Madame Zattiany did not utter a word during the short walk to her house.
It was evident that she had dismissed the merry evening from her mind and
was brooding on the coming hour. At the top of the steps she handed him
the latchkey, but still lingered outside for a moment. As he took her
hand and drew her gently into the house he felt that she was trembling.
"Come," he said, his own voice shaking. "Remember that you need tell me
nothing unless you wish. This idea of confession before marriage is
infernal rot. I have not the least intention of making one of my own."
"Oh!" She gave a short harsh laugh. "I should never dream of asking for
any man's confession. They are all alike. And I must tell you. I
cannot leave you to hear it from others."
He helped her out of her wrap and she threw the lace scarf on a chair and
preceded him slowly down the hall.
"I am a coward. A coward," she thought heavily. "Have I ever felt moral
cowardice before? I don't remember. Not toward any other man who loved
me. But---- Oh, God! And I shall never see him again. How shall I
begin?"
She was totally unprepared for the beginning. She heard him shut the
library door, and then it seemed to her that her entire body was
encircled by flexible hot bars of iron and her face, her mouth, were
being flagellated. If he hadn't held her in that vise-like grip she
would have fallen. She lay back on his arm as he kissed her and for the
moment she forgot the past and the future and was happy, although she
felt dimly that life was being drained out of her. She was passive in
that fierce possessive embrace. She had lost all sense of separateness.
"I won't listen to your story," he muttered. "This is no time for talk."
His voice, hoarse and shaking as it was, broke the spell; with a sudden
lithe movement she twisted herself out of his arms. Before he realized
what was happening she had run across the room, snatched the key from the
door and locked it on the other side. He heard her run up the stairs.
Clavering did and said most of the things men do and say when balked in
mid-flight, but in a moment he took the little key from the drawer in the
table and poured himself out a whiskey and soda--he had taken almost
nothing at the party--lit a cigarette and threw himself into a chair. He
had no desire to stride up and down; he felt as if all the strength had
gone out of him. But he felt no apprehension that she had left him for
the night. Nor should he take possession of her again until she had told
her story: he reflected with what humor was left in him that when a woman
had something to say and was determined to say it, the only thing to do
was to let her talk. Words to a woman were as steam to a boiler, and no
man could control her mind until she had talked off the lid.
She was giving him time to cool off, he reflected grimly, as he glanced
at the clock. Well, he felt heavy and inert enough--hideous reaction!
He was in a condition to listen to anything. If she was determined to
work her will on him, at least he had worked his on her for a brief
moment. She knew now that in the future she might as well try to resist
death itself. Let her have her last fling.
He rose as she entered, and for the moment his heart failed him. He had
never seen even her look more like marble, and she did not meet his eyes
as she crossed the room and seated herself so that her profile would be
toward him as she talked. As she had chosen the large high-backed chair,
Clavering, knowing her love of comfort, hoped that her discourse was to
be brief.
"When I finish," she said in her low vital voice, "I shall leave the room
immediately and I must have your word that you will make no attempt to
detain me, and that you will go at once and not return until Monday
afternoon. I shall not wish to see you again until you have had time to
deliberate calmly on what I shall tell you. I do not want any
embarrassed protests from a gallant gentleman--whose confusion of mind is
second only to his chivalrous dismay. Have I your word?"
"It never takes me long to make up my mind----"
"That may be, but I intend to save you from an embarrassing situation.
You need not come on Monday unless you wish. You may write--or, for that
matter, if I do not hear from you on Monday by four I shall
understand----"
"I--for God's sake, Mary----"
"You must do as I say--this time. And--and--you could not overcome me
again tonight. I can turn myself to stone when I choose."
"Oh!" He ground his teeth. His own nerves might be lulled for the
moment, but he had anticipated reaction when she finished her story.
"Very well--but it is for the last time, my dear. And why Monday? Why
not this afternoon?"
"You must sleep and write your column, is it not so? Moreover--and
deliberately--I am lunching with Mrs. Ruyler and dining at the
Lawrences'."
"Very well. Monday, then. You have set the stage. If I must be a
puppet for once in my life, so be it. But, I repeat, it's for the last
time. Now, for heaven's sake, go ahead and get it off your chest."
"And you will let me go without a word? Otherwise I shall not speak--and
I'll leave the room again and not return."
