In the club window, on the following afternoon, Jones was airing copy.
"Capua must have been packed with yawns. It is the malediction of mortals to want what they lack until they get it, when they want it no more. Epicurus said that or, if he did not, Lucretius said it for him. 'Surgit amari aliquid.' But here I am running into quotations when the only ones that interest anybody are those in the Street. Conditions here are revolting. Nowhere at any time has there been a metropolis that so stank to heaven. The papers drip with stocks and scandals and over there, before the massed artillery, the troops are wheeling down to death. But wheeling is perhaps poetic. The Marne was the last battle in the grand style."
"I don't see what that has to do with Capua," said Verelst.
"Nor I," Jones replied. "But, come to think of it, there is a connection. In Capua everybody yawned their heads off. In Flanders and Champagne they are shot off. Life swings like a pendulum between boredom and pain. When the world is not anæmic, it is delirious. If ever again its pulse registers normal, sensible people will go back to Epicurus, whose existence was one long lesson in mental tranquillity. By the Lord Harry, the more I consider it, the more convinced I become that there is nothing else worth having. Niente, nada, rien. Nothing whatever."
Verelst smiled. "In that case it is hardly worth while getting excited over it." He raised the lapel of his coat. There were violets in it. He took a whiff and added: "Has Lennox been here to-day?"
But Jones did not know.
Regretfully, Verelst continued: "He goes to Mineola to-morrow and soon he will be over the top."
Jones lit a cigarette. "Assuming that he gets back, the women will be mad about him. Some of them at any rate."
Verelst rolled an enquiring eye.
"Of course they will," Jones resumed. "Times have changed precious little since Victor Hugo.
'Les belles out le goût des héros. Le sabreurEffroyable, trainant après lui tant d'horreurQu'il ferait reculer jusqu'à la sombre Hécate,Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate.Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait à la boucheDe la blonde aux yeux doux, c'est le baiser farouche.La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant,Par l'homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant.Et c'est la volupté de toutes ces colombesD'ouvrir leur lit à ceux qui font ouvrir les tombes.'
'Les belles out le goût des héros. Le sabreurEffroyable, trainant après lui tant d'horreurQu'il ferait reculer jusqu'à la sombre Hécate,Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate.Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait à la boucheDe la blonde aux yeux doux, c'est le baiser farouche.La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant,Par l'homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant.Et c'est la volupté de toutes ces colombesD'ouvrir leur lit à ceux qui font ouvrir les tombes.'
"What rhythm! What music! The score is Napoleonic but——"
"Hello!" Verelst interrupted. Before the window a car had passed. He was looking at it. On the back seat was a man in a high hat and an overcoat. "M. P.!" he exclaimed.
"What of it?" Jones asked.
Verelst removed his glasses and looked distrustfully at them. It was as though he doubted their vision. Then, after a moment he said: "Last night I heard he was dying."
"Which," Jones remarked, "is the aim, the object and the purpose of life. But apparently he has not achieved it yet. Apparently also you are a futurist. The Napoleonic score did not interest you."
Verelst, resuming his glasses, replied: "It would not interest Lennox, if that is what you mean. He has been hit too hard."
Jones nodded. He knew all about it. It had even suggested a story, a famous story; one that was told in Babylon and has been retold ever since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter before the hero—whose death had been falsely gazetted—limps in.
But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The reader is so nice-minded!
Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women has, I am sure, made you indulgent."
"Not in the least."
"But——"
"Look here," Verelst interrupted. "When I was young and consequently very experienced, I was indulgent. But monsters change you. Last night I dined with one."
"Enviable mortal!"
"You remember Abraham?" Verelst continued. "His name was Abraham—wasn't it?—that benevolent old man in the Bible who made the sacrifice of sacrificing an animal instead of his son? Well, last night it seemed to me that there are women Abrahams, only less benevolent. The altar was veiled, the knife was concealed, but the victim was there—a girl for whom, at your age, I would have died, or offered to die, which amounts to the same thing. What is more to the point, at your age, or no, for you are much older than your conversation would lead one to believe, but in my careless days I offered to die for her mother. I swore I could not live without her. That is always a mistake. It is too flattering, besides being untrue. Perhaps she so regarded it. In any event another man fared better or worse. Afterward, time and again, he said to me: 'Peter, for God's sake, run away with her.' Am I boring you?"
"Enormously."
"Well, he was very gentlemanly about it. Without making a fuss at home, he went away and died in a hospital. She was very grateful to him for that. But her gratitude waned when she came in for his money. It was adequate but not opulent, the result being that she tried to train her daughter for the great matrimonial steeplechase. Just here the plot thickens. Recently the filly shied, took the bit in her teeth and—hurrah, boys!—she was off on her own, until her mother jockied her up to a hurdle that she could not take and the filly came a cropper. But her mother was still one too many for her. She had her up in a jiffy and now she is heading her straight for the sweepstakes."
"Excuse me," Jones with affected meekness put in. "I assume that the sacrificial victim and the filly are one and the same."
"Your perspicacity does you much credit."
Jones laughed. "I have my little talents. But you! The wizardry with which you mix metaphors is beautiful. You produce a dinner-table and transform it into an altar which instantly becomes a racecourse. That is what I call genius. But to an every-day sort of chap like me, would you mind being less cryptic?"
"Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes."
"So can I."
Again Jones laughed. "Not in my neighbourhood. You were talking of Lennox and drifted from him into the Bible. Your thoughts of the one recalled studies of the other and at once you had Abraham's daughter downed on the racecourse. Well, she won't be."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it is my business to see things before they occur. Miss Austen——"
"I never mentioned her," Verelst heatedly exclaimed. "You have no right to——"
"I admit it. But because of Lennox the whole matter has preoccupied me and quite as much, I daresay, as it has distressed you."
"I don't see at all what you have to do with it."
