Black Oxen Part 16

he added. "Mrs. Oglethorpe's."

"Oh!" There was a pause that seemed eternal. Then she laughed suddenly, a laugh of intense amus.e.m.e.nt that ended on a note of recklessness. "Well! Why not? Yes, I will go. Very many thanks."

"Good. It means an early dinner. I'll call for you at a quarter to seven."

"I'm promptness itself. Au 'voir."

So that was that! One night's respite. He'd leave her at her door.

He wondered if his voice had been as impersonal as her own: he had almost barked into the telephone and had probably overdone it. But was any man ever in such a ghastly position before? Well, he'd lose the game before he'd make a fool of himself again... . a.s.s ... he'd had the game in his own hands last night ... could have switched off any moment. He'd let go and delivered himself into hers.

He took a cold shower, and made a meticulous toilet.

When he arrived at the house he was shown into the drawing-room. He had never seen it before and he glanced about him with some curiosity.

It was a period room: Louis Quinze. The furniture looked as if made of solid gold and Madame Du Barry herself might have sat on the dainty brocades. The general effect was airy and graceful, gay, frivolous, and subtly vicious. (An emanation to which the chaste Victorian had been impervious.) He understood why Madame Zattiany did not use it.

She might be subtly anything, but a.s.suredly she was neither airy nor frivolous.

Then he realized that there was a painting of a girl over the mantel and that the girl was Mary Ogden. He stepped forward eagerly, almost holding his breath. The portrait ended at the tiny waist, and the stiff satin of the cuira.s.s-like bodice was softened with tulle which seemed to float about the sloping shoulders. The soft ashen hair, growing in a deep point on the broad full brow, was brushed softly back and coiled low on the long white neck. The mouth was soft and pouting, with a humorous quirk at the corners, and the large dark gray eyes were full of a mocking light that seemed directed straight into the depths of his puzzled brain as he stood gazing at that presentment of a once potent and long vanished beauty... . Extraordinarily like and yet so extraordinarily unlike! But the resemblance may have well been exact when Mary Zattiany was twenty. How had Mary Ogden looked at thirty?

That very lift of the strong chin, that long arch of nostril ...

something began to beat in the back of his brain... .

"What a beauty poor Mary must have been, no?"

He turned, and forgot the portrait. Madame Zattiany wore a gown of that subtle but unmistakable green that no light can turn blue; thin s.h.i.+mmering velvet to the knees, melting into satin embroidered with silver and veiled with tulle. On her head was a small diamond tiara and her breast was a blaze of emeralds and diamonds. She carried a large fan of green feathers.

He had believed he had measured the extent of her beauty, but the crown gave her a new radiance--and she looked as attainable as a queen on her throne.

He went forward and raised her hand to his lips. "I insist," he said gallantly. "Anything else would be out of the picture. I need not tell you how wonderful you look--nor that after tonight you will hardly remain obscure!"

"Why do things halfway? It has never been my method. And Mary told me once that Nile-green had been her favorite color until she lost her complexion. So--as I am to exhibit myself in a box--_enfin!_ ...

Besides, I wanted to go." She smiled charmingly. "It was most kind of you to think of me."

"Would that all 'kind' acts were as graciously rewarded. I shall be insufferably conceited for the rest of my life--only it is doubtful if I shall be seen at all. Shall we go?"

When they arrived at Sherry's they found the large restaurant almost deserted. It was barely seven. After he had ordered the dinner--and he thanked his stars that he knew how to order a dinner--she said casually:

"I had a call from your friend, Miss Dwight, today."

"Yes? You did not see her, I suppose?"

"Oh, but I did. We talked for two hours. It was almost comical--the sheer delight in talking to a woman once more. I have never been what is called a woman's woman, but I always had my friends, and I suddenly realized that I had missed my own s.e.x."

"I shouldn't fancy that you two would have much in common."

"You forget that we were both nurses. We compared experiences: methods of nursing, operations, doctors, surgeons, sh.e.l.l shock, plastic surgery, the various characteristics of wounded men--all the rest of it."

"It must have been an exciting conversation."

"You never could be brought to believe it, but it was. Afterward, we talked of other things. She seems to me quite a remarkable woman."

"Entirely so. What is it she lacks that prevents men from falling in love with her? Men flock there, and she is more discussed as a mind and a personality than any woman among us; but it is all above the collar. And yet those handsome-ugly women often captivate men."

"You ask one woman why another cannot fascinate men! I should say that it is for want of transmission. The heart and pa.s.sions are there--I will risk guessing that she has been tragically in love at least once--but there is something wrong with the conduit that carries s.e.xual magnetism; it has been bent upward to the brain instead of directed straight to the s.e.x for which it was designed. Moreover, she is too coldly and obviously a.n.a.lytical and lacks the tact to conceal it. Men do not mind being skewered when they are out for purely intellectual enjoyment, but they do not love it."

