Flames Part 84

Cuckoo nodded earnestly.

"And you are prepared to do anything you can?"

"Yes."

She had forgotten the smart carriage, and the horses that never came down, now.

"Good," said the doctor, shortly and decisively. "I will speak to you quite plainly to-day, for something leads me to trust you, and to say to you what I would say to no other person. Something leads me to believe that you can do more for Addison than any one else. Addison once implied it; but what I have observed for myself in your house leads me to be certain of it."

"Oh," said Cuckoo.

She had nothing more to say. She could have said nothing more. The stress of her excitement was too great.

"Look at that holly tree. What a quant.i.ty of berries it has!" the doctor said. "That's because it is a hard winter. Miss Bright, you are right in you conviction. Valentine Cresswell is--has been--totally evil, and is deliberately, coldly, but with determination, compa.s.sing the utter ruin of the man who trusts him and believes in him--of Addison."

Cuckoo nodded again, this time with a strangely matter-of-course air, which a.s.sured the doctor in a flash of the long certainty of her knowledge of Valentine.

"Such a thing seemed to me entirely incredible," the doctor pursued. "I am forced--forced--to believe it is true. But remember this: I have known Mr. Cresswell for several years intimately. I have been again and again with him and Julian. I have noticed the extraordinary influence he had over Julian, and I know that influence used to be a n.o.ble influence, used solely for good. Mr. Cresswell was a man of extraordinary high-mindedness and purity of life. He had a brilliant intellect," the doctor continued, forgetting to whom he was talking, as his mind went back to the Valentine of the old days. "But, far more than that, he was born with a very wonderful and unusual nature. It was written in his face in the grandeur--I can call it nothing else--of his expression. And it was written in his life, in all his acts. But, most of all it was written in all he did for Julian. Ah, you look surprised!"

Indeed Cuckoo's face, such of it as was visible under the black shadow of the veil, was a mask of blank wonderment. She looked upon the doctor as all that was clever and perfect and extraordinary; so this, it seemed to her, idiocy of his outlook upon Valentine was too much for her manner.

"Well, I never! Him!" she could not help e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. with a long breath, that was almost like a little puff.

"Remember," said Dr. Levillier, "this was before you knew him."

He had taken the trouble to ascertain from Julian the exact date of Valentine's first introduction to the lady of the feathers.

"Oh yes," said Cuckoo, still with absolute incredulity of the truth of the doctor's panegyric expressed in voice and look.

"Men change greatly, terribly."

"Oh, not like that," she jerked out suddenly, moved by an irresistible impulse to contradict his apparent deduction.

"No, there you are right," he answered with emphasis. "Sane men do not, can never, I believe, change so utterly."

"That's what I say. I've seen men go down, lots of 'em, but it ain't like that."

Cuckoo spoke with some authority, as of one speaking from depths of a deep experience. She put her hands under the warm rug with a sensation of something that was like dignity of mind. She and the doctor were talking on equal terms of intellectuality just at this moment. She was saying sensible things and he was obliged to agree with her.

"Not like that," she murmured again out of the embrace of the rug.

He turned towards her so that he could see her more distinctly and make his words more impressive.

"Remember now that what I am going to say to you must not be mentioned to Julian on any account, or to any one," he said.

"I'll remember. Honour. I'll never tell."

"I have a very sad theory to explain this great change in Mr. Cresswell, from what he was as I knew him, and you must take his beauty of character from me--to what he is as you and I know him now. I believe that he has become mad." For the doctor had resolutely put away from his mind the fancies called up in it by the visit of Marr's wife.

Cuckoo gave a little cry of surprise, then hastily glanced at the coachman's back and pushed her hands under the rug up towards her mouth.

"Hush," said the doctor. "Only listen quietly."

"Yes, pardon," she said. "But he ain't--oh, he can't be."

"I am forced to think it, forced to think it," the doctor said, with pressure. "He has, in great measure, one of the most common, most universal, of the fatuous beliefs of the insane,--a deep-rooted, an almost incredible belief in himself, in his own glory, power, will, personality."

Cuckoo tried to throw in some remark here, but he went on without a pause:

"There are madmen confined in asylums all over England who think themselves the Messiah--this is the commonest form of religious mania--emperors, kings, regenerators of the human race, doers of great deeds that must bring them everlasting fame. On all other points they are sane, and you might spend hours alone with them and never discover the one crank in their mind that makes the whole mind out of joint. So you have been alone with Mr. Cresswell and have not suspected him. Yet he has a madness, and it is this madness which leads him to this frightful conduct of his towards Julian, conduct which you will never know the extent of."

Here Cuckoo succeeded in getting in a remark:

"Will," she said, catching hold of that one word and beginning to look eager. "That's what he was at all the time he was talking to me that night. Will, he says, is this and that and the other; will, he says, is everythin', I remember. Will, he says, is my G.o.d, or somethin' like it.

He did. He did."

"Ah! you see; even you have noticed it."

"Yes; but he ain't mad, though," Cuckoo concluded, with an echo of that obstinacy which she could never completely conquer. She said what she felt. She could not help it. The doctor was in no wise offended by this unskilled opinion opposed to his skilled one. He even smiled slightly.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"He's too sharp. He's a sight too sharp."

"Madmen are very cunning."

"So are women," Cuckoo exclaimed. "I could see if a man was mad."

She was a little intoxicated with the swift motion, the bright sun, the keen air, the clang of the horse's hoofs on the hard roads, and, most of all, with this conference which the befurred coachman was on no account to hear. This made her hold fast to her opinion, with no thought of being rude or presuming. The doctor, accustomed to have d.u.c.h.esses and others hanging upon his words of wisdom, was whipped into a refreshed humour by this odd att.i.tude of an ignorant girl, and he replied with extreme vivacity:

"You will think as I do one day. Meanwhile listen to me. When Mr.

Cresswell came to you and broke out into this tirade, which you say you remember, on the subject of will, did he not show any excitement?"

"Eh?"

"Did he get excited, very hot and eager? Did he speak unusually loud, or make any curious gestures with his hands? Did he do anything, that you can remember, such as an ordinary man would not do?"

"Why, yes," Cuckoo answered. "So he did."

"Ah! What was it? What did he do?"

"Well, after he'd been talkin' a bit he caught hold of me and pulled me in front of the gla.s.s. See?"

"Yes, yes."

"And he made me look into it."

"What for?"