Again Margaret put her hand to her forehead. "Don't say that, mother. Keith did not call you a liar and it is not like him to roar and stamp about."
"My dear, I don't wonder you don't believe me. He went on like a madman. He could not get over the fact that his dollymop was one too many for you. He seemed to think that it was none of your business."
"Don't."
"My dear Margaret, you must do me the justice to admit that I stood up for him. I said he was an attractive young man. So he is. But that is just it. Attractive young men are most unreliable and reliable young men are most unattractive. At your age, I used to like them fair and false. That was your father's fault. He perverted me. He was so domestic!"
It was an old wound that Mrs. Austen touched then and under it Margaret winced. "The poor dear! He was a saint and you know it."
"Know it! I should say I did. I know too that he made me hate saints. But you love them and thought you had one, instead of which you got a devil. Your luck is far better than mine. If you take my advice, you will hang on to him like grim death. It is not too late. To-morrow he will be here, thundering at the gates."
Dimly at the moment the girl's creed turned a ray on her. She lifted her head.
"He will not thunder at the gates and he is not what you say. But perhaps I am. I may have done worse than he has and what he has done is my punishment."
It was very little but it was too much. Mrs. Austen, in spite of her facile digestion, gagged at it.
"If that is theosophy, I will believe it when I am old, fat and a Hun."
Margaret sank back. "But I am sorry you have been annoyed. It won't happen again. I will write to him."
Later, she did write.
Forgive me, dear Keith, if I cause you pain, but I feel that I am not suited to you. Forgive me therefore for not recognising it sooner. I have thought it all over and, though it wrings my heart to say it, I cannot see you again. Forgive me and forget.Margaret.
Forgive me, dear Keith, if I cause you pain, but I feel that I am not suited to you. Forgive me therefore for not recognising it sooner. I have thought it all over and, though it wrings my heart to say it, I cannot see you again. Forgive me and forget.
Margaret.
Hell was supposed to be very hot, very red, full of pugnacious demons. Educated people do not believe in it any more. It is curious how ignorant educated people have become. Hell is an actual plane, less vivid than was formerly imagined, not hot but cold, grey rather than red, but amply provided with demons, with the devils of self-accusation, with the fiends of insoluble queries. Very real and very actual, it is surprising how many educated people are there. The oddity of that is increased by the fact that they regard it as a private establishment. They regard their hell as unique. Perhaps the idea flatters them. Yet sooner or later everybody enters it. Hell may seem private. It is universal.
Headlong into it, Margaret's letter precipitated Lennox. Being a man, he struggled up. But not out. In hell there are no signposts. It takes time to find one's way. It takes more, it takes resignation. When both have been acquired, the walls part of themselves. The aspect of life has altered, but you are free.
Lennox, in struggling up, encountered the demons of enigmatic riddles. Each word of Margaret's letter they converted into a Why? They thrust it at him, demanding an answer. But the answer her heart alone possessed. That heart had been his. It was his no longer. The heart that she had given him, she had taken away. Nothing could be simpler and nothing more mysterious. The mystification was complete, but not the suffering. Suffering is never complete. However deep the hell, there is always a deeper one.
From the letter he looked at the walls. They were dumb. There was no answer for the demons there, not anywhere, perhaps, except among werewolves, basilisks and Mrs. Austens. These monsters did not occur to him. The monstrous letter sufficed. But Margaret was still too near, her vows were too recent for him to credit it, and the fact that he could not disclosed itself in those words which all have uttered, all at least before whom the inexplicable has sprung.
"It is impossible!"
Yet there it was. Yet there too was something else. But what? At once he was back again in the issueless circle of infernal questions.
The day before he had known that something was amiss. The attitude of Mrs. Austen had been too assured, too venomous, too smiling, for him to doubt it. But though he did not doubt that, not for a second did he doubt Margaret either. Always aware of the woman's hostility, he had been equally aware that it could not influence the girl. Not for a moment therefore had he accepted the statement that the engagement was broken. At the time he had thought that when next he had a word with Margaret it would all be explained. But all what? His life was as clean as his face. It was not that then. On the other hand he was not rich. By the same token, Margaret's only idea of money was to help others with it. It was not that then either. Nor was it that she had not loved him. She had loved him. He could have sworn it and not out of vanity, for he had none, but because never could she have promised herself to him if she had not. None the less, she could not see him again. She had thought it over. She was not suited to him. He was told to forget her. Why?
That Why, repeating itself, forced him deeper into the circles of which hell is made.
But even in hell despair is brief. Unless it consume you utterly, and it would not be hell if it did, it goads. It compels you to seek an issue. Apart from time, which is very slow, and resignation, which is never prompt, there is another portal.
A poet, who discovered it, scrawled on it: "Lascia la donna e studia la matematica"—a cryptogram which subsequent pilgrims variously deciphered. To some, it spelled Thought; to others, Action. Action is thought put in motion.
Lennox, to whom time was too dilatory and resignation too remote, happened on the device which he translated after his manner.
But however you construe the hierograph, the door must be demolished before you get out. Across the door is written: Hope. It is a very hard door to crack. When you succeed you are covered with splinters. They cling to you and pierce you. Joiners, carpenters, pilgrims, poets and fiends have a name for them. They call the splinters Regrets. Though you have escaped, they accompany you. Hell encircles you still.
It was on the day following the conversation with Mrs. Austen that Lennox received Margaret's letter. In his dark rooms it was waiting. A moment previous he had intended to go to her. He had it all planned. Mrs. Austen could say what she liked; the physician might interfere; he would submit to no one. He proposed to see her, to adjust it, to swing up and out from the circles which already were closing about him.
On leaving Mrs. Austen he had gone to dinner. He could not eat. He had gone to bed. He could not sleep. In the morning his face was flushed. Always fit, hard as nails, these phenomena perplexed. Yet he knew it was not illness that produced them. What he did not know was that poison had. The poison was anger, an unphilosophic emotion which disturbs the circulation, the stomach and social intercourse. He could have wrung Mrs. Austen's neck.
