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Title: Flames

Author: Robert Smythe Hichens

Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #14253]

Language: English

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                                FLAMES

                           BY ROBERT HICHENS

                  AUTHOR OF THE GARDEN OF ALLAH, ETC.




COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY HERBERT S. STONE & CO.

This edition published July, 1906, by Duffield & Company




BOOK I--VALENTINE




CHAPTER I

THE SAINT OF VICTORIA STREET


Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than
religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held
him back without effort from most of the young man's sins. Each age
has its special sins. Each age passes them, like troops in review, before
it decides what regiment it will join. Valentine had never decided to
join any regiment. The trumpets of vice rang in his ears in vain, mingled
with the more classical music of his life as the retreat from the
barracks of Seville mingled with the click of Carmen's castanets. But he
heeded them not. If he listened to them sometimes, it was only to wonder
at the harsh and blatant nature of their voices, only to pity the poor
creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old
age protection, at their shrieking summons. He preferred to be master of
his soul, and had no desire to set it drilling at the command of painted
women, or to drown it in wine, or to suffocate it in the smoke at
which the voluptuary tries to warm his hands, mistaking it for fire.
Intellectuality is to some men what religion is to many women, a trellis
of roses that bars out the larger world. Valentine loved to watch the
roses bud and bloom as he sat in his flower-walled cell, a deliberate and
rejoicing prisoner. For a long time he loved to watch them. And he
thought that it must always be so, for he was not greatly given to moods,
and therefore scarcely appreciated the thrilling meaning of the word
change, that is the key-word of so many a life cipher. He loved the
pleasures of the intellect so much that he made the mistake of opposing
them, as enemies, to the pleasures of the body. The reverse mistake is
made by the generality of men; and those who deem it wise to mingle the
sharply contrasted ingredients that form a good recipe for happiness
are often dubbed incomprehensible, or worse. But there were moments at
a period of Valentine's life when he felt discontented at his strange
inability to long for sin; when he wondered, rather wearily, why he was
rapt from the follies that other men enjoyed; why he could refuse,
without effort, the things that they clamoured after year by year with
an unceasing gluttony of appetite. The saint quarrelled mutely with his
holiness of intellectuality, and argued, almost fiercely, with his cold
and delicate purity.

"Why am I like some ivory statue?" he thought sometimes, "instead of like
a human being, with drumming pulses, and dancing longings, and voices
calling forever in my ears, like voices of sirens, 'Come, come, rest in
our arms, sleep on our bosoms, for we are they who have given joy to all
men from the beginning of time. We are they who have drawn good men from
their sad goodness, and they have blessed us. We are they who have been
the allegory of the sage and the story of the world. In our soft arms the
world has learned the glory of embracing. On our melodious hearts the
hearts of men have learned the sweet religion of singing.' Why cannot
I be as other men are, instead of the Saint--the saint of Victoria
Street--that I am?"

For, absurdly enough, that was the name his world gave to Valentine.
This is not an age of romance, and he did not dwell, like the saints of
old centuries, in the clear solitudes of the great desert, but in what
the advertisement writer calls a "commodious flat" in Victoria Street.
No little jackals thronged about him in sinful circle by night. No school
of picturesque disciples surrounded him by day. If he peeped above his
blinds he could see the radiant procession of omnibuses on their halting
way towards Westminster. The melodies of wandering organs sang in his
ascetic ears, not once, nor twice, but many times a week. The milk-boy
came, it must be presumed, to pay his visit in the morning; and the
sparrows made the air alive, poising above the chimneys, instead of the
wild eagles, whose home is near the sun. Valentine was a modern young
man of twenty-four, dealt at the Army and Navy Stores, was extremely
well off, and knew everybody. He belonged to the best clubs and went
occasionally to the best parties. His tailor had a habitation in
Sackville Street, and his gloves came from the Burlington Arcade. He
often lunched at the Berkeley and frequently dined at Willis's. Also
he had laughed at the antics of Arthur Roberts, and gazed through a pair
of gold-mounted opera-glasses at Empire ballets and at the discreet
juggleries of Paul Cinquevalli. The romance of cloistered saintliness
was not his. If it had been he might never have rebelled. For how often
it is romance which makes a home for religion in the heart of man,
romance which feathers the nest of purity in which the hermit soul
delights to dwell! Is it not that bizarre silence of the Algerian waste
which leads many a Trappist to his fate, rather than the strange thought
of God calling his soul to heavenly dreams and ecstatic renunciations? Is
it not the wild poetry of the sleeping snows by night that gives to the
St. Bernard monk his holiest meditations? When the organ murmurs, and he
kneels in that remote chapel of the clouds to pray, is it not the
religion of his wonderful earthly situation and prospect that speaks to
him loudly, rather than the religion of the far-off Power whose hands he
believes to hold the threads of his destinies? Even the tonsure is a
psalm to some, and the robe and cowl a litany. The knotted cord is a mass
and the sandal a prayer.

But Valentine had been a saint by temperament, it seemed, and would be a
saint by temperament to the end. He had not been scourged to a prayerful
attitude by sorrow or by pain. Tears had not made a sea to float him to
repentance or to purity. Apparently he had been given what men call
goodness as others are given moustaches or a cheerful temper. When his
contemporaries wondered at him, he often found himself wondering still
more at them. Why did they love coarse sins? he thought. Why did they
fling themselves down, like dogs, to roll in offal? He could not
understand, and for a long time he did not wish to understand. But one
night the wish came to him, and he expressed it to his bosom friend,
Julian Addison.




CHAPTER II

A QUESTION OF EXCHANGE


Most of us need an opposite to sit by the hearth with us sometimes, and
to stir us to wonder or to war. Julian was Valentine's singularly
complete and perfect opposite, in nature if not in deeds. But, after all,
it is the thoughts that are of account rather than the acts, to a mind
like Valentine's. He knew that Julian's nature was totally unlike his
own, so singularly unlike that Julian struck just the right note to
give the strength of a discord to the chord--that often seemed a common
chord--of his own harmony. Long ago, for this reason, or for no special
reason, he had grown to love Julian. Theirs was a fine, clean specimen
of friendship. How fine, Valentine never rightly knew until this evening.

They were sitting together in Valentine's flat in that hour when he
became serious and expansive. He had rather a habit of becoming serious
toward midnight, especially if he was with only one person; and no desire
to please interfered with his natural play of mind and of feeling when he
was with Julian. To affect any feeling with Julian would have seemed like
being on conventional terms with an element, or endeavouring to deceive
one's valet about one's personal habits. Long ago Julian and he had, in
mind, taken up their residence together, fallen into the pleasant custom
of breakfasting, lunching, and dining on all topics in common. Valentine
knew of no barriers between them. And so, now, as they sat smoking, he
expressed his mood without fear or hesitation.

The room in which they were was small. It was named the tentroom, being
hung with dull-green draperies, which hid the ceiling and fell loosely to
the floor on every side. A heavy curtain shrouded the one door. On the
hearth flickered a fire, before which lay Valentine's fox-terrier, Rip.
Julian was half lying down on a divan in an unbuttoned attitude.
Valentine leaned forward in an arm-chair. They were smoking cigarettes.

"Julian," Valentine said, meditatively, "I sometimes wonder why you and
I are such great friends."

"How abominable of you! To seek a reason for friendship is as inhuman as
to probe for the causes of love. Don't, for goodness' sake, let your
intellect triumph over your humanity, Valentine. Of all modern vices,
that seems to me the most loathsome. But you could never fall into
anything loathsome. You are sheeted against that danger with plate
armour."

"Nonsense!"

"But you are. It sometimes seems to me that you and I are like Elijah and
Elisha, in a way. But I am covetous of your mantle."

"Then you want me to be caught from you into heaven?"

"No. I should like you to give me your mantle, your powers, your nature,
that is, and to stay here as well."

"And send the chariot of fire to the coach-house, and the horses of fire
to the nearest stables?"

"Exactly!"

"Well, but give me a reason for this rascally craving."

"A reason! Oh, I hate my nature and I love yours. What a curse it is to
go through life eternally haunted by one's self; worse than being married
to an ugly and boring wife."

"Now you are being morbid."

"Well, I'm telling you just how I feel."

"That is being morbid. Recording to some people who claim to direct
Society."

"The world's County Council, who would like to abolish all the public
bars."

"And force us to do our drinking in the privacy of our bedrooms."

"You would never do any drinking, Valentine. How could you, the Saint of
Victoria Street?"

"I begin to hate that nickname."

And he frowned slowly. Tall, fair, curiously innocent-looking, his
face was the face of a blonde ascetic. His blue eyes were certainly not
cold, but nobody could imagine that they would ever gleam with passion or
with desire as they looked upon sin. His mouth seemed made for prayer,
not for kisses; and so women often longed to kiss it. Over him, indeed,
intellectuality hung like a light veil, setting him apart from the uproar
which the world raises while it breaks the ten commandments. Julian, on
the other hand, was brown, with bright, eager eyes, and the expression of
one who was above all things intensely human. Valentine had ever been,
and still remained, to him a perpetual wonder, a sort of beautiful
mystery. He actually reverenced this youth who stood apart from all the
muddy ways of sin, too refined, as it seemed, rather than too religious,
to be attracted by any wile of the devil's, too completely artistic to
feel any impulse towards the subtle violence which lurks in all the
vagaries of the body. Valentine was to Julian a god, but in their mutual
relations this fact never became apparent. On the contrary, Valentine
was apt to look up to Julian with admiration, and the curious respect
often felt by those who are good by temperament for those who are
completely human. And Julian loved Valentine for looking up to him,
finding in this absurd modesty of his friend a crowning beauty of
character. He had never told Valentine the fact that Valentine kept
him pure, held his bounding nature in leash, was the wall of fire that
hedged him from sin, the armour that protected him against the assaults
of self. He had never told Valentine this secret, which he cherished
with the exceeding and watchful care men so often display in hiding
that which does them credit. For who is not a pocket Byron nowadays?
But to-night was fated by the Immortals to be a night of self-revelation.
And Valentine led the way by taking a step that surprised Julian not a
little. For as Valentine frowned he said:

"Yes, I begin to hate my nickname, and I begin to hate myself."

Julian could not help smiling at the absurdity of this bemoaning.

"What is it in yourself that you hate so much?" he asked, with a decided
curiosity.

Valentine sat considering.

"Well," he replied at length, "I think it is my inhumanity, which robs me
of many things. I don't desire the pleasures that most men desire, as you
know. But lately I have often wished to desire them."

"Rather an elaborate state of mind."

"Yet a state easy to understand, surely. Julian, emotions pass me by. Why
is that? Deep love, deep hate, despair, desire, won't stop to speak to
me. Men tell me I am a marvel because I never do as they do. But I am not
driven as they are evidently driven. The fact of the matter is that
desire is not in me. My nature shrinks from sin; but it is not virtue
that shrinks: it is rather reserve. I have no more temptation to be
sensual, for instance, than I have to be vulgar."

"Hang it, Val, you don't want to have the temptation, do you?"

Valentine looked at Julian curiously.

"You have the temptation, Julian?" he said.

"You know I have--horribly."

"But you fight it and conquer it?"

"I fight it, and now I am beginning to conquer it, to get it under."

"Now? Since when?"

Julian replied by asking another question.

"Look here, how long have we known each other?"

"Let me see. I'm twenty-four, you twenty-three. Just five years."

"Ah! For just five years I've fought, Val, been able to fight."

"And before then?"

"I didn't fight; I revelled in the enemy's camp."

"You have never told me this before. Did you suddenly get conversion, as
Salvationists say?"

"Something like it. But my conversion had nothing to do with trumpets and
tambourines."

"What then? This is interesting."

A certain confusion had come into Julian's expression, even a certain
echoing awkwardness into his attitude. He looked away into the fire and
lighted another cigarette before he answered. Then he said rather
unevenly:

"I dare say you'll be surprised when I tell you. But I never meant to
tell you at all."

"Don't, if you would rather not."

"Yes, I think I will. I must stop you from disliking yourself at any
cost, dear old boy. Well, you converted me, so far as I am converted;
and that's not very far, I'm afraid."

"I?" said Valentine, with genuine surprise. "Why, I never tried to."

"Exactly. If you had, no doubt you'd have failed."

"But explain."

"I've never told you all you do for me, Val. You are my armour against
all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate the notion of being a
sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In fact, I loved it. I wanted
sin more than I wanted anything in heaven or earth. And then--just at the
critical moment when I was passing from boyhood into manhood, I met you."

He stopped. His brown cheeks were glowing, and he avoided Valentine's
gaze.

"Go on, Julian," Valentine said. "I want to hear this."

"All right, I'll finish now, but I don't know why I ever began. Perhaps
you'll think me a fool, or a sentimentalist."

"Nonsense!"

"Well, I don't know how it is, but when I saw you I first understood
that there is a good deal in what the parsons say, that sin is beastly
in itself, don't you know, even apart from one's religious convictions,
or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I understood that
sin degrades one's self, Valentine. For you had never sinned as I had,
and you were so different from me. You are the only sinless man I know,
and you have made me know what beasts we men are. Why can't we be what
we might be?"

Valentine did not reply. He seemed lost in thought, and Julian continued,
throwing off his original shamefacedness:

"Ever since then you've kept me straight. If I feel inclined to throw
myself down in the gutter, one look at you makes me loathe the notion.
Preaching often drives one wrong out of sheer 'cussedness,' I suppose.
But you don't preach and don't care. You just live beautifully, because
you're made differently from all of us. So you do for me what no
preachers could ever do. There--now you know."

He lay back, puffing violently at his cigarette.

"It is strange," Valentine said, seeing he had finished. "You know, to
live as I do is no effort to me, and so it is absurd to praise me."

"I won't praise you, but it's outrageous of you to want to feel as I and
other men feel."

"Is it? I don't think so. I think it is very natural. My life is a dead
calm, and a dead calm is monotonous."

"It's better than an everlasting storm."

"I wonder!" Valentine said. "How curious that I should protect you.
I am glad it is so. And yet, Julian, in spite of what you say, I would
give a great deal to change souls with you, if only for a day or two.
You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation.
Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they
be like? I can hardly imagine. There have been ascetics who have wept,
and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their
bodies to distract their thoughts from vice. To me they seem as madmen.
You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her
life of shame. He placed her in a convent and went into the desert. But
her image haunted him, maddened him. He slunk back to the convent, and
found her dying in the arms of God. And he tried to drag her away, that
she might sin only once again with him, with him, her saviour. But she
died, giving herself to God, and he went out cursing and blaspheming.
This is only a dramatic fable to me. And yet I suppose it is a
possibility."

"Of course. Val, I could imagine myself doing as that monk did, but for
you. Only that I could never have been a monk at all."

"I am glad if I help you to any happiness, Julian. But--but--oh! to feel
temptation!"

"Oh, not to feel it! By Jove, I long to have done with the infernal thing
that's always ready to bother me. Fighting it is no fun, Val, I can tell
you. If you would like to have my soul for a day or two, I should love to
have yours in exchange."

Valentine smoked in silence for two or three minutes. His pure, pale,
beautiful face was rather wistful as he gazed at the fire.

"Why can't these affairs be managed?" he sighed out at length.

"Why can't we do just the one thing more? We can kill a man's body. We
can kill a woman's purity. And here you and I sit, the closest friends,
and neither of us can have the same experiences, as the other, even for
a moment. Why isn't it possible?"

"Perhaps it is."

"Why? How do you mean?"

"Well, of course I'm rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But
I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting.
He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I met him at Lady
Crichton's."

"Who is he?"

"Haven't an idea. I never saw or heard of him before. We talked a good
deal at dessert. He came over from the other side of the table to sit by
me, and somehow, in five minutes, we'd got into spiritualism and all that
sort of thing. He is evidently a believer in it, calls himself an
occultist."

"But do you mean to tell me he said souls could be exchanged at will?
Come, Julian?"

"I won't say that. But he set no limit at all to what can be done. He
declares that if people seriously set themselves to develop the latent
powers that lie hidden within them, they can do almost anything. Only
they must be en rapport. Each must respond closely, definitely, to the
other. Now, you and I are as much in sympathy with one another as any
two men in London, I suppose."

"Surely!"

"Then half the battle's won--according to Marr."

"You are joking."

"He wasn't. He would declare that, with time and perseverance, we could
accomplish an exchange of souls."

Valentine laughed.

"Well, but how?"

Julian laughed too.

"Oh, it seems absurd--but he'd tell us to sit together."

"Well, we are sitting together now."

"No; at a table, I mean."

"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for
children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of
ourselves."

"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr--and he's really a very
smart, clever chap, Val--denies it. He swears it is possible for two
people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which
lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even
see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your
eyes, and pass in procession like living things."

"He must be mad."

"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very
lucidly, very ingeniously."

Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his foot.

"You have never sat, have you?" he asked.

"Never."

"Nor I. I have always thought it an idiotic and very dull way of wasting
one's time. Now, what on earth can a table have to do with one's soul?"

"I don't know. What is one's soul?"

"One's essence, I suppose; the inner light that spreads its rays outward
in actions, and that is extinguished, or expelled, at the hour of death."

"Expelled, I think."

"I think so too. That which is so full of strange power cannot surely die
so soon. Even my soul, so frigid, so passionless, has, you say, held you
back from sins like a leash of steel, And I did not even try to forge the
steel. If we could exchange souls, would yours hold me back in the same
way?"

"No doubt."

"I wonder," Valentine said thoughtfully. After a moment he added, "shall
we make this absurd experiment of sitting, just for a phantasy?"

"Why not? It would be rather fun."

"It might be. We will just do it once to see whether you can get some of
my feelings, and I some of yours."

"That's it. But you could never get mine. I know you too well, Val.
You're my rock of defence. You've kept me straight because you're so
straight yourself; and, with that face, you'll never alter. If anything
should happen, it will be that you'll drag me up to where you are. I
shan't drag you down to my level, you old saint!"

And he laid his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder.

Valentine smiled.

"Your level is not low," he said.

"No, perhaps; but, by Jove, it could be, though. If you hadn't been
chucked into the world, I often think the devil must have had me
altogether. You keep him off. How he must hate you, Val. Hulloh!
What's that?"

"What?"

"Who's that laughing outside? Has Wade got a friend in to-night?"

"Not that I know of. I didn't hear anything."

Valentine touched the electric bell, and his man appeared.

"Any one in with you to-night, Wade?" he asked.

The man looked surprised.

"No, sir; certainly not, sir."

"Oh! Don't sit up; we may be late to-night. And we don't want anything
more, except--yes, bring another couple of sodas."

"Yes, sir."

He brought them and vanished. A moment later they heard the front door
of the flat close. The butler was married and slept out of the house.
Valentine had no servant sleeping in the flat. He preferred to be alone
at night.




CHAPTER III

EPISODE OF THE FIRST SITTING


"Now, then," said Valentine, "let us be absurd and try this sitting.
Shall we clear this little table?"

"Yes. It's just the right size. It might do for three people, but
certainly not for more."

"There! Now, then."

And, as the clock struck twelve, Valentine turned off the electric
light, and they sat down with their hands upon the table. The room was
only very dimly illuminated by the fire on the hearth, where Rip slept
on, indifferent to their proceedings.

"I suppose nothing could go wrong," Julian said, after a moment of
silence.

"Wrong!"

"Yes. I don't know exactly what Marr meant, but he said that if
unsuitable people sit together any amount of harm can result from it."

"What sort of harm?"

"I don't know."

"H'm! I expect that is all nonsense, like the rest of his remarks.
Anyhow, Julian, no two people could ever hit it off better than you
and I do. Wait a second."

He jumped up and drew the curtain over the door. Wade had pulled it back
when he came in.

"I must have that curtain altered," Valentine said. "It is so badly
hung that whenever the door is opened, it falls half way back, and
looks hideous. That is better."

He sat down again.

"We won't talk," he said.

"No. We'll give the--whatever it is every chance."

They were silent.

Presently--it might have been a quarter of an hour--Julian said suddenly:

"Do you feel anything?"

"'M--no," Valentine answered, rather doubtfully.

"Sure?"

"I think so."

"You can't merely think you are sure, old chap."

"Well, then--yes, I'll say I am sure."

"Right," rejoined Julian.

Again there was a silence, broken this time by Valentine.

"Why did you ask me?" he said.

"Oh! no special reason. I just wanted to know."

"Then you didn't?"

"Didn't what?"

"Feel anything?"

"No; nothing particular."

"Well, what do you mean by that?"

"What I say. I can't be sure it was anything."

"That's vague."

"So was my--I can't even call it exactly sensation. It was so very
slight. In fact, I'm as good as sure I felt nothing at all. It was a mere
fancy. Nothing more."

And then again they were silent. The fire gradually died down until the
room grew quite dark. Presently Valentine said:

"Hulloh! here is Rip up against my foot. He is cold without the fire,
poor little beggar."

"Shall we stop?" asked Julian.

"Yes; I vote we do--for to-night."

Valentine struck a match, felt for the knob of the electric light, and
turned it on. Julian and he looked at each other, blinking.

"Think there's anything in it?" asked Julian.

"I don't know," said Valentine. "I suppose not. Rip! Rip! He is cold. Did
you ever see a dog shiver like that?"

He picked the little creature up in his arms. It nestled against his
shoulder with a deep sigh.

"Well, we have made a beginning," he said, turning to pour out a drink.
"It is rather interesting."

Julian was lighting a cigarette.

"Yes; it is--very." he answered.

Valentine gave him a brandy and soda; then, as if struck by a sudden
thought, asked:

"You really didn't feel anything?"

"No."

"Nor I. But then, Julian, why do we find it interesting?"

Julian looked puzzled.

"Hang it! I don't know," he answered, after an instant of reflection.
"Why do we? I wonder."

"That is what I am wondering."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

"But I don't come to any conclusion," he presently added, meditatively.
"We sit in the dark for an hour and a quarter, with our hands solemnly
spread out upon a table; we don't talk; the table doesn't move; we hear
no sound; we see nothing; we feel nothing that we have not felt before.
And yet we find the function interesting. This problem of sensation is
simply insoluble. I cannot work it out."

"It is awfully puzzling," said Julian. "I suppose our nerves must have
been subtly excited because the thing was an absolute novelty."

"Possibly. But, if so, we are a couple of children, mere schoolboys."

"That's rather refreshing, however undignified. If we sit long enough,
we may even recover our long-lost babyhood."

And so they laughed the matter easily away. Soon afterwards, however,
Julian got up to go home to his chambers. Valentine went towards the
door, intending to open it and get his friend's coat. Suddenly he
stopped.

"Strange!" he exclaimed.

"What's the row?"

"Look at the door, Julian."

"Well?"

"Don't you see?"

"What?"

"The curtain is half drawn back again."

Julian gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"So it is!"

"It always does that when the door is opened."

"And only then, of course?"

"Of course."

"But the door hasn't been opened."

"I know."

They regarded each other almost uneasily. Then Valentine added, with a
short laugh:

"I can't have drawn it thoroughly over the door when Wade went away."

"I suppose not. Well, good-night, Val."

"Good-night. Shall we sit again tomorrow?"

"Yes; I vote we do."

Valentine let his friend out. As he shut the front door, he said to
himself:

"I am positive I did draw the curtain thoroughly."

He went back into the tentroom and glanced again at the curtain.

"Yes; I am positive."

After an instant of puzzled wonder, he seemed to put the matter
deliberately from him.

"Come along, Rip," he said. "Why, you are cold and miserable to-night!
Must I carry you then?"

He picked the dog up, turned out the light, and walked slowly into his
bedroom.




CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND SITTING


On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in
his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the
only window of the tentroom opened upon some waste ground where once
a panorama of Jerusalem, or some notorious city, stood, and where
building operations were now being generally carried on. Valentine
very seldom used his drawing-room. Sometimes pretty women came to tea
with him, and he did them honour there. Sometimes musicians came. Then
there was always a silent group gathered round the Steinway grand piano.
For Valentine was inordinately fond of music, and played so admirably
that even professionals never hurled at him a jeering "amateur!" But
when Valentine was alone, or when he expected one or two men to smoke,
he invariably sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the
shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and
seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude.
To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his
usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete
silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when
the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and sound
of one kind or another is as ardently sought as at other times it is
avoided. In this room Valentine could hear the vague traffic of the dim
street outside, the dull tumult of an omnibus, the furtive, flashing
clamour of a hansom, the cry of an occasional newsboy, explanatory of
the crimes and tragedies of the passing hour. Or perhaps the eyes of
Valentine were, for the moment, weary of the monotonous green walls of
his sanctum, leaning tent-wise towards the peaked apex of the ceiling,
and longed to rest on the many beautiful pictures that hung in one line
around his drawing-room. It seemed so, for now, as he sat in a chair
before the fire, holding Rip upon his knee, his blue eyes were fixed
meditatively upon a picture called "The Merciful Knight," which faced
him over the mantelpiece. This was the only picture containing a figure
of the Christ which Valentine possessed. He had no holy children, no
Madonnas. But he loved this Christ, this exquisitely imagined dead,
drooping figure, which, roused into life by an act of noble renunciation,
bent down and kissed the armed hero who had been great enough to forgive
his enemy. He loved those weary, tender lips, those faded limbs, the
sacred tenuity of the ascetic figure, the wonderful posture of benign
familiarity that was more majestic than any reserve. Yes, Valentine loved
this Christ, and Julian knew it well. Often, late at night, Julian had
leaned back lazily listening while Valentine played, improvising in a
light so dim as to be near to darkness. And Julian had noticed that the
player's eyes perpetually sought this picture, and rested on it, while
his soul, through the touch of the fingers, called to the soul of music
that slept in the piano, stirred it from sleep, carried it through
strange and flashing scenes, taught it to strive and to agonize, then
hushed it again to sleep and peace. And as Julian looked from the picture
to the player, who seemed drawing inspiration from it, he often mutely
compared the imagined beauty of the soul of the Christ with the known
beauty of the soul of his friend. And the two lovelinesses seemed to
meet, and to mingle as easily as two streams one with the other. Yet the
beauty of the Christ soul sprang from a strange parentage, was a sublime
inheritance, had been tried in the fiercest fires of pity and of pain.
The beauty of Valentine's soul seemed curiously innate, and mingled with
a dazzling snow of almost inhuman purity. His was not a great soul that
had striven successfully, and must always strive. His was a soul that
easily triumphed, that was almost coldly perfect without effort, that
had surely never longed even for a moment to fall, had never desired
and refused the shadowy pleasures of passion. The wonderful purity of
his friend's face continually struck Julian anew. It suggested to him
the ivory peak of an Alp, the luminous pallor of a pearl. What other
young man in London looked like that? Valentine was indeed an unique
figure in the modern London world. Had he strayed into it from the
fragrant pages of a missal, or condescended to it from the beatific
vistas of some far-off Paradise? Julian had often wondered, as he looked
into the clear, calm eyes of the friend who had been for so long the
vigilant, yet unconscious guardian of his soul.

To-night, as Valentine sat looking at the Christ, a curious wonder at
himself came into his mind. He was musing on the confession of Julian, so
long withheld, so shyly made at last. This confession caused him, for the
first time, to look self-consciously upon himself, to stand away from his
nature, as the artist stands away from the picture he is painting, and to
examine it with a sideways head, with a peering, contracted gaze. This
thing that protected a soul from sin--what was it like? What was it? He
could not easily surmise. He had a clear vision of the Christ soul, of
the exquisite essence of a divine individuality that prompted life to
spring out of death for one perfect moment that it might miraculously
reward a great human act of humanity. Yes, that soul floated before him
almost visibly. He could call it up before his mind as a man can call up
the vision of a supremely beautiful rose he has admired. And there was a
scent from the Christ soul as ineffably delicious as the scent of the
rose. But when Valentine tried to see his own soul, he could not see it.
He could not comprehend how its aspect affected others, even quite how it
affected Julian. Only he could comprehend, as he looked at the Christ,
its imperfection, and a longing, not felt before, came to him to be
better than he was. This new aspiration was given to him by Julian's
confession. He knew that well. He protected his friend now without
effort. Could he not protect him more certainly with effort? Can a soul
be beautiful that never strives consciously after beauty? A child's
nature is beautiful in its innocence because it has never striven to be
innocent. But is not an innocent woman more wonderful, more beautiful,
than an innocent child? Valentine felt within him that night a distinct
aspiration, and he vaguely connected it with the drooping Christ, who
touched with wan, rewarding lips the ardent face of the merciful knight.
And he no longer had the desire to know desire of sin. He no longer
sought to understand the power of temptation or the joy of yielding to
that power. A subtle change swept over him. Whether it was permanent, or
only passing, he could not tell.

A tingling cry from the electric bell in the passage told of Julian's
arrival, and in a moment he entered. He looked gay, almost rowdy, and
clapped Valentine on the shoulder rather boisterously.

"Why on earth are you in here?" he exclaimed. "Have you been playing?"

"No."

"Are you in an exalted state of mind, that demands the best parlour for
its environment?"

"Hardly."

"But why then have you let out the fire in the den and enthroned yourself
here?"

"A whim, Julian. I felt a strong inclination to sit in this room
to-night. It seems to me a less nervous room than the other, and I
want to be as cold-blooded as possible."

"O, I see! But, my dear fellow, what is there nervous about the tent?
Do you imagine ghosts lurking in the hangings, or phantoms of dead Arabs
clinging, like bats, round that rosette in the roof? You got it up the
Nile, didn't you?"

"Yes. Where have you been?"

"Dining out. And, oddly enough, I met Marr again, the man I told you
about. It seems he is in universal request just now."

"On account of his mystery-mongering, I suppose."

"Probably."

"Did you tell him anything about our sitting?"

"Only that we had sat, and that nothing had happened."

"What did he say?"

"He said, 'Pooh, pooh! these processes are, and always must be, gradual.
Another time there may be some manifestation.'"

"Manifestation! Did you ask him of what nature the manifestation was
likely to be? These people are so vague in the terms they employ."

"Yes, I asked him; but I couldn't get much out of him. I must tell you,
Val, that he seemed curiously doubtful about my statement that nothing
had happened. I can't think why. He said, 'Are you quite sure?'"

"Of course you answered Yes?"

"Of course."

Valentine looked at him for a moment and then said:

"You didn't mention the--the curtain by any chance?"

"No. You thought you had left it only partially drawn, didn't you?"

Valentine made no reply. His face was rather grave. Julian did not
repeat the question. He felt instinctively that Valentine did not
wish to be obliged to answer it. Oddly enough, during the short silence
which followed, he was conscious of a slight constraint such as he had
certainly never felt with Valentine before. His gaiety seemed dropping
from him in this quiet room to which he was so often a visitor. The
rowdy expression faded out of his face and he found himself glancing
half furtively at his friend.

"Valentine," he presently said, "shall we really sit to-night?"

"Yes, surely. You meant to when you came here, didn't you?"

"I don't believe there is anything in it."

"We will find out. Remember that I want to get hold of your soul."

Julian laughed.

"If you ever do it will prove an old man of the sea to you," he said.

"I will risk that," Valentine answered.

And then he added:

"But, come, don't let us waste time. I will go and send away Wade.
Clear that little table by the piano."

Julian began removing the photographs and books which stood on it,
while Valentine went out of the room and told his man to go.

As soon as they heard the front door close upon him they sat down
opposite to each other as on the previous night.

They kept silence and sat for what seemed a very long time. At last
Julian said:

"Val!"

"Well?"

"Let us go back into the tentroom."

"Why?"

"Nothing will ever happen here."

"Why should anything happen there?"

"I don't know. Let us go. The fire is burning too brightly here. We ought
to have complete darkness."

"Very well, though I can't believe it will make the slightest
difference."

They got up and went into the tentroom, which looked rather cheerless
with its fireless grate.

"I know this will be better," Julian said. "We'll have the same table as
last night."

Valentine carefully drew the green curtain quite over the door and
called Julian's attention to the fact that he had done so. Then they
sat down again. Rip lay on the divan in his basket with a rug over him,
so that he might not disturb them by any movement in search of warmth
and of companionship.

The arrangements seemed careful and complete. They were absolutely
isolated from the rest of the world. They were in darkness and the
silence might almost be felt. As Julian said, they were safe from
trickery, and, as Valentine rejoined in his calm _voix d'or_, they
were therefore probably also safe from what Marr had mysteriously
called "manifestations."

Dead, dumb silence. Their four hands, not touching, lay loosely on
the oval table. Rip slept unutterably, shrouded head and body in his
cosy rug. So--till the last gleam of the fire faded. So--till another
twenty minutes had passed. The friends had not exchanged a word, had
scarcely made the slightest movement. Could a stranger have been
suddenly introduced into the black room, and have remained listening
attentively, he might easily have been deceived into the belief that,
but for himself, it was deserted. To both Valentine and Julian the
silence seemed progressive. With each gliding moment they could have
declared that it grew deeper, more dense, more prominent, even more
grotesque and living. There seemed to be a sort of pressure in it which
handled them more and more definitely. The sensation was interesting
and acute. Each gave himself to it, and each had a, perhaps deceptive,
consciousness of yielding up something, something impalpable, evanescent,
fluent. Valentine, more especially, felt as if he were pouring away from
himself, by this act of sitting, a vital liquid, and he thought with a
mental smile:

"Am I letting my soul out of its cage, here and now?"

"No doubt," his common sense replied; "no doubt this sensation is the
merest fancy."

He played with it in the darkness, and had no feeling of weariness.

Nearly an hour had passed in this morose way, when, with, it seemed,
appalling abruptness, Rip barked.

Although the bark was half stifled in rug, both Valentine and Julian
started perceptibly.

"'Sh!" Valentine hissed to the little dog. "'Sh! Rip! Quiet!"

The response of Rip was, with a violent scramble, to disentangle himself
from his covering, emerging from which he again barked with shrill and
piercing vehemence, at the same time leaping to the floor. By the sound,
which he could locate, Valentine felt certain that the dog had gone over
to the door.

"What on earth is he barking at?" Julian said in the darkness.

"I can't imagine. Hush, Rip! S-sh!"

"Val, turn on the light, quick! You're nearest to it."

Valentine stretched out his hand hastily, and in a flash the room sprang
into view. He was right. Rip was crouched--his front legs extended along
the floor, his hind legs standing almost straight--close to the door,
and facing it full. His head was down, and moving, darting this way and
that, as if he were worrying the feet of some person who was trying to
advance from the door into the centre of the room. All his teeth showed,
and his yellow eyes were glaring fiercely.

Julian, who had thrown a hasty and searching glance round the room when
the light was turned on, sprang forward and bent down to him.

"Rip! Rip!" he said. "Silly! What's the matter? Silly dog!" and he began
to stroke him.

Either this action of his, or something else not known by the young men,
had an effect on the terrier, for he suddenly ceased barking, and began
to snuffle eagerly, excitedly, at the bottom of the door.

"It's as if he were mad," said Julian, turning round. "Hulloh, Val! What
the devil's come to you?"

For he found Valentine standing up by the table with an expression of
deep astonishment on his face.

He pointed in silence to the door.

"By Jove! that curtain again!" said Julian, with an accent of amazement.
"I'm damned!"

The curtain was, in fact, drawn back from the door. Valentine struck a
match and put it to a candle. Then he opened the door. Rip immediately
darted out of the room and pattered excitedly down the passage, as if
searching for something, his sharp nose investigating the ground with a
vehement attention. The young men followed him. He ran to the front door,
then back into Valentine's bedroom; then, by turns, into the four other
apartments--bedroom, drawing-room, bathroom and kitchen--that formed the
suite. The doors of the two latter were opened by Valentine. Having
completed this useless progress, Rip once more resorted to the passage
and the front door, by which he paused, whimpering, in an uncertain,
almost a wistful attitude.

"Open it!" said Julian.

Valentine did so.

They looked out upon the broad and dreary stone steps, and waited,
listening. There was no sound. Rip still whimpered, rather feebly. His
excitement was evidently dying away. At last Valentine shut the door,
and they went back again to the tentroom, accompanied closely by the
dog, who gradually regained his calmness, and who presently jumped of
his own accord into his basket, and, after turning quickly round some
half-dozen times, composed himself once more to sleep.

"I wish, after all, we had stayed in the other room by the fire," Julian
said. "Give me some brandy."

Valentine poured some into a glass and Julian swallowed it at a gulp.

"We mustn't have Rip in the room another time," he added. "He spoilt the
whole thing."

"What whole thing?" Valentine asked, sinking down in a chair.

"Well, the sitting. Perhaps--perhaps one of Marr's mysterious
manifestations might have come off to-night."

Valentine did not reply at first. When he did, he startled Julian by
saying:

"Perhaps one of them did come off."

"Did?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"What was Rip barking at?"

"There's no accounting for what dogs will do. They often bark at
shadows."

"At shadows--yes, exactly. But what cast a shadow to-night?"

Julian laughed with some apparent uneasiness.

"Perhaps a coming event," he exclaimed.

Valentine looked at him rather gravely.

"That is exactly what I felt," he said.

"Explain. For I was only joking."

"I felt, perhaps it was only a fancy, that this second sitting of ours
brought some event a stage nearer, a stage nearer on its journey."

"To what?"

"I felt--to us."

"Fancy."

"Probably. You didn't feel it?"

"I? Oh, I scarcely know what I felt. I must say, though, that squatting
in the dark, and saying nothing for such an age, and--and all the rest of
it, doesn't exactly toughen one's nerves. That little demon of a Rip
quite gave me the horrors when he started barking. What fools we are! I
should think nothing of mounting a dangerous horse, or sailing a boat in
rough weather, or risking my life as we all do half our time in one way
or another. Yet a dog and a dark room give me the shudders. Funny, Val,
isn't it?"

Valentine answered, "If it is a dog and a dark room."

"What else can it possibly be?" Julian said with an accent of rather
unreasonable annoyance.

"I don't know. But I did draw the curtain completely over the door
to-night. Julian, I am getting interested in this. Perhaps--who
knows?--in the end I shall have your soul, you mine."

He laughed as he spoke; then added:

"No, no; I don't believe in such an exchange; and, Julian, I scarcely
desire it. But let us go on. This gives a slight new excitement to life."

"Yes. But it is selfish of you to wish to keep your soul to yourself.
I want it. Well, _au revoir_, Val; to-morrow night."

"_Au revoir_."

After Julian had gone Valentine went back into the drawing-room and stood
for a long while before the "Merciful Knight." He had a strange fancy
that the picture of the bending Christ protected the room from the
intrusion of--what?

He could not tell yet. Perhaps he could never tell.




CHAPTER V

THE THIRD SITTING


"Isn't it an extraordinary thing," Julian said, on the following evening,
"that if you meet a man once in London you keep knocking up against him
day after day? While, if--"

"You don't meet him, you don't."

"No. I mean that if you don't happen to be introduced to him, you
probably never set eyes on him at all."

"I know. But whom have you met to-day?"

"Marr again."

"That's odd. He is beginning to haunt you."

"I met him at my club. He has just been elected a member."

"Did he make any more inquiries into our sittings?"

"Rather. He talked of nothing else. He's an extraordinary fellow,
extraordinary."

"Why? What is he like?"

"In appearance? Oh, the sort of chap little pink women call Satanic;
white complexion showing blue where he shaves, big dark eyes rather
sunken, black hair, tall, very thin and quiet. Very well dressed. He
is that uncanny kind of a man who has a silent manner and a noisy
expression. You know what I mean?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"I think he's very morbid. He never reads the evening papers."

"That proves it absolutely. Does he smoke?"

"Always. I found him in the smoking-room. He showed the most persistent
interest in our proceedings, Val. I couldn't get him to talk of anything
else, so at last I told him exactly what had happened."

"Did you tell him that we began to sit last night in a different room?"

"Yes. That was curious. Directly I said it he began making minute
inquiries as to what the room was like, how the furniture was placed,
even what pictures hung on the walls."

"The pictures!"

"Yes. I described them."

"All of them?"

"No, one or two; that favorite of yours, 'The Merciful Knight,' the
Turner, those girls of Solomon's with the man playing to them, and--yes,
I think those were all."

"Oh!"

"He said, 'You made a great mistake in changing your venue to that room,
a great mistake.' Then I explained how we moved back to the tentroom in
the middle of the sitting, and all about Rip."

"Did he make any remark?"

"One that struck me as very quaint, 'You are _en route_.'"

"Enigmatic again. He was playing the wizard."

"He spoke very gravely."

"Of course. Great gravity is part of the business."

"Afterwards he said, 'Turn that dog out next time.'"

"And that was all?"

"I think so."

Valentine sat musing. Presently he said:

"I should rather like to meet this Marr."

"Oh, I don't think--I fancy--"

"Well?"

"I'd as soon you didn't."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'd get on. You wouldn't like him."

"For what reason?"

"I don't know. I've a notion he's something exceptional in the way of a
blackguard. Perhaps I am wrong. I haven't an idea what sort of a
reputation he has. But he is black, Valentine, not at all your colour.
Oh! and, by the way, he doesn't want to meet you."

"How charming of him!"

"I had half suggested it, I don't know why, and he said, 'Thanks! Thanks!
Chance will bring us together later on if we ought to meet.' And now I
am glad he wasn't keen. Shall we begin? Put Rip into your bedroom, as he
advised. Besides, I can't stand his barking."

Valentine carried the little dog away. When he came back he shut the
tentroom door and was about to draw the curtain over it. But Julian
stopped him.

"No, don't," Julian said.

"Why not?"

"I would rather you didn't. I hate that curtain. If I were you I would
have it taken down altogether."

Valentine looked at him in surprise. He had uttered the words with an
energy almost violent. But even as Valentine looked Julian switched off
the electric light and the leaping darkness hid his face.

"Come now. Business! Business!" he cried.

And again they sat with their hands loosely on the table, not touching
each other.

Valentine felt that Julian was being less frank with him than usual.
Perhaps for this reason he was immediately conscious that they were
not so much in sympathy as on the two former occasions of their sittings.
Or there might have been some other reason which he could not identify.
It is certain that he gradually became acutely aware of a stifling sense
of constraint, which he believed to be greatly intensified by the
surrounding darkness and silence. He wondered if Julian was conscious
of it also, and at moments longed to ask. But something held him back,
that curious something which we all feel at times like a strong hand
laid upon us. He made up his mind that this discomfort of his soul,
unreasonably considerable though it was, must be due solely to Julian's
abrupt demeanour and obvious desire to check his curiosity about
the drawing of the curtain. But, as the moments ran by, his sense of
uneasiness assumed such fantastic proportions that he began to cast
about for some more definite, more concrete, cause. At one instant he
found it in the condition of his health. The day had been damp and
dreary, and he had suffered from neuralgia. Doubtless the pain had
acted upon his nervous system, and was accountable for his present and
perpetually increasing anxiety. A little later he was fain to dismiss
this supposition as untenable. His sense of constraint was changing into
a positive dread, and not at all of Julian, around whom he had believed
that his thoughts were in flight. Something, he knew not at all what,
interposed between him and Julian, and so definitely that Valentine felt
as if he could have fixed the exact moment in which the interposition
had taken place, as one can fix the exact moment in which a person enters
a room where one is sitting. And the interposition was one of great
horror,--entirely malignant, Valentine believed.

He had an impulse to spring up from the table, to turn on the light,
and to say, "Let us make an end of this jugglery!" Yet he sat still,
wondering why he did so. A curiosity walked in his mind, pacing about
till he could almost fancy he heard its footsteps. He sat, then, as one
awaiting an arrival, that has been heralded in some way, by a telegram,
a message, a carrier-pigeon flown in at an open window. But the herald,
too, was horrible. What then would follow it? What was coming? Valentine
felt that he began to understand Marr's queer remark, "You are _en
route_." At the first sitting he had felt a very vague suggestion of
immoderate possibilities, made possibilities by the apparently futile
position assumed at a table by himself and Julian. To-night the vague
seemed on march towards the definite. Fancy was surely moving towards
fact.

With his eyes wide open Valentine gazed in the direction of Julian,
sitting invisible opposite to him. He wondered how Julian was feeling,
what he was thinking. And then he remembered that strange saying of
Marr's, that thoughts could take form, materialize. What would he give
to witness that monstrous procession of embodied brain-actions trooping
from the mind of his friend! He imagined them small, spare, phantom-like
things, fringed with fire, as weapon against the darkness, silent-footed
as spirits, moving with a level impetus, as pale ghosts treading a sea,
onward to the vast world of clashing minds, to which we carelessly
cast out our thoughts as a man who shoots rubbish into a cart. The
vagrant fancies danced along with attenuated steps and tiny, whimsical
gestures of fairies, fluttering their flame-veined wings. The sad
thoughts moved slowly with drooped heads and monotonous hands, and
tears fell forever about their feet. The thoughts that were evil--and
Julian had acknowledged them many, though combatted--were endowed with
a strangely sinister gait, like the gait of those modern sinners who
express, ignorantly, in their motions the hidden deeds their tongues
decline to speak. The wayward thoughts had faces like women, who kiss
and frown within the limits of an hour. On the cheeks of the libertine
thoughts a rosy cloud of rouge shone softly, and their haggard eyes
were brightened by a cunning pigment. And the noble thoughts, grand
in gesture, godlike in bearing, did not pass them by, but spoke to them
serene words, and sought to bring them out from their degradation. And
there was no music in this imagined procession which Valentine longed
to see. All was silent as from the gulf of Julian's mind the inhabitants
stole furtively to do their mission. Yes, Valentine knew to-night that
he should feel no wonder if thought took form, if a disembodied voice
spoke, or a detached hand moved into ripples of the air. Only he was
irritated and alarmed by the abiding sense of some surrounding danger,
which stayed with him, which he fought against in vain. His common sense
had not deserted him. On the contrary, it was argumentative, cogent in
explanation and in rebuke. It strove to sneer his distress down with
stinging epithets, and shot arrows of laughter against his aimless
fears. But the combat was, nevertheless, tamely unequal. Common sense
was routed by this enigmatic enemy, and at length Valentine's spirits
became so violently perturbed that he could keep silence no longer.

"Julian," he said, with a pressure of chained alarm in his voice,
"Julian!"

"Yes," Julian replied, tensely.

"Anything wrong with you?"

"No, no. Or with you?"

"Nothing definite."

"What then?"

"I will confess to you that to-night I feel--I feel, well, horribly
afraid."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea. The feeling is totally unreasonable. That gives it an
inexplicable horror."

"Ah! then that is why you joined your left hand with my right five
minutes ago. I wondered why you did it."

"I! Joined hands!"

"Yes."

"I haven't moved my hand."

"My dear Val! How is it holding mine then?"

"Don't be absurd, Julian; my hand is not near yours. Both my hands are
just where they were when we sat down, on my side of the table."

"Just where they were! Your little finger has been tightly linked in mine
for the last five minutes. You know that as well as I do."

"Nonsense!"

"But it is linked now while I am speaking."

"I tell you it isn't."

"I'll soon let you know it too. There! Ah! no wonder you have snatched it
away. You forget that my muscles are like steel, and that I can pinch as
a gin pinches a rabbit's leg. I say, I didn't really hurt you, did I? It
was only a joke to stop your little game."

"I tell you," Valentine said, almost angrily, "your hand has never once
touched mine, nor mine yours."

His accent of irritable sincerity appeared suddenly to carry conviction
to the mind of Julian, for he sprang violently up from the table, and
cried, in the darkness:

"Then who the devil's in the room with us?"

Valentine also, convinced that Julian had not been joking, was
appalled. He switched on the light, and saw Julian standing opposite
to him, looking very white. They both threw a rapid glance upon the
room, whose dull green draperies returned their inquiry with the
complete indifference of artistic inanimation.

"Who the devil's got in here?" Julian repeated, with the savage accent of
extreme uneasiness.

"Nobody," Valentine replied. "You know the thing's impossible."

"Impossible or not, somebody has found means to get in."

Valentine shook his head.

"Then you were lying?"

"Julian, what are you saying? Don't go too far."

"Either you were, or else a man has been sitting at that table between
us, and I have held his hand, the hand of some stranger. Ouf!"

He shook his broad shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I was not lying, Julian. I tell you so, and I mean it."

Valentine's eyes met Julian's, and Julian believed him.

"Put your hands on the table again," Julian said.

Valentine obeyed, and Julian laid his beside them, linking one of his
little fingers tightly in one of Valentine's, and at the same time
shutting his eyes. After a long pause he grew visibly whiter, and hastily
unlinked his finger.

"No, damn it, Val, I hadn't hold of your hand. The hand I touched was
much harder, and the finger was bigger, thicker. I say, this is ghastly."

Again he shook himself, and cast a searching glance upon the little room.

"Somebody has been in here with us, sitting between us in the dark," he
repeated. "Good God, who is it?"

Valentine looked doubtful, but uneasy too.

"Let us go through the rooms," he said.

They took a candle, and, as on the previous night, searched, but in
vain. They found no trace of any alien presence in the flat. No book,
no ornament, had been moved. No door stood open. There was no sound of
any footsteps except their own. When they came to Valentine's bedroom,
Rip leaped to greet them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He showed
no excitement until he had followed them back into the tentroom. But,
arrived there, he suddenly stood still, raised one white paw from the
ground, and emitted a long and dreary howl. The young men stared at him,
and then at each other.

"Rip knows somebody has been here," Julian said.

Valentine was much more uncomfortably impressed by the demeanour of
the dog than by Julian's declaration and subsequent agitation. He had
been inclined to attribute the whole affair to a trick of his friend's
nerves. But the nervous system of a fox-terrier was surely, under such
circumstances as these, more truth-telling than that of a man.

"But the thing is absolutely impossible," he repeated, with some
disturbance of manner.

"Is anything that we can't investigate straight away absolutely
impossible?"

Valentine did not reply directly.

"Here is a cigarette," he said. "Let us sit down, soothe our nerves,
and talk things over calmly and openly. We have not been quite frank
with each other about these sittings yet."

Julian accepted Valentine's offer with his usual readiness. The fire was
relit with some difficulty. Rip was coaxed into silence.

Presently, as the smoke curled upward with its lazy demeanour, the
horror that had hung like a thin vapour in the atmosphere seemed to
be dissipated.

"Now I think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine
began. "Don't let us be hysterical. Spiritualists always suffer from
hysteria."

"The sceptics say, Val."

"And probably they are generally right. Now--yes, do drink some more of
that brandy and soda. Now, Julian, do you still believe that a hand held
yours just now?"

Julian answered quietly, showing no irritation at the question:

"I simply know it as surely as I know that I am sitting with you
at this moment. And,--look here, you may laugh at me as much as you.
like,--although I supposed the hand to be yours, until you denied it
I had previously felt the most curious sensation."

"Of what?"

"Well, that something was coming, even had actually come, into the room."

Valentine answered nothing to this, so Julian went on.

"I thought it was a trick of the nerves, and determined to drive it
away, and I succeeded. And then, just as I was internally laughing at
myself, this hand, as if groping about in the dark, was first laid on
mine, full on it, Val, and then slid off onto the table and linked its
little finger tightly in mine. I, of course, supposed the hand was yours,
and this finger was crooked round mine for fully five minutes, I should
say. After you spoke, thinking that you were trying to deceive me for a
joke, I caught the hand in mine, and pinched it with all my strength
until it was forcibly dragged away."

"Strange," Valentine murmured.

"Deucedly strange! and, what's more, diabolically unpleasant."

"I wonder what that fellow, Marr, would say to this."

"Marr! By Jove, is this one of the manifestations which he spoke about so
vaguely?"

"It seems like it."

"But describe your sensations. You say you felt horribly afraid. Why was
that?"

"I can't tell. That, I think, made part of the horror. There was a sort
of definite vagueness, if you can imagine such a seeming contradiction,
in my state of mind. But the feeling is really indescribable. That it
was more strange and more terrible than anything I have known is certain.
I should like to ask Dr. Levillier about all this."

