LI THE ROCKET WITHOUT A STICK

When a great audience assembles with an amiable desire to be pleased, agreeably titillated with the thought of a new interest in the wide and often barren ranges of the impersonal life, and with their vanity pluming itself upon inaugurating a new era, the object of their distinguished regard must fail ignominiously to convince them that they have made a mistake.

Covent Garden was filled from stalls to roof on the night of Styr’s London déb?t, and the pit and the galleries were crowded with the true music lovers, who were mainly Germans. Princess Nachmeister, as well as Ordham and the enthusiasts he had enlisted, both in the fashionable and artistic world, had pulled the wires so subtly that practically everybody present fancied himself the discoverer of Styr, and hardly a person in the stalls and boxes but bore a distinguished name, either inherited or made. Ordham sat in his box alone. Mabel was ailing and her mother remained with her. He looked as impassive as he was nervous and angry; Styr had stolen into London, no one knew when, and he had not had a glimpse of her in private, although a few moments before he left Grosvenor Square he had received an invitation to lunch with her on the following day.

The opera was Tristan und Isolde, and Styr, delighted to sing it again after her long abstinence, gave the great rendering to which Ordham was accustomed. Although the fashionable part of the audience was reduced almost to idiocy before the end of the evening, particularly during the long innings of the tenor—second-rate, of course, on such short notice, and at this season—in the last act, there was no question of Styr’s personal triumph. The most bored remained until the end, and then gave “The Great German Prima Donna” an ovation. She had been called out repeatedly after the two preceding acts, but only twenty appearances after the final curtain satisfied an audience proud of its perspicacity, and generously happy in paying tribute to genius. The Germans shouted themselves hoarse, particularly when she dragged Richter out with her. All admired Styr’s manner of receiving homage almost as much as her voice and acting. It was neither effusive like that of the Latin song birds to whom they were accustomed; she kissed no bouquets and baskets of orchids, although these tributes were many: nor was she the haughty gracious queen of fiction, after the fashion of certain actresses and prime donne, thoroughly spoilt or qualifying for social incursions. She merely walked out and showed herself, seeming to tower above them all, with the cold, calm, grave majesty of the Sphinx. She was Styr. She was theirs until the opera lights went out. They might look their full. She bent her head to the royal box only because custom demanded it; nevertheless, she throbbed with exultation, for she knew that the wires would carry her triumph that night to every capital in the world. Her fortune was made. Once she sought Ordham’s eyes, and her own flashed out the gratitude she felt, then lingered for fully half a minute. When the ovation subsided, she obeyed a summons to the royal box, repaid compliments with the suave phrases of long experience, then, ignoring the crowd gathered about her dressing room, and numerous invitations to supper, went home to her frugal meal and bed.

Ordham walked restlessly up and down the large private sitting room in one of the Dover Street hotels where a table was laid for two. The Countess Tann, he had been informed, was dressing, begged him to accept her apologies; she would join him in ten minutes.

He roamed about for half an hour, so torn with annoyance, doubt, and mortification, as well as resentment against the great and capricious Styr herself, that he was far from that mood of tremulous happiness, stung with fear, which he had achieved in imagination many times. It was abominable of Styr to steal into London when he had made up his mind to rise at four of the clock and meet her at the station. With this heroic act he had hoped to atone for certain unavoidable derelictions. It was the bitterest mortification of his life that he was unable to introduce his friend to London society under his own roof. His mother-in-law had deftly avoided a renewal of the subject. Mabel had sweetly vowed to break through that Puritan casing in which her mother dwelt like an antediluvian mammal (this was Ordham’s image, not Mabel’s); but he had chanced to overhear a scrap of conversation between the pair which convinced him that not only did she meditate nothing of the sort, but had joined forces with her mother and old Levering in acquainting London society with the variegated, manifold, and heinous iniquities of Styr’s past. The favourite story, Ordham discovered soon after, was that “Peggy Hill” had deserted her starving and consumptive mother in the native mining town to become the squaw of an Indian chieftain, and had worn paint and feathers and carried pappooses on her back until a Western millionnaire had chanced along, offered her sealskin and diamonds, fought a duel unto death with the chieftain—who, wearing only feathers, had many vulnerable points—and carried the heartless mother to New York. There she promptly deserted him for a horse jockey, and after having figured as co-respondent in innumerable divorce suits, had opened a disreputable resort, over which she had presided affluently (when not in jail) until ordered once for all out of New York by the police. Then she had cultivated her voice, and, finding it a gold mine, conserved it with a fairly consistent exercise of virtue. This richly picturesque past, in which any prima donna might rejoice, delighted London, but it was hardly one to open the portals of society. London could stand a good deal—but really! There are lines! They would applaud her in Covent Garden, talk about her over every tea cup; but extend to her the greatest of the world’s hospitalities—hardly! The information that Munich society was at her feet they treated with the contempt it deserved. Munich!