In that murderous mood he went to Wall Street and in that mood returned. Already hell was gaping. Headlong into it the letter threw him. Being a man he sought and found the door, smashed it and passed out. Not at once however. It took him many a sleepless hour before he deciphered the device Lascia la donna. Leave the lady? Certainly. Since she so wished, what else in decency could he do? Go and badger her with complaints and questions? Not he. But how do you translate: Studia la matematica? The dictionary that is in every man, who is a man, told him. Then he knew. Meanwhile the flush in departing left him grey.
In every affection there is the germ of hate. Margaret, confronted by the unawaited, hated Lennox. Lennox, confronted by the inexplicable, hated Margaret. Hatred is love turned inside out. Love is perhaps a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. In that case so also is hate. Of all things mystery disturbs the imagination most. Margaret could not understand how Lennox could have acted as he had. Lennox could not understand how Margaret could act as she did. Dual misunderstanding, in which the imagination fermented. Hence the hate. Yet each, in hating, loved the other. Each felt the splinters which, as Browning somewhere noted, kept fresh and fine. Only a touch and the splinters would have joined.
Mrs. Austen, for all her horrible shrewdness, could not have prevented that. But pride, that gives so many of us a fall, was more potent than she. Margaret, insulted, could but turn away. Lennox, dismissed, could but let her go.
Any emotion is unbecoming. Pride is merely ridiculous. It resides in the youthful-minded, however old. In residing in these young people, it resisted the touch that would have combined them and, through its opposition, made one of them ill and the other grey. To be proud! How splendid it seems and how stupid it is. Hell is paved with just such imbecilities.
It is said of Dante that children peered at him and whispered: "That man has been in hell."
None of the children that clubmen are, pointed at Lennox, though two of them whispered. The others did not know, not yet at least. But Verelst knew and Jones guessed. The guess was due to the romantic profession that endows a novelist with the wonderful faculty of putting two and two together.
Hitherto, that is since the engagement was announced and, for that matter, long previously, Lennox had passed the evening in Park Avenue. Where else would he have passed it? After the rupture he sat about and read all the papers. When a man is down and out that is just what he does do, though not necessarily in the Athenæum Club.
Jones, noticing it, rapidly divined the reason which Verelst confirmed.
"Yes, her mother told me."
It was in a club window, of an afternoon. Before them was Fifth Avenue which, in the Aprils of not so long ago, used to be a horse-show of fair faces, ravishing hats, discreet liveries, folded arms and yards of yodeling brass.
Verelst, eyeing the usurping motors, added: "It is because of some girl I believe, or rather I don't believe it."
Jones sat back. Instantly the motors were replaced by the picture of a girl whose face was noble and reserved. He had seen the face at the Bazaar. He had seen Lennox talking to it. Afterward Lennox had told him that the girl was Portuguese. The picture was attractive but unconvincing. In agreement with Verelst he was about to say so. But behind him he heard a voice that he knew and he switched and said:
"What a remarkable country Portugal is! Born dumb, she spoke twice: once when she gave Asia to Europe, again when she presented the Lusiades to the world. Her history is resumed in two miracles, a discovery and a masterpiece. But when the Cape of Good Hope was succeeded by Camoens, once more she relapsed into a silence that was broken only when she shouted her defiance at the Huns."
Now though that voice was addressing them. Both turned and Lennox asked: "What are you talking about—war?"
"Sit down," said Verelst, who gave him a hand.
Jones gave him another. "What else is there to talk about? It will be talked of forever. So will that scrofulous Kaiser. Unfortunately he knows it and that pleases him. Last year or the year before he called for the death and destruction of all who opposed him. With singular modesty he added: 'God who speaks through my mouth so orders!' Loti claims that what spoke through him was a hyena. Loti is lacking in literary sobriety. When a hyena has eaten he is at peace with the world. But when was bestiality ever filled? It is insatiable and so is this thug whom God, at most, may have permitted to look in the mirror without vomiting. Meanwhile we stand by. A generation ago we fought for Cuba. What is Hecuba to us in comparison to the Anima Mundi?"
Verelst turned on the novelist. "And what is literary sobriety? You are hurling words in massed formation."
Jones smiled at him. "Where is my harp?"
"You mean your megaphone," Lennox put in. "You are always rehearsing copy. One of these days I may give you some."
"From the front?" Jones asked.
"Yes, though I don't see how you knew. The President has asked for war. Why aren't we up and at 'em? If Congress hems and haws over it much longer, I'll get my gun and join the Foreign Legion."
Jones nodded. He had guessed that also and he said: "Wait and join the legions here. At present, the country is alarmingly apathetic. The man in the subway is muddled. The call to arms does not stir him. The issues, clear enough to us, seem to him mixed as macaroni. He does not understand a war that is three thousand miles away. But in a year, every man in the country—a country that has never been beaten!—will be in it body and soul. Undividedly, shoulder to shoulder, we will be in it as we have never been in anything before."
The novelist touched a bell. "Lennox, have a Bronx. Verelst, what will you take? I'll wager a pippin that war is declared to-morrow."
"Done," said Verelst—who lost it.
The two hundred and fifty—less ten per cent—which an imaginary Mrs. Beamish had paid for the pleasure of not hearing Cassy sing, transported the girl who was not given to transports. These subsiding, she viewed the matter from its business aspect. She needed a frock, a wrap, a hat, gloves, shoes and certain things that are nowhere visible except in advertisements, shop-windows and extreme privacy. Also, her hair required tralalaing. Meanwhile, first and foremost, Lennox must be paid. The subsidy was not too much by a penny. These considerations occupied but an instant.
"When is it?" she asked the Tamburini, who, a moment before, had dumbfounded her with the money.
"When is what?" inquired the ex-star who already had forgotten Mrs. Beamish.
"Why, the concert!"
Carlotta Tamburini was dressed like a fat idol, in silk and false pearls. There the idolatry ceased. In her hand was an umbrella and on her head a hat of rose-leaves which a black topknot surmounted. About her shoulders was a feather boa. It seemed a bit mangy. Seated on Cassy's bed she looked at a window that gave on a wall. Cassy was standing. Behind Cassy was a door which the extinguished light had closed. Beyond, in the living-room, was the marquis. Anything that he did not hear would not hurt him.
"Oh, she'll let us know."
