Paliser stood up and drew back her chair. "Be careful. You might become
cynical. It is in thinking of others that cynicism begins."
The platitude slipped from him absently. He had no wish for the concert,
no wish to hear Berlinese trulls and bubonic bassi bleat. But, for the
tolerably delicate enterprise that he had in hand, there were the
preliminary steps which could only be hastened slowly and anything
slower than the Metropolitan on a Sunday night, it was beyond him to
conjecture.
But though on that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not
bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or
not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness
of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old
Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who called them painted mush.
But not twice! Cassy turned her back on him. The painted mush shook
stars in her ears, opened vistas on the beyond. Save for him she would
have been quite happy. But his remark annoyed her. It caused her to
revise her opinion. Instead of an inoffensive insect he was an offensive
fool. None the less, as the concert progressed, she revised it again. On
entering the box she had seen his name on the door. The memory of that,
filtering through the tinted polenta from the ancient cupboards,
softened her. A man so gifted could express all the imbecilities he
liked. Elle s'enfichait.
As a result, before it was over, in lieu of her back, she gave him the
seduction of her smile, and, later when, in his car, on the way to the
walk-up, he spoke of future dinners, fresher songs, she had so far
forgotten the painted mush insult, that momentarily she foresaw but one
objection. She had nothing to wear and frankly, with entire unconcern,
she out with it.
For that he had a solution which he kept to himself. The promptly
obliterating stare with which she would have reduced him to
non-existence, he dodged in advance.
Apparently changing the subject, he said: "You know--or know of--Mrs.
Beamish, don't you?"
"Never heard of her," said Cassy, entirely unaware that no one else ever
had either.
"She was at the Bazaar the other night and admired your singing."
"Very good of her I am sure," replied Cassy, who, a born anarchist and
by the same token a born autocrat, loathed condescension.
Paliser corrected it. "No, not good--appreciative. She wants you to sing
at her house. If you are willing, could she arrange about it through
Madame Tamburini?"
"If she tried very hard, I suppose she might," Cassy, with the same
loftiness, answered.
But the loftiness was as unreal as Mrs. Beamish. Inwardly she jubilated,
wondering how much she would get. A hundred? In that case she could
repay Lennox at once. At the thought of it, again she revised her
opinion. Paliser was young and in her judgment all young men were
insects. On the other hand he was serviceable. Moreover, though he
looked cocky, he did not presume. He talked rot, but he did not argue.
Then, too, his car was a relief.
But now the car, after bolting through the Park and flying along the
Riverside, had swerved. It was mounting the upper reaches of the longest
highway on the planet. There it swerved again. From Broadway it barked
loudly into a side-street where easily, with a soapy slide, it stopped.
Paliser got out, preceded Cassy to the steps of the walk-up and smiled
in her face. "When?"
Cassy, the revised opinion of him about her, gave him her hand. "Ask the
telephone."
The hall took her. She was scaling the stairs. On the way Mrs. Beamish
accompanied her. She wished she could tell her father. Yet, if she told
him, how could she account for what she did with the money? And would it
be a hundred? Perhaps fifty, perhaps less.
But Paliser saw to it that Mrs. Beamish behaved properly. On the morrow
Ma Tamby dumped in Cassy's astonished lap two hundred and fifty--less
ten per cent., business is business--for samples of the bel canto which
Mrs. Beamish was not to hear, and for an excellent reason, there was no
such person.