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Black Oxen

<h3> LV </h3> The flight next morning proved simpler of accomplishment than she had anticipated. The men were going to a neighboring lake to fish, Larsing having excited them with the prospect of abundant trout; and why fish in your own lake when you may take a tramp of several miles through the woods to another? They begged Clavering to go with them, and as man cannot exist for long in the rarefied atmosphere of the empyrean without growing restive, he was feeling rather let down, and cherished a sneaking desire for a long day alone with men. But he told Mary that he did not want to go out of their woods and down to that hideous village for any such purpose as to watch her sign papers, and he stood on the landing waving his hat as she and Mr. Dinwiddie crossed the lake in the motor boat to the waiting Ford. For once his intuitions failed him, and he tramped off with the other men, his heart as light as the mountain air, and his head empty of woman. Mary looked back once at the golden-brown lake, set like a jewel in its casket of fragrant trees, and wondered if she would see it again with the same eyes. She was both resentful and uneasy, although she still was unable to guess what harm could come of this interview. If Hohenhauer wanted her to go to Washington she could refuse, and he had long since lost his old magnetic power over her. But as the Ford bumped down the steep road between the woods she felt less like Mary Ogden every moment … those mists of illusion to withdraw from her practical brain … returning to the heights where they belonged … she wondered how she could have dared to be so unthinkingly happy … the sport of the cynical gods?… sentimental folly that she had called exaltation? After all! After all! Could she recapture that mood when she returned? Certainly, whatever this man wanted of her, it would be hard facts, not illusions, he would invite her to deal with. Even when he had been the most passionate of lovers, his brain had always seemed to stand aloof, luminous and factual. He had not an illusion. He saw life as it was, and although his manners were suave and polished, and his voice the most beautiful she had ever heard, he could be brutally direct when it suited his purpose. For a moment she hated him as ardently as she had for a time after he left her. They descended into lower and lower altitudes until the air grew intensely hot, physically depressing after the cold wine of the mountains; finally, ten minutes ahead of time, they drove into the doubly depressing village of Huntersville. It was no uglier than thousands of other villages and small towns that look as if built to demonstrate the American contempt for beauty, but the fact mitigated nothing to eyes accustomed to the picturesqueness of mountain villages in Europe, where the very roofs are artistic and the peasants have the grace to wear the dress of their ancestors. There were a few farms in the valley, but if Huntersville had not been a junction of sorts, it is doubtful if it would have consisted of anything but a "general store," now that the saloons were closed. There was one long crooked street, with the hotel at one end, the Store at the other (containing the post office), and a church, shops for automobile supplies, two garages, a drug store, and a candy store; eight or ten cottages filled the interstices. Men were working in the fields, but those in Huntersville proper seemed to be exhausted with loafing. Campers going in and out of the woods needing shelter for a night, and people demanding meals between trains, kept the dismal looking hotel open and reasonably clean. The situation was very beautiful, for the mountains rose behind and there was a brawling stream. Mr. Dinwiddie having ascertained that "Mr." Hohenhauer had received his message and gone for a walk, leaving word he would return at ten o'clock, Mary went into the hotel parlor to wait for him. The room was seldom used, patrons, local and otherwise, preferring the Bar of happy memories, and it smelled musty. She opened the windows and glanced about distastefully. The walls were covered with a faded yellow paper, torn in places, and the ceiling was smoked and fly-specked. The worn thin carpet seemed to have been chosen for its resemblance to turtle soup squirming with vermicelli. Over the pine mantel, painted yellow, were the inevitable antlers, and on a marble-topped table were badly executed water lilies under a glass dome. The furniture was horsehair, and she wondered how she and the Austrian statesman were to preserve their dignity on the slippery surface. Then she heard his voice in the hall as he stopped to speak to Mr. Dinwiddie, and she glanced out curiously. She had not seen him since a year before the war, but he was little changed; improved if anything, for there was more color in his formerly pale face. He was as straight and as thin as ever, his fine head erect, without haughtiness; his dark eyes under their heavy lids had the same eagle glance. He was still, she concluded dispassionately, the handsomest man she had ever seen, even for an Austrian, the handsomest race on earth; he combined high intelligence with a classic regularity of feature, grace, dignity; and when the firm lips relaxed he had a delightful smile. If it had not been for his hair, very thick white hair, he would have passed for little over forty. He wore loose gray travelling clothes, and every detail was as quietly faultless as ever. She went hastily to the speckled mirror beneath the antlers and surveyed herself anxiously. Her own travelling suit of dark green tweed, with its white silk shirt, was as carelessly perfect as his own, and the little green turban, with its shaded, drooping feather, extremely becoming. No color set