Read Ebook: Tower of Ivory: A Novel by Atherton Gertrude Franklin Horn

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Ebook has 1805 lines and 166909 words, and 37 pages

Ordham coloured haughtily. He did not like the word. "I never lie in wait for any one," he replied coldly. "Besides, no doubt, she is stalked by a footman."

"None of her servants speak English."

"How is it that her German is so faultless? I am told that before any stories got about she was taken for a German as a matter of course."

"Her parents were Hungarian. Her singing teacher in America was a Hanoverian."

"Has she told you that much?"

"Now and again I get something out of her--but nothing that really counts. To judge from her manner, her carriage, her breeding, she might be a Karoly or a Festetics, but one day when I told her bluntly there was a rumour to the effect that her parents were emigrants,--steerage emigrants,--she replied coolly that she should be delighted if the story put an end to romantic nonsense."

"I should like to believe that she was a runaway--or an abducted--princess."

"So would all the other romantic babies. Unfortunately, we have her word for it that she is an American born--and reared. Of course her policy in admitting that much is to stifle curiosity in her origin--origin in America not counting with Europeans in the least--as well as to discourage curiosity. The place is so vast--ten thousand miles across, I am told--or is it in diameter?--that one might as well look for a lost soul in Hades. She has even admitted that she was on the stage in America. But under what name? That I cannot surprise out of her, and the few Americans I know never saw nor heard of her. They all live in Europe. Of course she never sang over there. She need not tell us that, for if they were still red and wore feathers, they would have made that voice famous in a day."

"What makes you so sure that Margarethe Styr is not her name?"

"Am I a Frau Professor or an old woman of the world? When the King decided that bracelets, rings, even necklaces were inadequate acknowledgment from the first living royal patron of art to the greatest interpreter of the new music, and that she must be raised to the Bavarian aristocracy--Gott!--I was commanded to be her social sponsor. Naturally, with the utmost delicacy, I endeavoured to extract such information as would satisfy the curiosity of her future compatriots. I distilled a little and inferred more. Enfin! I am convinced that the story, whatever it may be, is hideous--but hideous! Who minds a lover or two?--and an artist, as I have said. I know women--ach Gott, ja! and I have studied the Styr far more deeply than she knows. There are certain signs--"

Excellenz lifted her shoulders and curved the corners of her mouth almost to her chin.

"I wonder!" Again Ordham's glance strayed into the dusk beyond the glare. He recalled the curses and the ecstasies of Isolde. A footman changed his plate, and he asked, "How is it that I have never met her, even at a rout?"

"She has gone into society very little this year. I fancy she is now quite tired of it, and that only a royal command could draw her forth. And"--with a sigh--"there is no court, as you know."

"Do the men still pursue her?"

"Not the older men; there are always recruits among the fledglings, but men soon learn the difference between ice and ivory, and life is short."

"I should like to meet her."

"No doubt. But she is more difficult to meet than the King."

"You seem to know her very well."

"There are no theories where genius is concerned. And if, in addition, she has an intellect--naturally she dominates. There are so few intellects. D'you see?"

"I do, you impertinent boy! And I shall not even try to present you to her."

"According to all accounts, dear Princess, you should be the last to fear her, for in your society alone does she appear to find any pleasure. Who else can claim to know her? I have heard of no one."

"Again I am assured of your fitness for the diplomatic career! As I told you, she was placed in my hands. I found her little in need of instruction. She seems to have been born with a sort of royal tact--this makes me believe that her parents were political refugees, at least. Perhaps they had disgraced themselves in other ways. Or it is possible that she is the illegitimate offspring of a prince and some pretty little actress who was bundled out of the country. Austrian archdukes have a mania for romantic marriages. N'importe! We have always remained friends of a sort. I rarely let a week pass without going to see her, and once in a while she comes to me alone and sits in my garden--and expresses her scorn of Sardou and her admiration of Ibsen! When I would give two or three of my best memories to hear how many lovers she has had, and what they were like. A woman can always be read through her lovers. Whatever Styr's may have been, her one desire now is to be impersonal. I might as well invoke Brynhildr or Iseult. Perhaps nothing personal remains in that charming casket. Off the stage ivory, on the stage fire. It is all very odd. I have never been so intrigu?e in my life. Don't try to know her. She might find you worth talking to--and then--who knows?"

