Flames

"We will live to-night."

Valentine laughed.

"You look excited."

"I feel excited. Don"t you?"

Valentine answered:

"I may presently. We mustn"t stay in here all the evening."

There was a knock at the door of the box. An attendant appeared to ask their orders. Valentine spoke some words to him, and in a few minutes he brought three long drinks to the box. Julian drank his mechanically. His eyes were always on the ballet. The betrayal of poor Margaret had now been accomplished and the soldiers were returning from the wars. Beyond the wall of the garden the tramp of their feet was heard, a vision of the tops of their pa.s.sing weapons was seen. The orchestra played the fragment of a march. Cuckoo sipped her brandy and soda, and gazed sometimes at the stage indifferently, often at the audience eagerly, and then at Julian.

When her eyes were on Julian"s face a light came into them that made her expression young, and even pure. A simplicity hovered about her lips, and a queer dawning of something that was almost refinement spoke in her att.i.tude. But if she chanced to meet the eyes of Valentine her face was full of fear.

And now the last great scene of the pageant approached, and the two schoolboys leant forward in their stalls in a pa.s.sion of greedy excitement. Julian happened to see them, and instead of smiling at their frankly l.u.s.tful att.i.tudes with the superiority of the drilled man over the child, he was conscious of an eager sympathy with their vigour of enjoyment and of desire. His nature retrograded and became a schoolboy"s nature, with the whole garden of life flowering before its feet. Suddenly there came to him the need of touching something human. He stole his arm closely around Cuckoo"s waist. She glanced at him surprised. But his eyes were turned away to the stage. Valentine pushed his chair a little backwards. He was watching them, and when he saw the movement of Julian"s arm, he laughed to himself. The cla.s.sical Sabbath sprang into view, and it seemed to be just then that the feet of the hours first began to move in the opening steps of their great dance of that night. Was it the magnificent Cleopatra that gave them the signal? Or did Venus herself whisper in their ears that the time for their _fete_ was come at length, that the paid vagaries of the stage demanded companionship, and that the audience, too, must move in great processions, whirl in demon circles, rise up in heart to the clash of cymbals, bow down before the G.o.ddesses of the night, the women who gave to modern men the modern heaven that they desire in our days? The stage was a waving sea of scarlet, through which one white woman floated, like a sin with pale cheeks in the midst of the rubicund virtues. She was, perhaps, not beautiful, but she was provocative and alluring, and her whiteness made her as voluptuous as innocence is when it moves through the habitations of the wicked. Julian watched her come to Faust and win him from the scarlet dancers and from the arms of Cleopatra, and the strange rejuvenation of this philosopher who had been old, and known decaying faculties, and the flight of the heart from the warm closes of the summer to the white and iron winter plains, filled him with sympathy. It must be easy to use your youth after you have known the enforced reserve of age. For age is a bitter lesson.

The dance grew more wild and rattling. The _frou-frou_ of the swinging scarlet skirts filled the great house with sound as the glitter of spangles filled it with a shimmering light. Faust was surrounded by fluttering women moving in complicated evolutions with a trained air of reckless devilry. And Julian gave himself to the illusion created by the skill of Katti Lanner, ignoring entirely the real care of the dancers, and choosing to consider them as merely driven by wild impulse, vagrant desires of furious motion, and the dashing gaiety of keen sensual sensation. They danced to fire a real Faust, and he was Faust for the moment. His arm closed more firmly round the waist of Cuckoo, and he could feel the throbbing of her heart against the palm of his hand. He did not look at her, and so he did not see the dawning anxiety with which she was beginning furtively to regard him. Entirely engrossed with the stage spectacle, the movement of his arm had been entirely mechanical, prompted by the hardening pressure of excitement in his mind. If he had actually crushed Cuckoo and hurt her he would have been unconscious that he was doing it.

And Valentine all this time leaned back in his chair, that stood in the shadow of the box, and looked at the enlaced figures before him with an unvarying smile.

Contrast and surprise are the essence of the successful "spectacle."

