III NEUSCHWANSTEIN

Ordham journeyed down to Neuschwanstein full of pleasant anticipations, which for several hours after his arrival seemed unlikely to be fulfilled. Although he and Princess Nachmeister, with whom he travelled, were received at Füssen by a royal coach, which bounded at the heels of four galloping steeds through the grey medi?val town crowded on the banks of the river, then up through the woods to the white castle on its lofty rock, in a fashion that exhilarated his blood, and although they were received at Neuschwanstein with vast ceremony, he learned immediately that the King found himself too unwell to see his guests, and that the Gr?fin von Tann would dine in her own apartments over in the Kemenate, where rooms had been put in order for herself and the Princess Nachmeister. In the main body of the castle no woman had ever slept, and few men. Ordham, after ascending to the third story, was conducted through endless suites of rooms, very new, very gaudy, painted with the legends of the sagas and furnished with blue, purple, red, or green satin heavily incrusted with gold. In his own imposing chamber, finding nothing comfortable but the bed—after turning up a corner of the quilt—to sit on (the gold embroideries of the chairs being at least four inches thick), he made his way out of the castle and determined to explore while it was still daylight, half hoping to meet the King or the Styr.

He forgot both for a time while he roamed about what is probably the most beautiful spot on earth. In an undulating valley surrounded by an irregular chain of Alps, the two castles were set on their heights about a mile apart: Hohenschwangau, feudal in appearance if not in fact, old and brown, with citadel, wall, and bastions; Neuschwanstein, a white mass of towers on a mighty rock springing abruptly from the deep gorge of the river P?llat. Between the castles and on all sides was the dark green forest, separating only for those two jewels of the Bavarian Highlands, the lakes, Alp and Schwan. Down in the lower valley were the old grey towers of Füssen; beyond Hohenschwangau and facing Neuschwanstein, three sharp peaks of the higher Alps glittered with snow. Behind the newer castle a green mountain rose almost as straight as a rampart, throwing the romantic white pile into such bold relief that it attracted the eye from every point of the valleys.

As Ordham wandered about, staring at the castles from all sides, or lying on the turf under the trees of the forest, his solitude broken only by a passing peasant in the picturesque grey and green costume of the Highlands, or the sudden appearance of a chamois at the end of a vista, he understood something of Ludwig’s contempt for mere mortals. He loitered on in the groves sacred to the unhappiest man the modern world has seen, many moods sweeping over him, but finally he lay dreaming idly; and, feeling that such romantic solitudes demanded a mate in fancy, since fate was obdurate, he evoked the image of the prettiest girl he knew, Mabel Cutting, and persuaded himself for a few moments that his happiness depended upon seeing her again and at once. He had just resolved to overcome his hatred for letter writing and indite her an epistle on the morrow, when a footman came to remind him that dinner was at seven. Mabel vanished with the chamois, although he made a wry face as he reflected that he was to dine alone in this enchanted vale with Princess Nachmeister.

The same lackey stood outside his door while he dressed, evidently under the impression that he must not be lost sight of again, and this time conducted him to the story above. He had expected as a matter of course that the dinner would be served in one of the smaller rooms, perhaps over in the Kemenate, where Excellenz might have inveigled the Styr to join their little party. But he was shown into a vast room, which was in such a glitter of light that for a moment he was half blinded. Few surprises ruffled his imperturbability, however; and although he appeared barely to glance about him, he observed with much pleasure the immense vaulted room, which was nearly a hundred feet long and almost half as wide, supported on carved columns and decorated with the legend of Parsifal. The ten chandeliers were blazing suns.

At the upper end of the hall a small square table looked like an oasis in a painted desert, with its service of crystal and gold, its candles shaded with pink—no doubt a satiric attention on the part of the King. Princess Nachmeister, very magnificent in pale blue brocade embroidered with silver (which, Ordham reflected, became her hideously), stood by the window and watched the young man with sharp interest as he advanced down the long apartment between the rows of gorgeous lackeys that seemed to await a concourse of kings. She despised the Anglo-Saxon race with all her German soul, believing them to be moderns without subtlety, and never forgetting that they were savages when the Italy of her ancestors was the crown of civilization; but if she had a soft spot in her fibrous old heart, it was for this protégé of hers, and it delighted her to observe that, far from being disconcerted, he had never looked more at his ease. Always, even in his boyish moments, he had the quiet aloofness of those born to the unpurchasable prizes and responsibilities of life, and although he was often nervous and shy in petty ordeals, the centuries that had made him invariably came to his rescue when suddenly placed in positions that shift the ballast of older men of less persistent breeding. Moreover, it is doubtful if the English aristocrat has deference in him for even the royal families of the minor states. He is democratic in manner, partly because it has become the fashion, partly through discretion, partly from sheer careless sense of superiority; but let no one mistake that attitude for humility of spirit or a sense of the universal brotherhood of man.

