Flames Part 79

The soup here--"

"Yes, yes; our coming here again and again to eat it proves our appreciation. Julian, do endeavour to answer my question. I am really interested to know exactly what it is that has taken you again to Marylebone Road."

Julian drank some more champagne. His eyes began to sparkle.

"Can you give a reason for everything you do?" he asked.

"I think I certainly could for every act that I reiterate."

"Then you're built differently from me. But I've told you all I can.

I like Cuckoo. She's a d.a.m.ned nice girl."

Valentine's lip curled.

"I can't agree with you, Julian."

"You don't know her as I do."

"Not quite."

Julian reddened.

"Come, now," he began, and then checked himself and laughed good-naturedly. "You can't play the saint any more, you know, Val,"

he said.

"I have no wish to. I discovered long ago that a saint is only the corpse of a man, not a living man at all. But we are talking about this corpse of a woman."

"Cuckoo's no corpse. By Jove, no. I believe she's got a power that no other woman has."

"How so? You haven't been imagining that absurd flame in her eyes again?"

Valentine spoke with furtive uneasiness. He was scarcely eating or drinking, but Julian was doing ample justice to the wine, and displayed a very tolerable appet.i.te. He lifted his gla.s.s to his lips and put it down before he answered:

"No. It's gone."

Valentine seemed relieved.

"Of course. I knew it was an hallucination. You went to satisfy yourself, I suppose. And now--"

"Since it's gone Cuckoo seems to me--I don't know--changed somehow. Val, there must be a few people in the world with great power over others. You are one. Marr was another, and--" He paused.

"And what?" Valentine said rather loudly.

"Well," Julian paused again, as if conscious that he was about to say something that would seem ridiculous, "Cuckoo--"

"Is a third! You think it reasonable to bracket me with a woman like that, to compare my will, mine, who have lived the life of thought as well as the life of action, who have trained my powers to the highest point, and offered up sacrifices--yes, sacrifices--to my will, to that degraded, powerless creature! Julian!"

He stopped, clenching his hand as it lay upon the table. Never before had Julian seen him so profoundly moved. All his normal calm and self-possession seemed deserting him. His lips worked like those of a man in the very extremity of rage, and the red glow in his cheeks faded into the grey of suppressed pa.s.sion. Julian was utterly taken aback by such an exhibition of feeling.

"My dear fellow," he stammered, "I didn't mean--I had no idea--"

"You did mean that. You do. And I--I have been fool enough to believe that you relied upon me, on my judgment; that you looked up to me; that--good G.o.d, how absurd!"

He lay back in his chair and burst into a paroxysm of loud and mirthless laughter, while Julian, holding his champagne-gla.s.s between his fingers, and twisting it stealthily round and round, regarded him with a blank stare of utter confusion and perplexity. Valentine continued to laugh so long that it seemed as if he were seized in the grip of a horrible hysteria. But just as the situation was becoming actually intolerable, he suddenly controlled himself with an obvious and painful effort. After remaining perfectly silent for two or three minutes, he said, in a voice that struggled to be calm and succeeded in being icy:

"Julian, you have torn the veil of the Holy of Holies from the top to the bottom with a vengeance. But why have you kept up the deception so long, when, after all, there was nothing behind the veil? That was surely unnecessary."

"What is the matter with you, Val? I don't understand you."

"Nor I you. And yet we say that we are intimate friends. There's an irony."

At this point the waiter came in with an omelette, and the conversation ceased, checked by his peripatetic presence. As soon as he had retreated, with all the hushed activity of a mute rolling on casters, Julian exclaimed:

"It's not an irony. You choose to make it so. You're not yourself to-night, Valentine. I do not compare you with poor Cuckoo. How could I? She's down in the dirt and you are far away from the dirt. And of course your power over any one must be a thousand times greater than hers."

"If it came to a battle? If it came to a battle?" interrupted Valentine.

"You say that, Julian?"

"A battle! of what?"

"Of wills, naturally, Cuckoo Bright's will against mine?"

"But what a strange idea--"

"You haven't answered my question."

"Because I don't see the force of it."

"Answer it nevertheless."

"Then Cuckoo would be beaten at once," Julian said. But there was no ring of conviction in his voice, and he fell at once into silence after he had spoken the words. Valentine saw by his frowning face and puckered forehead that the idea of such a battle had set in motion a train of thought in his mind.

"You are wondering, Julian," Valentine said.

Julian looked up.

"Who doesn't wonder in this beastly world?" he said morosely.

"I never do. I prefer to act. Drink some more champagne?"

He pushed the bottle over and went on:

"You are wondering why I spoke of a battle between Cuckoo Bright and me.

Well, I'll tell you. I spoke because I see that there is to be such a battle."

Julian drank his champagne and looked definitely and increasingly astonished, as Valentine continued:

"There is to be such a battle. I have seen it for a long time. Julian, you may think you know women. You don't. I said just now that a woman like Cuckoo Bright is nothing, but I said it for the sake of uttering a paradox. No woman is ever nothing in a world that is full of the things called men. No woman's ever nothing so long as there is a bottle of hair-dye, a rouge-pot, a dressmaker, and--a man within reach. She may be in the very gutter. That doesn't matter. For from the very gutter she can see--not the stars, but the twinkling vanities of men, and they will light her on her way to Mayfair drawing-rooms, even, perhaps, to Court.

Who knows? And G.o.d--or the devil--has given to every woman the knowledge of her possibilities. Men have only the ignorance of theirs."