Mabel, seated in a high-back Gothic chair, looking, in her ample flowing gown of white brocade embroidered with gold, her soft mass of “harvest-yellow hair” caught on either side with a jewel in an antique setting, like a cross between Rossetti’s Monna Vanna and his Venus Verticordia, wondered if this mob of people would never go. It seemed to her that all London, fashionable and artistic, lived in her mother’s drawing-rooms, and she wished that it had occurred to her to take a house of her own. True, the suggestion would have precipitated another discussion about that tiresome diplomatic future to which “Jackie” alluded now and again as a matter of course (he had returned to the Foreign Office), and, no doubt, it was as well to be relieved of all detail and care at this time: she felt well, but tired. Moreover, confident as she was in herself, normally, she had discovered that it was no light task to amuse a man who had been born bored, and that if he were to be kept in England, he must have its cream served up daily.
She congratulated herself, however, that she was growing cleverer every minute. Her husband had no suspicion that his departure for the Continent was to be delayed upon one pretext after another until pretexts were no longer necessary; did he retain his interest in diplomacy, the time would surely come when the Foreign Office would have no more of him. His good humour was unruffled. He was more kind, more captivating, than ever, and so considerate that his delicate young wife saw little of him. He sent her to bed early, and took himself off to the theatre, that “he might not keep her awake by roaming round the house; he had never gone to bed early in his life.” He made her lie down immediately after luncheon and remain on her couch until it was time to dress for the afternoon drive. Between half-past five and seven they had a crowded salon. He never had luncheon or dined away from home, and, like the courteous soul he was, entertained formally or familiarly those whose invitations he and his wife were obliged to decline for the present. It was the dinners that, for the most part, were informal, consisting of intimate friends of his mother or the Cuttings, whom he did not feel obliged to follow up to the drawing-room. The luncheons, or “breakfasts,” as it was the fashion to call them, were often imposing functions.
Of the impromptu afternoon salon he was even more the gay and fascinating host than at Ordham. No longer were Mrs. Cutting’s drawing-rooms the studiously select assemblies of the ante-Ordham-Bridgminster régime. True, there were many of greater social importance than she had mustered unaided, as well as that bevy of smart young American wives of English husbands so famous during the eighties, but in addition she found herself receiving all the prominent artists, authors, actors, poets, ?sthetes, musicians, and many—discoveries of her son-in-law—not yet famous but indisputably endowed. It was Ordham’s grief that Rossetti had died before he was able to do him honour, but he consoled himself by buying every picture of this consummate painter that found its way to the market. As they did not harmonize with the light, almost frivolous, effect of the drawing-rooms, he had them hung in the stately entrance hall downstairs, which Mrs. Cutting had left untouched that the effect of the French rooms above might seem the more brilliant by contrast. They lit up those dim spaces with their living colours, and Ordham often sat there alone. As available Rossettis were few, and he had an almost equal admiration for Burne-Jones, several fine paintings of this artist shared honours with the master. They would accompany him to the Continent.
Mabel, although at first delighted to be admired by artists, especially when they told her that she looked like The Blessed Damozel, to deck herself in Pre-Raphaelite gowns designed by her mother-in-law, and sit in a Gothic chair, was grown, in this month of March, heartily tired of it all, and confided to her maid that as soon as she was well again she should send ?sthetic duds to the old-clothes man, order a trousseau from Paris, such as even she had never possessed before, and become the smartest woman in London. Her husband might continue to have his artists if he wanted them, and they would cut their hair, but she had been born to grace another sphere.
Moreover, she was irritably tired of all this talk about Wagner and that Munich prima donna; London, always on the alert for a new fad, seemed to be obsessed. Five weeks of Wagner at Covent Garden! She devoutly hoped her Jackie would not demand that she sit in the back of his box and share his raptures. With all her little barrel-organ soul she hated Wagner; but she had not forgotten those carefully prepared appreciations of the courtship, and dared not retract them so soon after that first misguided confession she had worked so hard to obliterate.
At the end of five months she had progressed far in matrimonial tactics. But what a protracted mental campaign it was! And she had pictured a rose garden for two light-hearted lovers! Well, there was compensation in all things; she had become clever, at least. She might have married some nice, simple, unexacting person like poppa,—a gentleman who had attended strictly to his own affairs,—and become one of those undeveloped little American matrons who brought letters to them, and whose husbands talked of nothing but business or football. She felt her infinite superiority to all of them, happy and bright as they were; although there were times when she longed for the mental rest which one of these fine busy young fellows, whose brains were not crowded with their ancestors, would have afforded her. And how often she longed to be natural and free. But she was a true female; she adapted herself readily enough to her lot, at times thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of intrigue in which she felt herself moving, sure that in the long silent tussle of wills, she, with the superior tact and finesse of woman, must conquer. If Ordham had been a bold masterful person, such as his brother Stanley would be one of these days when his shyness had worn off, she would have knuckled under as a matter of course, enjoyed with all her feminine soul the battles royal which preceded each sure defeat, while remaining “good,” and “natural,” and “above board.” But the Machiavelli in Ordham had pumped to the surface all those obscure currents of intrigue and deceit which track through every woman’s nature. It was a strange circumstance, this secret pursuit of John Ordham’s ego, in the mysterious regions of the spirit, by two women at the same time; but they hunted on different planes and never met.