Ordham was not a little assisted in his present ordeal by his slight erect graceful figure, and he always carried his arms better than any man Excellenz had ever seen. She almost blushed with pleasure (poor lady, she could no longer blush) as she noted the respectful wonder on the faces of the lackeys. No doubt they had hoped to enjoy the embarrassment of so young a guest; and a rare entertainment it would have been to them, for the greatest nobles in Germany seldom found access to a castle where the solitary King forgot the world when he could.

Ordham seated himself with a grumble at the short time he had been given to dress. “And my servant is lost somewhere in this barrack,” he added (and this was a genuine grievance). “I could not find anything!”

“Tiens! Tiens!” (Excellenz relieved her English with French or German according to the specific gravity of her mood.) “You would have been late if I had sent for you an hour earlier. You were roaming all over the place hoping to meet Die Styr—don’t deny it!”

“Why couldn’t she dine with us? She is not going to sing an opera.”

“But she is going to sing out of doors, and her temper is worse than your own. I had a few words with her, and I never saw even a prima donna in such a state of suppressed fury. Of course she expected to sing in this room, but it seems the King has taken a vow that he will honour the memory of The Master by permitting no more music inside his castles, so—enfin!—he gets round his vow by commanding the great Styr to sing in the open—which, of course, is bad for the voice.”

“Why doesn’t she refuse—fall ill? I thought that prime donne were never without corns on their vocal chords when determined to have their own way, and that even a King must be prepared for caprice.”

“Not this King. Styr did not bring her doctor with her, and she loves but two things on earth, her art and Munich. When his Majesty commands, no excuse will serve. He alone in this realm is permitted to indulge caprice.”

“The Styr looks much too imperious to submit to such slavery—disgusting! She could sing anywhere.”

“Could she? Richard Wagner has no foothold as yet in either England or America—hardly outside of Germany. Styr’s voice would tear the old lyric r?les to tatters—divinely lyric as she makes her Isolde. It is Germany or nothing. And in Germany it is Munich or nothing—for she goes no more to Bayreuth.”

“Yes, Munich!—I too love Munich—Bavaria,” Ordham said softly, his eyes straying to the mountains beyond the narrow gorge. The windows were open and he could hear the low roar of the P?llat waterfall.

“Now don’t fall into a dream,” said Excellenz, tartly. “It isn’t often that I have you alone. What a situation—what surroundings! It makes me feel almost young again.”

“Then tell me something about the Styr.” Ordham sometimes amused himself playing on the strings of the old coquette’s remnant of sex. But he always smiled so charmingly that she really did feel younger for the moment. The Nachmeister was never able to decide whether it was his manners or his smile that enabled her to understand the relations between Elizabeth and Essex.

Her fine little nose seemed to rise and point further downward as her round brilliant eyes, whose expression never changed, returned his steady ingenuous gaze. In a moment the corners of her protesting mouth moved upward and she shrugged her shoulders.

“Enfin, mon enfant gaté! What do you want to know? Surely you hear the gossip of the town.”

“All gossip is more or less alike. Is she the King’s mistress?”

“That I am sure you have never heard. His worst enemy would not raise the point. I do not know but that I had better carry you over into the Kemenate to-night.”

“Great heaven!” Ordham upset his champagne. “Why then does he show her more favour than the other singers—why has he given her a title and a house?”

“Her voice. Her art. Are not those enough—for this King? He is quite mad over both. One might have hoped for the supreme Isolde, Kundry, Brünhilde, in the course of another ten or twenty years—for has not Wagner revolutionized voices as well as music?—but she burst upon the world full blown. One day she appeared in Bayreuth and demanded audience of The Master. He taught her the great r?les himself; her voice was ready for them—perfectly placed and trained, flexible, sweet, resonant, noble, enormous, three perfect octaves. Wonderful! No doubt he and the King put their heads together and determined that she should leave Bavaria for short gastspiels only. But where did she come from? Who is she? Why has she no credentials? Even if lowly born, which would seem incredible did not the most queenly creatures appear now and again among the peasantry,—while as for queens—do not they often look as if Nature, worn out, had peevishly sent her highest back to the soil to begin over again?—Tiens! Genius is no respecter of quarterings—but, even so, why such reticence? Beyond the bare assertion that she is an American she has barely alluded to her impossible country. Why doesn’t she invent a plausible story that would put people’s imaginations to sleep? Has it occurred to you as odd that she never will be photographed?” she concluded abruptly.

