CHAPTER VII
JULIAN VISITS THE LADY OF THE FEATHERS
From that night, and almost imperceptibly, the relations existing between Valentine and Julian slightly changed. It seemed to Julian as if a door previously shut in his friend's soul opened and as if he entered into this hitherto secret chamber. He found there an apparent strange humanity which, as he grew accustomed to it, warmed him. The curious refined saintliness of Valentine, almost chilly in its elevation, thawed gently as the days went by, but so gently that Julian scarcely knew it, could scarcely define the difference which nevertheless led him to alter his conduct almost unconsciously. One great sameness, perhaps, gave him a sensation of safety and of continuity. Valentine's face still kept its almost unearthly expression of intellectuality and of purity. When Julian looked at him no passions flamed in his blue eyes, no lust ever crawled in the lines about his mouth. His smooth cheeks never flushed with beaconing desire, nor was his white forehead pencilled with the shadowy writing that is a pale warning to the libertine. And yet his speech about the spring that night, as they leaned out over Victoria Street, had evidently not been a mere reckless rhapsody. It had held a meaning and was remembered. In Valentine there seemed to be flowering a number of faint-hued wants, such wants as had never flowered from his nature before. The fig-tree that had seemed so exquisitely barren began to put forth leaves, and when the warm showers sang to it, it sang in tremulous reply.
And the spring grew in London.
Never before had Julian been so conscious of the growth of the year as now. The spring stirred inside him, as if he were indeed the Mother Earth. Tumults of nature shook him. With the bursting of the crocus, the pointing of its spear of gold to the sun, a life gathered itself together within him, a life that held, too, a golden shaft within its colour-stained cup. And the bland scent of the innumerable troops of hyacinths in Hyde Park was a language to him as he strolled in the sun towards the Row. Scents speak to the young of the future as they speak to the old of the past; to the one with an indefinite excitement, to the other with a vague regret. And especially when he was in the company of Valentine did Julian become intensely alive to the march of the earth towards summer, and feel that he was in step with it, dragooned by the same music. He began to learn, so he believed, what Valentine had called the lesson of his strength, and of all the strength of the spring. His wild blood leaped in his veins, and the world was walking with him to a large prospect, as yet fancifully tricked out in mists and crowned with clouds.
The spring brought to Valentine an abounding health such as he had never known before, a physical glory which, without actually changing him, gave to him a certain novelty of aspect which Julian felt without actually seeing. One day, when they were out riding together in the Park, he said:
"How extraordinarily strong you look to-day, Val."
Valentine spurred his horse into a short gallop.
"I feel robust," he said. "I think it is my mind working on my body. I have attained to a more healthy outlook on things, to a saner conception of life. For years you have been learning from me, Julian. Now I think the positions are reversed. I am learning from you."
Julian pressed his knees against his horse's sides with an iron grip, feeling the spirited animal's spirited life between them. They were now on a level with the Serpentine and riding parallel to it. A few vigorous and determined bathers swam gaily in the pale warmth of the morning sun. Two boys raced along the grassy bank to dry themselves, whooping with exultation, and leaping as they ran. A man in a broad boat, ready to save life, exchanged loud jokes with the swimmers. On a seat two filthy loafers watched the scene with vacant eyes. They had slept in the Park all night, and their ragged clothes were drenched with dew.
"I could race with those boys," Valentine said. "But not so long ago I was like the men on the bench. I only cared to look on at the bathing of others. Now I could swim myself."
He sent his horse along at a tremendous pace for a moment, then drew him in, and turned towards Julian.
"We are learning the lesson of the spring," he said.
As he spoke a light from some hidden place shot for an instant into his eyes and faded again. Julian laughed gaily. The ride spurred his spirits. He was conscious of the recklessness created in a man by exercise.
"I could believe that you were actually growing, Val," he said, "growing before my eyes. Only you're much too old."
"Yes; I am too old for that," Valentine said.
