Madame Zattiany stood before the long old-fashioned pier glass in her
bedroom, a large cheerful room recently done over in white chintz sprayed
with violets. The bright winter sun streamed in on a scene of confusion.
Gowns were thrown over every chair and hats covered the bed. They all
had the air of being tossed aside impatiently, as indeed they had been,
and the maid with a last comprehensive look at her mistress began to
gather them up and carry them to the large wardrobes in the dressing-room.
Mary regarded herself critically. She had wished (not without malice!)
to emphasize her youthful appearance, but not at the expense of dignity,
and she felt that she had achieved the subtle combination in the frock of
soft black velvet cut with long, sweeping lines and of an excessive
simplicity; and a black velvet hat of medium size with a drooping brim
that almost covered one eye. The long white gloves disappeared into her
sleeves somewhere above the elbow and she wore a single string of pearls.
She looked very Parisian, very elegant, as Mrs. Oglethorpe would have
expressed it, and very assured. In spite of the mocking gleam in the one
visible eye her face was serene and proud.
She had felt some trepidation on Tuesday when she had sought out Mrs.
Oglethorpe and made her explanations, but she felt none whatever at the
prospect of meeting these other twelve old friends. Whether they
approved or resented, were indulgent or elevated their respectable noses
and intimated, "You are no longer one of _us_," was a matter of profound
indifference to Mary Zattiany. She would have avoided them all if it had
been possible, but since she had deliberately permitted her hand to be
forced she would take the situation humorously and amuse herself with
whatever drama it might afford.
Elinor Goodrich. Mabel Lawrence. Polly Vane. Isabel Ruyler. Ellen de
Lacey. Louise Prevost. She had been so intimate with all of them, not
only in the schoolroom but when they were all in Society together. Now
only her somewhat cynical sense of anticipation mitigated utter boredom
at the thought of meeting them again. Of the other six she had still
vaguer memories, although she recalled having heard that the beauty of
her own last season, Lily Armstrong, had married one of the Tracys. She
also was to be at the luncheon.
What on earth was she to talk to them about at the table? She could
hardly tell them the story they expected before the servants. That would
be for the later hour in the drawing-room--or would it be in that absurd
old room of Jane's upstairs?
She recalled Elinor Tracy (Goodrich) and her enthusiastic admiration,
which she had accepted as a matter-of-course, and given little beyond
amiable tolerance in return. As she had told Clavering, she was not a
woman's woman. She hoped Nelly had outgrown "gush." For some ten years
after her marriage she had met her from time to time abroad, but she had
not seen her for so long that she doubted if she would recognize her if
they passed on the street. The only one of her old friends for whom she
retained either interest or affection was Jane Oglethorpe, who, ten years
older than herself, with a commanding personality unfolding rapidly at
the dawn of their intimacy, had attracted deeply but subtly her own
untried force of character and ruthless will. Embarrassment over, she
had enjoyed their long hour together, and was glad to renew the intimacy,
to find that her old friend's warm affection had lost nothing with the
years. And she had found her more interesting than in her youth.
She sighed a little as she looked back on her long hours of almost
unbroken solitude in this old house. She had been comparatively happy at
first--a blessed interval of rest and peace in this marvellously wealthy
and prosperous city where the poor were kept out of sight, at least,
where all the men were whole and where one never saw a gaunt woman's
appealing eyes, or emaciated ragged children. Those untroubled hours had
fled for ever and astonishment, impotent fury, and dire mental conflict
had followed, but nevertheless she had dreamed--dreamed--and been glad of
her freedom from social and all other duties. Now, probably these women
and many more would swarm here.
Her mouth twisted as her maid helped her into the soft gray coat trimmed
with blue fox. Ordeal! That would come on Saturday night. No wonder
she was merely amused and totally indifferent today!
