lived since the convent doors had closed behind her. Money of her own
she now had in abundance, for her father had speculated rationally
during the later years of his life and had left her, his sole heir, a
considerable fortune. Once her lips gave a satirical twist as the
question obtruded itself: should she have had the courage to sacrifice
all for love on a younger son’s meagre income? Then she felt something
like a pang of gratitude that there was no obstacle to her headlong
abandonment to a passion, which, whatever suffering and mortification it
entailed, gave her back her youth, awoke once more in her weary brain
the power to dream, to vizualize a future. Years before, it seemed to
her, as she sat there and heard the heavy feet of her old husband in the
hall, she had resigned herself to the interminable blankness of the
present.

                                  VII
                         THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS

Ordham was unstrung and miserable for quite twelve hours. He went that
night to a rout at one of the embassies, and, dully alive to the
paltriness of life in general, and the absurdities of small courts in
particular, he pushed past a group of astonished royalties with as
little ceremony as had they been hucksters and the occasion Lord Mayor’s
Day in London. He managed to avoid speaking to every one he knew; but at
the end of an hour, realizing that he could no longer ignore Princess
Nachmeister or Frau von Wass, he left the house. In no mood for the
student cafés, with their careless gayety, their atmosphere so dense
with smoke that the clusters of caps on the “trees” were mere blurs of
colour, he strolled into Maximilia, a restaurant fashionable during the
day and early evening on account of its exceptional cooking, but rather
more interesting toward midnight and after. There was little night life
in Munich, outside of the student haunts, but Maximilia was a favourite
resort with the young bloods that had seen enough of other capitals to
scorn the bourgeois hours of the true Münchener. Occasionally there was
a dashing stranger to ogle, but few ladies of the lower ten thousand
found Munich worthy of their enterprise. The pretty waitresses,
actresses, chorus girls, then, as now, had each her patron, for even the
young Bavarian officer is of a domestic turn; and the floating tribe
received such cursory attention that they had been known to cut short
their visits with anathema. But the officers often brought their gaudy
young friends to Maximilia after twelve, and it amused Ordham,
interested in every phase of life, to sit and watch this honest German
attempt to feel as sophisticated as the Parisian.

And only in Munich, perhaps, a city too artistic to have a moral left,
would army officers and their almost respectable partners rub elbows, in
the best restaurant in the town, with painted young men come on the same
quest as the floating female. There were three of these young men here
to-night, all members of noble families, who had neither the energy nor
the ambition in their worn-out blood to cross the ocean and seek to
replenish their equally exhausted coffers in the manly avocations of
waiter and riding master. Ordham usually watched them with a mild
contempt, for they were of his class and he felt sorry for them. But
to-night, as he saw the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished
houses in Europe, a young man with something of Apollo in his slender
grace, and a face of perfect beauty, despite its signal-flag of paint,
enter, seat himself, and cast about the room a slow, anxious, appraising
glance, Ordham, depressed as he already was, felt the very walls of his
soul shudder. How much better fitted was he to cope with the grim
problem of mere existence than these unfortunates? He had a fine
physique, but his indolent habits, long indulged, had made nearly every
form of exertion distasteful to him. Individual as he was, he yet
belonged to that strictly modern type of English aristocrat impatiently
dubbed “literary” by those that shoot and ride and eat and drink in the
good old fashion of their ancestors. These intellectual young scions,
without any peculiar talent or the obligations of poverty, too modest or
too indolent to dream of enriching the arts they love, give themselves
up more and more to the refined pleasures and sensibilities of the
intellect, less and less to the pursuits that keep the blood swift and
red in the veins. With many this attitude begins in affectation, even
though as often it develops into something like a vocation; but in the
case of Ordham the subtler chords of Life’s big orchestra, forever
inaudible to the swarm, had allured him since he could remember. If
there was one reason more than another why Lord Bridgminster disliked
and disapproved of his heir presumptive, it was because of Ordham’s
candid aversion from “long tiresome meaningless days behind a gun,”
“tearing across country at the tail of a frantic fox,” “wolfing food
that would have stupefied the brain of a day labourer.” But if the life
he led was set to the tune of his temperament, he was forced to admit
that he paid toll in the depletion of his physical vigours, for at this
age, at all events, he should have been developing his muscles and
enriching his blood in the open air.

To-night he felt more tired than usual, and as he stared blankly at the
young nobleman to whom the centuries had given beauty and breeding in
their highest perfection, and a sufficient amount of brain to make him
something of a social star in every capital he visited, Ordham was
driven to review his own resources. His income was inadequate for his
mere needs, much less for his tastes, and some unthinkable reverse of
fortune might deprive him of it altogether. Upon what, then, could he
rely, not only to supply his material wants, but those others, which,
never having been hungry, he believed to be far more indispensable were
life to be tolerated at all. He was a lover of all the arts and a pupil
of none. His reading was wide, he was fastidious in his manner of
expressing himself; but what his fellow-students had learned out of
books or in lecture rooms he had but the vaguest idea. The mere thought
of roughing it in any of the colonies was as repugnant as of marrying a
rich woman devoid of charm. “The City,” into which he knew that many of
his kind disappeared, he visualized as a maelstrom of high hats and
office stools without backs. He had an aristocratic distaste for
business, not out of snobbery, of which he was innocent, but because of
a belief, both hazy and firm, that it commanded the development of the
meaner faculties, that only the cynically dishonest emerged from the
gorged arena with fortune in their disfigured hands. To-night, however,
he recalled, what he had practically forgotten, that the moneyed
foundations of the house of Ordham had been laid anew but four
generations since by the desperate heir of the ancient but impoverished
family: he had built a textile factory on one end of his Yorkshire
property. This enterprise prospering, he had built another, and another,
until he was enabled to buy back twenty thousand of the acres
confiscated during the Civil Wars, restore Ordham Castle, unroofed and
sacked by Cromwell, and furnish it with all the horrors in horsehair,
rep, mahogany, and meaningless bronze which preceded the crusade of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He then found leisure to occupy his seat in
the House of Lords, developed other useful talents, and was raised from
the barony of Ordham to the earldom of Bridgminster. Since then there
had always been an Ordham in Parliament, but the majority of the family
were given over to the enjoyment of sport, and were noted mainly for
their selection of beautiful wives and handsome husbands, rarely
unendowed with the minor blessings of wealth and race. They had
forgotten the origin of the factories still flourishing on the Yorkshire
estate, but now far removed from covers and fields; to-night, however,
Ordham, facing the contingency of Bridgminster’s marriage, or his own
failure to fall in love with a girl whose riches would be a fair
exchange for the position he could give her, bitterly envied his wise
and possibly unscrupulous ancestor, and would have welcomed similar
outcroppings in his own brain.

Or suppose he married for mere love, a folly to which all young men were
liable, and, upon his ridiculous income, found himself with a family
upon his hands? This, however, he felt to be such a violent strain upon
his imagination that he dismissed it, but found no consolation in the
prospect of keeping up appearances, much less enjoying life, on a
diminishing credit. He was too young, and too accustomed to see the
creases of life magically smoothed, to remain dispirited for long, no
matter what the combining causes; but during this hour he sat plunged in
a melancholy so profound that for years after its bare memory appalled
him.

There is a fine line between hypercivilization and degeneracy, too fine
to be a barrier for unwary feet: but the natural nobility and refinement
of Ordham’s mind, combined with its higher activities and poise, had
brought him up short. No matter what his straits, even with his somewhat
cynical attitude that all forms of vice were too inevitable to bother
about, he was incapable of falling to the horrid level of these young
continental nobles. But of what else might he not be capable? As his
imagination, morbidly active, pictured him hopelessly involved, without
a plank to grasp at, he suddenly swore an oath that he would never go
under, no, not if he sacrificed all belonging to him, and every canon
that society had invented for her own defence and deluded man into
believing was handed down from on high. Ordham, fastidiously bred, and
reared above the temptations that men of lower degree must reckon with
in their daily struggle, was one of the most finished results of those
same immemorial laws; but in this sudden vision of the horrors of
poverty, of the terrors and temptations of life, they fell to ashes, and
left him part savage, partly as cool, cynical, and unscrupulous, as only
the supercivilized can be. He would never go under, never come down one
step from the high position to which he had been born. If wishes could
have slain Lord Bridgminster, he would have died that night in his
Spartan bed. Ordham suddenly wondered if he were capable of killing his
brother. He glanced about the restaurant once more, his gaze lingering
on the gloomy face of the last of the line that had been illustrious in
the history of Europe since it had emerged from the yoke of the Huns. He
set his teeth and swore that he could, and without a scruple or a
regret. He would never go under, never, never, never. But it was a
solution by no means to his taste, and he left the restaurant abruptly
and went for a walk of unaccustomed activity in the Englischergarten.
When he reached his bed in the small hours his equilibrium was restored,
and he reflected with amazement and horror upon the vitalities that had
flourished unsuspected in the depths of his being. But his ego was
somewhat excited and fascinated at the discovery, and he fell asleep
wishing that he could talk it all over with Margarethe Styr.

                                  VIII
                     PURPLE LILIES AND BITTER FRUIT

That night Styr sang _Isolde_. On the morning following, Ordham sent her
a box of purple lilies. He expected no acknowledgment, for he knew that
she ignored all offerings; but in the course of the afternoon he
received a note which banished evil memories, including his struggles
with Fräulein Lutz.

    “DEAR MR. ORDHAM: I feel Isolde herself with these purple lilies
    in my hands. She was a great woman and no other colour is worthy
    of her. I have half promised to sing at Princess Nachmeister’s
    concert to-morrow night, and now I have a fancy to cover myself
    with these lilies and sing the _Liebestod_. One needs
    inspiration of an uncommon sort when, unsupported by orchestra
    and footlights, one feels as if one might founder any moment in
    a sea of impertinent eyes. Your eyes, at least, are kind and
    encouraging. I will sing to you—for once—in memory of a
    picturesque hour designed by a king, and one of that unhappy
    monarch’s rare triumphs.

    “Thank you so much!

                                                 “MARGARETHE TANN.”

This note so flattered and delighted him that he went voluntarily to
call on Frau von Wass, and further beatified by finding her surrounded,
made himself so charming to her guests that although, in spite of a
murmured invitation, he would not linger, Hélène was tempted to believe
that he kindled alone in the light of her smiles.

But he had no intention of bestowing a thought upon her except when
circumstances forced him into her society. She had craved no more than
her due, and for a fortnight longer she should have the benefit of all
the courtesy he could summon, but not a shadow of superfluous attention.
Little dreaming of what was pickling for him, he had already consigned
her to the past, and the only wish she inspired was the expiration of
the fortnight. He was too indifferent constitutionally to speculate upon
her sudden change of front, and too inexperienced, despite his
cleverness, to be the match of any adventuress who wore the habit of his
own world. With those profound and haunted abysses of wicked women he
had had as little contact as with that practical side of life which
tapers the wits and sharpens the vision. Ten years hence and the Hélène
Wasses would be read and disposed of in short order; to-day he was but
the good-natured, honourable, gullible young English aristocrat, who has
been taken in time out of mind, and will continue to be until England is
Americanized.

On the following evening he took his chair in the concert room of the
Nachmeister Palast with an inner ferment so successfully concealed that
his face was quite expressionless. For once he did not smile into every
pair of eyes turned upon him. He thought of little but the note of
Margarethe Styr, which he had read several times. Whatever her motive,
he knew that a great compliment had been paid him; and although a too
kindly fate disposed him to take most compliments as a matter of course,
and humility disturbed him at rare intervals, to-night he was inclined
to be not only exultant but grateful.

The immense room, with its old crimson brocades, its heavy dingy rococo
gilding, its cosmopolitan assemblage, was an imposing sight, and Ordham
was still young enough to love society. Parties at Excellenz
Nachmeister’s were seldom dowdy (unless too many royalties were
present), and when, as to-night, the entire diplomatic corps was bidden,
as well as many army officers and high officials, the men, in their
beautiful uniforms, their orders and sashes, made an even more dazzling
impression than the women. Uniforms at least were always new, and gowns
did duty in aristocratic Munich for many seasons, regardless of changes
in style. Waists too were large, and square, and soft; but the materials
that covered them, whether old or new, were very rich, and jewels
conceal many defects. A few besides Hélène Wass could be relied upon to
display the fashions of Paris, and the women of the diplomatic corps
were always resplendent.

When Princess Nachmeister received in this room she wore a powdered wig
and a brocade as stiff as a hoopskirt, consequently was less of an
eyesore than usual. Ordham had murmured his compliments, then after a
hasty glance about—he arrived late—taken an empty chair between two
people he did not know. Frau von Wass, a siren to-night in pale green
tulle, water-lilies, and many pearls, left her seat, took a chair
conspicuously apart, drew her eyelids into bows, and sent him a
quiverful of arrows. All in vain.

A number of distinguished amateurs played and warbled brilliantly; for
in the most musical city of northern Europe no one dared offend the
hypercritical ear with a second-rate performance. Possart recited from
_Manfred_. There was a small orchestra, and a tenor from Paris. At the
end of two hours, when even the most artistic were thinking wistfully of
supper and motion, there was a sharp rustle throughout the _Festsaal_, a
deep intaking of breath: little Baron Walleypeg of the crooked smile had
announced that Countess Tann had arrived at the last moment and would
sing. (But he made the announcement in redundant phrases and tones of
emotion, for he was a German, and he cherished a hopeless passion for
Die Styr.)

