The house in which Cassy lived was what is agreeably known as a walk-up.
There was no lift, merely the stairs, flight after flight, which
constituted the walk-up, one that ascended to the roof, where you had a
fine view of your neighbours' laundry. Such things are not for
everybody. Cassy hated them.
On this night when the taxi, after reaching Harlem, landed her there
and, the walk-up achieved, she let herself into a flat on the fifth
floor, a "You're late!" filtered out at her.
It was her father, who, other things being equal, you might have
mistaken for Zuloaga's "Uncle." The lank hair, the sad eyes, the wan
face, the dressing-gown, there he sat. Only the palette was absent.
Instead was an arm in a sling. There was another difference. Beyond, in
lieu of capricious manolas, was a piano and, above it, a portrait with
which Zuloaga had nothing to do. The portrait represented a man who
looked very fierce and who displayed a costume rich and unusual. Beneath
the portrait was a violin. Beside the piano was a sword-cane. Otherwise,
barring a rose-wood table, the room contained nothing to boast of.
"You're late," he repeated.
His name was Angelo Cara. When too young to remember it, he had come to
New York from Lisbon. With him had come the swashbuckler in oil. He grew
up in New York, developed artistic tastes, lost the oil man, acquired a
wife, lost her also, but not until she had given him a daughter who was
named Bianca, a name which, after elongating into Casabianca, shortened
itself into Cassy.
Meanwhile, on Madison Avenue, then unpolluted, there was a brown-stone
front, a landau, other accessories, the flower of circumstances not
opulent but easy, the rents and increments of the swashbuckler's estate,
which by no means had come from Lisbon but which, the rich and unusual
costume boxed in camphor, had been acquired in the import and sale of
wine.
The fortune that the swashbuckler made descended to his son, who went to
Wall Street with it. There the usual cropper wiped him out, affected his
health, drove him, and not in a landau either, from Madison Avenue, left
him the portrait, the violin, the table and nothing else.
But that is an exaggeration. To have debts is to have something. They
stir you. They stirred him. Besides there was Cassy. To provide for both
was the violin which in his hands played itself. For years it sufficed.
Then, with extreme good sense, he fought with the Union, fought with
Toscanini, disassociated himself from both. Now, latterly, with his arm
in a sling, the wolf was not merely at the door, it was in the
living-room of this Harlem flat which Cassy had just entered.