Tower of Ivory: A Novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

Ordham had been amused at first, but not for long. When only his opportune return diverted her from a cabinet which contained Styr’s letters and photographs, he was so incensed that he nearly ordered her out instead of gently conducting her forth to admire a new picture. After a day of black, albeit invisible, sulks, that gift for compromise which seldom failed him came to his rescue; and a week later found him installed in The Temple, with solitude within and beauty without, and only the roar of the Strand in his ears. Here he wrote his letters to Styr, read and reread hers, smoked, and dwelt upon the happiness of the past summer, as his eyes travelled from presentment to presentment of its heroine. He also enjoyed the sensation of deceiving his wife, for he felt that it was even a duty to balk a gregarious nature like that, and this secret life that he shared with Styr alone was eminently agreeable to the future master of the diplomatic art. Too proud to write of his disappointment to his friend, however her presence might have tempted confession, the very fact that he had taken this room as a solitary retreat would have told the whole story to his acute correspondent, even had not that atmosphere of melancholy superseded the subtle exaltation of those letters written from Ordham when his energies were humming and he was excited with a foretaste of power.

He lit the fire and a cigar, and settled himself into the ample Morris chair, but not with his usual sense of unqualified delight. Heretofore, when he had entered this room, it was to banish all unpleasant thought, all haunting doubt; but to-night he intended to open certain water-tight compartments and look squarely on their contents. He fancied that this unusual disposition to confront and probe must be inspired by the woman who had pricked his energies in so many other ways. Certainly, had he never known her, he would, after some such crisis as this evening’s understanding with his mother-in-law, have gone at once to the theatre, postponed indefinitely the admission that his marriage was a mistake.

No man could be more direct, more outspoken, than Ordham when it suited him, and this was his chief charm for people thrown much in his society,—betraying, as it did, the cool courage under his listless habit, furnishing the high lights, as it were, for that formal indubitably diplomatic nature. To-night he put several facts into the plainest possible English. He was mortally tired of his wife, hopelessly disappointed in her. He could have resigned himself to her intellectual lacks, trusting to time and his own assiduous tutoring to furnish her skull respectably; but her character was so utterly without variety, depth, mystery, interest of any sort, that the task of stuffing the brain was not worth while. Neither time nor determination can create a personality, and to Ordham’s mind people without strong individual characteristics were hardly worthy of visibility, no matter how admirable the shell. He had caught himself staring at Mabel in wonderment, half fancying he saw behind her that stately romantic elusive figure of his wooing, suggesting infinite possibilities. Had he been hypnotized, and where had she gone? True, Mabel was as beautiful as ever, as tall, her manners retained their grace, her head its lofty poise; but her features lost their dignity, her eyes their dreams, the moment she began to chatter; and heavens, how she did chatter!

He was still annoyed and embarrassed at this prospect of early paternity, still felt that this projection of himself would appropriate what was left of his youth; but at least it had the merit of causing a certain tenderness to linger. Not for the world would he have given Mabel a hint of his present evolution; he had only to remind himself of her pathetic condition to be delivered of the temptation. But later, when she was well again, strong, more tactless than ever in her renewed beauty and social successes, should he hate her? This was the ghost that had been tapping at his brain for weeks. He had no desire to hate his wife. It would be demoralizing, inconvenient, a constant source of irritation. Could he but crowd the world between them, wean her until she shared his own indifference, he fancied he could accept his lot philosophically; a well-bred ornamental wife was not to be despised. But inflict himself with her society and pertinacious affections he would not.

He realized now why his spirits had gradually sunk below their normal level, save only when the drawing-rooms were full of kaleidoscopic guests; moreover, that resentment had steadily grown at the trickery which had brought him to his present pass, anger at his own unthinkable stupidity. True, he was now immensely wealthy, but a young Briton’s only appreciation of money is in the incessant want of it, and, this passed, Ordham had almost forgotten that checkered interval between his father’s death and his present affluence. Besides, it was now positive that his brother had a mortal, if leisurely, disease; his inheritance was but a matter of time. If these women had not made a fool of him, he should still be free—young.

