Flames Part 101

Cuckoo was panting with her effort, but she pa.s.sed the voices and came upon the core of the crowd, the man who had yelled--Julian. She saw in a moment that he was mad with drink. His hat was off; his coat was torn; his evening clothes were covered with mud. Apparently he had fallen while getting out of a cab. Two men--strangers of the street--were holding him forcibly back while he struggled furiously to attack another man, who faced him calmly on the pavement with a smile of keen contempt. This man was Valentine. Julian was screaming incoherent curses at him and wild threats of murder. The crowd listened and jeered.

Cuckoo caught Julian by the arm. He turned on her to strike her. Then his arm fell by his side. It seemed as if he recognized her even through the veil of his excess. The drunken man looked on the starving woman, and the curses died upon his lips. He began to shiver and to tremble from head to foot. Valentine made a step towards him, but some in the crowd interposed.

"Let him alone," they said. "You'll only make him worse. Leave him to her."

The cab from which Julian had apparently just alighted was drawn up by the kerbstone. Cuckoo, who had not uttered a word as yet, drew Julian towards it. He staggered after her in silence, stumbled into the cab and collapsed in a heap in the corner, half on the floor, half on the seat. She got in after him, watched by the crowd, who seemed awed by the abrupt silence of this yelling madman at the touch of this spectral girl in black. Cuckoo gave her address to the cabman. Just as he was whipping up his horse to drive away, she leaned forward out of the cab as if to the crowd--really to one man in it.

"He's my man!" she said, drawing her thick eyebrows together, and with a nod of her head. "He's my man. I'll see to him."

The cab drove off into the darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

AN AWAKENING

That drive in the night was taken in silence. Julian, a crumpled heap of degraded humanity, slept. Cuckoo watched over him, half supporting him with one thin arm. Exultation shone in her eyes and beat in her heart.

The glory of being alone with this drunken creature, his protector, his guide, lay round the girl like a glory of heaven. As she looked at his white face, and pressed her handkerchief against the blood that trickled from his forehead, wild tears of triumph, pa.s.sionate tears of joy and determination, swam to her eyes. She felt at last the pride and the self-respect of one who possesses a will, and who has exercised it.

That was a justification of life to her mind. Something had given even to her the power to s.n.a.t.c.h this man to herself from the jaws of dark London, to carry him off, a succoured prey, from the world laughing at his degradation. She bent over him in the rattling cab and touched his face with her lips. Was that a kiss? She, who had known so many kisses, wondered. It was the going forth of her soul to purify with flame the thing it loved.

The cab stopped; Cuckoo shook Julian. He stirred uneasily, opened his eyes and shut them again, relapsing into something that seemed rather a sort of fit than a slumber. She called to the cabman to come and help her. Between them they carried Julian into the house and laid him out upon the horsehair sofa.

"He'll come to all right, lady," said the cabby, with a pleasant grin of knowledge. "There's a many it takes like that. It ain't nothing."

He paused for his payment, and then Cuckoo remembered that she had no money. The thought did not worry her; it seemed too far off.

"I ain't got no money," she said.

Cabby's jaw dropped.

"Wait a second," she said. "Go out, I'll get some."

The man withdrew doubtfully, then Cuckoo robbed Julian. She, who had never yet taken money from him, stole the price of his fare to her protection. Then she let the cabman out, locked the street door, and returned. She sat down by Julian, who still appeared to sleep. And now suddenly she felt that she was starving. She looked round the room; there was nothing upon the table. Mrs. Brigg, an hour after her "Te Deum," had been seized in the claws of reaction, and had repented of her generosity.

Suspicions and doubts obscured the previous rapture of her mind. She bethought herself that Cuckoo might chance to return alone, still penniless; she remembered the rent still owing. Her impulse to kill fatted calves suddenly struck her as the act of a mad woman. As locusts clear a smiling country of all that nourishes, she swept the table of Cuckoo clear, impounding to her larder with trembling, eager hands the food that might never have been paid for. Thereupon she went to bed, nodding her old head, and muttering to herself with pursed lips.

