The Paliser case

XXXIV

"Your very obedient servant, madam."

With that and a fine bow, Dunwoodie greeted Cassy when Jones had succeeded in getting her into the inner and airy office. The old ruffian drew a chair.

"Do me the honour."

Cassy sat down. What a funny old man, she thought.

Jones addressing the door, remarked dreamily: "Pendente lite, I will renew my acquaintance with Swinburne's 'Espousals.'"

Dunwoodie glared. "You will find it in the library." Then he sat down, folded his hands on his waistcoat and smiled at Cassy. "Nice day."

"Very."

"Down here often?"

Cassy shook her docked hair. "No, and I don't at all know why I am here now. I do know though, and I may as well tell you at once, I have no intention of making a fuss."

Dunwoodie's smile, a smile quasi-ogrish, semi-paternal, expanded. "If our Potsdam friend only resembled you!"

For a young woman so recently and doubly bereaved, Cassy's blue smock and yellow skirt seemed to him properly subdued. Moreover, from a word that Jones had dropped, he realised that wealth had not presided at their selection.

He twirled his thumbs. "But let me ask, what may your full name be?"

"Bianca Cara."

"Hum! Ha! Most becoming. And how young are you?"

Well, I like that! thought Cassy, who answered: "Twenty-one."

Dunwoodie crossed his legs. "You think me an impertinent old man. I don't mean to be impertinent. I take a great interest in you."

"Very good of you, I'm sure."

"Not at all. Is your grandmother living?"

"For heaven's sake! You did not know her, did you?"

"No, but I stand ready to take her place."

"You would find it difficult. She is buried in Portugal."

"The place of your grandfather then, the place of any one whom you can trust."

"But why?"

"Well, let me ask. What are your plans?"

"My plans? Mr. Jones asked me that. I have a sort of a voice and I am looking for an engagement. But the season is ending. Then too I am told I ought to change my name. I won't do it."

"Hum! Ha! But it appears that you have."

He's crazy too, thought Cassy, who said: "I don't know what you are talking about."

Dunwoodie extracted his towel. "Why, my dear young lady, you are Mrs. Paliser."

Cassy flushed. "I am nothing of the kind. I don't know how you got such an idea."

Dunwoodie, quite as though he were doing some hard thinking, folded and refolded that towel which was his handkerchief. "Yet you married Montagu Paliser, Jr., did you not?"

"Not at all. That is I thought I did, but the man who performed the ceremony was a gardener."

"Dear me! Is it possible! And where was this?"

What is it to you? thought Cassy. "At Paliser Place, if you must know."

"And when did it occur?"

"Really, Mr. Dunwoodie, I can't see why you are putting me through this examination, but if it is of any benefit to you, it happened just five days before he died."

"Anybody about?"

"Oh, yes. There were two other servants who enjoyed it very much. I heard them laughing and I don't blame them. It was a rare treat. A child would have laughed at it. All my fault too. I behaved like a ninny. But my great mistake was in telling my father. I would give the world if I had not. Won't you please send for Mr. Jones? As I told you, I don't know why I am here."

Dunwoodie shook out the towel. "You must blame him then. He said you were Paliser's widow."

"Well, you see I am not."

"Yet you consented to be his wife."

"Whose? Mr. Jones'?"

"Paliser's, my dear young lady. However fictitious the ceremony, you consented to be Paliser's wife."

"What if I did? It has nothing to do with it now."

"Just a little, perhaps. Did you hear Jones say that he would renew his acquaintance with Swinburne?"

"From the way he talks, one might think he knew him by heart."

"Yaas, he is very objectionable. But you are referring to the poet. He was referring to the jurist. The jurist wrote a very fine book. Let me quote a passage from it. 'It is the present and perfect consent the which alone maketh matrimony, without either solemnisation or' – here, Dunwoodie, skipping the frank old English, substituted – 'or anything else, for neither the one nor the other is the essence of matrimony, but consent only. Consensus non concubitus facit matrimoniam.' Hum! Ha! In other words, whether marriage is or is not contracted in facie ecclesiæ, it is consent alone that constitutes its validity. You understand Latin?"