Just as the scarlet dervish whirl was at its height the character of the music changed, slackened, softened, died from the angrily sensuous into an ethereal delicacy. The stage filled with clouds that faded in golden light, and a huge and glittering stairway rose towards the painted sky. On either side of it hung in the blue ether guardian angels with outstretched wings, and between their attentive ranks stood the radiant figure of the purified Margaret, at whose white feet the red crowd of women, even the majestic Cleopatra and pale voluptuous Venus, sank abashed. Harps sounded frostily, suggesting that crystal heaven of St.

John, in which the beauties we know in nature are ousted by unbreathing jewels, the lifeless pearl and chrysolite. The air filled with thin and wintry light, that deepened, and began to glow, through lemon to amber and to rose. The angels swam in it, and then the huge stairway leading up to heaven shone with the violence of a gigantic star. Faust fell in repentance before the girl he had ruined and failed to ruin, the girl who bent as if to bless him upon this fiery ascent to heaven. And Julian, absorbed, devoured the wide and glowing scene with his eyes, which were attracted especially by the living flames that were half veiled and half revealed beneath the feet of Margaret. The music of the orchestra rippled faintly, and then it seemed to Julian that, as if in answer, there rippled up from the golden stairs and from the hidden company of flames that faint, thin riband of shadowy fire which had already so strangely been with him in the dawn and in the dusk. It came from beneath the pausing feet of the girl who blessed Faust, and trembled upwards slowly above her glittering hair. Julian felt a burning sensation at his heart, as if the tiny fire found its way there. He turned round sharply, withdrawing his arm from Cuckoo"s waist with an abruptness that startled her.

"Valentine!" he exclaimed in a whisper. "There; now you see it."

Valentine leaned to him.

"See what?"

"The flame. It"s no fancy. It"s no chimera. Look, it is mounting up behind Margaret. Watch it, Valentine, and tell me what it is."

"I see nothing."

Julian stared into his eyes, as if to make certain that he really spoke the truth. Then Valentine asked of Cuckoo:

"Miss Bright, can you see this flame of which Julian speaks?"

Cuckoo answered, with the roughness that always came to her in the company of alarm:

"Not I. There ain"t nothing, no more than there was that day when I had the coffee."

She added to Julian, reproachfully:

"You"ve been drinkin". Now, dearie, you have."

Suddenly his two companions became intolerable to Julian. He thought them stupid, boorish, dense, devoid of the senses of common humanity, not to see what he saw, not to feel as he felt,--that this vague flame had a meaning and a message not yet interpreted, perhaps not even remotely divined. With an angry exclamation he sprang to his feet, turning once more to the stage. And as the curtain fell, he distinctly saw the flame glowing like a long and curiously shaped star above the head of Margaret.

And this man and woman would not see it! A sudden enmity to them both came to him in that moment. He abruptly opened the door of the box, and went out without another word to either of them. Cuckoo"s voice shrilly calling to him to stop did not affect his resolution and desire to escape from them if only for a moment.

Out in the corridor at the back of the dress circle people were beginning to circulate, relieved from the tension of examining the ballet. Julian was instantly swallowed up in a noisy crowd, hot, flushed, loud-voiced, bright-eyed. Ma.s.ses of excited young men lounged to and fro, smoking cigarettes, and making fervent remarks upon the gaily dressed women, who glided among them observantly. From the adjoining bar rose the music of popping corks and flowing liquids. The barmaids were besieged. Clouds of smoke hung in the air, and the heat was terrific. Julian felt it clinging to him as if with human arms as he slowly walked over the thick carpet, glancing about him. Humanity touched him on every side. At one moment an elderly woman, with yellow hair and a fat-lined face, enveloped him in her skirts of scarlet and black striped silk. The black chiffon that swept about her neck and heaving shoulders fluttered against his face.

