Black Oxen Part 29

There was a wild shriek from a corner of the room, a slim girl leapt across the intervening s.p.a.ce like a panther, and flinging herself upon Oglethorpe, beat his chest with her fists.

"You d.a.m.ned old plumber, you old dumb-duck!" shrieked his little daughter. "What did you come here and spoil everything for? He'd have had to marry me tomorrow if you'd minded your own business. I'll claw your eyes out." But her hands were imprisoned in her father's hard fists, and she turned and spat at the petrified Clavering. "I hate you! I hate you! But I'm going to marry you all the same. One way or another I'll get you. I meant to wait awhile; for I hadn't had fun enough yet, and I'd have precious little with you, you old flat tyre.

But when I heard that old Zattiany woman'd got hold of you--and then locked up and not able to do a thing--I thought I'd go mad. I dropped my diamond bracelet out of the window and one of the servants let me out--I won't tell which. You've been seen coming out of her house at all hours, but she's a thousand years old and n.o.body cares what she does, but I intended to rouse this whole house and I'd have been so compromised you'd have had to marry me. You're a gentleman if you are a d.a.m.ned old left-over, and you're a friend of granny's and dad's. I'd have had you tied up so tight you'd have toddled straight down to the City Hall."

Clavering stared at her, wondering how women felt when they were going to have hysterics. What a night! And this girl's resemblance to her grandmother was uncanny. He could see the Jane Oglethorpe of the portrait in just such a tantrum. And he had thought he knew both of them. He wanted to burst into wild laughter, but the girl was tragic in spite of her silly plot and he merely continued to regard her stonily.

"How did you get in?" he asked. "That's not easy in this house."

"I just got in the lift and told the boy I was your sister just arrived from the South and he let me in with the pa.s.s key. He took me for sixteen and said that as you weren't one for chickens he'd chance it."

"He'll get the sack in the morning."

"I don't care what happens to him." Suddenly she burst into tears, her face working like a baby's, and flung herself into her father's arms.

"Make him marry me, daddy. Make him! I want him. I want him."

Oglethorpe put his arms about her, but his sympathies were equally divided, and he understood men far better than he did young girls.

"You wouldn't want to marry a man who doesn't love you," he said soothingly. "Where's your pride?"

"Who cares a d.a.m.n about pride? I want him and that's all there is to it." She whirled round again. "Do you think you're in love with that rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if she's a day? She's hypnotized you, that's what. It isn't natural. It isn't. It isn't."

"I certainly shall marry Madame Zattiany if she will have me."

"O-h-h." Tears dried. She showed her teeth like a treed cat. Her eyes blazed again and she would have precipitated herself upon him, but her father held her fast. "Oh! Oh! Oh! It can't be. It can't be.

It's as unnatural as if you married granny. It isn't fair. How dare she come here with her whitewash and sneak young girls' lovers away from them?"

"Really, Janet."

"Oh, I know, you thought you didn't care for me, but you always did, and I'd have got you in time. I knew there was no chance for Marian and Anne; they're old maids, and I'm young--_young_. If I'd cut out the fun and concentrated on you I'd have got you. I wish I had! I wish I had! But you were such an old flat tyre I thought you were safe."

"What in heaven's name makes you think you're in love with me?"

exploded Clavering. "Your opinion of me is anything but complimentary, and I'm everything your chosen companions are not. You don't want me any more than I want you. You've simply been playing some fool game with yourself----"

"It's not! It's not! It's the real thing. I've been in love with you since I was six. Ask daddy. Daddy, didn't I always say I was going to marry him?"

"Yes, when you were little more of a baby than you are now. Can't you imagine how ashamed you'll be of such an undignified performance as this?"

"I ashamed? Not much. I always intend to do just as I please and d.a.m.n the consequences."

"A fine wife you'd make for Lee or any other man."

"I'd make him the best wife in the world. I'd do everything he told me. No, I wouldn't. Yes, I would." Sheer femaleness and the spirit of the age seesawed inconclusively. "Anyhow, I'd make you happy, because I'd be happy myself," she added navely. "Much happier than your grand-mother----"

"Perhaps you will oblige me by making no further allusion to Madame Zattiany."

"No, I won't. And the first time I see her when there's a lot of people round I'll tell her just what she is to her face."

"If you dare!" Clavering advanced threateningly and she swung herself behind her father, who, however, took her firmly by the arm and marched her to the door.

"Enough of this," he said. "You come home and pack your trunk and tomorrow we take the first steamer out of New York. If there isn't one, we'll take the train for Canada----"

"I won't go."

"It's either that or a sanitarium for neurotics. I'll have you strapped down and carried there in an ambulance. You may take your choice. Good night, Lee. Forget it, if you can."

As Clavering slammed the door behind them he envied men who could tear their hair. He had wanted to spend a long evening alone thinking of Mary Zattiany, dreaming of those vital hours before him, and he had been treated to a double nightmare. For the moment he hated everything in petticoats that walked, and he felt like taking a steamer to the ends of the earth himself. But he was more worn out than he knew and was sound asleep fifteen minutes later.

x.x.xIV

Janet had her revenge. Words have a terrible power. And Janet's vocabulary might be as primitive as lightning, but unlike lightning it never failed to strike.

