Flames Part 82

She told him. Many of them were symptoms well known to all those who have suffered acutely after some great shock, imagined sounds, movements, and so forth. The doctor listened. He had heard such a story many times before.

"I, _I_ am full of these ghastly, these degrading fancies," Mrs. Wilson cried, with a sort of large indignation against herself, and yet an uncertain terror. "Is it not--?"

She suddenly stopped speaking.

"There's some one at your door," she said, after a second or two of apparent attention to some sound without.

"I dare say. A patient."

At this moment a voice, which Dr. Levillier immediately recognized as the voice of Valentine, was audible in the hall.

Mrs. Wilson turned suddenly very pale, and began to tremble and gnaw her nether lip with her teeth in an access of nervous disturbance.

"In G.o.d's name tell me who that is," she whispered, turning her head in the direction of the door. "It can't be--it can't be--" Valentine's voice rose a little louder. "It _is_ his voice."

"Fancy!" the doctor said firmly. "It is the voice of a friend of mine, Mr. Valentine Cresswell."

Mrs. Wilson said nothing. She was trying to force herself to believe the evidence of another's sense against her own. Such a task is always difficult. At last she looked up and said:

"There, doctor, there you have an exhibition of my illness. It's horrible to me. Can you cure it?"

"I will try," the doctor answered.

But he found it very difficult just at that moment to say the three words quietly, to let Valentine go after leaving his message, without confronting him with this haggard patient who was entering the pool of Bethesda.

CHAPTER IX

A SHADOW ON FIRE

When a naturally calm, clear, and courageous mind finds itself besieged by what seem hysterical fancies, it is troubled and perplexed, and is inclined to take drastic measures to restore itself to its normal condition. Dr. Levillier found himself the prey of such fancies after his interview with Mrs. Wilson. He had prescribed for her. He had very carefully considered what way of life would be likely to restore her to health, and to banish the demons which had brought her strength and unusual self-reliance so low. He had received her grat.i.tude, and had dismissed her to the following of his plans for her benefit. All this he had done with calm deliberation, the very cheerful composure which he always practiced towards the victims of nervous complaints. But even while he did this his own mind was in a turmoil. For this woman had let fall statements with regard to her dead husband which most curiously bolstered up Cuckoo's fantastic a.s.sertion that Valentine and Marr were the same man. Marr had been cruel to animals, to dogs, had evidently taken a keen enjoyment in torturing them, and on hearing Valentine's voice she had turned pale and declared that it was the voice of her husband. Then her strange declaration about her husband's use of music as a mode of cruelty! These circ.u.mstances appealed powerfully to the doctor's mind, or at least to that unscientific side of it which inclined him to romance, and to a certain sympathy with the mysteries of the world. Many Europeans who go to India return to their own continent imbued with a belief in miracles, modern miracles, which no argument, no sarcasm, can shake. But there are miracles in Europe too. The magicians of the East work wonders in the strange atmosphere of that strange country, whose very air is heavy with magic. Yet England, too, has her magicians. London holds in the arms of its yellow fogs and dust-laden clouds miracles. Doctor Levillier found himself a.s.sailed by ideas like these as he thought of that transformed Marr, "possessed," as the pale, strongly built wreck of a grand, powerful woman had named it, as he thought of the transformed Valentine, the hour of whose transformation coincided with the hour of Marr's death. Why had this new, horrible, yet beautiful creature risen out of the ashes of the trance that was practically a death? Why had he such amazing points of resemblance to Marr? Why had the influence of Marr been deliberately intruded into the calm, happy, and safe lives of Julian and Valentine? Marr was cruel to dogs, and dogs showed rage and terror when the new Valentine approached them. Marr had a hatred, yet a knowledge of music. The new Valentine, when forced to sing, sang like some wild, desolate thing, with reluctant and terrible voice. And at this point the doctor used the curb suddenly and pulled himself up sharply. He felt that is was useless, that it was unworthy, to plunge himself thus in romance, and to hang veils of mystery around these facts which he had to accept and to deal with. A touch of humanity is worth all the unhuman romance in the world. Humanity lay at the doctor's gate, sore distressed, sinking to something that was beyond distress. So, putting his fancies resolutely behind him, Doctor Levillier resolved to fight through that frail weapon, the lady of the feathers, the battle of Julian's will against the will--which he now fully and once for all recognized as malign--of the man he must still call Valentine. Valentine had said to Julian, at the Savoy, "If it came to a battle--Cuckoo Bright's will against mine!" The doctor had not heard those words. Yet, under the stars on the doorstep of Cuckoo's dwelling he, too, had spoken to the girl of a fight. Thus he had poured a great ardour into her heart. The three souls, Cuckoo's, Doctor Levillier's, Valentine's, were thus set in battle array. They understood what they faced, or at least that they faced warfare. Only Julian did not understand--yet. He was besotted by the spell of the one he called friend laid upon him, and by the vices in which he had been taught to wallow.