off her fairness like green, but she turned away with a sigh. It was not the eyes of the past three days that looked back at her. And then she remembered that he had not seen her since the renaissance. The moment was not without its excitements. Their meeting was excessively formal. "Frau Gräfin." "Excellenz." She lifted her hand. He raised it to his lips. And then he drew back and looked at her with penetrating but smiling eyes. "I had heard, of course," he said gallantly, "but I hardly was prepared. May I say, Frau Gräfin, that you look younger than when I had the pleasure of meeting you first?" "I assure you that I feel many years younger," she replied lightly. "May I add that I am delighted to see that you are in the best of health? Your rest in Switzerland has done you good, although it would have been better for Austria had it been shorter. Shall we sit down?" Two tall dignified bodies adjusted themselves to chairs both slippery and bumpy. He had closed the door behind him. "Now that the amenities are over, Excellenz," she said with the briskness she had picked up from her American friends, "let us come to the point. I infer you did not take a day's journey and put up with this abominable hotel to tell me that you are forming a Federation of Austria and the South German States. You were sometimes kind enough to ask my help in the past, but I have no influence in Washington." "No, dear Gräfin. I do not need your assistance in Washington. But I do need it in Austria, and that is why I am here." "But it is—was—my intention to return to Austria almost immediately. Surely Judge Trent must have told you." "Yes, dear Gräfin, he told me, but he also told me other things. I shall not waste the little time at our disposal in diplomacy. He told me that you have the intention to marry a young American." There was the faintest accent on the young. Mary was annoyed to feel herself flushing, but she answered coldly, "It is quite true that I intend to marry Mr. Clavering." "And I have come here to ask you to renounce that intention and to marry me instead." "You!" Mary almost rose from her chair. "What on earth do you mean?" "My dear Marie." He renounced formalities abruptly. "I think you will be able to recall that whether I wrapped my meaning in diplomatic phrases or conveyed it by the blunter method, it was always sufficiently clear to the trained understanding. I have never known a more trained or acute understanding than yours. I wish you to marry me, and I beg you to listen to my reasons." She gave the little foreign shrug she had almost forgotten. "I will listen, of course. Need I add that I am highly honored? If I were not so astonished, no doubt I should be more properly appreciative of that honor. Pray let me hear the reasons." Her tone was satirical, but she was beginning to feel vaguely uneasy. Neither her words nor her inflections ruffled the calm of that long immobile face with its half-veiled powerful eyes. "Let us avert all possible misunderstandings at the beginning," he said suavely. "I shall not pretend that I have fallen in love with you again, for although my gallantry prompts me to such a natural statement, I have not the faintest hope of deceiving you. What I felt for you once can never be revived, for I loved you more than I have ever loved any woman; and when such love burns itself out, its ashes are no more to be rekindled than the dust of the corpse. You thought I fell in love with my pretty young wife, but I was merely fond and appreciative of her. I knew that the end had come for us, and that if I did not recognize that sad fact, you would. My marriage, which, as you know, was imperative, afforded a graceful climax to a unique episode in the lives of both of us. There was no demoralizing interval of subterfuge and politely repressed ennui. On the other hand, it did not degenerate into one of those dreary and loosely knit liaisons, lasting on into old age. We left each other on the heights, although the cliff was beginning to crumble." "Really, Moritz! I hope you have not come up here to indulge in sentimental reminiscence. Why rake up that old—episode? I assure you I have practically forgotten it." "And I can assure you that I never felt less sentimental. I wish merely to emphasize the fact that it was complete in itself, and therefore as impossible of resuscitation as the dead. Otherwise, you might naturally leap to the conclusion that I was an elderly romantic gentleman——" "Oh, never! It is obvious that you are inclined to be brutally frank. But, as you said, time is short." "If what I said sounded brutal, it was merely to remind you that love—the intense passionate love I have no doubt you feel for this young man who helps you to realize your renewed youth—never lasts. And when this new love of yours burns itself out—you never had the reputation of being very constant, dear Marie—you will have an alien young man on your hands, while that remarkable brain of yours will be demanding its field of action. You are European, not American—why, even your accent is stronger than mine! That may be due to an uncommonly susceptible ear, but as a matter of fact your mind has a stronger accent still. You became thoroughly Europeanized, one of us, and—I say this quite impartially—the most statesman-like woman in Europe. Your mind was still plastic when you came to us—and your plastic years are long over, ma chère. If your mind had become as young as your body, you would have bitterly resented it. You were always very proud of that intellect of yours—and with the best of reasons." Mary was staring out of the window. She recalled that she had faced the fact of the old mind in the young brain when she first discovered that she loved Clavering. How could she have forgotten … for a few short weeks—and up there?