Her high-heeled boots trod on his. He seemed one with her. Then she had vanished, and instantly he was in the arms of a huge racing-man, who wore gigantic pink pearls in his shirt front, and bellowed the latest slang to a thin and dissipated companion. It seemed to Julian that he was kicked like a football from one life to another, and that from each life he drew away something as he bounded from it, the fragment of a thought, the thrill of a desire, the indrawn breath of a hope. Like a machine that winds in threads of various coloured silks, he wound in threads from the various coloured hearts about him,--red, white, coa.r.s.e, and fine. And, half-unconsciously, was he not weaving them into a fabric? Never before had he understood the meaning of a crowd, that strange congregation of pa.s.sions and of fates which speaks in movements and is melodious in att.i.tudes, which quarrels in all its parts, silently, yet is swayed through and through by large impulses, and as an intellect far more keen and a.s.sertively critical than the intellect of any one person in it. And now, when Julian began to feel the meaning of this surging mob of men and women, the hours danced, and he and all the crowd danced with them. And the music that accompanied and directed the feet through the figures of that night"s quadrille was the music of words and of laughter, of hissing enticements and of whispered replies. Irresistible was the performance of the hours and of the crowd that lived in them. Julian knew it when the dance began, marvelled at it for a little when the dance was ended. There was contagion in the air, furtive, but strong as the contagion of cholera,--the contagion of human creatures gathered together in the night. Only the youth who dwells--like Will-o"-the-Mill--forever by the lonely stream in the lonely mountain valley escapes it entirely. Aged saints look backward on their lives, and remember at least one night when it seized them in its embrace; and even the purest woman, through its spell, has caught sight of the vision behind the veil of our civilization, and although she has shrunk from it, has had a moment of wonder and of interest, never quite effaced from her memory.

On every side the Oxford and Cambridge boys laughed and shouted, pushed and elbowed. They had begun to cast off restraint, and the G.o.d that is rowdy on a rowdy throne compelled them to their annual obeisance at his feet. Some of them moved along singing, and interrupting their song with shouts. Friends, when they met in the crowd, yelled shrill recognitions at each other, and nicknames sang in the air like noisy birds. Rows of men linked arms, and, striding forward, compelled the throng to yield them difficult pa.s.sage, swinging this way and that to make their progress more comprehensive. The attendants, standing by the wall like giants, calmly smiled on the growing uproar, into which they darted now and then with a sudden frenzy of dutiful agility to eject some rude wit who had transgressed their code of propriety. The very spirit of l.u.s.ty youth was in this crowd of hot, careless, blatant, roving youths, mad to find themselves away from the cool and grey Oxford towers, and from the vacant banks of the Cam, in pa.s.sionate Leicester Square, fired by the scarlet ballet, and the thunder of the orchestra, and the sight of smart women.

Sudden emanc.i.p.ation is the most flaming torch to human pa.s.sions that exists in the world. It flared through all that mob, urging it to conflagration, to the flames that burst up in hearts that are fresh and ardent, and that so curiously confuse joy with wickedness.

Flames! flames! The word ran in Julian"s mind, and in his breast flames surely burned that night, for, when he suddenly ran against Valentine and Cuckoo in the throng, he caught Valentine by the arm and said:

"Val, you were right just now. There was no flame; there could have been no flame where Margaret stood. She was too pure. What can fire have to do with snow? Cuckoo, I was a fool. Catch hold of my arm."

He pulled her arm roughly through his, never noticing how pale the girl"s face was, how horror-stricken were her eyes. He wanted to bathe himself, and her, and Valentine, in this crowd that influenced him and that he helped to influence. He felt as the diver feels, who, when he plunges, has a sacred pa.s.sion for the depths. There are people who have an ardour for going down comparable to the ardour felt by those who mount. Tonight such an ardour took hold of Julian.

Valentine fell in with it, seeing the humour of his friend, and Cuckoo, prisoned between the two men, did not attempt to resist them. As they moved on Valentine said, in a voice he made loud that it might be heard:

"Now, you feel the strength of the spring, Julian. Is it not better than all my teachings of asceticism?"

"Yes, by ----, it is."

And as he made that answer, Julian, for the first time, forgot to look up to Valentine, and felt a splendid equality with him, the equality that men of the same age and temper feel when they are bent on the same pursuit. How can one of two Baccha.n.a.ls stoop in adoration of the other, when both are bounding in the procession of Silenus? Valentine fell from his pedestal and became a comrade instead of a G.o.d. He was no longer the chaperon of the dancing hours, but their partner. And a new fire shone in his blue eyes, an unaccustomed red ran over his cheeks, as he heard Julian"s answer to his question. From that moment he ceased to play what, it seemed, had been but a part, the empty ivory _role_ of saint. For Julian was no longer conscious or observant of him, no longer able to wonder at his abrupt transformation. In a flash he cast off his habitual restraint and pa.s.sed from the reserve of thought to the rowdyism of act.

