“Was art your only hope? Suppose you had loved the right sort of man?”
“Such women don’t love the right sort of man. They are born off the key, and they do not meet the men to inspire them with ideals. Nor women either. Besides, after that I never wished to love again. The only good thing about love is the getting over it. Good God!” She flung out her hands again. “The delight of that recovery, the sense of freedom, the intoxicating liberty! Love to women of my nature is a hideous slavery, the sooner we become flint the better. Leave love for the conservators of the race. But enough of such black subjects this beautiful morning. The sun climbed the Alps while we were in the woods, and the stars have gone out. Let us return. I have a make-up for you! After breakfast I shall take a photograph—but it will flatter you!”
Some time before she had taught him how to use her camera, and he had taken a series of photographs of her in the costumes and attitudes of her various rôles. Thus it happens that to-day Bridgminster is the only person living who can recall Styr without the aid of memory, for even in London, when she realized the half of her supreme ambition, she would not be photographed for the public. And as Ordham, in spite of his laziness, could do most things well that he gave his mind to, these photographs, some twenty in number, are not only admirable specimens of the amateur’s art, but such approximate presentments of Styr that it is to be hoped they will yet find their way into a public gallery.
She let him sleep for two hours after breakfast, then sending for him to come to her in the garden, dressed him in a flowing wig, a velvet jacket, a low soft collar, and wandering scarf. Then she stood off.
“Pout out your lips. Make your eyes heavy with sullen dreams. There! You are Rossetti at nineteen. You look as if about to die of a rose in aromatic pain. How have you escaped the æsthetic craze, at the very least?”
“I don’t think that I have. Only whereas they think they can do things, I know that I cannot, and do not propose to make myself ridiculous to no end. Please hurry. This wig is very warm.”
He sent the photograph later to his mother, and it left her breathless for quite a moment. As much as she could fall in love with any man, she had fallen in love with Rossetti. At least he had haunted her girlish dreams, and perhaps those of her early married life until the world absorbed her. Of course she had never seen him in his beautiful youth; and to him—then deeply in love with Elizabeth Siddal—she had been nothing more than an interesting sitter whom her august papa had not too graciously allowed him to paint. But stranger things than that have happened in Nature’s workshop.
XXVI
FRIENDSHIP IN A BORROWED FRAME
The King suffered from toothache. Detesting dentists, and knowing from bitter experience that it would endure until the nerve died, he indifferently granted Styr’s request for a month’s leave of absence. Chaperoned by Fräulein Lutz, she and Ordham went on what they called a walking tour in the Bavarian Alps. Travelling third class, both for the picturesque companionship it afforded and to escape awkward rencounters, they took the train from village to village, and spent several hours of each day leisurely climbing, driving, wandering in the woods, or floating on the brilliant waters, as deeply toned as emerald or sapphire, of Alpine lakes. Avoiding hotels, they lodged on the outskirts of their villages, and Lutz went to market every morning. They took no servants with them, and nothing could exceed Ordham’s devotion in carrying wraps and ordering carriages. But this, they were not long discovering, was the limit of his usefulness. Either Styr or the chaperon bought the tickets, found the porters, engaged the rooms, bargained with guides, ordered the meals, made out the routes, and asked all necessary questions. On the morning after their arrival in Oberammergau, Fräulein Lutz almost burst into Styr’s bedroom.
“Mein Gott!” she exclaimed. “But I have just prepared his bath! But I, Hiobe Lutz! This is the climax. I met him wandering in the hall with his eyes half opened and seeming to look for something he could not find. He wore a pink dressing-gown with green facings, and his bare feet were not even in slippers. I asked him if he were ill. He said, No, that he had no bath. It never occurred to him to walk downstairs and ask for his tub, nor even to call out of the window. But he looked so helpless, so young, that I—Himmel!—I ran downstairs and found for that giant baby his tub, which had been put in the shed. Then, accompanied by the daughter of the house, I carried it up to his room—then returned again with jugs of water, hot and cold! He thanked us ‘so much.’ Oh, he has the prettiest manners. They never fail. But myself, I shall have to cross the English Channel and pass those examinations for him.”