Ordham flushed at the bare suggestion. "I am quite determined to know her."

Ordham's eyes flashed. "When?" he demanded.

"When the moon rises, sir. In less than an hour."

John Ordham stood alone on the balcony before the throne room. Princess Nachmeister, shivering and twinging, had gone over to her own comfortable apartment, where, wrapped in a wadded dressing-gown, she could sit at her window and lose nothing of the concert. Ordham, for some time, was sensitively conscious of an unquiet spirit just round the corner of the castle. He could not hear a footfall, a sigh, but he knew that the lonely King was trying to surrender his tormented soul to the golden flood pouring upward from the white figure on the Marienbr?cke, perhaps to the unearthly beauty of the night.

The full moon mounted slowly above the three snow peaks of the distant Alps. It turned even the lakes to sheets of silver, threw forest and unpowdered mountain tops into hard black outline against the deep blue of a sky that seemed to throb with a thousand responsive notes: the golden notes of every human song-bird that Earth had lost. The wind was still. Save for the roar of the waterfall, there was not a sound in the world but that great voice that seemed to fill it.

Ordham had waited breathlessly during the few moments that preceded her appearance, the intense stillness pounding in his ears. Then, by what sleight of body he could not guess, she seemed to dart suddenly up from the gorge below the bridge as she uttered the terrible shriek of Kundry when summoned by Klingsor from her enchanted sleep.

"Ach! Ach! Tiefe Nacht--Wahnsinn!--Oh!--Wuth!--"

Ordham fancied he recognized a note of genuine anger in her wild remonstrance, a bitter personal reproach. But she was artist before all, and when she passed on to her scene with Parsifal, her dulcet reminiscences of his infancy when she herself seemed to brood above him, the helpless anguish of the desolate wife and adoring mother, the maternal agony when the boy ran from her out into the world, the waiting, the savage cries of despair, the "dulling of the smart," the ebbing of life--the strain of exquisite pity in which she told the youth that he was alone on Earth--Ordham shivered more than once, staring back into a brief past where he could recall little of maternal love, wondering how much he would care if he never saw his mother nor any member of his distinguished selfish family again.

"Amfortas!-- Die wunde! Die wunde!-- Sie brent in meinen Herzen-- Oh, Klage! Klage! Furchtbare, Klage!--"

he came as angrily to himself. It was the spell whose meshes he cared least to encounter, and he wondered how he could be sensible to it, even under the influence of music, so soon after breaking from an entanglement which the lady had taken with a seriousness incomprehensible to himself. He was in a mood which impelled him to close the eyes of the lover in him forever, and his real interest in Margarethe Styr began when the Princess Nachmeister told him that she was a woman of intellect and hated his sex. He by no means hated hers, but his mind was lonely, and his ego sought blindly for that companionship which all souls claim as their right, and generally go forth to other worlds still seeking.

The voice of the King ceased. Kundry burst forth again. The wild grief, the remorse of her awakened soul at her abandonment of Christ, then her passionate supplication for the joys and compensations of mortal love, hardly removed the impression, nor her promise to make the obstinate youth a god in her embrace. But when she hurled forth her curses, Ordham breathed more freely, although the furies of hell seemed to echo among the hills.

There was a brief pause. Then with a wild and startling transition:--

"Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho! Hi-ya-ha! Hi-ya-ha! Ho-yo-to-ho! Ho-yo-to-ho!"

Br?nhilde's jubilant cry sprang from peak to peak; then this strange woman's vocal interpretation of the gulf that separated Wotan's daughter from her sisters even before the War-father bereft her of her godhead; the gathering clouds of her approaching humanity; the eternal tragedy of woman's sacrifice to man.

Styr passed from opera to songs, all, no doubt, selected by the King. Some were sonorous with deep religious feeling, others a long-sustained chaunt of sadness and despair; one alone was insolent with triumph and power. It seemed to Ordham that he was swept upward to the stars, those golden voices of dead singers once as great as this virile creature below him. His body was cold, his pulses were still, his brain was on fire. He had a vision of himself and this woman swirling together on a tide of song through the infinite paths of the Milky Way--invisible to-night under the violent light of the moon--then--up--up--through the gates of heaven--

But he was by character and training too cool and self-controlled to remain in a condition of mental intoxication for any length of time. He had glanced at the programme handed to him at the conclusion of dinner and knew that the songs were to end the night's performance.

