She was not sorry to forego the doubtful luxury of meditation on the sadness of life. When Miss Trevor's card was brought to her she told the servant to show her up and bring tea immediately. She was not interested in Agnes Trevor, a younger sister of Polly Vane, but at all events she would talk about her settlement work and give a comfortably commonplace atmosphere to the room in which tragic clouds were rising. As it had happened, Mary, during these past weeks, had seen little of New York women between the relics of her old set and their lively Society-loving daughters. The women between forty and fifty, whether devoted to fashion, politics, husbands, children, or good works, had so far escaped her, and Agnes Trevor, who lived with Mrs. Vane, was practically the only representative of the intermediate age with whom she had exchanged a dozen words. But the admirable spinster had taken up the cause of the Vienna children with enthusiasm and raised a good deal of money, besides contributing liberally herself. She was forty-two, and, although she was said to have been a beautiful girl, was now merely patrician in appearance, very tall and thin and spinsterish, with a clean but faded complexion, and hair-colored hair beginning to turn gray. She had left Society in her early twenties and devoted herself to moralizing the East Side.
She came in with a light step and an air of subdued bright energy, very smartly but plainly dressed in dark blue tweed, with a large black hat in which a wing had been accurately placed by the best milliner in New York. Her clothes were so well-worn, and her grooming was so meticulous, her accent so clean and crisp, her manner so devoid of patronage, yet subtly remote, her controlled heart so kind that she perennially fascinated the buxom, rather sloppy, preternaturally acute, and wholly unaristocratic young ladies of the East Side.
Mary, who had a dangerous habit of characterizing people in her Day Book, had written when she met Agnes Trevor: "She radiates intelligence, good will, cheeriness, innate superiority and uncompromising virginity."
"Dear Mary!" she exclaimed in her crisp bright tones as she kissed her amiable hostess. "How delightful to find you alone. I was afraid you would be surrounded as usual."
"Oh, my novelty is wearing off," said Mary drily. "But I will tell them to admit no one else today. I find I enjoy one person at a time. One gets rather tired in New York of the unfinished sentence."
"Oh, do." Mary's quick eye took note of a certain repressed excitement in the fine eyes of her guest, who had taken an upright chair. Lounging did not accord with that spare ascetic figure. "And you are quite right. It is seldom one has anything like real conversation. One has to go for that to those of our older women who have given up Society to cultivate the intellects God gave them."
"Are there any?" murmured Mary.
"Oh, my dear, yes. But, of course, you've had no time to meet them in your mad whirl. Now that things have slowed down a bit youmustmeet them."
"I'm afraid it's too late. I sail in a fortnight."
"Oh!" Miss Trevor's voice shook oddly, and the slow color crept up her cheeks. But at that moment the tea was brought in.
"Will you pour it out?" asked Mary. "I'm feeling rather lazy."
"Of course." Miss Trevor was brightly acquiescent. She seated herself before the table. The man retired with instructions that Madame was not at home to other callers.
Mary watched her closely as she stirred the tea with a little business-like air, warmed the cups, distributed the lemon and then poured out the clear brown fluid.
"Formosa Oolong," she said, sniffing daintily. "The only tea. I hate people who drink scented teas, don't you? I'm going to have a very strong cup, so I'll wait a minute or two. I'm—rather tired."
"You? You look as if you never relaxed in your sleep. How do you keep it up?"
"Oh, think of the life the younger women lead. Mine is a quiet amble along a country road by comparison.… But … monotonous!"
The last word came out with the effect of a tiny explosion. It evidently surprised Miss Trevor herself, for she frowned, poured out a cup of tea that was almost black, and began sipping it with a somewhat elaborate concentration for one so simple and direct of method.
"I'm afraid good works are apt to grow monotonous. A sad commentary on the triumphs of civilization over undiluted nature." Mary continued to watch the torch bearer of the East Side. "Don't you sometimes hate it?"
She asked the question idly, interested for the moment in probing under another shell hardened in the mould of time, and half-hoping that Agnes would be natural and human for once, cease to be the bright well-oiled machine. She was by no means prepared for what she got.
Miss Trevor gulped down the scalding tea in an almost unladylike manner, and put the cup down with a shaking hand.
"That's what I've come to see you about," she said in a low intense voice, and her teeth set for a moment as if she had taken a bit between them. "Mary, you've upset my life."