He chattered unceasingly, dressing his English in all the slang embroidery of the day. He laughed and chaffed, exchanged repartees with the flowing mult.i.tude through which they pa.s.sed, stopped to speak to the flaunting women and loaded them with extravagant compliments, elbowed loungers out of his way, and made the most personal remarks on those around him. Two men went by, and one of them exclaimed, with a surprised glance at Valentine:

"I"m d.a.m.ned! Why, there goes the Saint of Victoria Street."

"Saint!" said the other; "I should think devil the more appropriate name.

That chap looks up to anything."

"Ah, well; when a saint turns sinner--," answered the first speaker, with a laugh.

Valentine heard the words and burst into a roar of laughter. He drew Cuckoo to the left and Julian followed. They pa.s.sed under an archway into the bar, which was crowded with men, drinking and talking at the tops of their voices. Valentine called for drinks in a voice so loud and authoritative that the barmaid hurried to serve him, deserting other customers, who protested vainly. He forced Cuckoo to drink, and Julian needed no urging. Clinking gla.s.ses noisily with them, he gave as a toast:

"To the dance of the hours!"

These words, uttered with almost strident force, attracted attention even amid the violent hubbub that was raging, and several young men pressed round Valentine as he stood with his back against the counter of the bar.

They raised their gla.s.ses, too, half in ridicule, and shouting in chorus, "To the dance of the hours!" drained them to this toast, which they could not comprehend. Valentine dashed his gla.s.s down. It broke and was trodden under foot. The barmaid protested. He threw her a sovereign. The young men gathered round, broke theirs in imitation, and Julian, s.n.a.t.c.hing Cuckoo"s from her, flung it away. As he did so, Valentine thrust another, filled with champagne, into her hand, and again cried out the toast.

"What the deuce does he mean by it?" one youth called out. "The dance of the hours; what"s that?"

"The dance of the hours! The dance of the hours!" echoed other voices, and gla.s.ses were drained wildly. There was something exciting in the mere sound of the words that seemed to set brains jigging, and feet moving, and the world spinning and bowing. For if Time itself danced, what could the most Puritan human being do but dance with it? Seeing the crowd round Valentine, men who were drinking at the other end of the bar joined it, and the toast pa.s.sed quickly from mouth to mouth. Uttered by every variety of voice, with every variety of accent, it filled the stifling atmosphere, and tickled many an empty brain, like the catchword political that can set a nation behind one astute wire-puller. Boys yelled it, men murmured it, and an elderly woman in a plush gown and yellow feathers screamed it out in a piercing soprano that would have put many a trumpet-blast to shame. Gla.s.ses were emptied and filled again in its honour. Yet n.o.body knew what it meant, and apparently n.o.body cared, except the Oxford boy who had already expressed his desire to be better informed on the subject. He had gradually edged his way through the throng until he was close to Valentine, at whom he gazed with a sort of tipsy reverence.

"I say, you chap," he cried. "What are we drinking to--eh? What the devil"s the dance of the hours?"

Valentine brought his gla.s.s down on the counter.

"What is it?" he exclaimed. "Why, the greatest dance in the world, the dance that youth sends out the invitations for, and women live for, and old men die with longing for. We set the hours dancing in the night, we--all who are gay and careless, who love life in the greatest way, and who laugh at death, and who aren"t afraid of the devil. The devil"s only a bogey to frighten old women and children. What do the hours care for him? Not a snap. It"s only cowards who fear him. Brave men do what they will, and when the hours dance they dance with them, and drink with them all the night through. Who says there"ll be another morning? I don"t believe it. Curse the sunshine. Give me the night and the dancing hours!"

The youth gave a yell, which was echoed by some of his rowdy companions, and by the two little schoolboys who had joined the throng in a frenzy of childish excitement, which they thought manly.

"The dancing hours! The dancing hours!" they cried, and one who was with a girl suddenly caught her round the waist and broke into wild steps.

Others joined in. The confusion became tremendous. Gla.s.ses were knocked over. Whiskies and sodas were poured out in libations upon the carpet.