Flames

by Robert Hichens

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST SITTING

That evening Julian drove Cuckoo down Victoria Street. On the way they scarcely spoke. The doctor, summoned by a messenger, was there before them. He, although ignorant of what had passed been Julian and Valentine, was deeply expectant. Cuckoo was exhausted by the sleepless night of her vigil over Julian, and by the severe joy, almost like pain, that had burst upon her with his avowal and with his savage embrace.

When she entered the tentroom followed by Julian, she looked like a shadow gliding wearily through twilight. The doctor was there with Valentine. Valentine's face was gay. His manner was ardent, almost tempestuous. The clear calmness so generally characteristic of him had vanished, swept away by the flood of his triumph perhaps. Julian seemed nervous, and his appearance was so haggard as to be engrossing to any one who was observant. There was a hunted, fearful look in his eyes. His hands were never for a moment still. He kept close to Cuckoo. He even held her hands as he sat by her, and she felt that his were burning hot. He scarcely noticed the doctor, who observed him closely. Valentine watched his feverish excitement with laughing eyes. Of those four people he alone seemed entirely untouched by any deep emotion, entirely master of himself. For even Doctor Levillier was curiously moved that night, and was unable to suppress every trace of abnormal emotion.

They sat down. There were no flowers in the room. Valentine explained that he had remembered Cuckoo's fainting fit and feared its renewal.

"I am afraid you are still scarcely yourself," he added, with a solicitude that was too elaborate to be agreeable. "You are looking pale and tired. You are sure to sleep again."

"I'll not sleep to-night," she answered, showing none of her usual fear of him.

The assertion of her will, her momentary rescue of Julian, Julian's avowed love for her, his clinging to her as to a refuge—all these things, so Cuckoo thought, built up in her a great fearlessness. In her bodily weakness she felt strong. Her faded, weakly frame held now a large spirit of which she was finely conscious. And she attributed this leaping spirit, so brave, so intense to these things, these facts of which she could make a list. She did not know that behind them all there was a motive power inspiring her, through them perhaps, but of itself. How often is the power behind the throne unsuspected, unheeded. Cuckoo did not recognize it in this crisis, although there had been moments in the past when the murmur of its voice had stolen upon her and stirred her to wonder and to perturdation. And Valentine, to whom the combat came, saw not his real foe. And Julian looked only into Cuckoo's faded eyes for refuge, for comfort. And Doctor Levillier—? At present he could only wait patiently in the hope, doubtful, fragmentary of revelation.

Conversation that night was uneasy and disjointed. Cuckoo's defiance of Valentine was fully apparent. Julian's fear, obviously grown up to hatred, of his former friend shone clearly. There was a nakedness about the manners of both tired woman and shattered man that was disquieting and unusual. Valentine did not seem to notice it or to be moved about it. If anything, it might be supposed to add to his pleasure an unnatural revelry in being hated. Doctor Levillier, glancing from him to Julian, found him self-involved in remembrances of Rip and Valentine. The terror and the hate of the dog seemed to be reproduced vividly in the terror and the hate of the man. Valentine watched both with smiling eyes and drew draughts of power from that fountain of horror.

At last conversation failed entirely. Julian was half stretched on the divan, gazing at Cuckoo as one who aspires to salvation. It was apparent that he was fully awake to the terror of his own situation; that he pierced the depths of the abyss into which he had fallen, in which he lay crippled, prisoned, ruined. Yet a hope had dawned on him with the dawning of the full knowledge of his fall, of his fantastic self-deception. The great love in this woman's eyes shone down into the abyss, shone from that face pinched by starvation. There was Heaven in it. There was the flame. Yes, he saw it now, not literally as in the past days, when its mystery had plunged him in awe, when its presence had touched him with a great fear, but imaginatively, as men see flames of help, and of faith, and of purity, shining in the eyes of the good women they worship, with the reverence of earth for the distant wonder of the sky. He saw it now without fear, but with a passion of desire, a sharp consciousness of his degradation, that swept over him like a storm. And even yet, in this new knowledge, this rapture of awakening, he was still a bond slave, or feared he was, to this stranger with the face of a friend, this enemy with the presence of his former guardian angel. Only Cuckoo could save him, he said to himself, if indeed the day of salvation were not long ago past—only Cuckoo. For despite her many sins, the flame shone in her eyes. And where the flame shone there alone was even the shadow of help, a shadow within the shadow of those eyes.

In the silence that had come upon his guests, Valentine turned to them, and said:

"We are supposed to be here for a sitting. Well, shall we have it?"

"Yes—yes," Julian said, "a last sitting."

"Why—last?"

Julian sat up on the divan, and his hands were clenched on the cushions.

"Because if nothing happens to-night I'll give it up. I'll never sit again. And if Cuckoo sleeps—"

He paused.

"She will sleep," Valentine said. "I have the power to make her."

"No," said Cuckoo.

"Don't you think so, doctor?"

"It seemed so the other night," the doctor answered.

"And with each sitting my power will increase. Do you hear, Julian?"

"You're very fond of talking about your power," Julian said, roughly.

"No. But I may be very fond of exercising it. Why help me, then, by sitting?"

He spoke in a bantering tone. Julian began to look doubtful. Could it be that all was changed, that there was only danger in this act, that to grope thus in the darkness for lost hope, lost safety, a lost Valentine, with love, trust, beauty, still clinging about him, was to stumble further into a deepening night? It might be so. And if Cuckoo slept—!

Valentine smiled at this wavering approach of indecision. But Doctor
Levillier said, decisively:

"I wish to sit. It interests me. Send me to sleep, too, if you can,
Cresswell."

"I will," Valentine answered, lightly. "Come."

The doctor saw him standing for a moment in the light, with a glory of power and of triumph upon his face, and remembered that glory, even seemed to see it, a clear vision, when darkness filled the room.

Out of the darkness came the murmur of a voice.

"The last sitting," it said.

Julian was the speaker. Nobody replied. Silence followed. As before, the doctor sat between Julian and Valentine and touched their hands. As before, the darkness, and this mutual act in it, developed in him the faculty of hearing, or of thinking he heard, the voices of the thoughts of his companions. So far this night echoed the last night of the year. Would it echo that night farther still to the ultimate notes of this music of minds? The doctor wondered. He was soon to know.

Once again the notes of Valentine's Litany stole upon his heart. And to-night they seemed to him louder, more strident than before, as if blared from a soul that held a veritable brass band of shrill egoism within it. The doctor listened. He remembered presently that the former Litany had been broken sometimes, hesitating, that Valentine had been assailed by vague fears that stole upon him like ghosts from the lady of the feathers. To-night those little ghosts were laid. They came not. It seemed that Valentine had conquered them. No longer did they crowd to hear the bold fury of the Litany. No longer dared even one to creep along alone to bend and to listen. The doctor knew then that this night was not destined to be a mere echo of its fore-runner. It was at first as if Valentine had closed the rift in his lute, had bridged the gulf between his trial and his triumph. A tremendous sadness came upon the doctor with this thought, enveloping him in a cloud of cold. His heart fainted within him, as at some great catastrophe. He could have wept like a man who finds the trust of his life ill-founded, the faith in which he has dwelt builded upon the quicksand. He fancied that Valentine instantly became aware of his distress, and that the knowledge swelled the mighty tide of the music of the Litany. And this thought struck him and roused the man in him, like the call of circumstance on valour, crying: "Will a man say that anything is irrevocable, while there is breath in him to give the battle-cry, strength in him to stir a limb?" Then the faintness left him with the demeanour of that which is ashamed. The cold cloud evaporated. He heard the Litany without fear, but with a great desire to strike a lightning silence through it, with a fine hatred that destroyed his former hopelessness. This blatant will that sang ever the song of self, that had no desire but to itself, no glory but in its own deeds, no aim but to impress itself upon some slave, some Julian of this world, stood before the doctor's imagination like a personality, a devil embodied,—more, like the devil of whom men and women speak, against whom religion prays, and strives and rears great churches, and consecrates priests. Egoism developed to the utmost limits, is that the Devil? The doctor asked himself the question, and the great shadow that dogs the steps of life went by him on its black mission in the likeness of Valentine singing. And all the modern world stood still to hear and whispered: "Hark! It is an angel singing! If we but echo the song we touch the stars. If we but echo the song we, who are weary of time, shall know eternity. If we but echo the song we shall lay grief to rest beneath many roses, and draw from its sculptured sepulchre the radiant form of joy. We shall sing that we shall be great." And the modern world lifted up its voice, and when it sang, harmony was slain by discord.