His brain was clouded and his eyes were dim, as the brains and eyes of the _malades imaginaires_ who carry on the scheme of sin and sorrow in the world, and prolong by their deeds the long travail of their race.

Julian did not understand. For now he seldom thought sincerely. Sincere thoughts and the incessant and violent acts of pa.s.sion do not often dwell together.

The progress of Julian towards degradation had now become so rapid that his many acquaintances talked of him openly as of one who had practically "gone under." Not that he had ever done any of those few things at which society, whose door is generally ajar, with Mrs. Grundy's large ear glued to the keyhole, resolutely shuts the door. He had not forged, or stolen a watch, or killed anybody, or married a grocer's widow, or anything of that kind. But he had thrown his life to the pleasures of the body, and made no secret of the fact. And the pleasures of the body, like eager rats, had gnawed away his power of self-control until he could resist nothing, no wish of the moment, no desire born illegitimately of pa.s.sing excitement or the prompting of wine. So he committed many follies, and his follies had loud voices. They shrieked and shouted. And society heard their cries, held the door a little more ajar, and listened with that pa.s.sion of attention which virtue accords to vice. But society, having heard a good deal, shook its head over Julian. He had acquired such a taste for low company that he ought to have been born a peer. Certainly, he had money. That made his errors c.h.i.n.k rather pleasantly, and filled the bosoms of many mothers with an expansive charity towards him. Still, the general opinion was that he was sinking very low. In fact, the legend of Julian's shame was now written on his face in such legible and vital characters that the most short-sighted eyes could not fail to read it.

The eager beauty of untarnished youth had faded into the dull, and often sulky, languors of the utterly indulged body. Julian was often exhausted and pa.s.sing through those leaden-footed dreams that fitfully entrance the vicious,--those dreams that are colourless and sombre, that press upon all the faculties, and yet have no real meaning, that stifle all intentions, and put an end, for the moment, to all active desires. People talk of the vicious as "living," but half their time they are curiously dead, for their sins blunt their energies and lull them into a condition that resembles rather paralysis than slumber.

Since the night on which he had supped with Valentine at the Savoy, Julian had given himself up to the company and influence of his friend more than ever, and London, which had once nicknamed Valentine the Saint of Victoria Street, began to dub him with quite another name. For it gradually became apparent to those who only knew the two young men slightly that Valentine exerted an extraordinarily powerful influence over Julian, and that the influence was imperatively evil. At first many were deceived by the clear beauty of Valentine's face, but that was beginning to fade. A thin line, pencilled here and there with a fairylike delicacy, a slight puffiness beneath the blue eyes, a looseness of the cheeks, a droop of the lips, all very demure, as it were, and furtive, shed alteration upon his fair beauty. He himself noticed it, as he looked in a mirror one night, and silently cursed the inevitable effect which mind produces upon matter. No man's face can forever remain an entirely deceptive mask. The saintly expression of Valentine's was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. He wondered whether Julian noticed it.

But Julian was too much preoccupied with his own energies of dreary action and lacerating fatigues of subsequent thought, or it would be truer to say moodiness, to notice anything. He was self-centred, as are all sinners, immersed in his own downfall, like a man in an ocean. He was unconscious that he was the subject of battle, that four wills were to contend for his soul's sake. Four wills, yet one expressed itself in no outward form. It was in exile, till the day of its redemption should dawn.

On the night when Valentine heard Julian babble incoherently the name of the lady of the feathers, he said to himself that the battle should be his, and he leaned upon his will to feel its power and its glory.

