Ordham saw his lilies. They were in her hair, on her breast, on the front of her skirt. But what diverted his attention from this expected compliment was the surprise afforded by her evening gown. He had seen her only in the heavy white draperies affected by the heroines of Wagnerian romance, and in the still more classic costume she had worn at Neuschwanstein; he had supposed her to be a massive woman built for such rôles, and the more untuned to private life. To-night she wore a closely fitting modish gown of maize-coloured tulle, in which the purple lilies seemed to grow. Her neck and arms were uncovered, every line of her figure was salient. She was almost slender, clean-limbed, with a low small bust, and hips barely accentuated. Her shoulders sloped gracefully, her waist was so round that it looked small if it was not. Ordham was familiar, of course, with her long round throat, the famous arms and hands, and he marvelled that he had not taken for granted that the rest of her figure was built in harmony. Then he wondered what part that incomparable form, which might have risen from the mould of Messalina, had played in her unhappy past; and fancied he understood why she veiled it from the public eye with so complete an indifference. Again he felt sorry for her, and more determined than ever to know her.
She wore her heavy dark hair in a low knot. Her skin, ivory-white, had the luminous effect he had often noted on the stage and missed at Neuschwanstein; her eyes were sullen and heavy, she held her head very high. To the surprise of her audience she sang them several folk-songs. When she paused, there was a spontaneous outburst of approval, then a vocal demand for more. The applause subsided, and as she smiled and bowed, they took for granted that their desire for these old songs of their hearts was about to be gratified.
She burst softly into the Liebestod. Her face remained as immobile as ivory, but she threw the soul of Isolde into her voice. It floated upward in the first rapture of delirium, and few but saw the wild face of the dying queen rise above the body of Tristan, the castle towers, the dead Kurwenal, the weeping figures of King Mark and Brängane, the army of retainers in the background. Ordham, at least, shared Isolde’s vision of the valiant soul that had replaced the clay, as she sang, in tones heart-breaking in their sweet frenzy:
“Seht ihr’s Freunde?
Säh’t ihr’s nicht?”
As her voice, rising on a higher and higher note, clear and sustained in the triumph of the seer, the heaven-given vision of the woman to whom her lost has been restored, it seemed the golden pathway upon which her own soul mounted to disappear among the stars. When she opened the flood-gates many gasped and wept; and Ordham, petrified, wondered if all the passion of the world were being swept out into eternity by that soul of Isolde, whom nothing but the passion of death could satisfy.
The voice, remote, dying, drawn to a mere crystal thread, sank away on the last lines:
“ertrinken,
versinken,
unbewusst—