IVTHE STYR
John Ordham stood alone on the balcony before the throne room. Princess Nachmeister, shivering and twinging, had gone over to her own comfortable apartment, where, wrapped in a wadded dressing-gown, she could sit at her window and lose nothing of the concert. Ordham, for some time, was sensitively conscious of an unquiet spirit just round the corner of the castle. He could not hear a footfall, a sigh, but he knew that the lonely King was trying to surrender his tormented soul to the golden flood pouring upward from the white figure on the Marienbrücke, perhaps to the unearthly beauty of the night.
The full moon mounted slowly above the three snow peaks of the distant Alps. It turned even the lakes to sheets of silver, threw forest and unpowdered mountain tops into hard black outline against the deep blue of a sky that seemed to throb with a thousand responsive notes: the golden notes of every human song-bird that Earth had lost. The wind was still. Save for the roar of the waterfall, there was not a sound in the world but that great voice that seemed to fill it.
Ordham had waited breathlessly during the few moments that preceded her appearance, the intense stillness pounding in his ears. Then, by what sleight of body he could not guess, she seemed to dart suddenly up from the gorge below the bridge as she uttered the terrible shriek of Kundry when summoned by Klingsor from her enchanted sleep.
“Ach! Ach! Tiefe Nacht—Wahnsinn!—Oh!—Wuth!—”
Ordham fancied he recognized a note of genuine anger in her wild remonstrance, a bitter personal reproach. But she was artist before all, and when she passed on to her scene with Parsifal, her dulcet reminiscences of his infancy when she herself seemed to brood above him, the helpless anguish of the desolate wife and adoring mother, the maternal agony when the boy ran from her out into the world, the waiting, the savage cries of despair, the “dulling of the smart,” the ebbing of life—the strain of exquisite pity in which she told the youth that he was alone on Earth—Ordham shivered more than once, staring back into a brief past where he could recall little of maternal love, wondering how much he would care if he never saw his mother nor any member of his distinguished selfish family again.
The echoes gave back Parsifal’s brief lament; then the tall white figure on the bridge, although she did not move, seemed to bend her voice above the kneeling boy, summoning him to consolation. As it rose in seduction, in the insolent triumph of the passionate woman who knows that not for her is the balking of desire, it was so warm, so rich, so vast in its compass, that Ordham felt as if the golden waters were rising to suffocate him. When she paused so lingeringly on the final note of seduction, “Ersten kuss,” that the words seemed to live on and gather volume in the thrilling rebellious ear, and an angry cry burst from the balcony of the King:—
“Amfortas!—Die wunde! Die wunde!—Sie brent in meinen Herzen—Oh, Klage! Klage!Furchtbare, Klage!—”
“Amfortas!—Die wunde! Die wunde!—Sie brent in meinen Herzen—Oh, Klage! Klage!Furchtbare, Klage!—”
“Amfortas!—Die wunde! Die wunde!—Sie brent in meinen Herzen—Oh, Klage! Klage!Furchtbare, Klage!—”
“Amfortas!—
Die wunde! Die wunde!—
Sie brent in meinen Herzen—
Oh, Klage! Klage!
Furchtbare, Klage!—”
he came as angrily to himself. It was the spell whose meshes he cared least to encounter, and he wondered how he could be sensible to it, even under the influence of music, so soon after breaking from an entanglement which the lady had taken with a seriousness incomprehensible to himself. He was in a mood which impelled him to close the eyes of the lover in him forever, and his real interest in Margarethe Styr began when the Princess Nachmeister told him that she was a woman of intellect and hated his sex. He by no means hated hers, but his mind was lonely, and his ego sought blindly for that companionship which all souls claim as their right, and generally go forth to other worlds still seeking.
The voice of the King ceased. Kundry burst forth again. The wild grief, the remorse of her awakened soul at her abandonment of Christ, then her passionate supplication for the joys and compensations of mortal love, hardly removed the impression, nor her promise to make the obstinate youth a god in her embrace. But when she hurled forth her curses, Ordham breathed more freely, although the furies of hell seemed to echo among the hills.
There was a brief pause. Then with a wild and startling transition:—
“Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!Hi-ya-ha! Hi-ya-ha!Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!”
“Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!Hi-ya-ha! Hi-ya-ha!Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!”
“Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!Hi-ya-ha! Hi-ya-ha!Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!”
“Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!
Hi-ya-ha! Hi-ya-ha!
Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!”
Brünhilde’s jubilant cry sprang from peak to peak; then this strange woman’s vocal interpretation of the gulf that separated Wotan’s daughter from her sisters even before the War-father bereft her of her godhead; the gathering clouds of her approaching humanity; the eternal tragedy of woman’s sacrifice to man.
Styr passed from opera to songs, all, no doubt, selected by the King. Some were sonorous with deep religious feeling, others a long-sustained chaunt of sadness and despair; one alone was insolent with triumph and power. It seemed to Ordham that he was swept upward to the stars, those golden voices of dead singers once as great as this virile creature below him. His body was cold, his pulses were still, his brain was on fire. He had a vision of himself and this woman swirling together on a tide of song through the infinite paths of the Milky Way—invisible to-night under the violent light of the moon—then—up—up—through the gates of heaven—
But he was by character and training too cool and self-controlled to remain in a condition of mental intoxication for any length of time. He had glanced at the programme handed to him at the conclusion of dinner and knew that the songs were to end the night’s performance.
