Flames

Valentine hesitated.

"What have you thought of saying?" he asked.

"Oh, I don"t know. First one thing, then another. Good-bye among the number. That"s what you wish me to say, Val, isn"t it?"

He spoke in a listless voice, monotonous in inflection and lifeless in timbre. The dominion of Valentine over him since the supper at the Savoy had increased, consolidating itself into an undoubted tyranny, which Julian accepted, carelessly, thoughtlessly, a prey to the internal degradation of his mind. Once he had only been n.o.bly susceptible, a fine power. Now he was drearily weak, an ungracious disability. But with his weakness came, as is usual, a certain la.s.situde which even resembled despair, an indifference peculiar to the slave, how opposed to the indifference peculiar to the autocrat. Valentine recognized in the voice the badge of serfdom, even more than in the question, and he smiled with a cold triumph. He had intended telling Julian now, once for all, to break with the lady of the feathers, of whom even yet he stood in vague fear. But the question, the voice of Julian, gave him pause, slid into his soul a new and bizarre desire, child of the strange intoxication of power which was beginning to grip him, and which the doctor had remarked.

If Julian broke with Cuckoo, repulsed her forever into the long street that was her pent and degraded world, would not the sharp salt of Valentine"s triumph be taken from him? Would not the wheels of his Juggernaut car fail to do their office in his sight--there was the point!--upon a precious victim? The lady of the feathers thus deliberately abandoned by Julian would suffer perhaps almost to the limit of her capability of pain, but Valentine would have lost sight of her in the dark, and though he would have conquered that spectral opposition which she had whimsically offered to him--he laughed to himself now, thinking of his fear of it--he would not see that greatest vision, the flight of his enemy. These thoughts flashed through his mind, moving him to an answer that astonished Julian.

"Good-bye!" he said. "Why should I wish that?"

"You said the other day at the Savoy that she hated you; that you and she must have a battle unless I chose between you."

"I was laughing."

The lifelessness left Julian"s voice as he exclaimed:

"Valentine! But you were--"

"Sober, and you were not. Can you deny it?"

Julian was silent.

"I so little meant that nonsense," Valentine continued, "that I have conceived a plan. To-morrow is the last night of the old year. The doctor asked us to spend it with him. We refused. Providence directed that refusal, for now we are at liberty to celebrate the proper occasion for burying hatchets by burying our particular hatchet. The lady of the feathers, your friend, my enemy, shall see the new year in here, in this tentroom, where long ago we--you and I--with how ill success, sought to exchange our souls."

Julian looked utterly astonished at this proposition.

"Cuckoo wouldn"t come here," he began.

"So you said once before. But she came then, and she will come now."

"And then the doctor! If he gets to hear of it! We said we were dining out."

Valentine"s hard smile grew yet harder, and his eyes sparkled eagerly.

"I"ll arrange that," he said. "The doctor shall come here too."

It seemed indeed as if he meant that his triumph should culminate on this final night of the year, his year. He laughed Julian"s astonishment at this vagary aside, sat down and wrote the two notes of invitation, and then went out with Julian, saying:

"Julian, come out with me. You remember what I said about the greedy man?

Come; Fate shall present you with another course, one more step towards your _cafe noir_ and--happiness. _Voila!_"

Valentine was right in his supposition that both the lady of the feathers and the doctor would accept his invitation, but he did not understand the precise motive which prompted their acceptance. Nor did he much care to understand it. Cuckoo, Doctor Levillier! After all, what were they to him now? Spectators of his triumph. Interesting, therefore, to a certain extent, as an unpaying audience may be interesting to an actor.

Interesting, inasmuch as they could contribute to swell the bladder of his vanity, and follow in procession behind his chariot wheels. But he no longer cared to divine the shades of their emotions, or to busy himself in fathoming their exact mental att.i.tudes in relation to himself. So he thought, touched perhaps with a certain delirium, though not with the delirium of insanity attributed to him by Doctor Levillier.

The doctor had intended celebrating the last night of the year in Harley Street with Cuckoo and the two young men. The refusal of the latter put an end to the opening of his plan of campaign in this strange battle, and he was greatly astonished when he received Valentine"s invitation.

Still, he had no hesitation in accepting it.

"So," he said to himself, as he read the note, "we join issue within the very wall of the enemy. Poor, deluded, twisted Valentine! that I should have to call him, to think of him as an enemy! We begin the fight within the shadow of our opponent"s tent."

Literally that was the fact.

Cuckoo"s thoughts were less definite, more tinged with pa.s.sion, less shaped by the hands of intellect. They were as clouds, looming large, yet misty, hanging loose in torn fragments now, and now merging into indistinguishable fog that yet seemed pregnant with possibilities.

Poor thoughts, vague thoughts; yet they pressed upon her brain until her tired head ached. And they stole down to her heart, and that ached too, and hoped and then despaired--then hoped again.

CHAPTER II

CAFe NOIR

Snow fell, melodramatically, on the year"s death-night. During the day Valentine occupied himself oddly in decorating his flat for the evening.

