Black Oxen Part 43

Vienna"--her eyes sparkled--"Vienna, of course, would be the capital--and again one of the great capitals of Europe. Perhaps the greatest."

"Were you ever closely a.s.sociated with Hohenhauer in any of his schemes?"

"He had no immediate schemes then. He only awaited events. While the old Emperor lived no move was possible; he was most illogically adored by his people. But Hohenhauer told me more than once that he was only biding his time."

"And what of that preposterous estate of his in the old Galicia--sixteen million acres, wasn't it? Did he expect to hang on to that under a popular form of government?"

"He would have retained the castle and a few hundred acres, for he naturally had a great affection for his birthplace; and divided the rest among the people, whose natural inheritance it was. But he could do nothing until the proper time, for such an act would undoubtedly have resulted in confiscation and banishment. He would have accomplished no good, and lost his immediate power for usefulness besides. Like all those old-world statesmen, he knows how to play a waiting game."

"Sounds like a great man--if there are any such."

"I should certainly call him a great man," said Mary, but still with that note of complete personal indifference in her voice. "He not only has immense brain power and personality, but farsight and a thorough understanding of the people, and sympathy with them. Even the Social-Democrats liked and trusted him. And he has more than the ordinary politician's astuteness in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his sails; but coming out, nevertheless, at the end of the course exactly at the point he had aimed for. If he captures the bridge, to change the simile, he'll steer Austria out of her deep waters. No doubt of that."

"Exactly what was the part you intended to play in Austria?" he asked.

"You have never told me."

"I thought we were not to talk of that. It is impossible to make deliberate plans, anyhow. Only, there is a part for any one who loves the country and has the brains and the wealth and the political knowledge to help her."

"I have never quite understood why it should be Austria. Why not Hungary? After all----"

"I never cared for anything in Hungary but the castle, which was wonderfully situated in the mountains of Transylvania. The surroundings were wild beyond description and the peasants the most picturesque and interesting in Europe. But even if Buda Pesth had appealed to me socially, which it never did, there were deep personal reasons that made me dislike Hungary--I never spent a night in the Zattiany palace until I turned it into a hospital. But Vienna! I always lived in Vienna when I could, even during my first years in Europe, and later I made it my home. It is the most fascinating city, to me at least, in the world. Besides, Hungary is in the hands of Horthy and Bethlen, who have no more idea of making a republic of it than of permitting any one else to be king. There is no role for----"

"Hullo! Hullo! Hullo!"

Clavering sprang to his feet. "Shall we take the bull by the horns and go to meet them?" he asked. "Poor devils! They'll hate us for looking so fresh."

LII

They were forced to submit to a vast amount of good-natured chaffing, for they had invited it, but it was the sort of chaffing with which this amiable company would have victimized any pair that had recently met, and found each other's society suddenly preferable to that of the crowd.

They were all very tired. Mr. Dinwiddie, after refres.h.i.+ng his guests and himself with highb.a.l.l.s, went to his room and to bed. Rollo Todd announced that it was time to go back to New York to rest, and all fell down on the divans or floor for half an hour before going up to revive themselves with a hot and cold shower.

But fatigue pa.s.ses away quickly in the mountains. They were as lively as ever the next morning, although they unanimously elected to spend the day on the lake or idling in the woods. Clavering and Mary walked to another gorge he knew of and sat for hours among boulders and ferns on the brink of the stream, and surrounded by the maples with their quietly rustling leaves.

When they returned, Miss Darling, attired in ferns, was executing what she called the wood-nymph's dance, and Todd and Minor were capering about her making horrible faces and pretending to be satyrs. The rest were keeping time with hands and feet. All had agreed that not a letter nor a newspaper should be brought to the camp during their eight days' absence from civilization. Freedom should be complete. It seemed to Clavering that the expression of every face had changed.

They all wore the somewhat fixed and dreamy look one unconsciously a.s.sumes "in the woods." It was only a few moments before the onlookers had joined hands and were dancing around the central figures; chanting softly; closing in on them; retreating; turning suddenly to dance with one another ... but with a curious restraint as if they were reviving some old cla.s.sic of the forest and were afraid of abandonment. Almost unconsciously Clavering and Mary joined in the dance. Only Mr.

Dinwiddie, a smile half-puzzled, half-cynical, in his eyes, remained a spectator. They swayed rhythmically, like tides, the chanting was very low and measured, the faces rapt. Even Todd and Minor looked exalted.

Impossible to imagine they had ever been Sophisticates. They were creatures of the woods, renegades for a time, perhaps, but the woods had claimed them.

Then Mr. Dinwiddie did an impish thing. He inserted a disk in the victrola, and at once they began to jazz, hardly conscious of the transition.

LIII

At nine o'clock the moon was on the lake, and several couples, announcing their need of exercise, went out in boats.