Ordham, constitutionally shy, albeit with the audacity which so often accompanies that weakness, possessed also what Napoleon called two o’clock in the morning courage. He had felt sure that were he suddenly to be introduced to the mysterious Styr he should turn cold to his marrow and long to bolt. But to meet her formally might prove impossible. To-night was his opportunity. He made up his mind that he would talk to her did she invoke the vengeance of the gods.
He hastily made his way out of the castle by the main entrance, ran down the slope of the great rock, skirted its base, and ascended through the forest to the bridge. He believed that the King would retire as soon as the concert was over, and that the singer would remain for a few moments to enjoy the extraordinary beauty of the night.
And so it happened. Styr, her engagement finished, but still exalted with the intoxication of song, after one long look about her, leaned both hands on the railing of the bridge and stared down into the wild depths below. The grip of the bridge on the rocks was none too secure; a landslip, such as occurred daily in the Alps, and she would lie shattered below. But she enjoyed the hint of danger and might have stood motionless for an hour, warm as she was in her white woollen draperies, had not a footstep made her move her shoulders impatiently. She supposed it to be a lackey with a superfluous wrap, and did not move again until aware that some one stood beside her on the bridge. Then she turned with a start and faced Ordham. She knew at once who he must be; Princess Nachmeister often talked of her favourite, and had told her that he was a guest at the castle to-night. His audacity in approaching her and in such circumstances took away her breath. But only for an instant. She drew herself up with a majesty few queens have had sufficient practice to attain. Her height nearly matched his—not quite; he thanked his stars that she was compelled to look up at him; and she did look the cold astonishment her lips would not frame.
“I could not think of letting you return to the castle alone, Countess Tann,” said Ordham, gently, “even if those lackeys were not too stupid to think of coming for you. I am sure this forest is full of peasants; they must have known of the concert. They may be harmless, but as the King’s only guest of his own sex, and as he is unable to look after you himself—I am sure you will forgive me. How could I remain quiet in the castle while you found your way back alone? I should be a barbarian.”
There was no trace of emotion or even of admiration in his face, merely the natural courtesy of a gentleman, perhaps a touch of boyish knightliness. And certainly he was a mere boy, Margarethe Styr reflected. In that white downpour, that has rejuvenated many a battered visage, he looked—she groped for the word—virginal. And his steady gaze had never wavered before the haughty inquiry of hers. This young man might or might not be as innocent as he looked, but his perfect breeding, which she instantly divined to be an integral part of him, appealed to the woman who had so often found polished manners a brittle veneer. Moreover, she was as amused at his ruse, which had not deceived her for a moment, as she felt herself compelled to admire his strategic cleverness. Then she abruptly asked herself the question that perhaps the immortal goddesses asked in their day, “Why not?” and bent her head pleasantly.
“Thank you,” she said. “Of course you are Mr. Ordham. Thank you many times for thinking of me. Shall we walk a little? I should not stand too long after singing.”
He was so taken aback by the swiftness of his triumph that diffidence overwhelmed him, and he stammered: “You are sure you would not like another wrap? I can fetch one in a moment.”
“I am very warmly clad. Do not bother.” She did not notice his relapse and asked him idly if he had enjoyed her singing.
“Oh—enjoy! Please do not tempt me into banalities. It was much too wonderful to talk about. I should like to talk to you—about a hundred other things. I know your voice—I have never missed one of your nights since I came to Munich. But I do not know you at all. This is the blessed opportunity.”
He had had time to recover himself, and he watched her intently. Her eyes, which had hung before his mental vision like two tragic suns, flashed with amusement.
“Do you know that I have lived in Munich for six years and not had five minutes’ conversation with any man alone, except on business relating to the Hof? Much less have I ‘known’ any one.”
“But you can’t go on forever like that. If you weren’t fundamentally human, you could not be a great artist; and if you are human, you must crave some sort of companionship. Are you never quite horribly lonely?”
“There is so much in life that is worse than loneliness.” Her voice sounded as dry as dust. “Moreover, it is an excellent rampart. But I am not lonely. I work constantly. Why do you set such a high value on human companionship?”
“I don’t think I do. I am often glad enough to get away from people. And I fancy I read a good deal more than I talk—and I am not sure that I don’t like the theatre quite as well as society. But, after all—there are certain wants—”
“We outlive so many of them!”
“Do we—permanently, I mean? I feel that sooner or later you would have flung down your barriers. It is mere chance that makes me the blessed first.”
“I wonder?”
“Whether it is chance or destiny?” He smiled as if at the audacity of his own words.
“Not at all. There is no such thing as chance, or any destiny but that which you make for yourself—that is, after you are old enough to know what you are about. I wondered if the human needs were stronger than the brain.”
“I was thinking of mental needs when I spoke. Nothing is more human than the brain. One can get on without love, after one has had a dose or two of it, but not without striking fire from another brain now and again. From one brain in particular, I should say.”
“That is a curious speech for so young a man to make.”