… She raised her eyes to the mountain. From where she sat she could not see the top. It looked like an impenetrable rampart, rising to the skies. "Can you tell me with honesty and candor," he continued in those same gentle tones that had always reminded her of limpid water running over iron, "—and for all your subtlety your mind is too arrogant and fearless to be otherwise than honest au fond—that you believe you could remain satisfied with love alone? For more, let us say, than a year?" She moved restlessly. "Perhaps not. But I had planned to live in Vienna. He would spend only a part of the year there with me. His own interests are here, of course. It would be a perfectly workable arrangement." "Are you sure? If you are, I must conclude that in the mental confusion love so often induces, you have lost temporarily your remarkable powers of clear and coherent thought. Do you not realize that you would no longer be Gräfin Zattiany, you would be Mrs. Lee Clavering? Do you imagine for a moment that you could play the great rôle in Austrian affairs you have set yourself, handicapped by an American name—and an American husband? Not with all your gifts, your wealth, your genius for playing on that complex instrument called human nature. Austria may be a Republic of sorts, but it is still Austria. You would be an American and an outsider—a presumptuous interloper." She stared at him aghast. "I—oh!—I had not thought of that. It seems incomprehensible—but I had never thought of myself as Mrs. Clavering. I have been Gräfin Zattiany so long!" "And your plans were well-defined, and your ambition to play a great rôle on the modern European stage possessed you utterly until you met this young man—is it not so?" "Oh, yes, but——" "I understand. It must have been a quite marvellous experience, after those barren years, to feel yourself glowing with all the vitalities of youth once more; to bring young men to your feet with a glance and to fancy yourself in love——" "Fancy!" She interrupted him passionately. "I am in love—and more—more than I ever was with you. Until I met him I did not even guess that I had the capacity to love again. It was the last thing I wanted. Abhorrent! But … but … he has something for me that you—not even you—ever had … that I had given up hope of finding long before I met you.…" She stopped, coloring and hesitating. She had an intense desire to make this man understand, but she shivered, as if her proud reserve were a visible garment that she had torn off and flung at his feet, leaving her naked to his ironic gaze. He was leaning forward, regarding her through his veiled eyes. Their light was not ironic, but it was very penetrating. "And what is that something, Marie?" he asked softly. "I—you know those things cannot be put into words." "I fancy they can. It is merely one more delusion of the senses. One of the imagination's most devilish tricks. I had it for you and you for me—for a time! In the intimacies of either a liaison or matrimony that supreme delusion is soon scattered, ma chère." "But I believe it." She spoke obstinately, although that brawling stream seemed to take on a note of derision. "Do you? Not in the depths of your clear brain. The mist on top is dense and hot—but, alas for those mists!" "I refuse to discuss it," she said haughtily. "Why do you wish to marry me yourself?" "Because I need your partnership as much as you need mine. Even if you returned to Austria unencumbered, you could accomplish less alone than with a man of equal endowments and greater power beside you. Two strong brains and characters with similar purpose can always accomplish more together than alone. I intend to rule and to save Austria, and I need you, your help, your advice, your subtlety, your compelling fascination, and your great personality." "Do you intend to make yourself king?" she asked insolently, although his words had thrilled her. "You know that is a foolish question. I do not even use my title there. But I intend to make Vienna the capital of a great and powerful Republic, and I therefore ask you to renounce, before it is too late, this commonplace and unworthy dream of young love, and stand beside me. Youth—real youth—and the best years of maturity are the seasons for love. You and I have sterner duties. Do you suppose that I would sacrifice Austria for some brief wild hope of human happiness? And you are only two years younger than I am. Nothing can alter the march of the years. Moreover, you owe to Austria this wonderful rejuvenescence of yours. Steinach is not an American." She stamped her foot. "You descend to quibbling. And I have more than repaid Austria all that I owe her." "You have given her money and service, but she expects more, and you pledged yourself to her before you left. And don't forget that she is the country of your deliberate adoption. A far more momentous thing than any mere accident of birth. You did not return to America when Zattiany died. You never even paid her a brief visit after your marriage. You would not be here now but for the imperative necessities of business. You are Austrian to your marrow." "I had a rôle thrust on me and I played it. My parents came to Europe every year until they died. When Zattiany went, there were no ties to draw me back and habit is strong. But—underneath—I don't believe that I have ever been other than Mary Ogden." She blushed as she said it, and he looked at her keenly. "I think I understand. He is a very clever young man—of an outstanding cleverness, I am told. Or it may be that he is merely in love, and love's delusions are infinite—for a time. I doubt if a young man with so brilliant an intellect would, if he faced himself in honest detachment, admit that he believed anything of the sort. Nor do you, my dear Marie, nor do you." She twisted her hands together, but