Black Oxen Part 31

Nevertheless, and before his walk was finished and he had returned home to dress for dinner with her, the play was on one plane and he on another, visioning himself alone with her in the Austrian agapemone.

And cursing the interminable weeks between. He anathematized himself for consenting to the delay, and vowed she'd had her own way for the last time, He foresaw many not unagreeable tussles of will. She was far too accustomed to having her own way. Well, so was he.

For two weeks he left his rooms only to walk, or dine or spend an hour with her in the afternoon when she was alone. He rebelled less than he had expected. If he could not have her wholly, the less he saw of her the better.

Dinners, luncheons, theatre parties, receptions, were being given for her not only by her old friends--who seemed to her to grow more numerous daily--but by their daughters and by many others who made up for lack of tradition by that admirable sense of rightness which makes fas.h.i.+onable society in America such a waste of efficiency and force.

And whether the younger women privately hated her or had fallen victims to that famous charm was of little public consequence. It was as if she had appeared in their midst, waved a sceptre and announced: "I am the fas.h.i.+on. Always have I been the fas.h.i.+on. That is my _metier_.

Bow down." At all events the fas.h.i.+on she became, and it was quite as patent that she took it as a matter of course. The radiant happiness that possessed her, refusing as she did to look into the future with its menace to those high duties of her former dedication--clear, sharp, ruthless children of her brain--not only enhanced both her beauty and magnetism, but enabled her to endure this social ordeal she had dreaded, without ennui. She was too happy to be bored. She even plunged into it with youthful relish. For the first time in her life she was at peace with herself. She was not at peace when Clavering made love to her, far from it; but she enjoyed with all the zest of a woman with her first lover, and something of the timidity, this tantalizing preliminary to fruition. How could she ever have believed that her mind was old? She turned her imagination away from that lodge in the Dolomites, and believed it was because the present with its happiness and its excitements sufficed her.

Moreover, she was having one novel experience that afforded her much diversion. The newspapers were full of her. It took exactly five days after Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon for the story she had told there to filter down to Park Row, and although she would not consent to be interviewed, there were double-page stories in the Sunday issues, embellished with snapshots and a photograph of the Mary Ogden of the eighties: a photographer who had had the honor to "take" her was still in existence and exhumed the plates.

Doctors, biologists, endocrinologists, were interviewed. Civil war threatened: the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human mechanism with mere scientific ac.u.men on the other. Doctors, notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers, found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose steady degeneration was a source of respectable income. When it was discovered that New York actually held a practicing physician who had studied with the great endocrinologists of Vienna, the street in front of his house looked as if some ambitious hostess were holding a continual reception.

Finally Madame Zattiany consented to give a brief statement to the press through her lawyers. It was as impersonal as water, but technical enough to satisfy the _Medical Journal_. At the theatre and opera people waited in solid phalanxes to see her pa.s.s. Her utter immobility on these occasions but heightened the feverish interest.

Women of thirty, dreaming of becoming flappers overnight, and formidable rivals, with the subtlety of experience behind the mask of seventeen, were desolated to learn that they must submit to the claws and teeth of Time until they had reached the last mile-post of their maturity. Beauty doctors gnashed their teeth, and plastic surgeons looked forward to the day when they must play upon some other form of human credulity. As a subject for the press it rivalled strikes, prohibition, German reparations, Lenin, prize-fights, censors.h.i.+p and scandalous divorces in high life.

"Why isn't your head turned?" Clavering asked her one day when the sensation was about a month old and was beginning to expire journalistically for want of fresh fuel. (Not a woman in New York could be induced to admit that she was taking the treatment.) "You are the most famous woman in America and the pioneer of a revolution that may have lasting and momentous consequences on which we can only speculate vaguely today. I don't believe you are as unmoved as you look. It's not in woman's nature--in human nature. Publicity goes to the head and then descends to the marrow of the bones."

"I'm not unmoved. I've been tremendously interested and excited. I find that newspaper notoriety is the author of a distinctly new sensation." And then she felt a disposition to play with fire.

Clavering was in one of his rare detached moods, and had evidently come for an hour of agreeable companions.h.i.+p. "I am beginning to get a little bored and tired. If it were not for this Vienna Fund--and to the newspapers for their a.s.sistance I am eternally grateful--I believe I'd suggest that we leave for Austria tomorrow."

"And I wouldn't go." Clavering stood on the hearthrug smiling down at her with humorous defiance. "You switched me on to that play, and there I stick until it is finished. No chance for it in a honeymoon, and no chance for undiluted happiness with that cras.h.i.+ng round inside my head."