A sudden weariness ran in the words, a sudden sound of age.
"The truth is," he added, but with more life, "my nature is expanding inside my body, and you feel it and fancy you can see the envelope echo the words of the letter it holds. You are clever enough to be fanciful. Gently, Raindrop, gently!"
He quieted the mare as they turned into the road. Just as they were passing under the arch into the open space at Hyde Park corner a woman shot across in front of them. They nearly rode over her, and she uttered a little yell as she awkwardly gained the pavement. Her head was crowned with a perfect pyramid of ostrich feathers, and as she turned to bestow upon the riders the contemptuous glance of a cockney pedestrian, who demands possession of all London as a sacred right, Julian suddenly pulled up his horse.
"Hulloh!" he said to the woman.
"What is it?" asked Valentine, who was in front.
"Wait a second, Val. I want a word with this lady."
"Rather compromising," Valentine said, laughing, as his eyes took in with a swift glance the woman's situation in the economy of the town.
The woman now slowly advanced to the railing, apparently flattered at being thus hailed from horseback. Her kinsmen doubtless always walked.
"Don't you remember me?" Julian said.
She was in fact the lady of the feathers, with whom he had foregathered at the coffee-stall in Piccadilly. The lady leaned her plush arms upon the rail and surveyed him with her tinted eyes.
"Can't say as I do, my dear," she remarked. "What name?"
"Never mind that. But tell me, have you ever had a cup of coffee and a bun in Piccadilly early in the morning?"
The mention of the bun struck home to the lady, swept the quivering chords of her memory into a tune. She pushed her face nearer to Julian and stared at him hard.
"So it is," she said. "So it is."
For a moment she seemed inclined to retreat. Then she stood her ground.
Her nerves, perhaps, had grown stronger.
"I should like to know you," Julian said.
The lady was obviously gratified. She tossed her head and giggled.
"Where do you live?" Julian continued.
The lady dived into the back part of her skirt, and, after a long and passionate pursuit, ran a small purse to earth. Opening it with deliberation, she extracted a good-sized card, and handed it up to Julian.
"There you are, dearie," she said.
On the card was printed, "Cuckoo Bright, 400 Marylebone Road."
"I will come at five this afternoon and take you out to tea," said
Julian.
"Right you are, Bertie," the lady cried, in a voice thrilling with pride and exultation.
Julian rode off, and she watched him go, preening herself against the rail like some gaudy bird. She looked up at a policeman and laughed knowingly.
"Well, copper," she said; "how's that, eh?"
The policeman was equal to the occasion.
"Not out," he answered, with a stiff and semi-official smile. "Move along."
And Cuckoo Bright moved as one who walked on air.
Julian had joined Valentine, who had observed the colloquy from afar, controlling with some difficulty the impatience of his mare, excited by her gallop.
"You know that lady?" he asked, still laughing, with perhaps a touch of contempt.
"Very platonically. We met at a coffee-stall in Piccadilly as I was going home after your trance. She was with me when I saw that strange flame."
"When you imagined you saw it."
"If you prefer it, Val. I am going to see her this afternoon."
"My dear fellow—why?"
"I'll tell you," Julian answered gravely. "I believe she is the woman who went to the 'European' with Marr, who must have been with Marr when he was taken ill, and who fled. I have a reason for thinking so."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell you later, when I have talked to her."
"Surely you don't suspect the poor creature of foul play?"
"Not I. It's sheer curiosity that takes me to her."
"Oh."
They rode on a step or two. Then Valentine said:
"Are you going to take her out? She's—well, she is a trifle unmistakable, Julian."
"Yes, I know. You are right. She's not for afternoon wear, poor soul.
What damned scoundrels men are."
Valentine did not join in the sentiment thus forcibly expressed.