"Perhaps not. But preoccupation may lead to crystal-gazing. Now I will wager a red pippin that I can tell what you said at the steeplechase to the steeplestakes. You asked after his father."
Verelst stared. A man of the world and, as such, at his ease in any circumstances, none the less he was startled. "How in God's name did you get that?"
"It is very simple. Five minutes ago his father sailed by. You made a remark about him. The remark suggested a train of thought which landed you at the racecourse where you saw, or intimated that you saw, the steeplestakes. But what visible sweepstakes are there except M. P.'s son? You and M. P. are friends. It is only natural that you should ask about him."
Verelst turned uneasily. "I don't yet see how you got it. The only thing I said is that I heard he was dying."
"And five minutes ago you exclaimed at his resurrection. There is a discrepancy there that is very suggestive."
"It is none of my making then."
"It is none the less suggestive. The death-bed was invented."
"M. P. may have recovered."
"Yes, men of his age make a practice of jumping into their death-bed and then jumping out. It is good for them. It keeps them in training."
"Oh, rubbish!" Verelst resentfully exclaimed.
"No," Jones pursued. "The story was invented and the invention had a reason. If you like, you may ask what it is."
"You seem to be very good at invention yourself. I shall ask nothing of the kind."
"But you would like to know and I will tell you. It was invented to delay a possible announcement. It could have had no other object."
"I said nothing of any announcement," Verelst angrily protested. "What announcement are you talking about?"
"The heading of the filly for the sweepstakes. The expression—very graphic by the way—is your own."
"Graphic or not I wish you would drop it. Besides——"
"Besides what?"
"Why, confound it, admitting the engagement, which I ought not to admit for it is not out yet, why should he play for delay?"
"Ha!" exclaimed Jones, whom the spectacle of Paliser and Cassy sailing up the Riverside had supplied with an impression or two. "I thought I would interest you. He played for delay because he feared that if it were known, a pitcher of ice-water might come dashing over it."
"Why do you say that?" asked Verelst, eager and anxious enough for a spoke—if spoke there could be—to shove in a certain lady's wheels.
"Given the man and the deduction is easy."
The spoke was receding. Verelst, swallowing his disappointment, retorted: "Incoherence is easy too."
"Well, you are right there," Jones, lighting another cigarette, replied. "But there is nothing incoherent in the fact that fear is magnetic. What we dread, we attract. If our winning young friend fears the pitcher, the pitcher will probably land on him. That is the reason why, to vary your various metaphors, I declared that there would be no downing on the racecourse. On the contrary and look here. I will wager you not one pippin or two pippins, I will go so far as to lay a whole basket that Miss Austen becomes Mrs. Lennox."
Verelst sniffed. "You don't know her mother."
"No. I have not that honour. But I enjoy a bowing acquaintance with logic."
"Do you, now? I wonder if it bows back. I'll book your bet."
"Very good. Make it fancy pippins."
Verelst stood up. "Fancy is the only term that could be applied them."
"And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," Jones told himself as the old man moved away.
He looked about. The great room had filled. Stocks, money, war, the odour of alcohol, the smell of cigars, the rustling of evening papers, the sound of animated talk about nothing whatever, the usual atmosphere had reassembled itself.
From it he turned to the window, to the westering sun, to the motors, the smart gowns and the women who looked so delightful and of whom all had their secrets—secrets trivial, momentous, perverse or merely horrible.
Again he turned. Lennox, who had approached, was addressing him. "You were at the law school. I have to make a will. Will you help me?"
Serviceably Jones sprang up. "Come to my shop. It is just around the corner."
Among the old brocades with which the room was fitted and which, together with the silver bed and the enamelled faïence, gave it an earlier century air, Cassy stood before a cheval-glass.
She was properly dressed. Her costume, light cloth, faintly blue, was exquisitely embroidered. Beneath it was lingerie of the kind which, it is said, may be drawn through a ring. Behind and between was Cassy, on whose docked hair sat a hat that was very unbecoming and therefore equally smart.
A moment before she had thanked and dismissed Emma. Emma was the maid. With a slant of the eye, that said and suppressed many things, Emma had gone.
Through the open windows came the call of birds, the smell of fresh turf. A patch of sky was visible. It was tenderly blue. There was a patch too of grass that showed an asparagus green.
From the mirror Cassy went to a table and, from a jade platter, took a ring. It was made of six little hoops each set with small stones. She put it on. The platter held other rings. There was a sapphire, inch-long, deep and dark. She put that on. There was also an Australian opal and an Asian emerald, the latter greener than the grass. She put these on. Together with the wedding-ring they made quite a show. Too much of a show, she thought.
Like the costume, the hat, like other costumes, more hats and box after box of lingerie, they had all surprisingly dumped themselves, there, at her feet, the day after the wedding. The bundle, which she had brought with her, she had found very useless and so awkward that she would have given it to Emma, had it not seemed unsuited to a young person manifestly so fine. Since then it had been tucked away in a cupboard, safely out of sight.
That was just five days ago, a brief eternity, during which life seemed to be driving her headlong to some unimagined goal. Until the evening previous she had had barely a moment. But on that evening, Paliser, who was dining at the Austens', had given her a few hours to herself.
Now, on this afternoon, he was again in town.
The air was very still. Afar, a train bellowed, rumbled, died away. From the garage came the bark of a dog, caught up and repeated on the hillside beyond. On the lawn, a man in an apron was at work. Otherwise the air was still, fragrant, freighted with spring.
Cassy, turning from the table, went to the mirror again and tilted the hat. However unbecoming, it was certainly smart, and Cassy wondered what her father would think of Mrs. Monty Paliser.
In the spaciousness of the name, momentarily she lost herself. It is appalling to be a snob. But there are attributes that pour balm all over you. In the deference of the bored yet gracious young women who, with robes et manteaux, had come all the way from Fifth Avenue, there had been a flagon or two of that balm. In the invariable "Thank you, mem's" of the Paliser personnel there had been more. It is appalling to be a snob. There are perfumes that appeal.
Then also, particularly after Harlem, the great, grave, silent house had a charm that was enveloping, almost enchanted. Apparently uncommanded, it ran itself, noiselessly, in ordered grooves. Cassy fancied that somewhere about there must be a majordomo who competently saw to everything and kept out of the way. But she did not know. In her own rooms she was now at home, as she was also at home in the state chambers on the floor below. In regard to the latter, she had an idea—entirely correct, by the way—that at Lisbon, the royal palace—when there was one—could not have been more suave. But the rest of the house was as yet unexplored, though in regard to the upper storey she had another idea, that there was a room there close-barred, packed with coffins.
The idea delighted her. In this Palace of the White Cat it was the note macabre, the proper note, the note that synchronised the circumambient enchantments. In the historical nights of which Perrault told, the princess had but a gesture to make, the offender sank dead. At once a bier was produced, the corpse was hurried away, and the veils of charm restored fell languorously.
Yet, in that historical epoch, there subsisted—perhaps as a reminder of the vanities even of fairyland—the rose-leaf suggestively crumpled. The crumple affected Cassy but far less than she had expected. Paliser had been very gentlemanly. He had deferred to her in all things, agreed with her about everything, and though none the less he always had his own way, yet the pedestal was so obvious that if she had not known otherwise she might have thought herself continuously upon it.
The crumple was not there, or at least only such crumple as she had naturally awaited. The discomfort of the leaf consisted in the fact that married she was not mated, that she did not love him, and probably never could.
Now, as she tilted her hat, the spaciousness of the name recurred to her. Its potentialities she had considered before she accepted it, but only because of her father. The idea that it would lift him out of the walk-up, out of Harlem and cold veal, was the one excuse for her voyage to Cytherea. The voyage had been eminently respectable. Undertaken with full ecclesiastical sanction, Aphrodite and her free airs had had nothing to do with it. None the less it was to Cytherea that she had gone—and to Lampsacus also, for all she and her geography knew to the contrary.
Now, though, in tilting her hat, the disreputable beauty of the land was forgotten. She was in another and a fairer realm. A modern garden of the Hesperides lay about her. She saw herself distributing the golden fruit. The mirror showed her a red-crossed Lady Bountiful in an ambulance, in two ambulances, in a herd of ambulances, at the front. There was no end to the golden fruit, no end to his father's money, no end to the good he might allow her to do.
The picture so delighted her that she flushed and in the emotion of it two tears sprang to her eyes that were not of the crying kind.
She dried them, telling herself that if he framed the picture, she could love him, and she would.
It would be all so perfect, not the loving, but the giving, the joy of giving, the joy of always giving, of giving with both hands, of just shovelling it out and keeping at it, of never saying "No," of saying, "Yes, and here is more and here is more," of saying, too, "Don't thank me, it is for me to thank you." What joy ever was there, or ever will be, that can compare to that!
Why, I'm crazy, she thought, and thought also, he never will but he might, he could and if he should——
Then at once the Paliser of the Savile Row clothes and the St. James's Street boots, the Paliser of the looking-glass hair and the Oxford voice, assumed the hue and stature of a deva. Love him! It would be something higher. It would be worship!
She made a face. It was sheer nonsense. He had an allowance which, obviously, was very liberal and with which he was liberal enough. Unlike many rich men he was not close. But to fancy him beneficent was laughable. Cassy could not imagine him in the rôle of Lord Bountiful. Then too there was something queer about him. He hated to be alone. There are people who kill silence and he was one of them. He was always talking. Cassy could not understand it. To be silent with any one procures an intimacy which talk cannot supply. Moreover solitude was as necessary to her and as refreshing as her bath. Silence and solitude he could not endure. She tilted her nose and went to the window.
That night they were to go to the opera. But in a moment she was to motor in and see her father. Since she put Harlem behind her, she had wondered and worried about him. The condition of his heart was hazardous and she had been told that any excitement might be fatal. She had worried over that, over his sudden rages at tradespeople, and she had been fearful lest Mrs. Yallum, the janitress, who spoke no known tongue, had, instead of being of use, only enraged him further.
She would see to it, though. It was for that she was going in. As yet she had no money. But there were the rings and one more or one less, what did it matter? Of the lot she preferred the string of hoops. It was quaint, there was nothing philistine about it and probably it had not cost so very much. The emerald was different. It was a stone that would please any woman with plenty of money and a modicum of taste. Probably it had cost a thousand on Fifth Avenue, in which case it would fetch a hundred on Broadway. Or if not, then the sapphire would. Either or both she would hock very willingly. But not the hoop-ring and not the opal, unless she had to, and if Paliser, who apparently noticed nothing and saw everything, asked concerning them, why then she would out with it. Her father was a beggar! Did he expect her to let him starve? But what on earth do you suppose I married you for? For yourself? Take a walk. I sold myself for bread—and butter, and you can fork them over.
At the possibility of any such conversation—and of such language!—she flushed afresh and again called herself a fool. There could be no such conversation. Paliser would never question. He was too indifferent The consciousness comforted, precisely as, a moment before, the picture of herself shovelling gold had moved her to tears.
Then absently she found herself looking in the garden where the aproned man was at work. But it was Lennox that she saw. Again and again since the wedding-evening, when Paliser had told her of the unscrambled eggs, she had wondered about the broken engagement. On that evening she had felt that she had taken the wrong road and had lost her way. The feeling was momentary. If Lennox had never been engaged, the result would have been the same. Not once had he so much as said boo! He had not even looked it. At table, on the wedding-evening, the unscrambled eggs had not tasted very good, but reflection had salted them and since then, in reviewing the matter, it had occurred to her that it was none of her business.
Now as she looked out on the garden she wondered whether he had cared very greatly for this girl, for if he had, what then did she mean by throwing over a man who was too good for her, too good for anybody?
She sighed and absently looked again at the gardener. He was bending down, occupied in planting something. Since she had first noticed him he had half-circled a parterre and she was about to telephone and ask if the car were ready when he straightened, turned, extracted a pipe and attempted to light it.
The air was very still, there was no breeze, but the match was ineffective. On his trousers, with a backward movement, he struck another match and raised it to the bowl. The flame, faintly blue, mounted and, with it, a curl of smoke. But it was not Cassy or, more exactly, it was not her objective self, that saw it. It was her subjective self that registered and afterward reproduced that momentary and entirely commonplace incident. What the objective Cassy saw was not the flame or the smoke or the pipe, but the hand that held the match. It was thumbless. Many hands are. From the hand she looked at the man's face and gave a little scream, instantly suppressed.
But her mouth twitched, she tried to swallow and she experienced, what was new to her, an odd sensation in the epiglottis. She did not remember that she had ever been what is called sick at the stomach, none the less she realised that she was on the point of becoming so. Like the little scream, she choked it back. But the immanence of nausea stifled her, and she sat down on a brocade-covered chair.
Her hand had gone to her throat and though almost at once the sensation subsided, she held it there. The gold bands of the rings that were pressed against her throat cooled it, but the palm of the hand was wet. Unconscious of that, she was unaware that she could not think. A crack on the head makes you dizzy and into her dizziness a somnolence had entered. The somnolence dulled all the cells of the brain save one and that one cell, vehemently active, was inciting her to some effort, though to what she did not know.
"I must get up," she presently told herself and told it once more.
In the repetition of the words there was the effect of a spray. The irritability of the one active cell subsided, that of the others was aroused. Somnambulism ceased. The entire brain awoke. But the truth had not yet fully permeated all the cerebral convolutions and the fact that it had not, manifested itself in the melodramatic phrase which, a week previous, Lennox had uttered, which all have uttered, all at least before whom the unforseen has sprung.
"It is impossible!"
She got up, went to the window, looked again. There was no impossibility there, no doubt even, or the peradventure of one. There was only the ineluctable truth. The aproned man disclosed it. His thumbless hand had held the book. From his mouth, in which there was a pipe, had come the benediction. He was Dr. Grantly. That was the ineluctable truth, the truth which already perhaps she had intercepted in the land of Beauty and Horror.
The first sight of it had sickened. Now the physical effect had gone. But the nausea in passing had been replaced by another sensation, deadlier, equally human, that made her red and hot, blurred her eyes, set her quivering, shook her, put her thoughts on fire, vitriolised her with hate.
Nietzsche said that a woman's ability to hate is in proportion to her inability to charm. The brute omitted to add that a woman's ability to charm corresponds to her evolution.
There was nothing evolved about Cassy then. She had lapsed back into the primitive. Like Armide, she could have burned the palace that enchanted her. None the less, she did nothing. To do nothing may be very important. The inactivity saved her. During it, the vitriol vaporised; the hate fell by. She was still trembling, her hands were unsteady, but the fever was departing, the crisis had passed, the primitive had slunk back into the cellars of the subconscious, and, in the chair, to which without knowing it she had returned, she faced it.
Without, some one knocked and, getting no answer, accepted the invitation as most people do.
"Beg pardon, Mrs. Paliser. The car is at the door."
Cassy half turned. "What?"
Emma reconstructed it. "Whenever you are ready, mem, the car will be waiting."
Cassy turned away. "That will do."
"Thank you, mem."
With that air which servants assume, Emma pursed her lips, reopened them, thought better of it, closed them and closed too the door.
Facing it still, Cassy sat in the brocaded chair. Anger had shaken her and gone, taking with it its spawn which hatred is. What inhabited her then was disgust.
I am in a nice mess, she told herself. But she told it without surprise, as though all along it was something which she might have known, could have avoided, but into which she had put her foot. A momentary vision of the red-crossed Lady Bountiful returned and she even smiled at it. It was a sad little smile though.
Abstractedly, she had been turning and twisting the rings. The motion aroused her. It drew her attention to them. They also had something to say. Something which they had been saying ever since the smoke curled from the pipe. She had not heard it then. There had been too many things tumbling about her. But now she did hear. She took them off, stood up and dropped them on the table where they fell between gold-backed brushes and a vase, gorgeous in delicacy, the colour of ox-blood.
From a cupboard she took the rowdy frock, the tam, the basilica underwear and, for a moment, searched and searched vainly for a pair of stockings. In hunting for them she unearthed the bundle, and that together with the other things, she threw on the bed, which was not brocaded, or even daised. It was silver. A few days before, when she had first seen it, she had clapped her hands. The vase too she had applauded. Now the lovely room, that had seemed so lovely, a curl of smoke had turned into a lupanar.
Quickly, one after another, the modish hat, the delicious frock, the things that could be drawn through a ring, were removed and replaced. In the mirror she looked, stopped, looked again, adjusted the tam and was going to the bed for the bundle when she heard a horn. Head-drawn, she listened.
She would have so much preferred to leave without seeing him or speaking to him. If she could, she would have gone without a word, silently, in the only dignified manner that was possible. But, apparently, matters had arranged themselves otherwise. She went to the bed, took the bundle, moved back to the table and waited.
She did not wait long. Paliser, with the pretence of a knock and a smile on his lips walked in—but not far. That frock, that bundle, the sight of her there, sufficed. He knew. With an awkwardness that was unusual with him, he closed the door and twisted his hat. The smile had gone from his lips. They were dry.
Then as he looked at her and she looked at him—and with what a look!—words seemed such poor things. It was as though already everything had been said, as perhaps in the silent temples of their being, everything, accusations, recriminations, all the futilities of speech had been uttered, impotently, a moment since. A moment earlier she had said her say. As he looked at her he knew that she had and knew too, that before he entered the room, already she had heard his replies.