Cassy laughed. "I dream in it."

Dunwoodie laughed too. "Pleasant dreams to you always. But what I have quoted was the common law, and so remained until altered by the Revised Statutes, with which no doubt you are equally familiar."

Cassy smoothed her frock. "I was brought up on them."

"I don't need to tell you then that when adopted here they provided that marriage should be a civil contract. In so providing, they merely reaffirmed the existing common law. Subsequently, the law was changed. The legislature enacted that a marriage must be solemnised by certain persons – ecclesiastic, judicial or municipal – or else, that it should be entered into by written contract, which contract was to be filed in the office of the town clerk. Coincidentally the legislature prohibited any marriage contracted otherwise than in the manner then prescribed."

That morning Cassy had been to an agent, a saponacious person with a fabulous nose. At the moment the nose was before her. She was wondering whether it would scent out for her an engagement.

"However," Dunwoodie, twisting the edge of his towel, continued, "various amendments were afterward adopted and certain sections repealed. Among the latter was the one containing the prohibition which I have cited. In my opinion, it was not the intention of the legislature to repeal it. Yet, however that may be, repealed it was. Since then, or, more exactly, a few weeks ago, the enactments regarding the manner in which marriage must be solemnised were held to be not mandatory but directory, the result being that the law originally prevailing has now come again into operation, common-law marriages are as valid as before and – "

Here Dunwoodie flaunted the towel.

"And you are Mrs. Paliser."

Of the entire exposition, Cassy heard but that. It ousted the agent and his fabulous nose. She bristled.

"I can't be. I don't want to be. You don't seem to see that the clergyman was not a clergyman at all. He was one of the help there. I thought I told you. Why, there was not even a license! That man said he had one. It was only another of the whimsicalities that took me in."

Dunwoodie repocketing the towel, showed his yellow teeth. "A young gentlewoman who dreams in Latin, and who was brought up on the Revised Statutes, must be familiar with Byron. 'Men were deceivers ever.' Not long ago, a Lovelace whose history is given in the New York Reports conducted himself in a manner that would be precisely analogous to that of your late husband, were it not that, instead of dying, he did what was less judicious, he married again – and was sent up for bigamy. He too had omitted to secure a license. He also entertained a lady with a fancy-ball. None the less, the Supreme Court decided that he had legally tied the matrimonial noose about him and that decision the Court of Appeals affirmed."

Cassy shook her pretty self. "Well, even so, I don't see what difference it makes, now at any rate. He is dead and that is the end of it."

"Hum! Not entirely. As widow you are entitled to a share in such property as your late husband possessed. How much, or how little, he did possess I cannot say. But I assume that such share of it as may accrue, will be – ha! – adequate for you."

"But he hadn't anything. He told me so."

"He didn't always tell you the truth though, did he? In any event it is probable that he left enough to provide for your maintenance."

Cassy threw up her hands. "Never in the world."

Dunwoodie again ran his eyes over the severity of her costume. "You think it would be inadequate?"

But Cassy was angry. "I don't think anything about it. Whether it would or would not be adequate, does not make the slightest difference. I won't take it."

"Ha! And why not?"

Cassy fumed. "Why not? But isn't it evident? That man had no intention of marrying me, no intention whatever of leaving me a cent."

"As it happens, he did both."

Cassy clenched her small fist. "No matter. He did not intend to and don't you see if I were to accept a ha'penny of his wretched money, I would be benefiting by a crime for which may God forgive my poor, dear father."

There was a point which the legislature had not considered, which not one of all the New York Reports construed, a point not of law but of conscience, a point for a tribunal other than that which sits in banco. It floored Dunwoodie.

Damnation, she's splendid, he decided as, mentally, he picked himself up. But it would never do to say so and he turned on her his famous look.

"Madam, once your marriage is established, the money becomes rightfully and legally yours, unless – "

With that look he was frowning at this handsome girl who took law and order with such a high hand. But behind the frown was a desire, which he restrained, to hug her.

Frowning still he looked from Cassy to the door and there at a boy, who was poking through it a nose on which freckles were strewn thick as bran.