She appeared suddenly on the platform at the head of the room and
received a demonstration. Not only was she the artist best beloved in
Munich, but surprise shattered the languor appropriate to so fashionable
an occasion.

Ordham saw his lilies. They were in her hair, on her breast, on the
front of her skirt. But what diverted his attention from this expected
compliment was the surprise afforded by her evening gown. He had seen
her only in the heavy white draperies affected by the heroines of
Wagnerian romance, and in the still more classic costume she had worn at
Neuschwanstein; he had supposed her to be a massive woman built for such
rôles, and the more untuned to private life. To-night she wore a closely
fitting modish gown of maize-coloured tulle, in which the purple lilies
seemed to grow. Her neck and arms were uncovered, every line of her
figure was salient. She was almost slender, clean-limbed, with a low
small bust, and hips barely accentuated. Her shoulders sloped
gracefully, her waist was so round that it looked small if it was not.
Ordham was familiar, of course, with her long round throat, the famous
arms and hands, and he marvelled that he had not taken for granted that
the rest of her figure was built in harmony. Then he wondered what part
that incomparable form, which might have risen from the mould of
Messalina, had played in her unhappy past; and fancied he understood why
she veiled it from the public eye with so complete an indifference.
Again he felt sorry for her, and more determined than ever to know her.

She wore her heavy dark hair in a low knot. Her skin, ivory-white, had
the luminous effect he had often noted on the stage and missed at
Neuschwanstein; her eyes were sullen and heavy, she held her head very
high. To the surprise of her audience she sang them several folk-songs.
When she paused, there was a spontaneous outburst of approval, then a
vocal demand for more. The applause subsided, and as she smiled and
bowed, they took for granted that their desire for these old songs of
their hearts was about to be gratified.

She burst softly into the _Liebestod_. Her face remained as immobile as
ivory, but she threw the soul of Isolde into her voice. It floated
upward in the first rapture of delirium, and few but saw the wild face
of the dying queen rise above the body of Tristan, the castle towers,
the dead Kurwenal, the weeping figures of King Mark and Brängane, the
army of retainers in the background. Ordham, at least, shared Isolde’s
vision of the valiant soul that had replaced the clay, as she sang, in
tones heart-breaking in their sweet frenzy:

    “Seht ihr’s Freunde?
     Säh’t ihr’s nicht?”

As her voice, rising on a higher and higher note, clear and sustained in
the triumph of the seer, the heaven-given vision of the woman to whom
her lost has been restored, it seemed the golden pathway upon which her
own soul mounted to disappear among the stars. When she opened the
flood-gates many gasped and wept; and Ordham, petrified, wondered if all
the passion of the world were being swept out into eternity by that soul
of Isolde, whom nothing but the passion of death could satisfy.

The voice, remote, dying, drawn to a mere crystal thread, sank away on
the last lines:

    “ertrinken,
     versinken,
     unbewusst—
     höchste Lust!”

A great woman and her passion were dead and the world was poorer.

The applause was long and Styr was forced to return and bow many times;
but when Baron Walleypeg announced that she would not sing again, the
audience rose, and Ordham went in search of her. She had not glanced in
his direction, but he chose to believe that she had kept her word and
sung to him. He found her near the door of the supper room, surrounded
by so dense a crowd of men and women that he could not approach within
two feet of her. But she smiled at him, and a few moments later, when
there was a break in the ranks, extended her hand. When he would have
lifted it to his lips in the German fashion, which he privately thought
beneath his dignity unless the hand were young and shapely, she shook
his warmly, as if to remind him that she was an American. It was
pleasant to feel a hearty clasp again, and he smiled with quick
response, but asked her formally if it did not tire her to sing so
often. She replied that nothing tired her; and then her ear was claimed
by a personage in a light blue uniform embellished with many orders,
whom she addressed as “Königliche Hoheit.” It was impossible to
interrupt her conversation with a prince of the blood, but Ordham stood
his ground and glanced about idly. Nothing could be more formal than
Princess Nachmeister’s dinners, and nothing less so than her suppers,
when her guests, presumably, had had enough of the straight and narrow
chairs of Louis XIV. Only the unfortunate royalties were marshalled to
an alcove and seated about a table on a dais; the other guests stood,
sat on little sofas, grouped about small tables, as they listed; the
women waited upon, not only by the lackeys, but by the young officers
and diplomatic attachés. Now and again the imposing and portly, who no
doubt commanded the incessant service of their hausfraus at home, were
moved to demonstrate their youthful agility.

Ordham’s eye met the fixed gaze of Hélène Wass, sitting conspicuously
apart. He nodded carelessly to the wife of the distinguished Geheimrath,
heedless of the significance of the act, then coloured with annoyance as
he turned to meet a glance of keen inquiry in the eyes of Margarethe
Styr. Those eyes deliberately travelled from his to the siren in green
tulle and water-lilies, and encountered a look of haughty defiance.
Another dignitary offering his arm, she moved away, but gave Ordham a
little nod and smile which seemed to say, “Later—_nicht wahr_?”

As he turned he could not avoid seeing that Frau von Wass was still
strangely alone, and felt that he could do no less than offer his
services. She was quite at the end of the room, and she had time to
observe that he came on a leaden foot. Once more hatred flamed and
almost routed the octopus of her love. She had leapt to the not
unwarranted conclusion that there was an understanding between Ordham
and the great singer whom no man pretended to know informally. The
hand-shake and smile, the challenging glance at herself, caused the
depths of the desperate woman to swarm with fighting devils, rushing on
their armours and polishing their blades. She swore under her breath
that she would ruin him if she could not have him, and her momentary
hatred gave her a poise which, in her ferment, she might otherwise have
been unable to command. She smiled brightly when he finally stood before
her.

“Bring me an ice and a cup of coffee,” she said, in the pretty woman’s
careless tone of command, which he had thought so charming a few weeks
ago. He left her with alacrity; then, as he never could find anything,
it was quite fifteen minutes before he returned, followed by two
servants bearing a small table and a delicate but abundant supper.

“Always the grand seigneur!” she said lightly. “Even one or two
_Hoheits_ are waiting on the ladies, and as for several of my husband’s
portly old confrères—Well! the less one expects of you the better.”

She took a chair that gave her the advantage of sitting with her back to
the room, and Ordham wondered if she meant to treat him to a scene, then
reassured himself with the memory of her formal renunciation. And her
present manner was light and agreeable, that of the gay young woman of
the world.

“See how bored those poor dears are!” She indicated the segregated
royalties. “Whatever else has been my unhappy fate, I can at least be
thankful that I was not born a _Hoheit_. Do you know that all the queer
people of my acquaintance I have met at one or other of the royal
palaces? No wonder royalties grasp at the few liberties permitted them,
and snatch at any straw that relieves their ennui.”

“You met me at court,” said Ordham, for want of something better.

“Oh, not at court. You forget I cannot go to court. We met at a rout at
the Red Palace. Have you forgotten?”

“Of course not. Only these distinctions are beyond me. When do you break
all our hearts by leaving Munich?”

“Fritz puts me off! But I shall get him away almost as soon as I
planned. It is time!” The last sentence was delivered as from the mouth
of a toy cannon, and he jumped.

“What is it?”

“Do you not see that I am ostracized? Did you not notice that I was
driven to seat myself apart—like a pariah?”

“Well, you are here”—he answered vaguely. “It is not so easy—”

“You forget that Fritz is one of the Nachmeister’s oldest and closest
friends—a prehistoric lover, no doubt. No matter how much she may hate
me, she will never insult him. But when he dies—”

“Oh, well, you do not like Munich and would live elsewhere in any case.”
Ordham’s supper was turning to gall. Why would this woman always talk
about herself?

“But the present? And if I should not be able to persuade Fritz to go,
after all? Like all old men he is full of whims. It will be a
martyrdom—I may as well tell you the cause. I learned it to-day. All
your friends and admirers of my own dear sex have suddenly discovered
that you see more of me than of any one else and have formed the one
conclusion that can tickle the Munich palate. They have made up their
minds that as yet you are not seriously in love with me, however, and
have determined to get me out of the way before I have worked your
ruin.”

“Ruin?”

“Yes—It seems that I have a reputation! You would neglect your studies,
miss your examinations, wreck your chances of a wealthy marriage—heaven
knows what not! So they have made up their minds to put a stop to it.”

“Made up their minds—” An odd light was kindling in Ordham’s eyes,
which no longer looked juvenile, or even absent.

“It is a cabal. I only learned of it by the merest chance—rather, to be
exact, through the consideration of one faithful friend. They have
agreed to cut me, drop me, mortify me so that I shall no longer have the
courage to go anywhere. Meanwhile they will shower you with invitations
that you may not have an instant’s time to seek me. When you no longer
meet me, even see me, of course you will forget my existence, after the
fashion of volatile youth. Even the men that once liked me are in the
plot, for they have guessed for a long time that I was interested in no
one but you; and men are pettier than women.”

She told this preposterous story with so much concentrated passion, such
bitterness and venom of accent, that almost any man would have believed
her. And Ordham was young and full of the vanity of youth. His eyes were
blazing, his jaw line looked even longer than usual. She was quite aware
that he mistook his natural (and British) resentment at coercion of any
sort for righteous wrath, also, that by this time he knew something of
the petty cabals and intrigues of European court society; whose smiling
distaste for truth in any form, he had once remarked to her, made even
his diplomatic soul feel blunt and Anglo-Saxon.

“They have persuaded themselves that they think only of your welfare,
that extraordinary future they all predict for you. But they know what
their real motive is! It is their opportunity to cast me out, a pleasure
too long deferred. And out, I suppose, I must go.”

“Well, I will go with you.” This came through his teeth. “How dare
they?”

Her eyes dilated, but she dropped her lashes. She was not so carried
away by her victory as to lose sight of its contributing cause. To ask
him now if he loved her, to pin him down, might be fatal.

“Dare? They have taken you up to such an extent that they look upon
themselves as the natural arbiters of your destiny. They are devoted to
you. They have made you the fashion. Not tamely will they sit by and
watch their work undone. If you want the whole truth,” she ran on with
her amazing fertility, “they even wish to make you one of them. They
have decided upon the Brobdingnagian daughter of the rich Herr von
Schmidt, whose beer is justly famous. She is to be presented privately
to the Queen-mother, and then she will be formally on the market. She
looks as if she had beer in her very veins, and her ankles are as thick
as my waist. But what does that signify? She is the only child of an
ennobled Schmidt and will inherit millions. They will succeed! They will
succeed! They are so clever—and you—you are so indolent—you would
accept any one determined to marry you. It is your destiny to be
managed, and when these friends fling garlands about your neck and gold
dust into your eyes, you will murmur: ‘What a bore, but why not? My
family expect something of the sort. What matter a yellow skin and thick
ankles?’ While I—I—” She pounded the table in her mounting passion, no
longer entirely simulated. “I shall be an outcast. Once out, they will
never let me in again. Fritz, stupid as he is, will notice, inquire; he
will treat me as badly as the rest. I shall have the whole world against
me. I have always had the whole world against me. Those words will be
found flaming in my heart when I am dead. Even if I left Munich, these
people would hound me. It is my destiny. I can never escape it—never!
never! You cannot understand; you, who were born at the top, who would
compel deference for that alone if you committed the seven deadly sins,
if you wore rags in Australia—while I—I, the daughter of a small
merchant,—even if I had married a duke, the world would never let me
forget that I was born bourgeois. And a mere ritter, like Fritz—”

“Oh, please, please compose yourself! Let us go into another room.”
Ordham was cold with terror. A scene threatened him, with all Munich as
audience. She had stirred his anger, his dramatic sense, his pity; but
for the moment he had no thought of her. She controlled herself so
quickly and completely, however, that he was moved to admiration.
“Forgive me,” she said quietly, wishing that she had worn black velvet
instead of this frivolous Lorelei costume, but contriving to look
dignified in spite of her flushed cheeks and suffused eyes. “How could I
forget myself? But I was carried away by the thought of that abominable
cabal—remember that I only heard of it this afternoon. I wonder if they
will succeed?”

“Of course not.”

She stared at him, fascinated, as she had done on the day of their
reconciliation. Again his brain seemed to cast its shadow of maturity
over his face. This singular effect, combined with his youthful bloom
and indolent strength, entranced the blasée woman choking with the dregs
of life. With a last effort she controlled herself again. He had had as
much as he could stand for one evening; better she go home and mature
her plans. She rose and drew herself up, looking far more the great lady
than many of the homely shapeless women whose pedigrees ran back into
the Holy Roman Empire. “I shall go now,” she said. “Will you tell a
lackey to call my carriage?”

He went with her into the courtyard, and as he bade her good-night, she
said softly: “You will come to-morrow?”

“Of course.”

“I shall expect you.”

He returned hastily to the house in the hope of a word with Margarethe
Styr. But she had gone; and he took his own leave immediately, almost
scowling at his many good friends, and wondering if any young man had
ever been thrown into such perturbation before.