"I? What next!"
"I suppose you have troubles of your own, dear, and I hate to bother you with mine——"
"Oh, mine amount to nothing at present. And if I can help you——" She felt no enthusiasm at the prospect, but she saw that the woman was laboring under excitement of some sort, and if she could not give her sympathy at least she might help her with sound practical advice. Moreover, she was in for it. "Better tell me all about it."
"It is terribly hard. I'm so humiliated—and—and I suppose no more reticent woman ever lived."
"Oh, reticence! Why not emulate the younger generation? I'm not sure—although I prefer the happy medium myself—that they are not wiser than their grandmothers and their maiden aunts. On the principle that confession is good for the soul, I don't believe that women will be so obsessed by—well, let us say, sex, in the future."
Miss Trevor flushed darkly. "It is possible.… That's what I am—a maiden aunt. Just that and nothing more."
"Nothing more? I thought you were accounted one of the most useful women in serious New York. A sort of mother to the East Side."
"Mother? How could I be a mother? I'm only a maiden aunt even down there. Not that I want to be a mother——"
"I was going to ask you why you did not marry even now. It is not too late to have children of your own——"
"Oh, yes, it is. That's all over—or nearly. But I can't say that I ever did long for children of my own, although I get on beautifully with them."
"Well?" asked Mary patiently, "what is it you do want?"
"A husband!" This time there was no doubt about the explosion.
Mary felt a faint sensation of distaste, and wondered if she were reverting to type as a result of this recent association with the generation that still clung to the distastes and the disclaimers of the nineteenth century. "Why didn't you marry when you were a girl? I am told that you were quite lovely."
"I hated the thought. I was in love twice; but I had a sort of cold purity that I was proud of. The bare idea of—ofthatnauseated me."
"Pity you hadn't done settlement work first. That must have knocked prudishness out of you, I should think."
"It horrified me so that for several years I hardly could go on with it, and I have always refused to mix the sexes in my house down there, but, of course, I could not help hearing things—seeing things—and after a while I did get hardened—and ceased to be revolted. I learned to look upon all that sort of thing as a matter of course. But it was too late then. I had lost what little looks I had ever possessed. I grew to look like an old maid long before I was thirty. Why is nature so cruel, Mary?"
"I fancy a good many American women develop very slowly sexually. You were merely one of them. I wonder you had the climacteric so early. But nature is very fond of taking her little revenges. You defied her and she smote you."
"Oh, yes, she smote me! But I never fully realized it until you came."
"I hardly follow you."
"Oh, don't you see? You have shown us that women can begin life over again, undo their awful mistakes. And yet I don't dare—don't dare——"
"Why not, pray? Better come with me to Vienna if you haven't the courage to face the music here."
"Oh, I haven't the courage. I couldn't carry things off with such a high hand as you do. You were always high and mighty, they say, and have done as you pleased all your life. You don't care a pin whether we approve of what you've done or not. It's the way you're made. But I—couldn't stand it. The admission of vanity, of—of—after the life I've led. The young women would say, in their nasty slang, that I was probably man-crazy."
"And aren't you?" asked Mary coolly. "Isn't that just what is the matter? The sex-imagination often outlives the withering of the sex-glands. Come now, admit it. Forget that you are a pastel-tinted remnant of the old order and call a spade a spade."
"There's something terrifying about you, Mary." Miss Trevor had flushed a dark purple, but she had very honest eyes, and they did not falter. "But I respect you more than any woman I have ever known. And although you are not very sympathetic you are the only person on earth to whom I could even mention such a subject."
"Well, go ahead," said Mary resignedly. "If you want my advice, take your courage in your hands and do it. However people may carp, there is nothing they so much admire as courage."
"Yes, but they make you suffer tortures just because they do admire it—or to keep themselves from admitting it."
"True enough. But after all, they don't matter. Life would be so much simpler if we'd all make up our minds that what other people think about us does not signify in the least. It's only permitting it to signify that permits it to exist."
"That's all very well for you, but it's really a question of temperament. Do you think I'd dare come back here looking like a girl again—and I suppose I should. I'm sixteen years younger than you.… You must know how many of the women hate you."
"That sort of hate may be very stimulating, my dear Agnes," said Madame Zattiany drily.