The last caller drifted out and down the stair. Ordham returned, and bending over his wife, asked her solicitously if she was tired.
“Not in the least!” said Mabel, brightly. All the married women she knew told her that men hated tired women. “How interesting you have made our salon, darling. Mother, can you imagine how we were ever satisfied with just smart people before?”
Mrs. Cutting shrugged her shoulders, but smiled indulgently. “We never receive those people in New York, but no doubt we make a great mistake. Genius ought to be recognized, and when artists and others are quite convenable, I certainly think they should be encouraged to remain so. Besides, it helps them to meet patrons.”
Ordham concealed a smile and replied gently, “I feel greatly honoured that they should come to my house.” Mrs. Cutting noted with some amusement that he characteristically assumed that this splendid mansion, leased, furnished, and supported by the Cutting millions, was his own. But, although she too had some time since discovered that she knew him very little, she liked him too well to feel more than a passing irritation. In her own way she was in love with him, as mothers often are with a charming young man come suddenly into the family as the husband of an idolized child. It is the only opportunity a woman has to love a man with a passion that is not legitimately sexual or maternal, but a little of both, boned of both danger and responsibilities.
“I might point out,” continued Ordham, “that we are not the first to receive the great in art, although, naturally, they prefer their own circles. But even this absurd ?sthetic movement has been of service to London society, for it has popularized art, at least, and permanently banished antimacassars. It only remains for some culinary genius to follow in their track to make England almost as inhabitable as Paris or Italy.”
“Don’t you love your country, Jackie darling?” asked Mabel, wistfully.
“Of course. But I was born, remember, when the Brotherhood, unknown to the herd, was commanding the attention of the elect, and of these my mother aspired to be. Naturally I became imbued with a love of change as well as of beauty; quite as naturally I find it necessary to gratify both out of England.”
“It is odd that you should be so different from your brothers,” interposed Mrs. Cutting, hastily.
“Oh, they are all reversions to the ancestral type, Ordhams from marrow to skin. My father did not like artists, and in time, my mother, being a dutiful wife, got her gowns from Worth until he died, although permitted to invite Rossetti and a few others to her big parties. And she had much political entertaining, political work generally, to do; she had little leisure to cultivate that side of London.”
“Well, I am rather glad she has followed her natural bent since,” said Mrs. Cutting, pleasantly. “Those nice Burne-Jones gowns she wears—or are they Rossettis? Frankly, I can’t tell the pictures of one from the other, except that Burne-Jones’s women seem to be longer and thinner, particularly as to neck. I wonder what beauty Rossetti could have found in incipient goitres.”
Ordham got up suddenly and lit a cigarette some distance away. Less than a week since he had received a letter from Count Kilchberg, in which that gentleman, innocently regaling him with the gossip of Munich, mentioned that Frau von Wass had no goitre, had been shut up by her husband, suddenly jealous of somebody, no one could discover whom. The story ran that the Nachmeister had opened the eyes of the Herr Geheimrath in order to save some friend of her own from the clutches of the fair Hélène. No key was necessary for Ordham, and his conscience had given him a bad hour, although it was with a pleasant sense of relief that he realized he could do nothing. He had accordingly locked up the memory again, and was irritated with his mother-in-law for liberating it. But when he turned, he said carelessly:
“That was Rossetti’s chief fault in his last years, and due, no doubt, to failing eyesight and too much chloral. Talking of throats always brings to my mind the great Styr’s. That is one of her assets. It really is as like a column of ivory as mere flesh can be. I have taken a box for the Wagner season, and hope that both of you will go with me to every performance.”
He hoped nothing of the sort, but he knew he was quite safe in expressing himself with propriety, and words never cost him anything.
“How wonderful five whole weeks of Wagner will be!” cried Mabel, with glittering eyes.
But Mrs. Cutting felt herself at liberty to be quite frank. “The first night; thank you very much. No doubt it will be a great sight. I understand the Prince has promised your mother to go, and of course that means the world. But I have no hesitation in admitting that Wagner bores me to extinction, no doubt because I cannot appreciate him. But I was raised on composers whose characters do not talk interminably in a sort of singing register, and I am too old to be converted. You do not mind my frankness, I hope?”
“Of course not. But Mabel must come, as she loves all music, and has heard nothing but The Mikado for months.”
“Occasionally,” said Mrs. Cutting, playfully. “But for a while yet we must be inflexible guardians.”
