IX

When Clavering and Dinwiddie arrived at the Ogden house Judge Trent was

already there and mixing cocktails in the library. He was a large man

who must have had a superb figure before it grew heavy. He wore the

moustache of his generation and in common with what was left of his hair

it glistened like crystal. His black eyes were still very bright and his

full loose mouth wore the slight smirk peculiar to old men whose sex

vanity perishes only in the grave. Beside him stood a man some ten years

younger who was in the graying period, which gave him a somewhat dried

and dusty look; but whose figure was still slender and whose hard

outlines of face were as yet unblurred by flesh. They were, of course,

faultlessly groomed, but if met in the wilds of Africa, clad in rags and

bearded like the jungle, to the initiate they still would have been New

Yorkers.

"Come in! Come in!" cried the Judge heartily. "Madame Zattiany will be

down in a minute--she prefers to be called Madame Zattiany, by the way.

Thinks titles in America are absurd unless wearers were born to

them--more particularly since continental titles today are worth about as

much as rubles and marks. . . . Mr. Clavering, you know Mr. Osborne?

Madame Zattiany kindly permitted me to bring him as she was having a

little party. Families old friends."

Clavering placed two fingers in the limp hand extended and met the cold

appraising eye calmly. The New York assumption that all other Americans

are rank outsiders, that, in short, not to have been born in New York is

a social and irremediable crime, had often annoyed him but never caused

him to feel the slightest sense of inferiority. He had his own

ancestors, as important in their day as any bewigged old Dutchmen--all of

whom, he reminded himself, had been but honest burghers in Holland. But

he admired their consistency. The rest of the country had been

commenting bitterly on the New York attitude since the eighteenth

century. And when you got under their protective armor they were an

honorable and a loyal lot. Meanwhile it paid to be as rude as themselves.

"I am delighted that Madame Zattiany has decided to come out of her shell

at last," said Judge Trent, shaking vigorously. "I've been urging it for

some time. But she has had a long and harrowing experience, and seemed

to want only to rest. I think the stir she made at your first-nights,

Clavering, had something to do with it. There was a time, you know, when

she never appeared without making a sensation--like poor Mary before

her--but young as she is all that seems almost too remote to recall. Of

course if she had been able to live in London or Paris after the war it

would have been different, but she was stuck in Buda Pesth and

Vienna--ah!"

Madame Zattiany had entered the room. She wore pale green chiffon with

floating sleeves that left her arms bare. In the subdued light she

looked like a girl playing at Undine.

Clavering heard Dinwiddie give a sharp hiss. "Gad! More like Mary than

ever. Nile-green was her favorite color."

She greeted the Judge and Clavering with her slight flickering smile and

then turned to the other two men.

"This must be Mr. Osborne, as Judge Trent pointed out Mr. Dinwiddie to me

one day on Fifth Avenue. It was kind of you both to come in this

informal manner. I appreciate it very much."

Her manner was a little like that of a princess giving audience,

Clavering reflected, a manner enhanced by her slight accent and profound

repose, the negligent lifting of her hand to be kissed; and as she stood

graciously accepting their expressions of unhoped for felicity she looked

less American, more European, than ever. But Clavering wondered for the

first time if that perfect repose were merely the expression of a

profound indifference, almost apathy . . . but no, she was too young for

that, however the war may have seared her; and she was smiling

spontaneously, there was a genuine note of pleasure in her voice as she

turned to him.

"It was more than kind of you to watch my house until the policeman

came," she said on a lower key. "I was really alarmed when I remembered

that broken window and all those dreadful stories in the newspapers. But

you kept watch beneath my windows like a _preux chevalier_ and I felt

safe."

"I felt rather a fool if the truth be told." Her eyes had a curious

exploring look and Clavering felt unaccountably irritated, in spite of

all that her words implied. "I'd have done the same if you had been old

and withered. Served me right. I should have thought before I left the

house to telephone for a watchman."

"Ah! Quite so. American men are famous for their gallantry, are they

not? Myself, I have always liked them." The smile rose to her wise

penetrating eyes, and Clavering colored like a schoolboy. Then it faded

and her face looked suddenly rigid. "I wonder," she muttered, then

turned her back abruptly. "You must not forget your cocktail. And

dinner has been announced."

