LIV THE CONQUEST OF LONDON

If the next twenty-five days passed quickly, it was not because they were barren of events. It was Ordham’s idea that in the second performance of Die Walküre Styr should sing, not the vocally interesting but dramatically unappealing r?le of Brünhilde, but that of Sieglinde. Knowing that his race was the most remarkable compound on the globe of respectability and sensuality, he believed that the character of Sieglinde, portrayed with all the abandon of which Styr, alone of living singers, was capable, and yet easefully vapourized in the alembic of music, would give the Wagner season a fresh impetus; and the event proved him right. Styr, with a new need to give her imprisoned passions relief, acted the part of the faithless young wife, the incestuous demigoddess, with an emotionalism so deep and wild that the audience held their breath, and yet with a poignant sweetness that brought tears to their eyes, filled them with an immense pity for the captive of the hideous Hunding who found her mate capriciously caught in the body of a son of Wotan. After all, demigods were not mortals, they remarked, few besides the Germans understanding Fricka’s emphatic opinion on the subject.

In the second act Styr portrayed tragedy, delirium, remorse, and the mere physical weakness of woman, in a fashion that caused even herself to wonder why she had never essayed this r?le before. When she lay unconscious between the knees of Siegmund during the long duet between her lover and Brünhilde, she looked so beautiful that she continued to hold the attention of all, and Ordham stared at her until his gaze seemed to burn her eyelids and she stirred uneasily. When Sieglinde was finally swept off the stage by Brünhilde, the audience, almost to a man, arose and left the house.

By this time London was “mad over her.” Women whose lives were barren, great ladies whose passions were faded, men with far less reason but an equal pleasure, higher types that revelled in the brain behind the voice, the spiritual suggestion in scenes and music designed to appeal to the most elevated of mortal ideals, the remotest and shyest of the soul’s desires, crowded to hear the woman who would be a valuable aid to the Almighty on the day of resurrection. Styr, exultant and happy, with the transcendent happiness of the artist in the supreme triumph of her genius, gave these splendid audiences, so difficult to please with anything more serious than the wit and paradox to which Wilde was driven not long after, the greatest that was in her, and wondered if such intoxication of the mind, such insolence of victory, could be mortal woman’s a second time.

It is possible that London would have reacted in sheer exhaustion after more than five weeks of this stimulating banquet, but during that time Styr reigned unchallenged. Society, determined to meet her personally, took the shortest way round the scandals they had enjoyed, by professing not to believe them, rejecting them in toto. One ambitious hostess went so far as to announce at a large dinner party that she had taken the trouble to investigate, had even spent a small fortune cabling, and had learned that Styr had been an actress in New York of unimpeachable respectability, and that the Margaret Hill of Levering’s tales was lost in a wreck on the Pacific Coast ten or twelve years since. As a matter of fact she had done nothing of the sort, but her story was cleverly put together, and she was quite aware that others besides herself but wanted an excuse to entertain the greatest artist that had visited England in their time. The Queen held out and did not invite her to sing at Windsor, for she thought it crime enough to have inspired such stories, whether true or not, and more than one old-fashioned great lady, suspicious of celebrities in any case, fully agreed with her; but they were lost sight of in the general rush. It was impossible for Styr to accept more than one out of ten of the invitations showered upon her, or to show herself for more than a few minutes at a time at the various afternoon receptions given in her honour. Rehearsals were many and time was short. And even she, strong woman as she was, had to sleep. Invitations to supper she steadily refused, and on the day of a performance never spoke during the afternoon.

Naturally this left her little time for Ordham. They went sight-seeing no more, but as she rose every morning at ten he called at eleven and remained until one, although he rarely saw her for a moment alone. Others had the same privilege, and the impresario, the conductor, and various members of the company, all more or less desperate, came for advice and consultation. She practically rehearsed the company, for the impresario was not too efficient, and Richter had his hands full with the orchestra.