When she arrived at the house in Gramercy Park, purposely late, to give
her entrance the effect Mrs. Oglethorpe had commanded, she heard an
excited buzz of voices in the drawing-room as she was being relieved of
her wrap. As she entered it ceased abruptly and she heard several hardly
perceptible gasps. But the pause, before they all crowded about her, was
too brief to be noticeable, and they shook her hand heartily or kissed
her warmly. If their eyes were perhaps too studiously expressionless,
their words and manner might have been those of old friends welcoming
back one who had been long absent and nothing more. Conflicting
emotions, born of undying femininity, were not evident for the moment.
Mrs. Goodrich cried out at once how wonderfully well she looked, Mrs.
Lawrence asked if she had stopped in Paris for her clothes, and Mrs. Vane
if she found New York much changed. Nothing could have gone off better.
Mrs. Oglethorpe, in old-pile black velvet as usual, with a front and
high-boned collar of yellow rose-point lace, stood in the background
watching the comedy with a frank sardonic grin. If her guests had been
faithless to the traditions in which they had been bred, she would have
felt angry and ashamed, but the automatic manner in which they rose to
the occasion and took the blow standing (Mrs. Oglethorpe often indulged
in the vernacular of her son, her Janet, and her Lee) made her rock with
silent mirth. She knew exactly how they felt!
They were a fine-looking set of women and handsomely dressed, but they
indisputably belonged to the old régime, and even Mrs. Tracy, the
youngest of them, had something of what Mary Zattiany called that
built-up look. They were fashionable but not smart. They carried
themselves with a certain conscious rigidity and aloofness which even
their daughters had abandoned and was a source of disrespectful amusement
to their iniquitous granddaughters. Although Mrs. Goodrich, Mrs.
Lawrence and Mrs. Tracy were more up to date in their general appearance,
wearing slightly larger hats and fewer feathers, with narrow dog collars
instead of whaleboned net, they were as disdainful as the others of every
art that aims to preserve something of the effect of youth; although they
were spickingly groomed. They accepted life as it was, and they had
accepted it at every successive stage, serene in the knowledge that in
this as in other things they were above the necessity of compromise and
subterfuge. They were the fixed quantities in a world of shifting values.
In age they ranged from fifty-six to sixty-two, with the exception of
Mrs. Tracy, who was a mere fifty-two. A few were stout, the others bony
and gaunt. Their hair was white or gray. Only Mrs. Tracy, with her
fresh complexion and soft brown hair, her plump little figure encased in
modern corsets, had got on the blind side of nature, as Mrs. Oglethorpe
had told Mary. The others were frankly elderly women, but of great
dignity and distinction, some charm, and considerable honesty and
simplicity. And their loyalty never failed them.
The luncheon was by no means easy and informal. Mary, by racking her
memory, recalled the first names of most of them and never in all her
varied life had she been more sweetly amiable, made so determined an
effort to please. She might not care what they thought of her, but she
was sorry for them, they had behaved very decently, and for Jane
Oglethorpe's sake alone the occasion must be a success. She was ably
seconded by Mrs. Goodrich, who stared at her in wide-eyed admiration and
rattled off the gossip of New York, and by Mrs. Tracy, who had an
insatiable interest in diplomatic society. When she had satisfied the
latter's curiosity she led the conversation by a straight path to the
sufferings of the children of Austria and begged them to join her in
forming a relief committee. They received this philanthropic suggestion
with no apparent fervor, but it served to relieve the stiffness and
tension until they retired to the drawing-room for coffee.
They stood about for a few moments, Mary looking up at the portrait of
Jane Oglethorpe in her flaming youth. But the hostess ordered them all
to sit down and exclaimed peremptorily: "Now, Mary, tell them all about
it or I'll have a lot of fainting hysterical women on my hands. We're
still human if we are old and ugly. Go to it, as Janet would say. I
believe you have met that estimable exponent of the later New York
manner. You are no more extraordinary yourself than some of the changes
here at home, but you're more picturesque, and that's harder to swallow.
Put them out of their misery."
The ladies smiled or frowned, according to what humor the Almighty,
niggardly in his bestowal of humor, had allotted them. At all events
they were used to "Jane." Mrs. Goodrich, who had led Mary to a sofa and
seated herself beside her, took her hand and pressed it affectionately,
as if she were encouraging her on the way to the operating room. "Yes,
tell us the story, darling. It is all too wonderful!"