Mr. Dinwiddie made a pretext of sipping his cocktail as the three raised

their glasses simultaneously to their hostess. She had declined to join

them, with a little grimace. "Perhaps in time I may become American

enough to like your strange concoctions, but so far I think cocktails

have a really horrid taste. Shall we go in?"

The Judge offered his arm with the formal gallant air he could assume at

will and the other men followed at a discreet distance: her shimmering

gown had a long tail. Mr. Dinwiddie's eyes seemed to bore into that

graceful swaying back, but he was not the man to discuss his hostess

until he had left her house, and Clavering could only wonder what

conclusions were forming in that avid cynical old brain.

The dining-room, long and narrow, was at the back of the hall and

extended along the entire width of the large house. Like the hall it was

panelled and dark, an imposing room hung with family portraits. A small

table at the end looked like a fairy oasis. It glittered and gleamed and

the flowers were mauve, matching the tall wand-like candles.

"I do hope, Madame Zattiany," said Mr. Osborne, as he took a seat at her

left, "that you won't succumb to the prevailing mania for white, and

paint out this beautiful old walnut. Too many of our houses look

entirely too sanitary. One feels as if he were about to be shown up to a

ward, to be received by a hospital nurse with a warning not to speak too

loud." There was no chill formality in his mien as he bent over his

young and beautiful hostess.

"Ah, you forget this is Countess Zattiany's house," she said, smiling.

"But I will admit that if it were mine I should make few changes. White

was quite _à la mode_ in London long before the war, but, myself, I never

liked it."

Judge Trent sat opposite his hostess at the round table. She had placed

Mr. Dinwiddie and Mr. Osborne on either side of her, smiling at

Clavering. "I am sorry I do not know any young ladies," she said

graciously, although there was a twinkle in her eye. "You look rather

lonesome."

"Why should he?" growled Dinwiddie. "He is young and you are young. The

rest of us are the ones to feel out of it."

"Not a bit of it! Not a bit of it!" exclaimed Judge Trent. "You forget

that Madame Zattiany has lived in Europe since infancy. She's talked to

elderly statesmen all her life."

"Well, we're not statesmen, the lord knows." Dinwiddie could always be

relied on to make the obvious retort, thought Clavering, although it must

be admitted that he was seldom with none at all. "But you must have seen

more young men than old during the war, Madame Zattiany. I understand

that Mary turned her palace in Buda Pesth into a hospital and that you

were her chief assistant."

"That is quite true, and I had by no means confined myself before that to

elderly statesmen; but I had almost forgotten what a young man on his

feet looked like before the war finished. Or Society, for that matter.

My one temptation to enter Society here would be the hope of forming a

relief organization--drive, do you call it?--for the starving children of

Austria. Russian children are not the only pitiable objects in Europe,

and after all, the children of civilized countries are of more value to

the future of the world."

"Another drive!" Judge Trent groaned. "New York flees to cover at the

word. Enter Society by all means, but to give your youth its rights.

You have been deprived of them too long."

"I shall never feel as young as that again. Nor will any girl who was

merely sixteen at the beginning of the war ever be the same as your

care-free young ladies here. I sit in the restaurants and watch them

with amazement--often with anger. What right have they . . .

however . . . as for myself I shall not reenter the world for any but the

object I have just mentioned. Luncheons! Dinners! Balls! I was

surfeited before the war. And I have forgotten persiflage, small talk.

I am told that Americans avoid serious topics in Society. I, alas, have

become very serious."

She swept her favored guests with a disarming smile. They understood.

There was no sting in her words for them.

Clavering spoke up eagerly. "Why should you bore yourself with social

functions? If you want to raise money for the children I will not only

start a drive in my column but take you to call on several powerful

editors--or bring them here," he added hastily at the look of amazement

in her eyes, "and they will be more than willing to help you. They have

only to meet you----"

"That is all very well," interrupted Judge Trent, who, like the other

elderly gentlemen, was glaring at the famous young columnist who daily

laid down the law to his admiring readers. "But to raise money in large

amounts you've got to have a committee, and no committee is of any

use--for this sort of thing--without the names of fashionable women who

are as well known to our democratic public, that daily devours the

society columns, as the queens of the movies."

"Well--well--I do not know. I must think. It is not a step to take

lightly."