"Very well. I promise."
"I told part of it the other day at Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon--I had
told her before. But there's so much else. I hardly know how to begin
with you, and I have not the habit of talking about myself. But I
suppose I should begin at the beginning."
"It is one of the formulae."
"It is the most difficult of all--that beginning." And although she had
announced the torpidity of her nerves, her hands clenched and her voice
shook slightly.
"Let me remind you that to begin anywhere you've got to begin somewhere."
And then as she continued silent, he burst out: "For God's sake, say it!"
"Is--is--it possible that the suspicion has never crossed your mind that
I am Mary Ogden?"
"Wh-a-at!"
"Mary Ogden, who married Count Zattiany thirty-four years ago. I was
twenty-four at the time. You may do your own arithmetic."
But Clavering made no answer. His cigarette was burning a hole in the
carpet. He mechanically set his foot on it, but his faculties felt
suspended, his body immersed in ice-water. And yet something in his
unconscious rose and laughed . . . and tossed up a key . . . if he had
not fallen in love with her he would have found that key long since. His
news sense rarely failed him.
"I've told a good many lies, I'm afraid," she went on, and her voice was
even and cool. The worst was over. "You'll have to forgive me that at
least. I dislike downright lying, if only because concessions are
foreign to my nature, and I quibbled when it was possible; but when
cornered there was no other way out. I had no intention of being forced
to tell you or any one the truth until I chose to tell it."
"Well, you had your little comedy!"
"It did amuse me for a time, but I think I explained all that in my
letter. I also explained why I came to America, and that if I had not
met you I should probably have come and gone and no one but Judge Trent
been the wiser. I had prepared him by letter, and to him, I suppose, it
has been a huge comedy--with no tragic sequel. Be sure that I never
entertained the thought that I could ever love any man again. But I have
made up my mind to disenchant you as far as possible, not only for your
sake but my own. I wish you to know exactly whom you have fallen in love
with."
"You grow more interesting every moment," said Clavering politely, "and I
have never been one-half as interested in my life."
"Perhaps you have heard--Mrs. Oglethorpe, I should think, would be very
much disposed to talk about old times--that I was a great belle in New
York--belles were fashionable in those days of more marked individuality.
I suppose no girl ever had more proposals. Naturally I grew to
understand my power over men perfectly. I had that white and regular
beauty combined with animation and great sex-magnetism which always
convinces men that under the snow volcanic fires are burning. I was
experienced, under the frankest exterior, in all the subtle arts of the
coquette. Men to me were a sort of musical instrument from which I could
evoke any harmony or cacophony I chose.
"What held the men I played with and rejected was my real gift for
good-fellowship, my loyalty in friendship, and some natural sweetness of
disposition. But such power makes a woman, particularly while young,
somewhat heartless and callous, and I was convinced that I had no
capacity for love myself; especially as I found all men rather
ridiculous. I met Otto Zattiany in Paris, where he was attached to the
Embassy of the Dual Empire. He was an impetuous wooer and very handsome.
I did not love him, but I was fascinated. Moreover, I was tired of
American men and American life. Diplomacy appealed to my ambition, my
love of power and intrigue. He was also a nobleman with great estates;
there could be no suspicion that he was influenced by my fortune. He
followed me back to New York, and although my parents were opposed to all
foreigners, I had my way; there was the usual wedding in Saint Thomas's,
and we sailed immediately for Europe.
"I hated him at once. I shall not go into the details of that marriage.
Fortunately he soon tired of me and returned to his mistresses. To him I
was the Galatea that no man could bring to life. But he was very proud
of me and keenly aware of my value as the wife of an ambitious
diplomatist. He treated me with courtesy, and concerned himself not at
all with my private life. He knew my pride, and believed that where he
had failed no man could succeed; in short, that I would never consider
divorce nor elopement, nor even run the risk of less public scandals.
