The Paliser case

It was a bit thick and Paliser began to laugh.

Mrs. Austen saw that he did not believe her. The fact annoyed and in vexation she piled it on. "Afterward, in this very room, I taxed him with it and he admitted it."

What a lie! thought Paliser, who specialised in that article. But, a second thought prompting, he wondered whether it were a lie. His knowledge of Cassy refuted it. At the same time, where women are concerned, you never know. One thing, however, he did know. In his quality of expert he knew that there are statements which, whether true or false, may come in handy and, comfortably, he smiled.

"So that was the reason why the engagement was broken."

"What more would you have?" replied the candid creature, who now felt that he had swallowed it.

Quite as comfortably, Paliser returned to his muttons. "I may cease then to be an epicure?"

There was the fish again, but how to land him? The glittering fisherlady could not bind and gag the bait and drop her into his mouth. At any such attempt, the bait would pack and go, might even go without packing. Yet there was the fish, eager, willing, the gills awiggle. Barring a few gold-fish in Bradstreet, in Burke and in Lemprière, this fish was the pick of the basket. To see him glide away, and for no other earthly reason than because the bait refused to be hooked, was simply inhuman. Flesh and blood could not stand it. No, nor ingenuity either. Instantly the angler saw that in default of bait, a net may do the trick and, with the ease of a prestidigitateur, she produced one.

"You have my blessing!"

Paliser laughed and bowed. He was in it, it was where he wanted to be and he liked it. But in view of existing domestic arrangements, he was in it a bit too soon and, wriggling through a mesh, he stopped laughing and looked solemn.

"You are very good. But beforehand my father will expect to be consulted and, just at present, that is impossible. The physicians would forbid it."

"The poor dear old man! You don't mean – "

Paliser half raised a hand. The gesture was slight but expressive. One never knew!

But so much the better, thought Mrs. Austen. Pending the delay she could so bombard the bait, bombard her day in, day out, and the whole night through, that, like Liège and Namur, her resistance would crumble, and meanwhile he would come in for everything, or nearly everything, she reflected, and the reflection prompting, she affected concern.

"Has your sister been informed?"

"I cabled her to-day," said Paliser, who had done nothing of the kind.

With the same concern, Mrs. Austen lied as freely. "It is too sad for words." But at once the air of the sympathiser departed, replaced by that of the hostess. Through one door the men were entering. Through another came the girls.

Kate Schermerhorn approached. "Dear Mrs. Austen, Margaret's all right, but she has a headache." As she spoke, she threw a glance at Cantillon.

Poppet Bleecker also approached. "It is too bad, Margaret is such a dear! I would like to stop on but they tell me my maid is here. Thank you so much, dear Mrs. Austen."

The lady stood up. "But you are not all going!" They all were though. She knew it and was glad of it. The object of the dinner was achieved and achievement, however satisfactory, is fatiguing. "You too!" she successively exclaimed at Ogston and Cantillon. "And you also!" she exclaimed at Paliser, to whom, dropping her voice, she added: "If possible, remember me to him."

As they went, Verelst surveyed her. He stood against the mantel, his back to the empty grate.

Turning she saw him. "Well, what now?"

Verelst, adjusting his glasses, said, and distantly enough: "What now? No, what next?"

Mrs. Austen sat down. "Peter, if you ever loved me, don't adopt that tone."

"It is not the tone, it is the tune and the tune is yours."

"Tune? What tune? What on earth are you talking about?"

"The tune to which the dinner was set. I heard it. Margaret heard it. It knocked her out."

She raised her eyes to him, made them pathetic. "Peter, I haven't a penny."

"You have twenty thousand a year."

"Nineteen, not a dollar more, and that is genteel poverty and there's nothing genteel in poverty now."

Verelst tugged at his moustache. "Tell me this. Is she to marry him?"

In affected surprise, she started. "How you do jump at conclusions."

Angrily he nodded. "I appear to have jumped at the correct one."

But his anger had gained her. She faced him. "Heavens and earth! What have you against him? What have you all against him? My eyes are as good as any one's. I can't see it."

"You might feel it then."

"Feel what?"