The consciousness of this, equally shared by both, was so intense that, for a second, Cassy felt that everything happening then had happened ages ago, that she was taking part in a drama rehearsed on a stage that memory cannot reconstruct but which stood, and, it may be, still stands, back of those doors that close behind our birth.
The hallucination, if it be one, and which, given certain crises of the emotions, is common enough, vanished abruptly as it had come. But two seconds had gone since Paliser entered the room, yet, in those seconds, both recognised that eternity had begun between them.
With his hat, a hat studiously selected, made to order, Paliser motioned and with the same studiousness, selecting a platitude, he produced it. "I was going to take you out."
"After taking me in," Cassy in reviewing the situation subsequently commented. But at the time she said nothing. She merely looked. Her rage was gone, her anger spent. Only disgust remained. It was that which her face expressed. It was withering.
Paliser, steadying himself and, as was perhaps only natural, hedging still, resumed: "But apparently you have other intentions."
What a cad that blackguard is! thought Cassy who still said nothing.
"May I ask what they are?"
Cassy threw up her chin. "My intentions are to leave——"
"But why?"
"Don't presume to interrupt me. My intentions are to leave your assignation-house and have you horsewhipped."
Paliser had been served with strong drink before, but none ever as strong as that. It steadied him. He had expected that when it got to her, as eventually it must, there would be the passionate upbraidings, the burst of sobs, the Oh! Oh's!, the What will become of me?, the usual run up and down the scale and the usual remedies which a bank account supplies. He had expected all that. He had prescribed for it often. There was not a symptom for which he did not know the proper dose and just when to administer it. But barely had he crossed the threshold before he realised that all his science would be in default.
Cassy presented an entirely new case, but, fortunately, in the drink which she had served, he saw or thought he saw how to treat it.
He gestured again. "I never cared for scenes. But this house, which it has pleased you to describe from your knowledge of other establishments, is——"
Whatever he may have intended to add, was interrupted. Cassy, previously inexorable as fate, but converted then into a fury, dropped the bundle and caught up the vase. Missing him, it hit the door, where musically it crashed and shattered.
He turned, looked at it, looked at her, at the table. Barring the gold-backed brushes, the jade platter and that bundle, there was nothing that she could conveniently shy, and, in his Oxford voice, but civilly enough, he gave it to her.
"Allow me. There is no necessity whatever for your acting in this manner. The situation, such as it is, it had been my intention to remedy. It had been my intention, I say. But yesterday it came to my knowledge that it is because of your relations with Lennox that his engagement is broken."
Take that, he mentally added and continued aloud: "I might not have believed the story, but I was told that Lennox admitted it." Take that, too, he mentally resumed. I shall be treated to tears in a minute and in no time it will be "Kamerad!"
Sidewise he looked at the ruin of the vase, on which Daughters of Heaven and an ablated dynasty may have warmed their eyes. It affronted his own. Insult, yes, that could be tossed about, but not art, not at least the relatively unique.
With a crease in his lips which now were dry no longer, he looked at Cassy. The awaited tears were not yet visible. But the blood-madness that had seized her, must have let her go, routed, as hæmatomania may be, by the trivial and, in this instance, by a lie. That lie suffocated her. It was as though, suddenly, she had been garroted.
The condition was only momentary, but, during it, a curtain fell on this vulgar drama, which was to affect so many lives. Before the girl a panorama passed. She saw herself leaving Lennox' rooms. She saw Margaret Austen, saw the woman with her, saw the former's candid eyes; saw the latter's ridiculous airs, saw the construction which between them they had reached and saw, too, the consequences that had resulted. The dirt with which she had been besplattered she did not see. The panorama did not display it. What it alone revealed was Lennox' disaster. Of herself she did not think and regarding Margaret she did not care. That which occupied her was Lennox.
But was it true? In Paliser nothing was true, not even his lies. For it was unaccountable that a matter so simple could not have been cleared with a word. But it was not unaccountable at all. It was obvious. Margaret, a born snob, had given Lennox no chance for that word. Some one, Paliser probably, had invented the admission and she had refused to see him, after condemning him unheard.
I will attend to that, Cassy decided.
At once the suffocation ceased, the panorama sank, the scene shifted, the curtain parted, the drama proceeded and she found herself staring at Paliser, who was staring at her.
"As it is——" he tentatively resumed and would have said more, a lot, anything to coerce the tears to her eyes and with them surrender.
She gave him no chance. She took the bundle and, before he could continue, she passed him, opened the door, slammed it with a din that had in it the clatter of muskets, went down the stair and out to the perron, before which stood a car.
"The station!" she threw at the mechanician.
The house now, jarred a moment earlier by the crash of porcelain and the slamming door, had recovered its silence.
From within, Emma, very agreeably intrigued, a footman with a white sensual face beside her, looked out with slanting eyes.
Harris, wrinkled as a sweetbread and thin as an umbrella, blinked at Cassy. "Mr. Lennox is out, mem."
"Then go and fetch him."
Past the servant, Cassy forced her way through the vestibule, into the sitting-room, where the usual gloom abided, but where, unusually, were a smell of camphor, two overcoats, two trunks and a bag.
Cassy, putting down the bundle, exclaimed at them. "He is not leaving town?"
"Yes, mem, to-morrow morning, for Mineola." He spoke grudgingly, looking as he spoke like a little old mule at bay.
Cassy, noticing that, said: "See here, I don't mean to bully you, but it is most important that I should see Mr. Lennox—important for him, do you hear?"
"I hear you, mem, but I don't know where he is."
"Then find out. There must be a telephone."
Harris scratched his head but otherwise he did nothing.
"Come!" Cassy told him. "Hurry!"
Harris shifted. "I don't know as how he'd like it. He's been that upset these last few days. I——" He hesitated. Visibly an idea had visited him with which he was grappling. "You're not from Miss Austen, now, are you?"