"Do you really mean that you have never heard of this treatment?" asked
Madame Zattiany, who knew quite well that they had not. "Few things are
better known in Europe."
"We have never heard of it," said Mrs. Vane austerely. "We were totally
unprepared."
Madame Zattiany shrugged her graceful shoulders. "I have been told that
America never takes up anything new in science until it has become stale
in Europe. But women as well as men have been flocking to Vienna.
Russian princesses have pledged their jewels----"
"How romantic!" exclaimed Mrs. Goodrich, who was one of those women in
whom a certain spurious sense of romance increases with age. But Mrs.
Vane mumbled something less complimentary. She had never been romantic
in her life; and she was beginning to feel the strain.
"Well," said Madame Zattiany, "I suppose I must begin at the beginning.
I dislike holding forth, but if you will have it----"
"Don't leave out a word!" exclaimed Mrs. Tracy. "We want every detail.
You've made us feel both as young as yourself and as old as Methuselah."
Madame Zattiany smiled amiably at the one woman in the room who had
lingered in the pleasant spaces of middle age. "Very well. I'll be as
little technical as possible. . . . As you know, I ran a hospital in
Buda Pesth during the war. After the revolution broke out I was forced
to leave in secret to escape being murdered. I was on Bela Kun's
list----"
There was a sympathetic rustle in the group. This at least they could
grasp on the wing. Mrs. de Lacey interrupted to beg for exciting
details, but Mrs. Goodrich and Mrs. Tracy cried simultaneously:
"No! No! Go on--please!"
"Quite right," said Mrs. Oglethorpe, who was prepared to enjoy herself.
"We can have that later."
"I naturally went to Vienna, not only because I had some money invested
there, but because I could live in the Zattiany Palace. The old house
was difficult to keep warm, and as I was too tired and nervous to
struggle with any new problems I went at a friend's suggestion into a
sanitarium.
"The doctor in charge soon began to pay me something more than
perfunctory visits when he found that intelligent conversation after my
long dearth did me more good than harm. Finally he told me of a method
of treatment that might restore my youth, and begged me to undertake
it----"
"Ah!" There were sharp indrawn breaths. Mrs. Vane drew herself
up--figuratively, for she could hardly be more perpendicular, with her
unyielding spine, her long neck encased in whaleboned net and her lofty
head topped off with feathers. A look of hostility dawned in several
pairs of eyes, while frank distaste overspread Mrs. Ruyler's mahogany
visage. Madame Zattiany went on unperturbed.
"It may relieve your minds to hear that I was at first as indifferent as
all of you no doubt would have been. The war--and many other things--had
made me profoundly tired of life--something of course that I do not
expect you to understand. And now that the war was over and my
usefulness at an end, I had nothing to look forward to but the
alleviation of poverty by means of my wealth when it was restored, and
this could be done by trustees. Life had seemed to me to consist mainly
of repetitions. I had run the gamut. But I began to be interested, at
first by the fact that science might be able to accomplish a miracle
where centuries of woman's wit had failed----"
"Wit?" snorted Mrs. Vane. "Ignoble vanity."
"Well, call it that if you like, but the desire to be young again or to
achieve its simulacrum, in both men and women, has something of the
dignity which the centuries give to all antiques. However, at the time,
you will also be glad to know, I was far more interested in the prospect
of reënergizing my worn out mind and body. I was so mortally tired! And
if I had to live on, and no doubt with still much work to do in
distracted Europe----"
"But what did they _do_ to you?" cried Mrs. Tracy. "I'd have done it in
your place--yes, I would!" she said defiantly as she met the august
disgusted eye of Mrs. Vane. "I think Countess Zattiany was quite right.
What is science for, anyhow?"
"Go on! Go on!" murmured Mrs. Goodrich. She was too fat and comfortable
to have any desire to return to youth with its tiresome activities, but
all her old romantic affection for Mary Ogden had revived and she was
even more interested than curious.
