LV

The flight next morning proved simpler of accomplishment than she had

anticipated. The men were going to a neighboring lake to fish, Larsing

having excited them with the prospect of abundant trout; and why fish

in your own lake when you may take a tramp of several miles through the

woods to another? They begged Clavering to go with them, and as man

cannot exist for long in the rarefied atmosphere of the empyrean

without growing restive, he was feeling rather let down, and cherished

a sneaking desire for a long day alone with men.

But he told Mary that he did not want to go out of their woods and down

to that hideous village for any such purpose as to watch her sign

papers, and he stood on the landing waving his hat as she and Mr.

Dinwiddie crossed the lake in the motor boat to the waiting Ford. For

once his intuitions failed him, and he tramped off with the other men,

his heart as light as the mountain air, and his head empty of woman.

Mary looked back once at the golden-brown lake, set like a jewel in its

casket of fragrant trees, and wondered if she would see it again with

the same eyes. She was both resentful and uneasy, although she still

was unable to guess what harm could come of this interview. If

Hohenhauer wanted her to go to Washington she could refuse, and he had

long since lost his old magnetic power over her.

But as the Ford bumped down the steep road between the woods she felt

less like Mary Ogden every moment . . . those mists of illusion to

withdraw from her practical brain . . . returning to the heights where

they belonged . . . she wondered how she could have dared to be so

unthinkingly happy . . . the sport of the cynical gods? . . .

sentimental folly that she had called exaltation? After all! After

all!

Could she recapture that mood when she returned? Certainly, whatever

this man wanted of her, it would be hard facts, not illusions, he would

invite her to deal with. Even when he had been the most passionate of

lovers, his brain had always seemed to stand aloof, luminous and

factual. He had not an illusion. He saw life as it was, and although

his manners were suave and polished, and his voice the most beautiful

she had ever heard, he could be brutally direct when it suited his

purpose. For a moment she hated him as ardently as she had for a time

after he left her.

They descended into lower and lower altitudes until the air grew

intensely hot, physically depressing after the cold wine of the

mountains; finally, ten minutes ahead of time, they drove into the

doubly depressing village of Huntersville. It was no uglier than

thousands of other villages and small towns that look as if built to

demonstrate the American contempt for beauty, but the fact mitigated

nothing to eyes accustomed to the picturesqueness of mountain villages

in Europe, where the very roofs are artistic and the peasants have the

grace to wear the dress of their ancestors.

There were a few farms in the valley, but if Huntersville had not been

a junction of sorts, it is doubtful if it would have consisted of

anything but a "general store," now that the saloons were closed.

There was one long crooked street, with the hotel at one end, the Store

at the other (containing the post office), and a church, shops for

automobile supplies, two garages, a drug store, and a candy store;

eight or ten cottages filled the interstices. Men were working in the

fields, but those in Huntersville proper seemed to be exhausted with

loafing. Campers going in and out of the woods needing shelter for a

night, and people demanding meals between trains, kept the dismal

looking hotel open and reasonably clean.

The situation was very beautiful, for the mountains rose behind and

there was a brawling stream.

Mr. Dinwiddie having ascertained that "Mr." Hohenhauer had received his

message and gone for a walk, leaving word he would return at ten

o'clock, Mary went into the hotel parlor to wait for him. The room was

seldom used, patrons, local and otherwise, preferring the Bar of happy

memories, and it smelled musty. She opened the windows and glanced

about distastefully. The walls were covered with a faded yellow paper,

torn in places, and the ceiling was smoked and fly-specked. The worn

thin carpet seemed to have been chosen for its resemblance to turtle

soup squirming with vermicelli. Over the pine mantel, painted yellow,

were the inevitable antlers, and on a marble-topped table were badly

executed water lilies under a glass dome. The furniture was horsehair,

and she wondered how she and the Austrian statesman were to preserve

their dignity on the slippery surface. Then she heard his voice in the

hall as he stopped to speak to Mr. Dinwiddie, and she glanced out

curiously.

