He plunged down the steps into a snowstorm. Even during his
precipitate retreat he had realized the advisability of telephoning for
a taxi, but had been incapable of the anti-climax. He pulled his hat
over his eyes, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way
hastily toward Park Avenue. There was not a cab in sight. Nor was
there a rumble in the tunnel; no doubt the cars were snow-bound. He
hesitated only a moment: it would hardly take him longer to walk to his
hotel than to the Grand Central Station, but he crossed over to Madison
Avenue at once, for it was bitter walking and there was a bare chance
of picking up a cab returning from one of the hotels.
But the narrow street between its high dark walls looked like a
deserted mountain pass rapidly filling with snow. The tall
street-lamps shed a sad and ghostly beam. They might have been the
hooded torches of cave dwellers sheltering from enemies and the storm
in those perpendicular fastnesses. Far down, a red sphere glowed
dimly, exalting the illusion. He almost fancied he could see the
out-posts of primeval forests bending over the cañon and wondered why
the "Poet of Manhattan" had never immortalized a scene at once so
sinister and so lovely.
And no stillness of a high mountain solitude had ever been more
intense. Not even a muffled roar from trains on the distant "L's."
Clavering wondered if he really were in New York. The whole evening
had been unreal enough. Certainly all that was prosaic and ugly and
feverish had been obliterated by what it was no flight of fancy to call
white magic. That seething mass of humanity, that so often looked as
if rushing hither and thither with no definite purpose, driven merely
by the obsession of speed, was as supine in its brief privacy as its
dead. In spite of the fever in him he felt curiously uplifted--and
glad to be alone. There are moods and solitudes when a man wants no
woman, however much he may be wanting one particular woman. . . . But
the mood was ephemeral; he had been too close to her a moment before.
Moreover, she was still unpossessed. . . . She seemed to take shape
slowly in the white whirling snow, as white and imponderable. . . . A
Nordic princess drifting northward over her steppes. . . . God! Would
he ever get her? . . . If he did not it would be because one of them
was qualifying for another incarnation.
He walked down the avenue as rapidly as possible, his hands in his
pockets, his head bent to the wind, no longer transported; forcing his
mind to dwell on the warmth of his rooms and his bed. . . . His head
ached. He'd go to the office tomorrow and write his column there.
Then think things out. How was he to win such a woman? Make her sure
of herself? Convert her doubts into a passionate certainty? She, with
her highly technical past! Make no mistakes? If he made a precipitate
ass of himself--what comparisons! . . . His warm bed . . . the
complete and personal isolation of his rooms . . . he had never given
even a tea to women . . . he gave his dinners in restaurants. . . .
How many more blocks? The snow was thicker. He couldn't even see the
arcade of Madison Square Garden, although a faint diffused radiance
high in air was no doubt the crown of lights on the Metropolitan
Tower. . . . Had he made a wrong move in bolting----?
His thoughts and counter-thoughts came to an abrupt end. At the corner
of Thirtieth Street he collided with a small figure in a fur coat and
nearly knocked it over. He was for striding on with a muttered
apology, when the girl caught him by the arm with a light laugh.
"Lee Clavering! What luck! Take me home."
He was looking down into the dark naughty little face of Janet
Oglethorpe, granddaughter of the redoubtable Jane.
"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked stupidly.
"Perhaps I'll tell you and perhaps I won't. On second thoughts don't
take me home. Take me to one of those all-night restaurants. That's
just the one thing I haven't seen, and I'm hungry."
He subtly became an uncle. "I'll do nothing of the sort. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself--alone in the streets at this hour of the night.
It must be one o'clock. I shall take you home. I suppose you have a
latch-key, but for two cents I'd ring the bell and hand you over to
your mother."
"Mother went to Florida today and dad's duck-hunting in South Carolina.
Aunt Mollie's too deaf to hear doorbells and believes anything I tell
her."
"I am astonished that your mother left you behind to your own devices."
"I wouldn't go. She's given me up--used to my devices. Besides, I've
one or two on her and she doesn't dare give me away to dad. He thinks
I'm a darling spoilt child. Not that I'd mind much if he didn't, but
it's more convenient."
"You little wretch! I believe you've been drinking."
"So I have! So I have! But I've got an asbestos lining and could
stand another tall one. Ah!" Her eyes sparkled. "Suppose you take me
to your rooms----"
"I'll take you home----"
"You'll take me to one of those all-nighters----"
"I shall not."
"Then ta! ta! I'll go home by myself. I've had too good a time
tonight to bother with old fogies."
She started up the street and Clavering hesitated but a moment. Her
home was on East Sixty-fifth Street. Heaven only knew what might
happen to her. Moreover, although her mother was one of those women
whose insatiable demand for admiration bored him, he had no more
devoted friends than her father and her grandmother. Furthermore, his
curiosity was roused. What had the little devil been up to?
He overtook the Oglethorpe flapper and seizing her hand drew it through
his arm.
"I'll take you where you can get a sandwich," he said. "But I'll not
take you to a restaurant. Too likely to meet newspaper men."
"Anything to drink?"
"Ice cream soda."
"Good Lord!"
"You needn't drink it. But you'll get nothing else. Come along or
I'll pick you up and carry you to the nearest garage."
She trotted obediently beside him, a fragile dainty figure; carried
limply, however, and little more distinguished than flappers of
inferior origin. He led her to a rather luxurious delicatessen not far
from his hotel, kept by enterprising Italians who never closed their
doors. They seated themselves uncomfortably at the high counter, and
the sleepy attendant served them with sandwiches, then retired to the
back of the shop. He was settling himself to alert repose when Miss
Oglethorpe suddenly changed her mind and ordered a chocolate ice cream
soda. Then she ordered another, and she ate six sandwiches, a slice of
cake and two bananas.
