“Ketch ’em alive! Ketch ’em alive!” The fly-paper vender had the note of spring in his voice, and other and more distant street cries betrayed the same almost plaintive quickening under the influence of the warmth and light so long withdrawn. Ordham let himself out of the house looking as hard as he felt, but in a few moments the pagan beauty of the morning and the gay face of London in her springtime laughed his ill humor away and banished the memory of his wife. No city is more beautiful than London during her brief season of sunshine, with the flower boxes set like little Italian balconies on her grim old houses, the vivid close green of parks and squares, the endless processions of open carriages filled with smartly dressed folk from all parts of the world; some in the native finery of countries so far from occidental that they give the scene a touch of opera bouffe. As Ordham walked toward Dover Street he fancied he could hear the birds singing in Hyde Park—a colony that dwelt in a tree beside his bedroom window had awakened him early with their chattering—see the swans sailing on the lake in the park of St. James. It was good to be alive, good to belong by divine right to the one really great city in the world, and as he presented six-pence to several of his friends the crossing sweepers—more for the pleasure of receiving their blessing than because he had the least idea they needed it—he smiled at them so radiantly that more than ever they were convinced he was the sweetest young gentleman that ever gave siller, and ‘oped he would be ‘appy for ever and ever.
Ordham felt that he had every reason to be happy. Were not he and Margarethe Styr going for a long day in the country, a long unbroken day? Although they had carried out their programme and visited many sights, still was it their first whole day together. Rehearsals demanded by the heterogeneous mass of singers they had been able to borrow from German cities had stolen many of her free days; she had felt obliged to attend three receptions arranged in her honour and receive once; and during the coming week practically all her spare time would be occupied with rehearsals for Tannh?user and Lohengrin, for she had not sung the r?les of Elizabeth and Elsa for several years. But these hours they had snatched together had been wholly delightful, their spirits had been high to the edge of excitement; both took a nervous delight in playing with a danger that would soon finish, leave them face to face either with tragedy or a vast and cynical philosophy. It was tacitly understood that this was to be their last period of companionship, and although Ordham alternated between the pit of melancholy when alone and an almost fierce sensation of happiness while with this woman, whom he found more surely his than in the old days when his eyes were closed, he refused at any time to ask more of fate or to dwell upon the future. But that he was no longer the languid manageable youth of less than a year ago he knew as well as she. If he too put ambition before love, accepted the consequences of his marrying, it was because he chose to do so, not because of the woman’s subtle manipulation. Ordham sometimes found an added food for sadness in the knowledge that he had left the best of his youth behind him, but was wise enough to congratulate himself that his acute attack of racial industry had cleared his blood of blinding humours.
But only to Styr was there any change in his appearance, and as he entered her sitting room this morning he looked the archetype of conquering youth, of splendid young English manhood. His mouth, which of late had often been consciously firm, was as soft and boyish as when they had met at Neuschwanstein, and his eyes, always luminous, were sparkling with anticipation. Not the least of his attractions to Styr was his perfect grooming, for being artist as well as woman, she hated the sight of “artistic” men. She herself looked very smart, as he immediately told her, in an entire costume of tan-coloured cloth. As the day was warm and she could not wear a wrap, and as her tailor was the best in Paris, her frock followed every line and curve of her perfect figure. But as she had concluded to ignore the fact that Ordham was man as well as soul, and circumstances protected them both, she saw no reason for making herself clumsy and uncomfortable, as if he were a boy and she his guardian! Moreover, she was not averse from leaving in his memory as many charming pictures of herself as might be composed.
“How delicious it is merely to be alive!” she exclaimed with that enthusiasm which, when the sullenness of her face was routed by the mere pagan joy of living, was not the least of her fascinations. “Where are we going?” she added, as they entered a hansom.
“I have not the least idea.” But in a moment he lifted the trap and directed the cabby to drive to Euston Station.
