: Tower of Ivory: A Novel by Atherton Gertrude Franklin Horn - London (England) Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) Fiction; Man-woman relationships Fiction; Munich (Germany) Fiction

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

I WHEN BRIDGMINSTER WAS TWENTY-FOUR

But at this time, although had Styr ever been photographed, he would have framed and enthroned her, he rarely thought of her when not in his seat in the Hof, or listening to the comments of his friends. He was fluttering from flower to flower with the impatience and curiosity of his years, fearful of missing the least the gods provided for fortunate youth; drawn intensely for a day or a week by a beautiful face or an odd personality, but not daring to dally too long lest something more charming escape him. He had passing episodes of a semi-serious nature in that gay scampish underworld of Munich , as well as in the sphere that revolved about the Queen-mother, but they were by no means ardent or sustained. He had not yet begun to cultivate that outdoor life which makes Englishmen so virile, and in extenuation of his fickleness he reminded himself of the penetrating observation of Marguerite de Valois, that the passions of young men are apt to be wavering and cold. The truth was that he was influenced by what appealed to his mind and taste rather than to his passions, although being sensitive and eager, these could momentarily be aroused by a charming woman who chose to take the initiative. The serious side of his nature had hardly begun its development; youth, bubbling youth, was uppermost; unconsciously he smiled into any pair of pretty eyes that met and held his rather absent gaze, flirted desperately for an evening with a delightful creature whom he quite forgot to call upon next day. He found life very satisfactory and his studies not too arduous: persuaded by his family to enter diplomacy, and taking to it as naturally as he turned from the more dubious work of politics, he had spent a year in Paris unofficially attached to the British Embassy; then, a relative being appointed Minister Resident to the Court of Bavaria, he had come to him for another year in order to perfect himself in the German language before attempting his examinations.

It was some time before Munich found him out. For a while he was too much interested in the caf?s, the ale-halls, the student life, the opera and theatre, to go about in society, even had it not been away. But soon after the return of the fashionable world to the capital, it became known that visiting at the British Legation was a young Englishman of fine appearance, distinguished family, and excellent prospects: his half-brother, Lord Bridgminster, although still a young man and quite healthy, was, owing to an early disappointment and an accident which marred his features, a misanthropist and misogynist. Almost simultaneously Ordham began to go about with Mr. Trowbridge, the minister; and, to do himself as well as society justice, he was immediately and enthusiastically liked for himself. The glamour of long descent and a possible coronet can never wholly be forgotten, but they carry a man so far and no farther. John Ordham's worldly advantages no doubt were among the earliest of the factors that made him the fashion in Munich, so slow to accept strangers; but, later they were but the final excuse to shower attentions upon a young man who, under a shy and languid exterior, possessed an independent and audacious mind, who breathed refinement, and whose gentle and courteous manner charmed even the morose Ludwig to invite him to a private concert at Neuschwanstein, where he and Princess Nachmeister were the only guests. It was there that he met Margarethe Styr.

II FLYING ARROWS

Princess Nachmeister was the most disagreeable old woman in Munich and quite the most powerful. Herself a Prussian, she was a lifelong friend of the Queen-mother, and one of the few women ever admitted to the presence of the King; her genius for social leadership had been cultivated for forty years, and she had a "palace" in the K?nigenstrasse, whose high-walled garden extended through to the Kaulbachstrasse. Ordham, in his rather listless walks, had often glanced longingly over the flat coping at the grounds, half formal, half wild, crowded with trees and set with Italian seats and fountains, noseless satyrs and empty urns. The princess boasted that she was the first to "discover" him, and after the season opened he found himself dining or attending parties at her house several times a week. At the moment, so great was the depression, owing to the persistent seclusion of the King, that few besides Excellenz Nachmeister had the spirit to entertain on the grand scale. Luncheons, kettle-drums, diplomatic dinners, were not infrequent, and occasionally one of the minor royal palaces opened its doors for a rout; but had it not been for the old lady whom all vilified and courted, society would have been moribund. No one was more aware of this than Excellenz herself, for one secret of her uninterrupted success in a city that still hated Prussia was her genius for seizing and holding the strategic position.

She took Ordham to the routs that were given, to private tea-parties at the Residenz, where frequently the only other guests of the Queen-mother were her ancient ladies-in-waiting, and, in time, invited him alone of all the unofficial young men to her dinners given in honour of the diplomatic corps. She knew that he barely tolerated her, that he came to her house so often, not only because he found much to amuse him there, but because he was far too good-natured to refuse any one that pressed hospitality upon him; but she would have forgiven more to his manners, which she pronounced the finest in the world; and the old court intriguer honestly admired the diplomatic talents which inspired him to express the proper amount of deference and polite gratitude without sacrificing his dignity in the fashion of many that craved something more than a mere entr?e to the Palast Nachmeister; then, later, when to be the enfant g?t? and the formal man-of-the-world.

