongues about her, and, unable to interest herself in the stiff young officers that clicked their heels together in front of her, permitted them to be captured by ladies with whose methods they were more familiar. She was sitting alone,—save for her pug-dog, LaLa,—on one of the curved marble seats under a large tree, flanked by a pink hawthorn on one side and a white lilac bush on the other, when Ordham, who had arrived late, as usual, caught sight of her. A few moments later, his hostess, congratulating herself upon her subtlety, had steered him to the maiden’s side and casually presented him. Mabel enlivened immediately when the tall “boy,” as she defined him, very dignified and very diffident, stood blushing before her, and talked so fast that Ordham subsided into a chair with the welcome sensation of being spared all trouble. He was fascinated not more by the sparkling flow of empty words than by the play of dimples in the pink and white cheeks, and the flecks of golden light which the large pathetic brown eyes seemed to intercept from the aureole of her hair. She talked of England and Paris, which she knew far better than New York, “adoring” both, delivered her soul of her hatred of all things German, from the music to the shops, spoke with admiration of his mother who was a great friend of “Momma’s,” and admitted that she was simply dying to see the inside of Ordham Castle and its romantic recluse, Lord Bridgminster. Occasionally she dammed the stream of her eloquence with a question, answered by a glance from Ordham’s smiling eyes. Then Mrs. Cutting, who had been detained within, bore down upon them, and Mabel rose to her feet like a willow branch slowly released from the water. “Momma!” she cried, “this is Mr. Ordham, Lady Bridgminster’s son. I have asked him to call. Do invite him for dinner to-night. He is the very nicest boy I ever met. You are sure to like him, for he talks so splendidly, and says such amusing things.” Ordham had much ado to refrain from laughing outright, and Mrs. Cutting caught the flash in his eyes which made him suddenly look older. He cultivated—or perhaps, in his conventional hours, it was quite natural to him—a somewhat infantile expression, and Mrs. Cutting, observing him from the window, had concluded that he was a mere boy, and quite safe to sit alone with her little daughter at a formal German party. But as she stood talking to him,—he was now quite at his ease,—this woman whose keen American brain had never for a moment been clouded by passion, whose nerves were mere magnetic needles for the thousand complexities of the world she lived in, experienced a subtle response to something hard under the plastic surface of this charming young man. It was remote, a whisper from the unknown, as evanescent as a quiver along the branches of the tree that cast its shadow on the young pink of the hawthorn; and in a moment she forgot the impression in her general approval. But she recalled it long after, that fleeting response in herself to the germ of ruthlessness under that sincere and boyish desire to please her. Then and there she made up her mind that he should marry Mabel. The serious quest of her life was the son-in-law who should make her one with the aristocracy she had selected as the best this world had precipitated. She was a woman as fastidious as she was ambitious, for she belonged to the aristocracy of her own country, and there was still much of the Puritan in her, albeit none of the provincial. She would give her immaculate daughter to no man whom she knew to be unworthy, no matter what his rank; and, unsuspected, she had examined and rejected all the young unmarried noblemen she had met during her last two seasons in England. As it happened, she had never met Ordham, although she enjoyed something more than a passing acquaintance with Lady Bridgminster. Always a favourite of fortune, she realized at once that this garden party had been arranged by the august recipient of the prayers she never omitted to offer up when the exigencies of fashion took her to church. “Certainly you must dine with us to-night, if you are not ‘invited,’ as they say over here,” she exclaimed in her bright cordial voice which retained not a taint of the national crudity. “Mabel is a chatterbox and I shall send her to bed; but you and I will have a delightful gossip about London, from which I have been banished so often these last three years—since my husband’s death there has been so much tiresome litigation in New York. It is a delight even to look at an Englishman once more, especially here in Germany, which—let me whisper it—I hate as much as I love Paris. I am still a good American, you see, even if I did migrate long since to England. And you will come at eight?” Ordham murmured his thanks, almost as much fascinated by the mother as by the daughter. Mrs. Cutting