Flames Part 39

"But she is not utterly degraded, Val. For I know that she can see and understand something of the horror of her own condition."

Valentine put his hand on Julian's shoulder.

"I know what you are thinking," he said.

"What?"

"That you would like to rescue this girl."

A dull blush ran over Julian's face.

"I don't know that I had got quite so far as that," he said. "Would it be absurd if I had?"

"I am not sure that it would not be wrong. Probably this girl lives the life she is best fitted for."

"You surely don't mean--"

"That some human beings are born merely to further the necessities of sin in the scheme of creation? I don't know that. Nature, in certain countries, demands and obtains pernicious and deadly snakes to live in her bosom. Man demands and obtains female snakes to live in his bosom.

Are not such women literally created for this _metier_? How can one tell?"

"But if they are unhappy?"

"You think they would be happy in purity?"

"I believe she would."

Valentine smiled and shook his head.

"I expect her sorrows are not caused by the loss of her virtue, but merely by her lack of the luxuries of life. These birds always want their nests to be made of golden twigs and lined with satin."

But Julian remained unconvinced.

"You don't know her," he said. "Why, Valentine, you have never known such a woman! You! The very notion is ridiculous."

"I have seen them in their Garden of Eden, offering men the fruit of the tree of knowledge."

"You mean?"

"At the 'Empire.'"

"Ah! I have half promised to take her there one night."

"Shall I come with you, Julian?"

Julian looked at him to see if he was in earnest as he made this unutterable proposition. Valentine's clear, cold, thoughtful blue eyes met his eager, glowing, brown, ones with direct gravity.

"You mean it, Val?"

"Certainly."

"You will be seen at the 'Empire' with her?"

"Well--would not you?"

"But you are so different."

"Julian, you remember that night when we leaned out over London, when we saw what are called common people having common experiences? I said then that they, at any rate, were living."

"Yes."

"You and I will try to live with them."

"But, Valentine--you--"

"Even I may learn to feel the strength of the spring if I order my life rather differently in the future. We three, you, I, the girl, will go one night to the Garden of Eden, where the birds wear tights and sing comic songs in French, and the scent that comes from the flowers is patchouli, and silk rustles instead of the leaves of the trees. We will go there on boat-race night. Ah, the strength of the spring! On boat-race night it beats with hammering pulses among the groves of the Garden of Eden."

Julian was surprised at this outburst, which sounded oddly deliberate, and was apparently spoken without real impulse. He was surprised, but, on consideration, he came to the conclusion that Valentine, having silently debated the question of his own life, had resolved to make a definite effort to see if he could change the course of it. Julian felt that such an effort must be useless. He knew Valentine so intimately, he thought,--knew the very groundwork of his nature,--that that nature was too strong to be carved into a different, and possibly grotesque, form.

"Are you an experimentalist, Val?" he asked.

Valentine threw a rapid glance on him.

"I? I don't understand. Why should I experiment upon you?"

"No; not on me, but on yourself."

"Oh, I see what you mean. No, Julian; I prefer to let fate experiment upon me."

"At the 'Empire'?"

"If fate chooses."

"I think you ought to know Cuckoo--"

"Is that her name?"

"Yes, Cuckoo Bright, before our meditated expedition."

Valentine seemed struck by this idea.

"So that we may all be at our ease. A capital notion. Julian, sit down, write a note asking her to come to tea on Thursday, in the flat. I will show her my pictures, and you shall talk to her of Huxley and of Herbert Spencer."

Julian regarded Valentine rather doubtfully.

"Are you malicious?" he said, with a hesitating note in his voice.

"Malicious--no!"

"You won't chaff her?"