“How fatiguing to think about anything that matters so little!” He had fumed more than once because he could not obtain even a magazine sketch of her. “The ordinary prima donna caprice, no doubt. Or réclame. Such self-abnegation is enough to make any ‘artist’ notorious.”

Excellenz shook her befeathered head. Ordham, fascinated, as he often was by the intensifying of her wicked old face, wondered if visible poison were about to drop from her lips.

“She dare not. Photographs travel. Did hers reach America—and those vaudeville newspapers—cannot you fancy whole pages devoted to her past? They would rake it up in a week. Fortunate for her that America comes not to Munich and she goes no more to Bayreuth.”

“If she is too haughty to silence slander by an ingenious lie, why should she not be too haughty—too much the artist—to care? She must know that Munich has settled down into the belief that her past will not bear inspection. I have heard that much.”

“Ah, but it is all vague rumour now. Never was the woman, not publicly in the half-world, who did not congratulate herself that many people gave her the benefit of the doubt. And whatever Styr was in America, here in Germany she is a goddess walking on clouds. Her voice, her method, her acting, her superb appearance, which yet is not commonplace beauty, above all, her divine artist soul, have made her the idol of the public. In the Hof there are the usual jealousies and intrigues that have driven so many fine artists from Munich never to return, but the influence of the King, to say nothing of her own wit, tact, and will of cast iron, blunt every shaft. She is cleverer than all the good people in the world put together, and I, Olivia Nachmeister, who have seen so many great gifts disintegrate for want of that virile brain-mortar of many ingredients that compels success, greatly respect her.”

“And in private life?”

“An ivory statue waiting for the night of a public performance to come to life at the bidding of The Master. When she first appeared in Munich our men shook out all their battered flags of a thousand sieges. They bombarded that ivory fortress with notes, flowers, jewels, even with proposals of marriage after she had demonstrated her imperviousness to the more regular sort. The jewels she sent publicly to charities; of the other attentions she made no acknowledgment whatever. Not a man, barring the officials of the Hof, or perhaps a new composer, can boast that he has been received by her alone. She opens her doors once a month, she goes to routs, sometimes to dinners—at first she went a good deal into society, and, I fancy, was fascinated by it; but no man got a word alone with her. I believe she hates men—but mortally! If this be true, it is significant enough. It may be, however, that the monotonies of society merely bore her. She is the most intellectual woman I know.”

“Intellectual?” She had succeeded in surprising his interest to the surface.

“She has a fine library of her own, and her footman may be seen any day striding between her villa and the royal library—looking very cross. She often attends lectures at the University, and when at home always is either reading or buried in her r?les—when she does not walk. Gott! what a life for a woman under forty! And no one would care if she had a lover. She is a great artist. Does not that give her the liberty of a goddess? What futile regrets when she is my age—sixty!” (Ordham amused himself on rainy days looking up the ages of his friends in the Graf Buch, and knew that Princess Nachmeister was seventy; but she was not too old to retain delusions, and fancied that young men were above such curiosities, or that their memories at least were unfeminine.)

“Where does she walk?”

“That no one discovers. I have an idea that she rises at four in the morning, when, of a certainty, she will not meet the gallants of Munich. She is always in fine physical condition, and one would know that she took much exercise—and baths—not too favourite a pastime in Germany!—even did she not allude once in a while to her ‘tramps.’ But don’t lie in wait for her. You would only get a snub for your pains.”

Ordham coloured haughtily. He did not like the word. “I never lie in wait for any one,” he replied coldly. “Besides, no doubt, she is stalked by a footman.”

“None of her servants speak English.”

“How is it that her German is so faultless? I am told that before any stories got about she was taken for a German as a matter of course.”

“Her parents were Hungarian. Her singing teacher in America was a Hanoverian.”

“Has she told you that much?”

“Now and again I get something out of her—but nothing that really counts. To judge from her manner, her carriage, her breeding, she might be a Karoly or a Festetics, but one day when I told her bluntly there was a rumour to the effect that her parents were emigrants,—steerage emigrants,—she replied coolly that she should be delighted if the story put an end to romantic nonsense.”

“I should like to believe that she was a runaway—or an abducted—princess.”