She had not seen him since a year before the war, but he was little

changed; improved if anything, for there was more color in his formerly

pale face. He was as straight and as thin as ever, his fine head

erect, without haughtiness; his dark eyes under their heavy lids had

the same eagle glance. He was still, she concluded dispassionately,

the handsomest man she had ever seen, even for an Austrian, the

handsomest race on earth; he combined high intelligence with a classic

regularity of feature, grace, dignity; and when the firm lips relaxed

he had a delightful smile. If it had not been for his hair, very thick

white hair, he would have passed for little over forty. He wore loose

gray travelling clothes, and every detail was as quietly faultless as

ever.

She went hastily to the speckled mirror beneath the antlers and

surveyed herself anxiously. Her own travelling suit of dark green

tweed, with its white silk shirt, was as carelessly perfect as his own,

and the little green turban, with its shaded, drooping feather,

extremely becoming. No color set off her fairness like green, but she

turned away with a sigh. It was not the eyes of the past three days

that looked back at her.

And then she remembered that he had not seen her since the renaissance.

The moment was not without its excitements.

Their meeting was excessively formal.

"Frau Gräfin."

"Excellenz."

She lifted her hand. He raised it to his lips.

And then he drew back and looked at her with penetrating but smiling

eyes.

"I had heard, of course," he said gallantly, "but I hardly was

prepared. May I say, Frau Gräfin, that you look younger than when I

had the pleasure of meeting you first?"

"I assure you that I feel many years younger," she replied lightly.

"May I add that I am delighted to see that you are in the best of

health? Your rest in Switzerland has done you good, although it would

have been better for Austria had it been shorter. Shall we sit down?"

Two tall dignified bodies adjusted themselves to chairs both slippery

and bumpy. He had closed the door behind him.

"Now that the amenities are over, Excellenz," she said with the

briskness she had picked up from her American friends, "let us come to

the point. I infer you did not take a day's journey and put up with

this abominable hotel to tell me that you are forming a Federation of

Austria and the South German States. You were sometimes kind enough to

ask my help in the past, but I have no influence in Washington."

"No, dear Gräfin. I do not need your assistance in Washington. But I

do need it in Austria, and that is why I am here."

"But it is--was--my intention to return to Austria almost immediately.

Surely Judge Trent must have told you."

"Yes, dear Gräfin, he told me, but he also told me other things. I

shall not waste the little time at our disposal in diplomacy. He told

me that you have the intention to marry a young American." There was

the faintest accent on the _young_.

Mary was annoyed to feel herself flushing, but she answered coldly, "It

is quite true that I intend to marry Mr. Clavering."

"And I have come here to ask you to renounce that intention and to

marry me instead."

"You!" Mary almost rose from her chair. "What on earth do you mean?"

"My dear Marie." He renounced formalities abruptly. "I think you will

be able to recall that whether I wrapped my meaning in diplomatic

phrases or conveyed it by the blunter method, it was always

sufficiently clear to the trained understanding. I have never known a

more trained or acute understanding than yours. I wish you to marry

me, and I beg you to listen to my reasons."

She gave the little foreign shrug she had almost forgotten. "I will

listen, of course. Need I add that I am highly honored? If I were not

so astonished, no doubt I should be more properly appreciative of that

honor. Pray let me hear the reasons." Her tone was satirical, but she

was beginning to feel vaguely uneasy.

Neither her words nor her inflections ruffled the calm of that long

immobile face with its half-veiled powerful eyes.

"Let us avert all possible misunderstandings at the beginning," he said

suavely. "I shall not pretend that I have fallen in love with you

again, for although my gallantry prompts me to such a natural

statement, I have not the faintest hope of deceiving you. What I felt

for you once can never be revived, for I loved you more than I have

ever loved any woman; and when such love burns itself out, its ashes

are no more to be rekindled than the dust of the corpse. You thought I

fell in love with my pretty young wife, but I was merely fond and

appreciative of her. I knew that the end had come for us, and that if

I did not recognize that sad fact, you would. My marriage, which, as

you know, was imperative, afforded a graceful climax to a unique

episode in the lives of both of us. There was no demoralizing interval

of subterfuge and politely repressed ennui. On the other hand, it did

not degenerate into one of those dreary and loosely knit _liaisons_,

lasting on into old age. We left each other on the heights, although

the cliff was beginning to crumble."