"I can understand that. But I should return to what it is hardly an exaggeration to call a life of a thousand intimacies. The ridicule! The contempt! The merciless criticism! I don't want to live anywhere else. I can't face it! But, oh, I do so want it! I do so want it!"
"But just think of the compensations. No doubt you would marry immediately. If you were happy, and with a man to protect you, how much would you care?"
"Oh!" Once more the thin ascetic face was dyed with an unbecoming flush. "Oh!" And then the barriers fell with a crash and she hurried on, the words tumbling over one another, as her memory, its inhibitions shattered, swept back into the dark vortex of her secret past. "Oh, Mary! You don't know! You don't know! You, who've had all the men you ever wanted. Who, they say, have a young man now. The nights of horror I've passed. I've never slept a wink the nights our girls married. I could have killed them. I could have killed every man I've met for asking nothing ofme. It seems to me that I've thought of nothing else for twenty years. When I've been teaching, counselling good thoughts, virtue, good conduct, to those girls down there, it's been in the background of my mind every minute like a terrible obsession. I wonder I haven't gone mad. Some of us old maids do go mad. And no one knew until they raved what was the matter with them. When Hannah de Lacey lost her mind three years ago I heard one of the doctors telling Peter Vane that her talk was the most libidinous he had ever listened to. And she was the most forbidding old maid in New York. I know if I lose my mind it will be the same, and that alone is enough to drive any decent woman mad.… I thought I'd get over it in time—I used to pray—and fight with my will—but when the time came when I should have been released I was afraid I would, and then I deliberately did everything I could to keep it alive. I couldn't lose my right—— Itwasmy right. I couldn't tell you all the things I've—— Oh, I tell you that unless I can be young again and have some man—any man—I don't care whether he'll marry me or not—I'll go mad—mad!"
Her voice had risen to a shriek. She would be in hysterics in another moment. Mary, who was on the point of nausea, went hastily into her dressing-room and poured out a dose of sal-volatile. "Here!" she said peremptorily. "Drink this. I'll not listen to another word. And I don't wish to be obliged to call an ambulance."
Miss Trevor gulped it down, and then permitted herself to be led to a sofa, where she lay sprawled, her immaculate hat on one side, giving her the look of a debauched gerontic virgin. She lay panting for a few moments, while Madame Zattiany paced up and down the room.
She turned as she heard a groan. Miss Trevor was sitting up, straightening her hat. "Feel better?" she asked unsympathetically.
"Oh, yes—my nerves feel better! But what have I said? What must you think of me? I never expected to give way like that when I came. I thought I could put it all to you in a few delicate hints, knowing that you would understand.Whathave I said? I can hardly remember."
"Better not try! I'll promise to forget it myself." She sat down beside the sofa. "Now, listen to me. It would not be wise for you to go to Vienna. They would suspect, if not at once, then certainly when you returned. It can be done here. The rejuvenescence is so gradual that it would hardly be noticed. Fully a year. You do not have to go into a hospital, nor even to bed. You are not spied on, so no one would suspect that you were taking the treatment. At your age success is practically assured. Take it, and don't be a fool. If you don't it's only a question of time when that superb self-control you have practised for so many years will go again. And, too possibly, in the wrong place.… It is quite likely that you will never be suspected, because women often bloom out in their forties, take on a new lease of life. Begin to put on a little make-up——"
Miss Trevor interrupted with a horrified exclamation.
"It would be judicious. If they criticize you, remember that nothing they can say will be as bad—from your point of view—as their finding out the truth. They will lay it to that, and to the fact that you have grown a little stouter. And let me tell you, you won't care in the least, even if conservatism attacks you in solid battalions, for your mental attitude to life will be entirely changed. Remember that you will be young again, and too gay and happy to mind what people think of you. Now, promise me that you will take my advice, and then go home and to bed."
Miss Trevor got up and went to the mirror. "Yes, I'll do it." And then she said, no doubt for the first time in her life: "And I'll not give a damn, no matter what happens."
When she had left Mary Zattiany stood for a few moments striking her hands together, her face distorted. A wave of nausea overwhelmed her. She felt as if there had been an earthquake in her own soul and its muck were riding the surface. She loathed herself and all women and all men. She knew that the violence of the revulsion must be temporary, but for the moment it was beyond her control. She went to the telephone and called up Clavering and told him that she had a severe headache and was going to bed. And she cut short both his protests and his expression of sympathy by hanging up the receiver. And then she picked up a vase and hurled it to the floor and smashed it.