Clavering intercepted a flash between her eyes and Judge Trent's and the

old gentleman tightened his lips in a self-conscious smirk as he bent

over his fish.

"Damn him!" thought Clavering. "He knows the whole truth and is laughing

at us in his sleeve."

Madame Zattiany had turned the subject gracefully to European politics,

and he watched her with a detached air. Trent's attitude toward her

amused him. It was more deferential and admiring than infatuated. . . .

Whatever her charm, she was no longer in her first youth, and only unripe

fruit could sting that senescent palate. But the other two! Clavering

smiled sardonically. Dinwiddie, hanging on her every word, was hardly

eating. He was a very handsome man, in spite of his shining pate and

heavy white moustache. His features were fine and regular, his eyes, if

rather prominent, were clear and blue, his skin clean, and his figure but

little amplified. He was only sixty-two.

Osborne, who looked barely fifty, was personable and clever enough to

attract any woman. He, too, was astonishingly indifferent to the

excellent dinner, and both these gentlemen had reached an age, where, if

wary of excess for reasons of vanity and interior comfort, they derived

their sincerest enjoyment at the table.

That she possessed sex magnetism in a superlative degree in spite of her

deliberate aloofness, Clavering had, of course, been conscious from the

first. Had not every male first-nighter been conscious of it? There was

a surfeit of beauty in New York. A stranger, even if invested with

mystery, must possess the one irresistible magnet, combined with some

unusual quality of looks, to capture and hold the interest of weary New

Yorkers as she had done. Even the dramatic critics, who looked as if

they hated everybody, had been seen to gaze upon her with rare approval.

But tonight Clavering had a glimpse of something more than a magnetism

for which she was not responsible and to which she had seemed singularly

indifferent. It was quite evident that he was watching charm in action.

She was sparkling and exerting herself, talking brilliantly and

illuminatingly upon the chaos still known as Europe, and it was patent

that her knowledge was not derived from newspapers or drawing-room

gossip. Her personal acquaintance of public men had evidently been

extensive before the war, and she had as manifestly continued to see

those in and out of office in Vienna and Buda Pesth throughout all the

later fluctuations. Her detestation of the old German militaristic party

was unmitigated and she spoke of the late ruler of the Dual Empire and of

his yearning heir with no respect whatever. With other intelligent

people she believed Bolshevism to be an inevitable phase in a country as

backward and ignorant as Russia, but, to his surprise, she regarded the

Republican ideal of government as the highest that had yet been evolved

from finite minds, still far from their last and highest stages of

development. She believed that the only hope of the present civilization

was to avert at any cost the successful rise of the proletariat to power

until the governing and employing classes had learned sufficient wisdom

to conciliate it and treat it with the same impartial justice they now

reserved for themselves. ("And to educate themselves along the lines

laid down in 'The Mind in the Making,'" interpolated Clavering.)

Otherwise any victory the masses might achieve would be followed by the

same hideous results as in Russia--in other words, the same results that

had followed all servile uprisings since the dawn of history. When the

underdog, who has never felt anything but an underdog, with all the

misery and black injustice the word implies, finds himself on top he will

inevitably torture and murder his former oppressors. He hasn't the

intelligence to foresee the ultimate folly of his acts, or that the only

hope of the world is equal justice for all classes; he merely gratifies

his primitive instinct for vengeance--precisely the same today, as during

the first servile uprising of Rome--he butchers and slaughters and

wrecks, and then sinks with his own weight, while what brains are left

reconstruct civilization out of the ruins. "The trouble is that the

reconstructing brains are never quite good enough, and after a time it is

all to do over again. . . ."

This was by no means a monologue, but evoked in the give and take of

argument with Mr. Osborne, who believed in never yielding an inch to the

demands of labor, and with Mr. Dinwiddie, who, since his association with

the Sophisticates, was looking forward vaguely toward some idealistic

regeneration of the social order, although Socialism was rather out of

date among them, and Bolshevism long since relegated to the attic.

But Clavering was not particularly interested in her political views,

sound as they were. Foreign women of her class, if not as liberal,

always talked intelligently of politics. What interested him keenly was

her deliberate, her quite conscious attempt to enslave the two men beside

her, and her complete success. Occasionally she threw him a word, and

once he fancied she favored him with a glance of secret amused

understanding, but he was thankful to be on the outer edge of that

glamorous crescent. It was enough to watch at a comparatively safe

distance. Would his turn come next, or was she merely bent on so

befuddling these old chaps that there would be no place left in their

enraptured minds for suspicion or criticism? No doubt he was too rank an

outsider. . . . She shot him another glance. . . . Was his to be the

rôle of the sympathetic friend?

