Flames Part 53

"What are you about to-night?"

The question came from her painted lips very sternly. It seemed addressed by one who had a right to condemn, and who was going to exercise that right. Julian was astonished by her tone, and had an instant's inclination to resent it. But then he thought that there was nothing in the words themselves, and that the odd manner probably sprang simply from fatigue or some other womanish, undivined cause. So he answered:

"Just taking a stroll. It's so fine," and began to drink his coffee.

But Cuckoo quickly showed that her manner meant all that it had seemed to say.

"That ain't it," she said, with emphatic excitement, though she spoke in a low voice because of the people all round them. "You know it ain't."

Julian was just lighting a cigarette. The match was flaming in his hand.

He let it go out as he looked at her.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

"What are you doin'?" she retorted. "That's what I want to know. Not as I need to ask, though," she added, bitterly.

Julian was distinctly taken aback by the emotion in her manner, and the pa.s.sion that she tried to keep quiet in her voice. He flushed rather red, a boyish trick which he could never quite get over.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, lighting another match, and this time making it do its office on his cigarette.

Cuckoo tossed her head in a way that was not wholly free from vulgarity, but that was certainly wholly unconscious and expressive of real feeling.

"Oh yes, you do," she rejoined. Then after a moment's silence, she added, with bitter emphasis, and a movement of her hand in the direction of the door:

"You out in that crowd, and doing the same as all of them?"

As she said the words tears started under her blackened eyelashes.

If Julian had been taken aback before she spoke the last sentence, he was ten times more astonished now. The whole situation struck him as unexampled, and but for something so pa.s.sionate in the girl's manner that it overrode the natural feeling of the moment, his sense of humour must have moved him to a smile. It was strange indeed to sit at midnight under the electric moons of the Monico, and to be pa.s.sionately condemned for dissipation by a girl with a painted face, dyed hair, and that terribly unmistakable imprint of the streets. But Julian could not smile.

Something in Cuckoo's demeanour, something so vehement and so unconscious as to be not far from dignity, impressed him and took him well beyond the gates of laughter.

"Why--but you were out in the crowd too," he said.

"I!" she said sharply, and with a touch of scathing contempt for herself, yet impatient, too, of any introduction of her ent.i.ty into the discussion; "of course I've got to be there. What's that to do with it?"

"Really, Cuckoo," Julian began, but she interrupted him.

"I ain't you," she said.

"No, of course, but--"

"I'm different. It's nothing to me where I go of a night, or what I do.

But you ain't got to be there. You needn't go, need you?"

"n.o.body need," he said. "But--"

"Then what d'you do it for?" she reiterated, still in the same tone of one sitting on high in condemnation, and moved by her own utterance to an increasing excitement. This time she paused for a reply, and set her rouged lips together with the obvious intention of not speaking until Julian had plainly put forward his defence. Strange to say, her manner had impressed him with a ridiculous feeling that defence of some kind was actually necessary. It was a case of one denizen of the dock putting on the black cap to sentence another. Julian glanced at Cuckoo before he made any reply to her last question. If he had had any intention of not answering it at all, of calmly disposing, in a word or two, of her right to interrogate him on his proceedings, her fixed and pa.s.sionate eyes killed it instantly. He moved his coffee-cup round uneasily in the saucer.

"Men do many things they needn't do, as well as women," he began. "I must have my amus.e.m.e.nts. Why not?"

At the word "amus.e.m.e.nts" she drew in her breath with a little hiss of contempt. Julian flushed again.

"You're the last person," he began, and then caught himself up short. It must be confessed that she was very aggravating, and that the position she took up was wholly untenable. Having checked himself, he said more calmly:

"What's the good of talking about it? I live as other men do, naturally."

"Are you a beast too, then?" she asked.

She still kept her voice low, and the sentence came with all the more effect on this account.

"I don't see that," Julian exclaimed, evidently stung. "Women are always ready to say that about men."

Cuckoo broke into a laugh. She picked up her gla.s.s, and drank all that was in it. Putting it down empty, she laughed again, with her eyes on Julian. That sound of mirth chilled him utterly.

"Why d'you laugh?" he said.

"I don't know--thinkin' that you're to be like all the rest, I suppose,"

she answered. "Like all them brutes out there, and him too."

"Him," said Julian. "Whom are you speaking of?"

She had not meant to say those last words, and tried to get out of an answer by asking for something more to drink.

"Chartreuse," she said, with the oddest imaginable accent.

Julian ordered it hastily, and then immediately repeated his question.

"Never mind," Cuckoo replied. "It don't matter."

But he was not to be denied.

"D'you mean Valentine?" he asked.

She nodded her head slowly. Although Julian had half suspected that Valentine might be there this confirmation of his suspicion gave him a decided shock.

"Oh, he was just walking home from some party," he exclaimed.

"P'raps."

"I'm certain of it."

"He don't matter," she said with a hard accent.

She drank the chartreuse very slowly, and seemed to be reflecting, and a change came over her face. It softened as much as a painted face can soften under dyed hair.

"Dearie," she said, "it makes me sick to see you like the rest."

"I never pretended to be anything different."