But although he thus seemed to fall in with the consecrated humours of the season his decorations would scarcely have commanded the approval of those good English folk who think that no plant is genial unless it is p.r.i.c.kly, and that p.r.i.c.kly things represent appropriately to the eye the inward peace and good will that grows, like a cactus, perhaps within the heart. He did not put holly rigidly above his doors. No mistletoe drooped from the apex of the tentroom. Instead, he filled his flat with flowers, brought from English conservatories or from abroad. Crowds of strange and spotted orchids stood together in the drawing-room, staring upon the hurly-burly of furniture and ornaments. In the corners of the room were immense red flowers, such as hang among the crawling green jungles of the West Indies. They gleamed, like flames, amid a shower of cunningly arranged green leaves, and palms sheltered them from the electric rays of the ceiling. The tentroom was a maze of tulips, in vases, in pots, in china bowls that hung by thin chains from the sloping green roof.

Few of these tulips were whole coloured. They were slashed, and striped, and spotted with violent hues. Some were of the most vivid scarlet streaked with black. Others were orange-coloured with livid pink spots, circus-pink, such as you see round the eyes of horses bred specially for the ring. There were white tulips, stained as if with blood, pale pink tulips tipped with deepest brown, rose-coloured tulips barred with wounds whose edges were saffron-hued, tulips of a warm wallflower tint dashed with the stormy yellow of an evening sky. And hidden among those scentless flowers, in secret places cunningly contrived, were great groups of hyacinths, which poured forth their thick and decadent scent, breathing heavily their hearts into the small atmosphere of the room, and giving a strange and unnatural soul to the tulips who had spent all their efforts in the attainment of form and daring combinations of colour. As if relapsing into sweet simplicity, after the vagaries of a wayward nature had run their course, Valentine had filled his hall and dining-room with violets, purple and white, and a bell of violets hung from the ceiling over the chair which the lady of the feathers was to occupy at dinner. These were white only, white and virginal, flowers for some sweet woman dedicated to the service of G.o.d, or to the service of some eternal altar-flame burning, as the zeal of nature burns, through all the dawning and fading changes of the world.

Thus Valentine pa.s.sed his day among flowers, and only when the last twilight of the year fell had he fixed the last blossom in its place.

Then he rested, as after six days of creation, and from the midst of his flowers saw the snow falling delicately upon London. Lights began to gleam in the tall houses opposite his drawing-room windows. He glanced at them, and they brought him thoughts at which he smiled. Behind those squares of light he imagined peace and good will in enormous white waistcoats and expansive shirt-fronts, red-faced, perhaps even whiskered, getting ready for good temper and turkey, journalistic geniality and plum pudding. And holly everywhere, with its p.r.i.c.kly leaves and shining, phlegmatic surfaces.

Peace and good will!

He glanced at his orchids and at the red West Indian flowers, and he thought of those crawling green jungles from which they should have come, and smiled gently.

Peace and good will!

He went to dress.

Meanwhile, in the Marylebone Road the lady of the feathers achieved her toilet, a.s.sisted by Jessie. The only evening dress that Cuckoo possessed had been given to her long ago by a young man in the millinery department of a large London shop. For a week he had adored Cuckoo.

During that week he had presented her with this tremendous gift. She went into her bedroom now, took it out and looked at it. The gown rustled a great deal whenever it was moved; this had been the young man"s idea.

He considered that the more a gift rustled, the more aristocratic it was, and, being well acquainted with all the different noises made by different fabrics, he had selected one with a voice as of many waters.

Cuckoo heard it now as in a dream. She laid it down upon the bed and regarded it by candle-light. The young man"s taste in sound found its equivalent in his taste in colour. The hue of the gown was also very loud, the brightest possible green, trimmed with thick yellow imitation lace. Once it had enchanted Cuckoo, she had put it on with a thrill to go to music-halls with the young man. But now she gazed upon it with a lack l.u.s.tre and a doubtful eye. The flickering flame of the candle lit it up in patches, and those patches had a lurid aspect. Remembering that Julian had liked her best in black, she shrank from appearing before him in anything so determined. Yet it was her only dress for the evening, and at first she supposed the wearing of it to be inevitable. She put it on and went in front of the gla.s.s. In these days she had become even thinner than of old, and more haggard. The gown increased her tenuity and pallor to the eye, and, after a long moment of painful consideration, Cuckoo resolved to abandon these green glories. Once her mind was made up, she was out of the dress in an instant; time was short. She hurriedly extracted her black gown from the wardrobe, caught hold of a pair of scissors, and in a few minutes had ripped the imitation lace from its foundations and was transferring it with trembling fingers to Julian"s gift. Never before had she worked at any task with such grim determination, or with such deftness; inspired by exceptional circ.u.mstances, she might for twenty minutes have been a practised dressmaker. Certainly, pins were called in as weapons to the attack; but what of that? Compromises are often only stuck together with pins.

In any case Cuckoo was not entirely in despair with the new aspect of an old friend, and when she was ready was able at least to hope that things might have been worse.

Putting on over the dress a black jacket, she went out into the pa.s.sage and called down to Mrs. Brigg, who, as usual, was wandering to and fro in her kitchen, like an uneasy shade in nethermost Hades.

"Mrs. Brigg! Mrs. Brigg, I say!"

"Well?"

"Where"s the whistle?"

Mrs. Brigg came to the bottom of the kitchen stairs.

"What d" yer want it for?"

"A cab, of course," cried Cuckoo, in the narrow voice of one in a hurry.