"Really, Moritz! I hope you have not come up here to indulge in

sentimental reminiscence. Why rake up that old--episode? I assure you

I have practically forgotten it."

"And I can assure you that I never felt less sentimental. I wish

merely to emphasize the fact that it was complete in itself, and

therefore as impossible of resuscitation as the dead. Otherwise, you

might naturally leap to the conclusion that I was an elderly romantic

gentleman----"

"Oh, never! It is obvious that you are inclined to be brutally frank.

But, as you said, time is short."

"If what I said sounded brutal, it was merely to remind you that

love--the intense passionate love I have no doubt you feel for this

young man who helps you to realize your renewed youth--never lasts.

And when this new love of yours burns itself out--you never had the

reputation of being very constant, dear Marie--you will have an alien

young man on your hands, while that remarkable brain of yours will be

demanding its field of action. You are European, not American--why,

even your accent is stronger than mine! That may be due to an

uncommonly susceptible ear, but as a matter of fact your mind has a

stronger accent still. You became thoroughly Europeanized, one of us,

and--I say this quite impartially--the most statesman-like woman in

Europe. Your mind was still plastic when you came to us--and your

plastic years are long over, _ma chère_. If your mind had become as

young as your body, you would have bitterly resented it. You were

always very proud of that intellect of yours--and with the best of

reasons."

Mary was staring out of the window. She recalled that she had faced

the fact of the old mind in the young brain when she first discovered

that she loved Clavering. How could she have forgotten . . . for a few

short weeks--and up there? . . . She raised her eyes to the mountain.

From where she sat she could not see the top. It looked like an

impenetrable rampart, rising to the skies.

"Can you tell me with honesty and candor," he continued in those same

gentle tones that had always reminded her of limpid water running over

iron, "--and for all your subtlety your mind is too arrogant and

fearless to be otherwise than honest _au fond_--that you believe you

could remain satisfied with love alone? For more, let us say, than a

year?"

She moved restlessly. "Perhaps not. But I had planned to live in

Vienna. He would spend only a part of the year there with me. His own

interests are here, of course. It would be a perfectly workable

arrangement."

"Are you sure? If you are, I must conclude that in the mental

confusion love so often induces, you have lost temporarily your

remarkable powers of clear and coherent thought. Do you not realize

that you would no longer be Gräfin Zattiany, you would be Mrs. Lee

Clavering? Do you imagine for a moment that you could play the great

rôle in Austrian affairs you have set yourself, handicapped by an

American name--and an American husband? Not with all your gifts, your

wealth, your genius for playing on that complex instrument called human

nature. Austria may be a Republic of sorts, but it is still Austria.

You would be an American and an outsider--a presumptuous interloper."

She stared at him aghast. "I--oh!--I had not thought of that. It

seems incomprehensible--but I had never thought of myself as Mrs.

Clavering. I have been Gräfin Zattiany so long!"

"And your plans were well-defined, and your ambition to play a great

rôle on the modern European stage possessed you utterly until you met

this young man--is it not so?"

"Oh, yes, but----"

"I understand. It must have been a quite marvellous experience, after

those barren years, to feel yourself glowing with all the vitalities of

youth once more; to bring young men to your feet with a glance and to

fancy yourself in love----"

"Fancy!" She interrupted him passionately. "I am in love--and

more--more than I ever was with you. Until I met him I did not even

guess that I had the capacity to love again. It was the last thing I

wanted. Abhorrent! But . . . but . . . he has something for me that

you--not even you--ever had . . . that I had given up hope of finding

long before I met you. . . ."

She stopped, coloring and hesitating. She had an intense desire to

make this man understand, but she shivered, as if her proud reserve

were a visible garment that she had torn off and flung at his feet,

leaving her naked to his ironic gaze.

He was leaning forward, regarding her through his veiled eyes. Their

light was not ironic, but it was very penetrating.

"And what is that something, Marie?" he asked softly.