was not yet forty, very slim, Parisian, high-bred, not in the least faded, and her grey eyes, if cold, were very bright; her small mouth could accomplish smiles dazzling, arch, sympathetic, merely sweet, and she held her head higher than any lady of the court of Queen Marie. Ordham had met Americans of all sorts, but never any that attracted him as strongly as this distinguished couple that said nothing so charmingly and liked him so spontaneously. He felt the utter passionlessness of the older woman’s nature, but after the tempestuousness of certain of his foreign acquaintance this but added to her charm. As for the exquisite Mabel, she suggested all enchanting possibilities, although perhaps more than aught else the divine white flame of Wagner’s Elizabeth; that is to say (he was dreaming over a midnight cigarette at his window in the Legation when these reflections took shape), she would resemble that exalted ideal when she passed the chatterbox stage, that inevitable phase of the young American female. But, barring the fact that she talked too much and really knew nothing at all, she was quite flawless. He dined, lunched, drove constantly with the Cuttings during the ensuing fortnight, writing pathetic notes of apology to those that had booked him long since; and as Mrs. Cutting dined in her private suite, his many good friends almost wept as they thought on his sufferings. He answered their notes of sympathy in terms of passionate gratitude and regret (which made him more popular than ever) and gave not a second thought to the writers save when endeavouring to fix each particular excuse in his memory. He was enchanted with his new friends. Mrs. Cutting talked smartly, and on all subjects which she discovered appealed to him. Mabel was not sent to bed, and a great deal of quiet flirting went on under Momma’s discreetly averted eye. Frequently Mrs. Cutting was summoned into an adjoining room by her “dressmaker” (she would not have worn a German gown into her coffin), but certainly Ordham never felt so much as a passing suspicion that the girl was being thrown at his head, nor that his ideals, peculiarities, vague desires, were being carefully sounded and analyzed. When they departed he missed them so acutely for a few days that he was almost melancholy; then, by rapid gradations, forgot them. Mabel bedewed her pillow for many nights, and Mrs. Cutting, as soon as she had opened her house in London, and presented Mabel at Buckingham Palace, devoted herself to ripening her pleasant acquaintance with Lady Bridgminster into friendship. It was not long before those two astute dames understood one another, and the pliant Mabel, by no means without the craft of her sex, was put into training. Ordham journeyed down to Neuschwanstein full of pleasant anticipations, which for several hours after his arrival seemed unlikely to be fulfilled. Although he and Princess Nachmeister, with whom he travelled, were received at FÜssen by a royal coach, which bounded at the heels of four galloping steeds through the grey mediÆval town crowded on the banks of the river, then up through the woods to the white castle on its lofty rock, in a fashion that exhilarated his blood, and although they were received at Neuschwanstein with vast ceremony, he learned immediately that the King found himself too unwell to see his guests, and that the GrÄfin von Tann would dine in her own apartments over in the Kemenate, where rooms had been put in order for herself and the Princess Nachmeister. In the main body of the castle no woman had ever slept, and few men. Ordham, after ascending to the third story, was conducted through endless suites of rooms, very new, very gaudy, painted with the legends of the sagas and furnished with blue, purple, red, or green satin heavily incrusted with gold. In his own imposing chamber, finding nothing comfortable but the bed—after turning up a corner of the quilt—to sit on (the gold embroideries of the chairs being at least four inches thick), he made his way out of the castle and determined to explore while it was still daylight, half hoping to meet the King or the Styr. He forgot both for a time while he roamed about what is probably the most beautiful spot on earth. In an undulating valley surrounded by an irregular chain of Alps, the two castles were set on their heights about a mile apart: Hohenschwangau, feudal in appearance if not in fact, old and brown, with citadel, wall, and bastions; Neuschwanstein, a white mass of towers on a mighty rock springing abruptly from the deep gorge of the river PÖllat. Between the castles and on all sides was the dark green forest, separating only for those two jewels of the Bavarian Highlands, the lakes, Alp and Schwan. Down in the lower valley were the old grey towers of FÜssen; beyond Hohenschwangau and facing Neuschwanstein, three