Black Oxen Part 13

"I think this could not have been your friend. She emphatically said--I am afraid of being horribly rude----"

"Ah!" For the first time since he had known her the color flooded her face; then it receded, leaving her more pale than white. "I understand."

"Of course, it may be another Countess Loyos. Like the Zattianys, it may be a large family."

"As it happens there is no other."

Silence. He swore to himself. He had no desire to skate within a mile of her confounded mysteries and now like a fool he had precipitated himself into their midst again. But if she wouldn't talk... .

"Suppose we talk of something else," he said hurriedly. "I a.s.sure you that I have deliberately suppressed all curiosity. I am only too thankful to know you on any terms."

"But you think I am in danger again?"

"Yes, I do. That is, if you wish to keep your ident.i.ty a secret--for your own good reasons. Of course, no harm can come to you. I a.s.sume that you are not a political refugee--in danger of a.s.sa.s.sination!"

"I am not. What is Mr. Dinwiddie's inference?" She was looking at him eagerly.

"That you really are a friend of Countess Zattiany, but for some motive or other you are using her name instead of your own. That--that--you had your own reasons for escaping from Austria----"

"Escaping?"

"One was that you might have got into some political mess--restoration of Charles, or something----"

She laughed outright.

"The other was--well--that you are hiding from your husband."

"My husband is dead," she said emphatically.

He had never known that clouds, unless charged with thunder, were noisy.

But he heard a black and ominous cloud gather itself and roll off his brain. Had that, after all, been ... Nevertheless, he was annoyed to feel that he was smiling boyishly and that he probably looked as saturnine as he felt.

"Whatever your little comedy, it is quite within your rights to play it in your own way."

"It is not a comedy," she said grimly.

"Oh! Not tragedy?" he cried in alarm.

"No--not yet. Not yet! ... I am beginning to wish that I had never come to America."

"Now I shall ask you why."

"And I shall not tell you. I have read your Miss Dwight's novel, by the way, and think it quite hideous."

"So do I. But that is the reason of its success." And the conversation meandered along the safe bypaths of American fiction through the ices and coffee.

XIX

They sat beside the fire in chairs that had never felt softer. He smoked a cigar, she cigarettes in a long topaz holder ornamented with a tiny crown in diamonds and the letter Z. She had given it to him to examine when he exclaimed at its beauty.

Z!

But he banished both curiosity and possible confirmation. He was replete and comfortable, and almost happy. The occasional silences were now merely agreeable. She lay back in her deep chair as relaxed as himself, but although she said little her aloofness had mysteriously departed. She looked companionable and serene. Only one narrow foot in its silvery slipper moved occasionally, and her white and beautiful hands, whose suggestion of ruthless power Clavering had appreciated apprehensively from the first, seemed, although they were quiet, subtly to lack the repose of her body.

Once while he was gazing into the fire he felt sure that she was examining his profile. He made no pretensions to handsomeness, but he rather prided himself on his nose, the long fine straight nose of the Claverings. His brow was also good, but although his hair was black, his eyes were blue, and he would have preferred to have black eyes, as he liked consistent types. Otherwise he was one of the "black Claverings." Northumbrian in origin and claiming descent from the Bretwaldes, overlords of Britain, the Claverings were almost as fair as their Anglian ancestors, but once in every two or three generations a completely dark member appeared, resurgence of the ancient Briton; sometimes a.s.sociated with the high stature of the stronger Nordic race, occasionally--particularly among the women--almost squat. Clavering had been spared the small stature and the small too narrow head, but saving his steel blue eyes--trained to look keen and hard--he was as dark as any Mediterranean. His mouth was well-shaped and closely set, but capable of relaxation and looked as if it might once have been full and sensitive. It too had been severely trained. The long face was narrower than the long admirably proportioned head. It was by no means as disharmonic a type as Gora Dwight's; the blending of the races was far more subtle, and when making one of his brief visits to Europe he was generally taken for an Englishman, never for a member of the Latin peoples; except possibly in the north of France, where his type, among those Norman descendants of Norse and Danes, was not uncommon.

