"Yes, it is," Cuckoo reiterated, and nodding her head with the obstinacy

of a child.

"That--Valentine! It has no resemblance to him."

The doctor took up the photograph, and examined it closely. "This is not

Valentine."

"He told me it was. It's Marr--and somehow it's him now."

"Marr," said the doctor, sharply. "Why, he is dead. Julian told me so.

He died--he died in the Euston Road on the night of Valentine's trance.

Ah, but you know nothing about that. Did you know Marr, then?"

"Yes, I knew him."

Cuckoo hesitated. But something taught her to be perfectly frank with the

doctor. So she added:

"I'd been with him at that hotel the night he died."

"You were the woman! But, then, how can you say that this (he touched the

photograph with his finger) is Valentine?"

"He says he's really Marr."

Cuckoo spoke in the most mulish manner, following her habit when she was

completely puzzled, but sticking to what she believed to be the truth.

"Marr and Valentine one man! He told you that?"

"He says to me--'I'm Marr.'"

Cuckoo repeated the words steadily, but like a parrot. The doctor said

nothing, only looked at her and at the photograph. He was thinking now

of his suspicion as to Valentine's sanity. Had he, perhaps in his

madness, been playing on the ignorance of the lady of the feathers?

She went on:

"It was on the night he told me all that. I couldn't understand what he

is and what he's doing. And he said that the real Valentine had gone. And

then he said--'I am Marr.'"

"The real Valentine gone. Yes," said the doctor, gravely, "that is true.

Does he then know that he is--?" "Mad" was on his lips, but he checked

himself.

"What else did he say that night?" he asked. "Can you remember? If you

succeed, you may help Julian."

Cuckoo frowned till her long, broad eyebrows nearly met. The grimace gave

her the aspect of a sinister boy, bold and audacious. For she protruded

her under lip, too, and the graces of ardent feeling, of pain and of

passion, died out of her eyes. But this abrupt and hard mask was only

caused by the effort she was making after thought, after understanding.

She pressed her feet upon the ground, and the toes inside her worn shoes

curved themselves inwards. What had Valentine said? What--what? She

stared dully at the doctor under her corrugated brows.

"What did he say?" she murmured in an inward voice, "Well--he didn't want

me to see you. He came here about that--my seeing you."

"Yes."

"And--and Marr's not dead, he says, at least not done with. Yes, that was

it--he says as no strong man who's lived long's done with when he's put

away. See?"

Her face lighted up a little. She was beginning to trust her memory.

"The influence of men lives after them," the doctor said. "Marr's too.

Yes. He said that?"

She nodded. Then with a flash of understanding, a flash of that

smouldering power which she had felt in loneliness and longed to tear

out from its prison, she cried:

"That's it. That's how he's Marr, then."

She hesitated.

"Isn't it?" she said, flushing with the thought that she might be showing

herself a fool. For she scarcely understood what she really meant.

"Valentine, no longer himself, but endowed with the influence of Marr,"

the doctor muttered; "she means that he told her something like that.

The phantasy of an unsteady brain."--"Go on," he added to her.

But Cuckoo was relapsing into confusion already.

"And then he talked a lot about will, as he called it. Can't remember

what he said."

"Try to."

She was silent, knitting her brows.

"It's no use. I can't," she said, despairingly. "But I know he says that

he's really Marr and that he's killed Valentine. He said that; I know he

did."

She glanced eagerly at the doctor, in the obvious hope that his

cleverness, which she believed to be unlimited and profound, would

in a flash divine all the strange secret from this exposition of her

disjointed recollection. With each word she spoke, however, the doctor

became more and more convinced that Valentine had only been cruelly

amusing himself with her, or weaving for her benefit some intricate

web of vain madness. And Cuckoo, noticing this now, and recollecting the

momentary clearness of comprehension which had seized her at one point in

Valentine's wild sermon to her, was mad with herself for not being able

to seize again that current of inspiration, almost mad with the doctor

for not unravelling the mystery. This excess of feeling finally drowned

and swept away as a corpse the memory of the gospel of influence.

"I can't remember no more," she said stolidly. "There was ever such a lot

about--about some one as was good and didn't want to be good any more,

and so it was driven away--I don't know. P'rhaps he was only gamin' me."

She stared moodily at her feet, which she had stuck out from under her

dress. The doctor said nothing, but at her last speech his face had lit

up with a sort of excitement. For had she not described in those few

ill-chosen words the very mental position of the former Valentine? A

saint at first with his will, a saint at last against his will--and now

a saint no more. That was, perhaps, the key to the whole matter. A good

man prays to be no longer good. His prayer is granted. His grievous

desire is fulfilled. And then he may pray forever in vain to be as he

once was. Yet the change in Valentine was more even than this, more

than the gliding from white purity to black sin. There was something.

As Cuckoo and the doctor sat in silence, she staring vacantly and empty

of thought, being now utterly and chaotically puzzled, he thinking

deeply, the door bell rang. In a moment Mrs. Brigg appeared, went to

Cuckoo and muttered in her ear:

"Mr. Haddison wants to come in. I told him you was busy."

"Oh," said Cuckoo, "I say--wait," and then to the doctor, "It's him. It's

Julian."

"Let him in," the doctor said quickly.

To see Cuckoo and Julian together might tell him much.

Julian came in, stumbling rather heavily at the entrance of the room.

CHAPTER VI

CLEAR WEATHER

"Damn that mat!" he exclaimed. "I say, Cuckoo, who the--?" The question

faded on his lips as he saw Doctor Levillier, on whom he gazed with a

vacant surprise that, added to the unsteadiness of his movement upon

them, spoke his condition very plainly.

"You, doctor! Well, I'm damned! What are you here for?"

"To see Miss Bright," the doctor said, coolly.

He had pushed forward a chair quickly with his foot. Julian collapsed in

it by the table. Beads of the fog lay all over his long greatcoat and

upon his hat, which he had not yet taken off. His face was flushed and

dull.

"It's an infernal evening," he said. "You doctoring Cuckoo, eh?"

"I have been talking to Miss Bright."

"Oh, all right. I don't mind. Cuckoo, help me off with this coat. There's

a good girl."

She obeyed without a word. When the coat was off Julian threw himself

back in the chair and heaved a long sigh. His hat fell onto the floor

with a bang, but he did not seem to notice it. His face was moody and

miserable.

"Molly's thrown me over," he said.

Cuckoo caught her breath sharply and stole a glance at the doctor.

"Have some tea?" she said.

"No; a brandy and soda."

"Haven't got it. You must do with tea."

She rang the bell and ordered it despite his grumblings. Mrs. Brigg made

no difficulty. Julian had long ago soothed her delicate susceptibilities

with gold.

So, Cuckoo, oddly shy and excited, made tea for the doctor and Julian.

The tea cleared the latter's fogged brain a little, but he was still

morose and self-centred. He had evidently come to pour some woes out

to Cuckoo and was restrained by the presence of the doctor, at whom he

looked from time to time with an expression that was near to disfavour.

But the doctor began to chat easily and cordially, and Julian gradually

thawed.

"I suppose you know Rip's dead," he said presently. "Went out the other

night and got frozen in the snow. Poor little beggar. Val's awfully cut

up about it."

"Is he?" said the doctor.

"Yes. Dear old Val. Dev'lish hard Rip's never making it up with him

again, wasn't it? Rip didn't know a good fellow, did he, doctor?"

"He was devoted to Valentine once," the doctor said.

"Ah, but he changed. Dogs are just like women, just like women, never the

same two days together. Curse them."

He appeared to have forgotten Cuckoo's presence, and she sat listening

eagerly, quite unmoved by the dagger thrust at her sex.

"Dogs don't usually change. Their faithfulness bears everything without

breaking."

"Except a trance, then," Julian said, still with a wavering in-and-out

stolidity, at the same time mournful and almost ludicrous.

"That trance did for Rip; did for him, I tell you. He never knew poor old

Val again. As if he thought him another man after that, another man."

The doctor's eyes met Cuckoo's. She had a teacup at her rouged lips, and

had paused in the act of drinking, fascinated by the words that wound so

naturally into the legend of change which she knew and knew not.

"As if Val wasn't just the same," Julian pursued, shaking his head

slowly. "Just the same."

"You think so?" the doctor said, quickly.

"Eh?"

"You think that trance made no difference to him?"

"Why, how should it?"

Cuckoo drank her tea hastily and put the cup down.

"How should it?" Julian repeated, as if with a heavy challenge.

"It might in many ways, to his health--"

"He's stronger than ever he was."

"Or to his mind, his nature. You see no change there that might have

frightened Rip?"

"Not I. He's more of a man, good old Val, even than he was."

"Ah! You acknowledge there is a change."

"Give me some more tea, Cuckoo," Julian said, thrusting his cup towards

her. "Make it strong. It's picking me up." He sat forward in his chair

and began to light a cigar, keeping his eyes on the doctor.

"Well, if you call that a change; to get like other men. Old Val was a

saint. I loved him then, but I love him ten times more now he's--a--the

other thing, you know. Ten times more. He knows the world now, and his

advice is worth having. I'd follow him anywhere. He can't go wrong. Takes

care of himself, and of me too. I might have been anything--anything, but

for him. Instead of what I am--"

He drew himself up with some pride, and pulled at the cup which Cuckoo

pushed towards him.

"I'm just what Val makes me; just what he makes me," he said, taking

obvious joy in the thought. "Val can make me do anything. You know that,

doctor?"

"Yes. Then you have changed with him, become more of a man, as you call

it, with him. Is that so, Julian?"

"I suppose so."

Julian was drinking his tea, which had become very strong from standing.

"And are you happier than you were before?"

The doctor spoke insistently and gravely. Cuckoo had taken Jessie onto

her lap and now stroked the little dog quickly and softly with a thin,

fluttering hand. Julian seemed trying to think, to dive into his mind and

discover its real feelings.

"I suppose so," he said presently. "But who's happy? I should like to

know. Cuckoo isn't. Are you, Cuckoo?"

It seemed a cruel question, addressed to that spectre of girlhood.

"I dunno," she answered swiftly. "It don't matter much either way."

"She may be," the doctor said. "And you were happy, Julian."

The tea had certainly cleared the boy's brain. His manner was more

sensible, and the heavy sensuality had gone from his eyes. Though he

still looked haggard and wretched, he was no longer the mere wreck of

vice he had seemed when he drifted into the little room out of the fog.

"Was I?" he said slowly. "It seems a devil of a time ago."

The doctor's heart warmed to these two young creatures, children to

him, yet who had seen so much, gone so far down into the depths that

lie beneath the feet of life. He thought in that moment that he could

willingly give up all his own peace of mind, success, fame, restfulness

of heart, to set them straight up, face to face with strength and purity

once more. One was well born, educated, still handsome, the other a

so-called lost woman, and originally only a very poor and hopelessly

ignorant girl. Yet their community of misery and sorrow put them side

by side, like two children who gather violets in a lane together, or

drown together in some strong, sad river.

"It is not so long, Julian," he said. "Only before Valentine's trance."

Julian caught him up quickly.

"Why d'you say that, doctor?"

"Why? Simply because it is truth."