That night he forgot its fury, the intense emotion that had overtaken him at the supper-table as he gauged, or strove to gauge, the influence that Cuckoo was obtaining over Julian. He forgot Doctor Levillier. He remembered only himself and his own strength, which he was now to test to its foundations. And when he woke again to thoughts of others, it was only to laugh at the force arrayed against him. The lady of the feathers moved, to his fancy, like the most piteous of puppets, a jeering fate manipulating the strings. This manipulator had kept her long to one set of motions, stiff pleading arm, anxious head, interrogative joints, and a strut of wolfish eagerness and hunger. But such a game was now to be abandoned. And behold the puppet a warrior forsooth, a very Amazon, hounded to fight by the doctor's voice, the doctor's word of encouragement, battling with the stiff arms that had abandoned the pleading gesture, stern in a wooden att.i.tude of defiance. And Fate, in fits of laughter at the string-holding! Then Valentine lost his fear, and could have been angry that such a scarecrow was the creature selected by Fate to draw a sword against him. He chose to forget the vision in the mirror when he struck at the staring reflection of the lady of the feathers and s.h.i.+vered under the influence of a cold terror. He chose to remember only the thin and fearful woman who had given her body to the world, and so had surely given her soul to a mill that had long ago ground it to powder.

There is nothing so terrible to one screwed up to the highest pitch of action as a monotony of waiting. Scourging were better, the hemp or the fire. The lady of the feathers had been stirred to a strange enthusiasm, and to a belief in herself, a faith more wonderful to some, more unaccustomed and remote than any faith in G.o.d or devil. A flood of energy flowed over her, warm as blood, strong as love, keen with the salt of beautiful novelty, turbulent as the seas when the great tides take hold on them. It was to her as if for the moment the world's centre was just there where she was in the winter, and in the Marylebone Road, within sound of the great church clock, the great church bells, the cries of the street, the very steam panting up from the Baker Street Station.

Cuckoo was in the core of things, and the core of things is fierce and hot and action-prompting. That half-revealed shadow waving good-bye to Julian, as he stepped into the frosty night, was a shadow on fire. Yet he had scarcely looked back at it. But Cuckoo was to learn to the last word the lesson of patience. Inspired by the sympathy of the doctor and by something deep in her own heart, she was, for the moment, all courage, all flame. She was ready to fight. She was ready to do supreme things, to touch the stars. The stars went out and she had not touched them. The morning dawned very chilly, very dark, the morning that brought Mrs.

Brigg to her room yellow and complaining. Still, Cuckoo was conscious of a high, beating courage that made summer in that winter day. She astonished the old keeper of that weary house by the vivacity of her manner, the brightness of her look. For Mrs. Brigg was well accustomed to sad morning moods, to petulant la.s.situde, and dull grimness of unpainted and unpowdered fatigue, but had long been a stranger to early moods of hope or of gaiety. Mornings in houses such as hers are recurring tragedies, desolating pulses of Time, shaking human hearts with each beat nearer and nearer to the ultimatum of sorrow. She knew not what to make of this new morning mood of Cuckoo, and wagged a heavily pensive head over it, unresponsive and muttering. Jessie, too, was astonished, but more pleasantly. The little dog, dwelling ignorantly in the midst of degradation, had learned quickly the swing of its beloved mistress's moods. In the dim morning it was ever the comforter of misery it could not rightly understand, not the playfellow of happiness that stirred it to leaps and barks of wonder and excitement. In the mornings Cuckoo held it long against her thin bosom, sometimes crushed it nearly breathless, pus.h.i.+ng its little head down in the nest of her arms and telling it a tale of the world's woe that sent long and thin whimpers twittering through its body. The fluttering whisper of morning misery, or the silence of vacant fatigue, these were accustomed things to Jessie. Even if she did not thoroughly understand them, she was ready for them, and eagerly responsive, as dogs are, to emotions along whose verges they tread with the soft feet of sympathy, the sweeter for the ignorance that paints their generosity in such tender colours. But Jessie was _bouleversee_ by this pa.s.sionate, eager Cuckoo; this shadow on fire, who was alive almost ere London was alive, instead of half dead until half London slept. The shadow on fire s.n.a.t.c.hed her out of her sleep, tossed her in air, spoke to her with a voice that thrilled her to quick barking excitement, played with her till the little dog's flux of emotions threatened to consummate in a canine apoplexy, and Mrs. Brigg battered at the door with a shrill, "Keep that beast quiet, can't yer?" All this was Cuckoo fighting; battle in the bedclothes, battle with soap and water, curling-pins, corset, shoes. Each little act was performed with an energy it did not demand. The sponge was squeezed dry like a live thing being strangled; the toothbrush played as Maxim guns on an enemy; b.u.t.tons went into b.u.t.ton-holes with a manner of ramrods going into muskets; hooks met eyes as one army meets another. Battle in all that morning's common tasks, setting them high, dressing them with chivalry and strong endeavour. Cuckoo went into her sitting-room swiftly, with glowing cheeks and flaming eyes, as one ardently expectant. And then--? Mrs. Brigg had lit the fire, but it had spluttered out into a ma.s.s of blackened, ghostly paper and skeleton sticks. A little more battle in the relighting of it.