                                   IX
                         EXCELLENZ, THE POTTER

The next morning he was rejoiced by the news that Fräulein Lutz was
confined to the house by a severe _katarrh_, and he remained in bed
until twelve, meditating upon the position in which he found himself. He
had slept well—nothing had ever kept him awake—and he discovered that
refreshed by sleep and coffee, to say nothing of the brilliant sunlight
streaming over his bed, he hated his friends less than he had supposed
the night before. He would be managed by nobody, but women were born
matchmakers; it was not an unamiable vice; why should he resent their
efforts in his behalf? He had not the least apprehension of being
married against his will, and the painful picture of Fräulein von
Schmidt no longer maddened him. Last night he had felt almost trapped,
so communicable had been the excitement of that poor little woman.

He endeavoured to analyze his feeling for Frau von Wass. (He had never
called her Hélène even in his thoughts.) Could it be that he was really
fond of her? Certainly his soul had risen in arms last night as she
poured out her wrongs, passionately dwelt upon her isolation. “With all
the world against her.” It was a phrase to affect any man with a rag of
feeling in him.

Unconsciously he shook his head. He was not in love with her. On that
point at least he was quite clear. But he was uneasily sensible that
events might rush too rapidly for his guidance. Were she ostracized on
his account, cast out, perhaps, by an infuriated husband, there was no
folly that he might not be induced to commit, particularly when his
family combined in opposition. Although he had no suspicion of the plot
hatching by Frau von Wass, a new light rose in his mind and played about
the dangers of inspiring such a woman with a desperate passion. It is
true that she had announced her complete recovery, but her eyes had
betrayed her last night; moreover, he could not doubt that she had made
a deliberate appeal to his pity, his tenderness, his humanity. Could it
be that she wanted to elope with him? He broke into a cold perspiration.
A moment later he was out of bed and writing her a note protesting that
he was too ill to call on her that afternoon; he was really in a
pitiable condition and must break all his engagements. Would she forgive
him and let him call the instant he was presentable? Perhaps she would
honour him at a little dinner he intended to give during the following
week at one of the restaurants? Which did she prefer? And would Friday
suit her? He would speak to Princess Nachmeister as soon as he could get
out.

The Wass disposed of for at least three days, he shoved the memory of
her into one of those wonderful water-tight compartments of his brain,
and, returning to the pleasant places, met Margarethe Styr. Whether he
wanted to know any woman again well he was not sure, but his experience
of this isolated creature on the strange night of their meeting gave him
hope that she had outlived the vanities and follies of her sex. He
wondered that a woman to whom the fiery furnace of life had left no
precipitation but mind could retain so much of feminine charm. Or was it
but the magnetism of a strong brain, with the sauce piquante of fine
manners? It would be worth while to discover. No beauty, so far, had
appealed to his senses as odd and complex personalities did to his cool
analytical brain. And how delightful even the occasional companionship
of such a woman might be! Yes, he would know her if he could.

He did not care to call and run the risk of being turned from her door,
but after the deliberate compliment she had paid him he felt at liberty
to write and crave admittance. He was very guarded in expressing
himself, for he had all a young man’s sensitive fear of being laughed at
by a woman so much older in years and in life; the enterprises of blasée
women of the world, and mothers with marriageable daughters, while they
had augumented a self-confidence as inevitable as his grammar, had not
disposed of his natural modesty.

He sent the note by a messenger, but no reply came until the following
morning. It was very brief.

    “DEAR MR. ORDHAM: I have hesitated a long time—but it is better
    not. Friends are not for me. I shall not even go into society
    again for a long while. Think of me as a stage creature only.
    And after all, I am nothing else.

                                                 “MARGARETHE TANN.”

This put Ordham into such a villanous humour that he went out and
lunched alone.

“Does she think that I want to make love to her?” He addressed the
dinner (alas! not luncheon), which was very bad. “Little she knows! And
whoever would be the wiser if I called out there occasionally? Or is she
merely trying to _intriguer_ me? Is it that inflexible principle of sex
which will not let a man go in peace, but must hold him in the toils
even while denying him the little he asks? Or does she fear to step down
from her pedestal? Well, I’ll think no more about her. I hate them all.”

He returned to the Legation in time for coffee, and to help Mr.
Trowbridge entertain several pretty women that had lunched there. Later
he called at the Nachmeister Palast, sure of not meeting Frau von Wass;
she, with many another, never entered the gates save when bidden to a
function. Several old ladies were taking tea with Excellenz, and they
increased our hero’s ill humour by their maternal petting, for he was
almost as tired of being mothered as of being made love to.
Nachmeister’s sole charm was her entire indifference to his health and
his emotions.

When the women had gone, she invited him into her famous porcelain
boudoir, where the walls were made up of innumerable panels painted by a
disciple of Watteau, the windows and chairs covered with fading
brocades; and exhibited a photograph of Mabel Cutting that had arrived
in the morning mail. Of the note enclosed by the young beauty’s mamma,
the wise old diplomatist said nothing.

“Is she not lovely?”

Ordham scowled at the picture. “All American girls look alike. I saw
them by wholesale in Paris.”

“I do not pretend to vie with such experience, but, myself, I never saw
anything so lovely as Mabel. Leaning on that railing, she looks like The
Blessed Damozel. But it should be painted. Of course it gives no idea of
her exquisite colouring—pink and white and gold and brown. And such
soft pathetic eyes!” The Nachmeister looked almost sad.

“Those fluffy American beauties are passée at twenty-five. I like women
to be handsome at forty—as our women are,” he hastened to add.

“Of course, mon enfant. At your age the woman of forty, or a little
less, nicht? is part of Life’s curriculum. So is the unhappy wife who
wants sympathy—and all the rest of them. Fortunately there are the
Mabel Cuttings to marry.”

“Is she being trotted out for my inspection?”

“What if she were? Do you fancy that you can ever do better? Youth,
beauty, gentle blood, millions—and you merely look bored? I have no
patience with you.”

“I am in no hurry to marry.”

“But one day you must—is it not so? I can speak plainly, for I am an
old woman of the world that has grown fond of you, and there is no
mystery about you whatever. Inheritance to the titles and estates of
your family is by no means assured, at best is remote. You are entering
one of the most expensive of careers and your habits are extravagant.
Your income is small and your brother miserly. So do not be the baby you
sometimes look and are not, and give Mabel Cutting a definite place in
your calculations.”

“What has she in her own right?”

“Eight or ten millions—dollars, of course. Forty million marks! Ach
Gott! I have known Adela Cutting for twenty years. There is no doubt
whatever that her husband’s fortune was one of the largest in America;
and I remember perfectly the account of his death and will. There were
no other heirs.”

“What of this plot to marry me to the daughter of Herr von Schmidt?”

“What?” The Nachmeister’s astonishment was manifestly genuine.

“I heard—well, it is not worth talking about.”

“I should think not. Marie Schmidt! You! Her silly mother has never put
stays on her and she will have a Munich waist in three years. And her
complexion, her manners—but it does not matter. I happen to know that
she is to marry her cousin, Heinrich Krauss. Schmidt means to keep the
money in the family. Who could have started such a report?”

“Oh, one hardly knows where one hears such things.”

“Another time come to me at once with any little rumours that put you
out of temper, and I will tell you if they are correct or not. There are
no secrets in Munich from me. I may keep them, but I know them.”

“May I borrow this photograph?” Ordham looked as innocent as Moses in
the bulrushes.

“You may have it—and the original, no doubt, if you are clever enough.
But to tell you the truth, I do not know whether she retains her
interest in you or not. It was evident enough when she was here; but
maids as well as men are fickle.”

Ordham enthroned the photograph on his writing table. He even began a
letter to Mrs. Cutting. But he could think of no excuse that would cover
his long negligence, and after dreaming over his pen for a while he put
it aside until a more fertile moment. But fate pursued its even way and
drove Mabel Cutting far from his mind.

                                   X
                         THE BIRTH OF AN ARTIST

The following night he was paddling on the Isar when he became aware
that he approached the house of Margarethe Styr. It stood on a branch of
the river that separated the Englischergarten from Schwabing, an old
village now incorporated in the city of Munich. From the back projected
a tower whose foundation was not in the garden, but in the bed of the
stream. Her grounds were surrounded by a high wall, and on the day he
had left his card he had seen nothing of the house but its baroque
façade; but more than one of his friends, when driving him in the park,
had pointed out the tower and commented upon the lonely dwelling of the
Styr. There was a story that Ludwig I had built this villa for a
beautiful woman of Siena, intending to visit her by way of the Isar,
which flowed not far from the palace walls. The lady, however, could not
make up her mind to brave the rigours of the North, and it had become
the property of a romantic young couple, whose grandchildren had sold it
to the present King when the whim seized him to present a dwelling to
the Styr.

Ordham did not rest on his oars, but used them more slowly perhaps as he
raised his face, hoping for a glimpse of the great artist whom he still
permitted himself to admire even if no longer consumed by a desire to
know her. Just as the boat slipped past the tower such a shriek of
horror rang from the lowest of its rooms, that Ordham, without
hesitating a second, reached the shore with a stroke and swung himself
through a window in the opposite curve. He expected to find Countess
Tann struggling in the arms of a burglar, and was astonished to see her
standing alone in the middle of the room, staring down through the
window to which he had raised his eyes as the boat rounded the corner.
He did not enter noiselessly, but it was fully a moment before she
turned. Then she drew a spasmodic breath of relief.

“Of course—you! But when I saw that white face down in the water—your
face down there did look so white—I thought it was—”

Although the room was nearly dark he could see that she made an effort
to recover her natural poise, and she added: “Thank you for coming to my
rescue. Of course you thought I was being murdered?”

“Or Kundry!” He was recovering from his own fright.

“Oh, don’t jest! I have had a terrible shock. You have no idea what your
face down there brought back. I thought it was the ghost of a young man
who once gave his life for me; and yet there is no reason why he should
haunt me. I begged him to go.”

His complete silence expressed his right to hear the story, and in a
moment it was evident that she would tell it. Her head was bent, her
brows drawn, giving her eyes the expression of tragedy most familiar to
him. The shock, no doubt, had set her sense of drama in action. He
wondered if it were ever far from the surface of the artist that lived
for his art, as this woman did.

“I will tell you,” she said at length. “Why not? You have come into my
life in odd ways. As oddly you compel me to talk. I even wrote you long
letters—and tore them up. I have told you that I was on the stage in
America. I always had small parts, but I had some influence,
nevertheless. Over there it is called ‘pull’—but you never use slang,
do you? I scarcely ever went ‘on the road,’ as another phrase goes. But
one summer, after I had been cultivating my voice for about three years
with the old Wagnerian devotee I had discovered in New York, I
quarrelled with a man I had come to hate, and, it being impossible that
he should leave New York, I made up my mind to join a travelling company
that would demand my services for months to come. It was not the salary
of an actress that I needed in order to put the continent between us,
but the protection of the company. Women in that great free country, to
be admitted to hotels, or at least to remain in them, must be
accompanied by some member of their family, by some man who at least
pretends to be their husband, must be known (favourably known), must be
shabbily respectable, or must have a raison d’être. An actress
travelling with a company has always the right to live, no matter if she
can do nothing but dust the furniture. So I went barnstorming, and,
accustomed to luxury as I had grown, I was very uncomfortable,
disgusted; no doubt, had I been less hardy, I should have fallen ill. If
the adventure I am about to relate had not happened, I might not have—I
might have returned to New York in a very different fashion. My voice
might not have been enough. I cannot tell.

“We played across the continent to San Francisco, then up to Portland,
Oregon, intending to return in the same leisurely manner by the northern
route from Seattle. We took the steamer from Portland. It is an infamous
piece of coast, called, indeed, the ‘graveyard of the Pacific,’ but the
weather was fair, and as there are only twenty or thirty wrecks a year,
everybody in that optimistic section of the country expects to be among
the favoured. Before night one of those terrible winds of the North
Pacific suddenly descended upon us. I had often crossed the Atlantic,
but I had never heard such a wind, seen such waves. Only the old phrase,
‘mountains high,’ gives any impression the waves made upon me, at least.
Nearly everybody was ill. I remained on deck, enjoying the storm, the
roaring wind, the great green glassy waves with their soft white combs.
There was no rain, and the sky, as we rolled about, seemed to shake out
the folds of a spangled flag. I soon noticed an athletic young fellow
trying to stride up and down the deck. He gave it up after a time, and,
having helped me to my feet, after I had gone for the third time into
the scuppers, we fell into conversation. He was a Harvard man, had been
visiting relatives in San Francisco, and was on his way to British
Columbia for some shooting before returning to his home in Boston. He
confessed that he had cultivated sport to such an extent that he had
neglected his studies, and intended to take a post-graduate course. I do
not recall anything else that he said, but he looked so young, so
strong, so clean and thoroughbred, that I liked him, as I have always
liked the few of his type that I have met. After a time he advised me to
go to my room and get some sleep. I bade him good-night; and although my
small state-room was close and crowded, I soon fell asleep. I knew
nothing more until we were on the rocks.”