"Mr. Rymple, sir, says he has an appointment."

The old ruffian, rising, turned to Cassy. "One moment, if you please."

The door, caught in a draught, slammed after him, though less violently than other doors that were slamming still. Would they never stop? Cassy wondered. Would they slam forever? Were there no rooms in life where she might enter and find the silence that is peace? Surely, some time, somewhere that silence might be hers.

She turned. Jones, looking extremely disagreeable, was walking in.

Cassy, closing her ears to those doors, exclaimed at him. "Here's a pretty how d'ye do. Mr. Dunwoodie says I am Mrs. Paliser."

"That afternoon, when you sent your love to my cat, I could have told you that. In fact I did."

From Jones' air and manner you would have said that he was willing and able to bite a ten-penny nail.

Cassy did not notice. "It appears, too, that I am entitled to some of his wretched money."

"It is unfortunate I did not know that also."

"I believe you did. But I sha'n't take it."

Jones drew a chair. Hatefully he looked her up and down.

"You are quite right. Sixty years ago there was but one millionaire in the country. The plutocrat had not appeared in the street, he had not even appeared in the dictionary. The breed was unknown. To-day there are herds of such creatures. I was reading the statistics recently and they depressed me beyond words. It is always depressing to know how much money other people have. You are quite right not to suffer poor devils to be depressed by you."

Mrs. Yallum! thought Cassy, who said as much; "I don't know what you are talking about."

"You are very intelligent. I am talking small change."

Cassy gave a shrug. "Mr. Dunwoodie said I would have enough to live on. I can do as well as that myself, thank you."

"No doubt," Jones snarled. "I am even sure you could do worse. It is extraordinary how much one can accomplish in refusing a dollar or two that might save another man's life. To hell with everybody! That is the noble attitude. I admire your spirit. A handful of bank-notes are crying at you: 'I'm yours, take me, give me to the wounded, to the starving!' Not a bit of it. The Viscountess of Casa-Evora is too proud. That's superb."

Cassy turned on him. "See here, young man – "

"Don't you young man me," Jones irritably cut in. "In the rotunda out there, Dunwoodie gave me a foretaste of your swank and I can tell you I relished it. You won't look at a penny of this money because, if you did, you would be benefiting by an act committed by your father, who, as sure as you live, was impelled by the powers invisible to rid the earth of Paliser and to rid it of him for no other reason than that this money might serve a world in flames. Refused by you it will only revert to an old rounder who never did a good deed in his life; whereas, instead, it could call down blessings on your father's grave. But no, perish the thought! All that is leather and prunella to a young woman who regards herself as the arbiter of destiny. By God, you are prodigious!"

"I think you are horrid."

"So are you. You are the heiress to millions and millions. No wonder you put on airs."

Occasionally, to exceptional beings, a hand issuing from nowhere offers a cup brimming with madness, filled to the top with follies and dreams.

At that cup Cassy stared. It was unreal. If she tried to touch it, it would vanish.

"It is impossible!" she cried.

Jones looked about. "Where is my harp?"

Cassy did not know, she could not tell him. She had not even heard. A crater in the Wall Street sky had opened and from it, in an enchanted shower, fell sequins, opals, perfumes and stars.

But Jones must have found his harp. To that shower he was strumming an accompaniment.

"In to-day's paper there is a Red Cross appeal which says that what we give is gone. It is incredible, but educated people believe it. The ignorance of educated people is affecting. By reason of their education, which now and then includes mythology, they believe that happiness is the greatest of all the gifts that the gods can bestow. Being mortal, they try to obtain it. Being ignorant, they fail. Ignorance confounds pleasure with happiness. Pleasure comes from without, happiness from within. People may be very gay and profoundly miserable, really rich and terribly poor. In either case their condition is due to the fact that the happiness which they sought, they sought for themselves. Their error would be stupid were it not pathetic. In seeking happiness for themselves they fail to find it, but when they succeed in securing it for others, they find that on them also it has been bestowed. The money we give is not gone. It comes back to us. It returns in happiness and all the happiness that the richest, the poorest, the wisest, the stupidest can ever possess, is precisely that happiness which they have given away."

