“You are so delightfully genuine! The American imitation of the British aristocrat is the funniest thing in the world. You are not unhumorous from our crude point of view, but I doubt if you could really be affected if you tried, and you never would try. And yet over there you would be thought a mass of affectations.”
“I hope I’ll never go ‘over there.’ I’ve scarcely ever met an American that I liked. The women want too much waiting on, and I always have a feeling that the men despise me.”
“Perhaps they do, understanding no type but their own; few have had the opportunity to study the men of other races. To an American the man with no capacity for work, to ‘hustle,’ no desire to fight his way to the top, simply encumbers the earth. I hope you never will go over. No matter how good an Englishman’s manners may be at home, they become abominable the moment he sets foot in the United States. Even yours might not stand the test—whatever that test is.”
“I am sure they are merely terrified. We are not accustomed to reporters, interviewers, to an avalanche of invitations from people we don’t know. It is enough to terrify any one; and being a shy race—not having had your liberal education!—we shrink into a sort of panoply of war. We don’t go over meaning to be rude, but we are driven to appear so rather than show our fright and look ridiculous. One of my cousins visited the United States a year or two ago, just after he came into his title, and he was so hounded by reporters and lion hunters, that after doubling and dodging until he was worn out, he gave himself the airs of a stage lord and succeeded in freezing them off. Then the journalists wrote vicious articles calling him a snob—It would seem that like a good many others, they do not know exactly what that word means. And Jim is as decent a little chap as you could find in England.”
“Well, you misjudge us too. You are always commiserating the American husbands left at home to coin dollars while their wives swarm over Europe. If you only knew how delighted the American husband is to get rid of his wife for a few months out of the year! But come, let us go in. I know that you long for an easy chair and to see your cigarette smoke, while I dare not sit out too late. Who is not a slave of some sort?”
XXII
PRINCESS NACHMEISTER AS GUARDIAN ANGEL
He graduated from the easy chair to the divan by imperceptible degrees, for he had arts of his own; and in the course of a month of well-nigh daily intercourse he was almost as much at home in the villa by the Isar as Styr herself. Insensibly he began to assume airs of ownership, which made Margarethe wonder how her sense of humour had hitherto survived with so little to feed upon. He never gave her a sentimental glance, nor, not even when they talked till two in the morning and he left by the tower window in Kilchberg’s boat, did he in any way manifest a desire to make love to her. Nevertheless, it was quite evident that he had drifted into the assumption that the great prima donna, from whom no other man in Europe could claim more than a bow, or a few meaningless phrases at a rout, existed for him alone; that her time, her mind, her affections, were his; that, putting the attitude into the American nutshell, he owned her. And yet, while his bearing was a mixture of the husband, the friend, the lover, and the spoilt child, it was all on the mental plane; nor did he ever lose a certain formality, which indeed was so integral a part of his birthright that no intimacy of his would ever descend into the too dangerous places of familiarity.
If, as time went on, Styr was at some pains to analyze a relationship so foreign to the usual, no such fatiguing process had ever occurred to him. He accepted it all as a matter of course, as he did whatever good things came his way; it was only the rare scowl of fortune that gave him astonished pause. He sometimes threw a passing smile to an intimacy which had all the surface appearance of so much more, and appreciated the piquancy of this secret and unique experience. Now and again, too, he threw a bone of gratitude to Frau von Wass for curing him of whatever hankering for intrigue he may once have cherished, however languidly; although he was under no delusion in regard to Styr, knowing well that did he drop into even the usual gallantries he would be snubbed for his pains. Commonly, however, he wasted no time on thought, not even upon that inevitable future in which this rare and delightful companion could have no part. But when was he inclined to invoke the future unless his creditors were impertinent, or he dreamed vaguely of some strange exalted happiness for which he saw no parallel in life? At present his hopeful debtors were awaiting the sure enthusiasm of Lord Bridgminster when his brilliant heir had passed triumphantly into the diplomatic service; and if he sometimes dreamed, it was not of the woman he liked best on earth: she, being always at hand, why, in heaven’s name, should he dream of her?
Before leaving Munich, Princess Nachmeister had resolved upon a bold move. Too astute to mention the name of Mabel Cutting, she yet confided to the woman who, it was patent, alone possessed any real influence over her favourite, that his mother and friends were arranging a wholly desirable alliance for him, and only delayed bringing the two young people together until the girl should have gained the poise and experience of a London season, and he should have assimilated, undistracted, the knowledge of German necessary for his examinational ordeal.
“You are the subtlest of women,” continued the old diplomat. “Instil the expedience of an early and wealthy marriage into the mind of this most extravagant of princelings. Gott! One would think that my lord of Bridgminster was eighty and living on pap, not a red-faced sportsman of less than forty. That dear little boy! I fairly shudder when I imagine his future without an income practically unlimited.” She pressed her mummified old hand close upon Styr’s, a rare amenity in one that never permitted Munich to forget that she was its social dictator and the intimate friend of the Queen-mother. “Yes, that dear little boy! Cannot you conjure up his unhappy fate if he flings away this great opportunity and goes on at this pace for five years longer on the income of a younger son?”