"I--you know those things cannot be put into words."

"I fancy they can. It is merely one more delusion of the senses. One

of the imagination's most devilish tricks. I had it for you and you

for me--for a time! In the intimacies of either a _liaison_ or

matrimony that supreme delusion is soon scattered, _ma chère_."

"But I believe it." She spoke obstinately, although that brawling

stream seemed to take on a note of derision.

"Do you? Not in the depths of your clear brain. The mist on top is

dense and hot--but, alas for those mists!"

"I refuse to discuss it," she said haughtily. "Why do you wish to

marry me yourself?"

"Because I need your partnership as much as you need mine. Even if you

returned to Austria unencumbered, you could accomplish less alone than

with a man of equal endowments and greater power beside you. Two

strong brains and characters with similar purpose can always accomplish

more together than alone. I intend to rule and to save Austria, and I

need you, your help, your advice, your subtlety, your compelling

fascination, and your great personality."

"Do you intend to make yourself king?" she asked insolently, although

his words had thrilled her.

"You know that is a foolish question. I do not even use my title

there. But I intend to make Vienna the capital of a great and powerful

Republic, and I therefore ask you to renounce, before it is too late,

this commonplace and unworthy dream of young love, and stand beside me.

Youth--real youth--and the best years of maturity are the seasons for

love. You and I have sterner duties. Do you suppose that I would

sacrifice Austria for some brief wild hope of human happiness? And you

are only two years younger than I am. Nothing can alter the march of

the years. Moreover, you owe to Austria this wonderful rejuvenescence

of yours. Steinach is not an American."

She stamped her foot. "You descend to quibbling. And I have more than

repaid Austria all that I owe her."

"You have given her money and service, but she expects more, and you

pledged yourself to her before you left. And don't forget that she is

the country of your deliberate adoption. A far more momentous thing

than any mere accident of birth. You did not return to America when

Zattiany died. You never even paid her a brief visit after your

marriage. You would not be here now but for the imperative necessities

of business. You are Austrian to your marrow."

"I had a rôle thrust on me and I played it. My parents came to Europe

every year until they died. When Zattiany went, there were no ties to

draw me back and habit is strong. But--underneath--I don't believe

that I have ever been other than Mary Ogden."

She blushed as she said it, and he looked at her keenly.

"I think I understand. He is a very clever young man--of an

outstanding cleverness, I am told. Or it may be that he is merely in

love, and love's delusions are infinite--for a time. I doubt if a

young man with so brilliant an intellect would, if he faced himself in

honest detachment, admit that he believed anything of the sort. Nor do

you, my dear Marie, nor do you."

She twisted her hands together, but would not raise her eyes. He bent

forward again and said harshly:

"Marie! Glance inward. Do you see nothing that causes you to feel

ashamed and foolish? Do you--_you_--fail to recognize the indecency of

a woman of your mental age permitting herself to fancy that she is

experiencing the authentic passions of youth? Are you capable of

creating life? Can you love with unsullied memory? Have you the

ideals of youth, the plasticity, the hopes, the illusions? Have you

still even that power of desperate mental passion, so often

subordinating the merely physical, of the mature woman who seeks for

the last time to find in love what love has not? The final delusion.

No, Marie. Your revivified glands have restored to you the appearance

and the strength of youth, but, although you have played with a rôle

that appealed to your vanity, to your histrionic powers--with yourself

as chief audience--your natural desire to see if you could not be--to

yourself, again--as young as you appear, you have no more illusion in

your soul than when you were a withered old woman in Vienna."

She looked at him with hostile but agonized eyes.

"Your calculated brutality does not affect me in the least. And you

are merely one more victim of convention--like those old women in New

York. It never has been, therefore it never can be. Many women are

not able to bear children, even in youth."

