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.