"Levillier--yes. But he would--"

"Be reasonable about it, as he is about everything. Dear, sensible, odd,
saintly, emotional, strong-headed, soft-hearted little doctor. He is
unique."

They talked on for some time, arriving at no conclusion, until it
seemed they had talked the whole matter thoroughly out. Yet Valentine,
who was curiously instinctive, had, all the time, a secret knowledge
that Julian was keeping something from him, was not being perfectly
frank. The conviction pained him. At last Julian got up to go. He
stood putting on his overcoat.

"Good-night," he said.

"Good-night, Julian."

"Now--is this to be our last sitting?"

Valentine hesitated.

"What do you wish?" he asked at length.

"What do you?"

"Well, I--yes, I think I would rather it was the last."

Julian caught his hand impulsively.

"So would I. Good-night."

"Good-night."

Julian went out into the hall, got as far as the front door, opened it,
then suddenly called out:

"Valentine!"

"Yes."

"Come here for a moment."

Valentine went, and found him standing with his hand on the door, looking
flushed and rather excited.

"There is one thing I haven't told you," he began.

"I knew that."

"I guessed you did. The most horrible sensation I have had. During our
sitting to-night--don't be vexed--an extraordinary apprehension of--well,
of you, came over me. There! Now I have told you."

Valentine was greatly astonished.

"Of me?" he said.

"Yes. There was a moment when the idea that I was alone with you made my
blood run cold."

"Good heavens!"

"Do you wish I hadn't told you?"

"No, of course not. But it is so extraordinary, so unnatural."

"It is utterly gone now, thank God. I say, we have resolved that we won't
sit again, haven't we?"

"Yes; and what you have just told me makes me hate the whole thing. The
game seems a game no longer."

When the door had closed upon Julian, Valentine sat down and wrote a
note.

He addressed it to--

"Doctor Hermann Levillier,
"Harley Street, W.,"

and laid it on his writing-table, so that it might be posted early the
next morning.




CHAPTER VI

A CONVERSATION AT THE CLUB


Doctor Levillier was not a materialist, although he concerned himself
much with the functions of the body, and with that strange spider's
web of tingling threads which we call the nervous system. The man who
sweeps out the temple, who polishes the marble steps and dusts the
painted windows, may yet find time to bend in prayer before the altars
he helps to keep beautiful, may yet find a heart to wonder at the spirit
which the temple holds as an envelope holds a letter. Reversing the
process of mind which seems to lead so many medical students to atheism,
Dr. Levillier had found that the more he understood the weaknesses, the
nastinesses, the dreary failures, the unimaginable impulses of the flesh,
the more he grew to believe in the existence, within it, of the soul. One
day a worn-out dyspeptic, famous for his intellectual acquirements over
two continents, sat with the little great doctor in his consulting-room.
The author, with dry, white lips, had been recounting a series of sordid
symptoms, and, as the recital grew, their sordidness seemed suddenly to
strike him with a mighty disgust.

"Ah, doctor," he said. "And do you know there are people thousands of
miles away from Harley Street who actually admire me, who are stirred
and moved by what I write, who make a cult and a hero of me. They say I
have soul, forsooth. But I am all body; you know that. You doctors know
that it is only body that we put on paper, body that lifts us high, or
drags us low. Why, my best romances come straight from my liver. My
pathos springs from its condition of disorder, and my imaginative force
is only due to an unnatural state of body which I can deliberately
produce by drinking tea that has stood a long while and become full of
tannin. When my prose glows with fiery beauty, the tea is getting well
hold of my digestive organs, and by the time it has begun to prove its
power by giving me a violent pain in the stomach, I have wrung from it
a fine scene which will help to consolidate my fame. When a man wins
the Victoria Cross, his healthy body has done the deed, unprompted by
anything higher. Good air, or a muscular life, has strung his nerves
strongly so that he can't, even if he would, appreciate danger. On the
other hand, when a man shows funk, turns tail and bolts, and is dubbed a
coward, it's his beastly body again. Some obscure physical misfortune is
the cause of his disgrace, and if he'd only been to you he would have won
the Cross too. Isn't it so? How you doctors must laugh at mystics, and at
those who are ascetics, save for sake of their health. Why, I suppose
even the saint owes his so-called goodness to some analyzable proceeding
that has gone on in his inside, and that you could diagnose. Eh?"

Doctor Levillier was writing a prescription in which bismuth was an item.
He glanced up quietly.

"The more I know of the body, the more I think of and believe in the
power of the soul," he said. "Have that made up. Take it three times a
day and come to me again in a fortnight. Good-morning."

Indeed, this little man was writing prescriptions for the body and
thinking prescriptions for the soul all day long. Within him there
dwelt a double mind, the mind of a great doctor and the mind of a great
priest, and these two minds linked hands and lived as friends. The one
never strove against the other. There was never a moment of estrangement.
And if there were frequent arguments and discussions between the two,
they were the arguments and discussions that make friendship firmer,
not enmity more bitter. And, as Dr. Levillier very well knew, it was
often the mind of the priest within him that gave to him his healing
power over the body. It was the mind of the priest that had won him
testimonial clocks and silver salvers from grateful patients. Often as
he sat with some dingy-faced complainant, listening to a recital of
sickness or uttering directions about avoidance of green meat, sauces,
pastry, and liquids, till the atmosphere seemed that of a hospital, a
pastry-cook's shop and a bar combined, he was silently examining the
patient's soul, facing its probable vagaries, mapping out the tours it
had taken, scheming for its welfare. And, perhaps, after the dietary was
arranged and the prescription was written, he would say carelessly:

"Do you read much? What do you read? Ah! such and such books. Yes, very
interesting. Do you know this book which has struck me greatly? No? Allow
me to lend it to you. Good-bye."

And the patient departed, ignorant that he had received a pill for his
soul from the priest as well as a pill for his body from the doctor.

In appearance Dr. Levillier was small, slight, and delicate looking.
His complexion was clear and white. His eyes were blue. What hair he
possessed was rather soft, fluffy and reddish, with a dash of light
brown in it. He wore neither beard nor moustache, was always very neatly
and simply dressed, and was remarkable for his polished boots, said to be
the most perfectly varnished in London. Although he must have been nearly
fifty-five, he had never married, and some people declared that he had
the intention of starting a new "order" of medical celibates, who would
be father-confessors as well as physicians, and who would pray for the
souls of their patients after tending their bodily needs.

For some years Valentine had been very intimate with the doctor, whom he
admired for his intellect and loved for his nature. So now he resolved to
lay the case of the sittings with Julian before him and hear his opinion
of the matter. In all their conversations Valentine could not remember
that they had ever discussed spiritualism or occultism. As a rule, they
talked about books, painting, or music, of which Dr. Levillier was a
devoted lover. Valentine's note asked the doctor to dine with him that
night at his club. The messenger brought back an acceptance.

They dined at a corner table and the room was rather empty. A few men
chatted desultorily of burlesques, horses, the legs of actresses, the
chances of politics. The waiters moved quietly about with pathetic masks
of satisfied servitude. Valentine and the doctor conversed earnestly.

At first they spoke of a new symphony composed by a daring young
Frenchman, who had striven to reproduce vices in notes and to summon
up visions of things damnable by harmonic progressions which frequently
defied the laws of harmony. Levillier gently condemned him for putting
a great art to a small and degraded use.

"His very success makes me regret the waste of his time more deeply,
Cresswell," he said. "He is a marvellous painter in sound. He has
improved upon Berlioz, if it is improvement to cry sin with a clearer,
more determinate voice. Think what a heaven that man could reproduce
in music."

"Because he has reproduced a hell. But do you think that follows? Can
the man who wallows with force and originality soar with force and
originality too?"

"I believe he could learn to. The main thing is to possess genius in
any form, the genius to imagine, to construct, to present things that
seize upon the minds of men. But to possess genius is only a beginning.
We have to train it, to lead it, to coax it even, until it learns to be
obedient."

"Genius and obedience. Don't the two terms quarrel?"

"They should not. Obedience is a very magnificent thing, Cresswell, just
as to have to struggle, to be obliged to fight, is a very magnificent
thing."

"Yes," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. "I believe you are right. But,
if you are right, I have missed a great deal."

"How do you deduce that?"

"In this way. I have never had to be obedient. I have never had to
struggle."

"Surely the latter," the little doctor said, fixing his clear, kind
eyes on Valentine's face. "I don't think, in all my experience, that
I have ever met a man who lived a fine, pure life without fixing the
bayonet and using the sword at moments. There must be an occasional
_m�l�e_."

"Indeed not; that is to say," Valentine rather hastily added, "as regards
the pure life. For I cannot lay claim to anything fine. But I assure you
that my life has been pure without a struggle."

"Without one? Think!"

"Without one. Perhaps that is what wearies me at moments, doctor, the
completeness of my coldness. Perhaps it is this lack of necessity to
struggle that has at last begun to render me dissatisfied."

"I thought you were free from that evil humour of dissatisfaction,
that evil humour which crowds my consulting-rooms and wastes away the
very tissues of the body."

"I have been, until quite lately. I have been neither pessimist nor
optimist--just myself, and I believe happy."

"And what is this change? and what has it led to?"

"It was to tell you that I asked you here to-night."

They had finished dinner, and rose from the table. Passing through the
hall of the club, they went into a huge high room, papered with books.
Valentine led the way to a secluded corner, and gave the doctor a cigar.
When he had lit it and settled himself comfortably, his rather small
feet, in their marvellously polished boots, lightly crossed, his head
reposing serenely on the back of his chair, Valentine continued,
answering his attentive silence.

"It has led to what I suppose you would call an absurdity. But first,
the change itself. A sort of dissatisfaction has been creeping over me,
perhaps for a long while, I being unconscious of it. At length I became
conscious. I found that I was weary of being so free from the impulse
to sin--to sin, I mean, in definite, active ways, as young men sin. It
seemed to me that I was missing a great deal, missing the delight sin is
said to give to natures, or at least missing the invigorating necessity
you have just mentioned, the necessity to fight, to wage war against
impulses."

"I understand."

"And one night I expressed this feeling to Julian."

"To Addison?" the doctor said, an expression of keen interest sliding
into his face. "I should much like to know how he received it."

"He said, of course, that such a dissatisfaction was rather monstrous."

"Was that all?"

"No. He told me he considered temptation rather a curse than otherwise,
and then he surprised me very much."

"He told you a secret?"

"Why, yes."

"The secret of your great influence over his life?"

"You knew of this secret, then?"

"He didn't tell it to me. Long ago I divined it. Addison is a very
interesting fellow to a doctor, and the fact of his strong friendship
with you has made him more interesting even than he would otherwise
have been. His physique is tremendous. He has a quite unusual vitality,
and stronger passions by far than most Englishmen. I confess that my
knowledge of human nature led me to foresee a very troubled and too
vehement future for him. My anticipation being utterly falsified led
me naturally to look round for the reason of its falsification. I very
soon found that reason in you."

"I had never suspected it."

"Your lack of suspicion was not the least reason of the influence you
exercised."

"Possibly. He told me of the strength of his evil impulses, of how he
hated their assaults, and of how being with me enabled him to conquer
them. Apparently the contemplation of my unnatural nature is an armour
to him."

"It is."

"Well, I continued to bewail my condition, which he envied, and it ended
in our sitting down, in jest, to make an experiment to try to exchange
our souls."

"What means did you take?"

And then Valentine told Dr. Levillier the exact circumstances of the
three sittings, without embellishment, without omission of any kind.
He listened with keen attention, and without attempting interruption
or intruding comment. When Valentine had finished he made no remark.

"What do you think of it, doctor?"

"Of what part of it?"

"Of any part. Do you attach any importance to it?"

"I do, certainly."

"I thought you would laugh at the whole thing."

"Why should I? Why should I laugh at any circumstances which strongly
affect men whom I know, or, indeed, any men?"

"But then, tell me, do you believe in some strange, unseen agency? Do you
believe that Julian absolutely held the hand of some being dwelling in
another sphere, some being attracted to us, or, say, enabled to come to
us by such an action as our sitting at a table in the dark?"

"No. I don't believe that."

"You attribute the whole thing to bodily causes?"

"I am inclined to attribute it to the action and reaction of mind and
body, undoubtedly. If you had sat in the light, for instance, I don't
think Addison would have felt that hand. The hand is indeed the least of
the circumstances you have related, in my opinion. The incidents of the
dog and of the curtain are far more mysterious. You are positive the door
was securely shut?"

"Quite positive."

"Could you, after having drawn the curtain, have allowed your hand to
slip slightly back, pulling the curtain with it?"

"I don't think so. I feel sure not."

"You know we all constantly make involuntary motions--motions that our
minds are quite unaware of."

"I do feel sure, nevertheless. And the dog? What do you say to that?"

"I don't know what to say. But dogs are extraordinarily sensitive. I do
not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that the tumult of your
nerves--for there was tumult; you confess it--communicated itself to
him."

"And was the cause of his conduct?"

"Yes. In the course of my career I have been consulted by a great many
patients whose nervous systems have been disastrously upset by the
practices you describe, by so-called spiritualism, table-turning, and
so forth. One man I knew, trying to cultivate himself onto what he
called 'a higher plane,' cultivated himself into a lunatic asylum,
where he still remains."

"Then you consider spiritualism--?"

"I have too much respect for the soul, too much belief in its great
destiny, Cresswell, to juggle with it, or to play tricks with it. When
one meets a genius one does not want to have a game at puss-in-the-corner
with him. One is rather anxious to hear him talk seriously and display
his mind. When I come into contact with a soul, I don't want to try to
detach it from the home in which a divine power has placed it for a time.
I glory in many limitations against which it is the prevailing fashion
to fight uselessly. The soul can do all its work where it is--in the
body. The influence you exercise over your friend Addison convinces me
of the existence of spirits, things which will eventually be freed from
the body, more certainly than any amount of material manifestations,
sights, sounds, apparent physical sensations. Why should we not be
satisfied with remaining, for a time, as we are? I consider that you and
Addison were ill-advised in making this--no doubt absurd--experiment.
Supposing it to be absurd, the _raison d'�tre_ of the sittings is gone at
once. Supposing it not to be--"

"Yes. What, then?"

"Then the danger is great. Imagine yourself with Addison's soul or
nature, him with yours. To what might not you be led? How do you know
that your nature in him would exert any control over his nature in you?"

"Why should it not?"

"There comes in the power of the body, which is very great. I believe,
as you know, absolutely in the existence of the soul, and in its immortal
destiny; but that does not blind me to the extraordinary influence, the
extraordinary kingship, which a mere body, a mere husk and shell, as some
good people call it--I don't feel with them--can obtain not only over
another body, but, strangely, over the soul which is in that body. Your
influence over Addison has been, and is, immense. Do you imagine that it
is simply your nature which governs him?"

"I suppose so."

"Your mere appearance may have an immense deal to do with the matter.
You have the look, the expression, of one who has not sinned. It is
partly that which keeps Addison from giving the reins to his impulses.
I consider that if it were possible for your nature to change secretly
and for your face to remain unchanged, if you sinned perpetually and
retained your exact appearance, and if Addison did not know you sinned,
you could still be his guardian, while, really, yourself far worse in
every way than him."

"But surely that fights against your theory that the existence of a soul
is proved by such an influence as I possess over Addison?"

"Not at all. I said if it were possible for the body not to express the
soul, if--but that's just the difficulty, it is not possible. The body
manifests the soul. Supposing it were not so, the power of evil, the
devil, if you choose to name it and imply a personal existence for it,
might have hold of the world even more tightly than now. Just conceive,
under such conditions, how you might lure Addison to destruction if you
desired to do so. Looking at you, and seeing the same face in which he
has learned to see what he thinks entire goodness, he would be unable to
believe that any action you could suggest and take part in could be evil.
You could wreck his future with a perfect ease. But, as things are, did
your nature change and become malignant, your face would change too, and
you might quickly cease to exercise a strong influence over Addison. He
might even, having now been unconsciously trained into a curious
integrity, learn to hate and to despise you. You remember our
conversation to-night about that symphony?"

"Yes."

"I said that the soul which could reproduce hell should be able to
reproduce heaven."

"I know."

"Well, my boy--for you are a boy to me--the reverse of that might happen
also."

"Perhaps. But I don't quite see."

"The application--to you?"

"To me?"

"Yes, to you, Cresswell. You have been given a strangely perfect nature.
As you say, you seem to have nothing to do with the matter. You have even
been inclined to rebel against your gift. But, take my advice. Cherish
it. Don't play with it, as you have been playing. Remember, if you lose
heaven, the space once filled by heaven will not be left empty."

"Ah! now I see. You think that I--"

"Might swing from a great height to an equally great depth. That has
been my experience--that the man who is once extreme is always extreme,
but not always in the same way. The greatest libertines have made the
greatest ascetics. But, within my own experience, I have known the
reverse process to obtain. And you, if you changed, might carry Addison
with you."

"But then, doctor, you do believe in these manifestations?"

"Not necessarily. But I believe that the minds of men are often very
carefully, very deftly, poised, and that a little push can send them one
way or the other. Have you ever balanced one billiard-ball on the top of
another?"

"Yes."

"Then you know that a breath will upset it and send it rolling.
Be careful. Your mind, your very nature, may be poised like that
billiard-ball. Addison's may be the same. Indeed, I feel sure
Addison's is. That curious dread of you which overcame him at your
last sitting is a sign of it. The whole thing is wrong--bad for body
and for mind."

"Perhaps. Well, we have definitely agreed to give it up."

"That's well. Eleven o'clock! I must be going. Are you doing anything
to-morrow night?"

"No."

"I have got a box for this new play at the Duke's Theatre. Will you
come?"

"With pleasure."

"I will ask Addison also."

They put on their overcoats, and walked a little way along Pall Mall
before they parted. Near the Atheneaum they passed a tall, thin man,
who was coming in the opposite direction. He turned round as they went
by, and stood directly regarding them till they were out of sight.




CHAPTER VII

THE REGENT STREET EPISODE


The things we do apparently by chance often have a curious applicability
to the things we have thought. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the
way of the Lord. These thoughts are the John the Baptists of the mind,
and prepare the way for facts that often startlingly illustrate them.
It is as if our thoughts were gradually materialized by the action of the
mind; as if, by the act of thinking, we projected them.

When Doctor Levillier got a box for the first night of the new play at
the Duke's Theatre, and when he invited Valentine and Julian to make up
his party, he had no idea what the subject of the piece was, no notion
that it would have anything to do with the conversation which took place
between him and Valentine at the club. But the plot applied with almost
amazing fidelity to much that he had said upon that occasion. The play
was a modern allegory of the struggle between good and evil, which has
been illustrated in so many different ways since the birth of the Faust
legend. But the piece had a certain curious originality which sprang
from the daring of the author. Instead of showing one result of the
struggle, a good man drawn gradually down, or a bad man drawn gradually
up, he set forth, with a great deal of detail, a great deal of vividness,
a modern wobbler, a human pendulum, and simply noted down, as it were,
his slow swinging backwards and forwards. His hero, an evil liver, a
modern man of wrath in the first act, dominated by a particular vice,
was drawn, by an outside personal influence, from the mire in which
he was wallowing, to purity, to real elevation. But his author, having
led him up to the pinnacle, had no intention of leaving him there,
blessed by the proclaimed admiration of the gods in the gallery. In the
succeeding acts he introduced a second personal influence, exerted this
time on the side of evil, and permitted it to act upon his central figure
successfully. The man fell again into the mire, and was left there at the
conclusion of the piece, but hugging a different sin, not the sin he had
been embracing when the curtain rose upon the first act. This dramatic
scheme took away the breath of the house for a moment, but only for a
moment. Then the lungs once more did their accustomed duty, and enabled
a large number of excited persons to hiss with a wonderful penetration.
Their well-meant efforts did not have the effect of terrorizing the
author. On the contrary, he quickly responded to the hostile uproar,
and, coming forward in a very neat Jaeger suit, a flannel shirt, and a
pair of admirably fitting doeskin gloves, bowed with great gravity and
perfect self-possession. The hisses thereupon suddenly faded into
piercing entreaties for a speech, in which a gallery lady with a powerful
soprano voice became notorious as the leader. But the Jaeger author was
not to be prevailed upon. He waved the doeskin gloves in token of adieu,
and retreated once more into the excited obscurity of the wings, where
his manager was trembling like an aspen, in the midst of a perspiring
company. The lights were turned down. The orchestra burst into a tuneful
jig, and the lingering audience at length began to disperse.

Dr. Levillier, Julian, and Valentine left their box in silence. It
seemed that this odd play, which dared to be natural, had impressed
them. They walked into the vestibule without a word, and, avoiding many
voluble friends who were letting off the steam as they gathered their
coats and hats from a weary lady in a white cap, they threaded their way
through the crowd and emerged into the street. Just as they reached the
portico, Julian suddenly started and laid his hand on Valentine's arm.

"What is it?" asked Valentine, looking round.

"Ah! you're just too late. He's gone!"

"He--who?"

"Marr."

"Oh," Valentine said, showing considerable interest; "I wish I had seen
him. Where was he sitting?"

"I haven't an idea. Didn't know he was in the theatre."

Doctor Levillier made an exception to his rule of being in bed by twelve
o'clock that night, and accepted Valentine's invitation to sup in
Victoria Street. He had always been greatly drawn to Valentine, attracted
by the latter's exceptional clarity of character, and he was scarcely
less interested in Julian. Nor did the considerable difference between
his age and the ages of the two youths in any way interfere with their
pleasant intercourse. For Levillier had a heart that was ageless. The
corroding years did not act as acid upon it. All his sympathies were as
keen, all his power of enjoyment was as great, as when he had been a
delightfully gay and delightfully pleasant boy at school. Youth always
loved him, and age always respected him. He possessed the great secret
of a beautiful life. He was absolutely genuine, and he meant nothing
but good to all with whom he was brought into contact.

The three friends spoke but little as they went back to the flat, but
when they had sat down to supper, and Dr. Levillier had expressed his
complete satisfaction with the champagne that Valentine's butler had
politely insinuated into his glass, the silence took to itself wings
and lightly departed. They talked of the play, and it appeared that
they were all impressed by it, but in slightly different ways, and for
different reasons. Valentine, who was intensely, but sometimes almost
coldly, artistic, appreciated it, he said, because it did not obviously
endeavour to work out a problem or to teach a lesson. It simply, with
a great deal of literary finish and dramatic force, stated a curiously
human character, showed the nature of a man at work, and left him,
after some scenes of his life, still at work upon his own salvation or
destruction, not telling the audience what his end would be, scarcely
even trying to imply his innate tendency one way or the other. This
satisfied Valentine. This had made him feel as if he had seen a block
cut out of life.

"I do not want to learn what becomes of that man," he said. "I have
known him, good and bad. That is enough. That satisfies me more than
the sight of a thousand bombastic heroes, a thousand equally bombastic
villains. Life is neither ebony nor ivory. That man is something to my
mind forever, as Ibsen's 'Master Builder' is something. I can never
forget the one or the other."

"Your life is ivory, Val," Julian said.

He had liked the play because the violent struggle between good and evil
woke up many responsive memories in his mind. The hero of the play had
been shown feeling precisely as Julian had often felt. That was enough.
He did not very much care for the brilliant artifice, which Valentine had
remarked with so much pleasure. He did not specially note the peculiar
effect of nature produced by the simplicity and thoughtful directness
of the dialogue. He only knew that he had seen somebody whose nature
was akin to his own nature, although placed in different, perhaps more
dramatic, circumstances.

Dr. Levillier combined, to some appreciable extent, the different joys
of his two companions, and obtained another that was quite his own. He
had seen two horses running in double harness that night, the body and
mind of the hero, and had taken delight in observing what had practically
escaped the definite notice of his companions, the ingenuity and subtlety
with which the author, without being obtrusive or insistent, had
displayed their _liaison_; the effect of each upon the other, their
answering excursions and alarums, their attempts at separate _amours_,
_amours_ that always had an inevitable effect upon the one which the
other had, for the moment, endeavoured to exclude from its life. The
doctor in him and the priest in him had both enjoyed a glorious evening
of bracing activity. As they discussed the piece, and each advanced his
reason of pleasure, the doctor expanded into a sort of saintly geniality,
which was peculiarly attractive even to sinners. And when supper was
over, and they strolled into the drawing-room to smoke and to make music,
he sank into a chair, stretched out his polished boots with a sigh, and
said:

"And people say there is so little joy in life!"

Julian laughed at the satisfied whimsicality of his exclamation and of
the expression which shadowed it.

"Light up, doctor," he cried. "You are a boon to this modern world. For
you see all the sorrows of life, I suppose, and yet you always manage to
convey the impression that the joys win the battle after all."

Valentine had gone over to the piano and was dreamily opening it. He did
not seem to hear what they were saying. The doctor obeyed the injunction
to light up. He was one of the hardest and most assiduous toilers in
all London, and he appreciated a good cigar and a comfortable arm-chair
more than some men could appreciate Paradise, or some women appreciate
love.

"And I believe that joy will win the battle in the end," he said, with a
puff that proved successful.

"Why?"

"I see evidences of it, or think I do. The colour will fade out of bad
acts, Addison, but the colour of a good act is eternal. A noble deed will
never emulate a Sir Joshua Reynolds--never. Play to us, Cresswell."

"Yes, but I wish you to talk. I want to improvise to-night. The murmur of
your conversation will help me."

Julian sat down by the doctor. He, too, looked very happy. It was a
pleasant hour. Sympathy was in that pretty room, complete human sympathy,
and a sympathy that sprang from their vitality, avoiding the dusky
dumbness of the phlegmatic. Valentine sat down at the piano and began
gently to play. The smoke from the cigars curled away towards the
watching pictures; the room was full of soft music.

"Yes, Addison," Doctor Levillier continued, in a low voice, "I am
perpetually sitting with sorrow, communing with disease. That
consulting-room of mine is as a pool of Bethesda, only not all who come
to it, alas! can be healed. I sit day by day in my confessional--I like
to call it that; perhaps I was meant to be a priest--and I read the
stories of the lives of men and of women, most of them necessarily, from
the circumstances which bring them to me, sad. And yet I have a belief
in joy and its triumph which nothing can ever shake, a belief in the
final glory of good which nothing can ever conquer."

"That's fine, doctor. But do you know why you have it?"

"I daresay that question is difficult to answer. I often seek for my
reasons, Addison, and I find many, though I can hardly say which is
the best, or whether any quite explains the faith that is always in me.
_Apropos_ of this evening, by the bye, I long ago found one of my reasons
in the theatre, the theatre which some really good men hate and condemn."

"What was that?"

"Oh, a very simple one. I believe that men in the mass express eternal
truths more readily, more certainly, than men as individuals. Put a lot
of bad men, or--we won't call them bad, why should we?--loose, careless,
thoughtless men, together in the pit of a theatre. Many of them, perhaps,
drink, and are rendered cruel by drink. Many of them care nothing for
morality, and have wounded, in the worst way, the souls of women. Many
of them show incessant hardness in most of the relations of life. What,
then, is it, that makes all these individuals respond so directly, so
certainly, to every touch of goodness, and gentleness, and unselfishness,
and purity, and faith, that is put before them upon the stage? I think it
must be that eternal truth--the rocks of good that lie forever beneath
the wild seas of evil. Those men don't know themselves; don't know that
it is all useless for them to try to hide the nobility which has been put
into them, to thrust it down, and, metaphorically, to dance on it. They
can't get rid of it, do what they will. I like to think of goodness as
the shadow of evil through life, the shadow that, at death, or perhaps
long after death, becomes the substance."

"You think we cannot kill the good that is in us?"

"Not quite. But I think we can go near to killing it, so near that it
will take longer to recover and to be itself again, longer far than the
most relapsing typhoid patient."

"And have you other reasons for your belief?"

"Perhaps. But some of them are difficult to define, and would carry no
conviction to any one but myself. There is one in this very room with
us."

Julian glanced up, surprised.

"What is that, doctor?" he said.

"You ought to know better than I," Levillier answered.

He was looking at Valentine, who, apparently quite unconscious of their
presence, was still playing rather softly. Julian followed his eyes.

The light in the room was dim, a carefully manufactured twilight. It is
strange how many things, and how slight, stir, control, influence in one
direction or another, the emotions. Light and the absence of light can
divert a heart as easily as the pressing of a button can give a warship
to the sea. Twilight and music can change a beast into a man, a man into
an angel, for the moment. Long after that evening was dead, both Julian
and Doctor Levillier anxiously, and in their different ways analytically,
considered it. They submitted it to a secret process of probing, such as
many men enforce upon what they imagine to be great causes in their
lives. That hour became an hour of wonder, an hour of amazement, viewed
in the illumination of subsequent events. They found in it a curious
climax of misunderstanding, a culmination of all deceptive things.

And yet, in that hour they only watched a young man of London, a modern
intellectual youth, playing in a Victoria Street drawing-room upon a
Steinway grand piano.

They were sitting sideways to Valentine, and a little behind him.
Therefore he could not easily see them unless he slightly turned his
head. But they could observe him, and, obeying Doctor Levillier's mute
injunction, Julian now did so.

Valentine was gazing straight before him over the top, of the piano, and
his eyes seemed to be fixed upon the dim figure of Christ in the picture
of "The Merciful Knight." Was he not playing to the picture, playing to
that figure in it? And did not his musical imagination seek to reproduce
in sound the vision of the life of that mailed knight who never lived and
died? The purity of his expression, always consummate, was to-night more
peculiar, more unearthly, than before in any place, at any moment. And,
as mere line can convey to the senses of man a conception of a great
virtue or of a great vice, the actual shape of his features, thus seen in
profile, was the embodiment of an exquisitely ascetic purity, as much an
embodiment as is a drop of water pierced by a sunbeam. This struck both
Doctor Levillier and Julian, and the doctor was amazed anew at the silent
decree that the invisible shall be made visible in forms comprehensible
to the commonest minds. Sin would surely flee from a temple sculptured
in such a shape as the body of Valentine, as a vampire would flee from
the bloodless courts of the heaven of the Revelation. Lust cannot lie
at ease on a crystal couch, or rest its dark head upon a pillow of pale
ivory. And the message of this strange, unearthly youth now given in
music, and to the air and the dust--for Valentine had lost knowledge
of his friends--was crystalline too. In his improvisation he journeyed
through many themes of varying characters. He hymned the knight's
temptation no less than his triumph. But purity was in the hymn even
at the hour of temptation, and sang like a bird in every scene of the
life,--a purity classical, detached, so refined as to be almost
physically cold.

"I understand you," Julian whispered to the little doctor. "Yes, you
are right. He is a great reason why what you think may be true. And
yet"--here Julian lowered his voice to a breath, lest he might disturb
the player--"he is not religious, as--as--well, as you are. Forgive the
allusion--."

"Are the angels religious?" said Doctor Levillier. "Why should you
refrain, my dear boy? But you are right. There is a curious
unconsciousness about Cresswell--about Valentine--which seems to
exclude even definite religious belief as something in a way
self-conscious, and so impossible to him. There is an extraordinary
strain of the child in Cresswell, such as I conceive to be in unearthly
beings, who have never had the power to sin. And the best-behaved,
sweetest child in the world might catch flies or go to sleep during
the Litany or a sermon. This very absence of controversial or dogmatic
religion gives Valentine much of his power, seems positively to lift him
higher than religionists of any creed."

"You think--you think that perhaps it is something in him of which he is
unconscious which does so much for me?"

"Perhaps it is."

Valentine now glided into an accompaniment, and began to sing. And
the doctor and Julian ceased to talk. Valentine certainly did not sing
with such peculiar skill as he showed in playing, but he had a charming
voice which he used with great ease, and he never sang a single note,
or phrased a passage, without complete intelligence and understanding
of his composer. Only he lacked power. This scarcely interfered with the
pleasure he could give in a drawing-room, and to-night both Levillier and
Julian were rather in a mood for supreme delicacy than for great passion.
They listened with silent pleasure for a time. Then Levillier said:

"Do you remark how wonderfully the timbre of Cresswell's voice expresses
the timbre of his mind? The parallel is exact."

Julian nodded.

"That is his soul written in sound," the doctor added.

It was at this point that Valentine ceased and got up from the piano.

"I must smoke too," he said. "No, not a cigar, I'll have a cigarette
to-night."

"You are fond of that picture, Cresswell?" said Doctor Levillier as
Valentine sat down.

"'The Merciful Knight'? Yes, I love it. Have you told Julian your opinion
of our sittings, doctor?"

"No. He didn't ask me for it."

"I should be glad to have it, all the same," Julian said.

"Well, my opinion is entirely adverse to your proceedings," Levillier
said, with his usual frankness.

"You are, in fact, at the opposite pole from Marr," Julian answered.

"Marr! Who is Marr? I never heard of him."

"Nor I, until the other evening," Julian said. "But now I see him every
day. He was at the theatre to-night. I saw him as we came out."

"What is he, a spiritualist? A professional?"

"Oh dear, no! He calls himself an occultist. He goes out in society a
great deal, apparently. I met him at dinner first. Since then he has
taken the keenest interest in my sittings with Valentine."

"Indeed! You know him, Cresswell?"

Valentine shook his head, and Julian laughed.

"The fun of it is that Marr doesn't wish to know Valentine," he said.

"Why?" the doctor asked.

Julian told him the words Marr had used in reference to Valentine, and
gave a fairly minute description of Marr's attitude towards their
proceedings. Levillier listened with great attention.

"Then this man urges you to go on with your sittings?" he said when
Julian had finished.

"Scarcely that. But he certainly seems anxious that we should."

"You have both resolved to give them up, haven't you?"

"Certainly, doctor," Valentine replied.

"Does Marr know that?" Levillier asked of Julian.

"No. I haven't seen him to speak to since our final sitting."

The little doctor sat in apparent meditation for two or three minutes.
Then he remarked, with abruptness:

"Addison, will you think me an impertinent elderly person if I give you a
piece of advice?"

"You--doctor! Of course not. What is it?"

"Well, you young fellows know me, know that I am not a mere
sentimentalist or believer in every humbug that is the fashion of
the moment. But one thing I do firmly believe, that certain people
are born with a power to command, or direct others, which amounts to
force. The world doesn't completely recognize this. The law doesn't
recognize, perhaps ought not to recognize it. Some call it hypnotism.
I call it suggestion."

He paused, as if he had finished.

"But your advice, doctor?" Julian said, wondering.

"Oh, h'm! I don't mean to give it to you, after all."

"Why?"

Doctor Levillier became enigmatic.

"Because I have just remembered that to warn is often to supply a cause
of stumbling," he said.

Dr. Levillier and Julian drove together as far as the latter's
chambers that evening, and, after bidding Julian good-night, the doctor
dismissed the cab and set out to walk to Harley Street. He proceeded
at a leisurely pace along Piccadilly, threading his way abstractedly
among the wandering wisps of painted humanity that dye the London night
with rouge. Occasionally a passing man in evening dress would bid him
good-night, for he was universally known in the town. But he did not
reply. With his firm round chin pressed down upon his fur coat, and his
eyelids lowered, he moved thoughtfully. The problem of the relations
existing between youth and life eternally fascinated him. He pondered
over them now. What a strange, complicated _liaison_ it was, sometimes
so happy, sometimes so disastrous, always, to him, pathetic. Youth sets
up house with life as a lover sets up house with his mistress, takes an
attic near the stars, or builds a mansion that amazes the street-urchins.
And they dwell together. And youth strives in every way to know his
mistress. He tests her, tries her, kisses and cuffs her, gives her
presents, weeps at her knees. And at first she is magical, and a wonder,
and a dream, and eternity. And then, perhaps, she is a faded creature,
and terrible as a lost girl whom one has known in innocence. She is grim
and arid. She fills youth with a great horror and with a great fear. He
dare not kiss her any more. And then, perhaps, at last he prays, "Deliver
me from this bondage!" And he thinks that he knows his mistress. But,
happy or sad, does he ever quite know her? Is she not always a mystery,
this life, a sphinx who jealously guards a great secret?

His evening with the two boys, for so the doctor called them in his
thoughts, had set him musing thus definitely. Was there not a wonder
and a secret in their dual life of friendship? For is not the potent
influence of one soul over another one of the marvels of time? The
doctor loved Valentine as a human saint loves another saint. But he
loved Julian as a saint loves a sinner. Not that he named Julian sinner,
but it was impossible to be with him, observantly, sensitively, and not
to feel the thrill of his warm, passionate humanity, which cried aloud
for governance, for protection. Julian could be great, with the greatness
only attained by purged humanity, superior surely to the peaceful purity
of angels. But he could be a castaway, oh! as much a castaway as the
fainting shipwrecked man whom the hoarse surf rolls to the sad island of
a desert sea.

Without Valentine what might he not have been? And the little doctor
let his imagination run loose until his light eyes were dim with absurd
tears. He winked them away as he turned into Regent Street. The hour
was nearly two, and the great curved thoroughfare was rather deserted.
Those few persons who were about had a curious aspect of wolves. Their
eyes were watchful; their gait denoted a ghastly readiness for pause,
for colloquy. Poor creatures! What was their _liaison_ with life? A
thing like a cry for help in the dark. The doctor longed to be a
miracle-worker, to lift up his hands, just there where he was by the
New Gallery, and to say, "Be ye healed!" He had a true love for every
human thing. And that love sometimes seared his heart, despite his
fervent faith and hope.

But now, as he pursued his way, a physical sensation intruded itself upon
his mind, and gradually excluded all his reflections. A sense of bodily
uneasiness came upon him, of a curious irritation and contempt, mingled
with fear. He at first ascribed it to the coffee he had imprudently
drunk at Valentine's flat, and to the strength of the two cigars he had
smoked, or to some ordinary, trifling cause of diet. But by the time he
crossed Oxford Street, and was in the desert of Vere Street, he felt
that there was a reason for his distress, outside of him.

"I am being followed," he said to himself. "I am being followed, and by
some utterly abominable person."

He went by the Chapel, and struck across to the right, not looking behind
him, but analyzing his feelings. Being strongly intuitive, he had no need
to turn his head. He knew now for certain the cause of his uneasiness.
Some dreadful human being was very near to him, full of hateful thoughts,
sinister recollections, possibly evil intentions. Something, the very
vibrations of the night air, it might be, carried, as a telegraph wire
conveys a message, the soul-aroma of this human being to the doctor. As
he walked on, not hurrying, he mutely diagnosed the heart of this unseen
being. It seemed full of deadly disease. Never had he suspected man or
woman of such wickedness as he divined here; never had he felt from any
of his kind such a sick repulsion as from this unseen monster who was
journeying steadily in his steps. Doctor Levillier was puzzled at the
depth of the horror which beleaguered him. He remembered once driving a
staid, well-behaved horse in a country lane. The animal ambled forward
at a gentle pace, flicking its ears lazily to circumvent the flies,
apparently at ease with its driver and with the world. But suddenly it
raised its head, drew the air into its distended nostrils, stopped,
quivered in every limb, and then, with a strange cry, bolted like a
mad thing. Far away a travelling menagerie was encamping. It had scented
the wild animals.

Doctor Levillier felt like that horse. A longing to bolt for his life
came upon him. He had an impulse to cry out, to run forward, to escape
out of the atmosphere created by this evil nature, this deadly life. He
could have crept like a coward into the shadow of one of the areas of
Henrietta Street, and sheltered there till the thing went past. And, just
because he had this almost overmastering desire to flee, he stood still,
paused abruptly, and, without turning his head, listened. At a distance,
and he judged, round the corner of the street he heard the sound of a
quickening footstep advancing in his direction. He waited, under the
obligation of exerting all his powers of self-control; for his limbs
trembled to movement, his heart beat to the march, and every separate
vein, every separate hair of his body, seemed crying out piercingly to
begone. The footstep approached. Doctor Levillier heard it turning the
corner.

"Now," thought he, "this person will see me waiting here. Will he come
on? Will he pass me? And if he does, shall I be able to await, to endure
the incident?"

And he listened, as a scout might listen in the night for sounds of the
hidden enemy. Upon turning the corner, the footsteps advanced a pace or
two, faltered, slackened, stopped. For an instant there was silence.
The doctor knew that the man had been struck by his attentive figure, and
was pausing to regard it, to consider it. What would be the result of the
inspection? In a moment the doctor knew. The footsteps sounded again,
this time in retreat.

On this the impulse of the doctor to flee changed, giving way to a
strict desire and determination. He was resolved to interview this
night-wanderer, to see his face. A greedy anxiety for view, for
question, of this person came upon him. He, too, wheeled round, and
followed hastily in pursuit. The man had already escaped from his sight
into Vere Street, and the doctor broke into a soft run until he reached
the corner, skirting which, the man was immediately in his view, but
at a considerable distance from him. As the doctor sprang upon the
pavement the man turned round, and, evidently observing that he was
pursued, quickened his steps impulsively. The doctor was now absolutely
determined to address him, and began openly to run. And he was not far
from coming up with the fellow when he suddenly whistled a passing
hansom, bounded in, and thrust up the trapdoor in the roof. The direction
given was sufficiently obvious, for the cabby glanced round at the
doctor, lifted his whip, brought it down with a sweep over the horse's
loins, and the cab disappeared down Oxford Street at a rocking gallop.

The doctor paused. He was breathing hard, and the perspiration stood upon
his face. His disappointment was absurdly keen, and for an instant he had
even some idea of hailing another cab, and of following in pursuit. But,
upon reflection, he deemed it more reasonable to return upon his steps,
and to seek his bed in Harley Street. This accordingly he did, wondering
what had moved him so strangely, and wondering, also, not a little, at
the abrupt flight of the unknown person. In the brief and distant view
of him, which was all that the doctor had obtained, he judged him to be
tall, spare, and pale of countenance, with the figure of a gentleman.
The aspect of his face had not been revealed before the shelter of the
cab concealed him.




CHAPTER VIII

PAUSE


It chanced that for three or four days after the night of the theatre
expedition Valentine and Julian did not meet. They were rarely apart
for so long a period, and each was moved to wonder at this unwonted
abstinence of their friendship. What was the cause of it? Each found it
in a curious hesitation that enveloped him, and impelled him to avoidance
of the other. Valentine went about as usual. He looked in at White's,
dined out, rode in the park, visited two theatres, lived the habitual
London life which contents so many and disgusts not a few. But he did
not ask Julian to share any of these well-worn doings, and at first he
did not acknowledge to himself why he did not do so. He sought, more
definitely than ever before, to gain amusement from amusements, and
this definite intention, of course, frustrated his purpose. His power
of pleasure was, in fact, clogged by an abiding sense of dissatisfaction
and depression. And it was really his eventual knowledge of this
depression's cause that led him to bar Julian out from these few days
of his life. All that he did bored him, and the more decidedly because
he came to know that there was something which did not bore, which even
excited him, something which he had resolved to give up. He was, in
fact, strangely pursued by an unreasonable desire to fly in the face of
Doctor Levillier's advice, and of his own secondary antagonistic desire,
and to sit again with Julian. Everything in which he sought to find
distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered
with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found
himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of
the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men
struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual.
His morning ride was an active _ennui_, an _ennui_ revolving, like a
horse in a circus, round and round the weariness of the park.

Yet he had made up his mind quite fully that it would be better not
to sit any more. It was not merely Doctor Levillier's urgency that
had impressed him thus. A personal conviction had gradually forced
itself upon him that if anything resulted from such apparently imbecile
proceedings it would certainly not be of an agreeable nature. But, too,
this very sense that a secret danger might be lurking against him and
Julian, if only they would consent together to give it power by the
united action of sitting, spurred him on to restless desire. It is
not only the soldier who has a bizarre love of peril. Many of those
who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a
maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health,
perils to the mind. More human mules than the men of the banner and the
sword delight in journeying at the extreme edge of the precipice. And
Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering after danger. As he
knew it, he despised himself for it, for this attitude of the schoolboy
in which he held himself. Until now he had believed that he was free
from such a preposterous and morbid bondage, free on account of his
constitutional indifference towards vice, his innate love of the brooding
calms of refinement and of the upper snowfields of the intellect. The
discovery of his mistake irritated him, but the irritation could not
conquer its cause, and each day the longing to sit once more grew upon
him until it became almost painful. It was this longing which occasioned
Valentine's avoidance of Julian. He knew that if they were together he
would yield to this foolish, witless temptation, and at any rate try to
persuade Julian into an act which might be attended with misfortune, if
not with disaster. And then Valentine's profound respect for Doctor
Levillier, a respect which the doctor inspired without effort in every
one who knew him, was a chain almost of steel to hold the young man back
from gratification of his longing. Valentine never sought any one's
advice except the little doctor's, and he had a strong feeling of the
obligation laid upon him by such sought advice. To ask it and to reject
it was a short course to insult.

He resolved to avoid Julian until this gripping desire was shaken from
the shoulders of his mind.

Once or twice he tacitly wondered whether Julian was also the prey of
this desire, but then he felt certain that his friend could not be so
afflicted. Had he been, Julian would surely have found a swift occasion
to call. But he did not call. His feet did not turn their accustomed
way to Victoria Street. And it did not occur to Valentine that Julian
might be immersed in the same sort of struggle as himself. He thought he
knew Julian well enough to be sure that he would not have joined issue
with such an enemy without instant consultation. A council of war would
certainly have been convened.

So Valentine believed himself lonely in his feeling. One night he
returned from the theatre and a succeeding supper party at half-past
twelve, let himself into the flat with a latchkey, threw off his coat
and stood before the fire. His usually smooth, white forehead was
puckered in a frown. He contemplated the inevitable hours of bed
with dissatisfaction. When a man has allowed a vice to obtain dominion
over him there are moments when an enforced abstinence from it, even
of only a few hours, seems intolerably irksome. So Valentine felt now.
It seemed to him that he must sit again; that he could not go to bed,
could not rest and sleep, until he gratified his desire. Yet what was he
to do? He thought at first of starting out, late as the hour was, to
Julian's rooms. But that would be ridiculous, more especially after
their mutual resolution. Julian might refuse, would probably, in any
event, wish to refuse, the request which he came to make. Valentine
strove sincerely to dismiss the desire from his mind, but his effort
was entirely vain. Presently he went into his bedroom with the intention
of forcing himself to go, as usual, to bed. He began to undress slowly,
and had taken off his coat and waistcoat when he felt that he must
resume them; that he must remain, unnecessarily, up. He allowed the
mental prompting to govern him, and hardly had he once more fully attired
himself when the electric bell in the passage rang twice. Valentine went
to the door, opened it, and descended the flight of stone steps to the
main door of the house, which was locked at night. Julian was standing
outside on the pavement.

"You are still up, then," he exclaimed. "That's good. May I come in?"

"Yes, of course. Where have you been to-night?"

They were going up, their footsteps echoing hoarsely in the dim light.

"Nowhere."

"Then what made you turn out so late?"

"Oh," Julian said, with an elaborate carelessness; "I don't know. I
thought we were becoming strangers, I suppose. And suddenly I resolved
to look you up."

"I see," Valentine said, wondering why Julian was lying.

By this time they were in the flat and had shut the door behind them.

"Why haven't you been near me?" Julian said.

"Why haven't you been near me?"

"Oh--well--do you want to know really?"

"Yes; if you have got a definite reason."

"To tell the truth, I have; but it is such an absurd one."

Julian looked at Valentine and then added, with a decidedly forced laugh:

"You'll be awfully surprised when I tell you what it is, Val. I want
to sit again."

"Now I know why I stopped undressing just now," said Valentine. "I must
have had a sense that you were coming. Were you thinking very hard of me
to-night and of our sittings?"

"Rather! It is the oddest thing, but even since we had that talk with
the doctor and agreed to give the whole thing up, I've been perfectly
miserable. I haven't enjoyed a single thing I've done since that night."

"Nor I," said Valentine.

"What! you have been as bad? And without having Marr continually at your
elbow!"

"Marr again!"

"Again! Yes, I should think so. That chap has taken a fancy to me,
I suppose. Anyhow, directly I walk into the club, morning, noon, or
night, up he comes. He must live there. And the first thing he says is,
'Have you gone on with your sittings? You should, you should.' To-day
he changed his formula and said, 'You must,' and when I was going away,
he looked at me in a damned odd way and remarked in his low, toneless
voice, 'You will.' I declare I almost think he must have a sort of
influence over me, for I couldn't go to bed for the life of me, and
here I am. By the way, Marr seems to have a sort of power of divination.
Last night, when I happened to see him, he began talking about doctors,
and, by Jove, didn't he abuse them! He says they stand more in the way
of the development of the spiritual forces in man than any other body
of people. He denounced them all as low materialists, immersed in the
tinkering of the flesh. 'What does the flesh matter?' he said. 'It is
nothing. It is only an envelope. And the more tightly it is fastened
together, the more it stifles the spirit. I would like to catch hold
of some men's bodies and tear them in pieces to get at their souls.'
Val, as he made that cheerful remark, he looked more like a homicidal
maniac than anything I ever saw."

"I suppose you didn't stand up for the doctors?"

"But I did--for our little man. D'you think I wasn't going to say a word
for him?"

"What! you mentioned his name to this chap?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

"I don't know," Valentine said, hesitatingly.

"What objection could there possibly be?"

"None, of course--none. I simply had a quite unreasonable feeling that I
wished you hadn't. That is all."

And then Valentine relapsed into silence, the silence some men keep when
they are needlessly, uselessly irritated. The mention of Marr's name had
effected him oddly. He now felt a perverse desire not to sit, not comply
with the rather impertinent prediction of this dark-featured prophet
whom he had never seen. To carry out this prediction would seem like
an obedience to a stranger, governing, unseen, and at a distance. Why
did this man concern himself in the affairs of those over whom he had
no sovereignty, with whom he had no friendship?

"Julian," Valentine said at last, abruptly, "I wish you would promise me
something."

"What is it?"

"To drop this fellow, Marr. He has nothing to do with us, and it is a
decided impertinence, this curiosity he shows in our doings. Don't
answer any more of his questions. Tell him to keep his advice to himself.
And if you really believe he is obtaining an influence over you, avoid
him."

"You talk as if you disliked him."

"I feel as if I hated him."

"A man you have never even seen?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't take to him, and I have seen him. I will drop him as much
as I can. I promise you that."

"Thank you, old boy."

Julian fidgetted about rather uneasily, touching the ornaments on the
mantelpiece, opening and shutting his silver cigarette-case with a click.
It was obvious that he felt restless and dissatisfied. Then he said:

"Well, are we going to--"

"Surely you don't mean to say that you came here to-night to persuade
me into doing again what we both decided not to do any more?" asked
Valentine.

"I came to try," Julian replied with decision.

He looked at Valentine and then added:

"And do you know I have been thinking, especially to-day, that you were
of the same mind as I."

"How?"

"That you wanted to sit again as much as I did."

"But I don't know Marr," Valentine said, with unusual sarcasm.

Julian flushed red, like a man who has been stung.

"Perhaps he influences you through me, though," he said with a laugh.

"What nonsense, Julian! If I thought he had anything to do with the
matter, I would never sit again. But he can have nothing to do with it."

"Of course not. So will you sit? You want to give in. I know that."

"I do"

"I was sure of it."

"At the same time, remember the doctor's advice."

"Oh, doctors are always against that sort of thing."

"Julian, I have a strong feeling that, should we ever get any
manifestation at all, it will be inimical, even deadly, to one or both
of us. Each time we have sat a sensation of distress has taken hold of
me, and each time with greater force."

"Nerves!"

"Well, then, the hand which you say you held was nerves?"

"Perhaps. But that is just it. I must know, or at least try to know. It
is inevitable. We can't stop now, Val, whether we are standing on the
threshold of good, or evil, or--nothing at all. We have got to go on.
Besides, you and I have not effected an exchange."