“Of course!” Ordham smiled into his wife’s eyes, but in truth was ill at ease and screwing up his courage. After all, this was not his house, and there was a point to be settled before Margarethe Styr arrived in London. He had delayed the inevitable discussion as long as possible, but now seemed as propitious a time as any; and although he did not suspect the cause, it had by no means escaped his attention that these people were at all times anxious to please him. He attributed it to the fact that he was English and they Americans, but thought it very nice of them.
He strolled over to the table again and lit another cigarette, came back to his deep chair, and turned his charming smile and large ingenuous eyes upon his mother-in-law.
“Did I ever mention that Countess Tann is quite a friend of mine?”
Mrs. Cutting also braced herself. She, too, had anticipated this crisis. “I think we spoke of her the first time we met again in London,” she answered vaguely. “But you are such a diplomat! I should hardly know the name of a single one of your London acquaintance if they did not come to the house. I don’t think you have ever mentioned any of your Continental friends. I doubt”—with a brilliant smile—“if your left hand is on bowing terms with your right.”
“How can you say such a thing? How very odd! It seems to me that I must often have spoken of Countess Tann—she was so very hospitable to me in Munich. I met her at Neuschwanstein, where we both were guests of that strangest of all strange mortals, Ludwig of Bavaria. Otherwise, I might not have met her at all, for although Munich society is at her feet, she goes about very little. No doubt she opened her doors to me because we are both such good friends of your own good friend, Princess Nachmeister, but she certainly showed me marked hospitality, and I shall be glad to return it here in London.”
There was an ominous silence. Mrs. Cutting fanned herself vehemently, a bright spot in either cheek. Ordham, his nervousness conquered, looked at her steadily. Mabel twisted the ears of LaLa until he squealed and ran off in dudgeon.
Mrs. Cutting spoke at last. “Do you recall any of our conversation on the subject of—a—Countess Tann?”
“Was anything in particular said? I recall the fact of a conversation, nothing more.”
“I think I expressed my disapproval of that sort of people. On the stage, of course, it doesn’t matter; but to ask them under one’s roof—that is quite another question. Of course, no one knows better than yourself, dear John, that a man has many acquaintances his family cannot receive.”
“I don’t think I follow you,” he said wonderingly. “You spoke just now of feeling it a duty to encourage artists by social recognition. You surely have no objection to the stage—above all, to the operatic stage?”
“Oh, not at all! But I have to this Countess Tann.” Mrs. Cutting, driven to a defence of her principles, was the woman to fling social diplomatics to the winds.
“What objections have you to Countess Tann?”
“It is not possible that you have not heard all the—gossip about that woman?”
“I have heard gossip of every woman I have ever heard discussed at all. Gossip is the relaxation of overburdened minds, and most minds are burdened one way or another. I cannot understand your attitude to Countess Tann, when you receive—” and he mentioned the names of several women notorious for more than beauty and fashion.
Mrs. Cutting flushed. “They go everywhere,” she said tartly. “Nevertheless, I have received them only to please your mother; it has been under protest, even although nothing against them is proved. In time I shall tactfully weed them out.”
“There are no proofs against Countess Tann.”
“I am afraid proofs could easily be had. You were in the next room only this afternoon when Mr. Levering entertained a group of us, not for the first time, with reminiscences of Margaret Hill. That, he asserts, is her real name, and he not only saw her year in and out in New York, but knew her personally.”
“Levering is one of those rheumatic old beaux that sit in club windows and manufacture scandal. There is no wheat in his chaff. And what a cur to run about prejudicing people against a woman who has no man to defend her, a woman so great, for that matter, that it is a presumption to gossip about her at all! I shall cut him.”
“Dear me, I had no idea you could bring yourself to do anything so direct and undiplomatic!” Mrs. Cutting laughed, but she was growing angry. “And do remember that he is not only a very old friend of mine, but a power even here in London, where he has come every season for twenty years.”
“I have nothing to fear from Levering,” replied Ordham, coldly. “He is not even a second-rate Englishman, and these transplanted American men that have nothing better to do than invent or peddle racy gossip in order to make sure of being asked every night to meet a title or two at dinner are not taken very seriously by us.”
Mrs. Cutting made no reply for a moment. She realized that her son-in-law rude must be very much in earnest. Her American soul rose in wrath, but she kept Mabel’s happiness steadily before her, and finally said, in her usual calm even tones: “I am afraid it is all true. We won’t discuss poor old Levering. I have heard of Styr from other sources, and although it distresses me greatly to refuse you anything you wish, I fear I cannot receive her under my roof.”
“Granting that these stories are true, what difference does it make?” No tones could be more even, more mellifluous, than Ordham’s. “She is a great artist, many hold the greatest living. Shall we be more provincial than Munich, which receives the artist with no reference to what she may have been ten years ago, on the other side of the globe?”
“Why should artists be treated as if t............