sharp peaks of the higher Alps glittered with snow. Behind the newer castle a green mountain rose almost as straight as a rampart, throwing the romantic white pile into such bold relief that it attracted the eye from every point of the valleys. As Ordham wandered about, staring at the castles from all sides, or lying on the turf under the trees of the forest, his solitude broken only by a passing peasant in the picturesque grey and green costume of the Highlands, or the sudden appearance of a chamois at the end of a vista, he understood something of Ludwig’s contempt for mere mortals. He loitered on in the groves sacred to the unhappiest man the modern world has seen, many moods sweeping over him, but finally he lay dreaming idly; and, feeling that such romantic solitudes demanded a mate in fancy, since fate was obdurate, he evoked the image of the prettiest girl he knew, Mabel Cutting, and persuaded himself for a few moments that his happiness depended upon seeing her again and at once. He had just resolved to overcome his hatred for letter writing and indite her an epistle on the morrow, when a footman came to remind him that dinner was at seven. Mabel vanished with the chamois, although he made a wry face as he reflected that he was to dine alone in this enchanted vale with Princess Nachmeister. The same lackey stood outside his door while he dressed, evidently under the impression that he must not be lost sight of again, and this time conducted him to the story above. He had expected as a matter of course that the dinner would be served in one of the smaller rooms, perhaps over in the Kemenate, where Excellenz might have inveigled the Styr to join their little party. But he was shown into a vast room, which was in such a glitter of light that for a moment he was half blinded. Few surprises ruffled his imperturbability, however; and although he appeared barely to glance about him, he observed with much pleasure the immense vaulted room, which was nearly a hundred feet long and almost half as wide, supported on carved columns and decorated with the legend of Parsifal. The ten chandeliers were blazing suns. At the upper end of the hall a small square table looked like an oasis in a painted desert, with its service of crystal and gold, its candles shaded with pink—no doubt a satiric attention on the part of the King. Princess Nachmeister, very magnificent in pale blue brocade embroidered with silver (which, Ordham reflected, became her hideously), stood by the window and watched the young man with sharp interest as he advanced down the long apartment between the rows of gorgeous lackeys that seemed to await a concourse of kings. She despised the Anglo-Saxon race with all her German soul, believing them to be moderns without subtlety, and never forgetting that they were savages when the Italy of her ancestors was the crown of civilization; but if she had a soft spot in her fibrous old heart, it was for this protÉgÉ of hers, and it delighted her to observe that, far from being disconcerted, he had never looked more at his ease. Always, even in his boyish moments, he had the quiet aloofness of those born to the unpurchasable prizes and responsibilities of life, and although he was often nervous and shy in petty ordeals, the centuries that had made him invariably came to his rescue when suddenly placed in positions that shift the ballast of older men of less persistent breeding. Moreover, it is doubtful if the English aristocrat has deference in him for even the royal families of the minor states. He is democratic in manner, partly because it has become the fashion, partly through discretion, partly from sheer careless sense of superiority; but let no one mistake that attitude for humility of spirit or a sense of the universal brotherhood of man. Ordham was not a little assisted in his present ordeal by his slight erect graceful figure, and he always carried his arms better than any man Excellenz had ever seen. She almost blushed with pleasure (poor lady, she could no longer blush) as she noted the respectful wonder on the faces of the lackeys. No doubt they had hoped to enjoy the embarrassment of so young a guest; and a rare entertainment it would have been to them, for the greatest nobles in Germany seldom found access to a castle where the solitary King forgot the world when he could. Ordham seated himself with a grumble at the short time he had been given to dress. “And my servant is lost somewhere in this barrack,” he added (and this was a genuine grievance). “I could not find anything!” “Tiens! Tiens!” (Excellenz relieved her English with French or German according to the specific gravity of her mood.) “You would have been late if I had sent for you an hour earlier. You were roaming all over the place hoping to meet Die Styr—don’t deny it!” “Why couldn’t she dine with us? She is not going to sing an opera.” “But she is going to sing out of doors, and her temper is worse than your own. I had a few words with her, and I never saw even a prima donna in such a state of suppressed fury. Of course she expected to sing in this room, but it seems the King has taken a vow that he will honour the memory of The Master by permitting no more music inside his castles, so—enfin!