Ordham, indeed, began by disliking her intensely. Her thin dispraising nose, which, he reflected, looked as if it had a pin in it; her narrow mouth, whose corners seemed to drip poison; her hard, round, brilliant eyes; her red wig and emaciated figure,--all offended him; but her manifest and disinterested friendship , her many favours, and the more subtle influence of Time, to say nothing of her discretion in not inviting him to make love to her, inclined him to indulgence, and he even began to find good points in her,--after his habit with people whom he tolerated at all.

And he was never bored in her house, for he met in it a far more cosmopolitan society than he had been accustomed to in England or even in Paris. The United States had not yet discovered Munich, but it was always refreshed, this beautiful art city of mid-Europe, by Russians, Hungarians, Austrians, Italians, and odd and interesting people from the Balkans and the Porte. Moreover, he loved beautiful things, and the Nachmeister's house was an essential reincarnation of the rococo, even to the dinginess of the gilt, so fatally neglected by Ludwig in his brand-new palaces, Linderhof and Herrenchimsee. Her rooms and her grounds satisfied him so completely that he could not go to them often enough, and he was able to exclude their owner from his memory unless she stood in front of him.

Nor did she deny him anything he craved. When the rather nervous young man, who blushed so often, and yet was as automatically sure of himself as only an Englishman of his class can be, told her flatly that he wanted to meet the King, whom no stranger met, the audacity of the request took her breath away, but she managed the interview through the Queen-mother; and Ludwig, who happened to be in one of those intensely lucid tempers when he was sick unto death of shams and hypocrisies, and the vileness he found in the men that cringed at his wavering feet, fancied that he saw in the clean high-bred young Englishman something of the nobility and beauty of his own untainted youth, and impulsively invited him to Neuschwanstein for the following evening.

It was quite in keeping with the curious complications which at this period began to deflect John Ordham's feet from the sunny highway into dim by-paths ending in the mazes of life, that he should have met Mabel Cutting before he made even the bare acquaintance of Margarethe Styr. She was just eighteen, and her mother had brought her to Munich for a few weeks of German and music before launching her into London society. Princess Nachmeister, giving a garden party soon after the squares and gardens of Munich had burst into the vivid young greens of spring, begged Mrs. Cutting, whom she had known for many years, to bring the new American beauty to decorate her "gloomy old park." This with her romantic loveliness--she was tall and slim, her hair was golden, her big eyes were brown, sad, remote, her little nose and mouth cut with the sharpest and most rapid of chisels--Mabel accomplished with much complacency; she was not only quite aware of her charms, but that her smart Parisian gown made the greater number of the Bavarian aristocracy look like housemaids. But she was bored by the strange babel of tongues about her, and, unable to interest herself in the stiff young officers that clicked their heels together in front of her, permitted them to be captured by ladies with whose methods they were more familiar. She was sitting alone,--save for her pug-dog, LaLa,--on one of the curved marble seats under a large tree, flanked by a pink hawthorn on one side and a white lilac bush on the other, when Ordham, who had arrived late, as usual, caught sight of her. A few moments later, his hostess, congratulating herself upon her subtlety, had steered him to the maiden's side and casually presented him.

Mabel enlivened immediately when the tall "boy," as she defined him, very dignified and very diffident, stood blushing before her, and talked so fast that Ordham subsided into a chair with the welcome sensation of being spared all trouble. He was fascinated not more by the sparkling flow of empty words than by the play of dimples in the pink and white cheeks, and the flecks of golden light which the large pathetic brown eyes seemed to intercept from the aureole of her hair. She talked of England and Paris, which she knew far better than New York, "adoring" both, delivered her soul of her hatred of all things German, from the music to the shops, spoke with admiration of his mother who was a great friend of "Momma's," and admitted that she was simply dying to see the inside of Ordham Castle and its romantic recluse, Lord Bridgminster. Occasionally she dammed the stream of her eloquence with a question, answered by a glance from Ordham's smiling eyes. Then Mrs. Cutting, who had been detained within, bore down upon them, and Mabel rose to her feet like a willow branch slowly released from the water.

"Momma!" she cried, "this is Mr. Ordham, Lady Bridgminster's son. I have asked him to call. Do invite him for dinner to-night. He is the very nicest boy I ever met. You are sure to like him, for he talks so splendidly, and says such amusing things."

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!