"What sort of a catamount is she?"
At that the former prima donna's imagination balked. But she got something out. "Nice enough. What do you care?"
"I hate all those snobs."
"So do I," said the Tamburini, who worshipped the breed even when non-existent. "But don't go and include him. If it hadn't been for him——"
"Was he with her?"
"You ought to have heard the way he went on about you. She said: 'Why, Monty, I do believe you'd like to marry her.'"
Cassy's mouth twitched as she munched it. "She presumed to say that! She's an insolent beast."
"He shut her up, I can tell you. He said if he got on his knees, you wouldn't dust your feet on him."
"That jackanapes! I should say not!"
"You might say worse. Take the Metro. You're spat on if you're down and spat at if you're up. A dog's own life." Lifting her voice, the fat woman sang: "Croyez-moi car j'ai passé par la."
"What has that to do with it?"
Nothing whatever, the Tamburini truthfully reflected but omitted to say so. Paliser, in producing Mrs. Beamish, had also produced the programme. With both was a cheque. With the cheque was the assurance of another and a bigger one. She had only to earn it. To earn it she had only to follow the programme. The poor soul was trying to. The job was not easy. Cassy was skittish. A pull on the rein and she would kick the apple-cart over.
Femininely she discounted it all. Cassy was not worth the time, the trouble, particularly the careful handling. There were girls in plenty, quite as good-looking, who, without stopping to count two, or even one, would jump at it. But there you were! Paliser did not want partridges that flew broiled into his mouth. A true sportsman, he liked to snare the bird. The feminine in her understood that also. Besides it was all grist for her mill. But the grist was uphill, and if the noble marquis got so much as an inkling of it, he was just the sort of damn fool to whip out his sword-cane and run her through. The honour of the Casa-Evora, what? Yet, being on the job, she buckled to it.
"What will you get, dearie?"
Cassy sat down. Her previous ruminations returned. Escorting them was a vision of a baronial castle. In the hall, a guest-book in which you wrote your name. A squad of lackeys that showed you into a suite of salons. Rugs on which there was peace; sofas on which there was ease; étagères on which there were reveries. Nothing else. No cupboards hung with confections. No models sailing in and out. Nothing so commercial as anything for sale. Nothing but patrician repose and the châtelaine—a duchess disguised as a dressmaker—who might, or might not, ask you upstairs.
In war time at that! Though, it is true, Congress had only just declared it.
But, Cassy reflected, two hundred and fifty, with Lennox deducted and less ten per cent, would not take her as far as the drawbridge. The fleeting vision of the castle passed, replaced by the bargain seductions of department-stores.
Fingering the money, she said: "Where does this person live? She ought to send a taxi."
"Certamente," replied the fat woman, lapsing, as she occasionally did lapse, into the easy Italian of the lyric stage. "She certainly will."
Cassy jumped up. "Well, then, you come along while I take a look about. Afterward we will have lunch. I'll eat, you can watch me and I'll tell you how it tastes. There's the telephone!"
Cassy opened the door, went out into the narrow and shadowy hall and took the receiver.
"Yes? Oh! None the better for the asking. To-night? Impossible. To-morrow? Perhaps. Good-bye."
"Who was that?" the noble marquis called from the room beyond.
"An imbecile who wants me to dine and go to the opera."
"Not that Paliser?"
Cassy, poking her head in at him, threw him a kiss and returned to the Tamburini with whom, a little later, she was praying among the worshippers that thread the sacred and silent way where Broadway and Sixth Avenue meet.
In an adjacent basilica, the atmosphere charged with pious emanations, with envy, malice, greed and all other charitableness, choked the girl. But at last the holy rites were ended. To the voluntary of $109.99, she passed into the peace of Herald Square where the ex-diva swayed, stopped and holding her umbrella as one holds a guitar, looked hopelessly and helplessly about.
"You're not preparing to serenade the Elevated?" Cassy bawled in her ear.
In the slam-bang of trains and the metallic howls of surface cars that herded and volplaned about them, the fat lady, now apparently gone mad, was gesticulating insanely. Yet she was but indicating, or trying to indicate, the relative refuge of a side street in which there was a cook-shop.
Then, presently, after all the dangers that may be avoided in remaining at home, and supplied with such delights as clam fritters offer, she savorously remarked: "I hope I am not going to be sick."
The charm of scented streets, the sedatives of shopping, the joy of lightsome fritters, these things, combined with the job, the unearned cheque and the fear of losing both, made her ghastly.
Cassy, devoid of pity, said: "Have some beer."
The Tamburini gulped. "I couldn't talk to you this morning and I've got to. It's for your own good, dearie; it is, so help me! Supposing he is a jackanapes. What do you want? A prize-fighter? Take it from me, whether he is one or the other, in no time it will be quite the same."
Cassy's lips curled. "Croyez-moi car j'ai passé par la." But, in mocking the woman, she frowned. "What business is it of yours?"
The fallen star gulped again. Conscious that she had struck the wrong note, she struck another. "Your papa is no better, is he? Between you and me and the bedpost, I doubt if he ever will be. I doubt if he plays again. You'll have to look after him. How're you going to? You can't expect to sing every night to the tune of two hundred and fifty. Not with war marching in on us. Not with everybody hard up."
Cassy had been about to order a chocolate éclair. The new note stayed her. But though new, it was not novel. She had heard it before. It rang true. Absently she shoved at her plate.
In theory she knew her way about. The migratory systems of domestic experience said nothing to her, nor, thus far, had the charts of matrimony either. In the sphere of life to which a walk-up leads, the charts were dotted with but the postman and the corner druggist. Men and plenty of them she had met, but they too said nothing and not at all because they were dumb, but because, as the phrase is, they did not talk her language. But for every exception there is perhaps a rule. The one man who did speak her language, had held his tongue.
Now, as she shoved at her plate, she saw him, saw the tea-caddy, saw his rooms and saw too, as she left them, the girl to whom he was engaged. In the memory of that she lingered and looked down.
"Why, he could lead an orchestra of his own, your papa could."
Cassy looked up. She had been far away, too far, in a land where dreams do not come true. Impatiently she twisted. "What?"
