LII MATRIMONY

Mabel rustled into her husband’s dressing room as he was giving the last careful strokes to his front locks, which he arranged in a manner peculiar to himself. He nodded to her absently, longing for the time when he could ask her bluntly to respect his privacy, since she was impervious to hints, and she wandered to the window and fingered the bright flowers in the boxes.

“It is such a heavenly day,” she sighed. “Somehow, I never can grow accustomed to spending summer in the city. How—how—does Countess Tann like London?”

“She loves it, of course. Who does not love London at this season?”

“Well, it is certainly much nicer than to sing here in winter. I suppose she is perfectly wild over her success.”

“She has never had anything else.”

“But I mean in London, where no one, that is only a few, really likes Wagner. Some one said yesterday that, although Styr’s personal success was beyond dispute, he feared the Wagner season would be a failure as a whole; five weeks of Wagner was more than any one not a German could stand, and if they give the Ring again—”

“They will do nothing so tactless. But Die Walküre is romantic enough to please the silliest and great enough to entrance those that really do know music. No other performance of G?tterd?mmerung will be given, more’s the pity, for Brünhilde was always one of her two greatest r?les, and her rendering of it has deepened and even changed somewhat since I heard it in Munich. But no doubt it would fill the house only once—with people that want to be able to say they have heard the Ring! Styr has also consented to sing Elizabeth and Elsa; her voice is rather heavy for those r?les, but a hundred people will go to hear Lohengrin and Tannh?user where one will even show himself at the greater operas a second time. The enterprise is not in the hands of fools—I know several members of the committee—and everything has been thought of to insure the season’s success.”

“How nice! Of course she is quite extraordinary. I am so sorry I could only sit through one act last night. And what a pity I cannot meet her. It is too old-fashioned of mother.”

“You could leave a card on her.”

“But, Jackie dear, she would then feel at liberty to come here, and after all it is mother’s house.”

Ordham turned to her with a rising flush. “Do you mean that you believe Countess Tann would force herself upon any one? I must have given you a strange opinion of her.”

“Good heavens, Jackie dear, I hope you have not told her that we—that mother will not receive her. How dreadful!”

“Certainly I have not. But she does not happen to be a fool. She has now been in London ten days, and as neither my wife nor my mother-in-law has left so much as a card on her, don’t you suppose she understands?”

“But surely you told her that I cannot go about?”

“You drive every day. There is no effort involved in leaving a card.”

“But—how like a man! One can hardly go that far and no farther. If this were only our house!”

Ordham drew his lids together. “If it were, would you receive Countess Tann?”

But Mabel did not flinch. “Of course I would, Jackie darling. I would even defy mother—we could go to a hotel—if only I felt up to it. But I am a wreck and mother takes such care of me.”

Ordham set his teeth and turned away, grimly reflecting that the one mental trait his wife possessed which compelled his admiration was the neatness with which she could deliver a lie. She broke off the heads of several geraniums and then cried out, as if suddenly inspired with a bright idea: “Let us go to the country to-day. It is too utterly heavenly to stay in town. Let us take a long drive through Surrey.”

“It is not good for you to take long drives.”

“Oh, it won’t hurt me a bit. We can rest often in those ducky little inns, and sit in the woods. It would be too delicious.”

“There might be an accident, and I never should forgive myself.”

“Oh! With our horses? One is always thankful when any horses of mother’s will go off a walk. Say that you will!” She spoke with a charming girlish eagerness.

“I am afraid that I cannot. I have half a dozen engagements.”

“But, Jackie darling, you ought not to make engagements for a whole day when you know how lonesome I am without you.” Mabel fell headlong into the domestic snare, heedless of resolutions and advice from her mother-in-law.

He turned to her with the flush gone from his face, and said in the gentlest manner possible: “Should you mind if I asked you not to call me Jackie? I have often intended to do so. I hope you don’t mind.”

It was Mabel’s turn to flush, and although her temper was not quick, her eyes flashed and her lips trembled. “Why?” she demanded. “Do—do you think it a liberty?”

“How can you say such a thing?” But although he spoke promptly, he was surprised to discover that she had put a latent resentment into form.

“Why,” stammered Mabel, “you are English. I believe mother is right. But this—this is really too much. I wonder if you could ever understand that we Americans have exactly as good an opinion of ourselves as you English have of yourselves? Perhaps we too look down upon all other nations. We have the right to! United States History is the only history that English people never seem to know anything about.”