"You're always at that trance. I believe it's just because you told us

not to sit again. But there was no harm done."

"You are sure of that?"

As he put the question the doctor's mind was on a hunt round that sleep

and waking. He had gradually come to think that night a night of some

strange crisis, through which Valentine had passed from what he had

been to what he was. Yet his knowledge could not set at the door of that

unnatural slumber the blame of all that followed it. His imagination

might, but not his knowledge. He wondered whether Julian might not help

him to elucidation.

"Sure? of course! Why not? Valentine's all right. I'm all right. Rip's

the only one gone. And if he'd only stayed in the house that night he'd

be all right too."

"No, Addison."

Julian stared at this flat contradiction.

"Not?"

"Rip never went out of the house."

"But he died in the snow."

"No," the doctor said quietly. "He died in your dining-room, of

fear--fear of his old master, Valentine."

"What?" said Julian, gripping the table with his right hand. "Val had

been at him?"

In two or three simple, straightforward words, the doctor described the

death of Rip. When he had finished Cuckoo gave a little cry, and clasped

the astonished and squirming Jessie close in her arms. Julian's brow

clouded.

"He might have left Rip alone," he said. "It's odd dogs can't bear Val

now."

"Again since that trance," the doctor said.

Julian looked at him with acute irritation, but said nothing. Then,

turning his eyes on Cuckoo, who was still hugging Jessie, he snapped his

fingers at the little dog and called its name. Cuckoo extended her arms,

holding Jessie, to Julian, and he took the small creature gently. And as

he took her he bent forward and gazed long and deeply into Cuckoo's eyes.

She trembled and flushed, half with pleasure, half with a nervous

consciousness of the doctor's presence.

"Oh, why do you?" she murmured, turning her head away. The action seemed

to make Julian aware that perhaps his manner was odd, and his subsequent

glance at the doctor was very plainly, and even rudely, explanatory

of a wish to be alone with Cuckoo. The doctor read its meaning and

resolved to go away. With the quick observation and knowledge of men

which long years of training had given to him, he saw that, strangely

enough, the only creature whose influence could in any way cope with the

influence of Valentine was not himself, who once had been as a seer to

the two young men, but the thin, spectral, weary, painted Cuckoo. There,

in that small room, with the long murmur of London outside, sat these two

human beings, desolate woman, vice-ridden man, both fallen down in the

deep mire, both almost whelmed in the flood of Fate. And he stood strong,

faithful, clean-souled, brave-hearted, yet impotent, regarding them. For

some power willed it that misery alone could hold out a helping hand to

misery, that vice and degradation must rise to thrust back vice and

degradation. The fallen creature was to be the protector, the unredeemed

to be the redeemer. Doctor Levillier knew this when he saw Julian's

long glance into the hollow eyes of Cuckoo. And he thrilled with the

knowledge. It seemed to him a great demonstration of the root, the core,

of divine pity which he believed to be the centre of the scheme of the

world. Round this centre revolved wheels within wheels of cruelty, of

agony, of ruthless passions and of lawless bitterness. Yet they radiated

from pity. They radiated from love. How it was so he could not tell, and

there the pessimist had him by the throat. But that it was so he felt in

his inmost heart, and never more than now, when the tired boy sneered at

him, who was an old friend, clean of life, gentle of nature, and turned

to this girl, this thing that loathsome men played with and scorned.

Cuckoo flushed and trembled; this divine pity outpainted her rouge, and

shook that body which had so often betrayed itself to destroyers. This

divine pity gave to her, who had lost all, the power to find freedom for

another soul that lay in bondage.

The doctor gazed for an instant at the boy and girl, and was deeply

moved. His lips breathed a word that was a prayer, for Julian, for the

lady of the feathers.

Then he got up.

"I have to go," he said.

Julian said nothing; Cuckoo flushed again, and accompanied the doctor to

the hall door. When she had opened it, and they looked out, it was very

cold, but the fog had lifted, and was floating away to reveal a sky full

of stars, which always seem to shine more brightly upon frost. The doctor

took the girl's hand.

"I see you in clear weather," he said.

"You don't--you don't think as he'll--as I'll--" stammered Cuckoo,

glancing awkwardly towards the lighted doorway of the little

sitting-room, and then at the doctor. The church clock striking

7:30 pointed the application of the hesitating murmur. It was

unconventionally late for an afternoon call.

"It'll be all right, you know that?" said the lady of the feathers.

"Yes, I know that," he answered. "You have to fight, I feel that; only

you can do it. You have to fight this--this--" and here the doctor's

loyalty spoke, for he could not betray even this new Valentine,--"this

strange madness of Valentine's. Pit your will against his, and conquer

for Julian's sake."

"Will," said Cuckoo. "That's what he says I can't have."

"Won't you pray to have it given you?" said the little doctor.

Cuckoo looked at him, wondering. Then she said:

"I believe I could fight better 'n pray."

"Sometimes battle is the greatest of all prayers," said the doctor.

The iron gate clicked. He was gone. Cuckoo cast an oblique glance up

at the stars before she shut the door, and retraced her steps down the

passage.

CHAPTER VII

BATTLE ARRAY

When Julian left the Marylebone Road that night it was nearly ten

o'clock. He was quite sober, and looked preternaturally grave as he

opened the little gate and stepped out into the frost-bound street.

In the lighted aperture of the doorway behind him Cuckoo stood like

a shadow half revealed peeping after him, and he turned and waved his

hand to her. Then he walked away slowly, meditating. That night the

fight for the possession of his will, his soul, had begun in deadly

earnest. He did not know it, yet he was vaguely aware that he began to

move in the midst of unwonted circumstances. Cuckoo had not been able

wholly to conceal from him her strong mental excitement. Since her

conversation with the doctor she had become a different woman. For the

one word had been spoken which could change weakness into strength,

utter self-distrust into something that at least resembled self-reliance.

The doctor had broken Valentine's spell over Cuckoo with that word. He

believed in her. He told her to fight. He assumed that she had some

power, even more power for Julian than he had. "Only you can do it," he

had said. The sentence armed her from head to foot, put weapons in her

hands, light in her hollow eyes, a leaping exultation in her heart. The

flickering power that she had marvelled at, and then despaired of, burnt

up at last into a strong flame. That evening it had dazzled Julian's

eyes. He seemed to see a new Cuckoo, and he was thinking of her as he

walked along now in the frost under the stars. His meditation was not

very intellectual or very profound, for since the change in his life

Julian had put his old intellectualities away from him. Passion, so

long guarded, so bravely repressed, once it had broken loose stormed

all the heights of his nature, and drove every sentiment that tried to

oppose it into exile. The animalism that is so generally present in a

boy physically strong took possession of him, and would not tolerate

any divided allegiance. It declined to permit his life to be a thing of

mingled enjoyments, now rejoicing in the leaping desires of the body, now

disregarding them for the aspirations and clear contentments of the mind.

It seemed vengeful, like a man long kept fasting against his will, and

having at last come into its empire made that empire an autocracy, a

tyranny. Julian had passed at a step from one extreme to another, and had

already so lost the habit of following any mental process to a conclusion

that he could no longer think clearly with ease, or observe himself with

any acuteness. He was for the time all body, knew his muscles, his flesh,

his limbs, like intimates; his mind only distantly, like a stranger. With

passion, with greed, he had seized on all those pleasures which he had

previously feared and shunned, until his brain was heavy as is the brain

of a glutton and a drunkard, and his mind stepped in any direction with a

languid lethargy. So to-night he had the face of a man puzzled as he

walked in the frost under the stars.

Once the hint of some power lurking in Cuckoo had thrilled and awed

him, as only a certain clearness--a certain receptive, appreciative

clearness--can be thrilled and awed. Now the abrupt development of

that power almost distressed, because it confused him. He had gone

down lower in the interval between the two possibilities of sensation.

"What the devil's come over Cuckoo?" so ran his thought with a schoolboy

gait. That something had come over her he recognized. She was no longer

the girl he had stared at in Piccadilly, the creature he had pitied in

the twilight hour of their first friendly interview. Nor was she the

woman whose soul he had injured by his cruel whim, the woman who had

beaten him with reproaches, and made him for an instant almost ashamed

of his lusts. All these humanities perhaps slept, or woke, in her still.

Yet it was not they which heavily concerned him on his way to the Marble

Arch. There is a vitality about power of whatever kind that makes itself

instantly felt, even when it is not understood, even when it is neither

beloved nor appreciated. Julian was confused by his dull and sudden

recognition of power in Cuckoo. No longer did it flash upon him, a

mystery of flame in her eyes, moving him to the awe and the constraint

that a man may feel at sight of an unearthly thing, a phantom, or a

vision of the night. (He had looked for the flame in her eyes, and he

had not found it.) But it glowed upon him more steadily, with a warmth of

humanity, of something inherent, rooted, not detached, and merely for the

moment and as if by chance prisoned in some particular place, from which

at a breath it might escape. It drew him to Cuckoo, and at the same time

it slightly repelled him, the latter--though Julian did not know it--by

the sharp abruptness of its novelty. For the doctor had lit a blaze of

strength in the girl by a word. Julian's eyes were dazzled by the blaze.

Custom might teach them to face it more calmly. At present he could look

at the stars with greater ease. Indeed, as he walked, he did look at

them, and thought of the eyes of Cuckoo, and then of the eyes of all

women, and of their strange intensities of suggestion and of realization,

of their language of the devil and of the clouds, of their kindling

vigours. But the eyes of Cuckoo were no longer as the eyes of any other

woman. Julian glanced at a girl who watched him from the corner of the

street. He knew that Cuckoo looked each night at men as that girl looked

at him. He knew it, yet he felt that he did not believe it. For to him

she was dressed already in the fillet of some priestess, in the robes

of one tending some strange and unnamed altar. She woke in him a little

of the uneasy fear and uneasy attraction that a creature whom a man feels

to be greater than himself often wakes in him. That evening, while Julian

sat with her, he had been seized with curious conflicting desires to

fall before her or to strike her, to draw her close or to fend her off

from him, all dull, too, and vague as in heaviness of dreaming. Those

feelings, vague in the house, were scarcely clearer in the cold and in

the open spaces of the night, and Julian was conscious of a sense of

irritation, of anger against himself. He felt as if he were an oaf, a

lout. Was it, could it be, Cuckoo who had made him feel so? After all,

what was she? Julian tried to hug and soothe himself in the unworthy

remembrance of Cuckoo's monotonous life and piteous deeds, to reinstate

himself in contented animalism by thoughts of the animalism of this

priestess! He laughed aloud under the stars, but the laugh rang hollow.

He could not reinstate himself. He could only wearily repeat, "What the

devil's come over Cuckoo?" with an iteration of dull, moody petulance.

A hansom suddenly pulled up beside him and a voice called:

"Julian! Julian, where are you coming from?"

It was Valentine. He was muffled in a fur coat, and stretched himself

over the wooden apron to attract his friend's attention.

"I have been to your rooms," he continued. "Don't you remember we had

arranged to dine together?"

Julian looked at him without animation.

"I had forgotten it," he answered.

"Your memory is becoming very treacherous," Valentine said. "Where are

you off to? Get in. I will drive you."