But he was not the man to arrest his vision on the surface of his mistakes. He stared appalled at the sudden and vivid realization of all that true marriage meant. Mere mating, respectable or otherwise, that automatic opening of the door to a waiting generation always squatting on the threshold, was not for men like himself; the world swarmed with those that asked for nothing better, and cared little whether nature blindfolded them or not; why could not he have been spared? Marriage—it was a portentous thing; no mere similarity of tastes due to breeding and experience, but, for highly organized beings, a thousand points of contact, mental, physical, spiritual, which compassed an unimaginable union; mystery and discovery; the quick response to half utterances, the same enthusiasms in beauties and pleasures forever hidden from the mass upon whose fertile surfaces grew the exotics of life; passions of soul and body such as only Styr could suggest when the music of Wagner set her free; immortality this side of the grave,—that was union in love as Ordham conceived it. And consciously or not, upon at least half a thousand points had he met and mingled with Margarethe Styr. The other half, of course, were not to be commanded in a mere romantic friendship, wandering silently with the woman in scenes made up of ice and stars, floating on sinister lakes between Plutonian walls, sitting in a dimly lit room above the murmuring Isar till dawn—but how wonderful it all had been! Had he really appreciated it?

When he left her, he had refused to ask himself if she loved him, but he knew that she did. It breathed in her letters, floated from them in an almost visible aura. From the faithful Kilchberg he had heard in due course of her stupendous performance of Isolde, knew that she must have received his letter immediately before it.

Did he love her? It was significant that he did not reply even to himself, “Of course!” But although he admitted it as frankly as he had disposed of his sentiments toward his wife, he was as yet conscious of nothing beyond a vast immaterial longing for that other part of himself, so full of splendour and terrible mystery. After some dodging he analyzed this paradox also: he was sitting in the forbidding wreckage of early matrimonial disillusions, his passions lay so deep under the torpors he had cultivated that they had been but superficially disturbed, and he was still very shy. But between himself and Margarethe Styr there could be every response, every correlation, every analogue. It only depended upon circumstance or their own wills when that chemical affinity developed which sooner or later drives all lovers into each other’s arms. In this hour of cold reasoning, of almost vicious hatred of all things pertaining to his condition, he hoped it would be late, or never. He had not the least idea whether he lived for that moment or wished that Styr had never crossed his orbit. It was his disposition to live on the surface—there was so much on the surface! A man might occupy himself with it for a lifetime, and far better than plunging down to eternal fires. He believed that the wise men of life were its dilettantes, and to be prince of the dilettantes had nature eminently equipped him. But alas! . . .

Of course he did not wish he had never met Styr! What nonsense! Not only did he owe to her all he was or ever should be, not only was he philosophical by habit and temper, but he should exult in the memory of her to the end of his days. He strongly doubted, however, if he wanted to add to those memories, in other words enter upon a different phase. Had it not been for the great advantages she must reap from this London season, he could have wished that he had left England to educate itself. He longed above all things to meet her again, and there was nothing which he would not have done to avoid it. Could they get through these thirty-five days in safety? They would be crowded with work and social engagements; possibly he should see little of her, and prosaic London was not romantic Bavaria. Did he emerge from this coming ordeal with that spiritual bond between them still unvitalized, he vowed that he never would see her again. The moment they ceased to play with love would be the first real moment of his life, and he had but a confused idea of what must come after; nor was it comfortable to speculate. It was not so much that he dreaded the energies of a real passion, as the recklessness they might breed. He had no wish to sacrifice his career, to be haled into the divorce courts, to be relegated to that half world which exists for men as well as for women, particularly for young fools, there to be known as “Styr’s lover.”

And a career he was determined to have. He was become fully conscious of his abilities, his gift for leadership, his enjoyment of power. And if he had thought little or not at all of serving his country when preparing for the diplomatic career, he thought of it a great deal now. If much of his careless insolent youth had been buried under disillusions and ennui these last months, he found himself and life twice as interesting. Not lightly would he imperil that future which for the first time seemed vital and full. . . .