She flung out those famous expressive hands of hers. “That awful scene
of confusion! The sharp animal-like cries of the women! The hoarse yells
and curses of the men! The frantic rush! The horrible darkness—for
every light went out. Finally I found myself on deck—swept there, I
suppose, by that fighting mass of people. But it was all unreal at
first, like a scene in the theatre. I remember hearing the leading lady
sob: ‘Oh, Gawd, I’ll never do it no more, I swear I won’t!’ and
laughing.

“Then I saw that the atmosphere was impenetrable. I learned afterward
that the captain had entered those terrible straits in a dense fog. And
then I heard the grinding and pounding of the ship on the rocks, the
roar and hiss of breakers. The signal gun scattered the shrieks that
never stopped for a second. The ship gave a violent lurch. I saw a green
wall rushing through the fog and flung myself face downward, throwing my
arms about a smokestack. When the wave had receded and I recovered my
breath, I found myself alone and saw dark objects tossing on the water.

“There were no more screams, but there were other sounds—I cannot
describe them! Suddenly I felt myself lifted up and a voice said: ‘Come
quickly. There will be another wave. And we are sinking.’ I recognized
the voice of the young Bostonian. He half carried me to the top of the
pilot-house, where a few others were huddled. The fog lifted. I could
see still others clinging to the higher parts of the boat, but nearly
every one had been washed overboard. By this time lights were flashing
all along the shore, and we expected every moment that boats would put
out to our rescue. But the seas were running at a frightful rate. I
heard later that more than one boat was launched, but unable to fight
the energy of those heaving mountains.

“One end of the steamer was below water. The other was pounding
horribly; we merely waited for her to free herself and plunge to the
bottom. More than once she slipped—twisted—When morning came the
pilot-house was but a few feet above water. My young friend lashed me to
a mast. How I climbed it with him I cannot tell you, but I did, and was
firmly tied. He stood on a rung just below me and held my hand. He had
already wrapped his coat about me. There was no more rope, even for him.
I saw the others washed away, one by one. They went in silence. At first
I implored him not to leave me to die alone, and he promised that he
would not. But finally I begged him to try to swim to the shore. He was
so strong, and we now could see people running up and down, a boat
launching, even fancied we heard cries of encouragement. Surely they
would manage to pick him up even although they might not reach the ship.
But he would not. He said that a man could die only once, and that he
should be ashamed to call himself an American if he deserted a woman in
an hour like that.

“It will always be incredible to me that they did not make a more
persistent effort to save us than they did. And his life was worth
saving! The day passed. We saw a steam tug, evidently telegraphed for;
but after hanging about for an hour it went away again without making
any attempt to approach us. Another night passed. The gale did not
diminish for an instant. I was stiff, frozen, hungry, a mere bundle of
automatic nerves. Will, memories, reason, all that make the individual,
might have gone to find a grave for my tortured body. But I was safe so
long as the ship gripped the rock. With him it was a different matter.
He was strong and young, but he was not a god, and he was not lashed to
the mast. He spoke to me from time to time, but his hold on my hand
relaxed more than once, and I knew that he was in agony.

“I fell asleep. When I awakened, in a moment or two, no doubt, I called
to him in terror, for, had he too slept, he must have fallen and been
washed away. He answered me in a moment, and then I roused myself from
my lethargy and talked constantly. He held out till morning. Almost with
the dawn I saw a glittering green mountain, that seemed to smoke like a
volcano, rise above the ship, bend down, slip under my friend, roar
again and recede, holding triumphantly aloft that straight young figure.
For the first time in my life I forgot myself and wept for the fate of
another. Then I set my teeth in the face of that demoniacal storm and
swore that I would not be conquered. I had survived Life. I would defy
the mere elements. I thought of my voice, the voice my master had begged
me, literally on his knees, to consecrate to the greatest rôles ever
written. Sometimes he had thrilled me with an appetite for fame,
independence, but intermittently; perhaps because, although I had read
those rôles again and again, I had never heard them, above all never
known the ecstasy of singing them (he made me grind at tone production,
scales, difficult exercises); perhaps because I was by no means giving
my life to music alone. But now, abruptly, the artist awoke to life.
Alone in that raging waste of water, with death tugging at my very feet
and screaming in my ears, I was born into the religion of art, received
the sign that I had been chosen to worship at that shrine, to be blest,
to be lifted to its highest places—I—I—of all women! I saw far beyond
those hungry waters. I no longer regretted my friend. What mattered
it—the death of one mere mortal? I heard the cries of the Valkyrs as
they rode across the sky on their winged horses. The black clouds rolled
apart and I saw Wotan on his throne in Walhalla, the daughters of Erda,
my sisters, about him . . . they besought him. . . . I could see the
streaming of their hair, the flashing of their helmets and shields, as
they ran back and forth, leaned over the ramparts to encourage me with
their cries: ‘Hi—ya—ha! Ho—yo—to—ho!’ I was Brünhilde on her rock.
The waves were fire. Ah!” Styr flung her arms upward, her body backward,
swaying from side to side. “I shall never have such exquisite delusions
again. Never! Never! For one hour—or was it one moment?—I was a
goddess. It was no delusion! I was Brünhilde, awaking from a sleep, not
of a generation, but of the centuries that had gone since she rode into
the funeral pyre. I try to recall that ecstasy on the stage. Some of it
comes back, but not all! Not all! I have a fancy that Death will bring
it in his hand when he comes again.”

She dropped her arms, and her groping hand closed over the back of a
chair. “I remember nothing of the rescue. I awoke in bed. They told me
that I had slept for two days and nights, that I had been lashed to the
mast for forty hours, alone for ten. They asked my name. I gave the
first insignificant combination that entered my head. Charitable people
advanced the money for my return to New York. I had money of my own
there, for I had made profitable investments, when the whim for playing
with gold instead of spending it had seized me. I revealed myself to no
one but my banker and my singing teacher, and lived in obscure lodgings
until I was pronounced fit to go to Bayreuth and ask The Master to
listen to my voice. So far as any one else that had ever heard of me
knew, I was dead, dead with the rest of that miserable company. And I
was dead—for must not one die to be born again?”

                                   XI
                       THE DIPLOMATIC TEMPERAMENT

Ordham had been leaning against the wall, staring at her, carried out of
himself. He had heard the roar of the waters, the fragment of ship
pounding on the rocks, seen the solitary woman lashed to the mast for an
eternity, witnessed the tragedy of the gallant youth in whose death he
felt a poignant sense of loss. Once or twice he shivered, as when Styr
screamed on the stage, or her voice seemed to come from some far hidden
bower, dying of languor, in the love duet of _Tristan und Isolde_.

She passed through an archway and lit a lamp. As she turned and motioned
him to a chair she thought she had never seen any one look so young.
Every memory in his brain but this last might have withered and floated
away. He recovered himself and followed her into what appeared to be a
long gallery used as a living room.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I think he deserved that one man
should honour his memory. Why don’t you sit on this comfortable divan?”

He arranged the pillows about her, took a chair close by, and accepted a
cigarette; which, he felt, he had never needed more. She did not smoke,
but sat staring straight before her. Her eyes seemed to burn her white
face, but her repose was absolute. In a few moments she spoke abruptly.

“Twice I have lifted the curtain for you. I hope I never may again. It
is not good for me and can be of no use to you. All that know me here
are concerned only with my present—”

“Yes, with Die Styr, not Margarethe Styr.”

“I have little private life, but you seem to have been projected into
it, and you may remain if you think it would interest you to come here
and talk to me occasionally.”

He did not answer her, for he was wondering again if he wanted to know
her or not. Was not his personal experience of this famous woman already
romantic and adventurous enough to satisfy any man not in love? Whatever
it may have amused him to fancy before they met, that night at
Neuschwanstein had convinced him that he never should love her. The
woman was too wholly suffocated by the artist. Even now he hardly
realized that he was not in the presence of Brynhildr or Iseult,
summoned to earth by the necromancy of the mad King. Certainly he had
shared her delusion for a moment to-night. But he was a modern of the
moderns. There was nothing of the old gods in him. It was only when Styr
sang that the dead men in his soul awoke and surrendered. Contact with
herself did not stir his senses in the least, although it agitated his
mind.

If there be such a thing as the diplomatic temperament, John Ordham may
be said to have possessed it. Side by side with the recklessness of
youth and a sensitive nature, marched already a tendency to regard life
as a sort of musical instrument whose keys were to be touched
delicately, warily; crashing chords to be struck at precisely the right
moment or not at all—whatever the temptation. It was hardly more than
an instinct as yet, but he had made surprisingly few mistakes for a man
of his years. In spite of his British reserve he had little of the
narrow conservatism of his race; his tastes, his sympathies, his points
of view, were catholic. Nevertheless, even the acquaintances made
outside of his own world were never of a character to cause him future
annoyance; and when he tired of them, they experienced pangs of
self-reproach, or chafed at relentless fate. As the natural grace of his
body saved him in difficult social moments, its mental partner gently
extricated him from the most delicate situations. In spite of that
stratum of iron in his nature, he would never be brutal, but he might be
more ruthless and inflexible where his interests, or perhaps his
desires, were concerned, than the more primitive being who sticks a
knife into a rival or beats his woman.

But if insensible to the sex in this woman whom so many men had loved,
still loved, his mind was on the brink of an irresistible attraction. It
was not so much that her secrets and her depths tormented his curiosity,
as that her intellect called to his with that vague seductive promise of
completion which is usually confined to the whispers of sex.

He turned his head and looked at her. Her eyes were staring far beyond
him again, and his slight motion did not attract her attention. Her hair
was half down, but her skin, although white and clear, had none of the
freshness of youth. Her figure, in its loose white gown, looked massive,
immobile. He had a sudden conviction that she would never receive him in
a revealing gown, that he could not be more determined than she to keep
their intercourse on the rational plane. In a flash he comprehended her
intense loathing of his sex. She had demolished a barrier for his sake,
either because she had decided that fate was too strong or because their
chance intimacy had forced her to appreciate the loneliness of her life.
Down in the depths of his being he fancied that he heard a sharply
struck note of warning, but it was stifled under a rush of sympathy and
mental avidity.

He felt an intense desire to relieve the tension of the moment and
uttered the first commonplace that came to his mind:

“Should I not go? You look pale. Your skin has lost its wonderful
luminousness—”

She replied indifferently, “I did not put it on,” then laughed. “Are you
horrified?”

“Not in the least. Why should not a complexion be as fine a work of art
as a canvas that hangs on the line? As for nature—I have seen nothing
so exquisite in Venice as the pictures of Turner.”

“I have worked out a make-up which enables me to delude the world into
the belief that I am a beauty. But it is not merely these minor arts
that disguise me; I _am_ transfigured, even when I merely sing Venus or
Senta; and that is the reason I have never been recognized in Bayreuth,
where the elect of America are beginning to flock.”

“You change your eyes in both size and expression, but I should know
you.”

“Now, perhaps, that my characters have become a part of myself.” She
added abruptly, “I believe you know nothing in England of Ibsen, but he
is the only dramatist who, in some moods, makes me wish that I were on
the other stage.”

“I made my first teacher in Munich translate several of his plays:
first, because it was a straight path away from declensions, then
because I became interested. I never miss an Ibsen night, unless it
happens to be one of yours. I hardly know whether I like him or
not—yes, I suppose I do; that is to say, he fascinates my mind, while I
resent him with all my inherited particles, that cry out in favour of
illusions and lies.”

“Ah!” She looked at him with keen interest. “It may be those
uncompromising pictures of middle-class life, mean, sordid, bare, that
excite your mere curiosity—you are a pampered baby yourself. But you
are too young to hate shams.”

“I am sure that I love them. Perhaps he merely induces an irritability
of mind, which is a novel sensation. I shouldn’t wonder if I really
hated him. I cannot imagine you in any of these rôles. You do not
suggest his heroines—you whose mission it is to give intense reality to
impossible romance.”

“In other words you deny my right to be called an actress?”

“Oh! oh! How can you say such a thing? I have a theory that Wagner’s
music changed the character of the void itself. The souls floating
downward vibrated to the new harmonies, the least of them; and now and
again a great one was saturated, absorbed, imperiously impelled—”

“I never heard a more ingenious theory, but considering that _Tristan_
was written in ’57-’59, and _Götterdämmerung_ nearly fifteen years
later—”

“Souls sometimes sleep a long while,” he said softly.

For the first time he saw her flush. Then she sat erect suddenly.

“I won’t permit you to question my right to be called an actress! You
remember the scene in _Ghosts_ in which Mrs. Alving listens to Oswald’s
terrible revelation?”

He nodded, holding his breath. She did not rise, nor repeat a word of
the play, but he watched her skin turn grey, her muscles bag, the
withering cracking soul stare through her eyes. Every part of her face
expressed a separate horror, and he could have sworn that her hair
turned white. He shivered as if he had fallen into the snow water
beneath the tower, and stood up.

“It is too horrible! I am glad there is no such part in opera.”

She smiled triumphantly and Mrs. Alving vanished. But she turned pale
again as he asked abruptly:

“Was it of Mrs. Alving you were thinking?”

“Yes and no. It was Mrs. Alving on a superstructure. For the moment I
was that tormented mother, but were I merely a clever actress that had
left a pleasant home for the stage, I might make myself
feel—well—half, perhaps, of what I expressed for your benefit just
now.”

He asked irresistibly, “Are you glad or sorry?”