"I was not unhappy. I was rid of him. I had a great position and there
was everything to distract my mind. I was not so interested in the inner
workings of diplomacy as I was later, but the comedy of jealousy and
intrigue in the diplomatic set was amusing from the first. I was very
beautiful, I entertained magnificently, I was called the best-dressed
woman in Paris, I was besieged by men--men who were a good deal more
difficult to manage than chivalrous Americans, particularly as I was now
married and the natural prey of the hunter. But it was several years
before I could think of men without a shudder, little as I permitted them
to suspect it. I learned to play the subtle and absorbing game of men
and women as it is played to perfection in the bolder civilizations. It
was all that gave vitality to the general game of society. I had no
children; my establishment was run by a major domo; it bore little
resemblance to a home. It was the brilliant artificial existence of a
great lady, young, beautiful, and wealthy, in Europe before
nineteen-fourteen. Of course that phase of life was suspended in Europe
during the war. All the women I knew or heard of worked as hard as I
did. Whether that terrible interregnum left its indelible seal on them,
or whether they have rebounded to the old life, where conditions are less
agonizing than in Vienna, I do not know."
She paused a moment, and Clavering unconsciously braced himself. Her
initial revelation had left the deeper and more personal part of him
stunned, and he was listening to her with a certain detachment. So far
she had revealed little that Dinwiddie had not told him already, and as
he knew that this brief recapitulation of her earlier life was not
prompted by vanity, he could only wonder if it were the suggestive
preface to that secret volume at which Dinwiddie had hinted more than
once.
As she continued silent, he got suddenly to his feet. "I'll walk up and
down a bit, if you don't mind," he muttered. "I'm rather--ah--getting
rather cramped."
"Do," she said indifferently.
"Please go on. I am deeply interested."
She continued in a particularly level voice while he strode unevenly up
and down: "Of course the time came when ugly memories faded, my buoyant
youth asserted itself and I wanted love. And when a woman feels a crying
need to love as well as to be loved, her whole being a peremptory demand,
unsatisfied romance quickening, she is not long finding the man. I had
many to choose from. I made my choice and was happy for a time.
Although I had been brought up in the severest respectability--just
recall Jane Oglethorpe, Mrs. Vane, Mrs. Ruyler, and you will be able to
reconstruct the atmosphere--several of the women I had known as a girl
had lovers, it seemed to me that American women came to Europe for no
other purpose, and I was now living at the fountain-head of polite
license. Not that I made any apologies to myself. I should have taken a
lover if I had wanted one had virtue been the fashion. And the contract
with my husband had been dissolved by mutual consent. The only thing
that rebelled was my pride. I hated stepping down from my pedestal."
Clavering gave a short barking laugh. "Your arrogance is the most
magnificent thing about you, and that is saying more than I could
otherwise express. I'll fortify myself before you proceed further, if
you will permit." He poured himself out a drink, and returned to his
chair with the glass in his hand. "Pray go on."
She had not turned her head and continued to look into the fire. She
might have been posing to a sculptor for a bust that would hardly look
more like marble when finished.
"I soon discovered that I had not found happiness. Men want. They
rarely love. I realized that I had demanded in love far more than
passion, and I received nothing else.
"I am not going to tell you how many lovers I have had. It is none of
your business----"
"Ah!" Clavering, staring at her, had forgotten his first shock,
everything but her living presence; forgotten also that he had once
apprehended something of the sort, then dismissed it from his mind. He
spilt the whiskey over the arm of the chair, then sprang to his feet and
began to pace the room once more.
She went on calmly: "Disappointment does not mean the end of
seeking. . . . They gave me little that I wanted. They were clever and
adroit enough in the prelude. They knew how to create the illusion that
in them alone could be found the fulfillment of all aspiration and
desire. No doubt they satisfied many women, but they could not satisfy
me. They gave me little I did not find in the mere society of the many
brilliant and accomplished men with whom I was surrounded. I had a
rapacious mind, and there was ample satisfaction for it in the men who
haunted my salon and were constantly to be met elsewhere. European men
are _instruits_. They are interested in every vital subject,
intellectual and political, despite the itch of amor, their deliberate
cult of sex. They like to talk. Conversation is an art. My mind was
never uncompanioned. But that deeper spiritual rapacity, one offspring
of passion as it may be, they could not satisfy; for love with them is
always too confused with animalism and is desiccated in the art of
love-making. Fidelity is a virtue relegated to the bourgeois----"
"What about Englishmen?" demanded Clavering sarcastically. "I thought
they were bad artists but real lovers."
"I know little of Englishmen. Zattiany was never appointed to St.
