Flames Part 83

"Shan't tell you," Cuckoo hissed at her.

The filthy groove in which the landlady's mind forever ran began to rouse her to an intense animosity.

"Well, it's all one to me so long as I'm paid regular," muttered Mrs.

Brigg, with a swing of her dusty skirts and a toss of her grey head, governed by pomade, since it was a Sat.u.r.day. Mrs. Brigg must once have held Christian principles, as she always prepared the ground for certain Sabbath curls the day before.

Cuckoo ran to dress herself. It was seldom indeed that she stirred out in the morning, so seldom that that alone was an experience. Arrived in the bedroom, she pounced mechanically on rouge and powder, and was about to decorate herself when she suddenly paused with outstretched hands. She was going out into the bright wintry sunlight, and she was going to the doctor's house, full, perhaps, of those smart patients of whom Valentine had once spoken to her. What sort of an apparition would she be among them? She dropped her hands, hesitating. Then she turned to a cupboard, drew out the one famous black gown, and put it on. She crowned her head with Julian's hat, hid her hands in black silk gloves, pulled down her veil and seized an umbrella. Somehow Cuckoo vaguely connected respectability with umbrellas, although even the most vicious are fain to carry them in showery London. Then she looked at herself in the gla.s.s and wondered if her appearance were deceptive enough to trick the sharp eyes of the patients. The glance rea.s.sured her. She seemed to herself an epitome of black propriety, and she set forth with a more easy heart. As she walked, her mind ran on before, seeking what this summons meant and debating possibilities without arriving at conclusions. At the end of Harley Street her walk, which had been rapid, achieved a _ritardando_ and nearly came to a full close before she gained the doctor's door. Cuckoo could be a brazen hussy. A year ago she could scarcely be anything else. But that love of hers for Julian had, it seemed, a strange power of undermining old habits. It laid hands upon so many perceptions, so many emotions, with which it should surely have had nothing to do, and made subtle inroads upon every dark corner of the girl's nature. From it came this _ritardando_. For Cuckoo was filled with a very human dread of exposing Doctor Levillier to misconception by her appearance in the midst of his patients. Had it been late afternoon instead of morning her fort.i.tude would certainly have been greater, and might even have drawn near to impudence. But the clear light of approaching noontide set her mind blinking with rapid eyelids, and when she actually gained the street door her discomfort was acute.

As she put up her hand to touch the bell the door opened softly and a stout d.u.c.h.ess issued forth. Cuckoo didn't know she was a d.u.c.h.ess, but she quailed before the plethoric glance cast upon her, and her voice was uneven as she asked for the doctor.

"Have you an appointment, ma'am?" asked Lawler, who did not recognize her behind her black veil.

"I was asked to come," Cuckoo murmured.

"What name, ma'am?"

"Cuck--Miss Bright."

She was admitted. The doctor, in a hurry of business, had omitted to give Lawler any instructions in the event of Cuckoo's prompt response to his telegram. So she was shown into the waiting-room, in which three or four people were turning over ill.u.s.trated papers with an air of watchful idleness and attentive leisure. Cuckoo sat down in a corner as quietly as possible, and Lawler vanished. The leaves of the ill.u.s.trated papers rustled in the air with a dry sound. To Cuckoo they seemed to be crackling personal remarks about her, and to be impregnated with condemnation. She cast a furtive glance upon the square room and perceived that they were returned by four ladies, and that three of these ladies were looking straight at her. The eight eyes met in a glance of inquiry and were instantly cast down. Again the leaves of the ill.u.s.trateds rustled, this time, Cuckoo felt convinced, more fiercely than before. The _frou-frou_ of the skirts of one of the ladies joined in the chorus, which was far from crying "Hallelujah!" Cuckoo began to feel a growing certainty that, despite the black veil and the neat umbrella, feminine instinct had divined her. She was totally unaccustomed to such an atmosphere as that which prevailed in this room, and began to be the victim of an odd, p.r.i.c.kly sensation, which she believed to be physical, but which was certainly more than half moral. A wave of heat ran over her body. It was like the heat which follows on a received slap. One of the ill.u.s.trateds deleted its voice from the general chorus.

Cuckoo was aware of this, and looked up again to find two eyes fixed upon her with an expression of thin distaste that was incapable of misinterpretation. A second ill.u.s.trated ceased to sing, two heads were inclined towards one another, and the "t'p, t'p, t'p" of a low whisper set the remaining two ladies at their posts as sentinels on the lady of the feathers.

Cuckoo put her hand to her face to pull her veil a little lower down. By accident she tugged too hard, or it had been badly fastened to her hat, for one side got loose instantly and it fell down, revealing her face frankly.

The "t'p, t'p, t'p" sounded again, multiplied by two. Cuckoo, thrown into confusion by the malign behaviour of her veil, caught awkwardly at the dropped end with an intention of readjusting it, but something in the sound of the whispering suddenly moved her to a different action.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the veil quite off, set her feet firmly against the thick Turkey carpet, raised her eyes and stared with all her might at the four ladies, hurling, as a man hurls a bomb, an expression of savage defiance into her gaze. The whispers stopped; a thin and repeated cough, dry as Sahara, attacked the silence, and eight eyes were vehemently cast down.