"I am trying to! Well, I must tell you that the explanation of my
condition, as of others of my age, was that the endocrines----"
"The what?" The demand was simultaneous.
"The ductless glands."
"Oh," said Mrs. Prevost vaguely, "I've seen something----"
"It is all Greek to me," said Mrs. Vane, who felt that unreasoning
resentment common to the minor-informed for the major-informed. "You
promised to avoid technical terms."
Madame Zattiany explained in the simplest language she could command the
meaning and the function of the ductless glands. The more intelligent
among them looked gratified, for the painless achievement of fresh
knowledge is a pleasant thing. Madame Zattiany went on patiently: "These
glands in my case had undergone a natural process of exhaustion. In
women the slower functioning of the endocrines is coincident with the
climacteric, as they have been dependent for stimulation upon certain
ovarian cells. The idea involved is that the stimulation of these
exhausted cells would cause the other glands to function once more at
full strength and a certain rejuvenation ensue as a matter of course;
unless, of course, they had withered beyond the power of science. I was
a promising subject, for examination proved that my organs were healthy,
my arteries soft; and I was not yet sixty. Only experimentation could
reveal whether or not there was still any life left in the cells,
although I responded favorably to the preliminary tests. The upshot was
that I consented to the treatment----"
"Yes? Yes?" Every woman in the room now sat forward, no longer old
friends or rivals, affectionate or resentful, nor the victims of
convention solidified into sharp black and white by the years. They were
composite female.
"It consisted of the concentration of powerful Röntgen--what you call
X-Rays--on that portion of the body covering the ovaries----"
"How horrible!" "Did you feel as if you were being electrocuted?" "Are
you terribly scarred?"
"Not at all. I felt nothing whatever, and there was nothing to cause
scars----"
"But I thought that the X-Rays----"
"Oh, do be quiet, Louisa," exclaimed Mrs. Tracy impatiently. "Please go
on, Countess Zattiany."
"As I said, the application was painless, and if no benefit results,
neither will any harm be done when the Rays are administered by a
conscientious expert. My final consent, as I told you, was due to the
desire to regain my old will power and vitality. I was extremely
skeptical about any effect on my personal appearance. During the first
month I felt so heavy and dull that, in spite of assurances that these
were favorable symptoms, I was secretly convinced that I had forfeited
what little mental health I had retained; but was consoled by the fact
that I slept all night and a part of the day: I had suffered from
insomnia since my duties at the hospital had ended----"
"But surely you must have been nervous and terrified?" All of these
women had seen and suffered illness, but all from time-honored
visitations, even if under new and technical names, and they had suffered
in common with millions of others, which, if it offended their sense of
exclusiveness, at least held the safeguard of normalcy. They felt a
chill of terror, in some cases of revulsion, as Madame Zattiany went on
to picture this abnormal renaissance going on in the body unseen and
unfelt; in the body of one who had been cast in the common mould, subject
to the common fate, and whom they had visioned--when they thought about
her at all--as growing old with themselves; as any natural Christian
woman would. It was not only mysterious and terrifying but subtly
indecent. Mrs. Vane drew back from her eager poise. Almost it seemed to
the amused Mrs. Oglethorpe that she withdrew her skirts. Drama was for
the stage or the movies; at all events drama in private life, among the
elect, was objective, external, and, however offensive, particularly when
screamed in the divorce court, it was, at least, like the old diseases,
remarkably normal. But an interior drama; not to put too fine a point on
it, a drama of one's insides, and especially one that dealt with the
raising from the dead of that section which refined women ceased to
discuss after they had got rid of it--it was positively ghoulish. Drama
of any sort in this respectable old drawing-room, which might have been
photographed as the sarcophagus of all the Respectabilities, was
extremely offensive. And what a drama! Never had these old walls
listened to such a tale. Mrs. Vane and others like her had long since
outgrown the prudery of their mothers, who had alluded in the most
distant manner to the most decent of their internal organs, and called a
leg a limb; but the commonplace was their rock, and they had a sense of
sinking foundations.