Where now where those doors? Cassy, the cascade of flowers and stars about her, looked at the harper. In listening to him, the doors had ceased to slam. About them there was peace. But her eyes had filled.

Jones was still at it.

"The greatest happiness is the cessation of pain. That pagan aphorism the Red Cross might put on its banners. Spiritually it is defective, but practically it is sound and some relief the Red Cross supplies. Give to it. You can put your money to no fairer use. It will hallow the grave where your father lies."

From beyond, from the adjacent Curb, came the shouts of brokers.

Jones, abandoning his harp, looked over at the girl. "What are you crying about?"

"I am not crying," spluttered Cassy, who was blubbering like a baby. "I never cry. It is disgusting of you to say so."

"You are crying."

"I am not crying," Cassy, indignantly sniffing and sobbing, snapped at him. Fiercely she rubbed her eyes. "It is none of your business, anyhow." Pausing, she choked, recovered and blearily added: "And, anyway, if the money is mine, really mine, honestly mine, I will give it away, all of it, every p – penny."

"No, no, not all of it," Jones hastily threw in, for now the door was opening and Dunwoodie appeared. "Keep a pear for your thirst, put a little million aside."

He turned to the lawyer. "Mrs. Paliser accepts her responsibilities."

"Hum! Ha!" The great man sat down and looked at Cassy. He looked many things but he said very few. "My dear young lady, familiar as you are with Latin, with law and with literature, who am I to remind you that chickens should first be hatched? Your rights may be contested. The Paliser Case, as it will be called, may – "

"The Paliser Case!" interjected Jones, who could see the headline from where he sat. "Shade of Blackstone! It will be famous! It will be filmed! The eminent jurist here will be screened and you, too, my lady."

Balefully Dunwoodie shot a glance at the inkbeast and another at Cassy.

"It may last some time. I have no doubt of the result. None whatever. But in spite of your legal knowledge I suggest that you have associate counsel. Now, permit me to ask, would you care to retain me or would you prefer some one else?"

Cassy, who had dried her eyes, looked at him and it was remarkable how pretty she looked.

"Why, no, Mr. Dunwoodie, I would much rather have you, only – " Uncertainly she paused.

The eminent jurist took it up. "Only what?"

"Well, all I know about law is that it is very expensive and I have nothing except my grandfather's portrait."

Dunwoodie touched a button. "Ha! One moment."

A thin young man, with a pasty face and a slight stoop, opened the door.

The old ruffian raised a stubby finger. "Purdy, a cheque for a thousand dollars, to the order of Bianca Paliser, is to be mailed to this lady to-night."

"But, Mr. Dunwoodie!" Cassy exclaimed.

"You must allow me to be your banker," he told her, and turned again to the clerk. "Get Mr. Jeroloman. Say, with my compliments, I shall be obliged if he will look in here. And, Purdy, see to it that that cheque is attended to. Mrs. Paliser will give you her address."

"But, Mr. Dunwoodie!" Cassy exclaimed again, as the sallow youth went out.

To distract her attention, instantly Jones improvised a limerick. "There was a young man named Purdy, who was not what you'd call very sturdy. To be more of a sport, he drank gin by the quart, and danced on a hurdy-gurdy."

"You're insane," announced Cassy, who was a trifle demented herself.

Dunwoodie extracted his towel. "Jeroloman is the attorney for the other side. He will want to meet Mrs. Paliser, but that honour will not be his to-day."

Cassy stood up. "I should hope not. He would be the last camel on the straw – I mean the last straw on the camel."

Dunwoodie, rising also, gave her his fine bow and to Jones a hand.

Then as the two made for the door, from over her shoulder she smiled back at him.

"My grandmother could not have been nicer."

"What do you mean by that?" Jones absently inquired.

But, in the rotunda now, Mr. Purdy was asking her address. If he had dared he would have followed her there. Fortune favouring, he would have followed her to the ends of the earth. It was what one of our allies calls the thunderbolt. Never before had he beheld such a face. Earnestly he prayed that he might behold it again. Allah is great. The prayer was granted.