“I should hate the people I should be compelled to associate with. As I said just now, it requires enormous concentration to be a successful man of business; and fancy hearing no other topic of conversation day in and out, to see, to feel, nothing else in the men by whom one was surrounded!”
“You might be a cow-boy. That has appealed to other Englishmen, and is more picturesque—quite honest, also, I should think.”
“But so dirty, and such a hard life physically. They get up at four and go to bed with their boots on. Then, after they are quite demoralized, all their finer tastes hopelessly blunted, they come home without a penny. Heaven only knows into what limbo they disappear then. Don’t think I am really lazy.” (There was a genuine anxiety in his tones!) “What you said at Neuschwanstein about the possibility of finishing as a society drone has got me up every morning in time for Fräulein Lutz. I mean to pass my examinations and enter diplomacy. But I am afraid I am fitted for nothing else. I haven’t stumbled into it blindly. It is that or nothing, and although the suggestion was my mother’s, my father quite agreed with her.”
“It all comes back to this,—you must marry money.”
“Alas, yes! But four or five years hence. I will pay these bills somehow, and then I can run up others. They will always wait a few years.”
“But suppose you could meet some girl of great wealth whom you could love? That would be the ideal solution, and there are many rich and lovely girls. Should not you like peace of mind and happiness?”
“Happiness?” He stared at her in a fashion he had dropped into before, as if she were a mirror in which the future might take form. “I fancy that no matter whom I married . . . even if persuaded that I was in love with her . . . I should no sooner be settled down than I should begin to invent some one I might have loved better.” He came to himself with a smile. “Will you let me smoke? And tell you what a delight it is to see you again? And this room! To think that I may sit in it often! That we are to be friends for a whole summer! Nothing in life can ever be as wonderful as that.”
XIX
A DIPLOMATIST IN THE MAKING
The Queen-mother lingered on in Munich, and society with her. Excellenz Nachmeister and the diplomatic corps entertained constantly, and if the rest of the fashionable world took little initiative, it was always ready to lend the light of its countenance. Ordham, with the most enthusiastic intentions, saw little of Countess Tann, but at least he broke no engagements with her; and this, to those that knew him, would have appeared more significant than had he sought her daily. That pleasure awaited the empty summer months, and meanwhile, conformably with his half-admitted creed, he missed nothing that promised enjoyment. Nevertheless, true to his promise to Margarethe Styr, he took his daily lesson with Fräulein Lutz; and this recalls a story which became current in Munich at the time and entertained his friends not a little. Lutz related it with a mixture of tartness and triumph to Styr, who told it to Nachmeister, who——
His Grenadier, as he called her, arrived at the Legation every morning at five minutes before ten. He received her in an upper sitting room, and had made more progress in four weeks than during the six preceding months of his sojourn in Munich. As a rule he appeared at the rendezvous not more than five or six minutes later than Lutz, but one morning he arose with the greatest reluctance. He had taken a party of English friends to the monastic cellar of the Hofbräu the night before, and sat up until late listening to the students singing, and drinking beer in an atmosphere as thick as a London fog. He wanted to lie in bed until noon, but dared not run the risk of the loss of his Lutz. He arose when called, but entered the frigid presence quite twelve minutes late. Being greeted with a withering outburst, he was suddenly inspired to torment this iron-clad female, for whom he appeared to have no more magnetism than had he been a wooden dummy into which she was employed to drill holes and instil so much German per day. He sank into the deepest chair in the room, and drawled: