Flames Part 74

Suddenly Cuckoo sprang on her, twisted her round, and spun her out into the cold pa.s.sage. "Light the fire, I tell you!"

She banged the bedroom door and went on with her rapid toilet.

When she came into the sitting-room an uneasy fire was sputtering in the grate, one gas-jet flared, and Doctor Levillier was standing by the window looking out at the fog. He turned to greet her.

"I thought you'd forgotten--or didn't mean to come," Cuckoo said; "they often do--people that say they will to me, I mean."

The doctor held out his hand with a smile.

"No. Am I interrupting you?"

"Me!" said Cuckoo, in amazement, thinking of her empty days. "Lord, no."

Her accent was convincing. The little doctor sat down by the fire and put his hat and gloves on the table.

"Mrs. Brigg thought I was ill--you bein' a doctor," Cuckoo said, with an attempt at a laugh. She felt nervous now, and was not sustained today by the strung-up enthusiasm which had supported her in Harley Street. "Funny there bein' a fog again this time, ain't it?"

"Yes. I hope we shall meet some day in clear weather."

As the doctor said that, following a tender thought of the girl, he glanced round the room and at Cuckoo. "I hope so," he repeated. Then, rather abruptly:

"Two or three nights ago I went to dine with Mr. Addison. He was out. He was here with you."

Cuckoo got red. She could still be very sensitive with a few people, and perhaps Mrs. Brigg and her kind had trained her into irritable suspicion of suspicion in others.

"Only for a friendly visit," she said hastily. "Nothin' else. He would stop."

"I understand perfectly," the doctor said gently. Cuckoo was rea.s.sured.

"Did he say as he'd been?"

"Yes."

Cuckoo looked at the doctor and a world of reproach dawned in her eyes.

"I say," she said, "you haven't done nothin'. He's worse than ever. He's gettin'--oh, he's gettin' cruel bad."

Tears came up over the world of reproach.

"It's all him, all Valentine," she said.

And Doctor Levillier was moved to cast reticence, the usual loyalty of one man to another who has been his friend, away. Somehow the dead body of Rip lying in the snow put that old friends.h.i.+p far off. And also an inward thrill caught him near to Cuckoo. An impulse, swift and vital, thrust his mind to hers.

"You are right," he answered. "I believe that it is all Valentine."

"There! Didn't I tell you?" Cuckoo cried with eyes of triumph. "It's been him from the first. Oh, get him--get Julian away."

The doctor laid his hand upon Cuckoo's, which was stretched upon the tablecloth, very gently, almost abstractedly.

"Will you tell me something?" he said.

"What's it?"

"You love Julian?"

"Me!" the lady of the feathers said.

Her voice trembled over the word. She stole a hasty, hunted glance at the doctor. Was he, too, going to jeer at her? Would no one allow her to have a clean corner in her heart?

"You're laughin' at me. What's the good of such as me doin' a thing like that--lovin' a man?"

"I think you must love Julian. If you do, perhaps you are meant to protect and save him."

A secret voice prompted the doctor with the words he spoke, gave them to him, bent him irresistibly to repeat them. Never before had he felt what it is to be between the strong hands of destiny.

"Me! Me save any one!" Cuckoo said, trembling.

"Yes, you. There is something in you--I feel it and I can't tell you why, nor what it is--something that has hold of Julian. He told us so the other night. Don't you know what it is?"

"Eh?"

"Perhaps he feels that you love him--purely, cleanly."

"I do--oh! I do that!" Cuckoo cried.

A wonder as to the relations between Julian and this girl shot through the doctor. He was the last man in the world to think evil of any one, but just then, as Cuckoo moved, the gaslight struck fully on her. The dye on her hair shone crudely. The red and white of her face burned as on the face of a clown. And then even the doctor's good heart wondered. Cuckoo knew it in an instant, and her face hardened and looked older.

"Oh, go on," she said rudely. "Think as the others do. d.a.m.n you men! d.a.m.n you! d.a.m.n you!"

And without warning she put her head down on the table and broke into a wild pa.s.sion of tears. She sobbed, and as she sobbed she cursed and clenched her hands. She lost herself in fury and in despair. The Fates had stung her too hard this time, and she must blaspheme against them with her voice of the streets, her language of the streets, her poor heart--not quite of the streets. The Fates had stung her too hard, for they had put a flaw even in this one self-respect of hers. That one night accused her whenever she thought of Julian, whenever she saw the dissipation deepen round his eyes. She was not to have even one thing that she could be quite proud of; not one thing of which she could say, "This has been always pure." And then she turned on the doctor and cried:

"Go on--think it--think it! Think what you like! But I'll tell you the truth. There was only once I did him any harm, and that wasn't my fault.

I never wanted to. I hated it. I told him I hated it. I didn't want him to be that, like the others. And that was Valentine, too. And now--just because of that I'm no use. And you'd said I might be, you'd said I might be."

"And I say you shall be."

The wail died in Cuckoo's throat. The tears were arrested as by a spell.

Dr. Levillier had got upon his feet. All the truth and tenderness of his heart was roused and quickened. He knew real pa.s.sion, real grief, and from that moment he knew and trusted the lady of the feathers. And by the strength of her bitterness, even by the broken curses that would have shocked so many of the elect of this world, he measured the width and the depth of her possibilities. She had sent to d.a.m.nation--what? The vile cruelty, the loathsome, unspeakable, dastardly mercilessness of the world. To d.a.m.nation with it! That was the loud echo in his man's heart.

"That one night is nothing," he said. "Or rather it is something that you must redeem. It is good to have to pay for a thing. It is that makes one work. There is a work for you to do, a work which I believe no one else can do. You love Julian. Love him more. Make him love you. My will cannot fight the will of Valentine over him. No man's will can. A woman's may.

Yours may, shall."

His pale, small, delicate face flamed with excitement as he spoke. Few of his patients looking upon him just then would have known their calm little doctor. But Cuckoo had cried to him out of the very depths, and out of the very depths he answered her, still prompted--though now he knew it not--by that secret voice which sometimes rules a man, at which he wonders ignorantly, the voice of some soul, some great influence, hidden from him in the s.p.a.ces of the air, the voice of a flame, warm, keen, alive, and power-prompting.

And Cuckoo, as she listened to the doctor, had once again a hint of her own strength, a thrill of hope, a sense that she, even she, was not broken quite in pieces upon the cruel wheel of the world.

"Whatever can I do?" she said; "Valentine's got him."