Cassy caught at it. To confirm it would be fanciful. To deny it would be extravagant. Choosing an in-between for the benefit of this servant whom she knew to be English, she produced it.
"I am the Viscountess of Casa-Evora."
Harris wiped his mouth. A viscountess who had come only the other day with a bundle, and who now forced her way in with another bundle, did not coincide with such knowledge as he had of the nobility. But she was certainly overbearing enough to be anybody.
He turned. "Very good, your ladyship, I'll telephone."
Don't ladyship me, Cassy was about to reply, but judging that impolitic, she sat down.
On the train in she had debated whether she would go first to Harlem or to Lennox and in either case what afterward she should do. She had a few dollars which her father would need. The thought of these assets reminded her that in changing her clothes she had omitted to change back into her own stockings. Well, when she changed again she would return the pair which she had on and, as she determined on that, she saw Paliser's face as she had seen it when she threw the vase. That relapse into the primitive shamed her. She had behaved like a fish-wife. But though she regretted the violence, she regretted even more deeply the vase. The destruction of art is so despicably Hun! For moxa, she evoked the Grantly masquerade.
The entire lack of art in that seemed to her incongruous with the surface Paliser whom she had known. But had she even known the surface which itself was a mask? Yet behind the mask was an intelligence which at least was not ordinary, yet which, none the less, had descended to that! She could not understand it. She could not understand, what some one later explained to her, that a high order of intellect does not of itself prevent a man from soiling it and, with it, himself and his hands. The explanation came later, when other matters were occupying her and when Paliser, headlined in the papers, was dead.
Meanwhile the train had landed her in the Grand Central and she decided to go to Lennox first.
Now as she sat in his sitting-room where, for all she knew, she might have to sit for hours, it comforted her to think that she had so decided. If she had put it off until the morrow, Lennox would, by then, have gone to the aviation-field, where he might be killed before she could patch things up. At thought of that, she wondered whether he might not stay out undiscoverably all night and send for his things to be fetched to the station.
But in that case, Cassy promptly reflected, I'll go to her, pull her out of bed, drag her there—and no thanks either. I didn't do it for you, I did it for him. He's too good for you.
On the mantel, a clock struck, while thinly, through a lateral entrance, Harris emerged.
"The hall-porter at Mr. Lennox' club says he's just gone out with Mr. Jones. Yes, ma'am."
"Mr. Jones! What Mr. Jones? The novelist?"
"I'm thinking so, ma'am. A very haffable gentleman."
"Try to get him. Ask if Mr. Lennox, is there. Or, no, I'll do the talking."
Then presently she was doing it, collaborating rather in the dialogue that ensued.
"Mr. Jones?"
"Yes, darling."
Cassy, swallowing it, resumed: "Mr. Jones, forgive a stranger for intruding, I——"
"Beautiful voice, forgive me. Triple brute that I am, I thought it was my aunt."
"Then let me introduce myself. This is Miss Cara."
"Casta diva! You do me infinite honour!"
"Mr. Jones, I must see Mr. Lennox. It is a matter of life and death."
"Lennox is engaged with death now."
"What!"
"He is preparing for the great adventure. At this moment he is making his will. Miss Cara?"
"Yes?"
"Lennox takes even serious matters gravely."
"But he is with you?"
"In my workshop and at your service as I am."
"You will let me come there?"
"Enthusiastically and yet with all humility for I have no red carpet to run down the stair."
"Then hold on to him, please."
Ouf! sighed Cassy, as she hung it up. Another man who might be Mrs. Yallum's husband! She took the telephone-book, found and memorised the address and turned to Harris. "Thank you very much. Will you mind giving me that package?"
"Beg pardon, ma'am," the little man said, as he opened the door for her. "There's nothing more amiss, is there?"
Cassy covered him with her lovely eyes. "When Mr. Lennox comes back here, he may tell you to unpack."
"Then may God bless your ladyship."
Cassy went on.
At Jones' shop, a floor in a reconstructed private house, a man who had the air of performing a feat, showed her into a room that was summarily, but not spartanly, furnished. On one side was a bookcase supported by caryatides. Above, hung a stretch of silk on which was a flight of dragons. Above the silk was an ivory mask. Fronting the bookcase was the biggest table that Cassy had ever seen.
Jones, vacating the table, advanced to greet her. Perched on his shoulder, was a cat that peered at her. It had long hair, the colour of smoke; a bushy tail; the eyes of an angel and a ferocious moustache.
Although Cassy had other matters in hand, she exclaimed at it. "What a duck!"
Jones, who saw, and at once, that she had not come to ask the time of day, exclaimed also: "Yes, but ducky is as ducky does. That cat talks in her sleep."
But now Lennox, advancing too, had taken her hand.
Withdrawing it, she put the bundle on the table, on which were papers, and, noticeably, a dagger, brilliant, wicked, thin as a shadow. On the blade was a promise—Penetrabo.
She looked up. Jones and the cat had gone. She looked at Lennox. "I don't know where to begin."
Lennox could not tell her. On learning that she wanted to see him, he had supposed it was about her father and he had said as much to Jones. But in greeting her, the novelist knew from her vibrations that whatever her object might be, at least it was not ordinary. Then, taking the cat, he had gone.
Now, though, Cassy was at it. "The day you loaned me a hundred, you remember? As I went out I had the money in my hand. In the hall was Miss Austen. You had just shown me her picture. I recognised her at once. With her was a woman, thin-faced, thin-lipped, thin-minded. She saw me, saw the money, gave me a look. I did not forget it. But it is only to-day that I learned what it meant. It meant that I am no better than I ought to be—or you either."
Lennox had one hand on the table. He raised the other. "Who told you this?"
"Paliser. He said it was the reason your engagement was broken."
In the palm of the upraised hand, the fingers moved forward and back, regularly, methodically, mechanically. Lennox was unaware of it. He was unaware of anything except the monstrous perversity of the tale.