Reckless, by this time, of gossip, for he had by no means calculated upon a success so overwhelming as to leave him out in the cold, Ordham fell into the habit of going with her to rehearsals, and lounging in her dressing-room, where she came to him for an occasional chat. He went, when bidden, to every reception, every dinner and breakfast, given in her honour, that he might at least be in the room with her, receive an occasional glance and smile; which, beggarly satisfaction as it might be, was better than striding up and down his room in the Temple. His domestic habits were sadly out of joint. Mabel’s strained and sometimes terrified face, his mother-in-law’s speechless indignation, were unnecessary afflictions. At first he invented all the excuses which his ingenious brain could devise. “He was Wagner mad.” “As long as his family would not receive the woman who had showered hospitalities upon him when he was a harassed student in a strange city, he must do his best, not only to cover their defection, but to pour balm upon his conscience.” The secret that he had originated and financed the enterprise was well kept, but he insisted that he more than any one should work for its success, as he should owe his own career to the woman who had—yes, really, he could see it now!—so subtly compelled him to study and pass those stiff exams. He pretended to believe that Mabel would have taken a house and been the first to open her doors to his friend had she been well, for it was no part of his policy to notice her mounting jealousy. He saw her so little that he was able to be as charming as ever to her, although she was looking swollen in the face and coarse, one of the pathetic punishments of woman while fulfilling the highest of her duties. After excuses failed him he simply ignored the subject—lunching and dining at home on those alternate days when Styr was obliged to seclude herself; and after a time, impatient at the still unuttered disapproval which charged the atmosphere of Grosvenor Square, he accepted other invitations. He was by no means satisfied with himself, for he was as far as ever from any desire to make his wife unhappy; but if she was so unreasonable, so undiplomatic, as to refuse him his liberty for this short period, if she was bent upon proving herself unfit to be the wife of a man of the world, let her read her lesson and profit by it. Perhaps in the depths of his mind, buried under many layers of modernism but by no means extinct, he looked upon wives from the royal point of view: sound and vigorous transits for the next edition of the race. But he was beyond analysis, and had but one desire, one purpose: to see as much of Margarethe Styr during these racing weeks as he could manage, although he made no attempt whatever to see her alone.

Mrs. Cutting, angry, frightened, outraged, not only in her maternal passion, but in those principles which she could so gracefully ignore as long as society kept its hard bright surface closed, but to which she would in the last instance have sacrificed social position itself, shut her lips in Ordham’s presence, fearing to precipitate some unthinkable climax, and consoling Mabel with talk of the flying days and the singer’s crowded hours.

“He will follow her,” said Mabel one day.

“I am positive that he will do nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Cutting, briskly. “Never was a man less impetuous, less disposed to sacrifice anything for the sake of a passing flirtation.”

Mabel set her lips. For the moment she looked older than her mother, so smart and fresh, so alert yet reposeful of carriage. “You have never loved, and I can tell you that love gives one more than a little joy, and pain out of all proportion; it gives terrible insights. I stirred only the youthful shallows of John Ordham. He has depths that no innocent love could reach, much less satisfy. I say nothing about brains, although God knows I am well aware how much that mind of his—it is like an octopus—reaches out for that I cannot give him. But even so, were I—well, were he my second husband, for instance, I might hold my own against even clever women.”

“Mabel!” Mrs. Cutting was horrified at this sudden weed of sophistication in that fair landscape of her daughter’s mind she had so carefully laid out and tended. “You have been reading too many French novels of late; I have expressed my disapproval before.”

“It is a pity I did not read them earlier,” said Mabel, dryly. “I should recommend a course in Balzac, Maupassant, and Bourget to all girls about to marry—Europeans, at least. To be young and fresh and beautiful and good may be sufficient if you marry a business man or a scientist, but you need a good deal more than that to keep a man of the world in the toils, particularly if he has abundant leisure. That may not be a nice fact to face, but no congé will dislodge it. If I were only well!”