Between four and five that afternoon Julian hailed a cab and drove to Marylebone Road. The houses in it seemed endless, and dreary alike, but at length the cab drew up at number 400, tall, gaunt and haggard, like the rest. Julian rang the bell, and immediately a shrill dog barked with a piping fury within the house. Then the door was opened by an old woman, whose arid face was cabalistic, and who looked as if she spent her existence in expecting a raid from the police.
"Is Miss Cuckoo Bright at home?"
"Miss Bright! I'll see."
The old dame turned tail, and slithered, flat-footed, to a room opening from the dirty passage. She vanished and Julian heard two gentle voices muttering. The old woman returned.
"This way, sir!" she said, in a voice that perpetually struggled to get the whip-hand of an obvious bronchitis.
A moment more and Julian stood in the acute presence of the lady of the feathers. At first he scarcely recognized her, for she had discarded her crown of glory and now faced him in the strange frivolity of her hatless touzled hair. She stood by the square table covered with a green cloth, that occupied the centre of the small room, which communicated by folding doors with an inner chamber. A pastile was burning drowsily in a corner, and the shrill dog piped seditiously from its station on a black horsehair-covered sofa, over which a woolwork rug was thrown in easy abandon. Julian extended his hand.
"How d'you do?" he said.
"Pretty bobbish, my dear," was the reply; but the voice was much less pert than he remembered it, and looking at his hostess, Julian perceived that she was considerably younger than he had imagined, and that she was actually—amazing luxury!—a little shy. She had a box of safety-matches in her hand, and she now struck one, and applied it to a gas-burner. The day was dark.
"Pleased to see you," she added, with an attempt at a hearty and untutored air. "Jessie, shut up."
Jessie, the dog, of the toy species, and arched into the shape of a note of interrogation, obeyed, lay down and trembled into sleep. The gaslight revealed the details of the sordid room, a satin box of sweetmeats on the table, a penny bunch of sweet violets in a specimen-glass, one or two yellow-backed novels, and a few photographs ranged upon the imitation marble mantelpiece. There was one arm-chair, whose torn lining indecently revealed the interior stuffing, and there were three other chairs with wooden backs. The lady of the feathers did not dwell in marble halls, unless, perhaps, imaginatively.
"You've got cosey quarters," Julian said, amiably lying.
"Yes, they're not bad, but they do cost money. Sit down, won't you!"
The lady shoved the one arm-chair forward, and after a polite skirmish, Julian was forced to take it. He sat down, disguising from his companion his sudden knowledge that the springs were broken. She, on her part, laid hold of Jessie, dumped the little creature into her lap, and assumed an air of abrupt gentility, pursing her painted lips, and shooting sidelong glances of inquiry at the furniture. Julian could not at once explain his errand. He felt that caution was imperative. Besides, the lady doubtless expected to be entertained at Verrey's or possibly even at Charbonnel's. But Julian had resolved to throw himself upon the lady's hospitality.
"It's an awful day," he said.
The lady assented, adding that she had not been out.
"We are very cosey here," Julian continued, gazing at the small fire that was sputtering in the grate.
The lady looked gratified. She felt that the meagre abode which she must name home had received the hallmark of a "toff's" approval.
"Now I am going to ask you something," Julian said. "Will you let me have tea with you to-day, and—and—come out with me some evening to the Empire or somewhere, instead?"
The lady nodded her fringed head.
"Certainly, my dear," she responded. "Proud to give you tea, I'm sure."
Suddenly she bounced up, scattering Jessie over the floor. She promenaded to the door, opened it and yelled:
"Mrs. Brigg! Mrs. Brigg!"
The expostulating feet of the old person ascended wearily from the lower depths of the house.
"Lord! Lord! Whatever is it now?" she wheezed.
"Please bring up tea for me and this gentleman."
The lady assumed the voice of a sucking dove.
"Tea! Why, I thought you'd be out to—"
The lady shot into the passage and shut the door behind her. After a moment she put her head in and said to Julian:
"I'll be back in a minute. She's in a rare tantrum. I must go down and help her. Pardon."