Then she began to draw Dinwiddie and Osborne out, and it struck him that

her attitude was not merely that of the accomplished hostess. They both

talked well, they were intelligent and well-informed, and he was himself

interested in what they had to say on the subject of national politics.

(The Judge, who had an unimpaired digestion, was attending strictly to

his champagne and his dinner.) There was something of anxiety, almost of

wistfulness, in her expression as she listened to one or the other doing

his admirable best to entertain her. They had the charm of crisp

well-modulated voices, these two men of her own class; she had met no

better-bred men in Europe; and their air was as gallant as it had been in

their youth. He had a fleeting vision of what gay dogs they must have

been. Neither had married, but they had been ardent lovers once and

aging women still spoke of them with tender amusement. And yet only the

shell had changed. They had led decent enough lives and no doubt could

fall honestly and romantically in love today. In fact, they appeared to

be demonstrating the possibility, with the eternal ingenuousness of the

male. And yet nature had played them this scurvy trick. The young heart

in the old shell. Grown-up boys with a foot in the grave. Dependent

upon mind and address alone to win a woman's regard, while the woman

dreamed of the man with a thick thatch over his brains and the responsive

magnetism of her own years. Poor old fighting-cocks! What a jade nature

was . . . or was it merely the tyranny of an Idea, carefully inculcated

at the nativity of the social group, with other arbitrary laws, in behalf

of the race? The fetish of the body. Stark materialism. . . . However,

it was not as hard on them as on women outgrown their primary function.

Theirs at least the privilege of approach; and their deathless masculine

conceit--when all was said, Nature's supreme gift of compensation--never

faltered.

It crossed Clavering's mind that she was experimenting on her own

account, not merely bewildering and enthralling these estimable gentlemen

of her mother's generation. But why? Joining casually in the

conversation, or quite withdrawn, he watched her with increasing and now

quite impersonal interest. He almost fancied she was making an effort to

be something more than the polite and amiable hostess, that she was

deliberately striving to see them as men who had a perfect right to

fascinate a woman of her age and loveliness. Well, it had happened

before. Elderly men of charm and character had won and kept women fully

thirty years their junior. Possibly she belonged to that distinguished

minority who refused to be enslaved by the Ancient Idea, that iron code

devised by fore-thinking men when Earth was young and scantily

peopled. . . . Still--why this curious eagerness, this--it was

indecipherable . . . no doubt his lively imagination was playing him

tricks. Probably she was merely sympathetic. . . . And then, toward the

end of the dinner, her manner changed, although too subtly for any but

the detached observer to notice it. To Clavering she seemed to go dead

under her still animated face. He saw her eyes wander from Dinwiddie's

bald head to Osborne's flattened cheek . . . her lip curled, a look of

fierce contempt flashed in her eyes before she hastily lowered the

lids. . . . He fancied she was glad to rise from the table.

X

"Well?" he asked, as he and Dinwiddie were walking away from the house;

Osborne had driven off with Judge Trent. "Do you still think her a

base impostor?"

"Don't know what I think and don't much care. She can pack me in her

trunk, as we boys used to say. She's a great lady and a charming

woman; as little doubt about the first as the last. She's like Mary

Ogden and she isn't. I suppose she might be merely a member of the

same family--with several thousand ancestors where types must have

reappeared again and again. If she wants New York Society, especially

if she wants money for those starving children, I'll go the limit. But

I'm going to find out about her all the same. I'll hunt up Harry

Thornhill tomorrow--he's a recluse but he'll see me--and I'll get on

the track of some Hungarian refugee. She can't be the usual rank

impostor, that's positive. She has the same blood as Mary in her

veins, and if she's Mary's daughter and wishes to keep it dark, that's

her business. I'll never give her away."

"Well, good luck. Glad it went off so well."

They parted at the door of Mr. Dinwiddie's rooms and Clavering walked

slowly home in an extremely thoughtful mood. He felt an uneasy

distrust of the Countess Josef Zattiany, and he was not even sure that

he liked her.