"I hadn't any plan," Julian said, getting into the cab.

"Drive to the Savoy," Valentine called to the cabman. "I want some

supper," he added.

"I can't come in. I'm not dressed."

"We will have a private room, then. Have you dined?"

"I? No."

Valentine looked at him narrowly.

"Have you been in the Marylebone Road again?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

The answer was the bald truth. In making it Julian experienced a slight

feeling of relief. He was putting into words the vagueness that perplexed

him. He wondered why he did go to see Cuckoo.

"But you must know. You must have a reason," said Valentine.

"If I have I don't know what it is. I wish you would tell me, old

fellow."

"I can't supply you with reasons for all your actions."

"And I can't supply myself with reasons for any of them," Julian said

slowly. The words were leading him to a dawning wonder at his own way of

life, a dawning desire to know if there were really any reasons for the

things he did. But Valentine did not accept the reply as satisfactory. On

the contrary, it evidently irritated him still more, for he said with

unusual warmth:

"Your reason for dropping your engagements, throwing me over and

wasting my evenings is quite obvious. The blessed damozel of the

feathers is attractive to you. Her freshness captivates you. Her

brilliant conversation entertains you. She is the powdered and

painted reason of these irrelevant escapades."

"Don't sneer at her, Val."

The words came quickly, like a bolt. Valentine frowned, and a deepening

suspicion flashed in his eyes.

"I did not think you were so easily flattered," he continued.

"Flattered?"

"Yes. Cuckoo Bright admires you, and you go to number 400 to smell the

rather rank fumes of the incense which she burns at your shrine."

"Nonsense!" Julian cried warmly.

"What other reason can you have? She has no beauty; she has no

conversation, no gaiety, no distinction, no manners--she has nothing.

She is nothing."

"Ah, it's there you're wrong."

"Wrong!"

"When you say she is nothing."

"I say it again," Valentine reiterated almost fiercely.

"The lady of the feathers is nothing, nothing at all. God and the

devil--they have completely forgotten her. A creature like that is

neither good, nor would I call her really evil, for she is evil merely

that she may go on living, not because she has a fine pleasure in sin.

But if you sell your will for bread and butter, you slip out of the

world, the world that must be reckoned with. I say, Cuckoo Bright is

nothing."

"And I tell you she is something extraordinary."

As Julian spoke the words the cab stopped at the Savoy. Valentine sprang

out and paid the man. His face was flushed as if with heat, despite the

piercing cold of the night.

"A private room and supper for two," he said to the man in the vestibule.

"Take my coat," and he drew himself with obvious relief from the embrace

of his huge coat. Julian and he said nothing more until they were

sitting opposite to one another at a small oval table in a small and

strongly decorated room, whose windows faced the Thames Embankment. The

waiter uncorked a bottle of champagne with the air of one performing a

religious rite. The electric light gleamed and a fire chased the frost

from recollection. Julian had already forgotten what they had been

talking about in the cab. The first sip of champagne swept the heavy

meditativeness from him. But Valentine, unfolding his napkin slowly, and

with his eyes on the _menu_, said:

"In what way is she something extraordinary?"

"H'm?" Julian muttered.

"Surely you can define it."

"What, Val?"

"The peculiarity of Cuckoo Bright that you laid so much stress on just

now."

"Oh, yes, now I remember. No, I can't define it. How good this soup is.

The soup here--"

"Yes, yes; our coming here again and again to eat it proves our

appreciation. Julian, do endeavour to answer my question. I am really

interested to know exactly what it is that has taken you again to

Marylebone Road."

Julian drank some more champagne. His eyes began to sparkle.

"Can you give a reason for everything you do?" he asked.

"I think I certainly could for every act that I reiterate."

"Then you're built differently from me. But I've told you all I can.

I like Cuckoo. She's a damned nice girl."

Valentine's lip curled.

"I can't agree with you, Julian."

"You don't know her as I do."

"Not quite."

Julian reddened.

"Come, now," he began, and then checked himself and laughed

good-naturedly. "You can't play the saint any more, you know, Val,"

he said.

"I have no wish to. I discovered long ago that a saint is only the corpse

of a man, not a living man at all. But we are talking about this corpse

of a woman."

"Cuckoo's no corpse. By Jove, no. I believe she's got a power that no

other woman has."

"How so? You haven't been imagining that absurd flame in her eyes again?"

Valentine spoke with furtive uneasiness. He was scarcely eating or

drinking, but Julian was doing ample justice to the wine, and displayed a

very tolerable appetite. He lifted his glass to his lips and put it down

before he answered:

"No. It's gone."

Valentine seemed relieved.

"Of course. I knew it was an hallucination. You went to satisfy yourself,

I suppose. And now--"

"Since it's gone Cuckoo seems to me--I don't know--changed somehow. Val,

there must be a few people in the world with great power over others. You

are one. Marr was another, and--" He paused.

"And what?" Valentine said rather loudly.

"Well," Julian paused again, as if conscious that he was about to say

something that would seem ridiculous, "Cuckoo--"

"Is a third! You think it reasonable to bracket me with a woman like

that, to compare my will, mine, who have lived the life of thought as

well as the life of action, who have trained my powers to the highest

point, and offered up sacrifices--yes, sacrifices--to my will, to that

degraded, powerless creature! Julian!"

He stopped, clenching his hand as it lay upon the table. Never before

had Julian seen him so profoundly moved. All his normal calm and

self-possession seemed deserting him. His lips worked like those of a

man in the very extremity of rage, and the red glow in his cheeks

faded into the grey of suppressed passion. Julian was utterly taken

aback by such an exhibition of feeling.

"My dear fellow," he stammered, "I didn't mean--I had no idea--"

"You did mean that. You do. And I--I have been fool enough to believe

that you relied upon me, on my judgment; that you looked up to me;

that--good God, how absurd!"

He lay back in his chair and burst into a paroxysm of loud and mirthless

laughter, while Julian, holding his champagne-glass between his fingers,

and twisting it stealthily round and round, regarded him with a blank

stare of utter confusion and perplexity. Valentine continued to laugh

so long that it seemed as if he were seized in the grip of a horrible

hysteria. But just as the situation was becoming actually intolerable,

he suddenly controlled himself with an obvious and painful effort. After

remaining perfectly silent for two or three minutes, he said, in a voice

that struggled to be calm and succeeded in being icy:

"Julian, you have torn the veil of the Holy of Holies from the top to the

bottom with a vengeance. But why have you kept up the deception so long,

when, after all, there was nothing behind the veil? That was surely

unnecessary."

"What is the matter with you, Val? I don't understand you."

"Nor I you. And yet we say that we are intimate friends. There's an

irony."

At this point the waiter came in with an omelette, and the conversation

ceased, checked by his peripatetic presence. As soon as he had retreated,

with all the hushed activity of a mute rolling on casters, Julian

exclaimed:

"It's not an irony. You choose to make it so. You're not yourself

to-night, Valentine. I do not compare you with poor Cuckoo. How could

I? She's down in the dirt and you are far away from the dirt. And of

course your power over any one must be a thousand times greater than

hers."

"If it came to a battle? If it came to a battle?" interrupted Valentine.

"You say that, Julian?"

"A battle! of what?"

"Of wills, naturally, Cuckoo Bright's will against mine?"

"But what a strange idea--"

"You haven't answered my question."

"Because I don't see the force of it."

"Answer it nevertheless."

"Then Cuckoo would be beaten at once," Julian said. But there was no

ring of conviction in his voice, and he fell at once into silence after

he had spoken the words. Valentine saw by his frowning face and puckered

forehead that the idea of such a battle had set in motion a train of

thought in his mind.

"You are wondering, Julian," Valentine said.

Julian looked up.

"Who doesn't wonder in this beastly world?" he said morosely.

"I never do. I prefer to act. Drink some more champagne?"

He pushed the bottle over and went on:

"You are wondering why I spoke of a battle between Cuckoo Bright and me.

Well, I'll tell you. I spoke because I see that there is to be such a

battle."

Julian drank his champagne and looked definitely and increasingly

astonished, as Valentine continued:

"There is to be such a battle. I have seen it for a long time. Julian,

you may think you know women. You don't. I said just now that a woman

like Cuckoo Bright is nothing, but I said it for the sake of uttering

a paradox. No woman is ever nothing in a world that is full of the

things called men. No woman's ever nothing so long as there is a bottle

of hair-dye, a rouge-pot, a dressmaker, and--a man within reach. She may

be in the very gutter. That doesn't matter. For from the very gutter she

can see--not the stars, but the twinkling vanities of men, and they will

light her on her way to Mayfair drawing-rooms, even, perhaps, to Court.

Who knows? And God--or the devil--has given to every woman the knowledge

of her possibilities. Men have only the ignorance of theirs."

"What has this to do with Cuckoo and me?" Julian said. "This bottle is

empty, Valentine."

Valentine rang hastily for another.

"And what on earth has it got to do with a battle between you and

Cuckoo?"

"Everything. She hates me. She has told you so again and again."

Julian looked expressively uncomfortable.

"I've always stood up for you," he began.

"I believe it. She hates me not because I am myself, but simply because I

am your closest friend. Hush, Julian. It's much better all this should be

said once for all. Many women are intensely jealous of the men friends of

men whom they either love, or who they mean shall love them. Look at the

wives who drive their husbands' old chums from intimacy into the outer

darkness of acquaintanceship. Wedding-days break, as well as bind, faith.

And you have had your wedding-day with Cuckoo."

"That was an accident. She loathes to think of it."

"She may say so. But it puts a fine edge on her hatred of me,

nevertheless."

"No, Valentine, no. Her dislike of you is simply silly--instinctive."

"She tells you so. Ah! I was wrong to call her nothing. But it is her

hatred of me that must bring us to battle unless--"

"Unless what?"

"You give her up now, once and for all."

"Give Cuckoo up!"

The words came slowly, and the voice that uttered them sounded startled

and even shocked. Valentine began to gauge the new power of the lady of

the feathers from that moment.

"That's a--a strong thing to do, Val."

"It won't hurt you to do a strong thing for once in your life."

"Even if it didn't hurt me I think it would hurt her very much. For,

Valentine, I believe you said the truth when you said to me once, 'That

girl loves you.' Do you remember?"

"Perfectly. Loves you, your birth, your position, your money, your good

looks, perhaps your standpoint above the gutter. I can well believe that

Miss Bright, like all her sisterhood, loves with undying love that

combination of flesh-pots, her notion of the ego of a man."

"She has never accepted a halfpenny from me."

"Because she means eventually to have twenty-one shillings in the pound.

Have some more champagne."

"Yes. You are wrong, Val, utterly wrong. Cuckoo's not mercenary. If such

a girl could be good, she is good."

There was just a touch of the maudlin in Julian's voice. He went on very

earnestly, and nodding his head emphatically over even his conjunctions.

"And if she were what you say, she would have no influence over me, and

I should hate her. But to me she is just what a good girl might be. Why,

even the doctor--"

"Was he there to-night?" Valentine cried, with a sudden inspiration.

"Of course he was. And you know what a particular little chap he is."

"Why was he there?"

"Just to see Cuckoo, you know, in a friendly way."