Clavering stood on his high balcony and looked down upon Madison Square. Spring had come. The Square looked like an oasis in a rocky gorge. The trees were covered with the tender greens of the new birth, and even President Arthur and Roscoe Conkling, less green than in winter, looked reconciled to their lot. A few people were sunning themselves on the benches, many more were on top of the busses over on Fifth Avenue, and even the hurrying throngs, preoccupied with crass business, seemed to walk with a lighter step, their heads up, instead of sullenly defying winds and sleet. The eight streets that surrounded or debouched into the Square poured forth continuous streams of figures, constantly augmented by throngs rising out of the earth itself. There was a vivid color running like ribbons through the crowds, for it was nearly nine o'clock and the doors of offices and shops and business houses were open to women as to men. Overhead a yellow sun shone in a pale filmy sky and the air was both warm and sharp. The doves were circling and settling.
The prize-fighters had taken their prowess elsewhere, and a circus had come to Madison Square Garden. Clavering had heard the roar of lions in the night. A far different crowd would stand under the arcade in a few hours, but the peanut venders would ply their trade, and a little booth for candies and innocuous juices had been erected in an alcove in the front wall, presided over by a plump pretty blonde. She alternated "jollying" and selling with quiet intervals of beading a bag, undisturbed either by ogling or the hideous noises of Twenty-sixth Street.
In spite of his disappointment two nights before he found it impossible to feel depressed in that gay spring sunshine. He did not believe in the headache, but she had written him a charming note and he supposed that a man must get accustomed to the caprices of women if he intended to live with one. And a month from now they would be in the Dolomites, and she would be his. Let her have her caprices. He had his own. There were times when he didn't want to see her.
Moreover, he was still too jubilant over his play to feel depressed for long over anything; the warm and constantly manifested enthusiasm of his friends had kept his spirits from suffering any natural reaction. Their demand for his companionship was almost peremptory, and his thoughts turned to them as he stood on his balcony looking down on the waning throngs: the great stone buildings were humming like hives, and figures were passing busily to and fro behind the open windows. It astonished him a little. True, it was his first play and he was very popular. But he had a vague uneasy idea they were overdoing it. They talked of nothing else: his play, his brilliant future, his sure place in the crack regiment "if he hung on"; and they insisted that he must also express himself at least once through the medium of the novel. The great New York novel had yet to be written. They fairly dinned his gifts into his ears, until he was almost sick of them, and wondered if Mary were not also. She had seen a good deal of the Sophisticates lately, and from what she had let drop he inferred that even when he had not been present they had talked of little else. They had by no means waited for his play to be finished and read to a select few. Hogarth and Scores had assured them long before it was finished that it would be a great play.
Once or twice there was a rustling in the back of his mind. They were not given to wild enthusiasms of this sort. They thought too highly of themselves. He realized how genuinely fond they were of him, but he had not hoped for more than critical appreciation, from the men, at least. Could it be possible …
But he was still in the first flush of his triumph, his brain hummed with pleasant memories of those hours at Gora Dwight's, three nights ago. He had cleared the base of the pedestal on whose narrow and unaccommodating top he was soon to have his foothold, and it was not in human nature, at this stage of his progress, to suspect the sincerity of the adulation so generously poured at his feet.
And Mary, during this past fortnight (when he had been present, at least) had seemed to bask contentedly in reflected glory, and smiled sympathetically while they talked of the many Clavering first-nights they would attend in the sure anticipation of that class of entertainment up to which the Little Theatres and the Theatre Guild were striving to educate the public. They took it as a matter of course that he was to abide in the stimulating atmosphere of New York for the rest of his days. And they invariably insisted that "Madame Zattiany" must always sit in a stage box and be a part of the entertainment. They were too well-bred (and too astute) to hint at the engagement they were positive existed, but "hoped" she would be willing to add to the prestige of one who was now as much her friend as theirs. It was a curious position in which to place a woman like Mary Zattiany, but Sophisticate New York was not Diplomatic Europe, and he thought he saw her smile deepen into humor once or twice; no doubt she was reflecting that she had lived long enough to take people as she found them.
His reverie was interrupted by a buzzing at the end of his hall and he went to the door quickly, wondering who could have sent him a special delivery letter or a note at this hour. It proved to be a cablegram. He read it when he returned to his living-room. It was dated Rome, Italy, and read:
"I'll have you yet: Janet."
