He left her at ten o'clock, and the next morning rose at seven and went
to work at once on his play. He chose the one that had the greatest
emotional possibilities. Gora Dwight had told him that he must learn
to "externalize his emotions," and he felt that here was the supreme
opportunity. Never would he have more turgid, pent-up, tearing
emotions to get rid of than now. He wrote until one o'clock, then,
after lunch and two hours on his column, went out and took a long walk;
but lighter of heart than since he had met Mary Zattiany. He also
reflected with no little satisfaction that when writing on the play he
had barely thought of her. All the fire in him had flown to his head
and transported him to another plane; he wondered if any woman, save in
brief moments, could rival the ecstasy of mental creation. That rotten
spot in the brain, dislocation of particles, whatever it was that
enabled a few men to do what the countless millions never dreamed of
attempting, or attempt only to fail, was, through its very abnormality,
productive of a higher and more sustained delight, a more complete
annihilation of prosaic life, than any mere function bestowed on all
men alike. It might bring suffering, disappointment, mortification,
even despair in its train, but the agitation of that uncharted tract in
the brain compensated for any revenge that nature, through her
by-product, human nature, might visit on those who departed from her
beloved formulae.
Nevertheless, and before his walk was finished and he had returned home
to dress for dinner with her, the play was on one plane and he on
another, visioning himself alone with her in the Austrian agapemone.
And cursing the interminable weeks between. He anathematized himself
for consenting to the delay, and vowed she'd had her own way for the
last time, He foresaw many not unagreeable tussles of will. She was
far too accustomed to having her own way. Well, so was he.
For two weeks he left his rooms only to walk, or dine or spend an hour
with her in the afternoon when she was alone. He rebelled less than he
had expected. If he could not have her wholly, the less he saw of her
the better.
Dinners, luncheons, theatre parties, receptions, were being given for
her not only by her old friends--who seemed to her to grow more
numerous daily--but by their daughters and by many others who made up
for lack of tradition by that admirable sense of rightness which makes
fashionable society in America such a waste of efficiency and force.
And whether the younger women privately hated her or had fallen victims
to that famous charm was of little public consequence. It was as if
she had appeared in their midst, waved a sceptre and announced: "I am
the fashion. Always have I been the fashion. That is my _métier_.
Bow down." At all events the fashion she became, and it was quite as
patent that she took it as a matter of course. The radiant happiness
that possessed her, refusing as she did to look into the future with
its menace to those high duties of her former dedication--clear, sharp,
ruthless children of her brain--not only enhanced both her beauty and
magnetism, but enabled her to endure this social ordeal she had
dreaded, without ennui. She was too happy to be bored. She even
plunged into it with youthful relish. For the first time in her life
she was at peace with herself. She was not at peace when Clavering
made love to her, far from it; but she enjoyed with all the zest of a
woman with her first lover, and something of the timidity, this
tantalizing preliminary to fruition. How could she ever have believed
that her mind was old? She turned her imagination away from that lodge
in the Dolomites, and believed it was because the present with its
happiness and its excitements sufficed her.
Moreover, she was having one novel experience that afforded her much
diversion. The newspapers were full of her. It took exactly five days
after Mrs. Oglethorpe's luncheon for the story she had told there to
filter down to Park Row, and although she would not consent to be
interviewed, there were double-page stories in the Sunday issues,
embellished with snapshots and a photograph of the Mary Ogden of the
eighties: a photographer who had had the honor to "take" her was still
in existence and exhumed the plates.
Doctors, biologists, endocrinologists, were interviewed. Civil war
threatened: the medical fraternity, upheld by a few doubting Thomases
among the more abstract followers of the science, on one side of the
field, by far the greater number of those who peer into the human
mechanism with mere scientific acumen on the other. Doctors,
notoriously as conservative as kings and as jealous as opera singers,
found themselves threatened with the loss of elderly patients whose
steady degeneration was a source of respectable income. When it was
discovered that New York actually held a practicing physician who had
studied with the great endocrinologists of Vienna, the street in front
of his house looked as if some ambitious hostess were holding a
continual reception.
Finally Madame Zattiany consented to give a brief statement to the
press through her lawyers. It was as impersonal as water, but
technical enough to satisfy the _Medical Journal_. At the theatre and
opera people waited in solid phalanxes to see her pass. Her utter
immobility on these occasions but heightened the feverish interest.