"Didn't you hear me, dearie? I was talking about money—bushels of it."
About the bushels the woman rolled her tongue. They tasted better than the fritters.
A waiter approached. The room was long, dark, narrow, slovenly, spaced with tables on which were maculate cloths and lamps with faded shades. Greasily the waiter produced the bill.
"Bushels!" she appetisingly repeated.
Cassy paid. The waiter slouched away.
"You will drive through life in a hundred horsepower car and be fined for speeding. The papers will say: 'Mrs. Pal——'"
"What did he pay you to tell me that?" Cassy exploded at her.
Unruffled by the shot, which was part and parcel of the job, and realising that any denial would only confirm what at most could be but a suspicion, the former diva fingered her pearls and assumed an air of innocence.
But already Cassy had covered her with her blotting-paper look. "As if I cared!"
"Dearie, he did pay me. He paid me the compliment of supposing that I take an interest in you. But he said nothing except what I said he said. He said if he got down on his knees you would turn your back on him."
"Then he is cleverer than he looks."
"Well, anyway, he is clever enough to have bushels of money and that is the greatest cleverness there is."
"In New York," retorted Cassy, who had never been anywhere else, physically at least, though mentally her little feet had trod the streets of Milan, the boards of the Scala.
"It can't be much different in Patagonia," replied this lady, who, to save her life, could not have told whether the land was Asiatic or African, nor who, to save her soul—if the latter were still salvable—could not have told that it was neither. "Besides," she added, "I was only thinking of your poor, dear papa."
Cassy said nothing. She stood up. She was making for the door and the charm of the scented streets.
Ma Tamby sighed, rose and followed. It was the devil's own job. Housebreaking must be easier!
Cassy's department-store investments reached her the next day. Her father, who opened the door to them, fell back before the sum total of the C. O. D. With an arm in a sling, he could not hold the packages, much less pay for them, and he gasped as he called for aid.
The money that Cassy then produced seemed to him darkly mysterious and although he believed as firmly in her virtue, as, before the break, he had believed in the maestria of his own right hand, none the less, in addition to aid, he exacted light.
Cassy, dumping the packages on her bed, occupied herself in verifying the change which amounted to one cent. Then she sketched it.
His surprise fell away. The mythical catamount, the imaginary concert, the ponderable subsidy—two hundred and fifty, less ten per cent.—seemed to him natural and an unnatural world.
"And there's about ten dollars remaining," Cassy resumed. "Ten dollars and a penny. You can have the penny and I will keep the ten, or I'll keep the ten and you can have the penny."
That also seemed natural. But the addition or subtraction disclosed a deficit and he exclaimed at it. "You said two hundred and fifty!"
Cassy too saw the hole, but she could not lie out of it. "Well, I owed the difference."
In speaking she turned. Before her was a mirror in which she glanced at her hair that had been superiorly tralala'd. She turned again, reflecting that Lennox must have already received the postal-order, which she had mailed the night before, and wondering whether he had liked her little scrawl of indignant thanks.
"I'll tell you about it later," she added. "Now I must get your dinner. How would you like a tenderloin, a salad, and a box of Camembert?"
He shuffled. "There is no Camembert any more." The tragedy of that seemed to overwhelm him. "I wish I were dead."
Cassy laughed. "Now it's the cheese. On Saturday it was the violin. Well, you got it back. What will you say if I find some Camembert? Do stop meowing. Any one might think you didn't have me."
At her young laughter, he groaned. "Formerly if I let a day go without practising, I noticed it. If I let two days go, Toscanini noticed it. Now it's weeks and weeks. It's killing me."
To cheer him, Cassy said gaily: "The artist never dies."
But it did not cheer him. Besides, though Cassy had laughed, there had been a tugging at her heartstrings. Shabby, unkempt, in a frayed dressing-gown, his arm in a dismal sling, he looked so out of it, so forlorn, so old.
He had shuffled away. She bit her lip. Later, when he had had his tenderloin and she had department-stored herself, a pint of grocer's burgundy had reduced him to tears.
The day before it had seemed to her that the frock would do. But her judgment had been hurried. Shops, crowds, the vibrations of both, devitalised and confused her. In choosing the frock she had not therefore given it the consideration which it perhaps did not merit, and now her mirror shrieked it. The frock was not suited to her. Nothing was suited to her, except the produce of baronial halls, where the simplest thing exceeded the dreams of avarice, or else the harlequinades which she herself devised. None the less she would have liked to have had her father exclaim and tell her how smart she looked. He omitted it.
"Where are you going?"
"I told you. Dinner and the opera."
"Opera! There is no opera to-night. What do you mean? What did you tell me?"
On the table were dishes and the lamentable bottle. Cassy, in doubt whether to clear them then or later, hesitated. The hesitation he misconstrued.
"You told me nothing. You tell me nothing. I am kept in the dark."
Cassy, adjusting the wrap which she had left open that he might admire the unadmirable, moved to where he sat and touched him. "You're the silliest kind of a silly. I told you yesterday. Perhaps the opera was last night. But how could I go? Except that old black rag I had nothing to wear. If there is no opera to-night, there will be a concert or something. Don't you remember now? I was at the telephone."
He did remember, but apparently the recollection displeased. He growled. "Yes. It was that Paliser."
"Well, why not? If it had not been for him, I would not have got the catamount's money and you would not have had the burgundy."
But he was not to be mollified. The growl sharpened into a snarl. "Paliser! I don't like the breed. By God, if——"
The peradventure of that Cassy got before he could utter it. Paliser! Of all men! The absurdity convulsed her. Her laughter ran up and down the scale.
"You're the dearest old duck of a goose I ever heard of." She turned. Her wrap swished. "I only wish you were going too."
Below, in the street, a man, precipitatingly vacating the box of a machine, touched his cap at her. "Beg pardon, mem. Miss Cara? Mr. Paliser's compliments and he's sent a car."
Cassy glanced at the man, who looked like a Roman emperor. From the man she turned to the car. Superiorly and soberly finished, it beckoned. Now, though, the Cæsar was holding open the door. Cassy got in. The emperor hopped up. The car leaped.
