"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?"