“Glad.” And neither had the vaguest premonition of when and where she
would answer that question at length.

“I think I shall go now. It is late and I have kept you up long enough.
Thank you so much.”

“What are you thanking me for?”

“Everything. When may I come again?”

“Tuesday evening for supper, if you are not invited.”

“Of course I shall come.”

They shook hands and Ordham left as he had entered. As he rowed up the
Isar and heard the iron shutters slam, he felt some exultation in the
thought that no longer were they closed to him. And he knew that an
atmosphere both bracing and quickening was his to command. There was the
scent of neither violets nor patchouli in it, in other words, neither
bland conservatism nor commonplace outlawry. He was too modern for the
one and too fastidious for the other. He could not identify scent at all
with Margarethe Styr, not even those rare and subtle perfumes fabricated
for the elect, among whom was himself; and this a little disappointed
him.

                                  XII
                            LA BELLE HÉLÈNE

On strange and brittle threads hang the apples of fate. Hélène Wass had
matured her plan for the following Wednesday night. Like all plans
promising success, it was very simple. She divined Ordham’s nervous
dread of finding himself alone with her, but parties at her house were
always gay, and he was ever more than willing to be amused. She invited
him to dinner “to meet a party of friends from Vienna who were giving
her a night on their way to Paris.” Upon arrival he would discover that
the party had disappointed her, but he could not well refuse to eat her
dinner; nor could he run away immediately after. The Herr Geheimrath
never graced these late dinners of his wife, adhering stoutly to the
heavy midday meal of his ancestors, and partaking of a Spartan supper of
eggs, cold ham, sausage, tongue, salad, and compôte at six o’clock. At
eight he was slumbering peacefully. The dainty French repast finished,
Hélène would sing in her boudoir,—all the newest, gayest songs,—until
Ordham’s apprehensions, if he cherished any, were lulled, and he had
made himself too comfortable to think of moving before eleven o’clock,
at least. Then she would confide to him a long list of new indignities,
visited upon her by Munich society and her old husband, gradually
working herself up into a mighty passion—no difficult matter at any
time—and when, in a climax of uncontrollable excitement, she had flung
herself into his arms, her faithful maid, having awakened the virtuous
Geheimrath, would usher him in at precisely the right moment and exhibit
the scandalous tableau. She would shriek and sob and plead for
forgiveness, which, she well knew, would never kindle in that flabby
mass of vanity, shocked out of the fatuousness of a lifetime. Ordham, of
course, would not plead his innocence, and when she cowered to the
floor, wailing that now indeed all the world was against her, he would
walk over and take his place at her side. There would be no duel, for
the Herr Geheimrath had chronic rheumatism in his right shoulder, and
she would leave Munich with the young Englishman at eight o’clock on the
following morning.

She had not the least doubt that, given conditions as she planned them,
Ordham would go with her, and that between sympathy and Italy—her villa
was romantically situated in the Alban Hills—she could persuade him
that he loved the dainty versatile charming creature who had sacrificed
the world for his sake. And, it may be, the vanity of youth being very
great indeed, she would continue to win in the uneven game.

Hélène Wass was as clever as only a subtle unscrupulous highly seasoned
European can be. She belonged to a class that responds automatically to
the intrigues hatched under thrones and disseminated to the outposts of
society; in whose brains are dark and tortuous recesses furrowed by
generations of ancestors that have lied and schemed for royal favour;
and what birth had not given her, she had industriously colonized in the
rich soil of her brain for twenty years.

But the cleverest of mere mortals, even the wise old statesman at the
helm, is unable to see far into that dense belt just beyond his horizon,
can but guess at the forces generating there. Hélène Wass’s inimical
forces were trivial, almost ridiculous, but less have wrecked life and
reputation.

She had written a month since to her Parisian milliners to set to work
on her summer trousseau at once, for even then she had contemplated a
house party in her Italian villa, where Ordham would find it difficult
to dodge her. On the day of their apparent reconciliation she
telegraphed orders that it be sent at once. If delivered to her in
Munich, her husband must pay the bill, to say nothing of the duties.
Munich had denounced her extravagance as regularly as the seasons called
their attention to it; but she was, in truth, a thrifty creature, and
had kept her own inheritance, capital and income, intact. The Italian
villa was her only personal extravagance, and Wass supported that. This
trousseau, in spite of letters and telegrams, was unaccountably delayed.
Go without it she would not, and not only for economical reasons, but
because it was already hot in Italy, and she depended in no small
measure upon these exquisite diaphanous garments for the ultimate
conquest of her observing young lover.

It had been a mere chance that had taken Ordham on the Isar that night,
or, to speak by the book, an undetected chain of circumstances. Paddling
on the river in the city limits was a privilege granted to few, but a
friend of Ordham, Count Kilchberg, whose garden sloped to the banks, had
long since invited him to use a boat whenever he chose; and on the night
when he had so unpremeditatedly won the friendship of Margarethe Styr,
he had, after excusing himself from a dinner where he was likely to meet
Frau von Wass, suddenly bethought himself of this novel and congenial
way of passing the evening.

The trousseau arrived on Monday, and, still unpacked, was ready to be
spirited out of the house by the annoyed but acquisitive Lotte, who, as
a guardian of secrets and a surgeon of obstacles, received a salary
rather than a wage, and was meditating respectable matrimony at no
distant date. Lotte, although profoundly indifferent to moral lapses,
did not like Italy and was in love with a valet de chambre in the
Residenz. She was in a bad humour at the proposed flight, but dared not
forsake her mistress, who, beyond question, would give her a wedding
present. On Tuesday morning the Herr Geheimrath suddenly took it into
his fussy old head to go to Berlin and attend a scientific conference.
He invited Hélène to accompany him, and she screamed her refusal, almost
beside herself. Assuming that she was merely more nervous than usual, he
departed in haste, promising to bring her a present, and to return in
the course of ten days; he needed a little vacation and should see many
of his old friends.

She spent the greater part of Tuesday in bed, after her fashion when her
astonished ego was forced to admit that there were conflicting egos in
the world which her stupid patron saint went to sleep and forgot. She
wept, she had hysterics, she bit several handkerchiefs to pieces, she
tormented herself with visions of Ordham’s sudden recall to England
before her husband’s return; finally, in a flash of blinding light, saw
him infatuated with Margarethe Styr. That cordial hand-shake, that
unstereotyped smile, had meant something from the woman who would have
the world believe that she dwelt on a pedestal—in a niche—with a
curtain in front of her. Ordham, true to his temperament, had not
mentioned his meeting with Styr at Neuschwanstein, but Hélène knew of
the visit, and leaped at conclusions not far from the truth. Of course
he was fascinated, no doubt was talking Wagner (they were sure to begin
on Wagner) with her at that very moment.

She sprang out of bed and ordered her victoria brought round in an hour.
She must have movement, diversion, or her mind would become so inflamed
that she could not plan, and a new plan was imperative, unless, indeed,
she found the self-control to await her husband’s return.

It was a cold spring with occasional warm days. Lotte, anxious to shake
out one of the new gowns, expatiated upon the weather. Frau von Wass,
soothed by the thought that she could always command the envy of Munich,
permitted herself to be arrayed in a gown and hat designed to make its
wearer look as like a butterfly as a mere mortal can. The parasol, the
slippers and stockings, the gloves and handkerchief, assisted to
transform her into at least the Parisian she loved to be mistaken for,
and she forgot her woes for an hour in the delight of showing herself.
But she by no means forgot Ordham and directed her coachman to drive in
the Englischergarten, where he occasionally strolled with Kilchberg and
other friends. The beautiful day had brought out all Munich, driving,
riding, walking; the great park was filled with good-natured saunterers,
many of whom stared in open admiration, amazement, or disapproval at the
dazzling vision behind the liveries of the excellent Geheimrath Wass.

But she saw nothing of the young Englishman. She ordered her coachman to
leave the park by the Schwabing entrance and drive to the tennis court
on the other side of the village. This was a sacred enclosure, which,
with all her social adroitness and her husband’s popularity, she had
never penetrated. Reserved in the first instance for the young and
active members of the House of Wittelsbach, poverty in numbers had
forced them to open the gates to the embassies and legations, as well as
to the older families of the Bavarian aristocracy. Ordham had been
admitted to this club as a matter of course, and tennis being the only
form of exercise that he tolerated, he was an expert player, and might
be seen at the courts four or five times a week.

To-day, the air being charged with the elixir of spring, he was frisking
about like a kitten; and the sight not only made Hélène Wass pale with
fury, but induced a spasm of bitter despair. It was manifest that
nothing in him but his youth, his incontrovertible youth, was sentient.
What cared this buoyant healthy young Englishman for the pleasures of
the intellect, for impending examinations, the momentous question of
career? What cared he for LIFE, its problems, its tragic females? They
were non-existent, as was proper at his age, and his blood was sweeping
from his heels to his head in exultant waves, his lungs were full of
oxygen, and he was winning his game.

He made her feel old, forlorn, remember that whether she captured and
held him or not there was one of life’s gates to which she had lost the
key. That belonged to other young people like himself. True, she could
play tennis, and a very good game, but she could not abandon herself to
it, and that was the whole point.

Then, for the first time, she lost her head. She had imposed a severe
strain upon her excitable spoilt temper in disciplining herself for a
week. The prospect of ten days more, during which she must still control
herself, play the rôle of the arch indulgent friend, when she was
devoured by at least four different passions, abruptly declared itself
beyond her powers of endurance. The game of tennis finished, she sent
her footman to Ordham with an imperious summons. He came reluctantly,
for he intended to play another game at once.

“Come with me!” she exclaimed below her breath. “You must! you must! The
most dreadful thing has happened, and you are my only friend. I must
talk to you.”

Wondering what dreadful fate could menace any one so carefully and
exquisitely arrayed, but recalling that he had practically engaged
himself to stand by her for a fortnight, he sent the footman for his
coat and entered the victoria. She waved her hand in the direction of
the Englischergarten, and ten minutes later, leaving the carriage at the
opening of a secluded path in the woods, she led Ordham along the
romantic windings of the Isar. When they were out of earshot, she
suddenly caught him by the shoulders and brought her morbid excited
little face close to his.

“Johann! Johann!” she gasped. (She spoke English perfectly.) “Take me
away! Fritz suspects—he threatened this morning to kill me. He has gone
to Berlin. It is only a ruse! He will return suddenly, hoping to entrap
me—”

“But he cannot.” Ordham recalled some of her recent lies, and felt the
necessity of keeping his head clear. “I will even stay away from your
house. Then, what danger?”

“Oh, you don’t understand! It is the knowledge of the sword that hangs
over my head. If he came back suddenly and discovered nothing immediate,
it would make him the more furious. He would ferret out other things.”

“I don’t think he could.” But his blood congealed, and he wondered if it
were the damp woodland after his hour of tennis. That this would be an
excellent excuse for illness on the morrow cheered him somewhat, and he
said with his exquisite gentle courtesy:

“I am sure that you are agitating yourself for nothing. But could we not
talk it over to-morrow? I feel that I am getting a chill—I have not had
a shower and rub down, you know, and this enchanting nook is rather like
a new-made grave. You know how easily I take cold.”

“I don’t believe you ever had a cold in your life,” she screamed. “In
those flannels you look like a pink baby that hasn’t cut its teeth. You
shall listen to me, and if you write me to-morrow that you are ill I’ll
go to the Legation.”

“Oh, for your own sake, don’t do that.”

“I’m beyond caring for appearances. If Fritz discovers that I love you,
will he not divorce me? What matter if Munich cut me first? I know now
that is what they expect Fritz to do. Some one of them has told him. My
life here is rushing to a climax. It is only a question of days when I
shall be cast out for every she-wolf—led by Princess Nachmeister—to
set her teeth in my flesh.”

Ordham, colder each moment, stared at the ground with blanching face. He
recalled the discreet hint of Excellenz. And if she knew, why not
others? He wondered somewhat at Munich’s sudden access of virtue, then
remembered its deathless intolerance of the outsider. Might it not be
true that this poor woman—he had never seen any one look so weak and
helpless, as she wrung her hands and stared into vacancy—was about to
be publicly disgraced on his account? He turned faint and sick at the
burden cast upon his unwilling shoulders, but he made up his mind to
temporize until the last moment.

Her eyes dismissed their fixed stare and met his in an agony of appeal.
So may martyrs have looked when beholding the torch approach the fagots.

“Ah!” she wailed softly. “If you but loved me! Then it would not matter.
My villa in Italy! We could be so happy. In Italy nothing matters. And
by and by all would be forgotten. You are of the elect, and to them all
things are forgiven. But you hate me! You hate me!”

“How can you say such a thing? You have taken away my breath. You
suggest enchanting possibilities, but we must both take more time to
think. And I really must leave this damp spot. It is dangerous for us
both. If you have not come to the conclusion by to-morrow that your
fears are exaggerated, we will talk it over. Shall we meet here?”

“Will you swear not to send me word that you are ill?”

“Of course.”

“Then come to the house. I shall receive you in the salon. If we sit in
the middle of the room no one can overhear a word we say, and did Fritz
return suddenly no situation could disconcert him more. Whereas, did we
meet here—and were followed—how do I not know that the footman was not
told to spy?—yes! Let us go—now—quickly!”

