If the next twenty-five days passed quickly, it was not because they were barren of events. It was Ordham’s idea that in the second performance of Die Walküre Styr should sing, not the vocally interesting but dramatically unappealing r?le of Brünhilde, but that of Sieglinde. Knowing that his race was the most remarkable compound on the globe of respectability and sensuality, he believed that the character of Sieglinde, portrayed with all the abandon of which Styr, alone of living singers, was capable, and yet easefully vapourized in the alembic of music, would give the Wagner season a fresh impetus; and the event proved him right. Styr, with a new need to give her imprisoned passions relief, acted the part of the faithless young wife, the incestuous demigoddess, with an emotionalism so deep and wild that the audience held their breath, and yet with a poignant sweetness that brought tears to their eyes, filled them with an immense pity for the captive of the hideous Hunding who found her mate capriciously caught in the body of a son of Wotan. After all, demigods were not mortals, they remarked, few besides the Germans understanding Fricka’s emphatic opinion on the subject.
In the second act Styr portrayed tragedy, delirium, remorse, and the mere physical weakness of woman, in a fashion that caused even herself to wonder why she had never essayed this r?le before. When she lay unconscious between the knees of Siegmund during the long duet between her lover and Brünhilde, she looked so beautiful that she continued to hold the attention of all, and Ordham stared at her until his gaze seemed to burn her eyelids and she stirred uneasily. When Sieglinde was finally swept off the stage by Brünhilde, the audience, almost to a man, arose and left the house.
By this time London was “mad over her.” Women whose lives were barren, great ladies whose passions were faded, men with far less reason but an equal pleasure, higher types that revelled in the brain behind the voice, the spiritual suggestion in scenes and music designed to appeal to the most elevated of mortal ideals, the remotest and shyest of the soul’s desires, crowded to hear the woman who would be a valuable aid to the Almighty on the day of resurrection. Styr, exultant and happy, with the transcendent happiness of the artist in the supreme triumph of her genius, gave these splendid audiences, so difficult to please with anything more serious than the wit and paradox to which Wilde was driven not long after, the greatest that was in her, and wondered if such intoxication of the mind, such insolence of victory, could be mortal woman’s a second time.
It is possible that London would have reacted in sheer exhaustion after more than five weeks of this stimulating banquet, but during that time Styr reigned unchallenged. Society, determined to meet her personally, took the shortest way round the scandals they had enjoyed, by professing not to believe them, rejecting them in toto. One ambitious hostess went so far as to announce at a large dinner party that she had taken the trouble to investigate, had even spent a small fortune cabling, and had learned that Styr had been an actress in New York of unimpeachable respectability, and that the Margaret Hill of Levering’s tales was lost in a wreck on the Pacific Coast ten or twelve years since. As a matter of fact she had done nothing of the sort, but her story was cleverly put together, and she was quite aware that others besides herself but wanted an excuse to entertain the greatest artist that had visited England in their time. The Queen held out and did not invite her to sing at Windsor, for she thought it crime enough to have inspired such stories, whether true or not, and more than one old-fashioned great lady, suspicious of celebrities in any case, fully agreed with her; but they were lost sight of in the general rush. It was impossible for Styr to accept more than one out of ten of the invitations showered upon her, or to show herself for more than a few minutes at a time at the various afternoon receptions given in her honour. Rehearsals were many and time was short. And even she, strong woman as she was, had to sleep. Invitations to supper she steadily refused, and on the day of a performance never spoke during the afternoon.
Naturally this left her little time for Ordham. They went sight-seeing no more, but as she rose every morning at ten he called at eleven and remained until one, although he rarely saw her for a moment alone. Others had the same privilege, and the impresario, the conductor, and various members of the company, all more or less desperate, came for advice and consultation. She practically rehearsed the company, for the impresario was not too efficient, and Richter had his hands full with the orchestra.
