Black Oxen Part 33

"What has that to do with it? If you are so interested in me I should think I'd have your best wishes to carry off such a prize. Have you ever seen a more remarkable woman?"

"Oh, remarkable, yes. But--well----" And then she burst out: "It seems to me unspeakably horrid. I can't say all I'd like to----"

"Pray, don't. And suppose we change the subject---- They're at it again, d.a.m.n them."

The men were looking very uncomfortable. The women were gazing at their hostess with round apologetic eyes. Mrs. de Lacey, the youngest and prettiest of the married women, had clasped her hands as if wors.h.i.+pping at a shrine.

"It seems too terrible when we look back upon it!" she exclaimed, and she infused her tones with the tragic ring of truth, "_dear_ Madame Zattiany, that for even a little while we thought the most awful things about you. We'd heard of the wonderful things surgeons had done to mutilated faces during the war, and we were sure that some one of them bad taken one of your old photographs--how could we even guess the truth? How you must have hated us!"

"How could I hate you?" Madame Zattiany smiled charmingly. "I had not the faintest idea you were discussing me."

"But why--why--did you shut yourself up so long after you came when you must have known how mother and all your old friends longed to see you again?"

"I was tired and resting." She frowned slightly. Such a question was a distinct liberty and she had never either taken or permitted liberties. But she banished the frown and met her tormentor's eyes blandly. She had no intention of losing her poise for a moment.

"Ah! I said it!" cried Mrs. de Lacey. "I knew it was not because you felt a natural hesitation in showing yourself. To me you seem brave enough for anything, but it must have taken a lot of courage."

"Courage?"

"Why, yes! Fancy--well, you see, I'm such a coward about what people say--especially if I thought they'd laugh at me--that if I'd done it I should have run off and hidden somewhere."

"Then what object in invoking the aid of science to defeat nature at one more point? And I can a.s.sure you, dear Mrs. de Lacey, that when you are fifty-eight, if you have not developed courage to face the world on every count it will merely be because you have indulged too frequently in unbridled pa.s.sions."

"Ah--yes--but you didn't have any qualms at all?"

"Certainly not. I confess I am surprised at your rather strained view of what is really a very simple matter."

"_Simple_? Why, it's the most extraordinary thing that ever happened."

"The world is equally astonished--and resentful--at every new discovery, but in a short time accepts it as a commonplace. The layman resents all new ideas, but the adjustment of the human mind to the inevitable is common even among savages." Her slight affectation of pedantry was very well done and Clavering could not detect the flicker of a lash as her eyes rested indulgently upon her tormentor.

"Well, I don't see what that has to do with it. Anyhow, it must make you feel terribly isolated."

Madame Zattiany shrugged her shoulders. She could make this common gesture foreign, and her accent was a trifle more marked as she answered, "Here, possibly, but not in Europe, where the treatment has been known and practised for several years. It may interest you to hear that only yesterday I had a letter from a friend in Vienna telling me that an elderly countess, a great beauty some forty years ago, had announced triumphantly that once more men were following her on the street."

Mrs. de Lacey burst into a peal of girlish laughter. "Pardon me, dear Madame Zattiany. We are used to it in your case, now that we have got over the shock, but it does seem too funny. And Europe almost manless.

What--what will the poor girls do?"

"Scratch their eyes out," said Clavering, who could contain himself no longer.

Mrs. de Lacey made no attempt to conceal the wicked sparkle in her eyes as she turned to him. "How crude! I suppose it was you who set those dreadful newspapers on poor Madame Zattiany." She turned back to her hostess. "That has been a shocking ordeal for you. You know how we always avoid that sort of thing. We've felt for you--I wanted to come and tell you--you don't mind my telling you now?"

"Your sympathy is very sweet. But I really have enjoyed it! You see, my dear child, when one has lived as long as I have, a new sensation is something to be grateful for."

"Oh, but----" Mrs. de Lacey's bright eyes were now charged with ingenuous curiosity. "You don't really mean--we've had the most furious arguments--_couldn't_ you fall in love again? I don't mean like silly old women with boys, but _really_--like a young woman?

