XXXII EVERY MAN HIS OWN PILOT

Mrs. Cutting had bought, several years since, the lease of one of the great houses in Grosvenor Square from a bachelor who, late in life, had inherited it among other properties, and had lived comfortably at his club too long to move or to think favorably of matrimony. At his tenant’s tactful suggestion he reserved the ancestral furniture and pictures, sending them to one of his country houses, and Mrs. Cutting, in refurnishing, had wisely gone to Paris. Knowing the importance of the least of individualizations in a city which resents the unorthodox and is correspondingly fascinated by it, she had, instead of making her mansion the replica of a thousand other fine houses or even of permitting herself to be seduced by ?stheticism, that bastard of the Brotherhood, re-created the big heavy rooms into a setting appropriate for a marquise of the eighteenth century. But too wise, or too indifferent, to become the slave of any period, her house was merely light, gay, brilliant, not too full of exquisite furniture gilded and brocaded; there were pastels in very old frames, costly trifles, the whole effect infinitely French. Everybody pronounced the word vaguely upon entering the series of reception rooms, drawing-rooms, and boudoirs, barely noting if the effect were produced by the pale brocades set in the white and gold of the panelled walls, the polished floors, the old but beautiful rugs, or by the numberless details, such as the bluish grey inner blinds, drawn up on either side and in the middle, that one sees in any modern French house. But the effect was there, that bright delicate luxurious setting for two beautiful women as dainty and splendid as ever the aristocracy of France achieved before her people found themselves; and all London approved and went there to be refreshed. Although it was now quite three years since the house had been remodelled and thrown open, the illness and death of her husband, followed by litigation, had called Mrs. Cutting so often from the city of her heart that the season just past was the first she had spent uninterruptedly in London since she had been able to equip herself for conquest. An outsider, lacking the halo of fame, no matter how wealthy, cannot impress herself deeply upon a vast and busy society with no more obvious setting than a house hired from some economical noble. But this past season was a very pleasant memory to Mrs. Cutting, not only on account of her daughter’s unqualified success, but because no American in London could dispute the fact that her house had been the scene of the most superb and perfectly appointed entertainments with which dollars had ever defied sovereigns.

Lady Bridgminster, at once the most exclusive and the most independent of women (her Bohemian protégés belonged to the aristocracies of the art world), had been her sponsor, and she had met at once many great people, ordinarily indifferent to or disapproving of rich Americans, whom she might not have met for years, if ever. She was booked for certain country houses in the autumn and early winter which she had long felt she owed it to her American pride to visit, but, even with her already select acquaintance and social tact, hitherto inaccessible. In consequence, never had two women been such devoted friends from the middle of April until the middle of July as “Lady Pat” and Mrs. Cutting, and society had been considerably amused.

As Ordham was escorted through the immense entrance hall and up to the reception room at the head of the grand staircase, then left where he could command a long vista, he felt as if he had entered an enchanted palace. He had been in many palaces, many fine mansions, but never before where the wise gift of selection had eliminated the haphazard accumulations of the centuries, and appropriated all that was beautiful and artistic in historic houses whose owners could no longer pay their monthly bills. He knew what this wondrous interior meant to countless impoverished families whose ancestors had dazzled France. It was the most complete demonstration of the power of practically unlimited wealth that he had ever witnessed, and he wondered if rich Americans really appreciated their good fortune, or if they took it as a matter of course from the moment they were laid in their golden cradle; he was sure that American royalties, unlike European, would never condescend to use merely gilded cradles.

Down at one end of the long vista he saw Mabel Cutting approaching. He rose, but stood still for a moment, hoping that she had not yet seen him, and curious to discover what his first impression of her would be after these eventful months of separation. Moreover, he felt suddenly nervous.

His only impression at the moment was that the figure moving toward him down the bright formal French rooms, was the most graceful he had ever seen. Styr walked like a goddess. Mabel Cutting had the exquisite unconscious grace of a highly bred young girl, a grace that suggests a complete independence of the gravity of the earth. She walked as lightly as if she had never thought about walking at all; her slender figure had none of the conscious upstanding dignity of maturity; it was almost somnambulistic, an effect in harmony with her dreamy large eyes. She wore a gown and hat of various shades of green, and looked like spring reappearing for a moment to reproach the excesses of summer. And she was far more beautiful than when he had seen her last. Oh, no doubt of that. Beside her trotted LaLa, looking like a gnome.

Ordham stood spellbound before this vision for a moment; then advanced with even more dignity than usual, that she might not detect his tremors. Miss Cutting smiled pleasantly and offered her hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Ordham?” Her voice was light, sweet, cold, undeveloped. “Mother will be down presently and give you a cup of tea. Shall we sit in here? It is not so formal.”