On the front seat was a box with her name on it. In it was a handful of orchids. The luxury of the car, the beauty of the demon-flowers, the flight from the walk-up, yet more, perhaps, the caresses and surrenders of spring, affected her. If, she thought, if only the things that might be could be the things that are! If only——
On the pale cushions she leaned back. Before her a curtain parted. In a wide, marble-flagged hall she was looking at a girl who was looking at her. A moment before he had said: "That is Miss Austen to whom I am engaged." A moment before she had seen her picture. The girl was good to look at, so good that, without further acquaintance, you knew she was good through and through. There was no mistaking that. But was she good enough? Was any girl good enough for him? And who was that with her? Probably her mother who probably too was the catamount's sister. They had a family likeness. Then at once the scene shifted. Cassy was in a room floored with thick rugs, hung with heavy draperies, and in that room the catamount had hired her to sing! But the disgust of it passed. The curtain fell. Cassy turned to the window, through which a breath of lilac blew.
She sniffed and stared. Where was she? Where was the Riverside? Where, for that matter, was the roar of the glittering precinct in which the Splendor tossed its turrets to the sky? Here were dirty and reeling goblins; budding trees that bowed and fainted; a stretch of empty road that the scudding car devoured. Afar was a house that instantly approached and as suddenly vanished. Dimly beyond was another.
Cassy, leaning forward, poked at the emperor. "I will thank you to tell me where you are going. Don't you know where the Splendor is?"
Back at her he mumbled, but what she could not hear.
"Stop at once," she called.
Easily, without a quiver, almost within its own length, the car drew in and the Cæsar, touching his cap, was looking at her. "Beg pardon, mem. There was a note for you in the box. Mr. Paliser said——"
But now Cassy had it.
Chère demoiselle—though I do not know why I call you that, except that it sounds less perfunctory than dear Miss Cara, who, I hope will do me the honour of dining in the country, if for no better reason than because there is no opera to-night and I am her obedient servant.M. P.,jr.
Chère demoiselle—though I do not know why I call you that, except that it sounds less perfunctory than dear Miss Cara, who, I hope will do me the honour of dining in the country, if for no better reason than because there is no opera to-night and I am her obedient servant.
M. P.,jr.
Cassy looked up from it. "Country! He says country. What country? What does this mean?"
"The Place, mem. Paliser Place. It's not far now."
Cassy had not bargained for that. Stories of girls decoyed, drugged, spirited away, never heard of again, sprang at her. Quite as quickly she dismissed them. But, being human, she had to find fault.
"You should have told me before. That will do. Drive on."
She sank back. The car leaped and she smiled. Paliser in the rôle of white-slaver! Her momentary alarm was now a mile behind her. But would they be alone? Though, after all, what did it matter? Yet in Harlem there was a broken old man who would not like it. And the basilica investments! If she had known she would have worn the black rag. But they would do for that tiresome Mrs. Beamish. As yet she had not decided what she would sing. TheCaro nomeoccurred to her. Under her breath she began it and abruptly desisted. TheDear Namesuggested another.
For it she substituted theOmbra leggiera. In its scatter of trills that mount, as birds mount, there were no evocations, though she did begin wondering again about Mrs. Beamish's music-room. If it were not too impossible she might give theErnani involame. But at that and very unintentionally she thought of Lennox again.
She made a face and looked through the window. As usual she was hungry. The car now was bellowing through opening gates which, as she looked back, a man in brown was closing. On either side was a high stone wall, but beyond, as she looked again, was an avenue bordered with trees and farther on a white house with projecting wings in which was a court, an entrance and, above and about the latter, a pillared perron.
From the entrance she could see a man in livery hastening. Behind him, a man in black appeared. The car stopped. The first man opened the door. Cassy got out. The other man additionally assisted by looking on and moving aside. Cassy went into a hall where a young person who did not resemble the Belle Chocolatière but whose costume suggested her, diligently approached.
"Would madame care to go upstairs?"
No, madame would not. But Cassy, instinctively insolent to pretentiousness, was very simple with the simple. "Thank you. Will you mind taking my wrap? Thank you again."
She looked about the hall. Before she could inventory it, here was another man. "A nice trick you played on me," Cassy threw at him. "I was half-way before I discovered it. The orchids reconciled me. Thank you for them. Who is here?"
Smiling, deferential, apparently modest, perfectly sent out in perfectly cut evening clothes, Paliser took her hand. "You are and, incidentally, I am."
Cassy withdrew her hand. "I suppose you think you are a host in yourself."
"Merely the most fortunate of mortals," replied Paliser, who could be eighteenth-century when he liked, but who seldom bothered to keep it up.
Already he had been doing a little inventorying on his own account. The basilica frock did not say much and what it did say was not to his taste. The Sunday night fantasy he much preferred. It was rowdy, but it was artistic. But beauty may be dishonoured, it cannot be vulgarised. Even in pseudo-Parisianisms Cassy was a gem. A doubt though, one that had already visited him, returned. Was the game worth the possible scandal?
But now Cassy was getting back at him. "To stand about with the most fortunate of mortals ought to be a shape of bliss. As it happens, I would rather sit."
"Naturally. Only, worse luck, there is no throne."
Cassy gave it to him again: "There is a court fool, though. Where are your cap and bells?"
"Not on you at any rate."
He motioned and Cassy passed on into a room beyond which other rooms extended, each different, but all in the same key, a monotone attenuated by lustres and the atmosphere, infinitely relaxing, which wealth exhales.
Cassy's thin nostrils quivered. Since childhood, it was her first breath of anything similar. It appeased and disarmed this anarchist who was also an autocrat.
"Will you sit here?"
Paliser was drawing a chair. The table before it lacked the adjacent severity. On it were dishes of Sèvres and of gold. Adjacently were three men. Their faces were white and sensual. They moved as forms move in a dream.
The stories of girls decoyed, spirited away, never heard of again, returned to Cassy. She had put the orchids beside her. Her flexible mouth framed a smile.
"You know, for a moment, I had the rare emotion of feeling and fearing that I was being eloped with."
A pop interrupted. She turned to a man at her elbow. "Only half a glass, please, and fill it with water." She returned to Paliser, who was opposite. "I had been thinking of something. I had not noticed where the car was going; and all of a sudden, I found myself I did not know where. Then, houp! It got me."