—he gets round his vow by commanding the great Styr to sing in the open—which, of course, is bad for the voice.” “Why doesn’t she refuse—fall ill? I thought that prime donne were never without corns on their vocal chords when determined to have their own way, and that even a King must be prepared for caprice.” “Not this King. Styr did not bring her doctor with her, and she loves but two things on earth, her art and Munich. When his Majesty commands, no excuse will serve. He alone in this realm is permitted to indulge caprice.” “The Styr looks much too imperious to submit to such slavery—disgusting! She could sing anywhere.” “Could she? Richard Wagner has no foothold as yet in either England or America—hardly outside of Germany. Styr’s voice would tear the old lyric rÔles to tatters—divinely lyric as she makes her Isolde. It is Germany or nothing. And in Germany it is Munich or nothing—for she goes no more to Bayreuth.” “Yes, Munich!—I too love Munich—Bavaria,” Ordham said softly, his eyes straying to the mountains beyond the narrow gorge. The windows were open and he could hear the low roar of the PÖllat waterfall. “Now don’t fall into a dream,” said Excellenz, tartly. “It isn’t often that I have you alone. What a situation—what surroundings! It makes me feel almost young again.” “Then tell me something about the Styr.” Ordham sometimes amused himself playing on the strings of the old coquette’s remnant of sex. But he always smiled so charmingly that she really did feel younger for the moment. The Nachmeister was never able to decide whether it was his manners or his smile that enabled her to understand the relations between Elizabeth and Essex. Her fine little nose seemed to rise and point further downward as her round brilliant eyes, whose expression never changed, returned his steady ingenuous gaze. In a moment the corners of her protesting mouth moved upward and she shrugged her shoulders. “Enfin, mon enfant gÂtÉ! What do you want to know? Surely you hear the gossip of the town.” “All gossip is more or less alike. Is she the King’s mistress?” “That I am sure you have never heard. His worst enemy would not raise the point. I do not know but that I had better carry you over into the Kemenate to-night.” “Great heaven!” Ordham upset his champagne. “Why then does he show her more favour than the other singers—why has he given her a title and a house?” “Her voice. Her art. Are not those enough—for this King? He is quite mad over both. One might have hoped for the supreme Isolde, Kundry, BrÜnhilde, in the course of another ten or twenty years—for has not Wagner revolutionized voices as well as music?—but she burst upon the world full blown. One day she appeared in Bayreuth and demanded audience of The Master. He taught her the great rÔles himself; her voice was ready for them—perfectly placed and trained, flexible, sweet, resonant, noble, enormous, three perfect octaves. Wonderful! No doubt he and the King put their heads together and determined that she should leave Bavaria for short gastspiels only. But where did she come from? Who is she? Why has she no credentials? Even if lowly born, which would seem incredible did not the most queenly creatures appear now and again among the peasantry,—while as for queens—do not they often look as if Nature, worn out, had peevishly sent her highest back to the soil to begin over again?—Tiens! Genius is no respecter of quarterings—but, even so, why such reticence? Beyond the bare assertion that she is an American she has barely alluded to her impossible country. Why doesn’t she invent a plausible story that would put people’s imaginations to sleep? Has it occurred to you as odd that she never will be photographed?” she concluded abruptly. “How fatiguing to think about anything that matters so little!” He had fumed more than once because he could not obtain even a magazine sketch of her. “The ordinary prima donna caprice, no doubt. Or rÉclame. Such self-abnegation is enough to make any ‘artist’ notorious.” Excellenz shook her befeathered head. Ordham, fascinated, as he often was by the intensifying of her wicked old face, wondered if visible poison were about to drop from her lips. “She dare not. Photographs travel. Did hers reach America—and those vaudeville newspapers—cannot you fancy whole pages devoted to her past? They would rake it up in a week. Fortunate for her that America comes not to Munich and she goes no more to Bayreuth.” “If she is too haughty