Reckless, by this time, of gossip, for he had by no means calculated upon a success so overwhelming as to leave him out in the cold, Ordham fell into the habit of going with her to rehearsals, and lounging in her dressing-room, where she came to him for an occasional chat. He went, when bidden, to every reception, every dinner and breakfast, given in her honour, that he might at least be in the room with her, receive an occasional glance and smile; which, beggarly satisfaction as it might be, was better than striding up and down his room in the Temple. His domestic habits were sadly out of joint. Mabel’s strained and sometimes terrified face, his mother-in-law’s speechless indignation, were unnecessary afflictions. At first he invented all the excuses which his ingenious brain could devise. “He was Wagner mad.” “As long as his family would not receive the woman who had showered hospitalities upon him when he was a harassed student in a strange city, he must do his best, not only to cover their defection, but to pour balm upon his conscience.” The secret that he had originated and financed the enterprise was well kept, but he insisted that he more than any one should work for its success, as he should owe his own career to the woman who had—yes, really, he could see it now!—so subtly compelled him to study and pass those stiff exams. He pretended to believe that Mabel would have taken a house and been the first to open her doors to his friend had she been well, for it was no part of his policy to notice her mounting jealousy. He saw her so little that he was able to be as charming as ever to her, although she was looking swollen in the face and coarse, one of the pathetic punishments of woman while fulfilling the highest of her duties. After excuses failed him he simply ignored the subject—lunching and dining at home on those alternate days when Styr was obliged to seclude herself; and after a time, impatient at the still unuttered disapproval which charged the atmosphere of Grosvenor Square, he accepted other invitations. He was by no means satisfied with himself, for he was as far as ever from any desire to make his wife unhappy; but if she was so unreasonable, so undiplomatic, as to refuse him his liberty for this short period, if she was bent upon proving herself unfit to be the wife of a man of the world, let her read her lesson and profit by it. Perhaps in the depths of his mind, buried under many layers of modernism but by no means extinct, he looked upon wives from the royal point of view: sound and vigorous transits for the next edition of the race. But he was beyond analysis, and had but one desire, one purpose: to see as much of Margarethe Styr during these racing weeks as he could manage, although he made no attempt whatever to see her alone.
Mrs. Cutting, angry, frightened, outraged, not only in her maternal passion, but in those principles which she could so gracefully ignore as long as society kept its hard bright surface closed, but to which she would in the last instance have sacrificed social position itself, shut her lips in Ordham’s presence, fearing to precipitate some unthinkable climax, and consoling Mabel with talk of the flying days and the singer’s crowded hours.
“He will follow her,” said Mabel one day.
“I am positive that he will do nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Cutting, briskly. “Never was a man less impetuous, less disposed to sacrifice anything for the sake of a passing flirtation.”
Mabel set her lips. For the moment she looked older than her mother, so smart and fresh, so alert yet reposeful of carriage. “You have never loved, and I can tell you that love gives one more than a little joy, and pain out of all proportion; it gives terrible insights. I stirred only the youthful shallows of John Ordham. He has depths that no innocent love could reach, much less satisfy. I say nothing about brains, although God knows I am well aware how much that mind of his—it is like an octopus—reaches out for that I cannot give him. But even so, were I—well, were he my second husband, for instance, I might hold my own against even clever women.”
“Mabel!” Mrs. Cutting was horrified at this sudden weed of sophistication in that fair landscape of her daughter’s mind she had so carefully laid out and tended. “You have been reading too many French novels of late; I have expressed my disapproval before.”
“It is a pity I did not read them earlier,” said Mabel, dryly. “I should recommend a course in Balzac, Maupassant, and Bourget to all girls about to marry—Europeans, at least. To be young and fresh and beautiful and good may be sufficient if you marry a business man or a scientist, but you need a good deal more than that to keep a man of the world in the toils, particularly if he has abundant leisure. That may not be a nice fact to face, but no congé will dislodge it. If I were only well!”
“Mabel!”
“Don’t look at me in that puritanical way!” cried Mabel............