Flames Part 60

"Why d'you come, then?" she continued, with a certain desperation. "There ain't nothin' here to bring you. I know that well enough."

She cast a comprehensive glance round over the badly furnished room.

"Nothin' at all," she added with a sigh.

While she spoke Julian began to wonder, too, why he came, why he liked to come there. As Cuckoo said, there was nothing at all to bring him so often. He liked her, he was sorry for her, he had even a deep-running sympathy for her, but he did not love her. Yet he was fascinated to come to her, and there were sometimes moments when he seemed taken possession of, led by the hand, to that squalid room and that squalid presence in it. Why was that? What led him? He could not tell.

"I like coming here," he said; "and of course it's nothing to Valentine where I go."

Cuckoo glanced up hastily at the words. A little serpent enmity surely hissed in them. Julian spoke as if he were a man with some rebel feeling at his heart. But the serpent glided and was gone as he added:

"I'm always with him when I'm not with you, for I haven't seen the doctor for ages."

"The doctor! Who's that, then," asked Cuckoo.

"Doctor Levillier. Surely you've heard me talk about him."

"No, dearie."

"Oh, he's a nerve-doctor, and a sort of little saint, lives for his work, and is a deuced religious chap, never does anything, you know."

Julian looked at her.

"Oh," she said.

"And believes in everything. He's a dear little chap, the kindest heart in the world, good to every one, no matter who it is. He's devoted to Valentine."

"Eh?" said Cuckoo, with a long-drawn intonation of astonishment.

"I say he's devoted to Valentine," Julian repeated rather irritably. His temper was much less certain and sunny lately than of old. "But I believe he's devoted to every one he can do any good to. We used to see him continually, but he's been abroad for weeks, looking after a bad case, a Russian Grand Duke in Italy, who would have him, and pays him all the fees he'd be getting in London. He'll be coming back directly, I think."

"Where does he live?" said Cuckoo, ever so carelessly.

Julian gave the number in Harley Street rather abstractedly. Their conversation had led him to think of the little doctor. Would he be glad to see him again? And would Valentine? He tried to realize, and presently understood, and had a moment of shame at his own feeling. Soon afterwards he went away. That night, before she went to Piccadilly, Cuckoo walked round to Harley Street. She wandered slowly down the long thoroughfare and presently came to the doctor's house. There was a bra.s.s plate upon the door. The light from a gas lamp, just lit, flickered upon it, and Cuckoo, stopping, bent downwards and slowly read the printed name, "Doctor Levillier." Did it look a nice name, a kind name? She considered that question childishly, standing there alone. Then, without making up her mind on the subject, she turned to go. As she did so she saw the tall figure of a man motionless under the gas-lamp on the other side of the street. He was evidently regarding her, and Cuckoo felt a sudden thrill of terror as she recognized Valentine. They stood still on the two pavements for a minute, looking across at one another. Cuckoo could only see Valentine's face faintly, but she fancied it was angry and distorted, and her terror grew. She hesitated what to do, when he made what seemed to her a threatening gesture, and walked quickly away down the street.

CHAPTER VII

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS BUCKLES ON HER ARMOUR

That evening Cuckoo remained in a condition of mingled terror and resolution. There was something about Valentine that filled her, not merely with alarm, but with a nameless horror, indescribable and inveterate. She felt that he was her deadly enemy and the enemy of Julian. But he had cast such a spell over Julian that the latter was blinded and ready to follow him anywhere, and not merely to follow him, but to defend every step he took. Cuckoo had a sense of entering upon a combat with Valentine. As she stood upon the doorstep in Harley Street and faced him under the gas-lamp, were they not as antagonists definitely crossing swords for the first time? It seemed so to her. And the impression upon her was so strong and so exciting, that for once she broke through her invariable routine. Instead of going to Piccadilly she went home to her lodgings. It was about half-past nine when she arrived and opened the door with her latchkey. Mrs. Brigg happened to be in the pa.s.sage _en route_ to the kitchen from some business in the upper regions. She stared upon Cuckoo with amazement.

"What ever," she began, her voice croaky with interrogation. "Are you ill? What are you back for?"

"I'm all right," said Cuckoo crossly. "Leave me alone, do."

She turned into her sitting-room. Mrs. Brigg followed, open-mouthed.

"Ain't you a-goin' out ag'in?"

"No; oh do leave off starin'. What's the matter with you?"

Mrs. Brigg heaved a thick sigh and shuffled round upon her heels, which made a noise upon the oilcloth like the boots of the comic man at a music-hall.

"Well," she said with a sudden grimness, "I hope it'll be all right about the rent, that's all."

She vanished, shaking her head, on which a stray curl-paper, bereft of its comrades of the morning, sat unique in a thin forest of iron-grey wisps.

Cuckoo shut her door and sat down to think. But at first she had to receive the attentions of Jessie, who was even more surprised than Mrs.

Brigg at her unexpected return, and who began to bark with shrill joy and run violently round the room with the speed of a rat emanc.i.p.ated from a cage. As she would not consent to repose herself again, Cuckoo at last put her into the next room, on the bed, and shut the door on her. Then she returned, lit all the three gas-burners and turned them full on, before she removed her hat, and definitely settled herself in for the evening. She was fearful, and dreaded darkness, or even twilight. The pulse of London beat round her while she stretched herself on the hard sofa, let down her touzled yellow hair, and frowned slowly as the unlearned do when they know that they want to meditate.