But then--the blank day of the girl of the streets. Cuckoo sat down, watched the growing fire, and wondered what she had expected. She was conscious that she had expected something, and something not small. Her mood had demanded it. But our moods are often like disappointed brigands, who, having waylaid a pauper, demand with levelled pistols that which the pauper has so vainly prayed for all his life. Moods come from within.

They are not evoked to dance valses with suitable partners from without.

And so Cuckoo's strong excitement and energy found nothing to dance with.

She sat there growing gradually less alive, and wondering why she had hastened to get up; why she was fully dressed instead of wrapped in the usual staring pink dressing-gown with the chiffon cascades down the front. Mornings were of no use to her--never had been. G.o.d might as well never have included them in the scheme of His days, so far as she was concerned. But this morning she had thought, had felt--it seemed impossible that she should feel so unusual and that nothing should happen. She was ready, but Fate was in bed and asleep. That was really the gist of the feeling that came over her. She thought of Dr. Levillier, the man who had set a torch at last to her nature and fired it with a new ardour. He was at his work in the morning, seeing, speaking to, that pa.s.sing line of strangers, who walked on forever through his life. His energies were employed. Perhaps he had forgotten Cuckoo and her empty mornings. Almost for the first time in her life the lady of the feathers definitely longed for a legitimate occupation. How she could have flown at it to-day. But already the bright mood was fading. It could not last in such an atmosphere. As Cuckoo had said, she could fight better than she could pray. But it seemed to her, after a while, that there was only room in this cheerless, dark house to pray, no room at all to fight. She tried reading yesterday's evening paper, left on the horsehair sofa by Julian. But reading had never been a favourite occupation of hers, and to-day she wanted to save Julian, to make him love her, and so to win him from Valentine. She did not want to sit in the twilight of a winter's day reading about people she had never seen, things she did not understand.

And she threw the paper down.

To make Julian love her. Cuckoo flushed, yes, even sitting there quite alone, for Jessie had retired to the warmth of the bedroom blankets, as she said it in her mind. The doctor had told her to do so. Her heart had told her to try to do it long ago. But she trusted the doctor and she did not trust her heart. And how could she trust her power to make Julian love her? Cuckoo had once known very well how to make a man desire her.

In the very early days of her career she had been a very pretty girl.

Her old mother, who believed her dead, had often cried and said to the neighbours that her beauty had been Cuckoo's undoing. Thus do we lay blame on the few fine gifts that should gild our lives. But Cuckoo had been very pretty and had soon learnt the first foul lesson of her _metier_, to wake swift desire. As time went on and she wasted her gift of beauty along the pavements of London, she found this poor power failing in strength and in certainty. As to the power of wakening that slower, deeper, kindred, yet opposed desire of love, Cuckoo had never known whether she possessed it. She had had many lovers, but n.o.body to love her really, and this in days of her beauty, or at any rate her gracious prettiness. No wonder, then, that now a chill ran over her at the thought of the task that lay before her if she was to gain her battle. To break Valentine's influence she had to make Julian love her.

How? Instinctively, and with a sense of horror, she knew that her usual practised arts, instead of helping, almost fatally handicapped her now.

She loved Julian purely, so purely that she could not endure that he should meet her degradation as he had met it on that one night she never thought of but with repentance. Yet to her ignorance, to her, rising towards purity now, yet ever steeped in the coa.r.s.est knowledge, it seemed that the thing called love could hardly utter itself save by some threadbare blandishment, or parrot combination of words, used each night by a hundred women of the town. Cuckoo knew no language of love that was not, so to say, bad language, inasmuch as it was used by those whom she hated. And hitherto she had been content to keep her love for Julian a silent love, except on the few occasions when she had obliquely showed it by the anger of jealousy or of reproach. She wished nothing bodily from him, or if she did, stifled the wish in the mutely repeated record of her own unworthiness. But now, if she was to draw his soul to hers, she must move forward, she must surely commit some sacrifice, perform some deed. What deed could she perform? What sacrifice could she make that would win upon him, that would alter his relation towards her from one of eccentric friends.h.i.+p to one of affection that might even be governed?

The lady of the feathers did not reason this all out in her mind as she sat before the spluttering fire, but she felt it, a tangled ma.s.s of thoughts, catching her brain as in a net, catching her life as in a net too. How could she make Julian love her? What could she do? And all the time, as she asked herself pa.s.sionately that question, the hours were gliding by towards the evening refrain of her life. Cuckoo began to consider this evening refrain as she had never considered it before, as it might affect another if he loved her. If she made Julian love her, if she succeeded in this attempt that seemed as if it must be impossible, what of her evening refrain then? And what would be the conclusion of such a love? She could not tell; she could only wonder.

