He plunged down the steps into a snowstorm. Even during his precipitate retreat he had realized the advisability of telephoning for a taxi, but had been incapable of the anti-climax. He pulled his hat over his eyes, turned up the collar of his coat, and made his way hastily toward Park Avenue. There was not a cab in sight. Nor was there a rumble in the tunnel; no doubt the cars were snow-bound. He hesitated only a moment: it would hardly take him longer to walk to his hotel than to the Grand Central Station, but he crossed over to Madison Avenue at once, for it was bitter walking and there was a bare chance of picking up a cab returning from one of the hotels.
But the narrow street between its high dark walls looked like a deserted mountain pass rapidly filling with snow. The tall street-lamps shed a sad and ghostly beam. They might have been the hooded torches of cave dwellers sheltering from enemies and the storm in those perpendicular fastnesses. Far down, a red sphere glowed dimly, exalting the illusion. He almost fancied he could see the out-posts of primeval forests bending over the ca駉n and wondered why the "Poet of Manhattan" had never immortalized a scene at once so sinister and so lovely.
And no stillness of a high mountain solitude had ever been more intense. Not even a muffled roar from trains on the distant "L's." Clavering wondered if he really were in New York. The whole evening had been unreal enough. Certainly all that was prosaic and ugly and feverish had been obliterated by what it was no flight of fancy to call white magic. That seething mass of humanity, that so often looked as if rushing hither and thither with no definite purpose, driven merely by the obsession of speed, was as supine in its brief privacy as its dead. In spite of the fever in him he felt curiously uplifted—and glad to be alone. There are moods and solitudes when a man wants no woman, however much he may be wanting one particular woman.… But the mood was ephemeral; he had been too close to her a moment before. Moreover, she was still unpossessed.… She seemed to take shape slowly in the white whirling snow, as white and imponderable.… A Nordic princess drifting northward over her steppes.… God! Would he ever get her?… If he did not it would be because one of them was qualifying for another incarnation.
He walked down the avenue as rapidly as possible, his hands in his pockets, his head bent to the wind, no longer transported; forcing his mind to dwell on the warmth of his rooms and his bed.… His head ached. He'd go to the office tomorrow and write his column there. Then think things out. How was he to win such a woman? Make her sure of herself? Convert her doubts into a passionate certainty? She, with her highly technical past! Make no mistakes? If he made a precipitate ass of himself—what comparisons!… His warm bed牎?the complete and personal isolation of his rooms牎?he had never given even a tea to women牎?he gave his dinners in restaurants.… How many more blocks? The snow was thicker. He couldn't even see the arcade of Madison Square Garden, although a faint diffused radiance high in air was no doubt the crown of lights on the Metropolitan Tower.… Had he made a wrong move in bolting——?
His thoughts and counter-thoughts came to an abrupt end. At the corner of Thirtieth Street he collided with a small figure in a fur coat and nearly knocked it over. He was for striding on with a muttered apology, when the girl caught him by the arm with a light laugh.
"Lee Clavering! What luck! Take me home."
He was looking down into the dark naughty little face of Janet Oglethorpe, granddaughter of the redoubtable Jane.
"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked stupidly.
"Perhaps I'll tell you and perhaps I won't. On second thoughts don't take me home. Take me to one of those all-night restaurants. That's just the one thing I haven't seen, and I'm hungry."
He subtly became an uncle. "I'll do nothing of the sort. You ought to be ashamed of yourself—alone in the streets at this hour of the night. It must be one o'clock. I shall take you home. I suppose you have a latch-key, but for two cents I'd ring the bell and hand you over to your mother."
"Mother went to Florida today and dad's duck-hunting in South Carolina. Aunt Mollie's too deaf to hear doorbells and believes anything I tell her."
"I am astonished that your mother left you behind to your own devices."
"I wouldn't go. She's given me up—used to my devices. Besides, I've one or two on her and she doesn't dare give me away to dad. He thinks I'm a darling spoilt child. Not that I'd mind much if he didn't, but it's more convenient."
"You little wretch! I believe you've been drinking."
"So I have! So I have! But I've got an asbestos lining and could stand another tall one. Ah!" Her eyes sparkled. "Suppose you take me to your rooms——"
"I'll take you home——"
"You'll take me to one of those all-nighters——"
"I shall not."
"Then ta! ta! I'll go home by myself. I've had too good a time tonight to bother with old fogies."
She started up the street and Clavering hesitated but a moment. Her home was on East Sixty-fifth Street. Heaven only knew what might happen to her. Moreover, although her mother was one of those women whose insatiable demand for admiration bored him, he had no more devoted friends than her father and her grandmother. Furthermore, his curiosity was roused. What had the little devil been up to?
He overtook the Oglethorpe flapper and seizing her hand drew it through his arm.
"I'll take you where you can get a sandwich," he said. "But I'll not take you to a restaurant. Too likely to meet newspaper men."
"Anything to drink?"
"Ice cream soda."
"Good Lord!"
"You needn't drink it. But you'll get nothing else. Come along or I'll pick you up and carry you to the nearest garage."
She trotted obediently beside him, a fragile dainty figure; carried limply, however, and little more distinguished than flappers of inferior origin. He led her to a rather luxurious delicatessen not far from his hotel, kept by enterprising Italians who never closed their doors. They seated themselves uncomfortably at the high counter, and the sleepy attendant served them with sandwiches, then retired to the back of the shop. He was settling himself to alert repose when Miss Oglethorpe suddenly changed her mind and ordered a chocolate ice cream soda. Then she ordered another, and she ate six sandwiches, a slice of cake and two bananas.