Valentine realized then that the battle had begun. He divined the meaning

of the doctor's visit. He guessed what it had done for the lady of the

feathers. And he sat silent while Julian went on drinking more

champagne.

"I believe he likes Cuckoo, Val. I am sure he does. And he behaved quite

as if--quite as if he--you know--respected her. And it's all nonsense her

hating you, and having a battle, and all that kind of thing, with you.

She's only fanciful. She's not--"

"Would you give her up if I asked you to? Mind, Julian, I don't say I

ever shall ask you. But if I do?"

"Don't ask me to, don't ask me. Poor Cuckoo, poor girl, she's got no

friends, money, or--or anything. Poor Cuckoo. Poor Cuck--Cuck--"

He fell back in his chair, nodding his head, and reiterating his

commiseration for the lady of the feathers in a faint and recurring

hiccough. Valentine got up and rang the bell.

"The bill, please, waiter."

"Yes, sir."

The man glanced at Julian with the shadow of a pleasing, and apparently

also pleased, smile and withdrew. Valentine stood for a moment looking

at the leaning figure on the chair, relaxed in the first throes of a

drunken slumber. His anger and almost unbridled emotion completely died

away as he looked.

"Can it be called a battle after all?" he said to himself. "They may not

know it, but it is practically won already."

The waiter re-entered. Valentine paid the bill, and the breath of the

frost shortly revived Julian into an attempt at conversation.

"Don't ask me to give her up, Val; don't, don't ask me. Poor girl. Poor,

poor Cuck--Cuck."

The name of the lady of the feathers seemed a good one for a tipsy tongue

to play with.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DOCTOR RECEIVES A VISIT FROM MRS. WILSON

Doctor Levillier grew more puzzled day by day. His observation of

Valentine taught him only one thing certainly, and beyond possibility of

doubt and that was the death of the youth he had once loved, the living

presence of a youth whom he could not love, whom he could only shrink

from and even fear. He held to the theory that this radical and ghastly

change must be caused by some obscure dementia, some secret overturning

of the mind; but he was obliged to confess to himself that he held to

it only because, otherwise, he would be floating helpless, and without a

spar, upon a tide of perplexity and confusion. He could not honestly say

that he was able to put his finger upon any definite signs of madness

exhibited by Valentine, any that would satisfy a mad-doctor. He could

only say that Valentine's character had been strangely beautiful and was

now strangely evil, and that the soul of Julian was following rapidly the

soul of Valentine. The more closely he watched Valentine, the more

astounded did he become and the more eager to detach Julian from him. But

the strangest thing of all, as the doctor allowed in one of his frequent

self-communings, was, that though formerly he had loved Valentine

better than Julian, it never occurred to him that the work of rescue

might be undertaken on behalf of the former. His mind dismissed the new

Valentine into a region that was beyond his scope and power. He felt

instinctively that here was a soul, a will, that his soul could not turn

from its ends or detach from its pursuits. The new Valentine was a law to

himself. What moved the doctor to such horror was that the new Valentine

was a law to Julian. And there was something peculiarly dreadful in the

idea which he held, that Julian, once under the beautiful influence of

Valentine's sanity, was now under the baneful influence of his insanity.

The doctor had gone the length of deciding, in his own mind, that

Valentine's sane period of life and insane period lay one on each side

of a fixed gulf, and that fixed gulf was his long trance succeeding the

final sitting of the two young men. This conclusion was arrived at with

ease, once the theory of a subtle lunacy was accepted as a fact. For,

on sending his mind back along the ways of recollection, the doctor was

able to recall hints of the new Valentine dating from that very night,

but never before it. The first hint was Rip's manifested fear, and this

led on to others which have been already mentioned. Having made up his

mind that this trance was the motive power of Valentine's supposed

madness, the doctor sought in every direction to increase his knowledge

on the subject of simulations of death by the human body. He looked up

again the cases of innumerable hysterical patients whom he had himself

treated, sometimes with success, sometimes with failure. He consulted

other doctors, of course without mentioning the object of his research.

He endeavoured to apply to Valentine's case standards by which he was

quickly able to form a satisfactory opinion on the cases of others. He

even went so far as to examine as closely as possible into the history of

table-turning, the uses ascribed to it by its votaries, and the results

obtained from it by credible--as opposed to merely credulous--witnesses.

But he found no case that seemed in any way analogous to the strange case

of Valentine. As was only natural, the doctor did not forget the

possibility of hypnotism, which had struck him during his second

conversation with the lady of the feathers. Her confused declarations on

the subject of Valentine and Marr being one person, if they were really

a true account of what Valentine had said to her--which seemed very

doubtful--could only be made clear by accepting as a fact that the dead

Marr had laid a hypnotic spell upon Valentine, which continued to exist

actively long after its weaver slept in the grave. But Marr and Valentine

had never met. This fact seemed fully established. Valentine had always

denied any knowledge of him before the trance. Julian had always assumed

that only he of the two friends had any acquaintance with Marr. And

again, when the doctor, one day, quite casually, said to Valentine, "By

the way, you never did meet Marr, did you?" Valentine replied, "Never,

till I saw him lying dead in the Euston Road."

The doctor could see no ray of light in the darkness that could guide him

to the clue of the mystery. He could only say to himself, "It must be, it

must be an obscure and horrible madness," and keep his theory to himself.

Sometimes, as he sat pondering over the whole affair, he smiled, half

sadly, half sarcastically. For the event brought home to his ready

modesty the sublime ignorance of all clever and instructed men, taught

him to wonder, as he had often wondered, that there exists in such a

world as ours such a fantastic growth as the flourishing weed, conceit.

Another matter that puzzled him greatly was this: As the days went on,

and as Valentine grew--and he did grow--more certain of his own power for

evil over Julian, and as, consequently, he took less and less pains to

hide the truth of his personality from the knowledge of the doctor, the

latter was frequently seized with the appalled sensation which had long

ago overtaken him when he was followed in Regent Street and in Vere

Street. This recurrence of sensation, and the certainty forced gradually

upon the doctor that it was caused by the presence of Valentine,

naturally led him to wonder whether it were possible that the man who

had dogged his steps, and eventually fled from him, could have been

Valentine himself. If that were indeed so, then this madness--if it did

exist--must surely have come upon Valentine before the trance. Nothing

but a madness could have led him thus in the night hours to steal out

in pursuit of the friend who had just left his house and company. But the

doctor knew of no means by which he could satisfy himself of Valentine's

movements on the night in question. To ask Valentine himself would be to

court a lie. Once the doctor thought for a moment of having recourse to

Wade. But then he remembered that the butler did not sleep in the flat,

and had no doubt long gone home before the event of the night in

question. So, again, he was confronted with a dead-wall, beyond which

he could see no clear view or comprehensible country.

About this time there happened an event which struck strongly upon

the doctor's mind. He was one day, as usual, in his consulting-room,

receiving a multitude of patients, when his man-servant entered with

a card on a salver.

"A lady, sir, who wishes to see you. She has no appointment."

The doctor took the card. On it was printed merely "Mrs. Wilson."

"I cannot see the lady to-day," he said, "unless she can call again after

five o'clock. But I can see her then, or to-morrow morning at ten. Ask

her which she would prefer."

After a moment's absence Lawler returned.

"The lady will come at five o'clock this evening, sir."

"Very well."

And the doctor bent his mind once more steadily upon his work.

At five o'clock the door opened, and a tall, square, and strong-looking

woman, dressed in black, walked quietly into the room. She bowed to the

doctor and sat down.

"I am glad you could see me to-day," she said. "I leave London early

to-morrow morning. I hate London."

She spoke in a full and rather rich voice, with a slightly burring

accent, and looked the doctor full in the face with a pair of large and

sensible grey eyes. Nature had certainly built her to be one of those

towers of women, strong for themselves, for their sex, and often for men

also, who possess a peculiar power, given in quite full measure to no

male creature, of large sympathy and lofty composure. But the doctor saw

at a glance that some adverse fate had disagreed with the intentions of

nature, and fought against them with success. Circumstances must have

arisen in this woman's life to break down her unusual equipment of

courage and resolution, or if not to break it down, to dint and batter

the shield she carried over her heart and life. For her fine face was

lined with care, her naturally firm mouth was tormented by an apparently

irresistible quivering, that, once prompted by long and painful emotion,

had now become habitual and mechanical, and her eyes, although they met

the eyes of the doctor with a peculiar large reception and return of

scrutiny, held in their depths that hunted expression which is only

developed by long agony, either physical or mental. So much the doctor

read in a glance before his patient began to detail her symptoms. She

detailed them with a certain obvious shame and a slow conquering of

reticence that made her speak very deliberately.

She began by saying, in no insulting manner, that she had kept clear of

doctors during almost the whole of her life; that she had meant to keep

clear of them till her death.

"For I was born with a constitution of iron," she said, "and I have

always lived on the most sanitary principles, and with the utmost

simplicity. So I hoped to go to my grave without much suffering.

Certainly I never expected to have to consult any one on the ground

of nervous breakdown. Yet that is exactly why I am here with you at

this moment. The circumstances of my life have been too much for me,

I suppose."

There was a grave pathos in her voice as she uttered the last words.

"At any rate," she continued, after a pause, "I would like you to help

me if you can. The cause of my breakdown is remote enough, several years

old. I had a tremendous burden to bear then, and I bore it, as I thought

bravely, for a long time. At last it grew intolerable, and then I

succeeded at last in getting it removed, in getting rid of it, you

understand, altogether. The odd thing is, that while I was bearing my

burden my strength did not fail me, my courage did not utterly give way.

Only when the burden was removed did I faint because of it. My trouble

was partially physical--I had to endure grave physical cruelty at that

time--but chiefly mental. My agony of mind ran a race with my agony of

body, and won easily. It's generally so with women, I believe?"

She waited as if for a reply.

"Yes, it is often so," Doctor Levillier answered.

"Ever since the burden was lifted from my shoulders," she continued, "I

have been getting steadily worse. Each month, each year, I became more

and more degraded in my cowardice, my fear of trifles, even of things

which have no existence at all. All this is perhaps--perhaps--peculiarly

painful to me because I am naturally, you must understand, what sane

people call a strong-minded woman. I had originally complete physical

courage, didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear,' despised those who

did, I am afraid. So you see this is very bad for me; it cuts so deep

into my mind, you see. It makes me hate and loathe myself so. I sleep

badly, and have the usual symptoms of nervous collapse, I believe. I'm

strong one moment, feeble, no good at all, the next. My appetite has long

been bad, and so on. But it isn't that sort of thing I mind. I could

fight with that well enough. It's my horrible deterioration of mind that

troubles me, that has brought me here, to you, in spite of my hatred of

London, of every city. It was in a city, though not in London, that I

bore that burden I told you of. It doesn't seem possible to me, but I'm

told, and I read, that my mind diseased may be an effect, and that the

cause may lie in my body. That's why I come to you. Doctor Levillier,

root out the disease if you can."

She ended speaking almost with passion, her lips trembling all the time

and her eyes never leaving his face. Then she added with a curious

characteristic abruptness:

"I will tell you that I've plenty of money. Lack of funds is no weapon

against my return to health--if my return is in any way possible."