Clavering swore, then laughed. He tore the message into strips and sat down to read his newspapers; he had merely glanced at the headlines and his column. His eye was arrested by the picture of a man at the top of the first page of his own newspaper. Although smooth-shaven and very regular of feature, with no pronounced racial characteristics, it was, nevertheless, a foreign face, although difficult to place. From its distinction it might be Austrian, but the name below, "Prince Hohenhauer," might as easily be German. Still, it was not a German face, and Clavering studied it for a moment before reading the news text, wondering faintly at his interest.
It was unmistakably the face of a statesman, and reminded him a little of a picture of Prince Schwarzenberg, prime minister when Franz Josef ascended the throne, he had seen lately in a history of Austria. There was the same broad placidity of brow, the long oval face, the thin long slightly curved nose, the heavy lids, the slim erectness, the same suave repose. But this man's large beautifully cut mouth was more firmly set, had a faintly satiric expression, and the eyes a powerful and penetrating gaze. It was the face of a man who was complete master of himself and accustomed to the mastery of men.
Clavering read the story under the headlines:
"Prince Hohenhauer, a distinguished political factor under the old Austrian Empire, arrived yesterday morning on theNoordam. He refused to be interviewed, but it is understood he has a large amount of money invested in the United States and has come to New York at the request of his lawyers to attend to certain necessary formalities. He was, in fact, met at Quarantine by Judge Trent, one of the most distinguished members of the New York Bar since his retirement from the Bench, and they went at once to the Prince's stateroom and remained there until it was time to leave the ship. It is significant, however, that the Prince, after engaging a suite at the Ritz-Carlton, and lunching there with Judge Trent, took the afternoon train for Washington. As he recently left his estate in Switzerland to return to Vienna and accept a position in the Cabinet, and as it is well known that Austria desires the backing of the American Government to enable her to overcome the opposition of France to her alliance with Germany, or, it is whispered, with a kingdom farther south, it is not unreasonable to infer that he has come to the United States on a special, if secret, mission.
"The Prince was the subject of lively interest on the boat and of much speculation, but he took his meals in his suite and walked the deck only in the company of his secretary.
"He is a man of striking appearance, quite six feet in height, with a spare erect figure, fine features, and hardly looks his sixty years, in spite of his white hair."
Then followed a brief biography, which illustrated the efficiency of the newspaper "morgue," for the statesman's reputation was, so far, wholly European.
"Prince Moritz Franz Ernst Felix von Hohenhauer was born October 6th, 1862, on his ancestral estate in what was then known as Galicia. His mother was a princess of the House of Schwarzenberg. He has been the head of his own historic house for the last forty years, and has one son and two daughters. His wife, a member of the Kalnóky family, died several years ago. "Hohenhauer" was one of those almost unbelievably vast estates of sixteen million acres possessed by a few of the Austrian noblemen under the old régime. In spite of the fact that Prince Hohenhauer was one of the greatest landlords in all Christendom he was a liberal in politics from the first and the author of several of the reform laws in behalf of the people which from time to time were forced upon the most conservative monarch in Europe. He was in sympathy with the revolution and offered his services at once to the new Government. They were declined, and he retired to Switzerland, where he has an estate near St. Moritz, and, it is understood, considerable money invested. His vast estates in what is now Poland were confiscated, but he was one of the wealthiest men in the Empire and is said to have transferred immense sums to the United States before the war."
Clavering dropped the newspaper. Liberal in politics. Immense sums invested in the United States. Judge Trent. There could be no possible doubt as to who the man was. The floor seemed unsteady for a moment.
And yet there was as little doubt that Mary Zattiany bad long since ceased to care for him.Thatwas over fifteen or sixteen years ago. They had known each other in later years, both equally indifferent to the other and to the past.… Yes … but she had then completely lost the beauty and the charm that had enthralled him, while he was still a man in his prime, who, with that appearance, no doubt had other young and beautiful women in his life.
He may or may not have heard of the metamorphosis. At all events they had been political allies. He would call on her as a matter of course. And possibly out of more than politeness: he may have brought her an important message. Or he might find it expedient to confer with her on his present mission. That he had come on an important mission did not admit of a doubt; but at least he had not gone to her at once. His interest in her, so far, was still impersonal.