"It is your turn to quibble. Tell me: until you were attracted to this

young man--attracted, no doubt, because he was so unlike the European

of your long experience--had you deviated from the conclusion, arrived

at many years before, that you had had enough of love--of sex--to

satisfy any woman? You implied as much to me a few moments since. I

know the mental part of you so well that I am positive the mere thought

would have disgusted you. If you had been starved all your life it

would be understandable, but you had experimented and deluded yourself

again and again--and you were burnt out when you came to Vienna to

live--burnt out, not only physically but spiritually. Your imagination

was as arid as a desert without an oasis. If any man had made love to

you then, you would merely have turned on him your weary disillusioned

eyes, or laughed cynically at him and yourself. Your keen aesthetic

sense would have been shocked. You were playing then an important and

ambitious rôle, you had the greatest political salon in Vienna--in

Europe--and you went away to rest that you might continue to play it,

not that you might feel fresh enough once more to have _liaisons_ like

other foolish old women. . . . But the part you played then was a

bagatelle to the one awaiting you now. With your splendid mental

gifts, your political genius, your acquired statecraft, your wealth,

and your restored beauty, you could become the most powerful woman in

Europe. But only as my wife. Even you are not strong enough to play

the part alone. There is too much prejudice against women to permit

you to pull more than hidden strings. Masculine jealousy of women is

far more irritable in a democracy than in a monarchy, where women of

rank are expected to play a decorative--and tactful part in politics.

But if they step down and come into conflict with ambitious men of the

people, class jealousy aggravates sex jealousy. You might have a salon

again and become a power somewhat in the old fashion, but you never

would be permitted to play a great public rôle. But as the consort (I

think the word will pass) of the President--or Chancellor--you could

wield almost sensational power."

"I should probably be quite overshadowed by you," she murmured; but she

was hardly conscious of speaking. Her brain was whirling.

"Your position would be too eminent for that, even if I wished it,

which I assuredly should not. I value you too highly. Perhaps I am

one of the few men in Europe who admit--and believe--that a woman may

have as powerful and accomplished an intellect as any man. I did not

appreciate your mind as you deserved when I loved you, but I did during

those subsequent years in Vienna."

"You did not ask me to marry you then--when you appreciated me so

highly. You never seemed to know whether you were talking to a man or

a woman when you were with me. And yet I was, possibly, more

interesting psychologically than I had ever been."

"No man is interested in an old woman's psychology. I am not

interested in your psychology today. And I did not ask you to marry me

then for a great many reasons. I was too handicapped to play a great

rôle myself, you will remember. Nor could you have been of the same

service to me. Even if your fatigued mind had been refreshed, by your

stay in Hungary, you had lost the beauty and the energy, the power of

ardent interest in the affairs of state, which have now been restored

to you. With your rare gifts and your renewed youth, I repeat you have

it in your power to be the most famous woman in Europe, and perhaps the

most useful. But not with a young alien husband. Not only would you

automatically revert to the status of an American, but the dignity

which, unlike so many women of your age who had been _dames galantes_,

you took care to impress on the world, would be hopelessly sacrificed.

Incredible. To spend yourself on a love affair, wantonly to throw away

an historic career, merely because a young man has hypnotized you into

the delusion that you may once more enjoy the passions of youth----"

"Stop! You shall not!" She had sprung to her feet. Her face was

drawn and pinched but her eyes were blazing. "Every word you say is

for a purpose. If that were all I should have hated him. As much as I

hate you. My mind never dwelt on that--not for a moment--I--I never

faced it. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Ah, but I do." He had risen also, and he put his hands on her

shoulders. They were long thin hands but very powerful, and it seemed

to her that they sank slowly through her flesh, until, however

painlessly, they gripped the skeleton underneath. "Look at me, Marie.

Your Mary Ogden died many, many years ago. She died, I should say, at

the first touch of Otto Zattiany. There was nothing in your new life

to revive her, assuredly not your first lover. Certainly you were

Marie Zattiany, the most subtle, complex, and fascinating woman in

Europe when I met you--but abominably disillusioned even then. I

revived your youth for a time, but never your girlhood. You have been

able to deceive yourself here in the country of that girlhood, for a

time, with this interesting young gentleman in love with you, and, no

doubt, extremely ardent."

"Oh!" Her head sank. But she could not turn away, for his hands still

gripped her shoulders. The roar of the stream sounded to her horrified

ears like the crash of falling ruins.

