Flames Part 76

To see Cuckoo and Julian together might tell him much.

Julian came in, stumbling rather heavily at the entrance of the room.

CHAPTER VI

CLEAR WEATHER

"d.a.m.n that mat!" he exclaimed. "I say, Cuckoo, who the--?" The question faded on his lips as he saw Doctor Levillier, on whom he gazed with a vacant surprise that, added to the unsteadiness of his movement upon them, spoke his condition very plainly.

"You, doctor! Well, I'm d.a.m.ned! What are you here for?"

"To see Miss Bright," the doctor said, coolly.

He had pushed forward a chair quickly with his foot. Julian collapsed in it by the table. Beads of the fog lay all over his long greatcoat and upon his hat, which he had not yet taken off. His face was flushed and dull.

"It's an infernal evening," he said. "You doctoring Cuckoo, eh?"

"I have been talking to Miss Bright."

"Oh, all right. I don't mind. Cuckoo, help me off with this coat. There's a good girl."

She obeyed without a word. When the coat was off Julian threw himself back in the chair and heaved a long sigh. His hat fell onto the floor with a bang, but he did not seem to notice it. His face was moody and miserable.

"Molly's thrown me over," he said.

Cuckoo caught her breath sharply and stole a glance at the doctor.

"Have some tea?" she said.

"No; a brandy and soda."

"Haven't got it. You must do with tea."

She rang the bell and ordered it despite his grumblings. Mrs. Brigg made no difficulty. Julian had long ago soothed her delicate susceptibilities with gold.

So, Cuckoo, oddly shy and excited, made tea for the doctor and Julian.

The tea cleared the latter's fogged brain a little, but he was still morose and self-centred. He had evidently come to pour some woes out to Cuckoo and was restrained by the presence of the doctor, at whom he looked from time to time with an expression that was near to disfavour.

But the doctor began to chat easily and cordially, and Julian gradually thawed.

"I suppose you know Rip's dead," he said presently. "Went out the other night and got frozen in the snow. Poor little beggar. Val's awfully cut up about it."

"Is he?" said the doctor.

"Yes. Dear old Val. Dev'lish hard Rip's never making it up with him again, wasn't it? Rip didn't know a good fellow, did he, doctor?"

"He was devoted to Valentine once," the doctor said.

"Ah, but he changed. Dogs are just like women, just like women, never the same two days together. Curse them."

He appeared to have forgotten Cuckoo's presence, and she sat listening eagerly, quite unmoved by the dagger thrust at her s.e.x.

"Dogs don't usually change. Their faithfulness bears everything without breaking."

"Except a trance, then," Julian said, still with a wavering in-and-out stolidity, at the same time mournful and almost ludicrous.

"That trance did for Rip; did for him, I tell you. He never knew poor old Val again. As if he thought him another man after that, another man."

The doctor's eyes met Cuckoo's. She had a teacup at her rouged lips, and had paused in the act of drinking, fascinated by the words that wound so naturally into the legend of change which she knew and knew not.

"As if Val wasn't just the same," Julian pursued, shaking his head slowly. "Just the same."

"You think so?" the doctor said, quickly.

"Eh?"

"You think that trance made no difference to him?"

"Why, how should it?"

Cuckoo drank her tea hastily and put the cup down.

"How should it?" Julian repeated, as if with a heavy challenge.

"It might in many ways, to his health--"

"He's stronger than ever he was."

"Or to his mind, his nature. You see no change there that might have frightened Rip?"

"Not I. He's more of a man, good old Val, even than he was."

"Ah! You acknowledge there is a change."

"Give me some more tea, Cuckoo," Julian said, thrusting his cup towards her. "Make it strong. It's picking me up." He sat forward in his chair and began to light a cigar, keeping his eyes on the doctor.

"Well, if you call that a change; to get like other men. Old Val was a saint. I loved him then, but I love him ten times more now he's--a--the other thing, you know. Ten times more. He knows the world now, and his advice is worth having. I'd follow him anywhere. He can't go wrong. Takes care of himself, and of me too. I might have been anything--anything, but for him. Instead of what I am--"

He drew himself up with some pride, and pulled at the cup which Cuckoo pushed towards him.

"I'm just what Val makes me; just what he makes me," he said, taking obvious joy in the thought. "Val can make me do anything. You know that, doctor?"

"Yes. Then you have changed with him, become more of a man, as you call it, with him. Is that so, Julian?"

"I suppose so."