She hastened out of the grove, but at the end of the path paused
abruptly. “I must walk!” she announced. “I shall dismiss the carriage.
It is better, too, that you should walk.”

“Very well.” He resigned himself to another tête-à-tête. The park was
nearly deserted. They walked along the outer carriage drive. He
endeavoured to divert her mind. He might as well have attempted to dam a
flood with his hands. She had reached that pitch of nerves which must
find relief in a torrent of words or in hysterics. Her maid would soon
be methodically administering sedatives; and meanwhile Ordham was forced
to listen to a tirade against Wass, Munich, and her thrice unhappy fate
in loving a man who, for worldly reasons, would not permit himself to
return her love, hesitated to fly to a Paradise in Italy lest a few
ridiculous people cut him for six months. He was appalled at the
strength of the woman’s passion, and distracted at the thought of the
possible consequences. No longer could he cheat himself with the
delusion that she had transmuted her love into friendship, that she
would open her net after the fashion of sensible women of the world when
the captive began to flutter. For once his diplomatic instinct was at a
loss. Again he felt that events were rushing too quickly for him, and he
had not the least idea what to do.

Thus it happened that Margarethe Styr, seated in the curtained depths of
her tower, that she might amuse herself with glimpses of the world she
so seldom cared to enter, sat up suddenly and gazed hard at a voluble
white reckless woman dressed like a butterfly, and a dejected young
cavalier in flannels. She had heard no gossip of these two, but this
vision, linked with his similar appearance when leaving the house of the
same woman a few days before and his careless nod on the night of the
Nachmeister concert, told the story. Countess Tann concerned herself not
in the least with the affairs of others, and it is probable that if she
had not met Ordham a second time, she merely would have smiled half in
pity, half in scorn, at the eternal folly of young men, as manifested in
this moving tableau. But she had unbent to him even at Neuschwanstein,
far more on that night when he had leaped through this window to her
rescue. And to no one else in eight years had she given the least of
herself. That alone entitled him to a unique place in her regard; and to
refrain from some degree of personal interest in so sympathetic a
creature she had discovered to be impossible. Moreover, in spite of the
remodelling of character effected by that strong brain and will, there
was no lack of plain female in Margarethe Styr. She determined then and
there, not only to save this charming young man from the toils of an
unscrupulous siren, but to indulge in the pleasure of outwitting another
woman. She knew enough of Hélène Wass to conclude that her life had
reached a desperate climax which threatened danger to the man that had
magnetized the remnant of her youth. As she rose and went upstairs to
dress for supper, she felt even more stimulated than when about to
engage in a round with the opera-house cabal.

                                  XIII
                            STYR, THE POTTER

It was on this night that he was to sup with her. The hour appointed was
seven, and, not knowing his habits, she dressed early. As she arrayed
herself in one of the loose Fedora tea-gowns that Bernhardt had made
fashionable, she congratulated herself upon the inspiration that had
bade him, as he swung down from her window, “not to dress.” After that
scene in the park she resolved definitely to make him understand at once
that although living alone, and an artist, about whom, no doubt, many
stories were current, she was not to be confounded with the cocottes of
society: she could picture the costumes in which Hélène Wass received
her admirers at tête-à-tête suppers! The Fedora gown, with its curved
but loosely fitting back, its straight panel in front that hung from
throat to slipper, unrevealing but by no means negligée, was the golden
mean betwixt the formal and the intimate in feminine attire. And no one
could carry such a garment with more dignity than Countess Tann. A
number of these Fedora gowns had come to her recently from Paris, and
she selected one to-night of which all save the ivory-white panel of
crêpe de chine was of mignonette-green velvet. The girdle, which hung
low, was composed of flexible silver links and had been picked up in one
of the antiquity shops of Munich. Only her beautiful throat was bare.
Her hair was arranged like a coronet. She had seldom lost her interest
in clothes, and once or twice a month entertained at supper Excellenz
Nachmeister, Possart, Lenbach, and a number of the older authors,
artists, and scientific men, who could talk, and who were content to
await her summons.

To-night she smiled at the unmistakable excitement of titivating once
more for a mere man, although he made no appeal whatever to her deeper
feminine instincts. Those had long been dead, and she stared down for a
moment at their graves, almost forgotten under the heavy mounds of
loathing and hatred for the sex for which they had been implanted. She
no longer hated men; she had not even the desire, common to the woman
that has been deeply wronged, to wreak vengeance upon them as a sex, now
that all the cards were in her hands; art had enchained every faculty
and left little room in her mind for the meaner interests of life. But
she was a woman still, or she would not have been the great artist she
was; and she sighed a little as she clasped her girdle, and even
experienced a fleeting envy of Hélène Wass, who was two years older than
herself. She was very happy, she dwelt upon serene heights, and one day
Wagner would conquer London and she would sing there and behold the
world at her feet. But Life, Life itself, had cheated her horribly; she
must die when her time came without one tender or beautiful memory. It
had gorged her with its knowledge, but its lessons had been hideous; and
only her strong will—perhaps the greatest of her gifts—banished their
memory when they rose and flitted, phosphorescent ghosts, across her
upper consciousness. She swept them aside to-night and went downstairs,
grateful that with the power to love had gone the power to suffer; for
she would go out that instant from the world and its music rather than
descend into those buried depths of her nature again.

Although it was ten minutes past seven her guest had not arrived, and
she went into the drawing-room to wait for him. She felt some vanity in
displaying her salon to one who she knew instinctively possessed a
cultivated and exacting taste. It was a large room on the right of the
entrance, with a row of alcoves on the garden side, each furnished to
represent one of the purple flowers. The woodwork was ivory-white; the
silk panels of the same shade were painted with violets or lilacs,
pansies, asters, orchids, or lilies, as if reflecting the alcoves. There
was but one picture, a full-length portrait of Styr as Brynhildr, by
Lenbach. The spindle-legged furniture was covered with pale brocades and
not aggressively of any period. It was distinctly a “Styr Room,” as her
admirers, who were admitted on the first Sunday of the month, had long
since agreed, while sealing it with their approval.

At half-past seven Ordham was shown in, exclaiming: “I am so sorry! But
my driver went to sleep. I am positive of it. I spent the entire time
between Barerstrasse and Schwabing crying ‘_Schnell!_’”

“They are always at least half asleep at this hour. They have reached
almost the limit of their day’s allowance of beer. For that matter, I
often see them asleep in the park three hours earlier, huddled down into
their meridians and trusting to their patient old nags to keep the road.
One drove up a tree in front of my window not long since. Shall we go in
to supper?”

The dining-room was across the hall, a stately little room fitted up in
brown and dull gold. The small table, with its delicate service of
porcelain and crystal, was perfectly appointed, and the simple supper of
_omelette aux fines herbes_, pigeons, salad, and American hot breads,
was so refreshing to Ordham, after the heavy English cooking of the
Legation, and the heavier of such of the Bavarian aristocracy as did not
employ chefs, that it diverted and comforted him. But he had looked pale
and harassed when he entered, and Styr bore her purpose in mind.

They talked, as Hélène had anticipated, of Wagner, and Margarethe
succeeded in interesting him deeply when she spoke of her early doubts
and fears, not of the difficulties of the music, but of the strange
women she must portray.

“I had never heard the rôles sung, you know,” she was saying, as they
entered the gallery by the river and she motioned him into the deepest
of the chairs. “Please sit still. I am given to prowling. And smoke.
Those are Russian cigarettes, and very good, but smoke your own, if you
prefer. I had read those operas over and over,—Heavens, but how
often!—imagining myself the heroine of each in turn; but when my voice
was ready for interpretation, I realized that thought—brain—as well as
imagination, was a prerequisite. Of course I had not long been in
Bayreuth before I heard how others interpreted them, but that conveyed
little to me. As soon as I had begun really to analyze and ponder upon
the characters of Brünhilde and Isolde, I chose to call them from their
graves into my own soul, divested of all the conventions which already
clung to them like barnacles. My ardour was so great that when roaming
alone in the woods of Eremetage, the old park of the Margraves on the
hill outside of the town, I really persuaded myself—and for hours at a
time—that I was one or other of those great women, torn with her
passions, delirious with her hopes, exalted with her despair. My God! my
God! What happiness! I lived the life of the imagination, the artistic
imagination on fire; I gave not a thought to my personal self. Nor was
there time for anything but study. Frau Cosima, regarding me as an
irresponsible genius, found me a lodging with a good creature who kept
me from starving—and the clothes on my back. Perhaps even The Master
laughed at my intoxication,—for it was far beyond enthusiasm,—but I
neither knew nor cared. I was quite mad. Of course such a time can never
come again, for I have learned all the great rôles, and who shall write
others? But at least I am happy while singing them, and throughout the
day preceding the night of a performance I live the part to myself. I
see the Rhine beneath my window, my tower is the Hall of the Gibichungs.
I hear the Atlantic in the Isar and fling myself face downward on that
divan and let the passions of all womankind tear my heart as they tore
Isolde’s when they transformed her into a fate and the avenger of her
sex.”

Ordham had forgotten Hélène Wass. He would rather have made no reply,
but when she paused, he took refuge, after his habit when excited, in
commonplace:

“That is perhaps your greatest acting—that first act of _Tristan_. But
of course there is no other in which you run the gamut of the
passions—although in _Götterdämmerung_—but really I am not up to
criticism. You are terribly real in all of your tragic rôles. I wonder
how real it all is—if you are capable of sweeping a man out into
eternity with you to-day? You must have been once.”

“I am capable of nothing but acting to-day; and of getting quite wrought
up in the novelty of talking to some one besides myself in this room. I
receive those I receive at all in the salon, but in this I live. Let me
show it to you.”

He followed her about the long room that reminded him of galleries in
certain old houses in England. It must have been very bright during the
day, for the side facing the river was made almost entirely of windows.
The other three walls were set thick with pictures, many of them
sketches laid at the feet of Die Styr by the devotees of another art; a
few old prints and etchings, and an infinite number of photographs.
Ordham wondered how a woman who made so few friends had managed to
collect so many signed presentments, until he examined the signatures
and found that they were all from celebrities or members of the royal
families of Bavaria and other German states. Ludwig had sent her no less
than twelve, ranging from the supreme if morbid beauty of his young
manhood to the pallid corpulence of the present, in which nothing lived
to remind the world of one of the most promising monarchs that ever had
ascended a throne but the deathless ideality of the eyes. Other members
of the royal and ducal Wittelsbachs, kindly and genuine people, who came
sometimes to drink a cup of tea with the great artist (whom they admired
with that true reverence for art that the centuries had bred in them)
had sent their photographs handsomely framed and affectionately
autographed. Ennobled though she was, the fact that she was of those
that received payment for services rendered debarred her from court
functions at the Residenz, but that was all. She had dined with the
Queen-mother more than once, and was invited to the routs at the other
palaces in common with the rest of the Bavarian aristocracy. Although
that strong brain could never turn, it must have admitted an occasional
wave of astonishment, perhaps exultation, at the significance of this
eccentric curve in her fortunes.

Some such thought flitted through Ordham’s mind, but he made no comment,
and admired the graceful crowded room in general. It looked as if the
disposition of the tables and chairs were changed daily, and although
the walls were of a delicate grey, there was colour somewhere, in what
he could not define, so perfect was the harmony, that gave the room
warmth and brightness. At one end a marble bust of Wagner stood alone on
a pedestal. The books were in the tower, opposite whose arch was the
divan with its many pillows.

“You should be very happy in such a room,” he said with a sigh, as he
returned to the deep comfort of his chair. “I can well imagine that here
you can conjure up any vision you wish. I have been here but half an
hour, and already it seems more like home to me than any room in Munich.
I cannot fancy anything disagreeable happening in it.”

“But there are so many beautiful rooms in Munich.” She took a chair
facing him, lit a cigarette, and prepared to draw him out.

“Beautiful, but not _gemütlich_—wonderful word! Either they are
magnificent, like Princess Nachmeister’s, or merely formal, with fine
things in them, or quite awful, with stuffy ancestral furniture that
should have been refilled seven generations ago. My room at the Legation
is done up in chintz and is very pretty and fresh, but it is not—well,
it does not shut out the world as this room does.”

“But your place is in the world. And it is very good to you.”

“Oh, sometimes.”

There being no fire to stare into, his gaze had wandered to the open
window near his chair. Suddenly he realized that the dark object beyond
was a bit of the Englischergarten, and the scene of the afternoon
flashed back to his mind. The vague sense of dissatisfaction that had
stolen over him at the last words of Countess Tann crystallized, and he
turned pale and drew in his breath sharply.

“Has Fraülein Lutz been scolding you? She gave me many unhappy quart
d’heures.”

“I can only be grateful to her—and to you.”

“That was a sort of gambler’s throw on my part—I am curious to see how
far you will go in the diplomatic career. Very far, I venture to
predict.”

“Oh!” He twisted about again and looked hard at the dark panel of the
window. His languid ambition gathered a sudden vehemence as he seemed to
behold a forking road in his future and a sinister pointing finger.

“What is the age limit for examinations?”

“Twenty-six.”