"Great heaven!" exclaimed Clavering. "You must have the stomach of an
ostrich."
"Can eat nails and drink fire water."
"Well, you won't two years hence, and you'll look it, too."
"Oh, no I won't. I'll marry when I'm nineteen and a half and settle
down."
"I should say you were heading the other way. Where have you been
tonight?"
"Donny Farren gave a party in his rooms and passed out just as he was
about to take me home. I loosened his collar and put a pillow under
his head, but I couldn't lift him, even to the sofa. Too fat."
[Illustration: Returning home one night Clavering (Conway Tearle) found
Janet Oglethorpe (Clara Bow), daughter of his old friend, in a
semi-intoxicated condition. (_Screen version of "The Black Oxen."_)]
"I suppose you pride yourself on being a good sport."
"Rather. If Donny'd been ill I'd have stayed with him all night, but
he was dead to the world."
"You say he had a party. Why didn't some of the others take you home?"
"Ever hear about three being a crowd? Donny, naturally, was all for
taking me home, and didn't show any signs of collapse till the last
minute."
"But I should think that for decency's sake you'd all have gone down
together."
"Lord! How old-fashioned you are. I was finishing a cigarette and
never thought of it." She opened a little gold mesh bag, took out a
cigarette and lit it. Her cheeks were flushed under the rouge and her
large black eyes glittered in her fluid little face. She was one of
the beauties of the season's débutantes, but scornful of nature. Her
olive complexion was thickly powdered and there was a delicate smudge
of black under her lower lashes and even on her eyelids. He had never
seen her quite so blatantly made up before, but then he had seen little
of her since the beginning of her first season. He rarely went to
parties, and she was almost as rarely in her own home or her
grandmother's. Her short hair curled about her face. In spite of her
paint she looked like a child--a greedy child playing with life.
"Look here!" he said. "How far do you go?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"I should. Not for personal reasons, for girls of your age bore me to
extinction, but you've a certain sociological interest. I wonder if
you are really any worse than your predecessors?"
"I guess girls have always been human enough, but we have more
opportunities. We've made 'em. This is our age and we're enjoying it
to the limit. God! what stupid times girls must have had--some of them
do yet. They're naturally goody-goody, or their parents are too much
for them. Not many, though. Parents have taken a back seat."
"I don't quite see what you get out of it--guzzling, and smoking your
nerves out by the roots, and making yourselves cheap with men little
older than yourselves."
"You don't see, I suppose, why girls should have their fling, or"--her
voice wavered curiously--"why youth takes naturally to youth. I
suppose you think that is a cruel thing for a girl to say."
"Not in the least," he answered cheerfully. "Don't mind a bit. But
what do you get out of it--that's what I'm curious to know."
She tossed her head and blew a perfect ring. "Don't you know that
girls never really enjoyed life before?"
"It depends upon the point of view, I should think."
"No, there's a lot more in it than you guess. The girls used to sit
round waiting for men to call and wondering if they'd condescend to
show up at the next dance; while the men fairly raced after the girls
with whom they could have a free and easy time--no company manners, no
chaperons, no prudish affectations about kisses and things. No fear of
shocking if they wanted to let go--the strain must have been awful.
You know what men are. They like to call a spade a spade and be damned
to it. Our sort didn't have a chance. They couldn't compete. So, we
made up our minds to compete in the only way possible. We leave off
our corsets at dances so they can get a new thrill out of us, then sit
out in an automobile and drink and have little petting parties of two.
And we slip out and have an occasional lark like tonight. We're not to
be worried about, either."
"Why cryptic after your really admirable frankness? But there's always
a point beyond which women never will go when confessing their
souls. . . . I suppose you think you're as hard as nails. Do you
really imagine that you will ever be able to fall in love and marry and
want children?"
"Don't men?"
"Ancient standards are not annihilated in one generation."
"There's got to be a beginning to everything, hasn't there? One would
think the world stood still, to hear you talk. But anything new always
makes the fogies sick."
"Nothing makes _me_ as sick as your bad manners--you and all your
tribe. Men, at least, don't lose their breeding if they choose to sow
wild oats. But women go the whole hog or none."
"Other times, other manners. We make our own, and you have to put up
with them whether you like it or not. See?"
"I see that you are even sillier than I thought. You need nothing so
much as a sound spanking."
"Your own manners are none too good. You've handed me one insult after
another."
"I've merely talked to you as your father would if he were not blind.
Besides, it would probably make you sick to be 'respected.' Come
along. We'll go round to a garage and get a taxi. Why on earth didn't
you ring for a taxi from Farren's?"
"I tried to, but it's an apartment house and there was no one
downstairs to make the connection. Too late. So I footed it." She
yawned prodigiously. "I'm ready at last for my little bunk. Hope
you've enjoyed this more than I have. You'd be a scream at a petting
party."
Clavering paid his small account and they issued into the storm once
more. It was impossible to talk. In the taxi she went to sleep.
Thank Heaven! He had had enough of her. Odious brat. More than once
he had had a sudden vision of Mary Zattiany during that astonishing
conversation at the counter. The "past" she had suggested to his
tormented mind was almost literary by contrast. She, herself, a queen
granting favors, beside this little fashionable near-strumpet. They
didn't breathe the same air, nor walk on the same plane. Who, even if
this little fool were merely demi-vierge, would hesitate between them?
One played the game in the grand manner, the other like a glorified
gutter-snipe. But he was thankful for the diversion, and when he
reached his own bed he fell asleep immediately and did not turn over
for seven hours.