The strange thing about the lady of the feathers, and about many of her kind, was, that she never dreamed of such a thing as owing a duty to herself, to her own body, her own soul, or nature. Cuckoo knew not the meaning of self-respect. Had you told her that her body was a temple--not of the Holy Ghost, but of a wonderful, exquisite thing called womanhood, and for that reason should not be defiled, she would have stared at you under drawn eyebrows, like a fierce boy, and wondered what in heaven or earth you were talking jargon about. To get at her sympathy you must talk to her of duty to another; and if she had a soft feeling for that other, then she understood you, and then alone. It was the cause of Julian and his safety that made her now consider this evening refrain of her life as she sat there. And her mind ran back to Julian's first visit to her and to his first request. He asked her to stay at home just for one night with Jessie. And she refused. If she had not refused. If she had stayed at home. If she had at that moment, from that moment, given up her life of the street, would Julian have loved her then? Would she have been able to do something for him? For hours Cuckoo sat there pondering in her vague, desolate way over questions such as these. But she could give no answer to them. And then she thought of that horrible night when the hours danced to the music of the devil, when she gave Julian that first little impetus which started him on his journey to the abyss. And at that thought she grew white, and she grew hot, and she wondered why she had been born to be the lady of the feathers, and the wrecker, not of men's lives--she never thought of men tenderly in the ma.s.s--but of this one life, of this one man, whom she loved in a strange, wild, good-woman way.

"C-r-r-r!" she said, her tongue flickering against her teeth. Jessie stirred in the blankets, came to the floor with a "t'bb" and ran into the room with curved att.i.tudes of submission. But Cuckoo would not notice the little dog. She stared at the fire and looked so old, and almost intellectual. But there was n.o.body to see her. What a long, empty day it had been, this day for which she had risen eagerly as to a day of battle!

What a long, empty day, and no deed done in it. And now the hour of the evening refrain was come. Cuckoo had wanted this day to be a special day, for it was the first of those new days which were to come after the doctor's word of hope. And nothing had happened in it. n.o.body had come.

The doctor was with his patients. Julian was--ah, surely--with Valentine.

And she, Cuckoo, this poor, pale girl, who wanted to fight and to do battle, was alone. And she had been so eager in the morning. And now the night was falling and she had not struck a blow. The hour chimed. It was the hour of the evening refrain.

Suddenly Cuckoo got up. She went over to the window and pulled down the blind so sharply that she nearly broke it. She struck a match violently and lit the gas. She ran into the bedroom, caught her hat, which lay ready for service on the top of the chest of drawers, and cast it with a crash into a cardboard box, jamming the lid down on it. She seized her jacket, which lay on the bed, and strung it up on a hook, as if she were hanging a criminal. Then she came back into the sitting-room, sat down in the chair, took up the evening paper of yesterday and began to read, with eyes that gleamed under frowning brows, about "Foreign Affairs" and "Bimetallism."

And that night the evening refrain of Cuckoo's life did not follow the verse of her day.

She sat there all alone.

It was her way--the only way she could devise--of beginning to fight the battle for Julian.

She did not stay at home with any thought of purifying herself by the action. Another day she might go out as usual. But Julian had once asked her not to go. She had gone then. Now she obeyed him, and the obedience seemed to bring him a little nearer to her.

CHAPTER X

THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

Some days later Cuckoo received a telegram from Harley Street. It came in the morning, and ran as follows:

"Call here to-day if possible. Important. Levillier."

Cuckoo read it, trembling. In her early days telegrams came often to her door--"Meet me at Verrey's, four-thirty"; "Piccadilly Circus, five o'clock to-day." Such messages flickered through her youth, forming gradually a legend of her life. But this summons from the doctor at the same time frightened her and braced her heart. It might mean that Julian was ill, in danger--she knew not what. But at least it broke through the appalling inaction, the dreary stagnation, of her days. The lady of the feathers had fought indeed, of late, that worst enemy, mental despair, bred of grim patience at last grown weary. That was not the battle she had been inspired to expect, to prepare for. The doctor's telegram at least swept the unforeseen foe from the field, and seemed to set the real enemy full in view.

"There ain't any answer," the lady of the feathers said to Mrs. Brigg, who waited in an att.i.tude expressive of greedy curiosity.

"Which of 'em is it?" demanded that functionary.