Doctor Levillier smiled slightly.

"You are anticipating the usual 'long-sea voyage' formula, I see," he

said.

"Possibly."

"I should not prescribe it for you off-hand," he said. "Sea air is not a

specific for all nervous complaints, as some people seem to think. You

have no bodily pain?"

"No. I often wish I had."

"What you tell me about your gradual collapse coming on after the crisis

of your troubles was over, and not during it, does not surprise me. Nor

am I puzzled by your malady increasing if, as I suppose, you are living

idly."

"I am. I have no courage to do anything or see anybody."

"Exactly. You live in a sort of hiding."

"Why--yes. You see, once I was well known to a good many people. My

troubles became known to them too. I could not get rid of that burden I

told you of except by blazoning them abroad. I shrink from meeting any

people now. Therefore I live very quietly. I--"

Suddenly she seemed to grow tired of the half measures in frankness that

had so far governed her communications. She spread forth her hands with

a very characteristic, ample gesture of sudden confidence.

"I think I'll tell you exactly what it was," she said. "You may have

read of me. Long ago, some years at least, I was obliged to take action

against my husband, a Mr. Wilson, who afterwards assumed the name of

Marr. I charged him with cruelty, won my case, and obtained a judicial

separation."

Then Dr. Levillier knew that he looked on the former wife of the strange,

cruel, dead man, whose influence had entered into the lives of his two

friends.

"You may have heard of my case?" Mrs. Wilson said.

"Certainly I have."

"It was bad, even from a newspaper point of view, I believe. People

congratulated me on getting rid of a brute, and thought I was all right

and ought to be happy. But the newspapers and the world never knew what

I had gone through, the real horrors, before I insisted on release. You

started when I called my husband a brute just now, Dr. Levillier; I

noticed it. The phrase hurt you, coming from any wife about any husband.

I know why, a boy once told me that his mother was always drunk. He hurt

me then into hating him for the rest of my days. But I called a stranger

a brute, not the man I loved and married, not the man I loved after I

married him. Dr. Levillier, do you believe in possessions?"

She had been gradually getting excited while she spoke, and, on the last

words, she leaned forward in her chair and struck her hand down in her

lap.

"Do you mean possession by the devil?" said the doctor, very quietly,

opposing a strong calm to her intensity.

"Yes. I do. My experience obliges me to. I knew, for a year before I

married him, I married, I lived for two years after I married him, with

a man who was my conception of what a man should be, strong, gentle,

tender, brave, a hero to me. I got rid of a devil, after I had endured

two years of torture at his hands. It is no use to tell me those two

distinct men I knew were one and the same man. My soul, my heart, declare

that it's a lie. There were such differences. My husband loved music;

this man hated it; yet had the power to use it as a means of tormenting

me. But I needn't dwell on the evidences of change. Suffice it to say

that the thing that crushed me, the thing that has brought me down into

the dust where I am, dust of cowardice, and weakness, and impotence to

do or to be anything, was the horror of awakening to a knowledge of that

change, of having to live as wife with this devil, whom I knew not, who

was a stranger to me. Only the features were my husband's, nothing else.

I got rid of a stranger. The man found dead in the Euston Road was a

stranger whom I hated, nothing more to me than that."

As she spoke, in a deep, resonant voice that pulsated through the room,

Dr. Levillier recalled, almost with a thrill, Julian's words to him in

Harley Street, on the night of the _fracas_ with the mastiffs, words

spoken about the dead Marr: "His face dead was the most absolutely direct

contradiction possible to his face alive. He was not the same man." He

recalled these words and the thought shot through his mind: "Did the man

this woman loved return at the moment of death?"

And that change in Valentine!

He said to Mrs. Wilson, betraying none of the excitement that he really

felt:

"You spoke of cruelty. You had to endure physical cruelty?"

"Worse, to see it endured by others, dumb, helpless creatures, by my own

dog."

A great shudder ran through her.

"I can't talk of it," she said. "But it made me what I am. Can you do

anything for me? Why do you look at me like that?"

For, at her word about the dog, the doctor had fallen into a tense

reverie, looking steadily upon her, yet as one who sees little or

nothing. He roused himself quickly.

"Tell me something of the symptoms of your mental malady," he said.

"These fancies that distress you, of what nature are they?"

She told him. Many of them were symptoms well known to all those who have

suffered acutely after some great shock, imagined sounds, movements, and

so forth. The doctor listened. He had heard such a story many times

before.

"I, _I_ am full of these ghastly, these degrading fancies," Mrs. Wilson

cried, with a sort of large indignation against herself, and yet an

uncertain terror. "Is it not--?"

She suddenly stopped speaking.

"There's some one at your door," she said, after a second or two of

apparent attention to some sound without.

"I dare say. A patient."

At this moment a voice, which Dr. Levillier immediately recognized as the

voice of Valentine, was audible in the hall.

Mrs. Wilson turned suddenly very pale, and began to tremble and gnaw her

nether lip with her teeth in an access of nervous disturbance.

"In God's name tell me who that is," she whispered, turning her head in

the direction of the door. "It can't be--it can't be--" Valentine's voice

rose a little louder. "It _is_ his voice."

"Fancy!" the doctor said firmly. "It is the voice of a friend of mine,

Mr. Valentine Cresswell."

Mrs. Wilson said nothing. She was trying to force herself to believe

the evidence of another's sense against her own. Such a task is always

difficult. At last she looked up and said:

"There, doctor, there you have an exhibition of my illness. It's horrible

to me. Can you cure it?"

"I will try," the doctor answered.

But he found it very difficult just at that moment to say the three

words quietly, to let Valentine go after leaving his message, without

confronting him with this haggard patient who was entering the pool of

Bethesda.

CHAPTER IX

A SHADOW ON FIRE

When a naturally calm, clear, and courageous mind finds itself besieged

by what seem hysterical fancies, it is troubled and perplexed, and is

inclined to take drastic measures to restore itself to its normal

condition. Dr. Levillier found himself the prey of such fancies after

his interview with Mrs. Wilson. He had prescribed for her. He had very

carefully considered what way of life would be likely to restore her

to health, and to banish the demons which had brought her strength and

unusual self-reliance so low. He had received her gratitude, and had

dismissed her to the following of his plans for her benefit. All this

he had done with calm deliberation, the very cheerful composure which

he always practiced towards the victims of nervous complaints. But even

while he did this his own mind was in a turmoil. For this woman had let

fall statements with regard to her dead husband which most curiously

bolstered up Cuckoo's fantastic assertion that Valentine and Marr were

the same man. Marr had been cruel to animals, to dogs, had evidently

taken a keen enjoyment in torturing them, and on hearing Valentine's

voice she had turned pale and declared that it was the voice of her

husband. Then her strange declaration about her husband's use of music

as a mode of cruelty! These circumstances appealed powerfully to the

doctor's mind, or at least to that unscientific side of it which inclined

him to romance, and to a certain sympathy with the mysteries of the

world. Many Europeans who go to India return to their own continent

imbued with a belief in miracles, modern miracles, which no argument, no

sarcasm, can shake. But there are miracles in Europe too. The magicians

of the East work wonders in the strange atmosphere of that strange

country, whose very air is heavy with magic. Yet England, too, has her

magicians. London holds in the arms of its yellow fogs and dust-laden

clouds miracles. Doctor Levillier found himself assailed by ideas like

these as he thought of that transformed Marr, "possessed," as the pale,

strongly built wreck of a grand, powerful woman had named it, as he

thought of the transformed Valentine, the hour of whose transformation

coincided with the hour of Marr's death. Why had this new, horrible,

yet beautiful creature risen out of the ashes of the trance that was

practically a death? Why had he such amazing points of resemblance to

Marr? Why had the influence of Marr been deliberately intruded into the

calm, happy, and safe lives of Julian and Valentine? Marr was cruel to

dogs, and dogs showed rage and terror when the new Valentine approached

them. Marr had a hatred, yet a knowledge of music. The new Valentine,

when forced to sing, sang like some wild, desolate thing, with reluctant

and terrible voice. And at this point the doctor used the curb suddenly

and pulled himself up sharply. He felt that is was useless, that it was

unworthy, to plunge himself thus in romance, and to hang veils of mystery

around these facts which he had to accept and to deal with. A touch of

humanity is worth all the unhuman romance in the world. Humanity lay at

the doctor's gate, sore distressed, sinking to something that was beyond

distress. So, putting his fancies resolutely behind him, Doctor Levillier

resolved to fight through that frail weapon, the lady of the feathers,

the battle of Julian's will against the will--which he now fully and

once for all recognized as malign--of the man he must still call

Valentine. Valentine had said to Julian, at the Savoy, "If it came to a

battle--Cuckoo Bright's will against mine!" The doctor had not heard

those words. Yet, under the stars on the doorstep of Cuckoo's dwelling

he, too, had spoken to the girl of a fight. Thus he had poured a great

ardour into her heart. The three souls, Cuckoo's, Doctor Levillier's,

Valentine's, were thus set in battle array. They understood what they

faced, or at least that they faced warfare. Only Julian did not

understand--yet. He was besotted by the spell of the one he called friend

laid upon him, and by the vices in which he had been taught to wallow.

His brain was clouded and his eyes were dim, as the brains and eyes of

the _malades imaginaires_ who carry on the scheme of sin and sorrow in

the world, and prolong by their deeds the long travail of their race.

Julian did not understand. For now he seldom thought sincerely. Sincere

thoughts and the incessant and violent acts of passion do not often dwell

together.

The progress of Julian towards degradation had now become so rapid that

his many acquaintances talked of him openly as of one who had practically

"gone under." Not that he had ever done any of those few things at which

society, whose door is generally ajar, with Mrs. Grundy's large ear glued

to the keyhole, resolutely shuts the door. He had not forged, or stolen a

watch, or killed anybody, or married a grocer's widow, or anything of

that kind. But he had thrown his life to the pleasures of the body, and

made no secret of the fact. And the pleasures of the body, like eager

rats, had gnawed away his power of self-control until he could resist

nothing, no wish of the moment, no desire born illegitimately of passing

excitement or the prompting of wine. So he committed many follies, and

his follies had loud voices. They shrieked and shouted. And society heard

their cries, held the door a little more ajar, and listened with that

passion of attention which virtue accords to vice. But society, having

heard a good deal, shook its head over Julian. He had acquired such a

taste for low company that he ought to have been born a peer. Certainly,

he had money. That made his errors chink rather pleasantly, and filled

the bosoms of many mothers with an expansive charity towards him. Still,

the general opinion was that he was sinking very low. In fact, the legend

of Julian's shame was now written on his face in such legible and vital

characters that the most short-sighted eyes could not fail to read it.

The eager beauty of untarnished youth had faded into the dull, and often

sulky, languors of the utterly indulged body. Julian was often exhausted

and passing through those leaden-footed dreams that fitfully entrance

the vicious,--those dreams that are colourless and sombre, that press

upon all the faculties, and yet have no real meaning, that stifle all

intentions, and put an end, for the moment, to all active desires. People

talk of the vicious as "living," but half their time they are curiously

dead, for their sins blunt their energies and lull them into a condition

that resembles rather paralysis than slumber.

