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 role of
call-boy, were summoning the actors to the drama in which the leading
role 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 portieres 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, supreme 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."