would not raise her eyes. He bent forward again and said harshly: "Marie! Glance inward. Do you see nothing that causes you to feel ashamed and foolish? Do you—you—fail to recognize the indecency of a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is experiencing the authentic passions of youth? Are you capable of creating life? Can you love with unsullied memory? Have you the ideals of youth, the plasticity, the hopes, the illusions? Have you still even that power of desperate mental passion, so often subordinating the merely physical, of the mature woman who seeks for the last time to find in love what love has not? The final delusion. No, Marie. Your revivified glands have restored to you the appearance and the strength of youth, but, although you have played with a rôle that appealed to your vanity, to your histrionic powers—with yourself as chief audience—your natural desire to see if you could not be—to yourself, again—as young as you appear, you have no more illusion in your soul than when you were a withered old woman in Vienna." She looked at him with hostile but agonized eyes. "Your calculated brutality does not affect me in the least. And you are merely one more victim of convention—like those old women in New York. It never has been, therefore it never can be. Many women are not able to bear children, even in youth." "It is your turn to quibble. Tell me: until you were attracted to this young man—attracted, no doubt, because he was so unlike the European of your long experience—had you deviated from the conclusion, arrived at many years before, that you had had enough of love—of sex—to satisfy any woman? You implied as much to me a few moments since. I know the mental part of you so well that I am positive the mere thought would have disgusted you. If you had been starved all your life it would be understandable, but you had experimented and deluded yourself again and again—and you were burnt out when you came to Vienna to live—burnt out, not only physically but spiritually. Your imagination was as arid as a desert without an oasis. If any man had made love to you then, you would merely have turned on him your weary disillusioned eyes, or laughed cynically at him and yourself. Your keen aesthetic sense would have been shocked. You were playing then an important and ambitious rôle, you had the greatest political salon in Vienna—in Europe—and you went away to rest that you might continue to play it, not that you might feel fresh enough once more to have liaisons like other foolish old women.… But the part you played then was a bagatelle to the one awaiting you now. With your splendid mental gifts, your political genius, your acquired statecraft, your wealth, and your restored beauty, you could become the most powerful woman in Europe. But only as my wife. Even you are not strong enough to play the part alone. There is too much prejudice against women to permit you to pull more than hidden strings. Masculine jealousy of women is far more irritable in a democracy than in a monarchy, where women of rank are expected to play a decorative—and tactful part in politics. But if they step down and come into conflict with ambitious men of the people, class jealousy aggravates sex jealousy. You might have a salon again and become a power somewhat in the old fashion, but you never would be permitted to play a great public rôle. But as the consort (I think the word will pass) of the President—or Chancellor—you could wield almost sensational power." "I should probably be quite overshadowed by you," she murmured; but she was hardly conscious of speaking. Her brain was whirling. "Your position would be too eminent for that, even if I wished it, which I assuredly should not. I value you too highly. Perhaps I am one of the few men in Europe who admit—and believe—that a woman may have as powerful and accomplished an intellect as any man. I did not appreciate your mind as you deserved when I loved you, but I did during those subsequent years in Vienna." "You did not ask me to marry you then—when you appreciated me so highly. You never seemed to know whether you were talking to a man or a woman when you were with me. And yet I was, possibly, more interesting psychologically than I had ever been." "No man is interested in an old woman's psychology. I am not interested in your psychology today. And I did not ask you to marry me then for a great many reasons. I was too handicapped to play a great rôle myself, you will remember. Nor could you have been of the same service to me. Even if your fatigued mind had been refreshed, by your stay in Hungary, you had lost the beauty and the energy, the power of ardent interest in the affairs of state, which have now been restored to you. With your rare gifts and your renewed youth, I repeat you have it in your power to be the most famous woman in Europe, and perhaps the most useful. But not with a young alien husband. Not only would you automatically revert to the status of an American, but the dignity which, unlike so many women of your age who had been dames galantes, you took care to impress on the world, would be hopelessly sacrificed. Incredible. To spend yourself on a love affair, wantonly to throw away an historic career, merely because a young man has hypnotized you into the delusion that you may once more enjoy the passions of youth——" "Stop! You shall not!" She had sprung to her feet. Her face was drawn and pinched but her eyes were blazing. "Every word you say is for a purpose. If that were all I should have hated him. As much as I hate you. My mind never dwelt on that—not for a moment—I—I never faced it. You don't know what you're talking about." "Ah, but I do." He had risen also, and he put his hands on her shoulders. They were long thin hands but very powerful, and it seemed to her