Flames Part 47

The protests of the barmaids were unheeded or unheard. Julian whirled Cuckoo into the throng, and Valentine, snapping his long white fingers like castanets, stamped his feet as if to the measure of a wild music.

Against the wall some loungers looked on in contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt, but by far the greater number of men present were young and eager for any absurdity, and not a few were half tipsy. These ardently welcomed anything in the nature of a row, and the romp became general and noisy.

Men danced awkwardly with one another, roaring the latest music-hall tunes at the pitch of their voices. The women screamed with laughter, or giggled piercingly as they were banged and trodden on in the tumult.

The noise, penetrating to the promenade, drew the attention of the audience, many of whom hurried to see what was going on, and the block round the archways quickly became impenetrable. One or two of the gigantic chuckers-out forced their way into the throng and seized the dancers nearest to them, but they were entirely unable to stay the ridiculous impulse which impelled this mob of young human beings to capering and yelling. Indeed they merely increased the scuffle, which rapidly developed towards a free fight. Hats were knocked off, dresses were torn. The women got frightened and began to scream. The men swore, and some lost their tempers and struck out right and left. Valentine watched the scene with laughing eyes as if he enjoyed it. Especially he watched Julian, who, with scarlet face and sparkling eyes, still forced Cuckoo round and round in the midst of the tumult. Cuckoo was white, and seemed to be half fainting. Her head rested helplessly against Julian's shoulder, and her eyes stared at him as if fascinated. Her dress was torn, and her black veil hung awry. If she danced with the hours it was without joy or desire.

But suddenly police appeared. The dancers, abruptly realizing that a joke was dying in a disaster, ceased to prance. Some violently a.s.sumed airs of indifference and of alarming respectability. Many sinuously wound their way out to the promenade. A few, who had completely lost their heads, hustled the police, and were promptly taken into custody. Julian would have been among these had it not been for the intervention of Valentine, who caught him by the shoulder, and drew him and Cuckoo away.

"No; you mustn't end to-night in a cell," he said in Julian's ear. "The dancing hours want you still. Julian, you are only beginning your real life to-night."

Julian, like a man in an excited dream, followed Valentine to the bottom of the broad stairs, on, through the blooming ma.s.ses of flowers, to the entrance. Two or three cabs were waiting. Valentine put Cuckoo into one.

She had not spoken a word, and was trembling as if with fear.

"Get in, Julian."

Julian obeyed, and Valentine, standing on the pavement, leaned forward and whispered to him:

"Take her home, Julian."

Suddenly Julian shouted Cuckoo's address to the cabman hoa.r.s.ely.

The cab drove away.

Valentine walked slowly towards Piccadilly Circus, whistling softly, "I want you, my honey; yes, I do."

BOOK III--THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

CHAPTER I

THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS

The thin afternoon light of an indefinite spring day shone over the Marylebone Road. A heavy warmth was in the air, and the weather was peculiarly windless, but the sun only shone fitfully, and the street looked sulky. The faces of the pa.s.sers-by were hot and weary. Women trailed along under the weight of their parcels, and men returned from work grimmer than usual, and wondering almost with a fretfulness of pa.s.sion why they were born predestined to toil. The cabmen about Baker Street Station dozed with nodding heads upon their perches, and the omnibus conductors forgot to chaff, and collected their tolls with a mechanical deliberation. At the crossings the policemen, helpless in their uniforms of the winter, became dictatorial more readily than on cooler days. Some sorts of weather incline every one to temper or to depression. The day after the boat-race lay under a malign spell. It seemed to feel all the weariness of reaction, and to fold all men and women in the embrace of its la.s.situde and heavy hopelessness.

At number 400, Jessie whined pitifully in her basket, and her arched back quivered perpetually as her minute body expanded and contracted in the effort of breathing. Her beady eyes were open and fixed furtively upon her mistress, as if in inquiry or alarm, and her whole soul was whirling in a turmoil set in motion by the first slap she had ever received in gravity at the hands of Cuckoo. Jessie's inner nature was stung by that slap. It knocked her world over, like a doll hit by a child. Her universe lay p.r.o.ne upon its back.

