The Paliser case Part 23

"May the Lord forgive me," sighed the fat woman. "I was that fl.u.s.tered I forgot to congratulate him. But how it takes me back! Dearie, I too was young! I too have loved! Ah, gioventu primavera della vita! Ah, l'amore!

Ah! Ah!"

"You make me sick," said Ca.s.sy.

"Dearie----"

"Be quiet. My father won't like it and I can't lie to him about it. But I shall need some things and you will have to go for them. What will you tell him?"

With one hand, the fat woman could have flattened Ca.s.sy's father out.

But not his tongue. The nest of vipers there, even then hissed at her.

"Why, dearie, to-morrow you'll have your pick of Fifth Avenue and until then, if you need a tooth-brush, I'll get one for you around the corner."

"But my father will have to be told something. He'll worry to death. I might write though, and put on a special delivery. Look here. Have you any note paper that isn't rotten with scent? If not, I do believe I'll chuck it."

"For G.o.d's sake, dearie!"

Hastily, in search of scentless paper, the fat woman made off.

XIX

Over the way, on the jimcrack of the stately mansion opposite, the westering sun had put an aigrette of gold. The young man with the conquering eye had gone. A lovely Jewess, leaning like a gargoyle, violently threatened some Ikey in the unlovely street below. Above was a pallid green. Beyond, across the river, the sun, poised on a hill-top, threw from its eternal palette shades of salmon and ochre that tinted an archipelago of slender clouds. But in the street was the music of carefree lads, playing baseball, exchanging chaste endearments. There too was the gaiety of little trulls, hasty and happy on their roller-skates. While perhaps to generalise these delights, a trundled organ tossed a ragtime. The charm was certainly affecting and that charm the horn of Paliser's approaching car merely increased.

Long since the letter had gone and, with it, another to Mrs. Yallum. In the former, Ca.s.sy had tried to gild the pill, yet without succeeding in disguising it.

Dear Daddy:

You are the best man in the world and the next best your little girl is to marry now, right away, and become Mrs. Monty Paliser.

But my heart will be with you and so will Mrs. Yallum. Don't fuss with her, there's a dear, and take your medicine regularly and be ready to give me your blessing as soon as I can run in, which will be at the first possible moment, when I shall have more news, good news, better news, best of daddies, for thee.

A whirlwind of kisses,

Ca.s.sY.

Adjacently, on the upper reaches of Broadway, Ma Tamby was shopping. The sun now, gone from the river, was painting other spheres. From a corner, shadows crept. They devoured the floor, absorbed the piano, a.s.similated the room. They left pits where they pa.s.sed. They enveloped Ca.s.sy.

Suddenly, she shivered.

She had been far away, outside of the world, in a region to which the clamouring street could not mount. Her thoughts had lifted her to a land that had the colours, clear and yet capricious, of which dreams are made. There beauty stood, and truth with beauty, and so indistinguishably that the two were one. But truth, detaching herself, showed her candid face. The shadows elongating, reached up and darkened it. The candour remained, but the candour had become terrible. Ca.s.sy saw it. She saw that the land to which she had been lifted was the land of beauty and horror. It was then she shivered.

Instantly something touched her. There was no one. The land, the beauty, the horror had faded. No longer on the heights, she was in a trivial room in Harlem. She was awake. She was absolutely alone. None the less something that was nothing, something invisible, inaudible, intangible, imperceptible, something emanating from the depths where events crouch, prepared to pounce, had touched her. She knew it, she felt it. Her impulse was to scream, to rush away. But from what? It was all imaginary. Common-sense, that can be so traitorous, told her that. Then, immediately, before the wireless from the unknown, which modern occultism calls the impact, could impel her, the room was invaded.

Ma Tamby, tramping in, switching on the lights, was exclaiming and gesticulating at her and at Paliser, who had followed and who was standing in the doorway.

"Dearie! For G.o.d's sake! The child's asleep! In all my born days I never knew the likes of that!"

Icily Ca.s.sy eyed her. "What have you there?"

"Where? What? This?" Feelingly the woman exhibited a nice, big package.

"Why, the things I bought for you!"

"And do you for a moment suppose that I am going to carry a bundle?"

"Saints alive, child! Didn't you tell me----"

But now Paliser, in his cultured voice, intervened. "If I may have it?"

He took it, moved to the window, leaned from it, called: "Mike! You see this? Then see too that you don't m.u.f.f it."

The bundle vanished.

He turned to Ca.s.sy. "I telephoned to Dr. Grantly. He is a clergyman. It might seem uncivil to keep him waiting."

Ca.s.sy saw him at once--a starchy old man, with a white tie and little side whiskers, who lived--and would die--in a closed circle of thought.

Then again that nothing touched her, though, because of the others, more lightly, less surely. But it touched her. She was quite conscious of it, equally conscious that there was still time, that she could still desist, that she had only to say that she would not, that she had changed her mind and tell them no, right out and be hanged to them. On the strawberry of her tongue it trembled. At once before her there floated another picture, the picture of a shabby old man, without a penny in the world, or a hope save in her.

She stood up.

"Dearie, dearie, I wish you joy, I do!" the fat woman sobbed, or appeared to sob, and everything being possible, it may be that she did not sob. La joie fait peur. She had done her part. On the morrow a cheque would reach her. "Dearie, dearie!"

"Don't be a fool," Ca.s.sy frigidly threw at her.

"Will you take my arm?" Paliser asked.

"Don't be a fool either," she threw at him and bravely, head up, went on to the events that waited.

In the street below a strain overtook her. Ma Tamby was amusing herself with "Lohengrin."

XX

Paliser, alighting, turned to help Ca.s.sy. But Ca.s.sy could get out una.s.sisted.

The gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the retreating car. From afar came the bark of a dog, caught up and repeated. Otherwise the air was still, very sweet. The house too was silent. In the hall and in the windows there were lights, but there seemed to be n.o.body about and that and the quiet gave her the delicious impression that the house was enchanted. It was a very nonsensical impression, but it was the nonsense that made it delicious.

Paliser was saying something, though what she did not hear. The sky now was indigo and in it hung a yellow feather. On the Hudson it had been very pale, the ghost of a feather. But, as Harlem receded, it had ridden higher and brightened in the ride. Ca.s.sy had watched it, wishing that Paliser would not talk. He had sat next to her, on the same seat, yet if the portion of it which he occupied had been in a Queensland back-block, he could not have been farther from her heart. He took her hand and she let him. He kissed her and she submitted to that. But she wondered whether courtesans do not hate the men who pay them, more than they hate themselves. Was she any better? However a priest mumbled at her, she was selling herself. Love alone is marriage. She had none, nor had he. The whole thing was abominable, and, as he held her hand and pressed her lips, her young soul rebelled. Even for her father's sake, this cup was too much.

Now though, the empty hall and the great silent house took on the atmosphere of the Palace of the White Cat. The cup became a philtre. The abomination changed into deliciousness. There are fairy-tales that are real. For all she knew, Paliser might change into Prince Charming and certainly he looked it.

He had been saying something, what she did not hear. But on the steps beneath the perron, she turned and saw that which previously she had not realised, he was extraordinarily good-looking, and about her closed a consciousness that her rowdy frock was a tissue of diamonds and that he was in doublet and hose.