CHAPTER V
THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS STARVES
Down in her dreary kitchen, among her dingy pots and pans, Mrs. Brigg was filled with an anger that seemed to her as righteous as the anger of a Puritan against Museum-opening on Sunday. Her ground-floor lodger was going to the bad. Analysed, reduced to its essence, that was her feeling about the lady of the feathers. Cuckoo had lived at number 400 for a considerable time. Being, in some ways, easy-going, or perhaps one should say rather reckless, she had given herself with a good enough grace to be plucked by the claws of the landlady. She had endured being ruthlessly rooked, with but little murmuring, as do so many of her patient class, accustomed to be the prey of each unit in the large congregation of the modern Fates. For months and years she had paid a preposterous price for her badly furnished little rooms. She had been overcharged habitually for every morsel of food she ate, every drop of beer or of tea she drank, every fire that was kindled in her badly cleaned grate, every candle that lighted her, almost every match she struck. She and Mrs. Brigg had had many rows, had, times without number, lifted up their respective voices in vituperation, and shown command of large and vile vocabularies. But these rows had not been on the occasion of the open cheating of the former by the latter. Fallen women, as they are called, seldom resent being cheated by those in whose houses they live. Rather do they expect the bleeding process as part of the penalty to be paid for a lost character. The landlord of the leper is owed, for his charity and tolerance, good hard cash. The landlady of the Pariah puts down mentally in each added-up bill this item: "To loss of character—so much." And the Pariah understands and pays. Such is the recognized dispensation. Mrs. Brigg had had a fine time of robbery during the stay of Cuckoo in her ugly house, and, in consequence, a certain queer and slow respect for her lodger had very gradually grown up in her withered and gnarled old nature. She had that feeling towards Cuckoo that a bad boy, too weak to steal apples, has towards a bad boy not too weak to steal them. It could hardly be called an actual liking. Of that the old creature in her nethermost Hades was nearly incapable. But she enjoyed seeing apples off the tree lying in her kitchen, and so could have patted any hands that had gathered them nefariously. So far as she looked into the future she saw there always Cuckoo, and herself robbing Cuckoo comfortably, faithfully, unblamed and unrepentant, while the years rolled along, the leech ever at its sucking profession.
Now this agreeable vision was abruptly changed. This slide of the magic lantern was smashed to fragments. And Mrs. Brigg was filled with the righteous anger of a balked and venerable robber. As a mother, dependent upon the earnings of her child in some godly profession might feel on the abrupt and reasonless refusal of that child to continue in it, so did Mrs. Brigg feel now.
The lady of the feathers had, for the moment at least, given up her profession. She sat at home with folded hands at night. It was earth-shaking. It stirred the depths of the Brigg being. Quakings of a world in commotion were as nothing to it. And the sweet Brigg dream that had dawned on the last night of the old year, dream of a rich "toff" in love with Cuckoo and winding her up to gilded circles, in which the fall of night set gay ladies bareheaded, and scattered all feathered hats to limbo, died childless and leaving no legacies. Certainly, Cuckoo was not making money on the quiet enough in one night to keep her as seven or fourteen nights would formerly have supplied. Mrs. Brigg questioned, remonstrated, stormed, sulked, was rude, insinuating, artful, blunt, and blackguardly—all to no purpose. Cuckoo would give no explanation of her conduct. In the day she went out, but Mrs. Brigg was not to be deceived by that. She based her observations and conclusions on weighty matters connected with the culinary art and with things about which her trained, disgraceful intelligence could not be deceived. Cuckoo was falling into poverty. In the eyes of Brigg she had formerly been in touch with riches, that is to say, she had—so the landlady considered—lived well. She had got along without falling into debt. The exorbitant rent, regularly earned, had been as regularly paid. The Brigg perquisites had not been disputed. No watchful eye had been directed upon the claws that grabbed and clung, the fingers that filched and retained.