So the eyes of Cuckoo looked in vain for something to stay the bodily misery that stole upon her as she watched by Julian. Starvation stripped away all the mists from her soul and left it naked with the burdened soul it loved. Despite her increasing pain of body, Cuckoo was conscious gradually of a light and airy delicacy of sensation that was touched with something magical. This awful hunger made her feel strangely pure, as if her deeds, which for years had clung round her like a brood of filthy vampires, were falling away from her one by one. They dropped down into the night; she was mounting into freedom. And, despite faint agonies which at moments threatened to overwhelm her, she had never felt so happy. Instinct led her to get away from the consciousness of her body by leaning utterly upon her mind. She sat down by Julian, bent over him, absorbed herself in him. One of his hands she took gently in her own.

The little act baptized him hers in her mind, and she was aware of a great rush of happiness never known before. For she had him there in her nest, she alone. And she loved him. Even in his drunken sleep, even in his ma.s.sacred condition of ugliness and hatefulness, he was so beautiful to her that she could have wept from thankfulness. The world had taken from her everything, the very little that she had ever possessed, the purity that every creature has once, the innocence that she had never understood, left her this tipsy, degraded, abandoned, tragic atom of evil. And a great glory was hers. She could have fallen upon her knees in blessing and thankfulness, forgetful of all her tribe of sorrows, conscious only that she was a woman crowned and throned. By degrees she forgot that she was starving, forgot everything in an ecstasy of pure pa.s.sion and pride, an ecstasy that brought food, rest, calm, to her.

In the dawn Julian stirred and murmured incoherent words. Cuckoo bent down to hear them. But he slept again. And as the dawn grew, the light and airy feeling within her grew with it, till she seemed to be floating in the air and among soft, billowing clouds. At first there was light through them, light of the sun, strong and beautiful. But then it faded.

And darkness came, and strange sounds like far-off voices, and a murmur as of waters deepening in volume and rushing upon her. They reached her.

She put out her hands and thought she cried out.

The waters swept her away.

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo! What is it? Cuckoo!"

"She's a-comin'--she's a-comin' to."

"Give me some more water, then."

Cuckoo felt it very cold upon her face, and fancied at first that it was those rushing waters of her dream. But the darkness parted, showing her two faces close together, one old and withered and yellow, one young, but white and lined. At first she looked at them without recognition. Again she felt the cold drops of water dashing against her cheeks and lips, and then she knew Mrs. Brigg and Julian, and she saw her little room, and that it was morning and light. They helped her to sit up. She glanced wearily towards the table.

"What is it, Cuckoo?" Julian said.

"Food; I'm starving," she whispered, faintly.

Horror was written on his face.

"Starving! What the devil does she mean?"

He turned on Mrs. Brigg, who suddenly shrunk away muttering:

"I'll get something; breakfast--I'll get it."

Julian looked dazed. He was only recovering gradually from his drunken stupor.

"Starving--starving," he repeated, vacantly staring at Cuckoo, who said nothing more, only lay back, trying to understand things, and to emerge from the mists and noises in which she still seemed to be floating.

Presently Mrs. Brigg returned and shuffled about the table with a furtive, contorted face, laying breakfast. The teapot smoked.

"Come along, my dearie," began the old creature.

But Julian thrust her out of the room. He brought Cuckoo tea and food, fed her, put the cup to her lips. At first she had scarcely the strength to swallow, but presently she began to revive, and then ate and drank so ravenously that Julian, even in his vague condition, was appalled.

"Good G.o.d, it's true!" he said. "Cuckoo starving!"

He sat by her turning this piercing matter over in his mind. Its strangeness helped to sober him.

"You eat too," she said.

He shook his head.

"Yes, yes," she insisted feverishly.

To pacify her he made a sort of attempt at breakfast, and felt the better for it. Together they progressed slowly towards the normal. At last the meal was over. Cuckoo lay back, feeling wonderfully better and calm and happy. But Julian's eyes were searching hers insistently.

"What have you been doing?" he said. "You've got to tell me. Starving!

What's the meaning of it?"

His voice sounded almost angry and threatening.

"I ain't got any money," she said.

"Why?"