“Perhaps I should not make it if I were ten years older. For the matter of that, do years count? We come into the world encased in traditions and are only happy when we have shed the last of them.”
She liked the way he walked beside her, seeming to protect her down the steep path without touching her. He carried himself with a quiet unconscious dignity, refreshing after the military strut of which she was artistically weary; and as he looked down at her with his kind smile and calm almost studious gaze, he attracted her more than any man had done for half his years. She also felt a curious mental excitement, a desire to talk very fast, which she attributed to the uncommon circumstances, but which she realized before long was the stimulating influence of that rarest of mortal contacts, a sympathetic brain. In days gone by she had found it easy to love, but she remembered few men she had cared to talk to. At the moment she shot up an inquisitive glance. Might he not be older than she had fancied? Nineteen he had looked on the bridge. Possibly he was nearer thirty. But she recalled that Princess Nachmeister had mentioned his age. Young men—with one tragic exception—had never interested her. But she was quick to read the human countenance; and she observed that if his eyes recorded nothing beyond the mood of the moment, the line from ear to chin, under the fine smooth English skin, was uncommonly long. It might indicate future character and present obstinacy; although there were no strong lines yet in the boyish sensuous mouth, soft and pouting in spite of its fine modelling. And although he had demonstrated that he could seize and hold a fort, there was no hint of obstinacy in his manner, which was very gentle and diffident. For the first time in her life she experienced a sensation of gratitude toward a member of the man sex, a sensation made up of many parts, and rising from dark corners of memory. It impelled her to say:
“Let us sit down. It is quite warm here in the forest.”
“You are sure you will not take a cold? I will give you my coat to sit on.”
“You will do nothing of the sort. Fortunately, these classic costumes commanded by the King are made of wool. Besides, I always dress warmly to sing in thatFestsaal. It is colder there than out of doors.”
“Nevertheless, you were very angry when you began to sing.”
“Did you detect that? I hope the King did.”
Ordham, who had stretched himself at her feet—she had seated herself on a bench—looked steadily at her while they talked, wondering if she were beautiful or not, or if it mattered. Her head in poise and form was classic, her face oval, and her rather long nose thin and sensitive. But her eyes—those eyes that looked immense on the stage—were small, deeply set, dark, impenetrable, sullen, like the lower part of her face. Occasionally they lit up with amusement, and hinted of temper and other uncomfortable attributes; nor was there any suggestion of tenderness in the close mouth and strong jaw. In the second act ofTristan und Isoldeshe expressed every soft enchantment of womanhood, and Ordham for the first time fully realized what a great artist she was, for he could see no indication that any traces remained of those impulses that drive the race blindfolded, in this sullen almost angry shell. She looked like a fallen goddess, whom mortal passions had consumed, leaving but a vast regret for her lost godhead. No wonder she could play Brynhildr! There was nothing else in that imposing casket but brain, and although he could imagine the tigerish beauty of her youth, she fascinated him far more as she was. The world was full of soft passionate women—he hated the thought of them—and his mind, almost full-blown, imperiously demanded this particular brain as its mate. But he made no effort to lead the conversation into unusual channels. In conversation, for that matter, he was not skilful, and depended upon the inspiration of the moment.
Princess Nachmeister had said that a woman might be known by her lovers, but he judged people largely by what they read, and he asked Margarethe Styr if she took in all the reviews.
“Not one. To me this high plateau is the world. I do not know who is the President of the United States, or the Prime Minister of England.”
“Does your art really fill your life?”
“Almost. And I read a great deal, although no reviews, newspapers, and few novels.”
“And is this to go on forever? How do you define the word ‘life’?”
“All that I most wish to forget.”
“Then if you had not this wonderful voice, you would not live at all,” he adventured.
Her eyes gleamed, and for the moment she seemed about to turn the remark aside. But she looked at him unflinchingly, and finally answered, “No.”
“Then art does suffice. It is very interesting to learn that.”
“It once saved me from death—when I was almost dead. Every one else had succumbed. It was the knowledge of that golden wonder in my throat and the memory of the ecstasy in pouring it forth that kept the breath in my body.”
“Tell me about it!” He sat up eagerly.
She shook her head. “I never think of it. I cannot imagine what has brought it to my mind to-night.” She bent her head and looked at him keenly. “Yes, there is a slight resemblance,” she added thoughtfully.
“You are unfair. I am mad with curiosity. Tell me. Tell me.”
She asked him abruptly: “Do you find that I have a German accent? It is seven years and more since I have spoken with any one of my own tongue, and I am curious to know.”
“It is a colour rather than an accent—that is to say—I always express myself very badly—as if you had dyed your native American with brown and crimson, and at the same time rounded off the thin edges. But I should not take you for a German. Is that what you wish?”
“Not in the least.”
“But Princess Nachmeister intimated that Munich was the passion of your life, or something of that sort.”