Cuckoo continued staring, folding her hands in her lap. The p.r.i.c.kly sensation increased, but she considered it now as a thing to be jumped on. Recognizing that she was recognized, she was instantly moved to play up to her part, and she longed to stare the four women out into Harley Street. If the energy of a gaze could have achieved that object, they must have backed through the doctor's plate gla.s.s into the area forthwith. They were, in fact, most obviously moved, and their att.i.tudes expressed, by a community of lines, virtue rampant and agitation gules.

A shattering silence endured till Lawler appeared to bid two of these virgins with lit lamps of self-righteousness to the consulting-room.

As they rose the two other ladies rose also and followed in their wake.

Lawler politely protested, but they were now to proclaim their beauty of character.

"We should prefer to wait in another room," said the lady who had coughed as a communication with heaven.

"Yes, another room," added the other, and as she spoke she half turned, indicating the corner where Cuckoo sat.

Without a word Lawler showed them out and closed the door. For another twenty minutes Cuckoo sat alone, glaring at the table by which these members of her s.e.x had sat, and seeing no material objects but only--as is the way of humanity--her own point of view. The ladies saw only theirs. In this respect, at least, they closely resembled the lady of the feathers. When Lawler at length returned with his grave: "This way, if you please, ma'am," Cuckoo rose to her feet with the inflexibility of some iron thing set in motion by mechanism, and marched in his wake to the doctor's presence.

The doctor was standing up by a bright fire; he looked very grave.

"I am very sorry to have kept you," he said, "very sorry. I did not think you could get here so quickly."

Cuckoo cleared her throat.

"I wish I hadn't," she answered bluntly.

"Why?"

"It don't matter. I started directly your wire came."

"That was good of you. Please sit down."

Cuckoo sat with a straight back in the straightest chair she could perceive. The doctor still remained standing by the fire. He appeared to be thinking deeply. His eyes looked downward at his gaily s.h.i.+ning boots. After a minute or two he said:

"I speak to you now in strict confidence, trusting your secrecy implicitly."

The back of Cuckoo became less straight. Even a gentle curve made it more gracious if less admirable from the dancing-mistress point of view.

"Honour!" she interjected rapidly, like a schoolboy.

The doctor looked up at her and a smile came to his lips. And as he looked up he noticed the neatness of her black gown, the simplicity of her hat, the absence of paint and powder. Being, after all, only a man, he was surprised at Cuckoo's appearance of propriety. The four ladies had been surprised at her appearance of impropriety. But the doctor, seeing her so much better than usual, thought her--in looks--quite well, as indeed she was in comparison with the _tout ensemble_ of her usual days.

He looked from her black gloves, which held the thick black veil, to the winter suns.h.i.+ne sparkling, like a dancing, eager child, at the window.

"Do you like driving?" he said.

"What?"

"Driving--do you like it?"

"Pretty well, if the horse don't come down," said Cuckoo, at once concentrated on cabs.

"My horses won't."

"Yours!"

"Yes. I have no more patients to-day. I have a half-holiday and I want to talk to you. Shall we go for a drive to Hampstead and talk out in the open air and the suns.h.i.+ne?"

The four ladies, the ill.u.s.trateds, the cough, dry as Sahara, were instantly forgotten. Cuckoo became all curves, almost like Jessie in moments of supreme emotion.

"Me and you?" she exclaimed. "Oh yes!"

The doctor rang the bell.

"Take this lady to the dining-room and give her some lunch," he said to Lawler. "And please order the victoria round at once."

"Yes, sir."

"While you lunch," he said to Cuckoo, "I'll just get through two letters that must be written, and then we'll start."

Cuckoo followed Lawler with a sense of airy wonder and delight.

A quarter of an hour later she was seated with the doctor in the victoria, the veil tightly stretched across her face, her poor mode of living up to his trust in her, and deserving the honour now conferred upon her. The coachman let his horses go, and Harley Street was left behind. Such a bright day it was. Even the cold seemed a gay and festive thing, spinning the circulation like a gold coin till it glittered, decorating the poorest cheeks with the brightest rose as if in honour of a festival. To Cuckoo London, as seen from a private carriage, was a wonder and a dream of novelty, a city of kings instead of a city of beggars, a city of crystal morning instead of a city of dreadful night.

She gazed at it out of a new heart as these horses--that never came down--trotted briskly forward. Through the silk of her gloves her thumbs and fingers felt silently the warm sables of the rug that caressed her knees. And she thought that this feeling, and the feeling in her heart, must be const.i.tuent parts of the emotion called happiness. If the four ladies could see her now! If they could see her now, Cuckoo thought, she would take off her veil, just for a moment. When the aspect of the street began to change, when little gardens appeared, and bare trees standing bravely in the sun behind high walls and iron gates, the doctor said to Cuckoo:

"Now I will tell you why I telegraphed to you."

And then Cuckoo remembered that she was in this wonderful expedition for a reason. The doctor continued speaking in a low voice, with the obvious intention of being inaudible to the coachman, whose large furred back presented an appearance of broad indifference to their two lives.

"You remember what I said to you the other day--that perhaps you could help Julian from great evil."