that they sank slowly through her flesh, until, however painlessly, they gripped the skeleton underneath. "Look at me, Marie. Your Mary Ogden died many, many years ago. She died, I should say, at the first touch of Otto Zattiany. There was nothing in your new life to revive her, assuredly not your first lover. Certainly you were Marie Zattiany, the most subtle, complex, and fascinating woman in Europe when I met you—but abominably disillusioned even then. I revived your youth for a time, but never your girlhood. You have been able to deceive yourself here in the country of that girlhood, for a time, with this interesting young gentleman in love with you, and, no doubt, extremely ardent." "Oh!" Her head sank. But she could not turn away, for his hands still gripped her shoulders. The roar of the stream sounded to her horrified ears like the crash of falling ruins. "Listen, Marie," he said more gently. "If I have been brutal, it was merely because there was no other way to fling you head first out of your fool's paradise. If I had not known the common sense that forms the solid lower stratum of your mind, I should not have come here to say anything at all. You would not have been worth it. But remember, Marie, that under this new miracle of science, the body may go back but never the mind. You, your ego, your mind, your self, are no younger than your fifty-eight hard-lived years. And what object in being young again for any of us if we are to make the same old mistakes? Remember, that when you were as young as you look now you had no such opportunity offered you as in this terrible period of European history. Nor could you have taken advantage of it if you had, for mere mental brilliancy and ambition cannot take the place of political experience and an intellect educated by the world. It may be that we shall both be destroyed, that our efforts will avail nothing, and we shall all be swallowed up in chaos. But at least we shall have done what we could. And I know you well enough to believe that such an implacable end would give you greater satisfaction than dallying in the arms of a handsome young husband." He pushed her back into her chair, and resumed his own. "Would you like to smoke?" he asked. "Yes." She looked at him with bitter eyes, but she had recaptured her threatened composure. He regarded her with admiration but they smoked in silence for several moments. Then he spoke again. "You remember Elka Zsáky, I suppose? She was several years older than you and one of the dames galantes of her day. She has taken the treatment and looks many years younger, at least, than when she was a painted old hag with a red wig. She is still forced to employ artifice, but she has lovers again, and that is all she did it for. Vienna is highly amused. No doubt all women of her sort will take it for no other purpose. But many of the intellectual women of Europe are taking it, too—and with the sole purpose of reinvigorating their mental faculties and recapturing the physical endurance necessary to their work. I happen to know of a woman scientist, Frau Bloch, who is now working sixteen hours a day, and she had had a bitter struggle with her enfeebled forces to work at all. Lorenz is no more remarkable. He seems to be the only disciple besides yourself that this country has heard of, but I could name a hundred men, out of my own knowledge, who are once more working with all the vigor of youth——" "Yes," she interrupted sarcastically. "And without a thought of women, of course." "Probably not." He waved his hand negligently. "But incidentally. That is where men have the supreme advantage of women. The woman is an incident in their lives, even when sincerely in love. And if these men indulge occasionally in the pleasures of youth, or even marry young wives, the world will not be interested. But with women, who renew their youth and return to its follies, it will be quite another matter. If they are not made the theme of obscene lampoons they may count themselves fortunate. There will certainly be verbal lampoons in private." "Orthodoxy! Orthodoxy!" "Possibly. But orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that outrage them. How it may be some years hence, when this cure for senescence has become a commonplace, I do not pretend to say. But so it is today. Personally, no doubt, you would be indifferent, for you have a contemptuously independent mind. But your career and your usefulness would be at an end." "And suppose I am quite indifferent to that?" "Ah, but you are not. I will not say that I have killed Mary Ogden during this painful hour, for it is impossible to kill the dead, but I have exorcised her ghost. She will not come again. If you marry this young man it will be out of defiance, or possibly out of a mistaken consideration for him—although he will be an object for sympathy later on. And you will marry him as Marie Zattiany, without an illusion left in that clear brain of yours—from which the mists have been blown by the cold wind of truth. And in a year—if you can stand self-contempt and ineffable ennui so long—you will leave him, resume your present name—the name by which Europe knows you—and return to us. But it may be too late. Vienna would still be laughing. The Viennese are a light-hearted race, and a lax, but when they laugh they cease to take seriously the subject of that good-natured amusement.… It is not aesthetic, you know, it is not aesthetic. Are you really quite indifferent, Marie?" She shrugged and rose. "It must be time for luncheon," she said. "It will no doubt be horrible, but at least we can have it in here. The public dining-room would be impossible. I will find Mr. Dinwiddie and ask him to order it." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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