The Paliser case Part 20

Then Jones too got up. Paliser, to whom solitude was always irksome, found himself alone. But his solitude was not prolonged. A man joined him. Another followed. Presently there was a group.

From the table where Jones had gone, the inkbeast saw and seeing thought: Empires may totter, nations fall. The face of the earth will be changed. But the toady endureth forever.

XVI

It was another perfect day, a forenoon after Veronese, a day of which the charm was heightened by the witcheries that Harlem knows--the shouted temptations of push-carts; the pastimes of children, so noisy, so dirty, so dear! the engaging conversation of German ladies; the ambient odour of cabbage and the household linen fluttering gaily on the roofs. It was rapturous. Just beyond was a sewer--the Hudson. But above was the turquoise of the mid-April day.

Ca.s.sy went by and on, turned a corner, crossed the street, descended into a cave, smiled sweetly at a man who was closing a door and who, seeing that smile, smiled at it, smiled wantonly, held the door open, yet, noting then but an arid blankness where her smile had been, banged the door and shouted fiercely: "Hundred-thirty-seven-street-next."

The train crashed on. Ca.s.sy, her nose in the air, a.s.sumed a barbed-wire att.i.tude, her usual defensive against the conjecturing eyes of old men and the h.e.l.lo, Kid! glances of New York's subtle youth. This att.i.tude, which enabled her to ignore everything and everybody, enabled her also to think of what she liked, or of what she did not like, a circ.u.mstance that happened to her then and which was induced by her father.

That day he had been terrible. The tragedies of the fated Atrides, what were they to his? A lamentation longer than Jeremiah's followed. His arm, his skill, his art, his strength, his money, everything, for all he knew even his daughter, was taken from him. How long, O Lord, how long!

And presto! da capo, all over and afresh she had it.

Then, shaking a finger, he cried: "Where were you last night?"

Ca.s.sy, reduced to tears, exclaimed at him. "Why here. Where else?"

Darkly he eyed her. "Yes, but earlier, before you came in, where were you?"

Ca.s.sy could not help it, she shook. A moment before she had been crying whole-heartedly, a.s.sociating herself, as a daughter may, in her father's woe. But that was too much. With the tears still in her eyes, she laughed. "Gracious goodness! You don't take me for a fly-by-night?"

The n.o.ble marquis, who had been standing, sat down. Before him, on the ginger of the wall, hung the portrait of the gorgeous swashbuckler.

Behind the latter were portraits, dim, remote, visionary, of other progenitors who probably never existed. But he was convinced that they had, convinced that always, sword in hand, they had upheld the honour of the Casa-Evora. No, surely, his daughter had not forfeited that. No, certainly, he did not suspect her. But there was much that he did not understand. The misery of the mystery of things overcame him. He wept noisily.

Ca.s.sy, who had been seated, stood up. She had on her rowdy frock. She also had on a hat--if you can call a tam-o'-shanter a hat. Therewith were white gloves which she had got at the basilica and which as yet were free from benzine. Her father had distressed her inhumanly, but she had survived it, as youth survives anything, and she looked then, not tear-stained in the least, but, as usual, very handsome.

Bending forward, she touched him. "There, you dear old thing, don't take on so. I have been planning something fat for you. Everything will come out right Just wait and see--and when you're hungry, there's some nice cold veal in the kitchy."

But though in the kitchen there was cold veal, which it were perhaps poetic to describe as nice, yet even the poetry of that was exceeded by the poetry of the plan. Ca.s.sy had planned nothing lean or fat, nothing whatever. She had spoken as a little mother may, in an effort to console, though perhaps prompted subconsciously by the inscrutable possibilities of life. Anything may happen. Already on the stage of which destiny is the scene-shifter, the fates, in their eternal role of call-boy, were summoning the actors to the drama in which the leading role was hers and on which the curtain was about to rise.

Her father, comforted by the imaginary, looked up. She had gone. From the sling he took his arm. The elbow was stiff, though less stiff than it had been. Moreover the wrist moved readily and the fingers were as flexible as before. Consoled by that, comforted already, he shuffled into the kitchen and consumed the cold veal.

Now, in the crashing car, Ca.s.sy's thoughts went forward and back. Her father's question, that had succeeded in being both pointed and pointless, returned. She smiled at it. It would take another Don Juan than Mozart's to entice me, she serenely reflected. Yet, after all, would he have to be so remarkable? At any rate he would have to be fancy free and not engaged as was a certain person who had not so much as said Boo!

Ca.s.sy coloured. Always corsetless, she was not straight-laced. Given the attraction and with it the incentive, and that tam-o'-shanter might have gone flying over the windmill. The tam was very safe. There was no incentive and, though there was no moral corset either, she was temperamentally unable to go poaching on another's preserves. Barring the chimerical, that any girl may consider and most girls do, she was straight as a string. A shabby old man had no need to ask.

"Seventy-second!" The trainman bawled unmollifiably at her.