"Listen, Marie," he said more gently. "If I have been brutal, it was

merely because there was no other way to fling you head first out of

your fool's paradise. If I had not known the common sense that forms

the solid lower stratum of your mind, I should not have come here to

say anything at all. You would not have been worth it. But remember,

Marie, that under this new miracle of science, the body may go back but

never the mind. You, your ego, your mind, your _self_, are no younger

than your fifty-eight hard-lived years. And what object in being young

again for any of us if we are to make the same old mistakes? Remember,

that when you were as young as you look now you had no such opportunity

offered you as in this terrible period of European history. Nor could

you have taken advantage of it if you had, for mere mental brilliancy

and ambition cannot take the place of political experience and an

intellect educated by the world. It may be that we shall both be

destroyed, that our efforts will avail nothing, and we shall all be

swallowed up in chaos. But at least we shall have done what we could.

And I know you well enough to believe that such an implacable end would

give you greater satisfaction than dallying in the arms of a handsome

young husband."

He pushed her back into her chair, and resumed his own. "Would you

like to smoke?" he asked.

"Yes." She looked at him with bitter eyes, but she had recaptured her

threatened composure. He regarded her with admiration but they smoked

in silence for several moments. Then he spoke again.

"You remember Elka Zsáky, I suppose? She was several years older than

you and one of the _dames galantes_ of her day. She has taken the

treatment and looks many years younger, at least, than when she was a

painted old hag with a red wig. She is still forced to employ

artifice, but she has lovers again, and that is all she did it for.

Vienna is highly amused. No doubt all women of her sort will take it

for no other purpose. But many of the intellectual women of Europe are

taking it, too--and with the sole purpose of reinvigorating their

mental faculties and recapturing the physical endurance necessary to

their work. I happen to know of a woman scientist, Frau Bloch, who is

now working sixteen hours a day, and she had had a bitter struggle with

her enfeebled forces to work at all. Lorenz is no more remarkable. He

seems to be the only disciple besides yourself that this country has

heard of, but I could name a hundred men, out of my own knowledge, who

are once more working with all the vigor of youth----"

"Yes," she interrupted sarcastically. "And without a thought of women,

of course."

"Probably not." He waved his hand negligently. "But incidentally.

That is where men have the supreme advantage of women. The woman is an

incident in their lives, even when sincerely in love. And if these men

indulge occasionally in the pleasures of youth, or even marry young

wives, the world will not be interested. But with women, who renew

their youth and return to its follies, it will be quite another matter.

If they are not made the theme of obscene lampoons they may count

themselves fortunate. There will certainly be verbal lampoons in

private."

"Orthodoxy! Orthodoxy!"

"Possibly. But orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man

and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that

outrage them. How it may be some years hence, when this cure for

senescence has become a commonplace, I do not pretend to say. But so

it is today. Personally, no doubt, you would be indifferent, for you

have a contemptuously independent mind. But your career and your

usefulness would be at an end."

"And suppose I am quite indifferent to that?"

"Ah, but you are not. I will not say that I have killed Mary Ogden

during this painful hour, for it is impossible to kill the dead, but I

have exorcised her ghost. She will not come again. If you marry this

young man it will be out of defiance, or possibly out of a mistaken

consideration for him--although he will be an object for sympathy later

on. And you will marry him as Marie Zattiany, without an illusion left

in that clear brain of yours--from which the mists have been blown by

the cold wind of truth. And in a year--if you can stand self-contempt

and ineffable ennui so long--you will leave him, resume your present

name--the name by which Europe knows you--and return to us. But it may

be too late. Vienna would still be laughing. The Viennese are a

light-hearted race, and a lax, but when they laugh they cease to take

seriously the subject of that good-natured amusement. . . . It is not

aesthetic, you know, it is not aesthetic. Are you really quite

indifferent, Marie?"

She shrugged and rose. "It must be time for luncheon," she said. "It

will no doubt be horrible, but at least we can have it in here. The

public dining-room would be impossible. I will find Mr. Dinwiddie and

ask him to order it."