Flames Part 43

Julian exclaimed with his usual frankness:

"Why the devil do you think of asking her?"

"Because I am certain she will be amusing company on such an occasion."

"That's your real reason?"

"Yes. She will come, of course?"

Julian looked rather doubtful.

"I don't know," he said. "She may."

"She must, Julian. Here is a note I have written to her. Do give it to her yourself. I can't be thought a bogey. She must come and learn that I am harmless."

As he said this Valentine's fingers unconsciously twisted the note they held so strongly that it was torn to shreds.

"Why, you have torn it up," Julian said, in surprise.

"Oh yes."

Valentine paused, then added:

"You had better ask her by word of mouth. Persuade her to come."

"I will try."

The lady of the feathers did indeed require a good deal of persuasion.

When first Julian made the proposition her face shone with gratification, for he gave the invitation without mentioning Valentine's name. But then the clouds came down. The lady remembered him suddenly, and said:

"Are we two going alone, dearie?"

"Well--it's a big box, you see. We should be lost in it."

"Oh."

She waited for further explanation, an obvious anxiety in her eyes.

"My friend Cresswell is coming with us. It's his box."

The gratification died away from the painted face. Cuckoo shook her head and pursed her lips in obvious and absurd disapprobation.

"Then I don't think I'll go. No; I won't."

And upon this Julian had to launch forth over a sea of expostulation and protest. Cuckoo possessed all the obstinacy of an ignorant and battered nature, taught by many a well-founded distrust, to rely upon its own feebleness, rather than upon the probably brutal strength of others. She was difficult to move, although she had no arguments with which to defend her a.s.sumption of the mule's att.i.tude. At last Julian grew almost angry in defence of Valentine.

"Half the women in London would be proud to go with him," he said hotly.

"Not if they knew as much about men as I do," she answered.

"But you know nothing whatever about him. That's just the point."

"Ah, but I feel a lot," she said, with an expressive twist of her thin, rather pretty face. "He's bad, rank bad. That's what he is."

Julian was suddenly seized with a desire to probe this outrageous instinct to its source, believing, like many people, that the stream of instinct must flow from some hidden spring of reason.

"Now, look here," he said, more quietly. "I want you to try to tell me what it is in him that you dislike so much."

"It's everything, dearie."

"No; but that's absurd. For instance, it can't be his looks."

"It is."

"Why, he's wonderfully handsome."

"I don't care. I hate his face; yes, I do."

Julian impatiently pitied her as one pities a blind man who knocks up against one in the street. But he thought it best to abandon Valentine's appearance to its unhappy fate of her dislike, and sailed away on another tack.

"My friend likes you," he said, as he thought, craftily.

Cuckoo tossed her head without reply.

"He said he would rather go with you on Sat.u.r.day than with any one in London."

This last remark seemed to produce a considerable effect upon the girl.

"Did he, though?" she asked, one finger going up to her under lip, reflectively. "Really, truly?"

"Really, truly."

"What should he want with me? He's--he's not one of the usual sort."

"Valentine usual! I should think not."

"And he wants me to go?"

Certainly she was impressed and flattered.

"Yes, very much."

Julian found himself again wondering, with Cuckoo, mightily at Valentine's vagary of desire. She touched his hand with her long, thin fingers.

"You'll stay with me all the time?"

"Why, of course."

"You won't leave me? Not alone with him, I mean."