Ca.s.sy left a certain person there. Into her thoughts another man had hopped. She surveyed him. He was good-looking. He was rich. These attributes said nothing. A beautiful male--always an anomaly--never attracts a beautiful woman. That other anomaly, a man of inherited wealth, is disgusting to the anarchist. Ca.s.sy was a beauty and an anarchist. She was also an aristocrat. The tattered portieres of the House of Casa-Evora, the bedrabbled robes of the marquisate, all that was ridiculous to her. She was an aristocrat none the less. She had a high disdain for low things. In the kitchen, which she called the kitchy, she bent her back but not her head. Her head was unbowed. She sullied her hands but not her conscience. A dirty act she could not perform. Aristocrat and anarchist, she was also an artist. With simple things and simple people, she was simple as you please. Stupidity and pretentiousness enraged her. The philistine and the ign.o.ble she loathed.

Now, through the windows of her soul, she surveyed him. His looks, his money, said nothing. On the other hand there was about him an aroma that appealed. The aroma was not the odour that local society exhales. At that Ca.s.sy's nose was in the air. A lot of n.o.bodies occupied with nothing--and talking about it! Such was her opinion of the gilded gang, an opinion which Paliser--to do him the justice that the historian should--would have had put to music and arranged for trumpets. It was not that, therefore. The aroma was more fetching. The man talked her language, liked what she liked, never presumed. In considering these factors, she considered her gloves. Thank G.o.d, they did not smell of benzine!

"Grand Central!"

Ca.s.sy, abandoning Paliser there, went on to Fifth Avenue, where, with the protection of cross-town traffic, she attempted to get to the other side. But half-way, she saw, or thought she saw, the young woman to whom a certain person was engaged. She turned to look, backed into the traffic-sign and put it in motion. Instantly motors were careering at each other. Instantly a purple policeman grown suddenly black, was smitten with St. Vitus.

Dancing and bellowing as he danced, he righted the sign and swore at Ca.s.sy, who, for added outrage, had flung herself at him and was smiling sweetly in his swollen face. About them the torrent poured. Then all at once, in a riot that afterwards seemed to her phantasmagoric, the policeman raised a forefinger in salute. From the maelstrom she was hoisted bodily into a car. Somebody, the policeman probably, was boosting her from behind. Never had she suffered such indignities! To accentuate them, somebody else was shouting in her face.

"I've saved your life, you'll have to marry me."

"Well, I declare!" Ca.s.sy, horribly ruffled, exclaimed at Paliser, who had the impudence to laugh. She smoothed the smock, patted the hat, pa.s.sed a gloved hand over her nose.

"You're all there," Paliser, amused by the mimic, was telling her. "What is more, one pick-me-up deserves another."

With his stick, he poked at the mechanician, gestured with it, indicating a harbour.

The car veered and stopped at a restaurant that had formerly resided in Fourteenth Street, but which had moved, as the heart of Manhattan moved, and was then thinking of moving again.

In the entrance were Cantillon and Ogston, agreeable young men, who stood aside for Ca.s.sy, raised their hats at Paliser, nudging each other with unfathomable good-fellowship.

"A peach!"

"No, a pair!"

Their pleasantries were lost. Ca.s.sy and Paliser moved on and in to the Fifth Avenue room, crowded as usual on this high noon. But what are head-waiters for? Promptly there was a table, one not too near the orchestra and yet which gave on the street.

"What would you dislike the least?" Paliser from over a bill-of-fare inquired. He had brought his hat and stick with him and, in spite of a waiter's best efforts, had put both on the floor.

I am not fit to be seen, thought Ca.s.sy, looking about at two and three hundred dollar frocks and at blouses that were almost as cheap.

Paliser, turning to the waiter, translated pa.s.sages from the menu.

"Surprised tomatoes, cocottish eggs, supreme on a sofa, ice Aurora Borealis. And a baked potato." He turned to Ca.s.sy. "Barring the ice, a baked potato is the only thing in which they can't stick grease."

"Et comme vin, monsieur?" enquired the waiter who ought to have been at the front.

"Aqua pura. But probably you have not got it. Celestial Vichy, then." He looked again at Ca.s.sy. "What else might displease your ladyship?"

"Do stop talking like a low comedian," Ca.s.sy vexatiously retorted. "If you had not used force I would not be here. I could not make a row at the door."

"No, one scene on Fifth Avenue is enough for one day."

"I should say so and it was you who made it. I was going quietly about my business when I was derricked into your car."

"Not at all. You threw yourself at my head. If it had not been for me, the policeman would have marched you off to prison."

Ca.s.sy laughed. "The dear man! He knew I would be worse off with you."

"Yes. He was certainly perspicacious. Where did you say you were going?"

Ca.s.sy removed her gloves. "Before I was attacked? To a music-shop. There is a song I want to get for Mrs. Thingumagig's, Mrs. Beamish----"

"Mrs. Who?" Paliser asked. Again he had forgotten the lady. But from one of memory's pantries her wraith peered out. "Ah, yes, of course! Well, we can stop by for it and you can run it over in the country to-night.

You remember that you are to dine with me, don't you?"