“Well, it is one of them, certainly; and for a while I was so grateful to Germany, so enchanted with my new life, that I deliberately tried to make myself over into a German, put myself into the rôle, as one does on the stage. I succeeded for a time, but all that is past. Once an American always an American, I fancy. And the longer I live in Europe the more American I become. Don’t ask me to define this. It is merely an instinct—perhaps a jealousy of birthright. I may never return to the United States. I know nothing of her affairs. But—well, my essence was compounded in that great country. She could put Germany into her pocket and not hear it rattle. It may be that—the physical vastness of the country—that holds me. I am only thinking out loud—I have never attempted to analyze why I finally admitted that Europe could inspire me with everything but a new patriotism, but I have a fancy that it is only snobs that become thoroughly Europeanized. Titles are a form of intoxication to republicans as well as to the bourgeoisie of monarchical countries. But after all, they work less harm than absinthe and cognac, so why be too severe? If one must have human weaknesses, let us be content merely with making fools of ourselves and save our livers and our nerves.”
Ordham laughed. “I was sure you were a monster of charity! But I hardly understand your loyalty to the United States. If your blood is Hungarian, what matters your birthplace? No Englishman feels a sentiment for the American flag because he happens to have been born under it.”
“Who told you I was of Hungarian parentage?”
“Everybody.”
“My mother was a Hungarian—emigrant. I have caused that story to be circulated about Munich, for I was tired of their nonsense. If you have any curiosity on the subject—I have not the vaguest idea who my father was. My mother, I have reason to believe, was of aristocratic blood on her father’s side, but she was a natural child, of course, and a vagrant.”
“Are you trying to disenchant me?” Ordham felt a little angry; he was, in truth, too much of a Briton and a born diplomatist to relish such plain speech.
“Perhaps. But, to be quite honest, not entirely that. It is rather a relief to fling the bare facts into somebody’s teeth. When you have been shut up within yourself for many years, it suddenly becomes necessary to lift the lid and let the steam escape. Of course I cannot give all the facts to the public. It would not be fair to the King, in the first place. Moreover, when I set foot on German soil and assumed the name of Margarethe Styr, it was with the firm intention of beginning life over again. I had no scruple about holding my tongue on many subjects. I brought to the Germans the equivalent of all they could give to me. We are quits. I experience a kind of defiance now and again, a desire to assert my complete liberty and independence by proclaiming the truth from the housetops. But of course I do nothing of the sort.”
She did not ask him to keep her counsel, and he volunteered no promise, two facts that must have struck them as significant had either been in the analytical temper. But Ordham was wondering if she would ever tell him the whole story; and she, if the excited stir of her mind were due to the unwonted occurrence of talking to a young man alone in a forest at night, after eight years of almost complete disassociation from his sex; or if it were merely the usual nervous aftermath of song. But she had no time to define her sensations at the moment. There was a rapid step in the forest. Out of the shadows emerged the King’s personal footman, Meyr, who announced that his Majesty’s coach was in the courtyard, ready for the customary midnight drive, and that his Majesty requested the pleasure of the company of the Gräfin Tann and Herr Ordham.
“I won’t go,” said Ordham, in English. “I wish to stay here and talk to you. Please don’t get up.”
“Not even for the pleasure of talking to you would I risk being dismissed out of Bavaria to-morrow. This is the sovereign that takes no excuse. And why should I deny him? Has he not made me what I am? And do you realize that a great honour is being conferred upon you?—upon us both? So far as I know, he has never invited any one to drive with him at night before.”
“I will go for the sake of remaining with you, and only hope it may prove half as interesting as our talk would have been.”
He walked beside her down the hill, grumbling all the way. In the upper courtyard was a large open coach, bountifully gilded, to which six white horses were harnessed. On two were postilions; an outrider carried an unlighted torch. A footman was on the box beside the coachman, but there was none behind. Ordham’s eyes sparkled as he put on without further protest the overcoat and hat with which his apologetic servant awaited him; and had they been less under control, would have danced a moment later when the King’s valet came hastily from the castle with the announcement, which surprised no one but the English stranger, that his Majesty found himself too indisposed to go out that night, and begged that his guests would use the carriage at their pleasure. Countess Tann, whose maid had muffled her in a white hood and cloak, half turned from the coach, but she suddenly found herself handed in and Ordham seated beside her.
“This is quite wonderful!” he cried, as the horses seemed to make a flying leap over the drawbridge. “And I thought this visit was to be a failure. Blessed be the fates!”
And in spite of all that followed he never recalled that pæan.
VORDHAM AND THE STYR
The six horses seemed to take another leap through the air as they left the lower courtyard, and Ordham expected to land on the tree-tops below. But those horses, that had the motion of winged things, flew unerringly along the lower road, through the dark forest, down the mountain side to Füssen. In this loyal village every window, suddenly lighted, was flung open, heads of old and young appeared, and delighted cries of “Heil unserem König, Heil!” rang after the undetected occupants of the coach when they were once more in the forest. Up hill and down hill flew the horses, out of the forest again, toward snow peaks that seemed to be flying about in distraction, sometimes rushing to meet these mad riders of the night. The coachman and footman kept their seats as if a part of the bounding vehicle. But Ordham and his companion were so tossed about that he soon gathered up the cushions and packed them round her, then leaning his weight on those between them, braced his feet on the opposite seat. He made no attempt to hold her in place as another man might have done, he did not even touch her; and Margarethe Styr, who had been accustomed to men that took every possible advantage of a woman’s helplessness, gave him a place in her regard that she never permanently revoked.