to silence slander by an ingenious lie, why should she not be too haughty—too much the artist—to care? She must know that Munich has settled down into the belief that her past will not bear inspection. I have heard that much.” “Ah, but it is all vague rumour now. Never was the woman, not publicly in the half-world, who did not congratulate herself that many people gave her the benefit of the doubt. And whatever Styr was in America, here in Germany she is a goddess walking on clouds. Her voice, her method, her acting, her superb appearance, which yet is not commonplace beauty, above all, her divine artist soul, have made her the idol of the public. In the Hof there are the usual jealousies and intrigues that have driven so many fine artists from Munich never to return, but the influence of the King, to say nothing of her own wit, tact, and will of cast iron, blunt every shaft. She is cleverer than all the good people in the world put together, and I, Olivia Nachmeister, who have seen so many great gifts disintegrate for want of that virile brain-mortar of many ingredients that compels success, greatly respect her.” “And in private life?” “An ivory statue waiting for the night of a public performance to come to life at the bidding of The Master. When she first appeared in Munich our men shook out all their battered flags of a thousand sieges. They bombarded that ivory fortress with notes, flowers, jewels, even with proposals of marriage after she had demonstrated her imperviousness to the more regular sort. The jewels she sent publicly to charities; of the other attentions she made no acknowledgment whatever. Not a man, barring the officials of the Hof, or perhaps a new composer, can boast that he has been received by her alone. She opens her doors once a month, she goes to routs, sometimes to dinners—at first she went a good deal into society, and, I fancy, was fascinated by it; but no man got a word alone with her. I believe she hates men—but mortally! If this be true, it is significant enough. It may be, however, that the monotonies of society merely bore her. She is the most intellectual woman I know.” “Intellectual?” She had succeeded in surprising his interest to the surface. “She has a fine library of her own, and her footman may be seen any day striding between her villa and the royal library—looking very cross. She often attends lectures at the University, and when at home always is either reading or buried in her rÔles—when she does not walk. Gott! what a life for a woman under forty! And no one would care if she had a lover. She is a great artist. Does not that give her the liberty of a goddess? What futile regrets when she is my age—sixty!” (Ordham amused himself on rainy days looking up the ages of his friends in the Graf Buch, and knew that Princess Nachmeister was seventy; but she was not too old to retain delusions, and fancied that young men were above such curiosities, or that their memories at least were unfeminine.) “Where does she walk?” “That no one discovers. I have an idea that she rises at four in the morning, when, of a certainty, she will not meet the gallants of Munich. She is always in fine physical condition, and one would know that she took much exercise—and baths—not too favourite a pastime in Germany!—even did she not allude once in a while to her ‘tramps.’ But don’t lie in wait for her. You would only get a snub for your pains.” Ordham coloured haughtily. He did not like the word. “I never lie in wait for any one,” he replied coldly. “Besides, no doubt, she is stalked by a footman.” “None of her servants speak English.” “How is it that her German is so faultless? I am told that before any stories got about she was taken for a German as a matter of course.” “Her parents were Hungarian. Her singing teacher in America was a Hanoverian.” “Has she told you that much?” “Now and again I get something out of her—but nothing that really counts. To judge from her manner, her carriage, her breeding, she might be a Karoly or a Festetics, but one day when I told her bluntly there was a rumour to the effect that her parents were emigrants,—steerage emigrants,—she replied coolly that she should be delighted if the story put an end to romantic nonsense.” “I should like to believe that she was a runaway—or an abducted—princess.” “So would all the other romantic babies. Unfortunately, we have her word for it that she is an American born—and reared. Of course her policy in admitting that much is to stifle curiosity in her origin—origin in America not counting with Europeans in the least—as well as to discourage curiosity. The place is so vast—ten thousand miles across, I am told—or is it in diameter?