Ordham had discovered with astonishment and no little humiliation, that although with money, energy, and finesse, he might import German opera to London and induce people to hear it, although he was popular, admired, and wealthy, he had practically no power socially. He reflected bitterly that this was not to be accounted for only by his youth, his brother’s durability, the fact that he was not established under an imposing roof of his own, but that, much as he was liked, he stood for nothing, would be forgotten before he had lived out of London a month. He was a second son married to a rich American girl and living in the house of his mother-in-law. Who was he to presume to dictate to London society? Had he attempted it, he would have been put in his place as summarily as had he been an American himself.

And his mother had basely deserted him. Invited to join a driving party to the chateaux of northern France, she had left London with a hurried note of explanation to her son, feigning to forget the coming of his friend, but devoutly thankful for any escape from what was assuming the contours of a problem. She might rank among the independent women of London, rather weak on the subject of celebrities; but really! His grandmother doted on him, and he had approached her in the hope that she in her great rank and cynical indifference to a criticism that never could affect her, would help him out of his difficulty, enable him to return some of those hospitalities now bulking in his tormented imagination. But he had merely received a reminder of the duke’s aversion from foreigners and disbursements, and much sound advice against making mistakes in his youth; society had cast out its own before. But he had no intention of insulting Styr by entertaining her without the countenance of his family.

His only success had been among certain personages in the world of art, letters, and music, who, indeed, did not wait for his gentle manipulation; they were thankful for the opportunity to do homage to one of the world’s great artists. Whether the ridiculous stories current were true or not hardly concerned them, but they assumed as a matter of course that they were incidental, having suffered more or less themselves. Styr was certain to receive a social ovation from the sets that Ordham privately thought the best worth while in London, but that by no means satisfied him; after all, they were not of his own class, and it was this class—in the eyes of the world, representative England—that he had set his heart upon honouring his friend.

As he wandered about, glaring at the walls and furniture, far too exclusive to be artistic (it was, indeed, early Victorian), he felt his temper rising every moment; he hated Life, that gave with one hand only to take with the other, that had contracted the habit of late of balking his royal pleasure. Nevertheless, he was able to reflect that it was as well many circumstances had combined to stifle the lover in him for the moment. This first interview was the only one he had dreaded. Could they but shoot those breakers even plain speech between them would not be fraught with danger. He did not need experience to assure him that when lovers, long inarticulate, meet after a separation not too long, those brain centres that check and regulate human actions are liable to suffocation by fire and flood. But, were all barriers razed, he was in too bad a humour to-day (he had also been forced to swallow effusive regrets from Mabel before leaving home) to find a corner in him for ardours. At the same time he sighed at this new evidence of the eternal contrast between the anticipated and the real; his tremours over this first meeting had been very sweet.

Nothing perhaps is so eloquent of the artless respectability of the British race as the composition of its older hotels: drawing-rooms and bedrooms rarely connect. (And yet an Englishwoman, visiting the United States for the first time, innocently remarked that she could see the Americans were a virtuous race, as they used portières instead of doors!) The only door of Styr’s sitting room in this expensive hostelry gave entrance to the public corridor. Ordham heard the hissing of under-flounces for a full minute before the door opened and Styr entered. Her cheeks were flushed. She wore a Fedora gown of white camel’s-hair and silk, with a yellow flower in her hair and another in her girdle. He had never seen her look so lovely off the stage.

