Black Oxen Part 24

Madame Zattiany did not utter a word during the short walk to her house.

It was evident that she had dismissed the merry evening from her mind and was brooding on the coming hour. At the top of the steps she handed him the latchkey, but still lingered outside for a moment. As he took her hand and drew her gently into the house he felt that she was trembling.

"Come," he said, his own voice shaking. "Remember that you need tell me nothing unless you wish. This idea of confession before marriage is infernal rot. I have not the least intention of making one of my own."

"Oh!" She gave a short harsh laugh. "I should never dream of asking for any man's confession. They are all alike. And I must tell you. I cannot leave you to hear it from others."

He helped her out of her wrap and she threw the lace scarf on a chair and preceded him slowly down the hall.

"I am a coward. A coward," she thought heavily. "Have I ever felt moral cowardice before? I don't remember. Not toward any other man who loved me. But---- Oh, G.o.d! And I shall never see him again. How shall I begin?"

She was totally unprepared for the beginning. She heard him shut the library door, and then it seemed to her that her entire body was encircled by flexible hot bars of iron and her face, her mouth, were being flagellated. If he hadn't held her in that vise-like grip she would have fallen. She lay back on his arm as he kissed her and for the moment she forgot the past and the future and was happy, although she felt dimly that life was being drained out of her. She was pa.s.sive in that fierce possessive embrace. She had lost all sense of separateness.

"I won't listen to your story," he muttered. "This is no time for talk."

His voice, hoa.r.s.e and shaking as it was, broke the spell; with a sudden lithe movement she twisted herself out of his arms. Before he realized what was happening she had run across the room, s.n.a.t.c.hed the key from the door and locked it on the other side. He heard her run up the stairs.

Clavering did and said most of the things men do and say when balked in mid-flight, but in a moment he took the little key from the drawer in the table and poured himself out a whiskey and soda--he had taken almost nothing at the party--lit a cigarette and threw himself into a chair. He had no desire to stride up and down; he felt as if all the strength had gone out of him. But he felt no apprehension that she had left him for the night. Nor should he take possession of her again until she had told her story: he reflected with what humor was left in him that when a woman had something to say and was determined to say it, the only thing to do was to let her talk. Words to a woman were as steam to a boiler, and no man could control her mind until she had talked off the lid.

She was giving him time to cool off, he reflected grimly, as he glanced at the clock. Well, he felt heavy and inert enough--hideous reaction!

He was in a condition to listen to anything. If she was determined to work her will on him, at least he had worked his on her for a brief moment. She knew now that in the future she might as well try to resist death itself. Let her have her last fling.

He rose as she entered, and for the moment his heart failed him. He had never seen even her look more like marble, and she did not meet his eyes as she crossed the room and seated herself so that her profile would be toward him as she talked. As she had chosen the large high-backed chair, Clavering, knowing her love of comfort, hoped that her discourse was to be brief.

"When I finish," she said in her low vital voice, "I shall leave the room immediately and I must have your word that you will make no attempt to detain me, and that you will go at once and not return until Monday afternoon. I shall not wish to see you again until you have had time to deliberate calmly on what I shall tell you. I do not want any embarra.s.sed protests from a gallant gentleman--whose confusion of mind is second only to his chivalrous dismay. Have I your word?"

"It never takes me long to make up my mind----"

"That may be, but I intend to save you from an embarra.s.sing situation.

You need not come on Monday unless you wish. You may write--or, for that matter, if I do not hear from you on Monday by four I shall understand----"

"I--for G.o.d's sake, Mary----"

"You must do as I say--this time. And--and--you could not overcome me again tonight. I can turn myself to stone when I choose."

"Oh!" He ground his teeth. His own nerves might be lulled for the moment, but he had antic.i.p.ated reaction when she finished her story.

"Very well--but it is for the last time, my dear. And why Monday? Why not this afternoon?"

"You must sleep and write your column, is it not so? Moreover--and deliberately--I am lunching with Mrs. Ruyler and dining at the Lawrences'."

"Very well. Monday, then. You have set the stage. If I must be a puppet for once in my life, so be it. But, I repeat, it's for the last time. Now, for heaven's sake, go ahead and get it off your chest."

"And you will let me go without a word? Otherwise I shall not speak--and I'll leave the room again and not return."

"Very well. I promise."

"I told part of it the other day at Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon--I had told her before. But there's so much else. I hardly know how to begin with you, and I have not the habit of talking about myself. But I suppose I should begin at the beginning."

"It is one of the formulae."

"It is the most difficult of all--that beginning." And although she had announced the torpidity of her nerves, her hands clenched and her voice shook slightly.

"Let me remind you that to begin anywhere you've got to begin somewhere."

And then as she continued silent, he burst out: "For G.o.d's sake, say it!"

"Is--is--it possible that the suspicion has never crossed your mind that I am Mary Ogden?"

"Wh-a-at!"

"Mary Ogden, who married Count Zattiany thirty-four years ago. I was twenty-four at the time. You may do your own arithmetic."

But Clavering made no answer. His cigarette was burning a hole in the carpet. He mechanically set his foot on it, but his faculties felt suspended, his body immersed in ice-water. And yet something in his unconscious rose and laughed ... and tossed up a key ... if he had not fallen in love with her he would have found that key long since. His news sense rarely failed him.

"I've told a good many lies, I'm afraid," she went on, and her voice was even and cool. The worst was over. "You'll have to forgive me that at least. I dislike downright lying, if only because concessions are foreign to my nature, and I quibbled when it was possible; but when cornered there was no other way out. I had no intention of being forced to tell you or any one the truth until I chose to tell it."

