Not the least impressive moment in this terrible act was when Styr, after staring at the phials in the casket while the idea of death matured in her desperate brain,—death for herself as well as for the man that betrayed her,—raised her head slowly, her body to its full height. She looked the very genius of death, a malign fate awaiting its moment to settle upon the ripest fruit, the blithest hopes. A subtle gesture of her hand seemed to deprive it of its flesh, leave it a talon which held a scythe; by the same token one saw the skeleton under the blue robe; her mouth twisted into a grin, her eyes sank. It was all over in half a minute, it was but a fleeting suggestion, but it flashed out upon every sensitive soul present a picture of the charnel house, the worm, death robbed of its poetry, stripped to the bones by the hot blasts from that caldron of hate.
When, having compelled Tristan to drink the love potion which Brängane, who has no taste for crime, mixed instead of the draught of death, when, from the dark abysses of suicide and murder, her soul rose slowly and dazedly, but free, to the heights of the mightiest of all the passions, Styr was so superb in her abandonment, so sweet in her surrender, she carried this act of many emotions to a climax so acute and so satisfying, that few in her audience but felt the sequel should be given on the following night.
The curtain went down as Isolde was torn from Tristan’s arms by her tirewomen and old King Mark boarded the ship. Styr appeared again and again in response to loud cries, clapping, and stamping, which lasted for nearly ten minutes. But at last the audience went forth to refresh itself at the buffet. Ordham did not rise at once. He sat next to the central rope and was undisturbed. He was holding fast to that last picture of Isolde with her dazed yet illuminated eyes in which the love allowance of Earth seemed to be concentrated, when his own eyes unwittingly fell upon the woman that occupied the seat in front of him. She had neatly turned back her overskirt and skirt, and from the capacious pocket of her petticoat was extracting two large sandwiches, a slab of chocolate, and an apple. He gave an almost audible groan and went out into the foyer to exchange “Wunderschöns” with his friends.
The second act, greatest of all love scenes as it is, is far less of a strain on the audience than the first. When Tristan and Isolde, having expressed their joy in meeting in that succession of ecstatic love cries which makes the words feeble and superfluous, sank down upon the bench (that astigmatic couch!) and the love duet began, Ordham once more closed his eyes and listened, with his soul detached from his body, to that voice of fluid gold, melting, fainting, fiery, dreaming, despairing, expressing every phase of the phenomenon of love. Never has the ecstasy and the futility of love been expressed as here, and when Styr, her voice returning from those starry voids where Isolde’s soul had borne Tristan’s, passionately demanded death as the only relief for the insupportable tension of body and spirit, although she did not move, she conveyed the impression of a still more complete abandon. The tenor, being of immense proportions, and with his eyes seldom roving from the baton of the conductor, conveyed no such impression, or the scene might have been unbearably descriptive. But in Germany either the tenor or the soprano, by the entire respectability of their earthly mediums, can be relied upon to modify the most licentious opera ever written.
As Ordham did not like this particular tenor, he remained in the foyer until Tristan had finished his bleating and ranting in the last act—that vicious test of a tenor’s histrionic powers, as of his vocal endurance—and bribed the doorkeeper to let him enter later and stand while Styr sang the Liebestod. Sometimes she rose to her feet as if impelled upward by the intensity of her vision; but to-night she chose to exhibit the physical weakness of delirium as the soul struggled free of the relaxing flesh, the ecstasy of death. Styr always triumphed anew in that supreme effort of Wagner, and on this night when the curtain fell the audience “went quite mad.” While the house was ringing with “Styr!” “Styr!” “Styr!” Ordham conceived a sudden resolution. He had invited Princess Nachmeister, Mr. Trowbridge, and several other friends to sup with him at Maximilia; and although nothing was better known in Munich than that Styr never accepted invitations to supper after one of her performances, was never to be seen, for that matter, he determined to persuade her to join his party. It would gratify his vanity hugely to succeed where all had failed, and he craved the new experience of talking with her immediately after she had created the greatest of her illusions.
He had been behind the scenes with Kilchberg, who loved a maiden in the chorus, and he knew the location of Styr’s dressing room, although he had never caught a glimpse of her in or near it. He was determined to see her to-night; and he did!
He had made his way across the back of the stage, passed open doors of supers who were frankly disrobing, too hungry to observe the minor formalities, and was approaching the room of the prima donna, when its door was suddenly flung open, a little man was rushed out by the collar, twirled round, and hurled almost at his feet. The Styr, her own hair down, her face livid, her eyes blazing, shouted hoarsely at the object of her wrath, who took to his heels. The intendant rushed upon the scene. Styr screamed out that the minor official had dared to come to her dressing-room with a criticism upon the set of her wig, and that if ever she were spoken to again at the close of a performance by any member of the staff, from the intendant down, she would leave Munich the same night. The great functionary fled, for she threatened to box his own ears unless he took himself out of her sight, and the Styr stormed up and down, beat the scenery with her hands, stamped, hissed, her pallor deepening every second, until it was like white fire. Ordham, half fascinated, half convulsed, at this glimpse of the artistic temperament in full blast, stared at her with his mouth open. She looked like some fury of the coal-pit, flying up from the sooty galleries on the wings of her voice. Her words had been delivered with a strange broad burring accent, which Ordham found more puzzling than her tantrum.
Suddenly she caught sight of him. If possible her fury waxed.
“You! You!” she screamed. “Go! Get out of here! How dare you come near me? I hate you! I hate the whole world when I have finished an opera! They ought to give me somebody to kill! Go! I don’t care whether you ever speak to me again or not—”
Ordham, not knowing whether he should feel insulted or philosophical, beat a hasty retreat; and, remaining late at Maximilia, had no time to ponder upon the matter that night. He had barely awakened in the morning when he received the following note: