LXI THEIR MARRIAGE

When Ordham reached his hotel he found old Kurt awaiting him with the promised letter. He dismissed him sleepily and when in his room laid it on the table beside his bed, intending to read it in the morning when he was in a more appreciative condition. But the preparations for bed roused him somewhat, and he suddenly opened the letter with the purpose of glancing at the first page, believing this message was designed to console him for the taciturn note she had sent to the station. But when he had read three lines he read on; and when he had finished the letter he read it again; and then once more.

“After all, I find that I love you more than I love myself.

“Even could I exercise that power of will which has transformed me from one sort of woman into another during these last nine years of my life, and forced you to consent to see me no more, and even were I able to convince you for the moment that I acted in your interest alone, the time would come when you would resent the strength that enabled me to annihilate my happiness as well as your own; furthermore, the suspicion would be irresistible that art was the stronger passion after all. In time you would hate me, then grow indifferent, then forget. Now, you will love me always.

“In one’s last hour one must be entirely truthful; it is possible that, if I renounced my beloved art, my great career, the time would come when I should regret; when I might, indeed, raven for that lost world of illusions of which those that never have entered it have no conception whatever. And this might come to pass even did the world inconceivably ignore my life as Margaret Hill and I found myself a prop in your career—instead of assuring that career to you by eradicating myself. In that case could we continue to be happy? If Love is the C?sar among the passions, Art is an imperious atom of God himself. It sits on the mind’s throne, and although the golden mists of passion may, for a time, hang like a curtain before it, Art never abdicates. It bides its time, and that time inevitably comes.

“On the other hand, I find myself forced to believe that I am not the born artist, deep and inexorable as is the grasp of art on my mind and soul. The phenomenon of my temperament—its emotional part—can be explained, no doubt, by the fact that the natural passions of an uncommonly lusty and highly organized woman were turned back upon themselves by the accumulated disgust and horrors of those thirteen years, with all their vitalities unimpaired; rather were they recuperated, and rushed into the channels of art the moment the sluices were opened. I profoundly believe that no born artist would sacrifice her career—which is merely the insatiable activities of the gift resident in her brain—for any man, give him anything more than the temporary effervescence of her woman’s nature. To some accident of organism I owe the purely mechanical gift of a voice; my brain, my will, the peculiar circumstances of my life, have made me a great actress, a great artist. That I do not hate you for shattering the dearest delusion that can possess the human mind, is the final proof of my all-embracing love for you. For, alas! I am Brynhildr, not that Margarethe Styr deliberately manufactured upon the ruins of Margaret Hill.

“But if Brynhildr—who, however victimized by the fates, would at any moment have given her life for Siegfried—is in my soul, a more irresistible tyrant than the dazzling counterfeit of art in my brain, still does the fact remain that in this world I have played, and on its public stage, the horrid and unpardonable r?le of Margaret Hill. For every infringement of law (on this planet at least), we sooner or later pay the price. The bill has been presented to me later than I deserve—possibly because I had something to give the world—but at the precise moment when my all could be exacted in payment. Still, who shall say that I am not more fortunate than most?—I have my choice of retributions: to live and be your ruin, or to die while I can still live on in your heart, your unappalled imagination, forever. If I am not the absolute and inalienable artist I so fondly believed, at least I have not cultivated my soul and my brain to no purpose, and I do not believe that I really have hesitated a moment.

“Putting all other considerations aside, could I, after the life I led for thirteen long vile years, continue to exalt you above your sex? Those numberless ghosts would rise, sit at the banquet, claim you as their brother. And, alas that it should be so, it is only in dreams that men are not fatally alike!

“If when you read this you should conceive the mad thought of following me, please stop and reflect that by that act of cruelty you would make this sacrifice of mine—for I shall not pretend that I wish to leave this world—both foolish and useless. Therefore do you owe it to me to practise as your religion that promise you made me on Stanmore Heath, to live for the single purpose of developing to the utmost those great gifts for which I extinguish my own. And believe me when I assure you that in the constant exercise of great abilities, particularly when their performances are accompanied by the world’s orchestra, there is much to console. It is, indeed, the next best thing to the heart’s happiness; perhaps it should be given the first place, for as long as we are willing to exercise our gifts and our usefulness, so long are we masters of our fate. It is only the immortal happiness of mortal love that Life fears to give us lest we grow stronger than she.

“If I elect to die on the stage, it is not merely because I believe the stage to be the proper place for the final exit of those artists that have truly loved her, but because the stage of the Hof has been my best friend; on it I have known the most triumphant, the most exalted, moments of my life. Bayreuth was my school, the London experience was an anti-climax, a tour de force; on this stage alone have I been really alive, profoundly happy. Therefore do I give her my last breath.

“I shall be, when I pass finally through the gate of that fool’s paradise in which I have dwelt for the past eight years, a nameless woman, a waif of the coal pits, of the streets of New York. But I will not submit to have Margaret Hill engraved on my tombstone, for, however alloyed, in my veins there is a drop of golden blood. ‘Countess Tann,’ would make the gods on their thrones rock with mirth, and in time the world would hear and laugh too, and this beloved Bavaria, which has shown me surpassing kindness, would be put to shame. Therefore have I ordered my body purified by fire and the ashes cast on the Isar. Then will it dwell with music forever.

“I bequeath you my Will.

“I dare not see you again.

“Siegfried! Siegfried! Selig grüsst dich dein Weib!”