Yes, she would go. What was more, she would make sure of his career before she left London, raze forever his wife’s selfish defences. Little she cared whether the silly child had married him for love or not; her possible sufferings were of no consequence whatever. She would not break up his peace in the common fashion; but give him to Europe she would, and his wife might console herself with her baby and the great position for which she had schemed quite as much as for the love of this exceptional creature to whom she had but the flimsiest, the most transient rights. Not in nine short years could Margarethe Styr swallow ten whole commandments.

Nevertheless, perhaps unconsciously, she possessed the large vision, the contempt of petty detail, of obstructing means, when a great end promised. There were times when she put even herself out of mind, and saw Ordham, his fine and peculiar abilities in full flower, moving his sure hand among the destinies of Europe, making as sure a place for himself in history. Of what earthly importance was the possible happiness, or the crushing, of one more American girl in the face of a great and useful career? She was, in truth, a negligible quantity.

XLIX
THE SPIRIT OF THE RACE MOVES ON

Mabel, seated in a high-back Gothic chair, looking, in her ample flowing gown of white brocade embroidered with gold, her soft mass of “harvest-yellow hair” caught on either side with a jewel in an antique setting, like a cross between Rossetti’s Monna Vanna and his Venus Verticordia, wondered if this mob of people would never go. It seemed to her that all London, fashionable and artistic, lived in her mother’s drawing-rooms, and she wished that it had occurred to her to take a house of her own. True, the suggestion would have precipitated another discussion about that tiresome diplomatic future to which “Jackie” alluded now and again as a matter of course (he had returned to the Foreign Office), and, no doubt, it was as well to be relieved of all detail and care at this time: she felt well, but tired. Moreover, confident as she was in herself, normally, she had discovered that it was no light task to amuse a man who had been born bored, and that if he were to be kept in England, he must have its cream served up daily.

She congratulated herself, however, that she was growing cleverer every minute. Her husband had no suspicion that his departure for the Continent was to be delayed upon one pretext after another until pretexts were no longer necessary; did he retain his interest in diplomacy, the time would surely come when the Foreign Office would have no more of him. His good humour was unruffled. He was more kind, more captivating, than ever, and so considerate that his delicate young wife saw little of him. He sent her to bed early, and took himself off to the theatre, that “he might not keep her awake by roaming round the house; he had never gone to bed early in his life.” He made her lie down immediately after luncheon and remain on her couch until it was time to dress for the afternoon drive. Between half-past five and seven they had a crowded salon. He never had luncheon or dined away from home, and, like the courteous soul he was, entertained formally or familiarly those whose invitations he and his wife were obliged to decline for the present. It was the dinners that, for the most part, were informal, consisting of intimate friends of his mother or the Cuttings, whom he did not feel obliged to follow up to the drawing-room. The luncheons, or “breakfasts,” as it was the fashion to call them, were often imposing functions.

Of the impromptu afternoon salon he was even more the gay and fascinating host than at Ordham. No longer were Mrs. Cutting’s drawing-rooms the studiously select assemblies of the ante-Ordham-Bridgminster régime. True, there were many of greater social importance than she had mustered unaided, as well as that bevy of smart young American wives of English husbands so famous during the eighties, but in addition she found herself receiving all the prominent artists, authors, actors, poets, æsthetes, musicians, and many—discoveries of her son-in-law—not yet famous but indisputably endowed. It was Ordham’s grief that Rossetti had died before he was able to do him honour, but he consoled himself by buying every picture of this consummate painter that found its way to the market. As they did not harmonize with the light, almost frivolous, effect of the drawing-rooms, he had them hung in the stately entrance hall downstairs, which Mrs. Cutting had left untouched that the effect of the French rooms above might seem the more brilliant by contrast. They lit up those dim spaces with their living colours, and Ordham often sat there alone. As available Rossettis were few, and he had an almost equal admiration for Burne-Jones, several fine paintings of this artist shared honours with the master. They would accompany him to the Continent.

Mabel, although at first delighted to be admired by artists, especially when they told her that she looked like The Blessed Damozel, to deck herself in Pre-Raphaelite gowns designed by her mother-in-law, and sit in a Gothic chair, was grown, in this month of March, heartily tired of it all, and confided to her maid that as soon as she was well again she should send æsthetic duds to the old-clothes man, order a trousseau from Paris, such as even she had never possessed before, and become the smartest woman in London. Her husband might continue to have his artists if he wanted them, and they would cut their hair, but she had been born to grace another sphere.

Moreover, she was irritably tired of all this talk about Wagner and that Munich prima donna; London, always on the alert for a new fad, seemed to be obsessed. Five weeks of Wagner at Covent Garden! She devoutly hoped her Jackie would not demand that she sit in the back of his box and share his raptures. With all her little barrel-organ soul she hated Wagner; but she had not forgotten those carefully prepared appreciations of the courtship, and dared not retract them so soon after that first misguided confession she had worked so hard to obliterate.

At the end of five months she had progressed far in matrimonial tactics. But what a protracted mental campaign it was! And she had pictured a rose garden for two light-hearted lovers! Well, there was compensation in all things; she had become clever, at least. She might have married some nice, simple, unexacting person like poppa,—a gentleman who had attended strictly to his own affairs,—and become one of those undeveloped little American matrons who brought letters to them, and whose husbands talked of nothing but business or football. She felt her infinite superiority to all of them, happy and bright as they were; although there were times when she longed for the mental rest which one of these fine busy young fellows, whose brains were not crowded with their ancestors, would have afforded her. And how often she longed to be natural and free. But she was a true female; she adapted herself readily enough to her lot, at times thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of intrigue in which she felt herself moving, sure that in the long silent tussle of wills, she, with the superior tact and finesse of woman, must conquer. If Ordham had been a bold masterful person, such as his brother Stanley would be one of these days when his shyness had worn off, she would have knuckled under as a matter of course, enjoyed with all her feminine soul the battles royal which preceded each sure defeat, while remaining “good,” and “natural,” and “above board.” But the Machiavelli in Ordham had pumped to the surface all those obscure currents of intrigue and deceit which track through every woman’s nature. It was a strange circumstance, this secret pursuit of John Ordham’s ego, in the mysterious regions of the spirit, by two women at the same time; but they hunted on different planes and never met.

The last caller drifted out and down the stair. Ordham returned, and bending over his wife, asked her solicitously if she was tired.