On the following Monday night, however, he was by no means averse from

making a notable personal score. As Abbott, a dramatic critic, who

happened to sit next to Madame Zattiany, made his usual hurried exit at

the falling of the first curtain Clavering slipped into the vacant

chair. She smiled a welcome, but it was impossible to talk in the

noise. This was a great first-night. One of the leading actresses of

America had returned in an excellent play, and her admirers, who

appeared to be a unit, were clapping and stamping and shouting:

handkerchiefs fluttered all over the house. When the curtain descended

after the fifteenth recall and the lights went up and demonstration

gave place to excited chatter, Madame Zattiany held out her hand toward

Clavering.

"See! I have split my glove. I caught the enthusiasm. How

generous your people are! I never heard such whole-souled,

such--ah--unself-conscious response."

"Oh, we like to let go sometimes and the theatre is a safe place. One

of the best things that can be said for New York, by the way, is its

loyalty to two or three actresses no longer young. The whole country

has gone crazy over youth. The most astonishingly bad books create a

furore because from end to end they glorify post-war youth at its

worst, and the stage is almost as bad. But New Yorkers are too old and

wise in the theatre not to have a very deep appreciation of its art,

and they will render tribute to old favorites as long as they produce

good plays."

"But that is very fine. . . . I go to the matinee a good deal and I am

often very bored. And I have been reading your current novels with the

desire to learn as well as to be amused. I wish so much to understand

the country in which I was born. I have received much illumination!

It is quite remarkable how well most of your authors write--but merely

well, that is. So few have individuality of style. And even in the

best authors I find nearly all of the heroines too young. I had read

many American novels before the war--they came to us in Tauchnitz--and

even then I found this quite remarkable preoccupation with youth."

"Well--youth is a beautiful thing--is it not?" He smiled into her own

beautiful face. "But, if you will notice, many of our novelists,

capable of real psychology, carry their heroines over into their second

youth, and you can almost hear their sigh of relief when they get them

there."

"Yes, but they are still behind the European novelists, who find women

interesting at any age, and their intelligent readers agree with them.

Young women have little psychology. They are too fluid."

"Quite right. But I am afraid we are too young a country to tolerate

middle-aged heroines. We are steeped in conventionalism, for all our

fads. We have certain cast-iron formulae for life, and associate love

with youth alone. I think we have a vague idea that autumnal love is

rather indecent."

"And you--yourself?" She looked at him speculatively. "Are you too

obsessed?"

"I? Good lord, no. I was in love with a woman of forty when I was

seventeen."

His eyes were glowing into hers and she demanded abruptly: "Do you

think I am forty?"

"Rather not!"

"Well, I am young," she said with a deep sigh of content. "But look!

I see nothing, but I see everything."

Clavering glanced about him. Every neck in the boxes and neighboring

seats was craned. It was evident that the people in front--and no

doubt behind--were listening intently, although they could have caught

no more than an occasional word of the murmured conversation. Eyes

across the aisle, when not distended with surprise, glared at him. He

laughed softly.

"I am the best hated man in New York tonight." Then he asked abruptly:

"If you wish to avoid fashionable society why not see something of

this? It would be quite a new experience and vary the monotony of

books and plays."

"I may--some time, if you will kindly arrange it. But I am not a

stranger to the cognoscenti. In London, of course, they are received,

sought after. In Paris not so much, but one still meets them.--the

most distinguished. In Berlin the men might go to court but not the

women. In Vienna--well, genius will not give quarterings. But alas!

so many gifted people seem to come out of the bourgeoisie, or lower

down still--whether they are received or not depends largely on their

table manners."

"Oh, I assure you, our cognoscenti have very good table manners indeed!"

"I am sure of it," she said graciously. "I have an idea that American

table manners are the best in the world. Is it true that one never

sees toothpicks on the table here?"

"Good lord, yes!"

"Well, you see them on every aristocratic table in Europe, royalty not

excepted."

"One more reason for revolution---- Oh! Hang it!"

The lights had gone out. Clavering half rose, then settled himself

back and folded his arms. A man stood over him. "Just take my seat,

Billy, will you?" he asked casually of the eminent critic. "It's only

two back."