"That old Zattiany woman." "She's a thousand years old and n.o.body cares what she does." "That rejuvenated old dame who's granny's age if she's a day." "Much happier than your grandmother." The phrases flashed into his mind when he awoke and echoed in his ears all day. No doubt similar phrases, less crude, but equally scorching, were being tossed from one end of New York Society to the other. If Janet knew of his devotion to Madame Zattiany others must, for it could only have come to her on the wings of gossip. He was being ridiculed by people who grasped nothing beyond the fact that the woman was fifty-eight and the man thirty-four. Of course it would be but a nine days' wonder and like all other social phenomena grow too stale for comment, but meanwhile he should feel as if he were frying on a gridiron. Anne Goodrich would merely exclaim: "Abominable." Marian Lawrence would draw in her nostrils and purr: "Lee was always an erratic and impressionable boy. Just like him to fall in love with an old woman.

And she's really a beautiful blonde--once more. Poor Lee." As for Gora and Suzan Forbes--well, Gora would understand, and impale them sympathetically in her next novel, and Suzan would read up on endocrines, blend them adroitly with psychology, and write an article for the _Yale Review_.

He avoided the office and wrote his column at home. Luckily a favorite old comedian had died recently. He could fill up with reminiscence and anecdote. But it was soon done and he was back in his chair with his thoughts again.

It had been his intention when he awakened on Sunday after a few hours of unrefres.h.i.+ng sleep to dispatch his work as quickly as possible, take a long walk, and then return to his rooms and keep the hours that must intervene until Monday afternoon, sacred to Mary Zattiany. But if man wishes to regulate his life, and more particularly his meditations, to suit himself he would be wise to retire to a mountain top. Civilized life is a vast woof and the shuttle pursues its weaving and counter-weaving with no regard for the plans of men. It was impossible to ignore Mrs. Oglethorpe's appeal, and it was equally impossible to refuse to aid in the hunt for that d.a.m.nable Janet when her distracted father and his own intimate friend took his cooperation as a matter of course. And even if he had remained at home, no doubt she would have wiggled her way in before he could shut the door in her face. Then there _would_ have been the devil to pay, for she would have seen to it that he was hopelessly compromised. No doubt she would have run out on the balcony and screamed for help. Her failure was the one saving grace in the whole wretched night.

But she had planted her stings.

He was in a fine frame of mind to make love to a woman. He had pictured that scene as one of the great moments of life, so subtly beautiful and dramatic, so exalted and exulting, so perfect in its very incompleteness, that not a lifetime of suffering and disappointment could blur it. And he felt exactly like the flat tyre of Janet's distinguished vernacular. Even his body was worn out, for he had had but nine hours' sleep in two nights. What a dead cinch the playwrights had. A man might as well try to breathe without oxygen on Mount Everest as attempt to give his own life the proper dramatic values. He was a cursed puppet and Life itself was a curse.

He excoriated himself for his susceptibility to mere words; he who juggled in words, and often quite insincerely when it suited his purpose. But "that rejuvenated old dame," and "that old Zattiany woman" crawled like reeking vapors across some fair landscape a man had spent his life seeking, blotting out its loveliness, turning it to a noisome mora.s.s.

He had used equally caustic phrases when some young man he knew had married a woman only ten years older than himself, and when old men had taken to themselves young wives. And meant them, for he was fundamentally as conventional and conservative as all men... . But he cared less that he would be the laughing stock of New York than that his own soul felt like boiling pitch and that he was ashamed of himself.

He looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes to four. There was neither love nor desire in him and he would have liked to throw himself on the divan and sleep. But he set his teeth and got to his feet. He would go through it, play up, somehow.

He felt better in the nipping air and soon began to walk briskly. And then as he crossed Park Avenue and entered her street he saw two men coming down her steps. They were Mr. Dinwiddie, and the extremely good-looking young man whom Osborne had brought to the box on Monday night. The young man was smiling fatuously.

A wave of rage and jealousy swept Clavering from head to foot. She, at least, could have kept these hours sacred, and she had not only received this grinning ape, but evidently given him a delectable morsel to chew on. He could have knocked both men down but he was not even permitted to pa.s.s them by with a scowling nod. Another contretemps.

Dinwiddie hailed him delightedly.

"Good old Lee! Haven't seen you in an age. Where've you kept yourself? Know Vane? Mother's an old friend of Mary's. He's head over like the rest of us. Who says we don't live in the age of miracles?"

"Yeh, ain't life wonderful?" Clavering's jocular faculty was enfeebled, but it came to the rescue. He was staring at Vane.

Evidently this young man was unimpressed by searing phrases and he must have heard several, for, if he remembered aright, "Polly Vane" with "her head like a billiard ball," who "wore a wig for decency's sake,"

had been one of the most resentful women at the luncheon. For a moment he had a queer impression that his stature had diminished until the top of his head stood level with this glowing young man's waistcoat. And then he shot up to seven feet. Something had turned over inside him and vomited forth the pitch and its vapors. But he still felt angry and jealous. He managed to reply, however:

"Well, I must be getting on. Have an engagement at four. See you in a day or two, Din." He nodded to young Vane and in another moment he was taking Madame Zattiany's front steps three at a time.