"My Carlottatralala! Dear Carlottatralala!"
Lightly at the door, Cassy strung the words to a mazourka. Her voice
twisted, swung, danced into a trill that was captured by echoes that
carried it diminishingly down the stairway of the mansion where Carlotta
Tamburini lived.
"Eh?"
Partially the door opened. A fat slovenly woman showed an unpowdered
nose, a loose unpainted mouth, and, at sight of Paliser, backed. "For
God's sake! One moment, dearie. Straight ahead. With you in two shakes."
Cassy, her yellow frock swishing, led the way to a room furnished with
heaped scores, with a piano, a bench, chairs and a portrait, on foot, of
a star before the fall. Adjacently were framed programmes, the faded
tokens of forgetless and forgotten nights, and, with them, the usual
portraits of the usual royalties, but perhaps unusually signed. The
ex-diva had attended to that herself.
Paliser, straddling the bench, put his hat on the piano and looked at
Cassy, who had gone to the window. It was not the palaces opposite that
she saw. Before her was a broken old man revamped. In his hand was a
baton which he brandished demoniacally at an orchestra of his own. The
house foamed with faces, shook with applause, and without, at the
glowing gates, a chariot carried him instantly to the serenities of
elaborate peace.
"It won't take over an hour."
The vision vanished. Across the way, in a window opposite, a young man
was dandling, twirling one side of a moustache, cocking a conquering
eye. Cassy did not see him. Directly behind her another young man was
talking. She did not hear.
On leaving the restaurant and, after it, the music-shop, the car had
taken them into the Park where Paliser, alleging that he was out of
matches, had handed her into another restaurant where more Vichy was put
before her and, with it, that question.
The air was sweet with lilacs. On the green beyond Cassy could see them,
could see, too, a squirrel there that had gone quite mad. It flew around
and around, stopped suddenly short, chattered furiously and with a
flaunt of the tail, disappeared up a tree.
"What a dear!" was Cassy's reply to that question.
But Paliser gave her all the rope that she wanted. He had no attraction
for her, he knew it, and in view of other experiences, the fact
interested him. It had the charm of novelty to this man who, though
young, was old; who, perhaps, was born old; born, as some are, too old
in a world too young.
He struck a match and watched the little blue-gold flame flare and
subside. It may have seemed to him typical. Then he looked up.
"Frankly, I have no inducements to offer, and, by the same token, no
lies. It would be untrue if I said I loved you. Love is not an emotion,
it is a habit, one which it takes time to form. I have had no
opportunity to acquire it, but I have acquired another. I have formed
the habit of admiring you. The task was not difficult. Is there anything
in your glass?"
"A bit of cork, I think," said Cassy, who was holding the glass to the
light and who was holding it moreover as though she had thoughts for
nothing else.
But her thoughts were agile as that squirrel. A why not? Why not? Why
not? was spinning in them, spinning around and around so quickly that it
dizzied her. Then, like the squirrel, up a tree she flew. For herself,
no. She did not want him, never had wanted him, never could.
"May I have it?" Paliser took the glass. Save for subsiding bubbles, and
the bogus water, there was nothing there. "Will you take mine? I have
not touched it."
Cassy took it from him, drank it, drank it all. Her thoughts raced on.
She was aware of that, though with what they were racing she could not
tell.
"I don't know why I am so thirsty."
Paliser knew. He knew that the taste of perplexity is very salt. She was
considering it, he saw, and he payed out the rope.
"People who claim to be wise are imbeciles. But people who claim to be
happy are in luck. I have no pretensions to wisdom but I can claim to be
lucky if----"
Cassy, her steeple-chasing thoughts now out of hand, was saying
something and he stopped.
"It is very despicable of me even to listen to you. I don't think I
would have listened, if you had not been frank. But you have had the
honesty not to pretend. I must be equally sincere. I----"
It was Paliser's turn. With a laugh he interrupted. "Don't. A little
sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it must be fatal.
Besides I know it all by heart. I am the son of rich and disreputable
people. That is not my fault, and, anyway, it is all one to you. But
what you mean is that, should you consent, the consideration will not
be--er--personal with me or--er--spiritual with you, but--er--just plain
and simple materialism."
Cassy looked wonderingly at him. It was surprising how quickly and how
completely he had nailed it. But into the bewilderment there crept
something else. "Yes, and I am ashamed to look myself in the face."
Paliser gave a tug at the rope. "Then don't do that either. Look at me.
Matrimony is no child's play. It is like a trip to England--close
confinement with the chance of being torpedoed. Interference is the
submarine that sinks good ships. If you consent, there is only one thing
on which I shall insist, but I shall insist on it absolutely."