He had appreciated at once that it was a letter, not the usual note with which she had infrequently favoured him. Once before he had received a letter from her. It had arrived while he was in Purgatory and he had not opened it for a fortnight. Then, absorbed as he was, he had read it twice, so delightful was its quality. It was evident that not the least of Styr’s gifts was the epistolary, a common enough gift in her sex, but reaching the superlative degree when the woman has brains, experience, subtlety. As he opened this long letter, written on numberless sheets of thin foreign paper, he suddenly realized that he had looked forward to the time when he should have leisure to correspond with Margarethe Styr. Rarely as he faced it, he was still uneasily conscious that he had not been quite fair to this woman with whom he had enjoyed so deep and unique an intimacy. He knew there was a bond, that it was not severed, perhaps never would be. But he believed that he never again should seek her deliberately, for he had no desire to dislocate the even and, all things considered, delightful tenor of his present life; moreover, she was inaccessible save for a day now and again, or during some brief vacation he might pass in Munich. He was becoming dimly aware of deeper currents in his nature than those disturbed by his first love storm, dark and turbulent currents, perhaps, which his wife could never undam; but this was one reason the more for immuring them. Although his body had lost something of its inertia in this new life that took him so much out of doors, still was his hatred of bother, exertion, his dread of possible upheavals, no whit abated. Moreover, although it was now some time since he had admitted that he never should find companionship in his wife, still had he no wish to hurt her. She was, at least, a wife for pride, and although he had every intention of seeking his mental companionship elsewhere, still had he no desire to combine it with intoxications that Mabel must discover. As he stared at Margarethe Styr’s long letter, still half opened, he admitted, with that blunt candour of which he was signally capable, that here alone was the woman who could satisfy not only his mind but those deeper currents which run and roar in man’s maturer nucleus. This recognition, however, merely caused him to resolve anew to see no more of her. Correspondence, however—why not? He should enjoy sitting up after everybody—particularly his wife—was in bed, and living this purely mental life that ever had fascinated him in so many of its forms, enjoy it far more than assuring Mabel absent-mindedly that he loved her—of course.
He read the letter. It was an extremely artful letter, for Styr was at all times and above all things—for the present, at least—an artist. It was so deliberately clever that Ordham smiled again and again in sheer delight at its spontaneity, its naturalness. She talked irresistibly this midnight to her absent friend; and how much there was to talk about, to tell him! The letter was saturated with the atmosphere of Munich, an atmosphere of art, beauty, indolence, independence; a world in itself was that city on its lofty plateau, where poverty and “business” and the rush of modern life were almost unknown; an aristocratic, exclusive, segregated city, created as with a magic wand for pleasure, for dreams, not for work. No wonder he had found it difficult to study there. Never could he repay his debt to Lutz—and to this most wonderful of women. He sighed for his lost paradise, saw the gallery with its divan upon which he so often had made himself wholly at home!—and talked . . . and listened as she read to him . . . or to the Isar beneath the window, the birds in the green trees beyond . . .
She told him amusing anecdotes of his numerous acquaintance, of the opera house cabal, of the King. And she was impelled to write to him upon this particular night, not only because he had been even more than commonly in her mind all day, but because of the news that he had been accredited to Rome, and she must express the hope that he travel via Munich instead of Paris. She had learned a new r?le—Katharine, in The Taming of the Shrew; he must see her in comedy. Perhaps he would not believe it, but the experiment was a success; the critics, even those that belonged to the opposite faction, thought her as good as in tragedy, and her ovation from the public had been tremendous.
He read this letter through eagerly, then again more slowly, the second time in search of something that had induced a certain uneasiness in his mind. It did not take a third reading to discover the causes—for they were two.
She assumed, as a matter of course, that he was about to embark upon that career for which nature had so consummately equipped him, and to whose aid fortune had flown as if with a conscious sense of duty. How often they had discussed that future of his; she was on fire to witness the beginning of what must be an historical career; it was strange and delightful to be able to believe that she had played her little part in his life, and she was almost as excited as before her own début.
But this was the least of the jars, and although it stirred and shamed him, not in a moment could he be roused from the pleasant sloth into which he had fallen. She had written little of herself, but that little upon careful reading assumed a dark significance. The King’s moroseness and eccentricities increased daily. There were no more midnight performances in the Hof. And there were hints! He might shortly be relegated to a deeper obscurity still, and permanently. His expenditures were passing belief; drastic action by the government might be necessary to save the state from bankruptcy.
All this meant that Styr had lost her protector. The inimical party in the opera house, no longer restrained by fear of the King’s wrath, would conquer, drive her forth. It had required all the influence she possessed to obtain permission to learn two new r?les, and although her party was not contemptible, it was not likely that her friends among the opera house officials would go so far as to threaten Munich with their own loss were she driven out.
Perhaps the most deeply human trait in Ordham was his quick and sincere sympathy. He experienced it toward mere acquaintances in trouble or slighted by fortune. It gushed warmly for those he loved, and only dried when, sulky and obstinate, he turned his back after they had bored or otherwise alienated him. Then he could be as cold and unrelenting as if all his heart instead of that core were flint, and it is doubtful if he would turn his head to observe the most malignant straits to which the offender might be reduced. He shared this trait with certain women; the women whom too much desire has spoilt, and who mete out the extreme penalty to the man that bores them as coolly and remorselessly as the law disposes of its criminals.
Ordham was filled with pity and concern for this friend that had given him nothing but delight, and to whom he felt almost visibly linked by those latent vitalities which he would not permit to conquer his beloved inertia. But they shook him to-night. He rose and walked rapidly up and down the room. Driven from Munich, what would happen to this gifted unfortunate creature? There were other German capitals, but each had its hochdramatisch, who would use all her influence to exclude such a rival as Die Styr. She could merely gast about, with no assured income, while her lovely home was leased or s............