But nothing was farther from his mind than the wish to touch her. She was a woman alone with him under somewhat hazardous circumstances, and he protected her instinctively and made her as comfortable as possible. Although he would have risen to the occasion as a matter of course, he was grateful that he was not with a woman who would expect to be made love to, but with this strange and delightful creature, who, exhilarated by the terrific speed and the danger, could enjoy herself in precisely his own fashion. He did not even ask her if she were frightened, although once, as they tore through a narrow gorge with the roar of waters far below, he leaned over the side of the carriage, holding the cushions firmly against her with his left hand, then, as he resumed his former position, remarked:
“Three hundred feet, I should think, and perhaps three inches between the wheels and the edge.”
She laughed, and he turned his eyes quickly to her white face, in which the dark eyes were more widely opened and eager than usual.
“You enjoy the idea of possibly being dashed to pieces on those rocks—getting out of it all.”
Her eyes met his in a cold flash. “Do you realize what you have said?”
“That you are the bravest woman I ever saw, but with no love of life. Could you be the greatest actress in the world otherwise?”
“I wonder if you really know what you are saying? But you are young—so very young.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“Well—perhaps—what?”
“Nothing, really. I have seen you look very old and very young, and every shade between. When you get that helmet on your head inDie Walküre, you look sixteen, much too young for the part. Just now you look like a fate. A woman who calls out of their graves other women that have been dead for centuries and gives them life again for four or five hours,—Wagner’s operas are much too long,—who makes them live so intensely that their very dust must feel the current,—why, of course, you have no age. Margarethe Styr disappears, ceases to exist. When she returns to her tenement, it must be with the sensation of being born again. For myself—well, perhaps I am forty masquerading as a boy.”
“I know exactly how old you are,” she said maliciously. “And you could not grow a mustache to save your life.”
“Nothing would induce me to!” And then they both laughed, although he blushed very red, for he was sensitive on the subject of his age and wished that Peerages had never been invented.
Styr put her hands to her face and gave a faint scream. A column of fire had shot up in the path just ahead of the horses.
“The moon has gone under a cloud and the outrider has lit the torch,” Ordham reassured her.
She dropped her hands and leaned forward eagerly. The moon had made the wild mountain scenery, the forests and snow peaks, the upper reaches, so beautiful that more than once she had held her breath, felt as if her soul were full of crystal flowers. The flaming torch, high in the right hand of the outrider, lit the vast scene in a fashion that suggested the approach to Hell arranged in honour of distinguished visitors. The waterfalls leaping down the opposite cliffs, the glittering peaks, the gloomy roaring depths of the gorges, started out red and black, disappeared, flashed in the distance, rushed forward to hurl themselves at the flying carriage. Ordham wondered how many horses the King killed in a year. But he was too much interested in the scene, the adventure, to care. It was more wonderful, more satisfying, than anything he had ever dreamed of. For a moment he had an ecstatic desire for death, if only to avoid the anticlimax of life.
The moon came out again. The torch was extinguished. All the Alpine world was white and silver. It seemed like a sudden ascent into the vast quiet regions of space from the chaos of the Inferno. Both Ordham and his companion, who had been sitting tensely, leaned back with a sensation of contentment and peace.
In a moment she turned to him with softly shining eyes and said, “Cannot you understand the King a little better?”
“I think so.”
“Not yet! Be thankful for that.”
“When you began to sing to-night, I was frightfully oppressed by the thought of that tormented soul only a few feet from me. Then I forgot him.”
“Is it possible?” She stared at him with a puzzled interest. She knew nothing of the worldly and mental precocity of young Englishmen of Ordham’s class, and Ordham was himself in more ways than one.
“ ‘Tormented soul.’ Nothing could express it more perfectly.” She continued in a moment: “It was developed for some other planet where all conditions are higher and more satisfying than on this, then strayed here through some mismanagement of the Unknown Forces—and into the dark passages of a Wittelsbach brain, of all places! If he only had been in a position to work out his one hope of mortal salvation—to become a great artist. Genius inflamed and smothered by the megalomania of a king—and of a king with no part to play on the stage of Europe! No wonder there are abysses in his brain for which this life will build no bridges.”
“Do you know him well?”
“I have never exchanged a word with him, never met him face to face.”
“No?” Ordham turned to her with a quickened interest. He had attributed the Nachmeister’s defence to the amiable mood of the moment, but it did not occur to him to doubt the word of Margarethe Styr. “He has shown you so much favour—”
“He is grateful for my voice, poor soul, for it gives him a few moments’ happiness. But I shall never know him. I wish I might. I understand him so well.”
“Then you too do not belong to this planet?”
“I wonder you did not add that I too have a tormented soul.”
“That is what I meant.”
“But I have not.” She looked at him steadily. “Perhaps—once—yes. But that is long past. You, being a man, with a more sensitive fibre in you than most men possess,—you may catch just a glimmer of the depths of Ludwig, in spite of your tender years. But there is one thing of which you know absolutely nothing, and that is the intense and absorbing joy that an artist finds in his art.”