Now and then she rose suddenly on her elbow, half turned her head towards the window and listened. She had thought she heard a step on the pavement pause, and the cry of the little iron gate. Then, rea.s.sured, she leaned back once more. She had taken off her boots, and her feet, in black stockings gone a little white at the toes, were tilted up on the shoulder of the sofa. She fixed her eyes mechanically upon them while she began, all-confusedly, and with the blurred vagueness of the illiterate, to plan out a campaign. Not that she said that word to herself; she did not know its meaning. All that she knew was, that she wanted to put her back against the wall, or get into an angle, like a cornered animal, and use her teeth and claws against Valentine, that menacing figure with an angel's face. And what disgusted and drove Cuckoo almost mad as she lay there in the crude gaslight was the abominable fact that she was desperately afraid of Valentine. There was something about him which filled her not only with intense horror, but with something worse than horror,--intense fear. Why, she had all three gas-burners alight because, having met him that night and seen him watching her, she trembled at the faintest shadow and must see things plainly, lest their dim outlines should appal her fancy by taking his form.

Only once had the lady of the feathers known such enfeebling terror as this, on the night when she fled from the hotel in the Euston Road and left Marr dying on the bed between the tall windows. More than once, in her thoughts, had she loosely linked Marr with Valentine, puzzled, scarcely knowing why she did so. And, she repeated the mental operation now more definitely. They had at least one thing in common, this extraordinary power of striking fear into her soul. And Cuckoo was not accustomed to sit with fear. Her life had bred in her a strong, tough-fibred restlessness. She was essentially a careless creature, ready to argue, quarrel, hold her own with anybody, proud, as a rule, of being a match for any man and well able to take care of herself. She had knocked about, and was utterly familiar with many horrors of the streets, and of nameless houses. She had heard many rows at night; had been in brawls; had been waked, in the dense hours, by sudden sharp cries for help; was accustomed to be alone with strangers, men of unknown history, of unknown deeds. And all these circ.u.mstances she met with absolute carelessness, with a devil-may-care laugh, or the sigh of one weary, but not afraid. She was no more timid than the average English street-boy.

Only these two men, one dead, one alive, knew how to dress her in terror from head to foot, brain, heart, and body. And so she joined them in a ghastly brotherhood.

But to-night she was making a conscious effort against the domination of Valentine, for the awakening of fear in her was counterbalanced by other feelings prompting her to fight. And once Cuckoo began to fight she felt that she would not lack courage. For she clung to action, and hated thought, walking clearly in the one, but through a maze in the other.

Despite her fear of him, something drove her to fight Valentine; only she did not know how to fight him. It was in a mood of doubt that she had wandered into Harley Street and bent to read the name on the door of Dr. Levillier. Julian's description of the doctor had appealed to her.

The mention of his goodness, of his pure life, of his care for others, had impressed her, she scarcely knew why, and brought into her mind a desire to see this little man. Yet he was devoted to Valentine. And then Cuckoo, lying back on the sofa, felt heart-sick, wondering at the power of this man whom she hated and feared, wondering how she could ever fight against his influence over Julian; wondering, too, a little, why it was that she knew she must and certainly would fight it. For beyond the motive power of her love and jealousy, beyond the ordinary woman's desire to keep the man she admired from sinking to the level of the men she despised, there was another fiery and strong and urging insistent influence working upon her, working within her, crying to her, like a voice, to buckle on her armour and to do battle with the enemy. This influence came silently from without, and spoke to the lady of the feathers when she was alone, and never more clearly and powerfully than to-night. It wrestled with her terror of Valentine, and told her to put it away, to come into closer relations with him fearlessly, not to flee from him, but rather to watch him, dog him, learn what he was and what he was doing or trying to do. Yet fear fought this growing, stirring, strange warm influence that burned like a fire at Cuckoo's heart. She flushed and she paled as she lay there, with down-drawn brows and enlaced hands, her yellow hair falling over the hard, shiny horsehair of the sofa. She longed for some one to come to her who would give her counsel, help, courage, that she might fight for Julian, who was too spell-bound to fight for himself, and who was falling so fast, so terribly fast, into the abyss where men crawl like insects and women are as poisonous weeds in the slime of the pit.

Oh, for some one!

Involuntarily she sat up and extended her thin arms almost as if in a beckoning gesture.

As she did so the front door bell rang.

Cuckoo was startled and felt as if it rang for her. But that was unlikely; and there were other lodgers of her kind in the house. No doubt it was a visitor for one of them.

Mrs. Brigg went in weary procession along the pa.s.sage and opened the door. A few words were indistinctly spoken in a man's voice. Then the street door shut, and almost simultaneously the door of Cuckoo's sitting-room opened very quietly and Valentine entered.

CHAPTER VIII

VALENTINE EXPOUNDS THE GOSPEL OF INFLUENCE TO THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

Valentine closed the door behind him and stood by it, looking at Cuckoo gravely. She had pushed herself up on the sofa, using her elbows as a lever, and in an awkward att.i.tude, half sitting, half lying down, stared at him with startled eyes. Her unshod feet were drawn in towards her body, and her dyed hair hung in a thick tangle round her face and on her shoulders. She said nothing.

Valentine put his hat down on the table and began to take off his gloves.

"I am glad to find you at home," he said politely.

Cuckoo shifted a little farther back on the sofa. Now that she was actually shut up alone with Valentine, fear returned upon her and banished every other feeling, every desire except the desire to be away from him. She ran her tongue over her lips, which had suddenly become dry.