Nevertheless, although his northern inheritance predominated, he was conscious at times of a certain affinity with the race that two thousand years ago had met and mingled with his own.

He turned his eyes swiftly and met hers. She colored faintly and dropped her lids. Had she lowered those broad lids over a warm glow?

"Now I know what you look like!" he exclaimed, and was surprised to find that his voice was not quite steady. "A Nordic princess."

"Oh! That is the very most charming compliment ever paid me."

"You look a pretty unadulterated type for this late date. I don't mean in color only, of course; there are millions of blondes."

"My mother was a brunette."

"Oh, yes, you are a case of atavism, no doubt. If I were as good a poet as one of my brother columnists I should have written a poem to you long since. I can see you sweeping northward over the steppes of Russia as the ice-caps retreated ... reembodied on the Baltic coast or the sh.o.r.es of the North Sea ... sleeping for ages in one of the Megaliths, to rise again a daughter of the Brythons, or of a Norse Viking ... west into Anglia to appear once more as a Priestess of the Druids chaunting in a sacred grove ... or as Boadicea--who knows! But no prose can regenerate that shadowy time. I see it--prehistory--as a swaying ma.s.s of ghostly mult.i.tudes, but always pressing on--on ... as we shall appear, no doubt, ten thousand years hence if all histories are destroyed--as no doubt they will be. If I were an epic poet I might possibly find words and rhythm to fit that white vision, but it is wholly beyond the practical vocabulary and mental make-up of a newspaper man of the twentieth century. Some of us write very good poetry indeed, but it is not precisely inspired, and it certainly is not epic. One would have to retire to a cave like Buddha and fast."

"You write singularly pure English, in spite of what seems to me a marked individuality of style, and--ah--your apparent delight in slang!" Her voice was quite even, although her eyes had glowed and sparkled and melted at his poetic phantasma of her past (as what woman's would not?). "I find a rather painful effort to be--what do you call it? highbrow?--in some of your writers."

"The youngsters. I went through that phase. We all do. But we emerge. I mean, of course, when we have anything to express.

Metaphysical verbosity is a friendly refuge. But as a rule years and hard knocks drive us to directness of expression... . But poets must begin young. And New York is not exactly a hot-bed of romance."

"Do you think that romance is impossible in New York?" she asked irresistibly.

"I--oh--well, what is romance? Of course, it is quite possible to fall in love in New York--although anything but the ideal setting. But romance!"

"Surely the sense of mystery between a man and woman irresistibly attracted may be as provocative in a great city as in a feudal castle surrounded by an ancient forest--or on one of my Dolomite lakes. Is it not that which const.i.tutes romance--the breathless trembling on the verge of the unexplored--that isolates two human beings as authentically--I am picking up your vocabulary--as if they were alone on a star in s.p.a.ce? Is it not possible to dream here in New York?--and surely dreams play their part in romance." Her fingertips, moving delicately on the surface of her lap, had a curious suggestion of playing with fire.

"One needs leisure for dreams." He stood up suddenly and leaned against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere had become electric. "A good thing, too, as far as some of us are concerned. The last thing for a columnist to indulge in is dreams. Fine hash he'd have for his readers next morning!"

"Do you mean to say that none of you clever young men fall in love?"

"Every day in the week, some of them. They even marry--and tell fatuous yarns about their babies. No doubt some of them have even gloomed through brief periods of unreciprocated pa.s.sion. But they don't look very romantic to me."

"Romance is impossible without imagination, I should think. Aching for what you cannot have or falling in love reciprocally with a charming girl is hardly romance. That is a gift--like the spark that goes to the making of Art."

"Are you romantic?" he asked harshly. "You look as if born to inspire romance--dreams--like a beautiful statue or painting--but mysterious as you make yourself--and, I believe, are in essence--I should never have a.s.sociated you with the romantic temperament. Your eyes--as they too often are---- Oh, no!"

"It is true that I have never had a romance."

"You married--and very young."

"Oh, what is young love! The urge of the race. A blaze that ends in babies or ashes. Romance!"