The doctor shuddered, seeing an inferno of many circles. But the coward in him did not rise again. There was the gleam of a distant light upon him, unquenchable and serene. He doubted the eternity of the triumph of this Valentine, though he knew not why he doubted, nor upon what his doubts were based.

And as this doubt, which was a faith, blossomed within him he had a fancy that the music of the Litany wavered, faltered—that through it ran a thrill like a faint shadow of some dull despair.

At this moment Valentine spoke in the darkness.

"What are you doing, Julian?" he asked, quickly.

"Nothing," Julian answered.

"I heard you whisper."

"I only said something to Cuckoo."

"We must not talk. Let us link our fingers instead of only touching each other."

They all did so and were silent once more.

* * * * *

And now a fear seized the doctor. He became aware that a drowsy spirit like the little sandman who threw the dust of slumber into the eyes of the children stole round the circle. In his hands were poppy-seeds and opiates, and his touch was magical with sleep. Valentine had surely evoked him by a strange effort of will. He came, and his feet were shod so that he moved without noise. He filled the atmosphere with heaviness, and with a murmurous melody, like the melody of the drooping streams that hang their silver ribands over the hills of the far Lotus land. Passing the doctor, he stole to the place where Cuckoo sat between Julian and Valentine. And then he paused. The doctor divined his mission, to weave a veil and cast a cloud of sleep around the lady of the feathers. The weariness of Cuckoo's life lay like a burden upon her, a heavy burden to-night, despite the wild wakefulness of her spirit, the passion of her answered love, the strength of her resolution, the purity that drew near to her at last with ivory wings along the miry ways. She, who was at last awake, and conscious of the glory of a woman's will to rescue and to shelter, was to sleep again. The sentinel was to be overcome at her post, that the enemy might penetrate the lines and seize the citadel. How heavy the air was! To the doctor it seemed alive with sleep, as the waters of the great sea are alive with death for the sailor who sinks down in them. He saw the weaving of the veil that was dropping gently round Cuckoo. He saw the cloud shrouding her in a scarcely palpable mist. Or was it his dream? Or was it his fancy? For it was dark. There stood the tiny, obstinate spirit by Cuckoo's side. His hands touched her forehead, and touched her white and weary eyelids, and the doctor knew that all the fatigues of her life trooped together, as at a word of command, and came upon her to conquer her. They pressed round, nameless wearinesses induced by acts which had made Cuckoo that which she was. And they seemed to whisper to her: "You cannot fight. You cannot protect—it is all over. You can only sleep—you can only sleep. Sleep! You are so weary. Sleep, for life, which has taken everything else from you, has left you that." Cuckoo's face was white with the story of her life, and with the wonder of her recent self-denial, and with the memory of her martyrdom when the little old man of the many dogs shuffled to the door, bearing from her the friend of her loneliness. Her eyes were hollow and desolate. It seemed that she gave heed to the voices and listened to the beautiful legend of the magic and the holiness of sleep. And as she seemed to give heed, the devil of the egoism of Valentine rose again before the doctor, sharply outlined and distinct, and smiled with the triumph of the egoism—that modern vampire—of all the world, terrifically unconquerable. Would Cuckoo sleep? The doctor debated this question silently and with an agony of anxiety. He felt as if the fate of worlds hung upon it, and the destinies of kings.