Please let me have my little triumph. I've sworn you could. And then the poor men----"

"Upon my word!" Madame Zattiany laughed outright. "This has gone far enough. I refuse to be the exclusive topic of conversation any longer.

I am immensely flattered, but you are making me feel the rude hostess."

And this time she turned with an air of finality to the apologetic, almost purple, man at her side and asked him to continue to enlighten her on munic.i.p.al politics.

One or two women shrugged their shoulders. A few looked crestfallen, others, like Marian Lawrence, malignant. She had marched off with the flag, no use blinking the fact, and it had been small satisfaction to make her admit what she had already told the world. The "rubbing in"

had evidently missed its mark. And the men, instead of looking cheap, were either infuriated or disgusted. Only Clavering, who managed to look bored and remote, was attending strictly to his salad.

One thing more they could do, however, and that was to make the dinner a failure. They barely replied to the efforts of the men to "make things go" and gloom settled over the table. Madame Zattiany continued to talk with placidity or animation to the men beside her, and Clavering started a running fire with Anne Goodrich, who, almost as angry as himself, loyally helped him, on censors.h.i.+p, the latest books and plays, even the situation in Was.h.i.+ngton; and they continued their painful efforts until the signal was given to leave the table.

x.x.xVIII

The men did not linger in the dining-room. The women, protesting that they were later than usual for the opera, left immediately after they returned to the drawing-room. There was a cool insolence in their "good-byes" and there was no doubt that they meant them to be final.

Only Anne Goodrich shook the imperturbable hostess's hand warmly and asked if she might come some day to tea.

The husbands perforce went with their wives, after farewells that sounded more like au revoirs, and so did the younger men, except Clavering and Harry Vane. Clavering planted himself on the hearthrug, and Vane, scowling at him, lingered uncertainly.

He plunged his hands into his pockets, and, very red, stood in front of Madame Zattiany, who was leaning back in her chair and fanning herself leisurely. "I feel like apologizing for those beastly women," he blurted out.

"Apologize?" Madame Zattiany raised her eyebrows.

"Yes. Can't you see they came here tonight with the deliberate intention of making New York too hot to hold you? So that you'd clear out? They'd made up their minds that you'd changed yours about returning to Europe. They hate you. They're used to being jealous of one another, but this has knocked them silly and they can't get used to it. It's--it's--oh, it's too awful! I almost died of shame."

"I really do not understand. Do you mean to tell me they meant to be rude? I thought they were rather nave and charming."

"d.a.m.ned hypocrites. They hoped to make you simply expire with embarra.s.sment. But you were splendid. They must feel like naughty children that have been stood in a corner."

Madame Zattiany laughed. "Then I have unwittingly been playing my part in a little comedy. How stupid they must have thought me! But I really hope for their sakes that you are mistaken." She rose and held out her hand. "I am going to ask you to excuse me, Mr. Vane. I have a small commission for Mr. Clavering, who has kindly waited. And I am very tired."

Vane's face fell and he looked resentfully at Clavering, in whom he instantly recognized a rival. But there was nothing to do but go and he went.

When Madame Zattiany heard the front door close she told the footman on duty in the hall to put out the lights and go to bed.

Then she walked down the room to the library door. "Will you put out these lights?" she asked Clavering. "I believe we still have a fire in here."

Clavering, expecting to find her dissolved in tears, and, violent as his sympathy for her was, rejoicing that his was the part to comfort her, followed her precipitately. But she was standing by the table with scornful lips and eyes.

"I thought you'd be all broken up," he stammered. Tears of disappointment almost rose to his own eyes.

She laughed shortly. "I? Do you suppose I would pay them so great a compliment? But what a ridiculous exhibition they made of themselves.

It seems incredible."

"But surely you must have been hurt--and stabbed. It isn't possible that you weren't!"

"Oh, yes, I was stabbed, but I think I was even more amused. I felt sorry for the poor things. I certainly never saw a more comically naked exhibition of human nature. It was worth coming to America for.

Nor do I blame them. No doubt I should have felt the same at their age--although I hope I should even then have expressed myself in a fas.h.i.+on a trifle more subtle, a little less primeval."

"Good G.o.d! Are you always so--so rational?"