Black Oxen Part 17

"Of course. c.o.c.ktail party at Donny's----"

"Well, moderate your voice. It isn't necessary to take the entire room into your confidence. Better still, go back to your own table."

She raised her voice. "You see, Madame Zattiany, I was running round loose at about one o'clock A. M. when whom should I run into but dear old Uncle Lee. He looked all shot to pieces when he saw me. Girls in his day didn't stay out late unless they had a beau. Ten o'clock was the limit, anyhow. But did he take advantage of my unprotected maiden innocence? Not he. He stood there in the snow and delivered a lecture on the error of my ways, then took me to a delicatessen shop--afraid of compromising himself in a restaurant--and stuffed me with sandwiches and bananas. Even there, while we were perched on two high stools, he didn't make love to me as any human man would have done. He just ate sandwiches and lectured. G.o.d! Life must have been dull for girls in his day!"

People about them were t.i.ttering. One young man burst into a guffaw.

Madame Zattiany was calmly eating her dinner. The tirade might have fallen on deaf ears.

Clavering's skin had turned almost black. His eyes looked murderous.

But he did not raise his voice. "Go back to your table," he said peremptorily. "You've accomplished your revenge and I've had all I propose to stand... . By G.o.d! If you don't get out this minute I'll pick you up and carry you out and straight to your grandmother."

"Yes you would--make a scene."

"The scene could hardly be improved. Will you go?"

He half rose. Even Madame Zattiany glanced at him apprehensively.

Miss Oglethorpe laughed uncertainly. "Oh, very well. At least we never furnish material for your newspapers. That's just one thing we think beneath us." She rose and extended her hand. "Good night, Madame Zattiany," she said with a really comical a.s.sumption of the grand manner. "It has been a great pleasure to meet you."

Madame Zattiany took the proffered hand. "Good night," she said sweetly. "Your little comedy has been most amusing. Many thanks."

Miss Oglethorpe jerked her shoulders. "Well, console dear unky. He'd like the floor to open and swallow him. Ta! Ta!"

She ran back to her table, and its hilarity was shortly augmented.

Madame Zattiany looked at Clavering aghast. "But it is worse than I supposed!" she exclaimed. "It is really a tragedy. Poor Mrs.

Oglethorpe." Then she laughed, silently but with intense amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I wish she had been here! After all! ... Nevertheless, it is a tragedy. An Oglethorpe! A mere child intoxicated ... and truly atrocious manners. Why don't her people put her in a sanitarium?"

"Parents count about as much today as women counted in the cave era.

But it is abominable that you should be made conspicuous."

"Oh, that! I have been conspicuous all my life. And you must admit that she had the centre of the stage! If any one is to be commiserated, it is you. But you really behaved admirably; I could only admire your restraint."

Clavering's ferment subsided, and he returned her smile. "I hope I didn't express all I felt. Murder would have been too good for her.

But you are an angel. And for all her bravado you must have made her feel like the little vulgarian she is. Heavens, but the civilization varnish is thin!--and when they deliberately rub it off----"

"Tell me of this adventure."

"It was such a welcome adventure after leaving you! She told practically the whole of it. She had been to a party and her host was too drunk to take her home. She couldn't get a taxi, so started to walk. After I had fed the little pig I took her home. Of course I had no intention of mentioning it to any one, but I hardly feel that I am compromising my honor as a gentleman!"

"But will Society permit this state of things to last? New York! It seems incredible."

"Heaven knows. It might as well try to curb the lightning as these little fools. Their own children, if they have any, will probably be worse."

"I wonder. Reformed rakes are not generally indulgent to adventurous youth. There will probably be a violent revulsion to the rigors of the nineteenth century."

"Hope so. Thank Heaven we can get out of this."

They left the table. As he followed her down the long room and noted the many eyes that focussed on the regal and beautiful figure in its long wrap of white velvet and fox he set his lips grimly. Another ordeal before him. For a moment he wished that he had fallen in love with a woman incapable of focussing eyes. He hated being conspicuous as he hated poverty and ugliness and failure and death. Then he gave an impatient sigh. If he could win her he cared little if the entire town followed her every time she appeared on the street. And she had been very sweet after that odious flapper had taken herself off. He had ceased to feel at arm's length.

XXII

They entered the box during the nuptial hymn. Farrar, almost supine in the arms of the seducer, was singing with the voluptuous abandon that makes this scene the most explicit in modern opera. She had sung it a thousand times, but she was still the beautiful young creature exalted by pa.s.sion, and her voice seemed to have regained its pristine freshness.

She had done many things to irritate New Yorkers, but in this scene, whether they forgave her or not, they surrendered; and those to whom love and pa.s.sion were lost memories felt a dim resurgence under that golden tide.