“ ‘His.’ Can a woman?”
“Oh, you are clever! But, yes—in certain conditions. There are moments when I am happier than any one not an artist can ever dream of being. And betweenwhiles—with my studies, my long meditations upon the characters I portray—for I find always something new in those strange women, that not even The Master apprehended when he resurrected them—in my unruffled life, in my certainty of repeated triumphs—well, it is close enough to happiness; although I am willing to confess that it might not have been at your age. Have we really pulled up a bit?”
The horses were trotting quietly across a valley, where, unable to find excitement, the King, no doubt, was in the habit of sparing his unhappy beasts. But a few moments later the speed was increased again, apparently that they might enter a village on the other side of the valley like a hurricane. Here, as in all the other villages through which they had flashed, was the same rattling of windows flung up, the same flaring of lights, the same passionate cry:—
“Heil unserem König, Heil!”
But in this case the cheers stopped abruptly, for the faithful peasants had time to discover their mistake; the foaming horses came to a sudden halt before the gasthaus trembling and panting. As Ordham and Countess Tann descended into the narrow street which flamed like a comet, there were loud astonished cries. The outrider made a brief explanation, and the lights were extinguished, the windows slammed. In the beloved romantic figure of their King these humble folk took a deathless interest, but not the least in any guest he might invite to his castles; although for a week from this night they discussed the strange fact that he condescended to have guests at all, much less relinquish in their favour his midnight drive.
But the landlord of the inn had expected the King’s visitors, and kept his counsel: a groom on horseback had galloped in with orders half an hour before. Ordham and Styr were conducted into a long dark raftered room which had been hastily aired of its evening fumes of beer and tobacco, and illuminated with lamps and candles. There was a fire in the big tiled stove, and Ordham quickly threw off his overcoat and removed the long Arabian-looking wrap in which the singer was muffled. The supper was not ready, and he looked her over as she stood by the fire with her back to him, a tall figure draped in severe white folds, a finely poised head with loosened coils of heavy but rippling brown hair that shone as if polished daily with a silk handkerchief. But although she was engaged in the prosaic occupation of warming her hands, he received the impression that he always did in the first act ofTristanand the second ofGötterdämmerung, of a ruthless mental force, barely held in leash, of sullen deadly fires.
It was like a sudden vision of Aspasia in the dark tobacco-scented room of the little Alpine gasthaus, but in a moment he forgot his fancies; she turned to him with bright eyes and flushed cheeks that made her look human and young.
“How odd! How odd!” she cried. “And the oddest part of it is that I like it—talking to a human being once more. It might even seem natural to feel young and gay again. And in spite of your preternatural insight—or whatever it is—you are deliciously young, and, I think, stimulated all that was still youthful in my brain the moment we made friends.”
“Are we to remain friends?”
“I do not know. I must think it over.”
“I shall call.”
“Of course. That would be mere civility. But I am not sure that you will get in.”
He was never demonstrative in manner, although he often indulged in certain exaggerations of speech. But he could direct a quiet smiling appeal from his juvenile orbs which he had discovered was seldom resisted. He was far too clever to flirt with Margarethe Styr, so upon this occasion he merely looked like a very young man begging indulgence of a goddess. She smiled and shook her head.
“I am not sure. It is the first step that counts, and first steps are too often fatal. I might find myself enjoying the society of my kind again. I want nothing less—the even tenor of my life destroyed. When one has attained a form of happiness it is the quintessence of folly to risk it.”
“But the first step—you have taken it. We have had an adventurous night together and I shall refuse to be ignored.”
“To-morrow it will seem like a dream.”
“To-morrow, but not a week hence,” he retorted with his uncommon sagacity, which fascinated her more than any trait he had yet displayed to her. “And nothing can alter the fact that it is no dream, and that neither of us can forget it. I shall call to-morrow.”
She laughed and they sat down to the omelette that preceded the chickens. Like all singers she had a healthy appetite, and wondered that she had not missed her usual replenishment even after but an hour and a half of work.
“How do you manage it—concentrating all that tragedy in your eyes?” asked Ordham, abruptly. “Is it that you draw your brows together in some peculiar way—I fancy that is it; they are so low and straight. Will you show me?”
“Do you think I am a machine?” The artist arose in her wrath. “Do you fancy that when I am suffering the anguish of Iseult or Brynhildr I put eyebrows on my soul?”
“But you don’t really feel it? I thought artists dared not feel too much. I have seen would-be emotional actresses carried away to such an extent that they were quite ridiculous.”
“You give no stage artist the credit of a brain, I suppose? Can you imagine a born actress—born, mind you—living her part, yet never quite shaking loose from that strong grip above? That is what is meant by ‘living a part.’ You abandon yourself deliberately—with the whole day’s preparation—into that other personality, almost to a soul in possession, and are not your own self for one instant; although the purely mental part of that self never relaxes its vigilance over the usurper. It is a curious dual experience that none but an artist can understand. Of course that perfect duality is only possible after years of study, work, practical experience, mastery of technique. No beginner, no matter what her genius, should dare to abandon herself to her rôles.”
“You must have had great masters. You have harrowed me horribly.”
