Flames Part 66

"Then you know as I ain't ill?"

Doctor Levillier was still more surprised. Not understanding what was in her mind, he entirely failed to keep pace with its agility.

"Why do you come to me, then?" he asked.

"Oh," she returned, with a quickly gathering hesitation, "I thought as perhaps you knew."

"I! But we have never met before."

The doctor bent his eyes on her searchingly. For a moment he began to wonder whether his visitor was quite right in her head. Cuckoo shuffled under his gaze. The very kindliness of his face and gentleness of his voice made her feel hot and abashed. A p.r.i.c.kly sensation ran over her body as she cleared her throat and said, monosyllabically:

"No."

The doctor waited.

"What is it?" he said at length. "Tell me why you have called. If you are not ill, what is it you want of me?"

"You'll laugh, p'r'aps."

"Laugh? Is it something funny, then?"

"Funny! Not it!"

The sound of her voice seemed to give her some courage, for she went on with more hardy resolution:

"Look here, you can see what I am--oh yes, you can--and you wonder what I'm doin' here. Well, if I tell you, will you promise as you won't laugh at me?"

This was Cuckoo's way of delicately sounding the doctor's depths. She thought it decidedly subtle.

"Yes, I'll promise that," the doctor said.

He looked at her faded young face and felt no inclination to laugh.

"Well, then," Cuckoo said, more excitedly, "you know Ju--Mr. Addison, don't you?"

The doctor began to see a ray of light.

"Certainly I do," he said.

"And Mr. Cresswell?"

"He is one of my most intimate friends."

The words were spoken with an unconscious warmth that chilled Cuckoo. For surely the man who spoke thus of the man she hated, must be her enemy.

She faltered visibly, and a despairing expression crept into her eyes.

"I don't know as it's any use my sayin' it," she began as if half to herself.

The doctor saw that she was much troubled and the kindness of his nature was roused.

"Don't be afraid of me," he said. "You have come here to tell me something, tell it frankly. I am a friend of both the people you mention."

"You can't be that," she suddenly cried. "n.o.body can't be that!"

"Why not?"

"You ought to know."

She said it fiercely. All her self-consciousness was suddenly gone, swept away by the flood of thought and of remembrance that was surging through her mind.

"Why can't you see what he is," she exclaimed, "any more than he can, than Julian--Mr. Addison, I mean? Any one'd think you was all mad, they would."

Doctor Levillier was glad he had admitted the lady of the feathers to his presence. Interest sprang up in him, alive and searching.

"Tell me what you mean," he said. "Are you talking about Mr. Cresswell?"

"Yes, I am; and I say of all the beasts in London he's the greatest."

Cuckoo did not choose her words carefully. She was highly excited and she wanted to be impressive. It seemed to her that to use strong language was the only way to be impressive. So she used it. The doctor's face grew graver.

"Surely you hardly know what you're saying," he said very quietly.

But his thoughts flew to that summer night when his mastiffs howled against Valentine, and he felt as if a mystery were deepening round him as the autumn mist of evening deepened in the street outside.

"I do," she reiterated. "I do. But n.o.body won't see it. And it's no use what I see. How can it be?"

The words were almost a wail.

"Tell me what you see."

Cuckoo looked into the doctor's sincere eyes, and a sudden rush of hope came to her.

"That's what I want to. But if you like him you'll only be angry."

"No, I shall not."

"Well, then. I see as he's ruinin' his friend."

"Ruining Mr. Addison?"

"Yes."

It struck the doctor as very strange that such a girl as Cuckoo obviously was should cry out in such a pa.s.sionate way against the ruin of any young man. Was it not her fate to ruin others as she herself had been ruined?

He wondered what her connection with the two youths was, and perhaps his face showed something of his wonder, for Cuckoo added, after a long glance at him:

"It's true; yes, it is," as if she read his doubts.

"How do you come to know it?" the doctor said, not at all unkindly, but as if anxious to elucidate matters.