Ordham, constitutionally shy, albeit with the audacity which so often accompanies that weakness, possessed also what Napoleon called two o'clock in the morning courage. He had felt sure that were he suddenly to be introduced to the mysterious Styr he should turn cold to his marrow and long to bolt. But to meet her formally might prove impossible. To-night was his opportunity. He made up his mind that he would talk to her did she invoke the vengeance of the gods.

He hastily made his way out of the castle by the main entrance, ran down the slope of the great rock, skirted its base, and ascended through the forest to the bridge. He believed that the King would retire as soon as the concert was over, and that the singer would remain for a few moments to enjoy the extraordinary beauty of the night.

And so it happened. Styr, her engagement finished, but still exalted with the intoxication of song, after one long look about her, leaned both hands on the railing of the bridge and stared down into the wild depths below. The grip of the bridge on the rocks was none too secure; a landslip, such as occurred daily in the Alps, and she would lie shattered below. But she enjoyed the hint of danger and might have stood motionless for an hour, warm as she was in her white woollen draperies, had not a footstep made her move her shoulders impatiently. She supposed it to be a lackey with a superfluous wrap, and did not move again until aware that some one stood beside her on the bridge. Then she turned with a start and faced Ordham. She knew at once who he must be; Princess Nachmeister often talked of her favourite, and had told her that he was a guest at the castle to-night. His audacity in approaching her and in such circumstances took away her breath. But only for an instant. She drew herself up with a majesty few queens have had sufficient practice to attain. Her height nearly matched his--not quite; he thanked his stars that she was compelled to look up at him; and she did look the cold astonishment her lips would not frame.

"I could not think of letting you return to the castle alone, Countess Tann," said Ordham, gently, "even if those lackeys were not too stupid to think of coming for you. I am sure this forest is full of peasants; they must have known of the concert. They may be harmless, but as the King's only guest of his own sex, and as he is unable to look after you himself--I am sure you will forgive me. How could I remain quiet in the castle while you found your way back alone? I should be a barbarian."

There was no trace of emotion or even of admiration in his face, merely the natural courtesy of a gentleman, perhaps a touch of boyish knightliness. And certainly he was a mere boy, Margarethe Styr reflected. In that white downpour, that has rejuvenated many a battered visage, he looked--she groped for the word--virginal. And his steady gaze had never wavered before the haughty inquiry of hers. This young man might or might not be as innocent as he looked, but his perfect breeding, which she instantly divined to be an integral part of him, appealed to the woman who had so often found polished manners a brittle veneer. Moreover, she was as amused at his ruse, which had not deceived her for a moment, as she felt herself compelled to admire his strategic cleverness. Then she abruptly asked herself the question that perhaps the immortal goddesses asked in their day, "Why not?" and bent her head pleasantly.

"Thank you," she said. "Of course you are Mr. Ordham. Thank you many times for thinking of me. Shall we walk a little? I should not stand too long after singing."

He was so taken aback by the swiftness of his triumph that diffidence overwhelmed him, and he stammered: "You are sure you would not like another wrap? I can fetch one in a moment."

"I am very warmly clad. Do not bother." She did not notice his relapse and asked him idly if he had enjoyed her singing.

"Oh--enjoy! Please do not tempt me into banalities. It was much too wonderful to talk about. I should like to talk to you--about a hundred other things. I know your voice--I have never missed one of your nights since I came to Munich. But I do not know you at all. This is the blessed opportunity."

He had had time to recover himself, and he watched her intently. Her eyes, which had hung before his mental vision like two tragic suns, flashed with amusement.

"Do you know that I have lived in Munich for six years and not had five minutes' conversation with any man alone, except on business relating to the Hof? Much less have I 'known' any one."

"But you can't go on forever like that. If you weren't fundamentally human, you could not be a great artist; and if you are human, you must crave some sort of companionship. Are you never quite horribly lonely?"

"There is so much in life that is worse than loneliness." Her voice sounded as dry as dust. "Moreover, it is an excellent rampart. But I am not lonely. I work constantly. Why do you set such a high value on human companionship?"

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