Verelst tugged again at his moustache. He had never heard of elementals and, if he had heard, he would not have believed in them. He knew nothing of auræ – which photography has captured. He was very old fogy. But he knew an honest man when he saw one and a gentleman before he opened his mouth.

"Feel what?" Mrs. Austen repeated.

Verelst, thrashing about, could not get it, but he said: "I can't describe it, but it's something. His father had it. He – "

"His father is at death's door."

"Ah! Is he? Well, I'm sorry for that. M. P. used to be no better than the law allows – and the law is very lenient."

"You were too."

"I daresay. But M. P. has got over it. Without boasting, I think I have also. But that is neither here nor there. In the old days, I have seen people shrink from him."

"Nonsense! Precious little shrinking I ever did."

"Timidity was never one of your many virtues."

"Don't be coarse, Peter, and if possible don't be stupid. If you know anything against Monty, say it I may find it in his favour."

Impatiently Verelst motioned. "Decent men avoid him."

"And you!" Mrs. Austen retorted. "What do you call yourself? You are always civil to him."

Verelst showed his teeth. "One of the few things life has taught me is to be civil to everybody."

"Except to me. Now do sit down and make yourself uncomfortable. You have made me uncomfortable enough. Any one might think you a country parson."

But Verelst, scowling at the dial which the legs of the nymph upheld, removed his glasses. "I am going." He moved to the door, stopped, half turned, motioned again. "Tell Margaret I would rather see her in her coffin."

Angrily she started. "I'll tell her nothing of the kind."

It was his back that she addressed. She saw him go, saw too her anger go with him. The outer door had not closed before the tune of which he had spoken was dispersing it.

But was it a tune? It seemed something far rarer. In it was a whisper of waters, the lap of waves, the muffled voice of a river, which, winding from hill to sea, was pierced by a note very high, very clear, entirely limpid, a note that had in it the gaiety of a sunbeam, a note that mounted in loops of light, expanding as it mounted, until, bursting into jets of fire, it drew from the stream's deepest depths the sonority and glare of its riches.

The ripple of it ran down the spine of this woman, who at heart was a Hun and to whom the harmonies disclosed, not the mythical gleam of the Rheingold, but the real radiance of the Paliser wealth.

At the glow of it she rubbed her hands.

XXIII

In the club window, on the following afternoon, Jones was airing copy.

"Capua must have been packed with yawns. It is the malediction of mortals to want what they lack until they get it, when they want it no more. Epicurus said that or, if he did not, Lucretius said it for him. 'Surgit amari aliquid.' But here I am running into quotations when the only ones that interest anybody are those in the Street. Conditions here are revolting. Nowhere at any time has there been a metropolis that so stank to heaven. The papers drip with stocks and scandals and over there, before the massed artillery, the troops are wheeling down to death. But wheeling is perhaps poetic. The Marne was the last battle in the grand style."

"I don't see what that has to do with Capua," said Verelst.

"Nor I," Jones replied. "But, come to think of it, there is a connection. In Capua everybody yawned their heads off. In Flanders and Champagne they are shot off. Life swings like a pendulum between boredom and pain. When the world is not anæmic, it is delirious. If ever again its pulse registers normal, sensible people will go back to Epicurus, whose existence was one long lesson in mental tranquillity. By the Lord Harry, the more I consider it, the more convinced I become that there is nothing else worth having. Niente, nada, rien. Nothing whatever."

Verelst smiled. "In that case it is hardly worth while getting excited over it." He raised the lapel of his coat. There were violets in it. He took a whiff and added: "Has Lennox been here to-day?"

But Jones did not know.

Regretfully, Verelst continued: "He goes to Mineola to-morrow and soon he will be over the top."

Jones lit a cigarette. "Assuming that he gets back, the women will be mad about him. Some of them at any rate."

Verelst rolled an enquiring eye.

"Of course they will," Jones resumed. "Times have changed precious little since Victor Hugo.

'Les belles out le goût des héros. Le sabreurEffroyable, trainant après lui tant d'horreurQu'il ferait reculer jusqu'à la sombre Hécate,Charme la plus timide et la plus delicate.Sur ce, battez tambours! Ce qui plait à la boucheDe la blonde aux yeux doux, c'est le baiser farouche.La femme se fait faire avec joie un enfant,Par l'homme qui tua, sinistre et triomphant.Et c'est la volupté de toutes ces colombesD'ouvrir leur lit à ceux qui font ouvrir les tombes.'