“I have had none, except Wagner. Five years of stage experience in the United States were of a certain value, for although I never had an important part—I was too tall, I was not interested, my talent barely stirred—still I observed, I studied in an abstract mental fashion, I gained poise. It is an achievement alone to feel at home on the stage.”
He was burning with impatience. “How in heaven’s name could they have failed over there to discover that you were a great actress, whether or not you chose to cultivate your genius—and why not? why not? I hope you do not think me merely curious. I am trying to speak as one of the public that adores you—quite impersonally. There are so few great actresses. I feel that you had no right, for any private reasons whatever, to build a bushel over your talent. No genius belongs to himself alone.”
The colour left her face, but she replied composedly: “Perhaps not, but that is not the way that women, at least, reason when they are young. I went on the stage, not because I was stage-struck, nor in poverty, but for a reason that I cannot give you. When I found that the big heavy voice that even singing teachers had laughed at could be minted into pure gold for the new music,—which only one of the many instructors I sought knew anything about, or at least believed in,—then I felt resigned even to the causes which had driven me to the stage. I have become inordinately ambitious; I often wonder what life can mean to those that have no excuse for ambition—it is one of the reasons which enabled me to begin life all over again. I was indeed another being after my first triumph at Bayreuth, and not only because half the crowned heads in Europe rushed to hear me the second time I sang; when I stood on the greatest stage in the world with all my being set to the music soaring from my throat, not a nerve out of tune, I knew that I no longer was of common clay, that nothing that had ever happened to me before mattered in the least. Ah, what matter the charnel rooms in the soul when such memories blaze forever above? Poor women! Poor women!—that have no such blinding moments—that must sit and think—and think—”
Her eyes, dilated, horror-struck, gazed beyond Ordham, who felt intolerably excited. He drew a short breath of relief when she recovered herself abruptly, and said with a laugh: “But the world is very ungrateful to its stage artists. Think of Mallinger, Josephine Schefzky, Malwina Schnoor von Caroldsfeld. Less than twenty years ago all Germany rang with their fame. Have you ever heard their names?”
“I have heard of Schefzky! It was she that overturned the swan boat in the winter garden of the Residenz when sailing with the King—dressed up as Lohengrin!—and he ran off, dripping, and calling to a lackey to pull her out. I love that story.”
“It is all that keeps poor Josephine’s name alive. However—what matter so long as we have our little day? Only the chosen few have that. What have you made up your mind to do with your own life?”
She put the question so abruptly that he almost dropped his fork. “If I have interested you sufficiently to inspire that question, then the last six or eight years have not atrophied everything but the artist. Unless you asked it for the sake of saying something,” he added anxiously.
“Not altogether. I suddenly wondered. Excellenz Nachmeister and the few people I meet often mention you. I have had the impression that you were badly spoilt, but your head does not seem to be turned.”
“Why should it be? No one has ever spoilt me—thought of such a thing” (and he really meant it). “I am going into the diplomatic service, if you care to know. I am here to get my German—not that I get much, between rushing about and four teachers that practise their English on me.”
“Why four teachers?”
“I take every new one that is recommended, and am too weak-minded to dismiss the others. They all seem to be so horribly poor.”
“I must find you a good teacher.” She spoke impulsively, feeling an uncommon interest in a promising young creature, quite thirteen years her junior. She had never had a child, but as she regarded Ordham, who in the mellow light looked his youngest, and was eating his abundant supper as daintily as a girl, she moved toward him with an instinct of protection. He still had the soft bloom of lip and cheek and eye that the most innocent of women lose so early, and she knew the world he lived in. What a pity it must go, that he too must change! Between his inherited impressions and exceeding opportunities, he might know his world, and his brain might be all that admiring Munich acclaimed, but he was young, divinely young. No girl had ever given her such an impression of youth—fleeting youth! His contacts with the emotional side of life had made no impression on him beyond satisfying his curiosity and saving his mind from morbidity. She divined, indeed, that, his heart still being untouched, his nature was practically unawakened, that his casual experiences, when they had not disgusted him, had affected him no more than some story he had read and forgotten. Other phases of life meant so much more.
She reached these conclusions by aid of her deep instincts rather than through any conscious mental process, for her own contacts had been almost entirely with American men who were either ingenuously fast or uncompromisingly puritanical, generally the former, circumstances having limited her experience. She had met, as all handsome actresses must, young Americans of Ordham’s age; and when they had not been precocious and impertinent, they had belonged to that gallant, clean-minded, well-bred type the universities turn out in such abundance—the type that has every attribute to win the girl and not one to interest the woman. Ordham’s inherited complexities, intensified by growing up among men of affairs in a country always consciously making history, added to his own uncommon individuality, fascinated her. She would have liked to cultivate him, but she relinquished that idea, and said practically:
“These are precious years if you really mean to make a career. I know an excellent teacher, and will send her to you to-morrow. But you must not waste her time. Will you promise me to study?”
“Of course.” Ordham was always willing to promise anything. “I’ll dismiss all four and take her for as many hours as she will give me. You inspire me with a desire to work. Did you begin to study German when you were very young that your accent is so perfect?”