“That gives you two years. With Fraülein Lutz you cannot fail to pass in
German. But I find those examinations rather stupid. It gives too many
opportunities to the wrong class of young men, while those more
naturally gifted for such a career are thinking only of amusing
themselves. And after all, an under secretary can acquire one language
after another in the capitals where he is attached long before he has
any but a purely personal need of them. By the time he is a first
secretary he will know at least four languages, no matter how limited
his linguistic talents.”

“How wonderful of you to have thought about a career so far removed from
your own.”

“Is it? In your case, however, I have had the benefit more than once of
Princess Nachmeister’s disquisitions. She has made up her mind to live
to see you an ambassador; and she is quite capable of living till
ninety.”

“I could hardly be an ambassador at forty-four, unless I had had
uncommon opportunities.” But his eyes kindled and he smiled. He was
easily diverted, and even though his ambition might not grow fast enough
to conquer his indolence and love of pleasure before it was too late,
his natural sense of dignity, and a pride both personal and racial,
reminded him, now and again, that it was his duty to take the place
among men to which his talents and his opportunities entitled him.

“Well—you might come back as Minister Resident to Bavaria, and cheer
your good old friend’s last days.”

“Oh!” He had turned pale again. “I may never embark upon the diplomatic
career, Countess. It—I—it is too expensive, I am afraid. It is only in
the last year that I have learned the disagreeable lesson that money is
not to be had for the wishing. When I chose the diplomatic career,—not,
I fear, with any idea of serving my country, but as the most congenial I
could think of,—I had a vague idea that money in unlimited quantities
was my birthright, that it would flow in, every quarter, with the
changing seasons. Intellectually, I accept the fact that I am a younger
son and likely to remain one for another quarter of a century; but
personally, this knowledge seems to make no impression on me whatever. I
keep on spending more than my income, even here in Munich where I am a
guest. How can I expect properly to maintain the position of a regular
member of the staff with increasing social obligations? There is no pay
at all for two years; for many it is insignificant. I scorn to be a mere
hanger-on, professional diner-out. It is my disposition to entertain, to
give as good as I get.”

“Young men, particularly young officials, are in such demand—that need
hardly worry you. And then you can marry. High Heaven has preordained
that young Englishmen of great expectations and immediate debts shall
capture ambitious fortunes. Your family influence must be immense. Cause
yourself to be appointed to your legation in Washington—that Mecca of
the worthy and impecunious young attaché. You will have married a rich,
pretty, and charming girl before your first year is out. I am beginning
to feel that I have the seeds of the match-maker in the débris of my
feminine soul. I fancy that half the American wives in Europe were
caught in their own diplomatic pond.”

“I may never marry. I have little inclination for matrimony.” But he
spoke sadly, for the alluring vision of Mabel Cutting and her millions
had risen with the advice of the Styr. “Besides—well—”

Countess Tann rose and closed the window, drawing the curtains. The room
looked even more friendly, more shut in from the world, than before. He
had risen to assist her, and as she resumed her seat, he stood looking
down at her. He had never liked any one so much, never felt so oddly at
home, since the death of his father. Her atmosphere of mystery had
vanished in this room where she lived her intimate woman’s life. She was
not seductive nor too fascinating, but friendly, intelligent,
_gemütlich_. A wave of boyish despair swept over him. He would have
liked to put his head in her lap and pour out his troubles and receive
her comfort and advice. Although he looked as impassive as the Sphinx,
she knew that the time had come to speak.

“You are in trouble,” she said softly. “I knew it the moment you came
in, and it has been rising to the surface at intervals ever since. I can
only divert you for a few moments at a time. You are not in the least
what you were at Neuschwanstein, and you have a great reputation in
Munich for high spirits. New friends often make the best confidants.
Something tells me that I can help you. Do let me if I can. I have given
you more of my confidence than I have ever given to any one. It is your
turn. And there is a bond—you must feel it as well as I. Indeed—I am
almost superstitious about it, so—let me help you.”

He sat down under this assault, but instead of sinking into the deepest
embrace of the easy chair, after his habit whenever he captured that
triumph of modern furnishing, he leaned forward, staring at her as if
magnetized, and feeling something of the gratitude he so often politely
expressed.

“You are very good! Why do you take so much interest—you, of all women?
You do not dwell on the same plane with poor tormented human beings.”

“But I did once! Bear that in mind, and tell me what troubles you.”

“I am afraid I cannot.”

“You mean that it involves a woman and that I will put two and two
together and discover who she is?”

“Something like that.”

“You forget that I am not of your world. I enter it on rare occasions,
as a sort of lay figure. None of its gossip comes to me. I have a few
acquaintances, but they know better than to regale me with the scandal
of the town. To me Munich is a mere audience.”

“Princess Nachmeister seems to have talked to you a good deal about me.”

“But only because of her genuine interest. She has never gossiped about
you.”

“I don’t think there has been any gossip—no, I suppose you never could
guess. I have been foolish and I am afraid I shall have to pay heavily.”

“Don’t believe all that unscrupulous girls—”

“Oh! oh! It is not as bad as that. Perhaps, though, it is worse, if only
because more intangible. It is a sort of pressure—an accumulation—a
woman fancies herself in love with me—of course she isn’t,
but—well—she thinks that she is willing to sacrifice everything. She
has great strength of feeling, and I am haunted by the fear that she
will carry me away on that current whether I will or not. I do not love
her in the least, but there are obligations—”

“Were you very much in love with her? You do not look as if you had
passed through the throes of the grande passion.”

“I was fascinated.”

“But she did the love-making? If it is what I imagine—a casual episode
with some light-headed blasée society woman who is fascinated with your
youth—I fail to see that you have incurred a permanent obligation.”

He gave her a sharp look, but forgot that he was in the hands of a woman
whom many rated as the greatest actress of her time. Her expression was
speculative, disapproving; there was no canny gleam in her eyes, no
undue eagerness in her manner. It was patent that she was theorizing out
of her wide knowledge of the world and human nature.

“She is not old—at least in looks,—and I don’t think she is blasée,”
he replied, driven to defend his taste. “She is extraordinarily full of
life, of interest in everything; but she is high-strung and takes things
too tragically. It is my misfortune that she fancies just now that I
have inspired the serious passion of her life. No doubt she will soon
get over it. But meanwhile!”

“Why don’t you flee to England?”

“I won’t run. Besides, she would follow. And—well, there _is_ an
obligation. I could have stopped it in the beginning—as I did later,
when I had only the excuse of being bored. But I did not. That I did not
take the matter seriously at any time does not alter the fact that she
did—does. And that seems to give her a hold I cannot shake off.”

“Ah! She appeals to your chivalry, your sympathy, pity! She is a clever
woman at all events. She has played upon—Oh, I have no patience with
such women. They ruin more lives than the labelled women of the streets,
for they make the insidious approach. She wants to marry you, of
course.”

“I fancy she has some such idea, but her husband lives.”

“Then she wants to run away with you first.”

Ordham stood up again. The more or less vague apprehensions that had
haunted him for several hours took form and substance.

“Yes,” he said; “I am afraid that is it.”

“Good God!” Styr stood up, her face expressing a horror that lashed his
own brain. “That means ruin, no career—being a social outcast—for
several valuable years, at all events. No opportunity to marry a decent
girl of fortune. Nothing! And you—all the delightful freshness of your
young good looks faded, your enjoyment of life dulled, embittered,—your
splendid pride broken. Oh, you cannot, you do not contemplate such a
step!”

“No, I don’t,” he said intensely, although he did not raise his voice to
the tragic pitch of hers. “But she does. That is the whole point. Her
husband may accuse her at any moment. I think that is what she wants.
Then she will confess. He will cast her out. I must go with her.
Whatever she may be, there will be no altering the fact that she will
have courted ruin for my sake, and I cannot desert her. I have been a
fool. I must pay the price. How could I act otherwise?”

He looked so obstinate that Margarethe could have shaken him, but she
was aghast. It was far worse than she had supposed. She was the more
determined to save him—but how? She longed to be alone, to set her wits
to work.

“Suppose you were to be convinced that she had had many other
lovers—which, no doubt, is the case?”

“What difference would that make?”

“Well, none, I suppose, with a psychological young modern like yourself!
But you are too good to throw away. This must not happen. Cannot you
keep her quiet by renewed devotion and let her down by degrees?”

“I am afraid I haven’t the self-command. I almost hate her—except when
she appeals to my sympathies, and then I almost love her.”

“If you were ten years older you would manage it all so well! But, to be
sure, if you were ten years older you would not be in this predicament,
for more reasons than one. I suppose that you have never in your life
done anything you did not want to do, nor failed to gratify every
desire?”

“When possible,” he said ingenuously. “But I have to do many things I
don’t like.”

“I fancy you would have some difficulty in enumerating them. You radiate
an atmosphere of self-indulgence, and the caresses of fortune. But this!
I must, I will save you! I have learned in a hard school to succeed in
whatever I undertake, and I shall not fail here—”

“You will not try to find out who she is?” He did not speak excitedly,
but in a very low and quiet tone.

“I do not care in the least who she is. And how could I find out?
No—but you are too good—It seemed to me when I sent Lutz to you that I
pledged myself to your future.”

She came up to him swiftly and took both his hands. He stared at her,
fascinated, for she looked stronger than any one he had ever seen.
Involuntarily he leaned forward a little, as if to rest on that great
strength; and that moment witnessed the forging of the real bond between
them. “Give me your word,” she said, “that you will take no step until I
have had time to think.”

“Of course.” And then he felt that his usual ready formula was unworthy
of this woman. “I don’t know,” he faltered; “events might be too
strong.”

“Oh, I know the pressure of events! But you are not fifteen, and you are
very clever. You can temporize for a week or two. Give her a chance to
cool down and think better of it.”

“I have put her off so often. She no longer believes one of my excuses.”
He spoke with some humour.

“Oh, pretend that you love her, but beg her to wait till you have passed
your examinations.”

“What does she care for my examinations? And if she means to marry me,
she knows well enough that I cannot enter diplomacy blackened by a
scandal.”

“Well, find some other excuse—tell her that you are on the verge of
cajoling a larger income out of your brother—and meanwhile you really
must pretend that you love her more than ever—”

“I cannot!” There was such tragic disgust in his tones that Margarethe
had never liked him half as well.

“I am afraid that you really hate her.”

“I wish she were dead and buried!”

“And yet you are thinking of spending your ruined life with her! Oh, the
folly of youth! But one might as well talk to the winds. What would
become of the world if women had such extravagant notions of honour?”

Ordham, being a man, laughed at this. But he replied, “I should think
that you—of all women—had a very keen sense of honour.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t strain the point. And I have lived long enough to
leaven ideals with common sense. Well—at least promise me this—that
for one week—seven whole days, mind you—you will not take a step that
would ruin your life. It is not so much to ask.”

“Yes—I think I can promise you that. I have a sore throat and no doubt
can develop a case of bronchitis and go to bed for a few days. Strangers
always get bronchitis during their first year in Munich.”

“Good!”

“But I don’t see what you can do.”

“Nor I; but I shall disown myself for the rest of my life if I don’t
think of something. Only I must have time.”

He dropped her hands and moved away uneasily. She might be honourable
according to her standards, but he remembered that she could look like a
fate—and was supreme in the first act of _Tristan_! He doubted if,
given an impulse strong enough to rouse her, she would stick at
anything. But, he reflected, she was not in love with him. The vainest
of men could admit no delusion on that point; Ordham had no more than
his share of vanity, and had been given opportunities to decipher the
danger signals he dreaded. Therefore would she do nothing rash; and he
had some curiosity, although little hope, as to what she might suggest
when he emerged from the refuge of his chamber.

“You are too kind,” he said. “Of course I shall be only too ready to
listen if you can show me a way out. May I come again soon? Ah! if I
were swept away on that current, I suppose I never should see this room
again.”

“I do not fancy you would care to show yourself again in Munich for
several years, at least. Come meanwhile as often as you can—except on
the night before I sing, or on the day of a performance. I practise my
vocal gymnastics before you are awake in the morning!”

                                  XIV
                            THE SAVING GRACE

It was not until the gate was locked behind him that Ordham remembered
that in his preoccupation he had forgotten to tell his _kutscher_ to
return for him. If any more harrowing climax could have been devised by
a vicious fate to crown the unhappiest day of his life than a midnight
walk from Schwabing to Barerstrasse—some three miles—his imagination
was unable to suggest it. He detested walking at any time, and to-night
his throat really was irritated, his head ached a little. Schwabing
showed not a point of light; it might have been the Alpine village it so
picturesquely resembled. There was a long highway between fields to
traverse before reaching the Ludwigstrasse, and even there he might not
pick up a cab. The stately shell of Munich and most of her contents were
practically dead at ten o’clock.

A sharp wind was blowing from the Alps across the high plateau. Ordham
pulled up the collar of his light overcoat and walked more briskly than
was his habit. Illness might be convenient as an excuse, but as a fact
was little to his taste; although he realized that it was not the worst
evil that could befall him at present.