“Mabel!”

“Don’t look at me in that puritanical way!” cried Mabel, passionately. “What do you know about life? You scarcely ever saw father, and you didn’t love him anyhow. Besides, Americans are not so different from these Europeans when they have time enough. I got out of Bobby the other day that father kept a mistress for years, and small blame to him. You left him deliberately year after year and you would have had no excuse for righteous wrath had you known. But with us innocent young wives—it is a very different matter, with the world full of sirens like Margarethe Styr. And they are not all publicly branded, either. I could name a dozen that you are proud to know, that are barely gossiped about, who would take John off my hands in a moment if they had a chance at him, or he found them seductive. What has saved me so far is that he is odd, difficult to please, indolent, cold on the surface. But I can tell you that with a man like John Ordham matrimony is like American politics: the woman must know every trick of the game and be above employing none of them. It is horrible, but that makes it none the less true.”

“Mabel, you are outrageous! I’ll listen to no such blasphemy upon womanhood—American womanhood,” she added as an afterthought. “As for your father’s infidelity, it may be. I asked no questions, and I am not the fool you seem to think; but that is quite another matter from seeking to hold a man with the methods of the courtesan. Better let him go.”

“Not when you love him. I’d give my immortal soul, I’d trample in the slime all the girlhood innocence—”

“Mabel! At least be careful not to excite yourself.”

This admonition produced some effect; Mabel was silent for a few moments, and then resumed more calmly: “I am perfectly well aware that during the next few months I can do nothing but think and plan and try to cull wisdom from the masters that have put love under a microscope or on the dissecting table. I am sorry I have been sullen and looked as miserable as I felt. It was a mistake, as great a mistake as for us to refuse to meet Styr. We should have had her here morning, noon, and night. It is too late to alter that, and it is impossible for me to make myself charming when I look like a fright. But I am resolved to be hateful and woebegone no longer. I shall hereafter treat John exactly as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to amuse himself while I am so dull. At least he shall not have the faintest excuse to leave me. This is the critical time. When that woman is far away—and I am told she is to sing next winter in New York—and I am well again, I’ll become a coquette, I’ll make a fine art of matrimony; I wouldn’t be too proud to take hints from the very women of the trottoir if I could get at them. But win and hold him I will. I am a woman, and my eyes are wide open.”

“Have you considered that you may be obliged to give up your cherished plan of living in England? I am convinced by the remarks he drops now and again that he is more set upon diplomacy than ever.”

“If I fail to keep him in England until he has lost his chances for the service—yes, I’ll go. There is no sacrifice I won’t make. I’ll watch him like a cat, and know whether to hold out on that point or give in. Besides, there is always the chance of his growing impatient at the slow promotion. No doubt there will be more than one disgusted moment in which I can induce him to resign and come home to politics. Oh! Oh! that I were well and beautiful once more!”

Mrs. Cutting sighed deeply. She felt as sad as shocked. It was as if she saw a little crystal castle of surpassing beauty, every facet scintillating with a thousand modulated shades of the primal colours, shivered at her feet. Why had she been in such haste to marry her exquisite child? Mabel would have remained girlishly beautiful until twenty-eight; for ten years longer she might have gloried in her handiwork. As she did not care to listen to any more of Mabel’s conclusions, she merely remarked:

“You will not look as young at forty as I do, if you let emotions shake you like this.”

“I am not thinking about when I am forty. The present is all my powers are equal to. I believe John condescends to lunch at home to-day. I’ll put on a red and yellow gown that may perhaps throw into the shade my own sunset tints. Oh, that I were well! That I were well!”

This was a week before Styr’s departure. Ordham, whose mind was by no means obfuscated by the fever in his blood, began to notice that Mabel and her mother ceased to treat him to sour looks, subtly to make him feel a stone and a rake. He was vaguely grateful, for, unknown to Mabel, but prompted by Mrs. Cutting, the distinguished accoucheur, at present exercising a benevolent despotism in Grosvenor Square, had given him an emphatic warning, and he dined almost regularly at home, since he could not dine alone with Styr, and strove with what grace was in him to hide his fathomless ennui and amuse Mabel.