She shrank and turned cold, but recovered herself sharply and dismissed the pang. It was her first experience, in her exhaustive knowledge of men, of the writing temperament; and after all it was part of the novelty of the man who had obliterated every other from her mind. Nor had she any intention of letting him see that he could hurt her. She smiled sweetly and asked:

"How is it coming on? Are you satisfied with it?"

"Yes, I am. And so is Gora Dwight. I've finished two acts and I read them to her last night."

"Ah? Your Egeria?"

"Not a bit of it. But she's a wise cold-blooded critic. You can't blame me for not even talking about it to you. I see so little of you that I've no intention of wasting any of the precious time."

"But you might let me read it."

"I'd rather wait until it's finished and as polished and perfect as I can make it. I always want you to know me at my best."

"Oh, my dear! You forget that we are to be made one and remain twain.

Do you really believe that we shall either of us always be at our best?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't care a hang whether we are or not. I'll have you, and all to myself. And I won't say 'for a while, at least.' Do you imagine that when we return to New York I'm going to let Society take possession of you again? Not only shall I work harder than I've ever worked before, but I'd see little more of you than I do now. And that I'll never submit to again. I'll write my next play inside this house, and you'll be here when I want you, not gadding about."

She felt a sudden pang of dismay, apprehension. New York? She realized that not for a moment had she given up her original purpose.

But why disturb the serenity of the present? When she had him in the Dolomites ... She answered him in the same light tone.

"I'm having my last fling at New York Society. When we return we'll give our spare time to the Sophisticates. I see far less of them now than I like." Then, with a further desire to investigate the literary temperament, even if she were stabbed again in the process, she looked at him with provocative eyes and said: "I've sometimes wondered why you haven't insisted upon a secret marriage. I'm told it can be done with a reasonable prospect of success in certain states."

"Don't imagine I didn't think of it ... but--well--I think the play would go fluey ... you see... ."

"I see! And what about your next?"

"The next will be a comedy. I'll never be able to write a tremendously emotional play again."

"And meanwhile you will not deny that the artist has submerged the lover."

"I admit nothing of the sort. But you yourself let the artist loose--and what in G.o.d's name should I be doing these cursed weeks if you hadn't? You know you never would have consented to a secret marriage. You've set your heart on the Dolomites... . How about that interval of travel, by the way? Liners and trains are not particularly conducive to illusions."

"I thought I'd told you. My plan is to be married there. I should go on a preceding steamer and see that the Lodge was in proper condition.

I want everything to be quite perfect, and Heaven only knows what has happened to it."

"Oh! This is a new one you've sprung. But--yes--I like the idea. I'd rather dreaded the prelude." And then he made one of those abrupt vaultings out of one mood into another which had fascinated her from the first. "G.o.d! I wish we were there now. When I'm not writing----!

How many men have you got in love with you already? But no. I don't care. When I'm here--_like this, Mary, like this_--I don't care a hang if I never write another line."

x.x.xVII

During the following week she gave a dinner and insisted upon his attendance. She had given others to that increasing throng that had been young with her in the eighties and to others who had stormed and conquered that once impregnable citadel, but, she informed him, it was now time to entertain some of the younger women, and he must help her.

He consented readily enough, for he was curious to see her surrounded by a generation into which she had coolly stepped with no disadvantage to herself and, from all he heard, considerable to them. He knew that not only Vane but other men in their late twenties and early thirties were paying her devoted attentions. Dinwiddie, who met him in the Park one day and dined with him in the Casino, had spoken with modified enthusiasm of these conquests, but added that it was yet to be demonstrated whether the young men were egged by novelty or genuine coveting. When he hinted that she may have appealed to that secret l.u.s.t for the macabre that exists somewhere in all men, Clavering had scowled at him so ferociously that he had plunged into rhapsody and bewailed his own lost youth.

And then he had endeavored to sound the young man in whom he was most interested, but of whose present relations with Mary Zattiany he had no inkling; he had not seen them together nor heard any fresh gossip since her second debut. But he was told to shut up and talk about the weather.

Clavering, who knew that he would not have a moment alone with her, went to the dinner in much the same mood as he went to a first-night at which he was reasonably sure of entertainment. It certainly would be good comedy to the detached observer, and this he was quite capable of being with nothing better in prospect. Nevertheless, he was utterly unprepared for the presence of Anne Goodrich and Marian Lawrence, for he understood that the dinner was given to the more important of the young married women. But they were the first persons he saw when he entered the drawing-room. They were standing together--shoulder to shoulder, he reflected cynically--and he knew that they privately detested each other, and not on his account only.

How like Mary Zattiany, with her superb confidence in herself, to ask these beautiful girls who she had heard wanted to marry him themselves.

