Flames Part 70

"It's altered, certainly."

"Yes, for the worse. It was a beautiful room, one of the most beautiful in London."

A momentary change came over Julian. He dropped his hard manner, which seemed an a.s.sumption to cover inward discomfort or shame.

"Yes," he said almost regretfully. "I suppose it was. But it's gayer now, got more things in it. Full of memories this room is."

The last remark was evidently put forth as a feeler, to find out what Valentine had been talking about. Dr. Levillier was habitually truthful, although he could be very reserved if occasion seemed to require it. At present he preferred to be frank.

"Memories of women," he remarked.

"Oh, you've heard?"

"That several tastes helped to make his room the pandemonium which it is.

Yes."

"You're severe, doctor."

"Perhaps you like the room for its memories, Addison."

Julian looked doubtful.

"I don't know. I suppose so," he hesitated.

"By the way, is there among these vagrant memories of Circa.s.sians, Greeks, and Italians anything chosen by Cuckoo Bright?"

Julian started violently.

"Cuckoo Bright," he exclaimed, "what do you know of her?"

As he spoke Valentine strolled into the room dressed for dinner. He was drawing on a pair of lavender gloves, and looked down sideways at his coat to see if his b.u.t.tonhole of three very pale and very perfectly matched pink roses was quite straight.

"Cuckoo Bright?" he echoed. "Does everybody know her, then? How came she into your strict life, doctor?"

Doctor Levillier noticed that Valentine, like Julian, carefully set him aside as a being in some different sphere, much as a great many people insist on setting clergymen. This fact alone showed that he was talking with two strangers, and seemed to give the lie to long years of the most friendly and almost brotherly intercourse.

"Is my life so strict, then?" he asked gently.

"I think little Cuckoo would call it so, eh, Julian?"

He glanced at Julian and laughed softly, still drawing on his gloves. In evening dress he looked curiously young and handsome, and facially less altered than the doctor had at first supposed him to be. Still there was a difference even in the face; but it was so slight that only a keen observer would have noticed it. The almost frigid and glacial purity had floated away from it like a lovely cloud. Now it was unveiled, and there was something hard and staring about it. The features were still beautiful, but their ivory l.u.s.tre was gone. A line was penciled, too, here and there. Yet the doctor could understand that even Valentine's own man might not appreciate the difference. The manner, however, was more violently altered. It was that which made the doctor think again and intensely of Cuckoo's vague yet startling statement.

"Where did you meet Cuckoo, doctor?"

It was Julian who spoke, and the words were uttered with some excitement.

"I have met her," Levillier replied.

It was sufficiently evident that he did not intend to say where.

But Valentine broke in:

"She has called on you again, then, and this time found you at home.

I scarcely thought she would take the trouble."

"Again!" the doctor said.

"Yes. One evening when you were away I saw her at your door and ventured to give her a piece of advice."

"And that was?"

"Not to trouble you. I told her your patients were of a different cla.s.s."

"In that case I fear you misrepresented me, Cresswell. I do not choose my patients. But Cuckoo Bright is no patient of mine."

"If she's not ill," Julian said, "why should she go to you?"

"That is her affair, and mine," the doctor answered, in his quietest and most finishing tone.

Julian accepted the delicate little snub quietly, but Valentine sneered.

"Perhaps she went to seek you in your capacity of a doctor of the mind rather than of the body. Perhaps, after all, she sought your aid."

As he spoke the doctor could not help having driven into him the conviction that the words were spoken with meaning, that Valentine knew the nature of Cuckoo's mission to Harley Street. There rose in him suddenly a violent sensation of enmity against Valentine. He strove to beat it down, but he could not. Never had he felt such enmity against any man. It was like the fury so obviously felt by Cuckoo. The doctor was ashamed to be so unreasonable, and believed for a moment that the poor street-girl had absolutely swayed him, and predisposed him to this animus that surged up over his normal charity and good, clear impulses of tenderness for all that lived.

"My aid," he said--and the turmoil within him caused him to speak with unusual sternness. "And if she did, what then?"

"Poor Cuckoo!" Julian said, and there was a touch of real tenderness in his voice.

"Oh, I have nothing to say against it," Valentine replied, b.u.t.toning slowly and carefully the last b.u.t.ton of the second glove. "Only, Cuckoo Bright is beyond aid. She can neither help herself nor any one else."

"How do you know, Cresswell?"

"Because I have observed, doctor. Once I, too, thought that even Cuckoo might--might--well, have some fight in her. I know now that she has not. Her corruption of body has led to worse than corruption of mind, to corruption of will. Cuckoo Bright is as helpless as is a seabird with a shot through its wings, upon the sea. She can only drift in the present--die in the future."

The doctor listened silently. But Julian said again:

"Poor, poor Cuckoo!"

The exclamation seemed to irritate Valentine, for he caught up his cloak and cried:

"Bah! Let's forget her. Doctor, we must say good-night. We are due at the Prince's. It has been good to meet you again."

The last words sounded like the bitterest sarcasm.

CHAPTER IV