Clavering, when making up his list with Mr. Dinwiddie (by courtesy),
had, with the exception of Todd, who was always the life of any party,
Gora, whom he always liked to have at hand, and Eva Darling, who was a
favorite of "The Ambassador to the Court of the Sophisticates," as Todd
had long since dubbed him, chosen his guests at random, taking whom he
could get, careful merely to ask those who, so far as he knew, were on
speaking terms.
But he hardly could have gathered together a more congenial and lively
party, nor one more delighted to leave New York for the woods. Henry
Minor, editor of one of the intellectual and faintly radical magazines,
whose style was so involved in his efforts to be both "different" and
achieve an unremitting glitter, that he had recently received a
petition to issue a glossary, was as amiable as a puppy in the society
of his friends and when in the woods talked in words of one syllable
and discovered a mighty appetite. His wife, who had demonstrated her
originality by calling herself Mrs. Minor, was what is known as a
spiffing cook and a top-notch dresser. She had, in fact, the most
charming assortment of sports clothes in the camp. Eva Darling, who
danced for pastime and illustrated for what little bread she was
permitted to eat at home, was as lively as a grasshopper and scarcely
less devastating. Babette Gold wore her black hair in smooth bands on
either side of the perfect oval of her face, and had the sad and
yearning gaze of the unforgiven Magdalen, and she had written two
novels dealing with the domesticities of the lower middle class,
treating with a clinical wealth of detail the irritable monotonies of
the nuptial couch and the artless intimacies of the nursery. She
smoked incessantly, could walk ten miles at a stretch, and was as
passionless as a clam. Gerald Scores, who wore a short pointed beard
and looked the complete artist, was one of the chief hopes of the
intellectual drama cunningly commercialized; and as capable as
Clavering of shutting up his genius in a water-tight compartment, and
enjoying himself in the woods. He was mildly flirtatious, but looked
upon emotional intensity in the personal life of the artist as a
criminal waste of force. Halifax Bolton, who claimed to be the
discoverer of the Younger Generation (in fiction) and was just
twenty-eight himself, was a critic of formidable severity and the
author of at least five claques. The intense concentration of writing
routed his sense of humor, but he had as many droll stories in his
repertoire as Todd. His wife, the famous "Alberta Jones," fierce Lucy
Stoner, was the editor, at a phenomenal salary, of one of the "Woman's
Magazines," and wrote short stories of impeccable style and indifferent
content for the _Century_ and the _Dial_.
They were all intimate friends and argued incessantly and amiably. And
they were all devoted to Mr. Dinwiddie, whom they addressed as
Excellence, without accent.
[Illustration: At Dinwiddie's mountain lodge Clavering (Conway Tearle)
pleaded with Madame Zattiany (Corrine Griffith) to marry him. (_Screen
version of "The Black Oxen."_)]
When Mary and Clavering arrived at the camp in response to the dinner
bell, Eva Darling, who wore very pretty pink silk bloomers under her
sport skirt, was turning hand-springs down the living-room, while the
rest of the party applauded vociferously, and Mrs. Larsing, who was
entering with the fried chicken, nearly dropped the platter.
"Just in time, Madame Zattiany," cried Minor. "This is the sixth round
and she is panting----"
But she interrupted him. "'Mary'--from this time on. I insist. You
make me feel an outsider. I won't be addressed in that formal manner
nor answer to that foreign name again."
"Mary! Mary! Mary!" shouted the party with one accord, and Clavering
drew a long breath. He had wondered how she would manage to feel Mary
Ogden under the constant bombardment of a name that was a title in more
ways than one. But he might have trusted her to manage it!'
In the afternoon Mrs. Minor suggested having tea in the woods, and they
all walked--single file--five miles to drink their tea and eat their
cakes (Larsing carrying the paraphernalia) in a pine grove on the
summit of a hill, and then walked back again, clamoring for supper.
Mary had been monopolized by Scores and Bolton, occasionally
vouchsafing Clavering a glance. During the evening they were all too
pleasantly tired and replete to dance or to play the charades they had
planned, but lay about comfortably, listening to a concert of alternate
arias and jazz. Clavering did not have a word alone with Mary. She
sat on one of the divans between Gora and Todd, while Scores lay on the
floor at her feet, his head on a cushion, one foot waving over a lifted
knee, the perfect picture of the contented playwright. They kept up a
continuous murmur, punctuated with gales of laughter. Clavering had
sulkily taken a chair beside Babette Gold, whose metallic humor
sometimes amused him, but she went sound asleep before his eyes, and he
could only gaze into the fire and console himself with visions of a
week hence, when these cursed people had gone and he was the most
fortunate man on earth.
His room was downstairs next to Mr. Dinwiddie's, and he made up his
mind to let himself out softly at midnight, throw pebbles at her window
and whisper to her as she leaned from her casement. It was a scene
that if introduced into a modern play would have driven him from the
theatre and tipped his pen with vitriol next morning, but it appealed
to him, somehow, as a fitting episode in his own high romance. But he
was asleep before his head touched the pillow, and did not lift an
eyelash until the first bell roused him at seven o'clock. Then,
however, he lay for some time thinking, soberly.