But now was come a devastating change. Cuckoo grown, or growing, poor was no longer easy-going. Living much less well, she also began to keep a sharp eye on all she had. If it went mysteriously, without explanatory action of her own, she called loudly on Brigg for enlightment. Where had it gone? The old lady, disgusted to be brought to subterfuge, a thing to which she was frankly unaccustomed, lied freely and with a good courage. But her lies did not stand her in much stead with Cuckoo, who had, from the start, no intention whatever of believing any word she might say. So war of a novel kind came about between them. Mrs. Brigg was forced to live and hear herself named thief, a distressing circumstance which she could scarcely surmount with dignity, whatever she might manage in the way of fortitude. Denial only armed forces for the attack. Battles were numerous and violent. Cuckoo, who had in some directions no perception at all of what was humiliating, took to measuring proportions of legs of mutton going down to Hades and remeasuring them on their return. If the inches did not tally, Mrs. Brigg knew it. Her soul revolted against such surveyor's work on meat that her own hands had cooked. She called Cuckoo names, and was called worse names in reply. But still the measurings went on, and still Cuckoo spent her evenings within doors, sometimes without a fire in the winter cold.
Mrs. Brigg therefore said within herself that Cuckoo had gone to the bad, and beheld, with fancy's agitated eye, a time in the near future when not only prequisites would be no more, but the very rent itself would be in jeopardy. Fury sparkled in her heart.
Meanwhile the situation of Cuckoo above stairs was becoming at once sordid and tragic. Starvation is always sordid. It exposes cheek-bones, puts sharp points on elbows, writes ugliness over a face, and sets a wolf crouching in the heart. Tragic it must always be, for a peculiar sorrow walks with it; but when it is obstinate, and springs from the mule in a human being, the tragedy has a lustre, a colour of its own. The lady of the feathers was forever obstinate. She had been obstinate in vice, she was now obstinate in virtue. In the old days Julian had said to her, "Take some of my money and let the streets alone—even for one night." She had refused. Now Doctor Levillier had said to her, "Prove your will. Lean on it. Do something for Julian." She could only do this one thing. She could only leave the street! With frowning, staring obstinacy she left it. There was always something pathetically blind about Cuckoo's proceedings. She was not lucid. But once she had grasped an idea she was like the limpet on the rock. So now she sat at home. Out of her earnings she had managed to save a very little money. One or two men had made her small presents from time to time. For a little while she could exist. As she sat alone on those strange new evenings she did much mental arithmetic, calculating how long, with these reduced expenses, which brought Mrs. Brigg's so low, she could live without earning. Sad sums were these, whether rightly or wrongly worked out. The time must be short. And afterwards? This question drove Cuckoo out in the mornings, vaguely seeking an occupation. She knew that London was full of "good" girls, who went forth to work while she lay in bed in the morning, and came home to tea, and one boiled egg and watercress, when she started out in the evening. So she put on her hat and jacket and went forth to find out what work they did, and whether she could join in it. Those were variegated pilgrimages full of astonishment. Cuckoo would stroll along the road till she saw, perhaps, a girl who looked good—that is, as unlike herself as possible—descend into the frost, or the mud from a bus. Then she would dog the footsteps of this girl, find out where she went, with a view of deducing from it what she did. In this manner she once came to a sewing-machine shop in Praed Street, on the trail of a bright-looking stranger, who walked gaily as to pleasant toil. Cuckoo remained outside while the stranger went in and disappeared. She examined the window—rows of sewing-machines, beyond them the dressed head of a woman in a black silk gown. What did the stranger do here to gain a living, and that bright smile of hers? Suddenly Cuckoo walked into the shop and up to the lady with the dressed head.
"A machine, ma'am?" said the lady, with a very female look at Cuckoo.
Cuckoo shook her head.
"What can I do for you?"
"I'd like some work."
"Work!" said the lady, her voice travelling from the contralto to the soprano register.
"I ain't got nothing to do. I want something; I'll do anything, like she does," this, with a nod in the direction of a door through which the pleasant stranger had vanished.
"Miss King; our bookkeeper! You know her?"
"No. I only see her in the street."
"Good morning," came from the lady, and a back confronted Cuckoo.
The pilgrimages were resumed. Cuckoo visited dressmakers, bonnet-shops, ABC establishments, with no success. Her face, even when unpainted, told its tale. Nature can write down the truth of a sin better than art. Cuckoo learnt that fact by her walks. But still she trudged, learning each day more truths, one of which—a finale to the long sermon, it seemed—was that there is no army on earth more difficult to enlist in, under certain circumstances her own, than the army of good working-girls. The day she thoroughly understood that finale Cuckoo went home and had a violent row with Mrs. Brigg. A cold scrag of mutton was supposed to be the bone of contention, but that was only supposition. Cuckoo was really cursing Mrs. Brigg because the world is full of close boroughs, not at all because cold mutton has not learnt how to achieve eternal life, while at the same time fulfilling its duties as an edible. Not understanding this subtlety of emotion, Mrs. Brigg let herself loose in sarcasm.