Paliser helped himself to a clam. "The charm of elopements passed with the post-chaise. Then they had the dignity of danger and pistol shots through the windows. Nowadays you go off in a Pullman and return as prosaic as you started."
"Sometimes even more so," Cassy put in.
Paliser helped himself to another clam. "You speak feelingly and that is only right. This is a very important matter. It is a shame that romance should have passed with the post-chaise. Why should it not revisit us in the motor?"
Cassy sipped and considered it. "There ought to be a law on the subject."
"There is one. You may be summoned for speeding and get your name in the papers."
"Then the dignity of danger remains."
"But not in clams. Aren't you going to eat any?"
Cassy laughed. "I had some yesterday with Ma Tamby. They did not seem to agree with her. She became very noisy about a Mrs. Beamish. Who is she?"
"Mrs. Beamish?" Paliser repeated. He also had forgotten. But, with a click, memory raised a latch. From behind it the lady emerged. "Oh, she's a cousin of mine."
"Rather distant, I should fancy," said Cassy, who was conscious of the delay, though not of the click. The delay she had noticed without, however, divining the cause. But how could she possibly imagine that Mrs. Beamish had been evolved for the sole purpose of providing her with basilica opportunities? Yet the fault, if fault there were, resided in her education. She had never read Eliphas Levi. She did not know that genii can be evoked.
"Well, she is more my sister's cousin than mine," Paliser anxious to get out of it, threw in. "I mean my sister has a more cousinly nature."
"I did not know you had a sister," said Cassy, who not only did not know but did not care. "Though, come to think of it, a sister with a cousinly nature must be so gratifying. Another distant relative, isn't she?"
"Very. She is in Petrograd."
That too was evocative. Cassy began talking about the biggest cropper that history has beheld—a tsar tossed from the saddle to Siberia!
Paliser, glad to be rid of Mrs. Beamish, took it up. The sordid story of the Russian chief of staff, bought by Hindenburg and shot by the Grand-Duke Nicholas, whom the tsar then exiled, was told once more.
"What else could you expect of that Hun?" Paliser concluded.
"A Hun!" Cassy exclaimed. "Why he is a Romanov."
"No more than you are," Paliser replied. "The last of the Romanovs married Catherine the Greater. There the breed ended. Paul, who followed and who married a German drab, was Catherine's son but not her husband's. The rest of the litter, down to the father of the recent incumbent, all married German drabs. The father of the ex-tsar married a Dane. The fellow is therefore one-eighth Dane and seven-eighths Hun. Totally apart from which, a grocer who knew his business would not have had him for clerk. His family knew that and, before he had time to be tsar, tried to poison him. To the misfortune, not of Russia merely, but of Christendom, they failed. If they had succeeded the eastern front would be secure. As for his wife, I saw her once. It was in the Winter Palace which, before it was sacked, was a palace. Since the palace of the Caliphs of Cordova crumbled, there has never been a palace like it. It outshone them all. Well, that woman tarnished it."
Meanwhile dishes were brought and removed by servants, wooden-faced, yet with ears alert. The subject of elopements had seemed promising, but it led to nothing. At their own table, talk was gayer.
Cassy enjoyed the food, the diluted wine, Paliser's facile touch. He appeared to know a lot and she surprised herself by so telling him. "I wish I did," she added. "I am ignorant as a carp."
"You know how to charm," he replied. But, seeing her stiffen, he resumed, "With your voice. That is enough. It would be a mistake for you to be versatile. Versatility is for the amateur. The artist is a flower, never a bouquet."
It was decently said. In the decency of it, the agreeable insult which a compliment usually is was so chastened that Cassy flushed and felt that she had. It annoyed her, and she attributed it to the wine.
It was not the wine. Other influences were at work on this girl, born to a forsaken purple and whose soul was homesick for it. But purple is perhaps picturesque. It was not that for which her soul sighed, but the dream that hides behind it, the dream of going about and giving money away. To her the dream had been the dream of a dream, realisable only on the top rungs of the operatic ladder, which, later, she felt she was not destined to scale. None the less there are dreams that do come true, though usually, beforehand, there is a desert to cross.
"I wonder if I might have a cavatina?" Paliser asked, rising and moving to her.
Cassy shrugged. I have to pay for my dinner, she thought, but she too got up.
Preceding her, he led the way to a room of which the floor, inlaid and waxed, was rugless. The windows were not curtained, they were shuttered. In the centre was a grand and a bench. Afar, at the other end, masking a door, was a portière, the colour of hyacinth. Near it, were two unupholstered chairs; one, white; the other, black. Save for these, save too for a succession of mirrors and of lights, the room was bare. In addition, it was spacious, a long oblong, ceiled high with light frescoes, the proper aviary for a song-bird.
Cassy curtsied to it. At table she had not wanted to sing. The mere sight of this room inspired.
Paliser opened the piano and, seating himself, ran his long thin fingers over the keys. He was heating them, preluding a score, passing from it to another. Presently he looked up; she nodded and theAh, non giungefloated from her.
"Brava!" Paliser muttered as the final trill drifted away. Again he looked up. "You will be a very great artist."
He did not mean it. He judged her voice colourful but lacking in carriage.
Cassy, leaning forward, struck the keys, giving him the note and again she sang, this time theLibiamo, which, old as the hills, claptrap, utterly detestable, none the less served to display the bravura quality of her voice.
When it passed, Paliser sprang up, faced her. "Open your mouth! There! Wide!"
Cassy, familiar with the ritual, obeyed. Paliser peered into the strawberry of her throat. It was deep as a well and he moved back.
"You have the organ but you do not know how to use it. You don't know how to breathe."
Cassy forgot that he was young, that she was, that in the great room in the great house they were alone. Through the shutters came the smell of lilacs, the sorceries of spring. In the sexlessness of art these things were unnoticed. For the first time she liked him. It was his frankness that drew her, though if he had been a frank old woman she would have liked him as well.
"My father says that. He says it is Ma Tamby's fault. He can't bear her."