Clavering laughed. "I fancy your own mind is quite as coldly a.n.a.lytical, but nature took care of your conduits and you see to the tact. You cannot teach Gora how to redistribute her magnetism, but you might give her a few points."

"They would be wasted. It is merely that I am a woman of the world, something she will never be. And in my hey-day, I can a.s.sure you, I was not a.n.a.lytical."

"Your hey-day?"

"I was a good many years younger before the war, remember. Heavens!

How rowdy those young people are! A month ago I should have asked if they were ladies and gentlemen, but I have been quite close to their kind in the tea rooms and their accent is unmistakable; although the girls talk and act like _gamines_. One of them seems to know you."

Clavering had been conscious that the restaurant was filling with groups and couples, bound, no doubt, for the opera or theatre. He followed Madame Zattiany's eyes. In the middle of the room was a large table surrounded by very young men and girls; the latter as fragile and lovely as b.u.t.terflies: that pathetic and swiftly pa.s.sing youth of the too pampered American girl. The youth of this generation promised to be briefer than ever!

He gave them a cursory glance, and then his chair turned to pins.

Janet Oglethorpe sat at the head of the table. What would the brat do?

She had been fond of him as a child, but as he had found her detestable in her flapperhood, and been at no pains to conceal his att.i.tude, she had taken a violent dislike to him. Last night he had deliberately flicked her on the raw.

He was not long in doubt. She had returned his perfunctory bow with a curt nod, and after a brief interval--during which she appeared to be making a communication that was received with joyous hilarity--she left her seat and ran across the room. She might have been in her own house for all the notice she took of the restaurant's other guests.

Clavering rose and grimly awaited the onslaught. Even the waiters were staring, but for the moment only at the flas.h.i.+ng little figure whose cheeks matched to a shade the American Beauty rose of her wisp of a gown.

Her big black eyes were sparkling wickedly, her vivid little mouth wore a twist that can only be described as a grin. She had come for her revenge. No doubt of that.

She bore down on him, and shook his unresponsive hand heartily. "I've been telling them how dear and n.o.ble you were last night, dear Mr.

Clavering, just like a real uncle, or what any one would expect of one of granny's pets. No doubt you saved my life and honor, and I want to tell the world." Her crisp clear voice was pitched in G. It carried from end to end of the silent room.

"Would that I were your uncle! Won't you sit down? I believe that you have not met Madame Zattiany."

Miss Oglethorpe had not cast a glance at her victim's companion, a.s.suming her to be some writing person; although he did once in a while take out Anne Goodrich or Marian Lawrence: old girls--being all of twenty-four--in whom she took no interest whatever.

She half turned her head with a barely perceptible nod. The tail of her eye was arrested. She swung round and stared, her mouth open. For the moment she was abashed; whatever else she may have submerged, her caste instinct remained intact and for a second she had the unpleasant sensation of standing at the bar of her entire cla.s.s. But she recovered immediately. _Grandes dames_ were out of date. Even her mother had worn her skirts to her knees a short time since. What fun to "show this left-over." And then her spiteful naughtiness was magnified by anger. Madame Zattiany had inclined her head graciously, but made no attempt to conceal her amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Yes, I'll sit down. Thanks." She produced a cigarette and lit it.

"Granny's got a lot of ancient photographs of her girlhood friends,"

she remarked with her insolent eyes on Madame Zattiany, "and one of them's enough like you to be you masquerading in the get-up of the eighties. Comes back to me. Just before mother left I heard her discussing you with a bunch of her friends. Isn't there some mystery or other about you?"

"Yes, indeed! Is it not so?" Madame Zattiany addressed her glowering host, her eyes twinkling. It was evident that she regarded this representative of the new order with a scientific interest, as if it were a new sort of bug and herself an entomologist. "Probably," she added indulgently, "the most mysterious woman in New York. What you would call an adventuress if you were not too young to be uncharitable.

Mr. Clavering is kind enough to take me on trust."

Miss Oglethorpe's wrath waxed. This creature of an obsolete order had the temerity to laugh at her. Moreover---- She flashed a glance from Clavering's angry anxious face to the beautiful woman opposite, and a real color blazed in her cheeks. But she summoned a sneer.

"n.o.ble again! Has he told you of our little adventure last night?"

"Last night?" A flicker crossed the serenity of Madame Zattiany's face. "But no. I do not fancy Mr. Clavering is in the habit of telling his little adventures."

"Oh, he wouldn't. Old standards. Southern chivalry. All the rest of it. That's why he's granny's model young man. Well, I'll tell you----"

"You've been drinking again," hissed Clavering.