Would she sleep?

The obstinate spirit stood by her always, and the song of Valentine was a procession of triumph in the night.

* * * * *

Julian's thoughts broke upon the doctor fiercely, and swept him from his contemplation of Cuckoo. No drowsy poppy-bed was Julian's. The shadowy spirit of sleep strove not to influence him. No opiates gave him peace. No veil of gentle forgetfulness descended upon him. He was a human being plunged in the deepest abyss of fate, beneath the range of the starlight and the gaze of other worlds. He was trembling, stretching out his feeble hands in the blackness for guidance, sick with apprehension, betrayed, deluded. And now he began to writhe in the grasp of a new terror, for it seemed to the doctor that he, too, was conscious of the obstinate spirit that stood beside Cuckoo, and that he dreaded the approach of his doom in her slumber. He, too, murmured silently, "Will she sleep? Will she sleep?" If indeed she slept at the word of Valentine—Julian's last hope was gone. For he had now concentrated himself almost utterly on Cuckoo. No longer did he draw near to her half in awe, half in derision, led to her by the presence of the flame that flickered, something strangely apart from her, in her sad eyes. No longer did he set her and the flame apart. To him she was the flame, the only refuge, the only safety. For he sought the lost Valentine indeed, but with a strange hopelessness of ever finding him again. She must not sleep. She must not sleep. In her slumber the flame would die down, flicker lower and lower to a spark, to grey, cold ashes. And Julian in his distraction thought of himself as inevitably lost should the flame die, should Cuckoo sleep, ruled by Valentine. The fight was between Cuckoo, the flame, and Valentine. Everything else fell away and left Julian's world bare of all things save this one contest. This the doctor learnt in the darkness. But still the spirit of sleep kept vigil by Cuckoo, and the air grew heavy and full of slumber.

The doctor began to feel that his own powers were being strenuously attacked. Inertia grew in his body. He sat almost like one paralyzed. His limbs, at first heavy as if loaded with intolerable weights, gradually became numb, until he was no longer aware of them. He seemed to be merely a live mind poised there in the darkness, striving against the power that sought to sweep from its path all those that fought against it or dared, however feebly, to resist it. But his mind, poised thus in this strange circle of slumber, came by imperceptible degrees to have a grip upon the past. Imitating the mind that is enclosed within a drowning body, it gazed upon the wildly flitting pictures of the years that were gone. Regent Street by night rose up before it. The doctor saw, painted upon the background of the dense gloom in which they sat, the huge and vacant thoroughfare in the last watch of the night. Faint figures wandered here and there, or paused beneath the shadow of the tall blind houses, assuming postures of fatigue or of leering and attentive evil. But one moved onward steadily, scarcely glancing to the right or to the left. The doctor's mind, watching, knew that this moving figure was himself, and, as if with bodily eyes, he marked its course down the long vista of the dim street until it passed into more private ways of the town. It passed into more private ways, but not alone. A shadow followed it, and the face of the shadow was turned away. The doctor could not see it, but there rose in him the horror and the fear which had attacked him long ago, when he turned to pursue the thing that dogged him in the darkness. And he saw the shadow waver, pause, then turn to flee. And as it turned he thought that it had the soul, though not the face, of the new Valentine. Then suddenly a great anger against himself was born in him. Why had he been so blind, so deceived? He might have protected Julian. But he, too, had been a foolish victim of outward beauty, the prey of the glory of a face. He had not read the book of the heart. And other pictures succeeded this vision of the streets and of the shadows that walk in them by night. He saw Valentine singing while he and Julian listened. And the eyes of Valentine were as the eyes of a saint, but now he knew that behind them crouched a soul that was filled with evil. Slowly the air grew heavy. Slumber paced in the tiny room. The doctor struggled against it. But the colours of the brain-pictures faded. He saw them still, but only as one sees the world in a fog; looming forms that have lost their true character, that have assumed a vagueness of mystery, outlines at once heavy and remote, suggestive yet indefinite. And still the spirit of sleep keep vigil by Cuckoo.