"Of souls? No. Perhaps it is an imbecile proceeding to try."

"No matter."

"Or a dangerous proceeding."

"You are temporizing, and the night is running away as hard as it can.
Come, now, will you do what I want--yes or no?"

After a long hesitation, Valentine slowly answered:

"Yes."

And absurdly, as he said it, he felt like a man who tosses the dice for
life or death.




CHAPTER IX

THE FOURTH SITTING


They turned the light off and sat down in silence. Then Julian said:

"Keep your hands well away from mine, Val."

"I will."

They had not been sitting for five minutes before Valentine felt that the
atmosphere was becoming impregnated with a certain heaviness of mystery,
with a certain steady and unyielding dreariness hanging round them like a
cloud. They were once again confronted by a strange reality. Surely they
were. Valentine felt it, silently knew it.

In this blackness he seemed at length to step forward and to stand upon
the very threshold of an abyss, beyond which, in vague vapours, lay
things unknown, creatures unsuspected hitherto. From this darkness
anything might come to them, angel or devil, nymph or satyr. So, at
least, he dreamed for a while, giving his imagination the rein. Then,
in a revulsion of feeling, he jeered at his folly, mutely scolded his
nerves for spurring him to such flagrant imbecilities.

"This is all nonsense," he told himself, "all fancy, all a world created,
peopled, endowed with life by my desirous mind, which longs for a new
sensation. I will not encourage this absurdity. I will be calm, cold,
observant, discriminating. This is the same darkness in which every
night I sleep, with no sense of being surrounded by forms which I cannot
see, pressed upon by the denizens of some other sphere, not that in which
I breathe and live."

He deliberately detached himself from his mood of keen expectation, and
ardently resolved to anticipate nothing. And at this moment the table
began to shift along the carpet, to twist under their hands, to rap, to
tremble, and to pulsate, as if breath had entered into it. Like some live
animal it stirred beneath their pressing fingers.

"It is beginning," Julian whispered.

"Animal magnetism," Valentine murmured.

"Yes, of course," Julian replied. "Shall I ask--"

"Hush!" Valentine interrupted.

Julian was silent.

For some time the table continued its stereotyped performances. Then
it tremblingly ceased, and stood, mere dead furniture of every day, wood
on which lay the four hands made deliberately limp. A long period of
unpopulated silence ensued, and through that silence, very gradually,
came again to Valentine a growing sense of anxiety. At first he fought
against it as most men, perhaps out of self-respect, fight against the
entrance of fear into their souls. Then he yielded to it, and let it
crawl over him, as the sea crawls over flat sands. And the sea left no
inch of sand uncovered. Every cranny of Valentine's soul was flooded.
There was no part of it which did not shudder with apprehension. And
outwards flowed this invisible, unmurmuring tide, devouring his body,
till the sweat was upon his face and his strained hands and trembling
fingers were cold like ice, and his knees fluttered as the knees of
palsied age, and his teeth clicked, row against row, and his hairs
stirred, and his head, under its thatch, tingled and burned and throbbed.
Every faculty, too, seemed to stand straight up like a sentinel at its
post, staring into dust clouds through which rode an approaching enemy.
Eyes watched, ears listened, brain was hideously alert. The whole body
kept itself tense, stiff, wary. For Valentine had a secret conviction
at this moment that he was about to be attacked. By what? He was hardly
master of himself enough to wonder. His thoughts no longer ran free.
They crept like paralyzed things about his mind, and that despite the
unnatural vitality of his brain. It was as if he thought intensely,
violently, and yet could not think at all, as a man terrified may stare
with wide open eyes and yet perceive nothing, lacking for a moment the
faculty of perceiving. So Valentine waited, like some blind man with
glaring eyeballs. And then, passing into another stage of sensation, he
found himself vehemently and rapidly discussing possibilities of terror,
forming mental pictures of all the things, of all the powers, that we
cannot see. He embodied, materialized, the wind, the voice of the sea,
the angry, hot scent of certain flowers, of the white lily, the tuberose,
the hyacinth. He created figures for light, for darkness, for a wail, for
a laugh, and set them in array all around him in the blackness. But none
of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove
away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing
wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned
to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We
cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these
gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship.
We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious of them. Yet
may there not be physical or mental paroxysms, during which we become
conscious of them, during which we know, beyond all power of doubt, that
they are near us, with us? And, in such paroxysms, is it not possible for
them to break through the intangible and yet all-powerful barriers that
divide them from us, and to touch us, caress us, attack us? Valentine
believed that he was immersed in such a paroxysm, and that the barriers
were in process of being broken down. He seemed actually to hear the
faint cry of an approaching being, the dim uproar of its violent efforts
to obtain its sinister will, and gain the power to make itself known to
him by some ghastly and malignant deed. He was unutterably afraid.

"The hand again!" Julian suddenly cried. "Valentine, is it yours? Why
don't you answer? I say, is it yours?"

"No," Valentine forced himself, with difficulty, to reply.

"For God's sake then--the light!"

Valentine felt for it, but his hand shook and did not find the button.

"Make haste, Val. What are you doing? Ah!"

The room sprang into view, and Julian's eyes, with a furious, sick
eagerness, sought his hands.

"Valentine," he exclaimed hoarsely, "I see nothing, but I've got hold of
the hand still. I've got it tight. Put your hand here--that's it--under
mine. Now d'you feel the thing?"

Julian's hand, contracted as if grasping another, was in the air, about
an inch, or an inch and a half, above the surface of the table. Valentine
obediently thrust his hand beneath it. He now shook his head.

"I feel nothing," he said. "There is nothing."

"Then am I mad?" said Julian. "I'm holding flesh and blood. I'll swear
that. Yes, I can feel the fingers twitching, the muscles, the bones. I
can even trace the veins. What does this mean?"

"I can't tell."

"You look very strange, Valentine. You are certain you see and feel
nothing?"

"Nothing whatever," Valentine forced himself to answer calmly.

"We'll see this through," said Julian with a sort of angry determination.
"I won't be frightened by a hand. We'll see it through. Out with the
light."

Valentine turned it off. The action was purely mechanical. He had to
perform it, whether he would or no.

"Don't speak," he whispered to Julian in the darkness. "Don't speak,
whatever happens, till I ask you to speak."

"Why?"

"Don't; don't!"

"All right."

They sat still.

And now the horror that had possessed Valentine so utterly began to
fade away, making its exit from his body and soul with infinitesimally
small steps. At length it had quite gone, and its place was taken by a
numb calm, level and still at first, then curiously definite, almost
too definite to be calm at all. Gradually this calm withdrew into
exhaustion, an exhaustion such as dwells incessantly with the anemic,
with those whose hearts beat feebly and whose vitality flickers low to
fading. That was like a delicious arrival of death, of death delicate
and serene, ivory white and pure, death desirable, grateful. Valentine
indeed believed that he was dying, there in the darkness beside his
friend, and, impersonally as it seemed, something of him, his brain
perhaps, seemed to be floating high up, as a bird floats over the sea,
and listening, and noting all that he did in this crisis. This attentive
spirit heard a strange movement of his soul in its bodily prison, heard
his soul stir, as if waking out of sleep, heard it shift, and rise up
slowly, noted its pause of hesitation. Then, as the vitality of the body
ebbed lower, there grew in the soul an excitement that aspired like a
leaping flame. It was as if a madman, prisoned in his narrow cell in a
vast asylum, secluded with his company of phantoms, heard the crackling
of the fire that devoured his habitation, and was stirred into an
ignorant and yet tumultuous passion. As the madman, with a childish,
increasing uneasiness, awed by the sinuous approach of the unseen fire,
might pace to and fro, round and round about his cell, so it seemed to
this poised, watching faculty of Valentine that his soul wandered in
its confined cell of the body, at first with the cushioned softness
of an animal, moving mechanically, driven by an endless and unmeaning
restlessness, then with an increasing energy, a fervour, a crescendo of
endeavour. What drove his soul? Surely it was struggling with an unseen
power. And the steady diminuendo of his bodily forces continued, until
he was a corpse in which a fury dwelt. That fury was the soul. He had a
strange fancy that he, unlike all the rest of humanity, would die, yet
still retain his spirit in its fleshy prison, and that the spirit
screamed and fought to be free on its wayward pilgrimage to heaven or
hell. All its brother and sister spirits had fled, since the beginnings
of time, from their bodies at the crisis of dissolution, had gone to
punishment or to reward. His soul alone was to meet a different fate,
was to be confined in a decaying body, to breathe physical corruption,
and to be at home in a crumbling dwelling to which no light, no air,
could ever penetrate. And the soul, which knows instinctively its eternal
_m�tier_, rebelled with a fantastic violence. And still, ever, the body
died. The pulses ceased from beating. The warm blood was mixed with snow
until it grew cold and gradually congealed in the veins. The little door
of the heart swung slower and slower upon its hinges, more feebly--more
feebly. And then there came a supreme moment. The soul of Valentine, with
a frantic vehemence, beat down at last its prison door, and, even as his
body died, escaped with a cry through the air.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Valentine, did you hear that strange cry?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Valentine, what was it? I never heard any sound like that before, so
thin and small, and yet so horribly clear and piercing; neither like the
cry of a child nor of an animal, nor like the wail that could come from
any instrument. Valentine, now I see a little flame come from where you
are sitting. It's so tiny and faint. Don't you see it? It is floating
toward me. Now it is passing me. It's beyond. It's going. There, it has
vanished. Valentine! Valentine!"




BOOK II--JULIAN




CHAPTER I

THE TRANCE


Gaining no reply to his call, Julian grew alarmed. He sprang up from
the table and turned on the electric light. Valentine was leaning back
nervelessly in his chair. His face was quite pale and cold. His lips were
slightly parted. His eyes were wide open and stared before him without
expression. His head hung far back over the edge of his chair. He looked
exactly like a man who had just died, and died in a convulsion. For
though the lips were parted, the teeth set tightly together grinned
through them, and the hands were intensely contracted into fists. Julian
seized Valentine in his arms, lifted the drooping body from the chair
and laid it out at length on the divan. He put a pillow under the head,
which fell on it grotesquely and lay sideways, still smiling horribly at
nothing. Then he poured out a glass of brandy and strove to force some
of it between Valentine's teeth, dashed water in the glaring eyes, beat
the air with a fan which he tore from the mantelpiece. All was in vain.
There came no sign of returning life. Then Julian caught Valentine's
hands in his and sought to unclench the rigid, cold fingers. He laid
his hand on the heart of his friend. No pulsation beat beneath his
anxious touch. Then a great horror overtook him. Suddenly he felt a
conviction that Valentine had died beside him in the dark, had died
sitting up in his chair by the table. The cry he had heard, so thin, so
strange and piercing, the attenuated flame that he had seen, were the
voice and the vision of the flying soul which he had loved, seeking its
final freedom, _en route_ to the distant spheres believers dream of and
sceptics deny.

"Valentine! Valentine!" he cried again, with the desperate insistence of
the hopeless. But the cold, staring creature upon the green divan did not
reply. With a brusque and fearful movement Julian shut the eyelids. Would
they ever open again? He knelt upon the floor, leaning passionately over
his friend, or that which had been his friend. He bent his head down on
the silent breast, listening. Surely if Valentine were alive he would
show it by some sign, the least stir, breath, shiver, pulse. There was
none. Julian might have been clasping stone or iron. If he could only
know for certain whether Valentine were really dead. Yet he dared not
leave him alone and go to seek aid. Suddenly a thought struck him. In the
hall of the flat was a handle which, when turned in a certain direction,
communicated with one of those wooden and glass hutches in which sleepy
boy-messengers harbour at night. Julian sprang to this handle, set the
communicator in motion, then ran back into the tentroom. His intention
was to write a note to Dr. Levillier. The writing-table was so placed
that, sitting at it, his back would be turned to that silent figure on
the divan. A shiver ran over him at the bare thought of such a blind
posture. No, he must face that terror, once so dear. He caught up a
pen and a sheet of note paper, and, swerving round, was about to write,
holding the paper on his knee, when the electric bell rang. The boy had
been very quick in his run from the hutch. Julian laid down the paper and
went to let the boy in. His knees shook as he descended the dark, echoing
stairs and opened the door. There stood the messenger, a rosy-faced
urchin of about twelve, with rather sleepy brown eyes.

"Come up," Julian said, and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy
violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed
and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his
agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized
pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to
come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself
upon him.

"Lor', sir," it said. "Is the gentleman ill?"

Julian glanced up and found that the little boy had innocently followed
him into the tentroom, and was now standing near him, gazing with a
round-eyed concern upon the stretched figure on the divan.

"Yes," Julian replied; "ill, very ill. I want you to go for a doctor."

The boy approached the divan, moved apparently by the impelling curiosity
of tender years. Julian stopped writing and watched him. He leaned down
and looked at the face, at the inertia of hands and limbs. As he raised
himself up from a calm and close inspection he saw Julian staring at him.
He shook his round bullet head, on which the thick hair grew in an
unparted stubble.

"No, I don't think he's ill, sir," he remarked, with treble conviction.

"Then why does he lie like that?"

"I expect it's because he's dead, sir," the child replied, with grave
serenity.

This unbiased testimony in favour of his fears came to Julian's mind like
a storm.

"How do you know?" he exclaimed, with a harsh voice.

"Lor', sir," the boy said, not without a certain pride, "I knows a corpse
when I sees it. My father died come a fortnight ago. See that?"

And he indicated, with stumpy finger, the black band upon his left arm.

"Well, father looked just like the gentleman."

Julian was petrified by this urchin's intimacy with death. It struck
him as utterly vicious and terrible. A horror of the rosy-faced little
creature, with good-conduct medals gleaming on its breast, came over him.

"Hush!" he said.

"All right, sir; but you take my word for it, the gentleman's dead."

Julian finished the note, thrust it into an envelope, and addressed it to
the doctor.

"Run and get a cab and take that at once to Harley Street," he said.

The boy smiled.

"I like cab-riding," he said.

"And," Julian caught his arm, "that gentleman is not dead. He's alive,
I tell you; only in a faint, and alive."

The boy looked into Julian's face with the pitying grin of superior
knowledge of the world.

"Ah, sir, you didn't see father," he said.

Then he turned and bounded eagerly down the stairs, in a hurry for the
cab-ride.

Loneliness and desolation descended like a cloud over Julian when he had
gone, for the frank belief of the boy, who cared nothing, struck like an
arrow of truth to his heart, who cared everything. Was Valentine indeed
dead? He would not believe it, for such a belief would bring the world in
ruins about his feet. Such a belief would people his soul with phantoms
of despair and of wickedness. Could he not cry out against God in
blasphemy, if God took his friend from him? The tears rushed into his
eyes, as he sat waiting there in the night. As before a drowning man,
scenes of the last five years flashed before him, painted in vital
colours,--scenes of his life with Valentine,--then scenes of all that
might have been had he never met Valentine, never known his strange
mastering influence. Could that influence have been given only to be
withdrawn? Of all the inexplicable things of life the most inexplicable
are the abrupt intrusions and disappearances of those lovely
manifestations which give healing to tired hearts, to the wounded
soldiers of the campaign of the world. Why are they not permitted to
stay? Bitterly Julian asked that question. Of all the men whom he knew,
only Valentine did anything for him. Must Valentine, of all men, be the
one who might not stay with him? The rest he could spare. He could not
spare Valentine. He could not. The impotence of his patience tortured him
physically, like a disease. He sprang up from his chair. He must do
something at once to know the truth. What could he do? He had no
knowledge of medicine. He could not tabulate physical indications, and
he would not trust to his infernal instinct. For it was that which cried
to him again and again, "Valentine is dead." What--what could he do?

A thought darted into his mind. Dogs are miraculously instinctive. Rip
might know what he did not certainly know, might divine the truth. He ran
into Valentine's bedroom.

"Rip," he cried; "Rip!"

The little dog sprang from its lonely sleep and accompanied Julian
energetically to the tentroom. Observing Valentine's attitude, it sprang
upon the couch beside him, licked his white face eagerly, then, gaining
no response, showed hesitation, alarm. It began to investigate the body
eagerly with its sharp nose, snuffing at head, shoulders, legs, feet.
Still it seemed in doubt, and paused at length with one fore foot planted
on Valentine's breast, the other raised in air.

"Even Rip is at fault," Julian said to himself. But as the words ran
through his mind, the little dog grew suddenly calmer. It dropped the
hesitating paw, again licked the face, then nestled quietly into the
space between Valentine's left breast and arm, rested its chin on the
latter, and with blinking eyes prepared evidently for repose. A wild
hope came again to Julian.

"Valentine is not dead," he said to himself. "He is in some strange
hypnotic trance. Presently he will recover from it. He will be well.
Thank God! Thank God! I will watch!"

And so he kept an attentive and hopeful vigil, his eyes always upon
Valentine's face, his hand always touching Valentine's. Already life
seemed blossoming anew with an inexplicable radiance. Valentine would
speak once more, would come back from this underworld of the senses.
And Julian's hand closed on his cold hand with a warm, impulsive
strength, as if it might be possible to draw him back physically to
consciousness and to speech. But there was no answer. And again Julian
was assailed with doubts. Yet the dog slept on happily, a hostage to
peace.

Julian never knew how long that vigil lasted. It might have been five
minutes, or a lifetime. The vehemence of his mental debate slew his
power of observation of normal things. He forgot what he was waiting
for. He forgot to expect Dr. Levillier. Two visions alternated in glaring
contrast before the eyes of his brain--life with Valentine, and life
without him. It is so we watch the trance, or death,--we know not
which,--of those whom we love, with a greedy, beautiful selfishness.
They are themselves only in relation to us. They live, they die, in that
wonderful relation. To live is to be with us; to die, to go away from us.
There are women who love so much that they angrily expostulate with the
dying, as if indeed the dying deliberately elected to depart out of their
arms. Do we not all feel at moments the "You could stay with me, if only
you had the will!" that is the last bitter cry of despairing affection?
Julian, sitting there, while Valentine lay silent and the dog slept by
his breast, saw ever and ever those two lives, flashing and fading like
lamps across a dark sea, life with, life without, him. The immensity of
the contrast, the millions of airy miles between those two life-worlds,
appalled him, for it revealed to him what mighty issues of joy and grief
hung upon the almost visionary thin thread of one little life. It is
ghastly to be so idiotically dependent. Yet who, at some time, is not?
And those who are independent lose, by their power, their possible
Paradise. But such a time of uncertainty as that which Julian must now
endure is a great penalty to pay for even the greatest joy, when the
joy is past. He had his trance of the mind. He was hypnotized by his
ignorance whether Valentine were alive or dead. And so he sat motionless,
making the tour of an eternity of suffering, of wonder, of doubt, and
hope, and yet, through it all, in some strange, indefinite way, numb,
phlegmatic, and actually stupid.

At last the bell rang. Dr. Levillier had arrived. He was struck at once
by Julian's heaviness of manner.

"What is it? What is the matter?" he asked.

"I don't know. You tell me."

"He is fainting--unconscious?"

"Unconscious, yes."

They were in the little hall now. Doctor Levillier narrowly scrutinized
Julian. For a moment he thought Julian had been drinking, and he took him
by the arm.

"No; it is fear," he murmured, releasing him, and walking into the
tentroom.

Julian followed with a loud footstep, treading firmly. Each step said to
Death, "You are not here. You are not here."

He stood at a little distance near the door, while Levillier approached
Valentine and bent over him. Rip woke up and curled his top lip in a
terrier smile of welcome. The doctor stroked his head, then lifted
Valentine's hand and held the wrist. He dropped it, and threw a glance
on Julian. There was a scream of interrogation in Julian's fixed eyes.
Doctor Levillier avoided it by dropping his own, and again turning his
attention to the figure on the divan. He undid Valentine's shirt, bared
the breast, and laid his hand on the heart, keeping it there for a long
time.

"Fetch me a hand-glass," he said to Julian.

Mechanically, Julian went into the bedroom, and groped in the dark upon
the dressing-table.

"Well, have you got it? Why don't you turn up the light?"

"I don't know," Julian answered, drily.

Doctor Levillier saw that anxiety was beginning to unnerve him. When the
glass was found the doctor led Julian back to the tentroom and pushed him
gently down in a chair.

"Keep quiet," he said. "And--keep hoping."

"There is--there is--hope?"

"Why not?"

Then the doctor held the little glass to Valentine's lips. The bright
surface was not dimmed. No breath of life tarnished it to dulness. Again
the doctor felt his heart, drew his eyelids apart, and carefully examined
the eyes, then turned slowly round.

"Doctor--doctor!" Julian whispered. "Why do you turn away? What are you
going to do?"

Doctor Levillier made a gesture of finale, and knelt on the floor by
Valentine. His head was bowed. His lips moved silently. Julian saw that
he was praying, and sprang up fiercely. All the frost of his senses
thawed in a moment. He seized Levillier by the shoulders.

"Don't pray!" he cried out; "don't pray. Curse! Curse as I do! If he's
dead you shall not pray. You shall not! You shall not!"

The little doctor drew him down to his knees.

"Julian, hush! My science tells me Valentine is dead."

Julian opened his white lips, but the doctor, with a motion, silenced
him, and added, pointing to Rip, who still lay happily by his master's
side:

"But that dog seems to tell me he is alive; that this is some strangely
complete and perfect simulation of death, some unnatural sleep of the
senses. Pray, pray with me that Valentine may wake."

And, kneeling by his friend, with bent head, Julian strove to pray. The
answer to that double prayer pierced the two men. It was so instant, and
so bizarre, fighting against probability, yet heralding light, and the
end of that night's pale circumstances.

Rip, relapsing quickly from his perfunctory smile on the doctor, had
again fallen asleep with an evident exceeding confidence and comfort,
snoring his way into an apparent peace that passed all understanding. But
scarcely had the doctor spoken, giving Julian hope, than the little dog
suddenly opened its eyes, shifted round in its nest of arm and bosom,
smelt furtively at Valentine's hand. Then it turned from the hand to the
side of its master, investigated it with a supreme anxiety, pursued its
search as far as the white, strict face and bared bosom. From the face
it recoiled, and with a piercing howl like the scream of a dog run over
by a cart, it sprang away, darted to the farthest corner of the room,
and huddled close against the wall in an agony of terror.

Julian turned cold. He believed implicitly that the trance at that very
moment had deepened into death, and that the sleepless instinct of the
dog had divined it partially while he slept, and now knew it and was
afraid. And the same error of belief shook Dr. Levillier. A spasm crossed
his thin, earnest face. No death had ever hurt him so sharply as this
death hurt him. He saw Julian recoil in horror from the divan, and he
could say nothing. For he, too, felt horror.

But in this moment of despair Valentine's hands slowly unclenched
themselves, and the fingers were gradually extended as by a man
stretching himself after a long sleep.

The doctor saw this, but believed himself a victim of a delusion, tricked
by the excitement of his mind into foolish visions. And Julian had turned
quite away, trembling. But now Valentine moved slightly, pressed his
elbows on the cushions that supported him, and half sat up, still with
closed eyes.

"Julian," Dr. Levillier said in a low, summoning voice,--"Julian, do you
see what I see? Is he indeed alive? Julian."

Then Julian, turning, saw, with the doctor, Valentine sit up erect, open
his eyes and gaze upon his two friends with a grave, staring scrutiny.

"Valentine, Valentine, how you frightened me! How you terrified me!"
Julian at last found a voice to exclaim. "Thank God, thank God! you are
alive. Oh, Valentine, you are alive; you are not dead."

Valentine's lips smiled slowly.

"Dead," he answered. "No; I am not dead."

And again he smiled quietly, as a man smiles at some secret thought
which tickles him or whips the sense of humour in him till, like an
obeying dog, it dances.

Dr. Levillier, having regained his feet, stood silently looking at
Valentine, all his professional instinct wide awake to note this
apparent resurrection from the dead.

"You here, doctor!" said Valentine. "Why, what does this all mean?"

"I want you to tell me that," Levillier said. "And you," he added, now
turning towards Julian.

But Julian was too much excited to answer. His eyes were blazing with joy
and with emotion. And Valentine seemed still to be informed with a
curious, serpentine lassitude. The life seemed to be only very gently
running again over his body, creeping from the centre, from the heart, to
the extremities, gradually growing in the eyes, stronger and stronger, a
dawn of life in a full-grown man. Dr. Levillier had never seen anything
quite like it before. There was something violently unnatural about it,
he thought, yet he could not say what. He could only stand by the broad
couch, fascinated by the spectacle under his gaze. Once he had read a
tale of the revivifying of a mummy in a museum. That might have been like
this; or the raising of Lazarus. The streams of strength almost visibly
trickled through Valentine's veins. And this new life was so vigorous,
so alert. It was as if during his strange sleep Valentine had been
carpentering his energies, polishing his powers, setting the temple
of his soul in order, gaining almost a ruthlessness from rest. He
stretched his limbs now as an athlete might stretch them to win the full
consciousness of their muscular force. When the doctor took hold of his
hand to feel his pulse the hand was hard and tense like iron, the fingers
gripped for a moment like thin bands of steel, and the life in the blue
eyes bounded, raced, swirled as water swirls in a mill-stream. Indeed,
Dr. Levillier felt as if there was too much life in them, as if the cup
had been filled with wine until the wine ran over. He put his fingers
on the pulse. It was strong and rapid and did not fluctuate, but beat
steadily. He felt the heart. That, too, throbbed strongly. And while he
made his examination Valentine smiled at him.

"I'm all right, you see," Valentine said.

"All right," the doctor echoed, still possessed by the feeling that there
lurked almost a danger in this apparently abounding health.

"What was it all?" Julian asked eagerly. "Was it a trance?"

"A trance?" Valentine said. "Yes, I suppose so."

He put his feet to the floor, stood up, and again stretched all his
limbs. His eyes fell upon Rip, who was still in the corner, huddled up,
his teeth showing, his eyes almost starting out of his head.

"Rip," he said, holding out his hand and slapping his knee, "come here!
Come along! Rip! Rip! What's the matter with him?"

"He thought you were dead," said Julian. "Poor little chap. Rip, it's all
right. Come!"

But the dog refused to be pacified, and still displayed every symptom of
angry fear. At last Valentine, weary of calling the dog, went towards it
and stooped to pick it up. At the downward movement of its master the dog
shrank back, gathered itself together, then suddenly sprang forward with
a harsh snarl and tried to fasten its teeth in his face. Valentine jumped
back just in time.

"He must have gone mad," he exclaimed. "Julian, see what you can do with
him."

Curiously enough, Rip welcomed Julian's advances with avidity, nestled
into his arms, but when he walked toward Valentine, struggled to escape
and trembled in every limb.

"How extraordinary!" Julian said. "Since your trance he seems to have
taken a violent dislike to you. What can it mean?"

"Oh, nothing probably. He will get over it. Put him into the other room."

Julian did so and returned.

Doctor Levillier was now sitting in an arm-chair. His light, kind
eyes were fixed on Valentine with a scrutiny so intense as to render
the expression of his usually gentle face almost stern. But Valentine
appeared quite unconscious of his gaze and mainly attentive to all that
Julian said and did. All this time the doctor had not said a word. Now
he spoke.

"You spoke of a trance?" he said, interrogatively.

Julian looked as guilty as a cribbing schoolboy discovered in his dingy
act.

"Doctor, Val and I have to crawl to you for forgiveness," he said.

"To me--why?"

"We have disobeyed you."

"But I should never give you an order."

"Your advice is a command to those who know you, doctor," said Valentine,
with a sudden laugh.

"And what advice of mine have you put in the corner with its face to the
wall?"

"We have been table-turning again."

"Ah!"

Doctor Levillier formed his lips into the shape assumed by one whistling.

"And this has been the result?"

"Yes," Julian cried. "Never, as long as I live, will I sit again. Val, if
you go down on your knees to me--"

"I shall not do that," Valentine quietly interposed. "I have no desire to
sit again now."

"You both seem set against such dangerous folly at last," said the
doctor. "Give me your solemn promise to stick to what you have said."

And the two young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine
with a light smile. Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety.
The events of the night had seriously affected him. He was excited and
emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the arm as he exclaimed:

"Valentine, tell me, what made you give that strange cry just before
you went into your trance? Were you frightened? or did something--that
hand--touch you? Or what was it?"

"A cry?"

"Yes."

"It was not I."

"Didn't you hear it?"

"No."

Julian turned to the doctor.

"It was an unearthly sound," he said. "Like nothing I have ever heard or
imagined. And, doctor, just afterward I saw something, something that
made me believe Valentine was really dead."

"What was it?"

Julian hesitated. Then he avoided directly replying to the question.

"Doctor," he said, "of course I needn't ask you if you have often been at
deathbeds?"

"I have. Very often," Levillier replied.

"I have never seen any one die," Julian continued, still with excitement.
"But people have told me, people who have watched by the dying, that at
the moment of death sometimes a tiny flame, a sort of shadow almost,
comes from the lips of the corpse and evaporates into the air. And they
say that flame is the soul going out of the body."

"I have never seen that," Levillier said. "And I have watched many
deaths."

"I saw such a flame to-night," Julian said. "After I heard the cry, I
distinctly saw a flame come from where Valentine was sitting and float up
and disappear in the darkness. And--and afterwards, when Valentine lay so
still and cold, I grew to believe that flame was his soul and that I had
actually seen him die in the dark."

"Imagination," Valentine said, rather abruptly. "All imagination. Wasn't
it, doctor?"

"Probably," Levillier said. "Darkness certainly makes things visible that
do not exist. I have patients who are perfectly sane, yet whom I forbid
ever to be entirely in the dark. Remove all objects from their sight, and
they immediately see non-existent things."

"You think that flame came only from my inner consciousness?" Julian
asked.

"I suspect so. Shut your eyes now."

Julian did so. Doctor Levillier bent over and pressed his two forefingers
hard on Julian's eyes. After a moment,

"What do you see?" he asked.

"Nothing," Julian replied.

"Wait a little longer. Now what do you see?"

"Now I see a broad ring of yellow light edged with ragged purple."

"Exactly. You see flame-colour."

He removed his fingers and Julian opened his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "But that cry. I most distinctly heard it."

"Imitate it."

"That would be impossible. It was too strange. Are the ears affected by
darkness?"

"The sense of hearing is intimately affected by suspense. If you do not
listen attentively you may fail to hear a sound that is. If you listen
too attentively you may succeed in hearing a sound that is not. Now, shut
your eyes again."

Julian obeyed.

"I am going to clap my hands presently," said the doctor. "Tell me as
soon as you have heard me do so."

"Yes."

Doctor Levillier made no movement for some time. Then he softly leant
forward, extended his arms in the air, and made the motion of clapping
his hands close to Julian's face. In reality he did not touch one hand
with the other, yet Julian cried out:

"I heard you clap them then."

"I have not clapped them at all," Levillier said.

Julian expressed extreme surprise.

"You see how very easy it is for the senses to be deceived," the doctor
added. "Once stir the nervous system into an acute state of anticipation,
and it will conjure up for you a veritable panorama of sights, sounds,
bodily sensations. But throw it into that state once too often, and the
panorama, instead of passing and disappearing, may remain fixed for a
time, even forever, before your eyes, your ears, your touch. And that
means recurrent or permanent madness. Valentine, I desire you most
especially to remember that."

He uttered the words weightily, with very definite intention. Valentine,
who still seemed to be in an unusually lazy or careless mood, laughed
easily.

"I will remember," he said.

He yawned.

"My trance has made me sleepy," he added.

The doctor got up.

"Yes; bed is the best place for you," he said.

"And for us all, I suppose," added Julian. "Though I feel as if I could
never sleep again."

The doctor went out into the hall to get his coat, leaving the friends
alone for a moment.

"I am still so excited," Julian went on. "Dear old fellow! How good it is
to see you yourself again. I made up my mind that you were dead. This is
like a resurrection. Oh, Val, if you had been dead, really!"

"What would you have done?"

"Done! I don't know. Gone to the devil, probably."

"Do you know where to find him?"

"My dear boy, he is in every London street, to begin with."

"In Victoria Street, even. I was only laughing."

"But tell me, what did you feel?"

"Nothing. As if I slept."

"And you really heard, saw, nothing?"

"Nothing."

"And that hand?"

Valentine smiled again, and seemed to hesitate. But then he replied,
quietly:

"I told you I could not feel it."

"I did, until I heard that dreadful cry, and then it was suddenly drawn
away from me."

Doctor Levillier appeared in the doorway with his overcoat on, but Julian
did not notice him. Again his excitement was rising. He began to pace up
and down the room.

"My God!" he said, vehemently, "what would Marr say to all this? What
does it mean? What can it mean?"

"Don't let us bother too much about it."

"Excellent advice," said Levillier, from the doorway.

Julian stood still.

"Doctor, I can understand your attitude," he said. "But what an amazing
being you are, Val. You are as calm and collected as if you had sat and
held converse with spirits all through your life. And yet something has
governed you, has temporarily deprived you of life. For you were to all
intents and purposes dead while you were in that trance."

"Death is simply nothing, and nothingness does not excite or terrify one.
I never felt better than I do at this moment."

"That's well," said Levillier, cheerfully.

Julian regarded Valentine's pure, beautiful face with astonishment.

"And you never looked better."

"I shall sleep exquisitely to-night, or rather this morning," Valentine
said.

As he spoke he drew away the heavy green curtain that hung across the
window. A very pale shaft of light stole in and lit up his white face.

It was the dawn, and, standing there, he looked like the spirit of the
dawn, painted against the dying night in such pale colours, white, blue,
and shadowy gold, a wonder of death and of life.

In the silence Dr. Levillier and Julian gazed at him, and he seemed a
mystery to them both, a strange enigma of purity and of unearthliness.

"Good-bye, Cresswell," Levillier said at last.

"Good-bye, doctor."

"Good-bye, Valentine."

Julian held out his hand to grasp his friend's, but Valentine began
looping up the curtain and did not take it. In his gentlest voice he said
to Julian:

"Good-bye, dear Julian, good-bye. The dawn is on our friendship, Julian."

"Yes, Valentine."

Valentine added, after a moment of apparent reflection:

"Take Rip away with you just for to-night. I don't want to be bitten in
my sleep."

And when Julian went away, the little dog eagerly followed him, pressing
close to his heels, so close that several times Julian could not avoid
kicking him.

As soon as the flat door had closed on his two friends, Valentine walked
down the passage to the drawing-room, which was shrouded in darkness. He
entered it without turning on the light, and closed the door behind him.
He remained in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour. At length the
door opened again. He emerged out of the blackness. There was a calm
smile on his face. Two of his fingers were stained with blood, and to one
a fragment of painted canvas adhered.

When Valentine's man-servant went into the room in the morning and drew
up the blinds, he found, to his horror, the picture of "The Merciful
Knight" lying upon the floor. The canvas hung from the gold frame in
shreds, as if rats had been gnawing it.




CHAPTER II

THE PICCADILLY EPISODE


Doctor Levillier and Julian bade each other good-bye on the doorstep.
The doctor hailed a hansom, but Julian preferred to walk. He wished to be
alone, to feel the cold touch of the air on his face. The dawn was indeed
just breaking, ever so wearily. A strong wind came up with it over the
housetops, and Victoria Street looked dreary in the faint, dusky, grey
light, which grew as slowly in the cloudy sky as hope in a long-starved
heart. Julian lived in Mayfair, and he now walked forward slowly towards
Grosvenor Place, making a deliberate detour for the sake of exercising
his limbs. He was glad to be out under the sky, glad to feel the breeze
on his face, and to be free from the horror of that little room in which
he had kept so appalling a vigil. The dull lines of the houses stretching
away through the foggy perspective were gracious to his eyes. His feet
welcomed the hard fibre of the pavement. They had learned in that night
almost to shudder at the softness of a thick carpet. And all his senses
began to come out of their bondage and to renew their normal sanity. Only
now did Julian realize how strenuous that bondage had been, a veritable
slavery of the soul. Such a slavery could surely only have been possible
within the four walls of a building. An artificial environment must be
necessary to such an artificial condition of feeling. For Julian now
gradually began to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had
somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He
could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of
prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as
they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that
clung round the chimneys which they loved.

And yet he had been communing with death, had for the first time
completely realized the fact and the meaning of death. What a demon
of the world it was, sly, bitter, chuckling at its power, the one
thing, surely, that has perfect enjoyment of all the things in the
scheme of the earth. What a trick it had played on Julian and on
Valentine. What a trick! And as this idea struck into Julian's mind he
found himself on the pavement by the chemist's shop that is opposite to
the underground railway station of Victoria. His eyes fell on the hutch
of the boy-messengers, and he beheld through the glass shutter three
heads. He crossed the road and tapped on the glass. A young man pulled
it up.

"Want to send a message, sir?"

"No. I wish to speak to one of your boys, if the one I mean is here. Ah,
there he is."

Julian pointed to his little Hermes of the midnight, who was crouched
within, uneasily sleeping, his chin nestling wearily among the medals
which his exemplary conduct had won for him. The young man shook the
child by the shoulder.

"Hulloh, Bob!" he yelled. "Here's a gentleman wants to speak to yer."

Bob came from his dreams with a jerk, and stared upon Julian with his big
brown eyes. Presently he began to realize matters.

"Want another doctor, sir? It ain't no manner of good," he remarked
airily, beginning to search for his cap, and to glow in the prospect of
another cab-ride.

"No," said Julian. "I stopped to tell you that you were wrong. The
gentleman is quite well again."

He put his hand into his pocket and produced half a crown.

"There's something for your mistake," he said.

Bob took it solemnly, and, as Julian walked on, called after him:

"It wasn't my fault, sir; it was father's."

He had more desire to shine as an intellectual authority on great
matters of dissolution than to respect the departed. Julian could not
help smiling at the child's evident discomfiture as he pursued his way
towards Grosvenor Place. On one of the doorsteps of the big houses that
drive respect like a sharp nail into the hearts of the poor passers-by,
a ragged old woman was tumultuously squatting. Her gin-soddened face
came, like a scarlet cloud, to the view from the embrace of a vagabond
black bonnet, braided with rags, viciously glittering here and there
with the stray bugles which survived from some bygone era of comparative
respectability. Her penetrating snores denoted that she was oblivious
of the lounging approach of the policeman, whose blue and burly form
was visible in the extreme distance. Julian stopped to observe her
reflectively. His eye, which loved the grotesque, was pleased by the
bedragglement of her attitude, by the flat foot, in its bursting boot,
which protruded from the ocean of her mud-stained petticoats, by the
wisps of coarse hair wandering in the breeze above her brazen wrinkles.
Poor soul! she kept a diary of her deeds, even though she could perhaps
only make a mark where her signature should have been. Julian stared at
her very intently, and as he did so he started violently, for across the
human background which her sleeping dissipation supplied there seemed to
float the vague shadow, suggestion, call it what you will, of a tongue of
flame.

He walked hastily on, angrily blaming his nerves. As he passed the
policeman he fancied he noticed that the man glanced at him with a
certain flickering suspicion. Was horror legibly written in his face?
he wondered uneasily, confessing to himself that even in the dawn and
the lap of Grosvenor Place a horror had again seized him. What did this
shadow which he had now twice seen portend? Surely his nerves were not
permanently upset. He was at first heartily ashamed of himself. Near St.
George's Hospital, gaunt and grey in the morning, he stopped again, bent
his left arm forcibly, and with his right hand felt the hard lump of
muscle, that sprang up like a ball of iron under his coat sleeve. And
as he felt it he cursed himself for the greatest of all fools. Thin,
meagre little men of the town, tea-party men whose thoughts were ever
on their ties and their moustaches, no doubt gave themselves up readily
to disturbances of the nerves. But Julian had always prided himself on
being an athlete, able to hold his own in the world by mere muscular
force, if need be. He had found it possible to develop side by side brain
and biceps, each to an adequate end. It had seemed grand to him to hold
these scales of his being evenly, to balance them to a hair. Those scales
hung badly now, lopsidedly. One was up in the clouds. He resolved that
the other should correct it. After a cold bath and a sleep he would go
round to Angelo's and have an hour's hard fencing. Cold water, the
Englishman's panacea for every ill, cold steel, the pioneer's Minerva,
would tonic this errant brain of his and drill it into its customary
obedience. So he said to himself.

And yet as he walked there came to him a notion that this little shadow
of a flame was still his companion; that this night just passed, this
day just begun, were the birthnight and the birthday of this small,
ghostlike thing which had come into being to bear him company, to haunt
him. Yes, as he walked, followed always closely by Rip, and saw the tall
iron gates of the Park, Apsley House, the long line of Piccadilly, all
uncertain, gentle, reduced to a whimsical mildness of aspect in the
half-light of the dawning, he again recalled the fact, which he had
mentioned that night to Doctor Levillier, of people watching an invalid
who had seen, at the precise moment of dissolution, the soul escaping
furtively from its fleshy prison like a flame, which was immediately
lost in the air. Surely, wandering souls, if indeed there were such
things, might still retain this faint semblance of a shape, a form. And
if so, they might perhaps occasionally conceive a fantastic attachment
to a human being, and companion him silently as the dog companions his
master. He might have such a companion, whose nature he could not
comprehend, whose object in seeking him out he could not guess. Perhaps
it felt affection toward him; perhaps, on the other hand, enmity. A
lover, or a spy--it might be either. Or it might have no definite
purpose, but simply drift near him in the air, as some human beings
drift feebly along together through life, because they have long ago
loved each other, or thought each other useful, or fancied, in some
moment of madness, that God meant them for each other. It might be an
aimless, dreary soul, unable to be gone from sheer dulness of purpose--a
soul without temperament, without character.

As this thought crossed Julian's mind he happened to glance at the front
of a shop on his left, and against the iron shutters the flame was dimly
but distinctly outlined. He stopped at once to look at it, but even as he
stopped it was gone. Then he sternly brought himself back from the vague
regions of fancy, and was angry that he had permitted himself to wander
in them like a child lost in the forest. He bent down and patted Rip,
and sought to wrench his mind from its wayward course, and to thrust it
forcibly into its accustomed groove of healthy sanity. Yet sanity seemed
to become abruptly commonplace, a sort of whining crossing-sweeper,
chattering untimely, meaningless phrases to him. To divert himself
entirely he paused beside a peripatetic coffee-stall, presided over
by a grey-faced, prematurely old youth, with sharp features and the
glancing eyes of poverty-stricken avarice.

"Give me a cup of coffee," he said.

The youth clattered his wares in excited obedience.

While he was pouring out the steaming liquid there drifted down to Julian
through the grey weariness of the morning a painted girl of the streets,
crowned with a large hat, on which a forest of feathers waved in the weak
and chilly breeze. Julian glanced at her idly enough and she glanced back
at him. Horror, he thought, looked from her eyes as if from a window. As
she returned his gaze she hovered near him in the peculiar desultory way
of such women, and Julian, glad of any distraction, offered her a cup of
coffee. She drew nearer and accepted it.

"And a bun, my dear," she hinted to the sharp-featured youth.

"And a bun," echoed Julian, seeing his doubtful pause of hesitation.

The bun came into view from a hidden basket, and the meal began,
Julian, Rip, and the lady of the feathers forming a companionable group
upon the kerb. The lady's curious and almost thrilling expression, which
had seemed to beacon from some height of her soul some exceptional and
dreary deed, faded under the influence of the dough and currants. A smile
overspread her thin features. She examined Julian with a gracious
interest.

"It's easy to see you've been makin' a night of it, Bertie," she remarked
casually at length, in the suffocated voice of one divided between desire
of conversation and love of food.

"You think so?" said Julian.

"Think so, dear, I'm sure so! Ask me another as I _don't_ know; do
darlin'."

Julian took another draught from the thick coffee-cup that held so
amazingly little.

"And what about yourself?" he said. "Why are you out here so early?"

The lady of the feathers cast a suspicious glance upon him. Then the
horror dawned again in her eyes.

"I'm afraid to go home," she said. "Yes, that's a fact."

"Afraid--why?" Julian spoke abstractedly. In truth he merely talked to
this floating wisp of humanity to distract his mind, and thought of her
as a strange female David of the streets sent to make a cockney music
in his ears that his soul might be rid of its evil spirit.

"Never you mind why," the lady answered.

She shivered suddenly, violently, as a dog just come out of water.

"Have another cup?" Julian said.

"And a bun, dearie," the lady again rejoined. She shook her head till all
the feathers danced.

"Never you mind why," she said, reverting again to his vagrant question.
"There's some things as don't do to talk about."

"I'm sure I've no wish to pry into your private affairs," Julian rejoined
carelessly.

But again he noticed the worn terror of her face. Surely that night she,
too, had passed through some unwonted experience, which had written its
sign-manual amid the paint and powder of her shame.

The lady stared back at him. Beneath her tinted eyelids the fear seemed
to grow like a weed. Tears followed, rolling over her cheeks and mingling
with the coffee in her cup.

"Oh dear," she murmured lamentably. "Oh, dear, oh!"

"What's the matter?" said Julian.

But she only shook her head, with the peevish persistence of weak
obstinacy, and continued vaguely to weep as one worn down by chill
circumstance.

Julian turned his eyes from her to the coffee-stall, in which the
sharp-featured youth now negligently leant, well satisfied with the
custom he had secured. Behind the youth's head it seemed to Julian that
the phantom flame hung trembling, as if blown by the light wind of
the morning. He laid his hand on the lady's left arm and unconsciously
closed his fingers firmly over the flesh, while, in a low voice, he
said to her:

"Look there!"

The lady of the feathers stopped crying abruptly, as if her tears were
suddenly frozen at their source.

"Where, dearie?" she said jerkily. "Whatever do you mean?"

"There where the cups are hung up. Don't you see anything?"

But the lady was looking at him, and she now dropped her cup with a crash
to the pavement.

"There's a go," said the sharp-featured youth. "You're a nice one, you
are!"

Without regarding his protest, the lady violently wrenched her arm from
Julian's grasp and recoiled from the stall.

"Le-go my arm," she babbled hysterically. "Le-go, I say. I can't stand
any more--no, I can't."

"I'm not going to hurt you," said Julian, astonished at her outburst.

But she only repeated vehemently:

"Let go, let me go!"

Backing away, she trod the fallen coffee-cup to fragments on the
pavement, and began to drift down Piccadilly, her face under the
feathers set so completely round over her shoulder, in observation of
Julian, that she seemed to be promenading backwards. And as she went
she uttered deplorable wailing sounds, which gradually increased in
volume. Apparently she considered that her life had been in imminent
danger, and that she saved herself by shrieks; for, still keeping her
face toward the coffee-stall, she faded away in the morning, until
only the faint noise of her retreat betokened her existence any longer.

The sharp-featured youth winked wearily at Julian from the midst of his
grove of coffee-cups.

"Nice things, women, sir," he ejaculated. "Good ayngels the books calls
'm. O Gawd!"

Julian paid him and walked away.

And as he went he found himself instinctively watching for the fleeting
shadow of a flame, trying to perceive it against the grey face of a
house, against the trunk of a tree, the dark green of a seat. But the
light of the mounting morning grew ever stronger and the flame-shaped
shadow did not reappear.

Julian reached his chambers, undressed abstractedly and went to bed.
Before he fell asleep he looked at Rip reposing happily at the foot of
the bed, and had a moment of shooting wonder that the little dog was so
completely comfortable with him. That it had flown at its master, who
had always been kind to it, whom it had always seemed to love hitherto,
puzzled Julian.

But then so many things had puzzled him within the last few days.

He stroked Rip with a meditative hand and lay down. Soon his mind began
to wander in the maze whose clue is sleep. He was with Valentine, with
Doctor Levillier, with the sharp-featured youth and the lady of the
feathers. They sat round a table and it was dark; yet he could see. And
the lady's feathers grew like the beanstalk of Jack the Giant-killer
towards heaven and the land of ogres. Then Julian climbed up and up till
he reached the top of the ladder. And it seemed to him that the feather
ladder ended in blue space and in air, and that far away he saw the
outline of a golden bar. And on this bar two figures leaned. One seemed
an angel, one a devil. Yet they had faces that were alike, and were
beautiful. They faded.

Julian seemed vaguely to hear the sharp-featured youth say, "Good
ayngels! O Gawd!"

Was that the motto of his sleep?




CHAPTER III

A DRIVE IN THE RAIN


When Julian returned from Angelo's the next morning he found lying
upon the breakfast table a note, and, after the custom of many people,
before opening it he read the address on the envelope two or three
times and considered who the writer might be. It struck him at once
that the writing ought to be familiar to him and capable of instant
identification. The name of his correspondent was literally on the tip of
his mind. Yet he could not utter it. And so at last he broke the seal.
Before reading the note he glanced at the signature: "Valentine."

Julian was surprised. He knew now why he had seemed to remember, yet had
not actually remembered, the handwriting. Regarding it again, he found it
curiously changed from Valentine's usual hand, yet containing many points
of resemblance. After a while he came to the conclusion that it was like
a bad photograph of the original, imitating, closely enough, all the main
points of the original, yet leaving out all the character, all the
delicacy of it. For Valentine's handwriting had always seemed to Julian
to express his nature. It was rather large and very clear, but delicate,
the letters exquisitely formed, the lines perfectly even, neither
depressed nor slanting upwards. This note was surely much more coarsely
written than usual. And yet, of course, it was Valentine's writing.
Julian wondered he had not known. He read the note at last:

"DEAR JULIAN,

"I am coming over to see you this afternoon about five, and shall try and
persuade Rip to restore me to his confidence. I hope you will be in. Are
you tired after last night's experiences? I never felt better.

"Ever yours,
"VALENTINE."

"And yet," Julian thought, "I should have guessed by your writing that
you were in some unusual frame of mind, either tired, or--or--" he looked
again, and closely, at the writing,--"or in a temper less delightfully
calm and seraphic than usual. Yes, it looks actually a bad-tempered hand.
Valentine's!" Then he laughed, and tossed the note carelessly into the
fire that was crackling upon the hearth. Rip lay by it, quietly
sleeping.

Punctually at five o'clock Valentine appeared. Rip was still lying
happily before the fire, but directly the dog caught sight of its master
all the hair along the middle of its back bristled on end, and it showed
every symptom of acute distress and fury. Julian was obliged to put it
out of the room.

"What can have come over Rip, Valentine?" he said, as he came back. "This
sudden hatred of you is inexplicable."

"Absolutely," Valentine answered. "But it is sure to pass away. There was
something uncanny about that trance of mine which frightened the little
beggar."

"Perhaps. But the oddest thing is, that while you were insensible Rip lay
with his head upon your arm as contented as possible. It was only just as
you began to show signs of life that he seemed to turn against you. I
can't understand it."

"Nor I. Have you seen Marr to-day?"

"No. I haven't been to the club. I am so glad you don't know him."

Valentine laughed. He was lying back in a big chair, smoking a cigarette.
His face was unclouded and serene, and he had never looked more entirely
healthy. Indeed, he appeared much more decisively robust than usual.
Julian noticed this.

"Your trance seems positively to have done you good," he said.

"It certainly has not done me harm. My short death of the senses has
rested me wonderfully. I wonder if I am what is called a medium."

"I shouldn't be surprised if you are," Julian said. "But I don't think I
could be surprised at anything to-day. Indeed, I have found myself
dwelling with childish pleasure upon the most preposterous ideas, hugging
them to my soul, determining to believe in them."

"Such as--what?"

"Well, such as this."

And then Julian told Valentine of his curious notion that some wandering
soul was beginning to companion him, and described how he had thought he
saw it when he was gazing at the old woman in Grosvenor Place, and again
when he was with the lady of the feathers.

"But," Valentine said, "you say you were staring very hard at the old
woman?"

"Yes."

"That might account for the matter of the first appearance of the flame
in daylight. If you look very steadily at some object, a kind of slight
mirage will often intervene between you and it."