For perhaps the first time in his life something deeper than his temper
was agitated. He could always stamp about in a fine rage when annoyed,
but he had had little occasion to rail at a perverse fate. Now he found
himself face to face with a distinct crisis in his life—the probability
of disaster just beyond. He had heard Frau von Wass talk wildly before,
but other women talked wildly and nothing came of it. They seemed rather
to enjoy their little dramas than otherwise. He regarded them all as
interesting books—or plays—which he was graciously permitted to read
at first hand. But his own attitude had always been nearly impersonal.
When he had closed the book clept “Frau von Wass,” he had, in the
insolence and inexperience of his youth, taken for granted that it would
accumulate dust in limbo with all of its kind. He had been as much
astonished as annoyed at the turn affairs had taken, but not
apprehensive until to-day. That Hélène Wass was in desperate earnest he
could no longer flatter himself by doubting. He reviewed his own share
in the incident; and while he was amazed that such a price should be
levied for what had been little more than politeness on his part, still
was he far too intelligent not to remind himself that men had paid as
high for less, and too just not to admit that it had been in his power
to nip the woman’s passion in the bud.

Although he was puzzled as well as frightened at this encounter with the
grim visage of life, whose gloomy unsympathetic eyes presaged defeat, he
was sullenly angry with himself. If he had loved the woman or even been
possessed, no matter how briefly, by one of those overwhelming passions
of which he was always reading and hearing, he felt that he would have
accepted the consequences without flinching. But as it was, he felt like
a foolish mariner who had gone to sea without a compass and found
himself justly on the rocks. Unless the unexpected happened, it looked
as if he would be swept out of Munich with the rest of the Frau
Geheimrath’s wreckage and landed high and dry in Italy.

Suddenly another ugly phase of this crisis in his life leapt to his
mind, and he passed through the arch of the Siegesthor with such a
stride that the British Minister, returning from a late card party, did
not recognize him and went on without offering the hospitality of his
coupé.

Normally there was a faint hope that Bridgminster would once more pay
his debts, those distressing tradesmen’s bills of which he was reminded
daily. His tailor’s was but one, and the aggregate must be close upon a
thousand pounds. But if he openly committed the sin with which his
austere brother had the least sympathy, he would be driven into the
bankruptcy court. That would be a disgrace which would blast his
self-respect to the roots, even did England, never lenient to this
offence, forget it in time. There is a secret tendency in most human
hearts to forgive a lover his worst transgressions, but no sympathy
whatever for the financial muddler. And such a thing was unheard of in
his family, whatever its lapses in other directions. It was bred in his
very marrow to shrink with fastidious disgust from any form of monetary
publicity. To owe money to tradespeople did not worry him in the least
so long as they were sensible and patient, but there was ineffable
disgrace in being blazoned to the world as a man hopelessly in debt.

It was at this agonizing point in his reflections that his attention was
attracted by the peculiar antics of a dog emerging from the
Schellingstrasse. It had dropped something and was howling, grovelling
in evident appeal at the feet of a woman who soundly berated it. The
woman stamped her huge foot and pointed to the object the dog had
dropped. Howling and yelping an almost human protest, the dog picked up
the object and ran past Ordham into the Ludwigstrasse, then discarded
his burden once more, sat down on his haunches, and lifted up his voice
in a series of cries that sounded like an appeal to the winking stars.

Ordham, his curiosity excited, went forward, and bending down, examined
the object of the dog’s aversion. It was a block of ice. The poor beast
was howling with a toothache. Ordham looked at the woman as much in
amazement as in anger. She could have carried the ice in her skirt; it
was inconceivable to him that any one could maltreat a dog. But as he
opened his mouth to relieve his indignation, he realized that any
attempt to penetrate the thick Bavarian skull with his inadequate German
would be a mere waste of time. He picked up the piece of ice and dropped
it into the pocket of his overcoat.

“If you will lead the way,” he said, “I will carry it for you.”

The astonished housewife stared in amazement, ejaculated “Ach Gott!”
then, with a laugh of deep good-natured contempt, led off with a swing
that exhibited the tops of her man’s boots, the red blanket petticoat
above them, and the full flounces of her pantalets. She was almost as
broad as long, her waist line being in no place distinguishable from the
solid expanses above and below. Her skirts were short; she wore a shawl
crossed over her upper amplitudes and pinned behind. A small Tyrolean
hat sat jauntily above a walnut of plastered hair. She was a street
sweeper, inured to every sort of hardship, and not likely to sympathize
with a dog’s aching teeth. But no doubt she fed him as well as she could
afford.

The strange procession made its way up the stately Ludwigstrasse,
deserted but for the sentries before a palace. Once or twice Ordham,
contemplating his guide, who swung like a vast pendulum, laughed
silently. The grateful dog flew up and down, or frisked about his heels
in an ecstasy of relief. At the Odeonsplatz were two belated cabs.
Ordham handed into one the woman, the dog, and the ice, paid the driver,
and sank into the other with a sigh of gratitude, not only for the more
familiar mode of locomotion, but for the temporary diversion afforded by
a dog with a toothache! For a few moments he had forgotten his bills and
Frau von Wass. When he reached the Legation his throat was very sore,
and fortune so far favoured him that on the following day he really was
laid up with bronchitis. His servant took a verbal message to the Frau
Geheimrath, which, after sharp questioning, she was forced to accept.

                                   XV
                             POTTERS CONFER

On this same morning there was a brief but pithy interview between Styr
and Excellenz in the very centre of the Nachmeister gardens.

“So! so!” exclaimed the old woman; her grey eyes glittered like ice, the
corners of her mouth were down, of her nose up. “It comes to this! Poor
Fritz! We can save the young man if we are quick enough, but what of my
poor old friend? . . . Ach, yes! You are not interested. He is old.
You—yourself—look full of insolent youth this morning. I have never
seen you in this mood. Cultivate it. You look twenty-eight. Myself, were
I your age, should prefer to look more like a woman than a goddess.
Also! Fritz must suffer in any case, so all we can do is to save the
young man and spare the old one a lesion. Fritz is the vainest man in
Germany or he would have found her out long since. He remains in Berlin
ten days. You think she intends to make Mr. Ordham elope with her before
his return. I wonder! Gott! I fancy it would take more than ten days to
work our young friend up to that heroic pitch. More likely she has
planned a coup of some sort. Otherwise—I doubt. He will politely
promise to meet her at the train. At the last moment he will send a
message—but in haste! ‘I am so sorry! I can’t go to-day. I have a
cold.’ I know all the ingenious devices of that charming youth, and so,
I doubt not, does Frau Hélène. He has not eaten of the big black cake of
life yet, merely nibbled at its edges.”

“He is likely to choke on a slice unless we are quick enough.”

“True. Also! I repeat, she must know all his little ways by this time,
have discovered that he is by no means as ingenuous as he looks, nor as
easy to manage. She moves and lives in a network, a very maze, of
intrigue. Only the devious ways appeal to her. You may be sure she has
some plot on foot which the sudden departure of Fritz disarranged. That
would account for her excitement that same afternoon. I have watched
this little drama from the first, but she seems to have been playing a
deeper game than I fancied—and different! I have watched many of her
little dramas in the last twenty years. Of late it would seem that she
had been lulling the suspicions of our young friend while she laid her
wires. But what and where are those wires? There is only one way to find
out and that is through her maid.”

“I thought of that, of course; but none of my servants know any of the
Wass household.”

“Nor mine, probably. But I do my scheming through no such dangerous
channels. The secret police is always at my service. By to-morrow night
I shall have had an interview with the woman. If she has anything to
reveal I shall extract it with the promise of a position in the
Residenz; that is a bribe more potent than gold—which we will not use
unless we must. As soon as I am in possession of the facts I shall
act—you say he has vowed to do nothing rash for a week?”

“To be ill, if necessary. Fortunately she cannot storm the Legation.”

“Even so, we must act quickly. If the woman is really desperate, she
will find some way to compromise him—and what more effective than a
violent scene in the British Legation? It would be all over Munich in an
hour. But, by all the saints,” Nachmeister crossed herself devoutly,
“that scene she shall never make. We will baffle her before she has
quite lost her patience.”

When Excellenz had bidden good-by to her guest she stood for a moment
regarding the path with drawn brows. Had she engaged upon an enterprise
to deliver the lamb from the panther to the tigress? In a moment she
shook her head. She was a very wise old woman, and she recalled that
Styr had made no apologies, no explanations. She had said nothing about
disinterested friendship, taking a natural interest in a man so much
younger than herself. Nachmeister had long outlived the folly of
generalizing, of assuming that the same set of motives must govern the
most diverse individuals. For the present, at least, Ordham was in no
danger from the prima donna, who, no doubt, had lived her life, and
would hardly waste her time playing upon the weakness of young men.

“But if I should be mistaken,” she thought grimly, “she too can be
circumvented. Ordham must marry Mabel Cutting.”

                                  XVI
                        THE IVORY TOWER OF STYR

Two days later Styr stood in the tower of her living room, awaiting
Excellenz, who had sent her a succession of hasty notes. As always, when
the river was full, she had the sensation of floating on the current of
the lovely light green waters. The birds were singing in her garden and
in the deep glades of the park. The Isar itself sang of the glaciers and
snow peaks that gave it birth. From the fields, beyond the heavy trees,
came the dainty uplifting scent of newly mown hay. Usually this scene of
sylvan isolation fed the poetry of her secret life, and in these morning
hours, when the park was deserted, she might people it with satyrs and
dryads, even with Valkyrs, if she wished. But to-day it seemed only the
romantic annex to the exciting drama into which she had precipitated
herself; and it required but a slight effort to conjure up the
gorgeously dressed little butterfly with her ugly old soul in her
desperate face, and the perplexed, doubtless terrified, young man,
dragging his feet beside her.

Styr was by no means in a philosophic frame of mind. She fully realized
that this license in which she had indulged for the first time in many
years, this luxury of active interest in a human being, other than a
student or a chorus girl in distress, would lead far—unless she
promptly locked the gates again. Already her brain was showing a
disposition to offer hospitality to more than one of the great interests
with which the world palpitated. Yesterday she had been on the point of
buying a newspaper. If Ordham continued to call, they would inevitably
discuss all interests under the sun; books alone would never occupy
them; one by one the atrophies in her uncommonly complete nature would
disintegrate, disappear. And she had lived the inner life so completely,
so jealously, almost as isolated in her villa by the Isar as had it been
one of those schlosses on its lonely peak that decorate the German
landscape! That sense of unviolated liberty! It had at times lifted her
spirit to that exalted pitch to which music raises the emotional
capacity of speech. There are more forms of happiness than one in this
world, and Margarethe Styr had solved the greatest problem of woman’s
existence: she was quite happy, and not because she had found the man of
her heart, but because she had eliminated man from her existence
altogether. Whether Nature, that inexorable slave-driver, would have
permitted her to dwell in peace with art and her soul had not
circumstances first made all men hateful to her, was beside the
question. But although she had found happiness, it was at the expense of
far more than the one dream to which most women cling until the last of
their days. She had denied her mind much that it naturally craved, and
she had suppressed those superficial frivolous instincts which have
their own appetites. She often longed to dress (and show herself), in
marvellous Paris frocks, and, never before having known women with whom
she cared to associate (save briefly on Atlantic steamers), she would
have derived much honest enjoyment from long gossips with these friendly
sophisticated women of Munich; she would have liked to know and discuss
all the little comedies, tragedies, diverting weaknesses, in the lives
of her new compatriots. But she had not dared, and the results she had
achieved by her fidelity to the life long since prescribed by her too
enlightened brain, encouraged her to persist. She half resolved that,
having done her obvious duty by a fellow-creature, she would withdraw
from further intercourse with him at once. Better snap this link while
her surfaces were merely rippled, not drift on until all that was
feminine in her was caught in the net of the world again, and this ideal
existence destroyed.

It was at this point in her meditations that Princess Nachmeister was
shown into the gallery, and she went hastily through the arch to meet
her.

“What a picture!” exclaimed Excellenz politely, although, indeed, she
had long since reached the age when she could candidly enjoy feminine
loveliness. “Fancy being able to wear unrelieved white in the morning!
How do you like my new Paris frock? My maid says that the overskirt has
too many pleats on the hips, but for my bones, I think not.”

Princess Nachmeister looked very smart in a costume of dark brown
camel’s-hair and silk and a little bonnet of brown leaves, but Countess
Tann gave it but a perfunctory glance, and Excellenz herself was too
excited to demand more.

“Fritz arrives to-night and comes directly to me!” she announced. “I
telegraphed yesterday afternoon that I must see him at once upon a
business so important that he was not to waste time imagining it, but to
come. He replied that he would leave Berlin this morning. Lotte made a
sworn statement, and has obtained leave to visit her sick mother for two
days in order to be out of the way of Hélène’s claws when the bolt
falls. She is locked up in my house; but I do not wish her to see Fritz,
lest his questions should lead to other revelations that would induce
even him to sue for a divorce. And that would leave Hélène free to
practise on the susceptibilities of our _jüngling_. No, I shall convince
him—and present the subject in such a way that he may escape apoplexy.
Three days hence Frau Hélène will be locked up in that castle in Hungary
in good old mediæval style. I know my Fritz. His heart will never
trouble him again until it develops fatty degeneration; but in his
outraged vanity he will roar like a bull, he will be vicious,
relentless, and in the confusion of his mind will follow blindly every
suggestion I make. How he will hate her, and how he will make her pay!
He will give out that he retires to Hungary for his health, taking, of
course, his dutiful wife. Later, official matters recall him, but the