* * * * *

There was a slight hoarse cry in the night.

"What is that?" Valentine said, sharply.

There was no reply. The doctor could have told him that the cry came from Julian, and that the lady of the feathers, leaning low in her chair, had passed from consciousness into insensibility.

The spirit of sleep stole away. His work was accomplished. Julian sank forward upon the table with a gesture of utter abnegation. He thought that Cuckoo was dead. He felt that she was dead, as long ago he had felt that his loved friend, that Valentine who had protected him and taught him the right way of life, was dead in the night.

Doctor Levillier seemed to see Rip crouching down against the wall.

And now Valentine's will prepared to assert itself finally. It rose up to triumph as it had risen up to triumph over Rip. Was that struggle going to be repeated? Nothing had intruded upon it except the marvellous tenacity of the dog, who had died rather than yield obedience, died fighting. That tenacity surely did not dwell in the nerveless Julian, utterly despairing, utterly wrecked.

The doctor trembled, feeling that the close of the strange mystery was at hand. And as he trembled he seemed to see in the dense darkness a tiny flame. It shivered up in the blackness where Cuckoo slept, moved away from her, like a thing blown on a light wind, and flickered above the bowed, despairing head of Julian. And, as he watched it, wondering, the doctor was conscious once more that there was a new presence in the room, something mysterious, intent, vehement, yet touched with a strange and pathetic helplessness, something that cried against itself, something that had suffered a martyrdom unknown, unequalled, in all the pale history of the martyrdoms of the world. The doctor recalled the sitting of the former night and his impression then—and again he was governed by the tragedy of this unknown soul. Its despair laid upon him cold hands. Its impotence crushed him. He could have wept and prayed for it. This was for a moment. Then a new wonder grew in him. His eyes were on the flame which burned above the bowed head of Julian, and presently, while he gazed, he seemed to see, beyond and through it—as one who peers through a lit window—the face of Valentine, the beautiful, calm, lofty Valentine whom once he had loved. The face was white with a soft glory of endurance, and the eyes smiled like the eyes of a great king. And the doctor knew comfort. For this face, although marred by the shadow intense suffering ever leaves behind it, was instinct with the majesty of triumph. And the eyes were bent on Julian. Then Julian moved in the darkness and looked upward, despair seeking hope.

The man who sat by the doctor, and who was now nameless to him, was filled with a passionate fury. The doctor heard the Litany of his glory cease, and the long pulse of his heart throbbing with effort. His soul rose up, as the cruel spectre of the new Valentine had risen up to seize upon Rip, and moved towards Julian to dominate him finally, to draw him into its own eternal evil and pride and passion of degraded power. But Julian stretched his arms towards the flame which drew its brightness and its force from Cuckoo sleeping. That was a last battle of souls, and the allegory of it came clearly to the doctor's mind.