"Perhaps. But I have seen this shadow of a flame when I was not thinking
of it or expecting it."

"When?"

"Just now. As you came into the room I saw it float out at that door."

"You are sure?"

"I believe so. Yes, I am."

"But why should this soul, if soul it be, haunt you?"

"I can't tell. Perhaps, Val, you and I ought not to have played at
spiritualism as we should play at a game. Perhaps--"

Julian paused. He was looking anxious, even worried.

"Suppose we have not stopped in time," he said.

Valentine raised his eyebrows.

"I don't understand."

Julian was standing exactly opposite to him, leaning against the
mantelpiece and looking down at him.

"We ought never to have sat again after our conversation with the
doctor," Julian said. "I feel that to-day, so strongly. I feel that
perhaps we have taken just the one step too far,--the one step in the
dark that may be fatal."

"Fatal! My dear Julian, you are unstrung by the events of the night."

But the calm of Valentine's voice did not seem to sway Julian. He
continued:

"Valentine, now that I am with you, I am attacked by a strange idea."

"What is it?"

"That last night may have its consequences; yes, even though we strive to
forget it, and to forget our sittings. If it should be so! If anything--"

He was curiously upset, and did not seem able to-day to take the
influence of Valentine's mood. Indeed, this new anxiety of his was
only born in Valentine's presence, was communicated apparently by him.

"Everything one does has its following consequence," Julian said.

"It is the fashion to say so. I do not believe it. I believe, on the
contrary, that we often do things with a special view to the doctrine of
consequence, and that our intentions are frustrated by the falseness of
the doctrine. Suppose I kiss a woman. I may do so with intention to make
her love me, or, on the other hand, to make her hate me. The chances are
that she does neither the one nor the other. She simply forgets all about
such a trifle, and we go on shaking hands politely for the rest of our
natural lives. Julian, the memories of most people are like winter
days--very short."

"Perhaps. But there is some hidden thing in life whose memory is
everlasting. All the philosophers say so, especially those who are
inclined to deny the Deity. They put their faith in the chain of cause
and effect. What we have done,--you and I, Valentine,--must have an
effect of some sort."

"It will have a very bad effect upon you, I can see," said Valentine,
smiling, "unless you pull yourself together. Come, this is nonsense.
We have sat once too often, and the consequence followed, and is over:
I went into a trance. I have fortunately come out of it, so the penalty
which you so firmly believe in has been paid. The score is cleared,
Julian."

"I suppose so."

"I have no doubt of it. Let us forget the whole matter, since to remember
it seems likely to affect those devils that make the hell of the physical
man--the nerves. Let us forget it. Where are you dining to-night?"

"Nowhere in particular. I have not thought about it," Julian said, rather
listlessly.

"Dine with me then."

"Yes, Valentine."

Julian hesitated, then added:

"But not in Victoria Street, if you don't mind."

"At the Savoy then; or shall we say the Berkeley?"

"Very well,--the Berkeley."

"At eight o'clock. Good-bye till then. I must ask you to give the shelter
of your roof to Rip till he returns to a more reasonable frame of mind
about me."

When Valentine had gone Julian put on his coat, and walked down to the
club, ostensibly to look at the evening papers, really because he had
a desire to see Marr. His intention, if he did meet the latter, was to
question him closely as to the consequences which might follow upon a
sitting, or series of sittings, undertaken by two people for some reason
unsuited to carry out such an enterprise together. That Marr would be
in the club he felt no shadow of doubt. Apparently the club had for Marr
all the attraction that induces the new member to haunt the smoking and
reading rooms of his freshly acquired home during the first week or two
of its possession. He was incessantly there, as Julian had had reason to
know.

But to-day proved to be an exception. Julian explored the club from end
to end without finding the object of his search. Finally he went to the
hall-porter.

"Is Mr. Marr in the club to-day?"

"No, sir; he has not been in at all since yesterday afternoon."

"Oh, thanks."

Julian felt strongly, even absurdly, disappointed, and found himself
wishing that he possessed Marr's private address. He would certainly have
called upon him. However, he had no idea where Marr lived, so there was
nothing to be done. He went back to his rooms, dressed for dinner, and
was at the Berkeley by five minutes past eight. The restaurant was very
crowded that night, but Valentine had secured a table in the window, and
was waiting when Julian arrived. The table next to theirs was the only
one unoccupied in the room.

The two friends sat down and began to eat rather silently in the midst of
the uproar of conversation round them. Valentine seemed quite unconscious
of the many glances directed towards him. He never succeeded in passing
unnoticed anywhere, and although he had never done anything remarkable,
was one of the best-known men in town merely by virtue of his unusual
personality.

"There's the Victoria Street Saint," murmured a pretty girl to her
companion. "What a fortune that man could make on the stage."

"Yes, or as a pianist," responded the man, rather enviously. "His looks
would crowd St. James's Hall even if he couldn't play a note. I never can
understand how Cresswell manages to have such a complexion in London. He
must take precious good care of himself."

"Saints generally do. You see, we live for time, they for eternity. We
only have to keep the wrinkles at bay for a few years, but they want to
look nice on the Judgment Day."

She was a little actress, and at this point she laughed to indicate
that she had said something smart. As her laugh was dutifully echoed
by the man who was paying for the dinner, she felt deliriously clever
for the rest of the evening.

Presently Julian said:

"I went to the club this afternoon."

"Did you?"

"Yes. I wanted to have a talk with that fellow Marr."

Valentine suddenly put down the glass of champagne which he was in the
act of raising to his lips.

"But surely," he began, with some appearance of haste. Then he seemed to
check himself, and finished calmly:

"You found him, I suppose?"

"No."

"I thought he was perpetually there, apparently on the lookout for you."

"Yes, but to-day he hadn't been in at all. Perhaps he has gone out of
town."

"Ah, probably."

At this moment two men entered the restaurant and strolled towards the
table next to that at which Valentine and Julian sat. One of them knew
Julian and nodded as he passed. He was just on the point of sitting
down and unfolding his napkin when a sudden thought seemed to strike him,
and he came over and said to Julian:

"You remember that dinner at Lady Crichton's, where we met the other
night?"

"Yes."

"Startling bit of news to-night, wasn't it? Damned sudden!"

Julian looked puzzled.

"What--is Lady Crichton ill, then?"

"Lady Crichton! No. I meant about that poor fellow, Marr."

Julian swung round in his seat and regarded the man full in the face.

"Marr! Why, what is it? Has he had an accident?"

"Dead!" the other man said laconically, arranging the gardenia in his
coat, and taking a comprehensive survey of the room.

"Dead!" Julian repeated, without expression. "Dead!"

"Yes. Well, bye-bye. Going on to the Empire!"

He turned to go, but Julian caught his arm.

"Wait a moment. When did he die?"

"Last night. In the dead of the night, or in the early morning."

"What of?"

"They don't know. There's going to be an inquest. The poor chap didn't
die at home, but in a private hotel, in the Euston Road, the 'European.'
He's lying there now. Funny sort of chap, but not bad in his way. I
expect--"

Here the man bent down and murmured something into Julian's ear.

"Well, see you again presently. 'In the midst of life,' eh?"

He lounged away and began applying his intellect to the dissection of a
sardine.

Julian turned round in his chair and again faced Valentine. But he did
not go on eating the cutlet in aspic that lay upon his plate. He sat
looking at Valentine, and at last said:

"How horribly sudden!"

"Yes," Valentine answered sympathetically. "He must have had a weak
heart."

"I dare say. I suppose so. Valentine, I can't realize it."

"It must be difficult. A man whom you saw so recently, and I suppose
apparently quite well."

"Quite. Absolutely."

Julian sat silent again and allowed the waiter to take away his plate
with the untouched cutlet.

"I didn't like the man," he began at last. "But still I'm sorry,
damned sorry, about this. I wanted to see him again. He was an awfully
interesting fellow, Val; and, as I told you, might, I believe, in time
have gained a sort of influence over me,--not like yours, of course,
but he certainly had a power, a strength, about him, even a kind of
fascination. He was not like other people. Ah--" and he exclaimed
impatiently, "I wish you had met him."

"Why?"

"I scarcely know. But I should like you to have had the experience. And
then, you are so intuitive about people, you might have read him. I could
not. And he was a fellow worth reading, that I'm certain of. No, I won't
have any mutton. I seem to have lost my appetite over this."

Valentine calmly continued his dinner, while Julian talked on about Marr
rather excitedly. When they were having coffee Valentine said:

"What shall we do to-night? It is only a quarter past nine. Shall we go
anywhere?"

"Oh no, I think not--wait--yes, we will."

Julian drank his coffee off at a gulp, in a way that would have made him
the despair of an epicure.

"Where shall we go, then?"

Julian answered:

"To the Euston Road. To the 'European.'"

"The 'European'!"

"Yes, Valentine; I must see Marr once more, even dead. And I want you
to see him. It was he who made the strangeness in our lives. But for him
these curious events of the last days would not have happened. And isn't
it peculiar that he must have died just about the time you were in your
trance?"

"I do not see that. The two things were totally unconnected."

"Perhaps. I suppose so. But I must know how he died. I must see what he
looks like dead. You will come with me?"

"If you wish it. But we may not be admitted."

"I will manage that somehow. Let us go."

Valentine got up. He showed neither definite reluctance nor excitement.
They put on their coats in the vestibule and went out into the street.
While they had been dining the weather, fine during the day, had changed,
and rain was falling in sheets. They stood in the doorway while the
hall-porter called a cab. Piccadilly on such a night as this looked
perhaps more decisively dreary than a rain-soaked country lane, or
storm-driven sand-dunes by the sea. For wet humanity, with wispy hair
and swishing petticoats, draggled with desire for shelter, is a piteous
vision as it passes by.

Valentine and Julian regarded it, turning up their coat collars and
instinctively thrusting their hands deep into their pockets. Two soldiers
passed, pursued by a weary and tattered woman, at whom they laughingly
jeered as they adjusted the cloaks over their broad shoulders. They were
hurrying back to barracks, and disregarded the woman's reiterated
exclamation that she would go with them, having no home. A hansom went
by with the glass down, a painted face staring through it upon the yellow
mud that splashed round the horse's feet. Suddenly the horse slipped and
came down. The glass splintered as the painted and now screaming face
was dashed through it. A wet crowd of roughs and pavement vagabonds
gathered and made hoarse remarks on the woman's dress as she was hauled
out in her finery, bleeding and half fainting, her silk gown a prey to
the mud, her half-naked shoulders a hostage to the wind. Two men in
opera-hats, walked towards their club, discussing a divorce case, and
telling funny stories through the rain. A very small, pale, and filthy
boy stood with bare feet upon the kerbstone, and cried damp matches.

"How horrible London is to-night," Julian said as he and Valentine got
into their cab.

"Yes. Why add to our necessary contemplation of its horrors? Why go on
this mad errand?"

"I want you to see Marr," Julian replied, with a curious obstinacy. He
pushed up the trap in the roof.

"Drive to the European Hotel, in the Euston Road," he said to the cabman.
"D' you know it?"

"Yes, sir," the cabman said. He was smiling on his perch as he cracked
his whip and drove towards the Circus.

The glass had been let down and the two friends beheld a continuously
blurred prospect of London framed in racing raindrops and intersected
by the wooden framework of the movable shutter. It was at the same time
fantastic and tumultuous. The glare of light at the Circus shone over
the everlasting procession of converging omnibuses, the everlasting mob
of prostitutes and of respectable citizens waiting to mount into the
vehicles whose paint proclaimed their destination. Active walkers darted
dexterously to and fro over the cobblestones, occasionally turning
sharply to swear at a driver whose cab had bespattered their black
conventionality with clinging dirt. The drivers were impassively
insulting, as became men placed for the moment in a high station of
life. At the door of the Criterion Restaurant an enormously fat and
white bookmaker in a curly hat and diamonds muttered remarks into the
ear of an unshaven music-hall singer. A gigantic "chucker-out" observed
them with the dull gaze of sullen habit, and a beggar-boy whined to them
in vain for alms, then fluttered into obscurity. Fixed with corner stones
upon the wet pavement of the "island" lay in an unwinking row the
contents bill of the evening papers, proclaiming in gigantic black or
red letters the facts of suicide, slander, divorce, murder, railway
accidents, fires, and war complications. Dreary men read them with
dreary, unexcited eyes, then forked out halfpence to raucous youths
whose arms were full of damp sheets of pink paper. A Guardsman kissed
"good-bye" to his trembling sweetheart as he chivalrously assisted her
into a Marylebone 'bus, and two shop-girls, going home from work, nudged
each other and giggled hysterically. Four fat Frenchmen stood in the
porch of the Monico violently gesticulating and talking volubly at the
tops of their voices. Two English undergraduates pushed past them with
a look of contempt, and went speechlessly into the caf� beyond. A lady
from Paris, all red velvet and white ostrich-tips, smoothed her cheek
with her kid glove meditatively, and glanced about in search of her fate
of the dark and silent hours. And then--Valentine and Julian were in the
comparative dimness of Shaftesbury Avenue--a huge red cross on a black
background started out of the gloom above a playhouse. Julian shuddered
at it visibly.

"You are quite unstrung to-night, Julian," Valentine said. "Let us turn
the cab round and go home."

"No, no, my dear fellow; I am all right. It is only that I see things
to-night much more clearly than usual. I suppose it is owing to something
physical that every side of London seems to have sprung into prominence.
Of course I go about every day in Piccadilly, St. James's Street,
everywhere; but it is as if my eyes had been always shut, and now they
are open. I can see London to-night. And that cross looked so devilishly
ironical up there, as if it were silently laughing at the tumult in the
rain. Don't you feel London to-night, too, Valentine?"

"I always feel it."

"Tragically or comically?"

"I don't know that I could say truly either. Calmly or contemptuously
would rather be the word."

"You are always a philosopher. I can't be a philosopher when I see
those hordes of women standing hour after hour in the rain, and those
boys searching among them. I should be one of those boys probably but
for you."

"If you were, I doubt whether I should feel horrified."

"Not morally horrified, I dare say, but intellectually disgusted. Eh?"

"I am not sure whether I shall permit my intellect quite so much
license in the future as I have permitted it in the past," Valentine
said thoughtfully.

His blue eyes were on Julian, but Julian was gazing out on Oxford Street,
which they were crossing at that moment. Julian, who had apparently
continued dwelling on the train of thoughts waked in him by the sight
of the painted cross, ignored this remark and said:

"It is not my moral sense which shuddered just now, I believe, but my
imagination. Sin is so full of prose, although many clever writers have
represented it as splendidly decorated with poetry. Don't you think so,
Val? And it is the prose of sin I realized so vividly just now."

"The wet flowers on the waiting hats, the cold raindrops on the painted
faces, the damp boots trudging to find sin, the dark clouds pouring a
benediction on it. I know what you mean. But the whole question is one
of weather, I think. Vanity Fair on a hot, sweet summer night, with a
huge golden moon over Westminster, soft airs and dry pavements, would
make you see this city in a different light. And which of the lights is
the true one?"

"I dare say neither."

"Why not both? The smartest coat has a lining, you know. I dare say
there are velvet sins as well as plush sins, and the man who can find
the velvet is the lucky fellow. Sins feel like plush to me, however,
and I dislike plush. So I am not the lucky fellow."

"No, Valentine; you are wrong. I'm pretty sure all virtue is velvet and
all vice is plush. So you stick to velvet."

"I don't know. Ask the next pretty dressmaker you meet. Bloomsbury
is a genteel _inferno_ on a wet night."

They traversed it smoothly on asphalt ways. All the time Valentine was
watching Julian with a fixed and narrow scrutiny, which Julian failed to
notice. The rows of dull houses seemed endless, and endlessly alike.

"I am sure all of them are full of solicitors," said Valentine.

Presently in many fanlights they saw the mystic legend, "Apartments."
Then there were buildings that had an aged air and sported broken
windows. Occasionally, on a background of red glass lit by a gas-jet
from behind, sat the word "Hotel." A certain grimy degradation swam in
the atmosphere of these streets. Their aspect was subtly different from
the Bloomsbury thoroughfares, which look actively church-going, and are
full of the shadows of an everlasting respectability which pays its
water rates and sends occasional conscience-money to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer. People looked furtive, and went in and out of the houses
furtively. They crawled rather than pranced, and their bodies bore
themselves with a depression that seemed indiscreet. Occasionally men
with dripping umbrellas knocked at the doors under the red glass, and
disappeared into narrow passages inhabited by small iron umbrella-stands.
Night brooded here like a dyspeptic raven with moulting tail-feathers
and ragged wings. But London is eloquent of surprises. The cab turned
a corner, and instantly they were in a wide and rain-swept street, long
and straight, and lined with reserved houses, that shrank back from the
publicity of the passing traffic at the end of narrow alleys protected
by iron gates. Over many of these gates appeared lit arches of glass on
which names were inscribed: "Albion Hotel," "Valetta Hotel," "Imperial
Hotel," "Cosmopolitan Hotel,"--great names for small houses. These houses
had front doors with glass panels, and all the panels glowed dimly with
gas.

The cab flashed by them, and Julian read the fleeting names, until his
eyes were suddenly saluted with "European Hotel."

Violently the cabman drew up. The smoking horse was squeezed upon its
haunches, and its feet slithered harshly along the stones. It tried to
sit down, was hauled up by the reins, and stood trembling as the right
wheel of the cab collided with the pavement edge, and the water in the
gutter splashed up as if projected from a spray.

"Beg pardon, gents. I thought it was a bit further on," said the cabby,
leering down cheerfully. "Nice night, sir, ain't it?"

He shook the reluctant drops of moisture from his waterproof-shrouded
hat, and drove off.

Valentine opened the damp iron gate, and they walked up the paved alley
to the door.




CHAPTER IV

THE EUSTON ROAD EPISODE


Opening the door, they found themselves in a squalid passage. A room on
the left was fronted by a sort of counter, above which was a long window
giving onto the passage, and as the shrill tinkle of a bell announced
their entrance this window was pushed up, and the large red face and
furtive observant eyes of a man stared upon them inquiringly.

"Do you require a room for the night?" he asked, in a husky voice,
invaded by a strong French accent. "Because--"

"No," interrupted Julian.

The man nodded, and, strange to say, with apparent content.

"There is trouble in my house," he said. "I am unlucky; I come to England
from my country to earn an honest living, and before two years, I have
the police here last night."

"Yes," said Julian, "I know."

"What? You know it? Well, it is not my fault. The gentleman come last
night with a lady, his wife, I suppose. How am I to know? He ask for a
room. He look perfectly well. I give them the room. They go to bed. At
four o'clock in the morning I hear a bell ring. I get up. I go on the
landing to listen. I hear the bell again. I run to the chamber of the
lady and gentleman. The lady is gone. The gentleman falls back on the bed
as I come in and dies. Mon Dieu! It is--"

He suddenly paused in his excited narrative. Valentine had moved his
position slightly and was now standing almost immediately under the
gas-lamp that lit the glass door.

"You--you are relation of him?" he said. "You come to see him?"

"I have come to see him, certainly," said Valentine. "But I am no
relation of his. This gentleman," and he pointed to Julian, "knew him
well, and wished to look at him once more."

The landlord seemed puzzled. He glanced from Valentine to Julian, then
back again to Valentine.

"But," he began, once more addressing himself to the latter, "you are
like--there is something; when the poor gentleman fell on the bed and
died he had your eyes. Yes, yes, you are relation of him."

"No," Valentine said; "you are mistaken."

"I should think so," exclaimed Julian. "Poor Marr's face was as utterly
different from yours, Valentine, as darkness is different from light."

"No, no; it is not the eyes of the gentleman," the landlord continued,
leaning forward through his window, and still violently scrutinizing
Valentine,--"it is not the eyes. But there is something--the voice, the
manner--yes, I say there is something, I cannot tell."

"You are dreaming, my friend," Valentine calmly interposed. "Now, Julian,
what do you want to do?"

Julian came forward and leant his arm on the counter.

"I am the poor gentleman's great friend," he said. "You must let me see
him."

The landlord held up his fat hands with a large gesticulation of refusal.

"I cannot, sir. To-morrow they remove him. They sit on the poor
gentleman--"

"I know,--the inquest. All this is very hard upon you, an honest man
trying to make an honest living."

Julian put some money into one of the agitated hands.

"My friend and I only wish to see him for a moment."

"Monsieur, I cannot. I--"

Julian insinuated another sovereign into his protesting fingers. They
took it as an anemone takes a shrimp, and made a gesture of abdication.

"Well, if Monsieur is the friend of the poor gentleman, I have not the
heart, I am tender-hearted, I am foolish--"

He disappeared muttering from the window, and in a moment appeared
at a door on the left, disclosing himself now fully as a degraded,
flaccid-looking, frouzy ruffian of a very low type, flashily dressed,
and of a most unamiable expression. Taking a candlestick from a dirty
marble-topped slab that projected from the passage-wall, he struck a
match, lit the candle, and preceded them up the narrow flight of stairs,
his boots creaking loudly at every step. On the landing at the top a
smart maid-servant with a very pale face reconnoitered the party for
a moment with furtive curiosity, then flitted away in the darkness to
the upper regions of the house.

The landlord paused by a door numbered with a black number.

"He is in here," he whispered hoarsely. "Tomorrow they sit on him. After
that he go from me. Mon Dieu! I am glad when he is gone. My custom he
is spoilt. My house get a bad name, and like a dog they hang him. Mon
Dieu!"

He opened the door stealthily, forming "St!" with his fat, coarse lips.

"I light the gas. It is all dark."

"No, no," Julian said, taking the candle from him, "I will do that. Go
down."

He motioned him away, and entered the room, followed by Valentine, at
whom the landlord again stared with a greedy consideration and curiosity,
before turning to retreat softly down the narrow stairs.

They found themselves in a good-sized room, typically of London. It was
full of the peculiar and unmistakable metropolitan smell, a stale odor
of the streets that suggests smuts to the mind. Two windows, with a
long dingy mirror set between them, looked out towards the Euston Road.
Venetian blinds and thin white curtains looped with yellow ribbon
shrouded them. On a slab that stuck out under the mirror was placed a
bundle of curling-pins tied with white tape, a small brush and comb,
and a bottle of cherry-blossom scent. Near the mirror stood a narrow
sofa covered with red rep. Upon this lay a man's upturned top-hat, in the
corner of which reposed a pair of reindeer gloves. A walking-stick with
a gold top stood against the wall, in a corner by the marble mantlepiece.
In the middle of the room lay a small open portmanteau, disclosing a
disorder of shirts, handkerchiefs, and boots, a cheque-book, a bottle
of brandy, and some brushes. By the fireplace there was a vulgar-looking
arm-chair upholstered in red. The room was full of the faint sound of
London voices and London traffic.

Julian went straight up to the gas chandelier and lit all three jets.
His action was hurried and abrupt. Then he set the candle down beside
the bundle of curling-pins, and turned sharply round to face the bed.
The room was now a glare of light, and in this glare of light the broad
bed with its white counterpane and sheets stood out harshly enough. The
sheets were turned smoothly down under the blue chin of the dead man,
who lay there upon his back, his face with fast-shut eyes dusky white,
or rather grey, among the pillows. As Julian looked upon him he
exclaimed:

"Good God, it isn't Marr! Valentine, it isn't Marr!"

"Not?"

"No. And yet--wait a moment--"

Julian came nearer to the bed and bent right down over the corpse. Then
he drew away and looked at Valentine, who was at the other side of the
bed.

"Oh, Valentine, this is strange," he whispered, and drawing a chair
to the bedside, he sank down upon it. "This is strange. What is it
death does to a man? Yes; this is Marr. I see now; but so different,
so altered! The whole expression,--oh, it is almost incredible."

He stared again upon the face.

It was long in shape, thin and swarthy, very weary looking, the face of
a man who had seen much, who had done very many, very various things.
No face with shut eyes can look, perhaps, completely characteristic.
Yet this face was full of a character that seemed curiously at war with
the shape of the features and with the position of the closed eyes,
which were very near together. Julian, in describing Marr to Valentine,
had pronounced him Satanic, and this dead face was, in truth, somewhat
Mephistophelean. An artist might well have painted it upon his canvas as
a devil. But he must have reproduced merely the features and colouring,
the blue, shaven cheeks, and hollow eye-sockets; for the expression of
his devil he would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr, dead,
looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself
free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden
and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking,
"That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The
dead face was wonderfully happy.

Julian seemed entirely fascinated by it. After his last smothered
exclamation to Valentine, he sat, leaning one arm upon the head of the
bed, gazing till he looked stern, as all utterly ardent observers look.

Valentine, too, was staring at the dead man.

There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon the tall
windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them with an unceasing
chilly vivacity. Lights from the street flickered through the blinds to
join the glare of the gas. All the music of the town wandered round the
house as a panther wanders round a bungalow by night. And the thin stream
of people flowed by on the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of
the narrow garden. They spoke, as they went, of all the minor things of
life, details of home, details of petty sins, details of common loves and
common hopes and fears, all stirring feebly under umbrellas. And close
by these two friends, under three flaring gas-jets, watched the unwinking
dead man, whose face seemed full of relief. Presently Julian, without
looking up, said:

"Death has utterly changed him. He is no longer the same man. Formerly
he looked all evil, and now it's just as if his body were thanking God
because it had got rid of a soul it had hated. Yes, it's just like that.
Valentine, I feel as if Marr had been rescued."

As he said the last words Julian looked up across the barrier of the bed
at his friend. His lips opened as if to speak, but he said nothing; for
he was under the spell of a wild hallucination. It seemed to him that
there, under the hard glare of the gas-lamps, the soul of Marr spoke,
stared from the pure, proud face of Valentine. That was like a possession
of his friend. It was horrible, as if a devil chose for a moment to lurk
and to do evil in the sanctuary of a church, to blaspheme at the very
altar. Valentine did not speak. He was looking down on the dead serenity
of Marr, vindictively. A busy intellect flashed in his clear blue eyes,
meditating vigorously upon the dead man's escape from bondage, following
him craftily to the very door of his freedom, to seize him surely, if it
might be.

This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was
pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly hatred.

"Valentine!" Julian cried at last.

Valentine looked up.

And in an instant the spell was removed. Julian saw his friend
and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved. The
death-chamber no longer contained a phantom. His eyes were no longer
the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind.

"Oh, Valentine, come here," Julian said.

Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him.

Julian examined him narrowly.

"Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine."

"Opposite to you! Why not?"

"Nothing, nothing. Or--everything. What is the matter with this room?
and me? and you? And why is Marr so changed?"

"How is he changed? You know I have never seen his face before."

"You do not see it now. He has gone out of it. All that was Marr as I
knew him has utterly gone. Death has driven it away and left something
quite different. Let us go."

Julian got up. Valentine took up the candle from its place beside the
curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas-chandelier. He had turned
out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the two others
when Julian checked him.

"No; leave them. Let the landlord put them out. Leave him in the light."

They went out of the room, treading softly. A little way up the
staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house
a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of
the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian beckoned to her.

"You showed the gentleman--the gentleman who is dead--to his room last
night?"

"Yes, sir. Oh, sir, I can't believe he's really gone so sudden like."

"Then you saw the lady with him?"

"Yes, of course. Oh--"

"Hush! What was she like?"

The housemaid's nose curled derisively.

"Oh, sir, quite the usual sort. Oh, a very common person. Not at all like
the poor gentleman, sir."

"Young?"

"Not to say old, sir. No; I couldn't bring that against her. She wore a
hat, sir, and feathers--well, more than ever growed on one ostrich, I'll
be bound."

"Feathers!"

A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, wrapped
in the wan light of the early dawn. He put several rapid questions to
the housemaid. But she could only say again that Marr's companion had
been a very common person, a very common sort of person indeed, and
flashily dressed, not at all as she--the housemaid--would care to go out
of a Sunday. Julian tipped her and left her amazed upon the dim landing.
Then he and Valentine descended the stairs. The landlord was waiting in
the passage in an attentive attitude against the wall. He seemed taken
unawares by their appearance, but his eyes immediately sought Valentine's
face, still apparently questioning it with avidity. Julian noticed this,
and recollected that the man had insisted on a likeness existing between
Marr and Valentine. Possibly that fact, although apparently unremembered,
had remained lurking in his mind, and was accountable for his own curious
deception. Or could it be that there really was some vague, fleeting
resemblance between the dead man and the living which the landlord saw
continuously, he only at moments? Looking again at Valentine he could
not believe it. No; the landlord was deceived now, as he had been in
the death-chamber above stairs.

"May we come into your room for a moment?" Julian asked the man. "I want
to put to you a few questions."

"But certainly, sir, with pleasure."

He opened the side door and showed them into his sanctum beyond the
glass window. It was a small, evil-looking room, crowded with fumes of
stale tobacco. On the walls hung two or three French prints of more than
doubtful decency. A table with a bottle and two or three glasses ranged
on it occupied the middle of the floor. On a chair by the fire the Gil
Bias was thrown in a crumpled attitude. One gas-burner flared, unshaded
by any glass globe. Julian sat down on the Gil Bias. Valentine refused
the landlord's offer of a chair, and stood looking rather contemptuously
at the inartistic improprieties of the prints.

"Did you let in the gentleman who came last night?" asked Julian.

"But, sir, of course. I am always here. I mind my house. I see that only
respect-"

"Exactly. I don't doubt that for a moment. What was the lady like,--the
lady who accompanied him?"

"Oh, sir, very chic, very pretty."

"Didn't you hear her go out in the night?"

The landlord looked for a moment as if he were considering the
advisableness of a little bluster. He stared hard at Julian and
thought better of it.

"Not a sound, not a mouse. Till the bell rang I slept. Then she is gone!"

"Would you recognize her again?"

"But no. I hardly look at her, and I see so many."

"Yes, yes, no doubt. And the gentleman. When you went into his room?"

"Ah! He was half sitting up. I come in. He just look at me. He fall back.
He is dead. He say nothing. Then I--I run."

"That's all I wanted to know," Julian said. "Valentine, shall we go?"

"By all means."

The landlord seemed relieved at their decision, and eagerly let them
out into the pouring rain. When they were in the dismal strip of garden
Julian turned and looked up at the lit windows of the bedroom on the
first story. Marr was lying there in the bright illumination at ease,
relieved of his soul. But, as Julian looked, the two windows suddenly
grew dark. Evidently the economical landlord had hastened up, observed
the waste of the material he had to pay for, and abruptly stopped it.
At the gate they called a cab.

"No; let us have the glass up," Julian said; "a drop of rain more or less
doesn't matter. And I want some air."

"So do I," said Valentine. "The atmosphere of that house was abominable."

"Of course there can be no two opinions as to its character," Julian
said.

"Of course not."

"What a dreary place to die in!"

"Yes. But does it matter where one dies? I think not. I attach immense
importance to where one lives."

"It seems horrible to come to an end in such a place, to have had that
wretched Frenchman as the only witness of one's death. Still, I suppose
it is only foolish sentiment. Valentine, did you notice how happy Marr
looked?"

"No."

"Didn't you? I thought you watched him almost as if you wondered as I
did."

"How could I? I had never seen him before."

"It was curious the landlord seeing a likeness between you and him."

"Do you think so? The man naturally supposed one of us might be a
relation, as we came to see Marr. I should not suppose there could
be much resemblance."

"There is none. It's impossible. There can be none!"

They rattled on towards Piccadilly, back through the dismal
thoroughfares, towards the asphalt ways of Bloomsbury. Presently
Julian said:

"I wish I had seen Marr die."

"But why, Julian? Why this extraordinary interest in a man you knew so
slightly and for so short a time?"

"It's because I can't get it out of my head that he had something to do
with our sittings, more than we know."

"Impossible."

"I am almost certain the doctor thought so. I must tell him about Marr's
death. Valentine, let us drive to Harley Street now."

Valentine did not reply at once, and Julian said:

"I will tell the cabman."

"Very well."

Julian gave the order.

"I wonder if he will be in," Julian said presently. "What is the time?"

He took out his watch and held it up sideways until the light of a
gas-lamp flashed on it for a moment.

"Just eleven. So late? I am surprised."

"We were a good while at the 'European.'"

"Longer than I thought. Probably the doctor will have come in, even if
he has been out dining. Ah, here we are!"

The cab drew up. Julian got out and rang the bell in the rain.

"Is Doctor Levillier at home?"

"No, sir. He is out dining. But I expect him every moment. Will you come
in and wait?" said the man-servant, who knew Julian well.

"Thanks; I think I will. I rather want to see him. I will just ask Mr.
Cresswell. He's with me to-night."

Julian returned to the cab, in which Valentine was sitting.

"The doctor will probably be home in a few minutes. Let us go in and wait
for him."

"Yes, you go in."

"But surely--"

"No, Julian," Valentine said, and suddenly there came into his voice a
weariness, "I am rather tired to-night. I think I'll go home to bed."

"Oh," Julian said. He was obviously disappointed. He hesitated.

"Shall I come too, old chap? You're sure--you're certain that you are not
feeling ill after last night?"

He leant with his foot on the step of the cab to look at Valentine more
closely.

"No; I am all right. Only tired and sleepy, Julian. Well, will you come
or stay?"

"I think I will stay. I want badly to have a talk with the doctor."

"All right. Good-night."

"Good-night!"

Valentine called his address to the cabman, and the man whipped up his
horse. Just as the cab was turning round Valentine leaned out over the
wooden door and cried to Julian, who was just going into the house:

"Give my best regards to the doctor, Julian."

The cab disappeared, splashing through the puddles.

Julian stood still on the doorstep.

"Who said that, Lawler?" he asked.

The servant looked at him in surprise.

"Mr. Valentine, sir."

"Mr. Valentine?"

"Yes, sir."

"Of course, of course. But his voice, didn't--didn't you notice-"

"It was Mr. Valentine's usual voice, sir," Lawler said, with increasing
astonishment.

"I'm upset to-night," Julian muttered.

He went into the house and Lawler closed the street door.




CHAPTER V

THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE


Julian was a favourite in Harley Street, so Lawler did not hesitate
to show him into the doctor's very private room,--a room dedicated to
ease, and to the cultivation of a busy man's hobbies. No patient ever
told the sad secrets of his body here. Here were no medical books, no
appliances for the writing of prescriptions, no hints of the profession
of the owner. Several pots of growing roses gravely shadowed forth the
doctor's fondness for flowers. A grand piano mutely spoke of his love
for music. Many of the books which lay about were novels; one, soberly
dressed in a vellum binding, being Ouida's "Dog of Flanders." All the
photographs which studded the silent chamber with a reflection of life
were photographs of children, except one. That was Valentine's. The
hearth, on which a fire flashed, was wide and had two mighty occupants,
Rupert and Mab, the doctor's mastiffs, who took their evening ease,
pillowing their huge heads upon each other's heaving bodies. The ticking
clock on the mantelpiece was an imitation of the Devil Clock of Master
Zacharius. There were no newspapers in the room. That fact alone made it
original. A large cage of sleeping canaries was covered with a cloth. The
room was long and rather narrow, the only door being at one end. On the
walls hung many pictures, some of them gifts from the artists. Some
foils lay on an ottoman in a far corner. The doctor fenced admirably,
and believed in the exercise as a tonic to the muscles and a splendid
drill-sergeant to the eyes.

As Julian came into the room, which was lit only by wax candles, he could
not help comparing it with the room he had just left, in which the body
of Marr lay. The atmosphere of a house is a strange thing, and almost as
definite to the mind as is an appearance to the eye. A sensitive nature
takes it in like a breath of fetid or of fresh air. The atmosphere of the
European Hotel had been sinister and dreary, as of a building consecrated
to hidden deeds, and inhabited mainly by wandering sinners. This home of
a great doctor was open-hearted and receptive, frank and refined. The
sleeping dogs, heaving gently in fawn-coloured beatitude, set upon it the
best hall-mark. It was a house--judging at least by this room--for happy
rest. Yet it was the abode of incessant work, as the great world knew
well. This sanctum alone was the shrine of lotos-eating. The doctor
sometimes laughingly boasted that he had never insulted it by even so
much as writing a post-card within its four walls.

Julian stroked the dogs, who woke to wink upon him majestically,
and sat down. Lawler quietly departed, and he was left alone. When
he first entered the house he had been disappointed at the departure
of Valentine. Now he felt rather glad to have the doctor to himself
for a quiet half-hour. A conversation of two people is, under certain
circumstances, more complete than a conversation of three, however
delightful the third may chance to be. Julian placed Valentine before
all the rest of the world. Nevertheless, to-night he was glad that
Valentine had gone home to bed. It seems sometimes as if affection
contributes to the making of a man self-conscious. Julian had a
vague notion that the presence of his greatest friend to-night might
render him self-conscious. He scarcely knew why. Then he looked at the
mastiffs, and wondered at the extraordinary difference between men and
the companion animals whom they love and who love them. What man,
however natural, however independent and serene, could emulate the
majestic and deliberate _abandon_ of a big dog courted and caressed
by a blazing fire and a soft rug? Man has not the dignity of soul to
be so grandly natural. Yet his very pert self-consciousness, the fringed
petticoats of affectation which he wears, give him the kennel, the
collar, the muzzle, the whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to
subjection. And Julian, as he watched Rupert and Mab wrapped in large
lethargic dreams, found himself pitying them, as civilized man vaguely
pities all other inhabitants of the round world. Poor old things! Sombre
agitations were not theirs. They had nothing to aim at or to fight
against. No devils and angels played at football with their souls. Their
_liaisons_ were clear, uncomplicated by the violent mental drum-taps that
set the passions marching so often at a quickstep in the wrong direction.
And Julian knelt down on the hearth-rug and laid his strong young hands
on their broad heads. Slowly they opened their veiled eyes and blinked.
One, Rupert, struck a strict tail feebly upon the carpet in token of
acquiescence and gratified goodwill. Mab heaved herself over until she
rested more completely upon her side, and allowed an enormous sigh to
rumble through her monotonously. Julian enjoyed that sigh. It made him
for the moment an optimist, as a happy child makes a dreary old man
shivering on the edge of death an optimist. Dogs are blessed things.
That was his thought. And just then the door at the end of the room
opened quietly, and Doctor Levillier came in, with a cloak on and his
crush-hat in his hand.

"I am glad to see you, Addison," he said.

The dogs shook themselves up onto their legs and laid their heads against
his knees.

"Lawler, please bring my gruel."

"Yes, sir."

"Addison, will you have brandy or whisky?"

"Whisky, please, doctor."

Lawler took his master's cloak and hat, and the doctor came up to the
fire.

"So Valentine has gone home to bed?" he said.

"Yes."

"He's all right, I hope?"

"Yes. Indeed, doctor, I thought him looking more fit than usual to-day,
more alive than I have often seen him."

"I noticed that last night, when he revived from his trance. It struck me
very forcibly, very forcibly indeed. But you--" and the doctor's eyes
were on Julian's face--"look older than your age to-night, my boy."

He sat down and lit a cigar. The mastiffs coiled themselves at his feet
rapturously. They sighed, and he sighed too, quietly in satisfaction.
He loved the one hour before midnight, the hour of perfect rest for him.
Putting his feet on Rupert's back, he went on:

"Last night's events upset you seriously, I see, young and strong though
you are. But the most muscular men are more often the prey of their
nervous systems than most people are aware. Spend a few quiet days. Fence
in the morning. Ride--out in the country, not in the Park. Get off your
horse now and then, tie him up at a lych-gate and sit in a village
church. Listen to the amateur organist practising 'Abide with me,' and
the 'Old Hundredth,' on the Leiblich Gedacht and the Dulciana, with the
bourdon on the pedals. There's nothing like that for making life seem a
slow stepper instead of a racer. And take Valentine with you. I should
like to sit with him in a church at twilight, when the rooks were going
home, and the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think of
holidays."

"Doctor, I like your prescription. Yes; I am feeling a bit out of sorts
to-night. Last night, you see--and then to-day."

"Surely, Addison, surely you haven't been sitting--but no, forgive me.
I've got your promise. Well, what is it?"

Julian replied quickly:

"That man I told you about, Marr, is dead."

Doctor Levillier looked decidedly startled. Julian's frequent allusions
to Marr and evident strange interest in the man, had impressed him as it
had impressed Valentine. However, he only said:

"Heart disease?"

"I don't know. There is going to be an inquest."

"When did he die?"

"Last night, or rather at four in the morning; just as Valentine came out
of his trance, it must have been. Don't you remember the clock striking?"

"Certainly, I do. But why do you connect the two circumstances?"

"Doctor, how can you tell that I do?"

"By your expression, the tone of your voice."

"You are right. Somehow I can't help connecting them. I told Valentine
so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body."

"You have just come from that deathbed now?"

"Yes."

Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he left
to the last the immense impression made upon him by the expression of
the dead man.

"He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognize him,"
he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct contradiction
possible of his face, alive. He was not the same man."

"The man was gone, you see, Addison."

"Yes. But, then, what was it which remained to work this change in the
body?"

"Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs
and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, work up an
impression."

"But there was something more here,--more than peace. There was a--well,
a strong happiness and a goodness. And Marr had always struck me as an
atrociously bad lot. I think I told you."

The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which was a
small basin of gruel and soda-water bottles, a decanter of whisky,
and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the doctor,
still meditatively, took the basin of gruel onto his knees. As he
sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting
there in the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted
gently on the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes
fixed on the fire. He did not speak again until he was half way through
his gruel. Then he said:

"And you know absolutely nothing of Marr's past history?"

"No; nothing."

"I gather from all you have told me that it would be worthy of study. If
I knew it I might understand the startling change from the aspect of evil
to the aspect of good at death. I believe the man must have been far less
evil than you thought him, for dead faces express something that was
always latent, if not known, in the departed natures. Ignorantly, you
possibly attributed to Marr a nature far more horrible than he ever
really possessed."

But Julian answered:

"I feel absolutely convinced that at the time I knew him he was one of
the greatest rips, one of the most merciless men in London. I never felt
about any man as I did about him! And he impressed others in the same
way."

"I wish I had seen him," Doctor Levillier said.

An idea, suggested by Julian's last remark, suddenly struck him.

"He conveyed a strong impression of evil, you say?"

"Yes."

"How? In what way, exactly?"

Julian hesitated.

"It's difficult to say," he answered. "Awfully difficult to put such a
thing into words. He interested me. I felt that he had a great power of
intellect, or of will, or something. But in every way he suggested a bad,
a damnably bad, character. A woman said to me once about him that it was
like an emanation."

"Ah!"

The doctor finished his gruel and put down the basin on the table beside
him.

"By the way, where did Marr live? Anywhere in my direction? Would he, for
instance, go home from Piccadilly, or the theatres, by Regent Street?"

"I don't know at all where he lived."

"Have you ever seen him with animals,--with dogs, for instance?"

"No."

"If he had been as evil as you suppose, any dog would have avoided him."

"Well, but dogs avoid perfection too."

"Hardly, Addison."

"But Rip and Valentine!"

The remark struck the doctor; that was obvious. He pushed his right foot
slowly backwards and forwards on Rupert's back, rucking up the dog's
loose skin in heavy folds.

"Yes," he said; "Rip is rather an inexplicable beggar. But do you mean
to tell me he hasn't got over his horror of Valentine to-day?"

"This afternoon he was worse than ever. If Valentine had touched him,
I believe he would have gone half mad. I had to put him out of the room."

"H'm!"

"Isn't it unaccountable?"

"I must say that it is. Dogs are such faithful wretches. If Rupert and
Mab were to turn against me like that I believe it would strike at my
heart more fiercely than the deed of any man could."

He bent down and ran his hand over Rupert's heaving back.

"The cheap satirist," he said, "is forever comparing the fickleness
of men with the faithfulness of animals, but I don't mean to do that.
I have a great belief in some human natures, and there are many men
whom I could, and would, implicitly trust."

"There is one, doctor, whom we both know."

"Cresswell. Yes. I could trust him through thick and thin. And yet his
own dog flies at him."

Doctor Levillier returned to that fact, as if it puzzled him so utterly
that he could not dismiss it from his mind.

"There must be some curious, subtle reason for that," he said; "yet with
all my intimate and affectionate knowledge of dogs I cannot divine it.
Watch Rip carefully when he is not with Cresswell. Look after his health.
Notice if he seems natural and happy. Does he eat as usual?"

"Rather. He did to-day."

"And he seems contented with you?"

"Quite."

"Well, all I can say is, that Rip doesn't seem to possess a dog nature.
He is uncanny."

"Uncanny," Julian said, seizing on the word. "But everything has become
uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, when I look back into
the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself whether I am a fool,
or dreaming, or whether my health is going to the deuce. London seems
different. I look on things strangely. I fancy, I imagine--"

He broke off. Then he said:

"By Jove, doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into my
mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum."

"It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the men at
White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good heart. But it
is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a train runs into the Black
Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. In a day or two probably your
lungs, which have drawn it in, will expel it again."

He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said:

"You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined to
call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among male
muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning organ, and
the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a week. Forget
Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power of mesmerism. And
don't ask Valentine to go away with you."

The last remark surprised Julian.

"But why not?" he asked.

"Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that have
turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that your mind
is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, besides yourself,
two people only, Marr and Cresswell."

"Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian exclaimed,
like a schoolboy. "I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going round and round.
That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that cursed circle of our
sittings, and so I insanely connect them with one another. I actually
began to think to-night that Marr died, poor fellow, because--well--"

"Yes."

"Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our
last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind.
Could--could its exercise cause injury to his health?"

But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet and yet very complete
and self-possessed manner.

"Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. "It is folly to connect them
together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, "rotten of you. Go away
to-morrow."

"I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you?"

"Your friendship, my boy."

Dr. Levillier sat lower in his chair, and they smoked in silence, both
of them revelling in the warm peace and the ease of this night-hour.
Since he had come into the Harley Street house Julian had been much
happier. His perturbation had gradually evaporated until now scarcely
a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight
of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room,
gave the _coup de gr�ce_ to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened
excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the
power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among
all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at
the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's
ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and
comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of
their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of
large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their
fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The
delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction,
sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell
with the regularity of waves of the sea. Now and then one of them
slowly stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on
presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort and
of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant silence
now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. That silence
rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished steadily, steadily
as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the very end. And the grey
ashes dropped away of their own accord, and Julian's mind shed its grey
ashes too and glowed serenely. The dogs expanded their warm bodies on the
hearth, and his nature expanded in a vague, wide-stretching generosity
of mute evening emotion.

"How comfortable this is, doctor," he murmured at last.

"Yes. It's a good hour," the doctor replied, letting the words go slowly
from his lips. "I wish I could give to all the poor creatures in this
city just one good hour."

They smoked their cigars out.

"I ought to go," Julian said lazily.

"No. Have one more. I know it is dangerous to prolong a pleasure. It
loses its savour. But I think, Addison, to-night, you and I can get no
harm from the experiment."

He handed Julian the cigar-box.

"We won't stir up the dogs for another half-hour," he added, looking at
their happiness with a shining satisfaction. "Here are the matches. Light
up."

Julian obeyed, and they began the delightful era of the second cigar,
and sank a little deeper down, surely, into serenity and peace.
Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick,
chirrupped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men learnt
a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs.

Half way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master's
patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out
of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his
ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest
attitude which such features of a dog can assume, lifted themselves up
and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid legs
contracted under him, and the muscles of his back quivered. Mab, less
readily alert, quickly caught the infection of his attention, rolled over
out of her sideways position and couched beside him. The movement of the
dogs was not congenial to the doctor. Rupert's curious back, alert under
his feet, communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre
of his being. He said to Julian:

"The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have
heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well,
Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go to sleep."

Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog's neck, and gave him a push,
expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over onto the warm rug to
sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and instead, got up, and
stood at attention. Mab immediately followed his example.

"What are they after, doctor?" said Julian.

As he spoke a bell rang in the house.

"Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. "A summons to a
patient, no doubt."

As if in reply to the twitter of the bell, Rupert sprang forward and
barked. He remained beside the door, waiting, while Mab barked too,
nearer the fire. The bell sounded again, and the footstep of Lawler,
who always sat up as late as his master, was heard on the stairs from
the servants' part of the house. It passed them on its errand to the
front door, but during its passage the excitement of the two dogs
rapidly increased. They began to bark furiously and to bristle.

"I never saw them like this before," the doctor said, not without
anxiety.

As he spoke Lawler opened the hall door. They heard the latch go and
the faint voice of somebody in colloquy with him. For the dogs were
now abruptly silent, but displayed the most curious savage intentness,
showing their teeth, and standing each by the door as if sentinels
on guard. The colloquy ceasing, steps again sounded in the hall, but
more than Lawler's. Evidently the man was returning towards the room
accompanied by somebody from the street. The doctor was keenly observing
the mastiffs, and just as Lawler's hand struck upon the handle of the
door to turn it, he suddenly called out sharply:

"Lawler, you are not to open the door!"

And as he called, the doctor ran forward between the two dogs and caught
their collars in his two hands. They tugged and leaped to get away, but
he held on. The surprised voice of the obedient Lawler was heard on the
hither side of the door, saying:

"I beg your pardon, sir."

The doctor said hastily to Julian:

"These dogs will tear the person who has just come into the house to
pieces if we don't take care. Catch on to Mab, Addison."

Julian obeyed, and the dog was like live iron with determination under
his grasp.

"Some one is with you, Lawler," the doctor said. "Does he wish to see
me?"

"If you please, sir, it is Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Valentine come back for Mr.
Addison."

Julian felt himself go suddenly pale.




CHAPTER VI

THE STRENGTH OF THE SPRING


Rather reluctantly, Julian acted on the advice of Doctor Levillier and
went out of town for a week on the following day. He took his way to
the sea, and tried to feel normal in a sailing-boat with a gnarled and
corrugated old salt for his only companion. But his success was only
partial, for while his body gave itself to the whisper of the ungoverned
breezes, while his hands held the ropes, and his eyes watched the subtle
proceedings of the weather, and his ears listened to the serial stories
of the waves, and to the conversational peregrinations of his Ancient
Mariner about the China Seas in bygone days, his mind was still in
London, still busily concerned itself with the very things that should
now undergo a sea change and vanish in ozone. Recent events oppressed
him, to the occasional undoing of the old salt, well accustomed to the
seasick reverence of his despairing clients on board the _Star of the
Sea_. When the mind of a man has once fallen into the habit of prancing
in a circle like a circus horse, it is difficult to drive it back into
the public streets, to make it trot serenely forward in its ordinary
ways. And Julian had with him a ring-master in the person of the ignorant
Rip. Whenever his eyes fell on Rip, curled uneasily in the bottom of the
swinging boat, he went at a tangent back to Harley Street, and the
strange finale of his evening with the doctor.

It had been a curious tableau divided by a door. Levillier and he stood
on one side tugging mightily at the intent mastiffs, which strained at
their collars, dropping beads of foam from their grinning jaws, savages,
instead of calm companions. On the other side, in the hall, Lawler and
Valentine paused in amazement, and a colloquy shot to and fro through the
wooden barrier. On hearing the name of Valentine mentioned by the butler,
the doctor had cast an instant glance of unbounded amazement upon Julian.
And Julian had returned it, feeling in his heart the dawning of an
inexplicable trouble.

"Is anything the matter?" Valentine's voice had asked.

"No," said the doctor in reply. "But please go into the dining-room. We
will come to you there. And Lawler--"

"Yes, sir."

"When you have shown Mr. Cresswell to the dining-room, be careful to shut
the door, and to keep it shut till I come."

"Yes, sir."

The butler's well-trained voice had vibrated with surprise and Julian had
found himself mechanically smiling as he noted this. Then the footsteps
of servant and visitor had retreated. Presently a door was heard to shut.
Lawler returned, and was passing discreetly by, to wonder, in his pantry,
if his master had gone mad, when the doctor again called to him.

"Go downstairs, Lawler, and in a moment I shall bring the dogs to you."