“You look too pretty when you flash with patriotism like that.” Ordham smiled and kissed her lightly. “But you flew off at a tangent without giving me time to explain. It merely happens that I have always hated the nickname of Jack. In fact, I don’t like nicknames at all. It seems to me that they deindividualize. Men that permit themselves to be called Bertie and Olly and Sonny might as well shave their heads or wear a beard. I was christened John, and I feel John, not Johnny or Jackie.”

“Your mother calls you Johnny.”

“My mother goes in for fads. Nobody else has ever dared to call me Johnny.”

Mabel, always easily mollified, put her arms about his unresponsive neck. “If you had told me before, I never would have called you Jackie, although I love it, and John is so horridly formal. I shall feel as if I were addressing my husband’s double, or something. Do you really hate it—Jackie?”

“Yes.”

“Well! . . . I won’t any more. But you must do something for me in return. You must take me to the country to-day.”

“I really could not take the risk.”

“Then take me to Kensington Gardens.”

“I am so sorry—I think I told you I had several engagements. You see—you are generally occupied all day, with one thing or another. I have been thrown on my own resources, and now I cannot get out of these engagements I have made.”

“But you always used to come home to luncheon.”

“Now that you have so many American friends in London I did not fancy you would miss me; and as several of my own old friends are in town, I thought it a good opportunity to show them some attentions.”

“Why don’t you bring them to the house?”

“I could not think of fatiguing you, and men prefer to dine at a club, anyway.”

The words “Margarethe Styr” were shrieking in Mabel’s brain, but she was very proud, and rarely impolitic in any but small matters. Her mother had soothed her growing jealousy by assuring her that the great singer was far too occupied, now that all artistic London was running after her, to spare time for any man. Mabel could not crush her natural suspicions, particularly as she had discovered that he had once more thrown over the much-enduring Foreign Office, but she was determined not to alienate this puzzling young Englishman, whom she understood less every day, by “making scenes.” “Don’t bore him!” Lady Pat had warned her before leaving for France. “Give him his head and don’t ask him questions. He would not confide in himself if he could help it. He worships you and is far too lazy to pursue any woman, or even to respond to her advances. But don’t bore him.”

Mabel, with all the American girl’s independence of spirit, and firm belief in the inferiority of man, found such advice little to her taste, but, loving as she did, was willing to accept any that would help her to enchain her husband’s languid affections. But more than once of late she had turned cold as she asked herself if ever she could understand him, become really intimate with him. And now, kind and thoughtful as he still was, another fear was whispering. It seemed to her confirmed by his refusal of her simple request. While she might control the more direct expressions of her jealousy, the temptation was irresistible to indulge in the ancient formul?. She dropped her arms and turned away with a quivering lip.

“I don’t believe you love me any longer!”

“How can you say such a thing?”

“Do you?”

“Of course.”

She wheeled about and regarded him steadily. It occurred to him that she looked less vapidly pretty than usual.

“If you ceased to care for me,” she said stammeringly, her eyes widening with fear, “you would kill me. I never could stand it—never—I think that is all there is to me.”

“What a dear little thing you are. As if any man could help caring for the most charming wife in England. But you should have married Stanley, who is always exactly the same. I am afraid I am not. But as for the rest—do not be silly. Now I must run. Take care of yourself and don’t think of going for a drive of more than an hour.”

He tapped her on the cheek, dropped a kiss on her forehead, and departed in haste lest she think of a new argument. Mabel ran into her own room and fell on her divan, weeping wildly. But although she luxuriously let nature have her way for ten minutes or more, she finally drank a sedative, and then set her childish mouth in a straight hard line. There were several American women in England that had acquired conspicuous influence over their husbands—whom, no doubt, they had once had found as incomprehensible as her wonderful Jackie. If they had succeeded, so could she. It only required time and patience; and the return of her old buoyant health, which would enable her to companion him once more. If necessary, she would study politics and talk to old statesmen. But at this prospect she shuddered, and at the same moment her eye fell upon a shelf containing the works of Balzac, Maupassant, Bourget, and several other French authors, which one of her young married friends of their race had sent her, bound in white vellum, as a wedding present. They had been accompanied by a recommendation to read them and soon. She had never taken one from the shelf upon which her servant had arranged them.