For a while they discussed it. Paliser maintaining that were it not for the war she ought to go to Paris and Cassy asserting, though without conviction, that the specialty of the Conservatoire consisted in dried fruit.
Finally she said: "It must be late. I have a wrap somewhere and oh! my orchids."
The young person was summoned. The wrap was recovered, the orchids reappeared.
Paliser, helping Cassy with the wrap, said: "Shall I see it here again?" He knew he would but he thought it civil to ask.
Cassy too had her thoughts. The freedom with which, during the ham-and-eggs episode, his eyes had investigated her, where was it? On Sunday he had bored her to tears. That also had gone. During the past hour or two he had shown himself reasonably intelligent, unpresuming, without offensiveness of any kind. With a movement of the hand she lifted the wrap at her neck. "Here?"
It occurred to her that she did not know where the polished and inlaid floor on which she stood was located. Nor did she particularly care. Besides if her geography were vague, the floor was pleasant, a bit slippery perhaps, though just how slippery she was yet to learn.
"Yes. The day after to-morrow. Why not? I would like to run over a score or two with you."
"Good heavens! You are not composing an opera, are you?"
Paliser laughed. "I want to lead you away from painted mush into the arms of——"
"Not Strauss?" Cassy interrupted. "Art does not recognise frontiers but the Huns do not either and I will not recognise a Hun. Is the car at the door?"
He saw her out and away, and reentering the house went to a room in the wing. It was lined with bookcases that you did not have to break your back to examine. They began four feet from the floor and ended two feet higher. The room contained other objects of interest.
From among the latter, Paliser helped himself to a brandy and soda. It had been dry work. The drink refreshed him. It stimulated too. Also it suggested. He put the glass down and lightly swore at it.
"Damn Benny! He has only one thumb."
For a moment he eyed the glass. Then taking from a shelf Gautier's very spiritual account of the de Maupin, he eyed that. Not for long though. He put it back. He did not want to read. He did not want to drink. There were several things that he did not want. In particular he did not want to be alone.
He rang, ordered out a car and went sailing in town, to a brown-stone front where you could lose as much money as you liked and not in solitude either. On the way, the thought of the damned and thumbless Benny accompanied him.
Through the inflated proprieties of social New York, Paliser's father had driven four-in-hand, and at a pace so klinking that social New York cut him dead. A lot he cared! The high-steppers in their showy harness flung along as brazenly as before. He did not care. He had learned to since. Age is instructive. It teaches that though a man defy the world, he cannot ignore it. But tastes are inheritable. Monty Paliser came in for a few, but not for the four-in-hand. Less vigorous than his father, though perhaps more subtle, he preferred the tandem.
In preparation for one that he had in view, he looked in, not at a mart, but at a shrine.
It was on the afternoon succeeding Cassy's visit to his slippery floor. The day was radiant, a day not of spring, or of summer, but of both. Above was a sky of silk wadded with films of white cotton. From below there ascended a metallic roar, an odour of gasoline—the litanies and incense of the temple, Semitic and Lampsacene, that New York long since became.
Lampsacus worshipped a very great god and worshipped him uniquely. New York, more devout and less narrow, has worshipped him also and has knelt too to a god almost as great. Their combined rituals have exalted the temple into a department-store where the pilgrim obtains anything he can pay for, which is certainly a privilege. Youth, beauty, virtue, even smiles, even graciousness, Priapus and Mammon bestow on the faithful that garland the altars with cash.
In Park Avenue, on this radiant afternoon, Mrs. Austen and Paliser were occupied with their devotions. Mrs. Austen was priestess and Paliser was saying his prayers; that is, he was jingling his money, not audibly, but none the less potently in the lady's uplifted eyes.
"Yes," said the lady, who as usual did not mean it. "It is too bad. Margaret, the dear child, is so inexperienced that I feel that I must blame myself. I have kept from her—how shall I put it? Well, everything, and when she learned about this, I could not tell her that it was all very usual. It would have offended her modesty too much."
Pausing, Mrs. Austen smiled her temple smile. "I could not tell her, as somebody expressed it, that actresses happen in the best of families, but I left her to decide whether she cared to have them happen in her ménage."
The priestess, looking to the north and south, resumed: "It might have been different if she had been older, more experienced and had really cared for him. But how could she care? The child's nature is dormant. She does not know what love is. He is very nice, I have not a word to say against him, not one, but a lamp-post would be quite as capable of arousing her affection. She accepted him, I grant you that and you may well ask why. I know I asked myself the same thing, until I remembered that Mr. Austen offered to take me to Niagara Falls and I married him just to go there. At the time I was a mere chit and Margaret is little more. Now, I am not, I hope, censorious and I do not say that she had a lucky escape, but I can say she thinks so. It was such a relief that it gave her neuralgia. But the child will be up and about in no time and then you must come and dine. You got my note?"
Paliser stifled a yawn. The priestess was, he knew, entirely willing to deliver whatever he wanted at temple rates. But he knew, too, there were forms and ceremonies to be observed. Being bored was one of them.
At another portal he has been obliged to go through the forms with Carlotta Tamburini. She also had wearied him, though less infernally than Mrs. Austen, and of the two he preferred her. The ex-diva was certainly canaille, but her paw was open and ready, whereas this woman's palm, while quite as itching, was delicately withheld. Their gods were identical. It was the shrines that differed. The one at which the Tamburini presided was plain as a pikestaff. The Austen's was bedecked like a girl on her wedding-day. Behind each Priapus leered. Above both was the shining face of Mammon.
In the present rites, that which wearied Paliser was the recital of the reason of the broken engagement. It was broken, that was the end of it, an end which, in ordinary circumstances, he would have regretted. Ordinarily it would have made the running too easy. The hurdles were gone. There were no sticks, no fences. It would not even have been a race, just a canter. The goal remained but the sporting chance of beating Lennox to it would have departed. That is the manner in which ordinarily he would have regarded it. But the war, that was to change us all, already had changed his views. The draft act had not then been passed, yet it was realised that some such act would be passed, and generally it was assumed that among the exempt would be men with wives dependent on them and cogently he had reflected that if he married that would be his case precisely. At the same time he could not take a possible bride by the scruff of the neck and drag her off to a clergyman. Though it be to save your hide, such things are not done. Even in war-time there are wearisome preliminaries and these preliminaries, which a broken engagement abridged, the neuralgia of a possible bride prolonged. That was distinctly annoying and a moment later, when he had the chance, he vented the annoyance on Lennox.