"Why don't yer go out of a night?" she screamed, battering with one hand on a tea-tray, held perpendicularly, to emphasize her words. "What's come to yer? Go out; go out of a night."
"Shan't."
"Turned pious, 'ave yer?" sneered the landlady. "Or waitin' for a 'usband? Which is it to be? Mr. H'Addison, I dessey! Hee, hee, hee."
She burst into a bitter snigger. Cuckoo flushed scarlet and uttered words of the pavement. Any one hearing her then must have put her down as utterly unredeemed and irredeemable, a harridan to bandy foul language with a cabman, or to outvie a street-urchin bumped against by a rival in the newspaper trade. She covered Mrs. Brigg with abuse, prompted by the gnawings at her heart, the hunger of mind and body, fear of the future, wonder at the impossibilities of life. Her own greatness—for her love and following obstinate unselfishness, without religious prompting or self-respect, as it was, might be called great—turned sour within her heart at such a moment. Her very virtue became as vinegar. Mrs. Brigg was drowned in epithets and finally pushed furiously out into the passage. Cuckoo turned from the door to Jessie yelping, and directed a kick at the little dog. Jessie wailed, as only a toy dog can, like the "mixture" stop of an organ, wailed and ran as one that runs to meet an unknown future. Then Cuckoo pursued, caught her, and burst into tears over her. The little creature's domed skull and india-rubber ears were wet with the tears of her mistress. And she whimpered, too, but with much relief, for she was back in her world of Cuckoo's lap; and could not be quite unhappy there. But in what a world was Cuckoo!
It will be said that Dr. Levillier knew of her circumstances; but anxiously kind and thoughtful though he was, he did not yet realize the effect of his advice given to the lady of the feathers during the drive on the Hampstead Heights. He had told her to prove her will by doing the thing that Julian had asked of her. But he did not know what Julian had asked. And he did not comprehend the bitter fruit that her following of his further advice to keep from low and loveless actions must bring to the ripening. When he spoke, as the sun went down on London, he was carried on by excitement, and was thinking rather of the fate of Julian, the diablerie of Valentine, than of the individual life of the girl at his side. He was arming her for the battle. But he dreamed of weapons, not of rations, like many an enthusiast. He forgot that the soldier must be fed as well as armed. He said to Cuckoo: "Fight! Use your woman's wit; use your heart; wake up, and throw yourself into this battle." And she, filled with determination, and with a puzzled, pent ardour to do something, did not know what to do except—starve. So she began to starve for Julian's sake, and because the doctor had fired her heart. He had said: "Do what Julian asked you to do, and show Julian that you have done it." But something within Cuckoo forbade her to fulfil this last injunction. She could give up the street, but an extraordinary shyness, false shame, and awkwardness had so far prevented her from letting Julian know it. If he knew it, he would understand what it meant for her, and would force money on her, and Cuckoo, having once made up her mind that money and Julian should never be linked together in her relations with him, stuck to secrecy on this subject with her normal dull pertinacity. So matters move slowly towards a deadlock. The lady of the feathers did not neglect the pawnshop. Her few trinkets went there very soon. Then things that were not trinkets, that green evening dress, for instance, the imitation lace, and one day a sale took place. Cuckoo disposed, for an absurd sum, of her title deed, the headgear that had given birth to her nickname. She was no longer the lady of the feathers. The hat that had seen so much of her life reposed upon the head of virtue, and knew Piccadilly no more. But Julian's present remained with her, and indeed came into every-day use. And still Jessie sported her yellow riband. Later there came a terrible time, when the eyes of Cuckoo—appraising everything on which they looked—fell with that fateful expression, not merely upon Jessie's yellow riband, but upon Jessie herself. But that time was not quite yet.