"What rhythm! What music! The score is Napoleonic but – "

"Hello!" Verelst interrupted. Before the window a car had passed. He was looking at it. On the back seat was a man in a high hat and an overcoat. "M. P.!" he exclaimed.

"What of it?" Jones asked.

Verelst removed his glasses and looked distrustfully at them. It was as though he doubted their vision. Then, after a moment he said: "Last night I heard he was dying."

"Which," Jones remarked, "is the aim, the object and the purpose of life. But apparently he has not achieved it yet. Apparently also you are a futurist. The Napoleonic score did not interest you."

Verelst, resuming his glasses, replied: "It would not interest Lennox, if that is what you mean. He has been hit too hard."

Jones nodded. He knew all about it. It had even suggested a story, a famous story; one that was told in Babylon and has been retold ever since; the story of lovers vilely parted in the beginning and virtuously united at the end. It is a highly original story, to which anybody can give a fresh twist and Jones had planned to have the hero killed at the front and the heroine marry the villain, but only to divorce the latter before the hero – whose death had been falsely gazetted – limps in.

But Jones knew his trade. He knew that the reader always balks unless the hero gets the heroine firsthand and he had thought of making the villain an invalid. Yet at that too he knew the reader would balk. The reader is so nice-minded!

Now, the plot recurring, he said to Verelst: "Your knowledge of women has, I am sure, made you indulgent."

"Not in the least."

"But – "

"Look here," Verelst interrupted. "When I was young and consequently very experienced, I was indulgent. But monsters change you. Last night I dined with one."

"Enviable mortal!"

"You remember Abraham?" Verelst continued. "His name was Abraham – wasn't it? – that benevolent old man in the Bible who made the sacrifice of sacrificing an animal instead of his son? Well, last night it seemed to me that there are women Abrahams, only less benevolent. The altar was veiled, the knife was concealed, but the victim was there – a girl for whom, at your age, I would have died, or offered to die, which amounts to the same thing. What is more to the point, at your age, or no, for you are much older than your conversation would lead one to believe, but in my careless days I offered to die for her mother. I swore I could not live without her. That is always a mistake. It is too flattering, besides being untrue. Perhaps she so regarded it. In any event another man fared better or worse. Afterward, time and again, he said to me: 'Peter, for God's sake, run away with her.' Am I boring you?"

"Enormously."

"Well, he was very gentlemanly about it. Without making a fuss at home, he went away and died in a hospital. She was very grateful to him for that. But her gratitude waned when she came in for his money. It was adequate but not opulent, the result being that she tried to train her daughter for the great matrimonial steeplechase. Just here the plot thickens. Recently the filly shied, took the bit in her teeth and – hurrah, boys! – she was off on her own, until her mother jockied her up to a hurdle that she could not take and the filly came a cropper. But her mother was still one too many for her. She had her up in a jiffy and now she is heading her straight for the sweepstakes."

"Excuse me," Jones with affected meekness put in. "I assume that the sacrificial victim and the filly are one and the same."

"Your perspicacity does you much credit."

Jones laughed. "I have my little talents. But you! The wizardry with which you mix metaphors is beautiful. You produce a dinner-table and transform it into an altar which instantly becomes a racecourse. That is what I call genius. But to an every-day sort of chap like me, would you mind being less cryptic?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes."

"So can I."

Again Jones laughed. "Not in my neighbourhood. You were talking of Lennox and drifted from him into the Bible. Your thoughts of the one recalled studies of the other and at once you had Abraham's daughter downed on the racecourse. Well, she won't be."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it is my business to see things before they occur. Miss Austen – "

"I never mentioned her," Verelst heatedly exclaimed. "You have no right to – "

"I admit it. But because of Lennox the whole matter has preoccupied me and quite as much, I daresay, as it has distressed you."

"I don't see at all what you have to do with it."

"Perhaps not. But preoccupation may lead to crystal-gazing. Now I will wager a red pippin that I can tell what you said at the steeplechase to the steeplestakes. You asked after his father."