And she vanished like a flash.
Julian sat feeling rather guilty. To distract himself he got up and looked at the photographs on the mantelpiece. Most of them were of men, but there were two or three girls in tights, and there was one of a stout and venerable woman, evidently highly respectable, seated in an arm-chair, with staring bead-like eyes, but a sweet and gentle mouth. Her hair was arranged in glossy bands. Her hands held a large book, probably a Bible. Julian looked at her and wondered a little how she chanced to be in this galère. Then he started and almost exclaimed aloud. For there, at the end of the mantelpiece, was a cabinet photograph of Marr. He was right then in his suspicion. The lady of the feathers was also the lady at the "European."
"Sorry to keep you waiting," said a voice behind him.
There was a clatter of crockery. His hostess entered bearing a tray, which held a teapot, cups, a large loaf of bread, and some butter, and a milk-jug and sugar-basin. She plumped it down on the table.
"Mrs. Brigg wouldn't make toast," she explained. "And I didn't like to keep you."
"Let's make some ourselves," said Julian, with a happy inspiration.
He felt that to perform a common and a cosey act must draw them together, and awaken in the lady's breast a happy and progressive confidence. She was evidently surprised at the suggestion.
"Well, I never!" she ejaculated. "You are a queer one. You are taking a rise out of me now!"
"Not at all. I like making toast. Give me a fork. I'll do it, and you sit there and direct me."
She laughed and produced the fork from a mean cupboard which did duty as a sideboard.
"Here you are, then. 'Cut it pretty thick. It ain't so high class, but it eats better. That's it. Sit on this stool, dear."
She kicked an ancient leather one to the hearth, and Julian, tucking his long-tailed frock coat under him, squatted down and thrust forward the bread to the bars of the grate. The lady opened the lid of the teapot and examined the brew with an anxious eye.
"It's drawin' beautiful," she declared. "Well, I'm d—" she caught herself up short. "Well this is bally funny," she said. "Turn it, dearie."
Julian obeyed, and they began to talk. For the ice was broken now, and the lady was quite at her ease, and simple and human in her hospitalities.
"This is better than the bun," Julian said.
"I believe you, dear. And yet that bun did me a deal of good that mornin'."
Her voice became suddenly reflective.
"A deal of good."
"Are you often out at such a time?"
"Not I. But that night I'd—well, I didn't feel like bein' indoors.
There's things—well, there, it don't matter. That toast's done, dearie.
Bring it here, and let me butter it."
Julian brought it, and cut another slice from the loaf. He toasted while the lady buttered, a fine division of labour which drew them close together. Jessie, meanwhile, attracted by these pleasant preparations, hovered about, wriggling in pathetic anxiety to share the good things of life.
"Anything wrong that night?" Julian said, carelessly.
The lady buttered, like an angry machine.
"Oh no, dearie," she said. "Make haste, or the tea'll be as black as coal. Jessie, you're a pig! I do spoil her."
Julian called the little dog to him. She came voraciously, her minute and rat-like body tense with greed.
"She's a pretty dog," he said.
"Yes," the lady rejoined proudly. "She's a show dog. She was give to me, and I wouldn't part with her for nuts, no, nor for diamonds neither. Would I, Jessie? Ah, well, dogs stick to you when men don't."
She was trying to be arch, but her voice was really quivering to tears, and in that sentence rang all the tragedy of her poor life. Julian looked across at her as she sat by the tray, buttering now almost mechanically. She was naturally a pretty girl, but was growing rapidly haggard, and was badly made up, rouged in wrong places consumptively, powdered everywhere disastrously. Her eyes were pathetic, but above them the hair was dreadfully dyed, and frizzed into a desolate turmoil. She had a thin young figure and anxious hands. As he looked Julian felt a profound pity and a curious manly friendship for her. She had that saddest aspect of a human being about whom it doesn't matter. Only it matters about every living creature so much.
The lady caught his eye, and extended her lips in a forced smile.