"I came directly from him to your rooms. Your man said you were going away. Thank goodness, I am not too late."
Cassy had seated herself, but now, reaching for the bundle, she stood up. Across the street, in the house opposite, a boy was lowering a shade. It seemed to Cassy that she had raised one. But there are explanations that explain nothing. To Lennox there was a shade suspended before Margaret, who had judged him unheard. It obscured her. He could not see her at all.
Over the way, the boy lowered a second shade and Cassy, as though prompted by it, raised another. "Paliser said you admitted it."
From the obscurity Lennox turned, but it was still about him. "Admitted what?"
Cassy reddened. "What I told you."
With the movement of the head that a bull has when he is going for you, Lennox bent his own. The movement, which was involuntary, was momentary. The shade had lifted. He saw Margaret, but behind her he saw others holding her back, telling her he was not fit to be spoken to. He was going for them. Meanwhile he had forgotten Cassy. He looked up, saw her, remembered the part attributed to her in the story and struck the table.
"It is damnable that such a thing should be said of you."
"Oh," Cassy put in. "It was not at all on my account that I told you. I——" She stopped short. The promised horsewhipping occurred to her.
Lennox took up the knife, gave it a turn, shoved it away. It was very much as though he had twisted it in somebody's gizzards. The idea had come to him that Paliser had concocted the admission. But, as he was unable to conceive what his object could be, he dismissed it. None the less, for what the man had said, he deserved to be booted down the club steps.
Cassy had stopped short. The story behind the story did not concern Lennox, yet as he might wonder how Paliser had ventured with her on such a subject, she began at it again.
"We were married recently, or anyway I thought so. To-day I discovered that the ceremony was bogus. Then I told him a thing or two and he told me that."
Lennox stared. Angry already, angry ever since the rupture, angry with that intensity of anger which only those who love—or who think they do—and who are thwarted in it ever know, and all the angrier because he had no one and could have no one to vent it on, until he got to the front and got at the Huns, at that last fillip from Cassy he saw some one on whom he could vent it, and yet to whom none the less he felt strangely grateful. For, whatever Paliser had done or omitted, at any rate, he had completely clarified the situation.
"I must run," said Cassy. "But you can tell Miss Austen, can't you?"
Lennox, controlling himself, motioned. "Would you mind repeating this to Jones?"
Cassy's eyebrows arched themselves. "It was hard enough to tell you. Were it not for your engagement, I wouldn't have said anything. When dreadful things happen to a girl, people always think that she must be dreadful herself. Isn't that nice of them? I——"
"See here," Lennox interrupted, "you can't leave it like this. Something has got to be done. I can give Paliser a hiding and I will. But that isn't enough. I don't know whether a criminal action will lie, but I do know that you can get damages and heavy ones."
Cassy's lovely eyes searched the room. "Who was that speaking? It wasn't you, was it?"
Lennox, recognising the rebuke, acknowledged it. "Forgive me. I forgot whom I was addressing. Jones will be less stupid. Let us have him in."
But when Jones, immediately requisitioned, appeared, Cassy again putting down her bundle, protested. "Mr. Lennox regards me as an Ariadne and expects me to act like a young lady in a department-store. Either rôle is too up-stage."
Jones, taken with her mobile mouth, her lovely eyes, the oval of her handsome face, said lightly: "It seems to me that you might assume any part."
Lennox struck out. "Paliser hocuspocused her with a fake marriage. He——"
"Oh," Cassy gently put in, "I have no one to blame but myself. I ought to have known better."
Jones nodded. "Probably you did know. The misadventure is rare of which we are not warned in advance. We cannot see the future but the future sees us. It sends us messages which we call premonitions."
Instantly Cassy was back in the Tamburini's room, where she had seen both beauty and horror. She had not reached the latter yet and the sudden vision Lennox dissipated.
"Stuff and nonsense! Haven't you anything else to say?"
Amiably Jones turned to him. "I can say that no one is wise on an empty stomach." He turned to Cassy. "The Splendor is not far. Will you dine with us, Mrs. Paliser?"
Violently Lennox repeated it; "Mrs. Paliser! Miss Cara is no more Mrs. Paliser than you are."
"To err is highly literary," Jones with great meekness replied. "I hear that it is even human."
Cassy reached again for the bundle. "It is only natural. If I had been told in advance, I could not have believed it. I could not have believed that mock marriages occur anywhere except in cheap fiction. But we live and unlearn. Now I must run."
Lennox took her hand. "I owe you a debt. Count on me."
He spoke gravely and the gravity of it, the force that he exhaled, comforted Cassy's bruised little heart and the comfort, the first that she had had, made her lip twitch. None of that, though! Reacting she rallied and smiled.
"Good-bye—and good luck!"
Jones saw her to the door, followed her out, followed her down to the street, where for a moment he detained her.
"Just a word, if you don't mind. You have been abominably treated and you seek no revenge. That is very fine. You have been abominably treated and you bear no malice. That is superior. You have been abominably treated and you accept it with a smile. That is alchemy. It is only a noble nature that can extract the beautiful from the base. Where do you live?"
At the change of key Cassy laughed but she told him. "Good-bye," she added. "My love to your cat."
She passed on into the sunset. The bundle seemed heavy now, but her heart was lighter. She had got it off, Lennox knew, presently a young woman would be informed and though she could not be expected to dance at the wedding, yet, after all——
The Park took her.
When Cassy had gone, Jones went back to his rooms. He went absently, his mind not on her story, which was old as the Palisades, but on a situation, entirely new, which it had suggested.
"Nice girl," he remarked as he re-entered the workshop. "Suppose we go and have dinner."
Sombrely Lennox looked up. At the table where he sat, he had been fingering some papers. He threw them down.
"I am going to have a word with Paliser."
Jones cocked an eye at him. "See here, you are not a knight-errant. The age of chivalry is over." The novelist paused and exclaimed: "What am I saying! The age of chivalry is not over. It can't be. Last night, Verelst dined with a monster!"
