Flames Part 77

Julian was drinking his tea, which had become very strong from standing.

"And are you happier than you were before?"

The doctor spoke insistently and gravely. Cuckoo had taken Jessie onto her lap and now stroked the little dog quickly and softly with a thin, fluttering hand. Julian seemed trying to think, to dive into his mind and discover its real feelings.

"I suppose so," he said presently. "But who's happy? I should like to know. Cuckoo isn't. Are you, Cuckoo?"

It seemed a cruel question, addressed to that spectre of girlhood.

"I dunno," she answered swiftly. "It don't matter much either way."

"She may be," the doctor said. "And you were happy, Julian."

The tea had certainly cleared the boy's brain. His manner was more sensible, and the heavy sensuality had gone from his eyes. Though he still looked haggard and wretched, he was no longer the mere wreck of vice he had seemed when he drifted into the little room out of the fog.

"Was I?" he said slowly. "It seems a devil of a time ago."

The doctor's heart warmed to these two young creatures, children to him, yet who had seen so much, gone so far down into the depths that lie beneath the feet of life. He thought in that moment that he could willingly give up all his own peace of mind, success, fame, restfulness of heart, to set them straight up, face to face with strength and purity once more. One was well born, educated, still handsome, the other a so-called lost woman, and originally only a very poor and hopelessly ignorant girl. Yet their community of misery and sorrow put them side by side, like two children who gather violets in a lane together, or drown together in some strong, sad river.

"It is not so long, Julian," he said. "Only before Valentine's trance."

Julian caught him up quickly.

"Why d'you say that, doctor?"

"Why? Simply because it is truth."

"You're always at that trance. I believe it's just because you told us not to sit again. But there was no harm done."

"You are sure of that?"

As he put the question the doctor's mind was on a hunt round that sleep and waking. He had gradually come to think that night a night of some strange crisis, through which Valentine had pa.s.sed from what he had been to what he was. Yet his knowledge could not set at the door of that unnatural slumber the blame of all that followed it. His imagination might, but not his knowledge. He wondered whether Julian might not help him to elucidation.

"Sure? of course! Why not? Valentine's all right. I'm all right. Rip's the only one gone. And if he'd only stayed in the house that night he'd be all right too."

"No, Addison."

Julian stared at this flat contradiction.

"Not?"

"Rip never went out of the house."

"But he died in the snow."

"No," the doctor said quietly. "He died in your dining-room, of fear--fear of his old master, Valentine."

"What?" said Julian, gripping the table with his right hand. "Val had been at him?"

In two or three simple, straightforward words, the doctor described the death of Rip. When he had finished Cuckoo gave a little cry, and clasped the astonished and squirming Jessie close in her arms. Julian's brow clouded.

"He might have left Rip alone," he said. "It's odd dogs can't bear Val now."

"Again since that trance," the doctor said.

Julian looked at him with acute irritation, but said nothing. Then, turning his eyes on Cuckoo, who was still hugging Jessie, he snapped his fingers at the little dog and called its name. Cuckoo extended her arms, holding Jessie, to Julian, and he took the small creature gently. And as he took her he bent forward and gazed long and deeply into Cuckoo's eyes.

She trembled and flushed, half with pleasure, half with a nervous consciousness of the doctor's presence.

"Oh, why do you?" she murmured, turning her head away. The action seemed to make Julian aware that perhaps his manner was odd, and his subsequent glance at the doctor was very plainly, and even rudely, explanatory of a wish to be alone with Cuckoo. The doctor read its meaning and resolved to go away. With the quick observation and knowledge of men which long years of training had given to him, he saw that, strangely enough, the only creature whose influence could in any way cope with the influence of Valentine was not himself, who once had been as a seer to the two young men, but the thin, spectral, weary, painted Cuckoo. There, in that small room, with the long murmur of London outside, sat these two human beings, desolate woman, vice-ridden man, both fallen down in the deep mire, both almost whelmed in the flood of Fate. And he stood strong, faithful, clean-souled, brave-hearted, yet impotent, regarding them. For some power willed it that misery alone could hold out a helping hand to misery, that vice and degradation must rise to thrust back vice and degradation. The fallen creature was to be the protector, the unredeemed to be the redeemer. Doctor Levillier knew this when he saw Julian's long glance into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo. And he thrilled with the knowledge. It seemed to him a great demonstration of the root, the core, of divine pity which he believed to be the centre of the scheme of the world. Round this centre revolved wheels within wheels of cruelty, of agony, of ruthless pa.s.sions and of lawless bitterness. Yet they radiated from pity. They radiated from love. How it was so he could not tell, and there the pessimist had him by the throat. But that it was so he felt in his inmost heart, and never more than now, when the tired boy sneered at him, who was an old friend, clean of life, gentle of nature, and turned to this girl, this thing that loathsome men played with and scorned.

Cuckoo flushed and trembled; this divine pity outpainted her rouge, and shook that body which had so often betrayed itself to destroyers. This divine pity gave to her, who had lost all, the power to find freedom for another soul that lay in bondage.

The doctor gazed for an instant at the boy and girl, and was deeply moved. His lips breathed a word that was a prayer, for Julian, for the lady of the feathers.

Then he got up.

"I have to go," he said.

Julian said nothing; Cuckoo flushed again, and accompanied the doctor to the hall door. When she had opened it, and they looked out, it was very cold, but the fog had lifted, and was floating away to reveal a sky full of stars, which always seem to shine more brightly upon frost. The doctor took the girl's hand.

"I see you in clear weather," he said.

"You don't--you don't think as he'll--as I'll--" stammered Cuckoo, glancing awkwardly towards the lighted doorway of the little sitting-room, and then at the doctor. The church clock striking 7:30 pointed the application of the hesitating murmur. It was unconventionally late for an afternoon call.

"It'll be all right, you know that?" said the lady of the feathers.

"Yes, I know that," he answered. "You have to fight, I feel that; only you can do it. You have to fight this--this--" and here the doctor's loyalty spoke, for he could not betray even this new Valentine,--"this strange madness of Valentine's. Pit your will against his, and conquer for Julian's sake."

"Will," said Cuckoo. "That's what he says I can't have."

"Won't you pray to have it given you?" said the little doctor.

Cuckoo looked at him, wondering. Then she said:

"I believe I could fight better 'n pray."

"Sometimes battle is the greatest of all prayers," said the doctor.

The iron gate clicked. He was gone. Cuckoo cast an oblique glance up at the stars before she shut the door, and retraced her steps down the pa.s.sage.

CHAPTER VII

BATTLE ARRAY

When Julian left the Marylebone Road that night it was nearly ten o'clock. He was quite sober, and looked preternaturally grave as he opened the little gate and stepped out into the frost-bound street.

In the lighted aperture of the doorway behind him Cuckoo stood like a shadow half revealed peeping after him, and he turned and waved his hand to her. Then he walked away slowly, meditating. That night the fight for the possession of his will, his soul, had begun in deadly earnest. He did not know it, yet he was vaguely aware that he began to move in the midst of unwonted circ.u.mstances. Cuckoo had not been able wholly to conceal from him her strong mental excitement. Since her conversation with the doctor she had become a different woman. For the one word had been spoken which could change weakness into strength, utter self-distrust into something that at least resembled self-reliance.