But the strain on his powers of self-control grew more formidable daily. A short while and Styr would have vanished out of London, leaving it as empty as Sahara. The future appalled him. If he could have obtained a post, he would have forced Mabel to release him and left London at once, although he well knew how little work is demanded of an attaché. Still there would be distractions in the new scene. But there was no vacancy, would not be for several months. Upon no other pretext could he leave her—leave London, whose very hansoms would grin at him.

Not the least of the causes which contributed to the waters of his bitterness, of his agitation and disgust, was the amusement of “the world” at his patent infatuation for a famous woman who had no time to waste on men, young or old. Styr no longer encouraged him to come to the opera house during rehearsals, no longer made the slightest effort to give him an occasional moment alone. He was unable to determine whether this final act of cruelty were due to fear or to a real pleasure in meeting so many of the distinguished and really important men of England; to whom, at all events, she gave her spare moments. Of coquetry he was sane enough to acquit her; he had faith in her honesty; but she could have taken no surer means to fan a passion now so fully recognized that he sometimes wondered grimly how much he would stake on ambition when the race came off. He was able to laugh, however, at the diabolical irony of his position. Of all the men that pursued her, he alone had been given the opportunity to look ridiculous, he alone suffered, was wounded in more than vanity. For the first time the source of the lavish expenditures which had given Styr the greatest of her triumphs occurred to him, and he reflected that did the Cuttings and “Bobby” know the truth and were permitted to turn the pages of his mind, they might justly exult. This did not mean that he felt the least compunction or even regret, merely that he was beginning to look life more squarely in the face, give more than a lofty casual glance to cause and effect.

But he had himself well in hand. He had never been more indolent of manner, more alert in conversation. When he discovered that he was pitied as an object of hopeless passion, he ceased to be seen constantly in the wake of the prima donna, deliberately devoted himself to other women. Puppy love had pinched his face, ruined his manners, bereft him of pride and self-control; but this slow and complete awakening of his masculinity matured his character, which his brain had outstripped, and substituted the sharp violent desires of the man, the arrogance of the conquering male, for the thin timid blades of spring. To two people only did he look older, his wife and Styr. From the minds of neither was he long absent. Styr understood, and for the first time in her knowledge of him was frightened. There was something portentous in his cool smiling self-control, like that of a soft-footed tiger biding his time. Mabel half understood and was terrified but resolute. She believed that he was infatuated and unfaithful, but knew the power of the wife over the mistress if able to keep her head and wait, believed that when separated from Styr he would forget like other men. Her mind was now alert; she would be amiable and tactful, and she would stand her ground and fight to the last ditch. She was in no condition to enter upon such an engagement, and had it not been for the good streak of Dutch obstinacy in her nature, she might not have proved equal even to spurts of determination to win or die. When overcome by a physical weariness which compelled her to lie down for hours instead of pacing the room revolving plans, she could only reflect bitterly upon the disabilities which made the game so pitifully uneven. Were she well and beautiful, she would not have hesitated to feign interest in the most notoriously “successful” of her admirers,—in royalty itself,—and bring Ordham to terms through his vanity, and, no doubt, through reawakened passion. Then she wept bitterly, not only at her present impotence but for her lost ideals. She might win back her husband, but her love for him would never again be quite free of that resentment and antagonism, even hatred, inevitable when the woman has been forced in one way or another to recognize the remorseless might of sex. Above all, she felt it to be monstrous that she, with youth and beauty and virtue, wealth and position, the fitness and the wish to be a good wife and an ornament to society, should be pitted in a death struggle with a waif from the streets, whose life had been unprintable, and who had left youth behind her. Such injustice terrified her, confused her standards. At first she prayed wildly, then she ceased to pray at all.