Since the night on which he had supped with Valentine at the Savoy,

Julian had given himself up to the company and influence of his friend

more than ever, and London, which had once nicknamed Valentine the Saint

of Victoria Street, began to dub him with quite another name. For it

gradually became apparent to those who only knew the two young men

slightly that Valentine exerted an extraordinarily powerful influence

over Julian, and that the influence was imperatively evil. At first

many were deceived by the clear beauty of Valentine's face, but that was

beginning to fade. A thin line, pencilled here and there with a fairylike

delicacy, a slight puffiness beneath the blue eyes, a looseness of the

cheeks, a droop of the lips, all very demure, as it were, and furtive,

shed alteration upon his fair beauty. He himself noticed it, as he looked

in a mirror one night, and silently cursed the inevitable effect which

mind produces upon matter. No man's face can forever remain an entirely

deceptive mask. The saintly expression of Valentine's was rapidly

becoming a thing of the past. He wondered whether Julian noticed it.

But Julian was too much preoccupied with his own energies of dreary

action and lacerating fatigues of subsequent thought, or it would be

truer to say moodiness, to notice anything. He was self-centred, as are

all sinners, immersed in his own downfall, like a man in an ocean. He

was unconscious that he was the subject of battle, that four wills were

to contend for his soul's sake. Four wills, yet one expressed itself in

no outward form. It was in exile, till the day of its redemption should

dawn.

* * * * *

On the night when Valentine heard Julian babble incoherently the name

of the lady of the feathers, he said to himself that the battle should

be his, and he leaned upon his will to feel its power and its glory.

That night he forgot its fury, the intense emotion that had overtaken

him at the supper-table as he gauged, or strove to gauge, the influence

that Cuckoo was obtaining over Julian. He forgot Doctor Levillier. He

remembered only himself and his own strength, which he was now to test

to its foundations. And when he woke again to thoughts of others, it was

only to laugh at the force arrayed against him. The lady of the feathers

moved, to his fancy, like the most piteous of puppets, a jeering fate

manipulating the strings. This manipulator had kept her long to one set

of motions, stiff pleading arm, anxious head, interrogative joints,

and a strut of wolfish eagerness and hunger. But such a game was now

to be abandoned. And behold the puppet a warrior forsooth, a very

Amazon, hounded to fight by the doctor's voice, the doctor's word of

encouragement, battling with the stiff arms that had abandoned the

pleading gesture, stern in a wooden attitude of defiance. And Fate,

in fits of laughter at the string-holding! Then Valentine lost his fear,

and could have been angry that such a scarecrow was the creature selected

by Fate to draw a sword against him. He chose to forget the vision in the

mirror when he struck at the staring reflection of the lady of the

feathers and shivered under the influence of a cold terror. He chose

to remember only the thin and fearful woman who had given her body to

the world, and so had surely given her soul to a mill that had long ago

ground it to powder.

There is nothing so terrible to one screwed up to the highest pitch of

action as a monotony of waiting. Scourging were better, the hemp or the

fire. The lady of the feathers had been stirred to a strange enthusiasm,

and to a belief in herself, a faith more wonderful to some, more

unaccustomed and remote than any faith in God or devil. A flood of energy

flowed over her, warm as blood, strong as love, keen with the salt of

beautiful novelty, turbulent as the seas when the great tides take hold

on them. It was to her as if for the moment the world's centre was just

there where she was in the winter, and in the Marylebone Road, within

sound of the great church clock, the great church bells, the cries of

the street, the very steam panting up from the Baker Street Station.

Cuckoo was in the core of things, and the core of things is fierce and

hot and action-prompting. That half-revealed shadow waving good-bye to

Julian, as he stepped into the frosty night, was a shadow on fire. Yet he

had scarcely looked back at it. But Cuckoo was to learn to the last word

the lesson of patience. Inspired by the sympathy of the doctor and by

something deep in her own heart, she was, for the moment, all courage,

all flame. She was ready to fight. She was ready to do supreme things,

to touch the stars. The stars went out and she had not touched them. The

morning dawned very chilly, very dark, the morning that brought Mrs.

Brigg to her room yellow and complaining. Still, Cuckoo was conscious

of a high, beating courage that made summer in that winter day. She

astonished the old keeper of that weary house by the vivacity of her

manner, the brightness of her look. For Mrs. Brigg was well accustomed

to sad morning moods, to petulant lassitude, and dull grimness of

unpainted and unpowdered fatigue, but had long been a stranger to early

moods of hope or of gaiety. Mornings in houses such as hers are recurring

tragedies, desolating pulses of Time, shaking human hearts with each beat

nearer and nearer to the ultimatum of sorrow. She knew not what to make

of this new morning mood of Cuckoo, and wagged a heavily pensive head

over it, unresponsive and muttering. Jessie, too, was astonished, but

more pleasantly. The little dog, dwelling ignorantly in the midst of

degradation, had learned quickly the swing of its beloved mistress's

moods. In the dim morning it was ever the comforter of misery it could

not rightly understand, not the playfellow of happiness that stirred it

to leaps and barks of wonder and excitement. In the mornings Cuckoo held

it long against her thin bosom, sometimes crushed it nearly breathless,

pushing its little head down in the nest of her arms and telling it a

tale of the world's woe that sent long and thin whimpers twittering

through its body. The fluttering whisper of morning misery, or the

silence of vacant fatigue, these were accustomed things to Jessie. Even

if she did not thoroughly understand them, she was ready for them, and

eagerly responsive, as dogs are, to emotions along whose verges they

tread with the soft feet of sympathy, the sweeter for the ignorance

that paints their generosity in such tender colours. But Jessie was

_bouleversée_ by this passionate, eager Cuckoo; this shadow on fire, who

was alive almost ere London was alive, instead of half dead until half

London slept. The shadow on fire snatched her out of her sleep, tossed

her in air, spoke to her with a voice that thrilled her to quick barking

excitement, played with her till the little dog's flux of emotions

threatened to consummate in a canine apoplexy, and Mrs. Brigg battered at

the door with a shrill, "Keep that beast quiet, can't yer?" All this was

Cuckoo fighting; battle in the bedclothes, battle with soap and water,

curling-pins, corset, shoes. Each little act was performed with an energy

it did not demand. The sponge was squeezed dry like a live thing being

strangled; the toothbrush played as Maxim guns on an enemy; buttons went

into button-holes with a manner of ramrods going into muskets; hooks met

eyes as one army meets another. Battle in all that morning's common

tasks, setting them high, dressing them with chivalry and strong

endeavour. Cuckoo went into her sitting-room swiftly, with glowing cheeks

and flaming eyes, as one ardently expectant. And then--? Mrs. Brigg had

lit the fire, but it had spluttered out into a mass of blackened, ghostly

paper and skeleton sticks. A little more battle in the relighting of it.

But then--the blank day of the girl of the streets. Cuckoo sat down,

watched the growing fire, and wondered what she had expected. She was

conscious that she had expected something, and something not small. Her

mood had demanded it. But our moods are often like disappointed brigands,

who, having waylaid a pauper, demand with levelled pistols that which the

pauper has so vainly prayed for all his life. Moods come from within.

They are not evoked to dance valses with suitable partners from without.

And so Cuckoo's strong excitement and energy found nothing to dance with.

She sat there growing gradually less alive, and wondering why she had

hastened to get up; why she was fully dressed instead of wrapped in the

usual staring pink dressing-gown with the chiffon cascades down the

front. Mornings were of no use to her--never had been. God might as well

never have included them in the scheme of His days, so far as she was

concerned. But this morning she had thought, had felt--it seemed

impossible that she should feel so unusual and that nothing should

happen. She was ready, but Fate was in bed and asleep. That was really

the gist of the feeling that came over her. She thought of Dr. Levillier,

the man who had set a torch at last to her nature and fired it with a new

ardour. He was at his work in the morning, seeing, speaking to, that

passing line of strangers, who walked on forever through his life. His

energies were employed. Perhaps he had forgotten Cuckoo and her empty

mornings. Almost for the first time in her life the lady of the feathers

definitely longed for a legitimate occupation. How she could have flown

at it to-day. But already the bright mood was fading. It could not last

in such an atmosphere. As Cuckoo had said, she could fight better than

she could pray. But it seemed to her, after a while, that there was only

room in this cheerless, dark house to pray, no room at all to fight. She

tried reading yesterday's evening paper, left on the horsehair sofa by

Julian. But reading had never been a favourite occupation of hers, and

to-day she wanted to save Julian, to make him love her, and so to win him

from Valentine. She did not want to sit in the twilight of a winter's day

reading about people she had never seen, things she did not understand.

And she threw the paper down.

To make Julian love her. Cuckoo flushed, yes, even sitting there quite

alone, for Jessie had retired to the warmth of the bedroom blankets, as

she said it in her mind. The doctor had told her to do so. Her heart had

told her to try to do it long ago. But she trusted the doctor and she did

not trust her heart. And how could she trust her power to make Julian

love her? Cuckoo had once known very well how to make a man desire her.

In the very early days of her career she had been a very pretty girl.

Her old mother, who believed her dead, had often cried and said to the

neighbours that her beauty had been Cuckoo's undoing. Thus do we lay

blame on the few fine gifts that should gild our lives. But Cuckoo

had been very pretty and had soon learnt the first foul lesson of her

_métier_, to wake swift desire. As time went on and she wasted her gift

of beauty along the pavements of London, she found this poor power

failing in strength and in certainty. As to the power of wakening that

slower, deeper, kindred, yet opposed desire of love, Cuckoo had never

known whether she possessed it. She had had many lovers, but nobody to

love her really, and this in days of her beauty, or at any rate her

gracious prettiness. No wonder, then, that now a chill ran over her at

the thought of the task that lay before her if she was to gain her

battle. To break Valentine's influence she had to make Julian love her.

How? Instinctively, and with a sense of horror, she knew that her usual

practised arts, instead of helping, almost fatally handicapped her now.

She loved Julian purely, so purely that she could not endure that he

should meet her degradation as he had met it on that one night she never

thought of but with repentance. Yet to her ignorance, to her, rising

towards purity now, yet ever steeped in the coarsest knowledge, it

seemed that the thing called love could hardly utter itself save by some

threadbare blandishment, or parrot combination of words, used each night

by a hundred women of the town. Cuckoo knew no language of love that was

not, so to say, bad language, inasmuch as it was used by those whom she

hated. And hitherto she had been content to keep her love for Julian a

silent love, except on the few occasions when she had obliquely showed

it by the anger of jealousy or of reproach. She wished nothing bodily

from him, or if she did, stifled the wish in the mutely repeated record

of her own unworthiness. But now, if she was to draw his soul to hers,

she must move forward, she must surely commit some sacrifice, perform

some deed. What deed could she perform? What sacrifice could she make

that would win upon him, that would alter his relation towards her from

one of eccentric friendship to one of affection that might even be

governed?

