Black Oxen Part 14

"You have--other men have loved you."

"European men--the type my lot was cast with--may be romantic in their extreme youth--I have never been attracted by men in that stage of development, so I may only suppose--but when a man has learned to adjust pa.s.sion to technique there is not much romance left in him."

"Are you waiting for your romance, then? Have you come to this more primitive civilization to find it?"

She raised her head and looked him full in the eyes. "No, I did not believe in the possibility then."

"May I have a high-ball?"

"Certainly."

He took his drink on the other side of the room. It was several minutes before he returned to the hearth. Then he asked without looking at her: "How do you expect to find romance if you shut yourself up?"

"I wanted nothing less. As little as I wanted it to be known that I was here at all."

"That d.a.m.nable mystery! Who _are_ you?"

"Nothing that you have imagined. It is far stranger--I fancy it would cure you."

"Cure me?"

"Yes. Do you deny that you love me?"

"No, by G.o.d! I don't! But you take a devilish advantage. You must know that I had meant to keep my head. Of course, you are playing with me--with your cursed technique! ... Unless ..." He reached her in a stride and stood over her. "Is it possible--do you--_you_----"

She pushed back her chair, and stood behind it. Her cheeks were very pink, her eyes startled, but very soft. "I do not admit that yet--I have been too astounded--I went away to think by myself--where I was sure not to see you--but--my mind seemed to revolve in circles. I don't know! I don't know!"

"You do know! You are not the woman to mistake a pa.s.sing interest for the real thing."

"Oh, does a woman ever--I never wanted to be as young as _that_ again!

I should have believed it impossible if I had given the matter a thought--It is so long! I had forgotten what love was like. There was nothing I had buried as deep. And there are reasons--reasons!"

"I only follow you vaguely. But I think I understand--worse luck!

I've hated you more than once. You must have known that. I believe you are deliberately leading me on to make a fool of myself."

"I am not! Oh, I am not!"

"_Do_ you love me?"

"I--I want to be sure. I have dreamed ... I--I have leisure, you see. This old house shuts out the world--Europe--the past. The war might have cut my life in two. If it had not been for that--that long selfless interval ... I'd like you to go now."

"Will you marry me?"

"It may be. I can't tell. Not yet. Are you content to wait?"

"I am not! But I've no intention of taking you by force, although I don't feel particularly civilized at the present moment. But I'll win you and have you if you love me. Make no doubt of that. You may have ten thousand strange reasons--they count for nothing with me. And I intend to see you every day. I'll call you up in the morning. Now I go, and as quickly as I can get out."

XX

He plunged down the steps into a snowstorm. Even during his precipitate retreat he had realized the advisability of telephoning for a taxi, but had been incapable of the anti-climax. He pulled his hat over his eyes, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way hastily toward Park Avenue. There was not a cab in sight. Nor was there a rumble in the tunnel; no doubt the cars were snow-bound. He hesitated only a moment: it would hardly take him longer to walk to his hotel than to the Grand Central Station, but he crossed over to Madison Avenue at once, for it was bitter walking and there was a bare chance of picking up a cab returning from one of the hotels.

But the narrow street between its high dark walls looked like a deserted mountain pa.s.s rapidly filling with snow. The tall street-lamps shed a sad and ghostly beam. They might have been the hooded torches of cave dwellers sheltering from enemies and the storm in those perpendicular fastnesses. Far down, a red sphere glowed dimly, exalting the illusion. He almost fancied he could see the out-posts of primeval forests bending over the canon and wondered why the "Poet of Manhattan" had never immortalized a scene at once so sinister and so lovely.

And no stillness of a high mountain solitude had ever been more intense. Not even a m.u.f.fled roar from trains on the distant "L's."

Clavering wondered if he really were in New York. The whole evening had been unreal enough. Certainly all that was prosaic and ugly and feverish had been obliterated by what it was no flight of fancy to call white magic. That seething ma.s.s of humanity, that so often looked as if rus.h.i.+ng hither and thither with no definite purpose, driven merely by the obsession of speed, was as supine in its brief privacy as its dead. In spite of the fever in him he felt curiously uplifted--and glad to be alone. There are moods and solitudes when a man wants no woman, however much he may be wanting one particular woman... . But the mood was ephemeral; he had been too close to her a moment before.

Moreover, she was still unpossessed... . She seemed to take shape slowly in the white whirling snow, as white and imponderable... . A Nordic princess drifting northward over her steppes... . G.o.d! Would he ever get her? ... If he did not it would be because one of them was qualifying for another incarnation.

He walked down the avenue as rapidly as possible, his hands in his pockets, his head bent to the wind, no longer transported; forcing his mind to dwell on the warmth of his rooms and his bed... . His head ached. He'd go to the office tomorrow and write his column there.

Then think things out. How was he to win such a woman? Make her sure of herself? Convert her doubts into a pa.s.sionate certainty? She, with her highly technical past! Make no mistakes? If he made a precipitate a.s.s of himself--what comparisons! ... His warm bed ... the complete and personal isolation of his rooms ... he had never given even a tea to women ... he gave his dinners in restaurants... .

How many more blocks? The snow was thicker. He couldn't even see the arcade of Madison Square Garden, although a faint diffused radiance high in air was no doubt the crown of lights on the Metropolitan Tower... . Had he made a wrong move in bolting----?

His thoughts and counter-thoughts came to an abrupt end. At the corner of Thirtieth Street he collided with a small figure in a fur coat and nearly knocked it over. He was for striding on with a muttered apology, when the girl caught him by the arm with a light laugh.

"Lee Clavering! What luck! Take me home."

He was looking down into the dark naughty little face of Janet Oglethorpe, granddaughter of the redoubtable Jane.

"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked stupidly.

"Perhaps I'll tell you and perhaps I won't. On second thoughts don't take me home. Take me to one of those all-night restaurants. That's just the one thing I haven't seen, and I'm hungry."

He subtly became an uncle. "I'll do nothing of the sort. You ought to be ashamed of yourself--alone in the streets at this hour of the night.

It must be one o'clock. I shall take you home. I suppose you have a latch-key, but for two cents I'd ring the bell and hand you over to your mother."

"Mother went to Florida today and dad's duck-hunting in South Carolina.

Aunt Mollie's too deaf to hear doorbells and believes anything I tell her."

"I am astonished that your mother left you behind to your own devices."

"I wouldn't go. She's given me up--used to my devices. Besides, I've one or two on her and she doesn't dare give me away to dad. He thinks I'm a darling spoilt child. Not that I'd mind much if he didn't, but it's more convenient."

"You little wretch! I believe you've been drinking."

"So I have! So I have! But I've got an asbestos lining and could stand another tall one. Ah!" Her eyes sparkled. "Suppose you take me to your rooms----"

"I'll take you home----"

"You'll take me to one of those all-nighters----"

"I shall not."

"Then ta! ta! I'll go home by myself. I've had too good a time tonight to bother with old fogies."

She started up the street and Clavering hesitated but a moment. Her home was on East Sixty-fifth Street. Heaven only knew what might happen to her. Moreover, although her mother was one of those women whose insatiable demand for admiration bored him, he had no more devoted friends than her father and her grandmother. Furthermore, his curiosity was roused. What had the little devil been up to?