I WHEN BRIDGMINSTER WAS TWENTY-FOUR

John Ordham had been in Munich several months before he met Margarethe Styr. Like all the young men, native and foreign, he chose to fancy himself in love with her, and although both too dignified and too shy to applaud with the vehemence of the Germans, he never failed to attend a performance at the “Hof” when the greatest hochdramatische the new music had developed sang Iseult or Brynhildr. He was not sure that he wanted to meet her, for in a languid and somewhat affected manner he persuaded himself that she existed on the stage alone, and that did he even permit his imagination to picture her in private life it must be as a commonplace American woman of German extraction who drank enormously of beer and ate grossly, like the people in the restaurants. And as at that time he cultivated the sensuous rather than the stronger elements of his nature, he avoided what might have attenuated one of the most exquisite of his pleasures. It was true that in the second and last acts of G?tterd?mmerung her tragedy was so stupendous, her grief so poignant, her despair so fathomless, that he turned cold to his marrow, and felt as if the sufferings of all humanity were drowning him. But vicarious woe has all the voluptuousness and none of the hell of Life’s cruelties at first hand.

Styr’s methods were as likely to inthral the fastidious Englishman as the more artistic German. In a day when Sarah Bernhardt was the fashion in tragediennes, she had a still method all her own, a manner of appearing quietly on the stage, seemingly as impersonal as a part of its setting; then gradually dominating it, not only by the magic of her great golden voice and imposing height and presence, but by a force, which the critics, after long and acrimonious controversy, agreed to be an emanation from the brain. Whether she possessed also that physical magnetism, commonly indispensable to stage people, was a question still agitated when Ordham arrived in Munich, although she had then been “Royal Bavarian Court Singer” for six years; but that she had cultivated a mental power which above all else made her the great artist she was, the most violent partisans of other prime donne, lyric and dramatic, frankly conceded. Her associates at the Hof told that at rehearsals she merely walked through her part; and Princess Nachmeister, boasting private acquaintance with her since her elevation to the Bavarian aristocracy as Countess Tann, confided to the world that she never practised even those slow, grand, graceful, and infinitely varied gestures of hands and arms which were as expressive as her voice, but directed them from her brain as she did her acting; that she sat for hours thinking out the minutest details, but without moving a muscle until the night of public performance. All facial expression was concentrated in her eyes. She could express more with those features for which Nature had failed to invoke her conventions, than any living actress with physical writhings and distorted visage. Therefore, when she gave way to momentary violence, as, when at Siegfried’s repudiation she looked to be tearing her heart out, she created so profound an impression that more than Ordham rose breathless from their seats. Her desolation, her incredulous horror, the alternate pride of the goddess and agony of the woman, the dark and remorseless vengeance of the daughter of Wotan, not only induced a nervous shudder in Ordham but plunged his imagination down the past of this great but forbidding creature, who seemed to unlock her own heart for the moment with the reckless indifference of the supreme artist. He was but twenty-four at this time, but he had seen a good deal of the world, and its inheritances had composed many of his brain cells; he was, moreover, a very clever young man, as all admitted. Nevertheless, when he stared at Brynhildr in her agony and wrath, or dreamed through the second act of Tristan und Isolde, he had vague prickings in the depths of his soul that tragedy was not confined to the gods, and uneasy forebodings that life even for such as he was not all roses and cream.

But at this time, although had Styr ever been photographed, he would have framed and enthroned her, he rarely thought of her when not in his seat in the Hof, or listening to the comments of his friends. He was fluttering from flower to flower with the impatience and curiosity of his years, fearful of missing the least the gods provided for fortunate youth; drawn intensely for a day or a week by a beautiful face or an odd personality, but not daring to dally too long lest something more charming escape him. He had passing episodes of a semi-serious nature in that gay scampish underworld of Munich (that world of soubrettes, waitresses, young officers, students of both sexes), as well as in the sphere that revolved about the Queen-mother, but they were by no means ardent or sustained. He had not yet begun to cultivate that outdoor life which makes Englishmen so virile, and in extenuation of his fickleness he reminded himself of the penetrating observation of Marguerite de Valois, that the passions of young men are apt to be wavering and cold. The truth was that he was influenced by what appealed to his mind and taste rather than to his passions, although being sensitive and eager, these could momentarily be aroused by a charming woman who chose to take the initiative. The serious side of his nature had hardly begun its development; youth, bubbling youth, was uppermost; unconsciously (sometimes!) he smiled into any pair of pretty eyes that met and held his rather absent gaze, flirted desperately for an evening with a delightful creature whom he quite forgot to call upon next day. He found life very satisfactory and his studies not too arduous: persuaded by his family to enter diplomacy, and taking to it as naturally as he turned from the more dubious work of politics, he had spent a year in Paris unofficially attached to the British Embassy; then, a relative being appointed Minister Resident to the Court of Bavaria, he had come to him for another year in order to perfect himself in the German language before attempting his examinations.

It was some time before Munich found him out. For a while he was too much interested in the cafés, the ale-halls, the student life, the opera and theatre, to go about in society, even had it not been away. But soon after the return of the fashionable world to the capital, it became known that visiting at the British Legation was a young Englishman of fine appearance, distinguished family, and excellent prospects: his half-brother, Lord Bridgminster, although still a young man and quite healthy, was, owing to an early disappointment and an accident which marred his features, a misanthropist and misogynist. Almost simultaneously Ordham began to go about with Mr. Trowbridge, the minister; and, to do himself as well as society justice, he was immediately and enthusiastically liked for himself. The glamour of long descent and a possible coronet can never wholly be forgotten, but they carry a man so far and no farther. John Ordham’s worldly advantages no doubt were among the earliest of the factors that made him the fashion in Munich, so slow to accept strangers; but, later they were but the final excuse to shower attentions upon a young man who, under a shy and languid exterior, possessed an independent and audacious mind, who breathed refinement, and whose gentle and courteous manner charmed even the morose Ludwig to invite him to a private concert at Neuschwanstein, where he and Princess Nachmeister were the only guests. It was there that he met Margarethe Styr.