—that one might as well look for a lost soul in Hades. She has even admitted that she was on the stage in America. But under what name? That I cannot surprise out of her, and the few Americans I know never saw nor heard of her. They all live in Europe. Of course she never sang over there. She need not tell us that, for if they were still red and wore feathers, they would have made that voice famous in a day.” “What makes you so sure that Margarethe Styr is not her name?” “Am I a Frau Professor or an old woman of the world? When the King decided that bracelets, rings, even necklaces were inadequate acknowledgment from the first living royal patron of art to the greatest interpreter of the new music, and that she must be raised to the Bavarian aristocracy—Gott!—I was commanded to be her social sponsor. Naturally, with the utmost delicacy, I endeavoured to extract such information as would satisfy the curiosity of her future compatriots. I distilled a little and inferred more. Enfin! I am convinced that the story, whatever it may be, is hideous—but hideous! Who minds a lover or two?—and an artist, as I have said. I know women—ach Gott, ja! and I have studied the Styr far more deeply than she knows. There are certain signs—” Excellenz lifted her shoulders and curved the corners of her mouth almost to her chin. “I wonder!” Again Ordham’s glance strayed into the dusk beyond the glare. He recalled the curses and the ecstasies of Isolde. A footman changed his plate, and he asked, “How is it that I have never met her, even at a rout?” “She has gone into society very little this year. I fancy she is now quite tired of it, and that only a royal command could draw her forth. And”—with a sigh—“there is no court, as you know.” “Do the men still pursue her?” “Not the older men; there are always recruits among the fledglings, but men soon learn the difference between ice and ivory, and life is short.” “I should like to meet her.” “No doubt. But she is more difficult to meet than the King.” “You seem to know her very well.” “Comparatively. But she happens to be the only genius of my acquaintance—of my own sex—and I am never quite at ease with her. I should far more aptly take a liberty with the Queen, to whom, indeed, I am privileged to say du; but I have never ventured into that zone of liberty with Die Styr. She is the most majestic, or shall I say, the most frozen, creature I have ever met. Where did she get it? Her origin! Her past! She upsets every theory.” “There are no theories where genius is concerned. And if, in addition, she has an intellect—naturally she dominates. There are so few intellects. D’you see?” “I do, you impertinent boy! And I shall not even try to present you to her.” “According to all accounts, dear Princess, you should be the last to fear her, for in your society alone does she appear to find any pleasure. Who else can claim to know her? I have heard of no one.” “Again I am assured of your fitness for the diplomatic career! As I told you, she was placed in my hands. I found her little in need of instruction. She seems to have been born with a sort of royal tact—this makes me believe that her parents were political refugees, at least. Perhaps they had disgraced themselves in other ways. Or it is possible that she is the illegitimate offspring of a prince and some pretty little actress who was bundled out of the country. Austrian archdukes have a mania for romantic marriages. N’importe! We have always remained friends of a sort. I rarely let a week pass without going to see her, and once in a while she comes to me alone and sits in my garden—and expresses her scorn of Sardou and her admiration of Ibsen! When I would give two or three of my best memories to hear how many lovers she has had, and what they were like. A woman can always be read through her lovers. Whatever Styr’s may have been, her one desire now is to be impersonal. I might as well invoke Brynhildr or Iseult. Perhaps nothing personal remains in that charming casket. Off the stage ivory, on the stage fire. It is all very odd. I have never been so intriguÉe in my life. Don’t try to know her. She might find you worth talking to—and then—who knows?” Ordham flushed at the bare suggestion. “I am quite determined to know her.” Excellenz noted that his eyes were less infantile than usual. “Well, later—I will take you to one of her routs,” she remarked indifferently, determined to do nothing of the sort. “I wonder where this remarkable concert is to take place.” She beckoned to the master of ceremonies, and was informed that the prima donna would stand on the MarienbrÜcke, the narrow bridge that spans the PÖllat at a dizzy height, and that the guests would listen from the windows of the Festsaal, or from the balcony of the throne room below, as suited their pleasure. His Majesty would occupy the balcony before his bedroom windows. Ordham’s eyes flashed. “When?” he demanded. “When the moon rises, sir. In less than an hour.” |
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