"You got my note?" Mrs. Austen was asking.
"Yes," he replied, "and I will come with pleasure. Meanwhile, if my sympathy is not indiscreet, please convey it to your daughter." The kick followed. "Though, to be sure, Lennox is a loose fish."
"He is?" Mrs. Austen unguardedly exclaimed. Not for a moment had she suspected it and, in her surprise, her esteem for him jumped. Good heavens! she thought. How I have maligned him!
In the exclamation and the expression which her eyes took on, Paliser divined some mental somersault, divined too that behind it was something obscure, something that she was keeping back. Warily he backed.
"Oh, as for that, loose fish may mean anything. It is a term that has been applied to me and I dare say very correctly. If I did not live like a monk, I should be jailed for my sins."
He is his father all over again, Mrs. Austen cheerfully reflected and absently asked: "How is he?"
"Lennox? I haven't an idea."
"I mean your father."
"In a great hurry, thank you. The war has gone to his head."
"At his age? Surely——"
"He wants me to go," said Paliser, who had no intention of it whatever and whom subsequent events completely exempted. "He is in a hurry for me to enlist and in a greater hurry to have me marry."
Austerely, this pleasant woman grabbed it. "It is your duty!"
That was too much for Paliser, who, knowing as well as she did what she was driving at, wanted to laugh. Like the yawn, he suppressed it.
The priestess's austerity faded. A very fair mimic of exaltation replaced it. "Whoever she is, how proud she will be! A war-bride!"
But Paliser, who had his fill, was rising and, abandoning histrionics, she resumed: "The 24th at eight; don't forget!" Then as he passed from the portal, the priestess lifted her hands. "What a fish! Fast or loose, what a fish!"
Above her Mammon glowed, behind her leered Priapus.
Through the sunny streets, Paliser drove to the Athenæum, where everybody was talking war. The general consensus of ignorance was quite normal.
Lennox, seated with Jones at a window, was summarising his own point of view. "In a day or two I shall run down to Mineola, Perhaps they will take me on at the aviation field. Anyway I can try."
Jones crossed himself. He is signing his death-warrant, he thought. But he said: "Take you, Icarus. They will fly away with you. You will become a cavalier of the clouds, a toreador of the aerial arena, an archangel soaring among the Eolian melodies of shrapnel. I envy, I applaud, but I cannot emulate. The upper circles are reserved for youth and over musty tomes I have squandered mine. I am thirty-two by the clock and I should hie me to the grave-digger that he may take my measure. And yet if I could—if I could!—I would like to be one of the liaison chaps and fall if I must in a shroud of white swords."
Sombrely Lennox considered his friend. "Your shroud of white swords is ridiculous."
Jones agreed with him. To change the subject, he rattled a paper. "Have you seen this? There is an account here of a man who shot his girl. He thought her untrue. Probably she was."
"Reason enough then," said Lennox, who latterly had become very murderous.
"I wonder! Anyway, though the paper does not say so, that was not his reason. The poor devil killed her not because she had been untrue, but because he loved her. He killed the thing he loved the best out of sheer affection. Unfortunately, for his virtues, he loved her innocently, ignorantly, as most men do love, without any idea that the one affection worth giving is a love that nothing can alter, a love that can not only forgive but console."
"Is that what you call originality?" Lennox severely enquired. "If so, I have never run across any of it in your books."
"Heaven forbid that you should, dear boy. I live by the sweat of my pen. Originality never has, and never will make a best-seller."
It was while Jones was airing these platitudes that Paliser entered the room. He approached the two men. Lennox at once got up, turned his back, marched away.
A few days later, Jones, in reviewing the incident, wondered whether Lennox could, even then, have suspected. But, at the moment, in apology for him, he merely lied.
"I frightened him off with shop-talk."
Paliser took the vacant seat "What are you writing?"
"Cheques. There is nothing simpler and, except cash, nothing so easily understood. To keep my hand in I will write one now."
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.
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.
Cassy 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. Cassy, her nose in the air, assumed a barbed-wire attitude, her usual defensive against the conjecturing eyes of old men and the Hello, Kid! glances of New York's subtle youth. This attitude, 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 circumstance 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?"
Cassy, reduced to tears, exclaimed at him. "Why here. Where else?"
Darkly he eyed her. "Yes, but earlier, before you came in, where were you?"
Cassy could not help it, she shook. A moment before she had been crying whole-heartedly, associating 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 noble 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.
Cassy, 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. Cassy 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 rôle of call-boy, were summoning the actors to the drama in which the leading rôle 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, Cassy'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!
Cassy 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.
Cassy 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. Cassy was a beauty and an anarchist. She was also an aristocrat. The tattered portières 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 ignoble 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 Cassy's nose was in the air. A lot of nobodies 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 God, they did not smell of benzine!
"Grand Central!"
Cassy, 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 Cassy, 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!" Cassy, horribly ruffled, exclaimed at Paliser, who had the impudence to laugh. She smoothed the smock, patted the hat, passed 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 Cassy, raised their hats at Paliser, nudging each other with unfathomable good-fellowship.
"A peach!"
"No, a pair!"
Their pleasantries were lost. Cassy 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 Cassy, looking about at two and three hundred dollar frocks and at blouses that were almost as cheap.
Paliser, turning to the waiter, translated passages from the menu. "Surprised tomatoes, cocottish eggs, suprême on a sofa, ice Aurora Borealis. And a baked potato." He turned to Cassy. "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 Cassy. "What else might displease your ladyship?"
"Do stop talking like a low comedian," Cassy 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."
Cassy 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?"
Cassy 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?"
Cassy 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 Cassy and to such an extent that, finally, when the ice came she made no bones about admitting it was her favourite dish.
"Du café, monsieur? Des liqueurs?" the slacker asked.
But no, Paliser did not wish anything else, nor did Cassy. 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 suprêmes and some one to pay for them. She raised her napkin.