Women of thirty, dreaming of becoming flappers overnight, and
formidable rivals, with the subtlety of experience behind the mask of
seventeen, were desolated to learn that they must submit to the claws
and teeth of Time until they had reached the last mile-post of their
maturity. Beauty doctors gnashed their teeth, and plastic surgeons
looked forward to the day when they must play upon some other form of
human credulity. As a subject for the press it rivalled strikes,
prohibition, German reparations, Lenin, prize-fights, censorship and
scandalous divorces in high life.
"Why isn't your head turned?" Clavering asked her one day when the
sensation was about a month old and was beginning to expire
journalistically for want of fresh fuel. (Not a woman in New York
could be induced to admit that she was taking the treatment.) "You are
the most famous woman in America and the pioneer of a revolution that
may have lasting and momentous consequences on which we can only
speculate vaguely today. I don't believe you are as unmoved as you
look. It's not in woman's nature--in human nature. Publicity goes to
the head and then descends to the marrow of the bones."
"I'm not unmoved. I've been tremendously interested and excited. I
find that newspaper notoriety is the author of a distinctly new
sensation." And then she felt a disposition to play with fire.
Clavering was in one of his rare detached moods, and had evidently come
for an hour of agreeable companionship. "I am beginning to get a
little bored and tired. If it were not for this Vienna Fund--and to
the newspapers for their assistance I am eternally grateful--I believe
I'd suggest that we leave for Austria tomorrow."
"And I wouldn't go." Clavering stood on the hearthrug smiling down at
her with humorous defiance. "You switched me on to that play, and
there I stick until it is finished. No chance for it in a honeymoon,
and no chance for undiluted happiness with that crashing round inside
my head."
She shrank and turned cold, but recovered herself sharply and dismissed
the pang. It was her first experience, in her exhaustive knowledge of
men, of the writing temperament; and after all it was part of the
novelty of the man who had obliterated every other from her mind. Nor
had she any intention of letting him see that he could hurt her. She
smiled sweetly and asked:
"How is it coming on? Are you satisfied with it?"
"Yes, I am. And so is Gora Dwight. I've finished two acts and I read
them to her last night."
"Ah? Your Egeria?"
"Not a bit of it. But she's a wise cold-blooded critic. You can't
blame me for not even talking about it to you. I see so little of you
that I've no intention of wasting any of the precious time."
"But you might let me read it."
"I'd rather wait until it's finished and as polished and perfect as I
can make it. I always want you to know me at my best."
"Oh, my dear! You forget that we are to be made one and remain twain.
Do you really believe that we shall either of us always be at our best?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't care a hang whether we are or
not. I'll have you, and all to myself. And I won't say 'for a while,
at least.' Do you imagine that when we return to New York I'm going to
let Society take possession of you again? Not only shall I work harder
than I've ever worked before, but I'd see little more of you than I do
now. And that I'll never submit to again. I'll write my next play
inside this house, and you'll be here when I want you, not gadding
about."
She felt a sudden pang of dismay, apprehension. New York? She
realized that not for a moment had she given up her original purpose.
But why disturb the serenity of the present? When she had him in the
Dolomites . . . She answered him in the same light tone.
"I'm having my last fling at New York Society. When we return we'll
give our spare time to the Sophisticates. I see far less of them now
than I like." Then, with a further desire to investigate the literary
temperament, even if she were stabbed again in the process, she looked
at him with provocative eyes and said: "I've sometimes wondered why you
haven't insisted upon a secret marriage. I'm told it can be done with
a reasonable prospect of success in certain states."
"Don't imagine I didn't think of it . . . but--well--I think the play
would go fluey . . . you see. . . ."
"I see! And what about your next?"
"The next will be a comedy. I'll never be able to write a tremendously
emotional play again."
"And meanwhile you will not deny that the artist has submerged the
lover."
"I admit nothing of the sort. But you yourself let the artist
loose--and what in God's name should I be doing these cursed weeks if
you hadn't? You know you never would have consented to a secret
marriage. You've set your heart on the Dolomites. . . . How about
that interval of travel, by the way? Liners and trains are not
particularly conducive to illusions."
"I thought I'd told you. My plan is to be married there. I should go
on a preceding steamer and see that the Lodge was in proper condition.
I want everything to be quite perfect, and Heaven only knows what has
happened to it."
"Oh! This is a new one you've sprung. But--yes--I like the idea. I'd
rather dreaded the prelude." And then he made one of those abrupt
vaultings out of one mood into another which had fascinated her from
the first. "God! I wish we were there now. When I'm not writing----!
How many men have you got in love with you already? But no. I don't
care. When I'm here--_like this, Mary, like this_--I don't care a hang
if I never write another line."