The lady of the feathers did not reason this all out in her mind as

she sat before the spluttering fire, but she felt it, a tangled mass

of thoughts, catching her brain as in a net, catching her life as in

a net too. How could she make Julian love her? What could she do? And

all the time, as she asked herself passionately that question, the

hours were gliding by towards the evening refrain of her life. Cuckoo

began to consider this evening refrain as she had never considered it

before, as it might affect another if he loved her. If she made Julian

love her, if she succeeded in this attempt that seemed as if it must

be impossible, what of her evening refrain then? And what would be the

conclusion of such a love? She could not tell; she could only wonder.

The strange thing about the lady of the feathers, and about many of her

kind, was, that she never dreamed of such a thing as owing a duty to

herself, to her own body, her own soul, or nature. Cuckoo knew not the

meaning of self-respect. Had you told her that her body was a temple--not

of the Holy Ghost, but of a wonderful, exquisite thing called womanhood,

and for that reason should not be defiled, she would have stared at you

under drawn eyebrows, like a fierce boy, and wondered what in heaven or

earth you were talking jargon about. To get at her sympathy you must talk

to her of duty to another; and if she had a soft feeling for that other,

then she understood you, and then alone. It was the cause of Julian and

his safety that made her now consider this evening refrain of her life as

she sat there. And her mind ran back to Julian's first visit to her and

to his first request. He asked her to stay at home just for one night

with Jessie. And she refused. If she had not refused. If she had stayed

at home. If she had at that moment, from that moment, given up her life

of the street, would Julian have loved her then? Would she have been able

to do something for him? For hours Cuckoo sat there pondering in her

vague, desolate way over questions such as these. But she could give no

answer to them. And then she thought of that horrible night when the

hours danced to the music of the devil, when she gave Julian that first

little impetus which started him on his journey to the abyss. And at that

thought she grew white, and she grew hot, and she wondered why she had

been born to be the lady of the feathers, and the wrecker, not of men's

lives--she never thought of men tenderly in the mass--but of this one

life, of this one man, whom she loved in a strange, wild, good-woman way.

"C-r-r-r!" she said, her tongue flickering against her teeth. Jessie

stirred in the blankets, came to the floor with a "t'bb" and ran into the

room with curved attitudes of submission. But Cuckoo would not notice

the little dog. She stared at the fire and looked so old, and almost

intellectual. But there was nobody to see her. What a long, empty day it

had been, this day for which she had risen eagerly as to a day of battle!

What a long, empty day, and no deed done in it. And now the hour of the

evening refrain was come. Cuckoo had wanted this day to be a special day,

for it was the first of those new days which were to come after the

doctor's word of hope. And nothing had happened in it. Nobody had come.

The doctor was with his patients. Julian was--ah, surely--with Valentine.

And she, Cuckoo, this poor, pale girl, who wanted to fight and to do

battle, was alone. And she had been so eager in the morning. And now the

night was falling and she had not struck a blow. The hour chimed. It was

the hour of the evening refrain.

Suddenly Cuckoo got up. She went over to the window and pulled down the

blind so sharply that she nearly broke it. She struck a match violently

and lit the gas. She ran into the bedroom, caught her hat, which lay

ready for service on the top of the chest of drawers, and cast it with

a crash into a cardboard box, jamming the lid down on it. She seized her

jacket, which lay on the bed, and strung it up on a hook, as if she were

hanging a criminal. Then she came back into the sitting-room, sat down in

the chair, took up the evening paper of yesterday and began to read, with

eyes that gleamed under frowning brows, about "Foreign Affairs" and

"Bimetallism."

And that night the evening refrain of Cuckoo's life did not follow the

verse of her day.

She sat there all alone.

It was her way--the only way she could devise--of beginning to fight the

battle for Julian.

She did not stay at home with any thought of purifying herself by the

action. Another day she might go out as usual. But Julian had once asked

her not to go. She had gone then. Now she obeyed him, and the obedience

seemed to bring him a little nearer to her.

CHAPTER X

THE DOCTOR DRIVES OUT WITH THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

Some days later Cuckoo received a telegram from Harley Street. It came in

the morning, and ran as follows:

"Call here to-day if possible. Important. Levillier."

Cuckoo read it, trembling. In her early days telegrams came often to her

door--"Meet me at Verrey's, four-thirty"; "Piccadilly Circus, five

o'clock to-day." Such messages flickered through her youth, forming

gradually a legend of her life. But this summons from the doctor at the

same time frightened her and braced her heart. It might mean that Julian

was ill, in danger--she knew not what. But at least it broke through the

appalling inaction, the dreary stagnation, of her days. The lady of the

feathers had fought indeed, of late, that worst enemy, mental despair,

bred of grim patience at last grown weary. That was not the battle she

had been inspired to expect, to prepare for. The doctor's telegram at

least swept the unforeseen foe from the field, and seemed to set the real

enemy full in view.

"There ain't any answer," the lady of the feathers said to Mrs. Brigg,

who waited in an attitude expressive of greedy curiosity.

"Which of 'em is it?" demanded that functionary.

"Shan't tell you," Cuckoo hissed at her.

The filthy groove in which the landlady's mind forever ran began to rouse

her to an intense animosity.

"Well, it's all one to me so long as I'm paid regular," muttered Mrs.

Brigg, with a swing of her dusty skirts and a toss of her grey head,

governed by pomade, since it was a Saturday. Mrs. Brigg must once have

held Christian principles, as she always prepared the ground for certain

Sabbath curls the day before.

Cuckoo ran to dress herself. It was seldom indeed that she stirred out

in the morning, so seldom that that alone was an experience. Arrived

in the bedroom, she pounced mechanically on rouge and powder, and was

about to decorate herself when she suddenly paused with outstretched

hands. She was going out into the bright wintry sunlight, and she was

going to the doctor's house, full, perhaps, of those smart patients of

whom Valentine had once spoken to her. What sort of an apparition would

she be among them? She dropped her hands, hesitating. Then she turned

to a cupboard, drew out the one famous black gown, and put it on. She

crowned her head with Julian's hat, hid her hands in black silk gloves,

pulled down her veil and seized an umbrella. Somehow Cuckoo vaguely

connected respectability with umbrellas, although even the most vicious

are fain to carry them in showery London. Then she looked at herself in

the glass and wondered if her appearance were deceptive enough to trick

the sharp eyes of the patients. The glance reassured her. She seemed to

herself an epitome of black propriety, and she set forth with a more easy

heart. As she walked, her mind ran on before, seeking what this summons

meant and debating possibilities without arriving at conclusions. At

the end of Harley Street her walk, which had been rapid, achieved a

_ritardando_ and nearly came to a full close before she gained the

doctor's door. Cuckoo could be a brazen hussy. A year ago she could

scarcely be anything else. But that love of hers for Julian had, it

seemed, a strange power of undermining old habits. It laid hands upon so

many perceptions, so many emotions, with which it should surely have had

nothing to do, and made subtle inroads upon every dark corner of the

girl's nature. From it came this _ritardando_. For Cuckoo was filled with

a very human dread of exposing Doctor Levillier to misconception by her

appearance in the midst of his patients. Had it been late afternoon

instead of morning her fortitude would certainly have been greater,

and might even have drawn near to impudence. But the clear light of

approaching noontide set her mind blinking with rapid eyelids, and

when she actually gained the street door her discomfort was acute.

As she put up her hand to touch the bell the door opened softly and a

stout Duchess issued forth. Cuckoo didn't know she was a Duchess, but she

quailed before the plethoric glance cast upon her, and her voice was

uneven as she asked for the doctor.

"Have you an appointment, ma'am?" asked Lawler, who did not recognize her

behind her black veil.

"I was asked to come," Cuckoo murmured.

"What name, ma'am?"

"Cuck--Miss Bright."

She was admitted. The doctor, in a hurry of business, had omitted to give

Lawler any instructions in the event of Cuckoo's prompt response to his

telegram. So she was shown into the waiting-room, in which three or four

people were turning over illustrated papers with an air of watchful

idleness and attentive leisure. Cuckoo sat down in a corner as quietly

as possible, and Lawler vanished. The leaves of the illustrated papers

rustled in the air with a dry sound. To Cuckoo they seemed to be

crackling personal remarks about her, and to be impregnated with

condemnation. She cast a furtive glance upon the square room and

perceived that they were returned by four ladies, and that three of

these ladies were looking straight at her. The eight eyes met in a

glance of inquiry and were instantly cast down. Again the leaves of the

illustrateds rustled, this time, Cuckoo felt convinced, more fiercely

than before. The _frou-frou_ of the skirts of one of the ladies joined

in the chorus, which was far from crying "Hallelujah!" Cuckoo began to

feel a growing certainty that, despite the black veil and the neat

umbrella, feminine instinct had divined her. She was totally unaccustomed

to such an atmosphere as that which prevailed in this room, and began

to be the victim of an odd, prickly sensation, which she believed to be

physical, but which was certainly more than half moral. A wave of heat

ran over her body. It was like the heat which follows on a received

slap. One of the illustrateds deleted its voice from the general chorus.

Cuckoo was aware of this, and looked up again to find two eyes fixed

upon her with an expression of thin distaste that was incapable of

misinterpretation. A second illustrated ceased to sing, two heads were

inclined towards one another, and the "t'p, t'p, t'p" of a low whisper

set the remaining two ladies at their posts as sentinels on the lady of

the feathers.

Cuckoo put her hand to her face to pull her veil a little lower down. By

accident she tugged too hard, or it had been badly fastened to her hat,

for one side got loose instantly and it fell down, revealing her face

frankly.

The "t'p, t'p, t'p" sounded again, multiplied by two. Cuckoo, thrown

into confusion by the malign behaviour of her veil, caught awkwardly at

the dropped end with an intention of readjusting it, but something in

the sound of the whispering suddenly moved her to a different action.

She snatched the veil quite off, set her feet firmly against the thick

Turkey carpet, raised her eyes and stared with all her might at the four

ladies, hurling, as a man hurls a bomb, an expression of savage defiance

into her gaze. The whispers stopped; a thin and repeated cough, dry as

Sahara, attacked the silence, and eight eyes were vehemently cast down.

Cuckoo continued staring, folding her hands in her lap. The prickly

sensation increased, but she considered it now as a thing to be jumped

on. Recognizing that she was recognized, she was instantly moved to

play up to her part, and she longed to stare the four women out into

Harley Street. If the energy of a gaze could have achieved that object,

they must have backed through the doctor's plate glass into the area

forthwith. They were, in fact, most obviously moved, and their attitudes

expressed, by a community of lines, virtue rampant and agitation gules.

A shattering silence endured till Lawler appeared to bid two of these

virgins with lit lamps of self-righteousness to the consulting-room.

As they rose the two other ladies rose also and followed in their wake.

Lawler politely protested, but they were now to proclaim their beauty

of character.

"We should prefer to wait in another room," said the lady who had coughed

as a communication with heaven.

"Yes, another room," added the other, and as she spoke she half turned,

indicating the corner where Cuckoo sat.

Without a word Lawler showed them out and closed the door. For another

twenty minutes Cuckoo sat alone, glaring at the table by which these

members of her sex had sat, and seeing no material objects but only--as

is the way of humanity--her own point of view. The ladies saw only

theirs. In this respect, at least, they closely resembled the lady of

the feathers. When Lawler at length returned with his grave: "This way,

if you please, ma'am," Cuckoo rose to her feet with the inflexibility

of some iron thing set in motion by mechanism, and marched in his wake

to the doctor's presence.

