LV THE WORLD AND THE CROSS

Styr and her management had been careful to give the antidote of Elsa and Elizabeth often enough to protect an exhilarated public against reaction; and by one of those curious paradoxes, known to all that have had reason to study the public taste, her portrayal of that princess among virgins, Elizabeth of Thüringen, from her joyous girlhood to that last mournful scene where she is both saint and woman and wholly lovely, was quite as popular as of those passionate and lawless heroines, Isolde and Sieglinde.

In Munich Styr had sung the part of Venus as a matter of course, leaving the more lyric r?le to the aspiring jugendlichdramatischen, but she, as well as her directors, well knew that to give Tannh?user the mounting and accessories which made the first scene of its first act, as represented in Munich, the most suggestive on the stage, would be going a step too far even with the British public in its present state of enthusiasm. And without that rosy atmosphere like the mist of an amorous dawn, that sumptuous yet mirage-like couch in the background, the refined yet lascivious dancing of satyrs and nymphs, the visions of Leda and the swan, Europa and the bull, that first long scene, despite its delicious music, would mean to the unmusical beholder naught but an interminable duet between a forward woman in a Greek fillet and baggy gown, and a sulky man in a leathern jerkin and top-boots. Therefore was the first scene cut down to little more than a prologue, the part of Venus sung by an obese German beyond her prime, and fashion entered boxes and stalls a few moments before Elizabeth ran into the great hall of her father’s castle with a burst of song as of a bird mounting to the empyrean after long drooping behind the bars of a cage.

Perhaps Styr had never proved herself a greater actress than when she stared, incredulous and horrified, at the outbreak of the sophisticated Tannh?user, disgusted with the provincial virtues of the knights, for she looked just sixteen; and when Mabel, who had attended the first performance, saw that dawn of sorrowful womanhood in her eyes, the impotence of maiden innocence against the subtle sweets of mature vice, she clutched her salts and nearly fainted. But when in the last act, Styr, looking as only a pure woman that has never harboured so much as a sinful thought can look, first brought tears to the eyes of old cynics by her pitiful examination of every face in the ragged procession of pilgrims returning from Rome, and then, clinging to the cross, sang her soul straight up to a waiting heaven, Mabel sniffed audibly and walked out. She could not have felt more indignant had Styr publicly been received into the bosom of the Church of Rome and advertised as a beacon light for mankind. But mental suffering had developed a species of saturnine humour in her, and when she was in bed she laughed consumedly at the fool this great actress was making of London.

Before the end of the brief season Elizabeth had won in a race long disputed, perhaps because Styr managed to convey the impression of a pure white lily growing out of a baneful swamp, in other words emphasized the sensuousness of the music, and made her audiences feel that they loved virtue the more while enjoying vicarious naughtiness none the less. Perhaps it was an unadmitted desire for vindication that caused an almost unanimous demand that Tannh?user should end this agitating season. It was given, and Styr, eliminating the richness from her voice, sang with the sexless silvery sweetness of a boy chorister, which made the tremendous volume of her voice and its noble quality the more remarkable by contrast. The ovation began when the dead Elizabeth, looking like a marble angel, was carried in by the weeping pilgrims. It was too soon to lower the curtain, and as the audience manifested its complete indifference to the lament of Heinrich, Styr was forced to rise publicly from her coffin and respond to the plaudits of her admirers. As this absurd performance smote not only her own sense of humour but that of her audience, the great Wagner season ended in a hearty burst of laughter which put everybody in the best possible temper, and made the unavoidable speech easier to make.

Pelted with bouquets and standing up to her waist in the superb floral offerings handed over the footlights, Styr thanked London for its kindness with her usual proud aloofness considerably modified, and promised to return as soon as her engagements would permit. The audience, now on its feet, shouted, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” as eagerly as children, applauded, waved their handkerchiefs, tossed their bouquets for ten minutes longer. Ordham withdrew to the depths of his box, almost paralyzed between delight at the triumph of this woman, whom he would have given the whole round globe, were it his, and an uncontrollable agitation which made him thankful he was alone in his box. He saw his hands tremble and felt the tears on his cheeks, and scorned the heroes of French romance no more.

But he made no effort to see her after she had bowed her final adieu. There was to be a great supper on the stage, but he left the opera house with a scribbled word of apology on a card to the host, and walked until he found himself, at dawn, far out in the country. He went to bed at an inn, and returned to London when the train for the Continent was halfway to the coast. He had written Styr the day before that he should make no further attempt to see her again, that he accepted her manifest decree for the present, although he was by no means certain that he should not go to Munich as soon as he was free; the less he saw of her now the better, no doubt. Then with the utmost courtesy he thanked and congratulated her. He wrote with such cold precision that Styr was as convinced as himself that he had arrived at a worldly state of mind which he meant to be irrevocable, and it was with a grinning brain that she portrayed with even more than her usual poignance a woman shattered on the merciless rocks of love.