They alighted at Bushey, and, hiring a carriage for the day, drove or strolled through the old English lanes, with their high scented hedges, past houses built for subjects of Elizabeth, visited the tomb of Bacon at St. Albans, and even stared at the splendours of Hatfield House like veritable tourists, Ordham characteristically neglecting to mention that he had dined and slept there more than once. They idled on commons and in woods almost as full of light, lunched at the famous inn of Harrow, sat on the tomb favoured by Byron in the old town’s churchyard, hung over high-walled fences to inhale the perfume of flowers that the island’s moisture makes so rich, and to stare at the immense masses of pink and white hawthorn; bought fruit of a farmer (grown under glass, of course!) and sat on his wall to eat it. Few counties in England have more charms than Hertfordshire, and not its least is that it is practically undiscovered by the tourist.
They dined in the inn at Stanmore, dismissing their carriage, as they could take the train at this beautiful old town, which invited them to linger as long as it was light. They soon forsook the enormous joints, the mess of greens, the peas as round and hard as marbles, and an apple dumpling like a tunnel filled with the débris of many wrecks, and wandered forth once more. The streets were very narrow, the houses, of a dozen centuries, covered with ivy close cut; the church looked as old as England. At this hour the little town was silent and outwardly deserted, but one expected every moment to hear the sound of a horn, to see the London coach dash round a corner, a post-chaise with a lady in powder and patches at the window. Stanmore is so close to London that it was the first town reached by the mounted courier galloping through the dawn to tell the country that Victoria was queen, but it is as old and quiet and forgotten as if it were lost in one of the great counties of the north.
Gypsy wagons were halted on one corner of the heath, and the women cooked supper in the early twilight while the men lay on the ground and smoked their pipes. Their children, catching sight of two prosperous strangers, ran without prompting to beg. Ordham and Margarethe gave them silver, then, declining to have their fortunes told, in other words getting rid of them, strolled out over the heath. This large piece of waste land is as wild as anything in America, broken and rough of surface and covered with tangled grasses and shrubs. Beyond was what looked to be a black mass of woods, but the glimpse of a gateway suggested that they might be but the generously planted trees of a park. A grey church spire of some distant hamlet stood out sharply against a red band of afterglow. There was an intermittent tinkle of cow-bells, but no other sound.
They sat down in the very centre of the heath and watched the twilight gather, that long English twilight without chill or dew which brings with it something of the mystery of night while still holding in a loose embrace the safeguards of day. At that hour the flowers smell more sweetly, the night moths flutter among them, and man feels that his day’s work is done. A pungent scent rose from the gorse of Stanmore Heath, but Margarethe, who had felt as exhilarated all day as if she were a girl unexpectedly alone with a man secretly loved, felt her spirits drop. She remembered who she was and one of her objects in coming to London. So far not a word had passed between them concerning his married life. They had renewed the old intimate friendship in snatches that made them eager for more, but had found much to talk about in the monuments they visited, the most tactful programme for Covent Garden, in many subjects of common impersonal interest. But Margarethe had determined upon at least one crossed and dotted conversation with Ordham, and she believed this to be the time.
Ordham, too, was silent, staring straight before him with an expression which Styr had seen before when words lagged, an expression of mingled abstraction, astonishment, and apprehension.
“I want the whole story,” she said abruptly.
He turned to her with a start and flush. “The whole story?”
“Yes. All that has happened since we parted in Munich.”
“I thought we were to ignore the subject of my marriage.”
“To ignore is not to forget. I have tormented myself with so many versions—possibilities—how shall I call it? I want the truth. It will lay the ghost.”
“I am afraid you will hate me. I was an inconceivable ass.”
“No—it is wonderful that the story should be always the same and always different! But I hate generalities. I cannot go on confounding you with millions of other men. I want the specific incidents, your own version. A man’s viewpoint is always his best excuse.”
“Very well.” And as his love for her had always appealed to the carefully secluded fount of truth in his nature, for love would be wholly truth were it not for life, he told the story from beginning to end, omitting neither the skilful plot he had since unravelled, nor his own abject surrender.
“I loved Mabel; there can be no doubt of that. I suppose that the long root of such love is the axis of life. It permits millions to marry every day that have little or no prospect of educating or even supporting possible offspring; but if they paused to forecast, in other words, if their brains were not in a state of toxic poisoning from this love secretion, whatever it may be, the race would soon put an end to itself. Perhaps in time the law will step in and forbid marriages before the man ............