"Well, you had your little comedy!"

"It did amuse me for a time, but I think I explained all that in my letter. I also explained why I came to America, and that if I had not met you I should probably have come and gone and no one but Judge Trent been the wiser. I had prepared him by letter, and to him, I suppose, it has been a huge comedy--with no tragic sequel. Be sure that I never entertained the thought that I could ever love any man again. But I have made up my mind to disenchant you as far as possible, not only for your sake but my own. I wish you to know exactly whom you have fallen in love with."

"You grow more interesting every moment," said Clavering politely, "and I have never been one-half as interested in my life."

"Perhaps you have heard--Mrs. Oglethorpe, I should think, would be very much disposed to talk about old times--that I was a great belle in New York--belles were fas.h.i.+onable in those days of more marked individuality.

I suppose no girl ever had more proposals. Naturally I grew to understand my power over men perfectly. I had that white and regular beauty combined with animation and great s.e.x-magnetism which always convinces men that under the snow volcanic fires are burning. I was experienced, under the frankest exterior, in all the subtle arts of the coquette. Men to me were a sort of musical instrument from which I could evoke any harmony or cacophony I chose.

"What held the men I played with and rejected was my real gift for good-fellows.h.i.+p, my loyalty in friends.h.i.+p, and some natural sweetness of disposition. But such power makes a woman, particularly while young, somewhat heartless and callous, and I was convinced that I had no capacity for love myself; especially as I found all men rather ridiculous. I met Otto Zattiany in Paris, where he was attached to the Emba.s.sy of the Dual Empire. He was an impetuous wooer and very handsome.

I did not love him, but I was fascinated. Moreover, I was tired of American men and American life. Diplomacy appealed to my ambition, my love of power and intrigue. He was also a n.o.bleman with great estates; there could be no suspicion that he was influenced by my fortune. He followed me back to New York, and although my parents were opposed to all foreigners, I had my way; there was the usual wedding in Saint Thomas's, and we sailed immediately for Europe.

"I hated him at once. I shall not go into the details of that marriage.

Fortunately he soon tired of me and returned to his mistresses. To him I was the Galatea that no man could bring to life. But he was very proud of me and keenly aware of my value as the wife of an ambitious diplomatist. He treated me with courtesy, and concerned himself not at all with my private life. He knew my pride, and believed that where he had failed no man could succeed; in short, that I would never consider divorce nor elopement, nor even run the risk of less public scandals.

"I was not unhappy. I was rid of him. I had a great position and there was everything to distract my mind. I was not so interested in the inner workings of diplomacy as I was later, but the comedy of jealousy and intrigue in the diplomatic set was amusing from the first. I was very beautiful, I entertained magnificently, I was called the best-dressed woman in Paris, I was besieged by men--men who were a good deal more difficult to manage than chivalrous Americans, particularly as I was now married and the natural prey of the hunter. But it was several years before I could think of men without a shudder, little as I permitted them to suspect it. I learned to play the subtle and absorbing game of men and women as it is played to perfection in the bolder civilizations. It was all that gave vitality to the general game of society. I had no children; my establishment was run by a major domo; it bore little resemblance to a home. It was the brilliant artificial existence of a great lady, young, beautiful, and wealthy, in Europe before nineteen-fourteen. Of course that phase of life was suspended in Europe during the war. All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I did. Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them, or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less agonizing than in Vienna, I do not know."

She paused a moment, and Clavering unconsciously braced himself. Her initial revelation had left the deeper and more personal part of him stunned, and he was listening to her with a certain detachment. So far she had revealed little that Dinwiddie had not told him already, and as he knew that this brief recapitulation of her earlier life was not prompted by vanity, he could only wonder if it were the suggestive preface to that secret volume at which Dinwiddie had hinted more than once.

As she continued silent, he got suddenly to his feet. "I'll walk up and down a bit, if you don't mind," he muttered. "I'm rather--ah--getting rather cramped."

"Do," she said indifferently.

"Please go on. I am deeply interested."

She continued in a particularly level voice while he strode unevenly up and down: "Of course the time came when ugly memories faded, my buoyant youth a.s.serted itself and I wanted love. And when a woman feels a crying need to love as well as to be loved, her whole being a peremptory demand, unsatisfied romance quickening, she is not long finding the man. I had many to choose from. I made my choice and was happy for a time.

Although I had been brought up in the severest respectability--just recall Jane Oglethorpe, Mrs. Vane, Mrs. Ruyler, and you will be able to reconstruct the atmosphere--several of the women I had known as a girl had lovers, it seemed to me that American women came to Europe for no other purpose, and I was now living at the fountain-head of polite license. Not that I made any apologies to myself. I should have taken a lover if I had wanted one had virtue been the fas.h.i.+on. And the contract with my husband had been dissolved by mutual consent. The only thing that rebelled was my pride. I hated stepping down from my pedestal."

Clavering gave a short barking laugh. "Your arrogance is the most magnificent thing about you, and that is saying more than I could otherwise express. I'll fortify myself before you proceed further, if you will permit." He poured himself out a drink, and returned to his chair with the gla.s.s in his hand. "Pray go on."

She had not turned her head and continued to look into the fire. She might have been posing to a sculptor for a bust that would hardly look more like marble when finished.

"I soon discovered that I had not found happiness. Men want. They rarely love. I realized that I had demanded in love far more than pa.s.sion, and I received nothing else.

"I am not going to tell you how many lovers I have had. It is none of your business----"