Madame Zattiany, who knew exactly what was passing in their minds,
continued placidly: "Almost suddenly at the end of the fourth or fifth
week, it seemed to me that an actual physical weight that had depressed
my brain lifted, and I experienced a decided activity of mind and body,
foreign to both for many years. Nevertheless, the complete reënergizing
of both was very slow, the rejuvenation of appearance slower still.
Worn-out cells do not expand rapidly. The mental change was pronounced
long before the physical, except that I rarely felt fatigue, although I
spent many hours a day at the relief stations."
She paused and let her cool ironic glance wander over the intent faces
before her. "Not only," she went on with a slow emphasis, which made
them prick up their ears, "was the renewed power manifest in mental
activity, in concentration, in memory, but that distaste for new ideas,
for reorientation, had entirely disappeared. People growing old are
condemned for prejudice, smugness, hostility to progress, to the purposes
and enthusiasms of youth; but this attitude is due to aging glands alone,
all things being equal. They _cannot_ dig up the sunken tracks from the
ruts in their brain and lay them elsewhere; and they instinctively
protect themselves by an affectation of calm and scornful superiority, of
righteous conservatism, which deceives themselves; much as I had
assumed--and learned to feel--an attitude of profound indifference to my
vanished youth, and refused to attempt any transparent disguise with
cosmetics."
Intentness relaxed once more. Twelve pairs of eyes expressed at least
half as many sentiments. Mrs. Vane gazed at Mary Ogden, whose insolence
she had never forgotten, with indignant hostility; Mrs. Poole, who always
dressed as if she had a tumor, but whose remnant of a once lovely
complexion indicated perfect health, maintained her slight tolerant
smile; its effect somewhat abridged by the fact that the small turban of
bright blue feathers topping her large face had slipped to one side.
Mrs. Goodrich looked startled and gazed deprecatingly at her friends.
Mrs. Lawrence's eyes snapped, and Mrs. de Lacey looked thoughtful. Only
Mrs. Tracy spoke.
"Wonderful! I feel more like Methuselah than ever. But it certainly is
a relief to know what is the matter with me. Do go on, Mary--I may call
you Mary? I only came out the year you were married--and you cannot
imagine what a satisfaction it is to know that I am younger than
you--were once. I've never done any of those things one reads about to
keep looking young except cold cream my face at night, but I've often
felt as if I'd like to----"
"Do stop babbling, Lily Tracy!" exclaimed Mrs. Vane, who, however
disgusted, was quite as curious as the others to hear the rest of the
tale. And Mrs. Goodrich said softly:
"Yes, go on, Mary, darling. I am sure the most thrilling part is yet to
come. You see how interested your old friends all are."
Madame Zattiany moved her cool insolent eyes to Mrs. Vane's set visage.
"The time came when I knew that youth was returning to my face as well as
to the hidden processes of my body; and I can assure you that it excited
me far more than the renewed functioning of my brain. The treatment
induces flesh, and as I had been excessively thin, my skin, as flesh
accumulated, grew taut and lines disappeared. My eyes, which had long
been dull, had regained something of their old brilliancy under the
renaissance of brain and blood, and that was accentuated. My hair----"
"Do you mean to say that it restores hair to its natural color?" demanded
Mrs. Tracy, who had been plucking out bleached hairs for the past year.
"That would----"
"It does not. But my hair is the shade that never turns gray; and of
course my teeth had always been kept in perfect order. I should never in
any circumstances be a fat woman, but the active functioning of the
glands gave me just enough flesh to complete the outer renovation. My
complexion, after so many years of neglect, naturally needed scientific
treatment of another sort, but that was still to be had in Vienna."
"Ah!" The exclamation was sharp. Here, at least, was something they
knew all about and systematically discountenanced. "Do you mean that you
had your skin ripped off?" asked Mrs. Ruyler.
"Certainly not. The skin was simply softened and reinvigorated by
massage and the proper applications."