Lennox pushed at the papers. "If I were alone concerned, I would thank Paliser. He has done me a good turn. He has set me straight."
Then, to the listening novelist, who later found the story very useful, Lennox repeated Cassy's version of the rhyme and reason of the broken engagement.
The tale of it concluded, Lennox flicked at a speck. "I am grateful to Paliser for that, but for the manner in which he treated her, I shall have a word with him. Just one."
Jones sat down. "A word, eh? Well, why not? Flipping a man in the face with a glove was fashionable in the days of Charles II. Tweaking the nose was Georgian. The horsewhip went out with Victoria. Posting your man was always rather coffee-house and a rough-and-tumble very hooligan. If I were you, which I am not, but if I were, I would adopt contemporaneous methods. To-day we just sit about and backbite. That is progress. Let me commend it to you."
With a wide movement, Lennox swept the papers, shoved them into a pocket and stood up.
Jones also stood up. "Got an appetite? Well, dining has the great disadvantage of taking it away. Come along."
Lennox put on his hat. "I am going first to Park Avenue."
No you're not, thought Jones, who, with an agility which for him was phenomenal, hurried to the door and backed against it.
Lennox motioned him aside.
Jones, without budging, lied. "They're out of town." It was very imbecile. He knew it was, knew, too, that Lennox knew it, and, for the imbecile lie, he substituted another. "I mean they are dining out."
"What the devil are you driving at?" Lennox asked, and not very civilly either.
"A windmill, I suppose. You look like one. I——"
Jones broke off. The expression on Lennox' face arrested him. The attempt at interference, the stupid evasions, the conviction which these things produced, that there was something behind them, something secreted, something about Margaret that Jones knew and which he was concealing, made him livid.
"Out with it."
Jones looked at him, looked away, adjusted his neckcloth, vacated the door, crossed the room and sat down. He did not know to what saint to vow himself. But realising that it was all very useless, that everything is, except such solicitude as one pilgrim may show to another, and that, anyway, Lennox would soon hear it, he gave it to him.
"She is engaged to Paliser."
Lennox, who was approaching, stopped short. "Miss Austen is?"
Jones nodded.
"To Paliser?"
But it seemed too rough and, to take the edge off, Jones added. "It may not be true."
"How did you hear?"
"Verelst told me. He dined there last night."
Lennox turned on his heel. Futilely in that hell to which one may look back and see that it was not hell but purgatory prior to paradise, futilely there he had sought the reason of his damnation. A few minutes before he had thought that Cassy's story revealed it. In the light of it he had seen himself condemned, as many another has been, for crimes which he had not committed. But he had seen, too, the order of release. He had only a word to say. He was going to Park Avenue to say it.
When Jones was below with Cassy so he had thought and not without gratitude to Paliser either. If the cad had held his tongue, enlightenment might have been withheld until to his spirit, freed perhaps in Flanders, had come the revelation. Personally he was therefore grateful to Paliser. But vicariously he was bitter. For his treatment of that girl, punishment should follow.
That girl! Obscurely, in the laboratory of the senses where, without our knowledge, often against our will, our impulses are dictated, a process, intricate and interesting, which Stendhal called crystallisation, was at work.
Unaware of that, conscious only of the moment, to his face had come the look and menace of the wolf.
Now——!
"There is a book over there," Jones, who was watching him, cut in. "It is Seneca's 'De animæ tranquilitate.' Take a peek at it. It will tell you, what it has told me, that whatever happens, happens because it had to happen and because it could not happen otherwise. There is no sounder lesson in mental tranquillity."
But for all Lennox heard of that he might then have been dead. Without knowing what he was doing, he sat down. Paliser, Margaret! Margaret, Paliser! Before him, on encephalic films, their forms and faces moved as clearly as though both were in the room. He saw them approaching, saw them embrace. The obsession of jealousy that creates the image, projected it. He closed his eyes, covered his face with his hands. The image got behind them. It persisted but less insistently. The figures were still there. It was their consistence that seemed to fade. Where they had been were shadows—evil, shallow, malign, perverse, lurid as torches and yet but shades. For the jealousy that inflames love can also consume it and, when it does, it leaves ashes that are either sterile with indifference or potent with hate. At the shadows that were torches Lennox looked with closed eyes. Obscurely, without his knowledge, in the laboratory of his senses, crystallisation was at work.
Jones, leaning forward, touched him. "I say, old chap!"
Lennox had been far away, on a journey from which some men return, but never as they went. At Jones' touch he dropped his hands. The innate sentiment of form repossessed him. He straightened, looked about and, after the manner of the deeply preoccupied, who answer a question ten minutes after it is put, said evenly:
"Suppose we do."
Do what? But Jones, getting it at once, stood up. "Come along, then."
On the way to the neighbourly Athenæum, the novelist talked endlessly about the disadvantages of not being born, which is a very safe subject. Talking still, he piloted Lennox to the dining-room where, the advantages of sedatives occurring to him, he ordered a bottle of Pommard, which is mother's milk.
But when it was brought Lennox would not touch it. He wanted brandy and soda and told Johnson, a captain, to see to it.
In the great high-ceiled room, other members were dining. From one of the tables Ogston sauntered over and, noting that Jones and Lennox had not dressed, which he had, and very beautifully, remarked brilliantly: "You fellers aren't going to the opera, are you? It's the last night."
It was another safe subject and Jones smiled falsely at him. "But you are, eh? Sit down."
Ogston put a hand on the novelist's chair. "No. I'm off to a theatre-party. But I have a ticket for the Metropolitan. You don't either of you want it, do you?"
"Let me see, what is it, to-night?" Jones, with that same false smile, enquired. "And where is the seat?"
"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 passed 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 passed, going to their tables or leaving them. Occasionally one of them stopped, exchanged the time of day and then passed 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 Æschylus 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.