The Paliser case Part 21

Ca.s.sy lifted a lip as a dog does when about to bite. "Remember it, I have thought of nothing else."

But now the waiter put a dish between them and Paliser said: "You make me feel like this surprised tomato."

Then came the bite. "While you are about it, you can feel like both of them. I am not going."

Argument weakens everything and wearies everybody--except the young. The mouths of youth are naturally full of objections and insults. Were it otherwise, young people would be too servile to the past, too respectful to the present and the future would not know them as guides.

Paliser, young in years, but old at heart, omitted to argue. He did what is perhaps superior, he changed the subject. "What is this song you were speaking of? Why not try that thing of Rimsky-Korsakov, the 'Chanson Hindoue'?"

Then, throughout that course and the courses that followed, peace descended upon them. Even to talk music soothes the savage breast. It soothed Ca.s.sy and to such an extent that, finally, when the ice came she made no bones about admitting it was her favourite dish.

"Du cafe, monsieur? Des liqueurs?" the slacker asked.

But no, Paliser did not wish anything else, nor did Ca.s.sy. The ice sufficed. She ate it slowly, a little forkful at a time, wishing that her father could share it, wishing that he, too, could have sofa'd supremes and some one to pay for them. She raised her napkin.

Paliser lit a cigarette and said: "You made no reply to that statement of mine."

She stared. "What statement?"

"About saving your life."

"And ruining my reputation?"

"Well, life comes first. I said you would have to marry me to pay for it. Will you?"

Ca.s.sy lowered the napkin. He was talking in jest she knew, or thought she knew, but the subject was not to her taste, though if he had been serious she would have disliked it still more. She wanted to give it to him, but no fitting insolence occurred to her and she turned to the window before which two j.a.panese were pa.s.sing, with the air, certainly feigned, which these Asiatics display, of being hilarious and naf.

"Will you?" he repeated.

"Will I what?"

"Marry me?"

Perhaps he did mean it, she thought. He was cheeky enough for anything.

But now he was prodding her. "Say yes. Say to-morrow; say to-day."

She turned on him. "Why not yesterday? Or is it just another of your pearls of thought? You are simply ridiculous."

Paliser put down his cigarette. "That is the proper note. Marriage is ridiculous. But it is the most ancient of human inst.i.tutions. Divorce must have been invented at least three weeks later."

Ca.s.sy did not mean to laugh and did not want to, but she could not help herself and she exploded it. "You are so ardent!"

Innocently Paliser caressed his chin. He had made her laugh and that was a point gained. But such pleasure as he may have experienced he succeeded in concealing.

"Again the proper note! I am ardent. Yet--shall I admit it?--formerly I walked in darkness. It is all due to my father. I have forgotten the prophet preaching on the hillside who denounced respectability as a low pa.s.sion. But my father, while deeply religious, has views more advanced.

He dotes on respectability. He tried to instil it into me and, alas! how vainly! I was as the blind, the light was withheld and continued to be until, well, until a miracle occurred. You appeared, I was healed, I saw and I saw but you. What do you say?"

"That your conversation is singularly edifying." In speaking, Ca.s.sy gathered her gloves with an air slightly hilarious but not in the least naf. Before Paliser could cut in, she added: "If I don't hurry, Ma Tamby will be out and I shall lose my lesson."

Paliser shifted. She is devilish pretty, he thought. But is she worth it? For a second he considered the possible scandal which he had considered before.

He stood up. "Let me take you. We can stop for the song on the way."

XVIII

"My Carlottatralala! Dear Carlottatralala!"

Lightly at the door, Ca.s.sy strung the words to a mazourka. Her voice twisted, swung, danced into a trill that was captured by echoes that carried it diminishingly down the stairway of the mansion where Carlotta Tamburini lived.

"Eh?"

Partially the door opened. A fat slovenly woman showed an unpowdered nose, a loose unpainted mouth, and, at sight of Paliser, backed. "For G.o.d's sake! One moment, dearie. Straight ahead. With you in two shakes."

Ca.s.sy, her yellow frock swishing, led the way to a room furnished with heaped scores, with a piano, a bench, chairs and a portrait, on foot, of a star before the fall. Adjacently were framed programmes, the faded tokens of forgetless and forgotten nights, and, with them, the usual portraits of the usual royalties, but perhaps unusually signed. The ex-diva had attended to that herself.

Paliser, straddling the bench, put his hat on the piano and looked at Ca.s.sy, who had gone to the window. It was not the palaces opposite that she saw. Before her was a broken old man revamped. In his hand was a baton which he brandished demoniacally at an orchestra of his own. The house foamed with faces, shook with applause, and without, at the glowing gates, a chariot carried him instantly to the serenities of elaborate peace.

"It won't take over an hour."

The vision vanished. Across the way, in a window opposite, a young man was dandling, twirling one side of a moustache, c.o.c.king a conquering eye. Ca.s.sy did not see him. Directly behind her another young man was talking. She did not hear.

On leaving the restaurant and, after it, the music-shop, the car had taken them into the Park where Paliser, alleging that he was out of matches, had handed her into another restaurant where more Vichy was put before her and, with it, that question.

The air was sweet with lilacs. On the green beyond Ca.s.sy could see them, could see, too, a squirrel there that had gone quite mad. It flew around and around, stopped suddenly short, chattered furiously and with a flaunt of the tail, disappeared up a tree.

"What a dear!" was Ca.s.sy's reply to that question.

But Paliser gave her all the rope that she wanted. He had no attraction for her, he knew it, and in view of other experiences, the fact interested him. It had the charm of novelty to this man who, though young, was old; who, perhaps, was born old; born, as some are, too old in a world too young.

He struck a match and watched the little blue-gold flame flare and subside. It may have seemed to him typical. Then he looked up.

"Frankly, I have no inducements to offer, and, by the same token, no lies. It would be untrue if I said I loved you. Love is not an emotion, it is a habit, one which it takes time to form. I have had no opportunity to acquire it, but I have acquired another. I have formed the habit of admiring you. The task was not difficult. Is there anything in your gla.s.s?"

"A bit of cork, I think," said Ca.s.sy, who was holding the gla.s.s to the light and who was holding it moreover as though she had thoughts for nothing else.

But her thoughts were agile as that squirrel. A why not? Why not? Why not? was spinning in them, spinning around and around so quickly that it dizzied her. Then, like the squirrel, up a tree she flew. For herself, no. She did not want him, never had wanted him, never could.

"May I have it?" Paliser took the gla.s.s. Save for subsiding bubbles, and the bogus water, there was nothing there. "Will you take mine? I have not touched it."

Ca.s.sy took it from him, drank it, drank it all. Her thoughts raced on.

She was aware of that, though with what they were racing she could not tell.

"I don't know why I am so thirsty."