She preceded him into a large room, which assuredly, thought he, must have been lifted bodily from some unfortunate royal chateau; but he was far more interested in the graceful figure before him, in her cool ease of manner. Where was the chatterbox of six months since? As they seated themselves beside the tea-table she politely but a little absently asked him if he was glad to be in England again after so long a sojourn abroad; then, her curiosity apparently satisfied, left the conversation in his keeping. He was searching his mind for a new subject to avert an awkward pause, wondering if the great absent eyes fixed upon him gave heed to his unprecedented exertions, and growing vaguely angry, when Mrs. Cutting came brightly in. She shook him warmly by the hand, and prepared to pour out tea with a smiling alertness that made her daughter appear the more indifferent by contrast. As Mrs. Cutting ran on, indeed, Mabel seemed to withdraw more and more into herself, and even while drinking her tea gave the impression of performing a polite act in which she took no interest. At all events she made no attempt to enter the conversation, which, for a time, was all of Ordham’s examinations and future. Once or twice he sought her eyes in the suddenly remembered fashion of that fortnight in Munich when they flirted behind “Momma’s” back; but in vain. Mrs. Cutting was no longer Momma and Mabel was no longer Mabel. What was she? Being a mere man, it was incomprehensible to him that even a London season and many admirers, to say nothing of tutors and books, could transform a beautiful but decidedly commonplace child into a wondrous creature with the poise of her mother, the mystery of those maidens the poets invoke from cloudland, and the intellectual abstraction of a budding genius. She was so perfectfully beautiful, so provocative in her abstraction, that he was at first merely interested. But at the end of half an hour, when she had not addressed a remark to him, but had sat as if she were in front of a camera, he began to grow really angry. He was not accustomed to disdain. He was quite aware that if not yet the head of his family, he was more than a match for any American girl, and had received something more than encouragement from the young lady’s mamma. Moreover, and here he sat up suddenly and began talking with animation to Mrs. Cutting, was he not the intimate friend of one of the greatest women in the world? For the first time he felt the flattery of the haughty Styr’s selection, and in the present engagement it gave him a distinct moral advantage that almost visibly uplifted his chest. He had permitted Mrs. Cutting to sustain the conversation before; he now turned to her wholly, and, the talk having drifted to Munich, gave her a brilliant description of Styr’s Isolde, which should at least display to this absurd young person his knowledge of the art which had lured her to London in the heats of August.

“It is the disappointment of my life that I have not seen Styr,” said Mrs. Cutting. “She did not sing while I was in Munich, and I have never been to Bayreuth. To be frank, I care little for Wagner. When one has been brought up on Patti and Nilsson, so to speak,—”

“Mother!”

Ordham turned with a start. Miss Cutting was regarding her mother with eyes sparkling disapproval. She moved them to Ordham, and the access of interest in those profound orbs was unmistakable. “Thank heaven I am not old-fashioned!” Her voice was so sweet, almost plaintive, that even an American mother could not feel snubbed. “What little I have heard of Wagner—almost wholly at orchestral concerts here—makes me long to hear more—all. Perhaps my English teacher infected me with his own enthusiasm. And he, too, has heard the great Styr. Is it true, Mr. Ordham, that you have heard her in all her r?les?”

“Oh, many times.”

“And is she really so great?”

“She is quite the greatest singer and actress in the world.”

“Ah!” Miss Cutting looked him full in the eyes. Her own seemed to say: “How wonderful you are to love and understand such great things, when most men at your age prefer the Halls!” Mrs. Cutting interposed in her cool, smooth, almost aggressively cultivated voice:

“But she, too, has limitations. She could not sing any of the old r?les. I may be old-fashioned, darling, but I assuredly do prefer Lucia, Leonora, Violetta, with their marvellous vocalization, to those declaiming and unmelodious r?les. I sat through Die Walküre once, and it seemed to me that they merely talked interminably in the singing register. It was quite a week before I felt rested.”

“But Die Walküre is full of drama!” Miss Cutting looked at her parent with a soft steadiness of reproach. Ordham had never seen eyes that revealed and concealed so much. Her small curved mouth, pink and half parted over the little white teeth, was as innocent as a baby’s, yet withal had a delightfully sarcastic uplift at the corners. “Dear mother! There is not a moment when one must not be thrilled by the happenings of very strange things indeed, and it was Wagner’s object to ennoble speech; he thought the old trills and roulades—and all—debased it.”

“Yes, darling, but the speeches need not be so long. Think of Fricka scolding Wotan throughout half of an interminable act; and as for that duologue in the last act between Wotan and Brünhilde—well, its mere memory threatens to deprive me of all the patience I possess. But I foresee my fate. I shall have to take you to Munich next winter.”

“A month at least. I must have that before we go to the Riviera. Oh, there is so much in the world to see, to learn! I wish I were thirty, so that I could feel that I had accomplished a little.”