"You never know your luck!" she cried. "So it don't do to be down on it.
Come on, dearie. Now then for the tea."
She poured it out, and Julian drew up to the table. Already he felt oddly at home in this poor room, with this poor life, into which he longed to bring a little hope, a little safety. Jessie sprang to his knees, and thence, naughtily, to the table, snuffling towards the plate of toast. The lady drew it away and approached it to her nose by turns, playfully.
"She is a funny one," she said. "Is your tea right, dearie?"
"Perfect," said Julian. "Is my toast right?"
"Right as ninepence, and righter."
She munched.
"I like you," she said. "You're a gentleman."
She spoke naturally, without coquetry. It was a fine experience for her to be treated with that thing some women never know—respect. She warmed under it and glistened.
"We must be friends," Julian said.
"Pals. Yes. Have some more sugar?"
She jumped two lumps into his cup, and laughed quite gaily when the tea spouted over into the saucer. And they chatted on, and fed Jessie into joy and peace. Gradually Julian drew the conversation round to the photographs. The lady was expansive. She gave short histories of some of the men, summing them up with considerable shrewdness, kodaking their characters with both humour and sarcasm. Julian and she progressed along the mantelpiece together. Presently they arrived at the old lady with the Bible.
"And this?" Julian said.
The lady's fund of spirits was suddenly exhausted.
"Oh, that," she said, and a sort of strange, suppressed blush struggled up under the rouge on her face. "Well, that's mother."
"I like her face."
"Yes. She thinks I'm dead."
The lady turned away abruptly.
"I'll just carry the tray down to Mrs. Brigg," she said, and she clattered out with it, and down the stairs.
Julian heard her loudly humming a music-hall song as she went, the requiem of her dead life with the old woman who held the Bible on her knees. When she returned, her mouth was hard and her eyes were shining ominously. Julian was still standing by the mantelpiece. As she came in he pointed to the photograph of Marr.
"And this?" he asked. "Who's this?"
The lady burst into a shrill laugh of mingled fear and cunning.
"That's the old gentleman!"
"What do you mean?"
"What I say,—the old gentleman, Nick, the devil, if you like it."
"Now you are trying to take a rise out of me."
"Not I, dear," she said. "That's the devil, sure enough."
Either the tea and toast had rendered her exuberant, or the thought of the old woman who believed her to be dead had driven her into recklessness. She continued:
"I'd been with him that night I met you, and I was frightened, I tell you. I'd been mad with fright."
"Why? What had he done to you?"
Julian strove to conceal his eager interest under a light assumption of carelessness.
"Done!—never mind. It don't do to talk about it."
She laid her thin hand on his arm, as if impelled to be confidential.
"Do you believe in people being struck?" she said.
"Struck! I don't understand."
"Struck," she repeated superstitiously. "Down, from up there?"
Her eyes went up to the ceiling, like the child's when it thinks of heaven.
"Was he?" Julian asked.
She nodded, pursing her red lips.
"That's what I think. It came so sudden. Just when I was going to scream somethin' seemed to come over him, like madness it was. He seemed listening. Then he says, 'Now—now!' And he seemed goin' right off. He stared at me and didn't seem to know me. Lord, I was blue with it, I tell you, dear! I was that frightened I just left him and bunked for it, and never said a word to anybody. I ran downstairs and got out of the house, and I daren't go home. So I just walked about till I met you."
She sighed.
"I did enjoy that coffee, I tell you straight, but when you began about seein' things, I couldn't stow it. My nerves was shook. So off I trotted again."
Julian put a question to her.
"Do you know what has become of him?"
"Not I. He'll never get in here again. Mrs. Brigg won't let him. She never could abide him."
She shook her shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.
"I wish he was dead," she said. "I never go out but what I'm afraid I shall meet him, or come back late but what I think I shall find him standin' against the street door. I wish he was dead."
"I knew him. He is dead."
