Flames Part 42

"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 att.i.tude 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sertion and fear of Valentine, primarily, but there were other reasons prompting him to an unusual att.i.tude 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 coa.r.s.e 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 Sat.u.r.day is boat-race day?"

"What, you have really got a box for the 'Empire'?"

"Yes; and I mean to invite Miss Bright."