Clavering had too much of the arrogance of youth and he was too sure of Mary Zattiany's love for himself, to be apprehensive of the charms of a man of sixty, but he was invaded by a nameless and almost sickening fear. He had very swift and often very sure intuitions, and he was shaken by a premonition that in some manner, which, in his ignorance of the facts he was unable to define, this man's presence in America boded no good to himself.
But Clavering was also a man of swift decisions and resource, and he knew this was no time to lose his head, nor even to play a waiting game. And he must tread warily. Impulsive as he was by nature he could be as wary as a Red Indian when wariness would serve his purpose. He called up Mr. Dinwiddie on the telephone and asked if he might see him at once. It was only half past nine and Mr. Dinwiddie was just finishing his breakfast in bed, but he told his favorite cordially to "come along."
"What is it?" asked Mr. Dinwiddie, as Clavering entered his bedroom fifteen minutes later. "This is an early call. Thought you didn't get up till noon."
"Went to bed early last night for a change. I've come to ask a favor. I'll smoke, if you don't mind."
He took a chair beside the bed, where Mr. Dinwiddie, in skull cap and decorous pyjamas, leaned against high pillows, happily digesting his breakfast, with the newspapers beside him. Clavering smoked for a few moments in silence, while his host watched him keenly. He had never seen his young friend in quite this mood. There was a curious deadly stillness about him.
"What is it, Lee?" he asked when curiosity finally got the better of him. "Nothing wrong between you and Mary, I hope? Of course you know it's all over town that you're engaged to her. Don't mind my saying this, do you? And you know you can trust me. Nothing like an old gossip for keeping a confidence sacred."
"Well, I am. But she chooses not to announce it and that is her right. And here is where you can help me. I want you to open your camp in the Adirondacks and give Mary a house party. I suppose Larsing and his wife are still there?"
"Yes, but it's too early——"
"Spring is early this year. The ice must have gone out. And the house is always comfortable; we've often had fires there when people were having sunstroke in New York. I want you to get busy, so that we can leave tomorrow morning——"
"Tomorrow morning? You young dynamo. It can't be done."
"It can. I'll call up the people I want in a few minutes—from here. You can telephone to the camp. Provisions can go tonight. I'll see to that also——"
"But can you get away yourself?"
"I'd get away if I had to resign, but I shan't. I shall break away for two months later anyhow. We have planned to marry in Austria in about a month from now."
"Then why in thunder do you want to run off to the woods with her now? I never heard of anything so unreasonable. She has friends here who'd like to see her until the last minute, you selfish young beggar——"
"It's the most reasonable thing I ever did. Don't insist upon an explanation, Din. Just accept my word that it's a vital matter to me."
"Ah! But I know!" Mr. Dinwiddie's eyes glittered. "Hohenhauer is here. That's the milk in the cocoanut."
Clavering scowled. "What do you mean by that?"
"I—I—well—there was a good deal of talk at the time—but then you know, Lee, I told you the very first time we both saw her that there had been stories about Mary."
"Well, as it happens, she told me about this man, although not his name. Enough, however, for me to know at once this morning who he was. I don't intend she shall see him."
"You don't mean to tell me that you are jealous of Hohenhauer. Why, that was nearly twenty years ago, and he is almost as old as I am."
"I'm not jealous, but I've got a hunch." He scowled again, for he fancied he could see that old story unrolling itself in Dinwiddie's mind. It is one thing to dismiss the past with a lordly gesture and another to see it rise from the dead and peer from old eyes. He went on calmly, however. "I've no faith, myself, in the making of bonfires out of dead ashes, but all the same I scent danger and I intend to get her away and keep her away until the day before she sails; and I'll marry her the morning she does. I'll take no chances of their travelling on the same steamer."