She looked at him, at first questioning, then awe-stricken.
"Then he was struck? Lord!"
Her red mouth gaped.
"It was in the papers," Julian said, "At the European Hotel."
"That was the place. Lord! I never see the papers. Dead is he? I am glad."
Her relief was obvious, yet almost shocking, and Julian could not question her good faith. She had certainly not known. He longed to find out more about her relations with Marr, and his treatment of her, but she shied away from the subject. Obviously she really loathed and detested the remembrance of him.
"But why do you keep his photograph?" Julian asked at last.
The lady seemed puzzled.
"I dunno," she said at last. "I don't seem as if I could burn it. But if he is gone—dead, I mean—really—"
"He is."
"I know."
She sat thoughtfully. Then she said:
"He didn't look a fellow to die. It seems funny. No; he didn't look it."
And then she dropped the subject, and nothing would induce her to return to it. Presently they heard a church clock strike. It chimed seven. Julian was astonished to find that time had gone so quickly.
"I must be going," he said.
The lady looked at him with an odd, half-impudent, half-girlish, and wistful scrutiny.
"I say," she began, and stopped.
"Yes?"
"I say—why ever did you come?"
The short question that expressed her wondering curiosity might well have driven any thoughtful man into tears. And Julian, young and careless as he often was, felt something of the terror and the pain enshrined in it. But he did not let her see this.
"I wanted to have a talk with you," he answered.
"A talk; you like a talk with me?"
"Yes, surely."
She still stared at him with pathetic eyes. He had stood up.
"Oh," she said. "Well, dearie, I'm glad."
Julian took up his hat.
"I'm going out too," she said.
"Are you?"
"Yes."
She threw a sidelong glance at him, then added hardily, although her painted lips were suddenly quivering:
"I've got to go to work."
"I know," Julian said. "Well, I will wait till you are ready and drive you wherever you want to go."
"Want to go," she began, with a little, shrill, hideous laugh. Then, pulling herself up, she added in a subdued voice:
"Thank you, dearie. I won't be long."
She opened the folding doors and passed into the inner room, accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood, as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a hook, the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for the piteous battle of the London streets. And then his ears caught the eager patter of Jessie to and fro, and a murmured expostulation from her mistress. Evidently the little dog had got hold of some article of attire and was worrying it. There was a hidden chase and a hidden capture. Jessie was scolded and kissed. Then the sitting-room slowly filled with the scent of cherry-blossom. A toothbrush in action was distinctly audible. This tragedy had its comic relief, like almost all tragedies. Julian sighed and smiled, but his heart was heavy with the desolate and sordid wonder of life, as his mind heard—all over London—a thousand echoes of the bedchamber music of the lady of the feathers.
The folding doors opened wide and she appeared, freshly painted and powdered, crowned once again with the forest of ostrich tips, and holding the struggling Jessie in her arms.
"Jessie must go to basket," she said, and she dropped the dog into a tiny basket lined with red flannel, and held up a warning finger.
"Naughty—go bials!" she cried. "Go bials, Jessie."
"What's that?"
"Bials—by-bye. She don't like bein' left. Well, dearie, we've had a nice time."
Suddenly she put her hands on Julian's shoulders and kissed his mouth.
"I wish there was more like you," she whispered.
He kissed her too, and put his arms around her.
"If I give you something, will you—will you stay at home to-night, just to-night, with Jessie?" he said.
But she drew away and shook her head.
"I won't take it."
"Yes."
"I won't. No—we're pals—not—not the other thing. You're the only one
I've got—of that kind. I won't spoil it—no, I won't."
Her decision was almost angry. Julian did not persist.
"I'll come again," he said.
She looked at him wistfully.
"Ah—but you won't," she answered.
"I will."
He spoke with energy. She nodded.
"I'd like you to."
Then they went out into the evening and hailed a hansom.
"Put me down at the Piccadilly end of Regent Street," said the lady of the feathers.