The eminent critic gave him a look of hate, emitted a noise that

resembled a hiss, hesitated long enough to suggest violence, then with

the air of a bloodhound with his tail between his legs, slunk up the

aisle.

"Will you tell me how you always manage to get one of these prize

seats?" asked Clavering at the fall of the second curtain. "Nothing in

New York is more difficult of attainment than a good seat--any

seat--for a first-night. All these people, including myself, have a

pull of some sort--know the author, star, manager. Many of us receive

notifications long in advance."

"Judge Trent has a pull, as you call it."

"That explains it. There has been almost as much speculation on that

point as about your own mysterious self. Well, this time I suppose I

must. But I'm coming back."

He gave Mr. Dinwiddie his seat and went out for a cigarette. The foyer

was full of people and he was surrounded at once. Who was she? Where

had he met her? Dog that he was to keep her to himself! Traitor! He

satisfied their curiosity briefly. He happened to know Judge Trent,

who was her trustee. His acquaintance with the lady was only a week

old. Well, he hadn't thought to mention it to such friends as he had

happened to meet. Been too busy digging up matter for that infernal

column. Yes, he thought he could manage to introduce them to her

later. She had brought no letters and as she was a Virginian by birth

and had gone abroad in her childhood and married a foreigner as soon as

she grew up she knew practically no one in New York and didn't seem to

wish to know any one. But he fancied she was getting rather bored.

She had been here for a month--resting--before she even went to the

theatre. Oh, yes, she could be quite animated. Was interested in

everything one would expect of a woman of her intelligence. But the

war had tired her out. She had seen no one but Judge Trent until the

past week. . . .

He kept one eye on the still resentful Abbott, who refused to enhance

his triumph by joining his temporary court, and slipped away before the

beginning of the last act. Dinwiddie resigned his seat with a sigh but

looked flushed and happy.

"Poor old codger," thought Clavering as he received a welcoming smile,

and then he told her of the excitement in the foyer.

"But that is amusing!" she said. "How naïve people are after all, even

in a great city like New York."

"Oh, people as active mentally as this crowd never grow blasé, however

they may affect it. But surely you had your triumphs in Europe."

"Oh, yes. Once an entire house--it was at the opera--rose as I entered

my box at the end of the first act. But that was a thousand years

ago--like everything else before the war."

"That must be an experience a woman never forgets."

"It is sometimes sad to remember it."

"Dinwiddie tells me that your cousin, who was Mary Ogden, once had a

similar experience. It certainly must be a sad memory for her."

"Yes, Mary was one of the great beauties of Europe in her day--and of a

fascination! Men went mad over her--but mad! She took growing old

very hard. Her husband was handsome and attractive, but--well,

fortunately he preferred other women, and was soon too indifferent to

Mary to be jealous. He was the sort of man no woman could hold, but

Mary soon cared as little about him. And she had her consolations!

She could pick and choose. It was a sad day for Mary when men left her

for younger women."

"But I thought that European men were not such blind worshippers of

youth as we are?"

"Yes, within reason. Mary was too intellectual, too brilliant, too

well-informed on every subject that is discussed in salons, not to

attract men always. But with a difference! Quite elderly women in

Europe have _liaisons_, but alas! they can no longer send men off their

heads. It is technique meeting technique, intellectual companionship,

blowing on old ashes--or creating passion with the imagination. Life

is very sad for the women who have made a cult of men, and the cult of

men is the European woman's supreme achievement."

The delayed curtain rose and the house was silent. First-nighters,

unlike less distinguished audiences, never disgrace themselves by

whispering and chattering while the actors are on the stage.

At the end of this, the last act, while the audience, now on their

feet, were wildly applauding and fairly howling for the author of "the

first authentic success of the season," Clavering and Madame Zattiany

went swiftly up the aisle. A few others also hastened out, less

interested in authors than in taxi-cabs.

He handed her into her car and she invited him to enter and return with

her for a sandwich and a whiskey-and-soda. He hesitated a moment.

"I'll go with pleasure," he said. "But I think I'll walk.

It--it--would be better."

"Oh!" A curious expression that for the second it lasted seemed to

banish both youth and loveliness spread even to her nostrils. Sardonic

amusement hardly described it. Then it vanished and she said sweetly:

"You are very considerate. I shall expect you."

He did not walk. He took a taxi.