They were too proud to ask for details, and Mrs. de Lacey, who was stout,
glanced triumphantly at Mrs. Ruyler, who was stouter. "You mean, Mary,
that one has to be thin for this treatment to be a success?"
"That I cannot say. I really do not know what the treatment would do to
a stout woman of middle or old age. The internal change would be the
same, but, although additional flesh can be kept down by medicaments and
diet, I doubt if there would be a complete restoration of the outlines of
face and neck. A woman of sixty, with sagging flesh and distended skin,
might once more look forty, if the treatment were successful, but hardly
as young as I do. I was particularly fortunate in having withered.
Still, I cannot say. As I told you, many women of all ages and sizes
took the treatment while I was in Vienna. But they are too scattered for
me at least to obtain any data on the results. I knew none of them
personally and I was too busy to seek them out and compare notes. . . .
But with me----" She leaned back and lit a cigarette, looking over her
audience with mischievous eyes. "With me it has been a complete
success--mentally, physically----"
"Yes, and how long will it last?" shot out Mrs. Ruyler. She was as
strong as a horse and as alert mentally as she had ever been, and her
complete indifference to rejuvenation in any of its forms gave her a
feeling of superior contempt for all those European women who had swarmed
to Vienna like greedy flies at the scent of molasses--no doubt to undergo
terrible torments that Mary Zattiany would not admit. But her objective
curiosity on the subject of youth was insatiable and she read everything
that appeared in the newspapers and magazines about it, not neglecting
the advertisements. If she had sent for a facial masseuse she would have
felt that she had planted a worm at the root of the family tree, but the
subject was unaccountably interesting.
Mary Zattiany, who understood her complex perfectly, shrugged her
graceful shoulders. "It is too soon to reply with assurance. The method
was only discovered some six years ago. But the eminent biologists who
have given profound study to the subject estimate that it will last for
ten years at least, when it can be renewed once at all events. Of course
the end must come. It was not intended that man should live for ever.
And who would wish it?"
"Not I, certainly," said Mrs. Ruyler sententiously. "Well, I must admit
it has been a complete success in your case. That is not saying I
approve of what you have done. You know how we have always regarded such
things. If you had lived your life in New York instead of in
Europe--notoriously loose in such matters--I feel convinced that you
would never have done such a thing--exhausted or not. Moreover, I am a
religious woman and I do not believe in interfering with the will of the
Almighty."
"Then why have a doctor when you are ill? Are not illnesses the act of
God? They certainly are processes of nature."
"I have always believed in letting nature take her course," said Mrs.
Ruyler firmly. "But of course when one is ill, that is another
matter----"
"Is it?" Madame Zattiany's eye showed a militant spark. "Or is it
merely that you are so accustomed to the convention of calling in a
doctor that you have never wasted thought on the subject? But is not
medicine a science? When you are ill you invoke the aid of science in
the old way precisely as I did in the new one. The time will come when
this treatment I have undergone will be so much a matter of course that
it will cause no more discussion than going under the knife for
cancer--or for far less serious ailments. I understand that you, Polly,
had an operation two years ago for gastric ulcer, an operation called by
the very long and very unfamiliar name, gastroenterostomy. Did you
feel--for I assume that you agree with Isabel in most things--that you
were flying in the face of the Almighty? Or were you only too glad to
take advantage of the progress of science?"
Mrs. Vane merely grunted. Mrs. Ruyler exclaimed crossly, "Oh, no one
ever could argue with you, Mary Ogden. The truth is," she added, in a
sudden burst of enlightenment that astonished herself, "I don't suppose
any of us would mind if you didn't look younger than our daughters. That
sticks in our craw. Why not admit it?"
Mrs. Oglethorpe chuckled. She and Isabel Ruyler snapped at each other
like two belligerent old cats every time they crossed each other's path,
but, with the exception of Mary Ogden, whom she loved, she liked her
better than any of her old friends.