"I see. Perhaps you are right. He's a damn good-looking chap, too, and has that princely distinction peculiar to Austrians. Some European princes look like successful businessmen of the Middle-West. I was once stranded at Abbazia, Austria's Riviera, during a rainy spell, and as there were only two other people in the vast dining-room I thought I'd speak to them. I took for granted they were Americans. He was a big heavy man, with one of those large, round, fat, shrewd, weary faces you see by the hundreds in the lobbies of Chicago hotels. She looked like a New England school-marm, and wore a red plaid waist. Well—he was the reigning prince of Carlstadt-Rudolfstein, one of those two-by-six German principalities, and she was an Austrian archduchess. She was the only Austrian I ever saw that didn't look like one, but her manners were charming and we became great friends and they took me home with them to their beautiful old castle.… Ah, those wonderful old German castles! Profiteers living in them today, I suppose. But Hohenhauer is a perfect specimen of his class—and then some. I met him once in Paris. Intensely reserved, but opened up one night at a small dinner. I never met a more charming man in my life. And unquestionably one of the ablest men in Europe.… However, he's sixty and you're thirty-four. If he has any influence over her it's political, and in European politics one never knows what dark business is going on under the surface. Good idea to get Mary away. I'll get some fun out of it, too. Who'll you ask?"
"None of your crowd. How many bedrooms have you? I don't remember."
"Ten. If you want a large party you can turn in with me. There are twin beds in every room. I don't know how Mary'll like it; she's a luxurious creature, you know, and we don't go to the woods to be comfortable——"
"You forget she got pretty well used to worse while she was running that hospital. And hardy people never do mind."
"True. I'll give her a room to herself, for I don't see her doubling-up, at all events. That would leave eight good-sized rooms. Don't ask all married couples, Lee, for heaven's sake. Let's have two girls, at least. But the season is still on. Sure you can get anybody?"
"Of course. They're not all pinned down to regular jobs, and will be only too glad to get out of New York after a grinding winter. The novelty of a house party in the mountains at this season will appeal to them. I'll call up Gora first."
He was crossing the room to the telephone when Mr. Dinwiddie said hesitatingly: "And so—so—you're really going to marry Mary? Have you thought what it means? I mean your own career. She'll never live here—she's out of the picture and knows it."
Clavering took down the receiver and called Miss Dwight's number. Mr. Dinwiddie sighed and shrugged his shoulders. But his eyes were bright. He would have a love drama under his very nose.
Mary's "headache" had continued for two days, but Clavering came to her house by appointment that same afternoon at five o'clock. She kept him waiting fully ten minutes, and wandered back and forth in her room upstairs with none of her usual eagerness to welcome him after even a brief separation. The violence of her revulsion had passed, but she was filled with a vast depression, apathetic, tired, in no mood for love-making. Nor did she feel up to acting, and Clavering's intuitions were often very inconvenient. He would never suspect the black turmoil of these past two days, nor its cause, but it would be equally disconcerting if he attributed her low spirits to the arrival of Hohenhauer. What a fool she had been to have made more than a glancing reference to that last old love-affair, almost forgotten until that night of stark revelation. She must have enjoyed talking about herself more than she had realized, unable to resist the temptation to indulge in imposing details. Or self-justification? Perhaps. It didn't matter, and he must have "placed" Hohenhauer at once this morning, and would imagine that she was depressed at the thought of meeting him. There was no one on earth she wanted to meet less, although she felt a good deal of curiosity as to the object of his visit to Washington.
She heard the maid in the dressing-room and was visited by an inspiration. She called in the woman, gave her a key and told her to go down to the dining-room and bring her a glass of curacoa from the wine-cupboard.
The liqueur sent a glow of warmth through her veins and raised her spirits. Then, reflecting that Clavering never rushed at her in the fashion of most lovers, nor even greeted her with a perfunctory kiss, but waited until the mood for love-making attacked him suddenly, she took a last look at her new tea-gown of corn-flower blue chiffon and went down stairs with a light step.
"Shocking to keep you waiting," she said as they shook hands, "but I came in late. You'll stay to dinner, of course. I had an engagement but broke it, as I'm still feeling a little out of sorts."
"Never saw you look better. Nor in blue before. You look like a lily in a blue vase, or a snow maiden rising from a blue mist. Not that I'm feeling poetic today, but you do look ripping. What gave you a headache? I thought you scorned the ills of the flesh."
"So I do, but I had spent three hours in Judge Trent's office that morning, and you know what these American men are. They keep the heat on no matter what the temperature outside, and every window closed. On Tuesday the sun was blazing in besides, and Judge Trent and the two other men I was obliged to confer with smoked cigars incessantly. It gave me the first headache I'd had for twenty years. I felt as if I'd been poisoned."
She looked up at him, smilingly, from her deep chair as he stood above her on the hearthrug. He didn't believe a word of it: he was convinced she had been advised of Hohenhauer's coming, and that for some reason the news had upset her; but he had no intention of betraying himself. Moreover, he didn't care. He was too intent on his own plans.