James's, and although, of course, I met many of them in the service on
the continent, and even visited London several times, it must have
happened that I was interested in some one else or in a state of profound
reaction from love at the time--at least so I infer. It is a long while
ago. I remember only the fact.
"Those whom I tried to love would soon have tired of me had I not played
the game as adroitly as themselves, and if I had permitted them to feel
sure of me. The last thing any of them wanted was depth of feeling,
tragic passion. . . . My most desperate affair was my last--after a long
interval. . . . I was in my early forties. I had thought myself too
utterly disillusioned ever to imagine myself in love again. Men are
gross and ridiculous creatures in the main, and aside from my personal
disappointments, I thought it was time for that chapter of my life to
finish; I was amusing myself with diplomatic intrigue. I was in the
Balkans at the time, that breeding ground of war microbes, and I was
interested in a very delicate situation in which I played a certain part.
"The awakening was violent. He was an Austrian, with an important place
in the Government; he came to Belgrade on a private mission. He was a
very great person in many ways, and I think I really loved him, for he
seemed to me entirely worthy of it. He certainly was mad enough about me
for a time--for a year, to be exact. When he returned to Vienna it was
not difficult for me to find an excuse to go also. Although Zattiany was
a Hungarian, he never visited his Hungarian estates except for the boar
hunting, and spent his time when on leave, or between appointments, in
Vienna, where he had inherited a palace--I must tell you that the city
residence of a nobleman in the Dual Empire was always called a palace,
however much it might look like a house.
"I shall always remember this man with a certain pleasure and respect,
for he is the only man who ever made me suffer. A woman forgets the
lovers she has dismissed as quickly as possible. Their memory is hateful
to her, like the memory of all mistakes. But this man made me suffer
horribly. (He married a young girl, out of duty to his House, and
unexpectedly fell in love with her.) Therefore, although I recovered,
and completely, still do I sometimes dwell with a certain cynical
pleasure on the memory of him----"
"Have you never seen him since?" asked Clavering sharply. He had
returned to his chair. "How long ago was that?"
"Quite sixteen years ago. I did not visit Vienna again for several
years; in fact, not until after my husband's death, when I returned there
to live. But by that time I had lost both youth and beauty. His wife
had died, but left him an heir, and he showed no disposition to marry
again; certainly he was as indifferent to me as I to him. We often met,
and as he respected my mind and my knowledge of European affairs, we
talked politics together, and he sometimes asked my advice.
"But to go back. After that was over I determined to put love definitely
out of my life. I believed then and finally that I had not the gift of
inspiring love; nor would I ever risk humiliation and suffering again. I
played the great game of life and politics. I was still beautiful--for a
few years--I had an increasingly great position, all the advantages,
obvious and subtle, that money could procure. My maid was very clever.
My gowns, as time went on, were of a magnificent simplicity; all
frou-frous were renounced. I had no mind to invite the valuation I heard
applied to certain American women in Paris: 'elderly and dressy.'"
Clavering laughed for the first time. "I wonder you ever made a mistake
of any sort. I also wonder if you are a type as well as an individual?
I have, I think, followed intelligently your psychological involutions
and convolutions so far. I am only hoping you will not get beyond my
depth. What was your attitude toward your past mistakes--beyond what you
have told me? Did you suffer remorse, as I am told women do when they
either voluntarily renounce or are permitted to sin no more?"
"I neither regarded them as mistakes nor did I suffer remorse. Every
human being makes what are called mistakes and those happened to be mine.
Therefore I dismissed them to the limbo of the inevitable. . . . As your
world, I am told, looks upon you as the coming dramatist, it may appeal
to your imagination to visualize that secret and vital and dramatic
undercurrent of what was on the surface a proud and splendid life. . . .
Or, if there are regrets, it is for the weight of memories, the
completeness of disillusion, the slaying of mental youth--which cannot
survive brutal facts.
"I think that for women of my type--what may be called the intellectual
siren--the lover phase is inevitable. We are goaded not only by the
imperious demands of womanhood and the hope of the perfect companion, but
by curiosity, love of adventure, ennui; possibly some more obscure
complex--vengeance on the husband who has wrecked our first illusions--on
Life itself. Bringing-up, family and social traditions, have nothing to
do with it. Only opportunity counts. Moreover, we are not the product
of our immediate forebears, but of a thousand thousand unknown
ancestors. . . ."