Verelst stared. A man of the world and, as such, at his ease in any circumstances, none the less he was startled. "How in God's name did you get that?"

"It is very simple. Five minutes ago his father sailed by. You made a remark about him. The remark suggested a train of thought which landed you at the racecourse where you saw, or intimated that you saw, the steeplestakes. But what visible sweepstakes are there except M. P.'s son? You and M. P. are friends. It is only natural that you should ask about him."

Verelst turned uneasily. "I don't yet see how you got it. The only thing I said is that I heard he was dying."

"And five minutes ago you exclaimed at his resurrection. There is a discrepancy there that is very suggestive."

"It is none of my making then."

"It is none the less suggestive. The death-bed was invented."

"M. P. may have recovered."

"Yes, men of his age make a practice of jumping into their death-bed and then jumping out. It is good for them. It keeps them in training."

"Oh, rubbish!" Verelst resentfully exclaimed.

"No," Jones pursued. "The story was invented and the invention had a reason. If you like, you may ask what it is."

"You seem to be very good at invention yourself. I shall ask nothing of the kind."

"But you would like to know and I will tell you. It was invented to delay a possible announcement. It could have had no other object."

"I said nothing of any announcement," Verelst angrily protested. "What announcement are you talking about?"

"The heading of the filly for the sweepstakes. The expression – very graphic by the way – is your own."

"Graphic or not I wish you would drop it. Besides – "

"Besides what?"

"Why, confound it, admitting the engagement, which I ought not to admit for it is not out yet, why should he play for delay?"

"Ha!" exclaimed Jones, whom the spectacle of Paliser and Cassy sailing up the Riverside had supplied with an impression or two. "I thought I would interest you. He played for delay because he feared that if it were known, a pitcher of ice-water might come dashing over it."

"Why do you say that?" asked Verelst, eager and anxious enough for a spoke – if spoke there could be – to shove in a certain lady's wheels.

"Given the man and the deduction is easy."

The spoke was receding. Verelst, swallowing his disappointment, retorted: "Incoherence is easy too."

"Well, you are right there," Jones, lighting another cigarette, replied. "But there is nothing incoherent in the fact that fear is magnetic. What we dread, we attract. If our winning young friend fears the pitcher, the pitcher will probably land on him. That is the reason why, to vary your various metaphors, I declared that there would be no downing on the racecourse. On the contrary and look here. I will wager you not one pippin or two pippins, I will go so far as to lay a whole basket that Miss Austen becomes Mrs. Lennox."

Verelst sniffed. "You don't know her mother."

"No. I have not that honour. But I enjoy a bowing acquaintance with logic."

"Do you, now? I wonder if it bows back. I'll book your bet."

"Very good. Make it fancy pippins."

Verelst stood up. "Fancy is the only term that could be applied them."

"And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," Jones told himself as the old man moved away.

He looked about. The great room had filled. Stocks, money, war, the odour of alcohol, the smell of cigars, the rustling of evening papers, the sound of animated talk about nothing whatever, the usual atmosphere had reassembled itself.

From it he turned to the window, to the westering sun, to the motors, the smart gowns and the women who looked so delightful and of whom all had their secrets – secrets trivial, momentous, perverse or merely horrible.

Again he turned. Lennox, who had approached, was addressing him. "You were at the law school. I have to make a will. Will you help me?"

Serviceably Jones sprang up. "Come to my shop. It is just around the corner."

XXIV

Among the old brocades with which the room was fitted and which, together with the silver bed and the enamelled faïence, gave it an earlier century air, Cassy stood before a cheval-glass.

She was properly dressed. Her costume, light cloth, faintly blue, was exquisitely embroidered. Beneath it was lingerie of the kind which, it is said, may be drawn through a ring. Behind and between was Cassy, on whose docked hair sat a hat that was very unbecoming and therefore equally smart.

A moment before she had thanked and dismissed Emma. Emma was the maid. With a slant of the eye, that said and suppressed many things, Emma had gone.

Through the open windows came the call of birds, the smell of fresh turf. A patch of sky was visible. It was tenderly blue. There was a patch too of grass that showed an asparagus green.