“It is too delightful to see you once more!” she cried with the warm hypocrisy of a woman who longs to fling herself into a man’s arms and say nothing. “I know I am unforgiven for not letting you come to the station. But did you really think I should let you see me after twenty-four hours in train and boat? That was like a man! And now I have kept you waiting. But of course I expected that you would be late.”

“How can you say such a thing? I wanted above all things to go to that train. I shall never forgive you.”

“Ah! but had I let you meet me, I never should have forgiven myself. Shall we sit beside these delightful window boxes? I changed the luncheon hour to two o’clock—I woke up so late. Oh, tell me that I was quite wonderful last night. It seemed to me that I never had made a real effort before. I know that I triumphed, but I want to hear that you were satisfied.”

Ordham muttered what banalities he could summon. It was evident that her spirits were high, whether artificial or not. She ran on: “Never, never can I express to you what this sudden and splendid opportunity to sing in London means to me. You are my good angel. What had I ever done that you should take so much trouble for me? Those examinations? Yes, for that I shall take credit till the last of my days. But even so—”

“There was no question of paying any debt.” Ordham was scowling at the roses in the carpet. “I could not if I would repay you for many things. I have not the least desire to do so. I wanted you to come here and force London to accept Wagner. Of course you have become the rage in a night. You will reconquer some seventeen times during this too brief visit. It is hardly worth talking about. I wonder if you will like London. Have you ever been here before? I forget.”

“Never. Think of it! I had often visited the Continent before going there to live, but for one reason or another I never got to London. I am as excited at the idea of seeing as of singing to it.”

He had recklessly brought up the subject, but he suddenly felt the meanness of every excuse he had concocted. Should he tell her the truth? Why not first as last? She would not be long discovering it. While he hesitated, she came to his rescue. Before leaving Munich Princess Nachmeister had casually remarked that she feared dear Adela was too puritanical to receive a stage artist under her roof; for the matter of that, the Anglo-Saxon races, compared with the continent of Europe, were so provincial on many subjects that she never met an English or American woman who did not make her feel as if she were the mistress of every man in Europe. But as regarded stage folk, it must be remembered that Munich was almost exceptional in its catholicity. In Paris, in Rome, in many other capitals, they were anathema outside their proper spheres. Therefore was Styr prepared for the dark brow and nervous manner of her friend. She knew that as he had not written her before this of receptions arranged in her honour and begging her to reserve certain dates, his family must have refused point-blank to receive her. She was hardly disappointed, for she had little of the American’s romantic weakness for the social citadels of the old world, and she knew Ordham so well that her sympathy in any case would have been for him, not for herself. She leaned forward and said impulsively:

“Do promise me one thing! This is not only my first visit to England, but it may be a long time before I can come again. I want to be a tourist. I want to see all the sights. And to see them with you! Ah, fancy! Don’t be haughty and tell me that you scorn sight-seeing. Don’t tell me that you want me to meet a lot of tiresome people. I have not time for both. Do you hate the idea?”

“Hate it?” He seized her hand and kissed it in his immense relief. “I should love it. I have never been inside the Tower, nor the British Museum, and only once to the Abbey—to a wedding. It will be too enchanting to have all those hours alone with you. We will go to Windsor and Hampton Court, Madame Tussaud’s and the National Gallery, exactly like two American tourists. Promise that you will not go to a single place with any one else.”

“I do not expect to see any one else except the opera house people.”

“But—of course!—attentions will be showered upon you. It is most unfortunate that my wife—”

“Oh, do let me forget that you are married. We shall wander about just as we did in Bavaria, and in this crowded city no one will be the wiser. Will you take me to the Tower this afternoon?”

“Will I? Rather!”

His good humour was quite restored, and he spent an entirely happy afternoon, even condescending to share her interest in that mighty volume of tragic drama, the Tower of London.