And Cuckoo's? She was sitting in the one arm-chair with her thin hands folded in her lap. She wore the black dress given to her by Julian, but she did not look prepared to go out, for her hair was standing up over her head in violent disorder, her cheeks were haggard and unwashed, and her boots--still muddy from the previous night's promenading--stood in a corner near the grate in the first position, as if directed by a dancing-mistress. Cuckoo was neither reading nor working. She was simply staring straight before her, without definite expression. Her face indeed wore a quite singularly blank look and her mouth was slightly open. Her feet, stuck out before her, rested on the edge of the fender, shoeless, and both her general appearance and att.i.tude betokened a complete absence of self-consciousness, and that lack of expectation of any immediate event which is often dubbed stupidity. The lady of the feathers sitting in the horsehair-covered chair in the cheap sitting-room with the folding doors looked indeed stupid, pale, and heavy. Fatigue lay in the shadows of her eyes, but something more than ordinary fatigue hovered round her parted lips and spoke in her posture. A dull weariness, in which the mind took part with the body, held her in numbing captivity.

She had only broken through it in some hours to repulse the anxious effort of Jessie to scramble into the nest of her lap. That slap given, she had again relapsed without a struggle into this waking sleep.

The sun came out with a sudden violence, and an organ began to play a frisky tune in the street. Jessie whined and whimpered, formed her mouth into the shape of an O, and, throwing up her head, emitted a vague and smothered howl. Below stairs, Mrs. Brigg, who was afflicted with a complaint that prompted her to perpetual anxious movement, laboured about the kitchen, doing nothing in particular, among her pots and pans. The occasional clatter of them mingled with the sound of the organ, and with the suffocated note of Jessie, in a depressing symphony. The sun went in again, and some dust, stirred into motion by a pa.s.sing omnibus, floated in through the half-open window and settled in a light film upon the photograph of Marr. Presently the organ moved away, and faded gradually in pert tunes down the street. Jessie's nervous system, no longer played upon, ceased to spend its pain in sound, and a London silence fell round the little room. Then, at length, Cuckoo s.h.i.+fted in her chair, stretched her hands in her lap, and sat up slowly. The inward expression had not faded from her eyes yet, for, leaning forward, she still stared blankly before her, looking, as it seemed, straight at Marr's photograph.

Gradually she woke to a consciousness of what she was looking at, and putting up one hand she took the photograph from its place, laid it in her lap, and, bending down, gazed at it long and earnestly. Then she shook her head as if puzzled.

"I don't know," she murmured; "I don't know."

Encouraged by the sound of her mistress's voice, Jessie stepped from her basket and gingerly approached, snuffling round Cuckoo's feet, and wriggling her body in token of anxious humility. Cuckoo picked her up and stroked her mechanically, but still with her eyes on the photograph. Two tears swam in them. She dashed the photograph down. It lay on the carpet, and was still there when a knock at the door was succeeded by the entrance of Julian.

He, too, looked pale and rather weary, but excited.

"Cuckoo," he said.

She sat still in the chair, looking at him.

"Well?" she said, and closed her lips tightly.

He came a step or two forward into the little room, and put his hat and stick down on the table.

"You expected me to come, didn't you?"

"I don't know as I did."

Her eyes were on Jessie now, and she stroked the little dog's back steadily up and down, alternately smoothing and ruffling its short coat.

Julian came over and stood by the mantelpiece.

"I told you I should come."

"Did you?"

"Don't you remember?"

She s.h.i.+fted round in the chair till he could only see her shoulder, and the side of her head and neck, on which the loose hair was tumbling in ugly confusion. Sitting thus she threw back at him the sentence:

"I don't want to remember nothing. I don't want to remember."

Julian stood hesitating. He glanced at Cuckoo's hair and at the back of her thin hand moving to and fro above the little contented dog.

"Why not?" he said.

At first she made no answer to this question, and seemed as if she had not heard it, but presently it appeared that her silence had been caused by the effect of consideration, for at length she said, still retaining her aloof att.i.tude:

"I don't want to remember, because it's like a beastly dream, and when I remember I know it ain't a dream."

Julian said nothing, and suddenly Cuckoo turned round to him, and took her hand from Jessie's back.

"I say. You were mad last night. Now, weren't you?"

The words came from her almost pleadingly, and her eyes rested on Julian's insistently, as if demanding an affirmative.

"He'd made you mad," she continued.

"He," said Julian. "Who?"

"Your friend."

"Valentine! He had nothing to do with it."