And my daughter is second fiddle, thought Mrs. Austen, who said: "How interesting!"
With his sombre air, Lennox summarised it. "She is studying for the opera. The woman with her, Madame Tamburini, is her coach. You may have heard of her."
"A fallen star," Mrs. Austen very pleasantly remarked. Quite as pleasantly she added: "The proper companion for a soiled dove."
The charm of that was lost. Margaret, who had not previously seen this girl but who had heard of her from Lennox, was speaking to him.
"It was her father, was it?" Then, dismissing it, she asked anxiously: "But do tell me, Keith, what did the medium say?"
"That I would be up for murder."
Margaret"s eyes widened. But, judging it ridiculous, she exclaimed: "Was that all?"
"All!" Lennox grimly repeated. "What more would you have?" Abruptly he laughed. "I don"t wonder Mrs. Amsterdam wanted her money back."
On the stage, from jungles of underwear, legs were tossing. The orchestra had become frankly canaille. Moreover the crowd of Goodness knows who had increased. A person had the temerity to elbow Mrs. Austen and the audacity to smile at her. It was the finishing touch.
She poked at Margaret. "Come."
As they moved on, a man smiled at Lennox, who, without stopping, gave him a hand.
He was an inkbeast. But there was nothing commercial in his appearance.
Ordinarily, he looked like a somnambulist. When he was talking, he resembled a comedian. In greeting Lennox he seemed to be in a pleasant dream. The crowd swallowed him.
"Who was that?" Mrs. Austen enquired.
"Ten Eyck Jones."
"The writer?" asked this lady, who liked novels, but who preferred to live them.
Meanwhile Paliser was talking to Ca.s.sy Cara and the Tamburini. The latter listened idly, with her evil smile. Yet Paliser"s name was very evocative. The syllables had fallen richly on her ears.
Ca.s.sy Cara had not heard them and they would have conveyed nothing to her if she had. She was a slim girl, with a lot of auburn hair which was docked. The careless-minded thought her pretty. She was what is far rarer; she was handsome. Her features had the surety of an intaglio.
Therewith was an air and a look that were not worldly or even superior, but which, when necessary as she sometimes found it, could reduce a man, and for that matter a woman, to proportions really imperceptible.
A little beauty and a little devil, thought Paliser, who was an expert.
But leisurely, in his Oxford voice, he outlined for her a picture less defined. "You remind me of something."
With entire brevity and equal insolence, she returned it. "I dare say."
"Yes. Of supper."
"An ogre, are you?"
Paliser, ruminating the possibilities of her slim beauty served Regence, smiled at this girl who did not smile back. "Not Nebuchadnezzar at any rate. Vegetarianism is not my forte. Won"t you and Madame Tamburini take potluck with me? There must be a restaurant somewhere."
The fallen star moistened her painted lips. "Yes, why not?"
Born in California, of foreign parents, she had neither morals or accent and spoke in a deep voice. She spoke American and English. She spoke the easy French of the boulevards, the easier Italian of the operatic stage.
She never spoke of Tamburini. She left him to be imagined, which perhaps he had been.
From the room they went on into a wide, crowded hall, beyond which was another room, enclosed in gla.s.s, where there were tables and palms.
As they entered, a captain approached. There was a smell of pineapple, the odour of fruit and flowers. From a gallery came the tinkle of mandolins. Mainly the tables were occupied. But the captain, waving the way, piloted them to a corner, got them seated and stood, pad in hand.
Paliser looked at Ca.s.sy Cara. She was hungry as a wolf, but she said indifferently: "A swallow of anything."
"One swallow does not make a supper," Paliser retorted and looked at the Tamburini who appeared less indifferent.
"Ham and eggs."
Without a quiver, the captain booked it.
"Also," Paliser told him, "caviare, woodc.o.c.k, Ruinart." From the man he turned to the girl. "It was very decent of Lennox to introduce me to you."
Ca.s.sy put her elbows on the table. "He could not be anything else than decent. Don"t you know him well?"
Paliser shrugged. "Our intimacy is not oppressive."
"He saved her father"s life," the Tamburini put in. "Her father is a musician--and authentically marquis," she added, as though that explained everything.
"We are Portuguese," said Ca.s.sy, "or at least my father is. He used to play at the Metro. But he threw it up and one night, when he was coming home from a private house where he had been giving a concert, he was attacked. There were two of them. They knocked him down----"
"Before he had time to draw his sword-cane," the fat woman interrupted.
"Yes," Ca.s.sy resumed, "and just then Mr. Lennox came along and knocked them down and saved his violin which was what they were after."
"It"s a Cremona," said the Tamburini who liked details.
"But that is not all of it," the girl continued. "My father"s arm was broken. He has not been able to play since. Mr. Lennox brought him home and sent for his own physician. He"s a dear."
"Who is?" Paliser asked. "The physician?"
But now a waiter was upon them with a bottle which he produced with a pop! Dishes followed to which Ca.s.sy permitted the man to help her. Her swallow of anything became large spoonfuls of rich blackness and the tenderness of savorous flesh. She was not carnal, but she was hungry and at her home latterly the food had been vile.
The Tamburini, with enigmatic ideas in the back of her head, ate her horrible dish very delicately, her little finger crooked. But she drank n.o.bly.
Paliser too had ideas which, however, were not enigmatic in the least and not in the back of his head either. They concerned two young women, one of whom was patently engaged to Lennox and the other probably in love with him. The situation appealed to this too charming young man to whom easy conquests were negligible.
He had been looking at Ca.s.sy. On the table was a vase in which there were flowers. He took two of them and looked again at the girl.
"Sunday is always hateful. Couldn"t you both dine with me here?"
The former prima donna wiped her loose mouth. She could, she would, and she said so.
Paliser put the flowers before Ca.s.sy.
"Le parlate d"amor," the ex-diva began and, slightly for a moment, her deep voice mounted.