“I did not study anything when I was very young.” She hesitated, reflected that in all probability she would never see this young man again, and might as well drop a good seed when the opportunity was given her; it did not occur often. “I did not know even the English alphabet until I was fifteen. Nor did any other child in the wretched coal-mining district where I first saw light. It was peopled wholly by the poorest class of immigrants from eastern Europe—brought over wholesale by enterprising and not too honest mine owners. My clothes were made of hop-sacking. I had not the faintest idea that I was good-looking, for the simple reason that I was never clean or half fed. My mind was as tightly closed as an oyster. I recall no desires beyond want of more food and the night that brought rest. My mother died at my birth, and I was taken in by a family of fellow-immigrants to whom one more child meant one more future bread-winner.
“Suddenly, I went to New York. Almost immediately I began to attend a public school—a free school, not a public school in your sense. Later I had tutors, masters. I learned well from the first. My intellect, that is to say my interest in books, awakened early—novels, at first, of course; gradually heavier works. In them I soon learned to forget; that is to say, I found in them a separate and particular happiness. I made a special study of the language and the literature of Germany. Whence I inherit my tendencies and talents I have no idea. From nowhere, most likely. Some mysterious disarrangement of particles, of which science, so far, knows nothing. You are an exotic yourself, or I am much mistaken. To return—that rushing of the awakened mind over dam after dam, barrier after barrier,—there is nothing under heaven like it, except the discovery that one was born to be a great artist, which, of course, is the supreme happiness. There were times, even then, when I was as happy as I ever shall be; that is to say, my mental exaltation was as great, for I suppose that is what mortal happiness really means, what gives us our most precise distinction from the lower order of animals, and makes us feel our relationship to that omnipotent force which we personify as God. At all events it was a life apart, a secret life, a life in which no one—no one—” her voice rose on an accent almost furious—“could enter. And of course those years of study played their part in making me what I am to-day. Most singers have no brain, no mental life; they must be taught their rôles like parrots, they put on a simulation of art with their costumes which deceives the great stupid public and touches no one. Mere emotionalism, animal robustness, they call temperament. I strengthened and developed my brain during those terrible years to such an extent that I now act out of it, think myself into every part, relying not at all upon the instructions of the uninspired, nor upon chance.”
Ordham had forgotten his dessert and was staring at her, fascinated, almost bewildered. Again she had lifted a corner of the veil. If she would but fling it aside! And pity overwhelmed him, for he saw far behind her words. But his face betrayed little of his emotions, and when she paused abruptly, he said: “You have an object in telling me this. What is it?”
“To show what obstacles can be overcome by the power of the will and by ceaseless mental activity rightly directed. You have no obstacle to overcome but your indolence, which may, nevertheless, balk your languid desire for a career. Therefore, if you fail; if ten years hence you are a mere society butterfly, a drone, which, I infer, Munich is doing its best to make of you; if twenty years hence you are an old beau, with no object but to be invited out every night that you may escape death by ennui,—you need curse no one but yourself. Had I failed, I should have been justified in throwing myself into the river, cursing life, fate, your entire sex. I have conquered in spite of every millstone that could be hung about a woman’s neck. But you!”
He had flushed, and looked frightened. The vision she had evoked was not pleasant. He answered steadily, however: “Thank you for telling me all this. I know that no one, not even Princess Nachmeister, has ever heard one-tenth as much from you. What shall I do to show my gratitude?”
“Make a great man of yourself and study with Fräulein Lutz,” she said gayly, as they rose from the table. “I think they are bringing those poor horses round.”
They started by the light of the torch, but on the return journey the horses were spared, save on the more dangerous parts of the road. Then they galloped as if bent on destruction. While the carriage rocked and bounded through a gorge with the thunder of waters below and the narrow pass reeling in the red flame, Ordham regaled his companion with the story of the wild black night when the outrider, overcome by panic, had flung the torch into the depths, and fled shrieking, leaving the King to his fate. But she only laughed and shrugged her shoulders, and would not talk until they entered the valley of the Pöllat. The moon had sailed high above the thick Bavarian clouds, and the great white pile of Neuschwanstein seemed to be poised in the black void. Margarethe pointed to a solitary figure standing on the balcony before the throne room.
“The King,” she said softly. “He has his consolations. Who can say he is not happier in his mystic communion with nature, in his freedom to dwell amidst such scenes as this, than the mere mortals that pity him and think him mad? He is looking out now on the three snow peaks. Who knows? He may be their offspring. Mountains are no mere masses of rock, and he is no mere mortal. When his adumbrated spirit sheds that gross mass of flesh, who can say what glorious destiny awaits it? I should like to meet him out there in space. I feel sure he will reign over a noble kingdom, where he will no longer be alone, but where only the rarest spirits may enter.”
“Are you in love with Ludwig—with his soul?”
“Not even that. But I should be glad to know that he, above all men,—for he has suffered most,—had found what we all seek and never find—I mean all of us who are worthy of loneliness.”
“You do not believe in mortal companionship, then?”
“No.”
“I wonder.”
As he handed her out of the carriage in the courtyard they were surrounded by lackeys, and her anxious maid awaited her. But he said, as they shook hands:
“Thank you so much—again and again. And I shall call to-morrow.”