For two days Ordham was really ill, or at least so uncomfortable that his mind was quite averted from his evil fortunes. But with the quick submission of his ailment to treatment alarm bells began to ring in his brain once more. He wasted no time, however, cursing fate and his folly, neither did he make any effort to consign their achievements to one of those water-tight compartments of which he was so proud. He set his wits to work and finally hit upon a compromise which promised to save both his honour and his credit. Immediately upon his recovery he would go to England, and by hook or crook get his debts paid. He would appeal to Bridgminster first; finding him obdurate, he would confide his predicament to his mother, and he well knew that to avert a scandal she would raise the money if she had to sell her jewels or beg of her relatives. Meanwhile he should have written to Frau von Wass, very formally,—when had he ever written to her otherwise?—assuring her that he should return to Munich within the month. If she followed him, she could be kept out of sight in London. Otherwise, he might venture to hope that before his return her common sense would have revived. If not, he supposed he should be an ass, as other men had been before him; but while his chances for the diplomatic career would be ruined, his credit would be immaculate in the eyes of his world, and that would almost console him.
As it was prudent to receive no visitors and as he was in no mood for the fiction of other minds, he arrayed one of his tables with certain books presented to him by his father long since, and whose contents he must master before presenting himself before the Civil Service Commission: histories of Europe, Asia, and America covering the period between 1789 and 1880; Blackstone’s Commentaries, Ker’s edition, 1862; Hallam’s Constitutional History of England; Mill’s Political Economy; Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Before now, when ill or annoyed, he had taken refuge in this austere masonry, and had found its fascinations quite as powerful for the time as the jewelled streets of literature where the creative minds displayed their wares. Sometimes, too, he read them when mortified with the knowledge that he had not “played up,” “risen to the occasion,” as an older man still gambling with edged tools would have done; a manifestation of the quickness and assimilative qualities of his intellect salved his wounded vanity and induced a temporary scorn of youthful follies. But, truth to tell, it is not likely that he would have opened one of these books for ten years to come could he have passed his examinations without their aid.
During the six days of his convalescence he read steadily, and if the severe diet did not elevate his spirits, it diverted his mind. From the third day of his incarceration he wrote Frau von Wass a series of pleasant little notes to keep her quiet, and, receiving no answer, inferred that she was sulking. As she crossed her letters (she never wrote him notes), he was thankful for the additional respite until the eighth day of his seclusion; then he began to feel uneasy and to wonder if she really meditated an attack on the Legation. He was on the point of cutting his convalescence short and hastening to London, when he was astounded to receive the following note from Hungary:
“Dear Mr. Ordham: The most dreadful thing has happened to me! I am threatened with a goitre!! I spent a part of last summer in the Bavarian Alps—I remember certain villages where every other person had one—and the young men on Sundays with their arm round the waist of some hideous disfigured girl, as if that awful growth were a sort of heirloom! The sight made me quite ill; and now I—who am always so particular about water—I am in the wildest rage with myself for being so careless. The doctors say that it will yield to treatment, but meanwhile I prefer to keep out of sight. And you were to dine with me next week! Please don’t think me rude. One of these days you will visit Munich again and then I shall give a great dinner in your honour.
“Yours sincerely,
“Hélène v. Wass.”
Then for the first time did Ordham fairly appreciate the load that had weighed his spirits to earth, delaying his recovery, driving him to pound his brain into a state of stupefaction before night. In a moment he felt entirely well. Flinging his dressing-gown off and Blackstone into a corner, he began to dress hastily that he might go out of doors, take a drive, call on Countess Tann. He even felt an affectionate impulse toward Princess Nachmeister and other friends that had given much and asked little. He whistled, wondering that he had ever lost faith in his star; he felt young,—“but young!” as these foreigners would say, gay, insolent. His imagination took leaps and bounds: he saw himself an ambassador; Bridg long since retired from a world in which he had no place, leaving behind him an income which delivered his illustrious heir from the fatiguing obligation of marrying one; returning to Munich every year to hear Styr sing, and to sit for hours in that delightful gallery—no doubt in time she would let him lie on the divan while she sat in that odd American rocking-chair looking like a friendly goddess—
But his jubilance came to a violent halt. His mind had tossed up mechanically her avowed intention to save him. He had not given it a second thought, so manifest was her inability to play any part in this intensely personal crisis of his life. He recalled her eager insistence that he grant her a week, the strength that had pulled him toward her like a magnet, remembered that she had attempted greater things than foiling a silly woman and failed in none of them.
The blood mounted to his hair, he pressed his lips together until their soft boyish curves were obliterated. A wave of shame, anger, rebellion, rose and choked him.
In a few moments it receded, left him quite cold. He was a wise young man, in spite of follies. Whatever had been done—assuming that vivacious note from Hungary to have been written under coercion—had been carried to a finish. The episode was over. Frau von Wass announced that fact herself. If mystery were here, it were a mystery best unsolved. A water-tight compartment opened, closed. He refused even to harbour a natural curiosity.