"God! True enough!"
"Unfortunately, these women who have wasted so much time on love never
realize the tragic futility until Time himself disposes of temptation,
and then it is too late for anything but regrets of another sort. The
war may have solved the problem for many a desperate spirit.
"My own case has assumed an entirely different complexion. With my youth
restored I have the world at my feet once more, but safeguarded by the
wisdom of experience--in so far as a mortal ever may be. The bare idea
of that old game of prowling sex fills me with ennui and disgust. The
body may be young again, but my mind, reënergized though it is, is packed
with memories, a very Book of Life. When I found that my beauty was
restored I thought of nothing less than returning to the conquest of men
in the old manner, although quite aware of its powerful aid in the work I
have made up my mind to do in Austria. Of late, of course, I have
thought of little else but what this recrudescence of my youth means to
you and to myself. But--please do not interrupt--this I shall not
discuss with you again until Monday--if then.
"But once more I wish to impress you with the fact that I indulge in
nothing so futile as regrets for my 'past.' 'Sack-cloth and ashes'
provokes nothing but a smile from women of my type and class. Moreover,
I believe that my education would not be complete without that
experience--_mine_, understand. I am not speaking for women of other
temperaments, opportunities, of less intellect, of humbler character,
weaker will. . . . And if I had persisted in virtue at that time I
should probably make a fool of myself today, an even more complete fool
than women do when they feel youth slipping but still are able with the
aid of art and arts to fascinate younger men.
"That almost standardized chapter I renounced peremptorily. My pride was
too great to permit me to be foolish even in the privacy of my mind over
men half my age. Nor did I make any of the usual frantic attempts to
keep looking young. I had seen too much of that, laughed at it too
often. Nevertheless, I hated the approach of age, the decay of beauty,
the death of magnetism, as bitterly as the silliest woman I had ever met.
"Some women merely fade: lose their complexions, the brightness of their
eyes and hair. Others grow heavy, solid; stout or flabby; the muscles of
the face and neck loosen and sag, the features alter. I seemed slowly to
dry up--wither. There was no flesh to hang or loose skin to wrinkle, but
it seemed to me that I had ten thousand lines. I thought it a horrid
fate. I could not know that Nature, meaning to be cruel, had given me
the best chance for the renewal of the appearance as well as the fact of
youth.
"I suppose all this seems trivial to you--this mourning over lost
youth----"
"Not at all. It must have been hell to a woman like you. As for women
in general--they may make more fuss about it, but I fancy they hate it
less than men."
"Yes, men are vainer than women," said Madame Zattiany indifferently.
"But I have yet to waste any sympathy on men. . . .
"I suppose I only fully realized that my youth, my beauty, my magnetic
charm, had gone when men ceased to make violent love to me. They still
paid court, for I was a very important person, my great prestige was a
sort of halo, and I had never neglected my mind. There was nothing of
significance I had not read during all these years. I was as profoundly
interested in the great political currents of Europe, seen and unseen, as
any man--or as any intelligent woman of European society. Moreover, I
had the art of life down to a fine point, and I had not forgotten that
even in friendship men are drawn to the subtle woman who knows how to
envelop herself in a certain mystery. And European men are always eager
to talk with an accomplished woman, even if she has no longer the power
to stir their facile passions.
"When I realized that my sex power had left me I adopted an entirely new
set of tactics--never would I provoke a cynical smile on the faces I once
had the power to distort! With no evidence of regret for my lost
enchantment I remained merely the alert and always interested woman of
the world, to whom men, if sufficiently entertaining, were welcome
companions for the moment, nothing more. I cemented many friendships, I
cultivated a cynical philosophy--for my own private succor--and although,
for a time, there were moments of bewildered groping and of intense
rebellion, or a sudden and hideous sense of inferiority, I twisted the
necks of those noxious weeds thrusting themselves upward into my
consciousness and threatening to strangle it, and trampled them under the
heel of my will. It was by no means the least happy interval of my life,
for I was very healthy, I took a great deal of outdoor exercise, and
there was a sense of freedom I never had experienced before. Love is
slavery, and I was no longer a slave.