"Great heaven!" exclaimed Clavering. "You must have the stomach of an ostrich."
"Can eat nails and drink fire water."
"Well, you won't two years hence, and you'll look it, too."
"Oh, no I won't. I'll marry when I'm nineteen and a half and settle down."
"I should say you were heading the other way. Where have you been tonight?"
"Donny Farren gave a party in his rooms and passed out just as he was about to take me home. I loosened his collar and put a pillow under his head, but I couldn't lift him, even to the sofa. Too fat."
"I suppose you pride yourself on being a good sport."
"Rather. If Donny'd been ill I'd have stayed with him all night, but he was dead to the world."
"You say he had a party. Why didn't some of the others take you home?"
"Ever hear about three being a crowd? Donny, naturally, was all for taking me home, and didn't show any signs of collapse till the last minute."
"But I should think that for decency's sake you'd all have gone down together."
"Lord! How old-fashioned you are. I was finishing a cigarette and never thought of it." She opened a little gold mesh bag, took out a cigarette and lit it. Her cheeks were flushed under the rouge and her large black eyes glittered in her fluid little face. She was one of the beauties of the season's d閎utantes, but scornful of nature. Her olive complexion was thickly powdered and there was a delicate smudge of black under her lower lashes and even on her eyelids. He had never seen her quite so blatantly made up before, but then he had seen little of her since the beginning of her first season. He rarely went to parties, and she was almost as rarely in her own home or her grandmother's. Her short hair curled about her face. In spite of her paint she looked like a child—a greedy child playing with life.
"Look here!" he said. "How far do you go?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"I should. Not for personal reasons, for girls of your age bore me to extinction, but you've a certain sociological interest. I wonder if you are really any worse than your predecessors?"
"I guess girls have always been human enough, but we have more opportunities. We've made 'em. This is our age and we're enjoying it to the limit. God! what stupid times girls must have had—some of them do yet. They're naturally goody-goody, or their parents are too much for them. Not many, though. Parents have taken a back seat."
"I don't quite see what you get out of it—guzzling, and smoking your nerves out by the roots, and making yourselves cheap with men little older than yourselves."
"You don't see, I suppose, why girls should have their fling, or"—her voice wavered curiously—"why youth takes naturally to youth. I suppose you think that is a cruel thing for a girl to say."
"Not in the least," he answered cheerfully. "Don't mind a bit. But what do you get out of it—that's what I'm curious to know."
She tossed her head and blew a perfect ring. "Don't you know that girls never really enjoyed life before?"
"It depends upon the point of view, I should think."
"No, there's a lot more in it than you guess. The girls used to sit round waiting for men to call and wondering if they'd condescend to show up at the next dance; while the men fairly raced after the girls with whom they could have a free and easy time—no company manners, no chaperons, no prudish affectations about kisses and things. No fear of shocking if they wanted to let go—the strain must have been awful. You know what men are. They like to call a spade a spade and be damned to it. Our sort didn't have a chance. They couldn't compete. So, we made up our minds to compete in the only way possible. We leave off our corsets at dances so they can get a new thrill out of us, then sit out in an automobile and drink and have little petting parties of two. And we slip out and have an occasional lark like tonight. We're not to be worried about, either."
"Why cryptic after your really admirable frankness? But there's always a point beyond which women never will go when confessing their souls.… I suppose you think you're as hard as nails. Do you really imagine that you will ever be able to fall in love and marry and want children?"
"Don't men?"
"Ancient standards are not annihilated in one generation."
"There's got to be a beginning to everything, hasn't there? One would think the world stood still, to hear you talk. But anything new always makes the fogies sick."
"Nothing makes me as sick as your bad manners—you and all your tribe. Men, at least, don't lose their breeding if they choose to sow wild oats. But women go the whole hog or none."
"Other times, other manners. We make our own, and you have to put up with them whether you like it or not. See?"
"I see that you are even sillier than I thought. You need nothing so much as a sound spanking."
"Your own manners are none too good. You've handed me one insult after another."
"I've merely talked to you as your father would if he were not blind. Besides, it would probably make you sick to be 'respected.' Come along. We'll go round to a garage and get a taxi. Why on earth didn't you ring for a taxi from Farren's?"
"I tried to, but it's an apartment house and there was no one downstairs to make the connection. Too late. So I footed it." She yawned prodigiously. "I'm ready at last for my little bunk. Hope you've enjoyed this more than I have. You'd be a scream at a petting party."
Clavering paid his small account and they issued into the storm once more. It was impossible to talk. In the taxi she went to sleep. Thank Heaven! He had had enough of her. Odious brat. More than once he had had a sudden vision of Mary Zattiany during that astonishing conversation at the counter. The "past" she had suggested to his tormented mind was almost literary by contrast. She, herself, a queen granting favors, beside this little fashionable near-strumpet. They didn't breathe the same air, nor walk on the same plane. Who, even if this little fool were merely demi-vierge, would hesitate between them? One played the game in the grand manner, the other like a glorified gutter-snipe. But he was thankful for the diversion, and when he reached his own bed he fell asleep immediately and did not turn over for seven hours.