"Yes, sir."

The butler's voice was now almost shrill with scarcely governable
astonishment, and his footsteps seemed to tremble uneasily upon the
stairs as he retired. Then the doctor went to a corner of the room
and took down from a hook a whip with a heavy thong.

"I haven't had to use this since they were both puppies," he said, with
a side glance at the dogs. "Now, Addison, keep hold of Mab and go in
front of me down the servants' stairs. If the dogs once get out of hand
we shall have trouble in the house to-night."

The door was opened, and then a veritable affray began. The animals
seemed half mad. They tore at their collars, and struggled furiously
to break loose, snarling and even snapping, their great heads turned in
the direction of the dining-room. The doctor, firmest as well as kindest
of men, recognized necessity, and used the whip unsparingly, lashing the
animals through the door to the servants' quarters, and down the stairs.
It was a violent procession to the lower regions. Julian could not get it
out of his head. Entangled among the leaping dogs on the narrow stairway,
he had a sense of whirling in the eddies of a stream, driven from this
side to the other. His arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets. The
shriek of the lash curling over and around the dogs, the dim vision of
the doctor's compressed lips and eyes full of unaccustomed fire, the
damp foam on his hands as he rocked from one wall to the other, amid a
dull music of growls, and fierce, low barks, came back to him now as he
trimmed the sails to catch the undecided winds, or felt the tiller leap
under his hold. Each moment he had expected to be bitten, but somehow
they all tumbled together unhurt into Lawler's pantry, where they found
that factotum standing grim and wire-strung with anticipation. Beyond the
pantry were the dogs' night quarters, and they were quickly driven into
them and shut up. But they still bounded and beat against the door, and
presently began to howl a vain chorale.

"Lord, Lord, sir! what's come to them?" Lawler exclaimed.

His fat face had become as white as a sheet, and the doctor was scarcely
less pale as he leaned against the dresser, whip in hand, drawing panting
breaths.

"I can't tell. They will be all right in a minute."

He pulled himself up.

"Go to bed now if you like, Lawler," he said, rather abruptly. "Come,
Addison."

They regained the hall, and made their way to Valentine. He was sitting
by the dining-table in a watchful attitude, and sprang hastily up as they
came in.

"My dear doctor," he said, "what a pandemonium! I nearly came to your
assistance."

"It's very lucky you didn't, Cresswell," the doctor answered, almost
grimly.

"Why?"

"Because if you had you might chance to be a dead man by this time."

Out on the sea, under the streaming clouds that fled before the wind,
Julian recalled the strange terseness of that reply, and the perhaps
stranger silence that followed it. For Valentine had made no comment,
had asked for no explanation. He had simply dropped the subject, and
the three men had remained together for a few minutes, constrained and
ill at ease. Then the doctor had said:

"Let us go back now to my room."

Valentine and he assented, and got upon their feet to follow him, but
when he opened the door there came up from the servants' quarters the
half-strangled howling of the mastiffs. Involuntarily Dr. Levillier
paused to listen, his hand behind his ear. Then he turned to the
young men, and held out his right hand.

"Good-night," he said. "I must go down to them, or there will be a
summons applied for against me in the morning by one of my neighbours."

And they let themselves out while he retreated once more down the stairs.

The drive home had been a silent one. Only when Julian was bidding
Valentine good-night had he found a tongue to say to his friend:

"The devil's in all this, Valentine."

And Valentine had merely nodded with a smile and driven off.

Now, in the sea solitude that was to be a medicine to his soul, Julian
went round and round in his mental circus, treading ever the same
saw dust under foot, hearing ever the same whip crack to send him
forward. His isolation bent him upon himself, and the old salt's hoarse
murmurings of the "Chiney" seas in no way drew him to a healthier
outlook. Why Valentine returned for him that night he did not know.
That might have been merely the prompting of a vagrant impulse. Julian
cursed that impulse, on account of the circumstances to which it directly
led; for there was a peculiar strain of enmity in them which had
affected, and continued to affect, him most disagreeably. To behold
the instinctive hostility of another towards a person whom one loves is
offensively grotesque to the observer, and at moments Julian hated the
doctor's mastiffs, and even hated the unconscious Rip, who lay, in a
certain shivering discomfort and apprehension, seeking sleep with the
determination of sorrow. There are things, feelings, and desires, which
should surely be kicked out of men and dogs. Such a thing, beyond doubt,
was a savage hatred of Valentine. What prompted it, and whence it came,
were merely mysteries, which the dumbness of dogs must forever sustain.
But what specially plunged Julian into concern was the latent fear that
Dr. Levillier might echo the repulsion of his dogs and come to look
upon Valentine with different eyes. Julian's fine jealousy for his
friend sharpened his faculties of observation and of deduction, and
he had observed the little doctor's dry reception of Valentine after
the struggle on the stairs, and his eager dismissal of them both to the
street door on the howling excuse that rose up from the basement. Such
a mood might probably be transient, and only engendered by the fatigue
of excitement, or even by the physical exhaustion attendant upon the
preservation of Valentine from the rage of Rupert and Mab. Julian told
himself that to dwell upon it, or to conceive of it as permanent, was
neither sensible nor acute, considering his intimate knowledge of the
doctor's nature, and of his firm friendship for Valentine. That he did
continue most persistently to dwell upon it, and with a keen suspicion,
must be due to the present desolation of his circumstances, and to the
vain babble of the blue-coated Methuselah, whose intellect roamed
incessantly through a marine past, peopled with love episodes of a
somewhat Rabelaisian character.

At the end of five days Julian abruptly threw up the sponge and returned
to London, abandoning the old salt to the tobacco-chewing, which was his
only solace during the winter season, now fast drawing to a close. He
went at once to see Valentine, who had a narrative to tell him concerning
Marr.

"You have probably read all about Marr in the papers?" he asked, when he
met Julian.

The question came at once with his hand-grasp.

"No," Julian said. "I shunted the papers, tried to give myself up
entirely to the sea, as the doctor advised. What has there been?"

"Oh, a good deal. I may as well tell it to you, or no doubt Lady Crichton
will. People exaggerate so much."

"Why--what is there to exaggerate about?"

"The inquest was held," Valentine answered. "And every effort was made
to find the woman who came with Marr to the hotel and evaporated so
mysteriously, but there was no one to identify her. The Frenchman had
not noticed her features, and the housemaid, as you remember, was a
fool, and could only say she was a common-looking person."

"Well," Julian said, rather eagerly, "but what was the cause of death?"

"That was entirely obscure. The body seemed healthy--at least the various
organs were sound. There was no obvious reason for death, and the verdict
was, simply, 'Died from failure of the heart's action.'"

"Vague, but comprehensive."

"Yes; I suppose we shall all die strictly from the same cause."

"And that is all?"

"Not quite. It appears that a description of the dead man got into the
papers and that he was identified by his wife, who read the account in
some remote part of the country, took the train to town, and found that
Marr was, as she suspected, the man whom she had married, from whom she
had separated, and whose real name was Wilson, the Wilson of a notorious
newspaper case. Do you remember it?"

"What, an action against a husband for gross cruelty, for incredible,
unspeakable inhumanity--some time ago?"

"Yes. The wife got a judicial separation."

"And that is the history of Marr?"

"That is, such of his history as is known," Valentine said in his calm
voice.

While he had been speaking his blue eyes had always been fixed on
Julian's face. When Julian looked up they were withdrawn.

"I always had a feeling that Marr was secretly a wretch, a devil," Julian
said now. "It seems I was right. What has become of the wife?"

"I suppose she has gone back to her country home. Probably she is happy.
Her first mate chastised her with whips. To fulfil her destiny as a woman
she ought now to seek another who is fond of scorpions."

"Women are strange," Julian said, voluptuously generalizing after the
manner of young men.

Valentine leaned forward as if the sentence stirred some depth in his
mind and roused him to a certain excitement.

"Julian," he exclaimed, "are you and I wasting our lives, do you think?
Since you have been away I have thought again over our conversation
before we had our first sitting. Do you remember it?"

"Yes, Valentine."

"You said then I had held you back from so much."

"Yes."

"And I have been asking myself whether I have not, perhaps, held you
back, held myself back, from all that is worth having in life."

Julian looked troubled.

"From all that is not worth having, old boy," he said.

But he looked troubled. When Valentine spoke like this he felt as a man
who stands at a garden gate and gazes out into the world, and is stirred
with a thrill of anticipation and of desire to leap out from the green
and shadowy close, where trees are and flowers, into the dust and heat
where passion hides as in a nest, and unspoken things lie warm. Julian
was vaguely afraid of himself. It is dangerous to lean on any one,
however strong. Having met Valentine on the threshold of life, Julian
had never learned to walk alone. He trusted another, instead of trusting
himself. He had never forged his own sword. When Siegfried sang at his
anvil he sang a song of all the greatness of life. Julian was notably
strong as to his muscles. He had arms of iron, and the blood raced in
his veins, but he had never forged his sword. Mistrust of himself was
as a phantom that walked with him unless Valentine drove it away.

"I thought you had got over that absurd feeling, Val," he said. "I
thought you were content with your soul."

"I think I have ceased to be content," said Valentine. "Perhaps I have
stolen a fragment of your nature, Julian, in those dark nights in the
tentroom. Since you have been away I have wondered. An extraordinary
sensation of bodily strength, of enormous vigour, has come to me. And
I want to test the sensation, to see if it is founded upon fact."

He was sitting in a low chair, and as he spoke he slowly stretched his
limbs. It was as if all his body yawned, waking from sleep.

"But how?" Julian asked.

Already he looked rather interested than troubled. At Valentine's words
he too became violently conscious of his own strength, and stirred by the
wonder of youth dwelling in him.

"How? That is what I wish to find out by going into the world with
different eyes. I have been living in the arts, Julian. But is that
living at all?"

Julian got up and stood by the fire. Valentine excited him. He leaned one
arm on the mantelpiece. His right hand kept closing and unclosing as he
talked.

"Such a life is natural to you," he said. "And you have made me love it."

"I sometimes wonder," responded Valentine, "whether I have not trained
my head to slay my heart. Men of intellect are often strangely inhuman.
Besides, what you call my purity and my refinement are due perhaps to my
cowardice. I am called the Saint of Victoria Street because I live in a
sort of London cloister with you for my companion, and in the cloister
I read or I give myself up to music, and I hang my walls with pictures,
and I wonder at the sins of men, and I believe I am that deadly thing,
a Pharisee."

"But you are perfectly tolerant."

"Am I? I often find myself sneering at the follies of others, at what I
call their coarsenesses, their wallowing in the mire."

"It is wallowing."

"And which is most human, the man who drives in a carriage, or the man
who walks sturdily along the road, and gets the mud on his boots, and
lets the rain fall on him and the wind be his friend? I suspect it is
a fine thing to be out unsheltered in a storm, Julian."

Julian's dark eyes were glowing. Valentine spoke with an unusual, almost
with an electric warmth, and Julian was conscious of drawing very near to
him tonight. Always in their friendship, hitherto, he had thought of
Valentine as of one apart, walking at a distance from all men, even from
him. And he had believed most honestly that this very detachment had
drawn him to Valentine more than to any other human being. But to-night
he began suddenly to feel that to be actually side by side with his
friend would be a very glorious thing. He could never hope to walk
perpetually upon the vestal heights. If Valentine did really come down
towards the valley, what then? Just at first the idea had shocked him.
Now he began almost to wish that it might be so, to feel that he was
shaking hands with Valentine more brotherly than ever before.

"Extremes are wrong, desolate, abominable, I begin to think," Valentine
went on. "Angel and devil, both should be scourged--the one to be purged
of excessive good, the other of excessive evil, and between them, midway,
is man, natural man. Julian, you are natural man, and you are more right
than I, who, it seems, have been educating you by presenting to you for
contemplation my own disease."

"Well, but is natural man worth much? That is the question! I don't
know."

"He fights, and drinks, and loves, and, oftener than the renowned
philosopher thinks, he knows how to die. And then he lives thoroughly,
and that is probably what we were sent into the world to do."

"Can't we live thoroughly without, say, the fighting and the drinking,
Val?"

Valentine got up, too, as if excited, and stood by the fire by Julian's
side.

"Battle calls forth heroism," he said, "which else would sleep."

"And drinking?"

"Leads to good fellowship."

This last remark was so preposterously unlike Valentine that Julian could
not for a moment accept it as uttered seriously. His mood changed, and he
burst out suddenly into a laugh.

"You have been taking me in all the time," he exclaimed, "and I actually
was fool enough to think you serious."

"And to agree with what I was saying?"

Valentine still spoke quite gravely and earnestly, and Julian began to be
puzzled.

"You know I can never help agreeing with you when you really mean
anything," he began. "I have proved so often that you are always right
in the end. So your real theory of life must be the true one: but your
real theory, I know, is to reject what most people run after."

"No longer that, I fancy, Julian."

"But, then, what has changed you?"

Valentine met his eyes calmly.

"I don't know," he said. "Do you?"

"I? How should I?"

"Perhaps this change has been growing within me for a long while. It
is difficult to say; but to-night my nature culminates. I am at a point,
Julian."

"Then you have climbed to it. Don't you want to stay there?"

"No mere man can face the weather on a mountain peak forever, and life
lies rather in the plains."

Valentine went over to the window and touched the blind. It shot up,
leaving the naked window, through which the gas-lamps of Victoria Street
stared in the night.

"I wish," he said, "that we, in England, had the flat roofs of the East."

He thrust up the glass, and the night air pushed in.

"Come here, Julian," he said.

Julian obeyed, wondering rather. Valentine leaned a little out on the
sill and made Julian lean beside him. It was early in the night and
the hum of London was yet loud, for the bees did not sleep, but were
still busy in their monstrous hive. There was already a gentleness of
spring among the discoloured houses. Spring will not be denied, even
among men who dwell in flats. The cabs hurried past, and pedestrians
went by in twos and threes or solitary; soldiers walking vaguely, seeking
cheap pleasures, or more gaily with adoring maidens; tired business men;
journeying towards Victoria Station; a desolate shop-girl, in dreary
virtue defiant of mankind, but still unblessed; the Noah's ark figure of
a policeman, tramping emptily, standing wearily by turns, to keep public
order. Lights starred here and there the long line of mansions opposite.

"I often look out here at night," Valentine said, "generally to wonder
why people live as they do. When I see the soldiers going by, for
instance, I have often marvelled that they could find any pleasure
in the servants, so often ugly, who hang on their arms, and languish
persistently at them under cheap hats and dyed feathers. And I gaze at
the policeman on his beat and pity him for the dead routine in which he
stalks, seldom varied by the sordid capture of a starving cracksman, or
the triumphant seizure of an unmuzzled dog. The boys selling evening
papers seem to me imps of desolation, screaming through life aimlessly
for halfpence; and the cabmen, creatures driving for ever to stations,
yet never able to get into the wide world. And yet they are all living,
Julian; that is the thing: all having their experiences, all in strong
touch with humanity. The newspaper-boy has got his flower-girl to give
him grimy kisses; and the cabman is proud of the shine on his harness;
and the soldier glories in his military faculty of seduction, and in
his quick capacity for getting drunk in the glittering gin-palace at the
corner of the street; and the policeman hopes to take some one up, and to
be praised by a magistrate; and in those houses opposite intrigues are
going on, and jealousy is being born, and men and women are quarrelling
over trifles and making it up again, and children--what matter if
legitimate or illegitimate?--are cooing and crying, and boys are waking
to the turmoil of manhood, and girls are dreaming of the things they dare
not pretend to know. Why should I be like a bird hovering over it all?
Why should not I--and you--be in it? If I can only cease to be as I have
always been, I can recreate London for myself, and make it a live city,
fearing neither its vices nor its tears. I have made you fear them,
Julian. I have done you an injury. Let us be quiet, and feel the rustle
of spring over the gas-lamps, and hear the pulsing of the hearts around
us."

He put his arm through Julian's as they leaned out on the sill of the
window, and to Julian his arm was like a line of living fire, compelling
that which touched it to a speechless fever of excitement. Was this man
Valentine? Julian's pulses throbbed and hammered as he looked upon the
street, and he seemed to see all the passers-by with eyes from which
scales had fallen. If to die should be nothing to the wise man, to live
should be much. Underneath, two drunken men passed, embracing each other
by the shoulders. They sang in, snatches and hiccoughed protestations of
eternal friendship. Valentine watched their wavering course with no
disgust. His blue eyes even seemed to praise them as they went.

"Those men are more human than I," he slowly said. "Why should I condemn
them?"

And, as if under the influence of a spell, Julian found himself thinking
of the wandering ruffians as fine fellows, full of warmth of heart and
generous feeling. A boy and girl went by. Neither could have been more
than sixteen years old. They paused by a lamp-post, and the girl openly
kissed the boy. He sturdily endured the compliment, staring firmly at
her pale cheeks and tired eyes. Then the girl walked away, and he stood
alone till she was out of sight. Eventually he walked off slowly, singing
a plantation song: "I want you, my honey; yes, I do!" Valentine and
Julian had watched and listened, and now Valentine, moving round on the
window-ledge till he faced Julian, said:

"That is it, Julian, put in the straightforward music-hall way. People
are happy because they want things; yes, they do. It is a philosophy of
life. That boy has a life because he wants that girl, and she wants him.
And you, Julian, you want a thousand things--"

"Not since I have known you," Julian said.

He felt curiously excited and troubled. His arm was still linked in
Valentine's. Slowly he withdrew it. Valentine shut down the window and
they came back to the fire.

"You know," Valentine said, "that it is possible for two influences to
work one upon the other, and for each to convert the other. I begin to
think that your nature has triumphed over mine."

"What?" Julian said, in frank amazement. The Philistines could not have
been more astounded when Samson pulled down the pillars.

"I have taught you, as you say, to die to the ordinary man's life,
Julian. But what if you have taught me to live to it?"

Julian did not answer for a moment. He was wondering whether Valentine
could possibly be serious. But his face was serious, even eager. There
was an unwonted stain of red on his smooth, usually pale cheeks. A
certain wild boyishness had stolen over him, a reckless devil danced
in his blue eyes. Julian caught the infection of his mood.

"And what's my lesson?" Julian said.

His voice sounded thick and harsh. There was a surge of blood through
his brain and a prickly heat behind his eyeballs. Suddenly a notion took
him that Valentine had never been so magnificent as now,--now when a new
fierceness glittered in his expression, and a wild wave of humanity ran
through him like a surging tide.

"What's my lesson, Valentine?"

"I will show you, this spring. But it is the lesson the spring teaches,
the lesson of fulfilling your nature, of waking from your slumbers, of
finding the air, of giving yourself to the rifling fingers of the sun, of
yielding all your scent to others, and of taking all their scent to you.
That's the lesson of your strength, Julian, and of all the strength of
the spring. Lie out in the showers, and let the clouds cover you with
shadows, and listen to the song of every bird, and--and--ah!" he suddenly
broke off in a burst of laughter, "I am rhapsodizing. The spring has got
into my veins even among these chimneypots of London. The spring is in
me, and, who knows? your soul, Julian. For don't you feel wild blood in
your veins sometimes?"

"Yes, yes."

"And humming passions that come to you and lift you from your feet?"

"You know I do."

"But I never knew before that they might lift you towards heaven.
That's the thing. I have thought that the exercise of the passions
dragged a man down; but why should it be so? I have talked of men
wallowing in the mire. I must find out whether I have been lying when
I said that. Julian, this spring, you and I will see the world, at any
rate, with open eyes. We will watch the budding and blossoming of the
souls around us, the flowers in the garden of life. We will not be
indifferent or afraid. I have been a coward in my ice prison of
refinement. I keep a perpetual season of winter round me. I know it.
I know it to-night."

Julian did not speak. He was carried away by this outburst, which
gained so much, and so strange, force by its issue from the lips and
from the heart of Valentine. But he was carried away as a weak swimmer
by a resistless torrent, and instinctively he seemed to be aware of
danger and to be stretching out his arms for some rock or tree-branch
to stay his present course. Perhaps Valentine noticed this, for his
excitement suddenly faded, and his face resumed its usual expression
of almost cold purity and refinement.

"I generally translate this sort of thing into music," he said.

At the last word Julian looked up instinctively to the wall on which the
picture of "The Merciful Knight" usually hung. For Valentine's music was
inseparably connected in his mind with that picture. His eyes fell on a
gap.

"Val," he exclaimed, in astonishment, "what's become of--"

"Oh, 'The Merciful Knight'? It has gone to be cleaned."

"Why? It was all right, surely?"

"No. I found it wanted cleaning badly and I am having it reframed. It
will be away for some time."

"You must miss it."

"Yes, very much."

The last words were spoken with cutting indifference.




CHAPTER VII

JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS


From that night, and almost imperceptibly, the relations existing between
Valentine and Julian slightly changed. It seemed to Julian as if a door
previously shut in his friend's soul opened and as if he entered into
this hitherto secret chamber. He found there an apparent strange humanity
which, as he grew accustomed to it, warmed him. The curious refined
saintliness of Valentine, almost chilly in its elevation, thawed gently
as the days went by, but so gently that Julian scarcely knew it, could
scarcely define the difference which nevertheless led him to alter his
conduct almost unconsciously. One great sameness, perhaps, gave him a
sensation of safety and of continuity. Valentine's face still kept its
almost unearthly expression of intellectuality and of purity. When Julian
looked at him no passions flamed in his blue eyes, no lust ever crawled
in the lines about his mouth. His smooth cheeks never flushed with
beaconing desire, nor was his white forehead pencilled with the shadowy
writing that is a pale warning to the libertine. And yet his speech about
the spring that night, as they leaned out over Victoria Street, had
evidently not been a mere reckless rhapsody. It had held a meaning and
was remembered. In Valentine there seemed to be flowering a number of
faint-hued wants, such wants as had never flowered from his nature
before. The fig-tree that had seemed so exquisitely barren began to put
forth leaves, and when the warm showers sang to it, it sang in tremulous
reply.

And the spring grew in London.

Never before had Julian been so conscious of the growth of the year as
now. The spring stirred inside him, as if he were indeed the Mother
Earth. Tumults of nature shook him. With the bursting of the crocus,
the pointing of its spear of gold to the sun, a life gathered itself
together within him, a life that held, too, a golden shaft within its
colour-stained cup. And the bland scent of the innumerable troops of
hyacinths in Hyde Park was a language to him as he strolled in the sun
towards the Row. Scents speak to the young of the future as they speak
to the old of the past; to the one with an indefinite excitement, to the
other with a vague regret. And especially when he was in the company of
Valentine did Julian become intensely alive to the march of the earth
towards summer, and feel that he was in step with it, dragooned by the
same music. He began to learn, so he believed, what Valentine had called
the lesson of his strength, and of all the strength of the spring. His
wild blood leaped in his veins, and the world was walking with him to a
large prospect, as yet fancifully tricked out in mists and crowned with
clouds.

The spring brought to Valentine an abounding health such as he had never
known before, a physical glory which, without actually changing him, gave
to him a certain novelty of aspect which Julian felt without actually
seeing. One day, when they were out riding together in the Park, he said:

"How extraordinarily strong you look to-day, Val."

Valentine spurred his horse into a short gallop.

"I feel robust," he said. "I think it is my mind working on my body. I
have attained to a more healthy outlook on things, to a saner conception
of life. For years you have been learning from me, Julian. Now I think
the positions are reversed. I am learning from you."

Julian pressed his knees against his horse's sides with an iron grip,
feeling the spirited animal's spirited life between them. They were now
on a level with the Serpentine and riding parallel to it. A few vigorous
and determined bathers swam gaily in the pale warmth of the morning sun.
Two boys raced along the grassy bank to dry themselves, whooping with
exultation, and leaping as they ran. A man in a broad boat, ready to save
life, exchanged loud jokes with the swimmers. On a seat two filthy
loafers watched the scene with vacant eyes. They had slept in the Park
all night, and their ragged clothes were drenched with dew.

"I could race with those boys," Valentine said. "But not so long ago I
was like the men on the bench. I only cared to look on at the bathing of
others. Now I could swim myself."

He sent his horse along at a tremendous pace for a moment, then drew him
in, and turned towards Julian.

"We are learning the lesson of the spring," he said.

As he spoke a light from some hidden place shot for an instant into his
eyes and faded again. Julian laughed gaily. The ride spurred his spirits.
He was conscious of the recklessness created in a man by exercise.

"I could believe that you were actually growing, Val," he said, "growing
before my eyes. Only you're much too old."

"Yes; I am too old for that," Valentine said.

A sudden weariness ran in the words, a sudden sound of age.

"The truth is," he added, but with more life, "my nature is expanding
inside my body, and you feel it and fancy you can see the envelope echo
the words of the letter it holds. You are clever enough to be fanciful.
Gently, Raindrop, gently!"

He quieted the mare as they turned into the road. Just as they were
passing under the arch into the open space at Hyde Park corner a woman
shot across in front of them. They nearly rode over her, and she uttered
a little yell as she awkwardly gained the pavement. Her head was crowned
with a perfect pyramid of ostrich feathers, and as she turned to bestow
upon the riders the contemptuous glance of a cockney pedestrian, who
demands possession of all London as a sacred right, Julian suddenly
pulled up his horse.

"Hulloh!" he said to the woman.

"What is it?" asked Valentine, who was in front.

"Wait a second, Val. I want a word with this lady."

"Rather compromising," Valentine said, laughing, as his eyes took in with
a swift glance the woman's situation in the economy of the town.

The woman now slowly advanced to the railing, apparently flattered at
being thus hailed from horseback. Her kinsmen doubtless always walked.

"Don't you remember me?" Julian said.

She was in fact the lady of the feathers, with whom he had foregathered
at the coffee-stall in Piccadilly. The lady leaned her plush arms upon
the rail and surveyed him with her tinted eyes.

"Can't say as I do, my dear," she remarked. "What name?"

"Never mind that. But tell me, have you ever had a cup of coffee and a
bun in Piccadilly early in the morning?"

The mention of the bun struck home to the lady, swept the quivering
chords of her memory into a tune. She pushed her face nearer to Julian
and stared at him hard.

"So it is," she said. "So it is."

For a moment she seemed inclined to retreat. Then she stood her ground.
Her nerves, perhaps, had grown stronger.

"I should like to know you," Julian said.

The lady was obviously gratified. She tossed her head and giggled.

"Where do you live?" Julian continued.

The lady dived into the back part of her skirt, and, after a long and
passionate pursuit, ran a small purse to earth. Opening it with
deliberation, she extracted a good-sized card, and handed it up to
Julian.

"There you are, dearie," she said.

On the card was printed, "Cuckoo Bright, 400 Marylebone Road."

"I will come at five this afternoon and take you out to tea," said
Julian.

"Right you are, Bertie," the lady cried, in a voice thrilling with pride
and exultation.

Julian rode off, and she watched him go, preening herself against the
rail like some gaudy bird. She looked up at a policeman and laughed
knowingly.

"Well, copper," she said; "how's that, eh?"

The policeman was equal to the occasion.

"Not out," he answered, with a stiff and semi-official smile. "Move
along."

And Cuckoo Bright moved as one who walked on air.

Julian had joined Valentine, who had observed the colloquy from afar,
controlling with some difficulty the impatience of his mare, excited by
her gallop.

"You know that lady?" he asked, still laughing, with perhaps a touch of
contempt.

"Very platonically. We met at a coffee-stall in Piccadilly as I was going
home after your trance. She was with me when I saw that strange flame."

"When you imagined you saw it."

"If you prefer it, Val. I am going to see her this afternoon."

"My dear fellow--why?"

"I'll tell you," Julian answered gravely. "I believe she is the woman
who went to the 'European' with Marr, who must have been with Marr when
he was taken ill, and who fled. I have a reason for thinking so."

"What is it?"

"I'll tell you later, when I have talked to her."

"Surely you don't suspect the poor creature of foul play?"

"Not I. It's sheer curiosity that takes me to her."

"Oh."

They rode on a step or two. Then Valentine said:

"Are you going to take her out? She's--well, she is a trifle
unmistakable, Julian."

"Yes, I know. You are right. She's not for afternoon wear, poor soul.
What damned scoundrels men are."

Valentine did not join in the sentiment thus forcibly expressed.

Between four and five that afternoon Julian hailed a cab and drove to
Marylebone Road. The houses in it seemed endless, and dreary alike, but
at length the cab drew up at number 400, tall, gaunt and haggard, like
the rest. Julian rang the bell, and immediately a shrill dog barked with
a piping fury within the house. Then the door was opened by an old woman,
whose arid face was cabalistic, and who looked as if she spent her
existence in expecting a raid from the police.

"Is Miss Cuckoo Bright at home?"

"Miss Bright! I'll see."

The old dame turned tail, and slithered, flat-footed, to a room opening
from the dirty passage. She vanished and Julian heard two gentle voices
muttering. The old woman returned.

"This way, sir!" she said, in a voice that perpetually struggled to get
the whip-hand of an obvious bronchitis.

A moment more and Julian stood in the acute presence of the lady of
the feathers. At first he scarcely recognized her, for she had discarded
her crown of glory and now faced him in the strange frivolity of her
hatless touzled hair. She stood by the square table covered with a green
cloth, that occupied the centre of the small room, which communicated by
folding doors with an inner chamber. A pastile was burning drowsily in a
corner, and the shrill dog piped seditiously from its station on a black
horsehair-covered sofa, over which a woolwork rug was thrown in easy
_abandon_. Julian extended his hand.

"How d'you do?" he said.

"Pretty bobbish, my dear," was the reply; but the voice was much less
pert than he remembered it, and looking at his hostess, Julian perceived
that she was considerably younger than he had imagined, and that she was
actually--amazing luxury!--a little shy. She had a box of safety-matches
in her hand, and she now struck one, and applied it to a gas-burner. The
day was dark.

"Pleased to see you," she added, with an attempt at a hearty and
untutored air. "Jessie, shut up."

Jessie, the dog, of the toy species, and arched into the shape of a note
of interrogation, obeyed, lay down and trembled into sleep. The gaslight
revealed the details of the sordid room, a satin box of sweetmeats on the
table, a penny bunch of sweet violets in a specimen-glass, one or two
yellow-backed novels, and a few photographs ranged upon the imitation
marble mantelpiece. There was one arm-chair, whose torn lining indecently
revealed the interior stuffing, and there were three other chairs with
wooden backs. The lady of the feathers did not dwell in marble halls,
unless, perhaps, imaginatively.

"You've got cosey quarters," Julian said, amiably lying.

"Yes, they're not bad, but they do cost money. Sit down, won't you!"

The lady shoved the one arm-chair forward, and after a polite skirmish,
Julian was forced to take it. He sat down, disguising from his companion
his sudden knowledge that the springs were broken. She, on her part, laid
hold of Jessie, dumped the little creature into her lap, and assumed an
air of abrupt gentility, pursing her painted lips, and shooting sidelong
glances of inquiry at the furniture. Julian could not at once explain his
errand. He felt that caution was imperative. Besides, the lady doubtless
expected to be entertained at Verrey's or possibly even at Charbonnel's.
But Julian had resolved to throw himself upon the lady's hospitality.

"It's an awful day," he said.

The lady assented, adding that she had not been out.

"We are very cosey here," Julian continued, gazing at the small fire that
was sputtering in the grate.

The lady looked gratified. She felt that the meagre abode which she must
name home had received the hallmark of a "toff's" approval.

"Now I am going to ask you something," Julian said. "Will you let me
have tea with you to-day, and--and--come out with me some evening to
the Empire or somewhere, instead?"

The lady nodded her fringed head.

"Certainly, my dear," she responded. "Proud to give you tea, I'm sure."

Suddenly she bounced up, scattering Jessie over the floor. She promenaded
to the door, opened it and yelled:

"Mrs. Brigg! Mrs. Brigg!"

The expostulating feet of the old person ascended wearily from the lower
depths of the house.

"Lord! Lord! Whatever is it now?" she wheezed.

"Please bring up tea for me and this gentleman."

The lady assumed the voice of a sucking dove.

"Tea! Why, I thought you'd be out to--"

The lady shot into the passage and shut the door behind her. After a
moment she put her head in and said to Julian:

"I'll be back in a minute. She's in a rare tantrum. I must go down and
help her. Pardon."

And she vanished like a flash.

Julian sat feeling rather guilty. To distract himself he got up and
looked at the photographs on the mantelpiece. Most of them were of men,
but there were two or three girls in tights, and there was one of a
stout and venerable woman, evidently highly respectable, seated in an
arm-chair, with staring bead-like eyes, but a sweet and gentle mouth. Her
hair was arranged in glossy bands. Her hands held a large book, probably
a Bible. Julian looked at her and wondered a little how she chanced to be
in this _gal�re_. Then he started and almost exclaimed aloud. For there,
at the end of the mantelpiece, was a cabinet photograph of Marr. He was
right then in his suspicion. The lady of the feathers was also the lady
at the "European."

"Sorry to keep you waiting," said a voice behind him.

There was a clatter of crockery. His hostess entered bearing a tray,
which held a teapot, cups, a large loaf of bread, and some butter, and a
milk-jug and sugar-basin. She plumped it down on the table.

"Mrs. Brigg _wouldn't_ make toast," she explained. "And I didn't like to
keep you."

"Let's make some ourselves," said Julian, with a happy inspiration.

He felt that to perform a common and a cosey act must draw them together,
and awaken in the lady's breast a happy and progressive confidence. She
was evidently surprised at the suggestion.

"Well, I never!" she ejaculated. "You are a queer one. You are taking a
rise out of me now!"

"Not at all. I like making toast. Give me a fork. I'll do it, and you sit
there and direct me."

She laughed and produced the fork from a mean cupboard which did duty as
a sideboard.

"Here you are, then. 'Cut it pretty thick. It ain't so high class, but it
eats better. That's it. Sit on this stool, dear."

She kicked an ancient leather one to the hearth, and Julian, tucking his
long-tailed frock coat under him, squatted down and thrust forward the
bread to the bars of the grate. The lady opened the lid of the teapot and
examined the brew with an anxious eye.

"It's drawin' beautiful," she declared. "Well, I'm d--" she caught
herself up short. "Well this is bally funny," she said. "Turn it,
dearie."

Julian obeyed, and they began to talk. For the ice was broken now,
and the lady was quite at her ease, and simple and human in her
hospitalities.

"This is better than the bun," Julian said.

"I believe you, dear. And yet that bun did me a deal of good that
mornin'."

Her voice became suddenly reflective.

"A deal of good."

"Are you often out at such a time?"

"Not I. But that night I'd--well, I didn't feel like bein' indoors.
There's things--well, there, it don't matter. That toast's done, dearie.
Bring it here, and let me butter it."

Julian brought it, and cut another slice from the loaf. He toasted while
the lady buttered, a fine division of labour which drew them close
together. Jessie, meanwhile, attracted by these pleasant preparations,
hovered about, wriggling in pathetic anxiety to share the good things of
life.

"Anything wrong that night?" Julian said, carelessly.

The lady buttered, like an angry machine.

"Oh no, dearie," she said. "Make haste, or the tea'll be as black as
coal. Jessie, you're a pig! I do spoil her."

Julian called the little dog to him. She came voraciously, her minute and
rat-like body tense with greed.

"She's a pretty dog," he said.

"Yes," the lady rejoined proudly. "She's a show dog. She was give to
me, and I wouldn't part with her for nuts, no, nor for diamonds neither.
Would I, Jessie? Ah, well, dogs stick to you when men don't."

She was trying to be arch, but her voice was really quivering to tears,
and in that sentence rang all the tragedy of her poor life. Julian looked
across at her as she sat by the tray, buttering now almost mechanically.
She was naturally a pretty girl, but was growing rapidly haggard, and was
badly made up, rouged in wrong places consumptively, powdered everywhere
disastrously. Her eyes were pathetic, but above them the hair was
dreadfully dyed, and frizzed into a desolate turmoil. She had a thin
young figure and anxious hands. As he looked Julian felt a profound pity
and a curious manly friendship for her. She had that saddest aspect of a
human being about whom it doesn't matter. Only it matters about every
living creature so much.

The lady caught his eye, and extended her lips in a forced smile.

"You never know your luck!" she cried. "So it don't do to be down on it.
Come on, dearie. Now then for the tea."

She poured it out, and Julian drew up to the table. Already he felt oddly
at home in this poor room, with this poor life, into which he longed to
bring a little hope, a little safety. Jessie sprang to his knees, and
thence, naughtily, to the table, snuffling towards the plate of toast.
The lady drew it away and approached it to her nose by turns, playfully.

"She is a funny one," she said. "Is your tea right, dearie?"

"Perfect," said Julian. "Is my toast right?"

"Right as ninepence, and righter."

She munched.

"I like you," she said. "You're a gentleman."

She spoke naturally, without coquetry. It was a fine experience for her
to be treated with that thing some women never know--respect. She warmed
under it and glistened.

"We must be friends," Julian said.

"Pals. Yes. Have some more sugar?"

She jumped two lumps into his cup, and laughed quite gaily when the
tea spouted over into the saucer. And they chatted on, and fed Jessie
into joy and peace. Gradually Julian drew the conversation round to the
photographs. The lady was expansive. She gave short histories of some
of the men, summing them up with considerable shrewdness, kodaking their
characters with both humour and sarcasm. Julian and she progressed
along the mantelpiece together. Presently they arrived at the old lady
with the Bible.

"And this?" Julian said.

The lady's fund of spirits was suddenly exhausted.

"Oh, that," she said, and a sort of strange, suppressed blush struggled
up under the rouge on her face. "Well, that's mother."

"I like her face."

"Yes. She thinks I'm dead."

The lady turned away abruptly.

"I'll just carry the tray down to Mrs. Brigg," she said, and she
clattered out with it, and down the stairs.

Julian heard her loudly humming a music-hall song as she went, the
requiem of her dead life with the old woman who held the Bible on her
knees. When she returned, her mouth was hard and her eyes were shining
ominously. Julian was still standing by the mantelpiece. As she came in
he pointed to the photograph of Marr.

"And this?" he asked. "Who's this?"

The lady burst into a shrill laugh of mingled fear and cunning.

"That's the old gentleman!"

"What do you mean?"

"What I say,--the old gentleman, Nick, the devil, if you like it."

"Now you are trying to take a rise out of me."

"Not I, dear," she said. "That's the devil, sure enough."

Either the tea and toast had rendered her exuberant, or the thought
of the old woman who believed her to be dead had driven her into
recklessness. She continued:

"I'd been with him that night I met you, and I was frightened, I tell
you. I'd been mad with fright."

"Why? What had he done to you?"

Julian strove to conceal his eager interest under a light assumption of
carelessness.

"Done!--never mind. It don't do to talk about it."

She laid her thin hand on his arm, as if impelled to be confidential.

"Do you believe in people being struck?" she said.

"Struck! I don't understand."

"Struck," she repeated superstitiously. "Down, from up there?"

Her eyes went up to the ceiling, like the child's when it thinks of
heaven.

"Was he?" Julian asked.

She nodded, pursing her red lips.

"That's what I think. It came so sudden. Just when I was going to
scream somethin' seemed to come over him, like madness it was. He seemed
listening. Then he says, 'Now--now!' And he seemed goin' right off. He
stared at me and didn't seem to know me. Lord, I was blue with it, I tell
you, dear! I was that frightened I just left him and bunked for it, and
never said a word to anybody. I ran downstairs and got out of the house,
and I daren't go home. So I just walked about till I met you."

She sighed.

"I did enjoy that coffee, I tell you straight, but when you began about
seein' things, I couldn't stow it. My nerves was shook. So off I trotted
again."

Julian put a question to her.

"Do you know what has become of him?"

"Not I. He'll never get in here again. Mrs. Brigg won't let him. She
never could abide him."

She shook her shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I wish he was dead," she said. "I never go out but what I'm afraid I
shall meet him, or come back late but what I think I shall find him
standin' against the street door. I wish he was dead."

"I knew him. He is dead."

She looked at him, at first questioning, then awe-stricken.

"Then he was struck? Lord!"

Her red mouth gaped.

"It was in the papers," Julian said, "At the European Hotel."

"That was the place. Lord! I never see the papers. Dead is he? I am
glad."

Her relief was obvious, yet almost shocking, and Julian could not
question her good faith. She had certainly not known. He longed to find
out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment of her, but
she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really loathed and
detested the remembrance of him.

"But why do you keep his photograph?" Julian asked at last.

The lady seemed puzzled.

"I dunno," she said at last. "I don't seem as if I could burn it. But if
he is gone--dead, I mean--really--"

"He is."

"I know."

She sat thoughtfully. Then she said:

"He didn't look a fellow to die. It seems funny. No; he didn't look it."

And then she dropped the subject, and nothing would induce her to
return to it. Presently they heard a church clock strike. It chimed
seven. Julian was astonished to find that time had gone so quickly.

"I must be going," he said.

The lady looked at him with an odd, half-impudent, half-girlish, and
wistful scrutiny.

"I say," she began, and stopped.

"Yes?"

"I say--why ever did you come?"

The short question that expressed her wondering curiosity might well have
driven any thoughtful man into tears. And Julian, young and careless as
he often was, felt something of the terror and the pain enshrined in it.
But he did not let her see this.

"I wanted to have a talk with you," he answered.

"A talk; you like a talk with me?"

"Yes, surely."

She still stared at him with pathetic eyes. He had stood up.

"Oh," she said. "Well, dearie, I'm glad."

Julian took up his hat.

"I'm going out too," she said.

"Are you?"

"Yes."

She threw a sidelong glance at him, then added hardily, although her
painted lips were suddenly quivering:

"I've got to go to work."

"I know," Julian said. "Well, I will wait till you are ready and drive
you wherever you want to go."

"_Want_ to go," she began, with a little, shrill, hideous laugh. Then,
pulling herself up, she added in a subdued voice:

"Thank you, dearie. I won't be long."

She opened the folding doors and passed into the inner room,
accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself
listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood,
as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a
hook, the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the
whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for the piteous
battle of the London streets. And then his ears caught the eager patter
of Jessie to and fro, and a murmured expostulation from her mistress.
Evidently the little dog had got hold of some article of attire and was
worrying it. There was a hidden chase and a hidden capture. Jessie was
scolded and kissed. Then the sitting-room slowly filled with the scent
of cherry-blossom. A toothbrush in action was distinctly audible. This
tragedy had its comic relief, like almost all tragedies. Julian sighed
and smiled, but his heart was heavy with the desolate and sordid wonder
of life, as his mind heard--all over London--a thousand echoes of the
bedchamber music of the lady of the feathers.

The folding doors opened wide and she appeared, freshly painted and
powdered, crowned once again with the forest of ostrich tips, and holding
the struggling Jessie in her arms.

"Jessie must go to basket," she said, and she dropped the dog into a tiny
basket lined with red flannel, and held up a warning finger.

"Naughty--go bials!" she cried. "Go bials, Jessie."

"What's that?"

"Bials--by-bye. She don't like bein' left. Well, dearie, we've had a nice
time."

Suddenly she put her hands on Julian's shoulders and kissed his mouth.

"I wish there was more like you," she whispered.

He kissed her too, and put his arms around her.

"If I give you something, will you--will you stay at home to-night, just
to-night, with Jessie?" he said.

But she drew away and shook her head.

"I won't take it."

"Yes."

"I won't. No--we're pals--not--not the other thing. You're the only one
I've got--of that kind. I won't spoil it--no, I won't."

Her decision was almost angry. Julian did not persist.

"I'll come again," he said.

She looked at him wistfully.

"Ah--but you won't," she answered.

"I will."

He spoke with energy. She nodded.

"I'd like you to."

Then they went out into the evening and hailed a hansom.

"Put me down at the Piccadilly end of Regent Street," said the lady of
the feathers.




CHAPTER VIII

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS VISITS VALENTINE


Julian was curiously touched by his interview in the Marylebone Road, and
he did not fail to recount it to Valentine, whose delicate imagination
would, he felt certain, feel the pity and the pain of it.

But Valentine did not respond to his generous emotion.

"I thought she looked a very degraded young person," he said, distantly.
"And not interesting. The woman who is falling is interesting. The woman
who has reached the bottom, who has completely arrived at degradation, is
dull enough."

"But she is not utterly degraded, Val. For I know that she can see and
understand something of the horror of her own condition."

Valentine put his hand on Julian's shoulder.

"I know what you are thinking," he said.

"What?"

"That you would like to rescue this girl."

A dull blush ran over Julian's face.

"I don't know that I had got quite so far as that," he said. "Would it be
absurd if I had?"

"I am not sure that it would not be wrong. Probably this girl lives the
life she is best fitted for."

"You surely don't mean--"

"That some human beings are born merely to further the necessities
of sin in the scheme of creation? I don't know that. Nature, in certain
countries, demands and obtains pernicious and deadly snakes to live in
her bosom. Man demands and obtains female snakes to live in his bosom.
Are not such women literally created for this _m�tier_? How can one
tell?"

"But if they are unhappy?"

"You think they would be happy in purity?"

"I believe she would."

Valentine smiled and shook his head.

"I expect her sorrows are not caused by the loss of her virtue, but
merely by her lack of the luxuries of life. These birds always want
their nests to be made of golden twigs and lined with satin."

But Julian remained unconvinced.

"You don't know her," he said. "Why, Valentine, you have never known such
a woman! You! The very notion is ridiculous."

"I have seen them in their Garden of Eden, offering men the fruit of the
tree of knowledge."

"You mean?"

"At the 'Empire.'"

"Ah! I have half promised to take her there one night."

"Shall I come with you, Julian?"

Julian looked at him to see if he was in earnest as he made this
unutterable proposition. Valentine's clear, cold, thoughtful blue
eyes met his eager, glowing, brown, ones with direct gravity.

"You mean it, Val?"

"Certainly."

"You will be seen at the 'Empire' with her?"

"Well--would not you?"

"But you are so different."

"Julian, you remember that night when we leaned out over London, when we
saw what are called common people having common experiences? I said then
that they, at any rate, were living."

"Yes."

"You and I will try to live with them."

"But, Valentine--you--"

"Even I may learn to feel the strength of the spring if I order my life
rather differently in the future. We three, you, I, the girl, will go one
night to the Garden of Eden, where the birds wear tights and sing comic
songs in French, and the scent that comes from the flowers is patchouli,
and silk rustles instead of the leaves of the trees. We will go there on
boat-race night. Ah, the strength of the spring! On boat-race night it
beats with hammering pulses among the groves of the Garden of Eden."

Julian was surprised at this outburst, which sounded oddly deliberate,
and was apparently spoken without real impulse. He was surprised, but,
on consideration, he came to the conclusion that Valentine, having
silently debated the question of his own life, had resolved to make a
definite effort to see if he could change the course of it. Julian felt
that such an effort must be useless. He knew Valentine so intimately, he
thought,--knew the very groundwork of his nature,--that that nature was
too strong to be carved into a different, and possibly grotesque, form.

"Are you an experimentalist, Val?" he asked.

Valentine threw a rapid glance on him.

"I? I don't understand. Why should I experiment upon you?"

"No; not on me, but on yourself."

"Oh, I see what you mean. No, Julian; I prefer to let fate experiment
upon me."

"At the 'Empire'?"

"If fate chooses."

"I think you ought to know Cuckoo--"

"Is that her name?"

"Yes, Cuckoo Bright, before our meditated expedition."

Valentine seemed struck by this idea.

"So that we may all be at our ease. A capital notion. Julian, sit down,
write a note asking her to come to tea on Thursday, in the flat. I will
show her my pictures, and you shall talk to her of Huxley and of Herbert
Spencer."

Julian regarded Valentine rather doubtfully.

"Are you malicious?" he said, with a hesitating note in his voice.

"Malicious--no!"

"You won't chaff her?"

"Chaff a lady who wears more feathers than ever 'growed on one ostrich,'
and who was the _intime_ of the mysterious Marr? Julian, Julian!"

Then, seeing that Julian still looked rather uncomfortable, Valentine
added, dropping his mock heroic manner:

"Don't be afraid. We will give the lady one good hour."

"Ah!" Julian cried, struck by the expression, "that's what the doctor
wished to give to every poor wretch in London."

"We don't ask the doctor to our tea," Valentine replied, with a sudden
coldness.

The invitation was conveyed to the lady of the feathers, and in due
course an answer was received, a mosaic of misspelling and obvious
gratification.

"My dear," ran the missive, "I will com. I shall be pleased to see you
agane, but I thorght I shoold not. Men say--oh yes, I shall com back--but
not many does, and I thorght praps you was like the all the rest. Your
friend is very good to assk me, and I am,

"Yr loving,
"Cuckoo."

Valentine read the letter without comment and ordered an elaborate tea.
Julian read it, and wondered whether he was a fool because he felt
touched by the misspelt words, as he had sometimes felt touched when
he saw some very poor woman attired in her ridiculous "best" clothes.

The tea-time had been fixed for five o'clock, and Julian intended, of
course, to be in Victoria Street with Valentine to receive the expected
guest, but Cuckoo Bright threw his polite plans out of gear, and
Valentine was alone when, at half-past four, the electric bell rang,
and, a moment later, Wade solemnly showed into the drawing-room a
striking vision, such as had never "burst into that silent sea" of
artistic repose and refinement before.

The lady undoubtedly wore what seemed to be her one hat, and the effect
of it, at all times remarkable, was amazingly heightened by its proximity
to the quiet and beautiful surroundings of the room. As a rule, it merely
cried out. Now it seemed absolutely to yell bank-holiday vulgarity and
impropriety at the silent pictures. But her gown decidedly exceeded it in
uproar, being of the very loudest scarlet hue, with large black lozenges
scattered liberally over it. From her rather narrow shoulders depended a
black cape, whose silk foundation was suffocated with bugles. A shrill
scent of cherry-blossom ran with her like a crowd, and in her hand she
carried an umbrella and a plush bag with a steel snap. Her face, in the
midst of this whirlpool of finery, peeped out anxiously, covered as it
was with a smear of paint and powder, and when she saw Valentine standing
alone to receive her, her nervous eyes ranged uncomfortably about in
obvious quest of an acquaintance and protector.

"I am sorry that Mr. Addison has not come yet," Valentine said, holding
out his hand. "I expect him every minute. Won't you come and sit down?"

An ironical courtesy vibrated in his voice. The lady grew more obviously
nervous. She looked at Valentine through the veil which was drawn tightly
across her face. His appearance seemed to carry awe into her heart, for
she stood staring and attempted no reply, allowing him to take her hand
without either protest or response.

"Won't you sit down?" he repeated, smiling at her with humourous
contemplation of her awkward distress.

The lady abruptly sat down on a sofa.

"Allow me to put a cushion at your back," Valentine said. And he passed
behind her to do so. But she quickly shifted round, almost as if in fear,
and faced him as he stood with his hand on the back of the sofa.

"No," she said, in a hurry; "I don't know as I want one, thanks."

She half got up.

"Have I come right?" she asked uneasily. "Is this the house?"

"Certainly. It's so good of you to come."

The words did not seem to carry any comfort to the lady. She passed the
tip of her tongue along her painted lips and looked towards the door.

"Pray, don't be alarmed," Valentine said, sitting down on a chair
immediately opposite to her.

"I ain't. But--but you're not the friend, are you?"

"I am; and the _ami des femmes_ too, I assure you. Be calm."

He bent forward, looking closely into her face. The lady leaned quickly
back and uttered a little gasp.

"What is the matter?" Valentine asked.

"Nothin', nothin'," the lady answered, returning his glance as if
fascinated into something that approached horror. "When's he comin'?
When's he comin'?"

"Directly. But I trust you will not regret spending a few minutes alone
in my company. What can I do to make you happy?"

"I'm all right, thank you," she said, almost roughly. "Don't bother about
me."