The doctor was standing up by a bright fire; he looked very grave.

"I am very sorry to have kept you," he said, "very sorry. I did not think

you could get here so quickly."

Cuckoo cleared her throat.

"I wish I hadn't," she answered bluntly.

"Why?"

"It don't matter. I started directly your wire came."

"That was good of you. Please sit down."

Cuckoo sat with a straight back in the straightest chair she could

perceive. The doctor still remained standing by the fire. He appeared

to be thinking deeply. His eyes looked downward at his gaily shining

boots. After a minute or two he said:

"I speak to you now in strict confidence, trusting your secrecy

implicitly."

The back of Cuckoo became less straight. Even a gentle curve made it more

gracious if less admirable from the dancing-mistress point of view.

"Honour!" she interjected rapidly, like a schoolboy.

The doctor looked up at her and a smile came to his lips. And as he

looked up he noticed the neatness of her black gown, the simplicity of

her hat, the absence of paint and powder. Being, after all, only a man,

he was surprised at Cuckoo's appearance of propriety. The four ladies had

been surprised at her appearance of impropriety. But the doctor, seeing

her so much better than usual, thought her--in looks--quite well, as

indeed she was in comparison with the _tout ensemble_ of her usual days.

He looked from her black gloves, which held the thick black veil, to the

winter sunshine sparkling, like a dancing, eager child, at the window.

"Do you like driving?" he said.

"What?"

"Driving--do you like it?"

"Pretty well, if the horse don't come down," said Cuckoo, at once

concentrated on cabs.

"My horses won't."

"Yours!"

"Yes. I have no more patients to-day. I have a half-holiday and I want to

talk to you. Shall we go for a drive to Hampstead and talk out in the

open air and the sunshine?"

The four ladies, the illustrateds, the cough, dry as Sahara, were

instantly forgotten. Cuckoo became all curves, almost like Jessie in

moments of supreme emotion.

"Me and you?" she exclaimed. "Oh yes!"

The doctor rang the bell.

"Take this lady to the dining-room and give her some lunch," he said to

Lawler. "And please order the victoria round at once."

"Yes, sir."

"While you lunch," he said to Cuckoo, "I'll just get through two letters

that must be written, and then we'll start."

Cuckoo followed Lawler with a sense of airy wonder and delight.

A quarter of an hour later she was seated with the doctor in the

victoria, the veil tightly stretched across her face, her poor mode of

living up to his trust in her, and deserving the honour now conferred

upon her. The coachman let his horses go, and Harley Street was left

behind. Such a bright day it was. Even the cold seemed a gay and festive

thing, spinning the circulation like a gold coin till it glittered,

decorating the poorest cheeks with the brightest rose as if in honour

of a festival. To Cuckoo London, as seen from a private carriage, was

a wonder and a dream of novelty, a city of kings instead of a city of

beggars, a city of crystal morning instead of a city of dreadful night.

She gazed at it out of a new heart as these horses--that never came

down--trotted briskly forward. Through the silk of her gloves her thumbs

and fingers felt silently the warm sables of the rug that caressed her

knees. And she thought that this feeling, and the feeling in her heart,

must be constituent parts of the emotion called happiness. If the four

ladies could see her now! If they could see her now, Cuckoo thought, she

would take off her veil, just for a moment. When the aspect of the street

began to change, when little gardens appeared, and bare trees standing

bravely in the sun behind high walls and iron gates, the doctor said to

Cuckoo:

"Now I will tell you why I telegraphed to you."

And then Cuckoo remembered that she was in this wonderful expedition for

a reason. The doctor continued speaking in a low voice, with the obvious

intention of being inaudible to the coachman, whose large furred back

presented an appearance of broad indifference to their two lives.

"You remember what I said to you the other day--that perhaps you could

help Julian from great evil."

Cuckoo nodded earnestly.

"And you are prepared to do anything you can?"

"Yes."

She had forgotten the smart carriage, and the horses that never came

down, now.

"Good," said the doctor, shortly and decisively. "I will speak to you

quite plainly to-day, for something leads me to trust you, and to say to

you what I would say to no other person. Something leads me to believe

that you can do more for Addison than any one else. Addison once implied

it; but what I have observed for myself in your house leads me to be

certain of it."

"Oh," said Cuckoo.

She had nothing more to say. She could have said nothing more. The stress

of her excitement was too great.

"Look at that holly tree. What a quantity of berries it has!" the doctor

said. "That's because it is a hard winter. Miss Bright, you are right in

you conviction. Valentine Cresswell is--has been--totally evil, and is

deliberately, coldly, but with determination, compassing the utter ruin

of the man who trusts him and believes in him--of Addison."

Cuckoo nodded again, this time with a strangely matter-of-course air,

which assured the doctor in a flash of the long certainty of her

knowledge of Valentine.

"Such a thing seemed to me entirely incredible," the doctor pursued. "I

am forced--forced--to believe it is true. But remember this: I have known

Mr. Cresswell for several years intimately. I have been again and again

with him and Julian. I have noticed the extraordinary influence he had

over Julian, and I know that influence used to be a noble influence, used

solely for good. Mr. Cresswell was a man of extraordinary high-mindedness

and purity of life. He had a brilliant intellect," the doctor continued,

forgetting to whom he was talking, as his mind went back to the Valentine

of the old days. "But, far more than that, he was born with a very

wonderful and unusual nature. It was written in his face in the

grandeur--I can call it nothing else--of his expression. And it was

written in his life, in all his acts. But, most of all it was written

in all he did for Julian. Ah, you look surprised!"

Indeed Cuckoo's face, such of it as was visible under the black shadow of

the veil, was a mask of blank wonderment. She looked upon the doctor as

all that was clever and perfect and extraordinary; so this, it seemed

to her, idiocy of his outlook upon Valentine was too much for her manner.

"Well, I never! Him!" she could not help ejaculating with a long breath,

that was almost like a little puff.

"Remember," said Dr. Levillier, "this was before you knew him."

He had taken the trouble to ascertain from Julian the exact date of

Valentine's first introduction to the lady of the feathers.

"Oh yes," said Cuckoo, still with absolute incredulity of the truth of

the doctor's panegyric expressed in voice and look.

"Men change greatly, terribly."

"Oh, not like that," she jerked out suddenly, moved by an irresistible

impulse to contradict his apparent deduction.

"No, there you are right," he answered with emphasis. "Sane men do not,

can never, I believe, change so utterly."

"That's what I say. I've seen men go down, lots of 'em, but it ain't like

that."

Cuckoo spoke with some authority, as of one speaking from depths of a

deep experience. She put her hands under the warm rug with a sensation of

something that was like dignity of mind. She and the doctor were talking

on equal terms of intellectuality just at this moment. She was saying

sensible things and he was obliged to agree with her.

"Not like that," she murmured again out of the embrace of the rug.

He turned towards her so that he could see her more distinctly and make

his words more impressive.

"Remember now that what I am going to say to you must not be mentioned

to Julian on any account, or to any one," he said.

"I'll remember. Honour. I'll never tell."

"I have a very sad theory to explain this great change in Mr. Cresswell,

from what he was as I knew him, and you must take his beauty of character

from me--to what he is as you and I know him now. I believe that he has

become mad." For the doctor had resolutely put away from his mind the

fancies called up in it by the visit of Marr's wife.

Cuckoo gave a little cry of surprise, then hastily glanced at the

coachman's back and pushed her hands under the rug up towards her mouth.

"Hush," said the doctor. "Only listen quietly."

"Yes, pardon," she said. "But he ain't--oh, he can't be."

"I am forced to think it, forced to think it," the doctor said, with

pressure. "He has, in great measure, one of the most common, most

universal, of the fatuous beliefs of the insane,--a deep-rooted, an

almost incredible belief in himself, in his own glory, power, will,

personality."

Cuckoo tried to throw in some remark here, but he went on without a

pause:

"There are madmen confined in asylums all over England who think

themselves the Messiah--this is the commonest form of religious

mania--emperors, kings, regenerators of the human race, doers of great

deeds that must bring them everlasting fame. On all other points they

are sane, and you might spend hours alone with them and never discover

the one crank in their mind that makes the whole mind out of joint. So

you have been alone with Mr. Cresswell and have not suspected him. Yet

he has a madness, and it is this madness which leads him to this

frightful conduct of his towards Julian, conduct which you will never

know the extent of."

Here Cuckoo succeeded in getting in a remark:

"Will," she said, catching hold of that one word and beginning to look

eager. "That's what he was at all the time he was talking to me that

night. Will, he says, is this and that and the other; will, he says, is

everythin', I remember. Will, he says, is my God, or somethin' like it.

He did. He did."

"Ah! you see; even you have noticed it."

"Yes; but he ain't mad, though," Cuckoo concluded, with an echo of that

obstinacy which she could never completely conquer. She said what she

felt. She could not help it. The doctor was in no wise offended by this

unskilled opinion opposed to his skilled one. He even smiled slightly.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"He's too sharp. He's a sight too sharp."

"Madmen are very cunning."

"So are women," Cuckoo exclaimed. "I could see if a man was mad."

She was a little intoxicated with the swift motion, the bright sun, the

keen air, the clang of the horse's hoofs on the hard roads, and, most of

all, with this conference which the befurred coachman was on no account

to hear. This made her hold fast to her opinion, with no thought of being

rude or presuming. The doctor, accustomed to have duchesses and others

hanging upon his words of wisdom, was whipped into a refreshed humour

by this odd attitude of an ignorant girl, and he replied with extreme

vivacity:

"You will think as I do one day. Meanwhile listen to me. When Mr.

Cresswell came to you and broke out into this tirade, which you say

you remember, on the subject of will, did he not show any excitement?"

"Eh?"

"Did he get excited, very hot and eager? Did he speak unusually loud,

or make any curious gestures with his hands? Did he do anything, that

you can remember, such as an ordinary man would not do?"

"Why, yes," Cuckoo answered. "So he did."

"Ah! What was it? What did he do?"

"Well, after he'd been talkin' a bit he caught hold of me and pulled me

in front of the glass. See?"

"Yes, yes."

"And he made me look into it."

"What for?"

But at this point Cuckoo got restive.

"I--I can't remember," she murmured, almost sullenly, recalling

Valentine's bitter sarcasms on her appearance and way of life.

"Never mind, then. Leave that. But after; what came next?"

"While we was standin' like that he seemed to get frightened or

somethin', like he saw somethin' in the glass. He was frightened, scared,

and he hit out all on a sudden, just where my face was in the glass, and

smashed it."

"Smashed the glass?"

"Yes. And then he snatched hold of me and looked in my eyes awful queer,

and then he burst out laughin' and says as the mirror was tellin' him

lies. That's all."

"He was perfectly sober?"

"Oh, he hadn't been on the booze."

"Sober and did that, and then you can tell me that there is no madness in

him."

The doctor spoke almost in a bantering tone, but Cuckoo stuck to her

guns.

"I don't think it," she said, with her under lip sticking out.