"After my husband's death, as I told you, I opened the Zattiany palace in
Vienna once more (my nephew and his wife preferred Paris, and I leased it
from them), expecting to follow the life I had mapped out, until I was
too old for interests of any sort. I had a brilliant salon and I was
something of a political power. Of course, I knew that the war was
coming long before hatreds and ambitions reached their climax, and
advised this man of whom I have spoken, Mathilde Loyos, and other
friends, to invest large sums of money in the United States. Judge Trent
arranged the trusteeship in each case----"
"Where is this man?"
"I do not know. He went down with the old régime, of course, and would
be a pauper but for these American investments and a small amount in
Switzerland. He has occupied no position in the new Government, although
he was a Liberal in politics. What he is doing I have no idea. I have
not seen him for years."
"Well--go on."
"It was only when I became aware of a growing mental lassitude, a
constant sense of effort in talking everlastingly on subjects that called
for constant alertness and often reorientation, that I was really aghast
and began to look toward the future not only with a sense of helplessness
but of intolerable weariness. I used to feel an inclination to turn my
head away with an actual physical gesture when concentration was
imperative. I thought that my condition was psychological, that I had
lived too much and too hard, that my memory was over-burdened and my
sense of the futility and meaninglessness of life too overwhelming. But
I know now that the condition was physical, the result of the
degeneration of certain cells.
"I spent the summer alone on my estate in Hungary, and when it was over I
determined to close the palace in Vienna and remain in the country. I
could not go back to that restless high-pitched life, with its ceaseless
gaiety on the one hand and its feverish politics and portentous rumblings
on the other. My tired mind rebelled. And the long strain had told on
my health.
"I lived an almost completely outdoor life, riding, walking, swimming in
the lake, hunting, but careful not to overtax my returning strength. I
was not in love with life, far from it! But I had no intention of adding
invalidism to my other disintegrations. In the evening I played cards
with my secretary or practised at the piano, with some revival of my old
interest in music. I read little, even in the newspapers. I was become,
save perhaps for my music, an automaton. But, although I did not improve
in appearance, my health was completely restored, and when the war came I
was in perfect condition for the arduous task I immediately undertook.
Moreover, my mind, torpid for a year, was free and refreshed for those
practical details it must grapple with at once. I turned the Zattiany
palace in Buda Pesth into a hospital. And then for four years I was
again an automaton, but this time a necessary and useful one. When I
thought about myself at all, it seemed to me that this selfless and
strenuous interval was the final severance from my old life. If Society
in Europe today were miraculously restored to its pre-war
brilliancy--indifferent to little but excitement and pleasure--there
would be nothing in it for me.
"Now I come to the miracle." And while she recapitulated what she had
told the women at Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon, Clavering listened without
chaos in his accompanying thoughts. "Certainly, man's span is too brief
now," she concluded. "He withers and dies at an age when, if he has
lived sanely--and when a man abuses his natural functions he generally
dies before old age, anyhow--he is beginning to see life as a whole, with
that detachment that comes when his personal hold on life and affairs is
relaxing, when he has realized his mistakes, and has attained a mental
and moral orientation which could be of inestimable service to his fellow
men, and to civilization in general. What you call crankiness in old
people, so trying to the younger generations, does not arise from natural
hatefulness of disposition and a released congenital selfishness, but
from atrophying glands, and, no doubt, a subtle rebellion against nature
for consigning men to ineptitude when they should be entering upon their
best period of usefulness, and philosophical as well as active enjoyment
of life.
"Science has defeated nature at many points. The isolation of germs, the
discovery of toxins and serums, the triumph over diseases that once
wasted whole nations and brought about the fall of empires, the arrest of
infant mortality, the marvels of vivisection and surgery--the list is
endless. It is entirely logical, and no more marvellous, that science
should be able to arrest senescence, put back the clock. The wonder is
that it has not been done before."
She rose, still looking down at the fire, which Clavering had replenished
twice. "I am going now. And I have no fear that you will not keep your
promise! But remember this when thinking it over: I do not merely _look_
young again, _I am_ young. I am not the years I have passed in this
world, I am the age of the rejuvenated glands in my body. Some day we
shall have the proverb: 'A man is as old as his endocrines.' Of course I
cannot have children. The treatment is identical with that for
sterilization. This consideration may influence you. I shall use no
arguments nor seductions. You will have decided upon all that before we
meet again. Good night." And she was gone.