"Who could help bothering about a pretty woman?" Valentine answered
suavely, and approaching his chair a little more closely to her. "Do
you know that my friend Addison can talk of nobody but you?"

"Oh!"

"Nobody. He raves about you."

"You're laughing," the lady said, still uncomfortably.

"Not at all. I never laugh."

As he made this last remark, Valentine slowly frowned. The effect of
this change of expression upon the lady was most extraordinary. She
leaned far back upon the sofa as if in retreat from the face that stared
upon her, mechanically thrusting out her hands in a faltering gesture of
self-defence. Then, planting her feet on the ground and using them as a
lever, she succeeded in moving the sofa backwards upon its castors, which
ran easily over the thick carpet. Valentine, on his part, did not stir,
but with immovable face regarded her apparent terror as a man regards
some spectacle neither new nor strange to him, silently awaiting its
eventual closing tableau. What this would have been cannot be known, for
at this moment the bell rang and the butler was heard moving in the hall.
The frown faded from Valentine's face, and the lady sprang up from the
sofa with a violent, almost a passionate, eagerness. Julian entered
hastily.

"Why was you late?" Cuckoo Bright cried out, hastening up to him
and speaking almost angrily. "Why was you late? I didn't think--I
didn't--oh!"

Her voice sounded like the voice of one on the verge of tears. Julian
looked astonished.

"I am very sorry," he began. "But I didn't know you would be here so
soon."

He glanced from the lady to Valentine inquiringly, as much as to say:

"How have you been getting on?"

Valentine's expression was gay and reassuring.

"I have been entertaining your friend, Julian," he said. "But she has
been almost inconsolable in your absence. She was standing up because I
was just about to show her the pictures. But now you are here, we will
have tea first instead. Ah, here is tea. Miss Bright, do come and sit by
the fire, and put your feet on this stool. We will wait upon you."

Since the entrance of Julian, his manner had entirely changed. All the
irony, all the mock politeness, had died out of it. He was now a kind and
delicately courteous host, desirous of putting his guests upon good terms
and gilding the passing hour with a definite happiness. Cuckoo Bright
seemed struck completely dumb by the transformation. She took the chair
he indicated, mechanically put her feet up on the stool he pushed
forward, and with a rather trembling hand accepted a cup of tea.

"Do you take sugar?" Valentine said, bending over her with the
sugar-basin.

"No, no," she said.

"Oh, but I thought you loved sweet things," Julian interposed. "Surely--"

"I won't have none to-day," she ejaculated, adding with an endeavour
after gentility; "thank you, all the same," to Valentine.

He offered her some delicious cakes, but she was apparently petrified by
the grandeur of her surroundings, or by some hidden sensation of shyness
or of shame, and was refusing to eat anything, when Julian came to the
rescue.

"Oh, but you must," he said. "Have some of these sugar-biscuits."

She took some from him and began to sip and munch steadily, but still in
silence. Julian began to fear that the festival must be a dire failure,
for her obvious and extreme constraint affected him, and he was also
seized with an absurd sense of shyness in the presence of Valentine, and,
instead of talking, found himself immersed in a boyish anxiety as to
Valentine's attitude of mind towards the girl. He looked at Cuckoo in the
firelight as she mutely ate and drank, and was all at once profoundly
conscious of the dreary vulgarity of her appearance, against which even
her original prettiness and her present youth fought in vain. Her hat
cast a monstrous shadow upon the wall, a shadow so distorted and
appalling that Julian almost grew red as he observed it, and felt that
Valentine was probably observing it also. He wished poor Cuckoo had left
the crying scarlet gown at home, and those black lozenges, which were
suited to the pavement of the hall of a financier. Everything she had
on expressed a mind such as Valentine must become acquainted with in
amazement, and have intercourse with in sorrow. The pathetic side of
this preposterous feathered and bugled degradation he would fail to see.
Julian felt painfully certain of this. All the details of the woman would
offend him, who was so alive to the value of fine details in life. He
must surely be wondering with all his soul how Julian could ever have
contemplated continuing the intercourse with Cuckoo which had been begun
for a definite purpose already accomplished. Yet Julian's feeling of
friendship towards this rouged scarecrow with the pathetic eyes and
the anxious hands did not diminish as he blushed for her, but rather
increased, fed, it seemed, by the discordant trifles in which her soul
moved as in a maze. He was so much in the thrall of thought that he had
become quite unconscious of the awkwardness of the brooding silence, when
he heard Valentine's voice say:

"Are you fond of art, Miss Bright?"

The question sounded as if addressed to some society woman at home in
Melbury Road. Addressed to Cuckoo it was entirely absurd, and Julian
glanced at Valentine to deprecate the gay sarcasm which he suspected.
But Valentine's face disarmed him, it was so gravely and serenely polite.

"Eh?" said Cuckoo.

"Are you fond of art? or do you prefer literature?"

"I don't know," she said nervously.

"Or perhaps music?"

"I like singing," she said. "And the organs."

"Do sing us something, Val," Julian said, to create a diversion.

But Valentine shook his head.

"Not to-day. I have got a cold in my throat."

"Well, then, play something."

But Valentine did not seem to hear the last request. He had turned again
to Cuckoo, who visibly shied away from him, and clattered the teacup and
saucer, which she held like one alarmed.

"Music is a great art," he said persuasively. "And appeals essentially to
one's emotions. I am certain now that you are emotional."

"I don't know, I'm sure," she said, with an effort at self-confidence.

"You feel strongly, whether it be love or hate."

This last remark seemed to reach her, even to stir her to something more
definite than mere _mauvaise honte_. She glanced quickly from Julian to
Valentine.

"Love and hate," she responded. "Yes, that's it; I could feel them both.
You're right there, my d--, I mean yes."

And again she looked from one young man to the other. She had put up
her veil, which was stretched in a bunched-up mass across her powdered
forehead, and Julian had an odd fancy that in the firelight he saw upon
her haggard young face the rapid and fleeting expression of the two
violently opposed emotions of which she spoke. Her face, turned upon
him, seemed to shine with a queer, almost with a ludicrous, vehemence
of yearning which might mean passion. This flashed into the sudden frown
of a young harridan as her eyes travelled on to Valentine. But the frown
died quickly, and she looked downcast, and sat biting her thin lips, and
crumbling a biscuit into the tiny blue and white china plate upon her
knee.

"And do you give way to your impulses?" Valentine continued, still very
gravely.

"What?"

"Do you express what you feel?"

A flash of childish cunning crept into her eyes and mouth, giving her the
aspect of a _gamin_.

"No; I ain't such a fool," she answered. "Men don't like to be told the
truth. Do they, now?"

The question went to Julian.

"Why not?" he asked

"Oh, they like to be fooled. If you don't fool them, they fool you."

"A sufficiently clear statement of the relations of the sexes through all
time," said Valentine. "Have you ever studied Schopenhauer?"

"Ah, now, you're kiddin' me!" was her not inappropriate answer.

She was getting a little more at her ease, but she still stole frequent
furtive glances at Valentine from time to time, and moved with an
uncomfortable jerk if he bent forward to her or seemed about to come near
to her. He seemed now really interested in her personality, and Julian
began to wonder if its very vulgarity came to him with a charm of
novelty.

"Kidding?" Valentine said, interrogatively.

"Gettin' at me! Pullin' my leg! Oh, I know you!" cried Cuckoo. "I'm up to
all them games. You don't get a rise out of me."

"The lady speaks in parables," Valentine murmured to Julian. "I assure
you," he added aloud, "I am speaking quite seriously."

"Oh, seriously be hanged!" said Cuckoo, recklessly. "You're a regular
funny feller. Oh yes. Only don't try to be funny with me, because I'm up
to all that."

She seemed suddenly bent on turning the tables on one whom she
apparently regarded as her adversary. Some people, when they do
make an effort of will, are always carried forward by the unwonted
exertion into an almost libertine excess. Miss Bright's timidity was
now developing into violent impudence. She tossed her head till the
gigantic shadow of the sarcophagus that crowned it aspired upon the
wall almost to the ceiling. She stuck her feet out upon the stool
aggressively, and her arms instinctively sought the akimbo position
that is the physical expression of mental hardihood in vulgar natures.

"Go along!" she said.

Valentine pretended to take her at her word. He got up.

"Where shall I go? I am your slave!"

She laughed shrilly.

"Go to blazes if you like."

Valentine crossed to the door, and, before Julian had time to speak,
opened it and quietly vanished. Julian and Cuckoo were left staring at
one another. The latter's impudence had suddenly evaporated. Her face was
working as if she was astonished and afraid.

"What's he after? What's he after, I say?" she ejaculated. "Go and see."

But Julian shook his head.

"It's all right. He has only done it for a joke. He will be back
directly."

"Yes, but--but."

She seemed really frightened. Julian supposed she realized her rudeness
vaguely, and imagined she had made an abominable _faux pas_. Acting on
this supposition, he said reassuringly:

"He didn't mind your chaff. He knew you were only joking."

"Lord, it isn't that," she rejoined with trembling lips. "But what's he
goin' to do?"

"Do?"

"Yes. Go and see. Hark!"

She held up her hand and leaned forward in a strained attitude of
attention. But there was no sound in the flat. Then she turned again
to Julian and said:

"And he's your friend. Well, I never!"

The words were spoken with an extraordinary conviction of astonishment
that roused Julian to keen attention.

"Why, what do you mean?" he asked.

"He's a wicked fellow," she said with a snatch of the breath. "A real
downright wicked fellow, like Marr. That's what he is."

Julian was amazed.

"You don't know what you are saying," he answered.

But she stuck to her guns with the animation of hysteria.

"Don't I, though? Don't I? A girl that lives like me has to know, I tell
you. Where should I be if I didn't? Tell me that, then. Why, there's men
in the streets I wouldn't speak to; not for twenty pounds, I wouldn't.
And he's one of them. Why didn't you come? Why ever did you let me be on
my own with him? He's a devil."

"Nonsense," Julian said brusquely.

She laid her hand on his, and hers was trembling.

"Well, then, why's he gone off all sudden like that?"

"Only for a joke. Wait, I'll fetch him back."

Cuckoo Bright looked frankly terrified at the idea.

"No," she cried; "don't. I'm goin'. I'm off. Help me on with my cloak,
dearie. I'm off."

Julian saw that it was useless to argue with her. He put the cloak round
her shoulders. As he did so he was standing behind her, with his face to
the fireplace. The leaping flames sprang from the coals in the grate, and
their light was reflected on the wall, near the door, but only, of
course, to a certain height. Julian's eyes were attracted to these
leaping flames on the wall, and he saw one suddenly detach itself from
the shadows of its brethren, take definite shape and life, develop while
he looked from shadow into substance, float up on the background of the
wall higher and higher, reach the ceiling and melt away. As it faded the
drawing-room door opened and Valentine reappeared.

Miss Bright started violently, and caught at her cloak with both hands.
Valentine came forward slowly.

"You are not going already, surely," he said.

"I must, I must," she ejaculated, already in movement towards the hall.

"But I have just been to get you a box of sugar plums."

He held a satin box in his hand and began to open it. But she hurried on
with a nod.

"Good-bye. Sorry, but I can't stop."

She was in the hall and out of the flat in the twinkling of an eye,
followed by Julian. Valentine remained in the drawing-room.

"Lord, I am glad to be out of it," said the lady when she had gained the
street and stood panting on the pavement.

Julian hailed a hansom and put her into it. She gazed at him as if she
was almost afraid to part from him.

"You'll--you'll come and see me again," she said, wistfully.

"Yes, I'll come," he answered.

"For God's sake, don't bring him, dearie," she said, with an upward lift
of her feathered head towards the block of mansions.

Then she drove off into the darkness.




CHAPTER IX

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS WASHES HER FACE


It was at this point in his career that Julian, just for a time, began
keenly to observe Valentine, and to wonder if there were hidden depths in
his friend which he had never sounded. The cause of the dawning of this
consideration lay in Cuckoo's strange assertion and fear of Valentine,
primarily, but there were other reasons prompting him to an unusual
attitude of attention, although he might not at first have been able to
name them. He could not believe that there was any change in Valentine,
but he fancied that there might be some side of Valentine's nature which
he did not fully understand, which others vaguely felt and wrongly
interpreted. For it was the instinctive creatures in whom Valentine's
presence now seemed to awake distrust, and surely an instinct may be
too violent, or move in a wrong direction, and yet be inspired by some
subtlety in the character that awakens it, and prompts it, and drives it
forward. Julian thought that he found a reason for Cuckoo's aversion in
Valentine's lofty refinement, which would naturally jar upon her nature
of the streets. For her pathos, her better impulses, which had touched
him and led him to sympathy with her, were perhaps only stars in a mind
that must be a dust-heap of horrible memories and coarse thoughts. To
protect Valentine from even the most diminutive shadow of suspicion,
Julian was ready silently to insist that Cuckoo was radically bad,
although he really knew that she was rather a weak sacrifice than an
eager sinner.

Her declaration that Valentine was evil carried complete conviction of
its sincerity. Indeed, her obvious fear of him proved this. And this fear
of a woman reminded Julian of the fear exhibited towards Valentine by
Rip, a terror which still continued, to such an extent, indeed, that the
little dog was now never permitted to be in the presence of its master.

"You are rather an awe-inspiring person, Valentine," Julian said one day.

Valentine looked surprised.

"I never knew it," he answered. "Who is afraid of me?"

"Oh, I don't know--well, Rip, for one, and--and that girl, Cuckoo, for
another."

"Why is she afraid?"

"I can't imagine."

"I could soon put her at her ease, and I will do so."

He went over to the mantelpiece and took up an envelope that was lying
there. From it he drew a slip of coloured paper.

"This will be the talisman," he said. "Have you forgotten that Saturday
is boat-race day?"

"What, you have really got a box for the 'Empire'?"

"Yes; and I mean to invite Miss Bright."

Julian exclaimed with his usual frankness:

"Why the devil do you think of asking her?"

"Because I am certain she will be amusing company on such an occasion."

"That's your real reason?"

"Yes. She will come, of course?"

Julian looked rather doubtful.

"I don't know," he said. "She may."

"She must, Julian. Here is a note I have written to her. Do give it to
her yourself. I can't be thought a bogey. She must come and learn that
I am harmless."

As he said this Valentine's fingers unconsciously twisted the note they
held so strongly that it was torn to shreds.

"Why, you have torn it up," Julian said, in surprise.

"Oh yes."

Valentine paused, then added:

"You had better ask her by word of mouth. Persuade her to come."

"I will try."

The lady of the feathers did indeed require a good deal of persuasion.
When first Julian made the proposition her face shone with gratification,
for he gave the invitation without mentioning Valentine's name. But then
the clouds came down. The lady remembered him suddenly, and said:

"Are we two going alone, dearie?"

"Well--it's a big box, you see. We should be lost in it."

"Oh."

She waited for further explanation, an obvious anxiety in her eyes.

"My friend Cresswell is coming with us. It's his box."

The gratification died away from the painted face. Cuckoo shook her head
and pursed her lips in obvious and absurd disapprobation.

"Then I don't think I'll go. No; I won't."

And upon this Julian had to launch forth over a sea of expostulation and
protest. Cuckoo possessed all the obstinacy of an ignorant and battered
nature, taught by many a well-founded distrust, to rely upon its own
feebleness, rather than upon the probably brutal strength of others. She
was difficult to move, although she had no arguments with which to defend
her assumption of the mule's attitude. At last Julian grew almost angry
in defence of Valentine.

"Half the women in London would be proud to go with him," he said hotly.

"Not if they knew as much about men as I do," she answered.

"But you know nothing whatever about him. That's just the point."

"Ah, but I feel a lot," she said, with an expressive twist of her thin,
rather pretty face. "He's bad, rank bad. That's what he is."

Julian was suddenly seized with a desire to probe this outrageous
instinct to its source, believing, like many people, that the stream
of instinct must flow from some hidden spring of reason.

"Now, look here," he said, more quietly. "I want you to try to tell me
what it is in him that you dislike so much."

"It's everything, dearie."

"No; but that's absurd. For instance, it can't be his looks."

"It is."

"Why, he's wonderfully handsome."

"I don't care. I hate his face; yes, I do."

Julian impatiently pitied her as one pities a blind man who knocks up
against one in the street. But he thought it best to abandon Valentine's
appearance to its unhappy fate of her dislike, and sailed away on another
tack.

"My friend likes you," he said, as he thought, craftily.

Cuckoo tossed her head without reply.

"He said he would rather go with you on Saturday than with any one in
London."

This last remark seemed to produce a considerable effect upon the girl.

"Did he, though?" she asked, one finger going up to her under lip,
reflectively. "Really, truly?"

"Really, truly."

"What should he want with me? He's--he's not one of the usual sort."

"Valentine usual! I should think not."

"And he wants me to go?"

Certainly she was impressed and flattered.

"Yes, very much."

Julian found himself again wondering, with Cuckoo, mightily at
Valentine's vagary of desire. She touched his hand with her long,
thin fingers.

"You'll stay with me all the time?"

"Why, of course."

"You won't leave me? Not alone with him, I mean."

"No; don't be so absurd."

A new hesitation sprang into her face.

"But what am I to go in?" she said. "He--he don't like my red."

So her awe and dislike prompted her to a desire of pleasing Valentine
after all, and had led her shrewdly to read his verdict on her poorly
smart gown. Julian, pleased at his apparent victory, now ventured on a
careful process of education, on the insertion of the thin edge of the
wedge, as he mutely named it.

"Cuckoo," he said, "let me give you a present,--a dress. Now," as she
began to shake her tangled head, "don't be silly. I have never given you
anything, and if we are to be pals you mustn't be so proud. Can you get
a dress made in three days,--a black dress?"

"Yes," she said. "But black! I shall look a dowdy."

"No."

"Oh, but I shall," she murmured, dismally. "Colours suits me best. You
see I'm thin now; not as I was when I--well, before I started. Ah, I
looked different then, I did. I don't want to be a scarecrow and make
you ashamed of me."

Julian longed to tell her that it was the rouge, the feathers, the
scarlet skirt, the effusive bugles, that made a scarecrow of her. But he
had a rough diplomacy that taught him to refrain. He stuck to his point,
however.

"I shall give you a black dress and hat--"

"Oh, my hat's all right now," she interposed. "Them feathers is
beautiful."

"Splendid; but I'll give you a hat to match the dress, and a feather boa,
and black suede gloves."

"But, dearie, I shall be a trottin' funeral, that I shall," she
expostulated, divided between excitement and perplexity.

"No; you'll look splendid. And Cuckoo--"

He hesitated, aware that he was treading on the divine quicksand of
woman's prejudices.

"Cuckoo, I want you to make a little experiment for my sake."

"Whatever is it, dearie?"

"Just on that one night take--take all that off."

With an almost timid gesture, and growing boyishly red, he indicated the
art decoration, pink and pale, that adorned her face.

Poor Cuckoo looked completely flabbergasted.

"What?" she said uncertainly; "don't you like me with it?"

"No."

"Well, but, I don't know."

Such an experiment evidently struck her as portentous, earth-shaking. She
stared into the dingy glass that stood over the mantelpiece in Marylebone
Road.

"I shall look a hag," she muttered, with conviction. "I shall."

"You never had it, before you started."

Her eyes grew round.

"Ah, that was jolly different, though," she said.

"Try it," he urged. "Go and try it now, then come and show me."

"I don't like to."

The idea reduced her almost to shyness. But she got up falteringly, and
moved towards the bedroom. When she was by the folding door she said:

"I say."

"Well?"

"I say, you won't laugh at me?"

"Of course not."

"You won't--honour?"

"Honour!"

She disappeared. And there was the sound of many waters. Julian listened
to it, repeating under his breath that word of many meanings, that
panorama-word, honour. Among thieves, among prostitutes, among murderers,
rebels, the lost, the damned of this world, still does it not sing, like
a bird that is too hopeful of some great and beautiful end ever to be
quite silent?

Julian waited, while Cuckoo washed away her sin of paint and powder, at
first nervously, then with a certain zest that was almost violent, that
splashed the water on floor and walls, and sent the shivering Jessie
beneath the bed for shelter. Cuckoo scrubbed and scrubbed, then applied a
towel, until her skin protested in patches. Finally, and with a disturbed
heart, she approached the sitting-room. Her voice came in to Julian while
she remained hidden:

"I say--"

"Yes."

"I know you will laugh."

"Honour, Cuckoo, honour."

"Oh, all right."

And she came in to him, hanging her head down, rather like a child
among strangers, ashamed, poor thing, of looking respectable. Julian was
astonished at the change the water had wrought. Cuckoo looked another
woman, or rather girl, oddly young, thin, and haggard certainly, and the
reverse of dashing, but pretty, even fascinating, in her shyness. As he
looked at her and saw the real red of nature run over her cheeks in waves
of faint rose color, Julian understood fully all that the girl gives up
when she gives up herself, and the wish--smiled at by Valentine--came to
him again, the wish to reclaim her.

"Ah!" he said. "Now you are yourself."

He took her hand, and drew her in front of the mirror, but she refused to
lift up her eyes and look at her reflection.

"I'm a scarecrow," she murmured, twisting the front of her gown in her
fingers. Her lips began to twitch ominously. Julian felt uncomfortable.
He thought she was going to cry.

"You are prettier than ever," he said. "Look!"

"No, no. It's all gone--all gone."

"What?"

"My looks, dearie. I could do without the paint once. I can't now."

Suddenly she turned to him with a sort of vulgar passion, that suspicion
of the hard young harridan, typical of the pavement, which he had
observed in her before.

"I should like to get the whole lot of men in here," she said, "and--and
chew them up."

She showed her teeth almost like an animal. Then the relapse,
characteristic of the hysterical condition in which she was, came.

"Never you treat me like the rest," she said, bursting into sobs; "never
you try anythin' on. If you do I'll kill myself."

This outburst showed to Julian that she was capable of a curious depth
of real sentiment that gave to her a glimpse of purity and the divinity
of restraint. He tried to soothe her and quickly succeeded. When she had
recovered they went out together to see about the making of the new
black dress, and before they parted he had persuaded Cuckoo to face the
"Empire" multitude on the fateful evening without her panoply of paint
and powder. She pleaded hard for a touch of black on the eyes, a line of
red on the lips. But he was inexorable. When he had gained his point he
comforted her anxiety with chocolates, a feat more easy than the soothing
of her with reasoning could have been.

When he told Valentine of the success of his embassy, Valentine simply
said:

"I am glad."

Julian did not mention the episode of the washing, the preparation of the
black gown, or the promise wrung from the lady of the feathers. The
result springing from these three events was to come as a surprise to
Valentine on boat-race night.




CHAPTER X

THE DANCE OF THE HOURS


Even so huge a city as London, full of so many varying personalities and
clashing interests, assumes upon certain days of the year a particular
and characteristic aspect, arising from a community of curiosity, of
excitement, or of delight felt by its inhabitants. Such days are Derby
day and boat-race day. On the latter more especially London is leavened
by a huge mob of juveniles from the universities, and their female
admirers from the country, who cast a pleasant spell over the frigid
indifference of town-bred dullards, and wake even the most vacuous of the
Piccadilly loungers into a certain vivacity and boyishness. The cabmen
blossom cheerily in dark and light blue favours. The butcher-boys are
partisans. Every _gamin_ in the gutter is all for one boat or for the
other, and dances excitedly to know the result. London, in fact, loses
several wrinkles on boat-race day, and smiles itself into a very pleasant
appearance of briskness and of youth. As a rule, Julian went to see the
race and to lunch with his friends at Putney or elsewhere, without either
abnormal experience of excitement or any unusual vivacity. He was
naturally full of life, and had hot blood in his veins, loved a
spectacle, and especially a struggle of youth against youth. But no
boat-race day had ever stirred him as this one did--found him so
attentive to outside influence, so receptive of common things. For
Julian had recently been half-conscious that he was progressing, and with
increasing rapidity, though he knew not in what exact direction. Simply,
he had the feeling of motion, of journeying, and it seemed to him that he
had been standing comparatively still for years. And this boat-race day
came to him like a flashing milestone upon the road of life. He felt as
if it held in its hours a climax of episodes or of emotions, as if upon
it either his body or his mind must prepare to undergo some large
experience, to meet the searching eyes of a face new and unfamiliar.

Possibly the reason of his own excitement lay in the excitement of
another, in the curious preparations, which he had oddly shared, for the
transformation of the unmistakable into the vague. For the transformation
of Cuckoo Bright had been preparing apace, and Julian was looking forward
like a schoolboy to the effect which her novel respectability of
appearance would have upon Valentine. The rouge-box lay lonely and
untouched in a drawer. Even the powder-puff suffered an unaccustomed
neglect. The black gown had been tried on and taught to fit the thin
young figure, and a hat--with only one feather--kept company with the
discarded sarcophagus which had given to Cuckoo her original nickname.
And Cuckoo herself was almost as excited as Francine when she received
her muff. She had not seen Valentine since the day of the tea-party,
yet her attitude of mind had undergone a change towards him, bent to it
probably by her vanity. Ever since Julian had given her the invitation to
the Empire she had displayed a furtive desire to meet him again, and was
perpetually talking of him and asking questions about him. Nevertheless
her fear of him had not died away. Even now she sometimes exclaimed
against him almost with vehemence, and made Julian renew his promise not
to leave her during the evening. But Julian could see that she longed, as
well as dreaded, to meet him again. After all, had he not picked her out
from all the girlhood of London as one to whom he wished, to do honour?
Had he been the Minotaur, such a fact must have made her look upon him
with desirous interest.

When the great day arrived poor Cuckoo had to struggle with a keen and a
sore temptation. She longed to deck herself out in her usual borrowed
plumage, to take the habitual brilliant complexion out of the accustomed
drawer, to crown her frizzed head with feathers, and to look noisily
dashing--her only idea of elegance and grace. Never before had she so
desired to create an impression. Yet she had given Julian her most solemn
promise, and she intended to keep it. As she slowly attired herself,
however, she wondered very much why he was so set upon denuding her of
her accustomed magnificence. Her mind was entirely unable to grasp his
conception of beauty and of attractiveness. She thought all men preferred
the peony to the violet. To-night it was very certain that she would be
no peony, scarcely even a violet. Her new gown had been expensive, but it
was terribly simple, and the skirt hung beautifully, but was surely most
direfully sombre. Nevertheless, it rustled with a handsome sound, a
melody of wealth, when she had put it on and promenaded about her dingy
bedroom, with Jessie at her heels, pretending to worry it playfully. The
black bodice had some trimming. But it was all black. Cuckoo wished it
had been scarlet, or, at the least, orange--something to catch the eye
and hold it. When she was fully attired, and was staring into her glass,
between two boldly flaring gas-jets, she nearly resolved to break her
promise to Julian. She even went so far as to paint her lips and eyes,
and was charmed with the effect against the black. But then with a sudden
fury she sponged her pale face clean, threw the new feather boa round her
throat, and, without daring to glance again at her funereal image, turned
out the gas, and went into the sitting-room. As usual, her last act was
to ensconse the pensive Jessie in the flannel-lined basket, and to give
her a kiss. To-night, as she did so, she let a tear fall on the little
dog's head. She scarcely knew why she cried. Perhaps the quiet gown, the
lack of paint and powder, the prospect of kind and even respectful
treatment from at least Julian, if not from Valentine, gave to her heart
a vision of some existence in which Piccadilly Circus had no part.

Jessie shivered as she felt the tear, and licked the face of her mistress
eagerly. Then Cuckoo rustled forth, avoiding Mrs. Brigg, who might be
heard laboriously ascending the kitchen stairs to view her in her gala
attire. In the twinkling of an eye she was out in the street, and Mrs.
Brigg returned, swearing gustily, to the lower regions.

Cuckoo was to join the young men in their box, of which she had received
the number. She took a cab to the Empire, and was there in excellent
time. As she paid the man, she saw several women going noisily in,
dressed in bright colours and gigantic hats. She looked at them, and
felt terribly mean and poor, and it was with no trace of her usual airy
impudence that she asked her way of the towering attendant in uniform who
stood at the bottom of the carpeted staircase.

Julian and Valentine were already there. They turned round as she came
in, and stood up to receive her. Julian took her hand, but Valentine
hesitated for a moment. Then he said:

"Is it--can it be really Miss Bright?"

"Sure enough it is," Cuckoo answered, with an effort after liveliness.

But her eyes were fixed on his. She had seen a curious expression of
mingled annoyance and contempt flit across his face as she came in.
Why, why had she allowed Julian to over-persuade her? She was looking
horrible, a scarecrow, a ghost of a woman. She was certain of it. For
a moment she felt almost angry with Julian for placing her in such a
bitter position. But he was glowing with a consciousness of successful
diplomacy, and was delighted with her neat black aspect, and with her
smart, though small, hat. He was indeed surprised to find how really
pretty she still was when she allowed her true face to be seen, and was
only wishing that she had made a little less of her hair, which was more
vigorously arranged even than usual. He glanced to see Valentine's
surprise.

"You are so altered," the latter continued. "I scarcely recognized you."

Cuckoo's lips tightened.

"Altered or not, it's me, though," she said.

Valentine did not reply to this. He only made her come to the front of
the box, and placed a chair for her. She sat down feeling like a dog just
whipped. The young men were on each side of her, and the band played an
overture. Cuckoo peered out over the bar of the box, shifting ever so
little away from the side on which Valentine sat. In his presence all her
original and extreme discomfort returned, with an added enmity caused by
her secret certainty that he thought her looking her worst. She peered
from the box and strove to interest herself in the huge crowd that
thronged the house, and in her own dignified and elevated position in it.
For Valentine had taken one of the big boxes next the stage on the
first tier, and Cuckoo had never been in such a situation before. She
could survey the endless rows of heads in the stalls with a completeness
of bird's-eye observation never previously attained. What multitudes
there were. Endless ranks of men, all staring in the same direction,
all smoking, all with handkerchiefs peeping out of their cuffs, and gold
rings on their little fingers. Some of them looked half asleep, others,
who had evidently been dining, threw themselves back in their stalls,
roaring with laughter, and leaning to tell each other stories that must
surely have teemed with wit. Most of them were young. But here and there
an elderly and lined figure-head appeared among them, a figure-head
that had faced many sorts of weather in many shifting days and nights,
and that must soon face eternity--instead of time. Yet at the gates of
death it still sipped its brandy and soda, smiled over a French song
with tired lips, and sat forward with a pale gleam dawning in its eyes
to reconnoitre the charms of a _ballet_. And if it looked aside at youth
and was pierced by the sword of tragedy, yet it was too well bred or too
conventional to let even one of the world around witness the wound. There
is much secret bravery in social life. But these elderly figure-heads
were fewer than usual to-night. Youth seemed to have usurped the
playing-grounds of pleasure, to have driven old age away into the
shadows. With flag flying, with trumpet and drum, it gaily held the
field. The lady of the feathers, Valentine, and Julian leaned out from
their box as from the car of a balloon and saw below them a world of
youth hand in hand with the world of pleasure the gods offer to youth as
wine. It was yet early in the evening, and the hours were only tripping
along, as women trip in the pictures of Albert Moore. They had not begun
to dance, although the band was playing a laughing measure from an opera
of Auber that foams with frivolity. Men kept dropping in, cigar in mouth,
walking to their seats with that air of well-washed and stiff composure
peculiar to British youth, grim with self-consciousness, but affecting
the devil-may-care with a certain measure of success. Some of them
escorted ladies, but by far the greater number were in couples, or in
parties of three or four. The rose of health, or, in many cases, of
repletion, sat enthroned upon their cheeks; on the upper lips of many the
moustaches were budding delicately. These were just getting up on the box
and gripping the reins for the great coach-drive. Little wonder if the
veins in their eager hands stood out. Little wonder if they flourished
the whip with an unnecessary vehemence. But for them, too, so far the
hours were only tripping, a slow and a dainty measure, a formal minuet.
And they were but watching. Only later would they rise up and join the
great dance of the hours, large, complicated, alluring, through whose
measures the feet of eventual saints have trod, whose music rings in the
ears of many who, long after, try to pray and to forget. Some who were
with women made conversation jocosely, putting on travesties of military
airs, and a knowingness of expression that might have put the wisdom of
the Sphinx to shame. Nor did they hesitate to appear amorous in the
public eye. On the contrary, their attitudes of attention were purposely
assumed silently to utter volumes. They lay, to all intents and purposes,
at the feet of their houris, as Samson lay shorn at the feet of Delilah.
In loud young voices they told the secrets of their hearts, until even
the clash of the music could scarcely keep them hidden. And Delilah,
who had shorn the locks of so many Samsons, and who had heard so many
secrets, gave ear with a clever affectation of interested surprise that
deceived these gay deceivers and set them high on the peaks of their own
estimation. Two or three family parties, one obviously French, seemed out
of place, indecently domestic in the midst of such a throng, in which
matrimony was a Cinderella before the ball, cuffed in curl-papers rather
than kissed in crystal slippers. They sat rather silent. One consisted of
a father, a mother and two daughters, the latter in large flowered hats.
The father smoked. The mother looked furtive in a bonnet, and the two
daughters, with wide open eyes, examined the flirtations around them as a
child examines a butterfly caught in a net. One of them blushed. But she
did not turn away her eyes. Nor were her girlish ears inactive. Family
life seemed suddenly to become dull to her. She wondered whether it were
life at all. And the father still smoked domestically. He knew it all.
That was the difference. And perhaps it was his knowledge that made him
serenely content with domesticity and the three women who belonged to
him. Two boys, who had come up from a public school for the race, and had
forgotten to go back, sat at the end of a row in glistening white collars
and neat ties, almost angrily observant of all that was going on around
them. For them the dance of the hours was already begun, and already
become a can-can. They watched it with an eager interest and excitement,
and the calm self-possession with which some of the men near them made
jokes to magnificently dressed women with diamond earrings struck them
dumb with admiration. Yet, later on, they too were fated to join in the
dance, when the stars affected to sleep on the clouds and the moon lay
wearily inattentive to the pilgrims of the night, like an invalid in a
blue boudoir. On the thick carpet by the wall attendants stood loaded
with programmes. One of them, very trim and respectable, in a white cap,
was named Clara and offered a drink by an impudent Oxonian. She giggled
with all the vanity of sixteen, happily forgetful of her husband and
of the seven children who called her mother. Yet the dance of the hours
was a venerable saraband to her, and she often wished she was in bed as
she stood listening to the familiar music. In the enclosure set apart for
the orchestra the massed musicians earned their living violently in the
midst of the gaily dressed idlers, who heard them with indifference, and
saw them as wound-up marionettes. The drummer hammered on his blatant
instrument with all the crude skill of his tribe, producing occasional
terrific noises with darting fists, while his face remained as immovable
as that of a Punchinello. A flautist piped romantically an Arcadian
measure, while his prominent eyes stared about over the chattering
audience as if in search of some one. Suddenly he gave a "couac." He had
seen his sweetheart in the distance with a youth from Christ Church. The
conductor turned on the estrade in the centre of the orchestra and
scowled at him, and he hastened to become Arcadian once again, gazing at
his flute as if the devil had entered into it. In a doorway shrouded with
heavy curtains two acting managers talked warily, their hands in retreat
behind their coat-tails. They surveyed the house and mentally calculated
the amount of money in it, raising their eyes to the more distant
promenade, at the back of which large hats covered with flowers and
feathers moved steadily to and fro. One of them curled his lips and
murmured the word "Chant." Then they both laughed and strolled out to
the bar. More men passed in. Many could not get seats, and these stood,
smoking and exchanging remarks in the broad space between the stalls and
the wall. Some of them leaned nonchalantly against it and criticised the
appearance of the seated audience, or nodded to acquaintances. Others
gathered round the bar, and a few looked at the drop-curtain as if they
thought their ascetic glances would cause it to roll up and disappear.
The overture at length ended. The stage was disclosed, and a man came
forward with a smirk, and a wriggle of gigantic feet, to sing a song.

But Cuckoo Bright, Valentine, and Julian, from their balloon-car, still
surveyed the world. Cuckoo had heard the man before. She was no stranger
to the upper regions of the Empire, but the fascination of knowing
herself watched and commented on from the stalls was a new experience,
and she wished to make the most of it. Forgetting that she was not
painted and powdered, she stretched herself into view and believed she
was creating a sensation. So absorbed was she in the grand effort of
being seen, that when Valentine drew his chair a little closer to her
she did not notice it. One of her hands lay on her lap, the other being
on the ledge of the box supporting her chin. She returned eagerly the
glances of the stalls. The hand that was in her lap felt another hand
close on it. Instinctively Cuckoo turned towards Julian, ready to smile.
But Julian was gazing absorbed at the crowd, and half abstractedly
listening to the song of the man in the huge, distorted boots. It was
Valentine who held her hand. She tried to draw it away. He merely
tightened his grip on it and continued sitting in silence, not even
looking towards her. And as he held her hand a sense of helplessness came
over Cuckoo. Even through his kid glove she could feel the burning heat
of his palm, of the fingers that clutched hers with the strength of an
athlete. She gazed towards him through the new black veil that was drawn
over her face, and it seemed even to her limited intelligence that the
man who was so brutally holding her against her will could not be the man
at whom she was now looking. For Valentine, whose profile was set towards
her, was pale, calm, almost languid in appearance. His blue eyes were
glancing quietly over the multitude, with an air of indifferent
observation. His lips were slightly parted in a sort of dawning smile,
and his whole attitude was that of a man lazily at ease and taking his
pleasure in a desultory mood. Yet the hand on Cuckoo's knees was vicious
in its grasp. This startling and silent contradiction threw her into a
complete panic, but she did not dare to say anything in protest. She
sat silently trembling, and drawing her lips together in growing
perturbation, till Julian happened to turn towards them. Then Valentine's
fingers relaxed their grasp quietly, and slipped away. At the same time
he moved with an air of energy, and broke into gay conversation. His
languor vanished. His blue eyes sparkled. Julian was astonished at his
intense vivacity. He laughed, made jokes, became absolutely boyish.

"Why, Val, how gay you are!" Julian said.

"Every one is gay to-night."

He was interrupted by a roar of laughter. The man in the boots was
becoming immoderately whimsical. His feet seemed to have escaped from
control, and to be prancing in Paradise while he looked on in Purgatory.

"Every one is gay."

As Valentine repeated the words, and the huge theatre laughed like one
enormous person, Julian felt again the strange thrill of overmastering
excitement that had shaken him on the night when he and Valentine had
leaned out of the Victoria Street window. The strength of the spring
and of his long tended and repressed young instincts stirred within
him mightily. Scales fell from his eyes. From the car of the balloon
he gazed down, and it seemed to him that they--Valentine, Cuckoo,
and himself--were drifting over a new country, of which all the
inhabitants were young, gay, careless, rightly irresponsible. The
rows of open-mouthed, laughing faces called to him to join in their
mirth,--more, to join in their lives, and in the lives of the pirouetting
hours. He moved in his chair as if he were impelled to get up and leave
his seat. And as he moved a voice whispered in his ear:

"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Was it Valentine's voice? He turned round hastily, curiously perturbed.

"Val, was that you? Did you speak to me?"

"No."

Julian looked at Cuckoo. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shone with
dancing excitement.

"Did you, Cuckoo?"

"Not I, dearie. I say, ain't he funny to-night?"

Then the voice must have spoken in his own brain. He listened for it and
fancied he could hear it again and again, driving him on like a phantom
fate. But the voice was in timbre like the voice of Valentine, and he
felt as if Valentine spoke with a strange insistence and reiteration.
His heart, his whole being, made answer to the whisper.

"To-morrow we die. It is true. Ah, then, let us--let us eat and let us
drink."

The man in the boots wriggled furiously into the wings, and the curtain
rose on the ballet. Wenzel had ascended to the conductor's platform amid
loud applause. The first weary melodies of "Faust" streamed plaintively
from the orchestra, and a gravity came over the rows of faces in the
stalls. Julian's face, too, was grave, but his excitement and his sense
of his own power of youth grew as he looked on. The old Faust appeared,
heavy with the years and with the trouble of useless thought, and Julian
felt that he could sneer at him for his venerable age. As he watched the
philosopher's grandiloquent pantomime of gesture, like a mist there
floated over him the keen imagination of the hell of regret in which the
old age, that never used to the full its irrevocable youth, must move,
and a passion of desire to use his own youth rushed over him as fire
rushes over a dry prairie. Even a sudden anger against Valentine came to
him,--against Valentine for the protection he had given through so many
years. For had he not been protecting Julian against joy? and does not
the capacity for joy pass away with a tragic swiftness? As Faust was
transformed into youth, and the ballet danced in the market-place, Julian
turned to Valentine and said:

"We will live to-night."

Valentine laughed.

"You look excited."

"I feel excited. Don't you?"

Valentine answered:

"I may presently. We mustn't stay in here all the evening."

There was a knock at the door of the box. An attendant appeared to ask
their orders. Valentine spoke some words to him, and in a few minutes he
brought three long drinks to the box. Julian drank his mechanically. His
eyes were always on the ballet. The betrayal of poor Margaret had now
been accomplished and the soldiers were returning from the wars. Beyond
the wall of the garden the tramp of their feet was heard, a vision of the
tops of their passing weapons was seen. The orchestra played the fragment
of a march. Cuckoo sipped her brandy and soda, and gazed sometimes at the
stage indifferently, often at the audience eagerly, and then at Julian.
When her eyes were on Julian's face a light came into them that made her
expression young, and even pure. A simplicity hovered about her lips, and
a queer dawning of something that was almost refinement spoke in her
attitude. But if she chanced to meet the eyes of Valentine her face was
full of fear.

And now the last great scene of the pageant approached, and the two
schoolboys leant forward in their stalls in a passion of greedy
excitement. Julian happened to see them, and instead of smiling at their
frankly lustful attitudes with the superiority of the drilled man over
the child, he was conscious of an eager sympathy with their vigour of
enjoyment and of desire. His nature retrograded and became a schoolboy's
nature, with the whole garden of life flowering before its feet. Suddenly
there came to him the need of touching something human. He stole his arm
closely around Cuckoo's waist. She glanced at him surprised. But his eyes
were turned away to the stage. Valentine pushed his chair a little
backwards. He was watching them, and when he saw the movement of Julian's
arm, he laughed to himself. The classical Sabbath sprang into view, and
it seemed to be just then that the feet of the hours first began to move
in the opening steps of their great dance of that night. Was it the
magnificent Cleopatra that gave them the signal? Or did Venus herself
whisper in their ears that the time for their _f�te_ was come at length,
that the paid vagaries of the stage demanded companionship, and that the
audience, too, must move in great processions, whirl in demon circles,
rise up in heart to the clash of cymbals, bow down before the goddesses
of the night, the women who gave to modern men the modern heaven that
they desire in our days? The stage was a waving sea of scarlet, through
which one white woman floated, like a sin with pale cheeks in the midst
of the rubicund virtues. She was, perhaps, not beautiful, but she was
provocative and alluring, and her whiteness made her as voluptuous as
innocence is when it moves through the habitations of the wicked. Julian
watched her come to Faust and win him from the scarlet dancers and from
the arms of Cleopatra, and the strange rejuvenation of this philosopher
who had been old, and known decaying faculties, and the flight of the
heart from the warm closes of the summer to the white and iron winter
plains, filled him with sympathy. It must be easy to use your youth after
you have known the enforced reserve of age. For age is a bitter lesson.
The dance grew more wild and rattling. The _frou-frou_ of the swinging
scarlet skirts filled the great house with sound as the glitter of
spangles filled it with a shimmering light. Faust was surrounded by
fluttering women moving in complicated evolutions with a trained air of
reckless devilry. And Julian gave himself to the illusion created by the
skill of Katti Lanner, ignoring entirely the real care of the dancers,
and choosing to consider them as merely driven by wild impulse, vagrant
desires of furious motion, and the dashing gaiety of keen sensual
sensation. They danced to fire a real Faust, and he was Faust for the
moment. His arm closed more firmly round the waist of Cuckoo, and he
could feel the throbbing of her heart against the palm of his hand. He
did not look at her, and so he did not see the dawning anxiety with which
she was beginning furtively to regard him. Entirely engrossed with the
stage spectacle, the movement of his arm had been entirely mechanical,
prompted by the hardening pressure of excitement in his mind. If he had
actually crushed Cuckoo and hurt her he would have been unconscious that
he was doing it.

And Valentine all this time leaned back in his chair, that stood in the
shadow of the box, and looked at the enlaced figures before him with an
unvarying smile.

Contrast and surprise are the essence of the successful "spectacle."
Just as the scarlet dervish whirl was at its height the character of
the music changed, slackened, softened, died from the angrily sensuous
into an ethereal delicacy. The stage filled with clouds that faded in
golden light, and a huge and glittering stairway rose towards the painted
sky. On either side of it hung in the blue ether guardian angels with
outstretched wings, and between their attentive ranks stood the radiant
figure of the purified Margaret, at whose white feet the red crowd of
women, even the majestic Cleopatra and pale voluptuous Venus, sank
abashed. Harps sounded frostily, suggesting that crystal heaven of St.
John, in which the beauties we know in nature are ousted by unbreathing
jewels, the lifeless pearl and chrysolite. The air filled with thin and
wintry light, that deepened, and began to glow, through lemon to amber
and to rose. The angels swam in it, and then the huge stairway leading
up to heaven shone with the violence of a gigantic star. Faust fell in
repentance before the girl he had ruined and failed to ruin, the girl who
bent as if to bless him upon this fiery ascent to heaven. And Julian,
absorbed, devoured the wide and glowing scene with his eyes, which were
attracted especially by the living flames that were half veiled and half
revealed beneath the feet of Margaret. The music of the orchestra rippled
faintly, and then it seemed to Julian that, as if in answer, there
rippled up from the golden stairs and from the hidden company of flames
that faint, thin riband of shadowy fire which had already so strangely
been with him in the dawn and in the dusk. It came from beneath the
pausing feet of the girl who blessed Faust, and trembled upwards slowly
above her glittering hair. Julian felt a burning sensation at his heart,
as if the tiny fire found its way there. He turned round sharply,
withdrawing his arm from Cuckoo's waist with an abruptness that startled
her.

"Valentine!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "There; now you see it."

Valentine leaned to him.

"See what?"

"The flame. It's no fancy. It's no chimera. Look, it is mounting up
behind Margaret. Watch it, Valentine, and tell me what it is."

"I see nothing."

Julian stared into his eyes, as if to make certain that he really spoke
the truth. Then Valentine asked of Cuckoo:

"Miss Bright, can you see this flame of which Julian speaks?"

Cuckoo answered, with the roughness that always came to her in the
company of alarm:

"Not I. There ain't nothing, no more than there was that day when I had
the coffee."

She added to Julian, reproachfully:

"You've been drinkin'. Now, dearie, you have."

Suddenly his two companions became intolerable to Julian. He thought them
stupid, boorish, dense, devoid of the senses of common humanity, not to
see what he saw, not to feel as he felt,--that this vague flame had a
meaning and a message not yet interpreted, perhaps not even remotely
divined. With an angry exclamation he sprang to his feet, turning once
more to the stage. And as the curtain fell, he distinctly saw the flame
glowing like a long and curiously shaped star above the head of Margaret.

And this man and woman would not see it! A sudden enmity to them both
came to him in that moment. He abruptly opened the door of the box, and
went out without another word to either of them. Cuckoo's voice shrilly
calling to him to stop did not affect his resolution and desire to escape
from them if only for a moment.

Out in the corridor at the back of the dress circle people were beginning
to circulate, relieved from the tension of examining the ballet. Julian
was instantly swallowed up in a noisy crowd, hot, flushed, loud-voiced,
bright-eyed. Masses of excited young men lounged to and fro, smoking
cigarettes, and making fervent remarks upon the gaily dressed women, who
glided among them observantly. From the adjoining bar rose the music of
popping corks and flowing liquids. The barmaids were besieged. Clouds of
smoke hung in the air, and the heat was terrific. Julian felt it clinging
to him as if with human arms as he slowly walked over the thick carpet,
glancing about him. Humanity touched him on every side. At one moment an
elderly woman, with yellow hair and a fat-lined face, enveloped him in
her skirts of scarlet and black striped silk. The black chiffon that
swept about her neck and heaving shoulders fluttered against his face.
Her high-heeled boots trod on his. He seemed one with her. Then she had
vanished, and instantly he was in the arms of a huge racing-man, who wore
gigantic pink pearls in his shirt front, and bellowed the latest slang to
a thin and dissipated companion. It seemed to Julian that he was kicked
like a football from one life to another, and that from each life he drew
away something as he bounded from it, the fragment of a thought, the
thrill of a desire, the indrawn breath of a hope. Like a machine that
winds in threads of various coloured silks, he wound in threads from the
various coloured hearts about him,--red, white, coarse, and fine. And,
half-unconsciously, was he not weaving them into a fabric? Never before
had he understood the meaning of a crowd, that strange congregation of
passions and of fates which speaks in movements and is melodious in
attitudes, which quarrels in all its parts, silently, yet is swayed
through and through by large impulses, and as an intellect far more keen
and assertively critical than the intellect of any one person in it. And
now, when Julian began to feel the meaning of this surging mob of men and
women, the hours danced, and he and all the crowd danced with them. And
the music that accompanied and directed the feet through the figures of
that night's quadrille was the music of words and of laughter, of hissing
enticements and of whispered replies. Irresistible was the performance
of the hours and of the crowd that lived in them. Julian knew it when the
dance began, marvelled at it for a little when the dance was ended. There
was contagion in the air, furtive, but strong as the contagion of
cholera,--the contagion of human creatures gathered together in the
night. Only the youth who dwells--like Will-o'-the-Mill--forever by the
lonely stream in the lonely mountain valley escapes it entirely. Aged
saints look backward on their lives, and remember at least one night
when it seized them in its embrace; and even the purest woman, through
its spell, has caught sight of the vision behind the veil of our
civilization, and although she has shrunk from it, has had a moment of
wonder and of interest, never quite effaced from her memory.

On every side the Oxford and Cambridge boys laughed and shouted, pushed
and elbowed. They had begun to cast off restraint, and the god that is
rowdy on a rowdy throne compelled them to their annual obeisance at his
feet. Some of them moved along singing, and interrupting their song with
shouts. Friends, when they met in the crowd, yelled shrill recognitions
at each other, and nicknames sang in the air like noisy birds. Rows of
men linked arms, and, striding forward, compelled the throng to yield
them difficult passage, swinging this way and that to make their progress
more comprehensive. The attendants, standing by the wall like giants,
calmly smiled on the growing uproar, into which they darted now and then
with a sudden frenzy of dutiful agility to eject some rude wit who had
transgressed their code of propriety. The very spirit of lusty youth was
in this crowd of hot, careless, blatant, roving youths, mad to find
themselves away from the cool and grey Oxford towers, and from the vacant
banks of the Cam, in passionate Leicester Square, fired by the scarlet
ballet, and the thunder of the orchestra, and the sight of smart women.
Sudden emancipation is the most flaming torch to human passions that
exists in the world. It flared through all that mob, urging it to
conflagration, to the flames that burst up in hearts that are fresh and
ardent, and that so curiously confuse joy with wickedness.

Flames! flames! The word ran in Julian's mind, and in his breast flames
surely burned that night, for, when he suddenly ran against Valentine and
Cuckoo in the throng, he caught Valentine by the arm and said:

"Val, you were right just now. There was no flame; there could have been
no flame where Margaret stood. She was too pure. What can fire have to do
with snow? Cuckoo, I was a fool. Catch hold of my arm."

He pulled her arm roughly through his, never noticing how pale the girl's
face was, how horror-stricken were her eyes. He wanted to bathe himself,
and her, and Valentine, in this crowd that influenced him and that he
helped to influence. He felt as the diver feels, who, when he plunges,
has a sacred passion for the depths. There are people who have an ardour
for going down comparable to the ardour felt by those who mount. Tonight
such an ardour took hold of Julian.