While Cuckoo endured this fate, Dr. Levillier was in a perplexity of another kind. The first round of that battle had ended in apparent decisive defeat of Valentine's accusers. During the evening the fortunes of war had certainly wavered to the doctor's side. Julian had displayed sudden strong signs of an awakening; but the sitting had thrown him back into his dream, had pushed him more firmly beneath the yoke of his master. The doctor did not understand why, although he recognized the fact; he could not divine the exact effect that disappointment would have upon sudden suspicious eagerness. Julian had been waked to wonder, to observe Valentine for an instant with new eyes, to look the mystery of the great change in him in the face, and know it as a mystery. Yes, he had even thought of Valentine as a stranger, and said to himself, "Where, then, is my friend?" The new Valentine had risen out of the ashes of sleep. Julian pressed forward the sitting as a means, the only one, of searching among these ashes. In the old days each sitting had quickened his senses into a strange life, as the last sitting quickened the senses of the doctor. But to Julian this last sitting brought nothing but disappointment; the thing which had been alive was dead, and so the sudden hope which had come with the new wonder died too. He supposed that he had been the prey of an absurd fancy created by the idle words of the doctor, or by an idiotic movement of his mind, which had cried to him on a sudden: "If the Valentine you love and revere is really gone away, what are you worshipping now?" Now, in his heavy disappointment he thought of this cry as a mad exclamation, and he sought to drown all memory of it, and every memory in fresh vices, and in his fatal habit of absinthe-drinking. He lay down under the yoke beneath which he had previously wept, and so succeeded in going still lower. So that night Valentine had won his intended triumph, although for a while it had been in jeopardy.
Doctor Levillier was in perplexity; he had been brought to the very threshold of revelation, and then thrust back into an every-day world of thwarted hopes and broken ambitions. But the memory of magic was still with him, and gave him a feeling of unrest, and a pertinacity that was not to be without reward forever. Valentine's triumph held for the conqueror a poison seed from which a flower was to spring. The doctor's determination to continue the fight was frustrated at this time by Julian, rather than by Valentine. Julian's disappointment plunged him in a deep sea of indifference, from which he declined to be rescued. The doctor's invitations to him remained unanswered. If he called, Julian was never at home. Several times the doctor met Valentine, who, with a deprecating smile, told him that Julian was away on some mad errand.
"I seldom see him now," he even added upon one occasion. "He has gone beyond me. Julian is living so fast that my poor agility cannot keep pace with him."
It seemed as if the whole affair was going completely out of the doctor's knowledge, and that even Cuckoo had no longer any power of attraction for Julian. The doctor wrote to her and received an ill-spelt answer, telling him that Julian had not been near her since the last night of the year. In this event the doctor's only hope lay in keeping closely in touch with Valentine. To do this proved an easy matter. Valentine responded readily to his invitations, asked him out in return, seemed glad to be with him. The doctor believed he read the reason of this joy in Valentine's anxiety to prove the depth of Julian's degradation. He had now begun to play devilishly upon a pathetic stop, and sought every occasion to descant upon the social ruin that was overtaking Julian, and his deep concern in the matter. This hypocrisy was so transparent and so offensive that there were moments when it stank in the doctor's nostrils, and he could scarcely repress his horror and disgust. Yet to show them would be not only impolitic, but would only add fuel to the flames of Valentine's pyre of triumph. So the doctor, too, sought to play his part, and never wearied in seeking Julian, although his quest was in vain. From Valentine he gathered that Julian was now dropped even by the gay world; that his clubs looked askance at him; that men began to shun him, and to whisper against him.
"The stone is going down in the sea," Valentine said.
"Who threw it into the sea?" the doctor asked. "Tell me that."
Valentine shrugged whimsical shoulders.
"Fate, I suppose," he answered. "Fate is a mischievous boy, and is always throwing stones. Is the lady of the feathers disconsolate?"
The doctor did not trust himself to reply, but was silent, plotting another meeting to sit. For he had begun, still magic-bound perhaps, to divine some possible salvation in that act which he had once condemned, led, as he thought, by knowledge and by experience, of the nervous system forsooth! Now he was led unscientifically by pure feeling, like a child by a warm, close hand. The instinct that had guided Cuckoo seemed to stretch out fingers to him. He must respond. But how to reach Julian? While he strove to solve this problem it was solved for him in a manner utterly surprising to him, although engineered by words of his.
Cuckoo wrought a strange work with the skeleton hands of hunger and of pain.