"The rest has done you good," he said, smiling also. "But as you were looking rather fagged before you came down with that two-days' headache, I made up my mind that you needed a change and dropped Din a hint to open his camp in the Adirondacks and give you a farewell house-party. He jumped at the idea and it's all arranged. You'll have eight days of outdoor life and some sport, as well as a good rest. He's got a big comfortable camp on a beautiful lake, where we can boat and fish——"
"But Lee——" She was almost gasping.
"No buts. Not only do you need a rest before that long journey but I want these last days with you in the mountains where I can have you almost to myself. It seems to me sometimes that I do not know you at all—nor you me. And to roam with you in the woods during the day and float about that lake at night—it came to me suddenly like a foretaste of heaven. I couldn't stand the thought of the separation otherwise. Besides, here you'd be given a farewell luncheon or dinner every day until you sailed. I'd see nothing of you. And you'd be worn out. You must come, Mary dear."
Mary felt dimly suspicious, but it was possible that he had read his morning papers hastily, or that in his mental turmoil that night she had told him her story he had paid little attention to details, or forgotten them later. He certainly had never alluded to the man since. And this sudden impetuous plan was so like him that he needed no foreign impulse.
But she answered with some hesitation: "I'd like it, of course. And Judge Trent has nothing more for me to sign until the last minute. But—a woman always has a thousand things to do before going on a journey——"
"Your maid can do all that. And pack your trunks. She goes with you, doesn't she? And you'll only need warm sweaters and skirts up there. We never dress. You'll not need a maid."
"Well—but—do you mean to tell me that the whole thing is settled?"
"To the last detail. There'll be twelve of us, including Din."
"Really, Lee, youarehigh-handed. You might have consulted me first."
"No time to waste on argument. We'll only have a little over a week there as it is. It takes a day to go and another to return, and you'll need one day here in New York before you sail. I made up my mind you should go if I had to take you by force. Iwillhave those last days in the Adirondacks."
Her faint resentment vanished and she felt a languid sense of well-being in this enveloping atmosphere of the tactless imperious male, so foreign to her experience; of freedom from the necessity for independent action; and the prospect was certainly enchanting. Moreover, she would be able to avoid seeing Hohenhauer in surroundings where this strange love-affair of hers had obliterated the past (for the most part!), and she had found, for a time at least, happiness and peace. She would see him in Vienna, of course, and she had no wish to avoid him there; no doubt they would work together and as impersonally as they had sometimes done in the past; but to see him here, even in the drawing-room, which held no sacred memories, would be but another and uglier blot on her already dimming idyl; and a subtle infidelity to this man whose every thought seemed to be of her in spite of all he had to inflame and excite his ego.
And if she remained and Hohenhauer wished to see her she could hardly keep on making excuses for nearly a fortnight. So she merely smiled up at Clavering, who was gazing down at her intently, and said softly: "Of course I'll go. I always have sport things in my wardrobe and I think it a wonderful idea. Now tell me who is going. Miss Dwight, I suppose—and hope. And the De Witt Turners?" Madame Zattiany had no respect whatever for the Lucy Stone League, and invariably forgot the paternal names of the emancipated young wives of the men she found interesting.
"They can't get away. Gora, yes; and Rolly Todd, the Boltons, the Minors, Eva Darling, Babette Gold, Gerald Scores."
"Miss Darling is rather a nuisance. She flung her arms round me the other night at the Minors' and left a pink kiss on my neck. She was very tight. Still, she is amusing, and a favorite of Din's."
"I would have submitted the list to you in the first place, darling, but I knew I should have to take what I could get on such short notice. The only two I really care about are Gora and Todd. But there wasn't a moment to lose. I wish to heaven I'd thought of it before, but that play had to be finished, and it looked as if the date of your sailing might be postponed, after all."
He had no intention of letting her suspect that the wonderful plan was just eight hours old.
"I understand," she said. "When do we start?"
"Tomorrow morning. Eight-thirty. Grand Central."
"Tomorrow morning!" She looked almost as dismayed as Mr. Dinwiddie had done, then laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "Of course it can be done—but——"
"Anything can be done," he said darkly. And then, having got his way, he suddenly felt happy and irresponsible, and made one of his abrupt wild dives at her.