“So would all the other romantic babies. Unfortunately, we have her word for it that she is an American born—and reared. Of course her policy in admitting that much is to stifle curiosity in her origin—origin in America not counting with Europeans in the least—as well as to discourage curiosity. The place is so vast—ten thousand miles across, I am told—or is it in diameter?—that one might as well look for a lost soul in Hades. She has even admitted that she was on the stage in America. But under what name? That I cannot surprise out of her, and the few Americans I know never saw nor heard of her. They all live in Europe. Of course she never sang over there. She need not tell us that, for if they were still red and wore feathers, they would have made that voice famous in a day.”

“What makes you so sure that Margarethe Styr is not her name?”

“Am I a Frau Professor or an old woman of the world? When the King decided that bracelets, rings, even necklaces were inadequate acknowledgment from the first living royal patron of art to the greatest interpreter of the new music, and that she must be raised to the Bavarian aristocracy—Gott!—I was commanded to be her social sponsor. Naturally, with the utmost delicacy, I endeavoured to extract such information as would satisfy the curiosity of her future compatriots. I distilled a little and inferred more. Enfin! I am convinced that the story, whatever it may be, is hideous—but hideous! Who minds a lover or two?—and an artist, as I have said. I know women—ach Gott, ja! and I have studied the Styr far more deeply than she knows. There are certain signs—”

Excellenz lifted her shoulders and curved the corners of her mouth almost to her chin.

“I wonder!” Again Ordham’s glance strayed into the dusk beyond the glare. He recalled the curses and the ecstasies of Isolde. A footman changed his plate, and he asked, “How is it that I have never met her, even at a rout?”

“She has gone into society very little this year. I fancy she is now quite tired of it, and that only a royal command could draw her forth. And”—with a sigh—“there is no court, as you know.”

“Do the men still pursue her?”

“Not the older men; there are always recruits among the fledglings, but men soon learn the difference between ice and ivory, and life is short.”

“I should like to meet her.”

“No doubt. But she is more difficult to meet than the King.”

“You seem to know her very well.”

“Comparatively. But she happens to be the only genius of my acquaintance—of my own sex—and I am never quite at ease with her. I should far more aptly take a liberty with the Queen, to whom, indeed, I am privileged to say du; but I have never ventured into that zone of liberty with Die Styr. She is the most majestic, or shall I say, the most frozen, creature I have ever met. Where did she get it? Her origin! Her past! She upsets every theory.”

“There are no theories where genius is concerned. And if, in addition, she has an intellect—naturally she dominates. There are so few intellects. D’you see?”

“I do, you impertinent boy! And I shall not even try to present you to her.”

“According to all accounts, dear Princess, you should be the last to fear her, for in your society alone does she appear to find any pleasure. Who else can claim to know her? I have heard of no one.”

“Again I am assured of your fitness for the diplomatic career! As I told you, she was placed in my hands. I found her little in need of instruction. She seems to have been born with a sort of royal tact—this makes me believe that her parents were political refugees, at least. Perhaps they had disgraced themselves in other ways. Or it is possible that she is the illegitimate offspring of a prince and some pretty little actress who was bundled out of the country. Austrian archdukes have a mania for romantic marriages. N’importe! We have always remained friends of a sort. I rarely let a week pass without going to see her, and once in a while she comes to me alone and sits in my garden—and expresses her scorn of Sardou and her admiration of Ibsen! When I would give two or three of my best memories to hear how many lovers she has had, and what they were like. A woman can always be read through her lovers. Whatever Styr’s may have been, her one desire now is to be impersonal. I might as well invoke Brynhildr or Iseult. Perhaps nothing personal remains in that charming casket. Off the stage ivory, on the stage fire. It is all very odd. I have never been so intriguée in my life. Don’t try to know her. She might find you worth talking to—and then—who knows?”

Ordham flushed at the bare suggestion. “I am quite determined to know her.”

Excellenz noted that his eyes were less infantile than usual. “Well, later—I will take you to one of her routs,” she remarked indifferently, determined to do nothing of the sort. “I wonder where this remarkable concert is to take place.” She beckoned to the master of ceremonies, and was informed that the prima donna would stand on the Marienbrücke, the narrow bridge that spans the P?llat at a dizzy height, and that the guests would listen from the windows of the Festsaal, or from the balcony of the throne room below, as suited their pleasure. His Majesty would occupy the balcony before his bedroom windows.

Ordham’s eyes flashed. “When?” he demanded.

“When the moon rises, sir. In less than an hour.”