From the mirror Cassy went to a table and, from a jade platter, took a ring. It was made of six little hoops each set with small stones. She put it on. The platter held other rings. There was a sapphire, inch-long, deep and dark. She put that on. There was also an Australian opal and an Asian emerald, the latter greener than the grass. She put these on. Together with the wedding-ring they made quite a show. Too much of a show, she thought.

Like the costume, the hat, like other costumes, more hats and box after box of lingerie, they had all surprisingly dumped themselves, there, at her feet, the day after the wedding. The bundle, which she had brought with her, she had found very useless and so awkward that she would have given it to Emma, had it not seemed unsuited to a young person manifestly so fine. Since then it had been tucked away in a cupboard, safely out of sight.

That was just five days ago, a brief eternity, during which life seemed to be driving her headlong to some unimagined goal. Until the evening previous she had had barely a moment. But on that evening, Paliser, who was dining at the Austens', had given her a few hours to herself.

Now, on this afternoon, he was again in town.

The air was very still. Afar, a train bellowed, rumbled, died away. From the garage came the bark of a dog, caught up and repeated on the hillside beyond. On the lawn, a man in an apron was at work. Otherwise the air was still, fragrant, freighted with spring.

Cassy, turning from the table, went to the mirror again and tilted the hat. However unbecoming, it was certainly smart, and Cassy wondered what her father would think of Mrs. Monty Paliser.

In the spaciousness of the name, momentarily she lost herself. It is appalling to be a snob. But there are attributes that pour balm all over you. In the deference of the bored yet gracious young women who, with robes et manteaux, had come all the way from Fifth Avenue, there had been a flagon or two of that balm. In the invariable "Thank you, mem's" of the Paliser personnel there had been more. It is appalling to be a snob. There are perfumes that appeal.

Then also, particularly after Harlem, the great, grave, silent house had a charm that was enveloping, almost enchanted. Apparently uncommanded, it ran itself, noiselessly, in ordered grooves. Cassy fancied that somewhere about there must be a majordomo who competently saw to everything and kept out of the way. But she did not know. In her own rooms she was now at home, as she was also at home in the state chambers on the floor below. In regard to the latter, she had an idea – entirely correct, by the way – that at Lisbon, the royal palace – when there was one – could not have been more suave. But the rest of the house was as yet unexplored, though in regard to the upper storey she had another idea, that there was a room there close-barred, packed with coffins.

The idea delighted her. In this Palace of the White Cat it was the note macabre, the proper note, the note that synchronised the circumambient enchantments. In the historical nights of which Perrault told, the princess had but a gesture to make, the offender sank dead. At once a bier was produced, the corpse was hurried away, and the veils of charm restored fell languorously.

Yet, in that historical epoch, there subsisted – perhaps as a reminder of the vanities even of fairyland – the rose-leaf suggestively crumpled. The crumple affected Cassy but far less than she had expected. Paliser had been very gentlemanly. He had deferred to her in all things, agreed with her about everything, and though none the less he always had his own way, yet the pedestal was so obvious that if she had not known otherwise she might have thought herself continuously upon it.

The crumple was not there, or at least only such crumple as she had naturally awaited. The discomfort of the leaf consisted in the fact that married she was not mated, that she did not love him, and probably never could.

Now, as she tilted her hat, the spaciousness of the name recurred to her. Its potentialities she had considered before she accepted it, but only because of her father. The idea that it would lift him out of the walk-up, out of Harlem and cold veal, was the one excuse for her voyage to Cytherea. The voyage had been eminently respectable. Undertaken with full ecclesiastical sanction, Aphrodite and her free airs had had nothing to do with it. None the less it was to Cytherea that she had gone – and to Lampsacus also, for all she and her geography knew to the contrary.

Now, though, in tilting her hat, the disreputable beauty of the land was forgotten. She was in another and a fairer realm. A modern garden of the Hesperides lay about her. She saw herself distributing the golden fruit. The mirror showed her a red-crossed Lady Bountiful in an ambulance, in two ambulances, in a herd of ambulances, at the front. There was no end to the golden fruit, no end to his father's money, no end to the good he might allow her to do.

The picture so delighted her that she flushed and in the emotion of it two tears sprang to her eyes that were not of the crying kind.

She dried them, telling herself that if he framed the picture, she could love him, and she would.