“It will.” He looked as placid as a lake. “But no matter what comes, I can always conjure up this room—this room! Oh, I cannot leave it! I hate the Civil Service Commission! I hate the diplomatic service! I hate my creditors! I hate matrimony! And I hate my brother most of all.”
“You will feel much better after dinner. Come, it is ready.”
He remained with her until his servant came to fetch him for the night train. As he took her hand at parting his boyishness vanished, and his manner was a mixture of formality and sincere regret. “Good-by,” he said. “I wish this summer might have lasted forever. You have made it the most wonderful experience I shall ever have, and you will always be the most wonderful woman in the world to me.”
They were standing in the hall, before the open door. He suddenly smiled into her eyes with an expression that was not unlike a kiss. Then he shook hands with her once more and went out to his cab.
For the first few days she did not miss him at all; once more there was novelty in loneliness and freedom. When she did begin to miss him, she found a certain exhilaration in a sensation that was also a novelty. Then the King, still nursing his tooth, and always kindly, gave her another leave of absence, and she went to Switzerland.
XXVIII
A ROSSETTI
Nothing, save, possibly, a voluntary check from his brother, could have surprised Ordham more than the information that he had passed his examinations. With the optimism, not inherent, but veneered upon his mind by a too fortunate life, he had, up to the moment of his arrival, taken his success in this ordeal for granted; perhaps it is fairer to state that he saw himself always, when prefiguring his future, as an ambassador in Paris or St. Petersburg; but no sooner did he find himself at the entrance to those forbidding straits which he must traverse to find the sole agency for his talents, than he descended into the depths of black despair. He would not pass. How could he? His French was good, for he had talked it in the nursery, and it had been actively exercised in Paris. But he had barely brushed up his Latin. He should forget every date—of course! And how could any man remember a mass of stuff it had taken Mill and Smith a lifetime to grind out? And German! They laid as much stress upon it as if England meditated immediate occupation of middle and southeastern Europe. They would treat him like a witness at a murder trial. How he hated that hideous language—and how could he have been so fatuous as to imagine that he could accumulate the necessary amount in less than a year?—the greater part of which he had wasted. For once in his life he knew remorse, repentance, wished that he had a will of iron, and had exercised it during that delightful sojourn in Munich. It shamed him to reflect that what little he did know he owed to the interest of one woman and the determined pounding of another.
He appeared before the board of examiners, pale, dejected, resigned, with no crest whatever, and impressed that formidable body as being at least a modest youth, high-bred and dignified, who would not be rejected for personal reasons did he survive the mental ordeal—a finale which sometimes surprised the cock-sure aspirant for diplomatic honours.
And he had passed! Not brilliantly, but he was launched upon the diplomatic sea, and he had no apprehension, with his immense family influence and the talents he was beginning to appreciate, of foundering. For a few moments he felt an inclination to be wildly jubilant. But this he sternly repressed, shrugged his shoulders, and reminded himself that such a commonplace achievement was to be expected of any man who had brains instead of porridge in his skull. To this succeeded an hour of irritation and disgust that he had not distinguished himself, put his rival competitors to the blush, made them wish he had forborne to enter the lists. But he was generous and philosophical, and this mood also passed. He wrote a note to Lord Bridgminster, and sent telegrams to Countess Tann, Princess Nachmeister, Fräulein Lutz, and his mother. Then he felt that he might dismiss the tiresome matter from his mind, as well as the harrowing ordeal that awaited him in the north, and settle down to the enjoyment of such plays as the month of August afforded.
He found the English drama and its interpretations tame and trite after those highly seasoned performances of the Continent with what were practically whole star casts, but they were better than visiting political country houses with his mother; and he slept late, strolled up and down Piccadilly, and wrote daily notes to Margarethe Styr, whom he missed quite as much as he had anticipated. It would have been interesting to abuse the play with her and drive out into the cool green English country every afternoon. He consoled himself by reading several new books he had not heard of while abroad, and sending them to her with colloquial ramblings on the fly-leaves. It was very cool and pleasant in his mother’s little house in Chesterfield Street, where hitherto he had passed but a night or two during hasty visits from Paris. He had been little in England since Lady Bridgminster, shorn of her power, had departed out of Bridgminster House in St. James’s Square, and made a nest for herself on the income of a dowager supplemented by a small annual allowance from her tight-fisted papa, and occasional checks from the duchess; the latter assisting her to enjoy life after a fashion and contract new debts.