Black Oxen

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

They were too proud to ask for details, and Mrs. de Lacey, who was stout, glanced triumphantly at Mrs. Ruyler, who was stouter. "You mean, Mary, that one has to be thin for this treatment to be a success?"

"That I cannot say. I really do not know what the treatment would do to a stout woman of middle or old age. The internal change would be the same, but, although additional flesh can be kept down by medicaments and diet, I doubt if there would be a complete restoration of the outlines of face and neck. A woman of sixty, with sagging flesh and distended skin, might once more look forty, if the treatment were successful, but hardly as young as I do. I was particularly fortunate in having withered. Still, I cannot say. As I told you, many women of all ages and sizes took the treatment while I was in Vienna. But they are too scattered for me at least to obtain any data on the results. I knew none of them personally and I was too busy to seek them out and compare notes.… But with me——" She leaned back and lit a cigarette, looking over her audience with mischievous eyes. "With me it has been a complete success—mentally, physically——"

"Yes, and how long will it last?" shot out Mrs. Ruyler. She was as strong as a horse and as alert mentally as she had ever been, and her complete indifference to rejuvenation in any of its forms gave her a feeling of superior contempt for all those European women who had swarmed to Vienna like greedy flies at the scent of molasses—no doubt to undergo terrible torments that Mary Zattiany would not admit. But her objective curiosity on the subject of youth was insatiable and she read everything that appeared in the newspapers and magazines about it, not neglecting the advertisements. If she had sent for a facial masseuse she would have felt that she had planted a worm at the root of the family tree, but the subject was unaccountably interesting.

Mary Zattiany, who understood her complex perfectly, shrugged her graceful shoulders. "It is too soon to reply with assurance. The method was only discovered some six years ago. But the eminent biologists who have given profound study to the subject estimate that it will last for ten years at least, when it can be renewed once at all events. Of course the end must come. It was not intended that man should live for ever. And who would wish it?"

"Not I, certainly," said Mrs. Ruyler sententiously. "Well, I must admit it has been a complete success in your case. That is not saying I approve of what you have done. You know how we have always regarded such things. If you had lived your life in New York instead of in Europe—notoriously loose in such matters—I feel convinced that you would never have done such a thing—exhausted or not. Moreover, I am a religious woman and I do not believe in interfering with the will of the Almighty."

"Then why have a doctor when you are ill? Are not illnesses the act of God? They certainly are processes of nature."

"I have always believed in letting nature take her course," said Mrs. Ruyler firmly. "But of course when one is ill, that is another matter——"

"Is it?" Madame Zattiany's eye showed a militant spark. "Or is it merely that you are so accustomed to the convention of calling in a doctor that you have never wasted thought on the subject? But is not medicine a science? When you are ill you invoke the aid of science in the old way precisely as I did in the new one. The time will come when this treatment I have undergone will be so much a matter of course that it will cause no more discussion than going under the knife for cancer—or for far less serious ailments. I understand that you, Polly, had an operation two years ago for gastric ulcer, an operation called by the very long and very unfamiliar name, gastroenterostomy. Did you feel—for I assume that you agree with Isabel in most things—that you were flying in the face of the Almighty? Or were you only too glad to take advantage of the progress of science?"

Mrs. Vane merely grunted. Mrs. Ruyler exclaimed crossly, "Oh, no one ever could argue with you, Mary Ogden. The truth is," she added, in a sudden burst of enlightenment that astonished herself, "I don't suppose any of us would mind if you didn't look younger than our daughters. That sticks in our craw. Why not admit it?"

Mrs. Oglethorpe chuckled. She and Isabel Ruyler snapped at each other like two belligerent old cats every time they crossed each other's path, but, with the exception of Mary Ogden, whom she loved, she liked her better than any of her old friends.