The Paliser case Part 35

"In Paliser's box. He's to be alone and left it here with a note asking me to join him."

Deeply, beneath his breath, Jones swore, but with the same smile, he tried to shift the subject. "You're quite a belle, aren't you?"

"See here, Ogston," Lennox put in, "let me have it."

Ogston, fumbling in his white waistcoat, extracted the ticket and handed it over.

"By the way, Lennox, do you mind my doing a little touting for Cantillon? He's with Dunwoodie. Give him your law business--some of it, anyhow."

"I'll give him some, when I have it," answered Lennox, who was to have some, and sooner and far more monumentally, than either he, or even Jones, suspected.

"Good for you, Lennox. Good-night, Jones." The brilliant and beautifully dressed young man nodded and pa.s.sed on.

But now the captain was bearing down on them.

Jones looked at Lennox. "You will have to come back to my shop after dinner. There is a phrase in your will that I omitted. I forgot the 'seized and possessed.'"

Lennox drank before he spoke. Then he said: "After dinner, I shall do for Paliser."

Jones, waiting until the captain had gone, looked at Lennox again. "The greatest revenge is the disdain of any."

Lennox made no reply. A waiter put a plate before him and another before Jones. Members pa.s.sed, going to their tables or leaving them.

Occasionally one of them stopped, exchanged the time of day and then pa.s.sed on. In each exchange Jones collaborated. Lennox said nothing. The food before him he tormented, poking at it with a fork, but not eating it.

Presently he asked for coffee, drank a cup and got up.

Jones, too, got up and, to stay him, put out a hand.

Lennox, treating it, and him, like a cobweb, went on.

Afterward, Jones thought of the Wild Women of whom aeschylus tells, the terrible Daughters of Hazard that lurk in the shadows of coming events which, it may be, they have marshalled.

Afterward he thought of them. But at the moment, believing that Lennox would do nothing and realising that, in any case, nothing can be more futile than an attempt to avert the inevitable, he was about to resume his seat, when something on the floor attracted him. He bent over, took it, looked at it and tucked it in a pocket.

Then, sitting down again, mentally he followed Lennox, whom later he was to follow farther, whom he was to follow deep in the depths where the Wild Women, lurking in wait, had thrown him.

XXVII

The Park that had taken Ca.s.sy and from which, at that hour, children and nursemaids had gone, was green, fragrant, quiet. Its odorous peace enveloped the girl who had wanted to cry. In hurrying on she had choked it back. But you cannot always have your way with yourself. The tears would come and she sat down on a bench, from behind which a squirrel darted.

Before her the gra.s.s departed, the trees disappeared, the path wound into nothingness. In their place was the empty vastness that sorrow is.

The masquerade that had affected her physically, had affected her psychically and in each instance profoundly. It had first sickened and then stabbed. There had been no place for sorrow in the double a.s.sault.

There had been no time for it either. Occupied as she had almost at once become with the misadventures of another, she had no opportunity to consider her own. Yet now the aspect that sorrow took was not that of disaster. What it showed was the loneliness of the soul, solitary as it ever is in that desert which, sooner or later, we all must cross. Vast, arid, empty, before her it stretched.

Nearby, on the bench, crouching there, eager, anxious, wary, a squirrel, its fluffy tail and tiny nostrils aquiver, watched her with eyes of bead. From the desert she turned and seeing the little gracious thing, stretched her hand. She would have liked to take it and pet it. It would have made her solitude less acute. At the movement, a ball of misty fur bounded. Where it had been, there was air.

The abrupt evaporation distracted her. Before her the desert lay, but in it now was her father. She had been going to him. Previously, she had thought that, when she did go, her hands would be filled with gifts.

Instead they were bruised, bare to the bone. They would madden him and she wondered whether she could endure it. The long, green afternoon, that had been so brief, had been so torturesome that she doubted her ability. But he would have to be told. She could not lie to him and humanly she wished that it were to-morrow, the day after, the day after that, when it would be over and done for, put away, covered by woes of his own, though inevitably to be dragged out again and shown her, and shown her, too, with the unconscious cruelty that those who love you display.

It would be crucifying, but there was no help for it. Reaching for the bundle, she stood up and went her way, across the Park, to the subway, from which she got out in Harlem.

The loveliness of that land of love seemed to have changed, though the change, she then recognised, was in herself. But at least the walk-up was unaltered. In the grimy entrance was Mrs. Yallum, a fat Finn, who looked like a dirty horse, and who yapped at her volubly, incomprehensibly, but with such affection that Ca.s.sy, yapping back, felt less lonely as she ascended the stair.

The comfort was mediocre. In the afternoon she had gone from a ruin. Now she had the sensation of entering another, one from which she had also gone, but to which she was returning and with a spirit so dulled in the journey! Had she, she wondered, any spirit left at all? At least enough remained to prevent any wish for the reconstruction of the ruin behind her. About the fallen walls were forms of filth; in the crevices there were vermin, and though, before her, the desert stretched, it was clean.

However arid, it was wholesome.

But now she was at the door. She let herself in, hurried to the living-room, where, with the feigned cheerfulness of the unselfish, she beamed at her father and bent over him.

"Here I am to look after you again! How well you look. I am so glad and oh! where is your sling?"

In speaking she stroked him. His skin was clearer, she thought, and the abandoned sling was a relief.

He looked up at her. "You got married without me. I ought to have been there. Why didn't you tell me? It was for me to give you away. Who did?"

"Who did what?"

"Who gave you in marriage?"

With the mimic of gaiety, Ca.s.sy laughed. "Why, you old dear, all that has gone out. Hereabouts, nowadays, a father never goes to a wedding--only to funerals."

She paused and, with the idea of breaking it to him in bits, resumed: "Besides, it was all done in a hurry, in too much of a hurry."

He took it in, but at the wrong end. "Sick of him already, eh? Well, it isn't because I did not warn you. Where is he?"

Ca.s.sy moved back. Should she give it to him then or later? But the question, repeating itself, followed her.

"Where is your husband?"

Now for it, she thought. But at once he switched. "There was nothing in the papers. Why is that? What is that package?"

Ca.s.sy looked at the bundle which she still held. It gave her courage.

"I am not married."

For a second he stared. It was obvious that he had not got it. "Where have you been, then?"

Ca.s.sy fingered the bundle. Always she had hated to explain and of all possible explanations what could be more hateful than this? If only he would guess it, flare up, stamp about, get it over, let it go. But the cup was there and she drank it.

"I thought I was married. I am a fool."

For the awaited curse, she braced herself. The explosion did not come, but his eyes had widened. They covered her. Then, with an intake of the breath and of understanding, he lowered them. Apparently he was weighing it and Ca.s.sy thought he was trying to restrain himself, and she blessed him for it. It was less terrible than she had feared. But immediately it occurred to her that instead of trying to restrain himself, he was seeking the strength wherewith to rend her. And I am so innocent, she despairfully thought.

Her eyes were upon him and he looked up into hers.

"Why did you think you were married?"