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 _métier_? 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.