He divined, as in a vision, or as in a dream that is more real than reality, the story of his friend, the true Valentine, whom he had loved. He remembered Valentine's dissatisfaction with the glory of his own beautiful nature, his mad desire to change it. That dissatisfaction, that desire, had been the opportunity of the enemy. The soul that sighed in sorrow as it contemplated its own loveliness had been expelled by the soul that was completely satisfied with its own hatefulness. The weakness of the flame of purity had built up the strength of the flame of impurity. And so beauty was driven out to wander in the wilderness of the air, and ugliness dwelled in its body, its temple swept and garnished, like the seven devils of the Scripture. For how long a time had the wandering flame or soul of beauty been helpless, impotent, tortured by the appalling deception of the soul of Julian, whom it could no longer protect! Unable to be at rest, it had stayed to contemplate the dreary legend of Julian's gradual fall. It had seen his confidence in his love for the stranger whom he thought his friend and his protector. In the pale and delicate dawn, shrouded in the mystery of night and day, enclosed between the clasping hands of the angels of darkness and of light, it had hung in the air above the solitary Julian, as he walked homeward after his vigil by the lifeless body of Valentine. With a passionate effort it had sought to draw him to a knowledge of the truth, that he might wake from the dream in which lay his insecurity, at last his tragic danger. And faintly, even as the first sunbeam it had dawned upon him, once as he met the lady of the feathers, again as he bent his gaze upon the theatrical glories that attended the apotheosis of Margaret. And it had flickered behind the film of the tears in a woman's eyes, seeking to make itself known through the beauty of the love that clung inexorably to the heart of Cuckoo in the midst of the degradation and the corruption of her fate. Cuckoo had given it a home. She was alone. It approached her. She was an outcast. It stayed with her. She was beaten by the thongs of a world that teems with Pharisees. It clung to her. She had, through all her days and nights, been put only to the black uses of evil. It sought to use her only for good. And now at last it drew strength and power from the soul of the lady of the feathers. And the doctor knew that the secret of Cuckoo's grand influence to succour lay in her completeness. Degraded, wretched, soiled, ignorant, pent within the prison-house of lust—yet she loved completely. And because she loved completely, the sad, wandering, driven soul of Valentine chose her from all the world to help him in the rescue of Julian. For she, like the widow, had given her all to feed the poor. Her starvation had set her on high, more than the starvation and the mortification of saints and hermits. For they crucify the flesh for the good of their own souls. Cuckoo thought ever and only of another. She had betrayed Jessie and touched the stars. Now in her slumber, physical allegory of her abnegation of self, she fought in this battle of the souls.

The flame above the head of Julian grew brighter. The flame of Marr, striving with the fury of despair, flickered lower.

Doctor Levillier held his breath and prayed. Again he thought of Rip. Would Julian too die rather than yield to the final grip of evil? Would he die fighting?

* * * * *

A strange thin cry broke through the silence. The doctor saw two flames float up together through the darkness. They passed before the face of Cuckoo and were lost in the air above her. Two happy flames.

She stirred suddenly and murmured.

The thing that sat by the doctor sprang up. Light flashed through the room.

As it flashed the doctor leaned towards Julian, who lay forward with his arms stretched along the table.

He was dead.

Valentine—the spirit, at least, that had usurped the body of
Valentine—stood looking down upon Julian, dead, in silence.

Then it turned upon the doctor. The doctor stood up as one that nerves himself to meet a great horror.

He watched the light fade out of the eyes of this horror, the expression slink from the features, the breath remove from the lips, the pulses cease in the veins and arteries, until an image, some lifeless and staring idol, stood before him.

It swayed. It tottered. It fell, crumpling itself together like things that return to dust. The flesh, formerly kept alive by the spirit, now deserted finally by that which had dwelt within it and sought to use it for destruction, went down to death.

Then the lady of the feathers awoke at last from her sleep. The doctor bent over her and took her hands in his. It seemed to him that she had won a great battle. He felt awestruck as he looked into her eyes. He tried to speak to her, but no words came to him except these, which he murmured at last below his breath:

"Your victory."

Cuckoo looked up at him. Her eyes were still lightly clouded with sleep, but they were smiling, as if they had been gazing upon the face of beauty.

For how long had Cuckoo slept? Surely through all the length of her life, through all the tears that she had shed, through all the sad deeds that she had committed! Now, at last, she woke.

Her slumber had been as the deep slumber of death.

And from death do we not awake to a new understanding and to a new world?