“Of course not.” And knowing somewhat of the fecundity of the feminine pen, it did not strike him as odd that his mother should have found it worth while to write this epitome of her disgust three times.
XXXVII
ORDHAM CEASES TO BE ORIGINAL
For a day or two Ordham could hardly believe in his good fortune, so suddenly had it descended upon him. When separated from Mabel he moved as in a dream, looking preternaturally serious lest he wear a fatuous grin. But this phase passed and he settled down to the business of being supremely happy, or as happy as possible while happiness was still incomplete. He thanked the American fates for the business complications that called Mrs. Cutting to New York and hastened the wedding, which was to take place early in October. Lady Bridgminster had written two frigid letters of congratulation, which Ordham and Mabel smilingly compared; but, being in Paris, graciously offered to confer with the great milliner who had the honour of dressing the young beauty, and spare her and her mother the miseries of crossing the Channel and of French hotels.
Ordham had never felt so young. Having cared little for girls and greatly for women of the world, he had been, and in spite of his precocity and cleverness, under an unconscious strain for several years past. He had always been “playing up,” as Hélène Wass once expressed it, when she may have felt—who knows?—a moment’s pity for him. Now, he had the sensation that Life, having long cheated him, was making sudden and wondrous restitution. It was that perfect flower of youth in Mabel that called to him as potently as her beauty and her high-bred grace and charm. He no longer cared what she read; she declared herself too happy to think of books, and he replied that they were writing a great romance of their own; time enough for other men’s unlifelike vapourings later. He did not see her often alone, and these sweet brief interviews gave a romantic intensity to their engagement which London might not have offered to a pair less severely chaperoned; although, to be sure, that exotic mansion, with its imported atmosphere of vanished Bourbons and their reckless nobles, exorcised the memory of grimy London, and was a poem in itself. Even in imagination he always saw her drifting about the lovely bright rooms with her eyes full of dreams. She treated him to a bewildering variety of moods, sometimes even chattering for a few moments quite like the old Mabel, only to melt insensibly into the dignified and stately girl he longed to exhibit to every court in Europe. Not only was he fully roused from the long lethargy of his youth and alive as he had fancied he might be at thirty, but the romantic cravings born during his extraordinary experience with Margarethe Styr were eager, hungry, almost satisfied. Only that wondrous period prosaically known as the honeymoon could perfect this poem of the prince and princess of fairy lore.
It never occurred to him to wonder if he could have loved Mabel Cutting had she been a poor girl and he forced to give up his diplomatic ambitions and support her, or if he had met her only in commonplace hotel sitting-rooms. The exquisite creature’s very wealth was a part of her romantic fascination. It furnished the halo. It created, as with a magic wand, the poetic setting for her aristocratic beauty and grace. It moved her aloof from those common mortals whose gilded cages were stuffed with unpaid bills. That his life with her was to be free of those vulgar cares which his temperament held in particular abhorrence, added to the ecstasy, to the belief that they two were of the elect, chosen to dwell upon a rarefied plane, to experience a superior and perennial happiness.
It was quite ten days before he remembered Margarethe Styr. Then he sat down at once to write to her of his engagement, that she might not hear of it first through the public channels; it was to be announced as soon as the invitations were engraved. He found this letter the most difficult he had ever attempted to write. Even as he took up his pen that something he still did not wish to define stirred in the deeps of his mind, whispered that he had committed an act of infidelity. Never until that moment had he realized how close and deep his intimacy with Styr had been. It was, as she herself had called it, a mental marriage. There was no doubt that in a sense he had given himself to her, that he had intended to keep her always and first in his life, that he had vaguely looked forward to some ultimate union with her. The possibility of falling in love with the girl possessing the requisite millions had never occurred to him. But Margarethe Styr had gone out of his life. There was no possible doubt on that point. He no longer felt the slightest need of her. Henceforth he should be absorbed in his young wife and in his career. Mabel would become one of the cleverest women in Europe and give him all the inspiration he needed in that future of which she even now talked with such enthusiasm and intelligence. Friendships with other women would be superfluous and imprudent. Styr belonged to the past, and while he should cherish her memory, she must be content to reign in memory alone.
He spent the entire morning groaning at his desk, but finally concocted a letter that he dared to send to Munich. Far too astute to indulge in rhapsodies, and at the same time too much in love to be dishonest, he hedged between an avowal and a denial of his affection for the great heiress whom he shortly was to have the honour of leading to the altar. But although it was a very creditable performance, that letter, he was all youth and love and fire when he wrote it, and his pen conducted more than one flash from his electrified being. A woman far less keen than Styr would hardly have been persuaded that he was reluctantly steering into matrimony through the golden gate, barely conscious of his partner in the sordid transaction.
XXXVIII
ISOLDA FURIOSA
From the instant that Isolde raised herself slowly from the couch on the ship’s deck the great audience that Styr’s performances always called forth knew that some unusual influence was at work upon the impersonation. Not even in that first silent moment was there the reading of a princess whose tormented spirit had not permitted her to sleep since she had left her father’s shores. At once there was such an expression of fury, of murderous hate, in those immense pregnant eyes, such an aura of primal devastating force emanated from the strained body, the fixed features, that hardly a person in the house but stirred uncomfortably. This was no indignant princess weary with night-watches, whose wrongs would gradually set her brain on fire; here was the infuriated woman out of leash, a woman that might have been suckled by a tigress and forgotten what little she had ever known of civilization. “Brangäne” said afterward that she was afraid to approach her; and had not the audience focussed their attention wholly upon Styr, they might have noticed that the poor little mezzo sang off the key twice.
When Isolde—who had even lifted herself and shown her face sooner than was customary, had stared for long insupportable moments while the sailors sang the careless satirical words of their song, “Oh, Irish maid! My winsome Irish maid!”—sprang to her feet, crying, “What wight dares insult me?” her great voice seemed to ring through all Munich. “Brangäne, ho!” she shouted. “Where sail we?”