Valentine fell in with it, seeing the humour of his friend, and Cuckoo,
prisoned between the two men, did not attempt to resist them. As they
moved on Valentine said, in a voice he made loud that it might be heard:

"Now, you feel the strength of the spring, Julian. Is it not better than
all my teachings of asceticism?"

"Yes, by ----, it is."

And as he made that answer, Julian, for the first time, forgot to look
up to Valentine, and felt a splendid equality with him, the equality
that men of the same age and temper feel when they are bent on the same
pursuit. How can one of two Bacchanals stoop in adoration of the other,
when both are bounding in the procession of Silenus? Valentine fell from
his pedestal and became a comrade instead of a god. He was no longer the
chaperon of the dancing hours, but their partner. And a new fire shone in
his blue eyes, an unaccustomed red ran over his cheeks, as he heard
Julian's answer to his question. From that moment he ceased to play what,
it seemed, had been but a part, the empty ivory _r�le_ of saint. For
Julian was no longer conscious or observant of him, no longer able to
wonder at his abrupt transformation. In a flash he cast off his habitual
restraint and passed from the reserve of thought to the rowdyism of act.

He chattered unceasingly, dressing his English in all the slang
embroidery of the day. He laughed and chaffed, exchanged repartees with
the flowing multitude through which they passed, stopped to speak to the
flaunting women and loaded them with extravagant compliments, elbowed
loungers out of his way, and made the most personal remarks on those
around him. Two men went by, and one of them exclaimed, with a surprised
glance at Valentine:

"I'm damned! Why, there goes the Saint of Victoria Street."

"Saint!" said the other; "I should think devil the more appropriate name.
That chap looks up to anything."

"Ah, well; when a saint turns sinner--," answered the first speaker, with
a laugh.

Valentine heard the words and burst into a roar of laughter. He drew
Cuckoo to the left and Julian followed. They passed under an archway into
the bar, which was crowded with men, drinking and talking at the tops of
their voices. Valentine called for drinks in a voice so loud and
authoritative that the barmaid hurried to serve him, deserting other
customers, who protested vainly. He forced Cuckoo to drink, and Julian
needed no urging. Clinking glasses noisily with them, he gave as a toast:

"To the dance of the hours!"

These words, uttered with almost strident force, attracted attention even
amid the violent hubbub that was raging, and several young men pressed
round Valentine as he stood with his back against the counter of the bar.
They raised their glasses, too, half in ridicule, and shouting in chorus,
"To the dance of the hours!" drained them to this toast, which they could
not comprehend. Valentine dashed his glass down. It broke and was
trodden under foot. The barmaid protested. He threw her a sovereign. The
young men gathered round, broke theirs in imitation, and Julian,
snatching Cuckoo's from her, flung it away. As he did so, Valentine
thrust another, filled with champagne, into her hand, and again cried
out the toast.

"What the deuce does he mean by it?" one youth called out. "The dance of
the hours; what's that?"

"The dance of the hours! The dance of the hours!" echoed other voices,
and glasses were drained wildly. There was something exciting in the mere
sound of the words that seemed to set brains jigging, and feet moving,
and the world spinning and bowing. For if Time itself danced, what could
the most Puritan human being do but dance with it? Seeing the crowd round
Valentine, men who were drinking at the other end of the bar joined it,
and the toast passed quickly from mouth to mouth. Uttered by every
variety of voice, with every variety of accent, it filled the stifling
atmosphere, and tickled many an empty brain, like the catchword political
that can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller. Boys yelled it, men
murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and yellow feathers
screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have put many a
trumpet-blast to shame. Glasses were emptied and filled again in its
honour. Yet nobody knew what it meant, and apparently nobody cared,
except the Oxford boy who had already expressed his desire to be better
informed on the subject. He had gradually edged his way through the
throng until he was close to Valentine, at whom he gazed with a sort of
tipsy reverence.

"I say, you chap," he cried. "What are we drinking to--eh? What the
devil's the dance of the hours?"

Valentine brought his glass down on the counter.

"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Why, the greatest dance in the world, the
dance that youth sends out the invitations for, and women live for, and
old men die with longing for. We set the hours dancing in the night,
we--all who are gay and careless, who love life in the greatest way, and
who laugh at death, and who aren't afraid of the devil. The devil's only
a bogey to frighten old women and children. What do the hours care for
him? Not a snap. It's only cowards who fear him. Brave men do what they
will, and when the hours dance they dance with them, and drink with them
all the night through. Who says there'll be another morning? I don't
believe it. Curse the sunshine. Give me the night and the dancing hours!"

The youth gave a yell, which was echoed by some of his rowdy companions,
and by the two little schoolboys who had joined the throng in a frenzy of
childish excitement, which they thought manly.

"The dancing hours! The dancing hours!" they cried, and one who was with
a girl suddenly caught her round the waist and broke into wild steps.
Others joined in. The confusion became tremendous. Glasses were knocked
over. Whiskies and sodas were poured out in libations upon the carpet.
The protests of the barmaids were unheeded or unheard. Julian whirled
Cuckoo into the throng, and Valentine, snapping his long white fingers
like castanets, stamped his feet as if to the measure of a wild music.
Against the wall some loungers looked on in contemptuous amusement, but
by far the greater number of men present were young and eager for any
absurdity, and not a few were half tipsy. These ardently welcomed
anything in the nature of a row, and the romp became general and noisy.
Men danced awkwardly with one another, roaring the latest music-hall
tunes at the pitch of their voices. The women screamed with laughter,
or giggled piercingly as they were banged and trodden on in the tumult.
The noise, penetrating to the promenade, drew the attention of the
audience, many of whom hurried to see what was going on, and the block
round the archways quickly became impenetrable. One or two of the
gigantic chuckers-out forced their way into the throng and seized the
dancers nearest to them, but they were entirely unable to stay the
ridiculous impulse which impelled this mob of young human beings to
capering and yelling. Indeed they merely increased the scuffle, which
rapidly developed towards a free fight. Hats were knocked off, dresses
were torn. The women got frightened and began to scream. The men swore,
and some lost their tempers and struck out right and left. Valentine
watched the scene with laughing eyes as if he enjoyed it. Especially he
watched Julian, who, with scarlet face and sparkling eyes, still forced
Cuckoo round and round in the midst of the tumult. Cuckoo was white, and
seemed to be half fainting. Her head rested helplessly against Julian's
shoulder, and her eyes stared at him as if fascinated. Her dress was
torn, and her black veil hung awry. If she danced with the hours it was
without joy or desire.

But suddenly police appeared. The dancers, abruptly realizing that a joke
was dying in a disaster, ceased to prance. Some violently assumed airs of
indifference and of alarming respectability. Many sinuously wound their
way out to the promenade. A few, who had completely lost their heads,
hustled the police, and were promptly taken into custody. Julian would
have been among these had it not been for the intervention of Valentine,
who caught him by the shoulder, and drew him and Cuckoo away.

"No; you mustn't end to-night in a cell," he said in Julian's ear. "The
dancing hours want you still. Julian, you are only beginning your real
life to-night."

Julian, like a man in an excited dream, followed Valentine to the bottom
of the broad stairs, on, through the blooming masses of flowers, to the
entrance. Two or three cabs were waiting. Valentine put Cuckoo into one.
She had not spoken a word, and was trembling as if with fear.

"Get in, Julian."

Julian obeyed, and Valentine, standing on the pavement, leaned forward
and whispered to him:

"Take her home, Julian."

Suddenly Julian shouted Cuckoo's address to the cabman hoarsely.

The cab drove away.

Valentine walked slowly towards Piccadilly Circus, whistling softly,
"I want you, my honey; yes, I do."




BOOK III--THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS




CHAPTER I

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS


The thin afternoon light of an indefinite spring day shone over the
Marylebone Road. A heavy warmth was in the air, and the weather was
peculiarly windless, but the sun only shone fitfully, and the street
looked sulky. The faces of the passers-by were hot and weary. Women
trailed along under the weight of their parcels, and men returned from
work grimmer than usual, and wondering almost with a fretfulness of
passion why they were born predestined to toil. The cabmen about Baker
Street Station dozed with nodding heads upon their perches, and the
omnibus conductors forgot to chaff, and collected their tolls with a
mechanical deliberation. At the crossings the policemen, helpless in
their uniforms of the winter, became dictatorial more readily than on
cooler days. Some sorts of weather incline every one to temper or to
depression. The day after the boat-race lay under a malign spell. It
seemed to feel all the weariness of reaction, and to fold all men and
women in the embrace of its lassitude and heavy hopelessness.

At number 400, Jessie whined pitifully in her basket, and her arched back
quivered perpetually as her minute body expanded and contracted in the
effort of breathing. Her beady eyes were open and fixed furtively upon
her mistress, as if in inquiry or alarm, and her whole soul was whirling
in a turmoil set in motion by the first slap she had ever received in
gravity at the hands of Cuckoo. Jessie's inner nature was stung by that
slap. It knocked her world over, like a doll hit by a child. Her universe
lay prone upon its back.

And Cuckoo's? She was sitting in the one arm-chair with her thin hands
folded in her lap. She wore the black dress given to her by Julian, but
she did not look prepared to go out, for her hair was standing up over
her head in violent disorder, her cheeks were haggard and unwashed, and
her boots--still muddy from the previous night's promenading--stood
in a corner near the grate in the first position, as if directed by
a dancing-mistress. Cuckoo was neither reading nor working. She was
simply staring straight before her, without definite expression. Her
face indeed wore a quite singularly blank look and her mouth was slightly
open. Her feet, stuck out before her, rested on the edge of the fender,
shoeless, and both her general appearance and attitude betokened a
complete absence of self-consciousness, and that lack of expectation of
any immediate event which is often dubbed stupidity. The lady of the
feathers sitting in the horsehair-covered chair in the cheap sitting-room
with the folding doors looked indeed stupid, pale, and heavy. Fatigue lay
in the shadows of her eyes, but something more than ordinary fatigue
hovered round her parted lips and spoke in her posture. A dull weariness,
in which the mind took part with the body, held her in numbing captivity.
She had only broken through it in some hours to repulse the anxious
effort of Jessie to scramble into the nest of her lap. That slap given,
she had again relapsed without a struggle into this waking sleep.

The sun came out with a sudden violence, and an organ began to play a
frisky tune in the street. Jessie whined and whimpered, formed her mouth
into the shape of an O, and, throwing up her head, emitted a vague and
smothered howl. Below stairs, Mrs. Brigg, who was afflicted with a
complaint that prompted her to perpetual anxious movement, laboured about
the kitchen, doing nothing in particular, among her pots and pans. The
occasional clatter of them mingled with the sound of the organ, and with
the suffocated note of Jessie, in a depressing symphony. The sun went in
again, and some dust, stirred into motion by a passing omnibus, floated
in through the half-open window and settled in a light film upon the
photograph of Marr. Presently the organ moved away, and faded gradually
in pert tunes down the street. Jessie's nervous system, no longer played
upon, ceased to spend its pain in sound, and a London silence fell round
the little room. Then, at length, Cuckoo shifted in her chair, stretched
her hands in her lap, and sat up slowly. The inward expression had not
faded from her eyes yet, for, leaning forward, she still stared blankly
before her, looking, as it seemed, straight at Marr's photograph.
Gradually she woke to a consciousness of what she was looking at, and
putting up one hand she took the photograph from its place, laid it in
her lap, and, bending down, gazed at it long and earnestly. Then she
shook her head as if puzzled.

"I don't know," she murmured; "I don't know."

Encouraged by the sound of her mistress's voice, Jessie stepped from
her basket and gingerly approached, snuffling round Cuckoo's feet, and
wriggling her body in token of anxious humility. Cuckoo picked her up and
stroked her mechanically, but still with her eyes on the photograph. Two
tears swam in them. She dashed the photograph down. It lay on the carpet,
and was still there when a knock at the door was succeeded by the
entrance of Julian.

He, too, looked pale and rather weary, but excited.

"Cuckoo," he said.

She sat still in the chair, looking at him.

"Well?" she said, and closed her lips tightly.

He came a step or two forward into the little room, and put his hat and
stick down on the table.

"You expected me to come, didn't you?"

"I don't know as I did."

Her eyes were on Jessie now, and she stroked the little dog's back
steadily up and down, alternately smoothing and ruffling its short coat.
Julian came over and stood by the mantelpiece.

"I told you I should come."

"Did you?"

"Don't you remember?"

She shifted round in the chair till he could only see her shoulder, and
the side of her head and neck, on which the loose hair was tumbling in
ugly confusion. Sitting thus she threw back at him the sentence:

"I don't want to remember nothing. I don't want to remember."

Julian stood hesitating. He glanced at Cuckoo's hair and at the back of
her thin hand moving to and fro above the little contented dog.

"Why not?" he said.

At first she made no answer to this question, and seemed as if she had
not heard it, but presently it appeared that her silence had been caused
by the effect of consideration, for at length she said, still retaining
her aloof attitude:

"I don't want to remember, because it's like a beastly dream, and when I
remember I know it ain't a dream."

Julian said nothing, and suddenly Cuckoo turned round to him, and took
her hand from Jessie's back.

"I say. You were mad last night. Now, weren't you?"

The words came from her almost pleadingly, and her eyes rested on
Julian's insistently, as if demanding an affirmative.

"He'd made you mad," she continued.

"He," said Julian. "Who?"

"Your friend."

"Valentine! He had nothing to do with it."

"It was all his doing."

Her voice grew shrill with feeling.

"He's a devil," she said. "I hate him. I hate him worse than I hate
that copper west side of Regent Street. And I hate you, too,--yes, I
do,--to-day."

The tears gathered in her eyes and began to fall, tears of rage and shame
and regret, tears of one who had lost a great possession. Julian looked
embarrassed and pained, almost guilty, too. He put out his hand and tried
to take Cuckoo's. But she drew hers away and went on crying. She spoke
again with vehemence.

"I told you what I wanted you to be; yes, I did," she exclaimed. "Yes,
I told you. You said you only come here to talk to me."

"It was true."

"No; it wasn't. You're just like all the others. And I did so want to
have a pal. I've never had one."

With the words the sense of her desolation seemed to strike her with
stunning force. She leaned her head against the back of the chair, and
cried bitterly, catching at the horsehair with violent hands, as if she
longed to hurt something, to revenge her loss even upon an object without
power of feeling. Julian sprang up and went over to the window. He looked
out onto the road and watched the people moving by in the fitful sunshine
beyond the dirty railings. That day, he, too, was in a tumult. He felt
like a monk who had suddenly thrown off his habit, broken his vows, and
come forth into the world. The cell and the cloister were left behind,
were things to be forgotten, with the grating of the confessional and the
dim routine of service and of asceticism. He had been borne on by the
wave of a brilliant, a violent hour, away from them. Let the angelus bell
ring; he no longer heard it. Let the drone of prayers and praises rise in
a monotonous music by day and by night; he no longer had the will to heed
them. For there was another music in his ears. Soon it would be in his
heart. Imagine a Trappist suddenly transported from the desert of his
long silence to a gay _plage_ on which a brass band was playing. Julian
was that Trappist in mind. And though he knew Cuckoo was sobbing at his
back, and though his heart held a sense of pity for her trouble, yet he
heard her grief with a strange cruelty, at which he wondered, without
being able to soften it. That afternoon it seemed to him useless for
anybody to cry. No grief was quite worth tears. The violence of life was
present with him, gave him light and blinded him at the same time. He
found delight in the thought of violence, because it held action in its
grasp. Even cruelty was worth something. Was he cruel to Cuckoo?

He turned from the window and looked at her, with the observation of a
nature not generally his own. He noted the desolation of her hair, and he
noted, too, that she wore the gown he had given to her. Would she have
put it on if she had hated him as she said she did? Somehow it scarcely
seemed to suit her to-day. It looked draggled, and as if it had been up
all night, he thought. The black back of it heaved as Cuckoo sobbed, like
a little black wave. Was the eternal movement of the sea caused by some
horrible, inward grief which, though secret, must come thus to the eye of
God and of the world? Julian found himself wondering in an unreasonable
abstraction as he contemplated the crying girl. Then suddenly his mind
swerved to more normal paths; he was seized by the natural feeling of a
man who has made a woman weep, and had the impulse to comfort.

"Don't cry, Cuckoo," he said, coming over to her and sitting on the edge
of her chair. "You must not. Let us say I was mad last night. Perhaps I
was. Men are often mad, surely. To-day I'm sane, and I want you to
forgive me."

He put his arm round her shoulder. She glanced up at him. Then, with the
odd penetration that so often gilds female ignorance till it dazzles and
distracts, she said quickly:

"You don't mean what you say; you don't really care."

Julian was taken aback by her sharpness, and by the self-revelation that
immediately stabbed him.

"You mustn't say that," he began. But she stopped him on the instant.

"You don't care; you think it's nothing. So it ought to be to me, I
know."

That had perhaps actually been his thought, the thought of a mind
unimaginative to-day, because deadened by the excitement of action.
But if it was his thought he hastened to deny it.

"You know I don't think of you in that way," he said.

"You will now. You do."

That was the scourge that had lashed her all through this weary day of
miserable reaction; that now stung her to a passion that was like the
passion of purity. As she made this statement there was a question in
her eyes, but it was a question of despair, that scarcely even asked for
the negative which Julian hastened to give. He was both perplexed and
troubled by the unexpected violence of her emotion, and blamed himself
as the cause. But, though he blamed himself, his regret for what was
irrevocable had none of the poignancy of Cuckoo's. For a long time he
had gloried in living in a cloister with Valentine. Now he had left the
cloister, he did not look back to it with the curious pathos which so
often gathers like moss upon even a dull and vacant past. He did not,
for the moment, look back at all. Action had lifted scales from his eyes,
had stirred the youth in him, had stung him as if with bright fire, and
given him, at a breath, a thousand thoughts, visions, curiosities. A
sense of power came to him. He did not ask whether the power made for
evil or for good. Simply, he was inclined to glory in it, as a man
glories in his recovered strength when he wakes from a long sleep
following fatigue. Cuckoo, with feeble hands, seemed tugging to hold back
this power, with feeble voice seemed crying against it as a deadly thing.
And Julian, though he strove to console her, scarcely sympathized with
her fully. He could not, if he would, be quite unhappy to-day. Only in
Cuckoo's grief he began to read a curious legend. In her tears there was
a passion, in her anger a vehemence that could only spring from the
depths of a nature. Julian began to suspect that through all her sins
and degradations this girl, his lady of the feathers, had managed to
keep shut one door, though all the others had been ruthlessly opened.
And beyond this door was surely that holy of holies, an unspoiled woman's
heart. From what other dwelling could rush forth such a passion for a
man's respect, such a fury to be rightly and chivalrously considered? As
he half vaguely realized something of the true position of Cuckoo and of
himself, Julian felt stirred by the wonder of life, in which such strange
blossoms flower out of the very dust. He looked at Cuckoo with new eyes.
She looked back at him with the old ones of a girl who loves.

As he looked she stopped crying. Perhaps the sudden understanding in his
gaze thrilled her. He put out his hand to touch hers, and again repeated
his negative, but this time with greater conviction.

"I do not think of you in that way. I never shall," he said.

Her face was still full of doubt, and thin with anxiety. She was not
reassured, that seemed apparent; for in her ignorance she had a strange
knowledge of life, and especially a strange intuition which guided her
instincts as to the instinctive proceedings of men.

"They always do," she murmured. "Why should you be different?"

"All men aren't alike," he said, pretending to laugh at her.

"Yes, in some things, though," she contradicted. "They all think dirt of
you for doing what they want."

Seeing how unsatisfied she was, and how restlessly her anxiety paced up
and down, Julian resolved on more plain-speaking.

"Look here, Cuckoo," he said, and his voice had never sounded more
boyish, "last night I was drunk. Last night I woke up, and I'd been
asleep for years."

"Eh?" she interrupted, looking puzzled, but he went on:

"I was emancipated, and I was mad. Mind, I didn't mean to do you any
wrong, but if you have thought of me in a different way, I'm sorry.
Tell me what you want me to be to you, and in future I'll be it."

Hope and eagerness sprang up in her eyes then.

"I say," she began,

"Yes."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

The dull blood rose in her tired face.

"I want just a--just a friend," she said, as if almost ashamed.

Julian smiled.

"Not a lover," he said, with a fleeting air of gallantry. She shrank
visibly from the word, and hurriedly went on:

"Not I. I've had too much of love." The last word was spoken with a
violence of contempt. "I want a man as likes me, just really likes me,
as he might another man. See?"

"And you'll not love him?"

His eyes searched hers with a gaiety of inquiry that was almost laughter.
Cuckoo looked away.

"I'll not love him either," she said steadily. "I'll just like him too."

Seeing her earnestness and obvious emotion, Julian dropped his gently
quizzing manner, and became earnest, too, in his degree.

"Then it's a bargain," he said. "You and I are to like each other
thoroughly, never anything more, never anything less. Like two men, eh?"

She began at last to look relieved and happier.

"Yes, like that," she said. "Ain't it--ain't it truer than the other
thing? There's something beastly about love; that's what I always think."

And she spoke with the sincerest conviction. When Julian left her that
day, he shook hands with her by the door; she stood after he had done it
as if still half expectant.

"There's a man's good-bye to a man," he said. "Better sort of thing than
a man's good-bye to a woman, isn't it?"

"Rather!" she said hastily, and moved back into the sitting-room.
She stepped on something, and bent down to pick it up. It was Marr's
photograph.

"What's that?" Julian asked.

"Nothing," she said, concealing it. She had a foolish fancy that even
the photograph of the creature she had feared and hated might spoil that
good-bye of theirs. Yet even as it was, when Julian had gone she still
seemed unsatisfied.

She was a woman after all, and woman is most feminine in her farewells.




CHAPTER II

VALENTINE SINGS


When Valentine heard of the scene in Marylebone Road he smiled.

"How extraordinary women are," he said. "A man might give his life to
them, I suppose, yet never understand them."

"It would be rather jolly--making that gift, I mean," said Julian.

"You think so? Since last night."

"I want to talk to you about that, Valentine, d'you blame me?"

"Not a bit."

"Only wonder at me?"

"I don't even say that."

"No; but of course you must wonder at me."

Julian spoke almost wistfully, and as if he wanted Valentine to sweep
away the suggestion. Last night they had been comrades. To-day, in the
light and in the calm of afternoon, Valentine seemed much more remote,
and Julian felt for the first time a sense of degradation. He was
uneasily conscious that he might have fallen in Valentine's esteem. But
Valentine reassured him.

"I don't wonder at you, either, Julian; I simply envy you, and
metaphorically sit at your feet."

"That's absurd."

"Not quite; and I may not always be sitting there, for I believe I have
really got a little bit of your soul. Last night I seemed to feel it
stirring within me, and I liked its personality."

"You did seem different last night," Julian said, looking at Valentine
with a keen interest. "Can it be possible that those sittings of ours
have really had any effect?"

"On me they have; not on you. You haven't caught my coldness, but I have
gained something of your warmth. Doesn't that perhaps show that mine was,
after all, the wrong nature?"

"I don't know," Julian said doubtfully; "you look the same."

"Do I? Exactly?"

Valentine spoke with a sort of whimsical defiance, as if almost daring
Julian to answer, Yes. And Julian, too, seemed suddenly doubtful whether
he had stated what was the fact. He looked closely at Valentine.

"Do you think your face has changed? Do you mean to say that?" he asked.

"I only fancied there might be a little more humanity in it, that was
all."

"Once or twice I have thought I noticed something," Julian said, still
doubtfully; "but I believe it's imagination. It doesn't stay."

"When it does, I suppose I shall be able thoroughly to appreciate all
your temptations. Don't you begin to think now it's good to have them."

"I don't know," Julian said. But he was conscious that there had come
a change in his attitude of mind towards temptation. Some men glory in
resisting temptation, others in yielding to it. Hitherto Julian had not
been able to range himself in either of these two opposed camps. He had
merely hated his faculty for being tempted. Did he entirely hate it now?
He could not say so to himself, whatever he might say to others, but
something kept him from making confession of the truth to Valentine. So
he professed ignorance of his own exact state of feeling; really, had he
analyzed his reticence, it sprang from a fine desire to give forth no
breath that might tarnish the clear mirror of Valentine's nature. He
would not admit a change that might make his friend again fall into the
absurd dissatisfaction which he had combated on the night of their first
sitting in the tent-room. While they talked the afternoon had fallen into
a creeping twilight. In the twilight the front door bell rang.

"Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door," Valentine
said, quoting Poe. "It must be the doctor."

Julian reddened suddenly.

"I hope not," he said.

"What?" Valentine cried. "You don't want our little doctor?"

"Somehow not--to-day."

The door opened and Doctor Levillier entered. Valentine greeted him
warmly. They had not met since the night of the affray with the mastiffs.
In Julian's manner there was a touch of awkwardness as he shook hands
with the doctor. Levillier did not seem to notice it. He looked very
tired and rather depressed.

"Cresswell," he said, "I have come to you for a tonic."

"Doctor coming to patient!"

"Doctors take medicine oftener than you may suppose. I'm in bad spirits
to-day. I've been trying to cure too many people lately. It's hard work."

"It must be. Sit down and forget. Imagine the world beautifully incurable
and your occupation consequently gone."

The doctor sat down, saying:

"My imagination stops short at that feat."

He kept silence for a moment, then he said:

"You know what I want."

"No," Valentine answered. "But I'll do anything. You know that."

"I want your music."

Valentine suddenly became unresponsive. He didn't speak at first, and
both Julian and the doctor glanced at him in some surprise.

"Oh, you want me to be David to your Saul," he said at length.

"Yes."

"Do, Val," said Julian. "I should like it too."

Valentine, who was sitting near the doctor, looked down thoughtfully on
the carpet.

"I'm not in the mood to-day," he said slowly.

"You are always in the mood enough to cheer and rest me," Levillier said.

He had driven all the way from Harley Street for his medicine, and it was
obvious that he meant to have it. But Valentine still hesitated, and a
certain slight confusion became noticeable in his manner. Moving the toe
of his right boot to and fro, following the pattern of the carpet, he
glanced sideways at the doctor, and an odd smile curved his lips.

"Doctor," he said, "d'you believe that talents can die in us while we
ourselves live?"

"That's a strange question."

"It's waiting an answer."

"Well, my answer is, No; not wholly, unless through the approach of old
age, or the development of madness."

"I'm neither old nor mad."

Levillier and Julian both looked at Valentine with some amazement.

"Are you talking about yourself?" the doctor asked.

"Certainly."

"Why? What talent is dead in you?"

"My talent for music. Do you know that for the last few days I've been
able neither to sing nor play?"

"Val, you're joking," exclaimed Julian.

"I am certainly not," he answered, and quite gravely. "I am simply
stating a fact."

Doctor Levillier seemed unable to appreciate that he was speaking
seriously.

"I have come all this way to hear you sing," he said. "I have never asked
you in vain yet."

"Is it my fault if you ask me in vain now?"

Valentine looked him in the face and spoke with a complete sincerity.
The doctor returned the glance, as he sometimes returned the glance of
a patient, very directly, with a clear and simple gravity. Having done
this he felt completely puzzled.

"The talent for music has died in you?" he asked.

"Entirely. I can do nothing with my piano. I have even locked it."

As he spoke he went over to it and pulled at the lid to show them that he
was speaking the truth.

"Where's the key?" asked the doctor.

"Here," said Valentine, producing it from his pocket.

"Give it to me," said the doctor.

Valentine did so and the doctor quietly opened the piano, drew up the
music-stool, and signed to Valentine to sit down.

"If you mean what you say, the explanation must simply be that you are
suffering from some form of hysteria," he said, rather authoritatively.
"Now sing me something. No; I won't let you off."

Valentine, sitting on the stool, extended his hands and laid the tips of
his long fingers upon the keys, but without sounding them.

"You insist on my trying to sing?" he asked.

"I do."

"I warn you, doctor, you will be sorry if I do. My voice is quite out of
order."

"No matter."

"Go on, Val," cried Julian, from his arm-chair. "Anybody would think you
were a young lady."

Valentine bent his head, with a quick gesture of abnegation.

"As you will," he said.

He struck his hand down upon the keys as he spoke. That was the strangest
prelude ever heard. In their different ways Doctor Levillier and Julian
were both intensely fond of music, both quickly stirred by it when it
was good, not merely classical, but extravagant, violent, and in any way
interesting. Each of them had heard Valentine play, not once only, but a
hundred times. They knew not simply his large _r�pertoire_ of pieces and
songs through and through, but also the peculiar and characteristic
progressions of his improvisations, the ornaments he most delighted in,
the wildness of his melancholy, the phantasy of his gaieties; and they
knew every tone of his voice, which expressed with an exquisite realism
the temperament of his soul. But now, as Valentine's hands powerfully
struck the keys, they both started and exchanged an involuntary glance of
keen surprise. The first few bars gave the lie to Valentine's assertion
that he could no longer play. A cataract of notes streamed from beneath
his fingers, and of notes so curiously combined, or following each other
in such a fantastic array, that they seemed arranged in the musical
pattern by an intelligence of the strangest order. It is often easy for a
cultivated ear to detect whether a given composition has sprung from the
brain of a Frenchman, a German, a Hungarian, a Russian. The wildness
of Bohemia, too, may be identified, or the vague sorrow of that northern
melody which seems an echo of voices heard amid the fiords or in pale
valleys near the farthest cape of Europe. And then there is that large
and lofty music of the stars and the spheres, of the mightiest passions
and of the deepest imaginings, that is of no definite country, but seems
to be of its own power and beauty, and not of the brain and heart of any
one man. It exists for eternity, and its creator can only wonder and
worship before it, far from conceit as God was when He said, "Let there
be light." Such music, too, is recognized on the instant by the men who
have loved and studied the secrets of the most divine of the arts, for
profound genius can utter itself as easily in five notes as in fifty.
But the prelude now played by Valentine was neither the great music that
is of all time and of all countries, nor the music that is of any one
country. It was not even distinctively northern or southern in character,
impregnated with the mystery of the tuneless, wonderful East, or with the
peculiar homeliness that stirs Western hearts. Both the doctor and Julian
felt, as they listened, that it was music without an earthly home,
without location, devoid of that sense of relation to humanity which
links the greatness of the arts to the smallness of those who follow
them. Eccentric the music was, but the eccentricity of it seemed almost
inhuman, so unmannerly as to be beyond the range of the most uncouth man,
in advance of the invention of any mind, however coarse and criminal.
That was the atmosphere of this prelude, excessive, unutterable, crude,
sombre vulgarity of a detached and remote kind. As Levillier listened to
it amazed, he found that he did not instinctively connect the vulgarity
with any human traits, or translate the notes into acts within his
experience. He was simply conscious of being brought to the verge of some
sphere in which the sordidness attained by our race would be sneered at
as delicacy, in which our lowest grovellings of the pigsty would be as
lofty flights through the skies. And the hideous eccentricity of the
music, its wanton desolation, deepened until both Levillier and Julian
were pale under its spell, shrank from its ardent, its merciless and
lambent sarcasm against all things refined or beautiful. The prelude was
as fire and sword, as plague and famine, as plunder and war, as all
instruments that lay waste and that wound, a destroying angel before
whose breath the first-born withered and the very sun shrivelled into a
heap of grey ashes.

As Doctor Levillier leaned forward, moved by an irresistible impulse, and
stretched out his hand to enforce silence from this blare of deplorable
melody, Valentine looked up at him, into his eyes, and began to sing. The
doctor's movement was arrested, his hand dropped to his side, he remained
tense, frigid, his eyes fastened on Valentine's like a man mesmerised. At
first he knew that he was wondering whether his brain was playing him a
trick, whether his sense of hearing had, by some means, become impaired,
so that he heard a voice, not dimly, as is the case with the partially
deaf, but wrongly, as may be the case with the mad, or with those who
have suffered under a blow or through an injury to the brain. For this
voice was not Valentine's at all, but the voice of a stranger, powerful,
harsh, and malignant. It rang through the room noisily. A thick
hoarseness dressed it as in disease, and at moments broke it and crushed
it down. Then it would emerge as in a sigh or wail, pushing its way up
with all the mechanical power of the voice of a wild animal, and mounting
to a desperate climax, sinister and alarming. So unlike ordinary singing
was the performance of this voice that, after the first paralysis of
surprise and disgust had passed away from the doctor and Julian, they
both felt the immediate necessity of putting a period to this deadly
song, to which no words gave the faintest touch of humanity. They knew
that it must attract and rivet the attention of others in the mansions,
even possibly of passers-by in the street. The doctor withdrew his gaze
from Valentine's at length, and turned hastily to Julian, whom he found
regarding him with a glance almost of horror.

"Stop him," Julian murmured.

"You!" answered Levillier.

And then each knew that the other was in some nervous crisis that
rendered action almost an impossibility. And while they thus hesitated
there came a loud, repeated, and unsteady knock at the door. Julian
opened it. Valentine's man was standing outside, pale and anxious.

"Good God, sir," he ejaculated. "What is it? What on earth is the
matter?"

The man's exclamation broke through Julian's frost of inaction. He
whispered to Wade:

"It's all right," pushed him out and shut the door. Then he went straight
up to the piano, seized Valentine's hands and dragged them from the
keyboard.

The silence was like a sweet blow.

"I said my voice was out of order," Valentine said, simply and with a
smile.

"You did not say you had another voice, the voice of--of a devil," Julian
said, almost falteringly, for he was still shaken by his distress of the
senses, into a mental condition that was almost anger.

Dr. Levillier said nothing. More sensitive to musical sounds than Julian,
he dared not speak, lest he should say something that might stand like a
fixed gulf to eternally separate him from Valentine. He knew the future
that stretches out like a spear beyond one word. So he sat quietly with
his eyes on the ground. His lips were set firmly together. Valentine
turned to observe him.

"Doctor, you're not angry?" he asked.

The doctor made no reply.

"You know I warned you," Valentine went on. "You brought this thing on
yourself."

"Yes," said Levillier.

But Julian interposed.

"No Valentine," he exclaimed. "For, of course, it is all a trick of
yours. You didn't want to sing. We made you. This is your revenge, eh?
I didn't know you had it in you to be so--so beastly and cantankerous."

Valentine shook his head.

"It's no trick. It's simply as I said. My talent for music is dead. You
have been listening to the voice of its corpse."

Dr. Levillier looked up at length.

"You really mean that?" he said, and there was an awakening within him of
his normal ready interest in all things.

"I mean it absolutely."

"That is the only event in which I can forgive the torture you have been
inflicting upon me."

"That is the true event."

"But it's not possible," Julian said. "It's not conceivable. Surely,
doctor, you would not say--"

The doctor interrupted him.

"I cannot believe that Cresswell would deliberately commit an outrage
upon me," he said. "And it would be an outrage to sing like that to a
tired man. Weeks of work would not fatigue me as I am fatigued by
Cresswell's music."

Julian was silent and looked uneasy. Valentine repeated again:

"I couldn't help it. I am sorry."

Doctor Levillier ignored the remark. His professional interest was
beginning to be aroused. For the first time he felt convinced that some
very peculiar and bizarre change was dawning over the youth he knew so
well. He wanted to watch it grow or fade, to analyze it, to study it, to
be aware of its exact nature. But he did not want to put either Valentine
or Julian upon the alert. So he spoke lightly as he said:

"But I shall soon get the better of my fatigue, even without the usual
medicine. Cresswell, take my advice, give your music a rest. Lock your
piano again for a while. It will be better."

Valentine shut down the lid on the instant, and turned the little key in
the lock.

"Adieu to my companion of many lonely hours!" he said with a half
whimsical pensiveness. Then, as if in joke, he held out his hand with the
key in it, to the doctor.

"Will you take charge of this hostage?" he asked.

"Yes," the doctor replied.

Quite gravely he took the key and put it into his pocket.

And so it was that silence fell round the Saint of Victoria Street.




CHAPTER III

THE FLIGHT OF THE BATS


Julian had resolved to keep his compact with the lady of the feathers. He
had learned partially to understand the curious and beautiful attitude
which her mind had assumed towards him, polluted as it must be by the
terror and working out of her fate, by many dreary actions, and by many
vile imaginings. But although he held to his promise he did not, after
that night of crisis, resume his former career of asceticism tempered by
winds of temptation which could never blow his casement open. There are
men who can vary the fine monotony of virtue by an occasional deliberate
error, and who return from such an excursion into dangerous by-paths
drilled and comforted, as it appears, for further journeying along the
main road of their respectability. But Julian was not such a man. He
resembled rather the morphia victim, or the inebriate, who must at
all hazards abstain from any indulgence, even the smallest, in drug
or draught, lest the demon who has such charm for him clasp him in
imperturbable arms, and refuse with the steadfastness of a once-tricked
Venus ever to let him go again.

Valentine's empire of five years was broken in one night.

At first Julian was scarcely conscious that his descent was not
momentary, but rather tending to the permanent. Certainly, at the first,
he was inclined to have the schoolboy outlook upon it, and the schoolboy
outlook is as a glance through the wrong end of a telescope, dwindling
giant sins to the stature of pigmies, and pigmy sins to mere points of
darkness which equal nothingness. But, strangely enough, it was his
interview with the weeping Cuckoo, that Magdalen of the streets, which
drove the schoolboy to limbo, and set virtue and vice for the moment
rightly on the throne and in the gutter. Despite his comparatively dull
mood and tendency to a calm of self-satisfaction in the Marylebone Road,
Julian could not be wholly unmoved by the passion of Cuckoo's regret, nor
entirely unaware that it was a passion in which he must have some share,
whether now or at some more distant time, when the thrall of recently
moved senses was weakened, and the numbness really born of excitement
melted in the quiet expansion of a manly and a reasonable calm. His
understanding of her passion, none too definite at first, gave him a
moment's wonder, both at her and at himself. It seemed strange that the
shattered influence of Valentine should be of less account to him who had
known and loved it than to her who had never known it. It seemed stranger
still that the streets--those wolves which tear one by one the rags of
good from human nature, till it stands naked and tearless beneath the
lamps, which are the eyes of the wolves--stranger that those streets
should have left to one of their children a veil so bridal and so
beautiful as that which hung round Cuckoo when she wept. Julian was
almost driven to believe that sin and purity can dwell together in one
woman, yet never have intercourse. Yet he knew that to be impossible. The
fact remained that the tarnished Cuckoo, in the first moments of regret,
was more conscious of his sin for him than he was conscious of it for
himself; that she led him, with her dingy hands, to such repentance as he
experienced, and that she, too, guarded him against repetition of the
sin, so far as she was concerned. Julian considered these circumstances;
and there was a time when they were not without effect upon him, and
when, with the assistance of a word from Valentine, they might have
worked upon him an easy salvation. But Valentine did not speak that word.
His peculiar purity had saved Julian in the past by its mere existence.
Its presence was enough. That _satis_ was dead now. Julian did not ask
why. Nor did he find himself troubled by its decease. There is nothing
like action for making man unobservant. Julian was no longer a ship in
dock, nor even a ship riding at anchor. The anchor was up, the sails were
set, the water ran back from the vessel's prow.

Cuckoo was not conscious of this. Sometimes she was subtle by intuition;
often she was not subtle at all. When she understood Julian's nature for
the moment, it was because his nature was, for the moment, in close
relation to hers. Her fate was affected by it, or its passages of arms
clashed near her heart. Then intuition, woman's guardian, had eyes and
ears, saw and heard with a distinctness that was nearly brilliant. But
when Julian's nature wandered, and the wanderings did not bring it where
hers was dwelling, her observation slept soundly enough. So she was not
conscious at first of Julian's gentle progress in a new direction.
Whether Valentine was conscious of it did not immediately appear, for
Julian said nothing. For five years he had not had a secret from
Valentine. Now he had to have one. He ranked Valentine with Doctor
Levillier as too good to be told of the evil thing. When he had had
temptations and resisted them he had told Valentine of them frankly. Now
he had temptations, and was beginning not to resist them; he kept silence
about them. This silence lasted for a little while, and then Valentine
swept it away, involuntarily it seemed, and by means of action, not of
words.

One day Julian met a man at his club, a lively, devil-may-care soldier of
fortune in the world. The man came to where he was sitting and said:

"So, Addison, your god has fallen from his pedestal. He's only a Dagon
after all."

Julian looked at him ignorantly.

"What god?" he asked.

"Your saint has tumbled from his perch. I never believed in him."

He was of the species that never believes in anything except vice and the
_Sporting Times_.

Julian rejoined:

"I don't understand you."

"Cresswell," said the man.

Julian began to wonder what was coming, and silently got ready for the
defence, as he always did instinctively when Valentine was the subject of
attack.

"What have you got to say about Cresswell?" he asked curtly.

"My dear chap, now don't you get your frills out. Nothing that I should
mind being said about me, I assure you. Only Cresswell will soon lose his
nickname if he goes on as he's going now."

"I'm in the dark."

"That's what he likes being, if what they say is true. Quite a
night-bird, I'm told."

"You'd better be more explicit."

But the man glanced at Julian's face and seemed to think better of it. He
moved off muttering:

"Damned rot, minding a little chaff. And when we're all in the same boat
too."

Julian sat pondering over his veiled remarks. They surprised him, but at
first he was inclined to consider them as meaningless and unfounded as so
much of the gossip of the clubs. Men like Valentine must always be a
target for the arrows of the cynical. Julian had heard his sanctity
laughed at in billiard-rooms and in bars many times, and had simply felt
an easy contempt for the laughers, who could not understand that any
nature could be finer than their own. But to-day his own faint change of
life--as yet in its gentle beginnings--led him presently to wonder,
literally for the first time, whether there was a side of Valentine's
life that was not merely a side of feeling, but of action, and that he
knew nothing of. If it were so, Julian felt an inward conviction that the
very nearest weeks of the past had seen its birth. He remembered once
more Valentine's idle remark about his weariness of goodness, and
wondered whether--in violation of his nature, in violent revolt against
his own nobility--he was living at last that commonplace, theatrical
puppet-play of the world, a double life.

Valentine a night-bird! What did that mean?

And then Julian thought of the great wheeling army of the bats, whose
evolutions every night of creation witnesses. In the day they do not
sleep, but they are hidden. Their wings are folded so closely as to be
invisible. Nobody could tell that they ever flew through shadowy places,
seeking that which never satiates, although it may transform, the
appetite. Nobody could tell how the twilight affects them when it comes;
how, in their obscurity, they have to keep a guard lest the involuntary
fluttering of a half-spread pinion betray them. And then when the
twilight, the blessed one of the twin twilights, one in course towards
day, one in course towards night, has deepened and has died, they can
dare to be themselves, to spread their short wings, and to flutter on
their vagrant and monotonous courses. It is a great though secret
army--the army of the bats. It scours through cities. No weather will
keep it quite restful in camp. No darkness will blind it into immobility.
The mainspring of sin beats in it as drums beat in a Soudanese fantasia,
as blood beats in a heart. The air of night is black with the movement of
the bats. They fly so thickly round some lives that those lives can never
see the sky, never catch a glimpse of the stars, never hear the wings of
the angels, but always and ever the wings of the bats. Nor can such lives
hear the whisper of Nature and of the sirens who walk purely with Nature.
The murmur of the bats drowns all other sounds, and makes a hoarse and
monotonous music. And the eyes of the bats are hungry, and the breath of
the bats is poisonous, and the flight of the bats is a charade of the
tragedy of the flight of the devils in hell.

How could Valentine be one of the bats? It seemed to Julian that if
Valentine tried to join them they would fall upon him, as certain birds
will fall upon one who is not of their tribe, and kill him. And yet?

Yet Julian began to know that he had been aware of a change in Valentine.
He had believed it to be momentary. Perhaps it was not momentary. Perhaps
Valentine was concealing his new mode of life from some strange idea of
chivalry towards Julian. As Julian pondered he grew excited. He began to
long to tell Valentine now what he had not liked to tell him before.
Suddenly he got up and hastened out of the club. He drove to Victoria
Street. But Valentine was not at home.

"I suppose Mr. Cresswell goes out every night Wade?" he asked the man,
after a moment of hesitation.

Wade looked very much astonished at such a question coming from Julian.

"Yes, sir. At least, most nights," Wade answered.

"I see," Julian said.

He stood a minute longer. Then he turned away, after an abrupt:

"Say I called, will you?"

Wade looked after him as he went down the stairs, with the raised
eyebrows of the confidential butler.

That night was warm and gentle, with a full moon riding in clear heavens.
The season was growing towards its full height, and the streets were
thronged with carriages till a late hour. There is one long pavement that
is generally trodden by many feet at every time of the year, and in
almost every hour of the wheeling twenty-four. It is the pavement on
which the legend of London's disgrace is written in bold characters of
defiance. Men from distant lands, having made the pilgrimage to our
Mecca, the queen, by right of magnitude at least, of the world's cities,
stare aghast upon the legend, almost as Belshazzar stared upon the
writing on the wall. Colonists seeking for the first time the comfortable
embrace of that mother country which has been the fable of their
childhood and the dream of their laborious years of maturity, gaze with
withering hearts at this cancer in her bosom. Pure women turn their eyes
from it. Children seek it that they may learn in one sharp moment the
knowledge of good and evil. The music of the feet on that pavement has
called women to despair and men to destruction; has sung in the ears of
innocence till they grew deaf to virtue, and murmured round the heart of
love till it became the heart of lust. And that pavement is the
camping-ground of the army of the bats. On wet nights they flit drearily
through the rain. In winter they glide like shadows among the revealing
snows. But in the time of flowers and of soft airs, when the moon at the
full swims calmly above the towers of Westminster, and the Thames rests
rocked in a silver dream among the ebony wharves and barges, the
flight of the bats is gay and their number is legion. And their circle is
joined by many who are but recruits, or as camp-followers, treading in
the track of those whose names are on the roll-call.

The lady of the feathers rarely failed to join the evening flight of the
bats. Her acquaintance with Julian, even her curious passion for his
respect and distant treatment, had not won her to different evenings, or
to a new mode of life. But her feeling for Julian led her to ignore now
the fact of this fate of hers. She chose to set him aside from it, to
keep him for a friend, as an innocent peasant-girl might keep some
recluse wandering after peace into her solitude. Julian was to be the
one man who looked on her with quiet, habitual eyes, who touched her
with calm, gentle hand, who spoke to her with the voice of friendship,
demanding nothing, and thought of her with a feeling that was neither
greed nor contempt. And that one fatal night in which Cuckoo's private
and secluded heart was so bitterly wounded she put out of her
recollection with a strength of determination soldier-like and almost
fierce. It lay in the past, but she did not treat the past as a woman
treats a drawer full of old, used things, opening it in quiet moments
and turning over its contents with a lingering and a loving hand. She
shut it, locked it almost angrily, and never, never looked into it.
Julian was to be her friend of leisure, never associated in any way with
her tragic hours. All other men were the same, stamped with a similar
hall-mark. He only was unstamped and was beautiful.

On this evening of summer, Cuckoo, as usual, joined the flight of the
bats with a tired wing. The heat tried her. Her cheeks were white as
ivory under their cloud of rouge. Her mouth was more plaintive even than
usual, and her heart felt dull and heavy. As she got out of the omnibus
at the Circus one of her ankles turned, and she gave an awkward jump that
set all the feathers on her hat in commotion, and made the newspaper boys
laugh at her scornfully. They knew her by sight, and joked her every
evening when she arrived. At first--that was a long while ago--she had
resented their remarks, still more their shrewd unboyish questions, and
had answered them with angry bitterness. But--well, that was a long while
ago. Now she simply recovered her footing, paused a moment on the
kerbstone to arrange her dress, and then drifted away into the crowd
slowly, without even glancing at her nightly critics, who were aware of
a new bow on her gown, recognized with imperturbable _sang-froid_ the
change in a trimming or the alteration of a waist-belt.

Slowly she walked along. Piccadilly bats fly slowly. The moon went up.
She had not met her fate. In the throng she saw Valentine pass. He looked
at her with a smile. She turned her eyes hastily away. She had met him on
several evenings of late, but had never told Julian so, for she began to
understand now his reverence for Valentine, and a new-born, ladylike
instinct taught her not to hurt that reverence. Valentine disappeared.
He had not tried to speak with her. Once, on encountering her, he had
paused, but Cuckoo glided behind two large Frenchwomen and escaped with
the adroitness of a snake in the grass. Apparently he recognized her
movement as one of retreat, and was resolved to leave her alone, for he
had never followed her since that day, although he always lifted his hat
when he saw her. The crowd grew thicker. It was very heterogeneous, but
Cuckoo did not thread it with the attention of a psychologist, or examine
it with the pains of a philosopher of the dark hours. She stared
listlessly at the faces of the men, and if they stared back at her,
smiled mechanically with a thin and stereotyped coquetry, moving on
vacantly the while in a sort of dream, such as a tired journalist may
fall into as he drives his pen over the paper, leaving a train of
familiar words and phrases behind it. There are many dreamers like Cuckoo
on the thin riband of that pavement, moving in a maze created by
everlasting custom, beneath their flowers, half senseless to life, and
yet alive to the least human notice, behind the stretched barriers of
their veils. She walked from the Circus to Hyde Park corner and back
again; then turned, with an ever-growing lassitude, to repeat the
desolate experience. By this time the playhouses had vomited their
patrons into the night, and locomotion was becoming more difficult.
Sometimes there was a block, and Cuckoo found herself "hung up," as she
called it, squashed in a mass of people, all intent on some scheme of
their own, and resentful of the enforced interruption to their movement.
Then, by some unknown and mysterious means, the human knot was untied,
and all the atoms murmured on again through the ocean of the town. And
still Cuckoo was alone, and still the mechanical smile came and went upon
her lips, and her feet seemed to grow heavier and heavier, till they were
as cannon-balls to be lifted and dragged by her protesting muscles. And
still her senses seem to become more and more drugged by the familiarity
of it all, the familiarity of smile, of tired limbs, of incessant slow
motion, of staring faces and watchful eyes; the familiarity of the cabs
rolling home towards Knightsbridge and farther Kensington, with a dull,
harsh noise; the familiarity of personal, intense loneliness and longing
for quiet; the familiarity of the knowledge that quiet could only be
earned by failure, and that failure meant lack of food, debt, and deeper
degradation.

At last--perhaps it was owing to the unusual heat of the night--Cuckoo
became so over-fatigued that she was scarcely conscious what she was
doing. Her smile was utterly devoid of meaning, and had she been suddenly
asked, she could not have told whether she was at the Regent Street
end of Piccadilly, at Hyde Park Corner, or midway between the two.
Once more there was a block. The people were pressed, or surged of
their own will, together, and Cuckoo found herself leaning against
some stranger. This sudden support gave to her an equally sudden
knowledge of the extent to which she was fatigued, and when the block
ceased and the stranger--unconscious that he was being used as a species
of pillow--moved away, Cuckoo almost fell to the ground. Stretching
out her hands to save herself, she caught hold of a man's arm, and as
she did so her eyes moved to his face. It was Julian, and, before her
grasp had time to fix all his attention on her, Cuckoo saw why he was in
Piccadilly. In an instant all her lassitude was gone; all the fatigue, so
passionless and complete, vanished. An extraordinary warmth, that of
fire, not of summer, swept into her heart. She stood still and trembled,
as if from the accession of the abrupt strength that flows from an energy
purely nervous.

"Hulloh, Cuckoo!" Julian said.

She nodded at him. He looked down at her, not quite knowing what to say,
for he knew, by this time, that she objected to any hint from him on the
subject of her proceedings of the night. That was ignored between them,
and when they met the situation was that of a lodger in the Marylebone
Road holding friendly intercourse with a dweller in Mayfair, nothing more
and nothing less.