Clavering had no desire to surrender. In fact he endeavored to close his ears. He had received a cold douche and a hot one in the course of the past hour, and he felt that his equilibrium was satisfactorily established. He had forgotten to warn Madame Zattiany of the step at the front of the box, down which so many novices had stumbled, but she had taken it and settled herself with the nonchalance of custom. Odd. Once more something beat in the back of his brain. But he dismissed it impatiently. No doubt many boxes in Europe were constructed in the same fas.h.i.+on.

He had seated himself a little to the right and behind her. He saw her lids droop and her hands move restlessly. Then, as the curtain went down and Farrar was accepting the customary plaudits, her eyes opened and moved over the rich and beautiful auditorium with a look of hungry yearning. This was too much for Clavering and he demanded abruptly:

"Why do you look like that? Have you ever been here before?"

She turned to him with a smile. "What a question! ... But opera, both the silliest and the most exalting of the arts, is the Youth of Life, its perpetual and final expression. And when the house is dark I always imagine it haunted by the ghosts of dead opera singers, or of those whose fate is sadder still. Does it never affect you in that way?"

"Can't say it does... . But ... I vaguely remember--some ten years ago a young singer with a remarkable voice sang Marguerite once on that stage and then disappeared overnight ... lost her voice, it was said... ."

She gave a low choking laugh. "And you think I am she? Really!"

"I think nothing, but that I am here with you--and that in another moment I shall want to sit on the floor--Oh, Lord!"

The house was a blaze of light. It looked like a vast gold and red jewel box, built to exhibit in the fullness of their splendor the most luxurious and extravagant women in the world. And it was filled tonight from coifed and jewelled orchestra to highest balcony, where plainer people with possibly jewelled souls clung like flies. Not a box was empty. Clavering's glance swept the parterre, hoping it would be occupied for the most part by the youngest set, less likely to be startled by the resemblance of his guest to the girl who had sat among their grandmothers when the opera house was new. But there were few of the very young in the boxes. They found their entertainment where traditions were in the making, and dismissed the opera as an old superst.i.tion, far too long-winded and boring for enterprising young radicals.

Against the red backgrounds he saw the austere and homely faces of women who represented all that was oldest and best in New York Society, and they wore their haughty bones unchastened by power. There were many more of the succeeding generation, of course, many more whose ancestry derived from gold not blood, and they made up in style and ritual what they lacked in pulchritude. Lack of beauty in the parterre boxes was as notorious as the "horseshoe" itself, Dame Nature and Dame Fortune, rivals always, having been at each other's throats some century and three-quarters ago, and little more friendly when the newer aristocracy of mere wealth was founded. All the New York Society Beauties were historical, the few who had survived the mere prettiness of youth entering a private Hall of Fame while still alive.

It had begun! Clavering fell back, folded his arms and set his teeth.

First one pair of opera gla.s.ses in the parterre, then another, then practically all were levelled at Mrs. Oglethorpe's box. Young men and old in the omnibus box remained in their seats. Very soon white shoulders and black in the orchestra chairs began to change their angle, attracted by the stir in the boxes. That comment was flowing freely, he made no doubt. In the boxes on either side of him the occupants were staring less openly, but with frequent amazed side glances and much whispering. Madame Zattiany sat like an idol. She neither sought to relieve what embarra.s.sment she may have felt--if she felt any! thought Clavering--by talking to her escort nor by gazing idly about the house comparing other women's gowns and crowns with her own. She might have been a masterpiece in a museum.

A diversion occurred for which Clavering at least was grateful. The door opened and Mr. Dinwiddie entered, limping and leaning on a cane. He looked pale and worried. Clavering resigned his seat and took one still further in the rear. But the low-pitched dialogue came to him distinctly.

"Is this prudent?" murmured Dinwiddie, as he sat himself heavily beside her. "There will be nothing else talked of in New York tomorrow. So far there have only been rumors. But here! You look like Mary Ogden risen from the dead. There's a rumor, by the way, that she is dead."

"She was alive the last time I heard from Vienna. But why imprudent?

Mr. Clavering told me of your kind concern, but I a.s.sure you that I am neither a political nor a marital refugee."

"But you have a secret you wish to keep. Believe me, you can do so no longer. The Sophisticates are generous and casual. They take you on your face value and their curiosity is merely human and good-natured.

But this! In Jane Oglethorpe's box! It is in the nature of an invasion.

You hardly could have done more if you had forced yourself into a drawing-room uninvited. You must either come out tomorrow and tell them who you are, establish yourself ... or ... or----"

"Well?" Madame Zattiany was smiling, and, probably, the most serene person in the house.

"I--I--think you had better go back to Europe. I must be frank.

Anything less would be cowardly. You interest me too much... . But I can only suppose that your secret is of the sort that if discovered--and they will discover it!--would cause you grave embarra.s.sment."

"You mean if I am Mary Zattiany's illegitimate daughter?"