Well, he understood women well enough to be indulgent to their little vanities.

He was almost the last of the guests, but he had time to observe the two girls before dinner was announced, in spite of the fact that he was claimed by other acquaintances before he could reach them.

Anne looked regally handsome in gold-colored tissue and paillettes that gave a tawny light to her eyes and hair, and to her skin an amber glow.

She held her head very high, and in spite of her mere five feet five, looked little less stately than Madame Zattiany, who wore a marvellous velvet gown the exact shade of her hair. Marian Lawrence was small but so perfectly made that her figure was always alluded to as her body, and she carried her head, not regally, but with an insolent a.s.surance that became her. She was very beautiful, with a gleaming white skin that she never powdered nor colored, and hair like gold leaf, parted and worn in smooth bands over her ears and knotted loosely on her neck in the fas.h.i.+on known as a la vierge. Her large grayish-green eyes were set far apart and her brows and lashes were black. She had a straight innocent-looking nose with very thin nostrils, into which she was capable of compressing the entire expression of a face. She generally wore the fas.h.i.+onable colors of the moment, but tonight her soft s.h.i.+mmering gown was of palest green, and Clavering wondered if this were a secret declaration of war. She, too, was of the siren cla.s.s, and it was possible that she and Mary Zattiany derived from some common ancestress who had combed her hair on a rock or floated northward over the steppes of Russia. But there were abysmal differences between the two women, as Clavering well knew. Marian Lawrence, with great natural intelligence, never read anything more serious than a novel and preferred those that were not translated into English. She took no interest whatever in anything outside her inherited circ.u.mference, and had prided herself during the war upon ignoring its existence. She was as luxurious and as dainty as a cat and one of the most ardent sportswomen in America. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a stained-gla.s.s window, and she was a hard, subtle, predatory flirt; too much in love with her beautiful body to give it wholly to any man. She had never really fallen in love with Clavering until she had lost him, and he, his brief enthusiasm for her unique beauty and somewhat demoniac charm having subsided, had avoided her ever since; although they danced together at the few fas.h.i.+onable parties he attended. He knew her better now than when he had seen her daily, almost hourly, at a house party in the White Mountains, and almost as often for several weeks after his return. This was shortly after his mistake with Anne, and her attraction had consisted largely in her complete difference from a really fine character toward whom he felt a certain resentment for having so much and still lacking the undefined essential. He had not deluded himself that he would find it in Marian Lawrence, but her paradoxes diverted him and he was quite willing to go as far as her technique permitted. It had never occurred to him for a moment that she was seriously in love with him, but he had had more than one glimpse of her claws and he regarded her uneasily tonight. And what were she and Anne whispering about?

"You will take in Miss Goodrich," Madame Zattiany had said to him, her eyes twinkling, and he had merely shrugged his shoulders. He did not care in the least whom he talked to; it was the ensemble that interested him. Anne and Marian were the only girls present. The other women were between twenty-five and thirty-five or -six. Madame Zattiany would seem to have chosen them all for their good looks, and she looked younger than several of them.

Mauve was the fas.h.i.+onable color of the season. There were three mauve gowns and the table was lit by very long, very thin mauve candles above a low bank of orchids. Mrs. Ruyler had disinterred the family amethysts, but Mrs. de Lacey and Mrs. Vane, "Polly's" daughter-in-law, wore their pearls. There were several tiaras, for they were going on to the opera and later to a ball. The company numbered twenty in all and there were three unmarried men besides Clavering, and including Harry Vane. Clavering found Marian Lawrence on his left, and once more he caught a twinkle in Madame Zattiany's eyes as the guests surrounded the table.

He had not seen Anne since the night of Suzan's party, when they had varied the program by sitting on the floor in front of the fire, roasting chestnuts and discussing philosophy; then playing poker until two o'clock in the morning. He asked her if she were comfortable and happy in her new life.

"Rather!" She smiled with all her old serene brightness and her eyes dwelt on him in complete friendliness. "I'd even sleep in the studio, but have made one concession to my poor family. They're not reconciled, but, after all, I am twenty-four--and spent two years in France. I have had three orders for portraits--friends of the family, of course. I must be content with 'pull' until I am taken seriously as an artist. If I can only exhibit at the next Academy I shall feel full-fledged."

"And what of your new circle?"

"I've been to several parties and enjoyed myself hugely. Some of them get pretty tight, but I've seen people tighter at house parties and not nearly so amusing. And then Gora and Suzan! I've never liked any women as well... . This is the first dinner of the old sort I've been to since I started."

"Ah?" asked Clavering absently. "Why the exception?"