"Taking a stroll?" Julian said at last. "Isn't it a lovely night?"

"Yes. I say, I'm tired," she answered.

"Shall I take you somewhere?" he asked.

"Yes, do," she said.

They moved towards the Circus.

"Where shall we go?" Julian said. "Have you any pet place?"

"I don't know--oh, the Monico," she replied.

The restaurant was right in front of them. They dodged across to the
island, thence to the opposite pavement, and passed in silently. The
outer hall was thronged with people. So was the long inner room, and
for a moment they stood in the doorway looking for a table. At length
Julian caught sight of an empty one far down under the clock at the end.
They made their way to it and sat down.

"What will you have?" Julian asked Cuckoo.

She considered, sinking back on the plush settee.

"A glass of stout, I think, and--"

"And a bun," he interposed, smiling in recollection of their first
interview.

But Cuckoo did not smile or seem to recognize the allusion.

"Please, I'll have a sandwich," she said.

Julian ordered it, the stout, a cup of coffee and a liqueur brandy for
himself. While the waiter was getting the things he noticed Cuckoo's
extreme and active gravity, a gravity which seemed oddly to give her
quite a formidable appearance under her feathers. Despite the obvious
weariness written on her face, there was somehow a look of energy about
her, the aspect of a person full of intention and purpose.

"Why, Cuckoo," he said, "you look like a young judge about to deliver a
sentence on somebody."

And indeed that was just how her expression and pose behind the
marble-topped table affected him. Just then the waiter brought the
stout and the other things. Cuckoo removed her cheap kid gloves, took
the tumbler in her thin fingers and sipped at it. After a sip or two
she put the glass down, and said to Julian:

"I say."

"Well?"

"What are you about to-night?"

The question came from her painted lips very sternly. It seemed
addressed by one who had a right to condemn, and who was going to
exercise that right. Julian was astonished by her tone, and had an
instant's inclination to resent it. But then he thought that there was
nothing in the words themselves, and that the odd manner probably sprang
simply from fatigue or some other womanish, undivined cause. So he
answered:

"Just taking a stroll. It's so fine," and began to drink his coffee.

But Cuckoo quickly showed that her manner meant all that it had seemed to
say.

"That ain't it," she said, with emphatic excitement, though she spoke in
a low voice because of the people all round them. "You know it ain't."

Julian was just lighting a cigarette. The match was flaming in his hand.
He let it go out as he looked at her.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

"What are you doin'?" she retorted. "That's what I want to know. Not as I
need to ask, though," she added, bitterly.

Julian was distinctly taken aback by the emotion in her manner, and the
passion that she tried to keep quiet in her voice. He flushed rather red,
a boyish trick which he could never quite get over.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, lighting another
match, and this time making it do its office on his cigarette.

Cuckoo tossed her head in a way that was not wholly free from vulgarity,
but that was certainly wholly unconscious and expressive of real feeling.

"Oh yes, you do," she rejoined. Then after a moment's silence, she added,
with bitter emphasis, and a movement of her hand in the direction of the
door:

"You out in that crowd, and doing the same as all of them?"

As she said the words tears started under her blackened eyelashes.
If Julian had been taken aback before she spoke the last sentence, he
was ten times more astonished now. The whole situation struck him as
unexampled, and but for something so passionate in the girl's manner
that it overrode the natural feeling of the moment, his sense of humour
must have moved him to a smile. It was strange indeed to sit at midnight
under the electric moons of the Monico, and to be passionately condemned
for dissipation by a girl with a painted face, dyed hair, and that
terribly unmistakable imprint of the streets. But Julian could not smile.
Something in Cuckoo's demeanour, something so vehement and so unconscious
as to be not far from dignity, impressed him and took him well beyond the
gates of laughter.

"Why--but you were out in the crowd too," he said.

"I!" she said sharply, and with a touch of scathing contempt for
herself, yet impatient, too, of any introduction of her entity into the
discussion; "of course I've got to be there. What's that to do with it?"

"Really, Cuckoo," Julian began, but she interrupted him.

"I ain't you," she said.

"No, of course, but--"

"I'm different. It's nothing to me where I go of a night, or what I do.
But you ain't got to be there. You needn't go, need you?"

"Nobody need," he said. "But--"

"Then what d'you do it for?" she reiterated, still in the same tone of
one sitting on high in condemnation, and moved by her own utterance to an
increasing excitement. This time she paused for a reply, and set her
rouged lips together with the obvious intention of not speaking until
Julian had plainly put forward his defence. Strange to say, her manner
had impressed him with a ridiculous feeling that defence of some kind was
actually necessary. It was a case of one denizen of the dock putting on
the black cap to sentence another. Julian glanced at Cuckoo before he
made any reply to her last question. If he had had any intention of not
answering it at all, of calmly disposing, in a word or two, of her right
to interrogate him on his proceedings, her fixed and passionate eyes
killed it instantly. He moved his coffee-cup round uneasily in the
saucer.

"Men do many things they needn't do, as well as women," he began. "I must
have my amusements. Why not?"

At the word "amusements" she drew in her breath with a little hiss of
contempt. Julian flushed again.

"You're the last person," he began, and then caught himself up short. It
must be confessed that she was very aggravating, and that the position
she took up was wholly untenable. Having checked himself, he said
more calmly:

"What's the good of talking about it? I live as other men do, naturally."

"Are you a beast too, then?" she asked.

She still kept her voice low, and the sentence came with all the more
effect on this account.

"I don't see that," Julian exclaimed, evidently stung. "Women are always
ready to say that about men."

Cuckoo broke into a laugh. She picked up her glass, and drank all that
was in it. Putting it down empty, she laughed again, with her eyes on
Julian. That sound of mirth chilled him utterly.

"Why d'you laugh?" he said.

"I don't know--thinkin' that you're to be like all the rest, I suppose,"
she answered. "Like all them brutes out there, and him too."

"Him," said Julian. "Whom are you speaking of?"

She had not meant to say those last words, and tried to get out of an
answer by asking for something more to drink.

"Chartreuse," she said, with the oddest imaginable accent.

Julian ordered it hastily, and then immediately repeated his question.

"Never mind," Cuckoo replied. "It don't matter."

But he was not to be denied.

"D'you mean Valentine?" he asked.

She nodded her head slowly. Although Julian had half suspected that
Valentine might be there this confirmation of his suspicion gave him a
decided shock.

"Oh, he was just walking home from some party," he exclaimed.

"P'raps."

"I'm certain of it."

"He don't matter," she said with a hard accent.

She drank the chartreuse very slowly, and seemed to be reflecting, and
a change came over her face. It softened as much as a painted face can
soften under dyed hair.

"Dearie," she said, "it makes me sick to see you like the rest."

"I never pretended to be anything different."

"But you was different," she asserted. "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 assumed 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 caf�.

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 hoarse, 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
passers-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 assumed 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 pass 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.

"I can't," he began almost desperately.

She gave with her hand a little twitch at his.

"I say," she whispered, and she spoke to him as if to Jessie in the tiny
flannel-lined basket, "Go bials! will you?"

"But you?" he said, and there was something that was half a sob in his
voice.

"I can't. But you--go bials."

And then, to please her, he held up his hand and hailed a hansom. Getting
in he gave the direction of his rooms, loud enough for her to hear. She
stood at the edge of the pavement and nodded at him as she heard it.

Then she turned away, and Julian saw the feathers in her big hat waving,
as she joined once more the flight of the bats.




CHAPTER IV

THE FLAME IN A WOMAN'S EYES


"That girl loves you," Valentine had said, when Julian told him of
Cuckoo's strange fragmentary sermon in the Monico, and of its effect upon
himself.

Valentine spoke without any emotion or sympathy, and the absence of
feeling from his voice seemed almost to bring a certain slight vexation
into his manner. The love of Cuckoo, perhaps naturally, was to his fine
nature a thing of no account, or even of ill account. At least, his look
and manner faintly said so to Julian.

"But if she loves me," Julian said, and a certain wonder came into his
heart at the thought, "surely she wouldn't behave to me as she does,
turning me from a lover into a friend, and keeping me almost angrily in
the latter relation."

"Perhaps not," Valentine said languidly.

No doubt he understood what Julian did not entirely understand, the
subtleties of such a nature as Cuckoo's, a nature hammered out thin by
cruel circumstance, drilled till it found the unspeakable ordinary and
the loathsome inevitable, worn as a stone by dropping water till the
water, ceasing to fall, must have left a loneliness of surprise. Julian
did not fully realize that Cuckoo's life might well lead her to display
real affection, if she possessed it, by ways the reverse of those
naturally sought and gloried in by pure and protected women. To give is
the act natural to the love of such women. It is at least their impulse,
although restrained within strict limits, perhaps, by exigencies of
conscience or of religion. But to give is the impulse, giving being the
unusual act, the strange new act in them. Cuckoo's profession being an
ordered routine of giving, how could she show her love better than by
withholding? To be to Julian as she was to all men could prove nothing,
either to him or to herself. To be to him as she was not to any other man
whom she knew must mean something, argue something. So, at least, dimly
and without mental self-consciousness, her mind reasoned rather
instinctively, for the lady of the feathers was, above all things,
instinctive. Instead of logic, ethics, morals, the equipment of sage,
philosopher, good women, she had instinct only. Instinct told her the
secret meaning of reticence in her relations with Julian. When she said
good-bye to him, the hand-shake that passed between them had become
something more to her than a kiss. She kissed so many whom she hated, so
many who were dolls of vice to her, who were walking sins, incarnate lust
shadows, scarcely men. To be to Julian what another woman might have been
would be to seem to make him as all those dolls of horrible London. So
Cuckoo set him apart by her relations towards him, as she had previously
set him apart in her heart. She pushed the chair of her beloved from the
heart where the dolls sat night after night warming their expressive
hands at the cheap and ever-burning fire. She pushed it out into a circle
of cold that was the only sacred thing she could supply. The world and
her situation in it had bereft her of the power of even proving the
simplicity of love by simplicity of natural action. She had to find a new
way to show an old worship. She found it in refusal, where others find it
in assent.

But, after all, she was a woman, and perhaps she wished Julian to be an
anchorite. That was what Valentine meant when, after Julian's account of
Cuckoo's anger on finding him in Piccadilly, he simply said:

"That girl loves you."

The sentence stirred Julian to a surprise warmer than seemed reasonable,
for he had really known that Cuckoo had some feeling for him. But he had
always at the back of his mind the idea, common to so many, that such a
girl as Cuckoo could not be capable of the real love, the love ascetic,
not the love Bacchanalian. Love among the roses is easy, but not many
can welcome love among the nettles; and, moreover, Julian, despite his
knowledge of the thorny paths along which Cuckoo walked habitually, along
which all her poor sisterhood walked incessantly, had not entirely
disabused himself of the fallacy that a life such as hers was, in some
vague, undefined and indefinable way, a life of pleasure. Even when we
know a thing to be, we often cannot feel it to be. Knowledge in the mind
does not inevitably bring to the birth sensation in the heart, or even
the mental apprehension, half reasonable and half emotional, on the base
and foundation of which it is comparatively easy to ground acts that
indicate an understanding.

From Valentine's remark Julian understood him to mean that Cuckoo's
anger was entirely caused by jealousy, not at all by a fine desire of
protecting some one stronger than herself from that which she knew so
well through her own original weakness. Yet that was what Julian had
been led to believe, not by any hint of Cuckoo's, but by something
within himself.

"I don't see why she should love me," he said, presently.

"You're well off, Julian," Valentine rejoined.

Almost for the first time in his life Julian felt angry with Valentine.

"You don't know her at all," he said, hotly.

"I know her class."

Julian looked at him, and his anger died, as his mind sailed off on a new
tack.

"Her class! Then you must have been studying it lately, Val. Not long ago
you could not have studied it. Your nature would not have let you."

"That is true enough."

"Were you studying it when we met you the other night?"

"Yes."

"With what result?" Julian asked with eager curiosity.

"That I understand something I never understood before--the charm of
sin."

Julian was greatly surprised at this deliverance of his friend, who
uttered it in his coldly pure voice, looking serenely high-minded and
even loftily intellectual.

"You find the charm of sin in Piccadilly?"

"I begin to find it everywhere, in every place in which human beings
gather together."

"You no longer feel yourself aloof from the average man, then?"

Valentine pressed his right hand slowly upon Julian's shoulder.

"No longer," he answered quietly. "Julian, you and I are emerging
together from the hermitage in which we have dwelt retired for so long.
I always thought you would emerge some day. I never thought I should. But
so it is. Don't think that I am standing still while you are travelling.
It is not so."

The strength of his hand's grip upon Julian's shoulder seemed to indicate
a violence of feeling which the tones of his voice did not imply. Julian
listened, and then said, in a hesitating, irresolute manner:

"Yes, I see, Val; but I say, where are we travelling? or, at least,
where shall we travel if we don't pull up, if we keep on? That's the
thing, I suppose."

As he spoke he did not tell himself that it was nothing less than the
disconnected and ungrammatical remarks of the lady of the feathers which
prompted this consideration, this prophetic movement of his mind. Yet so
it was. And when Valentine replied he, the saint, was fighting against
her, the sinner, and surely in the cause of evil. For he said lightly:

"After all, do human souls travel? I often think they are like eyes
looking at a whirling zoetrope. It is the zoetrope that travels."

"You think souls don't go up or down?"

"I think that none of us knows really much about souls, and that, after
all, it is best not to bother ourselves too much about them."

"Marr thought a great deal about them. I used to fancy that as some
maniacs have been known to murder people in order to tear out their
hearts, he could have murdered them to tear out their souls."

Valentine took his hand from Julian's shoulder.

"Marr is dead and forgotten," he said almost sternly.

"I can't quite forget him, Val; and I still feel as if he had had
some influence over both of us. We have changed since those days of
the sittings, since that night of your trance and his death."

Julian was looking at Valentine in a puzzled way while he spoke.
Valentine met his eyes calmly.

"If I have changed," he said slowly, "it cannot be in essentials. Look at
me. Is my face altered? Is my expression different?"

"No, Valentine."

Julian said the words with a sort of return to confidence and to greater
happiness. To look into the face of his friend set all his doubts at
rest. No man with eyes like that could ever fall into anything which was
really and radically evil. Valentine perhaps was playing with life as a
boy plays with a dog, making life jump up at him, dance round him, just
to see the strength and grace of the creature, its possibilities of quick
motion, its powers of varied movement. Where could be the harm of that?
And what Valentine could do safely he began to think he might do safely
too. He gave expression to his thought with his usual frankness.

"You mean you are beginning to play with life?" he said.

"That is it exactly. I am putting life through its paces. After all, no
man is worth his salt if he shuts himself up from that which is placed in
the world for him to see, to know, and perhaps--but only after he has
seen and known it--to reject. To do that is like living in the midst of
a number of people who may be either very agreeable or the reverse, and
declining ever to be introduced to them on the ground that they must all
be horrible and certain to do one an infinity of harm."

"Yes, yes, I see. Then you think that Cuckoo is jealous of me?--that that
was all she meant?"

Julian again returned to the old question. Valentine replied:

"I feel sure of it. Women are always governed by their hearts. So much so
that my last sentence is a truism, scarcely worthy the saying. Besides,
my dear Julian, what would it matter if she were not? What could the
attitude of such a woman on any subject under the sun matter to you?"

The words were not spoken without intentional sarcasm. They stung Julian
a little, but did not lead him, from any sense of false shame, to a
feeble concealment of his real feeling.

"It does seem absurd, I dare say," he said. "But she's--well, she's not
an ordinary woman, Val."

"Let us hope not."

"No; you don't understand. There's something strong about her. What she
says might really matter, I think, to a cleverer man than I. She knows
men, and then, Valentine, there's something else."

He stopped. There was a queer look of mystery in his face.

"Something else! What is it? What can there be?"

"I saw the flame as if it was burning in her eyes."

Valentine made an abrupt movement. It might have been caused by surprise,
annoyance, anger, or simply by the desire to fidget which overcomes every
one, not paralyzed, at some time or another. His action knocked over a
chair, and he stooped to pick it up and set it in its place before he
spoke. Then he said:

"The flame, you say! What on earth is your theory about this
extraordinary flame? You seem to attach a strange importance to it. Yet
it can only be the fire of a fancy, a jet from the imagination. Tell me,
have you any theory about it, honestly? and if so, what is it?"

Julian was rather taken aback by this very sledgehammer invitation.
Hitherto the flame, and his thought of it, had seemed to have the pale
vagueness and the mystery of a dream. When the flame appeared, it is
true, he was oppressed by a sense of awe; but the awe was indefinite,
blurred, resisting analysis, and quite inexplicable to another.

"I did not say I had any theory about it," he answered.

"But then, why do you consider it at all? And why seem to think that
its supposed presence in the eyes of a woman makes that woman in any
way different from others?"

"But I did not say I thought so," Julian said, rather hastily. "How you
jump to conclusions to-day!"

"You implied it, and you meant it. Now, didn't you?"

"Perhaps I may have."

"This is all too much for me," Valentine said, showing now a very unusual
irritation. He even began to pace up and down the room with a slow, soft
footstep, monotonous and mechanical in its regularity. As he was walking
he went on:

"I do really think, Julian, that it is a mistake to allow any fancy to
get upon your nerves. You know what the doctor thought about this flame."

"Yes."

"And you know what I think."

"Do I?"

"Yes, that it is a mere chimera. But my opinion on such a subject has no
particular value. The doctor is different. He is a great specialist. The
nerves have been his constant study for years. If this vision continues
to haunt you, you really ought to put yourself definitely into his
hands."

"Perhaps I will," said Julian.

He spoke rather seriously and meditatively. Valentine, possibly because
he was in the sort of peculiarly irritable frame of mind that will
sometimes cause a man to dislike having his tendered advice taken, seemed
additionally vexed by this reply, or at any rate struck by it. He paused
in his walk, and seemed for an instant as if he were going to say
something sharply sarcastic. Then suddenly he laughed.

"After all," he exclaimed in a calmer voice, "we are taking an absurdity
mighty seriously."

But Julian would not agree to this view of the matter.

"I don't know that we are," he said.

"You don't know!"

"That is an absurdity. No, Valentine, I don't; I can't think that it is.
I saw it in Cuckoo's eyes only once, and that was--just--"

"Tell me just when you saw it."

The words came from Valentine's lips with a pressure, a hurry almost of
anxiety. He seemed curiously eager about the history of this chimera. But
Julian, eager too, and engrossed in thoughts that moved as yet in a maze
full of vapors and of mists, did not find time to notice it.

"I noticed it just after, or when, she was begging me to go home."

"Like a good boy," Valentine hastily interposed. "Because her jealousy
prompted her to hate the thought of your having any pleasure in which she
did not share. Oh, you noticed the flame then. Did it, too, tell you to
go home?"

He spoke rather harshly and flippantly, and apparently put the question
without desire of an answer, and rather with the intention of ridicule
than for any other reason. But Julian took it seriously and replied to
it.

"Somehow I felt as if, perhaps, it did wish to speak some message to me,
and that the message came, or might come, through her."

He spoke slowly, for indeed it was this action of words that was
beginning to make clear to himself his own impression, so vague and so
unpresentable before. As he thus traced it out, like a man following the
blurred letters of an old inscription with the point of his stick, and
gradually coming at their meaning, his excitement grew. He said, speaking
with a rising emphasis of conviction:

"I'm not a mere fool. There is--there is something in all this; I feel
it; I cannot be simply imagining. There is something. But I'm like a man
in the dark. I can't see what it is; I can't tell. But you, Valentine,
you, with your nature, so much better than I am, with so much deeper
an insight, how is it you don't see this flame? Unless,"--and here
Julian struck his hand violently on the table,--"unless it comes, as
it seemed to come that night in the darkness, from you. If it's part
of yourself--but then"--and his manner clouded again--"how can that be?"

"How indeed?" said Valentine, who had been watching him all through this
outburst with a scrutiny that seemed almost uneasy, so narrow and so
determined was it.

"Julian, listen to me; you trust me, don't you, and think my opinion
worth something?"

"Worth everything."

"Well, I believe you're getting into an unnatural, if you weren't a man
I should say a hysterical--habit of mind. If you can't throw it off by
yourself, I must help you to do so."

"Perhaps you're right. But how will you help me?"

Valentine seemed to think and consider for a moment. Then he exclaimed:

"I'll tell you. By making you join with me in putting this life, this
old life--new enough to both of us--through its paces. Why should each
of us do it alone? We are friends. We can trust one another. You know me
through and through. You know the--chilliness I'll call it--of my nature,
my natural bookishness--my bias towards contemning people too readily,
and avoiding what all men ought to know. And I know you. Without you I
believe I should never go any distance. Without me you might go too far.
Together we will strike the happy medium. For us life shall go through
all his paces, but he shall never lame us with a kick, like a vicious
horse, or give us a furtive bite when we're not looking. Men carry such
bites and kicks, the wounds from them, to their graves. We'll be more
careful. But we'll see the great play in all--all its acts. And, when
we've seen it, we'll be as we were, only we'll be no longer blind. And
we'll never forget our grand power of rejecting and refusing."

"Ah!" said Julian. "Perhaps I haven't that power."

"But I have."

"Yes, you have."

"And I'll share my power with you. We are friends and comrades. We ought
to share everything."

"Yes," exclaimed Julian, carried away. "Yes, by Jove, yes!"

"And as to this flame--"

"Ah!"

"We'll soon know if it's a vision or a reality. But it's a vision. You
saw it in a woman's eyes."

"I'll swear I did."

"Then that proves it's a fraud. The flame in a woman's eyes never burnt
true yet--never, Julian, since the days of Delilah."




CHAPTER V

JULIAN FEARS THE FLAME


Although Cuckoo knew well that Julian carried out his intention of going
home after he left her in Piccadilly, the fact of his being there, of his
making one of that crowd, that slowly-moving crowd, troubled her.
Valentine and Julian had argued the question of her real feeling about
the matter. Cuckoo did not argue it. She never deliberately thought to
herself, "I feel this or that. Why do I feel it?" She knew as much about
astronomy as introspection, and that was simply nothing at all. Instead
of diving into the depths of her mind and laboriously tracing every
labelled and tabulated subtlety to its source, she sat in the squalid
Marylebone Road sitting-room, with the folding doors open into the
bedroom to temper the heat of summer with draughts from the frigid zone
of the back area, and babbled her sensations to Jessie, who riggled in
response to every passing shadow that stole across the heart of her
mistress.

Jessie had learned much about Julian in these latter days. Into her
pricked and pointed ear, leaf-shaped and the hue of India-rubber, had
been whispered a strange tale of the dawning of love in a battered heart,
of the blossoming of respect in a warped mind. She had heard of the
meeting in Piccadilly, of the meal at the Monico, of the farewell on the
kerbstone. And she alone knew--or ought to have known--the mingling of
intense jealousy and of a grander feeling that burned in Cuckoo's breast
whenever she thought of Julian's life, the greater part of it that lay
beyond her knowledge, her sight, or keeping.

For the lady of the feathers, in most things a strange mixture, had never
driven two more contrasted passions in double harness than those which
she drove around the circle of which Julian was the core, the centre. One
was a passion of jealousy; the other a curious passion of protection.
Each backed up the other, urged it to its work. It would have been a hard
task, indeed, to tell at first which was the greater of the two. Cuckoo
neither knew nor cared. She did not even differentiate the two passions
or say to herself that there were two. That was not her way. She felt
quickly and strongly, and she acted on her feelings with the peculiar and
almost wild promptitude that such a life as hers seems to breed in
woman's nature. It is the French lady of the feathers who scatters
vitriol in the streets of Paris, the Italian or Spanish lady of the
feathers who snatches the dagger from her hair to stab an enemy. The wind
of Cuckoo's feelings blew her about like a dancing mote, and the feelings
awakened by Julian were the strongest her nature was capable of.

Only Jessie knew that at present, unless indeed Valentine had divined it,
as seemed possible from his words to Julian.

And these twin passions were fed full by the peculiar circumstances of
Cuckoo's relation to Julian, and by the depth of her knowledge concerning
a certain side of life.

She went home, that night of their meeting, very late, and in the
weariness of the morning succeeding it, and of many following mornings,
she began to brood over the change in Julian that she had intuitively
divined. Her street-woman's instinct could not be at fault with a boy.
For Julian was little more than a boy. She knew that when she first met
him, when they made toast together on the foggy afternoon that she could
never forget, Julian was unshadowed by the darkness that envelopes the
steps of so much human nature. Lively, bright, full of youth, strength,
energy, as he was, Cuckoo knew that then he had been free from the
bondage of sense which demands and obtains the sacrifice of so many lives
like hers. And she knew that now he was not free from that bondage, and
that she, by an irony of fate, had, with her own hands, fastened the
first fetter upon him.

Valentine had plotted that.

Cuckoo's belief said so; but surely her curious instinct against
Valentine must have tricked her here!

It was this knowledge of her unwilling action against Julian's peace that
first woke in her the strong protective feeling towards him, a feeling
almost akin to the maternal instinct. It was her strange love for him
that prompted the fiery antagonism against his relations with others that
could only be called jealousy. And though one of her passions was noble,
the other pitiable, they could but work together for the same end, aim at
a similar salvation.

Yet how could any salvation for a man come out of that dreary house in
the Marylebone Road, from that piteous rouged agent of the devil?

Cuckoo never stopped to ask such a question as that. She was a girl, and
she began to understand love. She had no time to stop. And each passing
day soon began to give fresh vitality to the vision of Julian's need.

Between him and her there had sprung up on the ruins of one night's folly
a tower of comradeship. Its foundations were not of sand. Even Cuckoo,
despite her ceaseless jealously, felt that. But, after all, she had only
come into his life as a desolate waif drifts into a settled community.
She was neither of his class, his understanding, or his education. She
was in the gutter; in the gutter to an extent that no man, as women feel
at present, can ever be. And though through her inspiration he had not to
come into the gutter to find her and to be with her, yet she sometimes
writhed with the thought that he was so far above her. Nevertheless, her
position never once tempted her, in the struggle that the future quickly
brought with it, to shrink from effort, to fail in fight, to despair in
endeavour for him.

There are flames that burn the dross from humanity and reveal the gold.
There are flames in the eyes and in the hearts of women.

       *       *       *       *       *

Julian's visits to Cuckoo were irregular but fairly frequent. He always
came in the afternoon, an hour or two before the psychological moment of
her start out for the evening's duty. Sometimes he would take her out to
tea at a small Italian restaurant near Baker Street Station. More often
they would make tea together in the little sitting-room, with the
ecstatic assistance of Jessie. And Rip, Valentine's dog, generally made
one of the party. He and Jessie got on excellently together, and devoutly
shared the scraps that fell from the Marylebone Road table. The first
time that Julian brought Rip to number 400, Cuckoo fell in love with him.

"Why, you never said you had a dog," she exclaimed.

"Rip's not mine," Julian answered.

"Isn't he? Whose is he?"

"Valentine's."

"Then why d'you have him with you?" asked Cuckoo, suddenly and rather
roughly pushing away Rip, who was swirling in her lap like a whirlpool.

"Oh, he's taken a stupid dislike to Valentine," Julian answered
thoughtlessly. "He won't stay with him."

In a moment Cuckoo had caught the little dog back.

"That's funny," she said.

"Yes, isn't it?" said Julian.

Then, seeing her thoughtful gaze, and the odd way in which she suddenly
caressed the dog, he was angry with himself for having told her anything
about the matter.

"Rip's a little fool," he said. "Perhaps Jessie will take a dislike to
you some day, Cuckoo."

"Not she, never!" said Cuckoo, with conviction. And, after that, she
could never spoil Rip enough.

These visits and teas ought to have been pleasant functions, bright
oases in the desert of Cuckoo's life, but a cloud fell over them at
the beginning and deepened as the days went by. For Cuckoo, with her
sharpness of the _gamin_ and her quick instinct of the London streets,
was perpetually watching for and noting the signs in Julian's face,
manner, or language, that fed those two passions of jealousy and of
protection within her. And, at first, she allowed Julian to see what
she was doing.

One day, as they sat at the table in the middle of the room, Julian said
to her:

"I say, Cuckoo, why d'you look at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Why d'you stare at me? Anything wrong?"

"I wasn't staring at you," she asserted. "The sun gets in my eyes if I
look the other way."

"I'll draw the blind down," he said.

He got up from the table and shut the afternoon sun out. The tea-tray,
the photographs, the little dogs, they two, were plunged in a greenish
twilight manufactured by the sun with the assistance of the Venetian
blind.

"There," Julian said, sitting down again, "now we shall all look
ghostly."

"But if I do take a fancy to look at you, why shouldn't I, then?" Cuckoo
asked.

"I don't mind," he laughed. "But you didn't seem pleased with me, I
thought."

"Rot!"

"Oh! you were pleased, then?"

"I don't say as I was, or wasn't."

"You're rather like the Sphinx."

"What's that?"

"Enigmatic."

She didn't understand, and looked rather cross.

"I told you I wasn't looking at you," she exclaimed pettishly.

"Then you told a lie," Julian said, with supreme gravity. "Think of that,
Cuckoo."

"And what would you ever tell me but lies if I was to ask you things?"
she rejoined quickly.

Julian began to see that there was something lurking in the background
behind her show of temper. He wondered what on earth it was.

"Why should I tell you lies?" he said.

"Oh! to kid me. Men like that. You're just like the rest, I suppose."

"I suppose so."

She seemed vexed at his assent, and went on:

"Now, aren't you, though?"

"I say, yes."

"Well, you usen't to be," she exclaimed, with actual bitterness of
accent and of look. "That's just why I was lookin' at you,--for I was
lookin',--makin' out the difference."

"I'm just the same as I was," Julian said, and he spoke with quite
sincere conviction.

"No, you ain't."

Having uttered this very direct contradiction, Cuckoo proceeded with
great energy:

"You've been lettin' him do it. I know you have."

Julian was completely puzzled.

"What do you mean?" he asked, with a real desire for information.

"You know well enough. He's leadin' you wrong."

Julian reddened with a sudden understanding. Her words touched him in
his sorest place. In the first place, no man likes to think he has been
doing a thing because he has been led by some one else. In the second,
Julian had grown ardently to dislike Cuckoo's unreasoning antipathy to
Valentine. Originally, and for some time, he had believed that she would
get over it. Finding later that there was no chance of that, he had once
told her that he could not hear Valentine abused. Since that day she had
been careful not to mention his name. But now her bitterness against him
peeped out once more, and seemed even to have been gathering force during
the interval.

"Cuckoo, you're talking great nonsense," he said, forcing himself to
speak quietly.

But she was in one of her most mulish moods, and was not to be turned
from the subject or silenced.

"No, I ain't," she said. "Where was you last week? You didn't come in
once."

"I was in Paris."

Cuckoo's brow clouded still more. Her knowledge of Paris was not
intimate, and, indeed, was confined to stories dropped from the lips of
men who had been there for short periods, and for purposes the reverse of
geographical or artistic. Julian's mention of the French capital drove a
sword into her.

"With him?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, with Valentine."

"Oh, what did you do there?"

She spoke with angry insistence, and Julian could not help thinking of
Valentine's remark, "That girl loves you." It seemed indeed that Cuckoo
must have some deep and wholly personal reason prompting her to this
strange demonstration of vexation.

"I can't tell you everything," Julian answered.

"Oh, you can't kid me over that. I know well enough what men go to Paris
for!" she rejoined, with almost hysterical bitterness.

Julian was silent. It was curious, but this girl stirred his conscience
from its sleep, as once Valentine alone could stir it. But by how
different a method! The stillness and calm of one who was sinless were
replaced by the vehemence and the passion of one who was steeped in sin.
And yet the two opposites had, to some extent, the same effect. Julian
did not yet realize this thoroughly, and did not analyze it at all. Had
any one hinted to him that the waning influence of Valentine for good
could ever be balanced by the waxing influence of the lady of the
feathers, he would have laughed at the crazy notion. And in the first
place he would have denied that Valentine's spell upon him had changed in
nature; for Valentine was still as a god to him. And Cuckoo could never
be a goddess, either to him or to any one else. But, though he would
scarcely acknowledge it even to himself, he did not care for Cuckoo to
know fully the changing way of his life. Perhaps it was the curiously
strong line she had from the first taken with regard to his actions that
made him careful with her. Perhaps it was the incident of the vision of
the flame--but no; remembrance of that had been well-nigh lulled to sleep
by the lullabies of Valentine, by his disregard of it, his certainty that
it was an hallucination, a mirage. Whatever the cause might be, Julian
felt somewhat like a naughty boy in the angry presence of Cuckoo. As he
looked at her the greenish twilight painted a chill and menacing gleam in
her eyes, and made her twisting lips venomous and acrid to his glance.
Her rouge vanished in the twilight, or seemed only as a dull, darkish
cloud upon her thin and worn cheeks. She sat at the table almost like a
scarecrow, giving the tables of some strange law to a trembling and an
unwilling votary.

"I know!" she reiterated.

Julian said nothing. He did not choose to deny what was in fact the
truth, that his stay in Paris had not been free from fault, and yet he
did not feel inclined to do what most men in his situation must by all
means have done, challenge Cuckoo's right to sit in judgment, or even for
a moment to criticise any action of his. There was something about her, a
frankness perhaps, which made it impossible to put her out of court by
any allusion to her own life. And indeed that must have been cowardice
and an impossibility. Besides, she put herself and her own deeds calmly
away as unworthy and impossible of discussion, as things sunk down
beneath the wave of notice or comment, remote from criticism or
condemnation, because the life of their hopelessness had been so long
and sunless.

Cuckoo, with her eyes on Julian, was silent, too, now. She understood
that what her suspicion had affirmed, without actually knowing, was true,
and her stormy heart was swept by a whirlwind of jealousy, and of
womanish pity for the man she was jealous of. In that moment she felt
a sickness of life more sharp than she had ever felt before, and a dull
longing to be a different woman, a woman of Julian's class, and clever,
that she might be able to do something to keep him from sinking to the
level of the men she hated.

How could she, in her nakedness of permanent degradation, give a helping
hand to anybody? That was a clear rendering of the vague thought, vague
as this twilight in which they sat, that ran through her mind. Suddenly
she turned to the tray and poured herself out a cup of tea. The tea had
been standing while they talked, and was black and strong. She drank it
eagerly, and a wave of nervous energy rushed over her, surging up to her
brain like light and electricity. It gave to her a sort of reckless
valour to say just the thing she felt. She turned towards Julian with a
manner that was half shrew, half wildcat--street girls cannot always
compass the impressive, though they may feel the great eternities
nestling round their hearts--and cried out:

"I just hate you!"

All her jealousy rang in that cry, smothering the whisper of the maternal
passion that went ever with it. Julian could no longer doubt the truth of
Valentine's words.

"Cuckoo, don't be silly," he said hastily, and awkwardly enough.

"Silly!" she burst out. "What do I care for that? I ain't silly, either,
and I ain't blind like you are. I can see where you're goin'."

"I shall go away from here," Julian said, trying to laugh, "if you talk
in this ridiculous way."

She sprang up and ran passionately in front of the door, as if she
thought he was really going to escape.

"No, you don't," she said, and her accent seemed to draw near to that of
Whitechapel as her voice rose higher. "Not till I've said what I mean."

"Hush, Cuckoo! We shall have Mrs. Brigg up, thinking I'm murdering you."

"Let her come! And you are, that's what you are, murderin' me, and worse,
seein' you go where you're goin'. He's takin' you. It's all him. Yes, it
is! He'll make you as he is."

"Cuckoo, I won't have it."

Julian spoke sternly and got up. The little dogs, alarmed by the tumult,
had begun to whine uneasily, and at his movement Jessie barked in a thin
voice. Julian went to Cuckoo, took her wrists in his two hands, and drew
her away from the door; but she tore herself from his grasp with fury,
for the touch of his hands gave a clearer vision to her jealousy of his
secret deeds, and made her understand better the depth of her present
feeling.

"You shall have it," she cried. "You shall. I know men. I know what
you'll be. I know what women'll make of you."

"A man makes himself," Julian interrupted.

"Rot! That's all you know about it. I've seen them begin so nice and go
right down, like a stone in a well. And they never come up again. Not
they. No more'll you. D'you hear that?"

"I shall hear you better if you speak lower."

Cuckoo suddenly changed from a sort of frenzy to a violent calm.

"You're different already," she said. "Can't I see it?"

As if to emphasize her remark she approached her face quite close to his
in the twilight. While they had been arguing a cloud had passed over the
sun, and dimness increased in the little room. Both of them were still
standing up, and now Cuckoo peered into Julian's eyes with almost hungry
scrutiny. Her lips were still trembling with excitement and her mouth was
contorted into a sideways grin, expressive of contemptuous knowledge
of the descent of Julian's nature. She was a mere mask of passion, no
doubt a ridiculous object enough, touzled, dishevelled and shaken with
temper, as she leaned forward to get a better view of him. And Julian
was both vexed and disgusted by her outbreak, and sick of a scene which,
like all men, he ardently hated and would have given much to avoid. He
faced her coldly, endeavouring to calm her by banishing every trace of
excitement from his expression.

And then, in the twilight of the dingy room, and in the twilight of her
eyes, he saw the flame once more. A thin glint of sunshine found its way
in from the street, and threw a shadow near them. Cuckoo's eyes emitted
a greenish ray like a cat's, and in this ray the flame swam and
flickered, cold and pale, and, Julian fancied, menacing.

Perhaps, because he was already irritated and slightly strung up by
Cuckoo's attack, he felt a sudden anger against the flame, almost as he
might have felt a rage against a person. As he stared upon it, he could
almost believe that it, too, had eyes, scrutinizing, upbraiding,
condemning him, and that in the thin riband and shade of its fire there
dwelt a heart to hate him for the dear sin to which, at last, he began to
give himself. For the moment Cuckoo and the flame were as one, and for
the moment he feared and hated them both.

Abruptly he held up his hand to stop the further words that were
fluttering on her thin and painted lips.

"Hush!" he said, in a little hiss of protest against sound.

For again, fighting with the anger, there was awe in his heart.

There was something unusual in his expression which held her silent, a
furtive horror and expectation which she did not understand. And while
she waited, Julian turned suddenly, and left the room and the house.




CHAPTER VI

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS LEARNS WISDOM


Julian did not come again to the house in the Marylebone Road for at
least a fortnight, and during that time the lady of the feathers was left
alone with her life and with her sad thoughts. The summer days went
heavily by, and the sultry summer nights. No rain fell, and London was
veiled in dust. The pavements were so hot that they burned the feet that
trod them. Sometimes they seemed to burn Cuckoo's very soul, and to sear
her heart as she stood upon them for hours in the night, while the crowds
of Piccadilly flitted by like shadows in an evil dream. She stared
mechanically at the faces of those passing as she strolled with a lagging
footstep along the line of houses. She turned to meet the eyes of the
pale-faced loungers in the lighted entrance of the St. James's
restaurant, "Jimmy's," as she called it. But her mind was preoccupied. A
problem had fastened upon it with the tenacity of some vampire or strange
clinging creature of night. Cuckoo was wrestling with an angel; or was it
a devil? And often, when she stopped on the pavement and exchanged a word
or two with some casual stranger, she scarcely knew what she said, or to
what kind of man she was speaking. She was possessed by one thought, the
thought of Julian and of his danger. Valentine, in her thoughts, was
strangely a pale shadow, incredibly evil, incredibly persistent, luring
Julian downwards, beckoning him with the thin hand of a saint to depths
unpierced by the gaze of even the most sinful. And that hand of the saint
was only part of the appalling deception of his beautiful and tragically
lying body, a crystal temple in which a demon dwelt secretly, peering
from its concealment through the shadowy blue windows, in which Julian
saw truth and honour, but in which Cuckoo read things to terrify and to
dismay.

For she was not wholly unaware of the mystery of Valentine, of the sharp
contrast between his appearance and the vision of his nature as it came
to her. She understood that there was something in the fine beauty of
his face and figure to account for Julian's blindness and refusal to be
warned against him. Cuckoo's intuition, the intuition of an unlearned and
instinctive creature trained by the hardest circumstances to rely on what
she called her wits, laid the crystal temple in ruins, and drove the
demon from its lurking-place naked and shrieking into the open. But,
after all, was not she rather deceived than Julian? Julian, from the
first moment of meeting Valentine, looked upon him as saint. Cuckoo,
from the first moment of meeting, looked upon him as devil. Each put
him aside from the general run of humanity, the one in a heaven of the
imagination, the other in a hell. Neither would allow him to be midway
between the two, containing possibilities of both,--ordinary, natural
man. Julian angrily scouted the notion of Valentine's being like other
men. Cuckoo felt instinctively that he was not. And so they glorified
and cursed him.

Cuckoo had at first cursed him plainly in the market-place and upon the
house-top. But that was before she had learned wisdom. Slowly she learnt
it on these hot days and nights, when the London dust filtered over the
paint upon her cheeks and lips, clung round the shadows in the hollows
beneath her eyes, and slept in the artificial primrose of her elaborate
cloud of hair. Slowly she learnt it in many vague and struggling mental
arguments, in which logic was a dwarf and passion a giant, in which
instinct strangled reason, and love wandered as a shamefaced fairy with
tear-dimmed eyes.

Julian's prolonged absence and silence first taught the lady of the
feathers the slow necessity of wisdom, otherwise, perhaps, her vehement
ignorance could never have absorbed the precious thing. Women of her
training and vile experience, nerve-ridden, and clothed in hysteria as
in a garment, often think to gain what they want by the mere shrillness
of outcry, the mere grabbing of ostentatious, eager hands and frenzy of
body. Their lives lead them through a wonder of knowledge and of danger
to the demeanour of babyhood, and they cry for every rattle, much more
for every moon. So Cuckoo had thrown her feelings down before Julian.
She had dashed her hatred of Valentine in his face; she had cried her
fears of his downfall to that which she consorted with eternally and
loathed--when she had still the energy to loathe it, which was not
always--in his ears with the ardent shrillness of a boatswain's whistle.
She had, in fact, done all that her instinct prompted her to do, and the
result was the exit of Julian from her life. This set her, always in her
sharp and yet childish way, sometimes oddly clear sighted, often muddled
and distressed, to turn upon instinct with a contempt not known before,
to discard it with the fury still of a child. And instinct thus forsaken
by an essentially instinctive creature opened the gates of distress and
of confusion.

By day Cuckoo sat in her stuffy little parlour brooding wearily. She
waited in day after day, always hoping that Julian would return, full of
resolutions, prompted by fear, to be gentle, even lively, to him when he
did come, full of excited intention which could not be fulfilled; for he
did not come. And by night, while she tramped the streets, still Cuckoo's
anxious mind revolved the question of her behaviour in the future. For
she would not, passionately would not, allow herself to contemplate the
possibility that Julian's anger against her would keep him forever
beyond reach either of her fury or of her tenderness. She insisted on
contemplating his ultimate reappearance, and her wits were at work to
devise means to win him from Valentine's influence without stirring his
horror at any thought of disloyalty to his friend. Cuckoo, in fact,
wanted to be subtle, intended to be subtle, and sought intensely the
right way of subtlety. She sought it as she walked, as she hovered at
street corners in the night, while the hours ran by, sometimes till the
streets were nearly deserted, sometimes even till the dawn sang in the
sky to the wail of the hungry woman beneath it. She sought it even in the
company of those strangers who stepped for a night into her life as into
a public room, and stepped from it on the morrow with a careless and
everlasting adieu, half-drowned in the chink of money.

And sometimes she thought, with a sick dreariness, that she would never
find it, and sometimes courage failed her, and, despite her passionate
resolution, she did for a moment say to herself, "If he should never come
again." There were moments, too, when every other feeling was drowned by
sheer jealousy of Julian, when the tiger-cat woke in this street-girl who
had always had to fight, when her thin frame shivered with the shaking
violence of the soul it held. Then she clenched her hands, and longed to
plant her nails in the faces of those other women, divined, though never
seen,--those French women who had sung him, like sirens, to Paris, away
from the sea of her greedy love. Her similes were commonplace. In her
heart she called such sirens hussies. Had she met them the battle of
words would have been strong and singularly unclean. That she herself was
a hussy to other men, not to Julian, did not trouble her. She did not
realize it. Human nature has always one blind eye, even when the other
does not squint. This passion of jealousy, circling round an absent man,
seized her at the strangest, the most inopportune moments. Sometimes it
came upon her in the street, and the meditation of it was so vital and
complete that Cuckoo could not go on walking, lest she should, by
movement, miss the keenest edge of the agony. Then she would stop
wherever she was, lean against the down-drawn shutter of a shop, or the
corner of a public house, among the gaping loungers, let her powdered
chin drop upon her breast, and sink into a fit of desperate detective
duty, during which she followed Julian like a shadow through imagined
wanderings, and watched him committing all those imagined actions that
could cause her to feel the wildest and most inhuman despair.

One night, when she was thus sunk and swallowed up in the maw of
miserable inward contemplation, a young man, who was walking by, observed
her. He was very young and eager, fresh from Cambridge, ardent after the
mysteries and the subtleties of life, as is the fashion of clever modern
youth. The sight of this painted girl leaning, motionless as some doll or
puppet, against the iron shutters of the vacant house, her head drooped,
and her hands, as if the strings to manipulate her had fallen loose from
the grasp that guided them, caught and eventually fascinated him. It was
a late hour of night. He passed on and returned, shooting each time a
devouring, analytical glance upon Cuckoo. Again he came back, walking a
little nearer to the houses. His heart beat quicker as he approached the
puppet. Its complete immobility was almost appalling, and each time he
came within view of it he examined it violently to see if a limb was
displaced. No; one might almost suppose that it was the body of some one
struck dead so suddenly against the shop that she had not had time to
fall, and so remained leaning thus. With shorter and shorter revolutions,
like a dog working itself up to approach some motionless but strange
object, the youth went by Cuckoo, hesitating more and more each time he
came in front of her with strange feelings of one being vaguely criminal.
He longed to touch the puppet, to see if any quiver would convulse its
limbs, any light flicker into its eyes. And he was so fascinated and
interested that at last he did furtively stop precisely in front of it.
For a second both of them were motionless, he from contemplation of the
outward, she of the inward. Then Cuckoo's thoughtful jealousy came to a
ghastly crisis. Her imagination had shown her frightful things and
herself an utterly helpless and compelled spectator. The puppet opened
its red lips to utter a sob, lifted up its white and heavy eyelids to let
loose tears upon its unnaturally bright cheeks, stirred its hanging hands
to clasp them in a crude gesture of dull fury. The youth started as at a
corpse showing suddenly the pangs of life. His movement shot Cuckoo like
a bullet into her real world. Through her tears she saw a man regarding
her. In a flash, old habit brought to her a smile, a turned head of
coquetry, an entreating hand, a hackneyed phrase that reiteration
rendered parrot-like in intonation. The youth shrank back and fled away
in the darkness. Long afterwards that incident haunted him as an epitome
of all the horrors of cruel London.

And Cuckoo, thus roused and deserted, put aside for the moment her
nightmare, and started once more upon her promenade of the night.

At last she began to fear that Julian would never come back, and by a
sudden impulse she wrote to him a short, very ill-spelt letter, hoping he
would come to tea with her on a certain afternoon. On the day mentioned
she waited in an agony of expectation. She had put on his black dress,
removed all traces of paint and powder from her face, remembering his
former request and her experiment, tricked Jessie out in a bright yellow
satin riband twisted into a bow almost larger than herself, and bought
flowers--large ones, sunflowers--to give to her dingy room an air of
refinement and of gaiety. Amid all this brilliancy of yellow satin and
yellow flowers she waited uneasily in her simple black gown. The day was
dull, not wet, but brooding and severe, iron-grey, like a hard-featured
Puritan, and still with the angry peace of coming thunder. The window was
open to let in air, but no air seemed to enter, only the weariful and
incessant street noises. Jessie wriggled about, biting sideways with
animation to get at her yellow adornment, and pattering around the
furniture seeking stray crumbs, which sometimes eluded her for a while
and, lying in hidden nooks and corners, unexpectedly rewarded her
desultory and impromptu search. Cuckoo leaned her arms across the table,
glanced at the tea things for two, and listened. A cab stopped presently.
She twisted in her chair to face the window. It had drawn up next door,
and she subsided again into her fever of attention. Jessie found a crumb
and swallowed it with as much action and large air of tasting it as if it
had been a city dinner. The hands of the clock drew to the hour named in
Cuckoo's note, touched it, passed it. A sickness of despair began to
creep upon her like a thousand little biting insects. She shuffled in her
seat, glanced this way and that, pressed her lips together, and, taking
her arms from the table, clasped her hands tightly in her lap. Then she
sat straight up and counted the tickings of the clock, the spots on the
tablecloth, the gold stars upon the wallpaper of the room. She counted
and counted until her head began to swim. And all the time she waited,
the lady of the feathers was learning wisdom. The lesson was harsh, as
the lessons of time usually are; the lesson was bitter as Marah waters.
And she thought the lesson was going to be a cross too heavy for her
narrow shoulders to bear when the iron gate of the garden sang its
invariable little note of protest on being opened. Cuckoo's head turned
slowly to one side. Her haggard eyes swept the view of the path. Julian
was walking up it.

She met him very quietly, almost seriously, and he shook hands with
her as if they had been together quite recently and parted the best of
friends. Only, as he held her hand, she noticed that he cast a hasty, and
as she fancied a fearful, glance into her eyes. Then he seemed reassured
and they sat down to tea. Cuckoo supposed that he had for the moment
dreaded what she called another row, and was satisfied by her expression
of good temper. They drank their tea, and after a short interval of
constraint began chattering together very much as usual. At first Cuckoo
had hardly dared to look much at Julian, lest he should see the joy she
felt at his coming, but when she was pouring out his second cup she let
her eyes rest fully on his face, and only then did she realize that a
shadow lay upon it, a shadow from which it had been free before.

With a trembling hand she filled the cup and stared upon the shadow.
She knew its brethren so well. In dead days she herself had helped to
manufacture such shadows upon the faces of men. She had seen them come,
thin, faint, delicate, impalpable as a veil of mist before morning. Only
morning light never followed them. And she had seen them stay and grow
and deepen and darken. Shadow over the eyes of the man, shadow round his
lips, shadow like a cloud upon the forehead, shadow over the picture
painted by the soul, working through the features, that we call
expression. Many times had she seen the journey taken by a man's face
to that haunted bourne, arrived at which it is scarcely any more a man's
face, but only a mask expressive of one, or of many, sins. Had Julian
then definitely set foot upon that journey? As yet the shadow that lay
over him was no more than the lightest film, suggestive of a slightly
unnatural and forbidding fatigue. Yet Cuckoo shrank from it as from a
ghost.

"Why, Cuckoo, your hand is trembling!" Julian said.

"Oh, I was out late last night," she answered, putting the teapot hastily
down. And they talked on, pretending there were only two of them and no
shadowy third.

Julian, having returned at last to the Marylebone Road, fell into his
old habit of coming there often. And each time that he came the lady of
the feathers counted a fresh step on his hideous journey towards the
haunted bourne. Yet she never spoke of the dreary addition sum she was
doing. She never reproached Julian, or wept, or let him see that her
heart was growing cold as a pilgrim who kneels, bare, in long prayers
upon the steps of a shrine. For she had learnt wisdom, and hugged it in
her arms. Valentine was scarcely ever mentioned between them; but once,
and evidently by accident, Julian allowed an expression to escape him
which implied that Valentine now objected to the intimacy with Cuckoo.
Immediately the words were uttered, Julian looked confused, and obviously
would have wished to recall them, had it been possible.

"Oh, I know as he don't like me," Cuckoo said.

Julian answered nothing.

"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 brass 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
passage _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 emancipated 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, reassured, 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