But once more Mrs. Vane drew herself up (figuratively). "Speak for
yourself. It may be that I am too old to accept new ideas, but this one
certainly seems to me downright immoral and indecent. This is not
intended to reflect on you personally, Mary, and of course you were more
or less demoralized by your close contact with the war. I mean the
idea--the thing--itself. We may call in doctors and surgeons when we are
in bodily discomfort, and be thankful that they are more advanced than in
our mothers' time, when people died of appendicitis every day in the week
and called it inflammation of the bowels. But no one can tell me that
rejuvenation is not against the laws of nature. What are you going to do
with this new youth--I never saw any one look less indifferent to
life!--make fools of men again--of our sons?"
"Who can tell?" asked Mary maliciously. "Could anything be more amusing
than to come back to New York after thirty-four years and be a belle
again, with the sons and grandsons of my old friends proposing to me?"
"Do you really mean that?" Mrs. Vane almost rose. She recalled that her
youngest son had met Madame Zattiany in Mrs. Oglethorpe's box on Monday
night and had been mooning about the house ever since. "If I thought
that----"
"Well, what would you do, Polly?" Mary laughed outright. "Your
son--Harry is his name, is it not?--is remarkably good-looking and very
charming. After all, where could you find a safer and more understanding
wife for him than a woman who has had not only the opportunity to know
the world and men like the primer, but looks--is--so young that he is
bound to forget it and be led like a lamb? Girls, those uncharted seas,
are always a risk----"
"Stop tormenting Polly," exclaimed Mrs. Oglethorpe. "Mary has no
intention of marrying any one. She's only waiting for her estate to be
settled in order to return to Europe and devote herself to certain plans
of reconstruction----"
"Is that true?"
"Quite true," said Madame Zattiany, smiling. "Don't worry, Polly. If I
marry it will be some one you are not interested in too personally, and
it is doubtful if I ever marry at all. There's a tremendous work to be
done in Europe, and so far as lies in my power I shall do my share. If I
marry it will be some one who can help me. I can assure you I long since
ceased to be susceptible, particularly to young men. Remember that while
my _brain_ has been rejuvenated with the rest of my physical structure,
my _mind_ is as old as it was before the treatment." She gave a slight
unnoticed shiver. "My memory, that for years before the war was dull and
inactive, is now as vigorous as ever."
Several of the women recalled those old stories of Countess Zattiany's
youth, and looked at her sharply. There was a general atmosphere of
uneasiness in the large respectable room. But whether or not they gave
her the benefit of the doubt, they had always given her due credit for
neither being found out nor embarrassing her virtuous friends with
confidences.
Mrs. Tracy was the first to break the silence. "But you will come to all
of us as long as you do stay, will you not? I do so want to give you a
dinner next week."
"Yes, yes, indeed." The chorus was eager, and sincere enough. After
all, nothing could alter the fact that she was one of them.
"Oh, I have enjoyed meeting you all again, and I am hoping to see more of
you." Madame Zattiany felt that she could do no less than be gracious.
"I have become a very quiet person, but I will go with pleasure."
"You must let us see you daily while you are with us," cried Mrs.
Goodrich, her spirits soaring at the prospect. As Mary stood up and
adjusted her hat before the mirror she felt that she had successfully
distracted their attention from a quick sigh of utter boredom. "You are
too kind, Nelly," she murmured, "but then you always were."
"Yes, go, Mary," said Mrs. Oglethorpe peremptorily, and rising also.
"Clear out and let them talk you over. They'll burst if you don't.
Human nature can stand just so much and no more."
Madame Zattiany took her leave amid much laughter, more or less
perfunctory, and one and all, whatever their reactions, insisted that she
must give her old friends the pleasure of entertaining her, and of seeing
her as often as possible as long as she remained in New York.
She escaped at last. That was over. But tomorrow night! Tomorrow
night. Every wheel and tire seemed to be revolving out the words. Well,
if he were repelled and revolted, no doubt it would be for the best. She
had made up her mind to spare him nothing. He would hear far more than
she had told those women. Certainly he should be given full opportunity
to come to his senses. If he refused to take it, on his head be the
consequences. She would have done her part.