Flames Part 54

"But you was different," she a.s.serted. "I know you was different."

How could she have divined the change in Julian that one night of the Empire had wrought?

"I say," she went on, and her voice was trembling with eagerness, "you've got to tell me somethin'."

"Well?"

"That night I--I--it wasn't me made you different, was it?"

And as she spoke Julian knew that it was she. Perhaps a fleeting expression in his face--telling naked truth as expressions may, though words belie them--made her understand, for her cheeks turned grey beneath the paint on them.

"I wish I'd killed myself long ago," she said in a whisper.

"Hush!" he exclaimed, cursing his tell-tale features. "I'm not different; and if I was you could have nothing to do with it."

She said no more, but he saw by her brooding expression that she clung to her intuition, and knew what he denied.

The hands of the clock fixed on the wall above their heads pointed to the half-hour after midnight. The pale and weary waiters were racing to and fro clearing the tables, dodging this way and that with trays, stealing along with arms full of long-stemmed, thick tumblers, eager for rest. The electric moons gave a sudden portentous wink.

"Time!" a voice cried.

People began to get up and move out, exchanging loud good-nights. The long room slowly a.s.sumed an aspect of desertion and greedy desolation.

"We must go," Julian said.

Cuckoo woke out of that reverie, which seemed so chilly, so terrible even. She glanced at Julian, and her eyes were again full of tears. He was standing, and he bent down to her with his two hands resting upon the marble of the table. He bent down and then suddenly stooped lower, lower, almost glaring into her eyes. She went back in her seat a little, half frightened.

"What's it?" she murmured.

But Julian only remained fixedly looking into her eyes. In the pool of the tears of them he saw two tiny shadowy flames, flickering, as he thought, but quite clear, distinct, unmistakable. And there came a thick beating in his side. His heart beat hard. Each time he had seen the vision of the flame he had been instantly impressed with a sense of strange mystery, as if at the vision of some holy thing, a flame upon a prayer-blessed altar, a flame ascending from a tear-washed sacrifice.

And now he saw this thing that he fancied holy burning behind the tears in Cuckoo's eyes!

Cuckoo got up.

"Come on," she said, abruptly.

Julian followed her out of the cafe.

The dream of the moon was with them as they came to the entrance, clear as a quiet soul, directly above them in a clear sky. Julian looked up at it, but Cuckoo looked, with eyes that were almost sullen, at the night panorama of the Circus. They waited a moment on the step. Julian was lighting a cigar, and many other voluble men, most of them French or Italian, were doing likewise. Having lighted it, and given a strong puff or two, Julian said to Cuckoo:

"Shall I drive you home?"

"I ain't going home yet," she replied doggedly. "Are you?"

He hesitated.

"Are you, or aren't you?" she reiterated.

While she spoke, in her voice that was often a little hoa.r.s.e, a young voice with a thread in it, he realized that somehow she--painted sinner as she was--had managed to make him ashamed of himself. Or was it that an awe had come to his soul with that strange flame? In any case his mood had risen from the old night mood of a young man to something higher, something that could not be satisfied in the sordid way of the world.

"I think I shall go home," he said.

"Right," she answered, and for the first time there was an accent of pleasure in her voice.

"But I'll walk a little way with you first," he added.

Together they crossed the Circus and mingled with the humming mob at the corner of Regent Street. They pushed their way towards Piccadilly with difficulty, for numbers of people at this hour do not attempt to walk, but stand stock still, despite the cry of the policeman, staring at the pa.s.sers-by, or talking and laughing with the women who throng the pavement. Having elbowed their way along as far as the St. James restaurant, they began to move with a little more ease, and could have talked as they went, but apparently neither of them felt conversational.

Julian was comparing the vision of the moon with the vision of the street, a comparison no doubt often made even by young men in London on still nights of summer, suggestive to most people, perhaps, of much the same thoughts--yet a comparison to thrill, as all the wild and eternal contrasts of life thrill. And Julian was thinking, too, rather sombrely of himself. Cuckoo walked on beside him, looking straight before her. Quite unconsciously, with the unconsciousness of a mechanical toy, expressive at the turning of a key in its interior, she had a.s.sumed her thin, invariable, professional smile. It came to her face in a flash when the pavement of Piccadilly came to her feet. She did not know it was there.

The moon looked down on it, yet, if Julian had been able to see, perhaps the little flame still flickered in those eyes which had been full of tears. But a little beyond St. James's Hall their silent progress was arrested, for they both saw Valentine pa.s.s them swiftly in the crowd.

He saw them, too, but did not attempt to speak to them. With a smile at Julian he walked on. Julian gazed after him, then turned to Cuckoo.

"And you saw him here to-night before I met you?" he asked.

"Yes."

"How long ago?"

"Two hours, I dare say."

After that Julian ceased to think of the vision of the moon. But presently he noticed that Cuckoo was walking more slowly.

"You're tired?" he said.

She nodded.

"Have you been out all the evening?"

She nodded again.

"Take a cab and go home. I'll pay the man."

"No; I can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"I can't," she repeated, and a mulish look of obstinacy came into her face.

Julian guessed the miserable reason.

"Let me--" he began, and in a moment his hand would have been in his pocket. She stopped him.

"I told you as I never would, not from you," she said. "And I wouldn't, all the more since--since that night."

Then, after an instant, she added:

"But you'd better leave me to myself now."

And then Julian realized that his presence and company were ruining her chance. That thought turned him sick and dull.