“You have begun,” said Ordham, smiling. His anger and pique had vanished. “But I hope you like England.”

“It is my second home, of course. Mother has brought me here during most of my vacations.” But there was no enthusiasm in her tones, and she added: “I don’t fancy I shall care deeply for any one place until I have seen a great deal of life. My head feels like an empty house full of tiny rooms, all vacant behind staring windows. Well, one grows older every day.”

Ordham looked at that lovely head, with its mass of shining yellow hair, the full luminous brow, the deep dark eyes, the pure polished whiteness of the skin. He could imagine no more delightful task than furnishing those clean empty little rooms. He suddenly felt that he had accumulated a vast amount in his twenty-four years, and that perhaps it was his duty to decorate the interior of that shapely skull. But her eyes wandered from him again as Mrs. Cutting asked him abruptly what he knew of Styr.

“One hears more and more of her every day, over here,” she added. “So many English people have become convinced that it is their duty to admire Wagner, and are making conscientious efforts. They not only go to Bayreuth, but these last two or three years they have taken in Munich on their way to the Riviera or Italy. Some of the artists, too, come back raving over her. No doubt they really understand Wagner. Do you meet her off the stage?”

“Rarely.”

“Is she supposed to be educated?”

“Educated? She is a highly accomplished woman—has furnished all her little rooms, I should think.” He smiled and turned to Mabel, who was feeding the pug.

“Ah! you know her?” Mrs. Cutting’s voice was very smooth. “She is not received?”

“Rather!”

“How interesting! And how odd—that she should be—well, like that—and received. There are stories.” She glanced significantly at the averted head of her young daughter. It was patent that Mabel was not to be permitted to furnish any of her vacant cells in the primal colours.

Ordham lifted his shoulders. “She is a great artist. In Munich that suffices. And now, at least, I fancy that little but her art interests her. Her life is one long act of devotion and sacrifice.”

“Nevertheless,” said Mrs. Cutting, as Mabel, having boxed the ears of LaLa for spilling his cream, was escorting him to the door, “she had better not return to New York.”

Ordham’s eyes, suddenly large and cold, interrogated her.

“It seems that one of the old gossips of the union Club spent a few days not long since in Munich and recognized Styr as a woman—well, whom every New York man once knew by sight, at least. He always spends the season in London, and now that Styr is becoming famous, it gives him great satisfaction to add his little quota of scandal.”

“It is quite possible that he mistook her for some one else. She looks like one woman off the stage, and another on.” Ordham felt an uncontrollable nervousness in his knees and moved about the room, staring at the soft pastels.

“He saw her both on and off. There is no doubt, I fancy. She was supposed to be dead, lost with a cheap company of players on the Pacific Coast. But he says that no one that had ever seen her could possibly mistake her for any one else, greatly as she has gone off—he says that she was a beautiful tigress when she squandered fortunes in New York. But, as you say, it does not matter in Munich, where, dear souls, they would worship the devil himself if he could sing. And, of course, she meditates no social conquest of London or New York. Levering says that she is very clever!”

“She is quite above thinking of such things.” Then, not wishing to hurt this charming woman’s feelings, he added hastily: “Art is a very exalting as well as exacting mistress. Nothing else seems worth while to so ardent a votary as Frau von Tann. If ever she comes here to sing, I fancy she will be the one to raise the social defences. You know that we too can be indifferent to pasts when they are walled off by fame. If Countess Tann created a furore at Covent Garden, she would be run after by every lion hunter in London. Remember Bernhardt.”

The colour left Mrs. Cutting’s cheek, and an angry light sprang to her eyes. But if prompted to deliver her mind of its disgust for the complaisance of a society in which she found no other fault, she thought better of it and replied calmly:

“Well—Bernhardt is French. One never expects much of people that have not had the advantages of the strict tenets of the Anglo-Saxon race; and when a transgressor is the most famous actress in the world, and has lived her life in Paris, the most feverish of all lives in the most feverish of all cities—well, of course, one not only makes allowances, but looks upon her as such a sheer outsider that one feels justified in paying tribute to her genius—or further satisfying one’s curiosity, whichever it may be. But this Styr—ah! here is the carriage. You will drive with us for an hour in the Park? Of course there will be nobody to look at, but the air will be delightful.”

He sat opposite the graceful voluble mother and the silent beautiful daughter with her eyes full of dreams and the hideous pug on her lap; and not only in the park, but during the drive down to Richmond, where he persuaded them to go for dinner. Once only, as they drove home through the twilight, he held Mabel’s eyes for a full minute. There was none of the old innocent coquetry in them, but they looked as if they were taking his measure and pronouncing him worth while if not heroic.

Styr’s name was not mentioned again, nor for many a day after.