Clavering rowed with long swift strokes until the others were far behind. Mary, m.u.f.fled in a warm white coat and with a scarf twisted round her head like an Oriental turban, lay on a pile of cus.h.i.+ons in the bottom of the boat, her head against the seat. She had the sensation of floating in s.p.a.ce. From the middle of the lake the forest on every side was a ma.s.s of shadows, and nothing was visible but that high vast firmament sprinkled with silver--silver dust scattered by the arrogant moon. The great silver disk, which, Mary murmured, looked like the tomb of dead G.o.ds, seemed to challenge mortals as well as planets to deny that he was lord of all, and that even human emotions must dwindle under his splendor.

"The moon is so impersonal," she sighed. "I wonder why the poets have made so much of it? I'm sure it cares nothing about lovers--less about poets--and thinks the old days, when the world was a heaving splitting chaos, and glaciers were tearing what was already made of it to bits, were vastly superior to the finished perfection of form today. Like all old things. If it has the G.o.ds in there, no doubt it wakes them up periodically to remind them how much better things were in their time.

Myself, I prefer the sun. It is far more glamoring."

"That is because you can't look it in the eye," said Clavering, smiling down on her. "You really don't know it half as well, and endow it with all sorts of mysterious attributes. I think I prefer the moon, because it is inimitable. You can counterfeit the light and warmth and heat of the sun, and even its color. But silver is used to describe the complexion of the moon only for want of a better word. It is neither silver nor white, but is the result of some mysterious alchemy known only to itself. And its temperature does not affect our bodies at all.

You cannot deny that it has exercised a most beneficent effect on the spirits of lovers and poets for all the centuries we know of. Every pair of lovers has some cherished memories of moonlight, and poets would probably have starved without its aid. It is a most benevolent old G.o.d, and the one thing connected with Earth that doesn't mind working overtime."

"I'm sure it must be frayed at the edges and hollow at the core. And when it is in the three-quarters it looks exactly like a fish that has lost its platter."

"If you continue to insult the moon, I shall take you back to camp and ask Minor to teach you how to jazz."

"I love the moon," said Mary contentedly, and pus.h.i.+ng a cus.h.i.+on between her head and the sharp edge of the seat, "I'd like to stay out all night."

They continued to talk nonsense for a while and then fell silent. When the boat was almost at the head of the lake Clavering turned it into a long water lane where the maples met overhead and the low soft leaves kept up a continual whispering. It was as dark as a tunnel, but he knew every inch of the way and presently shot out into another lake, small enough for its sh.o.r.es to be sharply outlined under the full light of the moon, which appeared to have poised itself directly overhead.

Here it was less silent than on the larger lake. There was a chorus of frogs among the lily pads, an owl hooted wistfully in the forest, and they heard an angry snort from the underbrush, followed by a trampling retreat.

"I fancy if we had lingered quietly in that pa.s.sage we should have seen deer drinking from that patch of sward over there," said Clavering.

"But I was not thinking of deer."

"What were you thinking of?"

"Why--you--in a way, I suppose. If I was thinking at all. I was merely filled with a vast content. G.o.d! I have found more than I ever dreamed any man could imagine he wanted. Vastly more than any man's deserts. It is an astonis.h.i.+ng thing for a man to be able to say."

Mary sat up suddenly. "Be careful. A little superst.i.tion is a good thing to keep in one's bag of precautions."

"I feel good enough to disdain it. Of course I may be struck by lightning tomorrow, or the car may turn turtle when we go down to be married, but I refuse to contemplate anything of the sort. I feel as arrogant as that moon up there, who may have all the G.o.ds inside him, and do not mind proclaiming aloud that earth is heaven."

"Well--it is." She was not superst.i.tious herself, but she was suddenly invaded by a sinister inexplicable fear, and smiled the more brightly to conceal it. But she lowered her eyelids and glanced hastily about her, wondering if an enemy could be hiding in those dark woods. She was not conscious of possessing enemies venomous enough to a.s.sa.s.sinate her, but she knew little of Clavering's life after all, and he was the sort of man who must inspire hate as well as love ... danger a.s.suredly was lurking somewhere ... it seemed to wash against her brain, carrying its message... . But there were no wild beasts in the Adirondacks, nor even reptiles... . Nor a sound. The owl had given up his attempt to entice his lady out for a rendezvous and the frogs had paused for breath. There was not the faintest rustle in the forest except those eternally whispering leaves and the faint surging tide in the tree-tops. That ugly invading fear was still in her eyes as she met his.

"What is the matter?" he asked. "You look frightened."

"I am a little--I have a curious feeling of uneasiness--as if something were going to happen."

"'Out of the depths of the hollow gloom, On her soul's bare sands she heard it boom, The measured tide of the sea of doom,'"

he quoted lightly. "I fancy when one is too happy, the jealous G.o.ds run the quicksilver of our little spiritual barometers down for a moment, merely to remind us that we are mortals after all."

The shadow on her face lifted, and she smiled into his ardent eyes.

"Ah, Mary!" he whispered. "Mary!"

LIV